VI
I lit a Fatima and breathed smoke in silence for a while, and the girl sat placidly watching me.
Here I had two women—neither normal. Mrs. Gilmore was hysterical, abnormally nervous. This girl was dull, subnormal. One was the dead man’s wife; the other his mistress; and each with reason for believing she had been thrown down for the other. Liars, both; and both finally confessing that they had been near the scene of the crime at the time of the crime, though neither admitted seeing the other. Both, by their own accounts, had been at that time even further from normal than usual—Mrs. Gilmore filled with jealousy; Cara Kenbrook half-drunk.
What was the answer? Either could have killed Gilmore; but hardly both—unless they had formed some sort of crazy partnership, and in that event—
Suddenly all the facts I had gathered—true and false—clicked together in my head. I had the answer—the one simple, satisfying answer!
I grinned at the girl, and set about filling in the gaps in my solution.
“Who is Stan?” I asked.
“Stanley Tennant—he has something to do with the city.”
Stanley Tennant. I knew him by reputation, a—
A key rattled in the hall door.
The hall door opened and closed, and a man’s footsteps came toward the open doorway of the room in which we were. A tall, broad-shouldered man in tweeds filed the doorway—a ruddy-faced man of thirty-five or so, whose appearance of athletic blond wholesomeness was marred by close-set eyes of an indistinct blue.
Seeing me, he stopped—a step inside the room.
“Hello, Stan!” the girl said lightly. “This gentleman is from the Continental Detective Agency. I’ve just emptied myself to him about Bernie. Tried to stall him at first, but it was no good.”
The man’s vague eyes switched back and forth between the girl and me. Around the pale irises his eyeballs were pink.
He straightened his shoulders and smiled too jovially.
“And what conclusion have you come to?” he inquired.
The girl answered for me.
“I’ve already had my invitation to take a ride.”
Tennant bent forward. With an unbroken swing of his arms, he swept a chair up from the floor into my face. Not much force behind it, but quick.
I went back against the wall, fending of the chair with both arms—threw it aside—and looked into the muzzle of a nickeled revolver.
A table drawer stood open—the drawer from which he had grabbed the gun while I was busy with the chair. The revolver, I noticed, was of .38 caliber.
“Now,” his voice was thick, like a drunk’s, “turn around.”
I turned my back to him, felt a hand moving over my body, and my gun was taken away.
“All right,” he said, and I faced him again.
He stepped back to the girl’s side, still holding the nickel-plated revolver on me. My own gun wasn’t in sight—in his pocket perhaps. He was breathing noisily, and his eyeballs had gone from pink to red. His face, too, was red, with veins bulging in the forehead.
“You know me?” he snapped.
“Yes, I know you. You’re Stanley Tennant, assistant city engineer, and your record is none too lovely.” I chattered away on the theory that conversation is always somehow to the advantage of the man who is looking into the gun. “You’re supposed to be the lad who supplied the regiment of well-trained witnesses who turned last year’s investigation of graft charges against the engineer’s office into a comedy. Yes, Mr. Tennant, I know you. You’re the answer to why Gilmore was so lucky in landing city contracts a few dollars beneath his competitors’. Yes, Mr. Tennant, I know you. You’re the bright boy who—”
I had a lot more to tell him, but he cut me off.
“That will do out of you!” he yelled. “Unless you want me to knock a corner of your head with this gun.”
Then he addressed the girl, not taking his eyes from me.
“Get up, Cara.”
She got out of her chair and stood beside him. His gun was in his right hand, and that side was toward her. He moved around to the other side.
The fingers of his left hand hooked themselves inside of the girl’s green gown where it was cut low over the swell of her breasts. His gun never wavered from me. He jerked his left hand, ripping her gown down to the waistline.
“He did that, Cara,” Tennant said.
She nodded.
His fingers slid inside of the flesh-colored undergarment that was now exposed, and he tore that as he had torn the gown.
“He did that.”
She nodded again.
His bloodshot eyes darted little measuring glances at her face—swift glances that never kept his eyes from me for the flash of time I would have needed to tie into him.
Then—eyes and gun on me—he smashed his left fist into the girl’s blank white face.
One whimper—low and not drawn out—came from her as she went down in a huddle against the wall. Her face—well, there wasn’t much change in it. She looked dumbly up at Tennant from where she had fallen.
“He did that,” Tennant was saying.
She nodded, got up from the floor, and returned to her chair.
“Here’s our story.” The man talked rapidly, his eyes alert on me. “Gilmore was never in my rooms in his life, Cara, and neither were you. The night he was killed you were home shortly after one o’clock, and stayed there. You were sick—probably from the wine you had been drinking—and called a doctor. His name is Howard. I’ll see that he’s fixed. He got here at 2:30 and stayed until 3:30.
