Red Gardenias

CHAPTER XVIII

Only the night lamp, a wan bulb with a meager supply of honey-pale electricity, provided illumination for the room. A circular puddle of light at the lamp s base showed a white table top, a glass half filled with water, a green thermos bottle. Gloom blurred the outlines of the room s other furniture, gave a fourth dimensional quality to Simeon March s bed, two chairs, a dresser. Cold air seeped through a half-open window.

Crane, on a chair back of the screen in the corner of the room, waited for the murderer.

He had been waiting for six hours and he was not happy. His neck ached from the rigidity with which he had held himself in his chair. He wanted a drink to quiet nerves that fluttered with every unusual sound. He wanted someone to talk to. He was worried like hell about Ann.

It was after midnight. Quiet, more nerve racking than the early evening bustle, had descended upon City Hospital. There were no calls for doctors over the loudspeaker system. Few used the corridors; occasionally a nurse would pass his door on tiptoe. At long intervals he could hear the whine of the elevator s electric motor.

Crane remembered how Ann had looked when he saw her last. She had looked trim and efficient, but her green eyes, her sawdust-colored hair, he thought, would certainly have got her into trouble if she had gone to the Crimson Cat. He, himself, had always admired tanned blondes; it wasn t every blonde-what was that? He held his breath. A small gust of wind rustled the curtains. He breathed again. What was he thinking of? Oh yes. Most blondes didn t tan well.

It had been necessary to tell Dr Rutledge and Dr Woodrin that he expected another attack on Simeon March. They had agreed to let him remain in the room, and had allowed him to place guards from the March Company plant at the front and back entrances to the hospital. Neither doctor treated this plan seriously, but the night nurse, Miss Edens, a pretty dark-haired girl, was impressed. She was spending the night in a small anteroom connected by a door to Simeon March s room.

Dr Rutledge had paid Crane visits at eight, ten and midnight. "Everything s ready," he whispered on his last appearance. "There are men at both back and front doors."

"I wish there was one under the bed," said Crane plaintively.

Grinning, Dr Rutledge said Dr Woodrin would take over at three. "If you re still alive."

A clock somewhere outside uttered a single gonglike note. He wondered if it was one, or half-past twelve. Or, hopefully, half-past one. The shade rustled again and his heart jumped. The elevator motor whined; there was a clashing noise as its metal door was opened and closed; heavy feet passed along the corridor. The wind was blowing stronger and the curtains, ghostly in the dim light, were dancing. There was an odor of chloroform in the air. A blue globe in the corridor threw a curious shadow on the ceiling by the transom. It looked like the shadow of a man wearing a cloak.

Somebody was bending over the bed. He clawed for his revolver under his arm, then saw it was the nurse.

"My God!" he said. "Don t scare me like that."

"You were asleep," she said.

"I couldn t have been."

Her voice was very small. "Do you want anything?"

"I d like a drink."

"Dr Rutledge said he d send you some whisky."

"He d better bring a lot."

"Not so loud." Her voice was soft. "Do you want anything else?"

"No, just whisky."

There was a slight tapping at the door to the anteroom in which Miss Edens had a cot. She left him. The curtains beside the open window were almost parallel to the floor; the wind was cold and steady. A door slammed somewhere down the corridor.

Miss Edens came back. "The floor nurse with a paper," she said.

"What s it say?"

She tilted the lamp so the light reached the screen.

In the saffron light they read:

SIMEON MARCH IS FOURTH VICTIM OF CARBON MONOXIDE

Simeon March, first citizen of Marchton, was recovering in City Hospital last night from severe carbon-monoxide poisoning. He was overcome early Sunday in the garage back of his home at 1703 Park Street.

He is the fourth member of the March family in less than a year to be the victim of accidental carbon-monoxide poisoning. The other three resulted fatally.

However, Mr March s chances of recovery, according to physicians at City Hospital, are good, owing to speedy injection of methylene blue, latest remedy for the deadly gas. It was said he might regain consciousness before morning.

The millionaire was discovered by Mrs Minnie Kruger, 55, of 904 E. Third Street, a cook in the March household. She said she became alarmed at her master s failure to emerge from the garage and had gone to…

The remainder of the story, running all over the front page of the paper, was mostly of the discovery of the body and an account of the millionaire s career. Crane felt a little better. The newspaper had fallen for his story, and the murderer would probably fall for it, too, and be worried by what Simeon March would say when he regained consciousness.

Only the important thing was: What had happened to Ann?

