Deadline at Dawn

Chapter 9

The brief shot of novocain that the easing of Helen Kirsch’s predicament had vicariously given her wore off and the dull throb of her own dilemma came back again, twice as sore as before. The red back-light of the homeward-bound transgressor’s cab petered out, and she was alone again. Out and around on her own again. With forty, maybe fifty good minutes smashed up, and as far from successful fulfilment as ever.

She was on East Seventieth Street already — bravura East Seventieth Street of the two revolver-shots in one night, one harmless, one murderous — so all she had to do to return to the Graves house was start walking slowly west along it. That was where she’d have to go now. She’d have to start out all over again, she had to start out from some place, and that was the logical jumping-off place for any new expedition.

She had the second key on her, the one they’d removed from Graves’ person, so she knew she wouldn’t have any difficulty in getting in again. She wasn’t sure just what she could hope to gain by going in again; she was sure it would be taking a darned big chance. But there wasn’t anything else she could do, now that her last lead had evaporated the way it had. Over and above all this, she was being drawn implacably nearer by the sort of irresistible fascination the scene of his crime is said to hold for the criminal. It was as though she were the murderer herself, the way she was being pulled back there.

She knew what it was; she wanted to see, she had to see, whether it had been discovered yet, whether there were any signs of police activity, any lights, anything to show that the secret reposing in it was no longer exclusively their own.

So she came back slowly, cautiously, not like anyone working against a time-limit, across Lexington, across Park. Nearer, ever nearer. From the middle of the Park-Madison block she could already see into the block ahead; see into it well enough to discern that it was still empty, still quiet, that outwardly at least everything was still under control. No cars drawn up anywhere around or near that doorway, no motionless figure of a cop posted outside it, no one coming in or going out. Above all, no light showing from any of the front windows. And window-lights can be seen far at night, particularly along such a lightless stretch as this was.

Or was this just bait? Was there some sort of trap down there waiting to be sprung? Oh, not a police-trap, not a trap set by men. They couldn’t know she was coming back like this at just such and such a moment, or coming back at all. The other kind of trap, set by the real enemy. The city.

She’d reached Madison now. She looked over at the diagonally opposite corner from which she’d started. She’d made a complete circle, and here she was back again — empty-handed. The cab was gone, the one that had led her to Helen Kirsch and on a fool’s errand.

A compact little aluminum-bodied milk-truck went skimming by, one of the new kind they were beginning to use within the last year or so. As noiseless and as agile as one of those early electric cabriolets. The milk already. Daybreak was nearly here.

She crossed Madison and went on.

It came nearer.

She’d never forget it, the face of that house. It was beginning to haunt her. She’d see it a long time from now, a long way from here. Even if they tore it down, and the site was vacant and it was gone, she’d still go on seeing it. She’d still be outside it like this, some night in a dream. It would leap upright in her mind, and be intact again, be whole again, just the way it was tonight. And — if she was lucky — she’d wake up just as she was about to go in.

It already seemed like long ago that she had paced slowly back and forth, on the other side, in front of it, and he had been inside, putting back the money. It couldn’t be this one same night, no night could last that long. But gee, how she wished she could go back to then, instead of it being now. For, as painful as it had been while that was going on, as frightened as she’d been then, as scared that he’d be caught, at least they hadn’t known about it yet, they hadn’t known what was waiting there inside for them.

She sighed. Her favorite dance-hall aphorism came back to her: what was the good of wishing?

She wondered where he was, how he was making out. I hope he’s having better luck than I just had, she thought. She hoped he was all right, wasn’t in any jam. Jam was good; what jam could be any worse than the one he was in, they were both in, already?

She was disgusted with herself. Aw, you with your hoping and your wishing. Why don’t you get a turkey wishbone and go up to the first cop you see and offer to pull it against him, and be done with it?

She came to a halt. It was directly opposite now. Funny, she thought, how a house with violent death in it doesn’t look any different from any other sort of a house, when you’re standing outside. It’s only what you know that makes the difference.

She was going in. She felt it coming on before the first move had even been made. She didn’t know why, she didn’t know what good it would do; but then what good would it do to stand here at a loss on the street outside, staring over at it?

At least she made the brave approach. No slinking over, no sidling up. She cut straight over to it, razor-straight, and went up the stoop-steps. The other way was the more dangerous of the two, the more likely to arouse suspicion if caught sight of by some wandering eye.

The swinging storm-doors fluttered shut behind her, and the stuffy little cubicle of the vestibule — more like an upright coffin than ever — was around her once again. Most of her courage, or impetus, if that was what it was, seemed to have stayed outside, suddenly.

She’d gone in with him, the last time. It was more frightening going in alone. Suppose someone was lurking in it? Not the police or anyone legitimate like that, but someone whose presence couldn’t be guessed at from out here, someone who wouldn’t want the lights on or their intrusion made known any more than he and she did. Someone you wouldn’t know about until it was too late.

