The Oxford Book of American Det (48 page)

“What—what are they worth?” she asked.

“Singly,” I told her, “they aren’t worth over five thousand apiece, but the four of them taken together, with that perfect matching and lustre, are worth forty grand in any man’s dough.” I shot her a look to see if she thought there was anything phoney about my appraisal. She didn’t. Her eyes were commencing to narrow now as ideas raced through her head.

“I suppose,” she told me, “you’ll peddle them to a fence and only get about a tenth of what they’re worth.”

“Well, a tenth of forty grand buys a lot of hamburgers,” I told her.

She moved over toward a small table, slid one hip up on that, and let the negligee slide carelessly open, apparently too much interested in the pearls to remember that she wasn’t clothed for the street. She had plenty to look at, that girl.

“You make a working girl dizzy,” she said wistfully. “Think how hard I’d have to work to make four thousand dollars.”

“Not with that shape.”

Indignantly she pulled the robe around her. Then she leaned forward, let the silk slip from her fingers and slide right back along the smooth line of her leg.

“I suppose it’s wicked of me,” she said, “but I can’t help thinking what an awful shame it is to sell anything as valuable as that for a fraction of what it’s worth. I should think you’d get yourself some good-looking female accomplice, someone who could really wear clothes. You could doll her up with some glad rags and show up in Santa Barbara or Hollywood, or perhaps in New Orleans. She could stay at a swell hotel, make friends, and finally confide to one of her gentlemen friends that she was temporarily embarrassed and wanted to leave some security with him and get a really good loan. Gosh, you know, there are lots of ways of playing a game like that.” I frowned contemplatively. “You’ve got something there, baby,” I told her. “But it would take a girl who could wear clothes; it’d take a baby who’d be able to knock ‘em dead and keep her head while she was doing it; it’d take a fast thinker, and it would take someone who’d be one hundred per cent loyal. Where are you going to find a moll like that?”

She got up off the table, gave a little shrug with her shoulders, and the negligee slipped down to the floor. She turned slowly around as though she’d been modelling the peach-coloured underwear. “I can wear clothes,” she said.

I let my eyes show suspicion. “Yeah,” I told her. “You sure got what it takes on that end, but how do I know you wouldn’t cross me to the bulls if anybody came along and offered a reward?”

Her eyes were starry now. She came toward me. “I don’t double-cross people I like,” she said. “I liked you from the minute I saw you—something in your voice, something in the way you look. I don’t know what it is. When I fall, I fall fast and I fall hard. And I play the game all the way. You and I could go places together. I could put you up right here until the excitement’s over. Then we could go places and—“ I said suspiciously, “You aren’t handing me a line?”

“Handing you a line!” she said scornfully. “Do I look like the sort of girl who’d have to hand anyone a line? I’m not so dumb. I know I have a figure. But you don’t see me living in a swell apartment with some guy footing the bills, do you? I’m just a working girl, plugging along and trying to be on the up-and-up. I’m not saying that I like it. I’m not even saying that I’m not sick of it. But I am telling you that you and I could go places together. You could use me and I’d stick.”

“Now, wait a minute, baby,” I temporised. “Let me get this package stamped and think this thing over a minute. You sure have got me going. Gripes! I’ve been in stir where I didn’t see a frail for months on end, and now you come along and dazzle me with a shape like that. Listen, baby, I—“

I raised the stamps to my tongue, licked them and started to put them on the package.

The wet mucilage touched my thumb and the stamps stuck. I tried to shake my thumb loose and the stamps fell to the floor, windmilling around as they dropped. I swooped after the stamps, and sensed motion over on the other side of the table.

I straightened, to find myself staring into the business end of my gun, which she’d snatched up from the table.

“Now then, sucker,” she said, “start reaching.”

I stood, muscles tensed, hands slowly coming up. “Now, take it easy, baby. You wouldn’t shoot me.”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t,” she told me. “I’d shoot you in a minute. I’d tell the cops you’d busted in here after your stick-up and I distracted your attention long enough to grab your gun; that you made a grab for me and I acted in self-defence.”

