She gnawed at her lower lip, thinking. “No . . . just that she roomed with Eve about two years ago.”
The cigarette fell out of my hand. I bent slowly and picked it up and blinked at it. Susan Griswold was staring at me, her lips slightly parted, a wrinkle in the clear skin above her eyebrows.
“You don’t say.” My voice sounded hoarse and I cleared it. “You mean . . . right here?”
“What right here?”
“Did Mary Conrad room with Eve Shelby at this address?”
“Well, I don’t know that. She didn’t say and I didn’t ask her. Is it important?”
“One never knows,” I said vaguely. I fingered ash into the tray and studied the nice frank lines of her lovely face. “And this,” I said, “all this you’ve told me so you could walk out of here before the sirens start screaming. This proves you can’t furnish any leads to who tied a knot in Mary Conrad’s windpipe. Have you actually missed the entire point or are you waiting for me to put it into words for you?”
“If you’re going to be clever,” she said impatiently, “don’t take so long at it. What point have I missed?”
“Let’s take it step by step,” I said. “You came up here at three o’clock to get information from Mary Conrad. She knew you were coming and she knew the time you’d arrive. You came up, found the door open and started into the bedroom and somebody laid you out.”
“But I don’t know who it was,” she said quickly.
“But it was a woman,” I said. I brought the strip of lace out of my pocket and held it in front of her eyes. “She clouted you and you fell down. But not before you grabbed at her and got part of her underwear. How does that sound?”
Her eyes flickered. “Yes,” she breathed. “I remember now. She hit me and I started to fall. I threw out my hands and caught hold of her. Something tore and she hit me again. That’s all I remember.”
“That should be plenty. Find the woman who wanted Mary Conrad killed and the mystery is solved. And even without seeing this woman, we know a thing or two about her.”
I had thrown her again. “I don’t see how—”
“Well, Mary Conrad was no vest-pocket edition,” I said. “You saw that yourself. It takes a good-sized woman to overpower and strangle anybody—even another woman.”
“Well, ye—e—s,” she admitted, dragging out the second word. “But that still—”
“Maybe I got the wrong picture,” I said. “But from the way you described Eve Griswold I assume she’s not exactly an invalid.”
Her jaw dropped so hard it almost bounced. “Are you suggesting Eve could have—?”
“Why not, Miss Griswold? Look at it a little. What if she got to worrying that Mary Conrad might let the wrong thing slip? Your stepmother could have found out what time you were coming here today. She could have arrived shortly ahead of you, done the job and left you on the floor to take the rap. I’m just using your own analysis of her.”
She liked it. She liked it fine. The light gleamed along her eyes and a small smile was on its way to being born. And then the smile died there and her eyes seemed to film over.
“No.” Her small firm breasts, pushing against the yellow sweater, rose and sank as she sighed. “No. I simply don’t believe it.”
“Why not?” I said. “Because you’ve changed your mind about what she’s capable of, or because having her arrested on suspicion of murder would be a haymaker to your father? Look, you want to get rid of her, don’t you? Legally?”
“Y-you’re only guessing. Others could have wanted Mary Conrad killed. I don’t know a thing about her. Do you?”
“The police will run down any leads furnished them, Miss Griswold. I’m not saying they’ll slap your stepmother in the chair tomorrow. But you can see that she might have done in Mary Conrad. Why not let them work on that angle?”
She said coldly, “Why are you so anxious to get her involved in this? What difference does it make to you?”
“Just trying out for the Boy Scouts.” I yawned and continued to sit there, moving the fragment of lace around in my fingers. Cheap stuff, I decided, not handmade, not at all what you’d expect to find next to the skin of an angel accustomed to wallowing in earthly luxury. I put it to my nose and sniffed and drew a blank. No “My Sin” or “Temptation” or “Prétexte.” Whoever it had belonged to might touch up the tips of her ears now and then but she kept the stuff out of the valley.
