“This is a big, busy place in a big, busy town, Willy. I think I’m getting a new idea. I can feel it turning over in my mind like a half-asleep dog. Let’s get some coffee.”
They got coffee at a counter and carried it to a hack booth. Argen borrowed one of Brock’s cigarettes. “Let’s start some fresh thinking, Willy. I think we made this check-out gimmick too fast. If it was careful planning that means there was something big in it. If there was something big, we hit the back trail too easy. Now let’s figure it another way. Let’s say we can’t make an identification on the girl. We got no way of knowing where she was staying. Sooner or later somebody checks on her and finds she checked out without leaving a forwarding address. It looks like she took off. It goes to missing persons. They make the morgue check. By then it’s cold. It looks like we shouldn’t have handled it so fast.”
“Now I think I know where you’re going. Somebody wanted her dead. But we got no good reason for anybody wanting the Matthews girl dead.”
“And that assistant manager I talked to. He checked and came back and he said the name was Helen Matthews with a double t.”
They finished the coffee and walked back to the hotel. The assistant manager he had talked to before was there. He was about to go off duty, and his annoyance was obvious.
“I don’t see how the hotel is involved in this,” he said.
“Some other woman checked out the Matthews girl, paid her bill and carted off her stuff and it happened after the girl was hit on the head. So stop acting like we come here to clean the drains. You go find out what other Matthews you’ve got in this place right now or had in the last few days. Female Matthews, friend.”
The man skittered away. Argen winked at Brock. He was nervous about his guess and he hummed a monotone that he thought was a tune.
The assistant manager came back with a sheet of paper from a note pad. “There is a Mrs. George Mathewson from Duluth. She checked in the day before yesterday. And a Miss Ellen Mathews from Philadelphia. She has been here for more than a week.”
“Bingo,” said Argen. “Now get me your best house man.”
The house man’s name was Fuller. Argen had met him years before when he had worked at a different hotel. Though Fuller had been born and raised in the city, he looked as if he had just walked out of a Grange meeting. His red neck was crisscrossed with plow-boy wrinkles and he wore steel-rimmed glasses.
Argen told him what he wanted and Fuller said it would take maybe twenty minutes. He was back in fifteen and the three of them sat in the small office.
“This is a blonde,” he said. “A little one. Cute and hard as a stone. She’s got a Miami tan that’s fading on account of she hasn’t been out of the room, near as I can tell, since she got here. The bellhops figure she’s hiding from somebody or something. She’s a gin drinker. She tips good. The hops say she isn’t what you call overdressed when you go in there. She’s got the TV, and she calls for a lot of service. Ice, food, bottles, magazines. No outgoing phone calls, and nobody can remember mailing anything for her. The hops like to get that number, that ten-o-nine. Every time, she opens the door with the chain still on, takes a look, then closes it and takes the chain off. It’s an outside room, but she keeps the blinds nearly closed and the room lights on. What are you on her for?”
“We don’t know yet,” Argen said. “I figure the name is a phony. Now how about this. Suppose somebody calls the switchboard. Says have you got a Miss Ellen Mathews registered. What’s the room number? You give that out?”
“Sure.”
“Does the girl explain if she’s got, say, an Ellen Mathews and a Helen Matthews registered?”
“Maybe, maybe not. If she’s rushed, maybe she doesn’t notice.”
“Let’s go look her over.”
When the elevator stopped, the two men walked down to ten-o-nine, and knocked. She opened the door on the chain and looked out at them, frowning. She had hard blue eyes and a sulky mouth. She wore yellow pajamas, and she wasn’t much over five feet tall. The television set was on behind her.
“You Ellen Mathews?” Argen said.
“What’s it to you?”
“Police. Take the chain off. We’re coming in.”
Argen saw that she was a little high. Not drunk. Just high. “We get a warrant if you want it that way. But we come in sooner or later.”
“So what’s the charge?”
“Illegal possession of stolen property.”
He saw the slight widening of her eyes and knew he had scored. “You’re crazy as hell.”
Argen turned to Brock. “Go fix up the warrant. Willy. Fuller, you get the nippers in case we have to cut that chain. I’ll camp right here.”
The mouth grew more sullen. “So all right. Big men, aren’t you? A big deal.” She slammed the door, and Argen heard the rattle of the chain. When she opened it again it opened wide. She turned her back on them and padded over and turned off the television set. Argen left the door open.
Brock found it in the closet, on the high shelf, a heavy brown suitcase. He brought it out and put it on the bed. The girl pointedly ignored them. It wasn’t locked. It was half full of male clothing, and half full of money.
“You count it?” Argen asked.
“Eighty-six thousand.” she said, “but I’ve been using some. Some small change.” She turned, a fresh drink in her hand. Her face changed, grew flushed. She cursed with a range and fluency that Argen was forced to admire. The vituperation was directed at one Sammy Prine, and the general idea was that Sammy should be locked up forever, locked up until he rotted.
“So why should we lock up Sammy?” Argen said, grinning at her.
“How else could you know? He knew and I knew. That was all. Nobody else knew the name I was using here. He said stay until he showed. He said be careful. Stay in the room. Big deal. So you pick him up and he folds.”
“Who was in it with him?”
“Didn’t he tell you? Harry Brohman. The Tampa bank three weeks ago. If I told Sammy once I told him a hundred times this Brohman isn’t the kind of guy you can cross and stay healthy. But don’t worry, sugar, he says. Brohman is a punk, he says. We take it all. You take it with you. That’s safer. We meet here. Then we go to Canada and he’s got contacts and we go to Spain. Big deal. I shoulda took off with all of it, and believe me, I thought about it. But you can’t hit me very hard. I didn’t have a damn thing to do with the job. I wasn’t along on it, even. I stayed in Miami and I can prove it. You can’t make it heavy.”
“I don’t know about that,” Argen said. “Get some clothes on. Willy, phone a car over here and we’ll take her in. And while you’re on the phone, tell them to give the dope on Brohman and Prine to the F.B.I. They’ll want to put out a pickup, and they’ll want this money.”
The girl stared at him in consternation. “Don’t you have Sammy?”
“I never even heard of him, honey.”
“But how—”
“It’s too long a story.” He patted her shoulder paternally. “Now you trot in the bathroom and put some clothes on in there.”
It was weeks before the loose ends were tied up, and the commendation placed in Argen’s file. By then the Matthews girl was well enough to be taken back to Boston. Prine was found first — what was left of him — in a roadside swamp in South Carolina. He was identified by his prints. He had run from Brohman, but not fast enough. He had been tortured before being killed. Brohman was picked up as he came out of a movie house in Biloxi. Though armed, he was taken without a fuss. He was positively identified as one of the two men who had taken the Tampa bank. He refused to talk. Finally, however, he realized that he could not escape a life sentence as an habitual criminal. Then a promise that he would not be prosecuted for the murder of Prine convinced him he had nothing to gain by silence. And he was eager to get his New York contact in trouble. The man, a known criminal named Shalgren, had ruined the whole thing by picking the wrong girl. Brohman told how he had caught up with Prine, had extracted the information from him, had made telephone contact with Shalgren. Brohman hadn’t wanted to risk entering New York, where he was wanted on a local charge.