5
John Hayden was not aware of time as he stood tense and immobile, breath held and his heart beginning to pound. The recorded playing of some dance band came softly from the radio in a syncopated beat, and with his feet still anchored by the shock of his discovery, he swiveled his head and glanced slowly about the room.
It was, he saw at once, the sort of unit known as an efficiency. Without actually tabulating its contents, he was aware that the furniture was constructed of some blond wood and in a style that was more modern than traditional. The two beds, which were placed at right angles along two walls, had slipcovers and pillows to make them look like couches until they were ready for use. Opposite the partly opened bathroom door was a cubicle with a built-in dresser and some coat hangers on a metal rod, and the end of the room directly ahead of him contained a shallow kitchenette. Here there were cabinets and cupboards, a sink, a counter, an enameled unit that contained a small icebox and an even smaller electric range on top. From where he stood he could see two glasses and a bottle of gin, nearly empty now, bottles of soda, the pulpy halves of lemons from which the juice had been squeezed.
His unconscious inspection completed, he brought his glance back to the man on the floor and now he moved reluctantly toward him. The torso had been turned so that it rested partly on one side, and as he leaned down he saw the reason for the wide, dark stain that glistened moistly on the white shirt.
Because Adler’s back was away from him and not far from the wall it lay partly in shadow but he could see the wooden knife handle protruding from the ribs just to the left of the spine. The shape of that handle suggested that it was a kitchen knife and he thought it had probably come from the unit at the end of the room.
He remembered the description that had been given him by Doris Lamar and knew it fitted the sharp-featured face that now looked slack and gray and lifeless. The sleek, black hair needed cutting. There was a dark smudge of beard along the angle of one jaw and the nose, in profile, had a broad and flattened look. The hand that he finally reached for seemed surprisingly warm and limp, and he tried to concentrate now as he sought a pulse beat that never came.
He straightened slowly then, traces of shock still mingling with the confusion in his mind. He could feel the dampness in his palms and his breath came shallowly as he tried to put his thoughts in order. It took a while to relate Adler’s death to his own problems, and his first reaction was one of relief as he understood that the man no longer posed a threat to his happiness. The thought shamed him even as it came to him, but it did not last long. For he remembered other details now, and that fleeting sense of relief gave way at once to a fear that was real, genuine, and greatly disturbing.
This fear did not spring from any thought that he would be suspected or charged with murder, and he wasted no time speculating on the reason for Sam Adler’s death. The fear he felt came from remembered details that Marion had told him earlier. Adler had shown her a photograph of her first husband; he had shown her a second photograph of fingerprints that he insisted belonged to Ted Corbin. Therefore these photographs had to be on the body or somewhere in this room.
Under other circumstances there would have been no hesitation on Hayden’s part. His life had been well ordered and he had an inbred respect for the law that came from a proper background. The thing to do was to call the police immediately and let them take it from there. This was what the sensible part of his mind told him, but the things that had happened to him in the past two or three hours had shaken him mentally, morally, and emotionally.
Nothing that had happened to him before had equipped him to handle such a situation, but he was certain that the first thing the police would do would be to search the room. When they found those photographs they would eventually uncover the very things that he had been trying to protect. By digging into the past they would eventually know why Sam Adler had come here and what he had been trying to do. All this added up to a fine motive for murder, and the thought of what could happen induced a sense of panic that could have distorted his thinking.
Still undecided and torn between two conflicting demands, he backed away and made a slow, deliberate tour of the room. He moved to the kitchenette and saw again the gin and the bottles and glasses and the squeezed lemons. He continued on to the lighted bathroom and pushed the door open with his elbow. As he stepped inside he was at once aware of the distinctive odor that lingered in the air. It was a perfumed smell, not strong but definite; it also had a quality that he did not think had come from the plastic bottle of after-shave lotion which stood beside the razor and toilet kit on the glass shelf above the bowl. This was a more perfumed smell, more feminine, and as he backed from the room he remembered again the woman he had thought he had seen in the darkness of the quadrangle.
The thought did not linger because by now he knew what had to be done. In the light of what happened later, there were times when he doubted the wisdom of his decision, but he did not stop to consider whether he was acting wisely; he was motivated by those inner fears and emotions that revolved about himself and Marion and the threat Sam Adler had made to their future together.
Adler had shown Marion two photographs. They must therefore be somewhere in the room now. Without them the police could find no link between Adler and the past. A likely place to keep them would be a man’s wallet, and while he shrank from any contact with the lifeless figure he started toward it, only to stop when he saw the sport coat draped over the back of a chair.
He tried the outside pockets first but found only a pack of cigarettes and paper matches and two sticks of gum. But the inner pockets revealed a coat-type wallet of worn pigskin and he quickly found the two glossy prints in the center fold. He saw that they were about three inches by four, one showing the prints of four fingers of a right hand, the other a well-focused snapshot of a bareheaded man in coveralls. He took a moment to study this one and realize that his wife’s impression had been correct. The background did indeed suggest a filling station and there was some insignia on the breast pocket of the coveralls the man wore.
