SEVENTEEN

The bellhop at the Athletic Club was back in three minutes with a nod for me to come with him. We rode up to the fourth floor and went around a corner and he showed me a half-open door.

“Around to the left, sir. As quietly as you can. A few of the members are sleeping.”

I went into the club library. It contained books behind glass doors and magazines on a long central table and a lighted portrait of the club’s founder. But its real business seemed to be sleeping. Outward-jutting bookcases cut the room into a number of small alcoves and in the alcoves were high-backed leather chairs of an incredible size and softness. In a number of the chairs old boys were snoozing peacefully, their faces violet with high blood pressure, thin racking snores coming out of their pinched noses.

I climbed over a few feet and stole around to the left. Derace Kingsley was in the very last alcove in the far end of the room. He had two chairs arranged side by side, facing into the corner. His big dark head just showed over the top of one of them. I slipped into the empty one and gave him a quick nod.

“Keep your voice down,” he said. “This room is for after-luncheon naps. Now what is it? When I employed you it was to save me trouble, not to add trouble to what I already had. You made me break an important engagement.”

“I know,” I said, and put my face close to his. He smelled of highballs, in a nice way. “She shot him.”

His eyebrows jumped and his face got that stony look. His teeth clamped tight. He breathed softly and twisted a large hand on his kneecap.

“Go on,” he said, in a voice the size of a marble.

I looked back over the top of my chair. The nearest old geezer was sound asleep and blowing the dusty fuzz in his nostrils back and forth as he breathed.

“No answer at Lavery’s place,” I said. “Door slightly open. But I noticed yesterday it sticks on the sill. Pushed it open. Room dark, two glasses with drinks having been in them. House very still. In a moment a slim dark woman calling herself Mrs. Fallbrook, landlady, came up the stairs with her glove wrapped around a gun. Said she found it on the stairs. Said she came to collect her three months’ back rent. Used her key to get in. Inference is she took the chance to snoop around and look the house over. Took the gun from her and found it had been fired recently, but didn’t tell her so. She said Lavery was not home. Got rid of her by making her mad and she departed in high dudgeon. She may call the police, but it’s much more likely she will just go out and hunt butterflies and forget the whole thing—except the rent.”

I paused. Kingsley’s head was turned towards me and his jaw muscles bulged with the way his teeth were clamped. His eyes looked sick.

“I went downstairs. Signs of a woman having spent the night. Pajamas, face powder, perfume, and so on. Bathroom locked, but got it open. Three empty shells on the floor, two shots in the wall, one in the window. Lavery in the shower stall, naked and dead.”

“My God!” Kingsley whispered. “Do you mean to say he had a woman with him last night and she shot him this morning in the bathroom?”

“Just what did you think I was trying to say?” I asked.

“Keep your voice down,” he groaned. “It’s a shock, naturally. Why in the bathroom?”

“Keep your own voice down,” I said. “Why not in the bathroom? Could you think of a place where a man would be more completely off guard?”

He said: “You don’t know that a woman shot him. I mean, you’re not sure, are you?”

“No,” I said. “That’s true. It might have been somebody who used a small gun and emptied it carelessly to look like a woman’s work. The bathroom is downhill, facing outwards on space and I don’t think shots down there would be easily heard by anyone not in the house. The woman who spent the night might have left-or there need not have been any woman at all. The appearances could have been faked. You might have shot him.”

“What would I want to shoot him for?” he almost bleated, squeezing both kneecaps hard. “I’m a civilized man.”

That didn’t seem to be worth an argument either. I said: “Does your wife own a gun?”

He turned a drawn miserable face to me and said hollowly: “Good God, man, you can’t really think that!”

“Well does she?”

He got the words out in small pieces. “Yes—she does. A small automatic.”

“You buy it locally?”

“I—I didn’t buy it at all. I took it away from a drunk at a party in San Francisco a couple of years ago. He was waving it around, with an idea that that was very funny. I never gave it back to him.” He pinched his jaw hard until his knuckles whitened. “He probably doesn’t even remember how or when he lost it. He was that kind of a drunk.”

“This is working out almost too neatly,” I said. “Could you recognize this gun?”

He thought hard, pushing his jaw out and half closing his eyes. I looked back over the chairs again. One of the elderly snoozers had waked himself up with a snort that almost blew him out of his chair. He coughed, scratched his nose with a thin dried-up hand, and fumbled a gold watch out of his vest. He peered at it bleakly, put it away, and went to sleep again.

I reached in my pocket and put the gun on Kingsley’s hand. He stared down at it miserably.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It’s like it, but I can’t tell.”

“There’s a serial number on the side,” I said.

“Nobody remembers the serial numbers of guns.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t,” I said. “It would have worried me very much.”

His hand closed around the gun and he put it down beside him on the chair.

“The dirty rat,” he said softly. “I suppose he ditched her.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“The motive was inadequate for you, on account of you’re a civilized man. But it was adequate for her.”

“It’s not the same motive,” he snapped. “And women are more impetuous than men.”

“Like cats are more impetuous than dogs.”

“How?”

“Some women are more impetuous than some men. That’s all that means. We’ll have to have a better motive, if you want your wife to have done it.”

He turned his head enough to give me a level stare in which there was no amusement. White crescents were bitten into the corners of his mouth.

“This doesn’t seem to me a very good spot for the light touch,” he said. “We can’t let the police have this gun. Crystal had a permit and the gun was registered. So they will know the number, even if I don’t. We can’t let them have it.”

“But Mrs. Fallbrook knows I had the gun.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “We’ll have to chance that. Yes, I know you’re taking a risk. I intend to make it worth your while. If the set-up were possible for suicide, I’d say put the gun back. But the way you tell it, it isn’t.”

“No. He’d have to have missed himself with the first three shots. But I can’t cover up a murder, even for a ten-dollar bonus. The gun will have to go back.”

“I was thinking of more money than that,” he said quietly. “I was thinking of five hundred dollars.”

“Just what did you expect to buy with it?”

He leaned close to me. His eyes were serious and bleak, but not hard. “Is there anything in Lavery’s place, apart from the gun, that might indicate Crystal has been there lately?”