Jake sat down. He had turned a chair around. “Well,” he said, “I came about Rosy’s death, and let’s get all the dispositions of you people over with it. It’s like this: I think maybe it’s murder. And I’ve never been wrong yet. I thought I might as well tell you.”
“Murder!” snapped Barney.
“That’s just what he said,” Jill echoed. She had her notebook out and was writing in it.
“What you writing?” asked Jake.
Jill looked up. “There’s no wall paper on the wall; and I saw a cockroach.”
“Well, look under the bed sheets,” Jake replied, “you’ll probably see more than that.” He turned to Barney. “Now look, gob. I’ve been around; I’ve seen a few yeomen and radiomen and guys that worked in navy post offices taken in. All the time they catch up with guys and arrest them — espionage charges, mostly. Some enlisted man selling stuff that comes his way at ten bucks a crack. Just little cases, but—”
Barney leapt to his feet. “Are you accusing me?”
“No, I’m not,” said Jake, “I’m just considering possibilities, that’s all I’m doing. What kind of a yeoman are you?”
“Communications.”
“Well, that’s all the better. You’re usually hanging around Rosy. Where were you last night?”
“I went swimming up near Wailupe. Night swimming.”
“Why weren’t you with your girl?”
“She has to work; but there’s no sense of me dancing every night just because she has to.”
“You went swimming by yourself?”
Barney nodded.
Jill glanced over. “As you always say, Jake: It has the odor of an alibi.”
Jake said, “Well, we’ll have to let it pass for right now; but if Barney was fooling around with navy communications, and Rosy was going to spill her guts...” He turned to Gertrude. “How about you, sweetheart? What time’d you get in?”
“About twelve; I was sick.”
“You mean drunk?”
“Call it what you want,” said Gertrude. She lit a cigarette.
“It was about one when Rosy fell off the balcony outside here. I suppose you were asleep?”
“That’s right. I was passed out cold. I didn’t know anything about it till Barney got here and woke me up and told me.”
Jill stared through her lorgnette; and Jake raised his eyebrows again. “Oh, so it’s like that. Maybe you and Barney bumped Rosy off to—”
“You’re nuts,” Gertrude spat.
“Maybe so,” Jake said, “maybe I’m nuts. But I’ll tell you, Gerty. We’ve got half a dozen witnesses here in the hotel that was awake at that time that heard you and Rosy arguing like hell at about one o’clock. You were screaming your heads off at each other. You mentioned Barney’s name several times. Right after that Rosy took the pitch to eternity. I just found out about all this half an hour ago.”
Gertrude’s face was scarlet. “It’s a stinking lie!” she screamed. “I was sound asleep. I didn’t even hear Rosy singing when she came reeling down the balcony.”
“How do you know she was singing?”
Gertrude jerked. “Somebody told me. They said she was singing ‘Frankie and Johnny.’ That’s only what they told me. But I didn’t hear her.”
Jake was on his feet. “We’ll be around to see you later. But it looks pretty bad, Gertie.”
“Get the hell out,” she snapped. “You can’t frame me on anything like this!”
Barney had left his funny papers. He was holding open the door.
Jill sniffed and swept through the portal. Jake followed along behind.
“I guess it was murder,” said Jake.
That night a nice soft, definite rain dripped across the porch of the hotel. Now and then there was a streak of lightning, and a clap of thunder. Through the downpour you could hear the sharp laughter of men and women; or angry argument; and far in the distance, though it was only half a block away, there came the brassy melody of the Rizal. Soldiers and sailors moved by in rubber coats, and girls were squealing and talking. A few automobiles swished past in the street, and the lone gas lamp shone bleakly down on them.
Through the rest of Hell’s Half Acre there was the rattle of rain on tin roofs, washing the soot from them. The original wooden roofs of the section had long ago defied repair, and they had been replaced with cheap galvanized tin.
Jill had returned to her elegant suite in the Majestic Hawaiian Apartments in the Waikiki district; but now she was back at Hell Acre Hotel. She was sitting in the chair that faced Jake’s roll-top desk. Jake was pacing up and down. He walked back and forth past an open window that was on the ground floor. You could look out through it and see as far as the little bridge over River Street, and Aala Park, where Filipinos clustered in groups under an awning; across from Aala park there were Chinese shop lights still gleaming from their windows, although the hour was late.
“I had supper,” said Jill.
“You were gone long enough to see a couple of movies,” Jake complained. Jill was writing notes. “Here I get things lined up, fool around making a thing that looks like an ancient letter — postmarked and all; and you take a powder on me. If you want to see things concluded, you should hang around.” He turned on her. “What are you writing?”
“What I had for dinner,” she said.
Jake was disgusted. “Now what good is that?”
“Well,” replied Jill, “maybe this’ll be an important night; maybe we’ll accomplish something, and it’s nice to remember little things about the evening, such as what you had for dinner. I’ll bet you don’t know what you had for dinner just three nights ago, even. That goes to show how people forget things.”
“I, for one,” said Jake, “don’t want to read your book when it’s written. If it wasn’t that I thought you might finally fall in love with me and marry me, I wouldn’t even bother with you.”
He hurried on before she could interrupt with an exclamation. “Now about Rosy. We’ve got all these people that say they heard her arguing with Gertrude. Gertrude claims she was in bed passed out. These people that heard the fight, they make what is a pretty good hunk of evidence. But I’ve got just one more idea by which we can get even more evidence, and maybe definite proof of what happened. I—”
While he was talking a large revolver lifted over the windowsill. A gloved hand held it. Its giant muzzle followed Jake as he moved up and down the room. Jake paused to scratch his knee, and Jill saw it. She screamed.
The gun went off with a bang. The bullet landed in the wall, three inches from Jill’s head.
Jake whirled around. He grabbed at the gun. In the next moment he had it by the muzzle and was whirling it around over his head. The hand at the window vanished. Jake stuck his head out the window. He tried to straighten the gun to shoot it; but rain pelted down across his bald head, and in the excitement, the heavy old revolver slipped through his fingers. It fell into the mud. Jake saw the vanishing figure; it was in white. It looked like a uniform.
While Jake was still bent out over the window, trying to cope with the figure which had now disappeared, Jill got to her feet. She opened the door of the office and ran into the lobby. There she stopped. Jake came out after her.
He looked upset. “You see? It must be murder.”
“It must be,” said Jill, chattering.
At that moment a figure in a bathrobe and bare feet moved in through the back of the hotel. It was Barney, the sailor. He didn’t look happy.
“You’re the house dick, aren’t you?”
“That I am,” said Jake.
“Well, some skunk stole my uniform. I don’t know what kind of a joint you’ve got here. But I demand you find my whites or I’ll sue you birds right up to your eyeteeth!”
“My goodness,” said Jill.