Invitation to Violence

CHAPTER TWO

Sue Dunne clicked off the television set at eleven-fifteen, as soon as the late news was over. She was tired and decided to go to bed, although it was actually very early for her. Friday nights were always like this; the one night of the week when she didn’t work and had free time, but the one night when she really enjoyed getting to bed early.

That was the trouble with the job at the cafeteria. Or at least, one of the troubles. There were others, of course. Somehow or other, during the past year while she had worked as a night cashier in the place, her whole life had seemed all topsy-turvy. She still couldn’t get used to sleeping during the day and working at night; six nights a week, from six in the evening until three in the morning.

Not that it was hard work. Just tedious. Standing there at the cash register and going through the same inane motions hour after hour, night after night. It was a dull, uninteresting job, but it was a job and the pay wasn’t bad.

It wasn’t the pay, however, which kept her interested. It was the part about having the afternoons free. Free at least to allow her to go on with her studies. Sue was bound and determined to become a singer and she had few illusions about her potential career. She knew it would take a lot of studying and a lot of practice, along with a certain number of breaks. Having those afternoons free gave her the time for studying and practice. There was no one around in the afternoons to complain about her singing and for this she was grateful.

There were, of course, other ways to pursue her career. It had not taken a girl as good looking as Sue Dunne long to find out these ways. There were the offers of night-club work and there were the other offers. Offers which had been made to her by various men who would have been only too glad to have helped further her career.

Once or twice, coming home in the early morning dead tired from standing on her feet for hours, discouraged with the little money she was making and the high cost of her music lessons, she had been almost tempted to take up one of those offers. But it had only been a passing thought. Quickly she had smiled, wryly, and dismissed such thoughts from her mind. She’d do it the hard way, no matter how long it took. At least she had plenty of time. At nineteen, you always have plenty of time.

She left the light on in the hallway and checked to see that the door was locked and then she went into the bedroom and closed the door. There was no telling what time Vince would be getting in. Vince slept on a pulled-out couch in the living room of the small apartment and he was always quiet when he came in.

That was one of the things she worried about with Vince. He was too quiet.

She took a warm shower after undressing and then climbed into a pair of men’s pajamas and went to the window and raised it wide. For several moments she stood there, looking out over the fire escape at the long row of silhouetted apartment houses which lay to the west. At last she sighed and turned and went to the bed. Before pulling the sheet over her, she reached up and set the alarm clock on the side table. She wanted to be up early, before Vince had a chance to leave the house. She’d made up her mind; she would just have to talk to him in the morning. He wouldn’t like it, but she was going to talk to him anyway.

It seemed incredible to her that Vince, who was himself nineteen years old, could be such a baby, such a complete child. You’d think, after the trouble he’d already been in, that he would have learned something. That he’d know enough to stay away from bad companions.

Sue had met Dommie and Jack Riddle and one or two others whom Vince had been running around with. Dommie was bad enough, but at least he was only a boy himself. But Riddle. That was hard to understand. She didn’t actually know anything about the older man, but she didn’t have to. What was a man of his age hanging around with a kid like Vince for anyway. It couldn’t be for anything good.

Riddle was one of the men who hung around the cafeteria in the late evenings. He and a half a dozen others. Bookies and loan sharks. She knew the type all right. You can’t be a cashier in an all-night restaurant for a year without picking up a lot of stray information about the types who hang around such places.

Slaughter himself had told her about Riddle and some of the others who patronized the place. He knew them all. He’d warned her not to have anything to do with them.

“No good bums,” he had told her. “Operators. Stay clear of them.”

The odd thing was that in spite of his advice, Slaughter himself hung around with the very worst of them. In fact, he held a sort of court each night at one of the back tables and they would drift in and sit down and then there would be the whispered conversations, the occasional exchange of money.

Fred Slaughter owned the cafeteria, as well as the bar next door and Lord only knows what else. He was a man of many and varied interests.

Well, it was probably one of the reasons he was able to warn her about men like Riddle. He knew them and did some sort of business with them.

At first she had thought that it was only because Slaughter liked her and had a sort of fatherly interest in her. He’d been nice about giving her the job, had seemed to take an interest in both her and Vince, whom he knew all about. But she’d soon learned that his interest was anything but fatherly.

Not that he’d been insistent or anything. Just made his pass, the way most men did sooner or later. Tried to take her out and when she had made her position very clear to him, had been a little nasty. But he hadn’t tired her and after a while he’d left her alone.

