Venomous Lady...

Chapter Four Nightmare

Krakow opened the door to 413, his right hand out of sight behind the door. He sighed, said, “Come in, guy. Where’s the bag?”

He stuffed a small blue-black automatic pistol back under the oxford gray suitcoat. It went into place with an audible click.

“I haven’t got the bag. I haven’t got the money,” Peter said hopelessly.

“Leave us not have fun and games, guy. This is a town I want to get out of. Maybe you’d like Lynda to go calling on Miss Owen this afternoon?”

“I had it all ready. I swear it. I had my back to the office door. Somebody came in and hit me. See the lump?”

Krakow jabbed the lump with the tip of his finger. “So that’s the angle, guy? Not good, my friend. Not good. That won’t save you either the dough or a lot of trouble.”

“But I tell you somebody slugged me and took it!”

Krakow looked at him for five slow seconds and then said softly, “You know, I can almost believe you. Yes, I do.”

His small white fist whipped up and smashed against Peter’s mouth. Peter staggered but didn’t fall. He lowered his head and started toward Krakow. The gun appeared in the man’s hand. “Go sit down on the bed, guy. Honest, I could lick you, but it would take a little time and you might mark me. Sit down.”

Peter sat on the bed, dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief and looked dully at the spots of blood on the white linen.

“That was for being careless,” Krakow said. “Who knows the whole story?”

“Nobody but you and me and Lynda.”

“Oh, come now. How about the beautiful Annaly?”

Peter shook his head.

“How about that redheaded crow in your office?”

“She doesn’t know anything.”

“What kind of phone setup you got in there?”

“A phone on her desk and a PBX on mine.”

Krakow sighed. “Maybe I was careless. Maybe I ought to give you a poke at me. But I won’t. Our baby is the redhead. She heard you on the phone. What’s her name?”

“Robina Bray.”

The door swung violently open. Krakow spun toward it, the gun still in his hand. Lynda stood and looked at Peter. She merely looked at him. But it made his mouth dry and tightened the muscles in his back and shoulder.

She wore the same taffeta housecoat. One hand was half hidden in the folds of the skirt. She smiled widely, an idiot smile. She took small mincing steps toward Peter. The room was very still. He heard the distant sounds of traffic on the street outside the hotel, the drip of a tap in the small bathroom.

Her lips pulled away from her teeth and she lunged at Peter, small nail scissors clenched in her hand. She drove them toward his eyes. Even as he rolled back away from her, he heard a thudding sound. She fell limply and rolled off onto the floor. The nail scissors were on the counterpane beside him.

Krakow shut the room door. He had slapped her across the temple with the barrel of the automatic. She lay on her back, her eyes shut, breathing heavily through her open mouth.

“See the trouble I’ve got?” Krakow said. “Her room door is open. Open this one and take a look at the hall. If it’s clear, Jet me know.”

The hallway was clear. “Okay,” Peter said.

Krakow picked her up easily. Peter stood aside. Krakow grinned. “After you, guy. Always after you.”

Inside Lynda’s room, Krakow threw her roughly onto the couch, brushed his hands together and said, “I got her clothes locked up, but I don’t know how long I can keep her off your neck. She’s worse since she saw you yesterday.”

Peter licked his lips. “What’s going to keep her from coming back here after you take her away?”

“The syndicate keeps bargains, guy. You pay off and no trouble. She won’t be back.”

“How do I know that?”

“You don’t. I take her back to the coast and put her back on the snow and then we unload her on a friend. The snow will keep her in line.” He chuckled. “Old Lynda will probably wind up in one of those peep-hole joints in Cairo or Shanghai.”

Peter swallowed thickly. He looked at the thin, beaten, unconscious woman on the couch and thought of the way she had looked in Calcutta. He thought of the yellow evening gown she had worn, of the way she had looked in the moonlight.

Krakow sighed. “There’s the phone. Tell that Robina chicken of yours to get herself over here, but quick.”

“No!” Peter said.

“Stop being an eagle scout! I’m not going to kill her.”

Slowly, Peter walked to the phone, got the number.

“Peter Hume’s office. Miss Bray speaking.”

Hoarsely, “This is Peter.”

“Yes?”

“I wonder if you could come over to the Sayreton House right away, Robina.”

“Oh! You can’t talk.”

“Right.”

“And the way you said my name. It’s about the robbery?”

“Room 414, Robina. And you might as well bring along the papers on the Daniels case. I’ll sign them here and you can mail them in the lobby on your way out.”

He hung up. Krakow grinned. “Still a cutey pants, hey? Daniels is the chief of police here. So she comes with cops?”

Lynda stirred and sat up, slid her feet down onto the floor. She didn’t say a word. She merely began to stare at Peter again. She ignored the trickle of blood that began to dry on her cheek. Her dark hair was tangled. She made no effort to smooth it back.

