I got him all right, and I started to back up.
“You ain’t gonna mess around with no more women,” he said. Then his voice got low and came out through his teeth. “You’ve made a sap out of your last dame.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I didn’t care. I knew his intentions. I turned around and walked into my room. Just as I crossed the threshold, I reached out and flung the heavy door back behind me with all my strength.
It caught him flush alongside his big head, and he dropped as if he’d been hit by Joe Louis. I slammed the door shut, jumped over his rolling body, and took off the way I used to every Saturday afternoon when I had a pigskin tucked under my arm. I didn’t know what the big ape wanted, but just then I wasn’t stopping to ask.
I didn’t apply the brakes until I got to Room 412. The door wasn’t quite closed. I knocked a couple of times and there was no answer. I figured maybe Ethel Winters wasn’t there, but as long as she was expecting me, I walked in.
She was there, all right — propped up in bed, wearing a nightgown and a big grin. Only the grin was in the wrong place — it was in her throat. Her neck had been slashed so savagely that it had practically taken her head right off her shoulders. An army trench-knife was still imbedded deep in her pink flesh. I looked down at her beautiful body — then at the bedspread soaked red with her blood, and I knew that if I didn’t get out of there fast, I was going to be sick.
For the next couple of hours I walked up and down the boardwalk, taking deep drags on cigarettes and the much-advertised Atlantic City air. Neither seemed to do me much good. Every time I thought of that blood-spattered bed, my stomach started playing pat-a-cake with my Adam’s apple.
It was quite dark when I got back to the hotel. The lobby was crawling with cops, so I knew that they’d discovered Ethel Winters’ body. I started to do what I should have done in the first place — tell the police what I’d found when I walked into that room. I got over to the desk, where the small cluster of men was standing. Half of them were in uniform and the others wore plain clothes.
A thin hawk-faced man, with piercing black eyes, was doing the talking. The others just listened.
Then the desk-clerk looked up, saw me, and said something to them. All of a sudden I’d never seen so many eyes at one time before — and they were all looking at me.
“Who’s in charge here?” I asked.
“Why?” said the little sergeant with a roly-poly stomach and eyes to match. “Something on your mind?”
“I want to report a murder.”
“You don’t say?” he mouthed. “Now ain’t that interesting?”
The tall man with the piercing eyes silenced him with a motion of his hand. Then he turned to me.
“I’m your man,” he said. “Lieutenant Repetti, Atlantic City Homicide. You were saying?”
“My name is Len Martin,” I told him. “I’m from New York.”
“Now tell us something we don’t know.” He tapped the small notebook he held in his hand. “That, I’ve got.”
“Yeah,” chimed in the sergeant, “why not tell us about this here murder you’re so anxious to report?”
Anxious was hardly the word, but I told them why I was in the resort city and what I had found when I walked into Ethel Winters’ room.
“And what have you been doing since?” queried the sergeant suspiciously. “Don’t tell me you’ve been walking up and down the boardwalk getting the sea air.”
“Yeah, that’s just what I’ve been doing.”
“Oh no!” groaned the sergeant. “You hear that, Lieutenant? Why do these guys always pull that sucker routine?”
“Hey, wait a minute,” I protested. “Don’t get any ideas that I had anything to do with this.”
The sergeant slapped the side of his head and looked disgusted. Lieutenant Repetti poked a long forefinger into my chest.
“You should have come right to us when you found the girl’s body,” he barked. “Why didn’t you?”
“For Pete’s sake,” I fired at him, “I didn’t want to get mixed up in a murder.”
The sergeant laughed harshly, and now it was the lieutenant’s turn to look disgusted.
“And besides,” I went on, “I felt sick. I just wanted to get out of there and get some air.”
The lieutenant started to walk away from me. Then he turned suddenly as if he’d forgotten something.
“Were you in the Navy?” he asked.
“No — Army,” I told him. “First Division.”
“Infantry, huh?” mused the sergeant. “And you mean to tell me that a little blood makes you sick?”
“This is different.”
“I’ll bet.”
“But this was a girl,” I remarked. “She was beautiful.”
“Aw, come now, Martin.” yapped the sergeant pointedly. “You can speak plainer than that.”
“Shut up!” I yelled, and I felt like planting my fist in his fat face.
“Cut it, sergeant!” Lieutenant Repetti’s voice snapped like a whip. Then he looked over his shoulder at me. “Stick around, Martin. I want to ask you some questions about that insurance. I’ll send for you when I need you.”
I watched them walk away, and then nearly jumped a foot when the desk-clerk tapped me on the arm.
“Don’t let that fat slob of a sergeant get your goat, Mr. Martin. He’s a louse.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “He sure sounds like it.”
“Now that Lieutenant Repetti — he’s a real nice feller, Mr. Martin.” He grinned.
“Well, just so long as he doesn’t think I had anything to do with this, I’ll believe you.”
“Oh, he doesn’t think that, Mr. Martin.” The clerk ticked the bottom of his rimless glasses with his finger. “As a matter of fact, they know who killed her. Some great big hairy bruiser the maid saw running out of Miss Winters’ room.”
Chapter Two
What’s in a Name?
I went back upstairs, stuck the key in my door, and walked in. Just as I reached over to the light switch, the door banged shut behind me, and something hard and round jabbed me between the shoulder blades.
Now, I’m no cop or private eye. I’m just a guy trying to learn the ropes in the insurance business; but I didn’t have to be told that it was a gun sticking in my back. I figured I couldn’t afford waiting to find out what the guy was going to do.
So I spun around, bending low to the ground and leaned to the right. My left arm pawed out with a sweeping motion, and the gun went flying across the room. I heard it land with a satisfying thud on the carpet. I came up out of my crouch and threw a hard right just where I thought his belly would be. It was there, all right, because my fist felt like it went in about six inches.
There was a low moan as the air whished out of gasping lungs, and although it was so dark that I couldn’t see the gunman in front of me, I sensed something falling forward. I stuck out my hands and grabbed. But the body suddenly went limp, and it felt all soft and feminine under my touch.
I reached out and found the light witch. My eyes didn’t make a liar of my sense of touch. It was a gal, all right — out cold. The way I’d hit her, she’d probably have a sore diaphragm for days to come.
I picked her up and put her on the bed. By the time I got the Army .45 off the floor and shoved in into my pocket and brought a glass of water from the bathroom, she was coming to.
She moaned a couple of times and her hands went to her midriff. I guess it hurt plenty. Then she spotted me bending over and her eyes looked frightened. She started to get up. I put my hand out and pushed her back on the bed.