Tuned for Murder

CHAPTER IX The Stalker

The rent on the three-room hotel-apartment suite was quite excessive. They were beautiful rooms, on the fifteenth floor, but they weren’t worth the high rent. However, Nellie Gray, registered as Josephine Lang, hadn’t even looked twice at the figure. None of the aides of The Avenger thought about expenses. They didn’t have to.

None, that is, save MacMurdie, who would always be in anguish when he had to spend a nickel, no matter how unlimited was the supply of nickels at his disposal.

Down two floors, there was a suite much larger than Nellie’s, and renting for twice as much. It was rented to Mrs. Jesse Cranlowe. The fancy sum indicated one of two things: Either Mr. Cranlowe had unlimited means at his disposal, too, or she was a very selfish person about her expenditures.

“It must be the latter,” said Nellie to Rosabel. “For the chief told us that Cranlowe was pinched for money at the moment. I guess the second Mrs. Cranlowe doesn’t care how pinched he is!”

“She seems to be nice, though,” said Rosabel.

“Yes, she does,” Nellie admitted. “I guess she’s more ignorant in financial matters, and spoiled, than mean. She probably hasn’t any idea what it means to be pinched for money.”

“She and Mr. Cranlowe’s son get along better than children and stepmothers often do,” said Rosabel.

Nellie nodded. That was her impression, too.

She had let no grass grow under her feet in her task of getting acquainted with Mrs. Cranlowe. The inventor’s wife had come into the lobby while Nellie was taking the suite for herself “and maid.” Nellie had exclaimed aloud and bent suddenly, with a wet fingertip trying to catch a run in her stocking. A run she had just started with a furtive fingernail.

“Oh!” she said. “And I haven’t time to shop for new stockings now. And my others are in my trunk, which won’t be here till tomorrow!”

The exclamation had been subtly directed at the passing Mrs. Cranlowe, who had turned, to be met with a rueful smile.

She had taken the bait.

“You are just coming in? You can send your maid to my rooms, if you like. I have a little thread that ought to match that flesh tint. It will make a pucker in the stocking, but it’s better than a run.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” said Nellie. There was a little general conversation, and a self-introduction. And then, with Nellie’s dainty charm turned on full, there was a suggestion of dinner together.

Nellie was getting into a crisp frock for dinner, now.

“Did you see that man when you went out to the drugstore a few minutes ago?” Rosabel asked in a low tone as she hooked Nellie up the side.

The man in question was a fellow Nellie had told Rosabel about glimpsing as she left Mrs. Cranlowe in the lobby and went to an elevator.

He was a young-looking chap with something the matter with his eyes. They didn’t match the rest of him. They were a thousand years old, and all evil; as if they had been pried from the skull of an old, old man and set into the sockets of a young man.

The young man with the ancient eyes had come to the building door shortly after Mrs. Cranlowe had. He hadn’t come in; had just stayed there, but Nellie got the idea he was watching the inventor’s wife.

Then he had seemed to watch Nellie after she talked to Mrs. Cranlowe.

“No, didn’t see a sign of him,” Nellie said cheerfully.

“Be careful,” urged Rosabel.

Nellie laughed. It was a reckless, musical trill of sound.

“I’ll be careful, all right. I don’t think a coffin would become me.”

She went down to Mrs. Cranlowe’s apartment.

Mrs. Cranlowe was a woman of thirty-three or four, but looking younger. She was a brunette, on the plump side, with a full red little mouth and hands that were always making vague gestures.

She opened the door, when Nellie knocked, on a businesslike-looking night chain. Then she unhooked it when she saw Nellie’s face.

“I wanted to be sure it was you,” she explained.

“Sure it was me?” repeated Nellie innocently.

“Yes! You know I have had some most unpleasant experiences recently. Men following me, watching me. At least I think they have. Maybe I’m getting a persecution complex. But — no, I’m sure I’ve been observed.”

They went out to a small, exclusive restaurant near the building, and over a women’s meal she talked freely on the subject.

“It’s all due to that silly invention of my husband’s. You knew my husband was the Cranlowe? Jesse Cranlowe, the inventor?”

Nellie made polite sounds indicating that she was surprised and impressed.

“Well, Jesse, my husband, recently invented some kind of war thing. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never been much interested in his work. But this, it seems, is quite important. After he had invented it, he gave an announcement to the newspapers. It was an absurd thing to do. He said he had the most deadly weapon yet invented and would give it to any small nation for defense in the event that it is attacked by any larger nation. Going to stop war, and all that. But perhaps you read about it.”

“A little,” Nellie murmured. “Not a great deal.”

