20
John Hayden had hoped that he would be able to talk to Marion alone before Lieutenant Garvey took charge of the investigation, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He could see the uncertainty in the hazel eyes when she saw Malone, and he had no choice but to introduce the detective and tell her that Garvey was on his way over with Ted Corbin.
By the time he had taken care of their coats and Malone had settled himself on the divan, the doorbell rang and he went over to admit Roger Denham. The lawyer’s bespectacled gaze was bright and curious, but he shook hands warmly when he stepped inside.
“I’m certainly glad to see you,” he said. “When I got your note and found out what you intended to do I thought it was a foolish move, but Marion tells me you pulled it off. Where’s Corbin now?”
“At the motel. Lieutenant Garvey’s bringing him over—that is, if he hasn’t skipped.”
He introduced Malone and took Denham’s coat, and then he spoke of Doris Lamar. He kept his account of what had happened as brief as he could, seeing the surprise in Denham’s eyes and the look of shock and incredulity in his wife’s face. To give her some encouragement, he stopped beside her chair to take her hand.
“She’s still alive,” he said. “She has a chance.”
“But if—”
“Don’t think that way,” he cut in. “I’ve told the lieutenant what she told you and—”
“But I don’t understand. Who could have done it, John? Who?”
He had no chance to answer the question, and for this he was grateful because he was not ready for it. He came quickly to his feet as the doorbell rang again, and then Lieutenant Garvey and Ted Corbin were in the room and it was time for Garvey to take the floor.
Once again he declined Hayden’s offer to take his coat, but he opened it and sat down, putting his hat beside the chair.
“Detective Ball is at the hospital with the Lamar woman,” he said. “We may hear something, we may not. I understand one of you”—he glanced at Corbin and then back at Hayden—“is going to tell me why Corbin disappeared. You’re going to tell me what Adler knew about that disappearance. But first I’d like to ask you some questions, Mr. Hayden.”
He paused, the gray eyes steady, and something in that look told Hayden he wasn’t going to like the questions.
“You went to Mobile and Fairview to look for Corbin. That means you knew he was alive.”
“I thought he might be.”
“What made you think so?”
It was Hayden’s turn to hesitate, and when he understood that evasion and temporizing would get him nowhere he decided to do the best he could with the truth.
“Adler came to my wife and told her so.”
“He wanted money to stay quiet about it?”
“Yes.”
“She told you. You went to Mr. Denham for advice and then you went to The Shady Maple. Now what took you to Mobile? How did you know Adler might have come from there?”
“You told me later.”
Garvey’s brows lifted. “So I did. All right. Now assuming Corbin lived in that area, how did you expect to find him? No one knew him by that name. You had to have some kind of a lead, a photograph or something—”
Hayden was already reaching for the snapshots and the enlargement of the insignia on the coveralls Corbin had worn when the picture was taken. He offered them, saw Garvey’s eyes narrow as he inspected them.
“You took them from Adler’s wallet,” the lieutenant said. “You denied being there that night.”
“I had to deny it. If you had known what Adler wanted then, and there was always a chance those negatives would turn up—as a matter of fact they did—then you would have known I had both a motive for murder and the opportunity. You might have arrested me that first night.”
“We might have.... So how did you finally locate Corbin?”
Hayden told him in detail about his search the previous day, and when he finished Garvey cleared his throat.
“Now that we’ve got that part straight let’s let it go for now and get back to Adler and how he knew Corbin was alive.”
Hayden looked over at Corbin, who was sitting in his chair, supported by shoulders and buttocks, his long legs stretched out with ankles crossed.
“Do you want to tell it?”
Corbin lifted one hand, tipped it. A small smile twisted his tanned, good-looking face and his voice was unconcerned.
“Go ahead. You’re better with words than I am.”
Hayden reached for a straight-backed chair and sat down. He said what he had to say was going to take quite a while and to make any sense he would have to explain why Corbin had decided to disappear when the opportunity came to him.
He spoke as briefly as he could about the marriage that could no longer survive and the circumstances which had taken Corbin to Capitol City in the first place. Recalling all the things that the big man had told him, he re-created a verbal picture that included the money Corbin had won with his football bets, the trench coat, the offering of that coat to the man who had none, the timing of Corbin’s movements in the air terminal that made it possible for the stranger to board the plane in his place.