I said, “How did you get in downstairs?”
“Get in?” she said blankly.
“Past the inner door,” I said impatiently. “Did you ring the bell or use a key or knock it in with a fire ax?”
“Oh—that!” Her expression cleared. “The janitor—I suppose that’s who he was—was sweeping the hall and the door Was propped open. Since I knew her apartment number and was expected anyway, I didn’t bother to ring the bell.”
“I was afraid of something like that,” I said. “Did he get a good look at you?”
“Not that I noticed. He didn’t even turn his head.”
“He must be an old man. Nobody saw you on your way into the apartment?”
“Frankly I wasn’t paying much attention. But I didn’t see anybody, if that’s any help.”
“Which leaves only the janitor,” I mused. “And since this is a big building with a lot of apartments, he would see too many people to remember any certain one.”
“I suppose,” she observed dryly, “that this is all terribly important.”
“It is to you,” I said. “It leaves the chances of somebody tipping off the bulls about you very remote.”
Sudden hope lighted up her face. “Then you don’t intend to hold me for the police? Is that what you’re saying?”
I spread my hands. “Holding people is a cop’s job. As a law-abiding citizen it’s my duty to detain, whenever possible, any person observed in the act of committing a felony. I haven’t observed you committing anything, Miss Griswold.”
She was on her feet and two steps from the couch before a sudden thought stopped her and turned her around. “Why the change of heart?” she demanded suspiciously. “You made this sound altogether different only a few minutes ago.”
“You ever hear about gift horses, Miss Griswold? Maybe I’ll need a favor from you someday. To earn it, I’m letting you breeze on out, hoping of course that I won’t get backed into a corner where I’ll have to tell the homicide boys about you.”
Her eyes narrowed until they were slits. “What favor do you have in mind?”
I grunted. “Maybe a yacht, maybe your pure white body, maybe only a kind word.” I stood up and stretched. “If you’re not leaving, you might as well help me find where the phone’s hidden.”
While I was halfway to the bedroom I heard the hall door close softly behind her.
CHAPTER 11
I WAS in the bathroom unscrewing the top from an aspirin bottle when the downstairs buzzer went off. My hand jerked, knocking a toothbrush behind the toilet bowl. I carried the aspirin bottle into the living room without realizing it and pushed the button.
Two uniformed prowl-car men came hurrying along the hall, panting a little, watching the numbers. When they saw me standing in the doorway to 311, they galloped over and combed me with their eyes.
The taller of the pair said tonelessly, “All right, buddy. Inside.”
They rode me in and closed the door and I got looked at some more in the impersonally tough way a cop looks at everything including his watch. Both were big men, with the flat unrelaxed faces issued to all members of any police force along with their badges. They could have driven trucks or built your house or owned the corner grocery. One had blue eyes, one had brown; one had a long thin nose, the other a blob of shapeless flesh to breathe through; one was fifty if a day, the other was stepping into thirty-five. Yet their uniforms and their expressions made them twins.
Their eyes went quickly around the room, missing nothing. They looked at me, at my face, at my general build, at the
aspirin bottle in my hand. The younger let his right hand drift down until it rested on the flap of a black leather holster at his hip.
“Your name Pine?”
I said my name was Pine.
“Where’s this stiff?"
I flapped a hand at the closed door to the bedroom. The cop looked at the door and back to me. He turned the stud on his holster flap and got out the heavy black gun. He did it with swift ease, like the sheriff of Tombstone.
“Turn around and get them hands up," he said, tough in a polite way. Or it might have been polite in a tough way.
I turned lazily, holding both hands at shoulder level, one still clutching the aspirin bottle but not intending to hit anybody with it. The same old routine as in every crime-fighter movie. Only the movies hadn’t originated it.
A hand patted me here and there from behind, as businesslike and detached as a tailor at work. It hit the bulge under my left arm, froze briefly, then darted under my lapel and came out with my gun. The gun disappeared and I heard a sniffing sound that meant he had his beak buried in the muzzle. I drew down my hands without being told and turned slowly.
