Mourn the Hangman Page 10

  He went directly into the library. There was a divan. Blake flopped on it and lay on his back with his feet propped on the arm rest. He stared at the ceiling and thought.

  He began to hear the steady click of the hall clock. He snapped on a table lamp and looked at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock. The silent house gave him the creeps. Even the servants were gone. There was no sign that Manley had been here all afternoon.

  He got up and wandered out into the hall. He snapped on the light to relieve some of the oppressive darkness of the old house. The yellow glow slid a long shaft through the dining room door, reaching all the way across the dining table.

  And there was Manley.

  He was sitting alone at the head of the table. Woodenly, Blake entered the dining room, snapped on the lights. He saw the blood then. It was all over everything. He saw that Manley had put a pistol barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It had been Manley’s last wish to die neatly.

  And even in that he had failed.

  Blake stood at the side of the table. He stared down at Manley’s handsome pale face. Manley wanted to die, Blake thought. For him there was nothing to live for. There was a gray fountain pen and a sheet of letter paper before Reeders chair. Reeder had written a note in his neat, precise handwriting. The paper was splattered and streaked with his blood.

  Slowly, Blake read it:

  I HAVE TAKEN MY OWN LIFE. I HAVE NO WISH TO LIVE AND I HAVE CHOSEN THIS WAY. I HAVE DISMISSED BOTH MY SERVANTS FOR THE DAY. THEY HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF MY PLANS. NO ONE ELSE IS TO BLAME IN ANY WAY. THIS IS MY FINAL CHOICE.

  MANLEY REEDER

  Blake turned away, moving stiffly. As he went through the hall, the telephone began to wail. It rang persistently. Blake didn’t even glance toward it. The sound of it trailed him out across the honeysuckle-pervaded porch and along the dark walk.

  12

  AT EIGHT-THIRTY, Blake caught the Gulf City bus on Grand Central. He sat alone at a window, staring through it. But he was unaware of the flat country sliding past. As far as he was concerned, Manley Reeder’s suicide proved Stella’s ex-husband knew nothing about her death. Manley had hated her. But Manley had told the truth. He hadn’t wanted her hurt.

  Thirty minutes later, Blake got off the bus at Twenty-Second Avenue North and Fourth Street. He walked swiftly east in the early night toward the Gale Island bridge. Dickerson had already told him that neither he nor his company would lift a hand to aid him. They had put him on the spot. But how he got off it was his affair.

  Blake’s steps quickened. That was yesterday. That was before Arrenhower set his hounds baying at Blake’s heels. Blake had made up his mind to only one thing. He was through talking, asking. Dickerson was going to help him stay free long enough to track down Stella’s killer.

  He saw the bright orange fan against the sky as he crossed the bridge. Orange with plumes of red and threads of hot gray through it. His steps slowed, lagged. He almost stopped. But he kept walking. There might be some mistake. But he knew better. Cars began to race past him. As he came nearer, he could hear the roar of the fire company pumps, the shout of the fighters and then the crackling of the flames as they chewed Dickerson’s fine home down to the core.

  As the cars continued to pile in, choking all the side streets leading to the place where the big red engines were futilely battling the flames, Blake stood on a curb half a block away.

  “How did it start?” he said to a man beside him.

  The man shook his head. “Accident,” he said. “Stove blew up in the kitchen. They say it’s funny, too. The cook had been through in there for more than an hour when the blaze started. Well, that’s how accidents are. Crazy.”

  “Yeah,” Blake said. And “yeah,” Blake thought. That’s the way accidents are. Crazy. He knew this accident began in Arrenhower’s front room. He had blabbed his heart out under Lowering’s drugs. He wondered if Dickerson had gotten out alive.

  “Were there any deaths?” he asked the man.

  “I don’t think so. At least, they haven’t found any bodies yet.” The man shivered. “Geez, what a hell of a way to die. I’d sure hate to be caught in there.”

  “Yeah,” Blake said again. He turned and began to walk away from the flames, walking against a rushing current of curious people. That’s me, Blake told himself, always alone, walking against everyone else.

