Nightmare Town

  “Not unless it was his wife—these excitable women always do silly things.”

  “If you had given her husband up, what reason would she have for killing him, do you think?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” she replied with complete indifference. “But I’m not the only girl that Bernie ever looked at.”

  “Think there were others, do you? Know anything, or are you just guessing?”

  “I don’t know any names,” she said, “but I’m not just guessing.”

  I let that go at that and switched back to Mrs. Gilmore, wondering if this girl could be full of dope.

  “What happened the night his wife came here?”

  “Nothing but that. She followed Bernie here, rang the bell, rushed past me when I opened the door, and began to cry and call Bernie names. Then she started on me, and I told him that if he didn’t take her away I’d hurt her, so he took her home.”

  Admitting I was licked for the time, I got up and moved to the door. I couldn’t do anything with this baby just now. I didn’t think she was telling the whole truth, but on the other hand it wasn’t reasonable to believe that anybody would lie so woodenly—with so little effort to be plausible.

  “I may be back later,” I said as she let me out.

  “All right.”

  Her manner didn’t even suggest that she hoped I wouldn’t.

  From this unsatisfactory interview I went to the scene of the killing, only a few blocks away, to get a look at the neighborhood. I found the block just as I had remembered it and as O’Gar had described it: lined on both sides by apartment buildings, with two blind alleys—one of which was dignified with a name, Touchard Street—running from the south side.

  The murder was four days old; I didn’t waste any time snooping around the vicinity; but, after strolling the length of the block, boarded a Hyde Street car, transferred at California Street, and went up to see Mrs. Gilmore again. I was curious to know why she hadn’t told me about her call on Cara Kenbrook.

  The same plump maid who had admitted me earlier in the afternoon opened the door.

  “Mrs. Gilmore is not at home,” she said. “But I think she’ll be back in half an hour or so.”

  “I’ll wait,” I decided.

  The maid took me into the library, an immense room on the second floor, with barely enough books in it to give it that name. She switched on a light—the windows were too heavily curtained to let in much daylight—crossed to the door, stopped, moved over to straighten some books on a shelf, and looked at me with a half-questioning, half-inviting look in her green eyes, started for the door again, and halted.

  By that time I knew she wanted to say something, and needed encouragement. I leaned back in my chair and grinned at her, and decided I had made a mistake—the smile into which her slack lips curved held more coquetry than anything else. She came over to me, walking with an exaggerated swing of the hips, and stood close in front of me.

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked.

  “Suppose—suppose a person knew something that nobody else knew; what would it be worth to them?”

  “That,” I stalled, “would depend on how valuable it was.”

  “Suppose I knew who killed the boss?” She bent her face close down to mine, and spoke in a husky whisper. “What would that be worth?”

  “The newspapers say that one of Gilmore’s clubs has offered a thousand-dollar reward. You’d get that.”

  Her green eyes went greedy, and then suspicious.

  “If you didn’t.”

  I shrugged. I knew she’d go through with it—whatever it was—now; so I didn’t even explain to her that the Continental doesn’t touch rewards, and doesn’t let its hired men touch them.

  “I’ll give you my word,” I said; “but you’ll have to use your own judgment about trusting me.”

  She licked her lips.

  “You’re a good fellow, I guess. I wouldn’t tell the police, because I know they’d beat me out of the money. But you look like I can trust you.” She leered into my face. “I used to have a gentleman friend who was the very image of you, and he was the grandest—”

  “Better speak your piece before somebody comes in,” I suggested.

  She shot a look at the door, cleared her throat, licked her loose mouth again, and dropped on one knee beside my chair.

  “I was coming home late Monday night—the night the boss was killed—and was standing in the shadows saying good night to my friend, when the boss came out of the house and walked down the street. And he had hardly got to the corner, when she—Mrs. Gilmore—came out, and went down the street after him. Not trying to catch up with him, you understand; but following him. What do you think of that?”

  “What do you think of it?”

  “I think that she finally woke up to the fact that all of her Bernie’s dates didn’t have anything to do with the building business.”

  “Do you know that they didn’t?”

  “Do I know it? I knew that man! He liked ’em—liked ’em all.” She smiled into my face, a smile that suggested all evil. “I found that out soon after I first came here.”

  “Do you know when Mrs. Gilmore came back that night—what time?”

  “Yes,” she said, “at half-past three.”

  “Sure?”

  “Absolutely! After I got undressed I got a blanket and sat at the head of the front stairs. My room’s in the rear of the top floor. I wanted to see if they came home together, and if there was a fight. After she came in alone I went back to my room, and it was just twenty-five minutes to four then. I looked at my alarm clock.”

  “Did you see her when she came in?”

  “Just the top of her head and shoulders when she turned toward her room at the landing.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Lina Best.”

  “All right, Lina,” I told her. “If this is the goods I’ll see that you collect on it. Keep your eyes open, and if anything else turns up you can get in touch with me at the Continental office. Now you’d better beat it, so nobody will know we’ve had our heads together.”

