Red Gardenias (20 page)

Crane shook his head. He wished they wouldn't talk about Ann. He said, "Excuse me," and went to the telephone and called his house. His heart fluttered as the bell rang and rang. There was no answer. He wondered where Williams was.

They were talking about the floor nurse when he returned to the table.

"All that blood," Dr Rutledge was saying, "was a simple nosebleed. She's all right now."

Dr Woodrin said, "Too bad she didn't get a good look at the woman who hit her."

"She apparently creeps up behind her victims," Dr Rutledge said. "Simeon March didn't see her, either."

Mr March's brief account of the events in his garage, Crane admitted, had substantiated Williams' theory. The old man told them he was getting into his sedan when someone threw a blanket over his head. He struggled, but he was easily overpowered. He was thrown to the floor, tied, and someone started the engine in his sedan. Presently he began to breathe gas... and then he woke up in bed.

Crane's mind went back to Ann. Why had she disappeared? Was she a prisoner? Could she still be alive? Or was she dead of gas?

Carmel asked Dr Rutledge when Simeon March would be able to go home. The doctor said not for several days.

"We'll have to keep the guards here, then," Peter said.

Alice March said, "That woman will never come back now."

"I'm not taking any chances," Peter said.

Crane spoke to Dr Woodrin. "If the woman had smothered him with her pillow and escaped without anyone seeing her, would you have been able to tell what had happened?"

"It would've been a perfect crime," Dr Woodrin said. "We'd have thought it was the gas."

The idea was pretty horrible. The murderer was smart! And ruthless! Crane felt a conviction that Ann had stumbled upon the truth and had been removed. Well, he'd spend the rest of his life...

Carmel asked him, "Would you like some more coffee and whisky?"

"I'd like some whisky."

She asked Dr Rutledge for his whisky and filled Crane's cup halfway up. "You look sick," she said. "I am sick."

"It wasn't your fault the woman got away."

"I'd have caught her if I'd been braver."

"I think you were very brave."

"I was lousy."

"No."

A white-coated attendant tapped him on the shoulder. "You're wanted on the phone, Mr Crane."

It was Williams. He was very excited about something.

"I can't hear you," Crane said.

Williams' voice sounded as though he was trying to shout through a long section of pipe. "Damn it! I'm telling you I've got the dame spotted."

"What dame?"

"The dame who raised all the hell in the hospital."

Crane was silent and Williams said:

"Can't you hear me? The dame who raised..."

"I hear you, but I don't believe you," Crane said.

"But, Bill, I spotted her when she came down the fire escape back of the Nurses' Home. I saw the gun she had, so I followed her. She went..."

"Where are you?" Crane broke in excitedly.

"I don't know as I'll tell you, doubting me like that."

"Don't be coy," Crane said. "You're wonderful. You're a great detective. You're smarter than I am. I love you. Will you marry me? Will you tell me where the hell you are?"

"State highway 20—the first farmhouse to the right after the intersection of the Charlesville Pike."

"Anybody with her?"

"She went in alone, but the place may be loaded down."

"We'll be along in ten minutes."

"Like hell you will! It's twenty miles."

"Fifteen minutes then."

Williams was sitting on the running board of a rented coupe. His black eyes blinked at the array of automobiles.

"You call out the militia?"

Crane got out of Dr Woodrin's car. "Everybody insisted on coming."

Carmel March, with Peter in her convertible, called out excitedly, "Where to now?"

"Women, too?" Williams asked disgustedly.

"We couldn't keep 'em at home."

"There'll be shooting."

"They'll stay back."

"Well, let's go."

Williams had them drive without lights a half mile down the cement road, then signaled for all the cars to stop. About one hundred yards ahead was a side road, a gray streak against the black countryside.

"We'll walk from here," he said.

Peter March told the women to wait with the cars. He left a guard to watch the side road. "Stop anybody who drives out," he said.

In the party were three more guards, Dr Woodrin, Dr Rutledge, Peter March, Williams and Crane.

