To judge by the weapons, the golf clubs, the pipes, the stuffed birds, the sporting prints and the other undergraduate atmospheric novelties that littered the place, I didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that Barclay belonged to the rugged, hairy-chested, outdoor school of manly men.
I didn’t think I would find anything of interest in this room. It was too open and above board; nothing-in-my-hand, nothing-up-my-sleeve kind of room, so I went up the stairs on tiptoe and paused on the balcony to listen.
It crossed my mind there was a possibility that Barclay might be sleeping off his lunch in one of the upstairs rooms: a thought that disturbed me. My nerves hadn’t entirely recovered from my encounter with Mills, and I had no wish to walk into a guy who collected battle-axes as a hobby and who might take a pot shot at me with a crossbow or pat me on the dome with an iron-studded mace. So I listened, but no sounds of heavy breathing reached me, and I plucked up enough courage to open the door nearest to me and glance in.
A very male bathroom greeted my eyes; a bath, a shower, a mechanical rowing machine and a Turkish bath cabinet, but no bath salts, no powder, no perfume bottles, and the towels hanging on the hot rail as if they were made from sharp wire thread.
I went to the next room, peeped around the door and decided this was where Barclay spent his nights.
There was a big double bed, a dressing-table and mirror, a fitted wardrobe, a trousers press, and over the bed hung a sporting print of an old guy with whiskers, holding an ancient fowling piece and looking as if he had a cold in his nose.
I left the door ajar, sneaked over to the dressing-table and opened one of the drawers. A large glossy photograph in a morocco-leather frame lay face up to greet me. It was an intimate photograph that struck a false note in this atmosphere of wide open spaces and clean manly fun. It was a picture of Anita Cerf, a full-length shot, with a spotlight full on her and the background blacked out. She had nothing on but a pair of dark, fur-backed gloves, which she used the way a fan dancer uses her fans but with much more effect. It was a novelty picture and would have sold in gross lots to the members of the Athletic Club at five dollars a throw. Across the foot of the picture was scrawled in white ink:
For darling George, with love from Anita.
I should have liked very much to have taken the picture along with me, but it was too big to go into my pocket. I lifted it from the drawer, slid it out of the frame and turned it over. On the back was a rubber-stamped address:
Louis,
Theatrical Photographer,
San Francisco.
I studied the photograph. It could have been taken some years ago. She looked younger than when I had last seen her, and the don’t-give-a-damn expression was not in evidence. I thought regretfully of my lost opportunity. There were times, I told myself, when being too honest with women was a mug’s game. If I’d seen this photograph before she had called on me I wouldn’t have needed a second invitation to neck with her on my casting couch.
I slipped the photograph into its frame and returned it to the drawer. The other drawers yielded nothing of interest, and I turned my attention to the wardrobe.
Dana had said that Barclay dressed like a movie star. To judge by the contents of the wardrobe the description was about right. I stared at the rows and rows of suits, the long shelf of hats and the dozens of pairs of shoes at the bottom of the cupboard. I decided that was nothing in there for me, but just to make sure I pushed some of the suits to one side so I could see the back of the wardrobe.
I stood looking at the blue coat and skirt that was hanging neatly on a hanger. I remained without moving for several seconds, then I felt a little chill run up my spine and reached forward and lifted the two garments off the hook and carried them to the window. I had seen them often enough. They belonged to Dana. I remembered that Benny had said the suit was missing from her wardrobe and that he guessed she must have worn it on the night she was killed. Well, here it was, hidden at the back of Barclay’s cupboard, and instead of the finger pointing to Mills it was now pointing to Barclay.
I had no time to think or to make up my mind what I was going to do with my find for suddenly I heard an un-mistakable sound of a footfall in the room below that brought me round on my heels, my nerves jerking and crawling up my spine.
I hurriedly rolled the coat and skirt up into a bundle, and stepped quickly to the door. Someone was moving about in the room below. I heard a board creak, then the sound of a drawer being opened and a rustle of papers. I crept out on to the balcony and looked over the banisters, keeping out of sight.
Caesar Mills stood before the writing desk in the distant corner of the room, a cigarette hanging from his thin lips, a bored, nonchalant expression on his face. He was wearing a blue Kuppenheimer lightweight suit and a wide-brimmed panama hat with a gaudy hatband. As Kruger had said he looked like a million dollars.
I faded quietly back into the bedroom, opened the dressing-table drawer, snapped up the photograph, rolled it hurriedly in the middle of Dana’s coat and skirt, opened the bedroom window and slid out on to the verandah.
I had a hunch that bright boy was looking for Anita’s picture, and I was going to take a great deal of care that he shouldn’t have it.
IV
As I drove along the beach road that runs at right angles to Wiltshire Avenue, I spotted Benny’s orange-and-red Ford convertible in a parking lot opposite a row of stalls that sold everything from soda pop to sea food, and did a roaring trade at night when the playboys and girls stoked up before having a neck on the sands.
I drove into the lot, took a parking ticket off an old ruin whose hands were so palsied I had to tell him to keep the change, and walked over to the stalls where I had a pretty good idea I should find Benny.
I found him all right.
He was having an engrossing conversation with a slim brunette with large, wicked eyes and a laugh like the slamming of a rusty gate. She was on one side of the milk-bar counter and Benny was on the other, but that didn’t make her safe. She had on a white overall that was wrapped around her figure like a second skin, and she leaned over the counter so that Benny could look down the V opening and as he seemed to be enjoying himself I had a look too.
The brunette gave me a long hard stare, straightened up, tossed her head and moved off with her nose in the air, while Benny turned on me with a look of outraged surprise.
‘I might have known it,’ he said bitterly. ‘Always at the wrong moment. Brother, didn’t anyone tell you not to come trampling up to a man and a maid when they’re sighing over each other?’
‘Was that what you were doing?’ I asked. ‘It didn’t look that way to me. I thought you’d dropped a dollar down the front of her dress and were going in after it.’
‘That’s because you’ve had a gross upbringing,’ Benny said warmly. ‘I was telling her what a lovely mind she had.’
‘Well, she keeps it in the funniest places,’ I returned. ‘And may I remind you you’re supposed to be working?’
‘For Pete’s sake!’ he exclaimed, reddening. ‘What else do you think I’m doing? You said check every yard of the way from Dana’s place to the spot where she was killed. That’s what I’m at.’
‘Did Dana walk over that floozie’s chest?’
‘Leave it, will you?’ he begged. ‘Don’t drive it into the ground.’
‘Well, did you get anywhere?’
He looked over his shoulder, winked at the brunette who winked back.