“Today when I heard you talking to Mr. Shuler,” she went on, looking up at him, “I remembered this Jordan, the name he had mentioned. As soon as I got home from work tonight I talked with him again. They say he’s crazy, but I’m sure he knows where to find your wife.”
“Good! I’ll hold Jordan. You phone the cops...”
“No,” she said quickly. She got to her feet, her hands clasped before her. “You’ve got to be careful. I... I think we’re playing with dynamite.”
The hairs across the hack of his neck were like sharp pins. “You mean Jordan is that dangerous?”
“He might be. He dresses like a tramp, but he wears shoes that cost every dime of twenty-five dollars — and he doesn’t work for the money. It’s my guess he gets it from a man he calls every now and then — a man named Jim Carson.”
“Carson...?” he breathed. He blared so hard his eyes burned. Carson... that made bitter, frightening sense. Two years ago, Hill had been an innocent bystander when Jim Carson had shot to death a restaurant owner who’d refused to pay protection money. He had testified against Carson, only to make a slinking enemy of the cheap racketeer. Car-son was acquitted, and Hill had heard nothing of him for a year now. Had he waited, bided his time to strike? If so, he couldn’t have chosen a more effective way.
He forced words out: “Which room is Jordan’s?”
“Upstairs. The one right over this one.” She followed him to the door. “You won’t tell anyone what I have told you? You won’t tell Carson who gave you your information?” Her voice sounded small.
He looked at her. “I won’t tell anyone. Thanks.”
The hall at the next level had only a dim bulb at the far end. The floor creaked under Bill’s weight. He paused before Jordan’s door, the pulse in his temples pounding like dull thunder.
There was a crack of light under the door, but no sound in the room. Jordan was either drunk or asleep. Trembling with agonizing anticipation. Bill pulled his twenty-five automatic from the hip pocket of his trousers. Jordan would have an unpleasant awakening...
He grasped the knob, took a deep breath, flung the door wide — and the breath went out of him explosively. Jordan wasn’t asleep; he was dead.
Hypnotically, Bill took a couple of steps into the room, faintly aware that the sight of the lean elderly man on the narrow iron bed, the knife in the man’s throat, was making him sick. The awareness grew as his stomach boiled up in him, and he shut his eyes to keep from looking at the horror of dying caught and frozen in the harsh lines of Jordan’s face. Then he set his teeth, closed the door softly behind him, and moved toward the bed.
He kept his teeth clamped very tightly as he began searching Jordan. He had to raise the inert bulk a little to reach the man’s wallet. Like his shoes, it was expensive.
The wallet contained about a hundred dollars in small bills — and identification. Bill was suddenly caught in a mesh of details too bizarre and frightening to think about.
This man was no tramp; his name wasn’t Jordan; there was no earthly reason for his plunging into Bill Aiken’s life. The corpse on the sagging bed was Jonathan Dresser, the patent medicine king who’d gone insane four months ago!
Bill was too stunned with shock to realize the swift movement behind him. It flashed through his mind that he had forgotten the closet. He whirled, dropping away from the figure hurtling itself upon him. He got a swift, paralyzing glimpse of the hulking body and set, pitted face of Jim Carson. Then Carson’s swinging arm struck, and the flat side of the gun in his hand splashed lightning sickeningly over Bill’s skull.
When blackness faded to wispy gray, Bill heard a cold voice: “Aiken... Snap out of it, Aiken!” A hand was slapping his check.
He squirmed to get away from the stinging hand and opened his eyes. The gray blur hovering before his face focused itself into the chubby features of Tim Hagan.
Hagan hauled him to his feet. “Too bad you went off the deep end, Aiken.”
“Deep end?” he echoed dazedly.
“You needn’t hand me the act. I found the note. Part of it had been torn away, but the part remaining in his hand,” he nodded toward the body on the iron bed, “had ‘Mary Aiken is,’ written on it. It’s plain enough.”
“You think that I...”
“What I see, Aiken, is what I think. Dresser escaped from a lunatic asylum owned by a sawbones named Lewis Ordway. You’ve probably read about the doc. Made himself famous first as a heart specialist, branched out and became well known as a psychiatrist. Ordway was a very close friend of Dresser’s, the family medico, and I guess he wanted to keep down publicity and kept the escape of Dresser quiet. But he shouldn’t have been so loyal. Dresser, before Ordway could find him, did something to your wife. You found out, knifed him, started to leave in a hurry, tripped and knocked yourself out.”
“Good Lord!” Bill choked. “You can’t believe that, Hagan!”
“I’d like not to. But I think a jury will.”
A jury... a trial. Prison — or the electric chair. And just four and a half short hours ago he had been an ordinary guy anxious to get home and kiss his wife hello...
His voice throbbed. “Lieutenant, you’ve got to believe me! I didn’t trip. There’s a girl downstairs who can tell you that Dresser has been phoning a man named Jim Carson. Carson was hiding in the closet when I came in. He...”
“What’s the girl’s name?”
“Pelman. Blanche Pelman. At least listen to her, Hagan.”
“All right,” Hagan said slowly. “I’ll listen to her.”
He held Bill’s arm tightly as they went into the hall, down the stairs. “This is it,” Bill said, pausing before Blanche Pelman’s door. Silently, Hagan raised his pudgy hand and knocked.
There was a rustle of movement inside, and Blanche pulled the door open. Her eyes were liquid with fright, the base of her nostrils twitched. Bill stared at her, fear creeping down his spine.
“This is official, lady,” Hagan said. “Can we come in?”
Her throat quivered as she swallowed. She clung to the door as if needing support as Hagan dragged Bill past her.
“Close the door,” Hagan said. “No sense of this being heard all over the house.”
She obeyed slowly, turned to face him, averting her gaze from Bill’s.
“I won’t take long, lady,” Hagan said. “I just want to ask you one thing — do you know this guy?”
“I... I...” Her mouth worked. “I never saw him before in my life!”
Bill had half-expected it; the conviction that the murderer had been here and threatened her was growing in him. But her words jarred Hagan hard. For an instant he stared at her in bewilderment. That instant was all Bill needed.
He didn’t know he could throw a punch like the one he crashed into Hagan’s jaw. But he was thinking of the electric chair — and of Mary.
Hagan released his arm, stunned, and tried to wobble back and pull his gun. Bill stepped in close, smashed Hagan in the stomach and again on the jaw. The cop sat down very hard, rattling the windows. Then, almost lazily, he tipped over and lay on his side.
Bill hadn’t heard the door open, but there was a sudden scream, and the hawk-faced landlady, her ever-present broom still in her hand, was foamed in the doorway. As he lunged at her she swung the broom. It caught him high on the side of his head, sprinkling broomstraws over his shoulders. He wrung the broom from her fingers and she scurried off down the hall. He knew her screams would bring the cop on the beat at any moment.
He left Blanche standing in the middle of the room, her face frozen in a frightened grimace.
He took the stairs three at a time, ran toward the back of the house, and emerged in a backyard overflowing with garbage cans and clotheslines. He could hear the landlady screaming on the sidewalk now.