Back in his office, he finally noticed the change that had come, over me since that last remark of his. “What is it, Mrs. Shaw? You seem troubled.”
I gestured shakily. “Well, after all, Lieutenant, why did I come here? To assure my own safety, to protect my life. This man saw me up there, just as I saw him. He knows I’m the only one who knows he was there. He’s going to try to kill me. He’s surely going to try, so that I won’t be able to tell that to anyone.
“Now if he’s already been wanted for three murders, and you haven’t gotten him so far, my identification makes no difference; you’ll simply want him for four murders now, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get him any quicker than before. And meanwhile, what’s to become of me? I’ll be living in danger from one minute to the next.”
“I’ll detail someone to—”
I quickly warded that off with a gesture.
“No, you can’t. How could such a thing escape Jim — my husband’s notice? He’s bound to ask questions, wonder what it’s all about. The whole thing would be bound to come out in the end. And that’s the very thing I tried to avoid by coming here to you unasked, entirely of my own accord.”
He stared at me incredulously. “You mean, given a choice between risking your life in a very real sense, and having your husband learn of your innocent involvement in this whole affair, you’d rather take chances on your life?”
“Much rather,” I told him very decisively.
I had been afraid not to pay the ten thousand. Now, because I had paid it, I was afraid to have it come out I had. I was afraid he would think there must have been something to cover up after all, if I had been so anxious and willing to pay it.
“You’re an unusual person,” Weill let me know.
“No, I’m not. Happiness is a soap-bubble. Once it’s been pricked, just try and get it back together again! This Sonny-Boy Nelson’s bullets can miss me. But my bubble can never be repaired again, once it’s burst. Even if it means just a stray thought passing through my husband’s mind five years from now. ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire.’ I won’t take that chance, I won’t risk it. Nothing else in life matters to me.” I got up and went toward the door.
Then I saw that he had more to say, so I stopped and looked back.
“Well, if you’re willing to take the risk that you are, spread out thin, over days and weeks, how about taking an even greater risk, but all at one time? Getting it over with then and there?”
I answered that by coming away from the door, returning to his desk, and reseating myself acquiescently.
“You said, a little while ago, that your coming here had done no good; that we’d only want him for one additional murder now but still without knowing where to find him. But you’re mistaken. If you’re willing to cooperate, run the risk that I just spoke of, we will know where to find him. Which is more than we ever knew before.”
I saw what he meant. I shook a little, but I lit a cigarette. The cigarette of cooperation.
“Tell me,” he said, “are there any out-of-the-way places you’re in the habit of going to by yourself, entirely unaccompanied by your husband or friends or anyone else? I mean, without departing from your normal routine or habits of life?”
I thought for a moment. “Yes,” I said, “there are.”
Chapter Four
The Trap Is Set
Jimmy didn’t mind my doing private charity work, going around to a few handicapped cases I happened to know of and doing what I could for them, but he didn’t like the parts of town it took me into at times. Above all, he didn’t like the idea of my going alone into some of those places. He’d warned me again and again to take someone with me.
I made the rounds only about once a month, anyway. I wasn’t a professional welfare worker. I never had more than half a dozen at a time on my list.
Like this old Mrs. Scalento, living alone and too proud to apply to the city for help. She wouldn’t have been eligible anyway; she could make enough to support herself when she was well. But right now she was laid up with arthritis or something, and needed tiding over.
I got out of the cab outside the tunnel-like black entrance of the rookery she lived in. They never had any lights on the stairs there, but I’d brought a little pocket-flash along in my bag for just that purpose.
I sent the taxi off. I usually stayed up there a considerable time with her, and it was cheaper to get another one when I came out again.
I groped my way down the long Stygian bore that led back to where I knew the stairs to be — from my memory of past visits alone.
Did you ever have a feeling of someone being near you, without seeing anything, without hearing anything move? Animals have that faculty of detection, I know, but that’s through their sense of scent. Scent wasn’t involved in this. Just some sort of a pulsing that told of another presence, reached me. To one side of the battered staircase.
I got the flash out and it shot a little white pill of light up the stairs in front of me before I’d even realized I’d nudged the little control-lever on. It must have been obvious which direction I was going to turn it in next, by the way it shook and slopped around in my hand.
The voice was so quiet. So reassuringly quiet. It seemed to come from right beside me, my very elbow almost. “Don’t turn the light this way, Mrs. Shaw.”
Mrs. Shaw. So then I knew what it was.
“Weill’s man. Don’t be frightened, Mrs. Shaw. We’re covering every one of these places you’ve showed up at tonight. Just act as you would at any other time.”
I went on up the stairs, after I’d gotten my breath back and my heartbeat had slowed a little, thinking resentfully, The fool! The Other One himself couldn’t have frightened me any worse!
That was what I thought.
I knocked when I got up to her door, and then let myself in without further ado. I had to; the old lady didn’t have the use of her legs.
She was sitting there propped up in bed, the way I usually found her. She didn’t seem glad to see me. Her face always lit up as though I were a visiting angel when I came in, and she’d start to bless me in Italian. Tonight she just stared at me with an intentness that almost seemed to have hostility in it.
She had just this one large barren room, and then a black hole of a kitchen without any window at all, leading off from it. I closed the door after me. “Well, how are we tonight?” I greeted her.
She gave an impatient swerve of her head away from me, almost as though she resented my coming in on her, as though I were unwelcome. I pretended not to notice the unmistakable surliness — not to mention ingratitude — of the reception I was getting.
The air of the room was stagnant, murky; none of these people were great believers in ventilation. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to let a little fresh air in here?” I suggested. I crossed to the window and raised it slightly from the bottom. She glared at me.
“How’s your plant getting along?” I asked her, crouching slightly to peer out at it. I’d sent her over a potted geranium, to cheer her up. She kept it out there on the window ledge.
A look of almost ferocious vindictiveness passed over her face, as I straightened up and turned away. “You no got to worry about it; iss all ri’,” she let me know in husky defiance. It was the first remark she’d uttered since I came in.
I tried to win her over. “Have you been using that electric heater? Does it take any of the stiffness out, make you feel any better?”
She said gruffly, “Lotsa bett’. Lotsa bett’.”
She had folded her arms across her chest now in a sort of stubborn sulkiness, and she kept jabbing one hand surreptitiously out from underneath the opposite arm. Not toward me, more — toward the door.