She went ahead. What else was there to do? Backing out wouldn’t have solved anything.

She put the key to the door. The dead man’s key it was, too. She remembered how his hand had shaken when he did it, the time before. He ought to see hers now, he’d know what some real shaking was. Her forearm was practically bouncing around in its elbow-socket. And what a racket! To her own ears, at any rate, it sounded like tin cans jangling. She might as well have rung the doorbell and be done with it, the way she was telegraphing her arrival.

Aw, what was the difference, there was no one in there anyway.

You hope, she amended in a minor key.

It opened.

Silence.

She knew her way a little better now, from being in the time before. You just went straight, and then you hit the stairs. She closed the door behind her first of all, and then she started out. She had that slightly precarious feeling, as of being on a tight-rope, that moving ahead in complete darkness always gives, even when the sense of direction is fairly sure.

That smell of leather and of woodwork again.

How still it was. How could a house be this still? It was almost as if it were overdoing it, for treacherous purposes of its own.

She thought, Let’s see if my valise is still where I left it, against the wall. That ought to be sort of a clue as to whether anyone’s been in here or not.

She knew which side she’d left it on, but naturally not just how far in away from the door. She turned and cut over to it. She found the wall, and felt down it with her palms. She got all the way to the bottom, to the baseboard, without anything impeding her.

Nope, not here. A little further on yet.

She moved out away from the wall a trifle, and went on again. She took about four more paces forward and closed in again and tried it there. This must be it, about here. It couldn’t be any further in than this. She must be nearly all the way to the foot of the stairs by now.

Her hands came out again, palms front, to find the wall and pat themselves down it to about the level where the valise should—

The wall had changed.

It wasn’t cool and smooth plaster any more, it wasn’t flat. Her hand went into something yielding. Yielding up to a point only; that gave a little but then held finally of its own inner bulk. Something rough, and yet soft. Fuzzy, bristly. Nap. Nap of a coat. A coat, with a body behind it. A coat with somebody in it.

There was somebody standing there, flat against the wall. Pressed back against it, trying to escape discovery. And she’d stopped right in front of it, of him, and like someone in a ghastly game of blindman’s buff — only this game was for keeps — had exploringly palmed her hands against him.

She could hear the sharp inhalation of breath coming from it, that wasn’t her own, at moment of contact. Her own had stopped entirely.

There was someone right there in front of her, someone alive, but standing deathly still, pinned there by her discovery of him.

The darkness eddied violently all around her; it loomed up to a crest, like an obliterating wave about to break and dash all over her. It was like being in the surf; a bad surf of terror of the senses. She started to go over backwards, drowned into senselessness in the middle of it. A little moaning cry drifted from her, something not intended to be uttered at all.

“Quinn, help me—”

An arm lashed out about the curve of her waist; her awareness was too blurred for a minute to tell whether it was in succor or in seizure. It held her afloat, up out of insensibility.

Quinn’s voice said, “Bricky! Hold it, Bricky!”

She went forward again, her head toppled inertly against his shoulder. She leaned there against him and couldn’t talk for a minute.

“My God,” he said, “I didn’t know it was you. I’ve been standing here paralyzed, afraid to—”

She could still only pant, even after a moment or two. “If that doesn’t kill me, nothing ever will.”

He led her away from the wall in the darkness, both arms about her in a sort of barrel-staff hold. “Come over here and sit down on the stairs a minute, they’re right over here—”

“No, I’m all right now. Let’s go up, so we can put on a little light, get rid of this blame darkness. That’s what did it, mostly.”

They went up the stairs. It was all right now that she had him with her, she wasn’t frightened any more.

“Funny we should both come back here like this, almost together. No luck either, hunh?” she surmised.

“Washed up. I came back to get a second start.”

“That’s what I was out for too.”

They didn’t ask each other about their experiences. They hadn’t paid off, so there was no profit in repeating them. There was no time, either; that was the main thing.

When the lights went on, they scarcely glanced at the form on the floor, either one of them. They had gotten so far past that point now. Just a glimpse out of the corners of their eyes, of something black with a white shirtfront, was enough, so long as it showed them it was still there. She thought, How quickly you get used to the presence of death in a room. That’s why those people who sit up with them all night never turn a hair. She’d never been able to understand their ability to do that until now.

It was the first one she’d ever seen, and yet all the awe had already worn off. She already found herself moving about the room and unconcernedly deviating a little from that particular place each time, no more. As one would to avoid treading on a sleeping dog or cat.

