Nightmare Town Page 9

  “Suppose you speak your piece,” I suggested after a while.

  But he wasn’t to be beguiled into conversation. He shook his head a mere fraction of an inch and the corners of his compressed mouth dropped down a trifle. The white crescents of eyeballs were growing broader, pushing the gray circles up under the upper lids.

  It was coming! And there was no use waiting for it!

  I drove a foot at his shins under the table, and at the same time pushed the table into his lap and threw myself across it. The bullet from his gun went off to one side. Another bullet—not from his gun—thudded into the table that was upended between us.

  I had him by the shoulders when the second shot from behind took him in the left arm, just below my hand. I let go then and fell away, rolling over against the wall and twisting around to face the direction from which the bullets were coming.

  I twisted around just in time to see—jerking out of sight behind a corner of the passage that gave to a small dining-room—Guy Cudner’s scarred face. And as it disappeared a bullet from Orrett’s gun splattered the plaster from the wall where it had been.

  I grinned at the thought of what must be going on in Orrett’s head as he lay sprawled out on the floor confronted by two Cudners. But he took a shot at me just then and I stopped grinning. Luckily, he had to twist around to fire at me, putting his weight on his wounded arm, and the pain made him wince, spoiling his aim.

  Before he had adjusted himself more comfortably I had scrambled on hands and knees to Pigatti’s kitchen door—only a few feet away—and had myself safely tucked out of range around an angle in the wall; all but my eyes and the top of my head, which I risked so that I might see what went on.

  Orrett was now ten or twelve feet from me, lying flat on the floor, facing Cudner, with a gun in his hand and another on the floor beside him.

  Across the room, perhaps thirty feet away, Cudner was showing himself around his protecting corner at brief intervals to exchange shots with the man on the floor, occasionally sending one my way. We had the place to ourselves. There were four exits, and the rest of Pigatti’s customers had used them all.

  I had my gun out, but I was playing a waiting game. Cudner, I figured, had been tipped off to Orrett’s search for him and had arrived on the scene with no mistaken idea of the other’s attitude. Just what there was between them and what bearing it had on the Montgomery murders was a mystery to me, but I didn’t try to solve it now.

  They were firing in unison. Cudner would show around his corner, both men’s weapons would spit, and he would duck out of sight again. Orrett was bleeding about the head now and one of his legs sprawled crookedly behind him. I couldn’t determine whether Cudner had been hit or not.

  Each had fired eight, or perhaps nine, shots when Cudner suddenly jumped out into full view, pumping the gun in his left hand as fast as its mechanism would go, the gun in his right hand hanging at his side. Orrett had changed guns, and was on his knees now, his fresh weapon keeping pace with his enemy’s.

  That couldn’t last!

  Cudner dropped his left-hand gun, and, as he raised the other, he sagged forward and went down on one knee. Orrett stopped firing abruptly and fell over on his back—spread out full-length. Cudner fired once more—wildly, into the ceiling—and pitched down on his face.

  I sprang to Orrett’s side and kicked both of his guns away. He was lying still but his eyes were open.

  “Are you Cudner, or was he?”

  “He.”

  “Good!” he said, and closed his eyes.

  I crossed to where Cudner lay and turned him over on his back. His chest was literally shot to pieces.

  His thick lips worked, and I put my ear down to them. “I get him?”

  “Yes,” I lied, “he’s already cold.”

  His dying face twisted into a grin.

  “Sorry…three in hotel…,” he gasped hoarsely. “Mistake…wrong room…got one…had to…other two…protect myself…I…” He shuddered and died.

  A week later the hospital people let me talk to Orrett. I told him what Cudner had said before he died.

  “That’s the way I doped it out,” Orrett said from out of the depths of the bandages in which he was swathed. “That’s why I moved and changed my name the next day.

  “I suppose you’ve got it nearly figured out by now,” he said after a while.

  “No,” I confessed, “I haven’t. I’ve an idea what it was all about but I could stand having a few details cleared up.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t clear them up for you, but I’ve got to cover myself up. I’ll tell you a story, though, and it may help you. Once upon a time there was a high-class crook—what the newspapers call a master-mind. Came a day when he found he had accumulated enough money to give up the game and settle down as an honest man.

