He saw Rogers' sedan at the first meter beyond the hotel no-parking zone. In the same glance he saw something else. Two cars ahead of the black sedan, a long blue Cadillac regally pre-empted a space and a half. Johnny quickened his stride. This could be part of Rogers' appointment, but Johnny didn't think so. And, if the detective walked in on them unknowing, there could be some firepower in that package upstairs.
“Four,” he said shortly to the gum-chewing, uniform-trousered brunette in the elevator. She ascended with him boredly. There was no sign of Rogers in the corridors. Johnny paused outside 407. He was going to need a hell of an opening line to talk his way in here. Tremaine nor nobody else wanted to see him.
He tested the knob, cautiously. Locked, of course. He shrugged, raised his hand to knock-and then heard, from what sounded like just beyond the door, a muffled thumping noise, twice repeated. Without even stopping to think, Johnny backed off the width of the corridor and charged the door with all the momentum he could generate. At the last second he barely remembered to lead with his right shoulder to protect his still-bandaged left side.
The door burst inward shiveringly in a shower of wood splinters from around the shattered lock. Johnny scrambled for balance as he lunged into Max Stitt, who was standing with his foot drawn back to kick Detective Rogers' prostrate body on the floor. Stitt backed off with a snarl, his colorless eyes lethal, his hand darting to a pocket. Johnny's quick reach and bone-crushing embrace clamped Stitt's arms helplessly to his sides; then Johnny swung him aloft with his feet to the ceiling. Abruptly Johnny released him, and the furiously struggling Stitt crashed floorward, head first. Stunned, he offered no resistance as Johnny bent quickly and removed a blued-steel Mauser from his jacket. It felt sticky to the touch, and Johnny looked down at bloodstains on his palm.
He took two quick steps to the doorway off the hall and looked through it at Jules Tremaine sitting slackly on the sofa, the handsome face lumped, red-streaked, and sick-white. Behind Johnny, Stitt rolled over and came up on his knees. Without a word Johnny stepped back inside, reversed the Mauser in his hand and slapped it tightly alongside a lean cheekbone. Max Stitt went over backward as bright juice spurted beneath his right eye. Raging, he doubled on himself like a snake and flung himself at Johnny's legs. The Mauser knocked him sideways along the floor in a sliding skid. He came halfway up to his knees again and paused.
“Keep comin',” Johnny invited him in a voice he had trouble recognizing. “Do me a favor. See can you wear out this iron. I wouldn't break up my hands on a puff adder like you.”
“Cut it-out, Johnny,” a voice said weakly from the floor to one side. Johnny half turned, one eye still on Stitt calculating his chances. Detective Rogers grimacingly pushed himself erect from hands and knees, one hand at the back of his neck and the other at his left side. “You want to- kill him?”
“Not all at once. Come on,” Johnny said to the taut-lipped, cold-eyed Stitt. “Do something. Give me an excuse.”
“Cut it out,” Rogers repeated in a stronger tone. Half doubled over and dragging his left leg, he moved past Johnny inside to the sofa on which Jules Tremaine sat with his head in his hands. “Let's have a look,” the detective said gently, and removed one of the hands.
“Nothin' thirty, thirty-five stitches won't fix up,” Johnny said sarcastically from the doorway.
Rogers turned away from the criss-crossed welts and oozing bruises on the shocked face and walked to the telephone. “Get the police up here,” he said into it.- “And an ambulance.” He walked back out to the hall, where Max Stitt was kneeling on the floor, his hands slackly at his sides, his pale eyes expressionlessly upon Johnny six feet away. A lowly pulsing tide of red ebbed down the lean visage from the slash beneath his eye.
“I'll get around later to how you happened to come through that door just then,” Rogers said to Johnny. One hand gingerly at the back of his neck, he looked down at Stitt. “I'd knocked four times before anything happened, and then it happened all at once. The door opened, he yanked me in and sapped me down. I don't know what the bootwork was for when he got the door closed again.”
“That was because he likes it.” Johnny half leaned in Stitt's direction. “Don't you, sweetheart?”
“Cut it out, I told you,” Rogers ordered. He looked inside in the direction of the sofa. “I don't understand it. Tremaine would make two of him.”
“You got to see this wart go to appreciate him,” Johnny assured him. “Fastest pair of hands I run into in a long time. An' I do mean run into. You were meetin' Tremaine?”
“So I thought.” The detective pointed a toe at the silent Stitt. “What's his mad at the Frenchman?”
“Both of 'em were wired into Dechant for a long time. Makin' money at it, too. Dechant was the contact man, an' a crackerjack. He provided the outlets for half a dozen little schemes that had stuff gettin' into the country illegally. When he died, the stuff was still comin', but there was no contact to the outlets. Tremaine hustled around, but he damn soon found out he wasn't no Dechant. He even had me tryin' to peddle a hundred fifty cases smuggled brandy for him. He couldn't carry the load, an' he started to go to pieces. At the same time our friend here, when Arends was knocked off, all of a sudden becomes one of the landed gentry an' he's no longer interested in grubby little smugglin' deals. Tremaine figured he had to be kept in line, both because of the warehouse facilities an' knowhow, an' Stitt's European contacts. I'm just guessin' now, but I think Tremaine made the mistake of hintin' to our boy here that, unless he continued to co-operate, the police were goin' to get word to look in his direction for what happened to Madeleine Winters. It looked so much like his trademark it would've been easy to do. If he had an alibi, okay-he hired it done.” He waved the Mauser at Max Stitt. “Stitt come over here to show him who was givin' the orders.”
“You'd have to say he made his point,” Detective Rogers said drily. “I don't see why these two-” He broke off as the battered door opened to admit two blue uniforms followed by an apprehensive looking gentleman obviously an assistant manager. “Come in, men,” Rogers said, and waved at Stitt. “Take him on down. I'll think up the charges later.”
The assistant manager paused in the doorway at sight of Jules Tremaine. “Dear me,” he said involuntarily. He turned to look uncertainly at Rogers. “A physician is needed? Unfortunately we have no house man. We use one from the neighborhood. I'll call-”
“Ambulance should be here any second,” the detective said. He watched as Max Stitt went out the door in the custody of the two patrolmen. “You'd better get that door fixed, though. I want to lock this room.”
“Certainly, sir. Certainly. I looked at it on the way in. I believe it can be fixed temporarily well enough to lock it.” He walked importantly to the phone.
Johnny silently handed the Mauser to Detective Rogers, who pocketed it. The ambulance crew arrived, and the white-coated doctor took one look at Jules Tremaine's face and eyes and stretched him out on the sofa. He worked on him for quite a long time before he signaled for the stretcher. “Come on, Johnny,” Rogers ordered when the tide had ebbed from around them. “I want to talk to him as soon as I can.”
“Sure, Jimmy.” Johnny followed him on out past a workman in carpenter's overalls muttering under his breath at the state of the door.
In the lobby, when he was sure that Rogers was in full flight after the stretcher, Johnny veered off to one side. He wanted a look at that room of Jules Tremaine's, and he wanted no one looking over his shoulder while he did so.