They were at a loss. They’d hit rock-bottom. They were blocked. They could read the knowledge in one another’s eyes as they looked at one another, but they tried to keep from saying it, from admitting it aloud. His evasion took the form of moving restlessly about, as though he were accomplishing something, when they both knew he wasn’t. He went to the bedroom-entrance, put on the light in there, stood looking about, as though desperately trying to discern something that was not there to be discerned. Then he came out again, went to the bathroom-entry, lighted that up, did the same thing there.

It was no use. It was hopeless, and they both knew it. They’d squeezed the last drop of muted testimony out of this place that there was to be had from it. They’d squeezed it dry.

Her sense of frustration took a more passive form. She stood still. It revealed itself only in the fingers of her hand, resting on the back of one of the chairs; those kept rippling like the fingers of a typist upon an unseen typewriter.

Suddenly something happened to the silence. It was gone, and they hadn’t done it.

“What’s that?”

Fright was like an icy gush of water flooding over them, as from some burst pipe or water-main; like a numbing tide rapidly welling up over them from below, in some confined place from which there was no escape. They were like two small things — two mice — trapped in an inundated cellar, and carried around and around, still alive but helplessly swirling, on the surface of the whirlpool before they finally went under.

Fright was the muted pealing of a bell. A tiny, softened t-t-t-ting, t-t-t-ting, over and over. Somewhere unseen around them, hidden, but pertinent to them, having to do with them, having to do with this place they were in.

After the first needle-like shock, they were motionless, only their eyes tracing it in frightened flight, now to this side, now to that, each time too late. It was like a wasp, buzzing elusively around their heads, while they held still, trying to identify it, trying to orient it, to isolate it. It was everywhere, it was nowhere. T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-tling, soft, velvety, but unending.

“What is it, a burglar-alarm?” she breathed. “Have we touched something we shouldn’t—?”

“It’s from over here — the bedroom. There must be an alarm-clock in there—”

They shot for the entrance, mice coursing on the tide of fright. There was a small folding-clock on the dresser. He picked it up, pummelled the top of it, held it to his ear.

T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-ting— It was no nearer than before, it was everywhere at once, a ghost-trilling.

He put it down, ran back again the other way. She after him.

“The doorbell, maybe. Oh God, what’ll we do?” She shuddered.

He ran down a few steps, stopped on the stairs, listening.

“No. It’s coming from two places at once. It’s coming from down there, but it’s also coming from up here behind us—”

She stopped him. “It’s no good, it’s dark down there, you’d never find it. Come back, we’ll try up here again—”

They ran back into the bedroom again, the drowning mice.

“Let’s try closing the door,” she said. “That may tell us which room—”

She swung the door to. They listened. It went on undiminished, unaltered, unaffected by the closing-off.

“It’s right here in this bedroom with us, we know that much now— Oh, if it would only stop a minute, give us a chance to collect our faculties—”

He’d dropped to the floor on hands and knees, was padding lumberingly this way and that, animal-like.

“Wait a minute, there’s a box under there! Against the wall, under the bed, painted white— I can see it. Telephone-extension. But where’s the arm itself—?”

He jumped up, ran over to the head of the bed, shunted it slightly out away from the wall. Then his arm reached around and behind it, at about mattress-level, and brought out the instrument.

“It was hooked on behind there, so he could reach it from his pillow without getting up.”

It was still unrecognizable.

“One of these muted bells, so it wouldn’t ring too hard in his ears. Must be another one downstairs, and this is an extension here, that’s what sent the sound all over the place, got us so rattled.”

It was still keeping up, right in his hands while he spoke.

Plaintively, untiringly. T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-ting—

He looked at her helplessly. “What’ll I do?”

T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-tling— It was like a goad, it would never stop.

“Somebody that doesn’t know, trying to get him. Trying hard, too. I’m going to take a chance and answer.”

Her hand flashed out to his wrist, tightened around it, ice-cold. “Look out! You’re liable to bring the police down on us! They’ll know it’s not his voice.”

“Maybe I can get away with it. Maybe if I talk low, indistinct, they won’t know the difference; I can pretend I’m he. It’s our only chance. We may find out something — even if it’s only a stray word or two more than we know already, we’ll be that much to the good. Stand close by me. Pray for all you’re worth. Here I go.”

He lifted the finger which had been holding the denuded hook down, and the thing was open.

He brought it up to his ear as gingerly as if it were charged with high-voltage electricity.

“Hello,” he said with purring indistinctness. She could barely hear it herself, he swallowed so much of it.

Her heart was pounding. Their heads were close together, blended ear to ear, listening, listening to this call in the night.

“Darling,” a voice said, “this is Barbara.”

She glanced over at the photograph on the dresser. Barbara, the girl in the silver frame. My God, she thought strickenly. You can fool anyone but a man’s best girl. She knows him too well. We’ll never—

His face was white with strain, and she could almost feel a pulse in his temple throbbing against hers.

