When Aline Ferris next awoke, sunlight streamed in the window, but the fear of last night remained strong and agonizing-the almost unbearable fear of the unknown.
She closed her eyes against the bright sunlight and tried to make her conscious mind quiescent, to break through to the subconscious which knew what she had to know.
Her telephone call from the cocktail lounge was the jumping-off place. That had been done without her conscious knowledge. It was the one thing she now knew she had done while blanked out. She had the number in her mind, memorized from the night before. She repeated the five digits over and over again silently, like an incantation to break down the barrier between conscious and subconscious. If she tried not to think about the numbers, not to recall consciously a name connected with them! Then, perhaps, the name would come.
It was there, in the hidden recesses of her mind. The knowledge of everything was there. It had to be. If she could only bring it forth…
She couldn’t. It wouldn’t come. The effort was exhausting. After a time, she ceased trying and opened her eyes.
The clock on the table beside the bed said 9:30. She moistened her lips, lifted herself on one elbow and reached for the telephone extension beside the clock, and called her office number.
Margie’s cheerful voice answered. Aline kept her own voice dull and flat when she said, “Hello, Margie. This is Aline.”
“Hi.” Margie lowered her voice to an elaborately confidential tone as she added, “Miss Prescott just went through. She asked if you were in.”
“I’m not,” Aline told her. “I’m out. Tell her I’ve got an abscessed tooth. Tell her any damned thing, Margie. I simply can’t make it today.”
“Bad, huh?”
“Horrible,” Aline groaned. “Fix it for me?”
“Will do. And you’d better get right over to the dentist. I’ll explain to Miss Prescott. Bye now.”
Aline hung up and sank back against the pillows. Her nerves were edgy and she felt physically exhausted. But it was impossible to relax, so she dragged herself from the bed and tottered into the tiny kitchenette. She gulped a large glass of cold orange juice, then put on a kettle of water for coffee. After measuring the coffee into the drip pot, she went resolutely to the front door. There was no use postponing it any longer. Sooner or later, she would have to read the morning newspaper. She opened the door and picked it up.
Her hands trembled as she spread it out on the couch. There were no screaming headlines… nothing at all on the front page about the murdered man. She really hadn’t expected to find anything there. By the time she reached page three, the kettle whistled and she got up to pour the water in the pot.
Returning, she went through the paper to the last page without finding any reference to a dead man having been found in an uptown hotel room.
There was no reason to expect the story to break so soon, she told herself as she sipped her first cup of black coffee. In fact, it would be strange if the body were discovered before mid-morning when a hotel maid might logically let herself in. So it would likely be late afternoon before she could learn anything definite about him.
A cigarette with her second cup of coffee helped a lot. Her mind began to function again, and her thoughts turned back to Bart’s party… back to the real beginning. Whomever she had telephoned at midnight must have been someone who was on her mind at the moment. Someone she felt she could turn to at that time of night while she was locked out of her apartment.
There was no use denying to herself that men were her first interest when she was blacked out. There was too much evidence from too many sources. So, the person must have been a man to whom she was strongly attracted. Someone she wanted to be with. All right. There was Dirk. She remembered their little necking party before she passed out. It had been pleasant enough, and rather gay. The usual sort of thing when the gang got together. But what had happened to cause a fight between her and Ralph over Dirk’s attentions?
No, she decided, it couldn’t have been Dirk. Nor any of the others with whom she was familiar at Bart’s party. Because the telephone number was strange to her.
The man had to be someone she met after she blacked out. A man whose name she knew, but whose number she had had to look up and ask Joe to write down for her when she went to the bar.
She frowned and bit at her lower lip. Both Doris and Ralph had mentioned a strange man with whom she had been smooching. Ralph had described him vaguely. Mediocre… nondescript. That description might easily fit the dead man! And Ralph had given the man a name. What was it? An unusual sort of name. Thorn? No…
Torn! Vincent Torn! That was it!
Aline put out her cigarette and went for a third cup of coffee. Her heart pounded painfully as she considered a possibility. A distinct possibility, one she could check without too much trouble. She could telephone him, and if he answered, he al least wouldn’t be the dead man. That would eliminate one possibility.
And if he didn’t answer? Well, that wouldn’t mean much either way. He would likely be at his office, if he had an office.
