Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door. Adele rose to answer it, then hesitated as she remembered the byplay with the taxi driver. Suppose instead of room service, it was one of Big Jim’s badged killers?
Glancing at the bed, she saw with surprise Dan’s holster with its heavy forty-five was gone, and realized he had taken it into the bath with him. Apparently the big man was capable of caution in spite of his tendency to ask for trouble. Relieved, she opened the door.
“The Collinses, ma’am,” Billie said, carrying in a tray containing a shaker and two frosted glasses.
The bellboy had hardly departed when Dan Fancy came out of the bathroom fully dressed. Over cool Tom Collinses she told him the story of Gene Robinson’s conviction for murder.
“Gene was relatively new in Lake City, you know,” she said. “About two years ago he came to town, and I guess I must have been the first person he talked to. I’m the owner and proprietor of Del’s Beauty Salon, and he asked me for a job. I gave it to him. I suppose you knew he was a hairdresser?”
“Yeah,” Dan grunted. “One of the reasons he never got along with the old man. His father thought he was a sissy.”
“He isn’t!” Adele said hotly. “Lots of men are in the beauty business. It’s a perfectly honorable profession.”
“All right,” Dan said mildly.
For a moment the girl looked at him suspiciously, then went on with the story. “I knew, of course, that Gene was the son of Martin Robinson, the millionaire steel man, but I doubt that anyone else in town did. Gene was bitter about their break and never mentioned his father. Mr. Robinson disowned him, you know, when he refused to enter the steel business.”
“I know,” Dan said.
“Until the trial it never came out who Gene was, or I don’t think they would have tried to frame him. It’s one thing to push around citizens of a town you own, but quite another to pick on the son of a nationally known figure. I imagine Big Jim Calhoun had a few uneasy moments when those big-time defense lawyers from Pittsburgh began to arrive in town. I think probably they would simply have killed Gene and made it look like an accident, had they known who he really was.”
“The advantage of having a big-shot parent,” Dan said dryly. “You get killed instead of framed.”
“Of course as it turned out it didn’t matter anyway, because Gene refused to accept any help from his father and wouldn’t even talk to the lawyers he sent down. The court finally had to appoint a defense lawyer, and that ended Gene’s chances, for the lawyer he appointed was just another tool of Big Jim’s.”
“Tell me about the killing,” Dan said.
“It happened about a month ago. George Saunders, the man who was killed, was a tavern owner in the same block where I have my beauty salon. He was a fiery, soapbox type of man, and I never liked him particularly. I don’t believe Gene did either, but he worked with him on the citizens’ committee because he believed in what Mr. Saunders was doing.”
“What was the citizens’ committee?”
“It was something George Saunders got up. A sort of vigilante outfit composed of merchants who wanted to break Jim Calhoun’s power. It was supposed to be secret, but George Saunders was constitutionally incapable of keeping his mouth shut, and practically everyone in town knew he was the leader and Gene was second in command.”
Dan looked interested. “So the chief of the citizens’ committee gets killed, and his first lieutenant takes the rap for it? Convenient for Big Jim. What happened to the committee?”
“It collapsed,” Adele said bitterly. “All the fight went out of it and the members scampered for their holes like frightened rats.”
The big man said, with a strange air of tolerance, “Don’t be bitter at them, Adele. Even brave men sometimes rout without leadership. How was the frame worked?”
“With Big Jim’s usual efficiency,” Adele said in a weary voice. “At the trial a half dozen witnesses testified George Saunders made a practice of teasing Gene about being a hairdresser. That wasn’t true, incidently. The same witnesses testified the two had come to blows over it the day before the murder, and Gene threatened to kill George. A pawnbroker testified Gene bought the gun identified as the murder weapon. Five witnesses testified they were customers in Saunders’ saloon when Gene entered and fired five shots into Saunders’ body. The arresting officers, who happened to be the same two you met at the station, said they heard the shots, rushed into the tavern while Gene was still firing, and overpowered him. What could the jury do? They convicted him.”
“The kid have any defense?”
“None anyone would believe. I was off that day and Gene was responsible for closing the shop. He said he had just locked the front door when two masked men entered the back way, covered him with pistols and kept him there for three hours. About eight P.M., just as it began to get dark, they forced him out the back door and down the alley to the rear of Saunders’ tavern, where they all entered through the kitchen. The two masked men told him to walk straight ahead into the barroom, but they themselves stayed back in the kitchen out of sight, and presumably left again by the back door as soon as Gene obeyed them.
“Gene said several men were in the tavern, apparently awaiting him, and two of them were Lieutenant Morgan Hart and Sergeant Larry Bull. At the time George Saunders was lying dead behind the bar, but Gene didn’t know this. Lieutenant Hart thrust a gun at Gene by the barrel and said, ‘Here. Take this.’ When Gene refused, the lieutenant slapped him twice, so Gene took the gun. Then he was arrested for murder.”
Dan grinned. “Bet the prosecution had a circus with that.”
“It was terrible. Even the judge obviously thought it was a lie. When he summed up, he told the jury it was up to them to weigh the statements of eleven reputable citizens and two officers of the law against the unsupported testimony of the defendant.”
“Was the judge in on the frame?”
The girl shook her head. “I don’t think so. It was Judge Anderson of the circuit court. I think he comes out of Mayville. Big Jim’s power doesn’t reach up into the state courts.”
Dan rose and stretched. “Let’s go down and have lunch. Afterward you can go back to your shop, if you like, while I sit in my room and wait for Big Jim to make a move.”
Adele said hesitantly, “I’d like to stay with you, if I may.”
The big man shrugged indifferently. “All right, if you wish.”
Chapter Two
Death Row Stooge
As the elevator swallowed Dan and Adele, the door to suite 510 opened cautiously. The little man, wearing a fresh seersucker suit as worn as the first, stepped out in the hall with his suitcase in his hand. Quickly he approached room 512, for a moment fiddled at the lock with a piece of wire, pushed open the door and shut it behind himself again.
Rolling the bed away from the wall, he spread his handkerchief on the floor, removed a small brace and bit from his bag, and drilled a hole through the baseboard, allowing the sawdust to fall on his handkerchief. When he felt the bit break through on the other side, he carefully folded the handkerchief and put it in his pocket.
Then he pushed two wires attached to a small microphone through the hole, screwed the mike to the baseboard, rolled the bed back in place and repacked his bag. The whole operation took no more than fifteen minutes.
Dan and Adele had been back from lunch barely a half hour, and were desultorily smoking cigarettes when a knock came at the door. Adele, in her chair by the window, stopped her cigarette halfway to her lips and gave Dan a frightened look. Dan, flat on his back on the bed, came erect lazily and swung his feet over the side.
“Come in!” he called.