Slaughter had plenty of women and she guessed that he just hadn’t wanted to bother. She was a good cashier, so he left her alone and had gone on about his business.

By this time she had begun to realize that whatever Slaughter’s business was, it involved a lot more than just owning a bar and cafeteria.

Thinking about it. her mind once more went back to Vince. It had been very tough after their mother died. She and Vince were seventeen at the time and Vince was in reform school. They’d picked him up in a stolen car and sent him away, and Sue was living alone with her mother at the time. She’d already had to leave school herself and was working.

The authorities had investigated, after the funeral, but when they found that she had a job and was able to support herself they had lost interest and had left her alone.

That job had ended after a year when a new boss came in and made things difficult. She’d quit and that was when she got the job in the cafeteria. Slaughter had learned about Vince and he must have had excellent connections because he’d been able to get him out on parole.

Vince was supposed to go to work as a bus boy in Slaughter’s place, but he hadn’t lasted long. He’d had a fight with a waiter and the manager had fired him. Slaughter heard about it, but he’d merely shrugged his shoulders.

“The kid will get another job,” he said. “In the meantime, don’t worry about it. I’ll tell the parole officer he’s still working here, until “he finds something else.”

The trouble was, Vince hadn’t found anything else. It had been a couple of months now, and Sue slowly began to realize that Vince wasn’t even looking. Instead, he was hanging around with Jake and with Dommie and some of the others.

Sue leaned up on her elbow and snapped on the table light. She found a pack of cigarettes and hunched a pillow under her shoulders so that she was half sitting up in bed.

Yes, she would have to talk with Vince in the morning. Vince wasn’t the brightest boy in the world, but Sue knew that he wasn’t really bad. He had sworn he hadn’t known the car was stolen, but the judge hadn’t believed him and they’d sent him away. In a sense, it was a tragedy. He’d been a different boy when he’d come back.

She finished the cigarette and stubbed it out and once more turned off the light and settled down in the bed. She was determined to get some sleep. She wanted to talk with Vince the first thing in the morning and she had a date at eleven o’clock at the television station for a commercial tryout. She wanted to be fresh and rested when she got there.

She’d just stop thinking about Vince and worrying about him-at least for the time being. He’d listen to her. There was no use worrying about it now. She just wished, though, that he’d get home. It was dangerous for him to be running around this late at night. If the parole board should find out…

By one-thirty, Sue Dunne had fallen into a restless, fretful sleep. Several times during the night she turned on the narrow bed, moaning slightly. Once she woke up for a moment or two, her eyes wide and frightened and her pretty, heart-shaped face bathed in perspiration. She half sat up, her slender body tense, and then slowly sank back on the bed.

She realized that she’d been having a nightmare and forced herself to again close her eyes. She slept then, the deep, quiet sleep of exhaustion, until sometime after daybreak.

When Gerald Hanna made his decision as he sat there in the front seat of the Chevvie on that lonesome stretch of deserted road out on Long Island in the early hours of Saturday morning, it was a sharp and a sudden thing.

It was seeing the fortune in stolen jewels glittering on the floor mat of the car in the dim rays cast by the dash light which triggered that decision. What brought it about, however, was a long series of events and circumstances which actually bore no relationship to the jewels or the method by which they had arrived at their present destination.

To understand this decision, it is necessary to know something about and to understand Gerald Hanna himself. Gerald belonged to that class which is loosely and incorrectly referred to as the great middle class. A white collar worker, employed by an insurance firm as an actuary, his background and upbringing was as normal, as routine, as mediocre, as it would be possible to imagine. He’d graduated from high school, taken two years at a Midwestern state university, and come East. He’d had to find a job but had also wanted to finish his education. The job, as a mechanic in a garage, had enabled him to complete a second two-year course at a business school. Then he had gone to work for the insurance firm which had hired him directly upon his graduation.

His college career had presaged his later business life. His marks had been average, he dabbled without distinction at a few extracurricular sports and activities. He didn’t bother much with girls, coming from slightly poverty-stricken but respectable parents who had to strain themselves in order to see him through college at all. He was a normal, rather dull, thoroughly respectable, reliable and very average young man. He had neither unusual vices nor outstanding virtues. He was, in short, the stuff of which the backbone of the nation is made up.

A hernia which bothered him not at all had kept him out of military service, for which he was vaguely grateful.

