Nothing to Lose But My Life (18 page)

I squeezed her hand, slowing her down. It worried me when she started talking fast. “I understand.” I got the door open and steered her onto the porch. “Now,” I said, “give me the rest of it. Why are you so sure that I didn’t kill Hoop?”

“Lowry, where are we going?”

I stopped and took her in my arms. It may have been a heel’s trick but I have never been sorry for having done it. “Away,” I said softly. “Away together, Enid.” I kissed her and then we started together up the service steps. “Away as soon as I clear myself, Enid.”

“All right, Lowry. I was there behind the door and—”

She got no further. There was a single hard, chopping sound that ripped apart the darkness. It came from behind us. Enid made no sound at all, just went backward, out of my encircling arm, back down the steps we had climbed, to land with a thud on the porch.

For an instant I couldn’t react at all. Then I threw myself flat. A second shot came, whining through the air above where I lay flattened on the steps. There was no sound except a soft pattering. It could have been someone running in rubber soles or it could have been the blood tapping in my ears. But a moment later a car motor whined up from below and farther along the street.

I was crouched over Enid’s body like an animal guarding its young when Tanya called from the top of the stairs.

“Lowry?” There was suppressed hysteria in her voice.

“Here.”

She came down. She was crying. She knelt, looking at Enid, faintly outlined by the night. There was a hole in the back of Enid’s head. She was thoroughly dead. Tanya touched my cheek with cold fingertips.

“Who, Lowry?”

“In that car that went below,” I said. “It fooled me, going on past.” I paused. “I don’t really know who, Tanya. I think I do but now I’m not sure.”

She was silent. I rose. “Let’s get out of here.”

“And leave her?”

In the distance sirens were wailing. Someone had reported the shots. “There’s no time for anything else,” I said. “The cops will take care of her.”

We went up the stairs as fast as I could manage. Tanya drove back the way we had come. We were at the foot of the Slope when the sirens stopped howling. Enid had been found.

I told Tanya to get me to a telephone again. When we were on the way, I said, “I almost learned enough, Tanya. She was going to tell me who killed Hoop.”

“If she knew,” Tanya said. “If she really knew. Enid had dreams and mixed them up with life.”

“I know,” I said, “no testimony of Enid’s would hold up in court. It’s just that I’d be more certain. I was certain until this happened—now I’m not.”

“I don’t see that it changes anything,” Tanya said.

“Perhaps not.” I brooded about it while we worked our way back to the Hill. I began to feel like a shuttle service, going there so often in such a short space of time. By the time we got the same telephone we had used before, I had stopped brooding. Tanya was probably right: Enid’s death hadn’t changed the situation a great deal. I decided to play it as I had planned before.

In the booth, I called the Conklin house. This time I got a masculine voice. It was Charles Conklin. I said nasally, “I’d like to speak to Mrs. Conklin. This is Duval from headquarters. It’s urgent.”

“How urgent? Mrs. Conklin has retired.”

There was a click on the line as an extension was lifted. We could hear Sofia Conklin’s crisp voice. “I’m awake, Charles. I can take the call. Yes, Mr. Duval?”

She paused. I waited. Conklin lowered his telephone. I said, using my normal voice, “This is Lowry Curtis. I think we’d better have a talk.”

Another pause, longer this time. When she answered, her voice was cool. “About what, Mr. Curtis?”

I said, “I can’t hide forever, you know. Sooner or later the police will pick me up. When they do, I’ll have to give my story to them to protect myself. But to make sure that my story is used, I have a statement written out for the press.”

“Just what has this to do with me?” she asked. There was hardly a flutter of curiosity in her voice. But she wasn’t hanging up, and that was something. It meant a great deal where I stood.

“Just this,” I said. “Your husband killed Colonel Hoop—or had him killed. It’s the same thing.”

She gasped, and I was willing to swear that it was genuine. “That’s absurd!”

“Is it, Mrs. Conklin?” I kept my voice level, low. “You’re aware, I’m sure, that Charles Conklin is head of the local Syndicate.” Silence. I went on, “The Syndicate made the mistake of pushing Hoop too far. He wanted out from under and he began gathering data he could use to fight when the time came.”

