“Now sign it in your own handwriting with the following words: ‘The Avenging Angel.’”
“What the hell is this supposed to be?” Ames asked.
“You want to write it, please?”
Ames wrote the words, and then handed the slip of paper to Carella. He and Hawes compared it with the note that had been mailed to Mercy Howelclass="underline"
“So?” Ames asked.
“So you’re clean,” Hawes said.
“Imagine if I was dirty,” Ames answered.
At the desk downstairs, Ronnie Sanford was still immersed in his accounting textbook. He got to his feet again as the detectives came out of the elevator, adjusted his glasses on his nose, and then said, “Any luck?”
“Afraid not,” Carella answered. “We’re going to need this register for a while, if that’s okay.”
“Well...”
“Give him a receipt for it, Cotton,” Carella said. It was late, and he didn’t want a debate in the lobby of a run-down hotel. Hawes quickly made out a receipt in duplicate, signed both copies, and handed one to Sanford.
“What about this torn cover?” Hawes asked belatedly.
“Yeah,” Carella said. There was a small rip on the leather binding of the book, and he fingered it briefly now and then said, “Better note that on the receipt, Cotton.” Hawes took back the receipt and, on both copies, jotted the words “Small rip on front cover.” He handed the receipts back to Sanford.
“Want to just sign these, Mr. Sanford?” he said.
“What for?” Sanford asked.
“To indicate we received the register in this condition.”
“Oh, sure,” Sanford said. He picked up a ballpoint pen from its desk holder and asked, “What do you want me to write?”
“Your name and your title, that’s all.”
“My title?”
“Night Clerk, The Addison Hotel.”
“Oh, sure,” Sanford said, and signed both receipts. “This okay?” he asked. The detectives looked at what he had written.
“You like girls?” Carella asked suddenly.
“What?” Sanford asked.
“Girls,” Hawes said.
“Sure. Sure, I like girls.”
“Dressed or naked?”
“What?”
“With clothes or without?”
“I... I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
“Where were you tonight between eleven-twenty and mid-night?” Hawes asked.
“Getting... getting ready to come to... to work,” Sanford said.
“You sure you weren’t in the alley of the Eleventh Street Theater stabbing a girl named Mercy Howell?”
“What? No... no, of course... of course not. I was... I was... I was home... getting... getting dressed... to... to...” Sanford took a deep breath and decided to get indignant. “Listen, what’s this all about?” he said. “Would you mind telling me?”
“It’s all about this,” Carella said, and turned one of the receipts so that Sanford could read the signature:
“Get your hat,” Hawes said. “Study hall’s over.”
It was twenty-five minutes past five when Adele Gorman came into the room with Meyer’s cup of tea. He was crouched near the air-conditioning unit recessed into the wall to the left of the drapes, and he glanced over his shoulder when he heard her, and then rose.
“I didn’t know what you took,” she said, “so I brought everything.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Just a little milk and sugar is fine.”
“Have you measured the room?” she asked, and put the tray down on the table in front of the sofa.
“Yes, I think I have everything I need now,” Meyer said. He put a spoonful of sugar into the tea, stirred it, added a drop of milk, stirred it again, and then lifted the cup to his mouth. “Hot,” he said.
Adele Gorman was watching him silently. She said nothing. He kept sipping his tea. The ornate clock on the mantelpiece ticked in a swift whispering tempo.
“Do you always keep this room so dim?” Meyer asked.
“Well, my husband is blind, you know,” Adele said. “There’s really no need for brighter light.”
“Mmm. But your father reads in this room, doesn’t he?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The night you came home from that party. He was sitting in the chair over there near the floor lamp. Reading. Remember?”
“Oh. Yes, he was.”
“Bad light to read by.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“I think maybe those bulbs are defective,” Meyer said.
“Do you think so?”
“Mmm. I happened to look at the lamp, and there are three hundred-watt bulbs in it, all of them burning. You should be getting a lot more illumination with that kind of wattage.”
“Well, I really don’t know too much about—”
“Unless the lamp is on a rheostat, of course.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what a rheostat is.”
“It’s an adjustable resistor. You can dim your lights or make them brighter with it. I thought maybe the lamp was on a rheostat, but I couldn’t find a control knob anywhere in the room.” Meyer paused. “You wouldn’t know if there’s a rheostat control someplace in the house, would you?”
“I’m sure there isn’t,” Adele said.
“Must be defective bulbs, then,” Meyer said, and smiled. “Also, I think your air conditioner is broken.”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t.”
“Well, I was just looking at it, and all the switches are turned to the ‘on’ position, but it isn’t working. So I guess it’s broken. That’s a shame, too, because it’s such a nice unit. Sixteen thousand BTUs. That’s a lot of cooling power for a room this size. We’ve got one of those big old price-fixed apartments on Concord, my wife and I, with a large bedroom, and we get adequate cooling from a half-ton unit. It’s a shame this one is broken.”
“Yes. Detective Meyer, I don’t wish to appear rude, but it is late...”
“Sure,” Meyer said. “Unless, of course, the air conditioner’s on a remote switch, too. So that all you have to do is turn a knob in another part of the house and it comes on.” He paused. “Is there such a switch someplace, Mrs. Gorman?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’ll just finish my tea and run along,” Meyer said. He lifted the cup to his lips, sipped at the tea, glanced at her over the rim, took the cup away from his mouth, and said, “But I’ll be back.”
“I hardly think there’s any need for that,” Adele said.
“Well, some jewelry’s been stolen—”
“The ghosts—”
“Come off it, Mrs. Gorman.”
The room went silent.
“Where are the loudspeakers, Mrs. Gorman?” Meyer asked. “In the false beams up there? They’re hollow, I checked them out.”
“I think perhaps you’d better leave,” Adele said slowly.
“Sure,” Meyer said. He put the teacup down, sighed, and got to his feet.
“I’ll show you out,” Adele said.
They walked to the front door and out into the driveway. The night was still. The drizzle had stopped, and a thin layer of frost covered the grass rolling away toward the river below. Their footsteps crunched on the gravel as they walked slowly toward the automobile.
“My husband was blinded four years ago,” Adele said abruptly. “He’s a chemical engineer, there was an explosion at the plant, he could have been killed. Instead, he was only blinded.” She hesitated an instant, and then said again, “Only blinded,” and there was such a sudden cry of despair in those two words that Meyer wanted to put his arm around her, console her the way he might his daughter, tell her that everything would be all right come morning, the night was almost done, and morning was on the horizon. He leaned on the fender of his car, and she stood beside him looking down at the driveway gravel, her eyes not meeting his. They could have been conspirators exchanging secrets in the night, but they were only two people who had been thrown together on a premise as flimsy as the ghosts that inhabited this house.