At thirty, Gerald was a good-looking, medium-built young man who still had all of his hair and almost all of his teeth. He was beginning to believe that his eyes were getting a bit nearsighted and had recently been promising himself to find out if he would be needing glasses, at least for reading. He had normal taste, rather limited ambition (knowing the possibilities of an insurance actuary’s career), and a sort of lingering desire to get married and settle down. He had met Maryjane Swiftwater at a house party given by one of the men who worked in his office, and they had been engaged for several years.

He had known, for some time now, that there was something wrong with his life. But he didn’t know quite what it was. Didn’t know, except that he realized his job was dull, his activities were dull and that even the girl he planned and hoped to marry had herself become just a little dull with the passing of the waiting years.

That evening he had taken a foolish chance when he had drawn to an inside straight. It wasn’t a matter of the petty sum of money involved. It was a silly, ridiculous thing to do. As an actuary, he could figure percentages.

But he had taken the chance and drawn to the inside straight and it had paid off.

Now, here, lying at his feet, was a fortune in gems.

Gerald’s decision involved a second foolish chance. A chance contrary to every law of percentages. A truly insane chance.

Gerald Hanna flipped on the dashboard light and opened the door at his side of the car. He circled around the front of the car and opened the other door. The boy’s body was surprisingly light. It took him only a minute or two to half lift and half drag the mortal remains of Vince Dunne from the front seat and over to the side of the road. He was almost gentle as he laid his burden into the pile of bushes, making only a slight effort to conceal it.

That was the easy part of it. What was a thousand times harder was making the trip back to Roslyn and the house in which he lived; finding the house and opening the garage doors and putting the ear away and taking the jewels and the gun and wrapping them in his jacket and carrying them up to his room.

He knew the chance he was taking; knew the percentages. He wasn’t sure, of course, if the car had been identified. Wasn’t sure that even now the pickup alarm wasn’t out. He also knew the chance of a cruising policeman stopping a car with a broken windshield, on general suspicion. Of course, if it happened before he turned into his own street, it would be all right. He’d just tell the truth, tell them that he was on the way to find help.

But it hadn’t been necessary; there had been no one to tell. He’d made the house without passing a single car or person. That had been a break and the second break was one which already existed and made it possible for him to put his plan into operation. The second break was the fact that the family from whom he rented his rooms were away for a month’s vacation in Bermuda. He had the house to himself and what was more important, he had the garage to himself.

There were neighbors, of course, but no one ever came around and even the milkman had suspended service while the owners were absent.

Sitting there in the small bedroom with the blinds carefully drawn and only the single dim desk light on for illumination, he was looking at more wealth, or potential wealth, than he would normally see if he worked for the rest of his life and saved up every cent he was ever to make.

Until this moment, not once in his entire life had he ever considered doing anything dishonest.

Very suddenly he laughed.

Well, in the purest sense of the word, he still hadn’t. A man with a gun in his hand had forced his way into his car. The man had later died, probably of a gunshot wound sustained in a battle with the police and had. conveniently, left a fortune in jewels scattered at his feet.

Gerald had merely removed a body which had intruded on him. He had driven home. One life already had paid for the gems and if Gerald was any sort of judge and his eyes hadn’t deceived him, several other lives had been forfeited. Certainly it was too late to do anything about that.

As for the owners of the gems, Gerald was certain they were covered by insurance.

Having spent some of the best years of his life slaving for a surety company which neglected to pay him enough money to get married and live decently, Gerald was not overly sympathetic. After all, that was why they were in business and why they charged very high premiums-to take care of just such losses as this.

Before going to bed, he did two things. He returned to the garage and removed the fragments of glass from the broken windshield. Then he carefully checked the car for bloodstains, wiped it over with a damp rag.

He placed the jewels in a brief case and put it into his bottom dresser drawer. He knew there would be no point in trying to hide the stuff; he must take a gamble that no one had taken the license number of his car.

It was a calculated risk and one which, in view of the possible rewards, he was perfectly willing to assume.

It was very much like the poker game; he’d already filled his inside straight. Now all he had to do was be sure no one else held a higher hand and he would collect the proper rewards for the rather insane risk he was taking.

Just before falling asleep, Gerald Hanna reminded himself that he must be sure and call Maryjane the first thing in the morning. He must make the proper excuses about the week end. It would, of course, be perfect if he were only able to run up to Connecticut as he usually did, but that would be impossible. You can’t run around in a car without a windshield. Certainly not in a certain Chevvie convertible which even now was sitting downstairs in the garage.

The idea of disappointing Maryjane failed to upset him and he had no difficulty in falling asleep almost at once.

After all, Maryjane had been disappointing him for a number of years now.

