“Yat T’oy reported to me and we decided we’d better sleep on it.”
“They’ll search this place then.”
“They have already. As soon as Yat T’oy told me about them I felt certain they’d make some excuse, so I went out to the back service porch and hid in the broom closet. Sure enough, a man came up with the janitor to inspect a leak in the gas pipes. They prowled all around and then left. Yat T’oy came and got me — and here I am.”
“How long do you think you can get away with this — staying here?”
“I don’t know. I do know that I can’t leave. I’m trapped here. Honest, Owl, I didn’t plan it that way. I just wanted a loan and to talk with you and see if you’d found my purse or if the police had. And then after I got here, the police — how is it we say it in the underworld? — oh yes, they ’sewed the place up’.”
“It’s a mess,” Clane said.
“I know. But it’s nice, isn’t it, Owl?”
“What?”
“Being a fugitive from justice this way. It’s sort of a battle, matching your wits with the police.”
Clane said, “Snap out of it, Cynthia. You can’t kid your way out of this mess.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “I think you’re right. But at least I can try and it’s lots of fun trying.”
“Back of that mask of facetious indifference,” Clane said, “you’re frightened. You know it and I know it. Why keep up the pretense? Why not give me the lowdown?”
“I guess I’m keeping your morale up,” she said airily. “But you can see how nice it is, Terry. The police are looking for me all over the city, I haven’t any money and they have my purse and driving license. Damn them, they even have my lipstick. And that hurts. You don’t realize what it means to be a woman and have no pockets, only a purse. And then lose that purse. Tell me, Owl, were you ever alone on the cold streets of a hostile city with the police looking for you and the fog making your nose run and you didn’t have a handkerchief?”
Clane grinned. “You make it sound inviting. What are your plans?”
“Why, I’m going to stay with you for a while, of course. The police have got everything else sewed up and this is the only place left.”
“They’ll find you here.”
“I don’t think so. They’re going to keep a watch on your apartment night and day from now on. They’ll know everyone who comes and goes. But it won’t ever occur to them that I got here first. Particularly after that inspection of the gas leak.”
She nodded with a self-satisfied little smile, said, “You know, Owl, we must practice talking out of the sides of our mouths. If we’re going to be outlaws, we want to look the part. Heavens, you can’t tell. They might want us for the movies some day; and if you talked out of the front of your mouth, people would think you couldn’t have amounted to much after all. I mean as a criminal, you know.”
“Well,” Clane said, sighing, “I guess you’ve made a criminal of me all right. One thing’s certain — Inspector Malloy never will believe your story about how you happened to get here.”
“Tell him to make up one of his own,” Cynthia said.
Clane raised his eyebrows.
“Let him do the explaining for a change,” she said. “He’s the one who had his man frisk the apartment and decided there was no one in it. Then he put men out to watch everyone who came and went. If he thinks he’s so damn smart, let him tell you how I got in here.”
“It’s an idea,” Clane said. “But unfortunately the talking will have to be done in front of a jury.”
“Not unless they catch you, Owl.”
Clane sighed, knowing that when Cynthia had one of her irresponsible streaks there was very little that a man could do about it.
“All right,” Clane said. “Let’s begin at the beginning. I want to know exactly how Edward Harold escaped and who rigged it up for him what your part in it was, how you happened to hide him down there in that warehouse.”
“But, Owl, I didn’t.”
Clane settled back in his chair, tapped a cigarette on the edge of his thumb nail. “Want one?”
“Not now, thanks.”
“Did you engineer the escape, Cynthia?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” Clane asked.
“Didn’t anything.”
“You mean you didn’t engineer the escape?”
“No.”
“You didn’t hide him down in that warehouse?”
“No.”
“How did you know where he was then?”
“Owl, I wish you wouldn’t shoot questions at me like that.”
“Why?”
“Because you sound sort of official and... I don’t know. It makes me want to lie to you.”
“Why?”
“I’ve always been that way. I want to tell people what I want to tell them and when I want to tell it to them. And when people start shooting questions at me, it makes me just... well, I feel they’re opening the door and walking in without knocking. And I hide.”
“Behind lies?”
“I suppose so if you want to put it that way.”
“Lying,” he said, “is negative.”
“Not the way I do it, Owl. It’s artistic. It’s wonderful. I don’t just tell a lie and then wait and get caught. But I tell a lie and I embellish it into a beautiful story; and when I get done with it, it’s so much more beautiful than the truth that I’m darned if I don’t sometimes believe it myself.”
Clane said, “Keep playing around with that philosophy and the police are going to nab you.”
“I suppose so. I guess they’re going to nab me anyway. You have to admit I’m giving them a merry chase.”
“Are you going to tell me or am I going to ask you questions?”
“If you ask me questions, I’ll lie.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Yes. If you aren’t so darned eager about it. You look as though you are ready to grab the words before they even hit the roof of my mouth.”
Clane settled back and watched the smoke eddying upward from the cigarette. There was a long interval of silence.
Cynthia sighed. “The first thing I knew of his escape, Owl, was when I heard it over the radio.”
“So what did you do?” Clane asked, not looking at her but keeping his eyes on the cigarette smoke and making his tone sound casual.
“I didn’t want the police to find him. And I thought the police would start looking for me, thinking I might be mixed up in it; and if they could find me right away and find I didn’t know anything about where he was and hadn’t been mixed up in it, that would... well, don’t you see? That would narrow their circle. I thought that, if I could be sort of a decoy and start out running, then whatever time it took the police to catch me would be that much time gained.”
Clane merely nodded, didn’t even glance at her.
“So,” she said, “I spent the night with a girl friend. I drew some money out of the bank as soon as it opened and went places. I tried to fix it so the police couldn’t find me, and then when they did, they couldn’t prove a single darn thing on me. I was upset and just wanted to get away from everything. I thought of the amnesia racket for a while and then decided that I couldn’t get away with that. I thought I could do better by pulling the old stuff about something snapping inside my brain.”
“That’s a pretty tough alibi to put across with the police,” Clane said.
“Don’t kid yourself. Women kill their husbands every day and stand up in front of a jury and tearfully tell them about how something snapped in their brains. And doctors get on the stand and give it some scientific name with a lot of Latin embellishments, and the jury go out, and that’s all there is to it. If you can kill a husband because of something snapping in your brain, why shouldn’t I be able to just go out and wander around?”