Harry Brown closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the monster, the bloated embodiment of his conscience and ineptitude; but he could not shut his ears to its voice.
“Now O’Brien got a phone call in his office just in time to make arrangements to convert the hotel into a trap and race up here to catch you in the act. Who do you think made that phone call, Doctor? At five minutes to seven?”
At five minutes to seven he had just pushed through the revolving door downstairs, less than a minute after Gresham...
“A woman made that call, O’Brien said,” the prissy voice went on. “A ‘hysterical’ woman who had heard a gun go off in Suite 101 that hadn’t gone off at all. So she knew a gun was scheduled to go off. She knew you were going to be standing in that room pumping lead into me. What woman knew that, Harry? Give me a name — any other name but my wife’s. Can you?”
But he could not, he could not.
“And why should Karen phone the house detective of the Starhurst — putting on another act, of course, hysteria — why should she get him to roar into this room at just the time you were supposedly shooting me? Wouldn’t you say that her timing — deliberately premature to give O’Brien the opportunity to get up here at the moment of the murder — wouldn’t you say it was contrived to catch you committing it, Harry?”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
“Maybe they figured you’d panic and run, Harry, and O’Brien would put a bullet in you — that would wrap it up neatly... both of us dead, the victim and his killer. Or, that when you saw O’Brien, you’d stick the gun in your mouth and save O’Brien the trouble, with the same satisfying result. And if you weren’t shot running, or if you didn’t shoot yourself... tell me, Harry, would you have dragged Karen into it? Could you have dragged Karen into it? If I know my wife, you’ll find she’s managed to leave herself completely uninvolved—”
Yes... All she had to do was not go through the motions of placing that two-minutes-to-seven phone call, was not to ask Dr. Stone to phone at twenty minutes past seven... then she was in the clear, in the clear.
“—and she’d have got away with it. How do you feel, Doctor?”
Harry licked his lips. Was it possible... was it possible that somehow, in some way, by some miracle, Karen was not responsible for this? That it had been Tony Mitchell all along...? But this straw bent and broke even as he grasped it. The only way Tony Mitchell could have known what was scheduled for tonight would have been through Karen’s telling him.
“I see you feel properly rotten, as rotten as only a fine clean-living young man could feel when he sees himself as others see him... a fool, an object of contempt, about as important to his beloved as a soiled handkerchief. And you’d like to find a hole somewhere, wouldn’t you, and crawl into it and lick your wounded little ego? You’d like to be out of the whole thing — Karen, Tony, the organization, me? Even me? Especially me? Harry?”
“Yes.” It came out stiff and dry.
“Maybe that can be arranged,” Kurt Gresham said. “You know, Harry, I liked you from the start. Just made a mistake about your guts. Well, this isn’t the time or place to discuss you. Right now we have work to do.”
He was trying hard, very hard, to follow the sense of the old man’s words. Gresham got off the bed and went to the closet and came back with one of his impossibly long, green Havana cigars. Harry watched him strike a match, puff critically, nod approval.
“We’re in an interesting situation now, Harry my boy,” the millionaire murmured. “Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of my wife and my clever lawyer. By now I’m dead and you’re killed, or alive but in custody. Of course you’re not able to show up at Monique’s for dinner, or to go to the theater with them and the Stones afterward. How do they explain your nonappearance? Very simply: doctors are notoriously unreliable socially. An emergency, no doubt — Dr. Stone and his wife will certainly understand that. You didn’t even have time to phone. These conscientious young doctors, tch, ten, and so on.” He took the cigar out of his mouth and frowned at it. “All right, then. Karen and Tony and the Stones finish their dinner and go to the theater. My chauffeur then drives the Stones home to Taugus, as Dr. Stone had requested. Leaving Karen and Tony alone for the first time this evening. Where do they go, Harry?”
“To your apartment.”
“Home sweet home — correct, Harry. He takes her home at once. Because I’m dead and you’ve murdered me, and the police must have been trying to reach the widow, are likely waiting for her there. Yes, they go right to the apartment, bracing themselves for the act they’ve undoubtedly rehearsed and — but what’s this?” The fat old man cried delightedly, “No police! No sign of police! No message! No anything. What’s their reaction, Harry?”
Harry said, “They’re puzzled. Then they get nervous. Maybe scared.”
“You’re certainly coming back to life, Harry,” said Kurt Gresham with pleasure. “Yes, they’re puzzled, then nervous, then very nervous, then scared to death. And what will they do, Harry, when they get puzzled and nervous and scared to death?” His teeth clamped down viciously on the cigar. “They’ll talk, that’s what they’ll do! They’ll talk it over.”
He still doesn’t think I’m convinced, Harry thought. Or maybe he’s not as sure of his theory as he’s made out to be.
“They’ll talk it over, Harry,” said Kurt Gresham, “and we’ll be there, you and I — we’ll be there to listen.”
Twenty-Four
Gresham called the desk and ordered a pile of sandwiches and a pot of coffee. The fat man ate with a sort of abstracted relish. Harry could not eat. He drank, however. Not coffee. A great deal more brandy.
At half-past ten Gresham took his brief case and they left the Starhurst. In the taxi he said, “We’ll go in through the tradesmen’s entrance at the rear and walk up. I don’t want the doorman or the elevator men to see us.”
Harry nodded dreamily. He was floating on brandy.
“We’ll set up our listening post in the blue guest room.”
“Blue guest room,” Harry said. In all this madness it sounded perfectly logical.
The millionaire unlocked his apartment door and they went into the black foyer at eleven minutes to eleven, by Harry’s watch. It was an old watch, a gift from his father, with a black face and pale green luminous hands. He was still focusing on the watch in the dark when Kurt Gresham snapped on the foyer light.
“Hurry it up.” The old man trundled ahead of Harry to the blue guest room and led him to a chair near the door. “You sit here.”
Harry sat. He fumbled for a cigarette. Gresham seemed able to see in the dark. “Don’t smoke,” he said sharply. “And don’t make a sound when they come in. Breathe with your mouth open.”
He trotted out of the room. A moment later the foyer light went off. A moment after that Harry heard him come back into the bedroom.
“You all right, Harry?” the prissy voice said. Harry restrained an impulse to giggle. It was like a séance he had once attended, with voices coming out of the air.
“I’m all right.”
He heard the slight scrape of another chair and a wheezy grunt as Gresham took up his position just inside the doorway, within reach of the guest room light switch; heard the creak of the chair springs, the thump of Gresham’s brief case being set down on the floor.