“A couple of days, if I like it, maybe a week.” He scratched the top of his head with one
finger. “Don’t see your baggage.”
“It’s at the station.”
“We like baggage, mister. We could collect it for you.”
I fished out two tens and dropped them on the desk.
“I’ll get it in the morning. Let’s have a room.”
He reached for a key from the rack behind him, shoved the register at me and a pen.
I wrote John Crosby on the line he indicated with a dirty finger. My slight hesitation didn’t
fool him.
“Any relation to Bing?” he asked with a small sneer.
“Why, yes,” I said. “I’m his sister. Where do I find the room?”
69
He gave me a cold, hostile look, stuck his thumb into a bell-push and turned his back on
me.
After a while a middle-aged bell-hop materialized and took the key. He was a rat-faced guy
with close-set eyes and a thin, hard mouth. His blue uniform and pill-box hat shone like a
nickel plate.
“Second floor,” he said. “No baggage?”
“No baggage,” I said.
I tramped up the stairs after him. Eventually we came to a door which he unlocked and
pushed open. He reached inside and turned on the light.
“The bathroom’s at the end of the corridor. Don’t use the shower. It don’t work.”
I went past him into a box of a room with a bed, a table, a chest of drawers and a strip of
worn carpet.
“Just like Buckingham Palace,” I said.
“A little more roomy, if anything.”
He put the key on the chest of drawers and looked me over expectantly. I gave him a dollar.
He nearly dropped in his tracks.
“Anything you want mister?” he said eagerly. “How about a little company? I have a list of
telephone numbers as long as my arm.”
“Dust,” I said.
“If you change your mind, call the desk and ask for me. My name’s Maddux.”
“Beat it!”
When he had gone I sat on the bed and took off my hat. I was so tired I could scarcely keep
my eyes open. The bed felt as if it had been stuffed with golf-balls, but that didn’t worry me.
I could have slept right then on a bed of nails.
I sat there, yarning and turning the hat around in my hand, my mind empty. As far back as I
could remember I had kept a ten-dollar bill behind the sweat-band of any hat I happened to
own. I’d stick it there and forget about it. Then when I was broke I had something to fall back
on. I wondered idly if the owner of this hat had the same idea. I turned down the sweat-band
and looked inside.
70
My fingers hooked out a thin ribbon of paper, and as I unfolded it I realized I wasn’t
surprised to find it there. It was almost as if I had known it would be there before I looked for
it.
I smoothed it out. It was a left-luggage receipt, and written in pencil across the top were the
words:
John Farrar,
Seaboard Air-Line Railway
Greater Miami.
Under the heading, Description of Articles, was written One suitcase.
I was fully awake now, the longing for sleep washed right out of my mind. Then this hat,
and obviously the clothes, did belong to me! I looked for the date on the receipt. There it was;
September 6th! The time the suitcase was handed in was also there: 6.5 p.m.
For some minutes I sat staring down at the threadbare carpet, I felt like a sceptic in a
haunted house who suddenly sees a horrifying apparition. There could be no doubt now. I
must have lost my memory for forty-five days, and during that time, if I was to believe Ricca,
I had murdered two men and a woman.
Ricca might be lying. If I were to remain sane I’d have to find out what had happened
during those forty-five days. It started with the smash, five miles outside Pelotta. I would go
to the scene of the accident and with any luck I might be able to trace my movements from
there. I had been thrown out of the Bentley and had injured my head. From that moment until
I had recovered consciousness in the hospital I had been going around with a blacked-out
mind.
I flicked the receipt with my fingernail. Maybe this suitcase contained the key to those
missing forty-five days. According to the receipt the suitcase belonged to me, and I must have
checked it in. I had no idea where the Seaboard Air-Line Railway was, but I had to get the
suitcase tonight. I wouldn’t sleep or rest until I had if.
I reached for the telephone.
“Send Maddux up here,” I said to the reception clerk. “I want a packet of cigarettes. Tell
him to hurry.”
As he began to grumble, I hung up.
A couple of minutes later Maddux came in, panting, as if he had run up the two flights of
71
stairs, his ratty face bright with expectation.
“Changed your mind?” he asked, closing the door and leaning against it. “What do you
fancy …?”
I held out my hand.
“Cigarettes?”
He gave me a packet.
“There’s a little blonde …”
“Forget it,” I said, lit a cigarette, then took out two ten-dollar bills. I rustled them between
my fingers.
“How would you like to earn these?”
His eyes bugged out and his mouth fell open.
“Try me,” he said.
I handed him the left-luggage receipt.
“Get that case and bring it back here.”
“What - now?”
“If you want to make twenty bucks.”
He looked at the receipt.
“I thought your name was Crosby,” he said, and gave me a quick, suspicious look.
I didn’t say anything. I folded the two bills and slid them into my pocket.
“I didn’t say anything,” he said hurriedly. “That wasn’t me talking.”
“Get that case and make it snappy.”
He went off as if fired from a gun.
While I waited I went over my meagre stock of information.
On the night of September 6th I had been driving a Buick convertible, registered in the
name of John Ricca, along a road seventy-five miles from Miami. With me was a girclass="underline"
72
whether it had been Della or not I couldn’t say, Ricca knew who she was, but Riskin didn’t.
There had been a smash. Apparently I had lost control of the car, for there was no other car
involved. The girl had been killed, and I had been found unconscious five minutes later by a
speed-cop. There was some talk about a gun. It had her fingerprints on it, and for some reason
or other Riskin seemed to think the smash had been deliberate, making it murder.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I had to find out who the girl was and why she
had a gun. I had to find out why I had lost control of the car.
Riskin had said I had an apartment on Franklin Boulevard, Lincoln Beach. I remembered
Della had said she and her husband were going to Lincoln Beach, and did I want to go with
them. It seemed in those forty-five missing days I had not only lived in Lincoln Beach, but I
had even set up a home there.
To judge by the suit I was wearing, and the fact I had owned a Buick, I must have got hold
of a lot of money. How had I done that in so short a time?
I switched my mind to the fat man, Ricca. He had given me a lot of obscure information.
According to him I was engaged to a girl called Ginny. Where had I met her and where was
she now?
I recalled what he had said. You’re the guy who killed Wertham and Reisner. Who were
they? Where have you hidden the money? he had asked. What money? You can walk out of
here and do what you damn well like. Why should I care? She was the one who cared. Who
was she? Why did she care?
I stretched out on the bed and smoked, staring up at the ceiling. There seemed no end to the
questions, but how was I to find the answers? I realized I wasn’t going to get far unless I had