by Joan Sanger
“Jesus! He didn’t expect to walk, did he?” I said, in surprise.
Judge Lamar nodded. “He said it would soothe him.”
I turned to Lynn laughingly. “There’s a moral to the judge’s story. What do you say to going dancing with me before I pull a brainstorm or start writing editorials or go generally haywire?”
* * *
For a long time afterward, that evening with Lynn remained impressed on my mind. It wasn’t that it was the last halcyon spell that preceded the storm, a final hour of tranquillity before a series of events that were to shake us like some convulsive nightmare. No, the hold of that night in my memory was Lynn’s alone. She was sweeter than I ever remembered her. Sweeter, softer and inexplicably nearer. I remember the orchestra kept playing “Siboney,” and “Spanish Love,” with plaintive persistence. I remember that the strongest bachelor’s resolve was almost wilted.
When I reached our room that night it was long past two o’clock. The air was hot and sultry. I rather expected to have to tiptoe across the porch, and noiselessly slip into bed, but to my surprise half-way across the garden I saw a yellow patch of electric light in our window.
Inside I found Pete pacing up and down the floor. I noticed he was fully dressed except for his coat, which in an excess of impatience, warmth or what you will, had been flung across the bed. For some inscrutable reason he looked worried and harassed. His face was pallid with shadows. His grey hair was rumpled. An absent-minded nod and “hello” were the only salutations I got out of him.
“What’s up?”
For answer he crossed to the bureau and picked up a note.
“Read that!”
Something in his tone aroused my curiosity. I glanced at the hastily penned letter. The envelope was addressed jointly to Pete and to me. The note was short.
Must see you tonight without fail. Have discovered something of gravest importance in connection with Wyndham’s end, Will return to your hotel at one o’clock sharp, If you are not in, will wait.
Calvin Watts.
I looked up at Pete as I finished.
“No sign of him yet?”
“No!” he answered in a strained, staccato way. “And I’ve been back here since twelve.”
“That’s funny.” Then I proceeded to impart to Alcott what Judge Lamar had told me of Watt’s condition earlier in the evening. Alcott listened to me with absorbed attention.
“The Judge told you Watts had already seen Ford, Dunlap and Phillip Brady?” Alcott repeated the names with emphasis as though he was mentally checking the list.
“I just finished telling you that.”
“And Stone?”
“Lamar didn’t mention him. But Watts may have seen him for all that.”
Alcott relaxed into a grin, his first that evening.
“He would have if he’d been around Police Headquarters, that’s sure. The bird was waiting for me when I came out. Only luckily I saw him first.”
“Good Lord! What is he up to?”
“God only knows. Get on with your story. You were saying Watts looked like hell and acted worse.”
“Yes.” I spared Pete no detail. By the time I reached the point in Judge Lamar’s story where Watts was supposed to have jumped up with his crazy exclamation that it was the question of the matches that solved the crime, Alcott crossed over to me and grasped me roughly by the shoulder.
“Look here, Johnny. For God’s sake! No clowning now! You’re dead sure that’s exactly what he said?”
“Sure thing.” I looked at Alcott with genuine surprise. His chin was set tensely and I noticed the muscles in his face were working with suppressed excitement. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Still—I’m worried. Damnably so! Ring for the night man. It’s just possible that Watts may be waiting somewhere in the lobby.”
I rang. But the night man’s advent seemed interminable. Meanwhile to kill time, I poured out to Pete the story of my afternoon’s adventures. During most of my account Alcott stood in the doorway, peering out into the night, watching, waiting the arrival of the porter. I was beginning to think my whole account a mad waste of breath, when he turned around to me, the old flicker of interest alight in his eye.
“What was that Charles Stone said about Ford?”
I repeated Stone’s curious statement. “He said, ‘Ask your friend what he was doing with a room down the same corridor as his own on the night of February 13th?’”
Alcott ran his hand through his hair. “H’m,” he said, as though thinking aloud. “I’d like to know the answer to that one myself.”
“Aw! Suppose you talk to him directly. You may get further than I.”
Alcott made no reply.
“And while we’re on that, you lazy bum! Don’t you think it about time you took a crack at a few of our leads directly. You haven’t talked to a single damned one as yet—excepting old Miss Isabella.”
Alcott turned around with a sudden smile.
“She was enough!” He paused abruptly, his smile died and a hard note crept in his voice. “I’ll see them all, but in my own good time.”
The porter’s arrival at that moment cut us short. He was a scrawny, blinky-eyed old fellow, whose repose had obviously been interrupted by our ring. Briefly, peremptorily, Alcott directed him to search the main lounge for an American gentleman who might be waiting there for us, and to bring the man to us with all possible speed. The night man nodded and shuffled off into the darkness.
After that the minutes dragged by as though weighted. From time to time Alcott turned on me with a barrage of seemingly irrelevent questions about Stone, Mrs. Dunlap and Ford. But for the most part he paced the floor, abstracted and moody, ten fathoms deep in his own reflections. Up and down! Up and down! Up and down! There was a feverish unrest in his manner.
