“And give my wife the opportunity she’s looking for? Then you would have the fat in the fire. The property settlement will be completed and signed within five or six weeks. Thank heavens, I’ll then be free to live my own life in my own way. Until then... until then, my darling, we have to be discreet in our indiscretions.”
She started to say something, checked herself, turned and stalked out of the apartment.
Carver Clements’ automobile was a big luxurious sedan equipped with every possible convenience, but it was cold sitting there, waiting.
Anita waited for several minutes, then, as she felt the chill creeping through her sheer nylons, turned the ignition switch and pulled out the heater button.
It took a minute or two for warmth to generate in the heater. Then a welcome current of warm air swirled caressingly about her legs.
After ten minutes, which seemed twenty, she grew impatient. She flung open the car door, went to the entrance of the apartment house, and angrily pressed the button of 702.
When there was no answer, she assumed that Clements must be on his way down in the elevator, so she walked back into the shadows, to stand there, impatient, feeling a strange desire to smash something. But Clements didn’t appear.
Anita used her key to enter the apartment house. The elevator was on the ground floor. She made no attempt at concealment this time, but pressed the button for the seventh floor, left the elevator, strode down the corridor, stabbed her key into the metal lock of Clements’ apartment, and entered the room.
Carver L. Clements, dressed for the street, was lying sprawled on the floor.
A highball glass lay on its side two feet from his body. It had apparently fallen from his hand, spilling the contents as it rolled along the carpet. Clements’ face was a peculiar hue, and there was a sharp, bitter odor which seemed intensified as she bent toward his froth-flecked lips. Since Anita had last seen him he had quite evidently had a caller. The print of half-parted lips flared in gaudy crimson from the front of his bald head.
With the expertness she had learned from a course in first aid, Anita pressed her finger against the wrist, searching for a pulse. There was none.
She opened her handbag, took out the silver cigarette case and held its smoothly polished surface close to the man’s lips. There was no faintest sign of moisture which would indicate breathing.
Carver L. Clements, wealthy playboy, yachtsman, broker, gambler for high stakes, was quite dead.
In a panic Anita Bonsal looked through the apartment.
There were all too many signs of her surreptitious and intermittent occupancy of that apartment — nightgowns, lingerie, shoes, stockings, hats, even toothbrushes and her favorite toothpaste.
Anita Bonsal turned back toward the door and quietly left the apartment. She paused in the hallway, making certain there was no one in the corridor. This time she didn’t take the elevator, but walked down the fire stairs, as she had done so many times, and returned to her own apartment on the sixth floor.
Fay Allison had been listening to a musical program on the radio. She jumped up with glad surprise as Anita entered.
“Oh, Anita, I’m so glad! I thought — thought you wouldn’t be in until real late. What happened? It hasn’t been any time since you left.”
“I developed a beastly headache,” Anita said. “My escort was a trifle intoxicated, so I slapped his face and came home. I’d like to sit up and have you tell me about your plans, but I do have a headache, and you must get a good night’s sleep tonight. You’ll need to be looking your best tomorrow.”
Fay laughed. “I don’t want to waste time sleeping. While I’m unconscious I can’t revel in my happiness.”
“Nevertheless,” Anita said firmly, “we’re going to get to bed early. Let’s undress, put on pajamas, have some hot chocolate, and then we’ll sit in front of the electric heater and talk for just exactly twenty minutes.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you came back!” Fay said.
“I’ll fix the drink,” Anita told her. “I’m going to make your chocolate sweet tonight. You can start worrying about your figure tomorrow. After all, you’ll be a married woman before this chocolate can put any pounds on you.”
She went to the kitchen, opened her purse, took out a bottle of barbiturate tablets, and emptied a good half of the pills into a cup. After she had carefully ground them she added hot water until they were, for the most part, dissolved.
She placed chocolate on the stove, added milk and melted marshmallows, and called out to Fay, “You undress, dear. I’ll put on my pajamas after we’ve had the chocolate.”
When she returned to the living room, carrying the two steaming cups, frothy with melted marshmallows floating on top, Fay Allison was in her pajamas.
Anita Bonsal raised her cup. “Here’s to happiness, darling.”
“Lots of happiness,” Fay Allison said almost dreamily.
After they had finished the first cup of chocolate, Anita talked Fay into another cup, then let Fay discuss her plans until drowsiness made the words thick, the sentences detached.
“Anita, I’m so sleepy all of a sudden. I guess it’s the reaction from having been so keyed up. I... darling, it’s all right if I... you don’t care if I...”
“Not at all, dear,” Anita said, and helped Fay into bed, tucked her in carefully, and then gave the situation careful consideration.
The fact that Carver Clements maintained a secret apartment in that building was known only to a few of his cronies. These people knew of Clements’ domestic difficulties and knew why he maintained this apartment. Fortunately, however, they had never seen Anita. That was a big thing in her favor. Anita was quite certain it hadn’t been a heart attack. It had been poison, some quick-acting, deadly poison. There was no use worrying herself, trying to figure out how it had been administered, or why. Carver Clements was a man who had many powerful friends and many powerful enemies.
The police would search for the woman.
It wouldn’t do for Anita merely to remove her things from that apartment, and, besides, that wouldn’t be artistic enough. Anita had been in love with Dane Grover. If it hadn’t been for that dismal entanglement with Carver Clements... However, that was all past now, and Fay Allison, with her big blue eyes, her sweet, trusting disposition, had turned Dane Grover from a disillusioned wolf into an ardent suitor. Well, it was a world where the smart ones got by. Anita had washed the dishes. Fay Allison had dried them. Her fingerprints would be on glasses and on dishes. The management of the apartment house very considerately furnished dishes identical in pattern — and it only needed a little careful work on her part. She would, of course, put on gloves. The police would find Fay Allison’s nightgowns in Carver Clements’ secret apartment. They would find glasses that had Fay’s fingerprints on them. And when they went to question Fay Allison, they would find she had taken the easy way out, an overdose of sleeping pills.
Anita would furnish the testimony that would make it all check into a composite, sordid pattern. A girl who had been the mistress of a rich playboy, then had met a younger and more attractive man who had offered her marriage. She had gone to Carver Clements and wanted to check out, but with Carver Clements one didn’t simply check out. Things weren’t as easy as that. So Fay had slipped the fatal poison into his drink and then had realized she was trapped when Anita returned home unexpectedly and there had been no chance for Fay to make surreptitious removal of her wearing apparel from the upstairs apartment. Anita would let the police do the figuring. Anita would be horrified, simply stunned, but, of course, cooperative.
Anita Bonsal deliberately waited three hours until things began to quiet down in the apartment house, then she took a suitcase and quietly went to work, moving with the smooth efficiency of a woman who has been accustomed to thinking out every smallest detail.