She was returning with the coffee when she abruptly realized that she could check her hunch by looking up Torn’s name in the telephone book. If he was listed… if his number was the one Ralph had brought back from the bar… then she would know it was he whom she had called. If not, she would at least know she was on the wrong track.
Her trembling hand slopped coffee into the saucer as she put it down and hurried to the directory. She turned the pages feverishly, and found his name.
Vincent Torn’s telephone number tallied with the one she now knew so well. The number Joe had written on the card.
Aline sank back on the day-bed and tried to piece together the few facts she had learned about her movements last night. She must have reached Torn by phone, and made an appointment, because she hadn’t asked Joe for another dime. She had gone directly outside to wait.
Since she had no money for a taxi, she must have met Torn outside the bar and gone to the hotel room with him. She shuddered violently, but braced herself against self-loathing. She had to face facts. It was exactly the sort of thing her body was likely to do once the conscious mind ceased directing its movements.
What now? By lifting the phone and dialing she might settle one more thing… whether Vincent Torn was alive or lying dead in the hotel room. In her own mind she now felt positive that he was the dead man. She reminded herself again that failure to get an answer would prove nothing. And what if someone else answered? Mrs. Vincent Torn… or a daughter… or a maid? She could hang up, of course, or pretend some other reason and ask for Mr. Torn.
She had to try. Not knowing was agonizing beyond endurance. If she could establish the fact that Torn had not returned home last night, she would know. And that would be the real beginning of her search for the hidden truth. Her search for the real killer in order to clear herself.
Also, there was the matter of time before the police came to question her. Once the body was found and identified it would be a routine matter for them to learn that he had been at Bart’s party and that a girl named Aline Ferris had made a big play for him. A girl who would answer the description of the one who had checked into the hotel with him after midnight.
If the man was Torn! That was the crux of it now.
Aline steeled herself for the attempt, lifted the receiver and swiftly dialed the number.
A man’s voice answered immediately, and Aline’s heart leaped into her throat.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Torn?”
“He isn’t in.” The voice sounded disappointed, brusque. “Can I take a message?”
“No. That is, do you expect him soon?”
“God knows.” There was a note of dry amusement now. “He hasn’t been in all night, and I haven’t the faintest idea when he’ll show up.”
“I… see.”
“Any message?” the voice persisted.
“No, thank you. I’ll try later.”
She was about to hang up when the voice said with interest and sudden urgency, “See here, isn’t this Aline Ferris?”
She gasped, “No,” and hung up. She stood by the telephone, trembling and white, trying to collect her thoughts.
The dead man was Vincent Torn! She was sure of that now. But who was the man who had answered Torn’s telephone? What did he know about her… about Aline Ferris… that had caused him to ask that last question?
Had he recognized her voice? Was he someone she knew? Or was it merely someone who knew Torn had gone out at midnight to meet a girl named Aline Ferris and hadn’t returned home?
She went back to the couch and buried her face in her hands. What came next? In her own mind she had established the identity of the hotel-room corpse. What would a detective do next?
Detectives. The police! She suddenly felt physically weak, and she couldn’t think straight. She needed food, a bath, and she had to get into some decent clothes. If they came and caught her looking like this!
She stripped off her pajamas on the way to the bathroom, took a quick shower, brushed the hangover taste from her mouth with toothpaste and put on stockings and underclothes. Before putting on make-up and a dress, she poached two eggs and made toast which she ate with a final cup of coffee.
Ten minutes later she was studying her face in the mirror, and it seemed incredible that she could have been the jaded, terrified person who had fled from a murder scene only a few hours ago. The bath and the food and a careful toilet had erased all outer signs of her hangover and steadied her nerves.
Back in the living room, she settled herself on the couch and took up the back-tracking again where she had left off.
A detective, she decided, would look for someone who had a motive, and an opportunity.
Who could have known that she and Vincent Torn were together in that hotel room? Had he been the sort of man who often took girls to hotels, and was he in the habit of frequenting the Halcyon?
That might be one angle. If someone were looking for an opportunity to murder him, it might have seemed a good time to commit the crime.
There were other possibilities, of course. Suppose Torn had been murdered only because of her? Through jealousy because she had gone there with him? By someone who had followed them to the hotel and traced them to the room?
The two-dollar bill thrust into the top of her stocking might be a clue pointing in that direction, the act of a jealous lover who had discovered her with Torn and murdered him in a burst of passion.