“Steve, darling, did I leave my gold compact with you? I couldn’t find it when I got back, and I’m worried about it. Look and see if you’ve got it. You may have slipped it in your pocket for me.”

“Your compact?” he said blurredly. “Wait a minute.”

He covered up the receiver momentarily.

“What’ll I do? What’ll I say?”

Bricky wrenched herself away from him suddenly. She ran into the other room. Then she came back again. She was holding something up in her hand to show him, something that caught the light burnishedly and flashed.

“Tell her yes, and go ahead. Keep your voice low. Keep it low. It’s going good so far. She didn’t really want that, that isn’t why she called him up. If you watch your step, you may be able to find out something.”

She crouched against him again, ear to the receiver. He took his muffling hand off the mouthpiece.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I have it here.”

“I couldn’t sleep. That was why I really called you. It wasn’t the compact.”

He shot Bricky a look, meaning “You were right.”

That voice was waiting; it was his turn to say something. Bricky’s elbow kicked into his side urgently.

“I couldn’t either.”

“If we were married, that would make it so much simpler, wouldn’t it? Then you would have just dumped it out of your pocket onto our own dressing-table in our own bedroom.”

Bricky dropped her eyes for a moment and winced. Proposing to a corpse, she thought.

“We’ve never parted angry like this before.”

“I’m sorry,” he said half under his breath.

“Maybe if we hadn’t gone there, to that Perroquet place, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“No,” he agreed submissively.

“Who was she?”

This time he didn’t say anything.

The voice was forbearing with what it took to be his stubbornness. “Who was she, Steve? The tall redhead in the light-green dress.”

“I don’t know.” He gave it because it was the only answer he could give; it turned out to be the appropriate one.

“You told me that before. That was what started it the first time. If you don’t know who she was, then why did she force herself in between us like that on the conga-line?”

He didn’t answer, couldn’t.

“Then why did she slip a note into your hand?”

The voice took his silence for continued denial.

“I saw her do it. I saw her with my own eyes.”

They were both listening intently.

“And after we went back to our table, why did you nod to her, all the way across the room? Yes, I saw that too. I saw it in my compact-mirror, when I didn’t seem to be looking. As if to say, ‘I’ve read your message; I’ll do what you say.’ ”

There was a pause to give him a chance to say something; he couldn’t use it.

“Steve, I’ve dropped my pride to call you up like this; won’t you meet me halfway?”

She waited for him to say something. He didn’t.

“Why, your whole mood changed from that point on. It was as though you couldn’t wait to see me to my door and get me off your hands. I cried, Steve. I cried when you left. I’ve been crying from then until now, through half the night, Steve. Steve, are you listening to me? Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“You sound so far-away, so— Is it the telephone or is it you?”

“Poor connection, I guess,” he said, close-mouthed.

“But Steve, you sound so — so cagey, as though you were afraid to talk to me. I know it’s silly, but I have the most curious impression that you’re not alone. There’s the oddest wait before everything you say, almost as though someone were there right beside you giving you stage-directions.”

“No,” he whispered deprecatingly.

“Stephen, can’t you talk louder? You’re whispering, almost as though you were afraid of waking someone. And if you’re awake yourself, who else is there in the house to be afraid of waking?”

The dead, thought Bricky, with an inward grimace.

He clapped his hand to it. “She’s beginning to tumble. What am I going to do?”

She sensed that he was about to hang up in sheer desperation, as the quickest way out. “Don’t. Don’t do that, whatever you do. Then you will give yourself away.”

He went back to it again. “Stephen, I don’t like the way you’re acting. Just what is going on up there? This is Stephen, isn’t it?”

He muffled it again. “She’s catching on. I’m sunk.”

“Wait a minute, don’t lose your head. I’ll get you out of it. Turn it my way a little.”

Suddenly she spoke out, full voice, in a maudlin, drunken singsong aimed straight for the telephone-mouth.

“Sugar, come awn. I’m getting tired waiting. I want another drink. How much longer you gonna stand there talking?”

There was a flash of shock at the other end, that was almost like a molecular explosion; without sound or substance to it, yet he could almost feel the concussion of it whirling through the wire toward him, it was so intense. And then the voice withdrew. Not in physical distance but through strata of pain. Withdrew to a remoteness that could never be bridged again.

When it sounded again, there was no indignation. There was nothing. Not even acute coldness, which is an inverse form of heat after all. There was only classic, neutral politeness.

The voice said just two things more. “Oh, I’m sorry, Stephen.” And breathed once or twice in agony between. “Forgive me, I didn’t know.”

There was a click, and silence.

“That was a lady,” Bricky apotheosized her ruefully when he’d hung up in turn. “A lady through and through.”

He drew the back of his hand across his mouth remorsefully. “Gee, that was cruel. I wish we hadn’t had to do that. She was engaged to him after all — whoever she is.” Then he looked at her curiously. “How were you so certain that would do the trick?”