“Today, this gumshoe, learning that you had been intimate with Gilmore, came here to question you. He knew you hadn’t killed Gilmore, but he made certain suggestions to you—you can play them up as strong as you like; maybe say that he’s been annoying you for months—and when you turned him down he threatened to frame you.
“You refused to have anything to do with him, and he grabbed you, tearing your clothes, and bruising your face when you resisted. I happened to come along then, having an engagement with you, and heard you scream. Your front door was unlocked, so I rushed in, pulled this fellow away, and disarmed him. Then we held him until the police—whom we will phone for—came. Got that?”
“Yes, Stan.”
“Good! Now listen: When the police get here this fellow will spill all he knows, of course, and the chances are that all three of us will be taken in. That’s why I want you to know what’s what right now. I ought to have enough pull to get you and me out on bail tonight, or, if worst comes to worst, to see that my lawyer gets to me tonight—so I can arrange for the witnesses we’ll need. Also I ought to be able to fix it so our little fat friend will be held for a day or two, and not allowed to see anybody until late tomorrow—which will give us a good start on him. I don’t know how much he knows, but between your story and the stories of a couple of other smart ladies I have in mind, I’ll fix him up with a rep that will keep any jury in the world from ever believing him about anything.”
“How do you like that?” he asked me, triumphantly.
“You big clown,” I laughed at him, “I think it’s funny!”
But I didn’t really think so. In spite of what I thought I knew about Gilmore’s murder—in spite of my simple, satisfactory solution—something was crawling up my back, my knees felt jerky, and my hands were wet with sweat. I had had people try to frame me before—no detective stays in the business long without having it happen—but I had never got used to it. There’s a peculiar deadliness about the thing—especially if you know how erratic juries can be—that makes your flesh crawl, no matter how safe your judgment tells you you are.
“Phone the police,” Tennant told the girl; “and for God’s sake keep your story straight!” As he tried to impress that necessity on the girl his eyes left me.
I was perhaps five feet from him and his level gun.
A jump—not straight at him—off to one side—put me close.
The gun roared under my arm. I was surprised not to feel the bullet. It seemed that he must have hit me.
There wasn’t a second shot.
I looped my right fist over as I jumped. It landed when I landed. It took him too high—up on the cheekbone—but it rocked him back a couple of steps.
I didn’t know what had happened to his gun.
It wasn’t in his hand any more. I didn’t stop to look for it. I was busy, crowding him back—not letting him set himself—staying close to him—driving at him with both hands.
He was a head taller than I, and had longer arms, but he wasn’t any heavier or stronger. I suppose he hit me now and then as I hammered him across the room. He must have. But I didn’t feel anything.
I worked him into a corner. Jammed him back little in a corner with his legs cramped under him—which didn’t give him much leverage to hit from. I got my left arm around his body, holding him where I wanted him. And I began to throw my right fist into him.
I liked that. His belly was flabby, and it got softer every time I hit it. I hit it often.
He was chopping at my face, but by digging my nose into his chest and holding it there I kept my beauty from being altogether ruined. Meanwhile I threw my right fist into him.
Then I became aware that Cara Kenbrook was moving around behind me; and I remembered the revolver that had fallen somewhere when I had charged Tennant. I didn’t like that; but there was nothing I could do about it—except put more weight in my punches. My own gun, I thought, was in one of his pockets. But neither of us had time to hunt for it now.
Tenant’s knees sagged the next time I hit him.
Once more, I said to myself, and then I’ll step back, let him have one on the button, and watch him fall.
But I didn’t get that far.
Something that I knew was the missing revolver struck me on the top of the head. An ineffectual blow—not clean enough to stun me—but it took the steam out of my punches.
Another.
They weren’t hard, these taps, but to hurt a skull with a hunk of metal you don’t have to hit it hard. I tried to twist away from the next bump, and failed. Not only failed, but let Tennant wiggle away from me.
That was the end.
I wheeled on the girl just in time to take another rap on the head, and then one of Tennant’s fists took me over the ear.
I went down in one of those falls that get pugs called quitters—my eyes were open, my mind was alive, but my legs and arms wouldn’t lift me up from the floor.
Tennant took my own gun out of a pocket, and with it held on me, sat down in a Morris chair, to gasp for the air I had pounded out of him. The girl sat in another chair; and I, finding I could manage it, sat up in the middle of the floor and looked at them.
Tennant spoke, still panting.
“This is fine—all the signs of a struggle we need to make our story good!”
“If they don’t believe you were in a fight,” I suggested sourly, pressing my aching head with both hands, “you can strip and show them your little tummy.”
He leaned down and split my lip with a punch that spread me on my back.
“And you can show them this!”
Anger brought my legs to life. I got up on them. Tennant moved around behind the Morris chair. My black gun was steady in his hand.
“Go easy,” he warned me. “My story will work if I have to kill you—maybe work better.”
That was sense. I stood still.
“Phone the police, Cara,” he ordered.
She went out of the room, closing the door behind her; and all I could hear of her talk was a broken murmur.