I said it aloud. “Alive!” I said it several times, and then I walked around the Buick and looked at Calvart. Only then did I fully realize what had happened, and I felt fine! I felt exactly the way I had the day I killed Gorgan, only better. Much better!
Then I remembered the papers that I'd sold him. I got down in the ditch with him and took them out of his pocket. Then I looked through the briefcase in the front seat and there was nothing in it but bundles of newspaper cut to the size of banknotes, but not even that could smother my elation. Money was the easiest thing in the world to come by, but a man had to stay alive to enjoy it.
That's something you should have thought of, Calvart, before you arranged this little party tonight!
The back seat of the Buick was a mess, and I didn't make it any better by dragging Max out of it. But I had to use the Buick to get back to Lake City and it wouldn't be especially smart to have it loaded down with corpses.
I dumped Max in the ditch on top of Calvart. Tomorrow they would find them, maybe, and there would be a hell of a noise, but there was very little they could do about it. Who would ever tie a thing like this to Roy Surratt?
It occurred to me that I might as well give the police a motive for the murders, any kind of motive except blackmail, so I went back to the ditch and began looking for wallets. This last was a profitable decision, as it turned out. Calvart, was carrying almost six hundred, and Max a little over four hundred, probably an advance on the job he was supposed to do. I laughed aloud as I counted it, almost a thousand dollars. Not bad, not bad at all fox a night's work, even though it was a little out of my line.
I pocketed the money, took Max's watch and Calvart's watch and diamond ring. No sir, not a bad night's work at all, everything considered!
I switched on the Buick, got it turned around, and headed back toward Lake City.
I parked the Buick on the outskirts of the city and caught a bus downtown. From there I drove the Lincoln to the apartment.
I was over the shakes now. I couldn't imagine how I could have been scared at all. One thing I was sure of—I'd never be scared again. Audacity, Surratt, that's the tiling to remember. Audacity and brains—they make a combination that can't be beat!
I felt fight headed, almost drunk. I was a giant among men and the twenty thousand dollars I'd lost didn't bother me at all. Money, I reminded myself again, is nothing.
While downtown I had picked up a morning paper, but I hadn't looked at it yet. The Burton killing had slipped out of the headlines, and it was too early for the Calvart murder, so I dropped the folded paper on a table, went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of milk.
It was still early, no more than ten o'clock. I'd get myself cleaned up. This had been quite a night... it called for a celebration. So I'd just go over to Pat's apartment....
That was when I saw it. I walked back in the front room and glanced at the paper and there it was—in black headlines just below the fold.
WIFE OF JOHN VENCI FOUND DEAD. CORONER SAYS SUICIDE
So Dorris had done it.
The first thing I felt was a sense of relief. Well, by God, I thought, I'm glad she had the guts to go through with it. I'm glad to have her off my neck!
She had shot herself, using a little .22 automatic, and it had been a neat, workmanlike job, according to the paper. One bullet in the temple. Well, I thought, that's the end of that. It's just as well that she had ended it this way, for she would have ended up in a nut ward sooner or later if she hadn't.
Then I thought of something that shook me. I thought: Wait a minute, Surratt. Dorris was pretty sore at you this morning when you brushed her off. Could that have had anything to do with her suicide? Could she have been sore enough to have left some incriminating evidence behind?
Jesus! I thought, that's something to think about, all right!
It was possible, I decided, just possible that Dorris had taken this big step because of me. If that was the way it had happened, it meant trouble. It very well could mean the end of Roy Surratt! What if she had left a note behind? What if she had talked to somebody—the district attorney, for instance—before taking the bottomless plunge to oblivion?
It shook me. I devoured every word concerning the suicide, and then I went through it again very carefully to see if I could read anything between the lines.
I could find nothing, feel nothing, sense nothing that might implicate me in the affair. It had happened around four in the afternoon, according to the newspaper. The maid was out of the house at the time. Dorris had simply gone to her room, locked herself in and shot herself with that toy automatic. The reporter quoted the maid as saying that Mrs. Venci had not been herself since her husband was killed, and it was implied that grief had been the driving motive behind the act of self-destruction.
It was perfectly simple. The same story about the grief-stricken widow is printed every day, someplace or other.... It is so simple, I thought, that the whole thing stinks. Dorris Venci had been incapable of doing a thing simple and cleanly—I knew that better than any person alive.
Any person alive...
My experience with Stephen Calvart had made me acutely aware of the importance of staying alive. A man had to use his brain; and that is exactly what I did. If this thing was going to turn out to be more than a simple suicide, I had to know about it, and fast.
The first thing I did was pick up the phone and call Dorris's number. That maid, that sour faced maid of Dorris's, she was the one who might be able to straighten me out. Finding the maid at the Venci house tonight was a longshot chance, and this wasn't the night for longshots to come in. I let the phone ring at least a dozen times and finally hung up.
What had been that maid's name, anyway. Ethel? Edith? Ellen? That was it, Ellen, but I had no idea what her last name was or where she might be.
But the police would know. The idea of going to the police for information amused me. I grinned, feeling a bit of the old excitement and elation return as I dialed the operator and got the number.
“Hello,” I said soberly, “may I speak to the officer in charge of the Venci case?”
“Who's callin', please?”
“My name is Robert Manley. You see, I just got the news not more than two hours, ago, in this evening's paper, the Lake City Journal-Times, and I came just as fast as I could, but you see there was some sort of mix-up at the bus station, I missed my connection at Midburg, and that's the reason...”
“Hold on a minute, will you! Now what's this about the Venci case?”
“That's what I was telling you, officer. You see my Aunt Ellen has been in Mrs. Venci's employ all these years and...”
“Will you please try to calm down, sir. Your Aunt Ellen, you said. Do you mean Ellen Foster, the Venci maid?”
“Yes, of course, Aunt Ellen Foster. You see I live in Midburg, and Aunt Ellen is my aunt. My, that is a ridiculous statement, isn't it, officer, but I'm so upset, really, and Aunt Ellen was so devoted to Mrs. Venci...”
“Please, sir,” the voice said wearily, “just what is it you're trying to say?”
“Why I want to know where my Aunt Ellen is, of course! I called the Venci residence, but of course she wasn't there, what with that awful...”
“All right, all right!” he almost growled. “Just hold on a minute.”
I held on, grinning.
“Here it is,” he said after a moment. “The investigating officer lists Mrs. Foster's present address as 1214 Stanley Road, a boarding house there, I believe.”