But she had no real lovers, jealous or otherwise. There had been passing affairs… nothing more. And they were over and done with. Ralph was the latest, but that could scarcely be called an affair. There was just that one night which she didn’t even remember. And Ralph certainly didn’t seem to be the jealous type. Only last night he had consoled himself with Doris after she, Aline, had refused to let him come in with her. Besides, he had driven away thinking she was going straight up to her own apartment. He hadn’t known about the call she made to Torn until he talked to the bartender much later.
There was no one else in her life who could possibly care enough about whom she slept with to commit murder.
No. It had to be someone in Torn’s own life. That, or pure accident. A prowler, who entered the room by chance, who was discovered by Torn and who killed him in the ensuing struggle. That would explain the absence of Torn’s wallet. But it hardly explained the two-dollar bill. What chance prowler would pause after murder to add that macabre touch?
It always came back to Torn himself. To his personal character and associates. And she knew absolutely nothing about him. He was merely a name to her. The name of a nondescript man who had evidently possessed enough sexual attraction for her to phone him at midnight and go to a hotel room with him.
Who would know about him? Neither Ralph nor Doris knew who he was. Ralph had mentioned hearing him introduced at the party, and had difficulty recalling his name.
Bart, of course. He was the host and must have invited Torn. Did she dare ask Bart about him? Would Bart wonder why she wanted to know? Would he suspect something?
Certainly not until he learned that Torn was dead and how he died. Then he would recall that Aline had asked about him. But it wouldn’t matter then. Sooner or later the police were sure to piece together the events of the evening and place her in the death room at the correct time.
She got up decisively and called Bart’s number. The phone rang several times before his lazy, cultivated voice drawled, “Hello.”
“Bart. How are you this morning?”
“Excruciating, my love. Simply excruciating. Tell me, why do I give parties? All sorts of rowdy people come and drink my liquor and make love to my girls and have a perfectly lovely time, and all I get out of it is a lousy hangover. By the way, how are you feeling this morning, Aline?”
“I have felt worse,” she told him as lightly as she could manage. “I think,” she added doubtfully, “though I really can’t remember when.”
Bart laughed indulgently. “But you did have a wonderful time. Don’t try to deny that.”
“It was a lovely party,” she assured him. “So many… interesting people. Some I’d never met before.”
“And some I hope I never meet again,” he told her dolefully. “What sort of dank rocks do they spring from under when word gets around that I’m throwing a whindig?”
She chuckled, then said archly, “I hope you don’t include Vincent in that group.”
“Vincent? Was there actually a Vincent? Ah, yes. It all comes back to me now. Shame on you. What has that gauche fellow got that I haven’t?”
“I… rather liked him,” she said delicately.
“And made it quite evident, my love. Yes, indeed. None of us doubted that your intentions toward him were strictly dishonorable. Tell me, frankly, how was it?”
Aline’s cheeks flamed and she strove to keep her voice casual. “Didn’t you know? Ralph brought me home. All perfectly safe and proper.”
“I never knew any homecoming with Ralph to be safe and proper,” he chuckled. “And I didn’t know he snatched you away at the last. You and the Vincent slug disappeared about the same time, and I confess I had shameful thoughts about you two.”
“You can forget them,” she told him lightly, “and that’s really why I’m calling. Who is Vincent Torn, Bart? Where does he live?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, my love. Gerry dragged him along. Gerry Howard, you know.”
“No. I don’t believe I do.”
“Writing chap. Books and things like that. I thought you knew Gerry. I have his phone number if you want to call up and pump him.”
“I’d like to, Bart.”
“Just a minute until I find my book. But why in the name of sweet Jesus an entrancing trollop like you wants to track down a specimen like Vincent Torn is utterly beyond my feeble comprehension. Hold it a minute.”
Aline waited with the receiver at her ear. In a moment Bart’s voice came through again.
“Here it is.” And he repeated a Butterfield number which was etched on Aline’s memory from the preceding evening.
She thanked Bart for the help, and hung up.
So it must have been Gerry Howard who had answered when she tried to call Torn. A “writing chap,” according to Bart. They had the same telephone number.
Her buzzer from the lobby entrance sounded as she turned away from the phone. Her heart beat violently against her ribs as she walked to the small entrance and lifted the mouthpiece. The police? Could they have traced her so quickly?
She said, “Yes?” and a man’s voice responded formally, “Miss Aline Ferris?”
“Y-yes.”
“You probably don’t remember me, but I met you last night at Bart’s party. Gerry Howard. May I see you?”
