O’Hara said patiently, “Just because you think she’s a swell number—”
Shuford’s face flushed a deeper crimson. “I don’t have to be nuts about the girl to see she gets a decent deal. She’s one sweet kid and she’s not going to be pushed around by the likes of you. This is suicide, as plain as the nose on your face.”
O’Hara grinned. “I’ve been told my nose isn’t so bad.”
“Skip the comedy. You’ve had it in for Miss Dana ever since you hit the place last night.” Shuford banged his fist on the table, got his outslung jaw within six inches of O’Hara’s face. “If you’re smart, O’Hara, you’ll leave her alone, you’ll forget the whole thing. That’s a warning.”
For a little they looked at each other, Shuford breathing hard and his face like that of a small boy about to break into tears, but the kind of a small boy who fights harder the harder he cries.
O’Hara smiled and said, “Otto, you’re a sucker but you’re a nice guy. And ain’t love grand?”
For a moment it seemed that Shuford would either choke on his rage or swing at O’Hara. Then he spun, pounded down the aisle and slammed out the door.
Tony said, “Well!” And then, “Do you think he’s in it?”
“Maybe,” O’Hara said. “But my real hunch is that Otto’s just a big dumb kid who doesn’t know anything because nobody ever told him anything. Even his partners don’t tell him what the score is until the ninth inning. I’d still say he’s a good decent guy who’s going to town for this Dana wench because she’s the first hot number that ever gave him a tumble.”
“Nevertheless I’d watch out for him.”
“Somebody should.” O’Hara drained his coffee cup, reached for his coat. “How’s your nose feel?”
“Long and sharp. Where do we start?”
“Dana’s our best bet to start with. If it was murder, we know she had something to do with it. So we start with her and work onward and upward — I hope.”
Despite the rain and a moderate amount of publicity on the violent death of Johnny Law-ton, the Club Barcelona was doing its usual quota of business. The parking lot beside the long white building was jammed with cars and more were arriving.
O’Hara wedged his coupé into a meagre space at the curb across the street from the arched entrance to the club. The rain made a transparent shifting curtain between the car and the lights.
O’Hara’s wrist-watch read seven-twenty. To Tony Ames beside him he said, “The first floor show starts at seven-thirty and lasts nearly an hour. Dana’s in the opening number and closes the bill with her feather dance. That leaves plenty of time to prowl her place.”
“I hope we know what we’re doing,” Tony said. “After all, there is such a thing as burglary.”
“And I’ve heard murder’s illegal, too.”
“Inspector Blane’s pretty white. Maybe we could get him to go along with us on this.”
“And maybe,” O’Hara said, “you think I didn’t hint around for just that and got the cold fishy eye for my pains. Suicide and case closed, said he. So we’ll just have to depend on the well known freedom of the press.”
“And hope nobody abridges it for us,” Tony murmured. “All right, let’s go.”
“I’m going and you’re staying.”
“As usual, you want to hog all the trouble.”
O’Hara shook his head, grinned down at her. He said cheerfully. “Always misunderstood. Personally, I couldn’t ask for a nicer cellmate than you. But if one of us gets jammed up the other had better be on the outside to do something about it. Catch on?”
He got out, pulled his coat collar up, his hat-brim down. There was a group of three women, four men, arriving and he walked through the archway with them, let them turn to the right toward the dining-room and obscure him from the view of the hat-check girl. He went up the stairs quietly.
In the hall upstairs the Club Barcelona orchestra was muted to a rhythmic thump, a vague suggestion of melody.
He knocked on the door of Inez Dana’s apartment, waited for a little. There was no answer, no sound within the apartment. In a pawnshop on South Main Street a long time before O’Hara had picked up a keyring, fitted with a number of things that were handy if not entirely legal. He tried four keys on the lock before he found one that worked.
Inside the apartment he paused, closed the door softly behind him. The darkness was close, heavy with the scent of an expensive perfume and there was no noise save the quick faraway beat of the orchestra. After a little he went to a window that gave on the parking lot. The window was open and just underneath a man was talking as he helped a small, well curved blonde out of a car.
The man said, “If you wanta crash the fillums, baby, I can do plenty for you, provided you make me feel like it.”
The blonde giggled a little. O’Hara chuckled softly and put his hand on the window to close it. Then he let the window stay open, said, “Idea!” in a low, thoughtful voice.
Nobody could have left the room via the window the night before. The ornamental grille outside made that certain. But if the window had been open, nothing would have prevented someone from sticking a gun through the bars and into the room and firing a blank just at the right moment. He parted the draperies a little more and looked out.
After a bit he said, “No idea,” in a disgruntled fashion.
Nobody could put a hand through a window that couldn’t be reached and obviously it would have been impossible for anyone to reach the window without a ladder. The roofs of the cars backed against the wall were a dozen feet below. Moreover, the parking lot was brightly flood-lighted, there were three attendants and nobody could have climbed to the window without being detected against the white wall, as readily as a black hat in a snowbank.
For a moment he toyed with the idea of a gun attached to a long pole, thrust up from the ground or down from the roof. Then he put that aside, too. It would have been nearly as conspicuous in the glare of the flood-lights as a ladder. Besides that, it was clumsy and uncertain. And clumsiness had no part in the picture he had been piecing together for the last twenty-four hours.
Finally he shut the window, drew the heavy draperies. Noises from the traffic on Palms Boulevard drifted through the wall of red velvet very faintly.
He turned on a floor lamp and went to work, quickly but methodically. He didn’t know what he was looking for, in particular, so he scrutinized carefully everything he came across. He went through a desk in the living-room, through an antiqued cabinet, the radio highboy, looked behind pictures, under the rug, behind the cushions of the overstuffed set. He found toothing interesting; went on to the single bedroom.
In a cardboard suit-box on the top shelf in the dressing room just off the bedroom, O’Hara finally struck the litter of personal papers he had been sure would be around some place. There were newspaper clippings, theatrical and night-club programs from New York and Chicago, letters, half a dozen glossy press photographs of Inez Dana with and without her fan.
He poked through the mess, taking his time. Virtually all the clippings were night-club publicity in which Inez Dana had been mentioned. He read a letter here and there, some from a sister in Cottlesville, Nebraska, and others from males on the make. There was nothing promising until he dug out a large envelope that was crammed with glossy eight-by-ten prints.
He pulled out the top print and looked pleased. It was the photograph of an addressed envelope. The envelope bore in a corner the engraved name of a Chicago florist and writing on it said with a flourish, “Miss Inez Dana.” The next picture was of a plain white card which said warm things about having enjoyed “your performance.” Underneath the warm things was a large signature, a signature that said, “Homer A. Davenport,” in dashing, ornate script.