He did not have long to wait. He was still on his first cigarette when the girl from 531 came in and walked with long graceful strides to the elevator. Murdock waited for it to start up so she would have a chance to get to her room; then went over and pushed the button.
The boy eyed him curiously as they rode up but Murdock pretended not to notice his inspection. When he stepped into the fifth-floor corridor he walked slowly until he heard the door clang behind him, then picked up his pace. He was still a step or two away from Room 531 when he heard the woman’s stifled cry, and after that he moved by instinct.
Sensing somehow that the cry came from the room he was approaching, he grabbed the knob and pushed on into darkness that, in that first moment, seemed black and impenetrable. He heard, rather than saw, the struggle taking place ahead of him and moved in just as someone fell to the floor. The rest of it remained in his mind as an interlude of wild confusion.
It was all over in five seconds and no word was spoken. In the dim light from the hall that filtered through the open door he made out a vague shape huddled on the floor. When, directly in front of him, he saw a moving shadow blacker than the rest, he swung at it.
His fist bounced off a man’s shoulder and almost simultaneously he took the other’s punch on the side of his head. He hardly felt it, but moving as he was, the blow was hard enough to knock him off balance. What spilled him was the unseen chair which caught him across the knees. He fell over it, twisting and landing on one shoulder, then losing his sense of direction as he tried to roll to his feet.
He made it finally but even as he came erect he heard the door slam and what light there was went out. He headed in the direction of the sound, groping along the little hallway, finding the knob and tugging at a door which would not yield.
Then he stopped, knowing it was locked from the outside; only then did he remember the still figure which lay huddled on the floor.
‘Are you all right?’ he called, his voice edged with alarm.
There was no answer and he groped along the wall in the entryway, breathing hard, his stomach taut as a sudden fear began to work on him. He located the light switch and snapped it twice but nothing happened. He found the doorway to the bath and reached inside, fumbling in his haste as his fears mounted. When he tripped the switch, light glared from the white walls and he blinked against it.
‘Who is it?’
The voice came weakly from the bedroom but it was a reassuring sound. He turned toward it, and the girl was still on the floor, unmoving as he stepped quickly past to switch on the bedside lamp. Only when he discovered she was watching him with open eyes did he begin to breathe again, and now he knelt beside her and asked again if she was all right.
‘Yes’, she said. ‘I—I think so … Oh. You’re the man who was in Neil’s room.’
Murdock lifted her to her feet, relieved and grateful that she had not been hurt. He saw that she had been hugging the red leather bag under her as she lay on the floor. The shoulder strap had been torn away and lay to one side, and even as he assisted her to the one upholstered chair, she held tightly to the bag, her face white with shock.
To give her time to collect herself, he moved another chair under the overhead light with its glass reflector, stepped up, and tried the bulb. It was loose, as he had expected, and when he screwed it tight it came alight.
‘You didn’t see who it was?’ he asked.
She shook her head, then swept her two-toned hair back and looked up at him, fear still lingering in the corners of her eyes.
‘I unlocked the door and came in. I put the key in the lock from the inside, and the switch wouldn’t work so I started for the floor lamp. Before I could reach it I heard the door slam and he grabbed me.’
Murdock went over to the door and tried it again. The lock was not of the spring type and the intruder had snatched at the key on his way out, then used it from the outside to prevent his being followed.
‘He didn’t strike you?’
‘No—I don’t think so. I felt him grab at me and I twisted and he caught the shoulder strap and yanked, but I held on. I guess I screamed——’
‘I heard you.’
‘—and then I was falling and the door opened. After that I was too scared to move.’ She hesitated, green eyes probing his face uncertainly. ‘Who are you? How did you happen to——’ She let the sentence dangle and watched Murdock take out his wallet. She inspected his press card.
‘Oh. A reporter?’
‘Photographer.’ Murdock pulled the chair closer to hers. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Audrey Wayne.’
There were a lot of questions in Murdock’s mind that demanded answers but he had an idea it would be best to take it easy. He smiled at her and offered a cigarette, gave her a light when she accepted. The colour had come back to her cheeks, leaving them smooth and tawny and unwrinkled except for the tiny ones about the eyes that years and experience had put there. She had a pleasantly husky voice and he liked the way she looked right at him when she answered.
‘How long have you known Garvin?’ he asked, keeping his tone conversational.
‘Two days—no, three.’
‘Oh?’
‘He sat next to me on the plane from Los Angeles and we got to talking.’
‘You took the bus from Chicago?’
‘He talked me into it. Not the bus, but coming to Boston! I was going to New York but he said he could get me an audition here; he knew someone in radio and television, or said he did.’
‘You’re an actress?’
‘There are times when I’m not sure. I was a singer originally, a canary with a band. Later, because of this little voice I had and a figure, I got a stock contract with one of the studios. I had an idea I’d be another Cornell or Hayes. The last couple of years I’ve been doing radio and TV work when I could get it.’
