Mourn the Hangman (10 page)

BLAKE LOOKED once more at Al White sprawled across the runner at the head of the stairs. He turned then and walked back along the upper hallway. At the rear stairs, he hurled one last look across his shoulder and went down the steps, running.

He could hear muted voices from the kitchen when he reached the lower hall. As he moved, he considered ways of getting out of the rear of this house. He was unarmed. He supposed his hand thrust threateningly into his coat pocket might deceive a cook and his helper long enough to get him across the room. But he discarded that idea. That was a fool’s game. Once he was out of the house, the cook would yell for help. The chase would be on. As a matter of fact, he had only until Al White came to his senses enough to cry out. He had better play those precious moments for all they were worth.

He stood for a moment in the gray hallway. There was what appeared to be a maze of doorways. Open the wrong door, he thought, and you are lost.

He heard a door slam. He smiled grimly. A side entrance. A carriage entrance. Stealthily he moved along the hall toward the place where the door had slammed. He stopped. There was a right turn in the corridor and there was the carriage door with the sunlight and freedom shining just beyond it.

And one of Arrenhower’s brown uniformed company police standing just inside it.

In desperation, Blake looked around. There was nothing. No weapon in the hallway. He looked again at the vase of flowers on an end table.

Holding his breath, he removed the flowers with both hands and set them, dripping, on an antique oakwood straight chair.

The police officer must have heard him. He said, “Who’s there?” and started across the short corridor. Blake’s hand closed on the neck of the vase.

For a moment they stared at each other. The big policeman slapped at the gun holstered on his hip. Blake didn’t wait any longer. “Here,” he said. “Catch.”

He brought the vase around overhanded, hurling it with all his strength. The company cop gasped and tried to dodge, but the distance was too short, the vase hurled too swiftly. He could only stand there, his eyes widening as the heavy glass vase struck him squarely between the eyes, with such force that it shattered.

The cop took a step forward. Behind him, Blake could hear the cries and footsteps of the kitchen help. The cop was staggering. Blake’s fist in his belly only hastened the moment of striking the floor.

Blake went through the side door of Arrenhower’s huge old house with no idea what he was going to meet in the driveway. He expected another company goon. He knew by now that they usually traveled in pairs. But there was no one in the tan Arrenhower Corporation Plant Guard car.

Blake ran around it and slid under the wheel. There were no keys in the ignition, either. His hands sweating and trembling, he felt under the dash, ripped loose the ignition wiring. Without taking his eyes from that side door, he twisted the wires together, and stepped on the starter. The engine roared into life. The car leaped away in a cloud of exhaust smoke and a shower of gravel.

“Hey!” It was the guard. He was standing in the doorway. He was still too stunned to run. The best he could do was stand with one hand across his bleeding nose and yell.

The company car had been facing the rear of the property. Blake knew the front gates would be closed and locked anyhow. There was no point in turning the car around. The main hope he had anyway was to get as far away from the house as possible before he was stopped. The gravel drive wound toward garages and stables. Both hands on the wheel, Blake drove swiftly. He wished for a gun. That sort of personal protection seemed indicated from this moment forward.

He looked around. There was undoubtedly a police positive holstered somewhere in the car. The goons would have used it for a kind of hideaway. The outbuildings loomed close ahead. Frantically, Blake searched with his hands along the side of the seat. He found the gun and with a laugh thrust it into his coat pocket.

For a moment, Blake was afraid his wild ride across Arrenhower Land was going to end in the stables. But the gravel drive curved sharply around them. There was a straight, short road to a wire fence — cyclone fence topped with barbed wire.

In his rear view mirror, Blake could see men running across the rolling grass toward him. There were two other tan cars like the one he was driving, whipping along the gravel drive.

He skidded the car hard against the fence. It bounced a little, but otherwise, nothing happened. He stepped on the gas again and stalled the engine with the car jammed against the wire. He could already hear them shouting behind him.

He came out of the car, climbed up on the hood. He pulled off his coat and spread it flat across the barbs of the wire. Then he got on top of the car, fell across the coat. He leaped outward then, dragging his coat after him. He cleared the fence and landed on his feet on the ground outside Arrenhower’s property. But the coat was impaled on the barbs of the wire.

He wasted only half a minute looking at that coat. It was lost to him. But there was no time to worry about that. The first of the company police cars was almost to the fence, with one of the goons leaning far out the window with a pistol in his hand.

Blake turned and ran into the thick brush. Ahead of him he could see cleared fields, and rows of small, low-priced homes of somebody’s subdivision. And a couple of blocks away was the noise and clamor of McDill Highway.

He began to run across the open field. His luck held. As he reached the corner of the highway, a yellow cab loomed into view. He ran out into the street and waved his arms. The cab screamed to a halt. The driver threw the door open. “Where to, mister?” he said.

“Take me to town,” Blake said. “And hurry. I’m trying to catch a plane.”

The cabbie shook his head. “Ain’t no planes in town, mister.”

