Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene (21 page)

“Congratulations, Hildy old girl,” the inspector said. “It’s pretty plain that you’ve got Kelso as snowed as you used to have me. It must be some kind of witch’s spell.”

Miss Withers sniffed audibly. “He picks my brains, Oscar, just as you did. Let’s go inside and catch up with each other. If you will try to conduct yourself properly, I’m prepared to invite you up to my room at the risk of my reputation.”

“At least,” said Inspector Piper with the nostalgic sadness of advanced years, “you are not risking anything else.”

A
T LUPO’S IN NORTH
Beach, the new Aloysius Fister, heated from within by simmering natural juices and a pepperoni pizza the size of a large plate, leaned across the table toward Lenore Gregory. Their hands had somehow crawled across the distance between them to meet, quite by accident, midway. “Lenny,” said Al, “do you think you could learn to love a UCLA drop-out?”

“It’s not for the pot,” said Lenore irrelevantly, not to say evasively, “to call the kettle black.”

“Of course, a drop-out can always drop back in.”

“That’s true, isn’t it? Luckily for both of us.”

“I don’t suppose you would consider marrying me?”

“Do you have enough money left to pay for a license?”

“I could probably borrow it from Miss Withers.”

“I doubt it. Miss Withers doesn’t strike me as the type who would contribute to the delinquency of minors. She already has a dim view of me, and I suspect that she doesn’t see you much clearer.”

“Are you a minor?”

“No. Just barely not. But Miss Withers probably judges me on the basis of what she considers my
mental
age.”

“Oh, Miss Withers isn’t too bad. In fact, she’s a pretty shrewd old chick.”

“I know. I was only joking. She’s been kind and generous.”

“Maybe you’d be willing to pay for the license and I could pay you back later.”

“Not I.”

“Why not? Are you rejecting me?”

“I’m taking you under advisement. Meanwhile, you may be able to save enough to pay for the license yourself. If, that is, I’m still available. Please bear in mind that I’m a prime candidate for Alcatraz or some place.”

“Don’t be ignorant. Alcatraz was a Federal coop. It’s closed now.”

“Well, Alcatraz, the gas chamber or wherever, Captain Kelso seems to think I’m a candidate.”

“Under all that skin,” said Al darkly, “Captain Kelso’s head is solid bone.”

They sat silently for a moment under the cold shadow of circumstances. The threat evoked by their words was suddenly very real. A shiver passed over Lenore’s body. Al could feel the tremor in her hands.

“I’ll be so glad when it’s all over,” Lenore said.

“What we ought to do,” said Al, “is
do
something.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know. Anything that would help.”

“Can’t you think of anything?”

“Give me time. I’m trying. I keep remembering the cat I saw slipping off the yacht the night of the murder. Right after Miss Withers went aboard. He must have been there for
something
. And I keep wondering were he went when I followed him upstairs to those pads day before yesterday. It’s funny how he just wasn’t there. He could have gone out the bathroom window and down the fire escape, but somehow I doubt it.”

“Maybe he was there all the time, and you just didn’t see him.”

“Well, one room was empty. At least I was told so. And none of the three men who answered the other doors looked anything like the one I was tailing.”

“Could he have been in a room with one of the others?”

“He could have been, I guess. It’s either that or out the window, because there wasn’t any place to hide. I’ve got a notion to go back and try again. We’re right here in North Beach, anyhow, so it wouldn’t take long.”

“What would you do if you found him?”

“I’d call Captain Kelso or someone to come pick him up. After all, the cops are looking for him.”

“Would you promise not to do anything foolish, like trying to make a silly citizen’s arrest or something like that?”

“Are you kidding? Do I look like the kind of hero who goes around annoying possible murderers?”

“Do you swear that you’ll behave like a sensible coward in all ways?”

“Gladly.”

“In that case, let’s go.”

“Let’s?”

“Certainly, let’s. After all, I’m the one with most at stake. Do you think I intend to let you go off and be cowardly all by yourself? You needn’t argue with me about it, for it will do you no good whatever.”

Al could see that it wouldn’t, so he didn’t. Besides, truth to tell, the prospect of separating from Lenore any sooner than absolutely necessary was not a happy one. They left Lupo’s and mounted the Hog, and were soon dismounting in a dark street near the building with the four upstairs pads. They went the short remaining distance afoot, holding hands for comfort if nothing else. Al tried the street door opening onto the narrow staircase, and found it unlocked. Together they crept up the stairs, a long and tortuous mile or more, and into the narrow hall lighted only by a dim bulb at the landing.

