"I noticed he was pretty jumpy," Eric Trent said. He was standing talking to Doan but looking at and leaning close to Melissa and there was an expression on his face which seemed to indicate that he was thinking about something entirely different from what he was saying. "I noticed he was exceptionally jumpy every time that Shirley Parker was around. He avoided her like the plague."
"He had a reason there," Doan told him. "Shirley's a psychologist, isn't she? At any rate, a graduate student in psychology, and these psychologists and psychiatrists and the like have a way of seeing right through fakers and spotting a liar as soon as they talk to one. This guy was afraid of Shirley for that reason. It's a wonder he didn't murder her too, which would have been a shame, because aside from being a psychologist she's a remarkably pretty girl...Thinking the matter over and remembering the difficulty she was having getting together her material on sex, I wonder if I couldn't be of some help to her--maybe in a personal way. Do either of you happen to know her telephone number?"
"Never mind that now," Melissa said. "You tell us the rest--quick!"
"There isn't much rest. Everything was going along as smooth as silk for Big Tub--he knew nothing about Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz--alias Morales trailing him--and then Trent had to turn up. That blew things sky high. Big Tub knew who Trent was. He'd been keeping track of Heloise. He knew Trent was separated from her, but he knew very well that wasn't the end of the story. He knew Heloise didn't let go of things that were hers that easy. He knew she'd start hanging around the university, and if she did, sooner or later she was going to spot Big Tub. No disguise would fool her for an instant. If she spotted him, she'd have him in jail before he could wink, and that would mean getting it in the neck for Bumbershoot Bennie and Sley-Mynick on top of the embezzlement rap. He had to get Trent away from the university, and that was just what he was trying so hard to do."
"You told us about that," Melissa said. She, too, was talking to Doan, but she was looking at Trent who was still looking at her, and between them there seemed to be an intimacy born of a new discovery or a new thought. "That's what started the whole thing off. Sley-Mynick or Big Tub or whoever was fixing up a booby trap for Eric when I waltzed in and caught it in the noggin."
"That's right," said Doan.
"But Ames--and Beulah..."
"They got in his way. He was desperate. He had two murders--and probably more--behind him. He couldn't take any chances at all. He couldn't afford to have any attention directed toward him. He swatted them like the ordinary person would a couple of flies--Ames because Ames had seen him and Beulah Porter Cowys because she was nosing around and might say something to Heloise that would point Heloise at Big Tub, alias Sley-Mynick. He could easily prowl around in the beauty salon. He used to loaf there all the time. He knew the place like the palm of his hand, and Carstairs gave him a nice assist."
"I still want to know," Trent said, "why he smashed my instruments."
"You and your silly instruments," said Melissa, but there was no malice in her voice.
"They are not silly, and they are damned expensive." Doan said, "He did that to cover himself after he missed with the tile and spotted Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz watching him. He was going to play his goofy blame-it-on-the-Gestapo game. Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz saved him the trouble by inventing that business about thunder birds."
"And another thing," said Trent. "What about my so-called brother, Horace?"
"Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz told Humphrey that because he thought Humphrey might possibly be bright enough to figure out that if Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz hadn't busted those instruments, only one other person could have. Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz did not intend to let Humphrey arrest the bird he thought was Sley-Mynick, so he pulled a herring in the shape of some nonexistent scrolls across the track."
"And you went off with the two of them and left me alone with Big Tub Tremaine--after he just got through trying to cave my head in with a tile! You're one hell of a bodyguard!"
"You were as safe as if you were in church," Doan assured him. "He wouldn't have dared make a move after that close shave. If he had killed you, even Humphrey would have known who did it."
"That would have been a big consolation," said Trent.
"Oh, Doan," said Melissa, "how awful. To think you could have been so heartless as to leave poor Eric alone and unarmed and unprotected in the company of this awful, awful person. I wouldn't have believed it of you. I've a good mind to strike your name off my list of nice people."
Doan looked at her blankly. "Your attitude," he said, "towards this guy--Eric. What's happened to change your attitude?"
"Never mind," said Melissa. "I want to know about Heloise."
"Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz went around to see her," Doan explained. He turned to the Mexican. "Didn't you do that?"
"Naturally," said Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz. He was looking very gloomy and very sullen and as though he had lost his last friend in the world somewhere far south of the Rio Grande.
Doan said, "Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz here wanted to know if there had been any previous connection--before Piedras Negras, I mean--between Big Tub and Sley-Mynick. And while he was at Heloise's, he showed her a picture of the fake Sley-Mynick. So much is my assumption. Now let's see if I'm not correct." Again he turned to the Mexican detective. "Isn't that what happened?"
"Naturally."
"But Heloise fooled you. She didn't admit she knew him, did she?"
"No."
