Just a Kill in the Dark...

Chapter Two A Corpse Between Us

Hiram Kelly edged into my room with the orange juice and coffee on a small tray. I opened one eye and said, “What the hell time is it?”

Hiram is a lean old man with a half-bald head and fingers like the talons of an elderly eagle. He smirked at me and said, “It is but ten, sire. Did the mahstah wish to be awaked a shade later? Just a shade?”

I sat up. “What’s the corny gag, Hi?”

He dropped the accent. “There’s a dish down in the library. She’s getting twitchy. She says she works here. I thought you ought to take a look.”

I stretched and yawned. Hiram spotted the new style fat eye I was wearing. “Lovely evening last night, I assume?” he said.

“The usual. Mike was his charming self with the entire contents of one of the lesser pubs. We managed to get the house cleaned and get into the car before the wagon came. Mike passed out on the way home. How about turning on the shower?”

After the water started to roar, I found my way to the bathroom and stood under it. My neck was stiff where somebody had tried to dent me with a bottle and missed. I hoped that the new dish would keep Mike working nights. Life was too energetic when he was between dishes.

I got down to the library within the half hour. She was standing by the windows that look down across the terraced yard. Dark suit. Starched white collar. Sensible hat.

She turned as I walked across the room toward her. The words that I was about to say didn’t come out. She had a rather pale face framed with dusty blonde hair. Her mouth was large and grey-green eyes were hidden behind a pair of very staunch looking shell-rimmed glasses. Crisp is the word for her. Crisp and business-like.

“Miss Ferris?” I asked politely.

She nodded coldly.

“I’m Al. Mike probably mentioned me.”

“How do you do. Mr. Muriak spoke of you. I take my orders from you, I understand. My first name is Jane.” It was a cool, Boston voice. Beacon Street — or better.

“Do you have a suitcase with you, Miss — Jane?”

“A suitcase and a small steamer trunk in the front hallway.”

I didn’t get it. This wasn’t anything Muriak should have wanted to be within eleven fathoms of. This was as crisp as good French dressing. Mike is partisan to women who rename themselves Dolores and Ivonne. This was plain Jane with a capital plain. And she looked bright. I began to wonder how well the make-work program was going to go over with her.

“Like to see your room, Jane?”

She nodded and I made an expansive gesture toward the hall and stairs. She went on ahead and as I walked behind her I began to see what Mike had seen. Some women have a jolty, wooden-legged walk. Some swing and sway like the third from the left in tire front row. Some drift like little wraiths. Plain Jane just walked. But she walked like a woman possessing all the key features and attractions. She couldn’t help herself. When she moved, she put a tag on her femininity — not a price tag, but just a discreet little note which plainly said, See, this is a woman, and a very fine example of the sex, and if you can ever talk her into fun and games you’ll have something very wonderful indeed.

I closed my mouth to keep from drooling and trotted along after her. She must have felt the beady eye on her because, as she reached for the stair railing, she turned and gave me one glance. It was as though somebody had broken an icicle over the bridge of my nose. I guess with the interesting blue shadows under my right eye, I didn’t look like what the lady expected.

She seemed mildly pleased with the room. Anna, the housekeeper, was fussing about, putting out fresh linens. George Janocki was puttering around out in the shrubbery and I got him to help me haul the steamer trunk upto her room. She got the suitcase herself. No stopping her.

I introduced her to George and, when Hiram went down the hall, I introduced him also. She was very grave and very pleasant with the introductions. Both George and Hiram had funny looks in their eyes, trying to bridge the gap between Helen and his new version.

“Mike will be up and around by lunch time,” I said. “When you get settled, come on down to the library and I’ll explain your duties.”

As I turned to leave she said, “Why do you and Mr. Janocki and Mr. Kelly act so peculiarly? As though I shouldn’t be here.”

That was plain enough. It was oddly difficult to lie with those grey-green eyes boring into mine. I noticed absently that the top of her head came to the bridge of my nose. A very pleasant differential in height.

I gave her the Grade A smile. “I might as well be honest with you, Jane. Maybe blunt is a better word. Mike Muriak generally selects the assistant secretaries from his own social level.”

One eyebrow went up in a most intriguing manner. “Oh, I see. I met Mr. Muriak during the evening. I wasn’t dressed this way.”

