Brett Halliday: The blonde cried murder

Evelyn Thompson yawned not too prettily as she lounged in front of the switchboard at the Hibiscus Hotel. Normally she was quite a pretty girl, but tonight her face was sullen, her lips poutiAg with discontent.

Still two and a half hours until midnight I Roger wouldn't wait. She knew darned well he wouldn't. Not for two whole hours. And there wasn't a chance in the world to get in touch with him and explain that things had gone haywire, that the other operator, who'd promised faithfully just that afternoon to relieve Evelyn at ten, so she could keep her date, had called up a while ago to say she had a headache and couldn't make it tonight.

A headache? Haw! And her voice all blurry with gin. Wait until she asked Evelyn for a similar favor. Just waiti That's all.

Evelyn yawned again and patted her open mouth delicately with flame-tipped fingers. Wouldn't be so bad if there was anything doing, but after nine o'clock at night at the Hibiscus in the off-season it was like running a switchboard in a morgue. Maybe there'd be half a dozen calls from partying rooms upstairs for more ice and soda before she went off at midnight. And that'd be all. For that, Evelyn had to sit here and miss her date with Roger.

And he'd be sore as the devil about it. This was distinctly not the proper point in her relationship with Roger to keep him waiting two hours with no explanation at all. She'd worked it so carefully up to now. Playing him along just enough-giving in to him a little more each date, but withdrawing into dignity just in time so now she really did have him all hot and bothered and worked up to the point where tonight A light flashed on the board in front of her. She stopped yawning and sat a little more erect and leaned forward negligently to plug in the connection. Room 360. That was Mr. Drood. "Drooling Drood," they called him. Not that he was so bad, but he did sort of seem to drool when he looked at a girl. Because his face was pufiEy and pink and always sweaty, and his full lips always looked wet.

Funny he should be calhng down now. Only twenty minutes ago that Miss Payne in 414 had called him from her room. Evelyn had listened in, of course. Sometimes you heard some real good stuff when the guests of different sexes called each other late in the evening. And she'd seen that affair shaping up the last few days, too. Miss Payne was tall and had a sort of haughty way about her, but with a welcoming eye for the men for all that. Funny how she couldn't do better than old Drood. But then she was plenty old, too. Thirty-five at the least. And when you got that old, Evelyn thought complacently from her point of vantage at nineteen, you were just about ready to take anything that wore pants.

But they'd been very circumspect on that earlier call. Almost like they might have some idea a girl downstairs on the switchboard wouldn't have anything better to do than listen in, Evelyn told herself indignantly.

Just Miss Payne saying she'd found that piece in the paper she'd told Mr. Drood about that afternoon, and would he care to come up and get it? And Mr. Drood drooling into the phone how he'd love to, and maybe Miss Payne'd like it if he brought along a night-cap for the two of them. And Miss Payne saying she had the ice if he had anything to go along with it.

That was it, Evelyn told herself as the plug went in. No ice had gone up to 414 since about five o'clock. Probably she just had a couple of half-melted cubes left, and when they decided to stretch the night-cap out into another one, old Drood had slipped back to his own room to order it- as if that was going to fool anybody in a hotel.

Into the mouthpiece beneath her chin, Evelyn Thompson said in dulcet tones, "Your call, please?"

A woman's voice answered from 360. Panting and strained, hoarsely hysterical: "There's a dead man in three-sixteen. He's murdered. Oh, please hurry." And there was a click that closed the connection.

Evelyn sat rigid, staring at the board with dilated eyes. But that was Mr. Drood's room. 360. It was plugged into 360. Her staring eyes verified that fact. Sounded like the woman said "three-sixteen." But it was 360. Sure it was. She must have heard wrong.

Murder?

Evelyn frantically tried to call the number back. There was no answer. She jerked her head sidewise toward the profile of the clerk, half-dozing behind his desk, and whispered loudly, "Dick."

The profile stirred and the clerk's head turned languidly toward her. She motioned excitedly with one hand while she plugged in another connection.

The telephone buzzed in a private office behind the front desk, and a man who was dozing, fully clothed, on an old sofa in the small ofiice slowly came to life.

Oliver Patton, "Chief Security Officer" of the Hibiscus, swung his feet over the edge of the sofa and sat up, rubbing his eyes. His was a twenty-four-hour job since he was the only dick the hotel afforded, and he had to catch his sleep when he could. Generally it wasn't bad. Most nights went straight through without requiring his services at all.

He yawned as he glanced at his watch and reached for the phone beside the sofa. He was a big man who had gone steadily to fat since retiring from the police force a few years ago. His bunions bothered him a good deal, but. with his wife's hospital bills, his pension simply wasn't enough and he needed this extra money.

Evelyn's low-pitched but excited voice leaped out of the receiver at him as he lifted it, "Trouble in three-sixty, Mr. Pattonl"

"What kind of trouble?" he grunted sourly. "That's Drood, ain't it?"

"But it wasn't Mr. Drood. Some woman called. There's a dead man there."

"Dead?" Oliver Patton stopped scratching the fold of fat in front of his belly and his mouth gaped. "Drood?"

"I don't know. It's awful, Mr. Patton. You better get up there quick. She said murder. Should I call the police?"

"Murder?" Patton's voice took on a sharp note of authority. "Don't call anybody." He slammed down the phone and rose to his six feet two, his heavy face worried.

Murder in a hotel was real trouble. It was his job to keep the police out if there was any way possible. Of course, if it was murder, it wouldn't be possible. But he knew most of the boys on Homicide. Sometimes you could fix things so there wouldn't have to be any publicity.

He hurried out of his office and around a comer into the lobby where the clerk and bell-captain and elevator operator were grouped at the desk talking excitedly to Evelyn.

They all stopped talking and looked to him for advice as he came up with ponderous swiftness. He disregarded them and demanded of Evelyn, "What you got, girl?"

"Just that. A woman called from three-sixty and said there was a murdered man there. She hung right up on me and didn't answer when I called back."

"Come along, Bill," he snapped at the bell-captain. "You watch it here, Dick. Don't let anybody out-nobody up." He trotted heavily to the waiting elevator, and when the door slammed shut, asked the operator, "Bring anybody down recently?"

"They was a lady a few minutes ago, Chief. She come from five." As the elevator stopped and he opened the doors, he asked anxiously, "What must I do?"

"Hold it right here." snapped Patton. "No matter how many bells ring." He turned to his left with Bill at his heels, moved swiftly but quietly toward a door standing open with light streaming out of it.

The open door was numbered 360. The overhead lights were on, revealing an impersonal hotel bedroom with a double bed in the corner between two windows.

There was no woman in the room, and no dead man in sight. Everything was in perfect order with a man's bedroom slippers showing from under the bed, a pair of violently flowered pajamas lying across the foot of it, a set of silver-backed brushes on the dressing-table.