He turned the door knob and pushed. The door opened and a violent smell of frying onions, virile tomcats and ripe garbage jostled past him as if anxious to reach some fresh air.
He tipped his hat to the back of his head, wrinkled his nose and moved farther into the hall. A row of mailboxes screwed against the wall told him what kind of house it was. The third mail-box belonged to Miss Coleman: that put her on the third floor.
Conrad climbed the stairs, passing shabby doors from which came the blare of radios playing swing music as if the listeners were stone deaf but determined to hear something.
The door facing the head of the stairs on the third floor told him this was where Miss Coleman lived. A neat white card bearing her name was pinned to the panel with a thumb tack.
As he closed his hand into a fist to knock, he saw the door was ajar. He knocked, waited a long moment, and then stepped back, his eyes suddenly wary.
Was this going to be another body behind a half-open door? he wondered.
Already he had looked at six bodies this night, each of them in its own particular way, horrible and pathetic. He felt his nerves crawl under his skin and the hair on the nape of his neck move.
He took out a cigarette and pasted it on his lower lip. As he set fire to it he noticed his hands were steady enough, and he suddenly grinned.
He leaned forward and pushed the door open and peered into darkness.
“Anyone in?” he said, raising his voice.
No one answered. A solid silence came out of the room on a faint perfume of Californian Poppy.
He took two steps forward and groped for the light switch. As the light went on, he drew a deep breath of expectancy, but there were no bodies, no blood, no murder weapons: just a small, box-like room with an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, a chair and a pinewood cupboard.- It looked as comfortable and as homely as a Holy man’s bed of nails.
He stood looking round for a moment or so, then he moved forward and opened one of the cupboard’s doors. Except for a far-away smell of lavender the cupboard was empty. He frowned, reached for one of the drawers in the chest and pulled it open. That, too, was empty.
He scratched the back of his neck with a forefinger, stared around some more, then lifted his shoulders and walked out into the passage.
He turned off the light and then walked down the stairs, slowly and thoughtfully. Back again in the hall, he inspected Miss Coleman’s mail-box. It was unlocked and empty.
A notice on the wall caught his attention. It read: Janitor. Basement.
“What have I got to lose?” he thought, and went along a passage and down a flight of dirty stairs into darkness.
At the foot of the stairs he collided with something hard and he swore under his breath.
“Anyone at home?” he called.
A door swung open and the light of a naked electric lamp flowed out, making him blink.
“No vacancies, pally,” a mild oily voice oozed from the doorway. “This joint’s fuller than a dog with fleas.”
Conrad looked into a small room that contained a bed, a table, two chairs and a worn rug. At the table sat a large fat man in shirt sleeves. In his mouth he held a dead cigar. Spread out before him on the table was a complicated patience game.
“You’ve got a vacancy on the third floor, haven’t you?” Conrad said. “Miss Coleman’s moved out.”
“Who says so?”
“I’ve just been up there. The room’s empty. Clothes gone. All the little knickknacks that make up a home gone too.”
“Who are you?” the fat man asked.
Conrad flashed his buzzer.
“City police.”
The fat man curled his upper lip into a complacent sneer.
“What’s she been up to?”
“When did she leave?” Conrad asked, leaning against the door post.
“I didn’t know she had left,” the fat man said. “She was here this morning. Well, that’s a relief off my mind. I would have had to put her out tomorrow: saves me a job.”
“Why?”
The fat man wheezed as he pushed a fat finger into his ear and massaged it briskly.
“The usual reason. She was three weeks behind on her rent.”
Conrad rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully.
“What do you know about her? When did she come here?”
“A month ago. Said she was a movie extra.” The fat man swept the spread-out cards into a little heap, picked them up and began to shuffle them. “Couldn’t get anything cheap in Hollywood: anyway, cheap enough for her. She was a nice girl. If I had a daughter I’d like her to be like her. Nice way of talking, nice looks, quiet, well-behaved.” He lifted his fat shoulders. “But no money. It’s the bad ones who have the dough, I guess. I told her to go home, but she wouldn’t listen. She promised to have the money for me by tomorrow morning for certain. Looks like she didn’t get it, doesn’t it?”
“That’s the way it looks,” Conrad said. He suddenly felt tired. Why should an out-of-work movie extra call on June Arnot, he wondered, except for a touch? She probably never got farther than the guard-house. It was unlikely June Arnot would have seen her.
He glanced at his watch. It was just after midnight.
“Well, thanks.” He pushed himself away from the door post. “That’s all I want to know.”
The fat man asked, “She isn’t in trouble, is she?”
Conrad shook his head.
“Not as far as I know.”
The night air felt cold and fresh after the fusty smells of the apartment house. Conrad drove home. Bardin had said he was convinced that Jordan had done the job. Why should he bother? He would talk to the D.A. tomorrow. If only he knew for certain that Maurer and June had been lovers. If they had been then there might be a chance that Maurer had engineered the job; might even have done it himself.
“Oh, the hell with Maurer!” Conrad thought as he walked up the path to his front door. “I’ve got him on my mind like a junkie’s got dope.”
He sank his key into the lock and moved into the dark little hall.
The house was very still and silent.
He went along the passage to the bedroom, pushed open the door and turned on the light. The twin beds had an empty and forlorn look about them.
So Janey had gone out and she wasn’t back yet.
He began to strip off his clothes. As he walked into the bathroom for a quick shower, he said aloud, “And the hell with her too!”
CHAPTER TWO
I
CHARLES FOREST, District Attorney, sat behind his big, flat-topped desk, a cigarette between his thick fingers and a brooding expression in his eyes.
Forest was a short, bulky man with a fleshy hard face, searching green eyes, a thin mouth and a square jutting chin. His thick white hair was seldom tidy as he had a habit of running his fingers through it when he was working on a knotty problem, and he seemed to spend most of his working hours solving knotty problems.
“McCann seems satisfied it was Jordan,” Forest said, waving his hand to the pile of newspapers that lay in an untidy heap on the floor. “On the face of it, Paul, he’s got a watertight case. I’ve read Bardin’s report, and that seems pretty conclusive. What’s worrying you?”
Conrad sank lower in the armchair. One leg hung over one of the arms of the chair and he swung it backwards and forwards irritably.
“It’s too damned pat, sir,” he said. “Doc Holmes said it looked like a professional job, and I think so too. I think a hop-head would have to be very lucky to kill six people with six shots, especially when he’s using a .45. Those guns kick, but each time he hit a bull’s eye. It seems to me the killer was a crack shot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t killed before.”