He called the clinic, got Cora, and asked about Mary Bayard.
“She’s just come out of the operating room, Mr. Marko,” Cora told him. “They think she’ll pull through but it was a mighty close thing. They said if it hadn’t been for her hair-bun deflecting the blow, she’d have been dead by now.”
“He tried to kill her, all right. Stay with her, Cora. Maxie’s on the desk. You might call him every hour or so. He’ll be like a cat on a hot stove if he gets any tough ones to handle, standing in for me.”
“What are you up to?”
“That blonde told me to come to her house, she’d give me everything. I’m going to try and keep the date.”
“Watch out you don’t land on a hospital cot instead of a studio couch, Mr. Marko. I’m scared of that she-cat and the wild man who tried to murder Mary.”
He soothed her. “I’m just gumshoeing around. If there’s any strong-arming to do, I’ll holler cop, don’t worry.”
“I will too, worry.”
“Okay. Worry about Mary.” He hung up, reached for the telephone directory.
Dabney’s was on Broadway at Sixtieth. Chez Moisson was on Columbus at Seventy-first. It seemed reasonable that “S.C.” would do her shopping in the neighborhood where she banked.
The nearest branch of the Traders Exchange was at Seventy-fourth and Broadway. He used his Nimbletts identification card, mentioned the vice-president at the main bank. An assistant cashier was impressed.
“If you’d ask the teller in your A to M window to come here a minute,” Don suggested, “it might save some time.”
The paying teller was summoned.
Don described the girl, produced the checkbook stubs. “I’d guess her initials were S.C., though that may be a mile off the mark. Anyhow, you’d remember her if she’s been in here much. She looks like important people, real upper crust.”
The teller looked like a dried-up winter apple with a bad taste in his mouth. Nevertheless he knew his stuff.
“I hesitate to say definitely,” he murmured. “but I’m inclined to think this is Miss Collinson’s writing.”
“Bingo.” Don said. “She told us it was Collins. Sally Collins.”
“Miss Collinson’s name, I believe, is Suzanne.” the teller replied diffidently. “And as you put it, she does look like important people.”
“Where’s she live?”
“I’ll get her ledger card for you, sir.” The card read:
Collinson, Suzanne,
619 West 74th St.,
Lorraine 8-6217.
Don said, “Thanks a million.”
He rang the store, got Maxie. “I’m on the track of that conniving blonde who tried to put over a fast one on the drapery section,” he said, and gave Maxie the address. “Just in case I run into something like Mary did.”
Maxie said, “Watch ya step, Chief. Hell is busting loose in a great big way.”
“Something new has been added?”
“Floor Coverings comes up with a charge of 7,800 bucks for Orientals, shipped to some guy over in Red Bank — he ain’t even been in the country for six months.”
“Same setup? Credit coin? Snappy dame?”
“Yep. A redhead that would make General Sherman get down off his horse, Floor Coverings claims. The G.M. has been bellowing his brains out for you, too.”
“Tell him I’m not at Toots Shor’s lapping up liquor, will you? I’ll check back, soon’s I have something.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for ya, Chief.”
The house on West Seventy-fourth was a former residence that had been converted into four apartments. The name “S. Collinson” was on the card beneath the bell for Apartment Three.
He rang the bell. No answer.
The third key in her keytainer opened the front door. He climbed stairs into musty gloom, listened at the door of Apartment 3. Again, silence.
The first key opened the door. The little foyer was dark: the shades in the apartment were drawn. An odor of onions came up the stair-well. The sound of driving rain against the windows was depressing.
He went in, groping for the light switch. He touched it, clicked it on. There was no responsive blaze of lights.
From a shadowy doorway at his left a cheerful voice said, “That’s a dud switch. The one that works is up higher. Yeah, put your hands up higher. That’s right. Just keep ’em up there, that’s the ticket.”
Don’s eyes became sufficiently accustomed to the gloom to make out the glinting twin-barrels of a shotgun, the muzzle a yard from his belt buckle. The steadiness with which it was held and pointed decided him to do what the man who held it said.
Chapter V
Crossly, Don said, “What’s the sense getting nasty about it? I was invited to come here, you know.”
The man chuckled. “Just the trouble. I never did like to get two-timed. Face the wall there. Keep the claws up. Look at the ceiling. That’s the ticket.”
The thick muzzle prodded Don in the small of the back. It felt like the corner of a coffin poking him.
“Guess you’ve got Suzanne wrong,” Don said. “She and I had a little business to talk over, that’s all.”
The man sniggered. “Yeah, yeah. I know the kind of business you’d have with her. Not that I blame you. March along into the next room there. I’ll give you a little light so you won’t break your neck. Bulbs glowed suddenly behind butter-yellow sconces on the walls of a long studio. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you until she gets here. Keep the chin high, bud.”
The rug beneath Don’s shoes felt like inch-thick moss. What he could see of the room was magnificently furnished. At the far end of the room a high Norman fireplace of stone with a wide slate mantel gave the impression of an altar before which were arranged twin semicircular sofas done in white leather. A coffee table of black and white marble carved to represent an artist’s palette stood between the sofas and the delicate black tracery of wrought-iron fire dogs.
Tables and heavy iron chairs of the Norman persuasion were mixed in with a few modern pieces — a low sofa, bookcases. The walls were decorated with dozens of water colors, charcoal sketches, a few oils in bleached wood frames. Some of the charcoals were nudes. Don thought one of them was an excellent, if somewhat obscene likeness of the blonde.
“Over there,” the man growled. “On that couch. Beside the bookcase there. That’s it. Lie down on it. On your belly. Turn your head toward the wall. That’s the ticket. Just stay that way. Don’t try to look around. Then maybe you won’t get hurt.”
Don gauged his chances of making a break. They didn’t seem so good with that muzzle at his spine.
He wondered, is it possible this guy doesn’t know why I’m here? Could be I simply crashed in on a jealous boy friend who thinks she’d planned to give him the crisscross. Well, she had done that, in a way. But if this is jealous business, I’d better get the snafu cleared up fast — before that shotgun begins to smoke.
Aloud he said, “You don’t think I’d be fathead enough to come up here without notifying my office, do you?”
“Ho!” The man laughed derisively. “Now you’re going to come up with that oldie about being an F.B.I. or a T-man. Go on, build it up. It’ll be strictly for laughs, but I don’t mind. We got to do something until Sue gets here.”
“Wallet in my hip pocket,” Don answered sourly. “Look in there. Cards’ll tell you who I am.”
“Don’t give a damn who you are. You sneak into my apartment. You claim you had an invitation from my girl. You’re going to stay here until she shows up. Until I find out what kind of kadoodling she had in mind when she asked you here.”
“Your girl got nabbed in an attempt to get away with twelve hundred dollars worth of merchandise from the store I work for. Then she staged a getaway.” Don found it hard to talk with his head twisted at right angles to his body. “There’ll be descriptions of her on every police teletype from here to Philadelphia by now. If the cops get her before I have a chance to talk to her, she’ll really have her tail in a crack with the door slamming. If I can talk to her, I might make a deal with her. The police won’t.”