“How were you dressed?”

One corner of her mouth twitched. On anybody else it would have been a broad grin. “A rather extreme evening gown. Silver. And when I’m out in the evening, I don’t wear these.” She took off the glasses.

I mentally slipped her into an evening creation. “Hmmm!” I said.

She popped the glasses back on, said, “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” and closed the door in my face. I shook my head as though shaking off the effects of one of Mike’s friendly left hooks. I floated downstairs and sat behind the kidney shaped desk. The typist’s desk was off on my left. Suddenly I remembered that nobody had cleaned out the typist’s desk.

I snapped my fingers and hurried over to it. The top drawer was okay. Bond and second sheets and carbon. I slammed it shut and opened the second drawer. A massive silver bracelet, half a lipstick, a comb missing some teeth, Helen’s heavy sapphire ring and her silver cigarette case.

I was reaching for them when Jane’s voice, ten inches from my ear said, “She must have left in a rush.”

I whirled. “Few little things she forgot, I guess,” I said. I shoved them in my side pocket. “I’ll see that she gets them.”

She had annoyed me, creeping up on me like that. The rug is thick and maybe she didn’t do it on purpose. There was one quick way to get even. I said, “As soon as you find a notebook and a pencil, I want you to take a letter.” I walked over and sat behind my desk. She rattled through the drawers, found a notebook, swung her chair around and propped the book against her crossed legs.

I leaned back, stuffed my thumbs under my belt and gave her a long letter to Rush Morson. As I rattled it off, I was pleased to see her lips tighten, see her bend over the pad, a lock of the dusty blonde hair falling across her forehead. I was determined that I’d make her ask me to slow down. She didn’t. That was okay with me. I’d catch the errors in the letter.

“For signature by Michael Muriak,” I said, “Two carbons, triple space between paragraph, each paragraph indented ten spaces.” I picked some papers off my desk and started to read them. But I was watching her with little quick glances.

She ran a sheet of scrap paper into the old machine, rattled off one sentence, tore oat the paper and found the brush and cleaned the type. She located a ribbon, changed the old one, went upstairs and washed the ink off her hands, trotted back down and made the old machine sound like one of those gimmicks they use to bust up pavements. She clipped the envelope to the two page letter, put the whole works on my desk.

It was the freshest, cleanest letter that ever came out of the place. And every comma was right where I wanted it. And one rather clumsy sentence had been polished up so that it read right.

“I surrender, dear,” I said. “You’ve worked before.”

For the first time she really smiled. “Long enough to know that only a darn fool turns down an offer of one hundred a week, Al. I was making sixty-five.”

“You may want to go back to the sixty-five, Jane.”

She frowned. “How so?”

“The last gal would have made that letter last all morning. It looks like you’ll handle the day’s work in an hour. Boredom is a pretty rough thing.”

“I can stand a lot of it for this money, Al.”

I didn’t tell her the real reason why I thought she’d leave.

“Well, I better tell you the setup, Jane. Mike is a very good friend of this Rushmore Morson. Mike has no financial interest in Acme Devices, Morson’s company. He doesn’t even own a share of stock. Rush takes Mike’s advice on business matters. Rush lets Mike give advice to a Mr. Kline, head of Morson’s sales department, and also to a Mr. Andresa, who is, you might say, a comptroller.”

“What does Acme Devices manufacture?”

“Amusement devices. Games.”

“I see. Does Mr. Muriak have any other business interests?”

“None whatsoever, Jane.”

“Where does he get the money to run a place like this?”

“Income from investments. Enough comes in to keep up the house, the cars, our salaries and a bit over.”

She frowned. “Why does he need you?”

“I take care of his correspondence, box with him in the basement, get him home when he’s drunk, handle the household accounts and payroll, make out his income tax, pay all the bills and keep him as happy as I can.”

There were a few little items I didn’t tell her, such as making the cash pickups, helping the Moke when the clients wouldn’t cooperate, acting as a bodyguard and so forth.

She frowned. “Well, I could take over the household accounts, if you want me to, and pay the bills.”

That seemed to solve the problem of keeping her busy for a time. I handed her the big ledger and journal and triple-tiered checkbook. She was just getting into it when Mike came lumbering down the stairs, groaning as each step jolted his head.

