“Fine, then I can call openly and ask for you. You can pretend it’s a business call, if anyone’s around, and argue price on a Miehle vertical for your end of the conversation.”
“Okay. One other thing.” I told him about the two alleged nitro pills I’d appropriated from Ollie’s bottle. I told him that on my way in to town for dinner, I’d drop them off on his desk at the office and sometime tomorrow he could take them to the lab. Or maybe, if nitro had a distinctive taste, Doc Kruger could tell by touching one of them to his tongue.
IT WAS five o’clock when I hung up the phone. I decided that I’d earned a drink and helped myself to a short one at the bar. Then I went to my room, treated myself to a quick shower and a clean shirt for the evening.
I was just about to open the door to leave when it opened from the other side and Eve Bookman came home. She was pleasantly surprised to find me and I told her how I happened to have the house key and Ollie’s car, but said I’d been there only half an hour, just to clean up and change shirts for the evening.
She asked why, since it was five thirty already, I didn’t stay and drive her in in Ollie’s car. That way we wouldn’t be stuck, after dinner, with having both the Buick and the MG downtown with us and could all ride home together.
I told her it sounded like an excellent idea. Which it was, except for the fact that I wanted to get the pills to Uncle Am. But there was a way around that. I asked if she could give me a piece of paper, envelope and stamp. She went to her room to get them and after she’d gone back there to dress, I addressed the envelope to Uncle Am at the office, folded the paper around the pills and sealed them in the envelope. All I’d have to do was mail it, on our way in, at the Dearborn Post Office Station and it would get there in the morning delivery.
I made myself comfortable with a magazine to read and Eve surprised me by taking not too long to get ready. And she looked gorgeous, and I told her so, when she came back to the living room. It was only six fifteen and I didn’t have to speed to get us to the Pump Room by seven. Ollie wasn’t there, but he’d reserved us a table and left word with the maître d’ that something had come up and he’d be a bit late.
He was quite a bit late and we were finishing our third round of Martinis when he showed up, very apologetic about being detained. We decided we’d have one more so he could have one with us, and then ate a wonderful meal. As an out-of-town guest who was presuming on their hospitality already, I insisted on grabbing the check. A nice touch, since it would go on Ollie’s bill anyway.
We discussed going on to a night club, but Eve said that Ollie looked tired—which he did—and if we went clubbing, would want to drink too much. We could have a drink or two at home—if Ollie would promise to hold to two. He said he would.
Since Ollie admitted that he really was a little tired, I had no trouble talking him into letting me do the driving again. Eve seemed more genuinely friendly than hitherto. Maybe it was the Martinis before dinner or maybe she was getting to like me. But it was an at-a-distance type of friendliness; my radar told me that.
Back home, I offered to do the bartending, but Eve overruled me and made our drinks. We were drinking them and talking about nothing in particular when I saw Ollie suddenly put down his glass and bend forward slightly, putting his right hand under his left arm.
Then he straightened up and saw that we were both looking at him with concern. He said, “Nothing. Just a little twinge, not an attack. But maybe to be on the safe side, I’ll take one—”
He took a little gold pillbox out of his pocket and opened it.
“Good Lord,” he said, standing up. “Forgot I took my last one just before I got to the Pump Room. Just as well we didn’t go night-clubbing, after all. Well, it’s okay now. I’ll fill it.”
“Let me—” I said.
But he looked perfectly well now and waved me away. “I’m perfectly okay. Don’t worry.”
And he went into the hallway, walking confidently, and I heard the door of his room open and close so I knew he’d made it all right.
Eve started to make conversation by asking me questions about the girl in Seattle whom I’d talked about, and I was answering and enjoying it, when suddenly I realized Ollie had been gone at least five minutes and maybe ten. A lot longer than it would take to refill a pillbox. Of course he might have decided to go to the John or something while he was there, but just the same, I stood up quickly, excused myself without explaining, headed for his room.
The minute I opened the door, I saw him and thought he was dead. He was lying face down on the rug in front of the dresser and on the dresser there wasn’t any little bottle of pills and there weren’t any amyl nitrite ampoules, either.
I bent over him, but I didn’t waste time trying to find out whether he was dead or not. If he was, the ampoule I’d got from Doc Kruger wasn’t going to hurt him. And if he was alive, a fraction of a second might make the difference of whether it would save him or not. I didn’t feel for a heartbeat or look at his face. I got hold of a handful of hair and lifted his head a few inches off the floor, reached in under it with my hand and crushed the ampoule right under his nose.
Eve was standing in the doorway and I barked at her to phone for an ambulance, right away quick. She ran back toward the living room.
OLLIE DIDN’T die, although he certainly would have if I hadn’t had the bright idea of appropriating that ampoule from Doc and carrying it with me. But Ollie was in bad shape for a while, and Uncle Am and I didn’t get to see him until two days later, Sunday evening.
His face looked gray and drawn and he was having to lie very quiet. But he could talk, and they gave us fifteen minutes with him. And they’d told us he was definitely out of danger, as long as he behaved himself, but he’d still be in the hospital another week or maybe even two.
But bad as he looked, I didn’t pull any punches. “Ollie,” I said, “it didn’t work, your little frame-up. I didn’t go to the police and accuse Eve of trying to murder you. On the other hand, I’ve given you this break, so far. I didn’t go to them and tell them you tried to commit suicide in a way to frame her for murder. You must love Dorothy and Jerry awfully much to have planned that.”
“I—I do,” he said. “What—made you guess, Ed?”
“Your hands, for one thing,” I said. “They were dirtier than they’d have been if you’d just fallen. That and the fact that you were lying face down told me how you managed to bring on that attack at just that moment. You were doing push-ups—about as strenuous and concentrated exercise as a man can take. And just kept doing them till you passed out. It should have been fatal, all right.
“And you knew the pills and ampoules had been on your dresser that afternoon, and that Eve had been home since I’d seen them and could have taken them. Actually you took them yourself. You came out in a taxi—and we could probably find the taxi if we had to prove this—and got them yourself. You had to wait till you were sure Eve and I would be en route downtown, and that’s why you were so late getting to the Pump Room. Now Uncle Am’s got news for you—not that you deserve it.”
Uncle Am cleared his throat. “You’re not married, Ollie. You’re a free man because your marriage to Eve Packer wasn’t legal. She’d been married before and hadn’t got a divorce. Probably because she had no intention of marrying again until you popped the question to her, and then it was too late to get one.
“Her legal husband, who left her ten years ago, is a bartender named Littleton. He found her again somehow and when he learned she’d married you illegally, he started blackmailing her. She’s been paying him two hundred a month, half the pinmoney allowance you gave her, for three years. They worked out a way she could mail him checks and still have her money seemingly accounted for. The method doesn’t matter.”