The people who knew Maryjane Swiftwater all agreed on one thing-she was a nice girl. A nice girl and a good girl. Just look at the way she took care of that invalid father of hers. And everyone knows how hard invalids are to get along with.

The expression Maryjane used, however, as she slammed the receiver back on the hook, was anything but nice. In fact, even people who didn’t know Maryjane and hadn’t as much as thought about her one way or the other, would have been hard put to figure out how anyone who looked as sweetly innocent and demure as Miss Swiftwater, would even know such an expression.

Old Horace Swiftwater, however, was neither surprised nor shocked when he overheard his daughter’s bitter voice as she hung up. Horace knew his daughter very well indeed.

“What’s the trouble, baby,” he called, from the front room where he sat in the wheel chair with the afghan over his shrunken legs. “Was that Gerald?”

“It was indeed,” his daughter said, striding into the room. She looked over at her father hatefully. “He must be either drunk or insane. He knew very well that I’ve planned the outing for this afternoon. How he can dare, at the last minute…”

“He’s unable to come up?”

For a moment Maryjane stared at him, as though aware for the first time that he was in the room. Her small, sharp face was bitter and the thin mouth was drawn tight as her pale eyes looked him slowly up and down.

“No excuses-nothing,” she said. “Just called and said not to expect him this week end. As though he didn’t know that I’ve been planning for weeks now…”

“Perhaps he’s ill,” the old man said. “You know how it is sometimes, a man…”

“Oh, God, I know all right,” Maryjane said. “Don’t think I could have been around here for the last dozen years waiting on you hand and foot without knowing. But he isn’t ill. There’s nothing wrong with Gerald. He just merely called and said he wasn’t coming up. And when I very politely asked him why he wasn’t, he didn’t say a thing for so long that I had to repeat my question. And then do you know what?”

She stopped for a minute as she stared at her father and her eyes narrowed.

“He said that he damned well didn’t want to come. Can you imagine? Gerald Hanna-said that he damned well didn’t want…”

She sputtered and stopped speaking then, her face suffused with color and her slender, reedy body shaking in anger and frustration.

“The boy must have been drinking,” Swiftwater said. “Perhaps…”

“Please don’t be a fool. Father,” Maryjane said. “Gerald drinking! The very idea is preposterous.”

“Well, then maybe he meant what he said,” the old man said, taking his eyes away from his daughter and staring out of the window. “Maybe he’s finally getting tired of waiting, getting tired of having you postpone…”

She swung toward him swiftly and for a second it looked almost as though she was going to strike him.

“Gerald knows very well why we must wait,” she said. “And certainly you, of all people, can’t accuse me of postponing or procrastinating. As long as I have you to take care of, and Gerald must send money home to his family, marriage is out of the question. Gerald knows it and he agrees with me.”

For a long moment the old man looked at his daughter and then slowly shook his head.

“Baby,” he said, his voice tired and old, “baby, you know better than that. Nothing stands in the way of you and Gerald getting married except you yourself. I can manage to get by all right. I’ve got my pension and I can go to a home…”

“No father of mine is going to go to a home so long as I can work,” Maryjane said. “Just stop talking foolishness. Anyway, Gerald still has to send money home and he makes so pitifully little.”

Once more the old man shook his head.

“I won’t argue with you, baby,” he said. “You know the truth as well as I do. I’d be happier in a home and no matter how little Gerald makes, you two could get along if you really wanted to. You’re like your mother-you’re afraid. You’re afraid of marriage and what marriage means. You want a husband but you don’t…”

Maryjane turned and started for the door. She yelled the words in a thin high voice over her shoulder as she left the room.

“You’re a miserable old man,” she said. “You have a bad mind. You don’t understand; you just don’t understand anything…”

She was crying as she ran up the stairs and slammed the door of her bedroom.

Flinging herself on the white counterpane of the single four-poster bed, she doubled her fists and pounded the mattress at her sides.

“They’re all dirty-all men,” she said in a high, tight voice. “Vile, lecherous, filthy…”

The words ended in a hysterical series of sobs as she lay staring up at the ceiling with the tears flowing from her half-closed eyes.

She didn’t quite know how or why, but she just assumed that once they were man and wife, his masculinity would no longer frighten and shock her.

She never thought of herself as being cold or frigid; she merely thought of herself as decent and proper. She knew all about sex, having read considerable material on the subject, but it was a knowledge obtained solely from books. In fact, she prided herself on her open-mindedness and her intellectual approach to something which she considered to be, after all, a minor part of the relationship between a man and a woman.

