Yat Sing handed me a piece of paper. On it written in a pencil scrawclass="underline" Genevieve Hotling, 632 Medville Arms.
I waited to see if there was any more.
“Betty Crofath write letters New Orleans. People no savvy much her pidgin. Keep alia same shut up. Ramon — Jose — too damn many. No can do.”
Yat Sing ceased talking.
“Anything else?”
“No more.”
I ate my dinner in silence and Yat Sing watched me in silence.
“Maybe-so by-and-by you find out more?” I said when I had finished.
He put the dishes back in the suitcase. “Maybe-so,” he said as he started out of the door, which was loquacious indeed for Yat Sing.
Chapter Seven
When a man is on the lam, there are certain elemental things he must remember if he has to go out in public. He must never seem to avoid other people. He should mingle in crowds as though unconscious of them, should neither try to hold the eyes of persons who look at him nor to avoid their glances. He should not hurry. He should not loaf. He should be just an average citizen going somewhere. And, most important of all, he should never, under any circumstances, glance back over his shoulder.
The amateur tries to avoid crowds, tries to keep off the beaten path, acting on the theory that the more people with whom he comes in contact, the more eyes there are watching him. As a matter of fact, the exact opposite is the truth. The more people who are about, the more faces there are for eyes to see, the more weary the eye gets of seeing them.
Which was why I went by streetcar to the Medville Arms rather than by taxicab.
There was a list of names and a row of buttons to the left of the door. I didn’t bother with any of them. I had the number I wanted, and the electrically-controlled lock on the street door was definitely not an obstacle to a person who knew anything about locks. It was not even an inconvenience.
I opened the door and entered the automatic elevator, whizzed up to the sixth floor and found 632 without any difficulty.
Noiselessly, I tried the knob of the door. It was locked.
I knocked.
I thought I heard surreptitious motion from inside the room, but I couldn’t be certain.
I knocked again.
A feminine voice on the other side of the door sounded distinctly frightened. “Who... who is it?”
“Telegram, Miss Genevieve Hotling,” I said, making my voice sound weary and without expression. “Charges, twenty-five cents.”
“Oh,” the voice said with relief.
The sound of a lock snapping back preceded the opening of the door.
I pushed forward.
Daphne Strate — alias Hazel Deering — fell back with panic-stricken eyes.
I kicked the door shut behind me.
“It’s time for you and me to have a little talk,” I told her.
She couldn’t get her lips together. She backed three steps to the edge of a studio couch and dropped down on the cushions. “What... Who...”
I said, “Let’s come clean for once. You doubled back to your room after I left. You found George Bronset, the Pullman porter, still in the bathtub with the water running. You cut his throat.”
“I did nothing of the sort. You’re crazy! Why should I have killed him?”
“We’ll talk about that, too. You killed him, all right.”
“I certainly did not! You’re the one who killed him!”
I kept my eyes on hers. “It had to be you. He had something on you. He came to blackmail you. You pulled the gun on him and scared him to death. You didn’t know what to do next. You tied and gagged him and put him in the bathtub. Then you realized that didn’t help any. The gun had frightened him stiff, but he was still a blackmailer and sooner or later you’d either have to turn him loose or else leave the place and let someone else turn him loose. In either event, you were no better off than when you started — worse off, in fact. You can’t stop a blackmailer by tying him up. You either have to pay up, tell him to go to hell, or kill him. You realized that, after a while. That’s why you came back and killed him.
“You were just debating what to do with him when you heard my knock on the door. You were in a blue funk. You finally decided that the porter was all right in the bathroom for a while, so you opened the door... Then the prisoner started making a noise, and you had to go out — until after you saw me leave; then you went back, with a knife.”
I waited for her to speak, and it was a long wait.
“No,” she said at length, “I didn’t. It wasn’t like that at all. You make it sound true, but it isn’t.”
“What did he have to blackmail you about?” I asked.
“Don’t be silly! He didn’t have a thing on me.”
I laughed.
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“In the first place,” I said, “you had the berth next to Betty Crofath. Betty Crofath was poisoned. You go to the hotel where she had made a reservation, register under her name. You show up with her baggage checks, claim her baggage, have it sent up to your room, open it and go through it. Come on, sister. Let’s at least be reasonable.”
She looked as though I had hit her in the stomach.
“And don’t take it out in bawling,” I said. “We haven’t any time for that.”
“I don’t cry. I’m not that kind. What do you want?”
“Suppose we try the truth for a change,” I suggested.
She was silent for a few seconds, thinking. I didn’t crowd her any, I simply sat there, waiting.
In that silence, the sound of a key in the lock sounded inordinately loud. I jumped to my feet and whirled.
The latch on the door clicked back. The girl who stood on the threshold was neat, trim, twenty-two or twenty-three, and cool as a test pilot. She looked at me with hazel eyes that held frank curiosity and not a trace of panic. Her hair, neatly combed along the sides of her head, was dark and glossy. The skin was of tawny smoothness.
“Hello,” she said, and smiled. “Who are you?”
“You’re Genevieve Hotling?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Related to Betty Crofath?”
“Yes. Are you a newspaper reporter?” she asked.
Daphne Strate said, “He’s... he’s... You know who.”
Genevieve’s eyes didn’t waver. “Oh,” she said, “like that, eh?”
I saw her gloved hand grope back toward the doorknob.
I said, “It’s too late for that. You can’t get out now. Come in and join the party, Miss Hotling.”
She sized up the situation, said suddenly, “Very well, I will.”
She slipped out of her light overcoat, started taking off her gloves with a certain calm precision.
I said, “I’m trying to talk some sense into this girl. Perhaps you can help.”
I liked the way she moved, liked the way she wore her clothes — a smooth, unwrinkled trimness about the way her garments fitted over the curves of her very good figure.
“Let’s hear what you have to say first,” she said, and seated herself over by the reading light. “Why did you kill the man?”
“Cigarettes?” I asked. “I didn’t kill him, Miss Hotling.”
“Yes, thanks. One would hardly expect you’d admit it.”
I handed her a cigarette, offered one to Daphne Strate. Daphne drew back as though my hand had held a knife.
I reached for a match, but Genevieve had one going before I scraped mine into flame. She lit her cigarette with a steady hand, settled back in the chair, crossed her knees, said, “As I gather the situation, you’ve located Daphne. You’re holding her a prisoner. I blundered in, so you’re holding me.”