A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

Lieutenant Retnick was sitting behind my desk. He regarded me with the usual cop stare as I came in, and then waved me to the clients’ chair.

There was a smear of dry blood on the back of the chair. I didn’t fancy to contact with that so I sat on the arm of the chair. “You got a gun permit?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s your gun?”

“A .38 police special.”

He laid his hand, palm up, on the blotter.

“Give.”

“It’s in the top right-hand drawer.”

He stared for a long moment, then withdrew his hand.

“It isn’t. I’ve looked through your desk.”

I resisted the temptation to wipe away the trickle of cold sweat that began to run down the back of my neck.

“That’s where it should be.”

He took a cigar from a pigskin case, stripped off the wrapping, pierced the cigar with a match end, then fed the cigar into his face. All the time his small hard eyes locked with mine.

“She was shot with a .38,” he said. “The M.O. says she died around three o’clock this morning. Look, Ryan, why don’t you come clean? Just what did this yellow skin have in her handbag?”

Keeping my voice calm with an effort, I said, “I may seem to you to be a dumb, stupid peeper, but you can’t really believe I would be that dumb and that stupid to knock off a client in my own office with my own gun even if she had all the gold in Fort Knox in her goddam handbag.”

He lit the cigar and blew a stream of rank smoke at me.

“I don’t know: you might. You might be trying to play it smart, kidding yourself you had dreamed up a water-tight alibi,” he said, but there wasn’t much conviction in his voice.

“If I had killed her,” I went on, “I would have known the time she had died. I wouldn’t have given you an alibi for eight-thirty, I would have cooked one up for three o’clock.”

He shifted around in my chair while what he used as a brain creaked under pressure.

“What was she doing in your office at that hour in the morning?”

“Want me to guess?”

“Look, Ryan, we haven’t had a murder in this city for five years. I’ve got to have some story to give the Press. Any ideas you’ve got, I’ll listen to. You help us, I’ll help you. I could arrest you and toss you in the tank on the evidence I’ve got against you, but I’m giving you a chance to prove I’m wrong. Go ahead and guess.”

“Suppose she was from ‘Frisco and not here? Suppose she had to talk urgently with me? Don’t ask me why or why she couldn’t talk to a private dick in ‘Frisco: just suppose this happened Suppose she decided to fake a plane and come here so she could talk to me and suppose she made up her mind about seven last night. She would know she couldn’t get here before I had left so she telephoned. Hard wick, having got rid of me, was waiting here to take the call. She told him she was flying here and would be here around three o’clock. He said it was okay and he would be here when she did arrive. When she arrived at the airport, she took a taxi and came here. Hardwick listened to what she had to say, then shot her.”

“Using your gun?”

“Using my gun.”

“The entrance to this building is locked at nine. The lock hasn’t been tampered with. How did Hardwick and the yellow skin get in here?”

“Hardwick must have arrived as soon as I had left and before the janitor locked up. He knew I was out of the way so he could sit right here and wait for the telephone call. When the time came for her to arrive, he went down and let her in. It’s a Yale lock. There’s no trouble opening it from the inside.”

“You ought to write movie scripts,” he said sourly. “Is this the yarn you’re going to tell the jury?”

“It’s worth checking. She would be easily spotted at the airport. The taxi-drivers out there would remember her.”

“Supposed it happened the way you say but instead of this unknown Hardwick, you were the one who told hex you would wait for her?”

“He’s not unknown. If you’ll check with the Express Messenger Service you’ll find he sent me three hundred dollars. You can check I was outside Connaught Boulevard from seven- thirty until nine. After that time, although I was there, only one car passed me around two o’clock, but I don’t know if the driver saw me or not. At six the milk delivery man will tell you I was still there,”

“I’m only interested in knowing where you were between one and four this morning.”

“I was outside Connaught Boulevard.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Just to keep the record straight, let me see what you have in your pockets.”

I turned out my pockets, laying the odds and ends on the desk. He watched without interest.

“If I had stolen her virtue,” I said, “I wouldn’t be carrying it around in my pocket.”

He got to his feet.

“Don’t leave town. I only need a puff of wind to throw you in the tank as a material witness, so watch yourself.”

He walked out of my office, through the outer room and into the passage. He left both doors wide open.