She Woke to Darkness (7 page)

“Yes. On one of the business cards advertising the place. You called it out to him, went over and took the card, then went back to the booth and closed the door.”

Aline nerved herself to ask, “Does Joe remember the number?”

“No. He thought it was a Butterfield number, but wasn’t positive. He says you stayed in the booth awhile, then came out and marched out without saying a word or even looking at him. And that’s all Joe knows.”

Aline was quiet for a moment, racking her tortured mind for a glimpse of remembrance that would not come. “If I only knew who I called,” she moaned.

“At least we know you didn’t call me,” Ralph said ruefully. “Even though you wanted a man, you had given me to understand quite clearly that I wasn’t the one you wanted. Try to think of someone else,” he went on calmly, glancing aside at her with lowered lids, “whom you felt a yen for when you were sober, but didn’t quite have the nerve to approach.”

“I can’t think,” she murmured, and then her voice rose angrily as she declared, “The hell of it is that I’m not the bitch I seem to become when I’m drunk. So how do I know what man I had a yen for? If Joe had only remembered that number!”

“Well,” said Ralph smugly, “it just happens that I’m not so bad when it comes to playing detective. I bought Joe a drink for his trouble, and over-tipped him, so you needn’t bother to give him back his dime. Then I went over to the phone booth and looked around inside. I found this lying on the floor.”

Ralph dramatically handed her a crumpled business card which he had taken from his pocket. Scrawled on the back, in pencil, were the letters BU, followed by five digits.

“I can’t swear that’s the number you called,” he pointed out judicially, “but I think it is. You didn’t have a handbag to put it in, and no pockets in your dress. You probably just crumpled it up and threw it on the floor after you’d reached your party.”

Aline took the card. Her eyes were round and frightened as she repeated the numbers aloud, and her head moved slowly from side to side. “It doesn’t sound even remotely familiar,” she told him. “Does it to you?”

“No. But I don’t know all your men friends. Sure you can’t remember?”

“I haven’t even the ghost of an idea,” she acknowledged, absently turning the card over and over with her fingers. “But isn’t there some way to get a person’s name from a number? Doesn’t the Telephone Company have a cross index… or something?”

“Of course. But I don’t think they give out information like that, as a rule, unless it’s requested by the police.” He finished his drink, put an arm around her and nuzzled his lips against her ear. “How about forgetting the whole thing for tonight? Let’s go to bed and get a couple of hours sleep. Everything will be bright and rosy tomorrow.”

“Ralph… don’t!” Her voice lashed out at him She struggled against his embrace, broke free and pushed him away. Then, seeing the strange expression on his face she managed a wan smile and said, “You’ve been sweet to try and help me, Ralph, and you have helped a lot. Now I know, at least, that I didn’t just pick up some complete stranger on the street at midnight. I feel more decent knowing that I looked up a number and telephoned.”

“Sure,” he said in a soothing tone. “And after you’ve had a good sleep, maybe you’ll remember a name to fit the number.” He stood up. “Okay, sweet. If you want to be alone, far be it from me to intrude. Bye now.” He turned and strode out.

7.

My doorbell buzzed just as I reached that point in Elsie’s manuscript. The sound rasped angrily in the utter silence of the hotel room, and I must have jumped a foot.

The cops, I thought. Here it is, Mr. Halliday. Gird up your loins and prepare for one of those interrogations you’ve described in your books so often. The innocent hero striving desperately to convince the cynical and brutal bluecoats that he is innocent.

I laid Elsie’s manuscript down unhappily, wishing to God they’d given me time to finish reading it, went to the door and opened it.

In all my life I’ve never seen such a welcome sight as Ed Radin’s broad face wearing a friendly grin. I wrung his hand hard and pulled him inside and demanded, “How bad is it, Ed? What did you find out?”

