Being originally a double house it had two front doors and two sets of front steps. One of the doors had a sign tacked over the grating that masked the peep window: Ring 1432.
I parked my car and went up right-angle steps, passed between two lines of pinks, went up more steps to the side with the sign. That should be the roomer’s side. I rang the bell. Nobody answered it, so I went across to the other door. Nobody answered that one either.
While I was waiting a gray Dodge coupe whished around the curve and a small neat girl in blue looked up at me for a second. I didn’t see who else was in the car. I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t know it was important.
I took out Kathy Home’s key and let myself into a closed living room that smelled of cedar oil. There was just enough furniture to get by, net curtains, a quiet shaft of sunlight under the drapes in front. There was a tiny breakfast room, a kitchen, a bedroom in the back that was obviously Kathy’s, a bathroom, another bedroom in front that seemed to be used as a sewing room. It was this room that had the door cut through to the other side of the house.
I unlocked it and stepped, as it were, through a mirror. Everything was backwards, except the furniture. The living room on that side had twin beds, didn’t have the look of being lived in.
I went towards the back of the house, past the second bathroom, knocked at the shut door that corresponded to Kathy’s bedroom.
No answer. I tried the knob and went in. The little man on the bed was probably Peeler Mardo. I noticed his feet first, because although he had on trousers and a shirt, his feet were bare and hung over the end of the bed. They were tied there by a rope around the ankles.
They had been burned raw on the soles. There was a smell of scorched flesh in spite of the open window. Also a smell of scorched wood. An electric iron on a desk was still connected. I went over and shut it off.
I went back to Kathy Home’s kitchen and found a pint of Brooklyn Scotch in the cooler. I used some of it and breathed deeply for a little while and looked out over the vacant lots. There was a narrow cement walk behind the house and green wooden steps down to the street.
I went back to Peeler Mardo’s room. The coat of a brown suit with a red pin stripe hung over a chair with the pockets turned out and what had been in them on the floor.
He was wearing the trousers of the suit, and their pockets were turned out also. Some keys and change and a handkerchief lay on the bed beside him, and a metal box like a woman’s compact, from which some glistening white powder had spilled. Cocaine.
He was a little man, not more than five feet four, with thin brown hair and large ears. His eyes had no particular color. They were just eyes, and very wide open and quite dead. His arms were pulled out from him and tied at the wrists by a rope that went under the bed.
I looked him over for bullet or knife wounds, didn’t find any. There wasn’t a mark on him except his feet. Shock or heart failure or a combination of the two must have done the trick. He was still warm. The gag in his mouth was both warm and wet.
I wiped off everything I had touched, looked out of Kathy’s front window for a while before I left the house.
It was three-thirty when I walked into the lobby of the Mansion House, over to the cigar counter in the corner. I leaned on the glass and asked for Camels.
Kathy Horne flicked the pack at me, dropped the change into my outside breast pocket, and gave me her customer’s smile.
«Well? You didn’t take long,» she said, and looked sidewise along her eyes at a drunk who was trying to light a cigar with the old-fashioned flint and steel lighter.
«It’s heavy,» I told her. «Get set.»
She turned away quickly and flipped a pack of paper matches along the glass to the drunk. He fumbled for them, dropped both matches and cigar, scooped them angrily off the floor and went off looking back over his shoulder, as if he expected a kick.
Kathy looked past my head, her eyes cool and empty.
«I’m set,» she whispered.
«You cut a full half,» I said. «Peeler’s out. He’s been bumped off — in his bed.»
Her eyes twitched. Two fingers curled on the glass near my elbow. A white line showed around her mouth. That was all.
«Listen,» I said. «Don’t say anything until I’m through. He died of shock. Somebody burned his feet with a cheap electric iron. Not yours, I looked. I’d say he died rather quickly and couldn’t have said much. The gag was still in his mouth. When I went out there, frankly, I thought it was all hooey. Now I’m not so sure. If he opened up, we’re through, and so is Sype, unless I can find him first. Those workers didn’t have any inhibitions at all. If he didn’t give up, there’s still time.»
Her head turned, her set eyes looked towards the revolving door at the lobby entrance. White patches glared in her cheeks.
«What do I do?» she breathed.
I poked at a box of wrapped cigars, dropped her key into it. Her long fingers got it out smoothly, hid it.
«When you get home you find him. You don’t know a thing. Leave the pearls out, leave me out. When they check his prints they’ll know he had a record and they’ll just figure it was something caught up with him.»
I broke my cigarettes open and lit one, watched her for a moment. She didn’t move an inch.
«Can you face it down?» I asked. «If you can’t, now’s the time to speak.»
«Of course.» Her eyebrows arched. «Do I look like a torturer?»
«You married a crook,» I said grimly.
She flushed, which was what I wanted. «He isn’t! He’s just a damn fool! Nobody thinks any the worse of me, not even the boys down at Headquarters.»
«All right. I like it that way. It’s not our murder, after all. And if we talk now, you can say goodbye to any share in any reward — even if one is ever paid.»
«Darn tootin’,» Kathy Home said pertly. «Oh, the poor little runt,» she almost sobbed.
I patted her arm, grinned as heartily as I could and left the Mansion House.
THREE
The Reliance Indemnity Company had offices in the Graas Building, three small rooms that looked like nothing at all. They were a big enough outfit to be as shabby as they liked.
The resident manager was named Lutin, a middle-aged baldheaded man with quiet eyes, dainty fingers that caressed a dappled cigar. He sat behind a large, well-dusted desk and stared peacefully at my chin.
«Marlowe, eh? I’ve heard of you.» He touched my card with a shiny little finger. «What’s on your mind?»
I rolled a cigarette around in my fingers and lowered my voice. «Remember the Leander pearls?»
His smile was slow, a little bored. «I’m not likely to forget them. They cost this company one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I was a cocky young adjuster then.»
I said: «I’ve got an idea. It may be all haywire. It very likely is. But I’d like to try it out. Is your twenty-five grand reward still good?»
He chuckled. «Twenty grand, Marlowe. We spent the difference ourselves. You’re wasting time.»
«It’s my time. Twenty it is then. How much cooperation can I get?»
«What kind of co-operation?»
«Can I have a letter identifying me to your other branches? In case I have to go out of the state. In case I need kind words from some local law.»
«Which way out of the state?»
I smiled at him. He tapped his cigar on the edge of a tray and smiled back. Neither of our smiles was honest.
«No letter,» he said. «New York wouldn’t stand for it. We have our own tie-up. But all the co-operation you can use, under the hat. And the twenty grand, if you click. Of course you won’t.»