The cylinder was turned out and he was counting bullets. The chambers were filled except for the one the hammer rested against. He gave me a thin, up-from-under glare, clicked the cylinder shut with a sharp movement of his hand and dropped the gun into one of the roomy side pockets of his uniform coat.
“This makes it tough on you, buddy," he growled. “Concealed weapons is against the law.”
“Should have ditched it, huh? Before I called homicide.”
That hadn’t occurred to him. Either I hadn’t been smart or there was more to me than met the eye. “Let’s see your identification.”
I hauled out my wallet and he leafed through it. When I got it back there was no more mention of the gun but it stayed in his pocket. He kept his eye on me while I retreated to the couch, then shifted his gaze to his partner.
“Take a look in there, Frank.”
Frank stalked over to the bedroom door, opened it and went in. The young cop slid his gun into its holster and stayed where he was, flexing the fingers of his right hand over and over. In the silence I heard the wind still going nowhere fast and loud. The cop and I were watching each other like a couple of strange dogs that could get to be friends if first appearances held up, when Frank ambled out of the bedroom.
“Dame, all right,” he said. He winked heavily and grinned a dirty grin. “A looker and nood as they come. Silk stockin’ around her neck.”
The young cop wet his lips uncertainly. He wanted to go in and get an eyeful but was reluctant to appear obvious about it. While he was thinking up the right words to justify doing so, the first-floor buzzer gave a Bronx cheer and he went over and tried to shove the release button through the wall. I leaned back and found a cigarette and lighted it. All traces of Susan Griswold’s red-tipped cigarettes were gone from the ash tray. The table lamp and the doorknobs had only my prints on them. The unknown killer would have been smart enough not to leave any.
The prowl-car men drifted aimlessly about the room until the door pushed all the way open and three officers in plain clothes stalked in. The young uniform cop saluted awkwardly and tilted his head at me. “This guy found her, Captain. Woman's on the bed in there.”
I was looked at briefly and without warmth, then the three of them entered the bedroom. Almost immediately the buzzer sounded again and the young cop admitted four men from the crime laboratory judging from the bags and cameras they carried. They joined the detectives and we had a spell of quiet and after a while the captain came out again.
He was a tall man, not as wide as a two-car garage and no fat on him. His face was bony, broad across the cheeks and pointed at the chin. Thin lips framed a large mouth and he had wide-set yellow-green eyes below heavy brows. He was old enough to have gray hair which receded off a high rounded forehead. A lightweight gray hat was pushed far back on his head, its black ribbon faded out from many cleanings. His brown suit had a fine dubonnet stripe, hardly noticeable, and needed pressing although it was clean and fitted him right.
He said something under his breath to one of the cops, didn’t wait for an answer and came over and nodded briefly to me, not tough and not gentle. “I’m Captain Blauvelt—Sheffield Avenue Station.” Nothing distinctive about his voice. “How much am I going to get out of you?”
“All there is to get,” I said. “I’m afraid it won’t be much.”
“Well now, I’m sorry to hear that. But even a little might turn out to be enough. They tell me you’re a private star. I hope you’re not one of the smart-aleck kind.”
He could be a fool or it could be his way of talking. I leaned toward the second theory. I put on my bland expression and said nothing. He swiveled his eyes around the room until he saw the open door to the kitchen and the light coming through it from the overhead fixture I had switched on before the two cops arrived. “Let’s have us a talk in there,” he said.
“One thing, Captain,” I said, getting up. “I’d like my gun back. One of the patrolmen is holding it for me.”
He looked at me narrowly, then over to the boys in blue. “I’ll take the gun,” he said. “Better get back to your car and check in with Abrams.”
The young cop, keeping his feelings off his face, brought out my Detective Special and laid it in the center of Blauvelt’s flat, long-fingered hand. There was a heavy plain gold ring on one of the fingers.