She was sitting quite close, still looking right at him when she spoke, and there was something deep down in her green eyes that Murdock could not quite fathom. When he realized she was no longer afraid he tried to isolate the quality and then wondered if it came not so much from the eyes but from her offhand manner of speaking. He somehow got the impression—then and later—that she knew much more than she was telling and yet he did not know why he thought so. In spite of this he realized he liked her air of cryptic self-reliance.
‘Did Garvin say why he came to town?’
She glanced down at her cigarette, brow furrowing. ‘Not exactly. I think he was a piano player. He said he wanted to see a couple of guys. He was going to do some collecting. At least that’s what he said. Also——’
She paused, mouth twisting. ‘It sounds kind of funny, I know, but he said something about a wedding he wanted to see. Those weren’t his words but I think that’s what he meant. He had this clipping—I think it was from some syndicated column—and he, well, he used to know the girl.’
‘The Canning wedding’, Murdock said. ‘You were there too.’
She looked at him, eyes widening; then she looked away. ‘Was I?’ she said, elaborately casual now.
‘Sitting on a stone bench on the lawn. Why?’
She looked for an ash tray, found one, and put out her cigarette. When he held out his hand, she passed it to him.
‘Why what?’
‘Why were you so interested?’
‘Women are always interested in weddings, especially big society ones.’
‘How did you get in without an invitation?’
Her shoulders moved in the faintest of shrugs and she answered without looking at him. She said she’d stood outside by the gate and noticed that when the cars drove up all anyone ever did was hold up an invitation.
‘So I got a taxi,’ she said, ‘and scrunched down so the gateman couldn’t tell how I was dressed. I held up a square piece of paper and he let us in. Of course I couldn’t get into the house but it was fun to sit there and watch the people come and go.’
She spoke easily enough and Murdock sens
ed that at least some of it was true, just as it occurred to him that the explanation was not quite good enough. A woman, a stranger who had been in town only a day, taking all that trouble just to get close to a wedding reception?
‘I’m sorry’, he said, aware that she had spoken.
‘I said, did Neil come back?’
‘No.’
‘But then’—she frowned, regarding him with a sudden scepticism—‘why did you come up here at all?’
It was a fair question and Murdock decided he would have to tell her. He leaned forward to take her hand, and then put her unresisting fingers on the bump on his head.
‘Oh’, she said. ‘You’re hurt.’
‘Not much’, he said, and told her what had happened downstairs, omitting a detail here and there. ‘Garvin was out to the Canning house too’, he said, not yet convinced that it was time to tell her all the truth. ‘He got himself in a jam and I found out where he was staying and came to wait for him.’
He paused and said: ‘The trouble was, someone else had the same idea and got there ahead of me. He was waiting in the darkened bathroom and he heard what you said when you came in. The only reason I can figure why he came up here to see you is because he was interested in that package. Is it in your bag? How did you happen to get it?’
She glanced down at her lap. Slowly she straightened the bag and just as slowly opened it. She took out the flat, envelope-wrapped package, the frown again working on her face.
‘It was at the desk, and when I came in and asked for my key the clerk gave it to me. There was a note that said I was to keep the envelope until he, Neil, saw me. I didn’t know when he wrote it so I came up to his room to see if he was in.’
‘You didn’t come up here after you left?’
‘Not all the way. I started to and then I remembered a letter I’d written at dinner to a friend of mine in New York. I forgot to mail it and I didn’t think of it until I got out of the elevator. Then I went back downstairs and the clerk said there’d be no more collections tonight. He said the post office was only about four blocks away so I walked over.’
Murdock took the package from her lap and turned it in his hands. He saw how the large envelope had been folded and taped to make about an eight-inch square; his fingers told him the object inside was rounded and a quarter of an inch or more thick.
‘Maybe we should have a look’, he said.
‘Oh, no.’ She took the envelope back. ‘It’s Neil’s. I have to keep it for him.’
Murdock shrugged, pretending it did not matter. ‘You don’t know what’s in it?… Any idea?’
‘Not the faintest.’
‘Did you know he had it?’
‘He showed it to me on the bus.’
‘Didn’t he say anything about it?’
‘Just that it was going to make him his fortune.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I think he was kidding.’
Murdock stood up, disappointed but not dwelling on the subject. He had too many other things chasing each other around inside his head. He liked this girl, her looks, manner, the rounded, nicely proportioned figure. The trouble was he could not tell how much of what she had said was the truth or how much more she knew that had not been told. He wanted to talk to her some more; he wanted particularly to know what was in the envelope but he realized he could not manage it here.
He stepped to the telephone and asked the clerk to send someone up to unlock the door. Presently a bellboy came and when the door opened Murdock gave him a coin and took the key. He looked at it, inspected the lock. He walked over to Audrey Wayne, his manner serious.
‘I think you ought to get out of here for tonight.’
‘Why?’
‘I should think you’d be a little scared.’
‘Well—I am.’
‘Garvin must be in some sort of jam. His room was searched and I got slugged.’ He paused, thinking about the letters Pat Canning had once written to Neil Garvin. These, it seemed to him, were the cause of the slugging, but he did not say so. ‘As a guess I’d say the same man came up here. He broke in, unscrewed the bulb so you’d never see him, and waited. Why? Because he wanted that envelope. There’s no telling what might have happened if I hadn’t barged in.’