“That’s where I’m catching one,” Blake said. “Let’s go.”

He left the cab at the entrance of the Union Bus station. He bought a ticket for Gulf City and then walked through the exit gates and through the loading ramps to the street beyond. He got into another taxi. He wanted to go to see Manley Reeder in Hyde Park. To hell now with being polite. If Reeder knew anything Blake should know, Blake knew the way to force Stella’s ex-husband to talk. But when the driver asked him where he wanted to go, Blake smiled grimly and gave the address of Clinton Edwards’ home in Seminole Heights. Hell, Blake thought, Arrenhower’s goons would be combing Tampa for him by now. But which one of them was smart enough to look for Blake in the home of Arrenhower’s private secretary?

• • •

Clinton Edwards opened the door of his Seminole Heights home. When he saw Blake, he seemed to go lax all over. His mouth fell open. He stepped back and tried to slam the door. Blake thrust his shoulder against it and pushed his way inside. Edwards wheeled, starting for the foyer telephone. Blake caught his shoulder in his hand, spun him around.

Edwards stared up at Blake’s murderous green eyes. His voice quavered. “What is this, Blake?” he demanded. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“It’s easy to see you, Edwards,” Blake said. “A lot easier than it would be to see Arrenhower. I want you to answer some questions.”

Edwards tried to laugh. “Why should I? How long do you think it will be before Mr. Arrenhower’s men find you and pick you up?”

“Maybe longer than you think,” Blake replied. “And here’s another angle. Maybe they are going to kill me. Maybe I will be the next hit-and-run victim on page five of the Times. I haven’t got much to lose, have I, Edwards? It won’t make much difference what I do to you, will it? They can only kill me once, Edwards. I’m a guy with nothing to lose. That’s the one guy in the world you don’t want to fool with.”

“You’ll never make me talk to you. I know my rights.”

Blake laughed coldly. “Your rights! The private secretary to the great Arrenhower. This is my life, Edwards. And your rights aren’t going to do you any good with your face shoved in. It’s up to you.”

The defiance in Edwards’ face weakened. “When they get you — ” he faltered.

“Sure — but that’s later. This is right now.” His hand tightened mercilessly on the thin shoulder. “Arrenhower and his boys kicked me around. Now it’s my turn.” He doubled his fist. “Your face a pulp, Edwards, or you tell me what I want to know.”

Edwards made one last attempt to laugh. “There isn’t much I could tell you — if I would,” he said.

Blake’s fist cracked into Edwards’ face. The blow came so suddenly, so sharply and sounded so loudly in the room that Edwards went completely to jelly in Blake’s grip. He covered his face with both his hands, sobbing. He cringed away, trying to break loose from the grip on his shoulder.

“It’s up to you,” Blake said again. There was no hint of mercy in his voice.

“What do you want to know?” Edwards whispered.

“My wife was killed,” Blake said. “Who did Arrenhower send over there? Who did it? Tell me, Edwards, or I’m going to beat you until you do.”

“Nobody,” Edwards whispered in terror. “I swear it. He never ordered your wife killed. I’d know it, Blake. I swear I would. Mr. Arrenhower trusts me. I know everything that goes on. He’s had to trust me. He spent a great part of the past two years in Lowering’s private hospital. I ran things. He — he just found out about you. He ordered you taken care of, that’s all.”

“But I got out of the plant in time and he had to come looking for me?” Blake said. He tightened his grip on Edwards’ shoulder. The secretary cried out in agony. At that moment, there was the sound of heavy fists on the front door. “Mr. Edwards! Edwards!”

Blake reached out to clamp his fist over the little man’s mouth. But the secretary jerked free of his hand and leaped away, screaming.

“He’s here! He’s in here!”

Thick shoulders were already battering at the door. Blake drove his fist into Edwards’ face. The little man sprawled out backwards, half the length of the hall and lay still on the runner. Blake leaped across him and went out the back door of the house as the front door splintered under the powerful shoulders of Arrenhower’s police.

• • •

Thirty minutes later, Blake started up the sidewalk to Manley Reeder’s ugly old house in Hyde Park. It seemed a hundred years ago since he’d walked up and down here, waiting for a taxi.

The heavy odor of the honeysuckle attacked his nostrils. He went quickly across the old-fashioned front porch with its swing and wicker rockers. The screen door was closed, but the inner door was ajar. The house was silent. Blake rang the doorbell, stood listening to it echo in the deep old rooms.

He tried the screen door. It was locked. He jerked on the handle and felt the single catch give. The second time he tried it, the screw ripped free of the panel and the door opened.

This was a good place to wait. And he had to talk to Manley. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Stella’s death had nothing to do with the Arrenhower trouble. If it didn’t, the answer lay with Reeder or at least with someone Reeder knew. And Reeder was going to talk this time, because Blake knew he was a man with nothing to lose. Funny, what a difference that made. You no longer cared about things that might have mattered once.

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:

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.

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 go. 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.