“Waiting for somebody?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s pretty late.”
“I was at a party.”
“Wish I was. I spend my life breaking up parties and there’s nothing I like better than a good rousing party with clean women and lively liquor. It goes against my grain always busting up parties. What a life.”
“Life is very long,” I said. “Are you the hotel detective?”
“That’s right. At your service and at the mercy of my feet. I can’t take credit for that one. That was on the wall in the office when I was a private dick in Detroit. Boy, them were the days. All the women I wanted and plenty of cash money on the side. Clean women, too. I could tear off a piece with the best of them before my heart went funny. It’s as funny as hell, y’know, sometimes it goes one-two-three-stop, one-two-three-stop.” He tapped on the arm of his chair to illustrate. I could see the veins on the back of his hand standing out like blue branches under the skin.
I waded into his stream of consciousness and said, “Maybe you can help me. As a matter of fact, the party’s still going on and I came over here to win a bet.”
“What kind of a bet?” He leaned towards me across the arms of the chairs and I could smell aniseed on his breath.
“It’s a crazy kind of bet,” I said, “but I stand to win twenty bucks if I can do what I’m supposed to. The idea is to trace the movements of one of the girls that was at the party. She was to come down here and register and then keep track of her own movements, the time of any telephone calls and so on, and then go back and hand in her report to the guy that’s running the game. I have to trace her movements and keep my own record and if it’s reasonably accurate I get a prize.”
“Twenty bucks, eh?” He took out a patent nail-clipper and clipped the thick cracked nail of his left thumb. Then he started on the fingers.
I took a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and reached over and tucked it in behind the purple handkerchief. “Do you think you can help me?”
“I might. When did she register?”
“You can easily find out. It couldn’t have been much before eleven.”
“What’s her name?”
“Ruth Esch. She’s got red hair and–”
“Oh, the red-headed girl?” He looked at me quizzically out of protruding blue eyes.
“You saw her?”
“Yeah. Sure. You want to wait here?”
“Yes. When she came and when she left. Phone calls. Visitors. Those are the main things.”
“Especially visitors, eh?” he said, and shuffled off. I wondered what he meant.
He talked to the night-clerk first and then disappeared through a door behind the desk. I waited fifteen or twenty minutes. When he got back, I had chewed most of the skin from the inside of my upper lip.
He switched on the floor-lamp behind our chairs and sat down beside me with a small slip of paper covered with pencilings in his hand.
“Did you get it?” I said.
“Sure. Why not? Take this down if you want to.”
I took a pen and envelope out of my pocket and got ready to write on my knee.
“O.K.,” he said. “She registered at the hotel about eleven or a little after. Call it three minutes after. Around eleven twenty-five she got a phone call and a couple of minutes later she went out. Call it eleven-thirty. On the way out she told the desk-clerk she was just going out for a bite to eat and she asked him for the name of a good place to go. He told her the Porpoise down the street.
“She came back in about twenty minutes or so, but you can pin that down closer. She told the clerk when she went out at eleven-thirty that she was expecting a phone call around a quarter to twelve, and to hold it for her if she wasn’t back by then. It came all right at a quarter to twelve and the operator held it for her for about five-six minutes and she came back and took it in her room.”
“What time did she get back here?”
“Ten to twelve, close as I can figure.”
“Does the operator know who the call was from?”
“I asked her, just to be complete. She didn’t know whether it was a man or a woman. Maybe a morphidite, eh?” He looked at me and winked and I smiled as cheerfully as I could.
“The word is hermaphrodite. The god Hermes and the goddess Aphrodite in one body blent.”
“Nice set-up, eh? You from the university?”
“That’s right. When did she go out again?”
“About three-quarters of an hour ago. Two-fifteen or two-twenty. Does that cover it?”
“Very nicely. You’re sure that this is straight?”
“As straight as I can bring it to you. I talked to the clerk and the operator and the bellhop.”
“Nice work.” I leaned forward to get up but he pushed his face towards me and said in an earnest whisper:
“Listen, friend, is this girl your wife?”
“No. Just a friend.”
“A girl-friend like? I mean you take her out quite a bit?”
“More or less,” I said. “Why?”
“Because I won’t take your money without telling you, boy. Mind you I’m not saying there’s no bet, I’m just saying you take it from me that that dame’s poison with a red label and you keep clear of her. She’s got the skull and crossbones on her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s a dike, friend. I’ve seen a million of them and I know. She likes women better than men. Now go back to your party if there is any party and thanks for the easy money, friend.”
I said, “Good night,” in a weak voice and walked out of the hotel. The stars fell down and rattled at the bottom of the sky and the night put on shabby brown clothes.
CHAPTER VIII
I WALKED DOWN THE main street towards the Porpoise, which was a block from the hotel. Ruth Esch had an alibi all right, but I had to make sure that it was perfect before I could put her in the locked cupboard at the back of my mind and forget her for good. The blue porpoise sign over the entrance was lit, but the restaurant was closed for the night. I walked back to my car, feeling almost glad that I couldn’t lay myself open to another jolt. A dream that you’ve slept with for six years has remarkable staying power.
The only live things on the main street were the neon signs, shining like cold fire on the three o’clock pavements. But there was a White Tower lit up across from where my car was parked, and I crossed the street and went in. My solar plexus was still numb where the word dike had hit me, and I ordered coffee.
The attendant filled my cup and made change without waking, moving as if his starched coat was holding him up.
I sat at the shining enameled counter, slowly burning my throat with coffee and thinking with a chilly three o’clock brain. Ruth was clear, of murder at any rate. But the Schneiders’ alibi was at least as good. Maybe I was all wrong and maybe Alec had been all wrong. Maybe Haggerty and Galloway and Helen were right about suicide. Maybe I should go home and go to bed.
No. Moran the motorcycle officer could have been bribed to protect the Schneiders. I could go and see him in the morning. I decided to hold on to the rock.
As for Ruth, why should I take to heart what a seedy hotel dick said? He wasn’t my psychoanalyst. On the other hand, how could I know that his information on her movements was reliable? He could have made it up to earn ten dollars. Or he could have been bribed. He was bribable. I didn’t know what to think.
I took Ruth’s letter out of my inside pocket, but I hadn’t the heart to read it again. I sat and looked at the envelope and saw the word ‘taillour.’ What had Alec meant by it? Was it an accident that ‘taillour’ meant ‘tailor,’ which meant ‘Schneider’? He was a philologist, and it wasn’t very likely that it was an accident. Some of his puns used to run into more than two languages.