“I’ve got the latest edition here,” she said.
“Take your time,” Brokay told her.
“You might,” she said smiling, “like to look over my shoulder.”
“Thanks,” Brokay told her, “if I may.” He moved so that he could see over her shoulder.
“I don’t know just what you’re interested in,” said the girl, “but I’m interested in this.” Her forefinger swept across the front page of the paper.
Brokay, following her forefinger, saw that she was indicating the account of the Ordway murder. “You interested in that?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”
“Just as a matter of news,” he told her. She laughed lightly. There was something almost of mockery in her laugh, and yet there was an undertone of nervousness; a certain throaty catch of the voice.
Brokay stared at her curiously, catching a part of her, profile, the curve of her cheek, the long sweep of her eyelashes. It was impossible for him to place her as a crook. He would, ordinarily, have unhesitatingly branded her as a young woman of beauty and refinement. To find her in this crook’s hide-out came as a distinct shock and surprise.
She evidently felt his eyes upon her, for she suddenly turned to face him. “I thought,” she said, “you were interested in the newspaper.” This time there could be no mistaking the mockery in her voice. “As a matter of casual news, of course,” she said.
Brokay devoted his attention to the newspaper account.
There was nothing in the paper which represented any startling developments in the case. For the most part, it merely elaborated what Brokay had already learned from the burglar.
As Brokay finished reading, the girl suddenly turned toward him and gave him a searching glance. “Do you think,” she said, “that the two men with the monkey had anything to do with it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Brokay said, “I try not to think about matters which don’t concern me. I have enough that does.”
“Well,” she said, “I think that those men are the guilty ones. They can say all they want to about some woman being mixed up in it. I think it was a man who killed her. You notice the newspaper account says that the window on the lower floor had been pried open with a jimmy. That doesn’t look very much as though a woman had done it. Does it?”
“That, of course, is an interesting fact,” Brokay said.
“There’s no reason on earth why the woman couldn’t have been killed, when she was undressed, by two men.”
“Would she have turned her back to two men?” asked Brokay.
“She could most certainly have turned her back to one of them,” said the young woman. “If the men had separated, she’d have had rather a difficult time facing in two directions at once.”
Brokay made a little gesture of dismissal. “Well,” he said, “it’s something that I can’t concern myself with. You said you were staying here?”
“Yes,” she said, “I have Room Twenty-one.”
Mindful of what the burglar had told him, Brokay made no effort to inquire her name, but for the life of him, could not keep from staring at her, and wondering how she could be interested in a life of crime, or why such a refined young woman could be, as the burglar had expressed it, “on the lam.”
“I wish you wouldn’t stare at me like that,” she said abruptly.
“I beg your pardon,” Brokay said, “I didn’t realize that I was staring, I was just... er... thinking.”
She met his gaze frankly. “Wondering just what brand of crime I was mixed up in, that necessitated my enforced stay in this house?” she asked.
He felt himself flush. “Not at all, not at all,” he said. “Please don’t think that I’m prying into something that’s none of my business.”
“It’s quite all right,” she said. “To be perfectly frank, I was looking at you and wondering the same thing about you.”
He caught his breath, started to make an indignant comment, then suddenly remembered that he was on the lam. “Oh well,” he said, “circumstances are frequently peculiar and account for many strange things.”
She nodded, placed a swiftly impulsive hand upon his arm. “Please forgive me,” she said. “I know the rules of the house. I know that it is quite all right to chat with anyone met here in Room Ten, but, I know that I mustn’t ask any questions. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“Certainly,” he said, “there’s nothing to forgive.” She flashed him a smile, turned and left the room. He heard the quick pound of her steps in the corridor and after a moment, the slamming of a door.
He sat down and studied the paper at length. There was nothing in it which gave him any particular clue, and, frowning thoughtfully, he refolded the paper, placed it on the table, and once more sought the companionship of Sam West, the burglar.
“What did you find out?” asked West when Brokay had seated himself and lit a cigarette.
“Nothing very much,” Brokay said, “just more of the same stuff you’ve given me.”
The monkey in the closet, hearing Brokay’s voice, made shrill chattering noises.
“He’s got to cut that out,” West said.
“He’s just glad that I’m back,” Brokay said. “I’ll open the door for a moment.” He opened the closet door. The monkey came out in a long, flying leap, jumped to his shoulder, and made crooning noise of endearment.
Brokay was stroking the monkey when suddenly the knob of the door turned and the door pushed open. “Ditch that monkey,” said Sam West, speaking out of one side of his mouth, while his hand slid swiftly to the holstered weapon which hung from his hip.
Brokay disengaged the monkey, literally flung it into the closet and stood with his back to the door. The door from the corridor swung open, and Thelma Grebe, the young woman who had assigned them their rooms, stood in the doorway. She saw the tense attitude of Sam West, saw the right hand which had dropped to the hip and suddenly caught her breath.
“Good heavens!” she said. “I came in without knocking, and letting you know who I was.”
Sam West sighed, an his hand came away from his revolver. “You’re going to get yourself drilled, doing that trick some day, Thelma,” he said.
“I know it,” she said. “I usually wait until the corridors are clear, and then I slip in, and sometimes I forget to knock, because I’m in a hurry.” She closed the door.
“What is it you want, Thelma?” asked Sam West.
“Frank Compton’s downstairs,” she said.
“The fence?” he asked.
“The fence,” she answered.
“What does he want?”
“He wants to see you about pulling a job.”
“How does he know I’m here?”
“I don’t know how he knows you’re here. It’s some hunch that he’s got I think. He says he’s simply got to see you; that he has a job you can make some money on.”
“You didn’t tell him I was here?” Sam West asked with sudden suspicion.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Of course, I didn’t tell him you were here.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that you weren’t here, that I didn’t have any idea you were coming in, but, that if you did, and wanted to get in touch with him, I’d have you give him a ring.”
Sam West frowned thoughtfully. “Compton’s all right,” he said. “He’s a good fence. He’s put me out on a couple of jobs that I’ve made money on. If he wants to see me, I have an idea it’s about something that would put some cash in my pocket, and I may need some money right now. I may have to get out of the country. Tell him it’s O.K.”
“Do you want to telephone him?”
“No, you telephone him and tell him to come on up, right away.”