“I don’t want you to come here.” The fact that Carlo had known that Carlotti had been to see me that afternoon warned me that my apartment was being watched. I told him to meet me at ten o’clock at the Press Club. He said he would do that.
I stripped off my raincoat, took it into the bathroom, then I came back to the lounge and poured myself a big shot of whisky. I sat down. My jaw ached and I was feeling pretty sick, with myself. I was in a jam, and there was no one to get me out of it except myself.
To-morrow was Sunday. On Monday I would have to fly down to Naples to attend the inquest. Friday morning I would have to leave for Nice unless I could pin Helen’s killing on to Carlo. It didn’t leave me a lot of time.
I was sure he had killed her, but I couldn’t think why he had done it.
I couldn’t believe he had killed her to get a hold-on me. That idea had come after he had killed her, and probably after he had found the note I had left for her. Then why had he killed her?
She was spending money with him. He had her where he wanted her. A drug pedlar always has his victims where he wants them… unless, of course, the victim happens to find out something about the pedlar that gives her a bigger hold on him than he has on her.
Helen was a blackmailer. Had she been crazy enough to try to blackmail Carlo? She wouldn’t have attempted it unless what she had found out was sheer dynamite: something, she must have been sure, that was so dangerous to Carlo that he would have to toe the line. Had she found some evidence that really put Carlo on the spot? If she had, she would have lodged it somewhere under lock and key before she dared to put the squeeze on Carlo.
The fact that he had killed her either proved that he had found the evidence and destroyed it, or else she hadn’t had the time to tell she had it hidden. As soon as she began her blackmail threat, he had swept her off the cliff. Was that what had happened?
It was a long shot, but a likely one. If I could get my hands on this evidence, I could draw Carlo’s teeth. If it existed, where had she hidden it? In her apartment? In her bank? In a safe deposit?
There was nothing I could do about her apartment. Carlotti had a police guard there. There was not much I could do about finding out if she had a safe deposit, but I could call in on her bank before I flew down to Naples on Monday.
I might be wasting time, but I had to think of every angle. This one seemed to be promising.
I was still thinking about it when, half an hour later, the telephone bell rang. As I picked up the receiver, I glanced at the clock on my desk. It was just after eleven-ten.
“I have traced the Renault, Signor Dawson,” Sarti told me. “The owner is Carlo Manchini. He has an apartment on via Brentini. It is over a wine-shop.”
“Is he there now?”
“He went in to change. He left five minutes ago, wearing evening clothes.”
“Okay. Stick where you are. I’m coming over,” I said, and hung up.
I pulled on my soaking raincoat, left the apartment and went down to the car. It took me
twenty minutes to reach via Brentini. I left my car at the corner of the street and walked quickly down until I spotted Sarti’s fat figure sheltering from the rain in a dark shop doorway. I stepped out of the rain beside him.
“He hasn’t returned?”
“No.”
“I’m going in there to have a look round.”
Sarti pulled a little face.
“It is illegal, signor,” he said without any hope.
“Thanks for telling me. Any idea how I can get in?”
I was looking at the wine-shop opposite. There was a side entrance that obviously led to the apartment over the shop.
“The lock isn’t complicated,” Sarti said, fumbled in his pocket and pressed into my hand a bunch of skeleton keys.
“These are strictly illegal too,” I said and grinned at him.
He looked depressed.
“Yes, signor. Not everyone would want my job.”
I crossed the road, paused to look up and down the deserted street, took out my flashlight and examined the lock. As Sarti bad said, it didn’t look complicated. I tried three of the keys before I turned the lock. I pushed open the door. Moving into darkness, I closed the door, once more turned on my flashlight and went quickly up the steep, narrow stairs that faced me.
There was a stale smell of wine and sweat on the landing, also the smell of cigar smoke. Three doors invited inspection.
I opened one and glanced into a small, dirty kitchen. In the sink was an accumulation of dirty pots and two frying pans around which flies buzzed busily. The remains of a meal of bread and salame lay on a greasy paper on the table.
I moved down the passage, looked into a small bedroom that contained a double bed, unmade and with grimy sheets and a greasy pillow. Clothes were scattered on the floor. A dirty shirt hung from an electric light bracket. The floor was spotted with tobacco ash and the smell in the room nearly choked me.
I backed out and entered the sitting-room. This too looked as if a pig had lived in it for some time. There was a big settee under the window and two lounging chairs by the fireplace. All three pieces looked grimy and dark with grease. On a small table stood six bottles of wine, three of them empty. A vase of dead carnations stood on the dusty overmantel. There were grease marks on the walls, and the floor was spotted with tobacco ash.
On one of the arms of the chairs was a big ash-tray loaded with cigarette butts and three cheroot butts. I picked up one of these butts and examined it. It seemed to me to be the exact fellow of the butt I had found on top of the cliff head. I put it in my pocket, leaving the other two.
Against one of the walls stood a battered desk on which were piled old, yellowing newspapers, movie magazines and pictures of pin-up girls.
I opened the desk drawers, one after the other. Most of them were crammed with junk that a man will accumulate who has never had a clear out, but in one of the lower drawers I found a new T.W.A. travelling bag that is given to passengers to keep their overnight kit in. I took it from the drawer, zipped it open and looked inside.
It was empty except for a screwed-up ball of paper. I smoothed this out and found it to be the duplicate of a return ticket from Rome to New York, dated four months ago and made out in Carlo Manchini’s name.
I stood looking at the ticket for several seconds, my mind busy.
Here was proof that Carlo had been in New York before Helen had left for Rome. Did it mean anything? Had they met in New York?
I slipped the paper in my wallet, then returned the bag to the drawer.
Although I spent another half-hour in the apartment, I found nothing else to interest me, nor did I find my note to Helen.
I was glad to get out into the rain and the fresh air once more.
Sarti was very uneasy when I joined him.
“I was getting nervous,” he said. “You stayed there too long.”
I had too much on my mind to bother about his nerves. I told him I’d be at the Press Club at ten the following morning and left him.
When I got back to my apartment I sent the following cable to Jack Martin, Western Telegram’s New York crime reporter:
Martin was an expert at his job. If there was an angle to Carlo’s visit to New York, he would know it.
PART TEN
