They dragged her into the closet between them like a sack of potatoes. There was a clothes bar running across it at shoulder-height. They tied a sort of halter to her under her arms, of thick sheet and pillow-case strips, wound it around this, left her dangling with her bound feet just inches short of the floor.
“That way she won’t be able to thump them, attract anyone’s attention.”
They closed the door on her. A sudden pall of darkness obliterated everything. She could still hear them through it for a moment or two more, making their last-minute preparations for departure.
“Got the bag?”
“Hey, I’m missing that hotel bill. We gotta pay up before we can get out here. It musta fallen on the floor some place around here.”
“Never mind looking for it now; let it go. They can make out a new one for us at the desk.”
“What’ll we say about her? They seen her come up here.”
“All right, she got tanked and we left her here to sleep it off. Hang up a Don’t Disturb on the door. That’ll keep ’em out longer.”
The outside door closed and they were gone.
She dangled there in the dark, unable even to swing her feet back and try to strike the rear wall of the closet with them; it hurt her already aching, out-of-joint shoulders too much.
They’d never make that bus now. Poor Frank would wait there for her at the Gadsby house, with the dead man to keep him company, until broad daylight came and someone happened on him there, and they arrested him for it. And that would be the end; he’d never be able to clear himself.
After all, Rose and her partner hadn’t left anything half as incriminating over there as that broken wall safe he was responsible for. She could accuse them all she wanted to afterwards, when she was released herself, but it wouldn’t do much good.
Precious minutes ticking by. It must be all of 5:30 now. In another ten minutes at the latest she and Frank should have been starting for the bus terminal. What a fat chance now. She’d be here all day probably.
They might have known the city would outsmart them. It always did. Just a small-town boy and a smalltown girl — what chance did they have? He’d go up the river to the electric chair. And she’d turn into a tough chain-dancer in a treadmill, without a heart, without a soul, without even a dream any more. Precious minutes ticking by, that couldn’t be stopped, couldn’t be called back again...
The outside door suddenly opened furtively. Someone had come in again. For a minute wild hopes flashed through her mind. The hotel clerk, his suspicions aroused? Maybe even Frank himself, who had had time to find out by now that Holmes wasn’t the guilty party? Then a voice spoke guardedly, and her hopes were dashed, turned into freezing horror.
“I shoulda thought of that sooner, before we got all the way downstairs.” It was Rose Beacon’s voice. They’d come back again — maybe to finish her off then and there, right on the spot. “There musta been something there that tipped her off. It’s a cinch she didn’t pull my name and address out of a hat.”
The closet door swung out and blinding light spilled over her, rendering her eyes useless for a moment. She was aware of herself being lowered from the clothes bar, dragged out into the room between the two of them. One of them lowered the towel gag sufficiently so that she could speak. She glimpsed Rose’s hand poised threateningly toward her lips, fingers knotted.
“Now if you try to scream, I’ll let you have one!”
She couldn’t scream, even if she’d wanted to. All she could do was pant and sag exhaustedly against the man who was holding her, overcome by the excruciating strain of the position she’d been in.
“Now quick, no stalling,” Rose went on. “What was it over there at Gadsby’s place that tipped you off I knew him? How’d you know where to find me?”
Carol answered in a muffled but unhesitant voice: “You dropped a hotel bill out of your handbag to the floor. It was lying near him—”
“She’s lying; I could swear I saw it when I got back here.”
“No,” Carol panted. “It was over there; seventeen dollars and eighty-nine cents.”
“Did you bring it with you?” the man asked, giving her a merciless shake.
“No. I left it lying there right where it was.”
“Don’t take her word for it; search her handbag,” he ordered. “If she picked it up in here, she’s still got it.”
The woman did, quickly and thoroughly. “She hasn’t got it.”
“Then we’ll have to go back there and get it! We can’t leave it lying around. It’s as good as a visiting card.” This time it was toward Rose he backed his hand. “You dopey idiot! Why weren’t you more careful?”
“I took it out to show it to him for a build-up, to show him how I needed money; that was before he got tough about it. It’s better this way, don’t you get it, Joe? We’ll take her with us when we go back, and then we’ll—” she hitched her head at Carol with unmistakable meaning — “do it there. Fix it to look like she did it to him, and then bumped herself off. That way we’re in the clear.”
“How’ll we get her past the desk?”
“She’s pie-eyed — that’s what we told him just now when we came down without her, ain’t it? We’re helping her home. Leave her hands tied the way they are, just loosen her feet.” She took off her own coat, slung it loosely around Carol’s shoulders, covering the unnatural rigidity of her arms.
The man brought out something from one of his pockets, slipped a hand underneath the enshrouding coat, ground something round and hard into her spine. “If you let out a peep, this goes off into you. And don’t think I’m kidding!”
She knew he wasn’t. But the point was, why should she cry out on her way through the lobby below or outside in the street, when she was getting them to go back to the murder house and face their crime? The only difference was, now they had the upper hand, and it would probably end in her own death.
“Keep your head down,” Rose Beacon cautioned viciously, and got a grip at the back of her neck in addition to the gun muzzle her partner was holding centered against her backbone, forcing her to bend it downward. She made it look as though she was supporting her. In place of the towel gag she solicitously held a handkerchief pressed to Carol’s mouth with her other hand, as though she were on the verge of being ill.
They swayed out through the lobby with her. “She’ll be all right as soon as we get some black coffee into her,” Rose called out cheerfully to the clerk. He snickered understandingly.
They evidently had a car of their own. They maneuvered her down the street to where it had been waiting in readiness for their own getaway, squeezed her into the front seat between the two of them. Rose took over the gun, kept it prodded into her side. Joe took the wheel.
Carol sat there docilely, made no move to resist. She wanted them to get there unhindered as much as they wanted to themselves.
They braked two or three doors down from the Gadsby house, in the before-dawn desolation of the street. They couldn’t leave the car at the corner, as Frank and she had the taxi, because they had her to convey. Joe cut the ignition, watchfully scanned the dark, lifeless house for a minute.
“Still good for another quick trip in and out,” he commented finally.
Her heart was pounding wildly as they hauled her out to the sidewalk, led her over to it with quick looks around to make sure no one was in sight, hustled her up the stoop into the concealment of the vestibule.
“Made it,” Rose breathed relievedly.
He tried the door cautiously, and it fell back before them.