This Is Murder

Chapter Seventeen

Sam Moraine sprawled on the davenport. His coat and vest were off, his shirt open at the neck, his face flushed, his eyes slightly blood-shot.

Doris Bender was perched on the arm of a chair. Her hand held a glass. Her dark eyes were watery, but, from time to time, she glanced at Sam Moraine in keen appraisal. But whenever his eyes encountered hers, she drooped her lids and smiled with loose-lipped conviviality.

The telephone rang.

She scowled, stared at Moraine for a moment and said, “Anyone know you’re here?”

He frowned, as though the concentration required to answer the question was more than his senses could command without the greatest effort, then slowly shook his head.

She lurched toward the telephone, picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”

The receiver made squawking noises.

“How the hell did you find out where I was?” she asked.

Once more, the receiver rasped sound.

She glanced shrewdly at Sam Moraine.

“No, no, no!” she said. “You can’t come up. I don’t want to see you! I don’t know how you found me... Yes, of course I’m alone... No, I don’t want you to... Hello, hello, hello...”

She dropped the receiver back into place. She looked at Sam Moraine with panic in her eyes.

“Whoosit?” he asked.

“Listen,” she said, “that’s Tom Wickes. I don’t know how he found me. He wants to talk with me. He says he’s coming up.”

“If you don’t want him to come up,” Moraine said, with alcoholic gravity, “I’ll throw him out.”

“No, no, don’t you understand? He’s working on those murder cases. He’s trying to save his own skin by finding a fall guy. If he found you here, he’d turn you over to the police.”

“I’d throw him downstairs.”

“Of course you would, sweetheart, but he’d turn you over to the police after he got downstairs.”

Moraine nodded with judicial gravity.

“Logic in that remark,” he announced thickly, the words running together.

“Listen,” she said, “you go in the closet and hide. I’ll go to the door and try to keep him from coming in.”

Moraine sat up on the davenport, turning the idea over in his mind.

“My God!” she cried, “snap out of it! We’ve got to do something and do it quick. Don’t you see what a jam you’re in?”

“Thought he was the boy-friend of your sister.”

“He is, but he’s trying to find out something about those murder cases. He’s coming up, I tell you. Get in the closet!”

Sam Moraine got to his feet, permitted himself to be guided to the closet. She opened the door, pushed him in and said, “Wait there. I’ll meet him in the corridor and try to head him off.”

She ran toward the outer door, and had no more than opened it when Tom Wickes’ voice said cautiously, “Hello, Dorry.”

“Listen, Tom,” she said, “I want to talk with you.”

She stepped out into the corridor, half-closing the door behind her.

Sam Moraine moved with cat-like quickness and complete silence. He opened the door of the closet, carefully closed it behind him, ran across the room to the door which led to the kitchenette. He stood there waiting.

A few moments later, the door of the apartment opened, and Doris Bender entered, with Tom Wickes at her elbow. Moraine held the door of the kitchenette open a crack, so that he could see as well as hear.

She placed her fingers to her lips, glanced at Wickes, moved cautiously toward the closet door. There was a key in the outside of the door. She pressed the door firmly into position, grasped the key between her thumb and forefinger.

She nodded to Wickes.

Wickes raised his voice and said, “Say, what the hell’s been going on here? You’ve had a man in the apartment. Who is it — a dick?”

“Don’t be foolish,” she said, raising her own voice. “There’s no one here.”

“Well, I’m going to look around and see.”

“The hell you are! This isn’t your apartment!”

“Say, don’t hand me any lip; and don’t try to double-cross me. The place is full of dicks.”

“Why?” she asked. “They aren’t after us, are they?”

“Don’t be silly. You’re Mrs. Gertrude Chester. No one’s looking for you.”

“But why is the place full of dicks?”

“That damn fool, Moraine, is headed in this direction. He’s hot. The damn fool’s been messing in politics and they’re going to railroad him to the gallows. This is a hell of a time for you to be picking up stray boy-friends, but you’re just the sort of a tramp that can’t keep your hands off. Let me look in that closet.”

“You go to the devil.”

She twisted the key in the lock, then jerked it out.

“Now, then,” she exclaimed, “try and take that key away from me. You’ll have to do it before you can look in that closet.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” he said. “Perhaps I was just a little upset. Ann’s death has raised the devil with me. Come on in the kitchen and buy a drink.”

She nodded toward Moraine’s suitcase.

Wickes picked it up, glanced significantly at her.

Together, they tip-toed toward the door which led from the apartment to the corridor.