“It’s pretty bad, Brett.” He shook his head and moved his solid body across to the brandy glass and bottle. He poured himself a moderate drink, downed it, and sat down wearily. “I just came from the apartment. She was strangled in the sitting room, fully clothed and no evidence of much struggle. Probably no sex angle. They think she had been drinking with the guy and he went crazy mad when she turned down his advances. Two kinds of cigarettes in the ashtray, fingerprints on the cognac glass. Yours, you think?” He regarded me steadily.

“Probably. Unless she washed out my glass before she admitted the killer. Anything else?”

“Not much. No one on the premises heard anything. Police went there on an anonymous telephone tip saying there was a dead woman in that apartment. Shortly after they found her, there was a phone call but when a cop answered, the caller hung up. They theorize that was the killer checking to see if they’d found her okay.”

“It was my call,” I told him wearily. “I phoned for the exact reason I told you. I’d read the first chapter of her script and I thought I’d call back. You know how amateur writers are. They can hardly hold their water while someone is reading their stuff.”

“I know,” he said stolidly, “but not many cops do. So, why didn’t you identify yourself to the cop?”

“Would you have?” I asked hotly. “Hell, Ed. It was about two o’clock in the morning. I call the gal and a man answers. Wouldn’t you discreetly hang up?”

“Probably,” he admitted as stolidly as before, “but I’m just asking the questions the cops are going to ask you. You’ve got a few hours, I guess, to get the answers ready. Soon as the morning papers are out, someone who saw you leave the banquet with Elsie will phone the information in. The rest is routine.”

“I don’t need to fix any answers,” I told him. “The truth will have to do.”

He said, “Fine,” and I knew he meant it. Ed Radin is strictly an honorable guy, and I knew he’d stretched a point very fine when he withheld the information that I had tipped him off to check Elsie.

He settled back and lit a cigarette and closed his eyes lightly and said, “Go back over it for me, Brett. Everything. From the moment you met Elsie until you phoned me.”

I went back over it. Every bit of it. Every word and inflection that had passed between us. Every kiss and every tiny bit of sex play. It was easy to tell a friend exactly how I had felt about Elsie, how I thought she felt about me… just what passed between us. I realized as I talked that it was going to be more difficult to tell the police the same things, much more difficult to make them understand. Ed was my friend, and he is a writer, too. He knows how things like that happen to a man, and that nothing I told him gave me any motive for murdering her. But that was because he knew me, and understood the sort of girl Elsie had been.

He opened his eyes and nodded approvingly when I told him about the phone call to Mike Shayne in Miami and that Mike would be arriving about eight.

“Good. But you’ve got to be careful they don’t find out you telephoned Shayne to come. Remember, you’re playing it that you didn’t know a thing about it all this time. You didn’t contact me and I haven’t seen you.”

“I thought of that. We’ll say Mike had planned all along to meet me here this morning for the weekend. He’ll play along.”

“It should be okay,” Ed decided, “if they don’t get suspicious and start checking. No reason why they should if they believe your story. I’ve a strong hunch,” he added tiredly, “that you’re going to need Shayne in your corner. They’ll have you for a suspect, and won’t look too hard for another one. With Shayne to work on it, we’ll get the truth… if he’s half as good as you make him out in your books.”

“He’s better,” I told him. “Mike is always making me cut out some of the good stuff because he’s so modest.”

“I’ve wanted to meet that redhead for a long time.” Ed Radin yawned and poured himself another careful drink of brandy. “You got any ideas of your own?”

I shook my head. “I just met the girl tonight. I’ve only got one crazy thought at the moment, and that’s her manuscript. What did you and the police think of it?”

“I was coming to that,” Ed said quietly. He glanced at the thick sheaf of typewritten pages beside me. “That it?”

I nodded. “The original copy. The carbon copy was there in her place.”

He shook his head. “No long piece like that. I helped them inventory her desk. Three short stories. Two unfinished stories, five and eleven pages, a batch of notes with ideas for characters and situations. That was all.” He spread out his hands and studied me soberly.

