Call for Michael Shayne [= Case of the Missing Twelve Days]

Chapter five How many more shocks?

Devlin knew now that he was “Joey.” Hence, the dead man must be Skid. And the girl whose arms were around his neck was Marge.

The door was partly open. His right arm tightened around her waist as he half turned and swung the door closed with his left hand.

Marge mistook the movement for passion. She gripped him tighter and said softly, “Oh, Joey — you do love me.”

He patted her and said, “Don’t say anything. I’ve got to think,” and stroked her hair while his eyes roamed around the shabbily furnished sitting-room. The cushions of the wicker couch and chairs were faded and soiled. The edges of a square greenish rug in the center of the floor were frayed, and the lavender striped wall paper was offensive. Through an open door a ceiling light revealed a cramped and disordered bedroom. The bed was unmade, and feminine apparel hung limply over the back of a chair. There was an inner door which he judged led into the bathroom. It was one of those small, three-room affairs dignified by the name of “efficiency apartments” that rented for an outrageous price during the tourist season, but $18 a week was about all it would bring in the summer.

Devlin reached up and pushed the felt hat from his head and let it drop to the floor. His head was beginning to ache again. The room was hot, and the heat of the girl’s body pressed against him sent big drops of perspiration pouring down his face. His arms fell to his sides and he took a step backward.

Marge looked up quickly, then cried, “Joey! You’re hurt. What happened? Where have you been?”

Devlin mumbled something about one question at a time, took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his face. His eyes went over her from head to foot as he stood there trying not to stare.

Marge was barefooted. She wore a sheer robe tightly belted around a slim waist. He could see the shoulder strap of a nightgown where the neckline of the robe was pushed aside. Her brown hair tumbled around her shoulders in disarray. He judged her to be in her mid-twenties, yet there was a looseness about her flesh that conveyed an impression of inner laxity.

It was her eyes that caught and held his gaze for a long time. They were black and enormous and strange. Her pupils were so small they appeared to be swallowed up by the iris. Contracted, he thought swiftly, by fear or by some violent emotion which he could only guess at.

She stood uncertainly before him, her mouth lax and pouting. Then her lips quivered and she said, “What’s the matter, Joey? What do you keep looking at me like that for?”

Devlin touched the bruised lump on his head and said, “I keep feeling dizzy and faint. I don’t know how bad it is. I was knocked out at first — and things get all blurred and then they’re clear again.” His body tensed and he took another step backward as though readying himself to open the door and fly from the room. He knew the next few minutes would decide whether he was going to get away with this imposture or whether she would see through it at once.

Marge’s features hardened suddenly and she seemed older than he had guessed. She kept staring at him with her enormous, pupil-less eyes, and he had no idea whether she was bracing herself to submit to some physical or mental cruelty from the man she knew as Joey — or whether she was suppressing some violent emotional upheaval of her own.

She said, “Where have you been since you phoned? You’re wearing different clothes, Joey. You’re acting — cold and strange.” She backed away from him, catching her full lower lip between her teeth, her eyes like round balls of sooty clay.

“I had to get a change of clothes,” he told her harshly. “My others had blood on them,” he went on evenly, watching her, hoping for some clue that would give him an idea of the tone Joey would use. “They had Skid’s blood on them.”

Her unrouged mouth twisted and a mist came over her eyes. “Where — did you get — clothes like that, Joey?” she asked meekly.

“I found an empty room down the hall there — you know — where I met Skid,” he told her, softening his tone. “The door was unlocked and I — took them. They fit pretty well. That’s what took me so long.”

“Oh, Joey!” The tears swam over her dark lashes and she ran to him, flinging herself in his arms again, weeping.

Devlin held her close. He had a curiously guilty feeling of compassion and tenderness as he comforted her, and he wondered desperately what they had been to each other these past twelve days. He had the fleeting impression that she had been kicked around by life and expected to be kicked again — by Joey.

“I’ve been so frightened,” she was saying through her sobs, her head pressed against his shoulder. “I didn’t know what to do when you didn’t come and didn’t phone. Then after I talked to you—” She drew away from him and looked up at him pleadingly, “Everything is all right, isn’t it? You didn’t — they’re not after you? Tell me everything’s all right.”

“I’ll tell you all about it,” he said heavily. “Everything is as right as it can be — under the circumstances — I guess. I’m beginning — to feel dizzy again.”

“You poor thing. Sit down over here on the sofa.” She caught his arm and led him to the soiled couch, fluffed a lumpy cretonne-covered pillow, said, “You just sit there and rest. I’ll get you a drink. I brought home some gin.”

Devlin moaned. “No — I don’t want a drink,” he protested harshly.

