“You got me wrong, brother. I’m a retired optometrist.”
“That why you have the .45 gun in there?” I pointed to the suitcase.
“Nothing to get cute about,” he said sourly. “It’s been in the family for years.” He looked down at the card again. “Private investigator, huh?” he said thoughtfully. “What kind of work do you do mostly?”
“Anything that’s reasonably honest,” I said.
He nodded. “Reasonably is a word you could stretch. So is honest.”
I gave him a shady leer. “You’re so right,” I agreed. “Let’s get together some quiet afternoon and stretch them.” I reached out and slipped the card from between his fingers and dropped it into my pocket. “Thanks for the time,” I said.
I went out and closed the door, then stood against it listening. I don’t know what I expected to hear. Whatever it was I didn’t hear it. I had a feeling he was standing exactly where I had left him and looking at the spot where I had made my exit. I made noise going along the hall and stood at the head of the stairs.
A car drove away from in front of the house. Somewhere a door closed. I went quietly back to Room 215 and used the passkey to enter. I closed and locked its door silently, and waited just inside.
5
Not more than two minutes passed before Mr. George W. Hicks was on his way. He came out so quietly that I wouldn’t have heard him if I hadn’t been listening for precisely that kind of movement. I heard the slight metallic sound of the doorknob turning. Then slow steps. Then very gently the door was closed. The steps moved off. The faint distant creak of the stairs. Then nothing. I waited for the sound of the front door. It didn’t come. I opened the door of 215 and moved along the hall to the stair head again. Below there was the careful sound of a door being tried. I looked down to see Hicks going into the manager’s apartment. The door closed behind him. I waited for the sound of voices. No voices.
I shrugged and went back to 215.
The room showed signs of occupancy. There was a small radio on a night table, an unmade bed with shoes under it, and an old bathrobe hung over the cracked, pull-down green shade to keep the glare out.
I looked at all this as if it meant something, then stepped back into the hall and relocked the door. Then I made another pilgrimage into Room 214. Its door was now unlocked. I searched the room with care and patience and found nothing that connected it in any way with Orrin P. Quest. I didn’t expect to. There was no reason why I should. But you always have to look.
I went downstairs, listened outside the manager’s door, heard nothing, went in and crossed to put the keys on the desk. Lester B. Clausen lay on his side on the couch with his face to the wall, dead to the world. I went through the desk, found an old account book that seemed to be concerned with rent taken in and expenses paid out and nothing else. I looked at the register again. It wasn’t up to date but the party on the couch seemed enough explanation for that. Orrin P. Quest had moved away. Somebody had taken over his room. Somebody else had the room registered to Hicks. The little man counting money in the kitchen went nicely with the neighborhood. The fact that he carried a gun and a knife was a social eccentricity that would cause no comment at all on Idaho Street.
I reached the small Bay City telephone book off the hook beside the desk. I didn’t think it would be much of a job to sift out the party that went by the name of “Doc” or “Vince” and the phone number one-three-five-seven-two. First of all I leafed back through the register. Something which I ought to have done first. The page with Orrin Quest’s registration had been torn out. A careful man, Mr. George W. Hicks. Very careful.
I closed the register, glanced over at Lester B. Clausen again, wrinkled my nose at the stale air and the sickly sweetish smell of gin and of something else, and started back to the entrance door. As I reached it, something for the first time penetrated my mind. A drunk like Clausen ought to be snoring very loudly. He ought to be snoring his head off with a nice assortment of checks and gurgles and snorts. He wasn’t making any sound at all. A brown army blanket was pulled up around his shoulders and the lower part of his head. He looked very comfortable, very calm. I stood over him and looked down. Something which was not an accidental fold held the army blanket away from the back of his neck. I moved it. A square yellow wooden handle was attached to the back of Lester B. Clausen’s neck. On the side of the yellow handle were printed the words “Compliments of the Crumser Hardware Company.” The position of the handle was just below the occipital bulge.
It was the handle of an ice pick. . . .
I did a nice quiet thirty-five getting away from the neighborhood. On the edge of the city, a frog’s jump from the line, I shut myself in an outdoor telephone booth and called the Police Department.
“Bay City Police. Moot talking,” a furry voice said.
I said: “Number 449 Idaho Street. In the apartment of the manager. His name’s Clausen.”
“Yeah?” The voice said. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a bit of a puzzle to me. But the man’s name is Lester B. Clausen. Got that?”
“What makes it important?” the furry voice said without suspicion.
“The coroner will want to know,” I said, and hung up.
6
I drove back to Hollywood and locked myself in the office with the Bay City telephone book. It took me a quarter-hour to find out that the party who went with the telephone number one-three-five-seven-two in Bay City was a Dr. Vincent Lagardie, who called himself a neurologist, had his home and offices on Wyoming Street, which according to my map was not quite in the best residential neighborhood and not quite out of it. I locked the Bay City telephone book up in my desk and went down to the corner drugstore for a sandwich and a cup of coffee and used a pay booth to call Dr. Vincent Lagardie. A woman answered and I had some trouble getting through to Dr. Lagardie himself. When I did his voice was impatient. He was very busy, in the middle of an examination he said. I never knew a doctor who wasn’t. Did he know Lester B. Clausen? He never heard of him. What was the purpose of my inquiry?
“Mr. Clausen tried to telephone you this morning,” I said. “He was too drunk to talk properly.”
“But I don’t know Mr. Clausen,” the doctor’s cool voice answered. He didn’t seem to be in quite such a hurry now.
“Well that’s all right then,” I said. “Just wanted to make sure. Somebody stuck an ice pick into the back of his neck.”
There was a quiet pause. Dr. Lagardie’s voice was now almost unctuously polite. “Has this been reported to the police?”
“Naturally,” I said. “But it shouldn’t bother you—unless of course it was your ice pick.”
He passed that one up. “And who is this speaking?” he inquired suavely.
“The name is Hicks,” I said. “George W. Hicks. I just moved out of there. I don’t want to get mixed up with that sort of thing. I just figured when Clausen tried to call you—this was before he was dead you understand—that you might be interested.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hicks,” Dr. Lagardie’s voice said, “but I don’t know Mr. Clausen. I have never heard of Mr. Clausen or had any contact with him whatsoever. And I have an excellent memory for names.”
“Well, that’s fine,” I said. “And you won’t meet him now. But somebody may want to know why he tried to telephone you—unless I forget to pass the information along.”
There was a dead pause. Dr. Lagardie said: “I can’t think of any comment to make on that.”
I said: “Neither can I. I may call you again. Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Lagardie. This isn’t any kind of a shake. I’m just a mixed-up little man who needs a friend. I kind of felt that a doctor—like a clergyman—”
“I’m at your entire disposal,” Dr. Lagardie said. “Please feel free to consult me.”