He looked at me as though I’d been a funny tropical fish swimming around in an aquarium.
“Now,” he said, “you interest me. Who the hell are you?”
I said, “I’ve told you who I was and what I wanted. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
“In about ten seconds,” he said, “I’m going to throw you out of this room so hard you’ll bounce.”
He got to his feet, walked across to the door, unbolted it, opened it, jerked with his thumb, and said, “Out.”
I got up and picked my place, a place where I could make a nice pivot, throw his right arm over my shoulder, hear down as I twisted, and send him hurtling over my head.
He walked over to me, very casually.
I waited for him to move that right arm.
It didn’t come up the way I’d been practicing with Hashita. It came around from the side. It caught me by the coat collar. His other hand caught me around the hip pockets. I tried to brace myself, and might as well have tried to push a freight train off the track. I went out of that room so fast I could hear the doorjamb whiz as it went by. I threw up my hands to break the force of the impact against the wall on the opposite side of the corridor. I grabbed the edge of the glass mail chute beside the elevator. He tore my grip loose, pivoted, and sent me down the hall at the same time he brought up his left foot.
I know now just how a football feels when a player kicks a place goal.
What with the momentum of the bum’s rush and the force of the kick, I went sailing down the hall for twenty feet before I came down flat on the floor.
I heard him go back, close and lock the door. I limped on down the corridor and around a bend, looking for the stairs, made up my mind I’d picked the wrong end of the hallway, and started back.
I was still twenty feet from the “L” when I heard three shots. A second or two later I heard running steps in the corridor going in the other direction.
I ran around the right-angled turn. The door of four-nineteen was open. An oblong of light was streaming out into the hallway. I looked at my watch — eleven-sixteen. The elevator boy would have gone off duty, leaving the elevator on automatic.
I pressed the call button, and, as soon as I heard the cage start upward, went into four-nineteen on tiptoe.
Ringold’s body was huddled in front of the step that led up to the bathroom. His head was doubled back under his shoulders. His arms were twisted out at a goofy angle. One knee was just inside the door to the bathroom. The left arm was pressing up against the connecting door to four-twenty-one.
I dipped my fingers into the right-hand coat pocket and felt the perforated edges of a folded oblong of paper. I didn’t take time to look at it. I jerked it out, stuck it in my pocket, turned, and ran for the corridor. The light switch was near the door. I switched the lights out and stood for a moment in the doorway, looking up and down the corridor. The only person in sight was a woman about fifty-five or sixty with her hair done up in curlers who was hugging a red robe around her, and standing in the open doorway of a room down at the end of the corridor.
“Did you hear someone shoot?” I called to her.
“Yes,” she said.
I jerked my thumb toward four-twenty-one. “I think it came from four-twenty-one. I’ll go and see.”
She continued to stand in the doorway. I walked over abreast of the elevator, called out, “He’s got a ‘Don’t Disturb’ sign over the door. I guess I’d better go down to the office.”
The elevator was waiting. I opened it, rode down to the second floor, got out, and waited.
It seemed as much as a minute before I heard the elevator taken back down to the first floor, and then saw it go rattling back up. The indicator showed that it had stopped at the fourth. I walked down the stairs and out into the lobby. The clerk wasn’t behind the desk. The blond girl at the cigar counter was reading a movie magazine. Her jaws were moving slowly with the rhythmic chewing of gum. She glanced up, then back to her magazine.
After I got out on the street I took the folded oblong of paper out of my pocket and looked at it. It was a check payable to cash in the amount of ten thousand dollars. It was signed Alta Ashbury.
I put it in my pocket and walked down to the place where Bertha Cool had left the car. It was gone. I stood there for a minute and didn’t see any sign of Bertha. I walked three blocks, picked up a taxi, gave the address of the Union Depot. When I got there I dropped the hotel key into a mailbox, picked up another cab, and gave the address of a swanky apartment hotel three blocks from where Ashbury had his residence. I paid off the cab, and, after he drove away, walked down to the Ashbury place.
The butler was still up. He let me in although Ashbury had given me a key.
“Miss Ashbury in yet?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. She came in about ten minutes ago.”
“Tell her I’m waiting on the sun porch,” I said, “and that it’s important.”
He looked at me for a moment, blinked his eyes, and said, “Very well, sir.”
I went out on the sun porch and sat down. Alta came down in about five minutes. She swept into the room with her chin up in the air. “There’s nothing you can say,” she said, “no explanation you can make.”
“Sit down,” I said.
She hesitated a moment, then sat down.
I said, “I’m going to tell you something. I want you to remember it. Think it over tonight and remember it tomorrow. You were tired and nervous. You canceled a date. You went to a movie, but couldn’t stick it out. You came back home. You haven’t been anywhere else. You understand?”
She said, “I came down here because I want to make a good job of having this over with once and for all. I hate snoops and spies. I suppose my stepmother employed you to find out just how I felt... Well, she’s found out. I could just as well have told her to her face, but as far as you’re concerned, I think you’re beneath contempt. I—”
I said, “Come down to earth. I’m a detective. I was hired to protect you.”
“To protect me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t need any protection.”
“That’s what you think. Remember what I told you. You were tired and nervous. You canceled a date. You went to a movie but couldn’t stick it out. You came back home. You haven’t been anywhere else.”
She stared at me.
I took the cheque from my pocket. “I don’t suppose,” I said, “that you bother to keep stubs of such minor cash outlays as ten-thousand-dollar checks, do you?”
Her face went white as she sat staring at that cheque, her eyes riveted on it.
I took a match from my pocket, struck it, and set fire to one corner. I held it until the flame got close enough to burn my fingers, then I dropped it into an ash tray. I ground the ashes to powder with the tips of my fingers.
“Good-night,” I said, and started for the stairs.
She didn’t say anything until I was going through the door.
“Donald!” she cried — just one sharp cry.
I didn’t turn around but closed the door behind me, went upstairs, and to bed. I didn’t want her to know he’d been murdered until she read it in the papers or until the cops told her. If anyone around the hotel knew who she was and the cops came out to question her, she could put on a lot better act of surprise, or grief, or relief, or whatever it was going to be, if she wasn’t acting a part.
I had a hell of a time getting to sleep.
Chapter five
The police sirens came about three o’clock in the morning. I could hear them coming a long way off. I started to get up and dress, because I wanted to be on hand when things began to happen; then I remembered my own position in the matter and went back to bed.