Nick said: “I thought you’d done it. You told Harley—”
“Don’t be a sap.” Brennan scowled with his eye closed — “I said that to throw a scare into Harley.”
Johnson picked up the phone, said: “You can’t get up. I’ll call the office and have Renée come over — you can give her the story.” He dialed a number, mumbled into the phone.
Brennan opened his eyes and pulled the bandage a little off the covered one, stared up at Nick.
“So what?”
Nick said: “A copper found you crawling down an alley in the next block to the Gateway. He called an ambulance. We were leaving the Gateway after the pinch an’ we heard the ambulance an’ came over around the corner, an’ there you were — large as life — looking like you’d been run through a meatgrinder.”
“What do you mean, ‘pinch’?”
“We raided the Gateway...”
Brennan said: “How about beginning at the beginning?”
“I saw you go down when the fireworks started — upstairs,” Nick went on. “I don’t know whether I winged Harley or slugged him — he was pretty limp. I know I got the big guy — I didn’t know it then but I know it now...”
Johnson hung up the receiver, interrupted: “That was Sam Kerr — used to be a houseman at Harley’s joint on Long Island. He’s very dead.”
Brennan nodded.
“Every time I’d move,” Nick went on, “somebody — the guy who cracked ‘Fancy that!’ an’ started shooting, I guess — would take a shot at me. The light had been smashed an’ it was plenty dark. I was scared to shoot back because I wasn’t sure where you were, so I just laid there an’ didn’t breathe. I figured you were all washed up, from the way you fell — but I couldn’t be sure...”
Brennan moved his eyes to Johnson, said: “Order me some coffee, Johnnie.”
Johnson went to the house phone.
Nick sat down on the edge of the bed, lighted a cigarette. “In a little while I got tired of lying there doing nothing so I started edging in the direction I figured the door to be. The door was still open as far as I knew — it was dark in the hall, too. The dinge gal who had opened the door was moanin’ an’ groanin’ — carrying on something terrible — I figured the direction of the door from that. I finally found the door an’ there wasn’t anything to do but go on out.”
Brennan nodded.
Nick grinned sheepishly. “I didn’t want to leave you there but there wasn’t anything else to do — if I struck a match to find out where an’ how you were, that guy would’ve popped me sure — that didn’t make good sense.”
Nick looked appealingly at Brennan.
Brennan laughed, said: “For the love of God, go on, Nicky. Of course you couldn’t do anything else — you did exactly right.”
Nick looked immensely relieved.
Johnson turned from the house phone and came over and sat on the other side of the bed. He said: “Coffee coming up.”
“I crawled on down the hall,” Nick went on, “an’ on downstairs. The door to the Gateway office was locked so I went on out the street door an’ got to a telephone—”
“Wasn’t there anybody outside the joint?” Brennan interrupted — “Didn’t anybody hear that barrage?”
Nick shook his head. “I guess the whole layout is soundproof.”
Johnson said: “Those cabarets have to be soundproof if they’re in a building that anybody lives in — city ordinance.” He took off his glasses, polished them with a handkerchief. “Nick called me,” he went on, “and I called Centre Street and told ’em we located Joice Colt in Harley’s place uptown.” Johnson smiled. “I didn’t tell ’em you were in on it, because I’d just finished telling the chief I’d canned you. Then I hopped a train uptown and when I got there they were smashing down the door upstairs.” He put his glasses on.
They were silent a moment; Brennan was looking at Johnson, waiting for him to finish.
Nick shook his head, smiled faintly, said: “We didn’t find a thing, Cy — except Sam Kerr. Everybody else was gone. If it hadn’t been for Kerr, an’ a lot of bullets in the wall, the coppers would of thought it was a pipe dream. I guess Harley wasn’t much hurt — anyway — he was gone — an’ Colt an’ the guy that started shooting an’ the black gal. An’ there wasn’t anybody downstairs either — they’d all beat it.”
Brennan stared at the ceiling. He said slowly: “Well, anyway — we know my hunch was okay. Harley’s our man — my story will make that plenty clear—”
Johnson interrupted: “Your story isn’t going to prove it.”
“I’ll attend to that when they pick up Harley.”
“They’re not even going to pick up Harley — we haven’t been able to tie him up with Gateway yet. Joice Colt is still it so far as the police are concerned.
Brennan muttered: “The dumb bastards.“ Then he raised himself carefully, leaned on one elbow. “The story will stick Harley an’ put Colt in the clear — and it’ll be so tight nobody will be able to ignore it...”
Nick said “It won’t do her much good being in the clear if we don’t find her before Harley puts her out of the way.”
Brennan looked at Johnson. “Put everybody you can spare on locating her, will you, Johnnie?” He said. “Or locating Harley — where we find one, we’ll probably find the other.”
Johnson nodded.
“You go over to the Glass Slipper, Nick,” Brennan went on, “an’ check on the alibi Harley framed there yesterday. Put the old scare on whoever was in on it.”
Nick said: “Right.”
Someone knocked at the door and Nick got up and let a waiter in. The waiter put a tray with three pots of steaming coffee on the bed table, poured the coffee and held the check for Brennan to sign. When he opened the door to go out Renée Jackman came in. She was very tiny, very dark; had the reputation of being one of the best editorial secretaries in the newspaper business.
She looked at Nick and Johnson and came over to the bed, looked down at Brennan with wide, soft eyes, said softly: “Poor baby.”
Johnson pulled a chair close to the bed for her; she sat down and crossed trim silken legs, opened a notebook and held a pencil poised tremulously in midair. She smiled. “Ready, set, go...”
Nick was at the door. He said: “I’ll call you, Cy,” went out.
Johnson picked up one of the cups of coffee and offered it to Renée; she shook her head. Johnson gulped down most of it, put on his hat. He said: “I’ve got to get back to the office. Hurry it up, Cy.”
Brennan bobbed his head up and down. He was stirring sugar into his coffee.
Johnson turned at the door. “I forgot to tell you,” he said, “that I had a man at the depot when the Atlanta train came in. Antony was on it — he went to the Curson Hotel on Fifty-fifth.”
Brennan grunted “Uh-huh” over the edge of the coffee cup. Then he called after Johnson, who had opened the door: “Have somebody try to spot the place they took me after I was creased. Maybe it was next door to the Gateway or across the alley. Maybe you can pick up something there.”
Johnson nodded, went out and closed the door.
Brennan finished his coffee, put the cup back on the tray and leaned back against the pillows. He smiled at Renée.
She smiled back, raised the pencil again. “Ready, set, go...”
At about a quarter of eleven Nick called.
Brennan had finished dictating the story; Renée was sitting at the broad desk typing it for a final okay. She looked up and watched Brennan grin into the telephone, grunt affirmatively.
He hung up finally; turned to her. “Nick says there isn’t anyone at the Glass Slipper who saw Harley there between five and seven. They say if he was there he was in his office and nobody can swear to that.”
She nodded, went on with her typing.