Krakow took a key out of his pocket and threw it to her. It landed in her lap. She kept looking at Peter.

“Your clothes are locked in my closet, Lynda. There’s the key. Go get dressed. Maybe you’ve got work to do.”

“No!” Peter said.

Krakow grinned. “Shut up, guy. You stopped having anything to do with this the minute you said the name Daniels.”

Lynda walked out of the room and across the hall. Krakow lit a cigarette. Time passed slowly. Time of nightmare. “What are you going to do?” Peter asked.

Krakow yawned. “I’m tired of you and sick of this filthy little town. I’m going to grab back the fifteen thousand and leave. The hell with it. You crossed me up and I cross you up. Lynda is your problem. When she gets dressed, I’ll save her to turn loose on your redheaded crow if I have to. You just aren’t smart, junior.”

Through bloodless lips Peter said, “What about the police?”

“In the first place, they’ll cover the joint, front and rear. They’ll send this Robina up with the hick cop idea that if she doesn’t show in fifteen minutes, they come up after her. They haven’t got enough to go on to come up here with her. I think I can talk her into telling them it was all a big mistake and to please go away now.”

“You seem pretty confident about what they’ll do.”

“After a few years you get to know how they think.” He held up his hand and listened to the distant clang of an elevator door. “That’ll be baby. You let her in when she knocks.”

There was a hesitant knock on the door. Peter turned the knob to open it. As soon as the catch was released, the door crashed in at him, driving violently back.

As he fell, he rolled, catching one quick glimpse of Krakow’s contorted face. The automatic made a thin crack which was swallowed up by the harsh heavy boom of a heavier gun.

Peter looked up at Krakow. The small man sagged back against the wall and grinned foolishly. His knees bent and he slowly slid down so that he was sitting on his heels. He coughed once, almost apologetically.

“Told them this was a lousy idea,” he said to Peter. “Fooled me. Redhead fooled me. Private talent. Didn’t know — had — any around. It is to laugh.”

He coughed again, gave a start of surprise and agony, and slid over onto his side, blood frothing in the comer of his mouth.

Peter scrambled up. A wide young man with a dark, bitter face holstered the thirty-eight he held in his big hand. He gave a casual glance at Peter, walked in and dropped heavily onto one knee beside Krakow.

“Too good,” he said softly.

Peter turned toward the door, saw the startled face of Chief Daniels and the taut, alarmed face of Robina Bray.

Daniels said in his high fussy voice, “You’re perfectly all right. I heard the first shot. He fired the first shot. Self-defense.”

Peter hurried to Robina, took her hands in his. She was shaking.

“I was afraid you were hurt, Peter. It would have been my fault. Last night I got these men by phone in Moines and hired them. They’re — investigators. I gave them the whole story before I came to work this morning. When you got the call from this man, I phoned them. I told them to use their own judgment. They took the money!”

The one who fired the shot said, “I’m Regan. Don’t fret about the dough, Hume. We’ve got it all intact to hand back to you.”

Suddenly Peter remembered Lynda. He looked beyond Robina, saw the door to 413 ajar, ran to it and flung it open. The room was empty!

He turned to Reagan. “The woman — she’s insane. Annaly! She’s gone after Annaly!”

“Relax, Hume,” Regan said. “I brought along one of our boys and posted him at your girl’s house. Sorry I had to clip you. I thought it would bring things out in the open.”

Peter said, “We better get over there. Fast!”

“Sure, Hume. Sure. But Miss Owen’s okay. I guarantee it.”

Regan, Robina and Peter went down in the elevator, leaving Daniels with Krakow’s body. Peter ran over to the desk. “Did a woman with a on her face leave here a few minutes ago?”

“Miss Stanley? Yes, sir. She caught a cab right out in front.”

Regan’s car was around the corner. He walked with exasperating slowness. Peter wanted to tug at his arm. The car was a small black sedan. Regan got behind the wheel, Robina and Peter beside him.

“I tell you everything’s okay,” Regan said. “If the woman is a nut, we’ll get her committed. Relax, Hume.”

Robina patted the back of Peter’s hand. “She’ll be okay, lad.”

As they rounded the corner onto the quiet street where Annaly lived, Regan pointed ahead and said, “See? There’s George. Right on the job.”

Suddenly he leaped closer to the windshield and squinted ahead. He gasped and the car jumped ahead. He pulled it into the curb in a screaming stop and piled out.

George was a lanky man in a tan suit and dirty white shoes. He stood on the sidewalk, rocking from side to side and making a whimpering noise like a whipped child. He held his hands cupped over his eyes.

As they ran toward him, he took his hands down, and his mouth twisted into an inverted smile, the gesture of a person trying to open eyes that are stuck together.

But where his eyes should have been were pockets of torn, ragged tissue, wet with blood and fluid which ran down his lean, tan cheeks.