He did the best he could with Corbin’s thoughts and movements, once he heard the aircraft had crashed. He spoke of the bus trip from the airport to Capitol City and from there to Mobile. He told of Adler’s curiosity, his feeling that if he was patient and played his cards right he might someday be rewarded for what he knew.
“The newspaper accounts told him about Marion and the insurance money,” he said. “For two years he continued to check on her and Corbin. He knew she had married again; he knew about me. He also knew that Corbin had done pretty well and that he had a girl he expected to marry. He took a snapshot and got a photograph of Corbin’s fingerprints and then he was ready for the payoff.”
He stopped, aware that he had been talking a long time, that the back of his throat was dry. He glanced over at Roger Denham in his well-tailored, three-button suit. Corbin was still stretched out in his chair and Marion, sitting in the opposite corner of the divan from Garvey, had pulled her legs up under her, her knees bent. Neither Garvey nor Malone had interrupted him, and now he concentrated on arranging the facts as he knew them so he could bring the story up to date.
“Adler went to Corbin first,” he said. “He told him what he knew and promised to stay quiet for five thousand dollars. He had a gun with him but Corbin took it away and threw him out and threw the gun after him. He warned him if he opened his mouth again he would wind up in Mobile Bay with an anchor around his neck. I think Adler believed him. I think he’d had enough of Corbin, so he came North to see how much he could collect from us.”
He took a breath and said: “But Adler wouldn’t let well enough alone. He resented the treatment Corbin had given him and he was now fifteen hundred miles away. Being the kind of person he was, he couldn’t resist telephoning Corbin and telling him that he was going to collect anyway.... You found out about that phone call, didn’t you?” he said to Garvey.
Garvey considered the question and decided to answer it affirmatively.
“It came from a booth near the Log Cabin,” Hayden said. “It was made on the night Adler took Doris Lamar there, the night George Freeman tried to jump him. I think that call was to Corbin and it was a mistake because Corbin flew up here to stop him.”
“Now wait a minute.” Corbin pulled in his legs, put his hands on the chair arms, and lifted himself to a sitting position. He leaned forward slightly, brows bent and his jaw hard. “Just because Adler called me doesn’t mean I came.”
Hayden stood up and produced the baggage tag he had removed from the big man’s suitcase the night before when Corbin had gone to see his girl for a few minutes. He gave the tag to Garvey.
“Corbin had to stop Adler,” he said. “What was happening was his fault and he wasn’t just thinking about himself. He didn’t want Marion to get hurt for something he did if he could help it.”
Garvey inspected the tag, turned it over, and he needed no diagram. He looked at Corbin.
“This says you flew from New York to Mobile Wednesday morning. That means you were probably in New York Tuesday night.”
“I can take it a little farther than that,” Hayden said. “I can prove he was in town Tuesday night.” He paused, conscious of Corbin’s stare, but when there was no interruption he explained how he had checked the filling stations that afternoon and what he had learned from Lee Cramer.
“Cramer’s son-in-law remembers Corbin,” he said. “He can identify him if necessary. So I say Adler not only made the mistake of bragging about what he was going to do, he also told Corbin where he was staying. Corbin asked directions to The Shady Maple. He was looking for Adler and—”
“So what?” Corbin cut in harshly, his tanned face shiny with perspiration. “That doesn’t mean I killed him.”
“When he told me how he had threatened Adler in Fairview,” Hayden said to Garvey, “an expression he used bothered me. I suppose it’s only a matter of semantics and it certainly isn’t proof, but I remember the sentence. He said: ‘I should have killed him then.’” He paused to make sure they understood him. “Why should he say it that way? Why should he use the word then? Why not simply: ‘I should have killed him’?”
Garvey coughed and the sound of it got their attention. “You admit being here that night, Mr. Corbin?”
“I guess I have to,” Corbin said. “But that’s all I’ll admit. Sure I stopped at the filling station and asked where The Shady Maple was. But I didn’t register. I never stepped on the property. I guess it was around a quarter of nine when I parked and I was hungry. I wanted some time to think, so I went over to the tavern and had a couple of drinks and a sandwich. By the time I had finished the police cars were in the street. There were a few people out there watching and I asked somebody what had happened and they told me.”
