“I’m going to raise hell now!” The shrillness crept hideously into Millie’s voice. “I’ve said everything I’m going to say. Now scram, you damn dirty snoop. You’ve had your nose in everything in here. Now get out!”
Stan rested an elbow on the desk, placed chin in palm, and looked steadily at the beautiful face flushed in anger. His eyes were troubled. He hated to hurt anything as gorgeous as Millie. It was comparable to deliberately bruising a voluptuous flower.
“Caprilli’s in Miami, Miss Loomis. If word has leaked in to Zorrio in Alcatraz that you and Eckhardt—”
Stan leaped to his feet and put an arm around the girl’s shoulders, lowering her down on the divan. She lay motionless, her face white as the satin clinging to her form. He poured a drink from a decanter, gave it to her, and watched the color creep slowly back to her face. “How did you know?” Her voice was lifeless, the shrillness gone.
“You’ve died a thousand deaths, haven’t you? Living with Eckhardt in constant fear of a man in prison thousands of miles away. Then in love with Fowler—and the double fear of Eckhardt and Zorrio both—”
“But if you know—” A quick fearful gesture of hand to mouth stopped her words. Then she went on, hopelessly: “Ben was good to me after Zorrio left. I didn’t know then what a brute he is at heart. I can’t tell you—it’s impossible. I was scared to leave him—am scared now. Ed was a wonderful man—”
“And you quarreled with him in front of Eckhardt so Ben wouldn’t be suspicious?”
Millie nodded. “Ed settled my debts at the Sunset last night before he was killed. I had to be so careful—”
“You weren’t careful when you brought Fowler here, and he signed travelers’ checks at your desk,” Stan warned. “Part of his signature is still on your blotter. And it’s well not to forget that Moneta Caprilli was Zorrio’s friend. The snapshots of you and Ben Eckhardt in that album, innocent as they look, might take you on a one way ride. Caprilli’s boys have a habit of prowling that’s worse than mine.” Stan stretched out a hand. “Shall we be friends?”
Her hand was cold when she clasped his. “I’d. do anything to help find who killed Edward Fowler. I loved him.”
“You can help by telling me all you knew about him.”
She shook her head, sadly. “I knew nothing about him. He never spoke about himself—and my training in the past has been that questions are dangerous. All I know is I loved him from the day I met him—and I’d go to hell to find the skunk who killed him.” She pressed her hands wearily to her forehead. “Even if the man’s Ben Eckhardt—and he’s said a hundred times he’d slit the throat of any man I looked at twice!”
Chapter VIII
Stan Rice was angry when he left Millie weeping in her apartment—angry with himself for making her cry; angry with despotic destiny, who frivolously enjoyed despoiling girls with too much beauty. He took it out on the amenable Buick by driving it nearly to Fort Lauderdale at twenty-five miles an hour, disregarding the infuriated sirens of delayed motorists behind him. Near Fort Lauderdale he refueled the car with gas, and himself with two Scotch highballs.
On the return trio, with food ahead, he passed everything on the road, Confronted with a large bowl of spaghetti, and a bottle of choice Chianti, life seemed slightly brighter. He ate slowly, and began thinking that the strands emanating from Fowler’s murder were becoming involved as the tangled spaghetti.
He sighed, and poured another glass of Chianti. Captain Vincent LeRoy never found murders so involved. He was a man of direct methods—given to forming conclusions based on sound judgment, and proving his conclusions correct, or incorrect, by arduous labor. The distress of delectable ladies was entirely clinical to LeRoy. He put a woman’s tears into the cold type of a report—a revolting idea to Miles Standish Rice.
LeRoy would be pleased to hear about Millie. He would add the name of Ben Eckhardt to his already formed list of Class “A” Suspects—unless the gambler was already thereon. A clever, patient detective would be assigned to digging out Eckhardt’s history from birth. The Captain would either approve, or reject, the results.
Stan was certain the Captain was not through with Tolliver Farraday. Wild young men with too much money, desirous of hiding their escapades from stern fathers, were grist for the mill, in LeRoy’s estimation. It was true that if Eckhardt had an opportunity to kill Fowler, young Tolliver, or anyone in the club might have done so. But Stan believed that Eckhardt’s possible motives of jealousy, and Dave Button’s sixty thousand dollars, were forces more apt to drive men to murder than the bad check of a scared boy.
Annoyed at a chain of inconclusive reasoning, Stan settled the bill and phoned LeRoy from a booth in the restaurant.
“You better put a couple of men to watch Millie,” he advised. “You might have another murder on your hands. She and Fowler were close as a pair of paper matches—and Ben Eckhardt may find it out.”
“Eckhardt? Where does he come in?”
“He has a key,” Stan said dryly, “to Millie’s apartment—and has had for some time. Were Fowler’s prints on the eleven of diamonds?”
LeRoy paused. Stan heard him speak softly to someone beside the phone. There was a minor umbrage in his reply: “It’s not. like you to hold out on the department, Stan. Fowler’s fingerprints were on the card. What do you know that you’re not telling?”
“Nothing, so help me, Vince.” Stan was convincingly frank. “I thought Fowler put that card where we found it. Why, I don’t know.
