“That’d be great. Where’s the lieutenant?”
“Oh, he’s gone.”
She went out, with no further explanation. He debated whether to attempt dressing before she returned with the coffee, decided against it.
The coffee was in a silver service; there were cigarettes in a silver goblet; the morning paper was folded neatly at the edge of the tray.
“Everything but the morning mail,” he said. “In time to make the eight-twenty. Thanks.”
“How do you feel?”
“I’ve felt better. How’s the other Kilkenny cat?”
“Bill can’t use his wrist very well. He thinks there may be a green fracture.”
“That won’t slow him down any more than a mosquito bite. He’s going to kill somebody, one of these days.” Pedley blew on the hot coffee. “I thought he was going to punctuate me. Why didn’t he?”
“Because I told him you saved my life.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Terry told me.” She stood in front of the door mirror, primping her hair. “I didn’t know, the first time you were here. I wouldn’t have been so snooty, if I had.”
“Think nothing of it. Part of our service to regular customers. Conover must have been disappointed at not finishing what he started.”
“It’s hard to tell how Bill feels. I’m a little afraid of him, myself, sometimes.”
“Ah! He’s as transparent as a kid on a pantry chair. He thinks you’re the glow-worm.”
“So do you — don’t you?” Her mouth and eyes were wistfully unhappy.
“He can’t dope out any way to help you except the direct action method. Problem: I’m a menace to your safety and his happiness. Solution: eliminate me. Primitive way of thinking. All those marines were taught to be primitive — or else.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You’re the one to answer it.” He emptied the coffeepot. “Not easy to lie here and look at you and remind myself that appearances are deceptive as hell. That you were in the dressing-room and in the Village and on Central Park West at or about the time of the crimes. That, as far as I know, you’re the only person who was at all three places.”
She sat on the bed again, leaned over with what might have been anxiety — or something else.
He’d have had to be beat up much worse than he was, Pedley realized, not to be affected by her. He’d run across a few girls of this sort before — the kind who considered sex something to be shared casually whenever its sharing was agreeable or profitable or useful. That was the way this girl used it, had always used it, apparently. As something which could be depended on to help her over the tough spots in the road.
Leila knew he wanted her now; she was using the certainty of it for all it was worth. She rested a hand carelessly on his knee, “Suppose I were — the glow-worm?”
“I’d turn you in. And testify against you. I’d do that even if you were to get into bed with me this minute—” The buzzer cut in.
“Damn!” She hurried to the door. “The doctor.”
“Tell him to go fly a kite. I’m all right.”
Out in the living-room, someone was excited.
“I don’t care who’s with you, Leila. We’ve got to settle this thing, now.”
Terry Ross! Pedley set the tray on the floor hastily. There were low murmurings from the next room. Then Ross asked, “Don’t you think you are carrying this thing too far, sweets?”
It was a minor agony for Pedley to get out of bed; he just managed to swing his feet to the floor as Ross burst in.
“Far be it I should intrude upon an affaire du coeur, my fran’ — but Chuck Gaydel will be here in two shakes. Get up and put your clothes on, will you?”
“Oblige me by doing a scramola, yourself. I like to sing in the shower; you’d put me off key.”
“Oh, for godsake! Just imagine the firehouse gong is clanging! You leap up. You jump into your jeans and slide down the brass pole. All in a matter of seconds.” The buzzer zizzed again.
Ross smote his forehead with the flat of his hand. “So you want to ruin Leila!” He backed out of the door with a final warning hiss. “Get — dressed!”
The door closed. Pedley stripped off the pajama top, inspected his bruises in the long mirror. There was a black-and-blue mark about four inches long on his forearm. The cut where the gun butt had broken the skin on his neck had been patched up with cotton and collodion but there was a ribbon of dried blood beneath it. The worst damage was just above the bridge of his nose, where there was a lump the size of a half-walnut.
He saw the bedroom door opening, in the mirror. He turned, made a grab for the bathrobe which lay folded over the foot of the bed. Then he saw who it was.
“Purty, ain’t he?” drawled Dublin. “Real purty now an’ that’s a fact.”
“Which particular part of the woodwork,” Pedley inquired, “did you crawl from?”
“One bumps into him in the queerest places,” Dublin said over his shoulder to the living-room. “Bathtubs — and girls’ bedrooms.” He turned around again to address the marshal. “What brings you here in this indecorous state of deshabille? Or should I ask?”
“Go to hell,” said Pedley.
While he was tying his shoelaces he could hear Leila, demurely, “I hope you don’t have to make an official report of this, Captain.”
“The truth, and nothing but the truth. Of course, where a young lady’s honor is involved—” Dublin managed to be insinuating.
“I wish you wouldn’t put the worst interpretation on things,” Leila wailed. “Just because Ben’s stayed here since nine o’clock last night and you find him in my bedroom—”
Ben! She’d never called him Ben, even when she’d been putting on her most appealing bedside manner a moment ago. He was hooked! A fine-looking figure he’d cut on the witness stand, testifying against her, now!
There might be one way out of it. He strolled to the bedroom door. “It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it, Leila?”
“Why — what?” She stammered; she didn’t have the nerve to call him Ben to his face.
“Ribbing the prize bull. But you ought to stop titillating Captain Dublin’s taste for scandal. He’ll find out soon enough that Bill’s been here with us all night.”
She opened her mouth, shut it again without answering. Ross looked bewildered.
Captain Dublin gazed at the marshal in round-eyed wonder. “I didn’t know—” he put his hand in his coat pocket, drew out a white card — “that Miss Lownes was married to Houdini.” He fished for his fountain pen, ostentatiously unscrewed the cap. “But the gentleman must be Houdini.”
Pedley went back to the bedroom for his coat.
“Because,” Dublin raised his voice for the marshal’s benefit, “we’ve had him down at Center Street since two o’clock this morning. And I can’t book him unless you sign this complaint, Benny.”
Chapter Thirty
Getting Somewhere — Maybe
The great, somber room on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters was in darkness, except for the seven 200-watt bulbs focused on the little stage at the far end. The hands of the clock at the side of the room formed the right angle of nine o’clock. In the semigloom, hundreds of men shuffled their feet, shifted in the hard chairs, made a low hum of mutterings.
They watched the man who swaggered to the center of the 25-foot platform, directly beneath the hot brilliance of the light, their eyes taking in every detail. His gait, the way he carried his head, the size of his hands. His height was shown against the scale painted on the wall close behind him.