Erle Gardner - The Case of the Haunted Husband

“Who?” Drake asked.

Mason grinned, “I am paying you money to find out things.”

“All ready whenever you are,” Della Street said.

“I will have to stop by my office to get my hat and coat,” Drake said. This is going to be a big relief. I won’t feel so darn sympathetic this time. I felt as though I was taking pennies out of the baby’s bank last night.”

“And all the time the baby was picking our pockets for heavy dough.”

“Your car or mine, Perry?”

“Taxicab. It will save time.”

“Okay, let us go.”

It took them less than ten minutes to get to the Gateview Hotel. Mason said, “Just to check up, Paul, let us see if there are any messages for you.”

“Wait a minute, Perry. I shall talk with my operative first. We will find out if she has been down to the desk.”

Drake moved off to one side. A man who had apparently been completely engrossed in a newspaper lowered the sheet, looked up at Drake, imperceptibly shook his head, changed his position, and went on with his reading.

Drake moved back to Mason. “She is in her room.”

Della Street said, “If you want my advice, you won’t give her a ring. She isn’t expecting you, is she?”

“No.”

“Why not take her by surprise?”

Mason looked over at Drake. “Let us go.”

“Got the room number?” Mason asked Drake.

“Six-twenty-eight.”

Mason looked at his watch. “She may not be dressed,” he said. “If she isn’t, Della, you will have to crash the gate and...”

“A girl who worked in a New Orleans cafeteria will be up by nine-thirty,” she said.

They rode up in the elevator, walked quietly down the carpeted corridor. Mason found the door, tapped on the panel. After a few moments, he knocked again, louder. “Looks like you lose,” he said to Della. “She is still asleep.”

Mason tried the knob of the door. It was locked. He knocked again, imperatively. There was not so much as a sound from the other side of the door.

Drake turned to Mason. “Gosh, Perry, you don’t suppose... we didn’t get her so frightened or despondent... you know, she wouldn’t be lying there...”

“Give me a leg up,” Mason said.

Drake stooped, caught Mason around the knees, lifted him up so he could catch the projection just below the transom. The lawyer pulled himself up and tried to peer through the opening. “Can’t make out anything, Paul, except I can see the electric light is on. Come on, let us get the manager.”

The manager was inclined to be somewhat distant, and Mason took prompt steps to counteract his suspicions. His sister-in-law, he explained, had come to the city. She was to have been at his office by eight o’clock, and he was to have taken her for an automobile ride. She hadn’t shown up. The woman had a heart affliction, and was all alone. There was probably not one chance in a hundred but what she had simply been detained. However, Mason wanted to make sure.

The assistant manager finally summoned the bellboy. “Go up and take a look in six-twenty-eight,” he said, and, as Mason started to follow, said with authority, “You folks might as well wait here.”

Drake stepped away from the desk, coughed twice. The man who had been reading the newspaper lowered it. Drake made a signal, motioning toward the bellboy who was waiting at the elevator. The man casually folded his newspaper, tapped ashes from the end of his cigar, stretched, yawned, and got to his feet just as the elevator door opened and the bellboy entered.

“Going up!” the man called, and then walked leisurely across the lobby.

Five minutes later, the bellboy was back with a report. “The door is locked from the outside. I used the passkey. There is no one in the room. The bed hasn’t been slept in. There is no baggage in the room. The towels haven’t been used. The curtains are drawn, and the lights are on.”

The assistant manager regarded Mason with cool appraisal. “I believe you said she was your sister-in-law. If there is any trouble about the hotel bill...?”

Mason said, “I will stop by the desk and settle the bill right now. Probably she has had a heart attack in a restaurant, and has been taken to a hospital.”

“Sometime during the night,” the assistant manager asked pointedly, “before she had gone to bed?”

Mason said easily, “Yes. She said she was going out to get a cup of tea. Poor girl, I hope she isn’t seriously ill. I will call the hospital. Della, would you mind stepping over to the desk and paying the bill?... If she should happen to return, tell her to get in touch with her brother-in-law at once. Will you tell her that, please?”

The assistant manager said, “I will be only too glad to. But just a moment, please.”

He picked up the telephone on his desk, said to the operator, “Get the records on six-twenty-eight. Find out what baggage, I shall hold the line.”

He sat with the receiver to his ear. His eyes surveyed his visitors in speculative appraisal while he waited. Then he said into the transmitter, “All right, let me have it... You are certain? Very well.”

He dropped the receiver into place and said to Mason, “She checked in with a suitcase and a hat box. They are not in the room now. Would she have taken them to the restaurant?”

Mason became indignant. “Are you insinuating that a relative of mine would leave the hotel to avoid paying her bill?”

The manager’s manner became somewhat uneasy. “It’s strange,” he said. “That’s all.”

Mason leaned toward him and said, “You’re right it is strange, and your manner and your insinuations are stranger still. Here is a woman, unsophisticated, inexperienced, staying in a hotel in a large city. She disappears mysteriously. In place of being of any assistance, you start making cracks about her hotel bill. Her bill has been paid. I am paying it, see? And I am good for anything she runs up.”

The manager said, “I didn’t mean it exactly that way. It is a suspicious circumstance, that’s all.”

“What’s suspicious about it?”

“Well, for one thing, she simply couldn’t have taken her baggage out through the lobby. The employees are instructed that no guest is permitted to take baggage through the lobby. The bellboy always takes it and goes to the desk. The guest then either checks out or gets an okay from the clerk on duty.”

Mason surreptitiously nudged Drake and said, “I fail to see what that has to do with it.”

“Was your sister-in-law subject to spells of amnesia?”

“Not that I ever heard of.”

“I merely asked,” the manager said.

“There is a back way?”

“There is a basement and a baggage room.”

“And there is an exit to the alley from those?”

“There is, but it is through a freight elevator, and the freight elevator can’t be operated except with the janitor’s knowledge. He is under instructions to notify the desk whenever there is any outgoing baggage.”

“Then the only way a person could leave is through the lobby?”

The manager coughed deprecatingly. “There is the fire escape,” he said.

Mason drew himself up with dignity. “I can hardly imagine my sister-in-law climbing through the window of her room to a fire escape and...”

“No, of course not,” the manager interrupted, and then added, “I just thought you should know. That is why I asked about the amnesia.”

“Thank you,” Mason said with frigid dignity. “I believe my secretary has, by this time, paid the hotel bill. Good morning.”

The manager was still watching him speculatively as Mason and Drake left his office.

“Just babes in the wood,” Mason groaned to the detective as they marched across the lobby.