He still had both his guns. Mendoza was facing him, ten feet down from Palliser.
Men were coming, pouring into the lobby excitedly.
The man fired, and missed, and raised the other gun. Then a shot spat at him from another direction, and he fell back against the wall and slid down it slowly, and sprawled full length.
'Thanks very much, Bert,' said Mendoza. 'That was my last slug. I never claimed to be a marksman.'
Dwyer walked up to the body and looked down at it, gun still in hand. 'You can say I told you so if you want,' he said. 'You and your hunches!'
NINETEEN
There was quite a bit of clearing up to do; Mendoza didn't get home until two-thirty again. There were all the reporters swarming around. And they found the Slasher's secret place and the rest of his arsenal; they found out who he had probably been, from an old union card in his wallet. The Railroad Brotherhood. So for a start they looked for that name, John Tenney, on the list of former S.P. employees, and there it was-he'd been hired, briefly, as a trackwalker, some years back.
'In a kind of way, you might feel sorry for him, if he hadn't.. .' said Palliser, leaving that unfinished. And Mendoza said, 'That damned lush Telfer! Look at all this mess! Seven people killed--I don't suppose anyone's missing the wino or Florence, or the other Skid Row type we found this morning, but there's the boy, and Loretta Lincoln, and Simms-and several more hurt, including a couple of cops. My God, and if Telfer hadn't been drunk that night we'd probably have picked the Slasher up inside twenty-four hours, with a full description.'
'It isn't going to trouble Telfer's conscience,' said Palliser dryly.
'No, probably not… '
And when he did get home he couldn't sleep. Had the assauly on Art been tied up to Nestor? How and why? Had to get at that thing again in the morning… Cliff Elger? He still didn't know where the Elgers had been on Tuesday night when Nestor was shot…
But, he thought suddenly, coming to complete wakefulness from an instant's half-sleep, it had to come back to that appointment in Nestor's office that night. Didn't it? He had told his wife he had an evening appointment. It might have been a date with a girl, but- vide Anita Sheldon-they wouldn't stay there. Naturally. So if it had been that, then he must have been killed very close to the eight o'clock margin Bainbridge gave them, or he wouldn't still have been in the office. But if it hadn't been a girl friend…
That scrapbook. He'd been thinking, Nestor not above a little blackmail. Had it been something like that? Have a good look at that list of patients, when the court order came through… By what Bert and the others said, the other women in Nestor's address book had been casual pickups, not exactly the kind to inspire the grand passion-to the point of murderous jealousy. But of course you never did know. People…
Art. If that wasn't linked to Nestor, was the outside thing, where the hell to start looking? Dead end. Hell. Andrea Nestor?
No. No. A man. They knew that much, because it had been a man who got rid of that gun. Maybe two people?
Andrea Nestor scarcely a woman to do murder for, either…
He drifted off uneasily at last, but woke for good at six. El Senor was chattering at the birds outside the window. Mendoza shaved and dressed, went out to the living room and called the hospital. Established routine now, he thought. Part of these long, long days
… The nurse's impersonal voice said, 'Oh yes, sir-just a moment, Dr. MacFarlane wants to speak to you personally, if you'll wait a moment.'
'All right,' said Mendoza. He waited, wondering academically how far his pulse rate had shot up.
'Lieutenant? Yes. He's been increasingly restless,' said the doctor. 'I think the chances are good that he'll regain consciousness sometime today. I'd like either you or someone else who knows him well to-er-stand by for a call, as it were. You understand.'
'Yes, Doctor.'
'You'll be called as soon as we know… Well, we're still not making any guesses, of course. Wait and see. You'll have someone standing by?'
'Yes.' Much as he would like to be the man, he couldn't; he had things to do today. 'Thanks very much, Doctor.'
'We'll just keep hoping,' said MacFarlane sadly. Even Mrs. MacTaggart wasn't up, this morning. He got out the Ferrari and stopped for breakfast at the Manning's on Vermont, but he couldn't get much of it down; he had three cups of coffee and began to feel slightly more alive.
He got to the office before the night shift was off; told them the latest news. When Dwyer came in he said, 'You're taking a little holiday, Bert. Stick around in case the hospital ca1ls.' He explained.
'O.K.,' said Dwyer, looking grim.
Mendoza looked at the clock irritably; he couldn't decently arrive at the Elgers' apartment before nine o'clock. He sat at his desk thinking about that appointment of Nestor's on Tuesday night.
An appointment with Ruth Elger? And Elger- So X discovered belatedly that he'd lost a button and, just in case he'd lost it in Nestor's office, gave away the jacket if he couldn't replace the button. How were you going to prove it?
A button. Suddenly, now, Mendoza was wondering whether that might have been what Art had spotted. If there was a tie-up. Whether X hadn't noticed the missing button until Art noticed, and questioned him about it. Whether…
Such a very ordinary little button. He got it out and looked at it. And another thought crossed his mind about it too, as a faint possibility of a lead-probably very faint. In these days of mass production. However…
All the morning papers had screaming headlines about the capture of the Slasher.
Nine o'clock found him using the knocker on the Elgers' apartment door.
Ruth Elger let him in; she wasn't dressed yet, but looked better this time-no hangover, and make-up.
'Well, for heaven's sake, what do you want?' she asked rather crossly.
'Answers to a few questions, Mrs. Elger, if you don't mind.' The room wasn't much neater than when he'd seen it first, and it hadn't been dusted in some time. She told him ungraciously to sit down, perched herself on the arm of a chair.
'Well?'
'Do you remember what you and your husband were doing on Tuesday night a week ago? A week ago yesterday?'
'Heavens, I don't know. I suppose we were here, if we weren't- Oh no, the Werthers' party was on Wednesday, wasn't it?'
'It's not so very long ago,' said Mendoza.
'Why on earth you want to know- Oh. That-that was the night Frank was shot, wasn't it? For heaven's sake. You can't be thinking we had-'
'Just try to remember, please.'
'Oh well! It was-yes, we went out to dinner-to the Tail o' the Cock, I think. Tuesday. Oh, I do remember, yes, as a matter of fact we were arguing all through dinner about that silly charge-account thing, and all the way home for that matter, and it wasn't long after we got home that Cliff got really mad and sort of slammed out-'
'Arguing over a bill you'd run up?' said Mendoza. 'And he left the apartment. When?'
'Heavens, I wasn't watching the clock, about half past nine, I suppose… No, I don't know where he went. What does it matter? I expect to a bar somewhere, he was a little high when he came home.'
'At what time?'
She shrugged petulantly. 'About midnight, I guess. I was in bed.'
'Mrs. Elger, has your husband ever owned a gun?'
'A- Well, of course not,' she said. 'What on earth-You simply can't be thinking- Frank? Good heavens, it was just--just an episode. Not important.'
'What's important or not,' said Mendoza, 'depends on who's looking at it. Thanks very much… '