“Now listen, baby,” I told her, keeping my hands up, “let’s be reasonable about this thing. I thought you and I were going away together. I’d show you London and Paris and—“

She laughed scornfully and said, “What a sap I’d be to start travelling with a boob like you. A pair of pretty legs, and you forget all about your gun and leave it on the table while you chase postage stamps to the floor.”

“You going to call the cops?” I asked.

She laughed. “Do I look dumb? I’m going to give you a chance to escape.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, “I haven’t got the heart to see a nice-looking young man like you go to jail. I’m going to call the cops and tell them I saw you in the corridor. I’ll give you ten seconds start. That ten seconds will keep you from hanging around here, and calling the cops will put me in the clear in case anybody sees you.”

“Oh, I see,” I said sarcastically. “You mean you’re going to grab off the gravy.”

“Ideas don’t circulate through that dome of yours very fast, do they?” she asked.

I made a lunge toward the paper parcel I’d wrapped up, but the gun snapped up to a level with my chest. Her eyes glittered. “Don’t crowd me, you fool!” she said. “Of all the dumbhead plays you’ve made, that’s the worst. I’ll do it, and don’t think I don’t know how to shoot a gun, because I do.”

I backed slowly away.

“There’s the door,” she said. “Get going.” She started toward the telephone and said,

“I’m going to call the cops. You have ten seconds.” I spilled a lot of cuss words, to make the act look good, unlocked the door, jerked it open and jumped out into the corridor. I made pounding noises with my feet in the direction of the fire-escape and then tiptoed back. I heard a metallic click as she shot the bolt home in the door.

After waiting a couple of minutes, I dropped to one knee and peeked through the hole in the door. She was over at the table, ripping the wrappings from the parcel. I straightened, and pounded with my knuckles on the door.

“Police call,” I said in a deep gruff voice. “Open up.” Her voice sounded thick with sleep. “What is it?”

“Police,” I said, and dropped again, to put an eye to the peer-hole in the door.

She ran to a corner of the carpet, raised it, did something to the floor and then snatched up a kimono.

I pounded with my knuckles again.

“Coming,” she said drowsily.

She twisted back the bolt, opened the door about the width of a newspaper and asked,

“What do you want?”

I stood aside so she couldn’t see me.

“We’re looking for a man who robbed the jewellery store downstairs,” I growled in my throat. “We think he came up here.”

“Well, he didn’t.”

“Would you mind letting me in?”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “Oh, very well, if you have to come in, I guess you have to. Just a minute. I’ll put something on... All right.” She pulled the door back. I pushed my way into the room and kicked the door shut.

She looked at me with wide, terror-stricken eyes, then jumped back and said, “Listen, you can’t pull this. I’ll have the police here! I’ll—“ I walked directly to the corner of the carpet. She flung herself at me. I pushed her off.

I pulled back the corner of the carpet and saw nothing except floor. But I knew it was there and kept looking, pressing with my fingers. Suddenly I found it—a little cunningly joined section in the hardwood floor. I opened it. My package had been shoved in there, and down below it was a package of letters.

Bending down so that my body concealed just what I was doing, I pulled out pearls and letters and stuffed them in my inside coat pocket.

When I straightened, I found myself facing the gun.

“I told you you couldn’t get away with this,” she warned. “I’ll claim you held up the jewellery store and then crashed the gate here. What’re you going to do about that?”

“Nothing,” I told her, smiling. “I have everything I came for.”

“I can kill you,” she said, “and the police would give me a vote of thanks.”

“You could,” I told her, “but nice girls don’t go around killing men.” I saw her face contort in a spasm of emotion. “The hell they don’t!” she said, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer clicked on an empty cylinder. She reinforced the index finger of her right hand with the index finger of her left. Her eyes were blazing. She clicked the empty cylinder six times and then threw the gun at me. I caught it by the barrel and side-stepped her rush. She tripped over a chair and fell on the couch.

“Take it easy,” I told her.

She raised her voice then and started to call me names. At the end of the first twenty seconds, I came to the conclusion I didn’t know any words she didn’t. I started for the door. She made a dash for the telephone and was yelling: “Police headquarters!” into the transmitter as I closed the door and drifted noiselessly down the corridor.

In the hallway I pulled off the pasteboard mask, moistened a piece of cotton in the benzine and scrubbed off the bits of adhesive which had stuck to my face and forehead.