He walked into the library, looked at Jane, blinked, rubbed his eyes and looked at her again. “Hello,” he said uncertainly.

“Good morning, Mr. Muriak,” she said primly, sitting at attention.

I could guess what was going on in Mike’s head and I wanted to laugh, but I knew it wouldn’t be sound. Mike was trying to mentally take off her glasses and put her back in the silver gown. It was quite a strain.

During lunch he kept giving her funny looks. The four of us ate together while Hiram served. For once the conversation was polite and almost formal. Chunky, black-haired George Janocki didn’t tuck his napkin in his neck and made a point of chewing with his mouth closed. Mike acted pained.

After lunch Mike and I went down into the cellar. He was shaking his big head sadly. “Al,” he said, “I wasn’t even drunk. Believe me, Al, she looked good. Maybe this her sister, hey?”

Somehow it made me feel good. I had a hunch that if Mike had started looking at her in the old familiar way, I wouldn’t have had any appetite for lunch. She reminded me a little of the gal I had been dating at the time I was nudged out of college. I couldn’t even remember her name. But she had had the same crisp, clean look as Jane Ferris.

We stripped down, put on the ring togs and climbed through the ropes. Mike seemed absent-minded. I tagged him a few times, but not so hard as to attract his special attention. By keeping him off balance with left jabs, I kept him from getting set and booming me in the middle with those jolting hooks of his.

We worked up a good sweat, and then, in the cellar showers, he called to me above the roar of the water. “Al, I think I find another girl I get rid of this one.”

It was a weight off my shoulders, but I knew if I agreed too quickly, he might change his mind. I said, “What’s the matter with this one?”

He roared with laughter. “Good typer and bookkeeper, that’s the matter. One week and she goes. Maybe give her a month pay, hey?”

But at dinner she fixed it for herself, but good. At five she folded the typewriter, went up to her room and came back down with the glasses gone, the hair upswept, an aqua dress on that did exactly the right things for her figure. She and I had martinis while Mike sipped old-fashioneds and looked at her with deep approval. She became flushed and gay and surprisingly vivid. Once when I filled her glass and handed it to her, her fingers touched mine and it was as though I had poked my hand down in where you put in a light bulb. I look at Mike’s face and knew that Jane would be staying longer than a week.

But I could also see that she baffled him and that he would take it slow and easy, not wishing to risk an untimely departure.

Up in bed that night I smoked in the darkness and tried to tell myself that it was none of my business, but somehow it was and I couldn’t help it. There was something all wrong about Mike’s brute strength and the slim purity of Jane Ferris.

The next day was a busy day. The Moke arrived at the station at nine in the morning. The Moke looks like a small, withered associate professor of ancient languages in a tiny college who has despaired of ever working himself up to be a full professor. His glasses have antique steel rims, and his clothes are all oxford grey.

Once some eager operators in K.C. threw the net over me and tied me to a chair and were unlacing my shoes to get at the soles of my feet when the Moke came in. He caught a .45 slug in the left shoulder and it slammed him against the wall so hard that the plaster fell off the lathes. Sprawled on the floor, the .38 Police Positive somehow jumped into his hand and he made three neat holes in three heads. He struggled to his feet, cut me loose and explained just how he wanted the bandage fastened against the hole in his shoulder. I felt okay until the Moke felt a little faint. He glanced around, then with a small sigh of weakness, sat gratefully on the middle of the back of one of the deceased. That is the sort of citizen he is. All the compassion of a lizard. It was a spot well out in the country, and the local police were too happy about the demise of the three citizens to look for the doctor that treated the Moke with more than a half-hearted interest.

He came trotting through the station, small and fussy and nervous looking. He didn’t look at all like a character carrying one hundred and twelve thousand bucks fresh from Louisiana. But he was. He had the dough in a brown paper bag and it looked like his lunch. We had coffee side by side and I walked off with his lunch.

Per agreement, I shook off any tail that could have been curious, then returned to the station and checked the lunch in a dime locker. I stuck the key in a hunk of cardboard and mailed it to a John Doe box we rent in the Newton Center Post Office. Mike had indicated his desire to pick it up later himself, in spite of my objections. I rejoined the Moke in the car and George drove us out to the house, which, in my heart of hearts, I call Crude Manor.

