Kill as Directed

Twenty-One

The day of the murder dawned to a unity with nature that was almost Greek. Friday was made for violence — scowling skies; dripping heat; windless; almost airless. It took effort to breathe. The weather aroused savagery.

By another irony, it turned out to be a busy day professionally for Dr. Harrison Brown. He was on the run all day, either out on house calls or seeing patients in his office. During his afternoon office hours he began to run behind schedule; only the fact that at the last moment two patients cancelled their appointments made it possible for him to send his evening receptionist home at six o’clock and darken his waiting room. He had called Dr. Lamper and notified his answering service at midday.

He locked the office street door carefully and switched off the outside light over his shingle.

First he downed a shot-glass of Scotch neat. Then he drank some water and put the bottle away. He had promised himself one drink before the event in his office, and two cocktails afterward, at Monique’s, no more.

He went to the dressing room at the rear and set to work. He was conscious of no particular tension or sense of excitement. His whole life hung on the nature and quality of his actions during the next ninety minutes, and he was pleased to find himself without nervousness or fear.

He undressed without haste or wasted motion and showered under warm water which he gradually turned to cold until he gasped. He toweled himself brutally and, naked, shaved without nicking himself. He purposely left the used towels on the floor of the bathroom and his discarded clothes strewn about. He put on fresh linen and a loose charcoal-gray mohair suit and a white shirt and a dark gray tie. It was six-thirty exactly when he slid the revolver into the waistband of his trousers, tucked the oilskin-wrapped silencer into the breast pocket of his jacket, locked the cabinet and made a last tour of the premises and took a last mental inventory.

For the first time he felt a quiver of fear. He had almost forgotten the gloves. He got them and put them in an ouside pocket. Immediately the feeling went away.

He had one last inspiration before he left: he took the receiver of his private phone off the cradle and left it that way. If anyone should try to dial him on the private line before he returned, there would be a busy signal, as if the phone were in use.

He slipped out into the street at twenty-one minutes to seven, leaving himself a cushion.

It was ten minutes to seven when he stepped into the dark tenement hallway directly across the street from the entrance to the Starhurst Hotel.

The taxi let the familiar fat figure out half a block from the Starhurst; probably, Harry Brown thought, an automatic precaution against some cabdriver’s remembering his Friday night destination. Through the dirty glass of the tenement hallway door Harry watched Kurt Gresham, carrying a brief case, go through the revolving door of the Starhurst. He glanced at his watch. It was six minutes to seven.

The millionaire disappeared.

Harry gave him fifty seconds. Then he stepped out into the street and crossed over, going not fast and not slowly. He pushed through the revolving door of the hotel without hesitation and turned right — up the long slot of the lobby there was no one to be seen, or to see — and walked along the short corridor to the brass-knobbed door and turned the knob with his gloved hand. He opened the door and stepped into the little vestibule. He glanced up the stairs; no one. He glanced into the short corridor; no one.

He took the gun from his waistband and the silencer from his pocket, fitted the silencer to the muzzle, and went softly and quickly up the steep stairs. Outside the door of 101 he released the safety of the Colt.

He turned slightly to the right so that the hand with the gun would be away from the door. Then he raised his left hand and rapped, not loudly, not softly, on the worn much-painted panel.

There was the slightest pause, as if the occupant of the room were puzzled.

Then the door opened.

And there stood Kurt Gresham, wide open to eternity.

Dr. Harrison Brown raised his right hand.

The little red mouth in the big round pink face made a little red hole as the colorless eyes went from Harry’s face to the gun with the silencer in Harry’s gloved right hand.

Then Kurt Gresham slowly fell back, and Harry followed, pushing the door gently to behind him with his left hand; the door clicked, and they stood there, eye to eye, in a dreadful silence.

Harry raised the revolver, elbow loose, grip firm.

He saw the jowls shake suddenly. He saw the little bit of pink tongue flick out and back from the dry lips. He saw the colorless eyes take on a jelly-like look.

And he told his trigger finger to squeeze.

And it would not squeeze.

It would not.

It would not.

Kurt Gresham took the gun from him and, grabbing his lapels with one surprisingly strong hand, swung him about and pushed him. He fell back into an overstuffed chair.

Gresham was saying, “Idiot. Fall guy. Sucker. Weak sister,” over and over in a soft vicious voice. And all of a sudden somebody’s fist crashed on the door panel outside and the knob began to turn. As it began to turn, the millionaire darted to the bed and shoved the gun under the pillow and was halfway back to the door when it burst open.

A giant of a man with a broken nose was in the doorway pointing a big black automatic pistol.