I had just time to see the chair dance on the platform like a crazy thing as bullets smashed into it, then I had slammed the door and thrown home the bolt.
“Let’s stay here and roast,” I said in a quavering voice.
“You might as well get the candles again,” Sedalia said calmly.
So while Sedalia repaired to her bedroom for another robe, I located the same candles we had used approximately twenty-four hours before and made a little light in the front room. Then we sat down, Sedalia with a beer and me with a high-ball, and conversed as though neither of us had a care in the world. Sedalia sounded entirely calm, but in the dim light of the two candles I could not make out her expression very well, and perhaps she was as frightened as I. If she was, she was exceedingly frightened, for I have never experienced such panic in my life as I did during the next forty-five minutes, as we sat there talking while the floor gradually grew so hot we could feel the warmth on our feet even through a thick rug.
“Do you really think the murderer set this?” I asked.
Sedalia took a long pull on her beer. “Obviously. It would be too much of a coincidence for him to be on the roof otherwise. If we don’t burn up, we’ve definitely got him now.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He wouldn’t go to such desperate lengths unless it were not absolutely essential to remove me tonight. He’s not making these frantic attempts because he simply fears me as an opponent. The only possible reason he could be so desperate is that he can’t afford to let me talk to Jonathan Toomey. So, by the process of applied logic, if we live to talk to Toomey we’ll have the answer.”
“Then our killer is Jerome Straight?”
“I don’t know,” Sedalia said. “We’ll never know unless we get to talk to Fibrolux Plastics’ vice president.”
When nearly a half hour had passed we suddenly heard a sound something like that of a huge vacuum cleaner. I was trying to classify the sound when there was a roaring immediately under our feet and the floor began to vibrate.
“The floor’s giving way!” I yelled, leaping to my feet.
“It’s just a fire hose,” Sedalia said matter-of-factly. “They’re playing a stream of water on the ceiling downstairs.”
I sank back in my chair feeling foolish, hope beginning to form in my breast that we would get out of our situation after all.
The hope materialized, for about fifteen minutes later a pounding came at the kitchen door. We went back to the kitchen together, and after satisfying ourselves that a fireman instead of the killer was on the fire escape outside by shouting back and forth through the door, I threw the bolt and let him in.
Incredibly, Inspector Stephen Home was with the fireman.
“Desk sergeant got me out of bed when a report on the fire came in,” he announced in explanation. “Knew you lived here and thought I’d want to know. You all right, Sedalia?”
“Just fine,” she said. “Have a beer, Stephen?”
The inspector shook his head, not even seeming surprised by the invitation. The fireman, an axe in one hand and a flashlight in the other, made a tour of the apartment and came back looking disappointed that he had found nothing to chop.
“You people should have gotten out,” he said. “Might as well stay now, though. The danger’s over.”
“Anyone hurt?” Sedalia asked.
“Woman sprained her ankle on a fire escape. Nobody burned, though the floor below here is pretty well gutted. Lucky the whole she-bang didn’t go up. Somebody poured gasoline all over the hall downstairs and pitched a match in it.”
He went out the way he had come.
“Our killer was on the roof a little while ago, Steve,” Sedalia said. “This was started to smoke me out apparently. He fired a number of shots and ruined the kitchen chair I threw out on the fire escape.”
“Noticed it,” he said. “Guessed something like that happened when I saw the holes in your robe. Checked the roof before I came in here, but there’s four other escapes he could have taken down.”
Suddenly, for no reason at all, an odd memory item popped from my subconscious into my conscious mind. This happens to me sometimes. I have what is known as a photographic memory, being able to reproduce in my mind vivid images of things I have seen in the past, for example whole pages of printed matter. Once the talent earned me a living on the stage, and now it is of occasional service to Sedalia.
I said, “Sedalia, what does this mean? Friday night when we were at the scene of the first murder, Gerald Rawlins pointed out his suitcase standing in the hall and remarked he had not had time to park it anywhere because he had come straight from the airport. It had a bright red baggage stub tied to its handle. But later when I searched his room, the stub was white and he also had an additional bag with a white stub.”
In the flickering candlelight Sedalia looked at me for a long time. Finally she said, “Have you been carrying that in your mind long, Hank?”
“Not consciously,” I said.
“It’s a good thing,” she told me grimly. “If you’d mentioned it right after searching Rawlins’ room, the case would have been solved right then.” She looked at the inspector. “No wonder the killer couldn’t afford to let me talk to Jonathan Toomey. Now I know what to ask Mr. Toomey.”
But she refused to tell us what she intended to ask, insisting she had no intention of accusing anyone of murder and arson until all the evidence was in. Instead she talked the inspector into having all five suspects picked up and at his office at nine in the morning, at which time she would make her long distance call to Dallas and then present the inspector with his murderer.
“The fire put my phone out of order again,” she said. “So this call will have to be at public expense.”
Whereupon she shooed the inspector out via the fire escape and we went back to bed.
When we arrived at headquarters the next morning, we found the five suspects already gathered together in the inspector’s office. Sedalia greeted them all courteously, borrowed the inspector’s phone and put in her call to the Fibrolux Plastics Corporation in Dallas. While waiting for this she asked the operator to get her the Statler Hotel.
Then she handed the phone to Inspector Home. “When you get the clerk, ask what time Gerald Rawlins registered on Friday.”
No one said anything as Home asked the question, grunted at the reply and hung up. He glanced at Gerald Rawlins.
“Desk clerk says he didn’t check in till about nine, which would be shortly after we released him after we questioned everyone at Mrs. Agatha Chambers’ home. But he phoned for the reservation from the railroad station at twelve-fifteen.”
“That ties it up,” Sedalia said. “We won’t even have to wait for Jonathan Toomey’s verification.” As the inspector reached for the phone she added quickly, “But don’t cancel the call. We’ll need the evidence. While waiting I’ll tell you how Mr. Gerald Rawlins performed these murders and why.”
Everyone turned to look at Gerald Rawlins, whose face had turned deathly pale, but who managed a cynical smile. He made no comment, simply staring defiantly at Sedalia as though daring her to go on. Sedalia obliged him.
“Rawlins managed to distort the picture of what really happened a bit,” she said. “But it was not really clever planning. It was merely incredible luck. What actually happened, of course, was not that Gerald phoned his aunt to disclose the hundred thousand dollar shortage, but Adrian Thorpe phoned her. Gerald was on a train at the time, en route to the family meeting. In spite of Gerald having fixed the books to make it look as though Thorpe was the embezzler, Mrs. Chambers knew her nephew well enough to put the blame where it belonged. Consequently, when Gerald arrived at his aunt’s house, he was met by a denunciation and Mrs. Chambers informed him he was not only permanently going to be cut out of her will, but a member of the district attorney’s office would be present at the meeting that might to take him into custody.”