I took a chance, told him to call me at the Ramada if he had second thoughts, but I probably wouldn’t be there beyond tonight. I sat in the car and looked at his house. The questions had only begun. I still didn’t know why Trish Aandahl thought the Graysons had been murdered, and I never did get to see Huggins’s books.
25
On the way downtown I stopped at a Chinese joint. I ate some great moo-shoo and arrived back at the Ramada at eight o’clock. I sat on the bed and made my phone checks. Leith Kenney was still incommunicado: in Taos, the recorded welcome mat continued on the Jeffordses’ phone. By nine o’clock I was tight in the grip of cabin fever. I tried Trish Aandahl, but there was no answer. Outside, the rain had resumed its hellish patter. Nothing to do at this time of night but wait it out.
At quarter after nine a knock at the door made me jerk to my feet, knocking the phone to the floor. I stood for a moment, that line from Poe running through my head…
“ ‘
. . . and slowly I moved to the window and parted the curtains. I could see the dark outline of a man, his shoulders and legs and the back of his head. He knocked again: he meant business. He had probably heard the phone falling and knew I was here, and he didn’t seem interested in helping me by moving back out in the light so I could see his face. I bit the bullet: went to the door and opened it.
It was the deskman. “Sorry to disturb you, I just wanted to check and see if that’s your car. I didn’t recognize it from anybody who checked in today.”
I assured him it was mine: the other car had belonged to a friend. He apologized and went away. But he stopped in the courtyard and looked back at the Nash, just long enough to give me the jitters. He didn’t write the plate number down, and I watched him through the curtain until he disappeared into the office.
If I had any thought about staying here past tonight, that ended it. I’d be gone with the dawn, looking for a new place and a new name. I sat on the bed and tried the phone again, but the world was still away from its desk. Kenney and Jeffords I could understand, but Trish had asked me to call, you’d think she’d be there. I would try her each half hour until she came in. I was reaching over to make the ten-o’clock call when it rang almost under my hand. It caught me in that same tense expectancy, and again I knocked it clattering down the table to the floor. I gripped the coiled wire and the receiver bumped its way back up the nightstand into my hands.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Hodges?”
“Yes…yeah, sorry about the racket.”
“It’s okay, I’ve done that a few times myself.” There was an awkward pause. “It’s Allan Huggins.”
“Ah.”
“I’ve been thinking about that chip of paper you showed me.”
I waited, letting him get to it in his own way.
“Actually, I haven’t thought about anything else since you left.”
“Have you changed your mind about it?”
“No…no.” I heard him breathe…in, out…in, out. “No, I feel sure it’s a photocopy. The question I can’t get out of my mind is, what’s it a photocopy of?…And where’s the original?…And how and when was it made?”
“Interesting questions.”
“I’m wondering if I could see it again. I know I wasn’t too hospitable when you were over earlier. I apologize for that.”
“It’s no problem.”
“Would it be asking too much…Could I perhaps make my own photocopy from your sample? I’d like to study it at greater length.”
“I don’t think I want to do that just now. You can see it again, if you’d like.”
“I would like, yes…very much. The lettering’s what’s getting to me. The more I think of it…I’ve never seen that exact typeface, and yet…”
He didn’t have to elaborate: I knew what was going through his head.
“Tomorrow, perhaps,” he suggested hopefully.
“I’ll give you a call if I can.”
“Please do…please.”
“You could do something for me while we’re at it Call it a trade-off.”
“Surely,” he said, but his voice was wary.
“Tell me why the name Rodney Scofield set you off like a fire.”
“Don’t you really know?”
“No,” I said with a little laugh. “I keep telling you, I never heard of the guy.”