“I’m a girl myself, after all,” she said wistfully. “We all work on the same strings.”

They thought about her for a moment longer, both turning to look at her, over there in her silver frame. “She won’t sleep tonight,” he murmured. “We’ve given her a busted heart.”

“She had to have one, one way or the other. The funny part of it is, though, she’ll suffer more this way than she would if she’d found out he was dead. Don’t ask me why.”

They left her, then, and returned to their own concerns.

“Well, we know a little more than we did before,” he said. “We’ve filled in another little chunk of missing time. They went to the show at the Winter Garden, Hellzapoppin, first, and then they went to this place where they had the trouble. The Piro — what’d she say it was?”

“The Perroquet.” She had the night-life of this city that she hated at the tips of her fingers at all times. “I know where that is, on Fifty-fourth Street.”

“But that still don’t bring it up to the point where he came back here and it happened. There’s still a chunk out, between the time he left her at her door and—”

She was thinking about it.

“There’s something right there. And something big. The biggest thing we’ve had so far all night. He must have gotten a note, there must have been one.” She went over closer to the picture. “This doesn’t look like the face of a girl who would make up a thing like that, out of her own jealous mind. Take a look at her. She’s too pretty and too sure of herself to think up things to worry about. If she says she saw it, she saw it, you can bet on that. There was a note. The thing is, what became of it? If we only knew what he did with it.”

“Tore it up into a million little pieces, I guess.”

“No, because if he did that while he was still with her, that would have been admitting he had gotten one after all, and he didn’t want her to know it. And then once he’d left her, there was no longer any reason to tear it up, she wasn’t around to claim it any more. He could leave it whole, the way it was. And most likely he did. What I’d like to know is, where did he have it hidden while he was still sitting with her in the club? He had it on him somewhere.”

“We’ve turned out all his pockets and it’s not in any of them—”

She tapped the curve of her underlip thoughtfully. “Let’s go at it this way. Quinn, you’re a man. I imagine you’d all act pretty much the same in a given situation. You’re in a night-club entertaining the girl you’re engaged to, and you’ve just been handed a note by a stranger, a note you didn’t want her to see. What would you be likely to do with it, where would you be likely to put it? Answer quick now, without taking too long to think it out. If you start thinking about it, that’ll make it artificial.”

“I’d roll it up in a little pill and pitch it.”

“No. You’re on a conga-line when it’s first slipped to you, there isn’t any chance for you to do that. If you take your hand off your partner’s waist you’re likely to go out of step and disorganize the line.”

“Well, I could drop it straight down the floor under me, without hardly moving my hand at all; just let it fall.”

“No again. That way it would be carried backward along the floor, under the line, and all your fiancée would have to do when she came up to that point would be to reach down for it herself. The main thing is, she didn’t see him do either of those things, and she was watching him from two positions away down the line — which is close enough to be accurate. He got it and then it disappeared, not another sign of it, either being thrown or being pocketed.”

“Then he must have kept it folded flat on the inside of his hand.”

“Exactly. Now here’s what I’m trying to get at by testing you. The line breaks up and he takes her back to their table. That’s when he stuffed it away some place, as soon as he had the table between them to cover him. Now try again. You’re sitting at the table with her, and she’s already starting to throw the incident up to you, so you can’t just be passive about it and let it ride. You’re covered up to here—” She drew a line across him just above the belt. “It’s in your hand yet, from the conga-line, and you’ve got to get it out of your hand fast. You can’t use your upper pockets, nor your wallet, nor your cigarette-case, because she’ll see all that, that’s above the water-line.”

“I’d throw it away under the table—”

“Never. One reading isn’t enough, especially on a conga-chain while you’re kicking out with both feet. You want to look at it again, to study it or decide what to do as soon as you’re alone and you safely can. He became uneasy from then on, she said to you just now. Showing that the note gave him a problem, he had to make a decision. That kind of a thing’s never thrown away after one quick glimpse. It was unfinished business. He kept it. But where?”

“Maybe he slipped it under the table-cloth, on his side.”

For a minute she stopped, startled. Then she said finally, “No-o. No, I don’t think he did that. That would still mean leaving it behind, when they got up to go. It would also mean some stranger would eventually get hold of it. He’d be less likely to do that than even to just throw it away. And I don’t think he could do that without her noticing the rippling of the cloth his hand would make. Remember, he’s trying to quiet down a girl who’s mad and has a right to be, a girl sitting squarely opposite to him, and they have six eyes and about a dozen extra senses.”

He was trying, but he wasn’t shining much. “Gee, I dunno— I’ve about run out of places. I’d sit on it, maybe, while I was still in the chair, but then as soon as I got up I’d be worse off than before.”