She never did know how she’d happened to let him talk her into agreeing to spend the week end at the lodge up in Saratoga. The place was owned by a friend of Gerald’s and he told her that his friend and his friend’s wife had asked them both up over the week end. They drove up, leaving on Friday night.

It was a small, weather-beaten shanty, a sort of hunting cabin, up in the mountains above the town and they went up late in the fall when the weather was brisk and clear and very cold at night. He’d been there before and he had no difficulty in finding the place in spite of the lonely back roads leading to it. They arrived near midnight-finding the cabin completely dark.

She hadn’t suspected anything at first, had merely assumed that Gerald’s friends had tired of waiting for them and retired. Gerald had taken their bags from the car and gone to the front door and let himself in, using a key that he carried. The place was empty and he explained that their hosts were probably late getting away from the city and had not arrived as yet.

There was a fire already laid in the great field-stone fireplace, which covered one wall of the room, and Gerald had lighted it. Then, while she warmed herself and took off her coat, he went into the kitchen and made a pot of hot coffee.

She was chilled through and the steaming coffee was welcome. Immediately she noticed the peculiar taste and Gerald explained that he’d laced it with brandy. She protested, as she almost never drank, but he’d insisted. It was odd the effect the drink had on her. It seemed to go through her veins like fire, warming her and making her pleasantly drowsy. He hadn’t had to argue about her taking a second cup.

Later, when she came to think about it, she realized that those two drinks had actually made her half drunk. It was while she was finishing that second cup that Gerald had confessed to her. The people who owned the cabin were not coming up. They would be alone in the place.

The strange thing was that she had argued only feebly. She knew of course that she should have insisted and that they left at once. She should have been furious at his deception. But the fact was she was very tired from the drive and she hated to face the thought of the long, lonely road back. She hated to leave the warm comfort of the place.

He had pulled the great bear rug from the couch and thrown it on the floor in front of the fireplace and she stretched out on it, half dozing in front of the flickering flames. She was only half conscious of his sitting beside her, holding her head in his lap as he talked with her. She was very drowsy, and the brandy was making her sleepy so she only half listened as he talked.

Then suddenly she had decided that she hated him; that she hated all men but especially him.

The strange part of it was the decision she reached the moment she realized it. She would never let him go. She would marry him, as they had planned, sometime in the future. He must belong to her, now and forever. But there must be time, time for her to adjust herself.

He owed her something and he must be made to pay for it. Yes, they would be married, but when the time came, things would be different. It would be a marriage on her terms, not his.

She was the stronger of the two; in spite of what he had done to her, she was the stronger. And it would work out the way she wanted it to. There was no doubt about that in her mind.

Lying on the bed and thinking things over, her thin-lipped mouth formed into a hard thin line and her jaw became resolute and firm. Gerald was like her father and she could handle him the same way she handled her father. If he thought he could callously break dates with her, he’d have another guess coming.

It was the sound of the ringing of the bell which awakened Sue, but she didn’t open her eyes. Instead her hand instinctively reached out and she fumbled around until she found the small, square clock and pressed the button on the top of it.

The ringing stopped and she started to fall back on the bed again. But just as her head again reached the pillow, the ringing began once more.

“Damn,” she said, her voice low and sleepy. This time she opened her eyes and the first thing she noticed, even before again seeking the clock, was the fact that it was barely daylight.

Almost immediately it came to her then. It wasn’t the alarm clock at all which had awakened her. The ringing was coming from the other room. She grabbed the dressing gown from the end of the bed as she leaped to her feet and started for the door. It wasn’t the telephone. It wasn’t that kind of a ring. It must be the doorbell.

Sue Dunne silently cursed whoever it was that was waking up the household at this unearthly hour.

The living room curtains were drawn and the room was in semidarkness, but she had no trouble finding her way to the front door which opened directly into the apartment. The first thing she noticed was that the burglar chain was not in its slot, but the significance of this failed to register. She twisted the knob and when the door didn’t at once open, realized that the lock had been snapped. She turned it and opened the door, standing in front of it sleepy-eyed and barely avoiding a wide yawn. With her robe held tight around her and her disheveled hair circling her small sleepy face, she looked very much like a little girl. Which, indeed, she was.

The man didn’t open his mouth. Didn’t say a word. He waited only a second until the door three-quarters opened and then he suddenly lunged forward and crashed into the room, pushing her roughly aside with one heavy, long arm as he entered. It was then that she saw the gun in his hand.

