It had been necessary to bury the chauffeur, as O’Hanna remembered the story. That made it murder, but the Los Angeles police had never been able to pin the dynamiting on anybody else. As for the black kitten, it had been adopted into the family and — when the old gentleman died of heart failure — there’d been a clause in his will setting up a trust fund to support the cat as long as it lived.
O’Hanna asked: “What’d he mean, let the cat alone?”
“I... I’m not sure. I screamed and sat up in bed and tried to turn on a light.” The blonde widened her eyes at O’Hanna. “There was a blinding flash, and Grandpa turned to smoke before my eyes!”
Endicott swallowed a word. After all, she was a paying guest and the granddaughter of a millionaire.
The girl said: “It’s the truth! It scared me so I jumped out of bed, and the next thing I knew I was running across the hotel grounds toward the main building.”
O’Hanna looked his surprise.
Eva Taine explained: “I’m staying in one of your hotel cottages — chalets, you call them.”
O’Hanna had known she was registered in one of the chalets — tourist cabins, he privately called them. Chalet was just the fifty-dollar word, coined by Endicott to justify the super-duper price charged for these accommodations. For in the swankiest California resort hotels, a cottage on the grounds is considerably classier — and costlier — than a suite in the hotel itself. A chalet at San Alpa spells what a penthouse apartment means in New York or Chicago.
It wasn’t the chalet that surprised O’Hanna. He put it in words: “But you stopped to put on the negligee?”
“No, I wore it to bed. I curled up with a book and must have fallen asleep over it.”
Endicott sniffed. “A book of ghost stories?”
O’Hanna ignored Endicott, said: “Then, when you fell asleep reading, there was a light burning in the room?”
“No — I mean yes. I remember half waking up with the light bothering my eyes. I switched it off and turned over and went back to sleep.” She sighed. “It sounds silly, but I’m afraid to go back there alone...”
O’Hanna said: “Let’s sneak out the back door.”
It didn’t prove her story was true, but O’Hanna heard the blonde catch her breath as they stepped out onto the night-cooled concrete driveway circling from the service door — she hadn’t stopped for mules, she’d come barefoot. Past the driveway, though, the hotel lawn was as perfect as a golf green. The steep-roofed, Swiss-styled chalets were farther down the slope, hidden among black oak and pine trees.
She didn’t like the pine needles. It didn’t prove her story exactly, but as he threw a flashlight under the trees he could see she hadn’t stopped to dodge needles the first time. There was dew enough to take a footprint. And she’d left footprints across the grass instead of following the picturesquely curving paths.
She’d left the chalet door open, too. They climbed stone steps to reach the threshold, snapped on lights in a knotty-pine paneled hallway, opening on the left into a paneled living room with peasant footstools scattered around the floor and sporting prints scattered around the walls. On the right, doors opened into bed chambers.
The blonde said: “This one.”
O’Hanna went in first, pressed a wall switch, and lit up a chandelier. The light she’d reached for was a reading lamp that had a chain dropping from the bed head. That bulb didn’t light. He touched it and it was loose in its socket.
The open window hadn’t blown away a strong smell of burnt match around the bed.
O’Hanna went to this window, aimed the flashlight onto the grass outside, and saw tracks in the dew. He said, “Excuse me while I play bloodhound,” and forked a leg over the sill.
The footprints ran upslope, about as easy to follow as U.S. No. 1. They led O’Hanna to the front steps of a chalet fifty yards above Eva Taine’s.
He climbed the steps, thumbed a bell button.
A chime rang two notes, immediately followed by a gun crash.
O’Hanna threw the door open, but the other man had a running start, and he had a fistful of something to help clear the way. He clipped O’Hanna like the Notre Dame backfield carrying hand hatchets.
The house dick went down, groveled, and rose on one knee. His back teeth vibrated in their sockets. His left eye ached. He was conscious, though, and he didn’t have to pinch himself to make sure. He knew the backfield had bounced off him and whirled and run the other way.
Apparently it ran into somebody else because a voice said, “Ow!” loudly and there was a sound of falling.
O’Hanna stood up. This took time. The trouble was in his legs. His legs buckled and he had to grab at the wall. He knew tears were trying to wash hot needles out of his eye. He took careful, weaving steps with his hand braced against the wall.
There was a sound of swearing. Then a light snapped on, turning a doorway yellow. O’Hanna reached the doorway and stopped, leaning a shoulder against the jamb.
In front of him, a man in bright green pajamas was down on his knees reaching for a gun under the bed. Addressing O’Hanna, he said: “Hell, he got away.” He rescued the gun from under the bed, pointed it at the open window and said: “He jumped out there. But I got a shot at him, anyway.”
O’Hanna lurched to the window. The shadow cast by his body stopped him from seeing anything. He moved to one side and peered down to the spill of window light on the grass.
There were footprints in the dew.
O’Hanna started to slide a leg over the sill. The green-pajamaed man came and grabbed the house dick’s shoulder. “Hey, not so fast!” He punched a revolver at O’Hanna’s face.
O’Hanna had been clipped over the left ear, and it hurt. Up close, it looked as if two hands and two revolvers were pointed at him. He had an idea it would hurt a lot more if one of them went off.
“Not so fast,” Green Pajamas said. “Just kindly say who the hell you are and what you’re doing here.”
He was a fattish man, the skin of his face pink and shiny and filled out with lard. There was a kind of slick dampness about the pink skin, like the fat sleek toadstools which pop up under mountain trees after a rain.
O’Hanna said: “Let go, you fool — I’m the house officer.”
“Yeah? Says you.”
“There’s a badge in my pocket.”
“Keep away from your pockets.” The fat pink face floated back. He kept the gun pointed. He lifted a phone from the bedside table.
“Operator,” the man said, “this is Mr. Lucas Kuhn in chalet 21-A I’ve got a prowler here who claims to be your house dick. Ask the manager to come down and see if he can identify the guy.”
O’Hanna said: “Ask her what I look like, sap.” But Lucas Kuhn had hung up.
O’Hanna stood and cooled off with the window behind him. It wasn’t as good as an icepack, but it helped. He fingered the spot. There was a little blood on his fingers and a little blood on the floor. His?
“Stand still, you,” Lucas Kuhn warned.
O’Hanna stayed still. He figured he had but one life, and why wager it on the whimsy of a trigger-happy paying guest? He said: “O.K., you’ve got me stopped, but it doesn’t mean we have to stall our brains. What’d the fellow look like?”
“That’s just the trouble. I couldn’t see in the dark.” Lard creases half-closed the pajama-clad man’s eyes. “It might even have been you!”
“Me! You said he went through the window!”
“You could have jumped out the window and run in the front door again,” Lucas Kuhn said. He thought it over and said: “Or there could have been two prowlers — the other guy and you.”
He kept the gun pointed. He said: “I’m playing it safe. You’re staying put until the manager identifies you.”