Still silence. I said, “When the time came, he didn’t go to your husband, he went to you. He knew you well enough to be sure that you would do almost anything to preserve your name and social position. He figured that if he told you about your husband’s connection with the Syndicate and about his own plan for making their operations public, you would force your husband to let him alone just to make sure there would be no bad publicity.”

“This is ridiculous.”

She was right, it was. I went on, “So you told your husband what Hoop was going to do. But instead of acting as Hoop expected him to act, your husband took a chance and killed Hoop. Hoop was a prominent man; he never expected Charles Conklin to take the risk of bringing public scrutiny to bear either on Hoop’s past or on their partnership. But Hoop forgot one thing.

“Yes, Mr. Curtis?”

God, she was cool. “I came to town,” I said. “And there I was, the perfect patsy. Your husband took advantage of the situation and tried to pin the murder on the man whose hatred of Hoop was open knowledge.”

I paused. She didn’t answer. “That’s the story,” I said. “I have it ready for the papers.”

She knew as well as I that if such a story were ever released, her name would land somewhere besides the society page for a change. And it wouldn’t matter if I were proved right or wrong. In the long run, she would be hurt. Since Conklin’s connection with the Syndicate could be proved by any competent detective, there would be a blot on her name no amount of scrubbing could erase. I was in a very nice position at the moment.

“Why are you telling
me
this, Mr. Curtis?”

“Because I want you to do for me what you couldn’t do for Hoop. I want you to deal with your husband on my behalf.”

“In what manner?” There was caution in her voice now.

“I want the records he has on Tanya Mace and Nikke destroyed. I want him to put the blame for Hoop’s death on someone else—I don’t care who. He can do it; he has the organization to do it. I want to be cleared of the charge of killing Jake and Perly. And I want Tanya cleared as well.”

If she had agreed, I would have been stumped. But she followed the pattern I expected of her. She said, “Mr. Curtis, I feel that we should discuss this monstrous accusation with my husband.”

I swallowed a sigh of relief. “Of course. In fact, I’ll meet him right now.” No answer. I added, “I don’t believe I need to remind you that my written statement for the press is somewhere besides on my person. Getting rid of me won’t help any.” I said it in a formal tone, using formal words—an old legal habit.

“I realize that, Mr. Curtis.”

“How shall I come?”

She understood that. “The French doors on the south side of the house open into his study. Come in that way, please.”

I hung up and went back to the car. “Same place,” I told Tanya.

She turned on the dome light for a moment. “For a sick man you look pleased with yourself, Lowry.”

I wasn’t sick. Not any longer. I was in the pink. I told her so. A little sore along the ribs, but my head was clear, my legs strong. I had it wrapped up, in the palm of my hand. I even sang a little to let her know how good I felt about it all.

Tanya parked at the edge of the trees as before. “This time …”

“This time I go alone again,” I said firmly. “You hotfoot it back and tell Nikke what we’re doing—if you can get to him. Tell him to have that escape hatch ready—just in case.”

“Lowry …”

I got out. “There’s really no need. But just in case …” I left it hanging, going without even kissing her goodbye. That would have been too final a gesture. And despite the way I had sounded off, I didn’t feel a bit sanguine.

Only one light was on, the one coming through the French doors. I went up to them and tried to peer through. But the curtains were too well drawn. I rapped.

The door was opened by Conklin. He stepped aside and I went in. He shut the doors quickly, turned a latch and then returned to his desk. It was very long and expensively plain. It fit very well into the room which was also long. The walls on two sides were lined with filled bookcases. At one end was a collection of pictures, at the other a huge, now cold fireplace. There were two chairs, one at each corner of the desk, besides the one where Conklin sat. When at the desk, he had his back to the French doors. His wife occupied one of the chairs. She was not looking at me but at the telephone which he had apparently been using. It lay off the cradle on the desk top.

“Take that chair,” he said, indicating the one at the opposite corner from where Sofia sat. He picked up the telephone. “He’s here now, Emmett. Get the setup ready and wait for me to call you. You know how I want Lowry taken care of.”

I was smiling but my mouth and throat were dry as I sat down and watched him hang up the telephone. He looked at me and he was as pink and bland as ever. This might have been a social evening, for all his expression showed.