She said helplessly, “I… guess so,” and pressed the button that would admit him to the building.
What could he want with her? What did he know about last night? A thousand questions tore at her mind while she waited at the door listening for the elevator to stop at her floor. When she heard footsteps in the corridor, she turned the knob slowly and opened the door.
Gerry Howard was slender and dark and dapper. He wore a loose tweed jacket and fawn-colored slacks and a tan sports shirt, and was bareheaded. There was a knowing smile on his face as he approached Aline. Something like a smirk, yet not exactly that. A smile that shared understanding with her, that said without words: You and I know things that are hidden from ordinary mortals. We know them because we are kindred souls, because we are numbered among the initiates.
The implication of his expression repelled Aline, yet frightened and fascinated her. She stood aside as he entered, then closed the door. He paused close beside her, appraising her sexually, with his eyes, nodded his sleek black head approvingly and pursed his thin lips.
He said, “I must have been pretty tight last night. God forgive me, I asked Vinnie what the hell he saw in you when he raved about his new conquest. Now I see, damn it. I was a fool not to see it last night.”
He moved against her abruptly, pinning her against the door, his chest against her breasts, his pelvic bone pressed to hers. He was no taller than she, and his eyes were level with hers, his pouting lips brazenly waiting a quarter of an inch from her mouth.
Aline Ferris wriggled aside and slapped him hard on the left cheek. She was panting violently, and her response was purely automatic.
His expression changed to one of speculation when she slapped him. His lips parted and the tip of his tongue flicked out to move from left to right. He nodded and said dispassionately:
“Much, much too good for Vinnie. He’d never know what to do with a hellcat like you. I shall put you in my next book.”
He turned away from her with seeming lack of interest, strolled over to the couch and dropped down on it. A single lock of black hair fell aslant his forehead, giving him a rakish look, and Aline had a feeling that he had carefully trained it to lie there.
She went over to a chair across the room from him and sat down. “What do you want here?” she demanded angrily.
He looked at her with speculative amusement. “Do I have to say it in four-letter words?”
“No. But I don’t even know you.”
“Does that make a difference?”
“Of course.”
“It didn’t make much last night with Vinnie.”
“Vinnie who? What are you talking about?”
“This is like a slice of dialogue from a particularly bad soap opera,” he said wearily. “The writer has so many pages to fill before the climax of a scene, and so his characters spar along page after page. Let’s not you and me spar.”
“I was not sparring,” Aline responded with spirit. “You’re a total stranger and you ring my bell and demand entrance to my apartment and then start insulting me.”
“Insulting you?” he asked with a slow grin. “Is any woman ever really insulted when a male tells her she is sexually desirable?”
“It depends on the male,” she told him tartly.
He leaned back and lazily got a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, took one out and lighted it, then calmly spun the matchstick on the rug.
“Where’s Vincent?” The two words lashed out at her like the angry crack of a whip.
“Vincent who?” she lashed back.
“My buddy. The lad you hogtied and lashed to the mast last night at Bart’s party. Come off it, woman,” he went on impatiently. “What did you do with him?”
“What makes you think I did anything with him?”
He shook his head sadly. “Here we go again. This isn’t a soap opera. Vinnie Torn. Haven’t got him stashed around here, have you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Uh-huh. I didn’t think so, else you wouldn’t have telephoned him a little while ago. It was you on the phone?” he challenged, pointing his cigarette at her as though he levelled a lethal weapon at her breast.
“How did you know?” Aline’s voice faltered slightly.
“Your voice for one thing. It is good, you know. One of the best things about you. Sexy and intimate. Besides, there has been no other woman in Vinnie’s life for months. What have you done with him?”
“Now, you’re sparring,” she accused angrily. “I don’t know what happened to your precious Vinnie. Last time I saw him was at Bart’s party.”
“I happen to know,” he said slowly and emphatically, “that you and he slipped out together. He told me not to look for him home until late… that you and he had plans, for a few hours. But… where is he now?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed miserably. “That’s why I telephoned to ask for him. If you want to know the exact truth,” she went on angrily, determined not to let her voice break again, “I passed out cold at Bart’s party. I don’t know what happened.”
He eyed her speculatively under sweeping black lashes. “Where were you when you finally came to?”
“That’s not anyone’s business,” she told him defiantly.
