I swiped another pocketful of silverware.
A bridge game constituted the excitement of the evening and I began to think I had been telling Kit the truth in saying events were dull and dismal.
After turning in, I waited until well after midnight before my second foray into the office to phone Kit. She didn't sound sleepy this time. She had been waiting for the call.
"Get anything exciting?"
"Yes, Eddie. That Indianapolis address was a phony. There isn't any such street there."
The Indianapolis address had been that of Harvey Toler. I whistled softly.
Was Harvey Toler the man I wanted?
"Thanks a million, angel," I said. "Now I can go ahead."
"Wait, Eddie. There was something funny about one or two of the others.
Frank Betterman--his address was okay, a cheap rooming house, but he'd lived there. Used to be a reporter on the Springfield Argus. He got fired for drinking too much."
"But that makes sense," I said. "He's a dipso--"
Then I saw what she meant. Where would a fired newspaper reporter get the kind of dough to stay at a fancy sanitarium? Particularly a lush, who would hardly have saved his money while he was working.
"And Kendall, William Kendall," Kit said. "He used to work for a bank and left there under a cloud. There was a shortage, and he was suspected of embezzlement. But they couldn't prove anything and he was never arrested."
"Um," I said. "Maybe that's where he got the dough to stay here. And since he's got amnesia, maybe he forgot where it came from. What about my friend Garvey?"
"That one was okay. He's got a sister, married and with six kids, living at that address. The other patient, Perry Evans, we couldn't get much on."
"That was the Chicago address, wasn't it?"
"Yes, and it's a hotel. A little one, Joe Unger said. All we could find out was that Perry Evans had stayed there for three months up to a month ago. They didn't know anything about his business, or wouldn't tell."
Nuts, I thought. That didn't eliminate Evans, by any means. For all anyone knew, Paul Verne could have stayed three months in a Chicago hotel under that name. But the heck with it, Harvey Toler had given a nonexistent out-of-town address.
"Okay, honey," I said. "I'll keep him in mind as second choice. What'd you find out about Doc Stanley?"
"He came here only a little over a month ago, rented the property out there. It had been built ten years ago as a small, select girls' school.
"And failed three years ago," I said, "and has been vacant since. Yes, toots, that was all in the newspapers. Also that Stanley came here from Louisville, Kentucky. What I want to know is about his reputation."
"Good, as far as we can find out. Joe Unger called a Louisville detective agency and they made inquiries there. He practiced as a psychiatrist for ten years there, then got sick and gave up his practice a year ago. His reputation was good, but presumably he didn't want to start at the bottom again to build up a new practice when he recovered, and got the idea of starting a sanitar-ium instead."
"I suppose somebody told him he could get this place here for a song," I said. "So he came to Springfield. Okay, honey. Anything else?"
"No, Eddie. How soon will you be through there?"
"Not over a few days, I hope. I'll concentrate on my friend Toler with one eye and Perry Evans with the other, and I ought to know pretty soon. 'By now."
Death in the Dark
After I hung up the phone, I sat there in the dark thinking. For some reason, I can think better sitting in an office, even in the dark, than in bed.
The only trouble was that the more I thought, the less I knew. Harvey Toler, the exhibitionist, had given a false address when signing on here. That might mean he was Paul Verne--if Paul Verne was really here at all. But it might mean nothing at all.
There are plenty of reasons why people give false addresses. I had given one myself, and I wasn't Paul Verne. Maybe he was ashamed of being here and didn't want his friends to find out where he was. Maybe giving himself a false identity--if his name as well as the address was phony--was a facet of his exhibitionism. And wasn't Perry Evans' case even more suspicious, on second thought? Paul Verne wasn't a dope.
Would he give an address which a single phone call would prove to be false?
Wouldn't he be more likely to have established an identity somewhere?
Say, he had been hiding out at a little Chicago hotel. Coming here, he would use the identity he had used there, so if some-one--like me--got curious, he could be checked back that far and no farther.
And if Perry Evans were genuine, and had enough money to afford this sanitarium, why had he been staying at a place like that? And where had a broken-down newspaper hack got the money to stay here?
And Billy Kendall, ex-bank clerk. Had he or had he not been guilty of embezzlement? And if so, where did he fit into the picture?
Nuts, I thought.
Only Garvey's case had been completely on the up and up. And Garvey had interested me most of the bunch. It had been Garvey I had asked for a machine-gun.
And got one.
Again, nuts.
I went back upstairs. Maybe some sleep would do me good. I hadn't slept much last night and it was already two o'clock tonight.
The light was still out in the upstairs hallway. I groped my way along the wall to my door at the end of the corridor.
I opened it, part way. It hit against some yielding but solid obstacle. Six inches, perhaps, it opened. Then a few more as I shoved harder. There it stuck.
I had the pencil flashlight in my hand, although I hadn't been using it along the hallway. I reached inside the door and turned it on, aimed downward. I could barely get my head inside the door far enough to see what lay there.
It was a body, lying on its back. A man, in pajamas, with blood matted in his black hair. It looked like--
And then something hard and heavy swished through the air and grazed the top of my head. Just grazed it, luckily, for the blow was meant to kill.
Pain blinded me, but I didn't have to be able to see to jerk my head back out of that door. And my hand, still on the knob, pulled the door shut after me.
Whoever was in there could probably open it from the inside, as I had, but not for several minutes.
Then, as a shot roared out inside the room and a little black hole appeared in the panel of the door, I dropped flat. And, as four more shots came through the door, at different angles, I rolled to a corner of the hallway and hugged the floor.
None of them hit me.
Five shots was all that came through the door. That meant that the killer hadn't emptied his gun. A revolver holds six shots, and an automatic may hold more.
Then silence. I listened carefully but the man inside didn't seem to be working on the lock to let himself out.
I stood up cautiously, and used my handkerchief to wipe off blood that was running down my forehead and into my eyes.
There wasn't silence any more now; there was bedlam. From most of the rooms along that corridor came voices yelling questions as to what was happening, wanting to be let out. Several doors were being hammered by impatient fists.
I heard footsteps running along the corridor overhead on the third floor, which meant that attendants were coming. If I waited for them it would be too late to find out what I most wanted to know--which of the patients were still in their rooms and which were not.
I ran along that corridor, jerking doors open. In most cases, the occupant of the room was right behind the door. If he wasn't I stuck my head inside and played my flashlight on the bed. I didn't take time to answer questions or make explanations, and I finished the corridor by the time the tall attendant, in white uniform, and Garvey, pulling trousers up over a nightshirt, came pounding down the stairs.