Sue didn’t scream. She did nothing, nothing at all but simply stand there, her mouth agape and her eyes wide and alarmed.

He moved fast, still saying nothing. The hand which was not holding the gun whipped out and found the light switch and the room was suddenly bathed in brilliance. It took him less than a second to see that there was no one in the room except the two of them and before Sue had a chance to find her voice, he passed on into the bedroom. She heard the slam of the bathroom door and then the sound of the closet opening and closing. A moment later and he was back, standing in the doorway between the living room and the bedroom.

“All right, where is he?”

For a long moment she just stood there staring at him. She wasn’t frightened; it had been too sudden for that.

Wordlessly she moved and half fell into the big upholstered chair near the window. Quickly she shook her head, getting the sleep out of her mind. She started to open her mouth, to say something, and then suddenly stopped. Her eyes had gone quickly around the room and for the first time she saw that the folding bed hadn’t been pulled out. Vince had not returned home from the late movie.

“Vincent Dunne,” the man said. “He lives here, doesn’t he, sister?”

Sue realized that her dressing gown had fallen open and that the top of her pajamas was unbuttoned. Instinctively she clutched the cloth of the robe close to her bosom.

“Say! Say, just who are you?” she said. Her voice was filled with indignation.

For the first time he looked at her as though she might be human. He didn’t smile, but at least he looked a little less like a maniac.

“Sorry,” he said. He put the gun in his side pocket and then reached into a second pocket and took out the nickel shield.

“Detective Wilson. Out of Headquarters,” he said. “Sorry to bust in like this, Miss. But I’m looking for a punk named Vincent Dunne. Understand he lives here. That right?”

“Vincent Dunne is my brother and he lives here all right,” Sue said. She was fully awake at last and the fear which had escaped her when the man first burst into the apartment was all too apparent at last. But the fear had nothing to do with the man who stood facing her.

“What is it?” she asked. “What has Vince done. Why are you here? What…”

“Take it easy, Miss,” the detective said. “I don’t know if he’s done anything. I’m just anxious to see him. You say he lives here? Then where…”

In spite of herself, her eyes went helplessly around the room.

“Yes, he lives here,” she said at last, her voice weak. She fought to keep the fear out of it, to keep her chin from quivering. “Please,” she said. “Please? Is Vince in some sort of trouble? Has he…”

“I’m just trying to find him, that’s all. Just want to talk to him. You say he lives here? Then how come…”

Sue stood up and unconsciously went toward the couch which made up into a bed.

“He’s not here,” she said. “He went out last night, to a movie, and he hasn’t come back. Tell me…”

“Your brother hang around with a guy by the name of Dominic Petri?” Detective Wilson asked. “Kid about twenty-one, twenty-two. Goes by the name Dommie. Does your brother know him?”

Sue looked at the man for a moment and then slowly shook her head.

“I don’t know who he knows,” she said.

“Or a man named Jake Riddle?”

She couldn’t help but start as he mentioned the name. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say. All she could do was wonder and worry. Worry where Vince was, what he’d been doing. Why hadn’t he come home? Where…

“I can see that he knows them,” Wilson said. “You want to help your brother, you best come clean. Tell me…”

“I’ve heard those names,” Sue said. “That’s all, just heard the names. Vince may have known them, but they weren’t friends of his. I’m sure of that. They weren’t friends of his. Vince is just a kid. He’s a good boy; he doesn’t hang out with riffraff. He…”

“He’s fresh out of reform school and on parole. He’s a punk. If you don’t know it, you should. Now, come on, tell me…”

This time, when the bell suddenly rang and interrupted his words, Sue didn’t have to think to know what it was. There was no doubt about it. It was the phone which stood on the end table next to her and the shrill sound of the ring cut his voice short.

For a second both their eyes went to the instrument and then the detective quickly looked back at her. She could see that he wanted her to answer it and as she leaned over to take the receiver from the hook, he quickly crossed the room, leaning close so that he might overhear the voice at the other end.

“Yes?” Her voice was a bare whisper.

The voice which came through the wires was even lower than her own. A deep, soft, masculine voice.

“Vince there?”

She hesitated a moment and looked up at the detective who stared at her without expression.

“Who’s calling?” she asked.

“I want to speak to Vince Dunne. It’s important.”

“Who is this?” Sue said. “This is Vincent’s sister. Who’s calling him, please?”

Quickly the detective leaned over and took the telephone from her and put the receiver to his ear. He listened for a second or two and then spoke in a high, disguised voice.