"But she did," said Doan. "And how she did. She recognized her dear departed husband's puss instantly. But Heloise never did anything without figuring what effect it would have on the business of Heloise of Hollywood. And this was something to chew on--two murders and a dead husband turning up. But more to the point, a husband she'd feel fine about never seeing again inasmuch as she'd already proclaimed to the world her marriage to Eric and his great love for her despite her age, not to mention the amount of money she'd invested in an advertising campaign emphasizing just those features..."
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" Trent shouted suddenly and loudly. "I knew there was something if I could just think of what it was, and now I've got it."
"I've got it too!" cried Melissa joyously. "Oh, Eric, Eric, isn't it wonderful, wonderful?"
Carstairs woke up suddenly and stared at them in amazement. They were dancing around like children at a Maypole.
"Well, I'll be a double-dyed Mexican blanket if I know what's going on here," Doan said.
"Naturally," spoke up Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz, alias Morales, a worried and puzzled look on his dark face.
"Oh, you dopes!" Melissa taunted them. "Oh, you two big stupid lumps who call yourselves detectives! It's perfectly obvious. Can't you see it? Why, Eric isn't married--isn't even a widower--hasn't been married at all. With Heloise married to Big Tub, who wasn't dead like everybody thought, then her marriage to Eric couldn't be legal. Oh, wonderful! Wonderful!"
"Yeah, yeah," said Doan. "I get that, but really the excitement--the cause for all this celebration... Well, really, it escapes me unless..." He stopped talking and smiled broadly.
"Not married," said Trent dazedly. "Think of that. A bachelor. Never married at all."
"Don't fret about it, darling," Melissa told him. "You soon will be... But go on, Doan. I forgive you for everything. I'll even go so far as to put your name back on my list."
Doan sighed a deep sigh and started all over again. "So Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz went to see Heloise and got himself played for a sucker. Then Heloise got rid of him and started figuring. She thought she could handle Big Tub. She had twenty servants and a gun, and she was tough. She called him up and told him she'd give him a twenty-four hour start or some kind of a start. She wanted to get rid of him without scandal. Big Tub started, all right--in her direction. She had lots of jewelry, and he needed some fast dough. He came in the back way and gathered up the servants--singly or in batches--and locked them away in the cellar. Then he interviewed her--wit
h his gun. He must have been getting the shakes pretty badly by this time. He was playing in hellish luck. I don't think he heard you two arrive. About that time he was up in the back bedroom fiddling around in Heloise's wall safe. The first he knew about you was when the phone rang there's an extension in the bedroom. He heard you talking and hiked down and cut the wires and switched off the lights and locked the door on you and was waltzing out the front when he met me."
There was a sudden raging roar in the night, and Humphrey came billowing down the lawn toward them, pumping his legs furiously and waving his fists in the air.
"You!" he shouted. "As soon as I heard over the radio that there was some kind of a riot up here, I said to myself 'It's that damned Doan again,' and sure enough here you are! I've had enough of you! I've had all I'm going to take! What have you done to poor Professor Sley-Mynick? Look at, him lying there all wet and cold and unconscious, if not dead. Don't try to lie, Doan. I warn you. You're under arrest right now!"
"Oh, relax," Doan advised. "I've just caught your murderer for you. He fell off the trellis, there, into the swimming pool and --"
"What?" Humphrey blurted. "Fell in the pool?" He ran to the edge and peered tensely in. "Where? Where?"
There was a sudden streak of fawn-colored shadow. A big body ran through Trent's legs and brushed past Melissa and made for Humphrey with the speed of a maddened goat, horns lowered, who's been waiting a long, long time for just the right opportunity.
"Carstairs!" Doan yelled frantically. "Don't you do it! Don't you dare..."
Humphrey shrieked and leaped right straight ahead, clutching his rear with both hands. The water swallowed him up with a cold and gleeful gulp.
"Carstairs!" Doan yelled. "You imbecile! You know he'll blame me for that! Do you want to see me in the gas chamber? Do you want to see me in jail for life?"
Carstairs ignored him. Carstairs was contemplating the frothy, turgid water in the pool with the remotely sadistic indifference of a scientist studying a pinned-down bug.
And Eric and Melissa ignored him too. For the moment they were too occupied with each other to have any interest in external affairs. Melissa's arms were about Eric's neck and he was holding her so closely that no biochemist or meteorologist or physicist or psychologist or any other scientist could have presented a logical explanation of how it was that she could breathe.
But she could, even though her lips were pressed close to his lips, and when their kiss was ended she sighed rapturously and long.
"Not married," Eric told her in a perfectly audible whisper. "Not married and never married to that old crow--God rest her. Now I have a right to ask you...Without any strings tied to it, I can offer you my name. You can be..."
"Stop! Stop!" Melissa cried, hugging him to her. "It's going to make you mad, maybe, but I can't help myself. I've just got to say it. It's too funny. If I don't say it I'll burst... Now I can be--can be Mrs. Handsome Lover Boy! There! I've done it! Don't strike me, Eric... Don't... Oh, oh! You aren't striking me... Oh, oh!"