“But I got some Tom Collins mixture, Joey. That’s what—”

“It’s my stomach,” he said hastily. “That blow on the head made me nauseated and dizzy. Just get me a glass of ice water.”

He watched her as she turned toward the kitchen. God in Heaven! He put his hands against his head and moaned again as he had his first peek behind the black curtain covering those twelve days. He had become a gin drinker! And from the way Marge had backed away from him, he had, no doubt, also become a woman beater.

Marge came back with the ice water. He drank it eagerly, swallowing the last of the lump that had constricted his throat earlier in the morning.

She sat down beside him and crooned, “Now tell me all about it, Joey. Every single thing. So, he didn’t bring the money — the no-good bastard.” She spoke without rancor; more in sorrow, it seemed to Devlin, than in anger.

“I told you over the phone I didn’t get the money.” He watched her closely. Her expression, her tone of voice were his only cues.

“Too bad he didn’t tell you before you conked him,” she said unfeelingly. “Skid was always an undependable louse. Did you have a fight, Joey? What’d he hit you with?” She moved closer to him, put her arm around his neck, and her finger tips felt gentle and competent as she massaged the swollen area.

He winced when she touched the bruised spot, and she asked with sudden concern, “You sure it’s all right, Joey? It might be a concussion. You never can tell about a lick like that.”

Devlin remembered that Doctor Thompson had said the very same thing and was on the verge of telling her he had seen a doctor. He was saved from making another thoughtless mistake when Marge said abruptly and with startling venom, “What in hell did he hit you with?”

Devlin caught his breath in sharply. “A blackjack,” he told her. “You see, I—”

“But you had the blackjack.” She jerked her arm from around his neck and moved to face him squarely. “If you had just listened to me, Joe Jerome! Just hid behind the door like I told you and let ’im have it as soon as he came in. Instead of that I suppose you shook hands with him politely and said, ‘Good evening, Mr. Munroe. I’m Joe Jerome — Marge’s husband, you know. If you’ll just hand over that money you’ve got in your pocket — Damn it.” Rage thickened her voice and she pounded her fist against his arm. “Sometimes I think you’ve got no guts at all.”

Devlin didn’t answer her for a moment. The little peepholes she was opening up in the black curtain were there before him. Joe Jerome. Skid Munroe. He was Marge’s husband.

“Well — what did happen?” Her sharp voice shocked him out of his reverie.

Devlin looked at her. A bright pinpoint of light gleamed in the center of her sooty irises and her features were hard. “I didn’t get there first,” he said quietly. “He was already in the room when I got there. When I came in he — well — we had a fight and he got the blackjack away from me.” He shook his head ruefully and added, “There was quite a mix-up for a moment, and I thought I was done for.” Marge relaxed as suddenly as she had tensed. She leaned back against the couch. The tonelessness was in her voice again when she said, “But you got him anyhow. He won’t do any talking. We can just forget about the whole thing.” She moved close to him and caught his arm in a gentle caress.

Devlin was astounded, and he was worried. He couldn’t let her stop talking just when he was beginning to find out some of the things he had to know. But he had to be careful. Thus far he hadn’t blundered. She hadn’t suspected him. But henceforth he had to force himself to acquire the cunning of a criminal. He laid one of his hands over hers and said, “They’ll find Skid’s body in the room — as soon as the maid starts cleaning.”

“That’s no concern of ours, Joey,” she purred, and pressed her head against his shoulder. “No one knows you were there.”

“The manager saw me come out,” he told her. “I’m afraid he recognized me because he remembered I’d asked the room number when I went there to meet Skid.” The moment the words were spoken he realized he’d made his first blunder.

Marge’s caressing fingers became claws that dug into the muscles of his arms. Her upper lip drew back from her teeth and she grated, “You knew the room number when you went there. I wrote it down for you so you wouldn’t forget.” She stared at him for an instant and her rage changed to fear that was low and awesome in her voice, “Joey! Did you have another one of those spells?”

Devlin jerked his arm from her grasp. “Suppose I did?” he said harshly. “Could I help it? I tried to remember — and I guess I forgot to take the slip with me. And so I asked,” he ended defiantly. His mind was whirling with hope. If he had spells during his mental blackout it might mean that he was trying to struggle back to consciousness. Could a person afflicted with amnesia unconsciously try to grope his way back to his real identity?

Marge was saying rapidly, “But he didn’t know you. You were just a guy to him. They can’t trace you here. You just stay in close like you’ve been doing. It’ll be all right.” She slowed her words and softened her voice gradually, as though in her mind her fear was going away. “It’ll be all right, Joey. I know it’ll be all right. Marge won’t let them find you. Don’t you worry.”

She kissed his neck and his chin, and moved her face upward to his lips.