  Arrenhower moves swiftly, Blake thought, his horrors to perform. Wherever Dickerson was, he must know by now that his game was up. And what about your own game, Blake asked himself bitterly. How long do you think you can go on fighting Arrenhower, his money and his influence and his uniformed goons?

  His fists clenched, fingernails cutting into the palms of his hands. There was only one answer to that. He was going on until Arrenhower’s men cut him down permanently or until he got the throat of Stella’s killer in his hands.

  What hell it was, he thought, walking through the darkness. The hell of separation, of Stella’s being lost to him. To know he was never going to see her again. Not going to see the way her eyes went all warm and soft when she looked at him. She was gone. She was dead. And he couldn’t just let her go. There was only one thing he could do for her. He was a private snitch and that was all he was now. Yesterday, last week, Stella had been his and he had been part of her. Only one thing stood between them — he was a private snitch and she hated it. And now he had to go on being the one thing she hated in order to find out who killed her….

  • • •

  It was just after ten o’clock when Blake walked into the Palm Club. The lavender and green room was crowded. The people over here didn’t know about the fire on Gale Island. It was too far away. They didn’t care. They cared about the drinks in their fists and the woman reflected in the hot mirrors of their eyes. They’re alive, Blake thought bitterly. They’re the living.

  As he went through the doorway, Blake saw the dark haired waitress, Sammy Anderson. She was moving swiftly, expertly, between the tables. She glanced toward the door, her brown eyes widening as she recognized Blake. Something happened to her face. She looked suddenly pale, suddenly frightened. She made a quick, negative gesture with her head. Blake nodded at her, intentionally misunderstanding and made his way to the bar.

  The thick shouldered bartender was grim and hurried. Blake ordered whiskey. The man served him without slowing down.

  “So you’re still in town,” someone said at Blake’s shoulder. Blake turned slowly. His eyes met the patient blue ones of Police Lt. Ross Connell.

  “Should I have run?” Blake said.

  “I think I would have,” Connell replied, “if I were in your place.”

  “You can never tell about people,” Blake said. Connell sat on the stool at his side. “You give ’em credit for sense and then you happen into a bar and there they are.”

  The detective grunted. “Your time is limited, son. Very limited. So have fun. And be careful, I can haul you in at any moment. As you might suspect, I’m pretty well aware of where you are all the time. I try to protect the taxpayers whether they want me to or not. They find loopholes in the law so murderers like you can run around free. Then they yell like hell when trouble strikes twice.”

  “You sound bitter, Lieutenant,” Blake said. “You’d better have a drink.”

  “I am bitter,” Connell replied, “and I don’t drink.”

  “Then what are you doing in here?”

  Connell regarded him. “I’m looking for a murderer,” he replied.

  Blake met his gaze levelly. “Then go somewhere else and look,” he said. “I’m looking for a murderer, too. You cramp my style.”

  Connell slid off the stool. He shrugged. “Okay, Blake. See you in jail.”

  Connell went away. As far as the nearest table. Blake glared angrily at his empty glass. There was nothing he could do with Connell at arm’s length. What did he expect to accomplish here? Maybe Stella had been in here alone. Maybe she had been in here — with another man. I know, Stella, I’m
the private snitch now, he thought miserably. Anyhow, they might have seen her with the man. They might remember. But not with Connell poised like a hawk on Blake’s shoulder. He lifted his gaze listlessly to the bar mirror. For an instant his green eyes collided with the brown ones of Sammy Anderson.

  Blake felt his spirits lift slightly. He slid off the stool and strolled past Connell.

  “Where you headed?” Connell inquired negligently.

  “Bar stools make me dizzy,” Blake said. “I prefer a booth.”

  He found the last empty booth. Sammy Anderson was standing beside it at almost the moment he reached it.

  “You look lovely,” Blake said quietly. “I never saw more beautiful eyes. I hate to rush it like this, but where can we go when this place closes?”