Miss Edens took the paper, put the lamp in place, touched his shoulder lightly and went into the anteroom. She was a nice girl, he thought.

The clock outside made a noise-bong bong-and it was two o clock.

Still coming through the window, the wind at intervals made a sound like a frightened horse blowing out breath. It was very cold. One of the curtains was stuck to something, but the other performed a macabre dance. It smelled as though snow was on the way.

He thought of the dead men in the case. There had been a lot-too many! It was not a neat case. He liked murder cases where there was one corpse and no prospects of any more. Then the problem became academic, with no haste and plenty of time for drinking at the client s expense. But this one wasn t a murder case; it was a massacre.

The dead: Richard March, John March, Talmadge March, maybe Simeon March and Lefty-what was his name? And three out of the five dead from a silent, odorless, creeping gas that filled their lungs and turned their bodies pink. What was the link between them?

And then there was Ann…

It was a really lousy case. He wondered what Colonel Black, his boss and Ann s uncle, would say to him. Especially since Ann was gone. He wondered where Williams was.

He was glad, though, the window was open. Suppose someone tried to pump carbon monoxide into the room. The idea was farfetched, but it made him shiver. He supposed it was perfectly possible to carry the gas in metal containers under pressure like oxygen. He wouldn t be able to detect its presence, unless he found himself getting drowsy. And he was drowsy!

In quick alarm he looked at the window. It was still open; both curtains were waving now. He decided he d freeze rather than lower that window. Good old window.

There was something horrible about dying of gas. Maybe it was just dying that was horrible, but it didn t seem so bad to die by gun, or by knife, or by hanging. Possibly those deaths seemed natural because people for a long time had been dying in those ways. But this gas, without odor, without color, like voodoo magic, crept upon its victim, left him to meet, gasping and blushing, an unnatural death.

Ann s face, young and frightened, came to mind. He opened his eyes and stared at the curtains.

Simeon March began to moan. With each exhalation he moaned, making a sort of aaaaaanaaahaa with his breath. The moans seemed to come from deep within his body; his chest gave them a resonant quality. It sounded as though he moaned, listened for an answer that didn t come, then moaned again.

Miss Edens came quietly into the room.

"Are you all right?"

"That s not me."

"I know. I thought I d see if you were all right."

"I m fine."

"I m going to lie down for a little while."

"All right."

After a minute the light in her room went off. He settled down further in his chair. It was getting very cold.

Simeon March was still moaning. In the corridor two nurses were whispering. Their hushed voices sounded foreign; so many s s and th s came to his ears. In the street someone was trying to start an automobile.

The engine was cold; it would catch, splutter, cough, then die.

It must be three, he thought; he must have missed two-thirty. As he was debating this the clock made a single bong. The minutes were moving like snails.

The next half-hour seemed a night. He moved around, but he couldn t find a really comfortable position. At intervals he reached under his arm to make sure his revolver was still there. He had a feeling someone was watching him, but he knew this was impossible. The automobile engine had finally started, and the automobile had gone away with a noisy meshing of cold gears. Simeon March still moaned. He wondered why someone didn t do something about him.

He wondered what could possibly have happened to Ann. He remembered the fun he d had with her in New York. He remembered a walk in soft rain through Central Park on an April morning, the gift of a straw-enclosed bottle of chianti from a restaurant proprietor who thought they were newlyweds, watching Army play in the Polo Grounds with Ann sharing his fur rug, a mad swing session with Stuff Smith at the Onyx Club, a brief, surprised kiss in a taxicab…

At last three o clock came, but he didn t feel any better. He knew ahead of him lay another night until three-thirty, and another until four, and another until four-thirty. By five he d probably be mad, if he wasn t already. He hoped Ann was having an easier time. He d welcome the arrival of the murderer. Anything was better than waiting. Why the hell didn t they shut up Simeon March?

The elevator whined, but it didn t stop at his floor. Like the veils of a classical dancer, the curtains quivered in the wind. There was light enough in the room to see their movements, sometimes languid, sometimes wild. The blue light in the corridor gave them a milky, diaphanous appearance, but it was strange; they cast no shadows. He watched them closely during an angry tarantella, but there were no shadows. It was like ghosts dancing.

A man was standing beside the bed. He must have come through the door on rubber-soled shoes, have tiptoed to the bed. Noiselessly, he put a black bag on the table under the shadow; only his hands were visible.

Hardly breathing, Crane remained motionless.