"Naturally!" said Sebastian Rodriguez y Ruiz, alias Morales, watching the young couple go back into their clinch. "Naturally," he said again, and for the first time that evening smiled his broad Latin smile.
THE END
Sally's In the Alley
Chapter 1
THIS WILL PROBABLY STRIKE YOU AS HIGHLY improbable if you know your Hollywood, but the lobby of the Orna Apartment Hotel, off Rossmore south of Melrose, is done in very nice taste. It is neat and narrow and dignified, with a conservative blue carpet on the floor and a small black reception desk on a line straight back from the unadorned plate glass door.
At this particular moment its only occupant was the desk clerk. He was small and very young-looking, and he had dark curly hair and a snub nose with freckles across the bridge. His blue eyes were staring with a look of fierce, crosshatched concentration at the pictured diagram of a radio hookup he had spread out on the desk.
The plate glass door opened, and a man came into the lobby with a quietly purposeful air. He was blond and a little better than medium height, and he was wearing an inconspicuous blue business suit. He looked so much like an attorney or an accountant or the better class of insurance broker that it was perfectly obvious what he really was.
He walked up to the desk and said, "Have you a party by the name of Pocus staying here?"
The desk clerk was following the whirligig line that indicated a coil on his diagram with the point of a well-chewed pencil. The pencil point hesitated for a split second and then moved on again.
"No," he said. He didn't have to bother about being courteous because he intended to quit the apartment hotel any minute now and get a job at a fabulous salary in a war plant installing radios in fighter planes.
The blond man took a leather folder from his pocket, opened it, and spread it out on the radio diagram. "Take a look at this."
The clerk studied the big gold badge for a second and then looked up slowly. "You're a G-man."
The blond man winced slightly. "I'm a special agent of the Department of Justice. Let's start over again. What's your name?"
"Edmund."
"All right, Edmund. Have you got a party by the name of Pocus staying here? H. Pocus or Hocus Pocus?"
"No," said Edmund. He cleared his throat. "Will you excuse me for a second? I've got to call and wake up one of our tenants. He works on the swing shift, and he has to get waked up and eat before--"
The blond man punched him suddenly and expertly in the chest with a stiffened forefinger. "Get away from the switchboard. You're not tipping anybody off." He whistled shrilly through his teeth.
Another man came in the front door. He was short and stocky, and he had sleepy brown eyes and a scar on his nose. A third man came in from the hall that led to the back door. He was very tall and thin, stooped a little. He wore a light topcoat, and he kept his hands in its pockets.
"They're here," said the blond man. "Come on, Edmund. Give. Which apartment are they in?"
Edmund stood mute.
The blond man watched him curiously. "Are you scared of them?"
"Yes," said Edmund.
"Listen, son," said the blond man. "This is the government you're talking to now. If either one of them even made a pass at you, we'd put them away in Alcatraz."
"How do I know they'd stay there?" Edmund asked.
"All right," said the blond man. "Come on out from behind that desk. Sit down in that chair and rest your feet. Look up the tenant index, Curtis."
The stocky man went behind the desk, found the file of register cards, and ran through them expertly.
"In two-two-nine," he said. He looked under the desk. "Here's the pass key." He flipped it to the blond man.
"Okay," said the blond man. "Stay here and watch the board, Curtis. If anybody comes down the elevator, they wait in the lobby. If anyone comes in the front, they wait, too."
"Sure," said Curtis.
"You come with me, Barstow," the blond man said. "We'll take the stairs. Go easy."
They went up to the second floor and along a hall that was carpeted in the same dark blue as the lobby, and stopped in front of the door numbered 229. The blond man fitted the passkey in the lock and turned it without making the slightest sound. He opened the door just as silently.
It was a single apartment, and the big combination living room-bedroom was bright and cheery with the sun coming in a warm, slatted flood through the Venetian blinds. There was no one in sight, but a door to the left was slightly open and through it came the pleasantly languid gurgle and splash of bathwater.
The blond man and his tall companion came into the apartment and shut the front door. The blond man nodded meaningly and then, with the tall man close behind him, walked over and opened the bathroom door.
It was a big bathroom and a beautiful one, tastefully decorated now with fat little coils of steam that clung cozily against the ceiling. It was equipped with an outsize sunken tub, and Doan was sitting in it
with his back to the door. He was chubby and pink and glistening, and he looked even more innocent and harmless than he usually did. He held a big sponge up over his head and squeezed it and made happy sputtering noises through the resultant flood.
"Now that you're here," he said amiably, "would you mind telling me if I've gotten all the soap off my back?"
"Yes, you have," said the blond man. "How did you know we were here?"
"There's a draft when the front door opens," Doan answered. He turned around in the tub to peer up at them. "Well! The government, no less. I'm honored."
The Essential Works of Norbert Davis Page 37