pay her two thousand dollars if he wasn’t even there?
“He gave her the money to stall her and keep her quiet for the time being. He needed her quiet for a while because she had told him that his two partners were double-crossing him. She told him she heard him murdering Anstruther, and that you were with him.
“What she was really telling him was that his two partners were at Anstruther’s the night Anstruther died. That information was certainly worth two thousand dollars. Only neither of them realized that the two of you weren’t there. Just Walter.
“And now, see how the rest of it was so much easier for Walter than for anyone else.
“Jean Dahl came to him last night and told him the story. This he very carefully put on a wire recorder. He could see now how potentially dangerous she was. So he saw a way to get rid of her and to hang the suspicion, if there was any trouble, onto his partner Max.
“So he records her story. Then he feeds her a drink with an overdose of something in it. He figures she’ll go home and pass out and that will be the end. Only I happen to spot her. And I bring her up here. He follows us. He phones me from across the hall, doing his imitation of Max again. Then, when I leave the room to meet him he slugs me.
“I come to and spot Jean on the elevator. Then, when the lights go out, he follows us downstairs. He’d just as soon have shot me and hung it on Max, except that you bopped him and I got away.
“Only Jean Dahl didn’t get away.
“You probably only stunned him for a second. He took off after Jean and he got her in the hall by the door. He knew the lights were going on any second so he ducked put of sight. As soon as you and I had gone he dragged the body to the foot of the stairs and waited for someone to find her. The someone who found her was Max. And I wouldn’t give you odds for your friend Max’s life either. We’re going to find him with a bullet through him pretty soon. He’s too dangerous.”
Janis Whitney didn’t answer. She was sleeping.
I took the automatic out of my coat pocket, flipped off the safety catch and went out of the room, closing the door gently behind me.
Chapter Thirteen
I hesitated in front of Walter’s door. I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. I swung it open and let myself in. I closed the door behind me.
Holding the gun in front of me, I called out, “Walter! Hey, Walter! Are you in there?”
Then I heard the voice.
“Hopalong Cassidy,” he said. “With the firearms. Somebody could get hurt.”
I whirled around.
He was sitting in the chair I’d sat in earlier in the day. His face was a pasty gray color. His eyes were vicious and cold. His feet were propped up on the small coffee table, and in his hand he held a large, dangerous-looking revolver.
“Roy Rogers,” he said. “Drop the gun. Right there. On the floor. By my feet.”
Walter’s imitation of Max Shriber’s voice had been good. But it did not compare with the real thing.
Max Shriber’s revolver was pointed directly at my chest.
“Drop the gun,” he said.
I dropped it. It made no sound at all when it hit the thick carpet.
Suddenly, Max Shriber groaned. Then he slumped forward until his head was resting on his propped-up knees. He groaned again and his whole body heaved convulsively.
I watched him in fascinated horror. It did not even occur to me to reach down and pick up the gun I had dropped.
When he pulled his head up again, his face was grayer than it had been and it was soaked with sweat.
“You don’t look so good,” I said.
“Dr. Mayo,” he said, in his heavy rasping voice. “A brilliant diagnosis. Frankly, I think I have contracted a case of bullet wound. There’s so much of it going around this time of year.”
He pulled back his coat on the left side. His shirt, high on the shoulder, was bloodstained and plastered to his skin. There was a darker spot in the middle of the dark stain.
“Who shot you?” I said. “Who did it?”
“A good question,” Max Shriber said. “By coincidence this is the very question I am here to discuss with my good friend Walter.”
“Listen,” I said. “How come you’re not in the hospital?”
“I was,” he said. “But I left.”
“I gather they found you, all right,” I said. “The maid was screaming loud enough. She thought you were dead. So did I.”
“I kill hard,” Max Shriber said. “A couple inches one way or the other and I could be. You were in my apartment?”
“That’s right. I came up to see you. I wanted to tell you I don’t like being beaten up by your gangster chauffeur. I had a few other things I wanted to tell you too.”
Max Shriber groaned and then before either of us could speak again the telephone on Walter’s desk began to ring. It rang twice.
“Pick it up,” he said. “It’s only polite. You could take a message.”
I walked to the desk and picked up the receiver.
“Elsa Maxwell,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. “Party giver. Where are you?”
It was the voice. It was Max Shriber’s voice, perfectly reproduced.
“This isn’t Walter,” I said. “This is Dick Sherman.”
Across the room, Max Shriber’s lips formed the question: Who is it?
I moved my lips in silent reply: Max Shriber.
“Walter isn’t here,” I said. “I haven’t seen him.”
“He called me,” said the voice on the phone. “He said he had to see me. I told him to come over here to the Carlyle. That was an hour ago. He’s still not here.”
Max Shriber leaned painfully forward and pushed a button on Walter’s instrument panel.
The picture on the wall began to slide noiselessly on its ball bearings.
Then I saw her.
She looked very ugly sitting naked on the bed talking into the telephone. The cords on her neck stood out as she strained for the guttural, snarling sounds.
If you’d only seen her in musicals, you’d have no idea what an actress she was. You’d have to see her in a few of the scenes from “Lure of the City.”
Or you’d have to have seen her through the mirror talking into the telephone.
I’m still not sure how she made the sound.
She distorted her whole face to do it, I know that. She was a great actress. She even managed to look a little like Max Shriber as she imitated his voice.
“Wait a minute,” the voice on the phone said.
I had my eyes on her face. The cords in her neck stood out even farther on the word “minute.” And her lower jaw shot forward.
Max touched the right button and then we could hear her voice from the next room. I could hear it twice. Once on the phone and once on the loudspeaker. It had an eerie, echo-like effect.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “There’s someone at the door now. This must be Walter. Yeah, it is. I hear him. O.K., Mr. Sherman, I’ll see you around.”
In the next room Janis Whitney replaced the telephone receiver.
I leaned over and touched the button. The picture slid back into place.
“I don’t understand,” I said softly.