Robina screamed and turned her face toward Peter’s jacket. Regan was cursing in a low, almost monotonous tone. The thirty-eight was in his hand as he pounded up the front steps. Robina braced herself, walked to George and took his arm.

“George,” she said, “your eyes are hurt. Take it easy. I’ll get you into the house and we’ll phone a doctor.”

“A woman,” George said brokenly. “She stopped and asked me where she could find somebody whose name I couldn’t catch. She was smiling. She had a scar on her face and neck. When I leaned closer to her to catch the name — she j-jabbed — and the lights went out.”

Peter followed Regan into the house. The house seemed still. Too still. The silence of death. Suddenly, from upstairs, there was a choked, ragged scream.

“Come on!” Regan yelled. He took the stairs three at a time, slamming off the wall at the turn in the staircase.

At the top he paused, listened intently and then smashed his shoulder into a closed door. The frame splintered and the door crashed open. Looking beyond him, Peter saw Annaly cowering in a corner, seated on the floor, her pale hair disordered.

Lynda stood above her, holding a small kitchen knife upraised. She turned an empty face toward the door. The eyes were flakes of coal. The scar glowed red. She looked at Regan without interest as he said, “Drop it, lady!”

Ignoring the gun in Regan’s hand, Peter threw himself straight at the two women. The knife drove down toward Annaly’s face. His outstretched hand thrust against her wrist, deflecting the knife. It tore through Annaly’s pale hair, but did not harm her.

Lynda was enormously strong with the unbelievable strength of madness. He dimly heard Regan yelling to him to stand aside. Somehow he found her wrist, held it tight. She tried to spin away from him, but he managed to retain his hold.

They rolled away from the corner, away from where Annaly was slumped in a dead faint. They both came to their feet at the same instant. Lynda yanked her hand free, drew the knife back.

In his mind it was as though the scene was suddenly taking place in slow motion. The blade was floating toward his belly and his balled fist was moving toward her jaw. Already he seemed to feel the hot, steaming pain of the thrust that would disembowel him.

The shock of the blow ran up his arm. The point of the knife touched him, and then moved away, falling from a limp hand as Lynda spun half around and dropped on her face, her hand against Annaly’s ankle.

He stood for a moment and looked down at Lynda, remembering the sultry warmth of the Calcutta nights, the more sultry warmth — of her lips...

Weakly he moved to the wall. He leaned against it and covered his eyes, vaguely conscious that Lynda was being bound, lifted, carried out.

Suddenly a shot crashed in another part of the house. Regan stood very still, his eyes intent, and then he seemed to crumple.

“What was that?” Peter asked.

“George. He must have figured it — I forgot to take his gun away from him.”

They had taken Annaly into the next bedroom. As Regan went slowly downstairs, Peter went in to look at Annaly.

She looked up at Peter with a sort of dull anger. “You were going to pay them!” she said. “You were going to turn me into a... a drudge!”

He tried to smile. “I won’t have to, now.”

She looked confused. Her face brightened. She was the small girl who had been given back the ice cream cone. “Come kiss me, darling,” she said.

“Were you frightened?” he asked.

“She wouldn’t really have hurt me, Peter. Not really,” she said confidently.

Peter looked at her and he suddenly saw her for the first time. A small beautiful, desirable girl, with the mind of a petulant child. Not a partner — but someone to be cared for, looked after.

As from a great distance, he heard his own voice saying, “Annaly, I hope that some day you will grow up. And I hope that when you do, you will meet someone who will appreciate you.”

As he left the room he heard her call plaintively. But he didn’t go back. He knew that she would soon get over the damage to her pride, just as he knew that life would never actually touch her...

It was after nine before all the statements had dictated, typed and signed and before Chief Daniels felt willing to release them. Peter watched Annaly, seeing in her eyes the bright interest of one who attends an interesting movie. He wondered why he hadn’t understood her before. Maybe that Cowl fellow would be willing to shoulder the burden of a child wife.

He wrote a three hundred dollar check for Regan and thanked him. Regan smiled thinly at the check and tucked it away, made no answer.

Robina left first. Peter was released a few minutes later. He hurried out, looked up the dark street in disappointment.

Then he slowed his steps, began to walk wearily home.

He walked near the big elms, his shadow revolving across the dark lawns as he passed the street lights.

“Hello, hero,” the soft voice said.

He stopped and turned. She leaned against one of the huge trees, her cigarette a glowing red dot in the velvet night.

He held her wrists tightly, the cigarette making a tiny shower of sparks as it dropped into the grass. She had a woman’s lips, a woman’s body, a woman’s strength.

There would be plenty of time later on to tell her how he had been wrong about Annaly, how it had been her all the time.

Plenty of time later.

Not right now.

Because, at the moment, Peter B. Hume, attorney at law, was kissing his secretary, and in some silent and mysterious way, they were telling each other all manner of things that could never be expressed in words.