  “But he had two lieutenants—one in New York and one in San Francisco—and they were the only men in the world who knew he was a crook. And, besides that, he was afraid of both of them. So he thought he’d rest easier if they were out of the way. And it happened that neither of these lieutenants had ever seen the other.

  “So this master-mind convinced each of them that the other was double-crossing him and would have to be bumped off for the safety of all concerned. And both of them fell for it. The New Yorker went to San Francisco to get the other, and the San Franciscan was told that the New Yorker would arrive on such-and-such a day and would stay at such-and-such a hotel.

  “The master-mind figured that there was an even chance of both men passing out when they met—and he was nearly right at that. But he was sure that one would die, and then, even if the other missed hanging, there would only be one man left for him to dispose of later.”

  There weren’t as many details in the story as I would have liked to have, but it explained a lot.

  “How do you figure out Cudner’s getting the wrong room?” I asked.

  “That was funny! Maybe it happened like this: My room was 609 and the killing was done in 906. Suppose Cudner went to the hotel on the day he knew I was due and took a quick slant at the register. He wouldn’t want to be seen looking at it if he could avoid it, so he didn’t turn it around, but flashed a look at it as it lay—facing the desk.

  “When you read numbers of three figures upside-down you have to transpose them in your head to get them straight. Like 123. You’d get that 321, and then turn them around in your head. That’s what Cudner did with mine. He was keyed up, of course, thinking of the job ahead of him, and he overlooked the fact that 609 upside-down still reads 609 just the same. So he turned it around and made it 906—Develyn’s room.”

  “That’s how I doped it,” I said, “and I reckon it’s about right. And then he looked at the key-rack and saw that 906 wasn’t there. So he thought he might just as well get his job done right then, when he could roam the hotel corridors without attracting attention. Of course, he may have gone up to the room before Ansley and Develyn came in and waited for them, but I doubt it.

  “I think it more likely that he simply happened to arrive at the hotel a few minutes after they had come in. Ansley was probably alone in the room when Cudner opened the unlocked door and came in—Develyn being in the bathroom getting the glasses.

  “Ansley was about your size and age, and close enough in appearance to fit a rough description of you. Cudner went for him, and then Develyn, hearing the scuffle, dropped the bottle and glasses, rushed out, and got his.

  “Cudner, being the sort he was, would figure that two murders were not worse than one, and he wouldn’t want to leave any witnesses around.

  “And that is probably how Ingraham got into it. He was passing on his way from his room to the elevator and perhaps heard the racket and investigated. And Cudner put a gun in his face and made him stow the two bodies in the clothespress. And then he stuck his knife in Ingraham’s back and slammed the door on him. That’s about the—”

  An indignant nurse descended on me from behind and ordered me out of t
he room, accusing me of getting her patient excited.

  Orrett stopped me as I turned to go.

  “Keep your eye on the New York dispatches,” he said, “and maybe you’ll get the rest of the story. It’s not over yet. Nobody has anything on me out here. That shooting in Pigatti’s was self-defense so far as I’m concerned. And as soon as I’m on my feet again and can get back East there’s going to be a master-mind holding a lot of lead. That’s a promise!”

  I believed him.

  RUFFIAN’S WIFE

  Margaret Tharp habitually passed from slumber to clear-eyed liveliness without intermediate languor. This morning nothing was unusual in her awakening save the absence of the eight o’clock San Francisco boat’s sad hooting. Across the room the clock’s hands pointed like one long hand to a few minutes past seven. Margaret rolled over beneath the covers, putting her back to the sunpainted west wall, and closed her eyes again.

  But drowsiness would not come. She was definitely awake to the morning excitement of the next-door chickens, the hum of an automobile going toward the ferry, the unfamiliar fragrance of magnolia in the breeze tickling her cheek with loose hair-ends. She got up, slid feet into soft slippers, shoulders into bathrobe, and went downstairs to start toast and coffee before dressing.

