Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

“Yes, I unpacked for both of us, like a good wife.”

“Set out all his shaving things for him—?”

“No, I meant to ask him about that!” she said. “He must have left them all behind in his hurry, he came away without a razor or blades or shaving-cream or anything—”

“Don’t!” I said, “Please don’t mention that subject to him at all—” And then lamely, “That’s supposed to bring bad luck too.”

But she wasn’t listening any more. “Here he is now,” she said. “Well, goodbye, old-timer,” and hung up. What’s a mere brother, even when he is trying to save your life without your knowledge, compared to a brand-new, adored husband?

I got the hotel right back again, and got the hotel-detective and identified myself. It was easier going with him, the ice wasn’t quite so thin. “Now this is a personal matter and I’m not in a position to give you the low-down. You can check up on me by getting in touch with Headquarters up here—”

“That’s perfectly all right, Dokes,” he assured me. “Anything we can do to cooperate with you, we’re at your service.”

“You have a Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hilton in tonight, room—?”

“Just a sec. Yes, Suite 22-G, that’s right.”

“I want you, or somebody working with you, stationed within earshot of the door of that suite tonight — all night long-with orders to break in there at the first unnatural or alarming sounds they hear. This is important, there must be no delay; whoever you give the post to must be provided with a passkey ahead of time and authorized to act at a moment’s notice, whether summoned by the occupants or not. Is that clear?”

“It’s unusual, to say the least, but I’ll see that it’s done. You wouldn’t care to enlighten us any furth—?”

“I would, but it’s out of the question just at present. This is a preventive measure, not a coercive one, you understand? And it’s essential that it be done without attracting the attention of the people in question; they must not know they are under surveillance. That’s vital!”

“You can count on us,” he said.

I wasn’t so sure that I could at that, it was a half-measure at best, but at least it was better than none; she wasn’t quite alone and at his mercy now, with just a fingernail-file and a room-phone to fall back on in case of a sudden attack in the dark. But I wasn’t being lulled into any false security, just the same. The room-door might be solid enough to muffle anything short of a full-bodied shriek. The man posted outside it might doze off. And if he was a person without much judgment, how would he know what constituted a danger-signal and what didn’t? By deliberately withholding the key to the situation from them I’d rendered them enormously liable to error. A death-rattle might seem no more to them than the sound of a restless sleeper clearing her throat. The whole thing was porous with pitfalls.

Chapter V Disbelief

She wasn’t glad to see me. That was as obvious as the nose on your face. She’d already passed back and forth in front of me an even half-dozen times in the wheel-chair — with him — without spotting me watching her. I’d taken good care of that. It was when I finally saw the Negro wheeling her back alone in the chair, that I stepped out from the cool, shady pergola where I’d stationed myself into the glare of the Boardwalk and strolled up to meet her. The colored man had turned her chair aside and parked it against the railing, looking toward the sea. I didn’t know how soon he’d be back, he might have stopped off just for cigarettes, but the opportunity mightn’t recur again for the rest of the day, so I had to grab it while I could.

Her mouth just opened when she saw me, then closed again, rather firmly too. “What are you doing down here?”

I said to the darky, “We’ll call you back when we want you.” Then I perched on the rail, facing her, so I could keep my eye on the Boardwalk. “I’m down here to get a guy,” I said tersely.

She didn’t try to conceal her repugnance. “That rotten business of yours! Hounding people—”

I said morosely, “Did it ever occur to you what kind of a world this would be, if it weren’t for that rotten business of mine?” But her reaction even to a casual remark like that, that seemingly had nothing to do with her, only showed me how she would have taken it had I told her the real McCoy over the phone. It would have killed her, or unbalanced her. “Even now,” I said to myself, “I’ve got to watch my step how I go about it, I can see that. She’s hipped on the guy. I’ve got to break it to her little by little. If I just drag him away from her, there’s no telling what it’ll do to her!”

“Look at that sea, look at that sun and that blue sky over us,” she was saying. “Oh, Ritchie, is that the only purpose you can find in life, to spread fright and darkness around you, to send people to their deaths or to living deaths shut up in clammy cells? Today — for the first time in my life — I’m not so proud of you!”