George dropped us off under the arch at the side door that opens into the study on the opposite side of the hall from the library. Jane Ferris was standing in the front hall, her glasses in her hand, her eyes bright and angry. But they weren’t any angrier than the eyes of the tall young man in the grey suit who was yammering at her.

“I say that you’re going to leave this place!” he said.

“And I say that I do as I please,” she said.

They turned and stared at Moke and me. At that point, grey suit grabbed Jane’s arm just above the elbow and tugged her toward the front door. She braced her feet and slid.

“Hold it up!” I snapped.

“You stay out of this,” he said.

“Who is he?” I asked Jane.

“An ex,” she said icily.

That was enough. I chopped his biceps with the heel of my hand and he let go of Jane’s arm. When he hauled the hand back to swing on me, I grabbed his wrist and spun with it, ending up with it anchored against his back between his shoulder blades. I reached around him, pressed my thumb down on the brass latch and pulled the front door open. I walked him out onto the porch, hooked a toe around his ankles and gave a hearty shove. When he stopped rolling and scrambled up, his face was white and both knees were out of the grey trousers.

He came charging back at me like a brave little boy. I stepped aside and tripped him again and he fell on his hands and knees on the porch. I got the back of his collar and the slack of his pants in my two hands and tossed him back out onto the bricks.

“I’m coming back with the police,” he said. His voice was shaking as though he was close to tears.

“You do that,” I said. “Bring them right back. We’ll file a complaint. Trespass and assault.”

With as much dignity as he could manage, he stalked out to his battered little coupe and drove off. I went back into the house. The Moke had shut himself in the study with Mike. Jane was dabbing up tears that ran out of her grey-green eyes.

“You two seemed to have a difference of opinion,” I said.

“He thinks I shouldn’t be working here and staying here,” she said. The tears were there, but there was no reflection of them in her voice.

Before I thought I said softly, “He might be right.”

She looked startled for a moment. But she didn’t ask any questions. She turned on her heel and went into the library. When I looked in she was adding up the figures on the bank statement.

Mike opened the study door and called me in. He had a tumbler half full of brandy beside his chair. The Moke was drinking ginger ale, straight. I shut the door behind me. Mike said, “The Moke worries too much.”

“What about this time?” I asked.

The Moke said, “I come here too often with too much money. I was careless yesterday. I could have been picked up. I wasn’t. Why?”

“I give up, why?” Mike asked.

I felt a little twinge of alarm. If Moke was right, there was a cause for worry. Shipments had been picked up before. But they had no way to trace the connection to Mike. Mike just took the loss, got the Moke out of trouble and went his merry way.

I said slowly, “If you’re right, it means that they’ve got some reason to think they can trace the connection.”

“Is the dough safe?” Mike asked.

“Of course it’s safe,” I snapped. “I’m wondering why somebody is getting optimistic about you to the extent of letting a shipment ride through. When is the next one coming?”

“Two weeks,” Moke said. “Big one. Two hundred. West coast dough.”

“Better not bring it here,” I said. “I can meet you some place and we’ll drop it on ice in a new safety deposit box.”

Mike groaned. “Now I got two of you worrying. Why? What’s different? They get a chance to grab the dough and they don’t. So what?”

“There must be a hole in the routine some place,” I said. “I don’t like it.”

I slapped my side pocket to find my cigarettes, felt instead the outlines of the heavy silver bracelet, the lipstick I had taken out of the drawer of the typist’s desk. Something started to chew at the back of my mind. Little sharp teeth nibbling.

Mike saw the look on my face. “What’s matter, Al?”

“Hey, the cigarette case! Helen’s cigarette case! It’s gone!”

“Al, honest, you drive me nuts. Smarten up, Al.”

“I tell you, Mike, I had it in my pocket and it’s gone.” I smacked my forehead with my hand. “The door on that damn locker!”

Mike looked bewildered. “Prints, Mike!” I said. “Prints!”

He came out of his stupor fast. “Who can take the case, Al? Think.”

“Let me see. I put it in the pocket of this jacket yesterday morning. I changed clothes when we went out after dinner last night. I put the jacket on again this morning. I didn’t remember noticing it this morning. I tossed it on my bed while I took a shower. That’s the only time it wasn’t locked up in the room. Oh, and when we were showering in the cellar.”

