“Inspector Queen will identify me,” said Beau.
“Suppose he does? Suppose he does?” said the house detective hotly. “I don’t care who you are, Mister; you were caught in that room—”
“What’s the argument about?” asked Beau. “Sam, you’re making a spectacle of yourself. Wow, look at those laws pour in! Come on upstairs before the press gives you the razz. Are you coming, or do I have to go up alone?”
“Don’t worry,” said Sam, taking a fresh grip on his .38. “I’m with you, baby.”
They took a special elevator up to the seventeenth floor. Outside Room 1724 a policeman held back a crowd of pushing people. Inside, there were two radio-car officers and a detective from the West Forty-seventh Street precinct. They were all asking questions at the same time.
Kerrie was still seated in the armchair, in the same position.
“This him?” said the precinct man.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “In person.”
“Well, the girl gives him an out. She says he wasn’t even here when the shots were fired. He came in right after.”
“Kerrie,” growled Beau. She had answered questions. He had told her not to.
She glanced at him in a calm, remote way.
“She admit givin’ the other dame the business?” asked Sam eagerly.
“She don’t admit nothin’.”
Beau shook his head warningly at Kerrie. She placed her hands, palms up, in her lap and stared out the window.
“Lucky stiff,” said Sam to Beau with a scowl.
“Yeah,” said Beau, looking steadily at Kerrie’s profile. “Am I lucky.”
When the call came from Centre Street, Inspector Richard Queen was in Doc Prouty’s office playing a hot game of two-handed klabiatsch with Sergeant Velie. He was waiting for the Medical Examiner’s autopsy report on Hunk Carnucci, the nation-wide search for whom had ended that very evening at the bottom of the East River.
“What?” said the Inspector into the telephone; and Sergeant Velie saw his superior’s gray mustache quiver and his little bird-like face blanch. “Yes. Yes. All right. Now listen. No reporter gets into that room, see? Grab the registration card, too. I’ll have your scalp if there’s a leak... Right away!”
He hung up, looking ill.
“What’s the matter?” asked the Sergeant.
“Plenty.” Inspector Queen rose. “A woman’s been knocked off at the Villanoy.”
The Sergeant looked puzzled. “So what?”
In the squad car, rushing towards Times Square with the siren screaming, the Inspector told him so what.
“I don’t believe it,” protested Velie. “It’s a gag.”
“They’re registered as Mr. and Mrs. Ellery Queen, I tell you!” snarled the old man.
“But who’s the dame? And the one that was shot?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows yet.”
“When’d you see Ellery last?”
“This morning. He didn’t say anything to me about his getting married. I thought he acted funny, though.” The Inspector gnawed his mustache. “To do a thing like this to me! Step on her, will you?”
“Boy, the papers,” groaned Velie.
“Maybe there’s a chance to keep it quiet,” said the old man feverishly. “Step on it, you baboon!”
The Sergeant looked at him pityingly.
At the Villanoy the Inspector shook off reporters, had the lobby cleared, listened to several reports, nodded to one of his squad, who was waving a registration card, and commandeered an elevator.
In the elevator he surreptitiously examined the fateful card. “Mr. and Mrs. Ellery Queen.” His eyes narrowed even as he sighed with relief. The handwriting was not Ellery’s. But it was almost as bad — it was Beau Rummell’s.
“What’s the bad news?” whispered Sergeant Velie.
“Stand by, Thomas,” muttered the old man. “There’s something queer going on. It’s Beau Rummell, not Ellery; he’s using Ellery’s name.”
“The nervy sprout!”
“We’ll play along for a while. Pass the word along to the squad. No cracks about who Beau is.”
The instant Inspector Queen entered 1724 Beau seized his hand. “’Lo, dad! How’s the old man? I’ll bet you never expected to find sonny-boy in a spot like this!” He winked.
The Inspector deliberately took a pinch of snuff. He glanced at the body, and then at Kerrie, and then at Beau.
“I’ll bet I didn’t,” he said dryly, and turned to one of the precinct men. “All right, Lieutenant. Clear the room. Witnesses outside till I call.” Then he took Beau by the arm and steered him into the bedroom.
“Thanks, pop!” said Beau, grinning. “That was fast thinking. Thanks a million. Now look, I’ve got to scram out of here—”
“You do?” The Inspector eyed him coldly. “What’s the idea of using Ellery’s name and who’s the brunette?”
“It’s a long story. Too long to tell now. She’s my wife—”
“Your what!” gasped the old man. “I thought that ‘Mr. and Mrs.’ business was—”
“With her? Say, we were married late this evening. There was a reason — I mean, why I couldn’t use my own name.”
“Ellery know?” snapped the old man.
“Yes.”
He was silent.
“I’ve got to get out of here for a half-hour, pop!”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I won’t leave the hotel.”
“Beau.” The Inspector looked him in the eye. “Did you have anything to do with that woman’s murder in there?”
Beau looked back and said simply: “No, pop.”
“Did your wife?”
“No.”
“How d’ye know?” asked the old man in a flash. “I’m told you walked in on her after the murder — your wife said so herself.”
“I can’t tell you how I know,” muttered Beau. “For Pete’s sake, pop, let me go now, will you? It’s important!”
“I’m a fool,” snarled the Inspector.
“Pop, you’re a prince!”
Beau strolled back into the sitting room, which was cleared except for the Inspector’s squad. He sauntered over to Kerrie and whispered into her ear: “I’ve got to go now, kid, for a little while. Remember what I said. Don’t talk. Not a word. Not even to — my old man.”
“What?” Her eyes were swimming in tears. “I mean...”
Beau swallowed. She looked so helpless he felt like jumping through the window. He had to do something! Get into that room from which the shots had come. After that... improvise. Keep going. It was toughest on her.
“I’ll be back soon.”
He kissed her and went out.
With him went the Do Not Disturb placard which had been hanging by its chain on the inside of the sitting-room door. He thrust it casually into his pocket.
Outside, a group of hotel employees and police looked at him curiously. Detective Flint, at the door, said it was all right. He went to the elevator and rang the Down bell. An elevator stopped. He got in and said: “Sixteenth.”
He got out on the sixteenth floor and bounded up the steps of the emergency stairway to the seventeenth floor again. The exit gave on a different corridor. He stole out. Clear sailing.
He made his way on tiptoe to Room 1726. Around the corner he could hear the group before 1724 talking excitedly.
Beau set his ear to the door of 1726. Then he slipped the Do Not Disturb sign over the knob and tried the door noiselessly. It gave. He pushed the door in quickly and softly, stepped inside, and closed the door again, careful to make no sound.