Coco Joe never made a mistake about the sex of visitors to the apartment. The masculine attire, masculine figure and masculine hairdo of the Canine Beauty Care Center messenger had not fooled him for an instant. He had known she was female anyway.
Just as the policewoman’s garb had not fooled him. He had known the intruder was male.
Josephine’s skin turned cold. The person who claimed to be Gladys Phelps was about five-feet-six or seven, probably weighed around 135 pounds, had blue eyes and a rather boyish face.
But hadn’t the voice been feminine? Not markedly, she answered herself, just not obviously masculine. And the supposed Gladys Phelps had said very few words, now that she thought of it, had so far been almost monosyllabic in fact — perhaps because it was a strain to assume that husky, almost feminine voice.
But what about the strawberry blonde hair?
The answer to that was simple. Every department store in town sold women’s wigs. You could get a quite natural-looking one for as little as twenty-five dollars.
But that would involve advance planning on James Clayton’s part. How could he possibly have guessed that a policewoman would be heading for her apartment in time to go buy a wig before intercepting her? And how did he know her name?
Setting Coco Joe on the bed, she went over to gaze out the window at the street four stories below while she sought answers to those two questions.
They came disturbingly quickly. He had seen the front-page photograph, six months before, of Josephine and her policewoman bodyguard seated in the apartment. The police, like criminals, tended to follow a certain modus operandi. James Clayton could be reasonably certain they would assign another policewoman guard to Josephine if they suspected he was the killer of Mrs. Sommerfield. Perhaps the list of potential victims had not been left behind on that poor woman’s dresser by accident after all. Perhaps it had been deliberately planted in order to make sure another policewoman guard was assigned to Josephine.
The answer to the second question was even easier. The killer had gotten Gladys Phelps’ name from her identification card after he killed her.
If she had not been so frightened. Josephine might have felt admiration for the deviousness of the man’s plot. It would have been considerably easier and less dangerous for him to have come direct from Mrs. Sommerfield’s murder last night to Josephine’s apartment. But this way he could demonstrate to the whole world, and specifically to the remaining twelve potential victims, that police protection meant nothing once James Clayton singled you out. Despite Sergeant Cord’s assertion that his demand for the release of Dolores Pitton from prison could not even be considered, and her agreement with the assertion, there undoubtedly would be strong pressure from at least some of the survivors to do just that, if he succeeded in murdering Josephine under the very noses of the police.
Josephine resolved to do everything in her power to prevent him from succeeding.
Unfortunately none of her apartment windows overlooked the back, or she might have dropped a note to the guard back there. She contemplated, then discarded, simply casually walking to the front door, suddenly darting out into the hall and calling to Officer Dewey that the policewoman was James Clayton in disguise. That probably would only get the young policeman killed too, because it was too much to expect for him to react quickly enough to do anything as unnatural to his instincts as shooting what seemed to be a policewoman before the bandit got in the first shot.
All at once it occurred to her that Officer Dewey had already been remarkably lucky in not being personally acquainted with Gladys Phelps. The killer must have simply taken a brazen chance on that, planning to draw the gun that undoubtedly was in that shoulder bag and start shooting if anyone accused him of being an imposter.
Realizing the fake policewoman would probably become suspicious and come looking for her if she didn’t reappear soon, she decided she had better come up with a plan of defense at once. But any defensive action necessarily depended on the killer’s plan of attack. Did he mean to dispose of her quickly, or to wait until she was asleep, as Mrs. Sommerfield had been?
Putting herself in the killer’s place, she decided the problem of getting by the guard in the outer hall threw the odds with him waiting until she was asleep. In the morning the policewoman guard was expected to leave, because she only stayed in the apartment nights. The killer could simply tell the outside guard that Josephine was still sleeping, walk past him and get on the elevator.
Then it occurred to her it would be just as simple for him to walk out five minutes from now on the pretense of going downstairs to get some cigarettes from the machine in the lobby.
Glancing at her watch, she saw it was five of six. She was reasonably certain James Clayton would not time the murder within the next few minutes, because he knew the changeover of hallway guards was due to take place at six. There would be no point in timing the killing when there might be two policemen outside the door. Logically he would wait until at least a few minutes after six, so that in case anything went wrong, he would have to contend with only one police guard.
Looking into her dresser mirror, she realized she was too pale to fool anyone into believing she wasn’t frightened half out of her wits. Deliberately she held her breath until her face became beet red. When she finally let it out, her color gradually faded, but only back to its normal tint.
Ordering Coco Joe to stay on the bed, she went out into the hallway and shut the door behind her to keep the dog in the bedroom. Squaring her shoulders and sternly reminding herself that her life depended on her acting perfectly natural, she marched up the hallway to the front room.
The pseudo-policewoman had one ear to the front door, trying to hear what went on in the front hall. The shoulder bag still hung from the imposter’s shoulder.
Josephine’s resolve shattered, and she became absolutely terrified.
Yet when the man in policewoman’s uniform turned to give her a sharp look, she found herself saying in a natural tone, despite her screaming nerves, “Why don’t you take off your cap, dear?”
Summoning a smile, the imposter removed the little blue cap and laid it on the same table where Officer Dewey had put his. Josephine breathed a sigh of relief, because that put her over the first hurdle of her plan.
“Dinner is all ready,” she said. “You don’t mind eating in the kitchen, do you?”
Without waiting for a reply, she walked into the kitchen, stiff-legged to keep her body from shaking with terror. The pseudo-policewoman followed.
Pausing next to the electric stove to give the simmering peas a stir, Josephine pointed to the chair whose back was to the stove and said, “Sit there, please, Gladys.”
Hanging the shoulder bag over the back of the chair, the imposter sat. Josephine stooped as though to open the oven door, but instead drew out the drawer beneath it and quietly lifted out the largest of her iron skillets.
With her right hand she raised the skillet high overhead. With her left she suddenly plunked off the wig. She had a double motive for doing the latter. She was afraid the wig would cushion the blow, and she wanted to make absolutely sure the person she was braining was not a policewoman after all.
The hair beneath the wig was straw-colored and crewcut. Josephine smashed the iron skillet down on top of it with all her might. The imposter half rose from his chair, glanced around with glazing eyes, and pitched sideways onto the floor.
Setting the skillet on the stove, Josephine grabbed up the shoulder bag and raced to the front door. When she flung it open, she found two policemen in the hallway. Officer Dewey was in the act of punching the elevator button. Standing with him was an equally large, but middle-aged policeman.