On the road level there was a rough pine board garage, and from this a path went up to the cabin porch. The garage was unlocked. Steve swung the door open carefully, groped in past the dark bulk of a car and felt the top of the radiator. It was still warmish. He got a small flash out of his pocket and played it over the car. A gray sedan, dusty, the gas gauge low. He snapped the flash off, shut the garage door carefully and slipped into place the piece of wood that served for a hasp. Then he climbed the path to the house.
There was light behind the drawn red curtains. The porch was high and juniper logs were piled on it, with the bark still on them. The front door had a thumb latch and a rustic door handle above.
He went up, neither too softly nor too noisily, lifted his hand, sighed deep in his throat, and knocked. His hand touched the butt of the gun in the inside pocket of his coat, once, then came away empty.
A chair creaked and steps padded across the floor and a voice called out softly: «What is it?» Millar’s voice.
Steve put his lips close to the wood and said: «This is Steve, George. You up already?»
The key turned, and the door opened. George Millar, the dapper night auditor of the Carlton House, didn’t look dapper now. He was dressed in old trousers and a thick blue sweater with a roll collar. His feet were in ribbed wool socks and fleecelined slippers. His clipped black mustache was a curved smudge across his pale face. Two electric bulbs burned in their sockets in a low beam across the room, below the slope of the high roof. A table lamp was lit and its shade was tilted to throw light on a big Morris chair with a leather seat and back-cushion. A fire burned lazily in a heap of soft ash on the big open hearth.
Millar said in his low, husky voice: «Hell’s sake, Steve. Glad to see you. How’d you find us anyway? Come on in, guy.»
Steve stepped through the door and Millar locked it. «City habit,» he said grinning. «Nobody locks anything in the mountains. Have a chair. Warm your toes. Cold out at this time of night.»
Steve said: «Yeah. Plenty cold.»
He sat down in the Morris chair and put his hat and coat on the end of the solid wood table behind it. He leaned forward and held his hands out to the fire.
Millar said: «How the hell did you find us, Steve?»
Steve didn’t look at him. He said quietly: «Not so easy at that. You told me last night your brother had a cabin up here — remember? So I had nothing to do, so I thought I’d drive up and bum some breakfast. The guy in the inn at Crestline didn’t know who had cabins where. His trade is with people passing through. I rang up a garage man and he didn’t know any Millar cabin. Then I saw a light come on down the street in a coal-and-wood yard and a little guy who is forest ranger and deputy sheriff and wood-and-gas dealer and half a dozen other things was getting his car out to go down to San Bernardino for some tank gas. A very smart little guy. The minute I said your brother had been a fighter he wised up. So here I am.»
Millar pawed at his mustache. Bedsprings creaked at the back of the cabin somewhere. «Sure, he still goes under his fighting name — Gaff Talley. I’ll get him up and we’ll have some coffee. I guess you and me are both in the same boat. Used to working at night and can’t sleep. I haven’t been to bed at all.»
Steve looked at him slowly and looked away. A burly voice behind them said: «Gaff is up. Who’s your pal, George?»
Steve stood up casually and turned. He looked at the man’s hands first. He couldn’t help himself. They were large hands, well kept as to cleanliness, but coarse and ugly. One knuckle had been broken badly. He was a big man with reddish hair. He wore a sloppy bathrobe over outing-flannel pajamas. He had a leathery expressionless face, scarred over the cheekbones. There were fine white scars over his eyebrows and at the corners of his mouth. His nose was spread and thick. His whole face looked as if it had caught a lot of gloves. His eyes alone looked vaguely like Millar’s eyes.
Millar said: «Steve Grayce. Night man at the hotel — until last night.» His grin was a little vague.
Gaff Talley came over and shook hands. «Glad to meet you,» he said. «I’ll get some duds on and we’ll scrape a breakfast off the shelves. I slept enough. George ain’t slept any, the poor sap.»
He went back across the room towards the door through which he’d come. He stopped there and leaned on an old phonograph, put his big hand down behind a pile of records in paper envelopes. He stayed just like that, without moving.
Millar said: «Any luck on a job, Steve? Or did you try yet?»
«Yeah. In a way. I guess I’m a sap, but I’m going to have a shot at the private-agency racket. Not much in it unless I can land some publicity.» He shrugged. Then he said very quietly: «King Leopardi’s been bumped off.»
Millar’s mouth snapped wide open. He stayed like that for almost a minute — perfectly still, with his mouth open. Gaff Tailey leaned against the wall and stared without showing anything in his face. Millar finally said: «Bumped off? Where? Don’t tell me —»
«Not in the hotel, George. Too bad, wasn’t it? In a girl’s apartment. Nice girl too. She didn’t entice him there. The old suicide gag — only it won’t work. And the girl is my client.»
Miliar didn’t move. Neither did the big man. Steve leaned his shoulders against the stone mantel. He said softly: «I went out to the Club Shalotte this afternoon to apologize to Leopardi. Silly idea, because I didn’t owe him an apology. There was a girl there in the bar lounge with him. He took three socks at me and left. The girl didn’t like that. We got rather clubby. Had a drink together. Then late tonight — last night — she called me up and said Leopardi was over at her place and — he was drunk and she couldn’t get rid of him. I went there. Only he wasn’t drunk. He was dead, in her bed, in yellow pajamas.»
The big man lifted his left hand and roughed back his hair. Millar leaned slowly against the edge of the table, as if he were afraid the edge might be sharp enough to cut him. His mouth twitched under the clipped black mustache.
He said huskily: «That’s lousy.»
The big man said: «Well, for cryin’ into a milk bottle.»
Steve said: «Only they weren’t Leopardi’s pajamas. His had initials on them — big black initials. And his were satin, not silk. And although he had a gun in his hand — this girl’s gun by the way — he didn’t shoot himself in the heart. The cops will determine that. Maybe you birds never heard of the Lund test, with paraffin wax, to find out who did or didn’t fire a gun recently. The kill ought to have been pulled in the hotel last night, in Room Eight-fifteen. I spoiled that by heaving him out on his neck before that black-haired girl in Eight-eleven could get to him. Didn’t I, George?»
Millar said: «I guess you did — if I know what you’re talking about.»
Steve said slowly: «I think you know what I’m talking about, George. It would have been a kind of poetic justice if King Leopardi had been knocked off in Room Eight-fifteen. Because that was the room where a girl shot herself two years ago. A girl who registered as Mary Smith — but whose usual name was Eve Talley. And whose real name was Eve Millar.»
The big man leaned heavily on the victrola and said thickly: «Maybe I ain’t woke up yet. That sounds like it might grow up to be a dirty crack. We had a sister named Eve that shot herself in the Carlton. So what?»
Steve smiled a little crookedly. He said: «Listen, George. You told me Quillan registered those girls in Eight-eleven. You did. You told me Leopardi registered on Eight, instead of in a good suite, because he was tight. He wasn’t tight. He just didn’t care where he was put, as long as female company was handy. And you saw to that. You planned the whole thing, George. You even got Peters to write Leopardi at the Raleigh in Frisco and ask him to use the Carlton when he came down — because the same man owned it who owned the Club Shalotte. As if a guy like Jumbo Walters would care where a bandleader registered.»