“Wait a minute,” Al whispered, impelled unconsciously to this show of stealth by the simple knowledge that they were where they probably had no business being.

“What’s the matter?” Lenore whispered back.

“Nothing’s the matter. Look.” Al gestured down the dark hall, growing darker as it extended farther from the dim light at the landing, and Lenore, clutching his near hand, obeyed.

“Look at what? I don’t see anything.”

“Look at the floor under the doors. Do you see any cracks of light from inside the rooms?”

“There’s one from the bathroom at the far end. And one from the room just to the right at the rear. It’s very dim, and I probably couldn’t see it at all if the hall wasn’t so dark down there.”

“Right. That means only the one room is occupied.”

“How clever of you to think of that.”

“Oh, well, it’s nothing. Just a little trick we private-eyes pick up with experience.”

“On the other hand, it may be a sign that the occupants of the other rooms have merely turned out their lights and gone to bed early.”

“Don’t spoil things. I like it better when you’re properly admiring.”

“Or it might mean that the occupant of that particular room merely went out and left his light burning behind him.”

“Damn it, are you trying to destroy my self-confidence? Come on.”

They moved down the hall. The boards beneath their feet shrieked with what was surely animated vindictiveness. They stopped before the door. Simultaneously, they were suddenly aware of the utter, unnatural silence of the old building. Al took a deep breath, which whistled softly into his lungs, and rapped sharply on the door. It moved. With a brief creak of hinges, it swung an inch or two into the room. Al’s pent breath was released in a long sigh.

“You were right,” he said. “He’s not only gone out and left his light burning behind him, but he’s left his door unlatched besides.”

“Well, that’s that,” said Lenore. “We may as well leave.”

“Wait a minute. I’m being tempted.”

“What?”

“It’s a character fault. I never come across an unlocked door without feeling an irresistible urge to look behind it.”

“Wouldn’t that be illegal entry or something?”

“Who’s going to enter? I just want to look.”

“What would be gained by it?”

“Are you trying to be reasonable with an irresistible urge?”

“Oh, go ahead. Get it over with. Just a quick peek, though. That’s all.”

Al placed fingertips against the door and pushed gently, slowly revealing the room beyond. He stepped across the threshold and stopped. It was a shabby, impoverished little room, furnished with odds and ends collected from here and there. On the floor a faded rug with the pile worn completely off where traffic had been heaviest. A metal bed with blue paint chipped off in large, ugly patches. A sagging overstuffed chair with dirty brown velour rubbed thin and shiny on arms and seat. Beside the bed, a rickety table painted blue to match the bed, chipped like the bed. On the table, a small bedside lamp from which came the weak light that had seeped under the door. On the floor, on his back in a puddle of blood between bed and door, the body of a stocky man, about thirty years old, with pale blond hair.

Al, standing frozen, recognized the man who had opened the door to him two days ago. After several terrible seconds, he whirled around to face Lenore, seeking to block her view with his body. Too late. She was already staring at the body on the floor. On her face was an expression of almost ludicrous incredulity. Slowly the expression was washed away by a greenish pallor of sickly horror. Her voice was a ragged whisper in her constricted throat.

“Bud!” she whispered. “It’s Bud Hoffman!”

At no cost to her pristine reputation, a fact which would have secretly disappointed her if she had seriously thought about it, Miss Withers had just brought Inspector Piper via recapitulation to the dark and foggy dock in the bay when the telephone began to ring. The sound somehow possessed an urgency that shot Miss Withers from her chair in a second and had her speaking into the mouthpiece in two. After speaking, she listened. After listening, she spoke. “Where are you?” she said.

She listened again and spoke again. “Stay where you are,” she said. “We’ll try to get in touch with Captain Kelso and be there immediately.”

She hung up, took a deep breath and turned to Inspector Piper. “Those crazy kids,” she said.

Inspector Piper had watched and listened with a growing sense of foreboding and despair. Now he spoke with resignation, secure in the knowledge that what had been bad enough was suddenly worse. “What kids?” he said.