Devlin held her close, feeling a tenuous and almost subconscious sense of recognition, as though all of this had happened exactly the same way before — one of those inexplicable moments when one wonders if time has two dimensions whereby it is possible to live through the same experience on different planes at exactly the same moment. He strained to grasp the half-memory. Drops of perspiration broke out on his face. Marge slid her arm around his neck to pull his head down closer, and the feeling was gone.

“Now you stop worrying, Joey. Just don’t think about it any more,” she crooned. “Pretend it’s just another one of those bad dreams you’ve been having. It’s like I promised you in the beginning — when you started forgetting. And Joey — you know what?” Her lips were nuzzling his ear and her voice was a persuasive whisper, wooing and caressing.

A wave of passion spread through him. His lips were dry and he forced them to say, “What, Marge?” giving himself over to the excitation she aroused in him.

“Let’s don’t make the couch up out here for you tonight, Joey. You’re okay now. We don’t have to keep that up any more. Do we, Joey?”

He lay quiescent, her kisses weakening his will and strengthening his body as he fought to break the situation down into its component parts, to probe beyond her words and find some understanding of the situation, some knowledge of how it had been brought about in a space of less than two weeks.

Marge made a sudden move and her forehead struck the tender, bruised spot above his ear. Pain stabbed sharply through him like a flame, jerking him back to frightening reality and dispelling the passion that threatened to consume him.

He sat very still until the throbbing in his temple subsided. Wary and alert now, he resumed his probing thoughts, easing his head downward again to rest against her hair. She was quiet, the tension gone from her body.

Devlin’s thoughts raced on. Marge had said that Joey Jerome was her husband — or pretending to be. Or was she pretending — and why? She had said that he had been sleeping on the couch.

Yet he had radioed Tommy from aboard the Belle of the Caribbean. And the letter from Janet said he had met her aboard the ship as Arthur Devlin and reassured her about her sister’s death. If he had done all that—

But no! Tommy had explained that he could not have continued long in a state of amnesia on board the boat using his own name. Or, if that could have happened, why hadn’t he gone right on being Arthur Devlin if he had jumped ship in Havana and returned to Miami and gotten mixed up with Marge in a murder plot?

No. The man who sailed on the Belle had been someone else — an impostor and a shrewd one. Shrewd enough to pass himself off as Arthur Devlin to Janet who had never met him, and by cleverly drawing her out had kept up the pretense. Just as he was now trying to draw Marge out.

He started all over again, trying to straighten out the possibilities and look at them objectively. Suppose there had been an accident that night after he left Bert Masters’s party and before he went aboard the Belle. Suppose all his clothing and identification had been stolen. Suppose he had awakened in a stupor — in a dead blank — with no memory whatever of the past.

Suppose, then, he had chosen the name of Joe Jerome for some silly reason and met Marge and married her. That would add up. Though he didn’t suppose they were legally married. He tried to recall exactly what she had said a few minutes ago. “Let’s don’t make up the couch out here for you tonight, Joey. You’re okay now. We don’t have to keep that up any more. Do we, Joey?”

That was the only logical explanation. Amnesia was a form of sickness. He had been sick when they were married. So Marge had been making up the couch for him to sleep on and she had occupied the bedroom. But tonight he had murdered a man at her behest, so she thought him strong enough to sleep in the room with her.

He caught her by the shoulders and held her away from him. The pinpoints of light glittered in her smoky eyes. He couldn’t stay here. They were not legally married. Of that he was certain. He was a murderer and she was his accessory before the fact. It was all a horrible farce and he would be eternally damned forever and ever if he stayed a moment longer.

He heaved himself up, her arms clinging around him. He pulled them loose and flung her back on the couch. She lay with heaving breasts and ludicrously frightened eyes.

“I’ve got to get out,” Devlin told her thickly. “I meant to tell you when I came in, but I forgot about it. I think I was followed here. I’m not sure, but I’m afraid I was.”

“Followed here? You mean—?”

“I mean if I stay here they may search the place and then they’ll arrest you, too. You see,” he went on swiftly, striking out in the dark, but shrewdly taking his cue from her own words, “even though there’s no connection between Skid Munroe and me, they’ll soon find out that you knew him. Then — if they did trail me here—” He flung out his hand nervously. “So I’ll be going along,” he ended flatly and turned to pick up his hat from the floor near the door.

Marge lay on the couch staring at him from between fiercely drawn brows. She looked like a discarded doll, and she did not speak until Devlin had his hand on the knob. Then she didn’t move. She asked wearily, “What are you going to do, Joey? When’ll you be back?”

“I don’t know,” he told her truthfully. “Not until I’m sure it’s safe.”

He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, and there was a stifled moan in the room as he pulled the door shut.