“Never mind, Quinn.” She shook her head dispiritedly. “You’ll make some woman an honest husband. You’re certainly no good for intrigue.”

“Well, I never had a note handed to me in a night-club by somebody, right while I was with somebody else,” he mumbled apologetically.

“I’m willing to take your word for that,” she assented drily.

They went inside again. She stood, looked down at it. All night long, it seemed to her, that was all they’d been doing, standing by it, looking down at it.

“Try that little watch-pocket or whatever you call it, just under the belt in front. Did we turn that one out before? I can’t remember.”

He crouched, hooked his thumb to it, drew it out again.

“Empty.”

“What are they for, anyway?” she asked dully. Then before he could answer, “Never mind. This is no time to be learning the ins and outs of the men’s tailoring business.”

He stayed down like that, at the crouch, dribbling his fingers undecidedly against his own kneecap.

“Quinn, could I ask you to— Would you mind turning him a minute?” she said hesitantly.

“The other way? Do you think we ought to disturb—?”

“We’ve done so much already, emptying the pockets and all, that I don’t see that it matters.”

He turned the form over, face down, as gently as he could. A slight, involuntary twinge of distaste struck through them both, quickly quelled.

“What’d you want that for?” he asked, ridging his forehead at her.

“I don’t know myself,” she said lamely.

He stood up again. They looked at one another uncertainly; at a loss, not knowing what to do next.

“It’s not on him, that’s a cinch. He may have put it somewhere around the place here, after he got back. The desk — we haven’t looked that over yet.”

“That’s going to be an all-night job,” she said, going over to it. “Look at the way it’s crammed with stuff. I tell you what; you go inside and take a look through the bureau-drawers, I’ll give this a quick going-over.”

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock— In the silence of their preoccupation with their separate tasks it sounded twice as loud.

“Quinn!” she called suddenly.

He came in on the fly.

“You mean it was in there? You came across it that quick?”

She was standing, however, with her back to the desk.

“No. Quinn, he was very well-dressed. I just happened to turn and something caught my eye. He has a hole in the heel of one sock, it’s showing just above the shoe. That doesn’t go with the way he’s turned out. The left one, Quinn.” He was already over by it.

The shoe dropped off with a light thud. The “hole” had vanished with it.

“The note,” he said.

He was already smoothing and starting to read the crumpled little slip of paper by the time she got over to him. They read it together the rest of the way.

It was hastily scrawled in pencil, on some impromptu edge that didn’t take pressure very evenly; the sort of a note written where there were no writing facilities readily available.

Unsigned.

She was hectically elated. “She did, see? She did! She did come up here. She was the woman of the matches — we were right about it. I forget which one of us it was—”

He was less positive, for some reason. “But the mere fact that he received the note and tucked it in his shoe doesn’t prove she actually did show up here.”

“She was here, you can count on that.”

“How do we know?”

“Listen, anyone that would go this far would go the rest of the way, don’t kid yourself. This was no shrinking violet. A girl or woman that would scribble out such a defiant note, and strong-arm her way onto a conga-line, and smuggle it into the hand of a prominent well-to-do man like Stephen Graves, without even knowing him, mind you, and under the very nose of the girl he was engaged to marry, wouldn’t let anything stop her from coming around here and calling on him, once she’d made up her mind to it! Get this: ‘And I don’t mean some other time, I mean right tonight.’ That dame was here, you can bet your bottom dollar!”

Then she added, “And if the character-reading approach doesn’t cinch it for you, give it the blindfold-test. That ought to do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“She goes with the kind of perfume that the match-folder gave off, and that I guessed at in the air of the room here when we came in the first time. The kind of a dame who would write a note like this is also the kind of a dame whose handbag would reek like that. She was here,” she said again.

“It still doesn’t follow from that, that she shot him. She might have been here all right, and left, and then this cigar-mangling guy came in after she was already gone.”

“I don’t know anything about him. I do know there’s plenty of shooting-material right here in this note, even before she got to the point of personal contact with him.”

“There is kind of a threat in it,” he admitted.

“A threat? The whole thing is threat, from the first word to the last. ‘Mr. Graves, I understand?’ ‘I wouldn’t want to be disappointed and not find you.’ What else would you call that?”

He was reading it over again. “It’s some kind of a shake, don’t you think?”

“Sure it’s a shake. A threat almost always spells a money-squeeze, and particularly when it’s from a woman to a man.”

“ ‘I feel like a member of the family already.’ What does she mean by that? He was engaged to this Barbara. It makes it look like it’s someone he got tangled up with before then, and when she heard about him becoming engaged— All except for one thing—”

“Yeah, I thought of that too, when I first read it. All except for that one thing, as you say.”

