Then I drove to the Crail Venetian Blind Company.
The building was a big three story brick structure down on the fringe of the commercial district. The sign over the door was old, and grimy. Gilt letters that had been on there for a long time said: CRAIL VENETIAN BLIND COMPANY.
I parked the car near the entrance. It was past quitting time and a straggling stream of workers was filing out — older men carrying lunch pails, slim attractive girls gushing with the healthy vitality of youth, chatting gaily as they moved down the stairs.
I walked in and tried the inner door. It was locked with a spring lock. I stood by it waiting until a girl, hurrying to catch up with a group down the street, flung it open. She hardly noticed me as I caught the door and prevented the latch from clicking.
A sign said: OFFICES UP STAIRS, and I climbed the stairs into a little reception room where there was a counter, a few chairs and a little arched opening in a partition bearing the word: INFORMATION. Below this was a glass door which could be swung open and shut so that a person standing on the other side of the counter couldn’t hear confidential communications which took place over the inside phone.
There seemed to be no one back of the arched opening, so I walked around to a gate in the partition, found one of those trick catches which are released by an electro magnet from the inside or a pressure of the fingers in the right place, pushed up the catch, opened the gate and went in.
There was a long hallway with half glassed partitions bearing signs in gilt letters: SALES MANAGER, CREDIT MANAGER, ACCOUNTING OFFICE, and down at the far end a door marked: PRESIDENT. Up here in this corridor there was no sound save the noises of occasional activity from the floor below — steps, the banging of a door, the sound of a voice. The second floor itself was silent as a deserted courtroom after the defendant has been sentenced to death and the judge has gathered his papers and gone out to play golf.
I pushed open the door marked PRESIDENT.
Ellery Crail sat at his desk, his chin over on his chest, his big competent hairy hands clinched so tightly that the afternoon light which filtered in from the big window touched the taut skin over the knuckles into high lights.
He didn’t hear the door open, and he didn’t look up. He was staring with steady-eyed concentration, his face dark with tortured thought. He might have been hypnotized, sitting there in the rigid immobility of a trance.
I walked across the thick carpet. And it wasn’t until I was seating myself in the chair opposite the desk that he saw me, looked up with a frown of annoyance and then as recognition flooded his features said with sudden irritation, “You!”
I nodded.
“How did you get in?”
“Walked in.”
“That door’s supposed to be locked.”
I said, “Let’s get in touch with Georgia Rushe.”
“She isn’t here. She left early. She’s gone home.”
I said, “She’s taking a powder.”
It took a moment or two for the full effect of my words to dawn on him. Then he said, “Powder! Good Heavens, Lam, not that!”
I said, “I was using a slang expression of the underworld. It means skipping out — taking what is known as a runout powder.”
“Good God, I thought you meant...”
“What?”
“I didn’t know what you meant.”
“Poison?”
“Perhaps.”
I said, “Let’s go have a talk with her. In case you don’t know the address, it’s two-o-seven West Orleans Avenue. I have my car downstairs.”
He looked at me for a second or two, his eyes hitting me with a hard flinty impact. “How much,” he asked, “do you know?”
“So much you don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.”
Without a word, he pushed back his chair. “All right,” he said, “let’s go.”
We went down the wide stairs and out through the locked door. A watchman was now on duty, and he said mechanically, “Good night, Mr. Crail.”
“Good night, Tom,” Crail said.
The door closed behind us and the lock clicked into place. I indicated the agency car with a jerk of my thumb and said, “That’s it.”
I went around to the driver’s seat and Crail climbed in the front seat beside me. We encountered quite a bit of traffic at that hour, but I was taking chances on a ticket and was less than ten minutes getting to 207 West Orleans Avenue.
It was an old-fashioned apartment house with no attempt at the white stucco exterior which is so frequently used to hide the grime of drab age. A few straggling green vines grew up the front of the building. The narrow windows told their own stories of insufficient light and ventilation. One look at the place and you could smell the psychic stench of dejected spirits, the physical odors of ancient cooking, the irritating fumes of defective gas heaters.
I held back slightly and Crail led the way.
His finger found the button opposite a piece that had been cut from a calling card printed in Old English lettering, Georgia Rushe.
Nothing happened.
The lock on the outer door was a little better than most of them. I had a passkey I thought would fit it, but I didn’t want to show my hand just then. I pressed two or three buttons at random and, after a moment, there was the distinctive buzz from the inside which indicated that someone was pressing a button which controlled the electric catch on the door.
I pushed the entrance door open.
The number on Georgia Rushe’s mailbox showed that her apartment was 243. There may have been an elevator in the back part of the hall, but I didn’t wait for it. I started climbing the stairs and Crail, climbing with the effort of a heavily muscled man, came lunging along behind me. I took the stairs two at a time.
No one answered when I knocked on apartment 243.
I looked at Crail. His face was drawn and haggard. Even in the dim light of the stuffy, smelly hallway, I could see the dead white pallor of his skin and the deep lines that etched themselves down from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth.
I saw no reason for being namby-pamby about it. I took a leather key container from my pocket, slid back the zipper and shook out my skeleton keys.
The first one did the trick. The lock clicked back and we went in.
It was near the back of the building on the north side. A little single apartment that had two narrow windows that furnished a small amount of ventilation. The only cross ventilation was through an adjustable transom over the top of the door.
A light was on in the apartment, and the globe was powerful enough to make the room seem rather bright. It was a conventional single apartment with a disappearing wall bed behind a glass-knobbed gray painted door. The overstuffed chair had seen better days and the upholstery had been pounded down with use until it was hard and lumpy. The davenport had probably been refinished a couple of times and was in need of a third treatment. The faded carpet was worn almost through to the floor by the table, and two deep circles marked where the foot of the bed would rest when it was lowered. A drawer was open in a little all-purpose table which would, at night, be by the side of the bed. A pine table stained a dark mahogany was in the center of the room. On it were a few magazines.
A woman’s hat and coat lay on a chair. The door of what had once been a closet was wide open to disclose a little sink and a two-burner gas stove over which was a small-sized electric refrigerator and a shelf containing a few dishes and glasses. A door which had a built-in full-length mirror was evidently the door to the bathroom.
On a straight-backed chair was a suitcase about half packed, the lid being raised to disclose the feminine garments on the interior.
Crail heaved a deep sigh of relief. “She hasn’t left yet,” he said.