  A fat man in black was on the point of leaving the kitchen.

  Margaret cried out, catching the robe to her throat with both hands.

  Red and crystal glinted on the hand with which the fat man took off his black derby. Holding the doorknob, he turned to face Margaret. He turned slowly, with the smooth precision of a globe revolving on a fixed axis, and he managed his head with care, as if it balanced an invisible burden.

  “You—are—Mrs.—Tharp.”

  Sighing puffs of breath spaced his words, cushioned them, gave them the semblance of gems nested separately in raw cotton. He was a man past forty, with opaquely glistening eyes whose blackness was repeated with variety of finish in mustache and hair, freshly ironed suit, and enameled shoes. The dark skin of his face—ball-round over a tight stiff collar—was peculiarly coarse, firm-grained, as if it had been baked. Against this background his tie was half a foot of scarlet flame.

  “Your—husband—is—not—home.”

  It was no more a question than his naming her had been, but he paused expectantly. Margaret, standing where she had stopped in the passageway between stairs and kitchen, was still too startled not to say “No.”

  “You’re—expecting—him.”

  There was nothing immediately threatening in the attitude of this man who should not have been in her kitchen but who seemed nowise disconcerted by her finding him there. Margaret’s words came almost easily. “Not just—I expect him, yes, but I don’t know exactly when he will come.”

  Black hat and black shoulders, moving together, achieved every appearance of a bow without disturbing round head’s poise.

  “You—will—so—kindly—tell—him—when—he—comes—I—am—waiting. I—await—him—at—the—hotel.” The spacing puffs prolonged his sentences interminably, made of his phrases thin-spread word-groups whose meanings were elusive. “You—will—tell—him—Leonidas—Doucas—is—waiting. He—will—know. We—are—friends—very—good—friends. You—will—not—forget—the—name—Leonidas—Doucas.”

  “Certainly I shall tell him. But I really do not know when he will come.”

  The man who called himself Leonidas Doucas nodded frugally beneath the unseen something his head supported. Darkness of mustache and skin exaggerated whiteness of teeth. His smile went away as stiffly as it came, with as little elasticity.

  “You—may—expect—him. He—comes—now.”

  He revolved slowly away from her and went out of the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.

  Margaret ran tiptoe across the room to twist the key in the door. The lock’s inner mechanism rattled loosely, the bolt would not click home. The warmly sweet fragrance of magnolia enveloped her. She gave up the struggle with the broken lock and dropped down on a chair beside the door. Points of dampness were on her back. Under gown and robe her legs were cold. Doucas, not the breeze, had brought the breath of magnolia to her in bed. His unguessed presence in the bedroom had wakened her. He had been up there looking with his surface-shining eyes for Guy. If Guy had been home, asleep beside her? A picture came of Doucas bending over the bed, his head still stiffly upright, a bright blade in his jeweled fist. She shivered.

  Then she laughed. Little silly! How conceivably could Guy—her hard-bodied, hard-nerved Guy, to whom violence was no more than addition to a bookkeeper—be harmed by a perfumed, asthmatic fat man? Whether Guy slept or Guy woke, if Doucas came as an enemy, then so much the worse for Doucas—a fleshbound house dog growling at her red wolf of a husband!

  She jumped up from her chair and began to bustle with toaster and coffeepot. Leonidas Doucas was put out of her mind by the news he had brought. Guy was coming home. The fat man in black had said so, speaking with assurance. Guy was coming home to fill the house with boisterous laughter, shouted blasphemies, tales of lawlessness in strangely named places; with the odors of tobacco and liquor; with odds and ends of rover’s equipment that never could be confined to closet or room, but overflowed to litter the house from roof to cellar. Cartridges would roll underfoot; boots and belts would turn up in unexpected places; cigars, cigar ends, cigar ashes would be everywhere; empty bottles, likely as not, would get to the front porch to scandalize the neighbors.

  Guy was coming home and there were so many things to be done in so small a house; windows and pictures and woodwork to be washed, furniture and floors to be polished, curtains to be hung, rugs to be cleaned. If only he did not come for two days, or even three.