“Vince talking,” he said.

He waited a moment or two and then spoke again. “This is Vince,” he said. “Who’s this?”

There was a sharp sound of a click at the other end of the wire and in a moment Wilson hung up the receiver in disgust.

He turned once more to the girl.

“Better get your clothes on,” he said. “There’s a man down at Headquarters wants to talk to you. Detective Lieutenant Hopper-of Homicide.”

Sue slowly nodded and stood up. She looked sick.

“I suppose I can go inside and get dressed?” she said.

Detective Wilson nodded.

“Sure, kid,” he said. “Go right ahead. And don’t take it so hard. Maybe nothing happened at all. Maybe your brother wasn’t mixed up in anything and just stayed out over night.”

He watched her as she crossed the room and entered the bedroom.

Yeah, maybe. But he didn’t believe it. Didn’t believe it at all.

And neither did Sue Dunne believe it.

The house, sitting well back on the half-acre plot, was in one of the older sections of town. It was surrounded by large shade trees and a high privet hedge protected it from the street in front and the neighbors on each side and the rear. It was one of the first split-level houses built, having been constructed to fit the natural slope of the land rather than conform to a popular building fashion. As a result, the three levels conformed with the landscaping naturally, allowing the garage level and basement to follow the contours of the driveway, which came in on the right side as one entered the grounds.

A flagstone walk led from a break in the hedge to the front door, which opened onto the second floor.

Originally the house had been designed for a doctor who planned to practice out of his home. Entering a central hallway, a visitor was confronted by a wide arch, which had been curtained off, and doors on each side. The door to the left led downstairs into the garage and basement; the door on the right led into the main residential part of the house, which consisted of half the second floor and all of the third. The archway itself led into what had originally been planned as the doctor’s offices.

When the present owners had purchased the house, they had converted the office section into a separate small apartment. This consisted of a living room, a small bedroom, a bath and a tiny kitchenette. These were the quarters which Gerald Hanna had rented and in which he lived. He paid only a nominal rent as the family which owned the house had been friends of his mother and leased out the apartment more as a personal favor then because of any desire for extra income.

The Sandersons, his mother’s friends, were an elderly couple whose children had long ago married and left to establish homes of their own. Carl Sanderson was a retired bank executive and he and his wife spent a good deal of time traveling. At present they were in Bermuda, where they usually spent the spring and part of the summer. They were only too glad to have Gerald as a tenant, liking the idea of someone around the place while they were away.

Gerald had the run of the house, but by preference stayed pretty much to his own quarters. He did, however, keep an eye on things. He saw to it that the gardener, hired for a few days each month, kept the lawn and the hedges trimmed and he also made a point of seeing that the Sandersons’ car was maintained in running condition. He checked to see that the tires didn’t become deflated from standing idle or the battery run down. There was no telling when the Sandersons might suddenly decide to return and he made it a point to be sure everything would be ready in case they did. In this fashion he partly made up for the low rent which he paid for his own quarters.

The converted doctor’s offices made a pleasant and convenient bachelor’s apartment; would in fact have been satisfactory for a childless couple. Maryjane Swiftwater, however, on the single occasion when she had visited Gerald, had found it hopelessly inadequate when he had casually suggested that it might make their immediate marriage possible. He hadn’t argued; for some odd reason he himself found the idea of sharing the apartment with a wife-or at least with Maryjane-slightly unattractive.

When Gerald returned in the early hours of the morning he had, for one of the few times in his life, neglected to set his alarm clock. As a result he awakened late, or at least late for him. It was well after seven-thirty when he slowly woke up and the sun was already streaming through the sheer curtains of his bedroom window, which faced to the east.

For a moment or two, as he opened his eyes and stretched, the events of the previous night were erased from his mind. He started to leap from the bed, remembering only that he had to hurry if he was to arrive in Connecticut as he had planned. And then, halfway to the bathroom, he stopped dead in his tracks. Connecticut? No, it wasn’t to Connecticut that he was going this Saturday.

He turned to the dresser where he had placed the jewels and he was unable to resist the temptation to pull open the drawer and check on them. There they were in all of their loveliness.

His eyes went to the clock as he checked the time. It had been more than five hours since he had left the scene of the robbery and the shooting. He breathed a sigh of sudden relief. He began to feel a little safer. No one could have obtained the number of his car; certainly not one of the policemen who had been lying in the street. They would have checked it and found him by now for sure. His calculated risk was beginning to pay off.