Moke said what was in our minds. “Who’s that girl you got now, Mike?”

While we were thinking it over, I heard the distant ring of the phone in the library. I walked to the door and opened it. Jane was walking rapidly toward the front door. On a hunch I grabbed her. “Where are you going?” I whispered.

“Down to the comer for some cigarettes,” she said, pulling her hand away.

“The house is loaded with them, lady. Come here.” I began pulling her along.

She hung back at first, but when she saw that it wasn’t any good, she came along willingly. I shoved her into my room, locked the door and pocketed the key. I went back into the study and said loudly, “I guess we’re all getting nervous. The gal’s okay.”

I didn’t have to look hard or long. There was a neatly wrapped package on the table by the window. I tiptoed over to it and Mike looked at me as though I were crazy as I laid my ear against it. I heard a small humming noise.

I started a running account to the Moke of the way Michael had pasted me down in the ring, while I found a scrap of paper on Mike’s desk and scribbled, “Room wired for sound. Keep talking.”

Mike’s eyebrows went up into his hair, but he kept talking. I told them I had some work to do and went out and slammed the door.

There is a cedar hedge between us and the house next door. Actually the two houses are within fifty feet of each other, both having been built on the edges of large lots, but the hedge gives the impression of more privacy than there actually is. I had a pretty good idea of what we were up against.

The guy I had thrown off the porch was lounging in a small room in the nearest corner of the house. He had a standard radio set turned on, had a sound recorder set with the mike right up against it. I was right so far, even to his hearing our conversation and warning Jane by phone. The room had french doors. I edged close to the frame, flattened against the side of the house. I could hear Mike’s voice.

The spring made a small click as I pulled the automatic free. I slammed the doors open with my foot and went in on him. He was too good and too smart to show how startled he was. I gave him no chance for a quick try at me. I got him turned around, his palms against the wall, leaning against it. The silver case was in his inside pocket, wrapped in tissue. I took it. I also took the little plastic records that had been filled out by the recorder. I could hear Mike’s conversation coming out of the radio.

Some of my anger at Jane went into the blow when I laid the barrel of the automatic behind his ear. He slumped against the floor, curled up like a sleeping child. I went back out, across the lawn and shoved through the hedge.

Back in the room I tossed the records into Mike’s lap, ripped open the cardboard carton and held up the little electronic mike. I bounced it off the rug and knew that the conversation coming out of the radio next door had suddenly stopped. A nice gimmick. No wires. Self contained battery and tube transmitter, good for any receiving set within a radius of sixty feet.

Mike took the records in his big hands and crumpled them.

“What did you do with her?” he asked.

“Locked in my room.”

“Let’s go,” he said. “Moke, you stay right here and we don’t want company. How much time we got, Al?”

“The guy across the way ought to be out for ten minutes. But maybe he’s got friends in the house. I was quiet as I could be.”

He scratched his big chin. “Al, you tell George to bring the car around. We go for a ride. Give me key.”

I don’t think he noticed my hesitation. By the time I ran back to the front of the house, tires were crunching on the gravel as George brought the car around. Mike hadn’t been exactly dainty. He came down the front stairs with his big paw on her wrist.

We left Hiram to take care of the house. Moke and George rode in the front seat. Mike and I were in back with Jane between us.

Everybody but Jane relaxed when we finally got out into the traffic.

Mike said, “Now, you tell us a little, huh? Who you work for?”

“The government,” she said coldly.

“That nice. Very funny.”

I said curiously, “Why didn’t you take it a little easier? Why the speed?”

“Why not?” she asked coldly.

“Mike,” I said, “the guy working with her brought the little electronic mike in the package while I was out. He gave it to her in the front hall and she slipped him the cigarette case she had filched out of my pocket. They put the box in the study, because she knew that was your place for business conversations. When Moke and I walked in, they turned it into an act. The guy did well, too.”

“It won’t do you any good to run,” she said.

Mike laughed. “Who runs? Al, he paid a visit to your guy next door. I busted the records. Al got the case back.”

