Somebody knocked at the door and Brennan called “Come in.” Renée said: “It’s locked I guess.” She got up and opened the door and Joice Colt came into the room.
She stood inside the door and stared dully at Renée and then moved her eyes slowly to Brennan.
Renée closed the door.
Joice Colt went across the room and stood with her hands on the foot of the bed looking down at Brennan. Her eyes were wide, opaque; her face dead white. She said: “Harley is dead.” Then her eyes went back in her head and she slumped down softly to the floor.
Brennan got up as swiftly as he could and knelt beside her, said: “Bring me the bottle of whiskey in the closet” over his shoulder to Renée. Renée brought the whiskey and Brennan poured some of it between Joice Colt’s pale clenched lips; with Renée’s help he lifted her and put her on the bed. After a minute or so she opened her eyes.
Brennan was leaning over her. He said: “Where? How?...”
There was no flicker of understanding in Joice Colt’s eyes; Brennan whispered “Harley” and very slowly intelligence and life came back into her face. She laughed a little.
Brennan poured a stiff drink and she took the glass, eagerly, drained it.
“They thought I was so full of weed I didn’t know where I was — I didn’t know what was going on” she said. “But I knew, I knew...” She spoke swiftly, huskily; she seemed to want to say everything at once. “I remember when you came in — an’ then the little fella started shooting an’ I saw you fall. Then it was dark and I could hear people crawling in the darkness and I could hear the Negro girl moaning and I thought she had been hit — but she was only scared.”
Renée was standing at the foot of the bed staring at Joice Colt; Brennan was sitting on the side of the bed in his pajamas and his bandaged head and bruised face were thrust towards Colt.
“Then after a while somebody said ‘He’s gone’ and they were talking about the man that came in with you, I think — and they turned on another light. You were bleeding terribly and I thought you were dead, and Sam Kerr was dead, and the Negro girl was still groaning — but she was only scared. Harley got up and he and the little fella looked at you and you were alive and the little fella put his gun down by your head, but Harley said ‘No.’ Then two Negroes came in and Harley told one of them — the big fat man — to pick you up and take you someplace, and he told the girl to go along...”
Brennan asked: “Take me where?”
“I don’t know — over to Cappy’s, or somewhere that sounded like that.” Joice Colt put her hands up and jerked off her small tightfitting hat. “Then Harley made me get up and took me downstairs an’ out the back way. His car was out there. He thought I was so full of the stuff that I didn’t know what it was all about. I was pretty high — but not that high.”
She paused, glanced at the bottle; Brennan poured her another drink.
“Harley drove over to the river,” she went on. “I guess his idea was to slug me an’ roll me in — he drove out on a little dark wharf an’ stopped the car.” She tilted the glass to her mouth, drank most of the whiskey. “An’ then a guy who’d been lying down on the floor in the back of the car got up and stuck a rod into the back of Harley’s neck an’ said: ‘Stick your hands up, you — an’ get out of the car.’ The guy got out behind him and walked him over to the edge of the wharf and I could hear them talking there, but I couldn’t make out what they said. Then there were two shots close together an’ the guy came running back to the car. He looked at me and I acted like I’d passed out — I’d been riding that way, slumped down in the seat, since Harley brought me out of the joint — and he figured I was out cold an’ hadn’t recognized him, I guess. He beat it back up the street.”
Brennan was leaning forward; his eyes were bright, interested. “Who?”
“Lou Antony.”
Brennan smiled thinly, stood up. He said: “You’re nuts — Antony didn’t get in town till this morning.”
She repeated: “Lou Antony. He looks like a skeleton — like he was awfully sick — but I’d know that face anywhere.” She finished her drink.
Brennan glanced at Renée, turned back. “Why, damn it, Joice — that doesn’t make sense...”
Joice Colt said slowly: “Oh, yes, it does.”
Brennan was staring at her with wide bewildered eyes.
“Harley didn’t kill Barbara,” she went on, “Antony did. He beat Harley to it.”
Brennan sat down slowly in the chair beside the bed; he was smilingly slightly, mirthlessly, shaking his head slowly back and forth.
Joice Colt sat up and leaned against the head of the bed. “Harley called me late yesterday afternoon,” she said — “said he wanted to see me, to come over to his office at the Slipper. I went over about five-thirty. We had a few drinks an’ he hemmed and hawed about letting bygones be bygones and giving me a job and things like that. I couldn’t figure what it was all about an’ after a while I got suspicious, an’ while Harley was in the bathroom I scrammed out of the place. When I got back to the hotel an’ found Barbara dead I figured Harley for it right away. He’d called me over to the Slipper so I’d be out of the way, an’ at the same time establish his alibi while one of his hoods came up an’ did for Barbara. I told you I called him right away — I did, but at the Slipper, not at the hotel. He’d left the Slipper. I went downstairs, figuring I might catch him coming in, an’ I ran into you—”
Brennan interrupted suddenly: “Sure, sure — so what? Harley’s still it. He had one of his men kill her, even if he didn’t do the actual job himself...”
She shook her head. “No. He planned for one of his boys to do it — Sam Kerr — but Kerr was too late. He went up about six o’clock, when he was sure I was safe at the Slipper. He wasn’t going to poison her — that isn’t the way Harley’s mind works — he was going to choke her or cave in her head or something gentle and quiet like that. Kerr was the kind of lad Harley would pick for a job like that. When he got there he knocked at Barbara’s door an’ there wasn’t any answer, an’ he’d been officed that we were practically living together so he went to my door, but there were voices inside — a man’s voice an’ Barbara’s voice — so he sat down on the back stairs to wait for the man to come out.”
Brennan said: “How the hell do you know all this?”
“This is the way I heard Kerr tell it to Harley — an’ this is the way it was.” She said it very emphatically.
Brennan reached for the bottle and a glass, poured himself a drink.
“In a little while the man came out,” she went on, “and went downstairs past Kerr. Kerr didn’t pay any particular attention to him — figured he was one of Barbara’s casual boyfriends — but he saw enough of him to describe him vaguely to Harley. It was Lou Antony.”
Brennan drank.
Renée had come around and was sitting on the foot of the bed. She said: “You might buy us all a drink.”
Brennan was frowning into space. He handed her a glass and the bottle.
“Kerr went back and knocked at the door,” Joice Colt went on. “Nobody answered an’ he finagled around with a couple of skeleton keys but it was no go — an’ pretty soon he heard the elevator stop at the floor an’ he ducked back down the stairway. He played hide an’ seek with the elevator that way for about ten minutes, working on the lock — and then I came back. He saw me go in, and come out in a couple minutes. He didn’t know what the hell to do — his orders were to knock Barbara off, an’ being a conscientious soul with a one-track mind, he was beginning to think about busting the door in when I came back up with you. He listened outside the door but couldn’t make much sense of what he could hear so he finally knocked at the door an’ came in and sapped you before he even noticed that Barbara was already stiff.”