In the doorway, with Vic already in the corridor, Johnny stopped and turned for a final searing look at the bed. Repressed emotion rioted within him, but he held it down. Savagely he closed the door from the outside and propelled Vic down the hall. Vic moved like an automaton, with Johnny's hand at his elbow.
They moved like a team off the elevator into the lobby, and Paul looked up from the registration desk. “You found him. I was beginning-” Paul broke off when he saw Johnny's face. His glance slid off to Vic, hesitated, and returned to Johnny.
“Got a bad one, Paul,” Johnny told him. He glanced around the deserted lobby. “Get Sally up here. We got work to do.”
Paul silently slithered down the narrow passageway behind the marbled counter and was back almost immediately with Sally. She looked from Johnny to Vic, and her thin features turned anxious.
“All right,” Johnny said abruptly. He tried to sort out his thoughts. “Listen close; I only got time to say this once. We have a dead woman up in 629. Her name is Ellen Saxon. She used to be-”
“Oh, Johnny, no!” Sally's shocked exclamation halted his staccato recital. “Ellen? Dead?”
“Murdered.” The word seemed to reverberate through the stillness of the lobby. “She used to be my wife,” he explained to Paul. No need to explain to Sally. Sally was the one person in the world who knew how Johnny Killain had felt about Ellen Saxon. “I put her in the room about an hour ago, unregistered. Vic found her there about fifteen minutes ago. Approximately.”
Sally's hand was at her throat. “Oh, Johnny-”
He continued harshly. “We're going to cut our losses a little before we call the police. We'll register her in, now. Gimme a blank, Paul.”
He took the registration card and handed it to Sally. “Need a woman's handwriting. Put down 'Ellen Saxon'.”
She wrote swiftly, and looked up at him. “Address?”
Johnny grunted. Address? That was a bad one. He didn't know. Where “Four Twelve Darby Court.” Johnny's eyes swiveled to Vic, who had said it. You couldn't tell from looking at that sodden, wrung-out face that Vic had said anything at all, Johnny reflected. Vic looked back at him, but it was a question if he saw him.
“Put it down,” Johnny told Sally. “I don't know if it's right or not. I don't know how he knows, if it is. I don't know why he went up there. There's too damn much I don't know. Put it down. Paul?”
“Yes, Johnny?”
“Get me the logbook. And your screwdriver.” He picked up the little screwdriver Paul laid down on the counter before he moved out from behind it and reached for the cord on the electric time clock. He pulled the plug, unfastened the two screws that held the metal cover in place on the clock, and slid it off. He turned to Paul at his elbow with the chronological listing of roomings and room service in the logbook and opened it to the current page. He almost smiled. “First break we've had tonight. Only half a dozen entries on this page, and they're all on this shift. Paul, you get this page out of here completely, and be careful no one can tell a page has been removed. On the new page write back in again the entries that were in your handwriting, leaving spaces for me to do the same. Leave me one extra space at the right place for me to enter Ellen Saxon as roomed at two-forty-five a.m. Got it?”
“Got it.” Paul's tone was brisk; he was already slipping his knife from his pocket.
Johnny turned back to the time clock. With the speed born of practice he jiggered the dial with his screwdriver and set it back for a 2:38 a.m. punch, plugged the clock back in and punched the back of the card Sally had filled out. He handed it to her. “Fix up the room carbons for this rack and yours, huh?” He could hear her at the typewriter as he unplugged the time clock again, reset it correctly after a glance at his watch and tested it with a blank card. He nodded, tore up the card, slid the metal cover back on and screwed it down tightly. On a bet one time he had done the whole thing in four minutes.
Paul pushed the logbook over to him, and Johnny reached for his pen. He looked across the counter at Sally. “All set? Call the police, and put Paul through to them. Paul, you say I just called you from upstairs.”
Sally's features looked pinched. “What are you going to tell them?”
Johnny shrugged. “The truth, except this little corner we just cut here. I'd rather tell them I found her, but look at Vic. How long d'you think it would stand up once they started to talk to him?” He could see them looking at Vic, then quickly away. “The hell of it is they're a cinch to take him in.” He picked up his pen again and started to write, then paused as he looked up. “Paul, after you talk to the police call in a couple of the boys that live closest. Get 'em in here fast. We're gonna have the law kneelin' on our chests the balance of this shift, and we'll need a little extra help till the day crowd comes on.”
Sally moved down to the switchboard, and Paul again circled behind the counter and picked up his phone. Vic stood, motionless, and stared off into space. Johnny made the last entry in the logbook, closed it and returned it to the bell captain's desk. He ran back over the routine in his mind-that should do it. Ellen Saxon could now properly be accounted for so far as the hotel and the police were concerned, and he would not be held up by tedious executive office and police inquiries about a registry irregularity in his own effort to find the murderer of Ellen Saxon.
He drew a deep breath, and his hands clenched. He felt as though he had been running down a long, dark street. He looked down at his hands, and with an awkward movement forcibly relaxed their knotted rigidity. He turned away from the desk.
Paul was hanging up his phone as Johnny returned to him. “Okay?” Paul nodded silently. “Good. Keep an eye on the switchboard a few minutes, will you? I need to talk to Sally.”
He continued on down to the little gate. “Let's go upstairs a minute, Ma. You might have the answers to a coupla questions I need answered.”
She slipped off the headphone and stood up. He held the gate open for her and followed her across the lobby onto the service elevator. “Johnny-” she began tentatively, and he shook his head.
“Post mortems upstairs, Ma,” he said, and his mouth twisted at the unintentional double entendre. He shot the cab aloft in a silent rush.
CHAPTER 4
Johnny closed the door of his room behind them, and Sassy advanced from under the bed in a ludicrously stiff-legged prance, the small ears alertly cocked.
Sally stared. “Johnny! Where on earth-”
Johnny introduced them. “Sassy, this is Sally.” He sat down in his armchair as Sally knelt and reached out a hand and drew the kitten to her. Sassy eyed her carefully, but made no protest, and Johnny shook his head. “How the hell do you like that? She like to ate me, horns and all, the first time I went near her.”
“You're beautiful,” Sally crooned to the kitten, and Sassy's head bobbed in complaisant agreement as she busily rough-tongued Sally's bare forearm. “Did you say 'her'?”
“Yeah. She's my new bodyguard.”
“Where did you get her, Johnny?”
“Ellen.”
“Oh.” Reminded, Sally shivered. She put Sassy down and sat down on the arm of Johnny's chair. “I still can hardly-believe it. Why Ellen?”
“I've got some better 'whys' than that.” Johnny stared across the room morosely. “Why did Ellen come here at all? Why wouldn't she tell me why she was so scared? Why did Vic go up to that room? Why can't I get it through my thick skull how the murderer could find her in an unregistered room?” He crouched forward in the chair, feeling driven in his impotence, then snorted impatiently and sank back. “Fix me a drink, Ma. Somethin's got to start the wheels turnin'.”
“Do you think you should?” she asked doubtfully. “You've got to talk to the police, you know.” She rose resignedly, however, and went to the wall cabinet and took down a bottle of bourbon and two three-finger shot glasses. She made a little face and returned one of them. “Why you can't use a civilized glass like ordinary people instead of these ten gallon hats you have here-”
“A slight exaggeration, Ma,” he told her as she poured. “An' bring the bottle back here with you.”
He accepted the brimming shot glass from her and tossed it off in a long, hard swallow. He waited for the
