“And while you’re about it,” he said, “you can bring my baggage up to 306.”
“You’re going to be up there?” the bell captain said.
Moraine laughed. “Hell,” he said, “I’m Mr. Chester.”
“Oh,” the bell captain said, and produced a telegram blank on which a message had been scrawled in pencil.
“No, it hasn’t gone out yet. I’ve rung for the messenger. He’ll be here any minute.”
The telegram was addressed to Thomas Wickes, and read:
“RANSOM MAN IS HERE WITH SUITCASE FULL OF PAPERS INCLUDING SHORTHAND NOTEBOOKS STOP IF WE CAN HANDLE SITUATION PROPERLY SELL-OUT CAN NEVER BE PROVED STOP JOIN ME FAST AS YOU CAN GET HERE I PLAN ESTABLISH CLOSE UNDERSCORE CLOSE PERSONAL CONTACT PARTY MENTIONED PLAY YOUR CARDS ACCORDINGLY”
The telegram was signed simply “Gertrude.”
Moraine read it through slowly, took a pencil from his pocket and scratched out the words “sell-out.”
“I’ll have to think of some other word for that,” he said. “When we wrote it, we forgot the telegraph company couldn’t transmit punctuation and compound words.”
The bell captain’s casual nod showed his lack of interest.
After a moment, Moraine wrote “betrayal” above the place occupied by the words “sell-out.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “Now, can you bring my suitcase up to 306?”
“It will be up right away,” the bell captain told him.
Moraine took the elevator back to Doris Bender’s apartment. Her face showed relief as he opened the door.
“I had the funniest hunch that perhaps you were taking a run-out powder,” she said.
“Why should I take a powder?”
“I don’t know. I just had sort of a hunch.”
“Forget it. I should run away from a nice little hideout like this, and walk into the arms- of some hick cop that recognized me from a newspaper photograph.”
“Your bags coming up?” she asked.
“They’ll be here by the time you’ve poured another drink.”
“That’s swell. I’ve changed my mind.”
“About what?”
“About getting crocked.”
“You mean you’re going to get crocked?”
“Absolutely pie-eyed, polluted. I’m going to celebrate.”
“Swell!” he told her. “We don’t have to go out for anything, do we?”
“We don’t have to go out for a month.”
The bell boy knocked at the door as she poured the drink. Moraine let him in, and Doris Bender came from the kitchenette to stare at the heavy suitcase which he thumped down on the floor. He placed his bag and overcoat beside it.
“Anything else?” the bell captain asked.
“Not a thing so far, but bring up a bottle of Scotch in about an hour.”
The boy nodded, and grinned.
Moraine sprawled on the davenport, propped his head up with a pillow. Doris Bender brought him Scotch and soda. Her eyes drifted to the big suitcase.
“Filled with papers?” she asked.
“Just lift it,” he told her.
She took hold of the handle, tried to lift it, and a look of surprise came over her face. She put both hands on the handle, strained, and managed to lift it an inch or two from the floor.
“Good heavens!” she said.
Moraine nodded complacently. “Chock full of political dynamite.”
“Say, how about some food?”
“Good idea. It’d be easier to eat now and celebrate afterwards than to celebrate now and eat afterwards. I never can work up an appetite when I’m crocked.”
“Same here,” she agreed.
“Do we have some stuff sent up from the dining-room?”
“No, they don’t have a dining-room. It’s an apartment hotel. There’s a restaurant next door, but there’s no sense having people trooping in and out of the room. I’ve got enough provisions here to last in a pinch for a long while, and I can have groceries delivered any time by ordering over the telephone.”
“Okay,” he told her; “that suits me swell. Where was your boy-friend when you left on the train?”
“What boy-friend?” she asked.
“What was his name — Wickes?”
“Oh,” she said, and laughed, “he wasn’t my boyfriend. That was Ann’s boy-friend. I think he likes me, but it’s just as a sister.”
“Ann,” he observed, “must have been popular.”
“She was — poor lad. Men fell for her and fell hard.”
“You still haven’t told me where Wickes was when you went down to the train.”
“I don’t know where he was. I didn’t tell him I was going.”
“Where was Ann?”
“I don’t know that either. Ann played rather a dirty trick on me.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t like to talk about it, now she’s dead.”
“Did you go to the station in a taxicab?”
“No, on a street car.”
“From your apartment?”
“I wasn’t in my apartment for a while before the train left. I wasn’t there after about eight o’clock in the evening.”
“Why?”
“Things were getting hot.”
“How were they getting hot?”
“Oh, don’t ask so damn many questions,” she said. “My God! I thought we were going to get drunk!”
“No,” he corrected; “we were going to eat.”
“All right, I’ll fix something.”
She was careful to close the door into the kitchenette, from which presently emerged the sound of pans making noise on the top of the gas range.
Moraine sighed happily and drifted off into light, dozing slumber.
Chapter Seventeen
Sam Moraine sprawled on the davenport. His coat and vest were off, his shirt open at the neck, his face flushed, his eyes slightly blood-shot.
Doris Bender was perched on the arm of a chair. Her hand held a glass. Her dark eyes were watery, but, from time to time, she glanced at Sam Moraine in keen appraisal. But whenever his eyes encountered hers, she drooped her lids and smiled with loose-lipped conviviality.
The telephone rang.
She scowled, stared at Moraine for a moment and said, “Anyone know you’re here?”
He frowned, as though the concentration required to answer the question was more than his senses could command without the greatest effort, then slowly shook his head.
She lurched toward the telephone, picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”
The receiver made squawking noises.
“How the hell did you find out where I was?” she asked.
Once more, the receiver rasped sound.
She glanced shrewdly at Sam Moraine.
“No, no, no!” she said. “You can’t come up. I don’t want to see you! I don’t know how you found me... Yes, of course I’m alone... No, I don’t want you to... Hello, hello, hello...”
She dropped the receiver back into place. She looked at Sam Moraine with panic in her eyes.
“Whoosit?” he asked.
“Listen,” she said, “that’s Tom Wickes. I don’t know how he found me. He wants to talk with me. He says he’s coming up.”
“If you don’t want him to come up,” Moraine said, with alcoholic gravity, “I’ll throw him out.”
“No, no, don’t you understand? He’s working on those murder cases. He’s trying to save his own skin by finding a fall guy. If he found you here, he’d turn you over to the police.”
“I’d throw him downstairs.”
“Of course you would, sweetheart, but he’d turn you over to the police after he got downstairs.”
Moraine nodded with judicial gravity.
“Logic in that remark,” he announced thickly, the words running together.
“Listen,” she said, “you go in the closet and hide. I’ll go to the door and try to keep him from coming in.”