“Don’t let her get off,” I warned, “I’ve gotta talk to her!” Then I let her go to it first. When she was all through cooing and billing, she said, “Wait a minute, Ritchie wants to say a word to you—”
I took the receiver and muffled it against my chest. “You go upstairs and go to bed, now,” I said to the old lady. I waited until she was out of earshot, then I said: “Betty.” Just that one word, quietly.
Her voice was a song. “Oh, Ritch, I’m so happy! You’ll never know—”
I was shaking all over, like a man with the ague. I thought, “Am I sure enough, even now? Can I take the risk of smashing her life for her? Suppose, suppose I find out afterward that I was wrong? Isn’t what I am about to do to her only a degree less terrible than what I am trying to save her from? ‘Sure enough’ isn’t enough, all the modus operandi files in the world aren’t enough, nor all the toothbrushes, nor all the effaced fingerprints; I’ve got to be positive — and yet how can I be that until it is already too late, the thing has already happened?” An unheard cry that should never have come from a detective, welled up inside me. “God, tell me what to do!”
You understand, don’t you? It wasn’t the detective in me that was holding me back; the detective had enough to go by, more than enough. But I wasn’t a detective in this, I was this girl’s brother. For twenty years now she’d been my weakness, my one soft spot, since they’d first let me hold her in my arms, a kid of seven. Was I ready to pour filth and insanity all over her, tear her heart out with my own hands, blot out the sun from her for years to come, maybe forever? I was, if it meant saving from sudden death in the depths of night. But that if, that biggest, longest, strongest word in the language! If Hilton wasn’t the man, if I had my wires crossed—!
Something — Someone — must have answered that cry of mine for guidance after all, without my knowing it. The course of action that was the only safe one for me to follow unraveled itself of its own accord from the tangled skein of the predicament I was in, right while I stood there, and pointed the way. I saw that there was no choice; whether he was Garvey or not I could not afford to tell her, for her own sake, while I was still at this distance away from her. If he wasn’t, then all the above reasons entered into it. If he was, then I was simply bringing her eventual doom down on her twice as quickly — before I could get there. She would give herself away, in her terror and revulsion, and meet her end almost instantly at his hands. Or she would attempt to escape, and the same fate would overtake her that had undoubtedly overtaken the last woman “Lanning” had married. By warning her over a telephone-wire from a hundred miles away I was simply condemning her to death.
There was only one thing for me to do, until I could get down there. Keep her in ignorance of the horrible trap she was in. Safeguard her as far as I was able to, without letting her know I was doing it. And, outweighing the grim realization that such safeguards would be worse than useless if the crisis should come on suddenly, there was the indisputable fact that her present ignorance and trustfulness, while they were allowed to continue undisturbed, formed her chief margin of safety. Would lull him to procrastination instead of whipping him to instant frenzy.
All this in a matter of seconds, though it seemed years, while she was babbling blithely at the other end. Then, “Well, I must say you’re not very talkative, Ritchie. This is costing my Frank money, so I guess I’d better say ta-ta.” And, a modern-girl streak which she sometimes affected — but which really wasn’t like her at all — cropping out in her just then, she giggled and said: “Zero-hour approaches; I think I just heard the elevator come up out in the corridor.”
There wasn’t very much time. “Where’re you registered?” I said tensely.
“The St. Charles.”
That was good. That or any other well-staffed hotel — the surroundings, set-up, would be in her favor as long as they stayed there; it was when he got her off in some house or flat by themselves... Even so, I couldn’t just pin everything on that, there was no certainty in this case, in any shape, form* or manner. “You’ve got a nail-file with you?”
“Of course—!” she said in surprise.
“I’ve just heard of an old superstition, it’s supposed to bring you luck. Slip it under your pillow, without letting him see you do it.” The way he’d reared away from that penknife, such a thing might just save her, give her a moment’s time, if anything happened in the middle of the night. Arguing that she’d have presence of mind enough to reach for it, which was unlikely unless she knew what it was for. And to most people a nail-file isn’t a weapon of defense. “It’s like a charm. If you have a bad dream, or anything happens — take it out and hold it with the point away from you. Don’t tell him about it; or it won’t work.” Something like a sob caught in my throat. “Be sure you do this for me, Betty. I’ll tell you why someday — soon.”
So she didn’t laugh the way she would have otherwise.
Further than that, I couldn’t go, and there was nothing else I could do at the moment. There was obviously a telephone right in the room with her, the one she was using right now. “Tell me something,” I couldn’t resist asking, “you’ve unpacked already, I suppose?”
“Yes, I unpacked for both of us, like a good wife.”
“Set out all his shaving things for him—?”
“No, I meant to ask him about that!” she said. “He must have left them all behind in his hurry, he came away without a razor or blades or shaving-cream or anything—”
“Don’t!” I said, “Please don’t mention that subject to him at all—” And then lamely, “That’s supposed to bring bad luck too.”
But she wasn’t listening any more. “Here he is now,” she said. “Well, goodbye, old-timer,” and hung up. What’s a mere brother, even when he is trying to save your life without your knowledge, compared to a brand-new, adored husband?
I got the hotel right back again, and got the hotel-detective and identified myself. It was easier going with him, the ice wasn’t quite so thin. “Now this is a personal matter and I’m not in a position to give you the low-down. You can check up on me by getting in touch with Headquarters up here—”
“That’s perfectly all right, Dokes,” he assured me. “Anything we can do to cooperate with you, we’re at your service.”
“You have a Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hilton in tonight, room—?”
“Just a sec. Yes, Suite 22-G, that’s right.”
“I want you, or somebody working with you, stationed within earshot of the door of that suite tonight — all night long-with orders to break in there at the first unnatural or alarming sounds they hear. This is important, there must be no delay; whoever you give the post to must be provided with a passkey ahead of time and authorized to act at a moment’s notice, whether summoned by the occupants or not. Is that clear?”
“It’s unusual, to say the least, but I’ll see that it’s done. You wouldn’t care to enlighten us any furth—?”
“I would, but it’s out of the question just at present. This is a preventive measure, not a coercive one, you understand? And it’s essential that it be done without attracting the attention of the people in question; they must not know they are under surveillance. That’s vital!”
“You can count on us,” he said.
I wasn’t so sure that I could at that, it was a half-measure at best, but at least it was better than none; she wasn’t quite alone and at his mercy now, with just a fingernail-file and a room-phone to fall back on in case of a sudden attack in the dark. But I wasn’t being lulled into any false security, just the same. The room-door might be solid enough to muffle anything short of a full-bodied shriek. The man posted outside it might doze off. And if he was a person without much judgment, how would he know what constituted a danger-signal and what didn’t? By deliberately withholding the key to the situation from them I’d rendered them enormously liable to error. A death-rattle might seem no more to them than the sound of a restless sleeper clearing her throat. The whole thing was porous with pitfalls.