He swallowed visibly and said, a note of desperation in his voice: “I hung around just long enough to find out who had been killed. I knew how it would look if I got caught there, so I got the hell out. I drove back to the airport and spent the night in a motel and took the nine-thirty plane out in the morning.”
Garvey looked at Hayden. “Did you actually talk with Lee Cramer’s son-in-law?”
“I talked with Lee,” Hayden said. “I waited while he telephoned the son-in-law and that’s what he said.”
Garvey stood up and began to belt his trench coat. He nodded at Malone and the plainclothes man was already reaching for his coat. He looked at Corbin, who had leaned forward in his chair, a shocked, incredulous look stamped on his face.
“You’d better come along with us, Mr. Corbin.”
“But I’m telling you the truth,” Corbin said.
“You’ll have a chance to prove it.”
For another second or two the big man remained where he was. He looked at Hayden and at Marion and then, as though it occurred to him that no one here could help him, he stood up, his jaw set.
“All right,” he said, “but I want a lawyer.” He looked at Denham. “How about you?”
Denham came to his feet. “This sort of thing is a little out of my line,” he said, “but I can recommend someone.” He took a notebook from his pocket and wrote a few lines with an automatic pencil. He passed the slip of paper to Corbin. “Both of these are good men,” he said. “If you have trouble reaching them, call me.”
Corbin pocketed the piece of paper and went over to get his coat. He put it on and made a final effort to convince Garvey.
“I admit Adler called me,” he said. “I came up here.”
“To stop him.”
“Well—yes. I suppose so.”
“You didn’t care how?”
“I didn’t think about that. I only knew I couldn’t let him foul up Marion’s life for something that was my fault. I didn’t stop to think how I was going to stop him, but I scared the hell out of him once and I figured to do it again.”
“All right, Mr. Corbin,” Garvey said quietly, “you’ll have your chance to prove that.”
The telephone rang in time to punctuate the sentence, and there was a moment of silence as they all exchanged glances at the unexpected sound. When Hayden stepped over to answer it a man’s voice asked for Lieutenant Garvey, and he turned to offer the telephone. They stood listening self-consciously as Garvey said:
“Yeah.... Wait a minute.” He put the telephone down beside the cradle and looked at Hayden. “Would there be an extension?”
“In the bedroom,” Hayden said, and led the way.
When he came back he saw that Marion had come to her feet and was standing close to Ted Corbin, not touching him but looking up at him, her smooth brow furrowed now with concern and the hazel eyes compassionate. They seemed not to be aware of anyone else in the room at the moment and he heard her say:
“I’m so sorry, Ted.”
“Forget it,” Corbin said, his voice gruff. “It’s my own damn fault.”
“But—you came up here to help me.”
“Why not? Just because we couldn’t cut it as man and wife doesn’t mean I don’t still like you. I’ve always liked you; you know that. And, what the hell, I’m the guy that had that brilliant idea two years ago.”
“I’m not blaming you for that.”
“I know you’re not.” He reached out and took her hand. “And whatever happens, don’t worry about the divorce thing. We can work something out in a hurry and—”
He stopped as the door opened and Lieutenant Garvey came back into the room. He let go of Marion’s hand and stepped aside. And Hayden, seeing the lieutenant’s frown, felt an odd tingle of excitement that had come from nowhere and was motivated by nothing more than the expression on Garvey’s face.
“That was Detective Ball from the hospital,” he said, taking time to look at Hayden and then at Marion. “The Lamar girl was conscious for a little while and Ball had a stenographer with him.”
“Is she going to be all right?” Marion asked quickly.
“They’re not sure about that part,” Garvey said, “but she did tell Ball a few things.... You’re a couple of lucky people,” he said and the frown went away. “She corroborated the story she told you. She says Adler was alive when you left, Mrs. Hayden, and she insists that he was dead”—he glanced at Hayden—“when she saw you step into that motel room.”
“Does—she know who tried to kill her?” Hayden asked.
“She says no.” Garvey looked at Corbin. “Ready, Mr. Corbin?... You don’t need to come to the door,” he added to Hayden. “We know the way out.”