The stairs to the washroom went down in smooth, marble terraces besides the elevator shaft. O’Hara had a hunch and he took the marble steps three at a time.
He slapped the leather-padded swing doors out of the way and went into the outer room of the lounge. There wasn’t anyone there, not even Hamfoot, the shoeshine boy.
He slammed through a second set of leather-padded doors and there were three guys there. One of them was Clancy, who didn’t seem to know or care where he was. He was on his back with his head beneath one of the washbowls. Blood and saliva drooled out of his open mouth.
Ernie, the dark-faced man from 907, was crunching photographic plates under one heel very deliberately and methodically. He had already kicked Clancy’s camera to bits.
Hamfoot trembled and jittered in one corner and his black face was a pale gray.
Ernie looked coldly at O’Hara as he crunched the last plate on the floor. He had a gun in his hand and he said: “Hello, press agent. Get the hell outa my way!”
The dark-faced man apparently had been accustomed for a long time to the respect a gun should command. He took it for granted that O’Hara would get out of the way so he walked toward him, toward the door. O’Hara did step aside. But when Ernie came even with him, he kicked the gun out of Ernie’s hand in one fast whirl of movement, using the follow-through of the kick to bring his right popping at the swarthy jaw. The right went high, smacking Ernie on the temple; but it had enough steam to slam him against the wall.
O’Hara felt pretty sore about things. He didn’t like little Clancy being knocked around and he didn’t like guys to put guns on him. But, most of all, he was sore about trying and trying to get that picture of the new L.O.B. officers and never getting it.
Ernie bounced off the wall, spun into the swing doors and catapulted into the outer room of the lounge. The doors swung shut again and O’Hara dived for the gun, came back at the doors. When he got them out of his way, the dark-faced man had vanished up the stairs.
O’Hara didn’t follow him. Ernie had a head start and if O’Hara did grab the guy in the lobby, it might start a riot in which hotel patrons could get hurt. A hotel press agent had to think of those things.
He went back in to Clancy and pulled him from under the washbowl. Hamfoot, still a pale gray, got a towel wet wordlessly and draped it over Clancy’s forehead.
Clancy stirred and sat up. He scowled at O’Hara, said: “Where am I?”
“That,” O’Hara growled, “is what everybody was asking a few minutes ago.”
“Now I remember — a guy socked me. By cripes, I hope I catch him sometime.” Clancy’s look was ferocious and he waggled a skinny fist at the end of his pipestem arm. “If I catch him—”
“You’ll be unlucky twice in the same place. Why’d you waltz down here with him?”
“He comes up to me at the newsstand and shows me he has his hand on a gun in his pocket. Then he makes me get my plate case and my box and brung me down here and socked me.” Clancy looked around. “Hey, Kenny, look what he done to my stuff!”
“Where’s the plate you shot in 907?”
Clancy spat blood out of his mouth. “You think the guy was after that one?”
“I don’t think it, I know it.”
Clancy chuckled. “The guy is outa luck. I left that one and a couple others I shot since lunch at the newsstand.”
“Make me a print as fast as possible. Can you walk?”
“Can I walk! Say, Kenny, I took a lot worse beatings than that and still got my pix in. Why, one time I am on the Denver Post—”
“Sure, sure, Clancy.” O’Hara got the little man to his feet, got him started out.
Hamfoot pointed at the gun, which O’Hara had laid atop a cabinet. “You forgettin’ you gun, Mist’ O’Hara.”
“Not mine,” said O’Hara. “Maybe the owner’ll be back for it and you can give it to him — across his dome.”
O’Hara and Clancy went up the stairs. There wasn’t any sign of the dark-faced man in the thronged lobby.
The cries of “Where’s Clancy?” had given way to the strains of the convention pep song in half-a-dozen keys. Everyone — that is, almost everyone — was happy.
The exception was the bellhop who skated across the lobby, skidded to a stop before O’Hara. He was goggle-eyed.
He said, keeping his voice down: “Geez, O’Hara, a moider!”
“A what?”
“A moider — a dead guy on the ninth floor. Dahlman wants you up there fast. He’s gone up with the dicks and he said you was to keep the reporters from knowing about it.”
Chapter Two
Closeted With a Corpse
The jockey-sized man was curled up at the bottom of the ninth-floor linen closet where a horrified maid had discovered him some fifteen minutes before. Kneeling beside the body, O’Hara saw, was Lieutenant Lenroot of Central Homicide. Lenroot unbuttoned the little man’s vest, lifted away a folded hotel towel from the shirtfront. Both towel and shirtfront were blood soaked.
Lenroot unbuttoned the shirt, using the towel to wipe away blood. “Stabbed dead center in the ticker,” he said. “Probably in one of the rooms on this floor.”
Dahlman objected shrilly. “You mean you’re going to intrude on our guests, Lieutenant? Why, we have eighty rooms on this floor — I won’t have you disturbing our guests like that!”
Lenroot said: “Don’t worry. We’ll handle everything nice.” He checked the little man’s pockets, found nothing got up off his knees. “Any idea who he is, Mr. Dahlman?”
“I never saw him before.”
O’Hara said: “I—”
Dahlman whipped around, noticed O’Hara for the first time. He shook a ladylike finger, said: “You certainly took your time getting up here, O’Hara. After this, when I send for you, you come hopping.”
Lenroot showed long yellow teeth in a grimace at O’Hara. He was a large stomachy man with a long, pale face and pale eyes. He said: “What’re you doing here, O’Hara? I thought you were out of the newspaper racket and — after many years — out of my hair.”
“He’s doing publicity for us,” Dahlman said. “I sent for you, O’Hara, to say that you positively must keep this thing away from the reporters—”
He broke off and stared past O’Hara, moaned softly: “Oh, my goodness, my goodness!”
O’Hara turned and there were five reporters and two photogs barging around the angle of the corridor, bearing down on them. Mason, the house dick, was borne along helplessly in their midst.
Kendall of the Times was in the lead and he chortled happily: “O’Hara, you’re a hotel press agent as is a press agent — you give us a swell murder in your first week here!”
Dahlman sputtered up at O’Hara: “You did that?”
“Did what?”
“You tipped off these reporters! Why, you... you—”
O’Hara might have had a chance to straighten matters out if at that moment it hadn’t occurred to Clancy that his contribution was needed. He shoved between O’Hara and Dahlman.
He waggled a puny fist in Dahlman’s face, growled: “Pull up your panty-waist, sister. You can’t shove my pal around.”
At that Dahlman went to pieces in earnest. He screamed: “You’re fired, Clancy. And you, O’Hara, you’re fired, too. Get out — get out! Both of you! Before I go crazy!”
Clancy said consolingly: “Well, sister, you ain’t got far to travel.”
Back of O’Hara the reporters guffawed and Dahlman wrung his hands, quivered. He darted a finger at O’Hara, at Clancy, and said hotly: “Lieutenant, get these men out of here. Get them out, please.”