“It’s — it’s not only that — that I’m afraid,” he tried to explain. “I am — but it’s — I’m not that afraid — but — but with Louise — and — it’s the shock and all. I—”
“I know,” I soothed him. “I know. And you haven’t slept for a couple of days. Who’s your doctor? I’m going to phone him.”
He protested feebly, but finally gave me his doctor’s name.
The telephone rang as I was going towards it. The call was for me, from Callahan.
“We’ve pegged the fingerprints,” he said triumphantly. “They’re Dick Moley’s. Know him?”
“Sure,” I said, “as well as you do.”
Moley was a gambler, gunman, and grifter-in-general with a police record as long as his arm.
Callahan was saying cheerfully: “That’s going to mean a fight when we find him, because you know how tough that — is. And he’ll laugh while he’s being tough.”
“I know,” I said.
I told Chappell what Callahan had told me. Rage came into his face and voice when he heard the name of the man accused of killing his wife.
“Ever hear of him?” I asked.
He shook his head and went on cursing Moley in a choked, husky voice.
I said: “Stop that. That’s no good. I know where to find Moley.”
His eyes opened wide. “Where?” he gasped.
“Want to go with me?”
“Do I?” he shouted. Weariness and sickness had dropped from him.
“Get your hat,” I said, “and we’ll go.”
He ran upstairs for his hat and down with it.
He had a lot of questions as we went out and got into his car. I answered most of them with: “Wait, you’ll see.”
But in the car he went suddenly limp and slid down in his seat.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I can’t,” he mumbled. “I’ve got to — help me into the house — the doctor.”
“Right,” I said, and practically carried him into the house.
I spread him on a sofa, had a maid bring him water, and called his doctor’s number. The doctor was not in.
When I asked him if there was any other particular doctor he wanted he said weakly: “No, I’m all right. Go after that — that man.”
“All right,” I said.
I went outside, got a taxicab, and sat in it.
Twenty minutes later a man went up Chappell’s front steps and rang the bell. The man was Dick Moley, alias Harrison M. Rockfield.
He took me by surprise. I had been expecting Chappell to come out, not anyone to go in. He had vanished indoors and the door was shut by the time I got there.
I rang the bell savagely.
A heavy pistol roared inside, twice.
I smashed the glass out of the door with my gun and put my left hand in, feeling for the latch.
The heavy pistol roared again and a bullet hurled splinters of glass into my cheek, but I found the latch and worked it.
I kicked the door back and fired once straight ahead at random. Something moved in the dark hallway then and without waiting to see what it was I fired again, and when something fell I fired at the sound.
A voice said: “Cut it out. That’s enough. I’ve lost my gun.”
It wasn’t Chappell’s voice. I was disappointed.
Near the foot of the stairs I found a light-switch and turned it on. Dick Moley was sitting on the floor at the other end of the hallway holding one leg.
“That damned fool maid got scared and locked this door,” he complained, “or I’d’ve made it out back.”
I went nearer and picked up his gun. “Get you anywhere but the leg?” I asked.
“No. I’d’ve been all right if I hadn’t dropped the gun when it upset me.”
“You’ve got a lot of ifs,” I said. “I’ll give you another one. You’ve got nothing to worry about but that bullet-hole if you didn’t kill Chappell.”
He laughed. “If he’s not dead he must feel funny with those two .44s in his head.”
“That was — damned dumb of you,” I growled.
He didn’t believe me. He said: “It was the best job I ever pulled.”
“Yeah? Well, suppose I told you that I was only waiting for another move of his to pinch him for killing his wife?”
He opened his eyes at that.
“Yeah,” I said, “and you have to walk in and mess things up. I hope to — they hang you for it.” I knelt down beside him and began to slit his pants-leg with my pocket-knife.
“What’d you do? Go in hiding after you found her dead in your rooms because you knew a guy with your record would be out of luck, and then lose your head when you saw in the extras this afternoon what kind of a job he’d put up on you?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “though I’m not sure I lost my head. I’ve got a hunch I came pretty near giving the rat what he deserved.”
“That’s a swell hunch,” I told him. “We were ready to grab him. The whole thing had looked phoney. Nobody had come for the money the first night, but it wasn’t there the next day, so he said. Well, we only had his word for it that he had actually put it there and hadn’t found it the next night. The next night, after he had been told the place was watched he left the money there, and then he wrote the note saying Death & Company knew he’d gone to the police. That wasn’t public news, either. And then her being killed before anybody knew she was kidnaped. And then tying it to you when it was too dizzy — no, you are dizzy, or you wouldn’t have pulled this one. Anyhow we had enough to figure he was wrong, and if you’d let him alone we’d have pulled him, put it in the papers, and waited for you to come forth and give us what we needed to clear you and swing him.” I was twisting my necktie around his leg above the bullet-hole. “But that’s too sensible for you. How long you been playing around with her?”
“A couple of months,” he said, “only I wasn’t playing. I meant it.”
“How’d he happen to catch her there alone?”
He shook his head. “He must’ve followed her there that afternoon when she was supposed to be going to the theater. Maybe he waited outside until he saw me go out. I had to go downtown, but I wasn’t gone an hour. She was already cold when I came back.” He frowned. “I don’t think she’d’ve answered the doorbell, though maybe — or maybe he’d had a duplicate made of the key she had.”
Some policemen came in: the frightened maid had had sense enough to use the telephone.
“Do you think he planned it that way from the beginning?” Moley asked.
I didn’t. I thought he had killed his wife in a jealous rage and later thought of the Death and Co. business.