He took his time showering and shaving, having put a pot of coffee on to boil first. And then he dressed, getting into a pair of slacks and an open-necked shirt and putting on a pair of tennis shoes. He fried two eggs and several slices of bacon and made himself a couple of pieces of toast. He ate a leisurely breakfast and took time to clean up after he had finished. Then he returned to the bedroom, made up the bed and put away the clothes he had been wearing the previous evening.

The pattern of Gerald Hanna’s thinking may have undergone a radical change, but the habits of a lifetime failed to desert him.

At eight forty-five he put in his call to Maryjane. He had his story all ready, his alibi for not coming up for the week end.

It was probably the quality of her voice that caused him to do what he did. Somehow or other, he was unable to help himself. There was something about the way she framed the question, something in the tone of her voice as she said, “And just why aren’t you coming, Gerald?” that made him say what he did. He couldn’t resist it.

“Because I damned well don’t want to,” Gerald said, and then, quite unconsciously, he laughed. He could hear the gasp at the other end of the wire.

Gerald carefully put the receiver back on the hook. He felt fine, just perfect. It was something he’d been wanting to say to Maryjane for a long, long time now.

Gerald left the telephone and at once went downstairs to the basement where his car sat next to that of the Sandersons’ in the double garage. He didn’t open the garage doors, but instead turned on the overhead light. He started the engine in his car and then pressed the button, lowering the convertible top. He minutely inspected the car for bloodstains. He found no trace of his unwelcome passenger of the previous night.

He realized almost at once what must have happened. The bullet must have struck the man somewhere in either the back of his head or his neck. The bullet had either completely passed through and gone out the windshield, or had struck a bone and stayed buried in the body. What little blood there was had probably dripped down the inside of the leather jacket.

Finishing his inspection of the inside of the car, Gerald next made an inspection of the windshield. He began removing the last remaining fragments of glass. When he was through, he gathered the broken glass together and wrapped it in newspapers along with the pieces he had already recovered, and then put the parcel in a zipper bag which had been given him as a souvenir by United Airlines. He returned upstairs and retrieved the .38 revolver which Vince Dunne had dropped on the floor of the car, and this too he put in the bag. He placed the bag on the floor of the Sandersons’ car next to the brief case which held the jewels.

Five minutes later, at the wheel of the Sandersons’ car, he drove out the driveway, after carefully locking the garage doors behind himself.

Traffic was inordinately light and he made good time getting into New York. He found a parking lot not far from Grand Central Station and after checking the car in, took the zipper bag in one hand and the brief case under his arm and walked the two or three blocks to the station. He realized that the public locker services had a twenty-four hour time limit, so he went to the parcel checkroom on the ground floor level. He checked both the zipper bag and the brief case.

He stopped in the lobby of the Biltmore long enough to obtain an envelope and a couple of sheets of stationery. Then he walked around the corner and over to the post office. Standing at the desk in the lobby, he addressed the envelope to himself, folded the check in two sheets of paper and inserted them. Then he purchased a stamp, sealed the envelope and dropped it into the slot.

Returning to the parking lot, he felt considerably relieved.

It took him only a few minutes to drive directly cross town and find the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.

A lot of changes had been made during the last seven years, since the last time he’d driven this way, but he had no difficulty in finding the place. It wasn’t surprising; he’d made the trip often enough, heaven knows, during the two years he’d worked for the garage while completing his course at college. They’d painted the building, added a wing and the name of the firm had changed, but it was still a glass factory. Parking in front of the place, he sensed a feeling of relief. It was an odd sensation walking inside once again.

A man he had never seen before greeted him at the long counter and he guessed that the place had probably changed hands. He asked for a windshield for a ’56 Chevrolet convertible. He had the model number, but the man behind the counter didn’t need it. The man had the right size glass in stock. Hanna paid for it in cash.

By one o’clock he was back in Roslyn.

He knew a moment’s nervousness as he drove into the driveway and stopped. The place was completely deserted, but he still felt the tension as he opened the garage doors. The Chevvie stood where he had left it the previous evening.

It took him longer than he thought it would and once he bruised his knuckles badly, but at last he had the windshield installed. When he was finished, he went out to the drive and picked up a handful of sand and gravel. He rubbed it over the windshield, purposely scratching it. Next he covered the glass with a thin layer of mud and then wiped it off, leaving stray bits around the edges.

At three-thirty he was finished and he went upstairs and washed up. Not until then did he sit down and relax. He picked up the newspapers he had purchased on his way back to Roslyn.