  The rubber gloves she had put aside as nuisances—had she put them in the hall closet or upstairs? She must find them. So much scrubbing to do, and her hands must not be rough for Guy. She frowned at the small hand raising toast to her mouth, accused it of roughness. She would have to get another bottle of lotion. If there was time after she finished her work, she might run over to the city for an afternoon. But first the house must be made bright and tidy, so Guy could tweak a stiff curtain and laugh, “A damned dainty nest for a bull like me to be stabled in!”

  And perhaps tell of the month he had shared a Rat Island hut with two vermin-live Siwashes, sleeping three abed because their blankets were too few for division.

  The two days Margaret had desired went by without Guy, another, others. Her habit of sleeping until the eight o’clock boat whistled up the hill was broken. She was dressed and moving around the house by seven, six, five-thirty one morning, repolishing already glowing fixtures, laundering some thing slightly soiled by yesterday’s use, fussing through her rooms ceaselessly, meticulously, happily.

  Whenever she passed the hotel on her way to the stores in lower Water Street she saw Doucas. Usually he was in the glass-fronted lobby, upright in the largest chair, facing the street, round, black-clothed, motionless.

  Once he came out of the hotel as she passed.

  He looked neither at her nor away from her, neither claimed recognition nor avoided it. Margaret smiled pleasantly, nodded pleasantly, and went on down the street away from his hat raised in a jeweled hand, her small head high. The fragrance of magnolia, going a dozen steps with her, deepened her feeling of somewhat amused, though lenient, graciousness.

  The same high-held kindliness went with her through the streets, into the shops, to call on Dora Milner, to her own street door to welcome Agnes Peppier and Helen Chase. She made proud sentences for herself while she spoke other sentences, or listened to them. Guy moves among continents as easily as Tom Milner from drug counter to soda fountain, she thought while Dora talked of guest-room linen. He carries his life as carelessly in his hands as Ned Peppier his brief case, she boasted to the tea she poured for Agnes and Helen, and sells his daring as Paul Chase sells high-grade corner lots.

  These people, friends and neighbors, talked amo
ng themselves of “poor Margaret,” “poor little Mrs. Tharp,” whose husband was notoriously a ruffian, always off some distant where, up to any imaginable sort of scoundrelism. They pitied her, or pretended to pity her, these owners of docile pets, because her man was a ranging beast who could not be penned, because he did not wear the dull uniform of respectability, did not walk along smooth, safe ways. Poor little Mrs. Tharp! She put her cup to her mouth to check the giggle that threatened to break in rudely on Helen’s interpretation of a disputed bridge point.

  “It really doesn’t matter, so long as everyone knows what rule is to be followed before the game starts,” she said into a pause that asked words of her, and went on with her secret thinking.

  What, she wondered with smug assurance that it never could have happened to her, would it be like to have for husband a tame, housebroken male who came regularly to meals and bed, whose wildest flying could attain no giddier height than an occasional game of cards, a suburbanite’s holiday in San Francisco, or, at very most, a dreary adventure with some stray stenographer, manicurist, milliner?

  Late on the sixth day that Margaret expected him, Guy came.

  Preparing her evening meal in the kitchen, she heard the creaking halt of an automobile in front of the house. She ran to the door and peeped through the curtained glass. Guy stood on the sidewalk, his broad back to her, taking leather traveling bags out of the car that had brought him up from the ferry. She smoothed her hair with cold hands, smoothed her apron, and opened the door.

  Guy turned from the machine, a bag in each hand, one under his arm. He grinned through a two-day stubble of florid beard and waved a bag as you would wave a handkerchief.

  A torn cap was crooked on his tangled red hair, his chest bulged a corduroy jacket of dilapidated age, grimy khaki trousers were tight around knotted thighs and calves, once-white canvas shoes tried to enclose feet meant for larger shoes, and failed to the extent of a brown-stockinged big toe. A ruddy viking in beggar’s misfits. There would be other clothes in his bags. Rags were his homecoming affectation, a laborer-home-from-the-fields gesture. He strode up the walk, careless bags brushing geraniums and nasturtiums back.