“But this is around fifty pages,” I protested. “She had this in a manila envelope, and said she’d been working on the carbon copy. I was getting the bum’s rush, you see, after the telephone call. As I said, I had a strong impression she was afraid the caller might be on his way up even though she’d told him she was working and he shouldn’t, and she wanted to get rid of me fast. The carbon copy must be there, Ed.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then the killer took it.” I got up and began to pace the floor excitedly. “That’s it, Ed. That’s the motive for Elsie’s murder. I’ve read most of the script now, and she admitted to me that it is a thinly fictionized account of something that actually took place… that all the facts are true, only names and descriptions changed. It’s a mystery story, you see. A girl blanks out from too much liquor and wakes up with a dead man. One of the oldest clichés in the business, but this time I think it happened. And to Elsie. The story deals with the girl’s attempts to find out who did kill the man, in order to prove that she didn’t. We know it is Elsie’s own story… and if the killer knew she was writing it, and perhaps had inadvertently written down the truth without quite knowing it was the truth… and if he knew she planned to show the script to me… mightn’t he have killed her and stolen the script to keep me from seeing it?”

“But you have a copy,” Ed pointed out.

“Suppose he didn’t know that? Think back to the telephone conversation I overheard in her place. She said something like: ‘He’s not here. He dropped me after I promised to send him my script tomorrow and I’m getting it ready for him to see it.’ Don’t you see, Ed? She used that as an excuse to keep him from coming up. They were talking about
me,
damn it. Someone who saw her leave the Henry Hudson with me… or who had been told she did so. When she told him she was going to give it to me to read tomorrow, she signed her death warrant. He had to stop her… if what I think is true and the solution of another murder is concealed in these pages in the shape of fiction.”

Ed Radin was definitely interested. He eyed the typewritten sheets speculatively. “You think the proof of another murder is there?”

“I’m guessing,” I admitted. “I haven’t finished it. But it must be there. If you and Mike and I go over it carefully, we should be able to spot some clue I think Elsie herself hadn’t even spotted. If she had, she certainly wouldn’t have let the guy in to murder her tonight.”

“It’s an interesting thought,” Ed muttered, “and it’s a logical reason for the other copy being missing. But you’ll have to turn it over to the cops, Brett. It’s evidence in a murder case. You can’t hold it back for Shayne to work on.”

“At least I can finish reading it before they come to me.”

“You can do that… and tell them you have. But you’ll have to give it to them.” He looked at his watch and muttered, “Damn it. You’ve got me so interested I’d like to spend a couple of hours with Elsie’s manuscript myself. But I’ve got to check down at the Precinct…” He paused thoughtfully, then leaned forward and picked up one of the typewritten sheets.

It was a good clean copy as I’ve said, neatly typed on lightweight paper. Not onion skin, but about 12-pound stuff.

He nodded happily and said, “I’ve got an idea, Brett. I believe it’ll work. There’s an outfit that calls itself The Overnight Duplication Service. Ever hear of them?”

I shook my head.

“They have some process for photographing manuscripts. Make a specialty of it. Five cents a page for as many duplicate pages as you want, and guarantee to turn out any ordinary job in a few hours. They boast they work around the clock, and the only thing is: the original has to be a solid black impression on fairly thin paper to duplicate well. This fits the bill. Let me call them and see. They’ve done a lot of work for me.”

He got up and hurried into the bedroom, searched for a number and started to call it, paused, returned the phone, and came back shaking his head. “That wouldn’t be so good. The police will check the switchboard for calls from this room just as routine. You’d have no earthly explanation for rushing out to get this duplicated unless you knew Elsie was dead and thought it might contain a clue for Shayne to work on.

“Here’s the address.” He wrote it down. It was a number on West 45th. “It’s in the ground floor of a small hotel,” he went on. “Some of them live there. The boss, I guess. If you still think the script is important after you finish reading it, take it down and have them knock off a copy. Leave the copy with them for me to pick up later. Bring this copy back and hand it over to the law when they come. And you’d better pray to God there is a motive in the script and we can find it.

“I’ve simply got to run. Don’t be surprised if I turn up with the cops in the morning. Don’t lie about anything except having seen and talked to me tonight. Good luck.” He shook hands hard and went out the door.

