The Guilty Are Afraid

I left the elevator, walked down the corridor, unlocked my bedroom door and entered the room. I shut and locked the door, chucked my hat on the bed and went over to Jack’s suitcase. I got the match-folder from the suitcase and then sat down in the armchair and took a closer look at the folder. It contained twenty-five tear off matches: each matchstick carried the name of the Musketeer Club. The inside back of the folder carried an advertisement for one of those arty pottery shops that spring up like mushrooms wherever there are tourists.

The advertisement ran:

You should not miss visiting

Marcus Hahn’s School of Ceramics

The Treasure House of Original Design.

The Chateau

Arrow Point

St. Raphael City.

I wondered why an advertisement so obviously aimed at the tourist trade should be displayed in a match-folder of an exclusive club that would not tolerate a tourist in any shape or form within its high-tone portals. I wondered if I were on to something or whether it was just one of those things.

I tore off one of the matches. On examining it I found printed on the back a row of ciphers: C451136. I bent back the other matches and saw they too were numbered and the numbers were consecutive up to C451160.

I wedged the loose match back into the folder, sat for several minutes wondering why the matches were thus numbered, then coming to no conclusion I put the match-folder into my wallet.

The time was now twenty minutes to one o’clock. It had been quite a day. There didn’t seem anything else for me to do now but to wait for the morning. With any luck the newspapers would tell me who the girl in the swim suit was. Until then, it seemed a good idea to go to bed.

As I got to my feet, there came a knock on the door. It was delivered by a set of knuckles that would have no trouble in ramming your teeth down your throat: knuckles that didn’t belong to any member of any hotel staff: knuckles you’d expect to find on the hands of the law.

I stood still, my brain racing. Had I been spotted leaving the beach? Had I left any fingerprints in the cabin?

Knuckles banged on the door again and a voice growled, “Come on! Open up! We know you’re in there.”

I took my wallet from my pocket, took the match-folder out and slid it under the edge of the fitted carpet, then I put my wallet back, stepped to the door, turned the key and opened the door.

Candy stood there, chewing, his dark eyes hostile. Behind him were two big plainclothes men: their faces stony and their eyes alert.

“Come on,” Candy said in a flat, bored voice. “Captain Katchen wants you.”

“What for?” I said, not moving.

“He’ll tell you. Are you coming rough or smooth?”

I hesitated, then, seeing the odds were against me, I picked my hat off the bed and said I’d come smooth.

Chapter 6

I

The night clerk’s eyes bulged out of his head like organ stops when he saw me come out of the elevator, surrounded by Candy and his two hunks of beef. This was the second time I had been taken away from the hotel by the law, and I had an idea that if I survived this trip, the management would probably ask me to leave.

But I wasn’t any too sure that I would survive the trip. I remembered what Katchen had said at our last meeting and I had a depressing idea he wasn’t bluffing.

We went across the lobby, down the steps to the waiting police car. The two plainclothes men got in the front and Candy and I got in the back.

The car went off with the usual frantic rush and with the usual wailing siren, leaving the kerb so fast the jerk nearly dislocated my neck.

Candy sat beside me like a rock that has been baked in the sun. I could feel the heat of his body, and although I couldn’t see much of his face in the darkness of the car I could hear the steady movement of his jaws as he chewed.

“Okay if I smoke?” I said, more or less for something to say.

“Better not,” Candy said, his voice flat and cold. “I was told to bring you in rough.”

“What’s biting the Captain?”

“If you don’t know, how should I?” Candy said, and there the conversation ceased.

I stared out of the window. I wasn’t happy. There was a chance that someone had seen me on the beach and had phoned in my description. I had visions of being grilled. If Katchen conducted the grilling, I knew I was in for a bad time.

No one said anything until we pulled up outside the police headquarters, then Candy groped in his hip pocket and produced a pair of handcuffs.

“Got to put the nippers on,” he said, and I thought I detected an apologetic note in his voice. “The Captain likes everything ship-shape.”

“Are you arresting me?” I asked, offering my wrists.

The cold bite of the steel bracelets added to my depression.

“I’m not doing anything,” Candy said, getting out of the car. “The Captain wants to talk to you—that’s all there’s to it.”

He and I walked across the sidewalk and up the steps into the charge room, leaving the two plainclothes men in the car.