I moved back from the body, noticing the direction in which it had fallen. Then I looked back toward the stairs.
I found a drop of blood, more blood, a trail of telltale spots which moved along the curving staircase to the upper corridor, down the corridor to an open door.
I listened for fully two minutes in front of this door before I ventured to enter the room.
My flashlight showed a bedroom. The bed had not been turned down, but there was an indentation on the counterpane where someone had flung himself at full length to rest — or perhaps get a cat nap while waiting for some particular event to happen. And there was blood on this counterpane.
I retraced my steps to the body sprawled in the hallway.
A glimpse of the eastern windows showed that the first faint wisps of light were trickling through the thick fog clouds, giving to the windows a faint hint of cold, gray visibility.
Ngat T’oy, waiting outside in the automobile, would be getting impatient.
I took from my pocket the money I had taken from Daphne Strate, fifteen hundred dollars. And I carefully counted out seven hundred and fifty dollars, folded it and slipped it into Whitney’s inside coat pocket.
Then I moved up the stairs once more on swiftly silent feet.
This time, I entered the room where Ruttling had received me on the occasion of my first visit. I remembered that there had been an expensive desk set in that room, a paper knife, scissors, paperweight, desk clock, ornamental blotter. With my gloved hands, I gently extracted the paper knife from the leather receptacle and once more went down the stairs.
I bent over the body. Carefully, I drew out the jade-handled dagger, and, as I drew it out, I inserted into the wound the paper knife I had taken from Ruttling’s desk.
I pushed the paper knife deeply and firmly into the wound; then I withdrew it, wiped it off rather hurriedly on the coat of the victim, then took it back upstairs and replaced it.
On my way out, I stopped in at the lavatory on the first floor to wash off Ngat T’oy’s dagger. I washed it with soap and water, and when I had finished there was no faintest stain upon either blade or handle.
I found Ngat T’oy’s purse where I thought it would be, on the table in the reception hallway. I put knife and purse under my coat and slipped out of the house the same way I had entered.
Cold dawn was now making the fog more milk-white than when I had entered. It was possible to see little swirling tendrils of fog in the strengthening daylight, ghastly streamers that drifted on past, caressing the countryside with damp fingers.
Ngat T’oy was waiting impatiently in the automobile.
“Just a minute,” I said, and raised the lid in the storage compartment in the back of the car. “I want to get a rag and wipe off that windshield,” I said. “Do you have anything in here that I could use?” I asked.
“Not there, silly,” she said. “It’s in the glove compartment.”
I hid her purse and dagger in the back of the car, pulled down the lid, snapped the handle into place, walked around to the front of the car and took the rag she gave me.
“You were in there a long time,” she said. “I thought you just wanted to talk with a man.”
“I had a hard time waking him up,” I said, polishing off the windshield.
“Did you learn anything?” she asked anxiously.
“I think so,” I said. “But I’ve got to go to the Monterey House Hotel to make sure. Are you feeling better?”
“I’m getting more of a grip on myself,” she said. “I think the daylight will make a difference — if only we could get out of this fog.”
I slid in behind the steering wheel, took off the emergency brake and let the car coast silently down the long incline.
“I think, Little Sun,” I told her, “we’ll be out of the fog very soon.”
Chapter Eighteen
I parked my car directly in front of the Monterey House Hotel.
“Will you be long?” Ngat T’oy wanted to know.
“Not long,” I said.
“Ed, tell me, can you find out anything — anything at all?”
“Not yet. I think this man I’m going to see will give me what I’m looking for,” I told her.
It was that period just before sunrise which is so beautiful out in the mountains, on rolling farmland or along a trout stream, and is so drab and sickly in a city.
A night clerk looked up from a book he was reading.
“You have a Herbert Rendon in the place?” I asked him.
“Yes, sir, room five hundred and six. Excuse me, sir, I hardly think he’s up yet,” he said.
“Not up yet!” I exclaimed. “He didn’t leave that six-o’clock call?”
“No, sir, his call was for seven.”
I grinned and said, “That’s one on Herb. I’ll bet that’s the first time he ever forgot an appointment in his life. Connect me up on a room phone. I’m going to have some fun with him. Why, he promised me he’d be all dressed and ready to come down to the lobby the minute I telephoned. Wait a minute. I’ll fix him.”
I walked over to the room phones, picked one up. The clerk connected me. I could hear the phone ringing, and then Rendon’s voice, not jovial this time, but thick with sleep.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Rendon,” I said, “this is the desk. I hated to disturb you, but the young lady says it’s most important; that it will be all right to ring you; that if I don’t do it, you’ll be very, very angry.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Rendon asked.
“A Miss Strate,” I said. “A Miss Daphne Strate. She seems to be very much upset over something and says you’ll want to see her.”
“Is she alone?”
“That’s right. And, if you’ll pardon me, she seems rather distraught.”
“Send her up,” Rendon said. “Send her right up.”
I took my face an inch or two from the telephone and said, “It’s all right, Miss Strate. You may go on up.”
I hung up the telephone, walked back to the desk and saw by the way the clerk was looking at me that he had been listening in on the conversation.
I slapped my hand down on the counter and burst into laughter. “This,” I said, “is one on Herb! That’s the way to get him up and dressed in a hurry. I was a little afraid I couldn’t get away with it because as soon as he heard the phone ring, he’d remember his appointment with me. He fell for it hook, line and sinker. This is going to be good,” I said, laughing and shaking my head.
I took the elevator up to the fifth floor, walked down to 506 and tapped very timidly on the panels of the door with the tips of my fingers.
I heard Rendon’s voice saying, “Just a minute, Miss Strate,” and then the bolt shot back and the door opened.
Rendon was just pushing the last of his shirttail down into his trousers. His face, which had been wreathed into a smile of pleasant expectancy, dropped about a foot.
Before he had recovered, I walked on into the room, over to the telephone, took pliers from my pocket and cut the telephone wire.
“Don’t,” I told him, “make the mistake of making any sudden moves.”
His eyes narrowed. “Isn’t this rather a new role for you, Jenkins? I thought you never carried a gun.”
I said, “Sit down over there on the foot of the bed. Keep your hands in sight. Don’t make any moves. Don’t try to reach under your pillow or into a suitcase.”
“What,” he asked, “do you want?”
I stood by the doorway. “I want to give you a break.”