I sat down and picked up Elsie’s manuscript again. It meant a lot more to me now that I’d learned the carbon was missing from her apartment. It
had
to be important. It had to be the motive for her murder.

I began reading again with intense absorption.

8.

When Aline Ferris next awoke, sunlight streamed in the window, but the fear of last night remained strong and agonizing—the almost unbearable fear of the unknown.

She closed her eyes against the bright sunlight and tried to make her conscious mind quiescent, to break through to the subconscious which knew what she had to know.

Her telephone call from the cocktail lounge was the jumping-off place. That had been done without her conscious knowledge. It was the one thing she now knew she had done while blanked out. She had the number in her mind, memorized from the night before. She repeated the five digits over and over again silently, like an incantation to break down the barrier between conscious and subconscious. If she tried not to think about the numbers, not to recall consciously a name connected with them! Then, perhaps, the name would come.

It was there, in the hidden recesses of her mind. The knowledge of everything was there. It had to be. If she could only bring it forth…

She couldn’t. It wouldn’t come. The effort was exhausting. After a time, she ceased trying and opened her eyes.

The clock on the table beside the bed said 9:30. She moistened her lips, lifted herself on one elbow and reached for the telephone extension beside the clock, and called her office number.

Margie’s cheerful voice answered. Aline kept her own voice dull and flat when she said, “Hello, Margie. This is Aline.”

“Hi.” Margie lowered her voice to an elaborately confidential tone as she added, “Miss Prescott just went through. She asked if you were in.”

“I’m not,” Aline told her. “I’m out. Tell her I’ve got an abscessed tooth. Tell her any damned thing, Margie. I simply can’t make it today.”

“Bad, huh?”

“Horrible,” Aline groaned. “Fix it for me?”

“Will do. And you’d better get right over to the dentist. I’ll explain to Miss Prescott. Bye now.”

Aline hung up and sank back against the pillows. Her nerves were edgy and she felt physically exhausted. But it was impossible to relax, so she dragged herself from the bed and tottered into the tiny kitchenette. She gulped a large glass of cold orange juice, then put on a kettle of water for coffee. After measuring the coffee into the drip pot, she went resolutely to the front door. There was no use postponing it any longer. Sooner or later, she would have to read the morning newspaper. She opened the door and picked it up.

Her hands trembled as she spread it out on the couch. There were no screaming headlines… nothing at all on the front page about the murdered man. She really hadn’t expected to find anything there. By the time she reached page three, the kettle whistled and she got up to pour the water in the pot.

Returning, she went through the paper to the last page without finding any reference to a dead man having been found in an uptown hotel room.

There was no reason to expect the story to break so soon, she told herself as she sipped her first cup of black coffee. In fact, it would be strange if the body were discovered before mid-morning when a hotel maid might logically let herself in. So it would likely be late afternoon before she could learn anything definite about him.

A cigarette with her second cup of coffee helped a lot. Her mind began to function again, and her thoughts turned back to Bart’s party… back to the real beginning. Whomever she had telephoned at midnight must have been someone who was on her mind at the moment. Someone she felt she could turn to at that time of night while she was locked out of her apartment.

There was no use denying to herself that men were her first interest when she was blacked out. There was too much evidence from too many sources. So, the person must have been a man to whom she was strongly attracted. Someone she wanted to be with. All right. There was Dirk. She remembered their little necking party before she passed out. It had been pleasant enough, and rather gay. The usual sort of thing when the gang got together. But what had happened to cause a fight between her and Ralph over Dirk’s attentions?

No, she decided, it couldn’t have been Dirk. Nor any of the others with whom she was familiar at Bart’s party. Because the telephone number was strange to her.

The man had to be someone she met after she blacked out. A man whose name she knew, but whose number she had had to look up and ask Joe to write down for her when she went to the bar.

