The sailor bent over him, pulled the garment open. Paper. Layer after layer of stiff, board-like paper, rolled around him like a cuirass, extending from ribs to thighs. A sash held it in place.
Hollinger rolled him out of his queer cocoon by pushing him across the floor, like a man laying a carpet. The stuff was in two lengths, one under the other. The Japanese had evidently slashed the whole square out of the screen first, then quickly slit that into two strips to narrow it so that he could wind it around himself. The knife-gash itself showed up in the second section, as it peeled free. The edges driven inward by the knife. Any cop worth his salt ought to be able to figure out what really happened with this to go by.
He riffled it out of the way. Then he flung himself down on the still stunned Japanese and gripped him by the throat. “Who was it?” he said in a low voice. “Who was in there? Who killed American fella?”
“No!” was the only answer he could get. “No!” Again and again.
“Better open up! This is waiting for you!” He showed a fist.
“No see! Man go in, come out again. I no know!”
“After what I just took off your hide? All right, here she comes!”
“Denguchi do! Denguchi do! I no do, he do! He get money for to do, he hired for to do—”
“Who hired him, you—?”
The yellow man’s eyes glazed. Then closed. The head rolled over heavily. Hollinger swore. He got up and quickly rolled the paper into a long staff, tucked it under his arm, took it out with him. Nothing more he could do here tonight.
The Russian was snoring in his lighted wall-niche when Hollinger got downtown again. Hollinger chased up the stairs past him, wangled the knob of his door triumphantly. “Hey, lady. Evelyn! It’s me, open up and listen to the good news!”
V
There wasn’t a sound from within. She must be in a pretty deep sleep, after what she’d been through earlier. He begun to thump subduedly. “Miss Brainard,” he said. “Lemme in, will ya?” Finally he went at the door in a way no sleeper could have ignored. He crouched down, looked through the keyhole. The light was still on inside, and he could make out the pear-shape of the key on the inside of the door.
Frightened now, he threw his shoulder against the door. The cheap lock tore off at the fourth onslaught. The Russian, roused, had come up meanwhile and was having epileptic fits at the damage to his premises.
The girl had vanished, with the key still locked from inside. A corner of the bedding trailed off onto the floor. One of the cheap net-curtains inside the window was torn partly off its rod, as though somebody had clutched at it despairingly. The window was all the way open. There was a tin extension-roof just below it, which sloped to within easy reach of the alley.
It wasn’t the police. They would have come in by the door, gone out with her by the door. All he had to go on was a name — Denguchi.
“Didn’t you hear anything? Didn’t you hear her scream out up here?”
The Russian immediately turned professionally indignant. “Oh, so you got girl opstairs! For this is extra charge!”
“I haven’t now!” gritted Hollinger, and the lodging-house keeper drew back hastily at sight of the grim lines in his face.
“I no hear. I tzleep. How I know you got somebody op here?”
Hollinger tested the disturbed bed with the back of his hand. It still showed faint traces of warmth. “She hasn’t been gone very long—” he muttered. “But every minute I stand here—”
Where would they take her? What could they possibly want with her? Just to hold her as a hostage, shut her up about the first murder? He didn’t think so. It was she they’d meant to get the first time, and not the man. Now they’d come back to correct the mistake. Then why hadn’t they killed her right here, why had they gone to the trouble of smuggling her out the window? The only answer he could find for that was that somebody had sent out after her. Somebody who hadn’t come here had wanted to see it done, had wanted to gloat. Who could be that interested in killing a woman? Only another woman. There was another woman in this somewhere, he should have realized that from the beginning—
He had a sudden hunch where to go to look for her. He remembered Evelyn’s remark in the taxi: “He didn’t seem to want me to know where he lived.”
He grabbed the Russian by the shoulder. “How do you find an address in a hurry, an address you don’t know? I’m out of my depth now—”
“You osk inflammation-lady at telephone-exchange—”
Not so different from home after all. He started shoving the Russian downstairs ahead of him. “Do it for me, I can’t talk the lingo! The name’s Robert Mallory — and tell her to steer the police over there fast—”
The Russian came out in a moment and threw a “twenty-five” and a tongue-twisting street-name at him.
“I’m leaving,” Hollinger called back. “Take care of that cylinder of paper upstairs for me!” He ran out into the streets saving the unpronounceable name over to himself out loud. If he dropped a syllable, it might cost Evelyn Brainard her life. He got a prowling cab just by luck. He kept on saying it over and over, even after he was in it.
“I hear,” sighed the driver finally, “I catch.”
Mallory had done himself well. His place turned out to be a little bungalow on one of the better-class residential streets, with grounds around it, even a little garage behind it and a driveway for his car. There were no lights in front, but the garage told him his hunch had been right. The reflected square of a lighted rear-window showed up against it, ghostly-pale, thrown over from the house. Someone was in the back of the house. Mallory had died hours ago in the House of Stolen Hours, and if the police were here, they would have been in front of the place, not in back.
He didn’t waste time on the front door, just hooded the Russian’s coat over his head for padding, bucked one of the ground-floor window-panes head on. It shattered and he climbed in, nicking his hands a little. A scream sounded through the house, then broke off short as though a hand had been thrown over the mouth emitting it. He waded out of the velvety darkness of the room he was in toward a semi-lighted hallway, toppling over something fragile behind him.
He ran down the hallway toward the light at the back. As the room swung into his vision he saw the Brainard girl in there, writhing, clutching at her throat, a darker head peering from behind her blond one. Somebody was strangling her with a scarf, or trying to.
But nearer at hand there was a sense of lurking menace hidden behind the slightly-stirring bead curtains bunched over to one side of the entryway. The girl, half-throttled as she was, tried to warn him with a limply outflung hand in that direction.
He caught up a slim teakwood stand, rammed it head on into the stringy covert, at stomach level. It brought a knife slashing down out at him, as if by reflex action. It cut the air in two before him. He grabbed at the tan fist holding it, brought it all the way out, vised it against him. Then he sent a swift punch home about two feet above it. The beaded strips lacerated his knuckles, but they must have lacerated the face behind them too, acting like cruel little brass-knuckles.
There was a yelp of agony and the man reeled out into the open, a short little demon in a candy-striped blazer. Hollinger twisted the knife out of his hand by shoulder pressure, gave him a second head blow that dropped him. Something white streaked by him, and when he looked over at her, the Brainard girl was alone, coughing as she struggled to unwind the strangling sash from her throat. She staggered toward him, fell into his arms with a jerky backward hitch of the elbows, like something worked on strings.