‘I know’, she said, her voice small.
‘What’s to prevent him from coming back? He got in once, he could do it again.’
‘You think I should change rooms?’
‘It wouldn’t do any good. You could pick these locks with a hairpin or a bent spoon. It would be a lot safer to stay at my place for tonight—until we find out what’s what.’
He saw the change in her expression as he finished. Her green eyes were suddenly veiled and wary, as though such propositions had been made before. When she hesitated he grinned at her and now his words were patient and explicit.
‘You’re a big girl’, he said. ‘You’ve been around and you’ve been propositioned before by strangers and you’re sort of proud that you can take care of yourself, right?’
‘You’re close.’
‘And so you say, “This guy has a new pitch, but who is he? His press card says he’s a reporter but since when have newspapermen been decorated for their morals?” ’ He hesitated, his gaze both earnest and amused. ‘So suppose I give you some character references. I’ll wait while you call them up. You’ll have to take my word that the apartment is big enough; that it has a lock on the bedroom door which is very simple to operate, even for little girls.’
She was smiling before he finished and the wariness had vanished from her glance. She seemed now to be studying this man who stood watching her in a somewhat different light. She took in the conservative but well-tailored dark-grey suit, the stiff white collar he had worn to the wedding, the black-and-white checked tie. She considered the lift of chest and the set of his shoulders, the angle of mouth and jaw, the easy steadiness of his dark gaze.
She liked what she saw but it was probably not the physical aspect of the man that decided her. For Murdock had a way of treating women that usually called forth a certain responsiveness of their own. It was not alone his way of talking or the things he said; rather it was the manner in which he said them which gave the all-important connotation of sincerity. He had, somehow, the happy faculty of making each woman think she was important in her own right, and given time their response was instinctive, and their concern not so much that he might make unwelcome advances, but that he might make none at all. That they were as nice to him as they were always surprised him a little, and this in itself was an advantage which gave added flavour to the relationship.
Audrey Wayne seemed to feel that way now because her laugh was light and genuine. ‘I’m almost convinced’, she said.
Murdock said it was the only sensible thing to do.
‘If you’ll trust me to carry the envelope,’ he said, ‘I should think you could get what you’ll need in your handbag. A nightgown, or whatever you wear——’
‘I can get along without one.’
‘Toothbrush——’ He stopped, his grin embarrassed. ‘Well, you know better than I do.’ He turned to put the envelope on the table while she went into the bath. He picked up the torn strap from the shoulder bag and put it on the bureau, slipped on his coat. He turned out all the overhead lights and was waiting, envelope and hat in hand, when she came back.
Downstairs they started past the bar and then Murdock stopped. ‘I could use one drink.’
‘So could I.’
They found a table and sat down, both ordering Scotch. Nothing more was said about what had happened upstairs but Murdock asked about her trip East in the hope that he might learn something more about Neil Garvin. He inquired about her plans and asked how long she would be in town.
She said she didn’t know, adding that Garvin was supposed to call this friend of his who would give her an audition, but since she hadn’t seen Garvin since last night she didn’t know what had happened.
They were in the bar no more than ten
minutes and then went out and got a taxi, riding to this block of brownstone fronts not far from Massachusetts Avenue. The remodelled house where he had an apartment on the second floor stood in the middle of the block, and when he had helped the girl from the cab he pointed to the stone steps diagonally ahead.
‘That one, there’, he said.
She sauntered across the sidewalk while he turned to pay the driver. As he did so a car pulled in behind the cab and cut its lights. Murdock was aware of this but he was busy counting change and thought no more about it until the cab pulled away. Now, starting toward the girl, who was waiting on the bottom step, he heard someone call his name.
‘Murdock’, the voice said. ‘See you a minute?’
Murdock looked the small sedan over and moved toward it. He saw the door open and someone start to get out, and then the other door opened and a second man moved round the car. Here in the middle of the block it was quite dark, the only light coming from a curtained window here and there, and all Murdock could tell about the two was that they were husky, and that one was a couple of inches taller than the other.
They were quite close to him before he remembered the envelope he still carried in his hand. He started to thrust it into his coat pocket, not knowing yet what this was about and suddenly apprehensive for its safety.
By then it was too late. The man who had hailed him spoke again. Something about the voice was vaguely familiar and now, peering through the darkness at the crooked face and turned down hat, Murdock knew that this was Lew Klime.
‘We’ll take that’, Klime said and reached for the envelope.
Murdock said nothing at all. He seemed to realize that somehow he had been followed from the hotel, that neither denial nor delaying tactics would do any good. With the envelope still in his right hand, he hooked savagely with his left, feeling the jolt all along his arm as the blow rocked Klime’s head.
Then, as he tried to hook again, hands grabbed him from behind, pinioning his arms. An instant later the envelope had been wrenched from his grasp and then something hard and round jabbed him forcibly in the small of the back.
‘Take it easy!’ a strange voice ordered. ‘This gun could go off.’
Crimson Clue Page 5