She frowned and bit at her lower lip. Both Doris and Ralph had mentioned a strange man with whom she had been smooching. Ralph had described him vaguely. Mediocre… nondescript. That description might easily fit the dead man! And Ralph had given the man a name. What was it? An unusual sort of name. Thorn? No…

Torn! Vincent Torn! That was it!

Aline put out her cigarette and went for a third cup of coffee. Her heart pounded painfully as she considered a possibility. A distinct possibility, one she could check without too much trouble. She could telephone him, and if he answered, he al least wouldn’t be the dead man. That would eliminate one possibility.

And if he didn’t answer? Well, that wouldn’t mean much either way. He would likely be at his office, if he had an office.

She was returning with the coffee when she abruptly realized that she could check her hunch by looking up Torn’s name in the telephone book. If he was listed… if his number was the one Ralph had brought back from the bar… then she would know it was he whom she had called. If not, she would at least know she was on the wrong track.

Her trembling hand slopped coffee into the saucer as she put it down and hurried to the

directory. She turned the pages feverishly, and found his name.

Vincent Torn’s telephone number tallied with the one she now knew so well. The number Joe had written on the card.

Aline sank back on the day-bed and tried to piece together the few facts she had learned about her movements last night. She must have reached Torn by phone, and made an appointment, because she hadn’t asked Joe for another dime. She had gone directly outside to wait.

Since she had no money for a taxi, she must have met Torn outside the bar and gone to the hotel room with him. She shuddered violently, but braced herself against self-loathing. She had to face facts. It was exactly the sort of thing her body was likely to do once the conscious mind ceased directing its movements.

What now? By lifting the phone and dialing she might settle one more thing… whether Vincent Torn was alive or lying dead in the hotel room. In her own mind she now felt positive that he was the dead man. She reminded herself again that failure to get an answer would prove nothing. And what if someone else answered? Mrs. Vincent Torn… or a daughter… or a maid? She could hang up, of course, or pretend some other reason and ask for Mr. Torn.

She had to try. Not knowing was agonizing beyond endurance. If she could establish the fact that Torn had not returned home last night, she would
know.
And that would be the real beginning of her search for the hidden truth. Her search for the real killer in order to clear herself.

Also, there was the matter of time before the police came to question her. Once the body was found and identified it would be a routine matter for them to learn that he had been at Bart’s party and that a girl named Aline Ferris had made a big play for him. A girl who would answer the description of the one who had checked into the hotel with him after midnight.

If
the man was Torn! That was the crux of it now.

Aline steeled herself for the attempt, lifted the receiver and swiftly dialed the number.

A man’s voice answered immediately, and Aline’s heart leaped into her throat.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Torn?”

“He isn’t in.” The voice sounded disappointed, brusque. “Can I take a message?”

“No. That is, do you expect him soon?”

“God knows.” There was a note of dry amusement now. “He hasn’t been in all night, and I haven’t the faintest idea when he’ll show up.”

“I… see.”

“Any message?” the voice persisted.

“No, thank you. I’ll try later.”

She was about to hang up when the voice said with interest and sudden urgency, “See here, isn’t this Aline Ferris?”

She gasped, “No,” and hung up. She stood by the telephone, trembling and white, trying to collect her thoughts.

The dead man was Vincent Torn! She was sure of that now. But who was the man who had answered Torn’s telephone? What did he know about her… about Aline Ferris… that had caused him to ask that last question?

Had he recognized her voice? Was he someone she knew? Or was it merely someone who knew Torn had gone out at midnight to meet a girl named Aline Ferris and hadn’t returned home?

She went back to the couch and buried her face in her hands. What came next? In her own mind she had established the identity of the hotel-room corpse. What would a detective do next?

Detectives. The police! She suddenly felt physically weak, and she couldn’t think straight. She needed food, a bath, and she had to get into some decent clothes. If they came and caught her looking like this!

She stripped off her pajamas on the way to the bathroom, took a quick shower, brushed the hangover taste from her mouth with toothpaste and put on stockings and underclothes. Before putting on make-up and a dress, she poached two eggs and made toast which she ate with a final cup of coffee.

