Bedrooms Have Windows

Sixteen

Two blocks from the Westchester Arms, we found Frank Seller’s police car parked by a fire hydrant.

Sellers’ exclamation of satisfaction was ample indication of the load that had been lifted from his mind.

“Stop right here,” he told the cab driver.

The cab driver lurched the car to a stop.

Sellers opened the door with his good hand, walked over to the police car, saw that the keys were in it, locked the ignition switch, pulled the keys out, put them in his pocket, grinned and walked back to the cab.

“Bertha,” Sellers said, holding his injured right hand so that there was little possibility of bumping it against the car door, “the keys to those handcuffs are in my right-hand vest pocket.”

Bertha pulled his coat back, fumbled for the keys. Sellers winced as the pressure of the coat caused motion in his right hand.

Bertha fitted the keys to the handcuffs on my wrists and took them off.

Sellers said, “Understand, Lam, you’re still under arrest. I’m just giving you a break.”

The cab driver said, “Who’s going to pay me?”

“They are,” Sellers said.

It spoke volumes for the condition of Bertha’s mind that she opened her purse, took out the sixty cents that was due to the cab driver and added fifteen cents with it.

“Now what?” Sellers asked. “Do we wait for them to come back?”

“They aren’t coming back,” I told him. “They’re smart enough to know that the quickest way they can get picked up is to be driving a stolen police car.”

“All right. What next?” Sellers demanded impatiently.

I said, “You come along with me.”

Sellers frowned, hesitated, all but refused point-blank, then fell into step at my side.

“No funny stuff,” he warned.

We walked in silence to the Westchester Arms Hotel.

“You certainly don’t think they’re staying here?” Sellers asked.

I said, “They’re hunted, they’re desperate, they’re trying to make a getaway. When Tom Durham checked out of that hotel he was in a hurry and he was trying to make a getaway. He and his suitcase disappeared. They might as well have been swallowed into thin air. We’re dealing with a regularly established blackmail ring. It isn’t a casual act of isolated blackmail. It’s part of a pattern.”

“All right, get to the point,” Sellers said.

I said, “Come on. This way.”

I opened the door of the cocktail lounge.

The manager was standing near the centre of the room where he could see both the door into the hotel lobby and the street door.

He came towards us, bowing, then he spotted Sellers, saw the bandaged hand, and then in a flash, recognised me.

I said, “I guess you remember me, don’t you?”

He tried to look blank.

I said, “You gave me some water with an olive in it and charged me for a cocktail.”

He said, “Where’s the evidence?”

“Down the drain. I guess.”

He said, “Don’t be a damn fool.” His eyes were fixed with fascination on the bloodstained bandage around Frank Sellers’ right hand.

I said, “Okay, we’re going to order a drink, and I want this one to be better than the others.”

I moved over to a booth. The four of us sat down, Sellers with obvious reluctance.

The manager melted away.

I said, in an undertone, “Follow him, Claire, quick! If he goes to a telephone, try and watch him and see what number he calls.”

Claire Bushnell slid out from behind the table, and, looking demure as befits a modest young woman who is searching for a rest-room, started tagging along behind the manager.

“You think he’s in on it?” Sellers asked skeptically.

I said, “Something happened in this vicinity when I was trying to follow Tom Durham. What’s more, Dover Fulton and Minerva Carlton were in here having drinks just before they went to the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT.”

“That’s a damn slender thread on which to tie a conclusion,” Sellers said angrily.

I said, “It’s a thread that was stout enough to get you your car back.”

There wasn’t any answer he could make to that.

I said, “I figure it had to be either here or at the Cabanita. I tried this first because it’s nearer and was an easier place to get rid of the car; but I’m not certain but what we’ll find the answer in the Cabanita.”

Sellers moved his hand and winced with sudden pain. The numbness was beginning to leave and the slivers of bone in his shattered thumb were grating every time he moved the elbow.

Bertha watched him sympathetically. “You’d better have a good shot of hooch,” she said.

Sellers said, “You’ve got something there. Let’s get that waiter.”

“I’ll find him,” I said. “What do you want?”