When he had first begun to call on Marion there had been a cabinet photograph of her first husband in her apartment. This had disappeared after their engagement, but he was as convinced now as she had been that this was an unposed snapshot of Ted Corbin. That he seemed older-looking and leaner than the remembered man in the other photograph seemed to bear out Adler’s contention that the picture had been taken recently.
A quick inspection of the inner pocket of the wallet revealed no other pictures, but he did find a Social Security card and two driver’s licenses. One had been issued in New York State and gave a Flushing address. When he saw that this was an old license he turned to the other, which gave a Conti Street address in Mobile, Alabama. He copied this address in a small notebook before he replaced the wallet, and now a new and urgent thought came to him that was at once discouraging.
If there were photographic prints there had to be negatives. If these were found they would be equally damaging. With this thought in mind he began a quick but thorough search of the room. He made himself bend over the body and pat the hip pockets. He searched the suitcase and the small blue flight bag. He went through the pockets of the gray suit that hung in the alcove and did the same thing to the blue topcoat. The drawers in the chest and the built-in vanity held nothing to interest him, and when he finally ran out of places to look, he was forced to accept the fact that there were no negatives in the room.
But if there were prints there had to be negatives. So where were they?
He repeated the question aloud, a sense of frustration growing in him until he realized that time could be important and he was wasting it. He did not think he had been here long, and as he stepped to the door he told himself that no one could prove he had been here tonight. Or could they?
“How about fingerprints?” he said, half aloud.
What had he touched that might betray him? Not the bathroom door because he had opened that with his elbow. The drawer pulls? No, they were too small. The wallet was something else again and he removed it, rubbed it with his handkerchief, and replaced it gingerly. That left only the outer doorknob, and as he reached for it, handkerchief in hand, one more thought came to nag him.
Marion knew he was coming here but he felt certain he could trust her to say the right thing. But how about Roger Denham? Denham knew he was coming. If questioned, Denham would naturally say so. True, Denham could be cautioned not to give the facts as he knew them, but that might imply guilt and he did not want to be under that sort of obligation to the lawyer. Then, even as he considered the problem, a solution came to him.
The door had been unlocked when he came. All he had to do now was to release the safety catch, thereby locking it. Whoever discovered the body would have to admit that the door was locked from outside and this was exactly what he would tell the police if they ever questioned him.
“I’ll admit I came to see Adler,” he’d say to them. “I knocked and no one answered. I tried the door. It was locked. I figured he was out. There was no way of knowing when he’d be back, so I went home.”
Still with the handkerchief in his hand, he inched the door open, fixed the lock, and mentally crossed his fingers as he prepared to leave. If someone saw him now it would be too bad, but it was a chance he had to take, so he sucked in his breath and went out quickly, closing the door behind him.
The darkness seemed complete after the lighted room but he stepped close to the side of the car with the New York license plates and stood in a half-crouch until his eyes adjusted themselves. He could see nothing, hear nothing but the muted sounds of the radio. Because he did not dare walk the length of the quadrangle and expose himself to the lights of the office and the motel sign, he moved the other way, peering for an opening in the hedge at the rear and finding one, then circling around the far side of the building until he reached the elm, which cast its inky shadow over his car.
He coasted into his garage a few minutes later and came to a stop beside the station wagon. He turned out his headlights and stepped to the floor and then he had to grope in the darkness for the switch that activated the overhead bulb. In doing so he stumbled, and as he put out a hand to steady himself his fingers found the hood of the station wagon. It was then that he became aware of the warmth of the metal and, not quite believing his senses or understanding how this could be, he moved forward, his hand finding the ornamental grille in front of the radiator.
By then he was sure. There could be no mistaking the heat in the radiator and he stayed where he was as his mind raced on, disturbed and strangely frightened by his discovery and the knowledge that Marion had used the car, and recently.
But how recently? And for what purpose?
He tried to tell himself that this was not unusual, that there was some simple and innocent explanation. A trip to the drugstore for a prescription or some toiletry or a late newspaper. This, he knew, had happened before, but even as he acknowledged the possibility he remembered again the woman he had seen so briefly at the motel, the distinctive odor of perfume in the lighted bathroom. To arrest such unwanted imagery he glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that it was still only ten minutes after nine.
This, he told himself as he pulled down the overhead door and turned toward the breezeway, was all to the good, and as he crossed the area to the darkened kitchen he outlined the tentative timetable which began with his prompt arrival at Roger Denham’s place at eight o’clock.
He had been there no more than a half hour, if that. Another ten minutes, say eight-forty, had brought him to Jerry’s Tavern. Five minutes with his brandy would put him at Sam Adler’s door at eight-forty-five or a minute later. Since it was about a ten-minute drive from the tavern here, he must have been at the motel no more than twelve or fourteen minutes.
And he not only had the two pictures; he had not been seen. So what should he do about Marion? Ask her where she’d been or pretend he did not know she had been gone? This, he knew at once, would be best, and he was determined to stick with the decision as he entered the kitchen and locked the door behind him.