“Jules Tremaine,” Johnny said into the house phone in the almost spartan lobby. “Killain,” he announced to the voice in his ear. “I'm downstairs.”
“Come on up. Four-oh-seven.”
The handsome Frenchman was standing in an open doorway when Johnny stepped off the elevator into the fourth-floor corridor. Silently he led the way inside. “Nice digs,” Johnny said after a look around. Nothing was new, but everything was comfortable. His glance rested longest on a large short-wave radio with a table to itself.
Tremaine nodded indifferently. “They want to get in to paint, but I can't stand the smell. I told them to wait till I had to be out of town.” His manner appeared neither friendly nor unfriendly. He was waiting, as though for a cue to determine the course of the conversation.
“All you people seem to be doin' pretty well,” Johnny suggested.
“All us people?”
“I went over to the blonde's, like you said. She don't look anywhere near close to the bread line.”
Tremaine pulled out his cigarettes and offered Johnny the pack. His dark eyes were inscrutable. “Anything of interest come up?”
“Is a dead body of interest?” The extended arm went rigid. “Whose?” “Jack Arends.”
For a count of five the Frenchman seemed nearly to hold his breath. “Killed?”
“Dead,” Johnny confirmed. “In the blonde's bathroom. Bathrooms are gettin' to be downright unlucky these days. Someone didn't like him four times in the head with a black automatic that looked like the twin of Dechant's.” Jules Tremaine shoved his cigarettes back in his pocket and lighted a match before be realized he hadn't taken one from the pack. “I met a guy named Harry Palmer tonight,” Johnny added.
“He financed deals for Claude.” The big-shouldered man said it absently, his mind obviously elsewhere. “I used to work for him myself.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“Europe. Bird-dogging business prospects.” Tremaine finally got a cigarette going. “What are the police doing?”
“Givin' your blonde acquaintance a fit about who had keys to her apartment. Arends was inside when we got there.”
“We?”
“We,” Johnny repeated, and let it go at that. “How would you assay this boy Faulkner?”
“Not too highly. He has-” Jules Tremaine bit off whatever he had been about to say. His steady regard of Johnny was emotionlessly thorough. “At the moment I'm more interested in how I assay you. Just where do you fit into the picture?”
“That didn't seem to bother you too much on the phone when you invited me to come over an' talk.”
“I've changed my mind about the talk. Jack Arends wasn't dead then.”
“I've got an alibi for that,” Johnny said lightly.
Unexpectedly the Frenchman flushed. “Meaning I haven't?”
“I don't give a damn whether you do or not.” Johnny stared at a stubbornly protruding lower lip. “Do you want to talk or don't you?” He threw up his hands at the sullen silence. “I don't get it. This was your idea, remember? Who muzzled you? Why?” His eyes probed at Tremaine's wooden expression. “Last chance,” he warned. “This is countdown. Three. Two. One. Zero.” He turned and walked to the door. There wasn't a sound from behind him.
In the corridor he wondered fleetingly whether Gloria could have called the Frenchman and told him that Johnny actually had knowledge of August Hegel. But then wouldn't she have told him about Arends?
He had to walk three blocks before he could flag down a cab to get him back to the Duarte.
CHAPTER V
The ring of the phone in his room caught Johnny on his way to the door. He came back and picked it up. “Yeah?”
“Two to see you down here, John.” The sound of Marty Seiden's brisk voice reminded Johnny that it was Vic's night off. Marty, the red-headed, bow-tied, wisecracking middle-shift front-desk man always took over for Vic Barnes. “Names are Faulkner and Palmer.”
“Send 'em on up.” On impulse he left the room to meet them at the elevator. They got off with their backs to him, Palmer in the lead, and Johnny reached out silently and tapped Ernest Faulkner on the shoulder. The lawyer whirled, mouth agape, dead white.
“Oh-” he said weakly. “Don't-do that-”
Harry Palmer's alert features reflected amusement as he turned to survey the scene. “Try Miltown, Ernest,” he advised. He cocked an eyebrow at Johnny. “Which way?”
“Straight ahead. Six-fifteen.” Johnny trailed them down the hall, removed a key from a clip on the band of his watch and opened the door. “We won't be disturbed here,” he told them.
Harry Palmer scuffed a toe in the dull-hued Oriental rug and gazed around the attractively furnished oversized bed-sitting room. He looked from the three-quarter-sized refrigerator in one corner to the television set to one of Johnny's uniforms laid out on the bed. “This is your place?” he asked sharply. He shook his head gently at Johnny's affirmative nod. “You sure must know where the body is buried around here, man, to rate this kind of accommodations.”
“A man died an' left it to me,” Johnny said. He waved them to chairs as he walked to the refrigerator. “Room an' all. You can have anything you like to drink, boys, if you don't mind it tastin' like bourbon.”
“I was forty years old before I knew they made anything but bourbon,” Harry Palmer grunted. The aggressive-looking little man seemed to be swallowed up in the depths of Johnny's armchair.
“Make mine a short one,” Ernest Faulkner said hastily. “Did you say a man left this to you in his will? I never heard of such a thing.”
“Neither had the hotel lawyers, but it stuck.” Johnny handed them each a drink and poured himself a shot. “If I'd known you were comin', I'd have iced the champagne.”
“Champagne!” Palmer snorted. “Just as soon drink vinegar.” He leaned back in the chair to look up at Johnny. “What kind of a man dies and leaves you with a place like this, Killain?”
“He owned the place. I was able to do him a couple favors one time,” Johnny said evenly. “In Italy.”
“Italy,” Palmer repeated with no change of expression, but Johnny saw that Ernest Faulkner's hand had whitened around his glass. The lawyer opened his mouth as though to speak, and then closed it again as Palmer continued. “That's where you met Dechant?”
“Not head-on. That came later.”
“Later,” Palmer repeated again. He drained half his drink, held the balance up to the light to study it critically, nodded, finished it off and set down his glass. He folded his hands together with his elbows resting on the arms of his chair. “You know what the password is in this game, Killain?”
“I know a password.” Johnny emphasized the indefinite article. “August Hegel.”
“That's the one,” the little man admitted, and looked at Ernest Faulkner.
“There's no way he could have known,” the lawyer said huskily. “Claude told his business to no one. You know that.”
“I know nothing,” Harry Palmer declared flatly. “Especially in the light of what you tell me of the state of his affairs.” He turned to Johnny, briskly assertive. “I don't know where you stand on this thing, Killain, but I know where I stand. Dechant died owing me a lot of money. I thought I was protected, but, if matters continue to shape up as they have to date, I'll wind up with the feathers from the chicken. I wouldn't like that, Killain. It could leave me looking to do business with a smart young fellow.”
“Faulkner's your lawyer, too?” Johnny asked.
Harry Palmer smiled. “Let's say I pay him a retainer.”
The lawyer's too-white face pinked up. He settled his heavy horn-rimmed glasses more firmly on the bridge of his delicate-looking nose. “There's an interrelationship of interests which permits-” he began, and was cut off by the brash little man.