While the others discussed plans for the attack, Crane took a flashlight, covered it with his coat so there would be no glow, examined the drive. He felt great excitement when he found a series of small craters on the soft earth. The treads were exactly like those made by the marksman's car at the Duck Club.

Dr Rutledge, coming over to him from the group, asked, "What are you doing?"

"I've found some fresh tire tracks."

They stood together while the whispered discussion continued. Crane asked the doctor, "Have you any methylene blue with you?"

"I think so. Why?"

"We might run into someone who has been gassed." He was thinking of Ann. "How long after would it work?"

"Depends upon how much gas they've had."

"How often do you give the injections?"

"That depends upon the patient."

"How often do you spray them?"

"You don't spray. Where'd you get that idea?"

"I don't know. I thought somebody told me you did."

The plan had evidently been decided upon, because Williams touched Crane, said, "Let's go."

They started and Peter March, just ahead, whispered to Williams, "You're sure she's there?"

"I know she went in."

The road seemed to be descending. At the same time it began to wind. Clumps of trees, bushes, tall grass lined both sides. They had to halt now and then while the leaders felt out the way. It was very cold and still.

"How'd you follow her?" Peter March asked.

"She drove slow as hell, to keep from being stopped by cops, I guess," Williams said. "I was able to keep up with my lights off."

"I mean through this," Peter said.

"Oh. I didn't come in here. When she turned off I stopped and watched her headlights. I could see her drive down to a house and switch off the lights."

"And then you went to a farmhouse and telephoned?"

"Yeah."

They had got off the road again. One of the guards lit a match. The orange flame showed trees, white faces; then someone knocked the match out of the guard's hand. "You fool!" Dr Woodrin said. "Want to give us away?"

Williams found the road. It wasn't completely dark, and Crane could see Peter's back, just ahead of him. The sky, above a tangle of half-bare branches, was mauve. It was only an hour to sunrise. Suddenly Williams halted.

"There's the house."

Directly ahead of them was a very faint rectangle of yellow light. For a moment it looked as though the light was floating high in the air, then they saw the gray outline of a two-story farmhouse. The rectangle was a window on the second floor.

"Somebody's up," Williams said.

Whispering, they decided to send four men around the house. The other four would try to get inside without attracting attention. At the sound of shooting, the four outside would rush the house.

Williams took it for granted he would be one of the four to go inside. Everybody took it for granted Crane would be another. Peter made it three. That left one more. Dr Rutledge said he'd go, but Crane objected.

"It's not your show," he said.

Dr Woodrin had been examining the house at a little distance from the group. He returned and said, "I'm going. John and Richard... Talmadge... They were my best friends. It's certainly my show."

A cautious examination of the farmhouse disclosed locked windows and doors. The color of the night was Oxford gray; in the sky only the big stars remained. There was no wind. Williams led them to the front door, tried a master key in the lock. After a moment it turned and they followed him inside.

The hall had a musty smell, like that of a room shut up for a long time. There was a smell of dry leather, of dust, of mildewed fabric, of mice, of rotting wood. The air felt moist and warm on their faces.

Under their feet, the floor creaked faintly. They halted, holding their breaths.

There was talking upstairs. The voices were muffled; it was impossible to tell if the speakers were men or women. The conversation was leisurely; a rumble of words, a long silence, a murmured reply.

A rod of light extended from Williams' fountain-pen flashlight to a green rug, so worn that cross threads of the fabric showed through the nap. Further ahead were stairs and a ten-foot landing. On the left the oak balustrade had been partially torn loose from the stairs. It tilted crazily, like a section of railroad track uprooted by flood. Over the landing a tattered piece of muslin partially cloaked a square window.

Williams touched Crane's arm. They started up the stairs, keeping close to the wall on the right. On the landing Crane was surprised to see that the square window was made up of small, colored panes; green, red, blue, orange and brown. The next flight of stairs looked safer.

A cold draft flowed along the second-floor hall, numbed their wrists and ankles. The voices were louder now, but it was not possible to distinguish the words. Light stained the hall floor through a crack under a door fifteen feet to the right.