  “We close at midnight,” she answered promptly, “and I never cared for people who procrastinate. I know a place we can go. I’ll meet you outside ten minutes after we close.”

  “It’ll seem like hours,” Blake said. “I may not be alone. That man over there thinks I’m pretty.” He nodded toward Connell. “He’s following me.”

  “I’ll call a cab,” Sammy said. “If he follows us, at least he’ll have to use another car.”

  Blake nodded, thanking her. As Sammy walked away, he looked up. He met Nort Donaldson’s tired eyes. “Hello, Blake,” Donaldson said uncertainly.

  “Hi, Nort.”

  “Could you come over to our table, Steve? Paula sent me.”

  “I’m on the front pages,” Blake said. “I’m the alleged murderer.”

  “I know,” Nort said sickly. “We want to talk to you.”

  Blake nodded and followed Nort Donaldson to the booth where Paula, a faded-eyed blonde, awaited them. She looked up and put out her hand. “I want to tell you, Steve, Nort and I don’t think you did it,” Paula said.

  “Thanks.” Blake slid into the booth beside Nort. “Did you call the police, Nort? I mean the night they found her body?”

  Nort Donaldson shook his head. “So help me God, Blake, we didn’t. We wouldn’t have done such a thing. It was only after we heard about it on the radio. Paula was distracted. Paula insisted we tell them how you acted in here. But both of us insisted we were sure it was shock.”

  “I told the police I never saw two people more in love,” Paula said.

  “Okay,” Blake said. “You did what you had to. Both of you. That’s all anybody can do.”

  “God knows, I’m glad you understand,” Nort said. “We’ve been sick. Both of us.”

  “If there’s anything we can do,” Paula said.

  Blake looked at her. “There is something you can do, if you will. I’m not prying into Stella’s life. It’s too late for that. And you were her friends, not mine. I know that. But it would help if you could tell me — did you ever see Stella in here — with any man?”

  Blake saw them look at each other, briefly. “No,” Nort said quickly. Too quickly. “No. I never did, Blake.”

  “The police have already asked us that,” Paula added. Blake looked at her. She was remembering that Stella had been her friend — in the days when she had been Mrs. Manley Reeder. In that long ago time when she’d been a respectable young Hyde Park matron and not a picture of a dead woman on the front pages of the newspapers. “Don’t let yourself get like Manley,” Paula said suddenly. “He suspected Stella of infidelity. It wasn’t true. And Manley drove her to drinking. He wouldn’t let friends come to the house. He wouldn’t let her go out. He mistrusted everybody. He didn’t even want her to have other women as friends. He was sick, Steve. We — Nort and I were glad — when Stella finally found someone like you. Don’t let whatever you think or what you hear change what you and Stella had. Please.”

  “I want to find the man who killed her,” Blake answered.

  “Of course you do. If there was only something I could tell you that would help. The only way she could have met anyone, Steve, would have been while she was taking the cure in that Lowering’s private hospital. I guess you meet all kinds of queer ducks in private hospitals. Maybe somebody — ”

  “Yeah,” Steve said. “Maybe.”

  “Stella was miserable with Manley,” Nort said. “She began to drink alone. She was like a new person, different, after she married you.”

  “It’s so terrible,” Paula whispered. “Just when she was beginning to be happy. But no matter what else, Steve, remember this. Stella wasn’t doing anything wrong. She loved you too much. I know. She wasn’t doing anything wrong — ”

  Blake felt that aching need for tears again. No, Stella wasn’t doing anything wrong. She’d been heating soup and rolling up a shirtwaist to iron. Oh, God, he thought. Let me have his throat in my hands.

  He couldn’t stay there any more. He got up and told them goodnight. The bartender called. “Sorry, folks. It’s time to order up your last round. We’re closing in fifteen minutes.” People were drifting toward the exits. There was a sudden burst of laughter across the room. Blake returned to his booth.

