Dell said, “A guy with something for you,” as he stepped forward on his right foot and pivoted, throwing all the weight of his shoulders into the left hook to the sailor’s stomach. The man doubled up with the breath leaving him in a loud, “Woosh.”
“That’s for you,” Dell snapped. “And this is for that louse of a captain, in case I don’t get a chance to give it to him myself.” He brought the right no from the hip in a crushing uppercut and the sailor shot back against the rail and flopped down on the deck.
The fellow who was singing Abel Brown the Sailor forward, stopped suddenly and yelled. “Hey, what’s going on there?” His feet made loud, clanging noises on the steel deck as he ran.
Dell went down the gangplank in a series of leaps. The board had enough spring in it to give him momentum. He cleared the space between the gangplank and the shed in a long, spring-propelled leap. He made for the street with the second sailor’s voice following him in a string of startled, “Heys!”
Walking up the street in hard, angry strides he thought it over. He was still as much in the dark as ever. But he did know now that Hardesty knew something. He knew also that Hardesty had been tipped off that a detective had entered the game. He cursed his own stupidity at not remembering that he had been hired in a public bar and that even then, someone had probably been tailing the Arnolds and Benedict.
There was, he knew, another angle of approach. There was the hotel where Arnold had stopped. Laura Arnold had been able to tell him the room where Arnold had been registered. The room had been torn apart twice. Hardesty and whoever was in this with him were still looking for the unknown valuables. Therefore the hotel would still be a focal point.
Breen stalked across the bare and cheerless lobby to the shabby desk. The man behind the desk was pinched and thin. He had shifty black eyes that were like jet in the pallor of his face. He looked suspiciously at the streaks of blood on Dell’s face as he turned the grubby register around to face him.
Dell grinned and wiped at the blood streaks with the back of his hand. “I got paid off this afternoon,” he said. “A couple of mugs tried to take me in a back alley.”
The clerk nodded. It was in his eyes that such things were not unknown to him. Dell let his eyes wander over the tiny cubicle behind the counter. There was an oblong frame with cardboard slips opposite the room numbers. The white ones had names typed on them. The pink ones were blank. Opposite number 206 he saw the name, “William Gannon.”
Dell jerked his head at the slip and said to the clerk, “I’ll bet that’s Bill Gannon off the Pacific Queen. Good old Bill. How long has he been here?”
The clerk’s eyes filmed over with caution. “Mr. Gannon has been with us quite awhile. I wouldn’t know about what ship he came off.”
“That’s all right.” Dell said beartily, “Bill was always a cautious guy He knows how to keep his mouth shut, Bill does.” He winked at the clerk as one man winks to another who understands these things and the clerk smiled coldly and tightly.
“If you’d just stick me somewhere on the same floor as good old Bill I could look him up when he comes in.”
The clerk picked a key off the rack and held it in his hand. “You’ll have to pay in advance, mister,” he said.
“Sure,” Dell said agreeably. “I understand.” He threw a crumpled five-dollar bill on the counter and explained, “I’ll bring my duffle bag around later. I left it in a saloon while I located a berth to turn into.”
The clerk said, “Up the stairs and to your right. Your room is 209. The toilet is right across from your room.” Dell could fed the clerk’s eyes boring into his back as he swaggered across the lobby with what he hoped was a good seaman’s roll. The filthy stairs creaked as he climbed to the barren, odorous corridor above.
He unlocked 209 and went in. He groped in the darkness till he found the bare bulb in the center of the room and snapped it on. He stood for a second, gazing around, his nose wrinkling with distaste. The air was stale and foul. He crossed and threw up the window and surveyed the rest of the room with a glance. The bed was an old-fashioned brass affair. Over the head of it a fly-specked card read, “God bless this abode.”
Dell grinned wrily and looked around. Besides the bed there was a washstand with a cracked mirror over it, two rickety chairs and a battered desk in a corner. The covers on the bed looked as though they had seen a lot of guests since they had seen a laundry.
He paused at the foot of the bed for a long time, his face heavy with thought. As he paused he rested one hand on the top of one of the low brass footposts. A noise somewhere in the hall made him turn quickly. It sounded as if someone had fallen. No other sound followed that one dull thud.
He stood a moment, listening.
As he turned, the top of the brass post came off in his hand. He held it, staring at it, then he stared at the hollow post from which it had come and a speculative gleam came into his eyes. He replaced it slowly and made an attempt to screw it back in its place. But the thread was worn and stripped. The brass cap turned round and round loosely. When he lifted his hand the cap stayed on the post at a drunken angle.
Behind his closed door he went through his pockets. His gun was gone. He felt of the empty holster under his arm again and his mouth pulled down at the corners and his eyes burned a more frosty blue. He shoved a hand into his hip pocket and sighed with relief.
He pulled the sap out and looked at it most lovingly. He slapped it into the palm of his left hand and grinned. Slipping it up his sleeve he put his head on one side and gazed at the door.
Opening it softly he slid out into the corridor. He could hear a low murmur of voices from the lobby below. Someone was talking to the clerk. Dell listened for a second but could hear nothing of what was said. He shrugged gently and walked along the corridor, keeping close to the wall to minimize the creaking of the loose boards.
A thin thread of light trickled out from under the door of 206. Dell put his ear close and listened. There was no sound from within. He tried the knob cautiously, turned it and pushed the unlocked door open slowly.
A voice across the room said, “Well, if it ain’t Mr. Bloody Breen again. So you got loose, did you? You’re smarter than I thought. But this time I’ll make sure of my job.”
Hardesty was sitting with his back to the window. Under the glare of the naked bulb his red whiskers shone like polished copper. His eyes were very bright and blue above the whiskers. His tongue looked pale and soft as he licked his lips. “That’s what you’re going to get, Mr. Bloody Breen.”
He jerked his head. Following the direct ion of the gesture Dell saw a man lying on his face on the floor beyond the bed. A cheap blue serge coat covered his bony shoulders. His long legs were clad in soiled gray flannels and ended in heavy-soled boots. The fellow had a fringe of sandy hair between his scrawny neck and the shiny bald top of his head. Only now the bald head wasn’t so shiny. It was bisected by a red valley from which blood seeped to run through the fringe of hair, over an ear to the linoleum beneath him. Something about the way the man lay told Dell that he would never move again under his own power.
IV
His face a mask, Dell looked at the big gun in Hardesty’s hand. Hardesty’s hands were matted with red hair. Red hair trickled along the thick fingers that held the gun so steadily. On its long barrel was a smear of crimson. Dell glanced from it to the crushed head of the man on the floor.