He went to one of the two low armchairs, sat down, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “What’s it all about?”
Joice Colt took a cigarette out of her bag, lighted it. “Barbara and I have been practically living together for the last month,” she said. “She had the room across the hall but we always left our doors unlocked and sort of shared everything.” She smiled ruefully. “That is, whatever we had to share — which was nothing.”
Brennan suddenly noticed a green glass tumbler that had rolled partway under the bed. He got up and picked it up with his handkerchief and sniffed it, sat down again and put the tumbler on the table beside him.
He said: “Make it fast. We’ll have to call the Law pretty soon.”
“Barbara’s been cockeyed for the last couple weeks,” Joice Colt went on, “An’ every time she’d begin talking about killing herself. She talked about it too much — people who talk about it that much don’t do it.”
“What was the matter with her?”
“Everything. Antony cut off her allowance about three months ago. He’d fixed it up for her before he was put over. She didn’t have a dime. She was on the cuff to the bootlegger for a couple hundred an’ she was into the hotel for twice that much — she got her eviction notice yesterday...”
Brennan glanced at the girl on the bed. “How come Antony cut off her dough?”
“He probably heard she was playing around.”
“Was she?”
“Uh-huh.” Joice Colt was smiling a little. She took a deep drag of her cigarette.
“Who with?”
Joice Colt said: “Ed Harley,” as if the name were a bad taste in her mouth. Her eyes were narrowed to thin blue-fringed slits.
Brennan leaned back. He said slowly: “Well, well — your own true love. How come you and Barbara were so chummy if Harley aired you for her?”
“It wasn’t her fault. He gave her that razzle-dazzle works about starring her in one of his clubs an’ she was too limp to say no. Then he dropped her like a hot potato when Antony was wise to him, an’ got scared.”
Brennan curved his thin lips into something like a smile. “And Harley didn’t even take care of her bill in his own hotel?”
Joice Colt shook her head.
Brennan said: “Nice boy.” He stared thoughtfully at the girl on the bed. “It looks like there were plenty of reasons for her to do it — broke, kicked out of the hotel, given the gate by Harley, and Antony on his way up from Atlanta with blood in his eye.”
“Just the same, I’ll take the long end that it wasn’t suicide.” Joice Colt smashed out her cigarette. “She wasn’t the type.”
“Harley would probably want to shut her up.” Brennan picked up the tumbler again with his handkerchief, sniffed it. “And Antony would be a cinch for this kind of thing — if he’s half as haywire as they say he is — but he couldn’t get here from Atlanta if he was sprung this morning...”
“He could fly.”
Brennan nodded slightly. “We can check on that.” He was silent a little while and then he said slowly: “If it wasn’t suicide, and if Harley and Antony can establish alibis — you know who’s going to hold the bag, don’t you?”
Joice Colt stood staring vacantly down at him.
“Little Joice,” Brennan went on. “The DA can make a swell show out of your prison record, and the fact that Harley dumped you for Barbara — and you discovering the body...”
“That’s ridiculous.” Joice Colt laughed a little, without mirth.
Brennan nodded. “Uh-huh. Would you like to tell a jury of twelve good men and true how ridiculous it is?” He got up and went to the telephone, asked the operator to get the city desk of the Eagle, call him back. He leaned against the wall and smiled sleepily at Joice Colt. “I think we’d better vote for suicide for the time being,” he said. “Don’t you?”
She nodded abstractedly, went to one of the low chairs and sat down.
The phone rang and Brennan picked it up, said: “Hello, Johnnie. Barbara Antony, Lou Antony’s wife, bumped herself off in her room at the Valmouth... Yeah... Strychnine, I think... There are a lot of angles. One of them is that Lou got out of Atlanta this morning. Have somebody call the office in Atlanta and check on him — whether he took a train, or flew, or what have you... Yeah, Ed Harley’s another angle, but you’d better soft-pedal that. Make it suicide for now — I’m going to work on it and whip out a swell feature for tomorrow — save the spot page. An’ Johnnie, call Centre Street right away — have ’em send Freberg if he’s there — he’s the brightest boy on their whole doggone detective force; which isn’t saying a hell of a lot... Uh-huh. So long.”
Brennan hung up the receiver, took a shiny leather cigar-case out of his breast pocket, took out a cigar and stuck it into his mouth. He started back to his chair and then someone knocked at the door; he glanced at Joice Colt, turned and went to the door, opened it. A man with a blue silk handkerchief covering the lower part of his face stood in the doorway. He was a very tall, heavily shouldered man and he held a short automatic waist high in front of him.
Brennan looked at the automatic, said: “How do you do?” slowly.
The man came into the room and Brennan backed up; Joice Colt stood up and put one hand to her mouth. The man closed the door and stood with his back to it for a moment, then went swiftly to Brennan, jabbed the automatic viciously into his stomach. Brennan started to put up his hands and the man grabbed his shoulder suddenly, spun him half around, crashed the barrel of the automatic down hard against the back of his head.
Brennan saw Joice Colt’s white drained face. He heard her scream. Then his vision dulled and his knees gave way and he fell forward heavily.
He heard Freberg’s voice before he opened his eyes, recognized the nasal Scandinavian drawl. Freberg was saying: “Get a report of what’s in her insides before you do anything else. Then swear out a warrant for the Colt gal — I want her picked up tonight...”
Brennan opened his eyes; Freberg was bending over him. There was another man standing in the doorway. The other man said: “Okay,” and went out and closed the door.
Freberg was a slight blond man, about thirty-five. He grinned at Brennan, slid his arm under Brennan’s shoulders and pulled him up, held a dark brown pint bottle to his mouth. Brennan put up his hands and held the bottle, took a long drink. He glanced at the bed and saw that the Antony girl had been taken away; he and Freberg were alone in the room.
Brennan handed the bottle back to Freberg, said: “Oi jamina — my head!”
“Uh-huh.” Freberg took a drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Who did it?”
“Carnera.”
“I know — I know.” Freberg put the cork into the bottle and tucked it into his hip pocket. “What did he look like?” Brennan got laboriously to his feet, sank into one of the chairs. He noticed that the tumbler was no longer on the table, the carpet between the table and the wall glittered with splinters of green glass. He leaned forward and held his head in his hands.
He said: “Big guy — black hair. He had a handkerchief draped over his pan.”
Freberg sat down in the other chair.
Brennan asked: “What happened to Colt?”
Freberg shrugged. “Was she here when the big fella slapped you down?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When I got here,” Freberg went on, “the house dick was shooing away a lot of innocent bystanders. It seems somebody screamed in here and the guy in the next room called downstairs, and when the dick came up with a passkey he found the Antony gal very dead, and you, cold with that egg on the back of your head.”
“Nobody else?”
Freberg shook his head. “Nobody else.” He leaned back and tilted his hat back and scratched his head. “The doc figured her to have been dead about an hour. What happened?”