Drugged by the monotony of his footsteps, and the humid warmth of the night I became gradually aware that I was very tired. With increasing wistfulness I began looking at my open bed. I felt a simple old-fashioned yearning to turn in.
“Aw, Jesus! Pete,” I said, when I could struggle no longer. “There isn’t a chance of that Watts guy turning up any more tonight. Maybe you’re not wise to it, but at this moment it’s precisely ten minutes past three.” I aimed my remark as a plain little homespun statement of fact.
Its effect on Alcott was amazing to observe. He wheeled around as though he had been struck.
“Ten past three!” he said, in a flat, incredulous tone. “I’d no idea!” For a moment he stood looking at me like a man who was seeing ghosts or hearing voices. Then he strode across to the bed and picking up his coat, he shouldered into it like an automaton.
“What a fool I’ve been! What a complete damned fool!” he kept repeating under his breath. “I should have known.”
At the door, the night porter suddenly appeared, his taciturn solitary presence looming out of the darkness and announcing to us more clearly than words that his search had failed. I gave him some change and waved him away.
Alcott stood rooted in his steps, running his hand through his hair nervously. “God! Sometimes brute logic is as dangerous as brute force. Don’t sit there staring, Johnny!” He gave a humorless laugh. “There’s something horrible afoot. Something devilish. Like ‘when church yards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.’ Good God! Why didn’t we foresee this?”
To see a person of habitual reserve shaken by intense emotion is an arresting phenomenon to say the least. Galvanized, I sat bolt upright unable to take my eyes from him.
He was moving with swift decision now. From under his bed he pulled his old grip. I watched him open it, and take from a small compartment in the side, a revolver whose presence I had never once suspected heretofore.
“What the devil’s eating you?” I burst out, as I saw him slip the gun into his pocket.
Alcott turned to me, his face set and grim. He rubbed his hand across his eyes convulsively.
“Grab your hat and
come along, Johnny,” he said, almost fiercely. “Calvin Watts won’t be coming here tonight. What’s more I’ve an awful hunch he won’t be going anywhere for a long, long time.”
Chapter XXIII A SHOT IN THE NIGHT
A FEW moments later Alcott and I were jumping into a taxicab.
“Almandares Hotel!” Pete commanded almost hoarsely. “And veloz! pronto!”
The night was black and intolerably warm, despite the fact that a fine drizzle had begun to fall and the wind was rising.
On our drive Alcott hardly spoke a word, but as the street lamps whizzed by, I could see that his face had lost none of its strained, tense look.
We turned in the driveway of the Almandares grounds, and immediately I became aware that something unusual was up. Just ahead, between the smooth trunked palm trees, there was the gleam of lanterns, and the flash of searchlights. Out of the rain loomed dark forms trampling the grass and examining the shrubbery and trellises.
Alcott sat forward. Under his breath I heard him mutter, “Too late! Good God! I was afraid so!” He ordered the driver to stop and in three strides he had joined a knot of men who were standing in shivering curiosity near the roadway.
“What became of the body?” he demanded so peremptorily that I found myself starting. For a moment the cluster of men stared blankly at each other and at him. Then, as happens in almost every Cuban group, some one of the party understood English and stepping aside, he bowed and answered us in a low voice.
“They moved him away in an ambulance over an hour ago.”
Alcott swallowed. Neither I, nor anyone else could have been sure of what he said. I caught something that sounded oddly like “fiend” and then the next thing I knew he’d stalked off and left me.
When I caught up to him, he was in the thick of the wet, bedraggled group of policemen, camera men, newspaper reporters and hotel employees who had all spurred hither to this focus of excitement. I saw him buttonhole a hardened old reporter from the Havana Post whom we had both previously met. Jeffers was the man’s name. He was an American by birth and a funny, shabby little fellow with bad teeth and worse hair.
“Over there! Mr. Alcott!” The man was saying with excitement. “Look! You can still see the blood in spite of all this infernal rain!”
I followed the direction of his outstretched hand, where the ground, despite the now sudden and torrential downpour, was still darkly stained with gore. A shiver of apprehension went down my spine. It comes back over me again as I think of that scene. The circle of grave sombre faces, lit by the occasional flashes of lightning and the dim glow from the lanterns, the wind moaning like a soul in distress through the tall palm trees, the flower-bordered hotel path, and there in the center, that crimson tell-tale pool of blood.
As in a dream I heard Jeffers talking: “It appears the poor guy was walking peacefully up to his hotel when his assailant shot at him from behind that bush!” He nodded off a half dozen paces.
“Were you there?” Alcott asked with a flare of interest.
“Nope. But there were footsteps behind there, that is before this rain started coming down. And then the body was lying in a way to suggest it.”
“I see,” Alcott said gravely. “At what time was all this?”
“Sometime past twelve. We fix the hour largely on the advice of the doctor who came along with the ambulance.”
“No one heard the shot?”
“Oh, yes! Shortly after twelve the night clerk and some of the guests heard a report off on the grounds. However, they paid no attention to it. So many cars backfire these days. They just set it down to that!”
