My first knock on the door of apartment 2-A was a gentle, insistent tapping.
A woman’s voice called, “Yes? Who is it, please?”
She seemed trying to keep the fright out of her voice.
I said nothing, waited nearly twenty seconds, then knocked again, this time more insistently. The voice sounded from close to the door. “Who is it?” A note of panic had crept into the voice now.
I still didn’t say anything, just waited — waited a good thirty-five seconds. Then knocked again, this time louder than before.
“Who—” Her voice broke.
I was raising my hand to knock for the fourth time when I heard the sound of a key in the lock, and the door opened a few inches. My shoulder pushed it the rest of the way. Helen Framley gave ground before me as I entered the room and walked toward her. Her face was chalk white. Her hand was on her throat.
“Well?” I asked.
“Close — close the door, Donald.”
I half turned, stabbed at the edge of the door with the toe of my shoe, and slammed it shut.
“Well?” I asked.
“Sit down, Donald. My God, don’t look at me like that!”
I sat down, took a package of cigarettes from my pocket, offered her one, took one myself, and held out a match.
She touched my hand in guiding the flame to her cigarette. I could feel her arm trembling. The tips of her fingers were cold.
“How did you find me?”
“Easy.”
“No. It couldn’t have been.”
“You forget I’m a detective.”
“I don’t care if you’re the whole police force. It wasn’t easy. I’ve been around enough to know how to take care of myself when I’m in a jam.”
“All right, what difference does it make whether it was easy or hard? I found you, didn’t I?”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to hear your story.”
“I haven’t any.”
“That’s too bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“The police won’t like it.”
“Donald, you’re not going to — you’re not going to rat!”
“The police will find you.”
“No. They won’t.”
I just smiled, and I made it as superior as I could.
“The police haven’t a thing in the world on me.”
“Except that the murdered man was living with you in your apartment, and—”
“He wasn’t living with me!”
“He spent most of his time there, didn’t he?”
“Some of it, but he wasn’t — wasn’t living with me.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I don’t take a notary public to bed with me.”
I took the cigarette from my lips, and yawned.
“Donald, what’s come over you? You don’t think I killed him, do you?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Someone did.”
“And he had it coming to him, too, if you ask me.”
“The police would be interested in that statement.”
“Well, the police wouldn’t hear anything out of me. Do you think I’d squeal?”
“Probably not.”
“You can bet your bottom dollar I won’t.”
“Got an alibi?”
“For what time?”
“Oh, around ten minutes to nine to about nine-twenty.”
“No.”
“Tough luck.”
“Donald, listen to me. How did you find me? I thought this was absolutely airtight.”
“Easy.”
“Well, how?”
“That’s a professional secret.”
“I suppose you’d like to see me get a first-degree rap?”
“No. Believe it or not, I came to help you.”
Some of the haunted, hunted expression left her eyes. “You’re a brick.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too easy to trace you.”
“I didn’t think they’d ever find me — not in a thousand years.”
“They’d find you in a thousand minutes.”
“What were you going to suggest?”
“I could get you out of town.”
“How?”
“It’s a secret.”
“All right, what’s your price?”
“I want to know what happened.”
“Do you really want to take me out of town, Donald?”
“I’d do it for a consideration.”
“You’re a funny boy.”
“I want something.”
“What?”
“Information.”
“That all?”
“Yes.”
She pouted. “I don’t believe I ever knew a man exactly!ike you. Tell me, are the police looking for me?”
“What do you think?”
“Why don’t they get busy and find the real murderer?”
“They’re looking for clues.”
“Well, what am I going to do? Shake clues out of my sleeves, pull some out of the tops of my stockings, put ’em on a silver platter, and say, ‘Here, Mr. Copper.’ ”
“That’s between you and the police. If you don’t tell what you know, it might put you in a serious position. You were the last one to see Harry Beegan alive.”
“I was not. I broke up with him right after the fight.”
“You ran away with him.”
“I ran down to the alley. He came along after a few minutes. He grabbed my arm, and we ran almost to the end of the alley. There was a high board fence there. He picked me up and put me up to where I could reach the top. After I got up, I gave him a hand and he made it.”