In the lime-colored rays from the lamp the hands were an unhealthy white. Sparse black hair grew from the wrists to the knuckles, sprouted in tufts from the fingers. The fingers were strong and supple. They opened the black case and withdrew an atomizer with a metal snout and an egg-size rubber bulb. This they put on the table, then returned to the bag. Without haste, but quickly, they emerged with a silver hypodermic syringe.

The right hand held the syringe between the first two fingers. The thumb pressed the plunger a fraction of an inch and fluid bubbled from the needle, fell in two drops to the table.

"Aaaaaaaanaaahaa," moaned Simeon March.

The man in the room moved closer to the bed. He held the hypodermic syringe in his right hand; with his left hand he reached for Simeon March s arm.

"No!" Crane flung himself off the chair, jerked out the revolver. "I ve got you covered! Don t move!"

Simultaneously, the lights flashed on. Crane aimed the revolver at the man. Miss Edens stood by the door, her left hand on the light switch.

Holding the hypodermic syringe, Dr Woodrin blinked at them, his pink-and-white face astonished and alarmed. "My God!" he exclaimed. "You gave me a start." He bent over Simeon March and gave him an injection with the syringe. "I thought you were both in the anteroom."

Crane said, "I thought it was better to wait in the same room."

"How is he, Doctor?" Miss Edens asked.

Dr Woodrin put the syringe and the atomizer in the black bag. "The next hour or two will tell. I think he ll live, but how the morning paper can be so sure is beyond me."

"Newspapers are that way," Crane said. "But maybe the murderer will believe them."

The white skin over the doctor s nose wrinkled in two V s when he thought. "If there is a murderer… You know I really think these deaths were accidental."

"Maybe you re right," Crane said. "We ll see. If there was a murderer he won t want Simeon March to recover, particularly if the old man saw him."

"That s reasonable enough." Dr Woodrin picked up the bag. "Good luck. If you need me I ll be downstairs with Peter and Carmel."

With the room dark, it didn t take Crane long to become thoroughly nervous again. The encounter with the doctor, although it was all right, hadn t been quieting. He shuddered when he thought of the weird effect made by the doctor s hands in the puddle of light from the night lamp. The effect was like that of those horror movies Universal used to make in which the hero is fastened to an operating table in a cathedral-size laboratory and a mad scientist gets ready to change him into an ape.

He decided he had never really appreciated the truth of those movies.

He had, he admitted, for a moment thought the doctor was planning to inject Simeon March with something to prevent his recovery. Yet the doctor, when the lights were on, had gone ahead with the injection. He wouldn t have dared kill the old man before witnesses. And besides, he was definitely not involved in the attempt upon Simeon March.

He was still thinking about the case when the clock outside struck four. He had a feeling the solution was within reach of his brain if only he could get the facts in their correct perspective. What was the thing he d been talking about earlier that day? Oh yes, the relevant clue. The persistent odor of gardenias; how did they fit into the picture?

And Ann! What could he do about her?

He heard a faint noise in the corridor and held his breath. Somebody was whispering; a man said something, a woman replied, and then there was silence. Simeon March no longer moaned, but he was breathing hoarsely.

He thought about the attack at the Duck Club. Was it really on him? And if it was, why had it been made? He certainly had no information that would make it worth while for the murderer to kill him. Could the attack have been on Dr Woodrin?

The wind had suddenly died, and the curtains hung limply beside the half-open window. From a switch engine a long distance away came two shrill toots. The room felt as though it had been packed with ice. It felt like a cold-storage vault.

The nurse came in and stood beside Crane s bed.

"I m afraid it s a flop," she said.

"There s still two hours."

"I fixed you a drink." She handed him a glass. "A Mr Williams sent it up."

"That was thoughtful of him."

The whisky, well diluted with water, was smooth. It warmed his throat, his stomach, made his mouth feel clean. He felt better immediately. She took the glass, returned to her room.

He felt a little sleepy. He was no longer scared; the whisky had fixed that, and there was only a mild feeling of excitement. He supposed that he had been over-ambitious in his plans for the murderer s capture; the murderer must have known about them. Yet who did know? He and Williams, Dr Rutledge and Dr Woodrin, and the nurse. That was all; not even the men guarding the hospital knew.

A dog two blocks away was barking at something. His barks came in bursts of threes, finishing up on an interrogative note, as though he wasn t sure what he was barking about. The queer blue shadow of a man with a cloak was still on the ceiling by the transom.

Crane twisted his body so he was sitting on his left hip and thought: to hell with it all! To hell with the blue man in the cloak! To hell with all the various and sundry noises! A hospital was the last place he d ever go for a rest.