  Alone in the library, I cocked an eye at the ceiling and considered the information Lina Best had given me. But I soon gave that up—no use trying to guess at things that will work out for themselves in a while. I found a book, and spent the next half-hour reading about a sweet young she-chump and a big strong he-chump and all their troubles.

  Then Mrs. Gilmore came in, apparently straight from the street.

  I got up and closed the door behind her, while she watched me with wide eyes.

  “Mrs. Gilmore,” I said, when I faced her again, “why didn’t you tell me that you followed your husband the night he was killed?”

  “That’s a lie!” she cried; but there was no truth in her voice. “That’s a lie!”

  “Don’t you think you’re making a mistake?” I urged. “Don’t you think you’d better tell me the whole thing?”

  She opened her mouth, but only a dry sobbing sound came out; and she began to sway with a hysterical rocking motion, the fingers of one black-gloved hand plucking at her lower lip, twisting and pulling it.

  I stepped to her side and set her down in the chair I had been sitting in, making foolish clucking sounds—meant to soothe her—with my tongue. A disagreeable ten minutes—and gradually she pulled herself together; her eyes lost their glassiness, and she stopped clawing at her mouth.

  “I did follow him.” It was a hoarse whisper, barely audible.

  Then she was out of the chair, kneeling, with arms held up to me, and her voice was a thin scream.

  “But I didn’t kill him! I didn’t! Please believe that I didn’t!”

  I picked her up and put her back in the chair.

  “I didn’t say you did. Just tell me what did happen.”

  “I didn’t believe him when he said he had a business engagement,” she moaned. “I didn’t trust him. He had lied to me before. I followed him to see if he went t
o that woman’s rooms.”

  “Did he?”

  “No. He went into an apartment house on Pine Street, in the block where he was killed. I don’t know exactly which house it was—I was too far behind him to make sure. But I saw him go up the steps and into one—near the middle of the block.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “I waited, hiding in a dark doorway across the street. I knew the woman’s apartment was on Bush Street, but I thought she might have moved, or be meeting him here. I waited a long time, shivering and trembling. It was chilly and I was frightened—afraid somebody would come into the vestibule where I was. But I made myself stay. I wanted to see if he came out alone, or if that woman came out. I had a right to do it—he had deceived me before.

  “It was terrible, horrible—crouching there in the dark—cold and scared. Then—it must have been about half-past two—I couldn’t stand it any longer. I decided to telephone the woman’s apartment and find out if she was home. I went down to an all-night lunchroom on Ellis Street and called her up.”

  “Was she home?”

  “No! I tried for fifteen minutes, or maybe longer, but nobody answered the phone. So I knew she was in that Pine Street building.”

  “And what did you do then?”

  “I went back there, determined to wait until he came out. I walked up Jones Street. When I was between Bush and Pine I heard a shot. I thought it was a noise made by an automobile then, but now I know that it was the shot that killed Bernie.

  “When I reached the corner of Pine and Jones, I could see a policeman bending over Bernie on the sidewalk, and I saw people gathering around. I didn’t know then that it was Bernie lying on the sidewalk. In the dark and at that distance I couldn’t even see whether it was a man or a woman.

  “I was afraid that Bernard would come out to see what was going on, or look out of a window, and discover me; so I didn’t go down that way. I was afraid to stay in the neighborhood now, for fear the police would ask me what I was doing loitering in the street at three in the morning—and have it come out that I had been following my husband. So I kept on walking up Jones Street, to California, and then straight home.”

  “And then what?” I led her on.

  “Then I went to bed. I didn’t go to sleep—lay there worrying over Bernie; but still not thinking it was he I had seen lying in the street. At nine o’clock that morning two police detectives came and told me Bernie had been killed. They questioned me so sharply that I was afraid to tell them the whole truth. If they had known I had reason for being jealous, and had followed my husband that night, they would have accused me of shooting him. And what could I have done? Everybody would have thought me guilty.

  “So I didn’t say anything about the woman. I thought they’d find the murderer, and then everything would be all right. I didn’t think she had done it then, or I would have told you the whole thing the first time you were here. But four days went by without the police finding the murderer, and I began to think they suspected me! It was terrible! I couldn’t go to them and confess that I had lied to them, and I was sure that the woman had killed him and that the police had failed to suspect her because I hadn’t told them about her.

  “So I employed you. But I was afraid to tell even you the whole truth. I thought that if I just told you there had been another woman and who she was, you could do the rest without having to know that I had followed Bernie that night. I was afraid you would think I had killed him, and would turn me over to the police if I told you everything. And now you do believe it! And you’ll have me arrested! And they’ll hang me! I know it! I know it!”

  She began to rock crazily from side to side in her chair.

  “Sh-h-h,” I soothed her. “You’re not arrested yet. Sh-h-h.”

  I didn’t know what to make of her story. The trouble with these nervous, hysterical women is that you can’t possibly tell when they’re lying and when telling the truth unless you have outside evidence—half of the time they themselves don’t know.

  “When you heard the shot,” I went on when she had quieted down a bit, “you were walking north on Jones, between Bush and Pine? You could see the corner of Pine and Jones?”

  “Yes—clearly.”

