“His landlady said he had a telephone call about seven o’clock. He told her he was going out and he asked her to remember an address for him. She wrote it down.”
“This address?” Dinah said. “Yes, it would be this address, of course, or you wouldn’t be here. The port of missing men.”
“I think he’s dead.”
“Of course,” Dinah said. “Of course he’s dead.”
She kept nodding her head, her eyes half closed and glassy. “Duncan and Dennis. Why not Sammy?”
“You’d better go up to your room, Mrs. Revel.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why should I go up to my room? I want to follow you. I want to see that you don’t find Sammy. Maybe Sammy never went back because he didn’t want to go back, see? Maybe Sammy was like me, not giving a damn, only wanting to be left in peace. Maybe he doesn’t want to be found—”
“You’re hysterical, Mrs. Revel. Please—”
“O God! There are things so much worse than death. You say I’m hysterical because you don’t want to admit it. I know about you, Sands. You haven’t the faintest respect for human life. I can see it in your eyes, contempt for weakness. Why are you a policeman, Sands? For a laugh? Guilty conscience, maybe?” She drew a long, deep breath that ended in a sob. “Sammy’s all right, and Duncan, and Dennis—”
“Guilty conscience, I think,” Sands said quietly. “You’d better go and rest. Perhaps Dr. Prye will give you a sedative.”
“To hell with Prye.” She straightened up and threw back her head. “To hell with sedatives. I’m going to get roaring drunk. I’m going to get so drunk I’ll think you are the Dionne quintuplets. You wait there. I’ll be back.”
She swung round and walked quickly and unsteadily toward the drawing room. Sands made a feeble noise of protest. He was a little uncomfortable with Dinah Revel even when she was cold sober.
He went into the library, laid his hat on the desk, and began to reread the notes he had taken in Boston. He was still there when Prye came in.
“You don’t get handwriting samples by playing charades,” Prye said. “Let’s get that straight.”
Sands looked up in surprise. “Don’t you? Sit down.”
Prye tossed an envelope on the desk. “But there they are.” He walked over to the windows. A police car was just stopping on the driveway. Six men climbed out of it, armed with a strange assortment of implements — spades, pickaxes, a camera, and an iron-toothed rake.
Prye raised his eyebrows. “Friends of yours?”
Sands said, “We’re looking for something that may be under ground.”
“The fifty brunettes?”
“No, a young man, one young man.”
Prye froze.
“The young man came here last night,” Sands said. “I think he is still here.”
“Who was he?”
Sands told him.
“I see,” Prye said. “You think he came here and never got away. Why?”
“He knew something, too much perhaps. He was an elevator boy at the Royal York. I examined his locker about an hour ago and found his betting book. On Saturday afternoon he played fifty dollars on Iron Man. That’s an unusual bet for an elevator boy accustomed to two-dollar bets. On Saturday morning Miss Stevens was poisoned, on Saturday afternoon an elevator boy conjured up fifty dollars, and on Saturday night Duncan Stevens was killed. Problem: who gave Sammy the fifty dollars, and why?”
“For services rendered,” Prye said.
“Exactly. And what particular service do you think of? Remember that Sammy was young, that he was not a crook, that he liked to play the horses.”
“He could dial a number,” Prye said.
Sands said, “Yes. I think he did dial a number. He called the hospital on Saturday at noon.”
He paused, running his finger over his upper lip, smoothing it out like crepe paper.
“So the people I’m interested in right now are the people who have alibis for that phone call. We have assumed that the person who made the call was the person who poisoned Jane by mistake and later killed Duncan, and that whoever had an alibi for the phone call was not the murderer. Now we’ll have to turn that around. If the murderer paid Sammy fifty dollars to make that call, he or she will certainly have an alibi for that time.”
He flicked over the pages of his notebook.
“Here they are. Dr. Prye, when that phone call was made you were talking to Sergeant Bannister in the hall outside this room. That gives you and Miss Stevens, who was in the hospital, the strongest alibis for that time. Mrs. Revel was in the taproom of the King Edward Hotel tossing pretzels into the air and trying to catch them in her mouth. Two waiters remember her very well. Mrs. Shane had just arrived home from the church with Dennis Williams and they were together in the drawing room. Mrs. Hogan and Hilda were in the kitchen. Jackson was talking to me in the library. That leaves Miss Shane and Miss O’Shaughnessy with no alibis for the time of the phone call, as well as Duncan Stevens, who no longer counts.”
He drew a breath and went on in a different tone: “But perhaps Sammy isn’t dead at all. If he is, we’ll find him.”
Prye nodded. “Meanwhile, do we tell Mrs. Shane what the squad is looking for and why?”
“I’ll tell them,” Sands said.
It wasn’t the kind of news any of them could be expected to like.
Except for Aspasia, who fainted, they took it calmly enough. They sat around the drawing room sipping the hot, strong tea which Mrs. Hogan believed to be an antidote for emotional upsets. Dinah went on slowly and methodically getting drunk. Revel sat apart from the others, watching them with an air of detached interest like a turtle peering out from his impregnable shell.
By twelve o’clock Dinah was drunk enough to be getting quarrelsome. Hoping to avoid another scene, Prye offered to take her for a drive to sober her up.
“Sober me up?” Dinah said. “What in hell do you get drunk for if you’re going to sober up? Prye, you’re a louse.”
Prye agreed.
“All men are lice,” Dinah said. “Especially Revel. Revel is the great king louse almighty.”
“I’d awfully like a drive,” Jane said faintly. “I’m not at all well. Couldn’t we—?”
“I’d be delighted,” Prye said. “Anyone else want to come?”
Nora said “Yes.” Dinah said if Nora and Jane went she would have to come along to protect them from the lice which all men were.
Nora went upstairs and brought down her coat and Dinah’s, and Prye went out to get his car from the garage. He ran into two men who were probing with spades in the earth beside the garage. They stopped work to glance at him curiously.
“Finding things?” Prye asked pleasantly.
They both said “Yeah,” and went on with their work. Halfway up the driveway a small man was scooping bits of earth into a bottle. A man with a camera was standing beside him.
Prye went up to them. “Could I get my car past here?” he said.
“In a hurry?” the small man said dryly. “Look again and you’ll see that I’m busy.”
“That’s no answer,” Prye said. “Can I get my car through here? Or not?”
“Not.”
“When will—”
“Go away!”
The man with the camera grinned and said, “Joe is temperamental. He doesn’t like people. His mother used to take him on shopping tours.”
“I don’t like big people,” Joe corrected him. “I got the damnedest inferiority complex you ever saw. Watch this, gentlemen.”
He removed a bottle from his pocket, poured some of the liquid into the bottle of earth, and held it up to Prye. The earth had turned a deep blue.
“I’d be staggered,” Prye said, “if I didn’t know that was the benzedrine-hydrogen peroxide test for bloodstains.”
“Oh, go away,” Joe said gloomily. “Get your bloody car through. I should care.”