Brennan asked softly: “What about the glass?”
“What glass?”
“The glass under the bed — the one that had the strychnine in it. It was smashed when I came to.”
She said: “If you had some angle figured out about that glass it was your own idea — you knocked the glass off the table an’ smashed it when you fell.”
Brennan smiled sourly, said: “God! I’m a swell sleuth!” Then he snapped: “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about being with Harley, when you took me up to the room?”
“I didn’t have time.” Joice Colt reached for a cigarette on the bed table, lighted it. “I was trying to figure the thing out by myself — find out where I got off...”
“So what happened after Kerr slugged me?”
“I’m getting to that. Kerr saw that Barbara was dead an’ took it big. He evidently figured his best play was to take me along because he knew I could tie him up to Harley — an’ if I went into a good thorough disappearance it would look like I’d killed Barbara. I think he half figured that I’d killed her, anyway. He hustled me out an’ down the back stairs an’ out the service entrance. He kept close to me and had that rod in his pocket, shoved into my ribs. We got into a cab an’ went to his place over on Sixty-first an’ Lexington and he finally got Harley on the phone an’ told him what had happened. Harley told him to bring me to the joint uptown.”
Brennan was leaning back in the chair, staring bleakly at Joice Colt. He asked: “Who slipped you the reefers?”
“Kerr.” She smiled. “He smokes. I was awful jittery an’ he took pity on me, I guess.” She swung up to sit on the edge of the bed, facing Brennan. “We went uptown and met the fat nigger at the bar across the street from the Gateway, an’ they made me call you. Then they took me down to the Gateway and hustled me upstairs. The girl gave me some more weed — they figured I knew what was going to happen to me, I guess, an’ needed plenty anesthetic.” She put her hands up and patted her hair. “That’s all.”
Brennan got up and walked to the window, stood staring out into the rain. “Where’ve you been all night?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Riding around in a cab — trying to figure out what to do. Then I sat in a speakeasy down the street for a couple hours. Finally I called the Eagle to find out if they had any dope on you — I figured they’d put the chill on you uptown by this time. The telephone girl said you were home, so I took a chance on coming over.” She smiled wanly. “They’re dragging the city for me, according to the papers — I’m plenty hot. I get goose pimples every time I see a uniform. I—”
The phone rang. Joice Colt stiffened nervously, sucked in her breath sharply. Renée started to get up, but Brennan turned and went to the phone. He said: “Hello... Mister Louis? I don’t know any Mister Louis — what does he want?... Personal?... Does he look like a bill collector?... Okay — tell him to wait. I’ll call you back.”
Brennan put the phone down and went back to the window. He stood there a little while and then he turned and went to the desk and picked up the sheaf of typewritten pages that Renée had finished. “Well — I guess I’m the chump in this deal,” he said. “Here’s the swellest story I ever turned in — almost turned in.” He sighed, shook his head. “I ride a hunch, an’ bet Johnnie my job — an’ my life — that I’m right. I make a sucker out of myself for Freberg an’ the Department an’ the whole damned town to give the horse laugh. I bloody near get myself killed — an’ all because I’m sap enough to go into a big sympathy act for a tomato like you.” He inched his head emphatically towards Joice Colt.
She smiled coldly. “An’ because you hated Harley,” she said. “An’ because you think those trick hunches of yours are straight from...”
Brennan said, “Right,” very loudly. His expression was not pleasant. “I’ve played my hunches across the board since I was that high.” He held his hand at the height of his hip descriptively. “They’ve always worked out.” He patted his chest with his hand, went on very dramatically, very seriously: “If I can’t believe in my hunches, I can’t believe in myself!”
Joice Colt grinned broadly at Renée. “He’s delirious.”
Renée was smiling at Brennan. She said softly: “Listen, baby — the Antony slant is as good, or better, than Harley.” She glanced at her watch. “And we can just make it.” She got up and went to him, took the sheaf of pages from him and threw them into the wastebasket, sat down at the desk and put a sheet of paper into the typewriter.
There was a soft drumming of fingernails at the door. Brennan went to the door and opened it and there was a very thin man in a tightly belted dark raincoat standing there. His face was very thin, very gray; his dark eyes were sunken above sharp jutting cheekbones. Water dripped from the brim of his soft black hat, the bottom of his long raincoat.
He came into the room slowly. “I told the girl to announce me as Louis,” he said, “because I wanted to learn the number of your room before you had a chance to misunderstand my visit.” He spoke very precisely, with a trace of accent; his voice had the hollow toneless quality of a sick man. He smiled. “I am Antony.”
He stood quietly while Brennan closed the door. Renée and Joice Colt were staring at Antony with bright interested eyes.
Antony moved his smile from Renée to Joice to Brennan; he asked: “May I sit down?”
Brennan said: “Sure.” He jerked his head towards a chair, crossed behind Antony to a dresser near the door to bathroom, opened the top drawer.
Antony said very quietly, “Don’t do that.” His voice was almost pleading. He had not moved towards the chair; a heavy blue automatic glittered dully in his hand.
Brennan turned his head towards Antony, grinned slowly. “I was going to open a fresh one in your honor,” he said. He kept his eyes on Antony, reached slowly into the drawer and took out a bottle wrapped in tissue paper.
Antony went to the chair and sat down; he held the automatic on his lap.
Brennan tore the wrapper off the bottle, snapped off the cap; he took a fresh glass from the top of the dresser and poured a big drink. As Antony leaned forward to take it he was seized suddenly by a violent fit of coughing; he put the glass on the floor and took out a handkerchief and coughed for perhaps a half minute in a curious rhythmic way.
Brennan poured whiskey into three glasses on the bed table; he turned the chair near the bed to face Antony, sat down and picked up his glass.
Antony’s coughing ended as suddenly as it had started. He smiled apologetically at Brennan, picked up his glass from the floor and drank most of it. He said: “That is a good cough — yes?”
Brennan nodded.
“I have come to tell you something very funny,” Antony went on. He leaned back in the chair and his sunken pain-glazed eyes twinkled momentarily with amusement. “I have become soft, like a woman — I am Antony of whom many men were afraid and I have become soft and sentimental like — what you call it? — a pansy.” He laughed, and the sound was a harsh tearing sound deep in his body; he bent his head a little to one side, stared quizzically at Brennan. “Have you ever wanted something very much and then when you got it it was not very much — and you did not want anything very much?...”
Brennan smiled, shook his head slightly.
Antony went on in the clipped, precisely accented monotone: “For a long time I have wanted to kill two people. It was a fever to me — there was nothing else that was important. I lived for that — I planned it very carefully.” He gestured pointedly with one hand. “Now it is done — and I think there is nothing that is important to me any more.”