Drake nodded.
Mason reached the coat closet in four swift strides, jerked his coat from the hanger, struggled into it, and clapped on his hat.
“Listen, Paul, you have got to hold the office. I will be back before Mrs. Greeley gets here. Tragg may be back before she arrives. Tell him I had to talk with Stephane Claire and get her consent before I agreed to cooperate with him. Tell him it is a matter of form, just my idea of professional ethics.”
“And I will tell him you went to see her?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t it sound a little more like it if I told him that you had telephoned her and tried to explain it to her, and she couldn’t understand so you had to go on up and see her?”
“Perhaps so. Use your own judgment. Don’t be too voluble. Take it as a matter of course. I am on my way.”
Mason grabbed a taxicab from a stand in front of his office building. “Adirondack Hotel,” he said, “and drive like the devil.”
The cab-driver said, “I can make it in five minutes.”
“Try making it in four. Stop across the street if it will save time.”
The cab shot forward. Mason didn’t relax against the cushions, but kept a precarious position on the edge of the seat, hanging on to the door handle, watching the traffic whiz past.
It began to sprinkle before the cab had gone a block, and was raining steadily by the time the cab-driver pulled up in front of the hotel, but directly across the street.
“If you want to spring across, Captain, you can save a full minute. I would have to go around.
Mason jerked the door open.
“Want me to wait?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I shall be right in front of the place, all ready for you.”
Mason ran across the wet street. Once in the hotel he walked rapidly across the lobby, stepped into the elevator, said, “Five, please,” and was whisked on up to the fifth floor. The elevator operator looked at him curiously, apparently trying to ascertain whether Mason was registered in the hotel or merely a visitor. The lawyer, turning to the left without the slightest hesitation, walked confidently down the corridor.
After he had given the elevator time to drop back to the lobby. Mason examined the numbers on the doors, and saw he was going in the wrong direction. He retraced his steps past the dark elevator shaft, found room five-twenty-eight and knocked.
A woman’s voice called softly, “Who is it?”
“Mason.”
The door opened. Hortense Zitkousky said, “Come in.”
She looked garish below her make-up. The splotches of rouge on her cheeks, the dark red on her full lips seemed in startling contrast to the pallor of her skin where the make-up failed to cover it.
“What is it?” Mason asked.
She crossed the bedroom, placed her hand on the knob of a door, then drew back. “You do it.”
Mason impatiently jerked the door open, then recoiled at what he saw.
A pillow lay crumpled on the floor of the bathroom. From the interior of this pillow, white, fluffy feathers had drifted out over the floor, over the bathroom, over the body which hung balanced over the bathtub, the head down, the arms outstretched. From the back of the head, near the base of the brain, sinister streams of red welled upward to trickle down the neck and jaw, and drop into the bathtub. There was a faint acrid odor of burnt, smokeless powder in the room, and the ejected cartridge from a small-caliber automatic glistened in the light, the newness of the yellow brass glinting as though it had been freshly minted gold.
“I am sorry,” Horty said. “You see how it is. I couldn’t tell you over the phone. Cripes, Mr. Mason, this has got me. I am going to get sick if I stay in here.”
Mason said with crisp authority, “Snap out of it.” He stepped forward, bent down, and looked at the bullet hole. There were little powder marks tattooed in the skin. The rip in the pillow on the floor had a burnt discolouration around the edges.
Mason bent forward and reached for the man’s wrist.
“He is dead as a herring,” Hortense said.
He turned the man’s head. It was Ernest Tanner, the chauffeur.
Mason stepped back. “How did it happen?” he asked.
“Let us get out of here... Okay... We got to feeling pretty good. He was a good egg. He knew something. He was sore at Homan. I strung him along. You know the play. After a while, he started making passes.”
“What did you do?” Mason asked.
“What did you think I was going to do? Think I was going to take him out, kid him along, and then slap his face when he got fresh? Not me. I took it in my stride, and strung him along.”
“Well, come on,” Mason said, looking at his wrist watch. “Get down to brass tacks. Just how did this happen?”
“I wish I knew.”
“We will have to call the police, so let us get the facts. Get them out. Don’t make statements and then wait to see how I take them.”
“Well, I got this man feeling pretty good. I was trying to get him loosened up and convivial, and I guess I overdid it. I kept talking to him about how he could get even with Homan by giving Stephane a break. He was tight-lipped at first, but later on he loosened up. I saw he was getting in the mood to tell what he knew and made up my mind that I was going to have him where I could get action fast.”
“You mean getting him in touch with Stephane?”
“No, with her uncle. I thought a man could...”
“I understand. What happened?”
“Well, I kept working him down in this direction until we finally wound up at the Adirondack Bar. And then — well, then was when I found I had miscalculated. He had taken aboard a little too much. But he was getting ready to come through with some real information. Gosh, Mr. Mason, I didn’t know what to do. Under circumstances like that, a girl has to think fast. Well, I asked him to excuse me a minute, and telephoned up to Stephane’s room. She wasn’t in. I telephoned her uncle. No answer. I wasn’t going to let him get out of my hands, so I decided to take him up to the uncle’s room, and wait for him to get feeling better and Mr. Olger to come in.”
“How did you work it?”
“It was a cinch,” she said. “I simply walked up to the desk, bold as brass, and asked for the key to five-twenty-eight. I knew that was the suite. The room clerk was busy talking with someone, and he just reached in the pigeonhole and slid the key out on the counter. I went back and got Tanner and took him up to the room. Of course, he got sick right away, and headed for the bathroom. I didn’t know just where I could get in touch with Stephane, so I thought I should better call you, tell you the whole business, and see if you knew where Mr. Olger was, or if you wanted to come and talk to this lad. I hated to bother you with it, but...”
“Go on.”
“Well, you know how it is in these hotel bedrooms. You can hear what a person says over the telephone if you are in the bath. Those doors are thin, and the telephone is by the head of the bed, right near the bathroom door. I felt Ernest would be pretty well occupied for a while. I guess I wasn’t thinking quite so clearly myself. We have been having quite a few. I remembered there were telephones in the lobby in booths. So I dashed to the elevator, went down to the lobby, and called your office. I kept getting a busy signal. So then I came back up here to make certain Ernest didn’t walk out on me. As soon as I came down the corridor, I saw the door was slightly ajar...”
“You had locked it when you left?”
“No, I hadn’t. I had just closed it and...”
Mason pressed the down button, and almost instantly an elevator cage slid to a stop. The operator was the same one who had taken Mason up to the fifth floor. He gave them both casual glances, then slid the door shut, and dropped the cage to the lobby.