Erle Gardner: Turn on the Heat

I said, “Well, come on, let’s go. We can’t get in any deeper than we are now.”

Bertha Cool said, “God, how I wish you were right,” and unlocked the door.

We went out into the corridor. Bertha calmly and methodically locked the door. “How about a taxicab?” I asked.

“There’s a taxi stand in front of the hotel,” she said.

We went down through the lobby. The clerk said, “You’re baggage hasn’t shown up yet, Mrs. Cool. Do you want me to do anything about it? I can arrange with a transfer company—”

“Nothing, thank you,” Bertha said and swept on past him.

There was a taxi at the stand in front of the hotel. Bertha heaved herself into the seat. I said to the cab driver, “Key West Apartments and make it snappy.”

We rode along for a block or two in silence. Then Bertha Cool said, “Why in hell you didn’t fix it up so the police wouldn’t think she’d been kidnapped is more than I know. If she wanted to come down where she could live with you, why the hell didn’t you have her think up a good stall which would fool cops. The way it is now, you’re headed for the big house, and it doesn’t make a damn what happens to this murder case. You—”

“Shut up,” I said. “I’m thinking.”

She said, “Well, I’m paying you wages. Think about the case we’re working on. Think about your own troubles in your time off.”

I turned on her. “You give me a pain. I am thinking about business problems, and you try to get me started on my personal problems. Shut up.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Shut up.”

When we were within a few blocks of the Key West Apartments, I said, “We’re all nuts.”

“What is it now, Donald?” Bertha Cool asked.

“Those cigarette stubs in Evaline Harris’s apartment. One of them had lipstick on. One of them didn’t. Police jumped at the conclusion that that meant a man had been in the room. It doesn’t mean any such thing.”

“Why not?”

I said, “She’d been out late the night before. She was sleeping late. She was still asleep when someone gave her door a buzz.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The paper under the door.”

“I see. Go ahead.”

I said, “You don’t keep lipstick on when you go to bed, do you?”

“No.”

“Neither did Evaline Harris. She removed her makeup and got into bed. Her visitor came before she had a chance to put any make-up on. They sat on the bed and talked. Her visitor was a woman. It was the caller’s cigarette stub that had the lipstick on it.”

The cab driver pulled into the kerb in front of the Key West Apartments. “Want me to wait?” he asked.

I said, “No,” and handed him a dollar.

Bertha Cool was staring at me with steady, wide-eyed intentness.

I said, “You know what that means.”

Bertha Cool nodded.

“All right. Let’s go.”

She pulled herself out of the cab. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the detectives parked just behind the agency car keeping the place under surveillance. Bertha saw him too, but didn’t even bother to signal him.

As I held the door open for Bertha Cool, I said, “Keep the clerk busy for a minute.”

Bertha nodded and moved over to the desk. The clerk came forward to greet her. I walked past him to say in a low voice to Frieda Tarbing, “Didn’t she call?”

“Not a peep. Shall I go through the motions of ringing?”

I saw the clerk cock an ear in our direction, and I said in a loud voice, “Oh, don’t bother to ring. Aunt Amelia is expecting me. We’ll go right on up.”

She raised her voice. “According to the rules,” she said, “I have to ring.”

The clerk said, “That’s all right, Miss Tarbing. They can go right up,” and he smiled at Bertha.

Bertha gave him one of her most gracious smiles, and I stood to one side while she eased her avoirdupois into the elevator. I followed her. The elevator door clanged shut and we shot upwards.

We left the elevator and walked down the corridor. Bertha Cool said to me, “Any ideas?” and I said, “We’ve got to really get rough with her this time.”

Bertha said, “All right then, lover. You keep out of it. When it comes to getting rough with a woman, I know some fine points that would never occur to a mere man. If it’s getting rough you want, just stand to one side and watch Bertha do her stuff.”

We knocked on the door and waited. There was no sound from the inside. The transom was tightly closed.

I knocked again. Bertha said, “This is a swank place. There’s probably a button here somewhere — here it is.”

She pressed her finger against the button. Still nothing happened. Bertha and I exchanged glances. Then we listened at the door for any sound of motion. We pounded again, and nothing happened.

Bertha said, “That damned operative went to sleep on the job and she sneaked out on us.”

I tried to keep my face from showing what I was feeling.

We pounded on the door again and Bertha Cool rang the buzzer some more. Then she said grimly, “Come on down with me, lover. I want you to hear what I have to say to that snake’s-belly sitting in that car.”

I tagged along behind. There was nothing else to do.

We’d taken half a dozen steps when suddenly Bertha Cool stopped and sniffed. She turned and looked at me.

“What is it?” I asked, and then I caught it, just a faint whiff of gas.

I ran back to the apartment door and dropped to my hands and knees, put my cheek against the carpet, and tried to look under the door. I couldn’t see a thing, just a black strip beneath the jamb of the door. I took a long-bladed knife from my pocket, opened the blade, and inserted it in the crack. It struck some obstacle.

I jumped up, dusted off the knees of my trousers with the palms of my hands, and said, “Come on, Bertha. Let’s go”

We went to the elevator and down to the lobby. I walked up to the clerk and said, “I’m afraid something’s wrong with my Aunt Amelia. She told me to come back at this time, that she’d be here waiting. I went up and pounded on the door and couldn’t get any answer.”

The clerk was very affable. “She s probably gone out.” he said. “She’ll be back in a little white. Would you like to wait in the lobby?”

I said, “She was expecting me. She said, she’d be there.” Frieda Tarbing said, “I’m quite sure she hasn’t gone out.”

“Give her a ring,” the clerk said.

Frieda Tarbing flashed me a quick glance, then plugged in a line, and worked a key back and forth. After a few minutes, she said, “She doesn’t answer.”

The clerk said, “Well, there’s nothing I can do—”

“I thought,” I said, “that there was a faint odour of gas in the corridor.”

The affable smile dissolved from the clerk’s face. I saw his eyes get big and his face change colour. Without a word, he reached under the counter and took out a pass-key. “Come on,” he said.

We went up. The clerk tried fitting the pass-key to the door. It didn’t work. He said, “The door’s bolted from the inside.”

Bertha Cool said, “Donald, you’re thin. You could smash out the glass in that transom, and drop through, and open the door.”

I said to the clerk, “Give me a leg up.”

He said, “I’m not certain we should resort to extreme measures—”

Bertha Cool said, “Here, lover. I’ll give you a boost.”

She picked me up as though I weighed no more than a pillow. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, wadded it around my hand, and smashed in the glass of the transom. A blast of gas came out to strike me in the face.

I said to Bertha, “Slip off your shoe, and give it to me. I can hang on up here.”