“And then?”
“We waited for a while until the cops had gone by. We could hear them talking, see their lights flashing, and hear them asking questions. A lot of people came along behind the cops. We made a clean getaway.”
“Then what?”
“Then,” she said, “I told him that he was a double-crosser, and that I was finished. He knew I meant it, too.”
“And beat up on you?”
“Nothing like that. He begged and pleaded, promised he’d never interfere again, told me that he couldn’t help but be jealous because he loved me so much, but that he’d learned his lesson now and that he realized he couldn’t interfere in my life.”
“Change your mind?”
“I walked away.”
“What happened to him?”
“He started to follow, and I turned back on him and told him I’d give him the works if he kept on following me.”
“Threaten to call the police?”
“No, of course not. The police and I don’t ‘go to the same school.”
“Threaten to scream?”
“No. I told you what I said. I told him I’d give him the works.”
“What did you mean by that?”
“I don’t know what I meant, but I was fed up.”
“Murder?” I asked.
“Of course not. I just said that to make him leave me alone.”
“But you did threaten to give him the works?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that the same as saying you’d kill him?”
“I tell you I don’t know what I meant. I just wanted him out of the way. I’d have threatened to pull the moon out of the sky and beat his head in with it if the idea had occurred to me. I was crazy mad.”
“Think anyone heard you?”
“No.”
“You had climbed over this fence?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get back to the street?”
“I followed along the fence, saw the lights of a pool room, walked through the back way, and out to the street.”
“Men in the back of the pool room?”
“Yes.”
“Playing pool?”
“Two or three of them were.”
“Did they look you over pretty carefully?”
“I’ll say.”
“Think they’d remember you?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” she said, her voice showing her weariness. “The way they looked me over, if I’d had a mole the size of a pinhead just below the knee on my left leg, they’d have remembered it for twenty years. Does that answer your question, Mr. Detective?”
“It does. How about the second stories on those buildings? Was there a rooming-house or a hotel there in the block?”
“I don’t know.”
“Notice any lights in the windows above you?”
“No.”
“Would you have noticed them if they’d been there?”
“I don’t know. I was mad. When I’m mad, I don’t notice things.”
“Let’s get back to Harry Beegan.”
“Let’s not. Listen, Donald, I want to get out of here. Can you get me out?”
“Yes.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Exactly as I tell you to.”
“For how long?”
“Perhaps two or three weeks.”
“In order to get out?”
“Partly that. The rest of it is the price I’m charging for getting you out.”
She looked puzzled. “Are you just making a cold-blooded proposition to me?”
“It isn’t a proposition.”
“What is it?”
“A business arrangement.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I think you can help me.”
“Do what?”
“Clean up a case I’m working on.”
“Oh, that! ” she said.
I tapped the ashes off my cigarette.
“All right,” she said abruptly, “when do we start?”
“When can you get packed?”
“I’m packed. I didn’t bring anything with me. There wasn’t time for that.”
“Not even a suitcase?”
“Just a little bag.”
“When did you get it? I mean, when did you go to the apartment to get it?”
“Don’t you wish you knew?”
“It’ll come out sooner or later anyway.”
“You can find out then.”
“How about Eloise Dearborne?”
“What about Eloise Dearborne?”
“How long have you known her?”
“Where does she live?”
“Here.”
“Here! Why, what does she do?”
“Her brother’s an engineer out at Boulder Dam.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know her.”
“Who,” I asked, “was the redheaded girl with the bunny nose that you were chumming around with at the Cactus Patch?”
“I don’t know whom you mean.”
“Don’t know anyone like that?”
“No. I may have stopped and passed the time of day with someone, but I haven’t any friend who answers that description. How old?”
“Oh, twenty-three or twenty-four.”
She shook her head.
I said, “Well, get ready to go. We may leave in a hurry.”
“Okay.”
“Now, one other thing. In traveling, we don’t want to excite attention. There may be times when — when you’ll have to—”
She laughed at me. “It took you long while to get around to that, didn’t it, Donald?”
I said, “Yes,” got up, and walked out.