Suddenly a man laughed hoarsely. Crane nearly lost his balance; his startled jerk carried him against the wall; he put up his left hand to save himself. Cobwebs stuck to his fingers. He realized the man was laughing in the room with the light. He tried to scrape the cobwebs off his hand with the barrel of his revolver. He was scared as hell.

They went along the hall to the door. A woman was laughing with the man; both sounded a little drunk. The man, between laughs, said in a deep voice:

"Like a boilerworks, by golly!"

He pounded a table with his fist, then they both laughed.

Williams' mouth was against Crane's right ear. "The doc hasn't got a gun. He'll bust the door with his shoulders, bust in, and you and Peter and me'll cover..."

Vicious snarls, loud barking broke out somewhere in back of the house. A pistol went off twice. Crane could see the flashes through the colored window. The dog yelped once and was silent.

Dr Woodrin said, "Come on." He hit the door with his shoulder; it gave with a crack like a big firecracker. He staggered into the room. Crane, beside Williams and a step ahead of Peter March, followed.

Two flickering oil lamps on a bare table threw jaundiced light over half the room. They held in uncertain rays a carrot-haired woman in a gaudy cotton wrapper; a quart of rye whisky and two partially filled glasses; a mussed bed on which sat a man wearing a blue skirt and an underwear top. The woman was Delia Young. She was seated on a chair across the table from the bed; her painted face was turned in the direction of the shots. The man was looking that way, too, but his face was in shadow. There was a shapeless bundle of clothes in a corner of the room. A tight bandage circled the man's left arm just above the elbow.

It seemed, to Crane, the action was like that in a prizefight motion picture which has been halted for an instant to let the audience see a particular punch. The crack of the door was the signal for the halt; their arrival in the room started the reel again.

Delia Young screamed. The man bent over and fumbled among the bedcovers. Dr Woodrin's voice shook the windows.

"We've got you this time."

Delia Young screamed. The bundle of clothes in the corner moved. The man's hand came around in a swift arc. A sliced second before his pistol went off, Dr Woodrin, almost between Crane and the man, dropped on the floor. Like an echo, Williams' revolver answered the pistol. Crane fired at the man, too. They both fired again. "You... you..." the man muttered. His body suddenly flabby, he pitched forward on the floor. Delia Young screamed again.

"Pipe down, tutz," Williams said.

Crane moved a step forward, his smoking revolver still pointed at the bed. Dr Woodrin got off the floor. Crane looked down at the body. It was Slats Donovan and he was dead. Peter March hurried to the bundle in the corner. Crane lifted the bottle of rye from the table. It was half full. He wiped the neck with the palm of his hand, took a long drink.

"My God!" he said when he finished. "Oh, my God!"

Delia Young stopped screaming. Her eyes were frightened behind smears of blue mascara. Williams put his hands under Donovan's armpits.

"Give me a hand, Bill."

They put the body on the bed. Crane discovered blood on his left hand, his left wrist. He couldn't find a handkerchief in the pockets on his right side and he didn't want to spoil his clothes by searching with the left hand. He opened his coat, wiped the hand on his shirt. It was only a two-dollar shirt.

Peter March was lifting the bundle in the corner. It was Ann Fortune, and she had been bound and gagged. Crane felt a great relief. He wondered how she had found the house. She was smiling at Peter.

Crane said, "Lucky for you, baby, we came along."

Ann smiled at him. "Hello, Bill," she said. Her hair was the color of the straw that champagne bottles come in. "I'd almost given you up." Her green eyes went back to Peter. "Thanks for untying me," she said to him.

That's gratitude for you, Crane thought. You risk your life saving a gal, and who does she thank? The other guy!

Williams said disgustedly, "All this work chasing after clues, and it turns out to be a plain gangster job."

Dr Woodrin was looking at Donovan. "That was a close one." There was no pink in his face.

Williams said, "It took guts to do what you did without a gun." He stared at Dr Woodrin's white face. "He didn't wing you, did he?"

"No."

"Where'd his shot go?"

Nobody knew, and Williams added, "Good thing Bill and I were quick."

Delia Young was watching them. "Damn you all for a bunch of murderers," she said in her husky voice.