“ ‘You don’t know me.’ So how can a guy get tangled up with someone, and still not know her? Unless maybe she’s fronting for some other dame, making the approach. She’s the, how would you call it — middleman? Maybe a sister, or someone like that.”

She lopped that off short. “Nuh, never. That’s one thing, if you knew more about women— You’ll never find a woman using another woman for go-between, in a squeeze-play stemming from heart-interest stuff. Don’t ask me why, but that’s the hard-and-fast of it. A man might, in business or some kind of crookedness. But never a woman, in anything of this kind. She either does the dirty work herself, or it doesn’t get done.”

“Then he wasn’t tangled with her. And yet she had something on him.”

“And he knew she had something on him, or at least had a hunch she did. The way he acted after getting the note shows that. He met the writer of it part of the way, on her own ground. Look, see what I mean? Barbara was jealous of another kind of a note, which she thought this was. Of a friendly, a too-friendly note, from somebody that he knew, that he was flirting with behind her back. All he had to do to calm her down was show her this, show her what kind of a note it really was. But he’d rather keep it to himself, even at the cost of letting her work herself up and of parting from her on bad terms. Why shouldn’t he want to show it to her? Or better still, why didn’t he get up from the table then and there, go over and accost the woman before she left the place. ‘What d’you mean by this? Who are you? What’re you driving at?’ Force the thing out into the open.” She shook her head. “He had more than a slight suspicion that there was something behind it that needed to be handled with kid gloves, and you can’t tell me different. That she had at least part of a leg to stand on, if not the whole two; that there was fire somewhere behind the smoke. He played it her way, soft-pedalled it. And why should he have to? People don’t do that. Would you—?” Then she quickly cancelled that out. “Oh, never mind you; you’re no good at that stuff, anyway. I forgot that, from before.”

He had been prepared to look flattered for a moment; he let the look slip off again.

“In other words,” she went ahead, “it rang the bell somewhere or other, deep inside him, when he got it. It wasn’t just a bluff, out of thin air.”

She was starting to get herself together, as if ready to go out again. “All that’s neither here nor there. The main thing is, we’ve got her now. I’m almost sure we’ve got her. And I’m going out and find her.”

“But we still don’t know her name, what she looks like, where she hangs out.”

“We can’t expect life-sized photographs to be handed us in this. I think we’re doing pretty good as it is, starting in from scratch the way we did. At least she’s become a live person now, she’s real, instead of being just a will-o’-the-wisp like she was until now. Just a whiff of perfume in a room, that’s already gone. We know that she was at the Perroquet around midnight; she must have been seen there. His girl told you something about her. What was it, now? A tall redhead, a light-green dress. Number Three on the conga-line. They can’t all have been tall redheads in light-green dresses down there tonight.” She flung her hands encouragingly wide, to impress it on him. “Look at all we’ve got!”

“The place’ll be closing by now.”

“The people that count, the people that can really help, they’ll still be around. Waiters, checkroom girl, washroom attendant, all like that. I’ll trace her from there if I have to go over the hairbrushes in the dressing-room one by one for stray red hairs—”

“I’m going with you.” He went over to the bedroom-doorway, put out the light in there. Then he went toward the bath. “Just a minute,” he said, “I want to get a drink of water in here, before we go.”

She went on out to the stairs without waiting. She thought he’d be right after her. Then because he wasn’t, she stopped and waited, two or three steps down from the top. Then because he still didn’t come, she turned and went back again the two or three steps, and into the lighted room once more.

She could see him standing there motionless just past the bath-entrance. She knew even before she went in and joined him, that he’d found something, that he’d seen something, by the intent, arrested way he was holding himself.

“What is it?”

“I called you and you didn’t hear me. This was lying in the tub. That shower-curtain must have hidden it from us until now. When I was getting a drink, my elbow grazed the curtain and it fell further back than it was. And this was there, on the dry bottom of the tub.”

It was light blue and he was holding it taut between both hands.

“A check,” she said. “Someone’s personal check. Let me see—”

It was made out to Stephen Graves, for twelve thousand five hundred dollars and no cents. It was endorsed by Stephen Graves. It was signed by Arthur Holmes. It was stamped, in damning letters diagonally across the face of it: Returned — No Funds.

They exchanged a puzzled look across it, she now holding one end, he the other. “How’d a thing like this get into the bottom of a bathtub?” she marvelled.

“That’s the least important part of it. That’s easy enough to figure out. This check must have been in the cash-box in the first place. The hole I made in the wall is up over the bottom of the tub in a straight line. When I pulled the cash-box out and opened it, the check must have slipped out and volplaned down into the tub without my noticing it. Then the slant of the shower-curtain hid it from me until just now. But that isn’t the thing. Don’t you see what it could mean?”

“I think I do. There’s a pretty good chance of Holmes being our jittery cigar-chewer, don’t you think?”

