9
Aline was still lying face down on the couch fifteen minutes later when there was a knock on her door. She rolled over dazedly and sat up.
The knock was repeated. It wasn’t exactly a furtive knock, but it sounded hesitant. As though the person standing outside weren’t exactly sure whether it was the right door or not, or whether Aline would welcome his or her presence.
She pulled herself to her feet and went to the door and opened it. The sight of the big, blond Viking standing there, with boyishly tousled hair and a wistful, wishful sort of smile on his lips brought a sudden smarting to Aline’s eyes.
She whispered, “Dirk! My God, Dirk! What are you doing here? Ina just telephoned. She’s terribly upset.”
He said, “I know. I’m horribly sorry, my dear. Everything seems to have gotten itself in pretty much of a tangle.” He hesitated momentarily. “May I come in? Or would you rather I went away and never came back?”
Aline laughed shakily. “Please do come in.” She held the door open wide for him. “After what Ina suspects about last night, nothing that happens now can matter very much.
“I know exactly what you mean.” His eyes were bloodshot and his suit looked as though he had slept in the gutter in it. He entered her living room and sat down heavily. “I’m in an apologetic mood this morning,” he confessed unhappily. “If I owe you one… or many… please consider them as being very humbly offered.”
“I’m not at all sure that you owe me any.” Aline closed the door and turned to look down at him curiously. “Before we go into any of that, how the dickens did you get up to my apartment without buzzing me from outside?”
“I used your key.” He looked surprised and opened his clenched palm to show her a flat key. “An extra you had last night. Don’t you remember giving it to me at Bart’s?”
Aline shook her head slowly, sinking down onto the couch opposite him. “I’m sorry, Dirk,” she said wearily. “I don’t remember. Did I really?”
“Dear God!” Dirk spread out his hands piously. “Don’t tell me you forget things too?”
“I’m afraid I lost a lot of last night.”
“Oh, no! I’d depended on you. Didn’t I come up here after the party as you asked me to?”
“I don’t know,” Aline confessed miserably. “You see, I passed out, too. Honestly, Dirk, I don’t remember a single thing after my third martini.” She hesitated, biting her underlip in embarrassment. “What the hell?” she burst out angrily. “We won’t get anywhere beating around the bush. I remember you making love to me. Not too much, but nicely. But I didn’t know I gave you my key.”
“Then you passed out before I did,” Dirk said lugubriously.
“And I’d depended on you to put me straight on what happened.” He paused to take a deep breath, and went on rapidly, “I came to in my own place about four o’clock this morning with Ina in hysterics and accusing me of having spent the night with you. Seems she’d phoned around and had been told that you and I had sort of made some passes at each other at the party. I indignantly denied everything, but when I found your key in my pocket, I thought of course this is where I’d been all the time. If I didn’t come here, where the devil did I go?”
“I’m sure you weren’t here. Or, if you were, you were here alone.”
“When did you get in?” he asked unhappily.
Aline hesitated. A dreadful and horrible doubt was beginning to take possession of her mind. “How much do you remember about Bart’s party?” she demanded.
Dirk shrugged. “Dimly, right up to the last. You deserted me, you know. For some other man. A chap I’d never met before. Most unattractive, I thought him. But you whispered to me that it would be much safer for us both, there among people who knew us, if you pretended to be interested in someone else. You promised me faithfully,” he added sadly, “that you would get rid of him and be waiting for me here. Then you disappeared, and I lost track of just what happened. I naturally supposed I had come here.”
“You don’t remember anything after the party broke up?” demanded Aline.
“Nothing. It remains a complete blank. I couldn’t admit that to Ina, of course,” he went on hurriedly. “I made up a long story for her benefit about meeting a couple of strange men in a bar and drinking with them. Not that she believed me. She’s convinced I was here with you, and her conviction strengthened my own. Where were you if not here?”
Aline Ferris hesitated before answering him, biting her underlip uncertainly. She wanted terribly to confide in Dirk. To pour out every horrible detail to him and to beg for his advice. Did she dare to do it?
Could he be mixed up in it, too, somehow? The thought was utterly fantastic, but she couldn’t put it wholly away from her. She evidently had given him her extra key last night and invited him to come up after the party even though she didn’t remember doing so. With that incentive, and in a state of drunkenness, could he possibly have followed her… seen her meet Vincent Torn outside the cocktail lounge?
She shuddered violently and avoided his eyes, saying miserably, “I’m in a terrible mess, Dirk. I don’t know what to do, where to turn. I wish you had come here last night. If you only had! And stayed with me. I’d be almost willing to have Ina know about it, if it were only true.”
Dirk settled back in his chair and studied her downcast face with troubled eyes. “Tell me about it, Aline. Perhaps I can help. God knows, I’ll try.”
“I… I… all right, Dirk,” she burst out. “I think I’ll have to. I feel as though I’ll go mad if I don’t talk to someone. You say I passed out first at the party… that you remember another man whom I played up to in order to keep the others from suspecting the truth about us. Do you remember his name?”
“I don’t believe I heard it. He was a complete stranger to me. I know I was quite jealous of him, but kept telling myself you didn’t mean it really and were just doing it for camouflage.”
“Does the name Vincent Torn mean anything to you?”
He shook his head wearily. “Afraid not.”
She drew in a deep breath and told him swiftly: “It will by this time tomorrow after you read the paper. He’s dead, Dirk. Lying alone in a hotel room where I went with him, God help me. I don’t know why I did it,” she cried out wildly. “Don’t ask me why. I don’t even know the man. Consciously, I mean. I’m not aware of ever having seen him until I woke up early this morning in a hotel room with his dead body the only other occupant.”
“Are you serious, Aline? How did the man die?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed piteously. “That is, I do know how, of course. He was murdered, Dirk. With a knife. There was blood all over. But I didn’t do it!” Her voice rose, hysterical and shrill. “I couldn’t have. Don’t you see? Even though I was unconscious at the time it happened. There was no knife there in the room. Nothing that could possibly have done it to him.”
Dirk’s face was pale, his eyes deeply troubled. He said gently, “I think you had better tell me all about it. Every single thing. This sounds very serious.”
“Serious?” With an effort she choked off wild laughter. “That’s one of the understatements of all times. Any moment now, the police will be here accusing me of his murder. And I can’t possibly prove I didn’t do it. This is the way it happened, Dirk.”
She paused and asked uncertainly, “Would you like a drink before I start?”
Dirk shook his blond head decidedly. “I’m afraid there’s already been much too much drinking. We both need clear heads to cope with this.”
Aline sat very erect and began her story in a small, tight voice. She omitted nothing, or at least, tried to omit nothing. Not even the horrible detail about the two-dollar bill tucked in her stocking and her own reaction on discovering it there.
Dirk did not speak once or move while she went rapidly over every incident that had occurred after she awakened in the hotel room. His face was gravely concerned and he sat well back on the sofa, long legs stretched out in front of him, eyes narrowed and brooding down at the tips of his shoes.
“So I just don’t know what to think,” Aline ended despairingly after quoting his wife’s virulent words over the telephone. “That was the first time I knew you and I had gotten serious about each other last night.”
“And the thought immediately sprang into your mind,” he told her morosely, “that I might be the one who