Ten minutes later she was studying her face in the mirror, and it seemed incredible that she could have been the jaded, terrified person who had fled from a murder scene only a few hours ago. The bath and the food and a careful toilet had erased all outer signs of her hangover and steadied her nerves.

Back in the living room, she settled herself on the couch and took up the back-tracking again where she had left off.

A detective, she decided, would look for someone who had a motive, and an opportunity.

Who could have known that she and Vincent Torn were together in that hotel room? Had he been the sort of man who often took girls to hotels, and was he in the habit of frequenting the Halcyon?

That might be one angle. If someone were looking for an opportunity to murder him, it might have seemed a good time to commit the crime.

There were other possibilities, of course. Suppose Torn had been murdered only because of her? Through jealousy because she had gone there with him? By someone who had followed them to the hotel and traced them to the room?

The two-dollar bill thrust into the top of her stocking might be a clue pointing in that direction, the act of a jealous lover who had discovered her with Torn and murdered him in a burst of passion.

But she had no real lovers, jealous or otherwise. There had been passing affairs… nothing more. And they were over and done with. Ralph was the latest, but that could scarcely be called an affair. There was just that one night which she didn’t even remember. And Ralph certainly didn’t seem to be the jealous type. Only last night he had consoled himself with Doris after she, Aline, had refused to let him come in with her. Besides, he had driven away thinking she was going straight up to her own apartment. He hadn’t known about the call she made to Torn until he talked to the bartender much later.

There was no one else in her life who could possibly care enough about whom she slept with to commit murder.

No. It had to be someone in Torn’s own life. That, or pure accident. A prowler, who entered the room by chance, who was discovered by Torn and who killed him in the ensuing struggle. That would explain the absence of Torn’s wallet. But it hardly explained the two-dollar bill. What chance prowler would pause after murder to add that macabre touch?

It always came back to Torn himself. To his personal character and associates. And she knew absolutely nothing about him. He was merely a name to her. The name of a nondescript man who had evidently possessed enough sexual attraction for her to phone him at midnight and go to a hotel room with him.

Who
would
know about him? Neither Ralph nor Doris knew who he was. Ralph had mentioned hearing him introduced at the party, and had difficulty recalling his name.

Bart, of course. He was the host and must have invited Torn. Did she dare ask Bart about him? Would Bart wonder why she wanted to know? Would he suspect something?

Certainly not until he learned that Torn was dead and how he died. Then he would recall that Aline had asked about him. But it wouldn’t matter then. Sooner or later the police were sure to piece together the events of the evening and place her in the death room at the correct time.

She got up decisively and called Bart’s number. The phone rang several times before his lazy, cultivated voice drawled, “Hello.”

“Bart. How are you this morning?”

“Excruciating, my love. Simply excruciating. Tell me, why do I give parties? All sorts of rowdy people come and drink my liquor and make love to my girls and have a perfectly lovely time, and all I get out of it is a lousy hangover. By the way, how are
you
feeling this morning, Aline?”

“I have felt worse,” she told him as lightly as she could manage. “I think,” she added doubtfully, “though I really can’t remember when.”

Bart laughed indulgently. “But you did have a wonderful time. Don’t try to deny that.”

“It was a lovely party,” she assured him. “So many… interesting people. Some I’d never met before.”

“And some I hope I never meet again,” he told her dolefully. “What sort of dank rocks do they spring from under when word gets around that I’m throwing a whindig?”

She chuckled, then said archly, “I hope you don’t include Vincent in that group.”

“Vincent? Was there actually a Vincent? Ah, yes. It all comes back to me now. Shame on you. What has that gauche fellow got that I haven’t?”

“I… rather liked him,” she said delicately.

“And made it quite evident, my love. Yes, indeed. None of us doubted that your intentions toward him were strictly dishonorable. Tell me, frankly, how was it?”

Aline’s cheeks flamed and she strove to keep her voice casual. “Didn’t you know? Ralph brought me home. All perfectly safe and proper.”