“I’m betting on it. Here’s something to kill someone for — twelve-fifty — oh... oh!”

“Then maybe this Holmes came around here tonight to see him, either to make good on it then and there, or to ask him not to prosecute until he’d raised enough money to make good on it in the near future. And because Graves wasn’t able to find the check when he went to look for it, Holmes thought he was trying to put something over on him. They got into an argument about it, and Holmes shot him.”

“Then, in a way, I’m still responsible for his death—”

“Forget that. Holmes didn’t have to kill him, even if he did think he was holding out the check on him. Holmes,” she said thoughtfully, backing the crook of one finger to her mouth. “I’ve heard or seen that name before, somewhere, tonight. Wait a minute, weren’t there some cards in his wallet? I think it was on one of them.”

She went out into the other room and knelt down there on the floor again. She took up the wallet, shuffled through the two or three cards that had been in it the first time. She looked up at him, nodded. “Sure, I told you. Holmes was his broker. Here it is right here.”

He came over and joined her, check still in hand. “That’s funny. I don’t know much about those things, but don’t clients usually give checks to their brokers, and not the other way around? And a bad one at that.”

“There could be a reason for that. Maybe Holmes misappropriated some securities that he was holding, or handling for Graves and then Graves demanded an accounting sooner than he’d expected, so he tried to gain time by foisting a worthless check on him. When that bounced back and Graves threatened to have him arrested—”

“Any address on that?”

“No, just the brokerage firm-name, down in one corner.”

“Well, I can get to him.” He took a hitch in his belt. “I’m going,” he said determinedly. “Come on, you can go down to the bus terminal awhile, and wait for me there—” Then, as he saw she didn’t make any immediate move, “You agree with me that it was Holmes now, don’t you?”

“No,” she said to his surprise. “No, I don’t. In fact, if anything, I still think it was that conga-line dame.”

He flourished the check at her. “But why, when we’ve just turned this up?”

“Several little things, that you won’t take any stock in. First of all, if Holmes did kill him, it was to cover up this check. Right? Then he never would have left here without it. Once he’d gone as far as to kill him over it, he would have looked for it until he’d found it. Because he’d know that it would point straight at him when it was found. Just as it is doing at this minute.”

“Suppose he did look for it and wasn’t able to find it?”

“You found it,” was all she replied to that. “And then another thing that makes me think it was the woman who was here at the end — I know this one you’re going to laugh at, but — Graves had his coat on when he died.”

“Aw, Bricky—” he started to protest.

“I knew you wouldn’t take it seriously, but the impression I get of him, I don’t know why, is that he was the type man wouldn’t have received a woman with his coat off, not even a blackmailer. And it was pretty late by then and he’d been in it all evening. I think if it was Holmes who’d been here at the end we’d have found him lying just in his vest, or maybe even just in his shirt-sleeves. But that’s just the meaning it has to me, I don’t ask anyone else to try to get that out of it. It’s more of a hunch than anything else. Anyway, to me it still spells the woman.”

After a moment he laughed cheerlessly. “First we didn’t have anything. Now we’ve got too much again.”

“What I said before still holds good. More so now than then, even because the time has been clipped that much shorter. One of them is still the wrong one, one of them the right one. But we can only afford to pick the right one the first time out. We can’t go after either one of them together. Because even those fifty-fifty odds are too high for us to take. If they paid off wrong, that would let the other one go by default. Suppose Holmes is the wrong one after all? Then by the time we’ve found that out, there’s no more slack left to go out after the woman.”

“But it’s him and no one else. Everything here is trying to tell you that with all its might.”

“There’s motive enough here for Holmes to have shot him,” she agreed. “Plenty, and to spare. But we’re not even sure that he was up here tonight. The check and all that, it’s just, what do they call that stuff?”

“Circumstantial,” he supplied grudgingly.

She nodded. “It’s circumstantial with her too. It’s circumstantial all the way around. He got a note from a woman in a night-club, saying she was coming up here. And a woman was here. But that doesn’t mean it was one and the same woman. It might have been two entirely different women. A man named Holmes gave him a check that bounced. And a man was up here tonight arguing with him and chewing on a cigar. But they also might have been two entirely different men.”

“Now you’ve split them in four.”

“There’s still just two, one for you and one for me. I’ll still take her, and you take him. And back here by quarter to six, like we said before.”

The lights went out and the dead man disappeared in the dark. They went downstairs.

They parted this time without a kiss. The pledge of constancy had been given once, it didn’t have to be renewed.

“I’ll be seeing you, Quinn,” was all she murmured, standing beside him in the shrouded doorway.

She waited for a few moments, in order not to interfere with his going. When she came out into the open in turn, he was gone from sight. As gone as though she’d never seen him. Or rather, as gone as though she would never see him again.

Only the city was there, lazily licking its chops.