Thinking about Noble’s story, Jake began to wonder whether it wasn’t too pat and plausible. Anyone knowing Noble would immediately believe it, of course. Noble was bom to be involved with a chorus girl on the night of a murder for which he would need an alibi. But if Noble was lying, he had been at least smart enough to type-cast himself in a preposterous, and hence believable, situation.
Jake grinned and picked up his phone. He asked the club operator to get him the Regis Hotel.
He talked to the hotel clerk very briefly. And when he put the phone slowly back into its cradle he was no longer smiling.
Bebe Passione had left for Miami ten days ago.
Chapter Eight
Jake got down to work the next morning at ten thirty and found Noble in his office exulting over the morning papers.
“Did you see these, Jake?” he cried happily. “They’re beautiful, simply beautiful.”
Jake hadn’t. He walked around behind Noble’s desk and glanced at the stories, which had been inspired by the press conference in Riordan’s suite the previous afternoon.
From the agency’s and Riordan’s standpoint, they were excellent. The dominant tone was that Riordan was being harried by officious government snoops. There was, in addition to the straight news coverage, a feature story on Riordan’s Chicago plants in the News, with production figures to indicate their importance to the war effort. And in a front page editorial entitled STOP THE WITCH HUNT, the Tribune ominously warned its readership that free enterprise and the American Dream were being threatened by these promiscuous and irresponsible investigations. The editorial made the point that the Hampstead Committee was not a specially privileged unit, and should not take unto itself the authoritarian powers of a police state. The Committee, the editorial concluded, under the direction of one Gregory Prior, had brought no charges against Mr. Riordan, but had, nevertheless, already damaged his reputation by implication and innuendo.
“Get that line about Gregory Prior,” Noble said, delightedly. “Jake, we’re off to a running start.”
“Did we make the wires on any of this stuff?” Jake asked.
“You’re damned right. AP and UP covered, and Time has already called this morning and asked for dope on Riordan. I got Niccolo busy on a handout.”
“Fine,” Jake said.
He picked up a fresh copy of the Tribune from Noble’s desk and took it to the bar, while Noble began to outline an idea for a picture story on Riordan’s family life, with the accent to be laid heavily on its domestic simplicity and young Brian’s war record.
Jake listened absently and went through the paper. The murder of Avery Meed was on the first page, the fact of his having been Riordan’s secretary giving it additional news value. May was on page four now, and there were no further developments in either case. The police were investigating several possibilities and were expecting a conclusive development within the next twenty-four hours. Jake wondered why they always said just that; and wondered what would happen if they announced instead that they had lost all interest in the case and were now engrossed with making ceramics.
Noble suddenly pounded his fist on the desk, and said, “There! What do you think of that?”
“Oh, great,” Jake said. “I’ll get someone on it right away.”
“Jake, you act like you’re tired or something.”
“I was taken unexpectedly drunk last night,” Jake said, and winced. He wondered if he were likely to develop into the sort of graceless idiot who was never at a loss for rakish comments about his hangovers.
Mixing a drink, he caught sight of himself in the mirror behind the bar. He was wearing a dark gray suit, with a neatly knotted blue silk tie. His graying hair was combed down smoothly and he was freshly shaved. But his face was pale and drawn, and his eyes were tired. He looked like a man of distinction who had gone hog-wild over the sponsor’s product.
Noble watched him in the mirror. “You’d better check into a steam bath this afternoon,” he said. “We’ve got to be at top form from now on, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Jake said. He sipped his drink and met Noble’s eyes in the mirror. “Where were you the night that May was killed, Gary?”
Noble remained motionless behind his desk, staring at Jake expressionlessly; but Jake saw his hand move and close nervously on the handle of a long letter opener.
“Why do you want to know?” he said finally.
Jake turned from the bar and shrugged. “Let’s don’t make small talk. I found out last night that Bebe Passione hadn’t been in town for ten days. She’s in Miami. You said you were with her the night before last when May was killed. I know damn well you weren’t in Miami, Gary. So where were you?”
“I went to see May that night,” Noble said, and suddenly he looked old and frightened. The color left his normally ruddy cheeks, and he ran both hands nervously through his rumpled white hair. He met Jake’s eyes anxiously. “I–I thought I could clear up that business about the diary. Jake, I need the Riordan account. Grant’s cancelled last week, but I didn’t tell anybody about it, not even you. You know I can’t talk about a lost account. It’s like talking about dying. Anyway, I thought if I could straighten things out with May it would put us in solidly with Riordan.”
Jake sat down tiredly in a deep leather chair and rested his head against the back. “Was she alive?” he asked.
“Yes, she was alive,” Noble said quickly. “I got there around two thirty, I guess. I told her what I wanted, but she wouldn’t go for it, Jake. She didn’t want money.”
“What did she want?” Jake asked.
Noble shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what she wanted, Jake. She seemed glad to see me, and we had a drink or two. But I couldn’t make any progress with her. She was just in one of those moods. She said she was expecting someone else at three and hustled me out.”
“Yes? That’s interesting. Who?”
“She didn’t say.” Noble scratched his head. “But it was odd. She told me about it, and then she laughed. It was a private joke, I gathered.”
“Okay. You said she was in ‘one of those moods.’ What do you mean?”
“I’ll be damned if I know exactly,” Noble said, frowning. “But it was just that she didn’t seem to be taking me or herself seriously. It was all an act we might have been doing in a charade game. There was a young ass from Chicago University there when I arrived. Maybe she was showing off for him. He had a crew cut and horn-rimmed glasses and was behaving as if he’d been on a steady diet of Oscar Wilde for years.”
“This was two thirty?”
“Yes, and May was wearing red silk Mandarin pajamas and there was incense burning on the mantle.” Noble shook his head. “It was all pretty disgusting.”
“That’s a fine middle-class attitude,” Jake said. “What you mean is that her refusal to be bribed by you was disgusting.”
“Don’t snap at me,” Noble said, peevishly. “I’m not up to it. Maybe ‘picturesque’ is what I meant. At any rate she chased this character from the University, and we got down to business. But we didn’t get down far enough. She just laughed at me, said she was touched by my concern for Riordan, but that she couldn’t let that stand before her artistic integrity. But,” and Noble suddenly pounded his fist on the desk in exasperation, “she was laughing at me all the time. She didn’t mean any of that crap about artistic integrity.”
“I know what you mean,” Jake said. “Where did you go when you left her?”
Noble wet his lips and got to his feet. “I just went out and got drunk,” he said. “I felt lousy, and one drink led to another. I heard the radio flash about May in the Croydon bar, so I called you, and then came over to the office. I–I realized that it would look bad if it came out that I’d been to May’s. So I cooked up the story about being with Bebe for you, and hoped you’d cover up for me by saying we’d been together all night talking business.”