  “See anybody?”

  “No—not until I reached the corner and looked down Pine Street. Then I saw a policeman bending over Bernie, and two men walking toward them.”

  “Where were the two men?”

  “On Pine Street east of Jones. They didn’t have hats on—as if they had come out of a house when they heard the shot.”

  “Any automobiles in sight either before or after you heard the shot?”

  “I didn’t see or hear any.”

  “I have some more questions, Mrs. Gilmore,” I said, “but I’m in a hurry now. Please don’t go out until you hear from me again.”

  “I won’t,” she promised, “but—”

  I didn’t have any answers for anybody’s questions, so I ducked my head and left the library.

  Near the street door Lina Best appeared out of a shadow, her eyes bright and inquisitive.

  “Stick around,” I said without any meaning at all, stepped around her, and went on out into the street.

  I returned then to the Garford Apartments, walking, because I had a lot of things to arrange in my mind before I faced Cara Kenbrook again. And, even though I walked slowly, they weren’t all exactly filed in alphabetical order when I got there. She had changed the black and white dress for a plushlike gown of bright green, but her empty doll’s face hadn’t changed.

  “Some more questions,” I explained when she opened the door.

  She admitted me without word or gesture, and led me back into the room where we had talked before.

  “Miss Kenbrook,” I asked, standing beside the chair she had offered me, “why did you tell me you were home in bed when Gilmore was killed?”

  “Because it’s so.” Without the flicker of a lash.

  “And you wouldn’t answer the doorbell?”

  I had to twist the facts to make my point. Mrs. Gilmore had phoned, but I couldn’t afford to give this girl a chance to shunt the blame for her failure to answer off on central.

  She hesitated for a split second.

  “No—because I didn’t hear it.”

  One cool article, this baby! I couldn’t figure her. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now, whether she was the owner of the world’s best poker face or was just naturally stupid. But whichever she was, she was thoroughly and completely it!

  I stopped trying to guess and got on with my probing.

  “And you wouldn’t answer the phone either?”

  “It didn’t ring—or not enough to awaken me.”

  I chuckled—an artificial chuckle—because central could have been ringing the wrong number. However…

  “Miss Kenbrook,” I lied, “your phone rang at two-thirty and at two-forty that morning. And your doorbell rang almost continually from about two-fifty until after three.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “but I wonder who’d be trying to get me at that hour.”

  “You didn’t hear either?”

  “No.”

  “But you were here?”

  “Yes—who was it?” carelessly.

  “Get your hat,” I bluffed, “and I’ll show them to you down at headquarters.”

  She glanced down at the green gown and walked toward an open bedroom door.

  “I suppose I’d better get a cloak, too,” she said.

  “Yes,” I advised her, “and bring your toothbrush.”

  She turned around then and looked at me, and for a moment it seemed that some sort of expression—surprise, maybe—was about to come into her big brown eyes; but none actually came. The eyes stayed dull and empty.

  “You mean you’re arresting me?”

  “Not exactly. But if you stick to your story about being home in bed at three o’clock last Tuesday morning, I can promise you you will be arrested. If
I were you I’d think up another story.”

  She left the doorway slowly and came back into the room, as far as a chair that stood between us, put her hands on its back, and leaned over it to look at me. For perhaps a minute neither of us spoke—just stood there staring at each other, while I tried to keep my face as expressionless as hers.

  “Do you really think,” she asked at last, “that I wasn’t here when Bernie was killed?”

  “I’m a busy man, Miss Kenbrook.” I put all the certainty I could fake into my voice. “If you want to stick to your funny story, it’s all right with me. But please don’t expect me to stand here and argue about it. Get your hat and cloak.”

  She shrugged, and came around the chair on which she had been leaning.

  “I suppose you do know something,” she said, sitting down. “Well, it’s tough on Stan, but women and children first.”

  My ears twitched at the name Stan, but I didn’t interrupt her.

  “I was in the Coffee Cup until one o’clock,” she was saying, her voice still flat and emotionless. “And I did come home afterward. I’d been drinking vino all evening, and it always makes me blue. So after I came home I got to worrying over things. Since Bernie and I split, finances haven’t been so good. I took stock that night—or morning—and found only four dollars in my purse. The rent was due, and the world looked damned blue.

  “Half-lit on dago wine as I was, I decided to run over and see Stan, tell him all my troubles, and make a touch. Stan is a good egg and he’s always willing to go the limit for me. Sober, I wouldn’t have gone to see him at three in the morning; but it seemed a perfectly sensible thing to do at the time.

  “It’s only a few minutes’ walk from here to Stan’s. I went down Bush Street to Leavenworth, and up Leavenworth to Pine. I was in the middle of that last block when Bernie was shot—I heard it. And when I turned the corner into Pine Street I saw a copper bending over a man on the pavement right in front of Stan’s. I hesitated for a couple of minutes, standing in the shadow of a pole, until three or four men had gathered around the man on the sidewalk. Then I went over.

  “It was Bernie. And just as I got there I heard the copper tell one of the men that he had been shot. It was an awful shock to me. You know how things like that will hit you!”