  The place was almost deserted when Blake went through the front doors and stood in the middle of the sidewalk. The neon signs discolored the ground at his feet and the night around him. The lights were switched off and he was left in darkness. Sammy called to him from the front door. At that moment their taxi pulled up to the curb and as they got in, Sammy loudly directed the driver to take them to the Beach Club. “Where to, really?” Blake said when the cab moved away.

  Sammy smiled at him. She leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “The Regal Hotel.”

  The driver laughed. “Wow, what a difference.”

  “Never mind the laughter,” Sammy said. “We’ve got our own phonograph.”

  “Beach Club headwaiters make me self-conscious,” Blake said.

  The driver nodded. “I’m glad you’re not going way over to the beach anyway. It’s a long, lonesome drive back.” He watched the mirror for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder. “You want I should lose that car that’s tailing us before I take you to the Regal?”

  • • •

  Sammy Anderson’s room at the Regal Hotel was a strange, cluttered place. To Blake, it appeared to be the temporary lodgings of a migrant with too much to carry, no place to keep it and yet, without the heart to part with any of it.

  Sammy held the door open and said, “Come in, Steve.” She looked faintly embarrassed. She locked the door behind them and shed her coat, hanging it in the crowded closet.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, because there were some of her belongings on all the chairs.

  She ran her hands through her hair, loosening it about her well-shaped head. “I’ll get us a drink,” she said. She went into the bathroom and came out with two glasses and a fifth of blended whiskey.

  She poured a big drink for herself.

  She drank down her whiskey in a long, gulping swallow. When she moved the glass, her face was flushed and her eyes were wet.

  She set the glass down on a littered table. She smiled at him, still holding his liquor untouched. “Drink,” she said. “Tomorrow the atom bomb.” She snapped on the radio and then, before the music came in, she snapped it off. “Only for you, the atom bomb was yesterday.” She sat on the edge of the bed beside him. “And for me it was a year ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Why? Everybody gets it sooner or later. You want to hear about my atom bomb, Steve? Sure you do. It — it blasted the — the hell out of my world. But I — I managed to save something. See, it wasn’t a total loss. Look around you, Blake, and see what I saved. A radio, a set of silver that I got on my second anniversary. I — I’ve got my baby’s c-clothes in there — in the closet. What a fool thing to lug around. And yet, I can’t let ’em go. You — hang on. Even — even when there’s nothing to hang on to, you go on hanging on.”

  “What happened?” Steve said.

  “Oh, what always happens? I — I was visiting at my mother’s. She was ill. There wasn’t anybody. And I had to g
o. I had been up there a week and Bob and the baby were coming for me. They were supposed to be there at — I don’t know — about eight or nine at night at the latest. Only it got to be midnight and three and at five they came and told me.

  “We had an old car. I don’t even know how old it was. Bob was driving and the baby — was sleeping with — with its head in his lap. They — they were still like that when they got ’em out of the wrecked car. Some fellow came careening down the highway. He must have been going seventy. His tire must have blown out. He came right into my poor Bob’s car. A car that wouldn’t even go thirty miles an hour. He — he was driving to — to get me. With our — baby sleeping in his lap — and — and — and — ”

  Her voice was choked in her throat and she couldn’t go on talking. But she sat there beside him on the bed, her slender shoulders straight, her jaw squared defiantly.

  “If I could cry,” she whispered. “If I could cry and forget it.”

  Blake stared at her. The need to cry! The wish for impossible, life-saving tears.

  He set the drink down, untouched. “You’ve got to cry,” he said roughly. “You’ve got to! A year, that’s too long to live with it.”

  “Is it?” she said. “How long do you think it will be before you forget?”

  “It’s different with me,” he answered. “I’ve got something to hate — ”

  “So have I,” she said. “I hate the nights. Every night, all night, I wait for them to come and tell me that Bob and my baby are dead. If I go to sleep, I wake up quickly, sitting up in bed and listening, waiting for them to come. Then after five o’clock, I can dress and go out and eat. When I come back, I’m all right and I can sleep. I hope you have better luck.”

  He wasn’t aware until then that their hands were locked between them on the bed. Their eyes met.