She could snarl and she did. “That doesn’t matter. I know enough and Mr. Forrest knows enough so that between us we can break up this long tea party you’ve been having, Mr. Muriak. You can plan to spend several years sitting in the federal penitentiary thinking about income tax evasion, along with your dear friend, Al.”

“Have you got records?” I asked mildly. “Photostatic copies of our books? Don’t talk rot, Miss Ferris, if that is your name.”

She smiled sweetly at me. “Al, darling, you’re so much brighter than Mr. Muriak. You know, you should be in charge. We knew that Mr. Andresa came at intervals. Mr. Muriak has a tiny black notebook that he keeps in his wallet. On one sheet is a row of figures. Last night he wrote down the date and opposite it he wrote eleven point two. Compared with previous figures we know that Mr. Andresa brought in one hundred and twelve thousand dollars today.” She paused, watching them.

I looked at Mike with deep disgust. “Mike, do you do a damn fool thing like that? I thought you were smart.”

He smiled sheepishly and took out his wallet. “Is harmless, Al. I show you.” He stuffed a blunt finger in the compartment and then his mouth opened slowly. “Is gone!”

Jane laughed. “Of course it’s gone. Along with some samples of your handwriting. You’re all through, Mr. Muriak. That is, unless you get out of the country fast enough, and I somehow don’t think you will.”

Mike looked at me dolefully. “What now?”

I was thinking out loud. “A key part of their case is Jane’s evidence as to how she lifted it off you. They’ve got to prove that you wrote the figures down to record income. Are they in pen?”

“No. Pencil.”

“Good. They can tell the age of ink. Now suppose I were to make up a quiz where the figures you wrote down would be the right answers to the quiz. If Jane here couldn’t—”

I was about to say testify. I didn’t need to say it. I had already condemned her to death. She was sitting beside me. Mike filled up so much of the back seat that her knees pressed against mine. I could feel the warmth of her through the fabric of her skirt and my trousers. She was warm, and yet, in a very definite way, she was already dead. We had a corpse between us, and good old Al had done it.

Mike chuckled. “Maybe she like to swim like Johnny Lerone.”

I remembered Johnny. He had tried to expand into our line of business. Some of his boys had broken up some of our equipment. He fell for Mike’s offer to merge. He accepted Mike’s offer to come up to the camp at Lake Loraina in New Hampshire.

He had been wined, dined, kidded along and carefully drowned. Mike spent three hundred bucks on flowers for Johnny’s funeral.

Mike had done it himself and had enjoyed every minute of it. Mike is a fine swimmer. He can hold his breath for a full two minutes under water.

“George,” Mike said. “We go to Lake Loraina. Miss Ferris, she needs swimming suit. Stop by a store. And we got to buy some food. Nice steaks, Al. You pick.”

I guessed her at a size fourteen. George pulled into one of those market spots where you can buy everything. I bought a suitcase, two dresses, swim suit, sandals, toilet articles.

When I got back to the car after the second trip for groceries, Mike had opened the bag and he said, “What you buy all this stuff for, Al. Why?”

“Don’t be a dope, Mike. If all she had left in the camp was the dress she’s wearing, the coroner might get ideas.”

I felt the quick start that Jane made, and then the slow shudder. I looked at her. Her eyes were shut and her lips were bloodless. I think it was the first time she realized that this was the end of the line for her.

We took turns eating at a pig stand so someone could watch Jane. When I came back from my turn, along with George, I brought her a sandwich. She looked at it as though it made her gag. A mile or so further on, I dropped it out the window.

The November day was warm and pleasant. The sky was an intense blue. The big car ran with silent power. Beside me the corpse of a pretty girl sat. She breathed and her body was warm and her heart was beating. But she was dead. And now she knew it too.

We rode in silence and I watched the successive stages march through her mind. Fear, disbelief, terror, doubt, horror, disbelief.

Once she said in a high voice, shrill and somehow child-like, “You’re trying to scare me!”

Mike patted her knee heavily and she cringed away from his touch. “Not scare you, girl. Don’t be scared. Over quick.” He laughed.

The Moke turned around and looked at us. I could see that he didn’t care for any part of the idea.

We made the camp at four in the afternoon. The only way I can describe what happened to Jane Ferris during that trip is to say that she unraveled at the edges.

Fear of death ate at her. And yet she didn’t crack wide open as so many would have.