“Double brandy,” Sellers said, and dropped his head back against the cushion. His face suddenly went white and his eyes closed. There were marks of pain around the corners of his mouth.

I slid out of the booth and had taken half a dozen steps before Sellers opened his eyes and suddenly straightened.

“Hey,” he said, “not you! Bertha can go. You come back here.”

Somewhere a woman screamed.

It was a peculiar muffled scream which seemed to come from back of the bar somewhere.

I made a dash for the bar. The bar-tender said, “You can’t go in there.”

I spotted an open door and a flight of stairs. I made a sprint. The bar-tender grabbed and caught the shoulder of my coat. I kicked him in the knee-cap and, when his hold loosened, dashed on down the stairs. The bar-tender had sufficient presence of mind to slam the door shut behind me so that any noise made down below wouldn’t be heard in the cocktail lounge.

I reached a basement storage room. There were cases of liquor stacked all around, racks with wine bottles. There was no sign of Claire Bushnell.

The manager of the cocktail lounge was in the process of gliding through another opened door at the far end of the room. He saw me, and an expression of black anger came over his face.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“Where’s that girl who screamed?”

“I don’t know. She ran back upstairs. This is private. Get out.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

He heard the sound of commotion at the head of the stairs and said suddenly, “As far as I’m concerned this is a stick-up. I’m going to defend myself.”

His hand darted under his coat.

I grabbed a champagne bottle by the neck and hurled it.

The bottle missed his head, but struck against the concrete wall. The champagne, spurting out from the broken bottle, drenched his face and had him blinking hard.

He kept his right hand under the lapel of his coat. His left hand angrily brushed his eyes.

I charged across the room at him.

Behind me, I heard the crash of a door being kicked open, the sound of heavy steps on the stairs.

The manager of the cocktail lounge suddenly thought better of it. He jerked his right hand out from under his coat.

Sergeant Sellers and Bertha Cool came barging down the stairs.

“What the hell’s coming off here?” Frank Sellers asked, his face white as a sheet.

“Where’s the woman?” I asked.

“I tell you, she went back up the stairs,” the manager said.

Claire Bushnell thrust a cobweb-streaked countenance out from behind a wine bin. “Nuts!” she said angrily. “I was going to see where he went. I ran back up the stairs when he turned on me and then when he ran back I sneaked on down and got behind the wine bin.”

“Say, what is this?” the manager demanded. “I’m going to make a protest to police headquarters. It’s lucky there wasn’t a shooting. I thought this was a hold-up. I was getting ready to defend myself. Sergeant, I’m going to hold you responsible for this.”

Sellers seemed as tense as a marathon runner trying to hold out until he reached the tape. He came slowly forward and said, “Lam, I’ve had enough of this…”

I whirled, ducked under the arm of the manager of the cocktail lounge, sprinted through the open door.

I heard Sellers bellow with anger, “Grab him!”

There were feet pounding after me.

I heard the manager shouting, “You can’t go in there,” and then adding, “I’ll catch him.”

I was in a place that had been fixed up as an apartment, evidently living-quarters for a porter in the hotel. The furniture was cheap and shoddy, but there was the odour of fresh tobacco smoke in the room and a cigarette in an ash-tray was sending up wisps of smoke.

I bent down to look under the bed.

I saw skirts, a woman’s leg, and then met the glare of Amelia Jasper’s angry eyes.

The sound of motion caused me to look up.

Tom Durham was swinging a club. I got my head out of the way and grabbed for his foot. The club numbed my shoulder. Durham went down on the floor with me, and we went whirling around, over and over.

Amelia Jasper came scrambling out from under the bed and grabbed a fistful of my hair. The manager of the cocktail lounge kicked me, and then Bertha hit the scrimmage like a battering ram.

I heard Sergeant Sellers yell, “Break it up! Break it up there!” Then I saw Bertha’s muscular leg, felt her toe whiz past my head, smack into Durham’s jaw and heard Bertha saying angrily, “That’s the worst of these modern styles. You have to fumble around with a couple of yards of skirt every time you want to kick some son-of-a-bitch in the face!”