He crossed one leg over the other.
‘You don’t imagine I can live in the style in which I live from what I get out of the International, do you, Scott? Three years ago I had a chance of buying the Little Tavern, and I bought it. This is a rich town. It is full of rich degenerates with nothing to do but to chase one another’s wives and drink whisky. I knew it was a crowd that would gamble if given the opportunity. I gave it the opportunity. For three years that wheel at the Little Tavern has been spinning and has been making me a fortune. The law against gambling is strict. A lot of people have tried to run a wheel and they have been shut down. I was more fortunate. This man Harry O’Brien was in charge of the roads leading to the Little Tavern. It was his job to report any suspicious gathering of people who might be gamblers. He was the eyes and ears of the Police Commissioner. I made it worth his while to be deaf and dumb, but I knew sooner or later he would get greedy, and he did. The profits from the wheel, instead of coming to me, began to go to him. He bled me white. As a blackmailer he was in a class of his own. After six or seven months, I found I was making less money than I had made before I bought the Little Tavern. His demands became so pressing, I was forced to use some of the International’s profits to satisfy him. That was a situation that had to stop.’
The clock on the overmantel suddenly began to strike four o’clock. The afternoon’s sun beat against the sun-blinds. The whisper of the sea somehow had a sinister sound.
I lay there, listening, looking at this man who was my boss and who I had thought the tops in the advertising game. He still looked impressive, with his big frame, his well-fitting clothes and his massive, whisky-red face, but he wasn’t impressive to me any more.
He reached out and stubbed out his cigarette, lit another and smiled at me.
‘There is only one way to stop a blackmailer when he is in O’Brien’s class and that’s to kill him.’ The glittering eyes met mine and the thin lips tightened. ‘Murdering a policeman is dangerous, Scott. It is a challenge to the police force and they take extra trouble in tracking down the killer. I laid my plans. As in everything I do, I took the broad view of the situation. If I were to kill a man, I would make a complete job of it, I decided. I badly needed money. I had taken fifteen thousand dollars from the International and I knew I couldn’t hide that up for long. I owed money everywhere. It would take me several weeks to recoup from the wheel once I had got rid of O’Brien, and the chances were that his successor would find out what was going on at the nightclub and I would be closed down. So I had to have money quickly. It was then I thought of you. I had heard you had some money. Everything fell into place once I decided to make use of you, Scott. So I prepared the bait of the New York office and you fell for it.’
I lay listening to his quiet, dangerous voice, and I kept wondering about Lucille. I was scared to ask him if she were still in my bedroom in case she had got free and had left the bungalow before he arrived. There was just a chance that she had got free.
‘In case things went wrong,’ he went on, ‘I took the precaution to provide myself with an alibi. Only Mrs. Hepple and Lucille know I didn’t break my leg. Mrs. Hepple has been with me for years and I can trust her. Lucille…’ He broke off and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Let me tell you about Lucille. She was one of the dancers at the Little Tavern. When I bought the place, I was careful no one at the club except Claude should know who I was. I used to go there as a customer. The girl appealed to me. A mistake, of course. She was pretty and gay and young, but a man soons gets tired of a girl when she has a head as empty as Lucille’s. However, the one thing in her favour is she does what I tell her to do, and so does her oaf of a brother, Ross, who also worked at the Little Tavern when I took it over. I explained to these two what I wanted. I told them if O’Brien continued to blackmail me, the Little Tavern would shut down; Ross would lose his job and Lucille would find herself married to a poor man. It was my suggestion that Lucille should ask you to teach her to drive—a good suggestion, I think.’ Again, the thin lips lifted in a sneering smile. ‘When I was ready, I told her to take you down that beach road. I had arranged to meet O’Brien down there. His monthly pay-off was due. We met down there. While I was talking to him, Ross came up behind him and knocked him senseless. In the meantime you and Lucille were acting out your little drama. I had instructed her exactly how she was to behave. It was essential that you should attempt to seduce her, thus providing you with a guilt complex. It was also essential that she should run away with your car. I know enough about male psychology to be sure you would act the way I wanted you to act, and you did.’ He leaned forward to tap ash off his cigarette. ‘Lucille brought the car to me. The accident wasn’t difficult to stage. I had O’Brien lying in the road. I ran the car over him. Then I drove the car fast and hard into his motorcycle I had placed on its parker in the middle of the road. It was quite a smash. Then I turned the car over to Lucille and Ross and told them to take it to your bungalow.’
‘You made a mistake,’ I said. ‘All killers make mistakes. You ran O’Brien over with the off-side wheel and you hit the motorcycle with the on-side front wing. That told me there was something phoney about the accident. It wouldn’t have been possible to have killed O’Brien accidentally the way you staged it.’
He lifted his eyebrows.
‘It doesn’t matter. You obligingly got rid of the mistake by having the car repaired. That was a smart move of yours, Scott, the way you switched the number plates. But it did give Ross a chance to get a photograph of you and when he showed me the photo I knew then I had you where I wanted you.’ He stretched out his long legs and stared up at the ceiling, ‘It’s a pity you got too smart. It’s a pity too that you ran into that Lane woman. It complicated things for me. I knew I would have to get rid of her sooner or later as I was sure O’Brien had told her he was blackmailing me, and she would probably guess his death hadn’t been an accident. I had my men watching her all the time, and she knew it. She and Nutley were scared. They wanted to get out of town where I couldn’t reach them, but they lacked funds. So when you appeared on the scene, she saw her chance of getting some money to leave town. I was told you were going to her apartment. I arrived a little late, but not late enough to hear she had double-crossed you. I was waiting outside her apartment as she came out and I killed her. I very nearly lost track of Nutley, but fortunately one of my men had been watching him and he reported to me that you and Nutley had got together at the Washington. I went along there and shot him. The night clerk had to go too. He cost me a hundred dollars to go up to Nutley’s room. On my way out, I had to kill him. He would have known me again.’ He rubbed his red, fleshy face and his glittering eyes stared at me.
‘Killing comes easily, Scott, after you have killed your first man, but it also becomes complicated. You kill someone, then you kill someone else to cover up the first killing, and then you have to kill again to cover up the second killing.’
‘I guess you must be out of your mind,’ I said huskily. ‘You can’t hope to get away with this.’
‘Of course I can. At the moment I am lying in bed with a broken leg. It’s a perfect alibi. It will never occur to anyone I have had anything to do with any of this. Besides, I am going to shift the whole thing on to you. I see you have a typewriter over there. I intend to type out the beginning of a confession that will convince the police that you accidentally killed O’Brien, and Ross and Lucille attempted to blackmail you.’ He put his head on one side, smiling. ‘I forgot to tell you that while my men were bringing you here, I took Ross back to his bungalow and shot him through the head with the gun that killed Nutley. I’m making a clean sweep, Scott. I’m tired of Ross and I am very, very tired of Lucille.’ Again he smiled. ‘Getting back to your confession, Scott, they will read that the Lane woman and her agent Nutley also tried to blackmail you and you killed them. You have left enough evidence behind you to convince the police that you did kill them. They will read that you went out to Ross’s bungalow and killed him and then you returned here, enticed Lucille down here and strangled her with one of your neckties.’