I wadded the mask into a ball, walked around to my car and drove away.

I heard the siren of a police radio car when I was three blocks away. The machine roared by me, doing a good sixty miles an hour.

Walking down the corridor of the Pemberton home, I coughed as I passed Mrs.

Pemberton’s door. I walked into my bedroom and waited. Nothing happened. I took out the letters and looked at them. They were plenty torrid. Some men like to put themselves on paper. Harvey Pemberton had indulged himself to the limit.

I heard a scratching noise on my door, then it slowly opened. Mrs. Pemberton, walking as though she’d carefully rehearsed her entrance, came into the light of the room and pulled lacy things around her. “My husband hasn’t come in yet,” she said. “But he may come in any minute.”

I looked her over. “Even supposing that I’m your brother,” I said, “don’t you think he’d like it a lot better if you had on something a little more tangible?” She said, “I wear what I want. After all, you’re my brother.”

“Well, go put on a bathrobe over that,” I told her, “so I won’t be so apt to forget it.” She moved a step or two toward the door, then paused. “You don’t need to be so conventional,” she said.

“That’s what you think.”

“I want to know what you’ve found out.”

“You’re out in the clear,” I told her. “All we need now is to—“ I broke off as I heard the sound of an automobile outside. There was a business-like snarl to the motor which I didn’t like, and somebody wore off a lot of rubber as the car was slammed to a stop.

“That’s Harvey now,” she said.

“Harvey wouldn’t park his car at the curb in front, would he?” I asked.

“No,” she admitted.

“Get back to your room,” I told her.

“But I don’t see what you’re so—“

“Get started!” I said.

“Very well, Sir Galahad,” she told me.

She started down the corridor toward her room. I heard the pound of feet as someone ran around the house toward the back door. Then I heard feet on the stairs, crossing the porch, and the doorbell rang four or five times, long, insistent rings.

I slipped some shells into the empty chambers of my gun, switched off the lights, opened my door, picked up my bag and waited.

I heard Mrs. Pemberton go to the head of the stairs, stand there, listening. After a moment I heard the rustle of her clothes as she started down. I stepped out to the hallway and stood still.

I heard her say, “Who is it?” and a voice boom an answer through the closed door.

“Police,” it said. “Open up.”

“But I—I don’t understand.”

“Open up!”

She unlocked the door. I heard men coming into the corridor, then a man’s voice say,

“I’m Lieutenant Sylvester. I want to talk with you. You’re Mrs. Pemberton?”

“Yes, but I can’t understand what could bring you here at this hour. After all, Lieutenant, I’m—“

“I’m sorry,” the lieutenant interrupted, “this is about your husband. When did you see him last?”

“Why, just this evening.”

“What time this evening?”

“Why, I don’t know exactly.”

“Where did you see him last?”

“Will you please tell me the reason for these questions?”

“Where,” he repeated, “did you see your husband last?”

“Well, if you insist on knowing, he was here for dinner and then left for the office about seven-thirty.”

“And you haven’t seen him since?”

“No.”

The officer said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pemberton, but your husband’s body was found on the floor of his office by the janitor about half an hour ago.”

“My husband’s body!” she screamed.

“Yes, ma’am,” the lieutenant said. “He’d been killed by two bullets fired from a thirty-two calibre automatic. The ejected shells were on the floor of his office. In an adjoining office, furnished with a dilapidated desk and a couple of chairs, we found a home-rigged microphone arrangement which would work as a dictograph. In the drawer of that desk we found the gun with which the murder had been committed.

Now, Mrs. Pemberton, what do you know about it?”

There was silence for a second or two, then she said in a thin, frightened voice, “Why, I don’t know anything about it.”

“What do you know about that office next to your husband’s?”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve never been in there?”

This time she didn’t hesitate. “No,” she said, “never. I don’t know what makes you think I would be spying on my husband. Perhaps someone has hired detectives.
I
wouldn’t know.”

I tiptoed back to my room, picked up my bag and started silently down the corridor toward the back stairs. I could hear the rumble of a man’s voice from the front room, and, at intervals, the thin, shrill sound of Mrs. Pemberton’s half-hysterical answers.