Stan strode across the room and tried it. It was locked. He looked for a key, but the lock was empty. He came back and rested himself on the corner of a bridge table without removing his feet from the floor. Toby Munroe swallowed dryly, waiting for Stan to speak.
Stan took a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, blew a heavy cloud of smoke, and watched it dissipate lazily in the still air. “The matter of proper ventilation must be a trying thing, Toby. It was hotter than billy-be-dam last night. It’s hotter than that now. Is the air in here better with that door closed and locked?”
Toby’s face set in defiant lines. “You better ask Hal Sweet,” he said shortly. “He’s my lawyer. I’ve been grilled once today.”
Stan’s voice was reproachful. “I merely wanted to find out if that door was closed and locked last night.”
“Well, find out. Snoop all you damn please. I’m going back downstairs.” Toby turned his back and started from the room.
“I can find out.” Stan stood up and put a hand on Toby’s shoulder. “There were several here last night who can probably tell me. I thought it might be better coming from you.” Stan’s usually cheerful blue eyes hardened. “There is one of two reasons why that door was closed last night. A man was stabbed to death in the poker room, just across the hall. He had to pass that door to get in there. You knew he was going in there—and didn’t want him to be seen by the players in here—”
“That’s a god damned lie!” Toby screamed. He began to shake with a quick uncontrollable tremor. “Don’t you listen to him. Captain. For God’s sake, don’t listen to him. That room was engaged for a poker game last night. The same fellows have had it before. They always make me lock the door so they can get in without being seen.”
“You’ll have to come clean, Toby,” said LeRoy. “I can’t take a yarn like that back to headquarters without names and dates. I’m not out to clean up gambling. I’m after somebody to sit in a chair.”
“It was Caprilli.” Toby spoke through a sob. “He’s in town with some of his mob for the races. They’ll beat hell out of me if they ever learn I tipped you off—”
The Captain whistled softly. “So that rat’s back in Miami. I warned him last year to spend his winters north.”
“And what about the game?” Stan asked. “Did it end with the last pot for Mr. Fowler?”
Toby slumped into a chair, crossed his arms on a table, and buried his face. His shoulders were trembling with nervousness and fear. “I’m busted wide open,” he sobbed. “There was no game. Caprilli gave me fifty bucks advance to hold the room and buy liquor. Juan fixed a lot of stuff—and not a damn stinking one of the crowd showed up!”
Chapter VI
The poker room was semi-obscured from the hot noon sun by partially closed Venetian blinds at each of the three windows. A solitary fly walked along the broad blade of the ceiling fan. It buzzed lazily out of the opened doors as Stan Rice and the Captain entered.
A single low-backed, leather-seated, folding chair stood at the table, its back toward the only entrance to the room. A dark stain, close to the back legs on the floor, showed clearly it had not been moved since its last occupant was carried out in a basket.
“Blood ran down his coat and dripped on the floor,” LeRoy explained. “There isn’t any on the seat of the chair—but plenty on the back.”
Stan said nothing. The Captain’s dispassionate air depressed him. Stan Rice could be casual about most things, but not about death. His business had brought him in contact with more than a fair share. The war had left him memories of which he never spoke. He had learned to successfully conceal all outward emotion with a lightness of his own. But the lightness was false. Inwardly, he fought a dullish sense of futility; a sueer certainty that anything Stan Rice might do was anti-climactic. His best efforts could bring nothing but death for death, a doubtful requital for the living, never compensation to the dead.
His soft-soled shoes made no sound as he circled the table. The Venetian blind, shielding the window faced by the vacant chair, rose smoothly as he pulled the double cord. Bars of sunlight on the battleship linoleum floor gave way to a gleaming yellow square.
“The window has a full length screen on the outside.”
“So has every window in the house,” said LeRoy.
Stan unhooked the screen from the bottom and pushed. It swung out easily, held at the top by two hinges. He examined the rabbet where the screen fitted snugly on the outside edge of the sill. Two dead house flies, and a large mosquito, had trapped themselves and struggled to death in the small crack between screen and sill. Stan brushed them off the sill and looked out. A vine covered trellis of white wood rose from the ground to the left side of the window. LeRoy came up and leaned out beside him.
“This window’s an ideal balcony for a Romeo with a gun.” Stan indicated the trellis.
“I get the idea although I’ve never seen the play. It might be interesting if Fowler hadn’t been stabbed from the back by somebody inside the house. For your information—nobody climbed that trellis. We gave it the works this morning. We didn’t forget that the screen might have been hooked by the kindly soul who tipped us off to this job.”
They withdrew from the window. Stan rehookcd the screen. “It never occurred to me, Vince, that anybody might have come in through that window. You fellows are so confounded thorough that at times you run off up side roads, I wanted to see if anybody could
