Noddy was sitting quite still in the front seat. His right hand moved slowly towards the gun under his thigh. Dalmas opened the door of the sedan and got out, shut the door, took two steps and opened the door of the taxi. He stood beside the taxi and watched the sandy-haired man.
Horns of the stalled cars blared furiously. The driver of the Yellow was out in front tugging at the two cars with a great show of energy and with no result at all. His toothpick waggled up and down in his mouth. A motorcycle officer in amber glasses threaded the traffic, looked the situation over wearily, jerked his head at the driver.
«Get in and back up,» he advised. «Argue it out somewhere else — we use this intersection.»
The driver grinned and scuttled around the front end of his Yellow. He climbed into it, threw it in gear and worried it backwards with a lot of tooting and arm-waving. It came clear. The sandy-haired man peered woodenly from the sedan. Dalmas got into the taxi and pulled the door shut.
The motorcycle officer drew a whistle out and blew two sharp blasts on it, spread his arms from east to west. The brown sedan went through the intersection like a cat chased by a police dog.
The Yellow went after it. Half a block on, Dalmas leaned forward and tapped on the glass.
«Let’em go, Joey. You can’t catch them and I don’t want them … That was a swell routine back there.»
The redhead leaned his chin towards the opening in the panel. «Cinch, chief,» he said, grinning. «Try me on on a hard one some time.»
TWO
The telephone rang at twenty minutes to five. Dalmas was lying on his back on the bed. He was in his room at the Merrivale. He reached for the phone without looking at it, said: «Hello.»
The girl’s voice was pleasant and a little strained. «This is Mianne Crayle. Remember?»
Dalmas took a cigarette from between his lips. «Yes, Miss Crayle.»
«Listen. You must please go over and see Derek Walden. He’s worried stiff about something and he’s drinking himself blind. Something’s got to be done.»
Dalmas stared past the phone at the ceiling. The hand holding his cigarette beat a tattoo on the side of the bed. He said slowly: «He doesn’t answer his phone, Miss Crayle. I’ve tried to call him a time or two.»
There was a short silence at the other end of the line. Then the voice said: «I left my key under the door. You’d better just go on in.»
Dalmas’ eyes narrowed. The fingers of his right hand became still. He said slowly: «I’ll get over there right away, Miss Crayle. Where can I reach you?»
«I’m not sure … At John Sutro’s, perhaps. We were supposed to go there.»
Dalmas said: «That’s fine.» He waited for the click, then hung up and put the phone away on the night table. He sat up on the side of the bed and stared at a patch of sunlight on the wall for a minute or two. Then he shrugged, stood up. He finished a drink that stood beside the telephone, put on his hat, went down in the elevator and got into the second taxi in the line outside the hotel.
«Kilmarnock again, Joey. Step on it.»
It took fifteen minutes to get to Kilmarnock.
The tea dance had let out and the streets around the big hotel were a mess of cars bucking their way out from the three entrances. Dalmas got out of the taxi half a block away and walked past groups of flushed débutantes and their escorts to the arcade entrance. He went in, walked up the stairs to the mezzanine, crossed the writing room and got into an elevator full of people. They all got out before the penthouse floor.
Dalmas rang Walden’s bell twice. Then he bent over and looked under the door. There was a fine thread of light broken by an obstruction. He looked back at the elevator indicators, then stooped and teased something out from under the door with the blade of a penknife. It was a flat key. He went in with it … stopped … stared.
There was death in the big room. Dalmas went towards it slowly, walking softly, listening. There was a hard light in his gray eyes and the bone of his jaw made a sharp line that was pale against the tan of his cheek.
Derek Walden was slumped almost casually in the brown and gold chair. His mouth was slightly open. There was a blackened hole in his right temple, and a lacy pattern of blood spread down the side of his face and across the hollow of his neck as far as the soft collar of his shirt. His right hand trailed in the thick nap of the rug. The fingers held a small, black automatic.
The daylight was beginning to fade in the room. Dalmas stood perfectly still and stared at Derek Walden for a long time. There was no sound anywhere. The breeze had gone down and the awnings outside the french windows were still.
Dalmas took a pair of thin suede gloves from his left hip pocket and drew them on. He kneeled on the rug beside Walden and gently eased the gun from the clasp of his stiffening fingers. It was a .32, with a walnut grip, a black finish. He turned it over and looked at the stock. His mouth tightened. The number had been filed off and the patch of file marks glistened faintly against the dull black of the finish. He put the gun down on the rug and stood up, walked slowly towards the telephone that was on the end of a library table, beside a flat bowl of cut flowers.
He put his hand towards the phone but didn’t touch it. He let the hand fall to his side. He stood there a moment, then turned and went quickly back and picked up the gun again. He slipped the magazine out and ejected the shell that was in the breech, picked that up and pressed it into the magazine. He forked two fingers of his left hand over the barrel, held the cocking piece back, twisted the breech block and broke the gun apart. He took the butt piece over to the window.
The number that was duplicated on the inside of the stock had not been filed off.
He reassembled the gun quickly, put the empty shell into the chamber, pushed the magazine home, cocked the gun and fitted it back into Derek Walden’s dead hand. He pulled the suede gloves off his hands and wrote the number down in a small notebook.
He left the apartment, went down in the elevator, left the hotel. It was half-past five and some of the cars on the boulevard had switched on their lights.
THREE
The blond man who opened the door at Sutro’s did it very thoroughly. The door crashed back against the wall and the blond man sat down on the floor — still holding on to the knob. He said indignantly: «Earthquake, by gad!»
Dalmas looked down at him without amusement.
«Is Miss Mianne Crayle here — or wouldn’t you know?» he asked.
The blond man got off the floor and hurled the door away from him. It went shut with another crash. He said in a loud voice: «Everybody’s here but the Pope’s tomcat — and he’s expected.»
Dalmas nodded. «You ought to have a swell party.»
He went past the blond man down the hall and turned under an arch into a big old-fashioned room with built-in china closets and a lot of shabby furniture. There were seven or eight people in the room and they were all flushed with liquor.
A girl in shorts and a green polo shirt was shooting craps on the floor with a man in dinner clothes. A fat man with noseglasses was talking sternly into a toy telephone. He was saying: «Long Distance — Sioux City — and put some snap into it, sister!»
The radio blared «Sweet Madness.»
Two couples were dancing around carelessly bumping into each other and the furniture. A man who looked like Al Smith was dancing all alone, with a drink in his hand and an absent expression on his face. A tall, white-faced blonde weaved towards Dalmas, slopping liquor out of her glass. She shrieked: «Darling! Fancy meeting you here!»