Sofia on the other hand was obviously angry. “Charles, you’re being a fool.”

“This is my affair, Sofia. I didn’t ask you to come into it.”

“Hardly,” I said dryly. “This is her affair now. Remember the precious name of Proctor-Conklin.”

“He’s quite right, Charles. It is my affair. If you had told me your business sooner, none of this would have happened.”

I began to understand what she was driving at, and I had to admire her if only because she made such a magnificent iceberg. Sofia wasn’t perturbed because her precious husband was running nasty rackets. She just didn’t like the way he went about it, and she was cutting herself in. She was going to tell him how to do it!

He spoke with such cold mildness, that I felt a shiver run up my back. Pink and bland he might be, but there was a viciousness underneath that exterior. “As you wish, my dear.”

He turned to me. “The story you told my wife is ridiculous.”

“Certainly it is,” I agreed. “But that won’t stop an investigation. And during it they might even turn up the truth.”

“That you killed Hoop—you or Nikke?” He sounded as though he really believed it.

I said, “No. Neither of us had anything to do with it.” I was only thinking about him with half my mind. The other half was on Emmett, who would like nothing better than to get his hands on me. I wondered what kind of “setup” he and Conklin had planned for me. I wondered, too, just how far my bluff was going to carry me. Conklin was a gambler; if he had an inkling that I was bluffing, he might well try to call for a showdown. Then I was done. Right now, I didn’t hold a card worth drawing to, let alone playing.

“You’re given to talking absurdities tonight, Lowry,” he said.

I stopped worrying about Emmett and brought my mind fully to the game at hand. I was playing the long shot, the longest shot of my career. It wasn’t the kind of bet any gambler with half a brain would have taken, but I had no choice. I played another card and prayed.

“I know you didn’t do it,” I said, “because it doesn’t smell of your technique. Besides, you needed Hoop for business contacts, if only to make yourself look respectable. Nor would you want an investigation of your partnership. Too close a scrutiny might start the wrong people thinking.”

“You have it all worked out.”

“Written out,” I corrected. “Those points are in my statement too. You see, in it, I set up the evidence against you and then the evidence for you. It’ll give the newspaper boys more to think about.”

Sofia had been watching me intently, listening in silence. Now she spoke. “What else is in your statement, Mr. Curtis?”

“The fact that Hoop was stabbed. He wasn’t stabbed through his clothes, however, but when he was naked. He was killed in his own bedroom and taken to Tanya Mace’s garage and dumped there. There are the earmarks of an amateur job, a clumsy attempt at a frame. It was unfortunate that Tanya moved the body downstairs to Enid’s—for me to take care of. No one wanting to keep the Proctor name out of things would have put the body that close to Enid’s flat.”

“Another piece of evidence in my favor,” Conklin said dryly.

I nodded. “Assuming, of course, you knew that Enid had that flat.”

The sweat was running down my face, down my ribs. I had it built up now. All I had to do was put in the clincher and hope that they saw it as plainly as I did, as the police should. I said, “You see the night Enid found the body and had a ‘spell,’ she talked to me. What she said didn’t make much sense at the time. But it did later-after I talked to her tonight. Just before she was killed.”

Conklin said stupidly, “Enid—killed?”

It was as though someone had timed this for a stage scene. The telephone rang. Conklin lifted the receiver, not taking his eyes from me. They were inquiring eyes, at the same time angry. There had been a lot of feeling in his voice when he had said “Enid.” That was something I counted on.

He said into the telephone, “Conklin here.” A pause. “Yes … I see.” Another pause. “I—I—I’m shocked, lieutenant.” I could feel that he was acting now. “Call me if I can help. I’d rather not talk about it now.” The telephone went on to its cradle.

“That was the city police. They found Enid’s body. She was shot from behind. They believe you did it, Lowry.”

“You know better,” I said. “I was trying to protect Enid.”

Quiet, still, deadly. “From whom?”

“From your wife,” I said. “She killed Hoop and she killed Enid.”

SOFIA CONKLIN
had nothing but scorn for me. “That’s even more absurd than your previous accusation.”

I looked at Conklin who was now watching his wife, the faintest of frowns wrinkling his forehead. “Is it?” I asked.