“Payoff?” She laughed hollowly. “This time, darling, the payoff is murder. I feel it inside. This time Talbot will...”
“With someone else perhaps,” McDowell conceded begrudgingly, “but not with Lynne. He’s a cinch.”
“No. I want out. That’s final.”
McDowell turned from the balcony in quick anger. “Talbot,” he said in an ominously soft voice when he was out of Gretchen’s hearing range, “I have a job for you.”
“She’s your woman,” Talbot said without looking up from the cards.
“She has suddenly become very dangerous to us. She could talk.”
Talbot remained silent.
“I want her killed,” McDowell said.
Talbot flipped a card, placed it. “So kill her.”
“That’s your line.”
“Not in this particular case, Arnold.”
“Why not?”
“Do you plan to continue the operation?”
“Certainly. It’s very lucrative. You know that.”
“And we will continue to be partners?”
“Naturally.”
“Then you kill her, Arnold. I don’t want it hanging over my head. Someday it could ruin our partnership. You have an uncanny knack of holding a grudge.”
“Dammit, you’re falling down on your end of our deal! Cheat!”
The two men stared at each other for a long time. And then Talbot finally sighed deeply. “All right, Arnold. Let’s play a game.”
“What!”
“Fifty-fifty chance. You interested?”
“Chance on what?”
“Which one of us kills your woman.”
“Oh, no!”
“I’m conceding. I shouldn’t, but I like this set up. It pays off, so I’m conceding to a degree. I’ll take a chance. I don’t want to kill Gretchen for you because I think it will backfire someday. Still — I’ll cut the cards with you.”
“You’ll what?”
Talbot gathered the deck of cards, shuffled them expertly and put them on the low coffee table. He looked out toward Gretchen Kane on the balcony, and then suddenly he was looking up at McDowell hard. “We cut,” he said. “High card deals. High card kills her.”
McDowell was ashen when he cut a Jack of Clubs. Talbot reshuffled the deck and cut an Eight of Hearts.
McDowell looked trapped in the grip of terrible indecision. “I... I don’t know whether I have... the stomach.”
“It’s really quite simple,” Talbot said with a vague shrug. “Push her from the balcony. Very little pain. It’s twenty-four floors.”
“Now?”
“Certainly not now. You have to set it up.”
“B-but...”
Talbot appeared to think deeply as McDowell stumbled for the words. “All right,” Talbot said finally, “I’ll set it up for you.”
McDowell’s mouth worked, but no words came out.
“We’ll make it tomorrow night,” Talbot said as he began placing the cards for a new game of solitaire. “We’ll use my office, the night watchman in the building, a mannequin and a tape. And...” Talbot hesitated, then placed a card carefully. “Yes, an outfit from my kit. One of the disguises for you. Nothing elaborate, just a little something that will keep others in this building from recognizing you.”
“I... I don’t understand any of this!” McDowell exploded.
“Patience, Arnold,” Talbot said with equanimity. “Think of the physical makeup of my office, the entry room and the frosted glass door between it and my private sanctuary. The fire escape outside my sixth floor window. It’s perfect.”
Talbot placed three consecutive cards face up and grinned. “I’ll inform Mr. Jamison, the night watchman, that I have a very important client coming in tomorrow night on a tax matter, a client who is demanding discretion and secrecy. We are to meet in my office. And to absolutely insure that we have complete privacy I will need someone sitting in the entry room to block the charwoman, a late straggler, or anyone who might return to the building for night work. That someone will be Mr. Jamison.”
“But...” McDowell began.
He cut it off when Talbot raised a hand. Talbot placed another card. His grin spread. He was winning. “I’ll seat the mannequin in front of my desk. I will be behind the desk playing the tape of our voices, a tape we’ll make tonight. Jamison will be in the entry room. By placing a lamp strategically, he will be able to see our silhouettes through the frosted glass. He will also hear our voices. There now. You have your alibi and your witness. How could you possibly be in my office and three and a half miles across town at the same time?”
“I... I can’t,” McDowell said hesitantly. He sounded totally befuddled.
“We’ll also select the disguise tonight,” Talbot said thoughtfully. “I think a red wig, a mustache, dark-rimmed glasses and something to fatten you around the middle will do it. You might also limp.” He paused again. “No. The limp is out. You’ll forget it in your excitement. And we don’t want someone remembering a man who limped coming up to this suite and a man who did not limp leaving.”
He turned five cards without placing them on the table and his grin began to fade. “You will come up here at nine o’clock sharp,” he said almost absently. “You will let yourself inside, knock Gretchen unconscious immediately to keep her from screaming, toss her from the balcony, leave without running, take a bus to my building and come up the fire escape to my office. I will have the window open for you. We will then remove and hide the disguise along with the mannequin and tape, and confront Jamison in the entry. It will be imperative that he sees us coming out of my office. We might even converse with him for a few seconds so that he will be absolutely sure to remember you when the police want to quiz you about your whereabouts at the time your love fell — or jumped — to her death.”
McDowell stood rooted in open-mouthed fascination. “Fan-tastic!”
“But good,” Talbot said flatly.
“My ears are burning.”
McDowell jerked convulsively at the sound of Gretchen’s voice. Talbot, without moving, watched her come in from the balcony. She approached them with great animation and a tiny smile working at the corners of her red lips. She swept off the dark glasses. “Why is it people sometimes know when others are talking about them?”
Talbot shrugged and scowled down on the cards spread before him. He had been defeated again. He gathered and stacked the cards swiftly. “Arnold tells me you are planning to retire.”
“In California,” she said. “In the sun.”
“Have fun.”
“I expect to.”
The city shimmered in neon and the light of a full moon on the night of the murder. Talbot sat in his office in the Adams building and stared out on the kaleidoscope of artificial color. The hour hand of his wrist watch crawled from nine to ten o’clock. He waited patiently, only half listening to the voices that came from the tape recording on his desk. He turned, smiled faintly on the mannequin seated opposite him and took a fresh deck of cards from a drawer.
He was in his third game of solitaire when he heard the noise on the fire escape below his window. He gathered the cards, stacked them neatly, put them in the drawer and watched the legs slide through the open window.
Gretchen Kane swept off the red wig and dark-rimmed glasses and removed the layers of towels from inside her clothing. Then she stood before Talbot, tall and beautiful and desirable. She was smiling happily.
“He’s dead?” Talbot asked.
“Smooth as silk, darling,” she purred. She handed him a small automatic. “Just one shot, dead center.”