“Too bad!” I broke out. “A little promptness and they might have tracked the criminal.”
“I doubt it,” Alcott said with weary emphasis. Then he turned back to Jeffers. “Who discovered the body?”
“Two of the hotel guests. It seems, they were coming in from a party some time after one, and saw, or thought they saw some unusual bulk over here in the shadows. They stopped to investigate. Ten minutes later the. night clerk was phoning for police, first aid and all the rest of the works! It was then I hopped out here!”
“Funny, no one noticed the body before then.”
“Well, the grounds are rather deserted at night, you know, and the poor guy seems to have picked out a pretty dark spot in which to keel over.”
“It’s ghastly.”
“It’s got me beat. The man’s watch and wallet were left untouched so there’s not even a good, old-fashioned theft to pin it to!” Jeffers turned up his coat collar and looked slantwise at the heavens. “Zowie! Did you ever see such a downpour?”
I never had. The rain was teeming. I felt rivulets descending my back, dripping from my hat, seeping into my shoes. “Good God! let’s move under cover!”
Of a sudden, the wind had come up with tropical force, beating the vines and bushes this way and that. howling through the tops of the palm trees. Lightning licked the black sky, and the thunder seemed to crack all about us. Even before my words were out most of the crowd were scurrying this way and that for shelter.
Only Alcott seemed strangely loathe to leave the spot. His clothes were drenched. At each minute the storm was becoming more menacing, and yet it seemed as though that small rapidly disappearing pool of blood held him rooted and spellbound by its fatal secret.
When reason could put up with this situation no longer, I touched him on the arm. “Look here! you crazy sap! If you’re all set for an early death, I’m not!”
With a profound sigh, Alcott shook himself out of his reverie. “Clear off, if you want. I just can’t get over this confounded mess. God! I should have forseen it. That’s the worst of it! Poor fellow!”
“I’m not budging from this spot till you do.” I was honestly bothered about Alcott. However, the words were hardly out when a wild gleam of lightning tore through the sky, illuminating for one blinding instant every object about us. In the crash of thunder that followed, I clutched hold of Pete’s arm.
“Holy God! over there! Behind that tree trunk! Did you see what I did?”
“Stone!” he whispered between closed lips. “He’s been there fifteen minutes.”
“What’s he up to?”
“God knows. He keeps watching us like a hawk.”
I grabbed Pete by the arm in genuine earnest. I remember my voice was husky as I said, “Let’s get going. There’s been enough crime around here for one night!”
Pete shrugged. “Maybe this once you’re right, old punk. Anyhow, that bird is beginning to give me the creeps.”
We turned swiftly up the path to where the Al-mandares, white and still, seemed slumbering peacefully through all the wild cannonade of the storm.
A few minutes later we entered the lounge. Its polished marble floors, its cool banks of green, its dimmed lights brought a fleeting sense of serenity, but not for long. Reminders of the night’s grim business were all about us, evidenced in the scattered knots of police and reporters, who, like ourselves, had taken shelter here from the storm.
Alcott made his way straight to the hotel desk, where a slender dark-eyed night clerk was regaling a group of late comers with all the gory details of the crime. In the group, I suddenly caught sight of the tall foppish figure of Barton Dunlap. He was dressed with all his usual sartorial elegance. Alcott saw him too and drawing me aside, he waited unobtrusively for the clerk to finish and the group to move away. Then without ado, Alcott produced his press card and introduced himself to the young man.
“We won’t keep you a minute.”
The young clerk smiled. “It’s quite ‘okay’ as you Americans say. We do not have disturbances like this so often.” His dark eyes kindled. Obviously, he was relishing the excitement.
“At what hour did you come on duty tonight?”
“At seven o’clock.”
“Since your arrival has anyone called to see Mr. Calvin Watts?”
The young man hesitated. “I’m sorry. We’re not at liberty
to divulge. . . .”
At that moment, Alcott beckoned to a short, massive Police Inspector who had been looking over at us uncertainly.
“Didn’t know I’d have need of you twice in the same day, Inspector Montara,” he said laughingly. “For Christ’s sake! Tell this young man he can speak freely and that we know how to hold our tongues. Oh, by the way, this is a friend of mine, Mr. Ellis.”
The Police Officer’s presence worked wonders. As though by miracle the night clerk’s garrulity returned.
“Si! Si! There were two callers. A gentleman and a lady. Just a moment, please.” He rummaged in the room box and took out a slip. “Ah! There is the message! Maybe it will help.”
Alcott opened the envelope with indecent haste. Within was a short note and a strange one.
Remember my warning. The odds are all against you.
Hugh Ford.
“At what time were these people here?”
“At perhaps nine o’clock! I would say.”
“I see.” Pause. “And this very tall fashionably dressed gentleman who was talking to you when I came up.” Alcott was referring to Dunlap, of course, “Was he here earlier this evening?”
“I do not know. But he asked very many questions about the affair, so I assume he could not have been there!”
“H’m. Did Mr. Watts have any other callers during the evening?”