“A little satisfaction.”
“He'll wear you out, if he takes a notion.”
Johnny looked at him. “I don't work for him, kid. He'll play hell gettin' an angle on me. And when I was workin' for him, I'd leave it up to him who wore who out.”
Detective Rogers laughed. He started to say something and then broke off as Ronald Frederick emerged through the swinging doors from the lobby, in pajamas and plum colored robe. He came directly to them. “A dreadful accident, dreadful.”
“Accident?” Jimmy Rogers' tone was amused.
“I meant to say-that is to say, not an accident, most assuredly not, but a shocking-ah-occurrence. They woke me to let me know.”
The sandyhaired man nodded. “If we could have three minutes' conversation now it might save fifteen or twenty in the morning,” he suggested.
“Certainly,” Ronald Frederick acceded promptly. **We can use my office.” He turned to Johnny. “You'll take care of-ah-things?”
“Yeah.” He looked at the sandyhaired man. “I got something for you I wouldn't give that lardhead just walked out of here. There's an automatic pilot elevator touches on that kitchen; we use it for room service. The kitchen outlet is supposed to be locked at ten every night, but for a client with keys it's the easiest route.”
“Where does it go?” Detective Rogers demanded.
Johnny grinned at him. “Only to the sixteenth floor.”
The slender man grimaced. “I already had no appetite for breakfast; now I'm losing it for lunch.”
“The kitchen outlet can be locked either from the kitchen side or the elevator side,” Johnny suggested.
“So?” Jimmy Rogers began, and then his eyes narrowed. “Then whatever floor that elevator is on now is where the guy got off?”
“If he used it,” Johnny amended. “And if he was cute enough not to get off at his own floor you won't have lowered the odds a nickel's worth.”
“Give me your keys,” Detective Rogers said briskly. “I'd like to start lowering the odds around here even a little bit.”
“I have mine,” Ronald Frederick said interestedly, and produced them from a pocket of his robe. “May I accompany you?”
“You two go ahead,” Johnny told them. “I haven't checked the front in an hour.” He watched the oddly matched pair pause in the service door entrance to the again darkened kitchen while Rogers flipped on lights; when the door swung shut behind them, Johnny left the bar for the lobby. He glanced over at Sally's switchboard; and regretted it immediately; she beckoned imperiously, but he shook his head. Making a circle of thumb and forefinger of each hand, he lifted them to his eyes, and then pointed upward. Sally shook her head in a furious negative, but Johnny grinned at her and headed for the elevator.
As he started upward, he could hear the impatient, persistent ringing of the unanswered bell captain's phone.
Chapter V
If he was afraid of anything in this world, he was afraid of confinement. Johnny could feel his nostrils thinning in anticipatory rejection as he knelt before the heavy walnut desk in his own room and from the right hand bottom drawer removed flashlight, screwdriver, and icepick. On his way back to the door he could see in the mirror the hard line of his lips as he carefully patted bulging pockets to make sure he had forgotten nothing.
In the corridor he passed the exit door with its prim red overhead light, and stopped at the door beyond it with its neatly lettered metal sign, Maid. He opened this door, groped around behind the mops and the broom handles and removed a short stepladder whose bulk had effectively sealed the narrow opening behind it.
Johnny drew a deep breath, took a final look along the deserted corridor, and squeezed into the closet; he reached back a long arm and carefully closed the door upon himself. The warm, humid darkness closed in upon him, and he listened. Somewhere off to his right water dripped steadily, and the monotonous repetition set his teeth on edge.
He removed the flashlight from his hip pocket and experimented with its sharp finger of light upon the white plastered inner walls which enclosed him. He could feel the almost physical restraint of the tightly walled envelopment with its airless, fetid odor, and without giving himself time to think he inched sideways into the cramped passageway which would not admit the breadth of his shoulders.
Step by step he advanced, crabwise, feet always in the same relative position as he placed them carefully in the path delineated by the flashlight's slender beam upon the white walls which seemed now to stretch narrowly away before him to infinity. He pressed onward with body rigidly braced to withhold contact from the thin shell of plaster on either side of him.
Mentally he counted rooms in his slow progress, hoping he was keeping track correctly. He came to a stop finally, and ineffectually tried to shrug the clinging shirt from its moist contact with his neck and shoulders. He restored the flashlight to his pocket and removed the icepick. Selecting a spot head-high in the darkness which had again enveloped him, he gingerly inserted the point of the pick. Locking his wrist and arm solidly, he exerted a steady, unhurried forward and downward pressure as the needle point attacked the yielding plaster. Patiently he guided its fractional advance until a tiny jolt warned him of the breakthrough.
He removed the pick carefully, and a pinpoint of light rewarded him; he grunted softly as he applied his right eye to the minute aperture and tried to focus on the swirl of color in the room before him. A cream-colored wall reflected light so successfully that his eye watered involuntarily; he blinked it impatiently as he waited for his vision to adjust. The tiny peephole strained his sight intolerably; the left eye ached in sympathy with the staring right. Details of the room filtered through to him in agonizing flashes of recognition: the kneehole desk in its center, the small, neat bookcase in the corner, the imitation-leather easy chair, the partly opened door to the lighted bathroom beyond.
At least it was the right room; he removed himself from the aperture, and in the heat and darkness settled down to wait. He had needed the extra time to take up residence here within the walls before Ronald Frederick should return. Johnny had an increasing interest in the doings of Ronald Frederick.
The sound of a closing door alerted him; it might have come from anywhere in the sticky midnight which pressed in heavily upon him, but he was expecting a particular closed door. An inquiring eye at the peephole again at once disclosed the plum colored swirl of Ronald Frederick's robe as the little manager moved rapidly about the room. As the ache mounted behind Johnny's eye again from the intensity of his stare, the man he was watching broke off in his rapid movements and plopped down in the chair at the desk; Johnny barely had time to focus directly upon him before he leaned forward and picked up the phone. Johnny could see the thin lips moving, and he strained to hear, but a low, indistinguishable murmur was all that came through the plaster. In desperation he turned his head and applied his ear to his newly-manufactured listening post, and perspiration trickled down the back of his neck. He relaxed a little, then, because the clipped tones, though still indistinct, were understandable.
“-speak to Wilson-”
In the earpopping silence Johnny flicked water from the end of his nose. In these moments of aversion to the claustrophobia which gripped him, he had a recurring fantasy: he could feel the sweat which bathed him seeping down his body in tiny rivulets until it seemed to fill his shoes. He could feel it so vividly that involuntarily he flexed his toes. He tensed again as the blurred voice beyond the plaster continued. “-is Ronald Frederick. No, wait. Would I call if it were not an emergency? Never mind your surprise; I was surprised myself so spectacularly a few moments ago, sir, that it seems to me to quite alter the — ah-terms of our contract.”