Still holding the gun he turned and walked into the kitchen, and I tagged along. He sat down at the white enameled table and pointed to the remaining chair. He took off his hat and mopped his forehead and neck with a white handkerchief from a back pocket. When he reached for it I saw the butt of a heavy gun in an arm holster. He put away the handkerchief and sat there dancing my gun lightly on his hand and looking at me intently.
“So far,” he said suddenly, “I got nothing but your word you’re a private dick. Prove it to me.”
Once more I dug out my wallet and placed the photostat and a business card on the table in front of him. He spent enough time on the first to memorize it, then fingered the card, his expression telling me what he thought of such fripperies. “What else?”
“That leaves the telephone,” I said. “Ike Crandall, with the State’s Attorney, knows me but he won’t brag about it. Or Lieutenant Overmire, Central Homicide. He’s not crazy about me either, but he’ll tell you I’m not wanted for anything. I can give you the names of a lawyer or two, but not unless you insist.”
“Sounds okay,” he said grudgingly while I reloaded my wallet and got rid of it. “I’m not spending an hour checking them people—not over a Surf Street floozie. Or is that all she is?”
“Search me, Captain.”
He patted the table’s porcelain surface and sighed. “Christ, I’m dry. Hell of a wind coming up.”
I left the chair and went over to the refrigerator. There were four bottles of beer, two quarts of milk with the cream poured off one, some sliced tomatoes on a cracked plate, the ruins of a pork roast. I said, “Beer or milk, Captain?”
“Milk? Don’t tell me that floozie had kids!”
“Grownups have been known to drink the stuff. Beer, hunh?”
“If she’s cold.”
I took out two of the bottles and removed the caps with an opener hanging above the sink. The cupboard yielded two tall glasses. Blauvelt put my gun on the table and poured for both of us and we watched the foam settle. He emptied the glass in four gulps and pushed it back along the table and shook his head when I reached for the bottle.
He let out his breath and closed his eyes and opened them again. “Who is she, Pine?”
“Mary Conrad. With the floor show at the Tropicabana, a nightspot on East Fifty-third.”
“I know where it is. Who shoved her?"
“By me, Captain.”
“Dead when you found her, eh?”
“I’d hate to have you think different.”
> “Girl friend of yours?”
“Nothing like that. I never saw her alive. This was a matter of business.”
“Tell me about it.”
I hunched my shoulders and put my elbows on the table. “I was hired to find a girl—the daughter of an elderly couple from out of town. She’d come to Chicago a couple of years ago and dropped out of sight. Mary Conrad, it seems, had roomed with her for a short time right after she arrived in town. I learned Conrad’s address and came around to see what she could tell me. I was a little too late.”
“How could you get in if she was already dead?”
“Well, the downstairs door was open and I didn’t bother to ring. When I got up here the apartment door was ajar and knocking didn’t bring any answer. I wondered why anybody would go away and leave the door open, so I kind of looked the place over.”
He made a small noise deep in his throat that might have meant almost anything. “That’s all, Pine?” he asked silkily.
“All except my phone call to the bureau.”
“Uh-hunh. You sure glossed this one over, brother. What I mean! Doors all open for you, body waiting, killer gone. And that’s all.” He tilted back on his chair, steadying himself with a hand against the table edge, and rubbed a forefinger thoughtfully against the hinge of his sloping jaw. “Well, it could of happened; I don’t say no. But you left out a hatful. What’s about this dame you’re supposed to find? What name?”
“Laura Fremont,” I told him reluctantly.
“From out of town, you said. Whereabouts out of town?”
“Nebraska.”
“You hired by letter or something?”
“It started that way. I drove out there and talked to her folks.”
“They give you this lead on Conrad?”
“Nothing for you down that street, Captain. The Fremonts didn’t have the name of any of Laura’s Chicago friends."
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