“Lenore and Al Fister. All they started to do was have dinner together, but it seems that they have somehow, in the process, stumbled across a corpse. That was Al on the phone. He was talking from a sidewalk booth in North Beach. Don’t just sit there, Oscar. Use the phone and see if Captain Kelso happens to be at headquarters at this hour. If he is, ask him to pick us up here. Meanwhile, I’ll put on a hat.”

Luckily, having nothing else to lure him home but an empty bed, Captain Kelso was at headquarters. In a remarkably short while, his siren dying to a whimper, he was pulling up in front of the Canterbury, where Miss Withers and Inspector Piper, despite his swift arrival, had been waiting for some minutes. Kelso was in the back seat, behind a driver. Miss Withers piled in beside him, Inspector Piper following, and they were off again with the siren coming to raucous life. Miss Withers passed precise directions to Captain Kelso, who relayed them to his driver, who followed them precisely to the North Beach building where Al and Lenore were waiting as instructed. They were huddled together on the sidewalk at the foot of the dark, narrow stairs leading to the narrow hall and the shabby little room where death had been before them.

No one uttered a word. Captain Kelso was out of the car and pounding up the stairs before the siren’s whimper had faded away, Inspector Piper and Miss Withers right behind, Al and Lenore trailing. When Miss Withers entered the murder room, Captain Kelso was already on one knee beside the body.

Miss Withers was also looking at the dead man’s face with a sense of deflation. She had expected a familiar face, one of the amateur Argonauts from the
Karma,
a clear and indisputable connection between the murder there and the one here, and she was totally unprepared for a coincidence. She was about to speak when another voice intruded.

“It’s Bud. It’s Bud Hoffman.”

Miss Withers and Inspector Piper turned in unison. Captain Kelso rose from his knee and turned slowly, with a kind of rigid restraint, just after them. Lenore stood pressed against the wall beside the door, as if to keep as much distance as possible between her and the body, now partially screened by Kelso’s upright bulk. Her face was composed, held together by the inner discipline that Miss Withers had noted with satisfaction aboard the
Karma
, and only in her dark eyes could one see the depth of her shock. Al, apparently reading a threat into the concerted attention, suddenly focused on Lenore, edged closer to her along the wall and fumbled protectively for her hand.

“Who the hell,” said Captain Kelso with dreadful mildness, “is Bud Hoffman?”

“He was this man I knew back East. In New York. We worked together for CAP. The Committee of Artists for Peace. I told Miss Withers about him.” Lenore’s voice was quiet, betraying her wonder by only an odd lilting quality. “I wrote to him and told him where I’d gone and what I planned to do, but the letter was returned unopened. Another man at CAP who told me about Captain Westering’s voyage in the first place must have guessed where I’d gone, and he probably told Bud Hoffman afterward. That must be the way it was. How else could Bud have followed me?”

“Why would he follow you at all?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine.”

“You didn’t know he was here? You haven’t seen him?”

“Not until Al and I found him here tonight.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that he’d follow you across a continent and then not contact you?”

“Yes. It’s queer. I can’t understand it.”

“What the devil were you and Al doing in this place, anyhow? What brought you here?”

The question was directed to Lenore, but it was Al who answered it. He picked it up with vague truculence, as if it were a club that he intended to use, if necessary, in defense of true love.

“This is the building I tailed the hippie type to. You remember. The one I saw slipping off the yacht the night Captain Westering was murdered. I saw him again the next day and tailed him here. Only, when I came in after him and tried to find him, he wasn’t here at all.”

Captain Kelso shifted his attention to Al with a slightly pained expression, mildly surprised, as if he were a Great Dane who had been attacked by a Chihuahua. “So far as I can see,” he said, “he still isn’t. Whatever this fellow was, this Bud Hoffman, he wasn’t a hippie type by a long shot.”

Miss Withers, perversely, seemed to have lost all interest in the proceedings at that precise point when they became most revealing. Immediately after Lenore suddenly identified the body on the floor, which lay grotesquely in the puddle of blood that had flowed from a knife wound in his back, she had turned away and begun to prowl the room with apparent aimlessness, poking here and snooping there. No one paid any attention to her except Inspector Piper, who knew her from long experience. He was watching her closely when she opened a narrow closet door and reached up, after a moment, to explore a shelf above her head. When she turned around, her hands were behind her back.