“Unless I take her out tonight,” Stan said thoughtfully. “I understand she is affable and fairy-footed. Have you any objection?”
The Captain lifted his brows. “Have a good time while you’re young, boy. I’ll enjoy reading the reports on you in the morning.”
“Anybody who will trail a man and a maid in their innocent amusements is a lecherous old goat,” Stan assured his friend. “Mark my word: you’ll end up running a divorce agency and peeping through keyholes.”
“That would sure make things tough for you,” said LeRoy.
Millie was seated on a bench in the room outside—a different Millie from the girl Stan had frightened on Sunday afternoon. The sudden deaths of two men who had befriended her had not left her unscarred. Expert make-up failed to hide the light touch of blue under her violet eyes, or the sharpness of two fine lines arching her carmined lips. Her belted green raincoat of transparent oiled silk topped with a chic beret, shaded to match, made a noticeable splash of color against the grim darkness of headquarters. She smiled with an obvious effort as Stan approached her.
“I was glad to hear yesterday that you weren’t dead,” she said.
“That’s generous of you.” Stan sat down beside her. “When did you hear that I was?”
Instantly she knew she had said the wrong thing, made an irremediable blunder. She had matched wits once with the lanky pleasant man beside her and ignominiously finished in tears. Rapier keenness cloaked with kindness, sympathy, good nature and more than a touch of chivalry was a combination too profound for Millie. She was an expert in competition with smart men, who mixed brutality with their smartness. One experience had taught her she was outclassed fencing with Miles Standish Rice.
When she came to police headquarters, all her accumulated knowledge of avoiding trouble had warned her against talking. The less she knew about Ben Eckhardt the freer she would be from the noisome toils of the police. But her first remark to Stan had forced her to make a quick decision. Either she must build a new network of lies, or tell the truth about Ben’s last visit to her apartment. Sparring for time, she fell back on her one inerrant weapon—the resplendent femininity of Millie LaFrance.
“Am I in for another cross examination?” The tremulous note in her question was hot entirely feigned. “I thought Sunday you said we were going to be friends.” “I really meant it. As a matter of fact I came out here with the firm intention of asking you to have dinner with me tonight. Then it occurred to me it might be out of place—that is, you might not want to.”
“You mean on account of—of what’s happened?”
“Yes. I thought I might help you. The Captain won’t be able to talk with you until tomorrow morning.”
“You’re pretty white for a copper, Mr. Rice. I think I’ll place a bet on you. I’m afraid if I wore crêpe for a year I couldn’t do much for Ed Fowler or Ben. Call at my place at six.”
“I’ll be there,” he promised.
He was thoughtful when he left Millie and stepped out into the rain on Flagler Street. He walked to a nearby restaurant and ordered lunch, but the food was mediocre. Thoughts of Dave Button’s story about Fowler kept interferitig with his meal. Button was undeniably nimble-witted and canny, but Stan doubted that he was cunning enough to fabricate a story so naive that it must appear true.
Alone, it might not have been so good. But it fitted with nicety into one other action of Edward Fowler’s—the tearing up of Tolliver Farraday’s ten thousand dollar check. If Fowler had really asked Dave Button to broadcast a false statement about the sixty thousand dollar indebtedness, coupled with the destruction of the check it clinched one fact. Gambling was a mere cover for Fowler’s real business in Miami. What was the business?
Stan disgustedly stirred his weak coffee. The anwer had been right in front of his nose since Fowler’s murder and he had miserably failed to see it. Dumbly, almost unconsciously along with Captain LeRoy he had nursed a vague idea that Fowler’s operations must border on the illegitimate. Based on what? On an analysis of Fowler’s activities, the places he frequented, and his assorted choice of companions.
“A dash of introspection might do you good,” Stan told himself. “Fowler frequented gambling houses. You’ve spent a few hours around them yourself during the past few days. Fowler knew a lot of sportive people. You attended a cocktail party with most of them yesterday afternoon. Fowler cultivated Eve Farraday and Millie. How is the brilliant Mr. Rice doing? Not so well, thank you. It never even entered his thick head that Edward Fowler might have been in the same line of business!”
He located the Buick and drove out Flagler Street, slowing down at the bridge over the Miami River to watch the rain pattering on the water. Convinced that Edward Fowler had been an investigator, or a police officer, killed in the line of duty, Stan was seized with one of his rare moods of depression. It might so easily have been Vincent LeRoy, or Miles Standish Rice. He tightened his grip on the wheel. It was due to the Captain’s mature realization of danger that Miles Standish Rice was alive today—certainly not to any precautions taken by his numbskulled self!
The apartment house where Stan had taken cocktails the afternoon before looked somber in the rain when he pulled the Buick up before the front door. He sat staring at the entrance, reflecting on how badly wet weather discolored the sharp brightness of houses in Miami. It was a city of contrasting tones of green, red, and white, built to glow in the sunshine, not to be drenched with water.
In the lobby he paused to study name plates on the twelve mail boxes before going upstairs. Four of the apartments showed vacant. He noted the