“Perhaps not. But Vinnie is my business. I’ve been looking after him for years and I intend to keep on doing so. Where did you leave him? In what condition?”
“I told you the last time I saw him was at the party when I left.”
“And I know you’re lying. You and he left together. See here! You say you passed out. How do you know who you left with or what you did?”
“I’ve done some checking this morning. A man named Ralph Barnes brought me home. You can ask him if you like.”
“I suppose he’d lie for you if you asked him to,” Gerry said with indifference. “I happen to know this much: Vinnie took me aside at the party a little before midnight and said he was taking you with him. And not to worry if he didn’t get back to our place until quite late. When I got home about an hour later, he wasn’t in. He hasn’t come in yet… or phoned or anything. So what am I supposed to think?”
“I don’t care what you think,” she snapped.
He grinned with mocking arrogance. “I could make you care.” He got up and moved across the room, leaned over her and gazed into her eyes with what she realized he must consider hypnotic intensity.
Aline had never felt less susceptible to hypnotism. She glared back into his eyes and said, “Get out of my apartment before I call the police.”
He continued to lean over her and his expression did not change. It was as though he had not heard her. She felt a strange dizziness coming over her, and closed her eyes suddenly. She kept them closed while he pressed his lips hard against hers.
Gerry Howard withdrew his lips quickly, crossed the room to the door and went out.
Aline didn’t open her eyes until she heard the door close behind him. She felt dazed and bewildered, and the familiar room looked unfamiliar. She got up and went to the couch and slumped down on it, pressed her hands over her eyes and tried to put Gerry Howard out of her thoughts.
What now? What could she do next?
While she was debating that question her telephone rang. She jumped, startled by the sound. Then she steeled herself to answer it, trying to steady the beat of her heart as she lifted the receiver.
“Hello,” she breathed into the mouthpiece.
A woman’s angry voice answered, strident, and speaking fast as though she had keyed herself up to the task:
“Aline! This is Ina Dreer and I’m warning you to stay away from Dirk after this. Do you hear me? Stay away from him. If he’s with you now, you can tell him it’s me calling and he’d better get out of there fast if he ever expects to come home again.”
“Whatever are you talking about, Ina?” asked Aline, aghast. “Why would Dirk be here?”
“Isn’t he?”
“No.”
“If he shows up, you send him packing. Hear me?”
“I hear you,” said Aline coldly. “But nothing you’ve said makes any sense. I have no reason to expect Dirk here.”
“Oh, no? Well, when he flung away from me an hour ago he said he’d see you any damned time he wanted to and what could I do to stop him? You slut, you!” Ina’s voice sprayed venom. “Keeping him out all hours and then sending him back to me so nasty-drunk I have to clean up his vomit. Let me tell you a thing or two right now. If you think for one minute…”
“But I didn’t,” Aline broke in determinedly.
“Didn’t what?”
“Keep him out all hours. I’ve never been out with Dirk in my life.”
“That’s what he said, too,” shrilled Ina. “But don’t think I didn’t do some checking up last night when he didn’t come home from Bart’s party where he slipped off by himself. I’ve got some friends, too, you know. And they told me plenty. I know well enough where he was… and why you didn’t answer your phone all last night. I suppose you precious two lay up in bed together and laughed and laughed while it rang… while I tore my heart out trying to call him. Well, you listen to me, Miss Bitch! Dirk’s my husband. He’s never done such a thing to me before, and he never will again if I have to castrate him. How’d you like that? You tell him I said so and to come home!”
Ina Dreer was sobbing hysterically when she hung up.
Aline replaced the receiver with shaking hands. Her legs felt rubbery and there was a churning in her stomach. What a mess it all was! Somehow, the problem of the dead man wasn’t nearly so acute, now, as this new development.
Poor, dear Dirk. Just because he had kissed her a couple of times at the party. Just because he had sought a little human sympathy and understanding. How could this horrid accusation be built on so small a foundation? It hadn’t meant anything. Really it hadn’t. Just a little amorous dalliance between good friends.
Then a frightening realization came to her: That’s the way she remembered it. Up to the third martini. Up to the point she had blacked out.
Again she flung herself on the couch, this time because she felt too weak to stand.
What had happened after that? How much of Ina’s hysterical accusation was true? Why had she and Ralph fought over the way she and Dirk were carrying on, as Doris had said?
Dirk, and the stranger named Vincent Torn!
What in the name of God had she done after that third martini?