She said, “You’re crazy.”
I said, “That’s the way the police are going to reason.”
She glanced almost helplessly at Roberta Fenn.
“Now then,” I said, “suppose you tell me just how you became acquainted with Archibald C. Smith, and why you happened to give him a letter to Roberta.”
There seemed to be genuine surprise on her face. “Smith! Good heavens, what’s that old fossil got to do with it?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
“Now I know you’re crazy. He hasn’t anything to do with it.”
“Well, how did you happen to meet him? What’s—”
The doorbell rang sharply.
“See who it is,” I said to Edna.
She went to the telephone, pressed the button, said, “Who is it?”
Looking at her face, I knew from the expression of sheer terror what the answer was.
“Have you got any things here?” I asked Roberta. “A bag, clothes, anything?”
She shook her head. “I left the apartment without anything. I telegraphed Edna collect and she wired me money to come here. I haven’t had a chance to buy anything. I—”
“Grab everything you’ve got,” I said, “everything that would indicate you’d been here. Let’s get going.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
I said to Edna, “Press the buzzer that opens the downstairs door. Take all these extra cigarette butts from the ash tray, and throw them out of the window. Be putting on that housecoat when they come to the door.”
I saw Edna’s hand groping for the button which controlled the buzzer.
“Who is it?” Roberta asked.
Edna turned to her. Her quivering lips couldn’t answer.
“The police, of course,” I said, grabbed Roberta’s wrist, and rushed her to the door.
Chapter Sixteen
There was a bend in the corridor about twenty feet from Edna’s door. I kept my hand on Roberta’s wrist, guiding her down the corridor and around this bend.
“But what—” she said. “Why—”
“Hush,” I whispered. “Wait.”
There were steps on the stairs.
“If it’s one man,” I whispered, “we wait here. If it’s two men, we beat it.”
There were two men. They came walking down the corridor, the heavy tread of beefy men. We could hear knuckles on Edna’s door.
I peeked around the corner and saw two broad backs. I had a glimpse of Edna’s white face; then the two men pushed their way into the room. I waited until the door closed, turned to Roberta, and beckoned.
She followed me down the hall.
At the head of the stairs she asked, “Why would we have waited if there had only been one?”
“They hunt in couples. If one had gone up, it would have meant the other was sitting in the car, waiting. With both of them in Edna’s room, it should mean the coast is clear. At any rate, let’s hope.”
We went down the stairs. I pushed open the door and held it for Roberta. A police car was parked in front of the apartment. No one was in it.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We walked down the street.
“Not too fast.”
“I feel as though something were chasing me. I want to run.”
“Don’t do it. Look up at me and laugh. Slow down. Here, let’s stop and look in this window.”
We paused, looked casually in a store window, then started walking again. Slowly I guided her around the corner.
“Know anyone else here?” I asked.
“No.”
I said, “Okay, we go into a restaurant and eat. Had dinner?”
“No. We were just going out for dinner when you rang the bell. Edna was just out of the tub.”
We strolled along the street. Once or twice she tried to ask me questions. I told her to wait. We found a good-looking restaurant with booths, went in, and selected a quiet booth off in the comer away from the door. The waiter brought a menu, and I ordered two daiquiri cocktails.
The waiter withdrew.
I said, “Keep your voice down low. Tell me How much you know about Edna’s little scheme.”
“Nothing,” she said. “It happened just the way you doped it out, only I didn’t know she was expecting any papers to be served on her.”
“Why was Nostrander so anxious to see you?”
She said, “He fell for me. It was very annoying as far as I was concerned.”
I said, “You don’t mean that you moved out of the apartment, changed your whole style simply because some man whom you didn’t like was making passes at you.”
“Well — well, not exactly.”
“Why, then?”
“I’d rather let it go just the way it is.”
I shook my head. “You can’t.”
She said, “Well, to tell you the truth, in part I got tired of the life I was living. I wasn’t working. I was getting all of my expenses paid simply to stay there and take the name of Edna Cutler. I wasn’t getting up until along about eleven or twelve o’clock in the morning. I’d go to breakfast, take a little walk, pick up some magazines, come back, read and doze during the afternoon, go out about seven o’clock for a bite to eat, come back, take a bath, put on my glad rags, take a lot of care with my make-up, and groom myself up to the minute. Then I’d either have a date, or else I’d drift across to one of the bars, and — well, you know how it is in New Orleans. It isn’t like any other city on earth. A girl sits in the bar, and men pick her up. They don’t think anything of it, and neither does the girl. In any other city, you’d wonder what sort she was, but — well. New Orleans is New Orleans.”
The waiter brought our daiquiris. We touched glasses, took the first sip.
The waiter stood by the table, exerting a silent pressure for our orders.
“Could you bring some oysters on the half shell with a lot of cocktail sauce, some horseradish and lemon?” I asked. “Then bring us some of those cold, peppered shrimp, some onion soup, a steak about three inches thick, done medium rare, some French-fried onions, shoestring potatoes, cut some French bread, put on lots of butter, sprinkle on just a trace of garlic, put it in the oven, let it get good and hot so the butter melts all through the bread, put some sparkling Burgundy on the ice, and after that bring us a dish of ice cream, a huge pot of coffee, and the check.”
The waiter never batted an eyelash. “I could do that very nicely, sir.”
“How about you?” I asked Roberta.
“I could go for that in a big way.”
I nodded to the waiter, waited until the green curtains had dropped back into place, and said suddenly to Roberta, “Where were you at two-thirty a.m. Thursday?”
She said, “If I told you what happened that night, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Bad as that?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me then.”
She said, “I’d kept away from Nostrander. He didn’t know I was in New Orleans; then he found me. You were there when he found me. You heard what he said. It was the first time I’d seen him for two years. I didn’t want to have a scene in front of you. The last time I had seen him, he had been absolutely crazy about me. In fact, he had a jealousy complex. That was one of the things which made him so distasteful to me. Whenever I’d try to go out with anyone else, he’d go absolutely crazy-I mean that literally. He was a very brilliant man, but completely unstable. Heaven help the woman whoever married him! He wouldn’t have let even the milkman come to the house.”