“Well, of course the minute such an announcement came out, it meant that all sorts of terrible people would try to get the weapon from Jesse. So he had to take necessary precautions. That’s why I’m living here, in town, instead of out at Cranlowe Heights with him. Though I have always spent a great deal of time in town.”

She waved a smooth, white hand.

“Our country home has been turned into an armed camp.” she said distastefully. “Guards and dogs, and all the trees cut down because otherwise people might hide behind them. It is very uncomfortable out there, so I live here.”

Nellie recalled her to her former subject.

“And you really think people have been following you around since that newspaper announcement? Because of your husband’s invention?”

“It must be because of the invention,” said Mrs. Cranlowe, nodding wisely. “Because no one ever followed me around before.”

“But why do you suppose they annoy you? You haven’t anything to do with his invention. Or — have you?”

“Not one single thing,” said Mrs. Cranlowe. “So, you see, it is all very stupid.”

Nellie didn’t say anything for a moment. But she was thinking. Not so stupid, perhaps. This woman didn’t have anything to do with Cranlowe’s work. But she had a great deal to do with the man, himself. Presumably she was adored. If she were kidnaped, and then threats made—

“Have you ever seen the people you think are following you? Ever had a good look at them?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Cranlowe. “There is one man I have seen so often that I’m sure he is following me. That is a young chap who doesn’t, somehow, look young, though you know he is. If you get what I mean.”

Nellie did get what she meant, having seen the same man herself.

“The other I’ve seen several times. He is a very fat man, not tall, who looks extremely good-natured. And yet I would hate to meet him on a dark street with money in my bag.”

Nellie marked those descriptions down graphically in her memory. She was getting, she thought, information more valuable than she had dared hope for.

The meal was about over. Mrs. Cranlowe kept looking at a tiny jeweled watch on her wrist.

“My son is coming for me very shortly,” she explained, at last. “Rather, Mr. Cranlowe’s son. He’s really my stepson, though neither of us ever think of that.”

“You mean the young man who came up to you in the lobby just after we’d met over the run in my stocking?” said Nellie, pretending she didn’t already know all about young Robert Cranlowe.

“Yes, that’s the man— Here he is now.”

A very good-looking young chap was coming in the restaurant door. He was tall and slim and dark-haired, with engaging blue eyes. Almost too engaging, Nellie thought. He was one of these young fellows whom everyone describes as “his own worst enemy.” The kind everyone liked but no one trusted in important matters.

He came gaily to the table where the two women sat. Mrs. Cranlowe introduced Nellie.

“Oh, yes, I noticed Miss Lang this afternoon!” Robert Cranlowe said easily. It took a minute for Nellie to remember that that was her pseudonym. “It is a real pleasure to meet you, Miss Lang. I hope you’ll be in Garfield City for quite a while. You are staying at the same building as Mrs. Cranlowe?”

Nellie assured him that she was. She was very nice about it, too. She might get information from the inventor’s son as well as the inventor’s wife, though she already was sure the information would be innocently given. She was quite sure neither the woman nor young man had any crookedness in them.

“Can we take you anywhere in my car?” asked Robert Cranlowe.

Nellie smilingly shook her head. The two bade her a pleasant farewell, and drove away. Nellie watched them from the curb for a moment, then turned to walk back to the building. It was only a short distance, so she went along with no haste. Once in her room she would communicate with the chief over the marvelously effective little radio Smitty had devised, and with which each aide of The Avenger’s was always equipped.

A long way behind her, and very cleverly, a man stalked her as a hunter stalks an animal.

He was the young fellow with the old eyes. In those eyes, now, was speculation — and murder. He trailed her to the building entrance, then hurried to a phone booth from which he could still see the building and make sure Nellie didn’t get out again without his knowledge.

“Kopell?” he muttered into the phone. “Something new on this, I think.”

“You mean on the Cranlowe dame?”

“Yeah! She’s got a new friend awful fast. A swell-looking little blonde. She checked into the building just before dinner, and got talking to the Cranlowe dame. I thought it was pretty fast, and I thought it was pretty smooth. But I wasn’t sure it meant anything, till a while ago. Then I saw the two of ’em go out to put on the feed bag together.”

“So?” said the smooth, oily voice at the other end of the wire.

“Well, look,” said the young fellow. “The blonde could be with some other mob that we don’t know about, couldn’t she? She could be shining up to Cranlowe’s wife on a new angle we ain’t hep to yet, couldn’t she?”

The logic of this was admitted, too.

“So, maybe—” said the young man with the old eyes, reaching mechanically a little way toward his automatic.

“Be on the lookout,” said the oily voice. “Don’t take the chance, yet. But be ready to with one funny move.”

The young man with the ancient eyes patted his shoulder holster.

“You bet,” he said, mouth like a thin gash in his flinty countenance.