He wondered, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach, about Ann. He knew she was being held, or was dead. He knew he d be through if she was dead. Never again, if he got out of this mess, would he work on a case with somebody he cared for terribly. What was it Delia Young had said? "I feel hollow inside." That was the way thinking about Ann made him feel.

Who could be holding her? He wondered if Williams was doing anything about her. He hadn t seen him all evening. He wondered what he would do when daylight came. He d have to call in the police. Imagine a private detective asking help…

A scream, so brief he hardly believed his ears, sounded in the corridor. The sound was not repeated. What the hell? He found his revolver and slid out of the chair.

At the same instant the door to the room opened. Sudden draft made the muslin curtains dance wildly. A bulky woman with a floppy hat and a fur coat tiptoed toward the bed, a pillow in her hands. Crane said, "I ve got you!" The woman dropped the pillow, fired two shots in his direction. The yellow flare of her gun blinded Crane. He crouched under the fluttering curtains and fired a shot at the door. His revolver made a deeper noise than the woman s. Acrid smoke stung his nose, his eyes. Together, making an enormous noise, he and the woman fired again.

"You bastard!" said the woman. Her voice was husky, like Delia Young s.

She let go one more shot, shattered the windowpane and fled. Crane ran to the door, stepped out into the corridor. The woman was three quarters of the way down the corridor in the direction of the elevator. She was running, and a blue skirt flared out under the brown fur coat. She was a big woman with muscular legs. Her hat hid the color of her hair.

Swinging down his revolver in a smooth arc, Crane took a careful shot at her. The revolver made a swell echo in the corridor. He didn t see that the shot had taken effect, though. Still running, the woman rounded the turn by the elevator.

Miss Edens was behind Crane. "Who was it?"

"I don t know."

He started to run along the corridor. She ran after him, said:

"It sounds like the fall of Shanghai."

Their progress was abruptly halted by the woman. She leaned suddenly around the corner, took a pot shot at Crane. Floppy hat, coat collar, shielded her face. Miss Edens ducked into her anteroom. Crane, further along, leaped for the door to Room 417, opened it, backed into the room.

The woman fired another shot and Crane went further into the room. Behind him a woman began to scream.

"For God s sake, lady!" he said. "I won t hurt you."

He stuck his head out the door; the woman was gone. He stepped into the corridor. Nothing happened. He heard the whine of the elevator. He ran down the corridor, almost tripped over the body of a woman in a nurse s uniform. She was lying on the cement floor beside a table with a telephone on it, her head in a pool of blood. A chair had toppled across her feet.

The elevator was an automatic one. The golden arrow on the circle of Roman numerals above the glass doors was moving counterclockwise between III and II. Crane seized the phone.

"Hello. Hello! Goddamn it! Hello!" His thumb jiggled the hook. "Hello. Are there guards from March amp; Company in the lobby?… Well, tell em to stop whoever s coming down in the elevator. Quick!"

He dropped the receiver. Miss Edens was bending over the floor nurse.

"Is she dead?" he asked.

"I don t think so."

The golden arrow reached I, promptly started up again. Gray smoke swirled through the corridor. Miss Edens lifted the nurse s head, pushed a black leather chair pad under it. The nurse moaned softly. The golden arrow passed II.

Crane stared at it. "She s coming back."

Miss Edens said, "She s not!"

Crane looked at the. 38. He had two shots. "Maybe she ll get off at three," he said.

The woman in 417 screamed. Her voice was shrill with terror; it made shivers run along Crane s spine. She screamed, caught her breath in a sob, screamed again.

The golden arrow went by III.

"You better get the hell out of here," Crane said to Miss Edens.

He pulled the reception desk from the wall, put a foot against one leg, with his free hand sent it to the floor on its side. Temperature charts zigzagged through the air; pencils, erasers, paper clips, chewing gum, a thermometer slid to the floor; the telephone smashed on the cement.

The woman in 417 screamed.

He slid the nurse s feet out of the way, knelt behind the table. She had on half-length silk hose, her thighs were bare. He could see a light behind the semiopaque glass doors of the shaft. He steadied his revolver hand on the upper edge of the table. Miss Edens was standing in a doorway farther up the corridor.

With a metallic click, the elevator reached IV. Crane crouched behind the table, aimed the revolver at the door. Squeeze the trigger, he kept thinking, squeeze the trigger. The nurse was conscious. She watched him through eyes bright with fear.

The elevator door slid open and Alice March stepped into the corridor, a sweet smile on her plump face, white flowers in her arms, a floppy hat on her head.