Brett Halliday - She Woke to Darkness

“I know,” said Dirk rapidly, “but he does like you, and I gather his ego was severely wounded when you sent him away last night. You didn’t tell him anything about Torn?” he asked urgently. “He has no idea at all that the midnight telephone call you made may involve you in a murder case as a suspect?”

“No!” Aline shuddered. “I told him nothing. I didn’t dare. You’re the only person who knows, Dirk.”

“If he did know how important that telephone call is to you,” pointed out Dirk, “isn’t it quite possible he would be willing to remain quiet about it? As a favor to you?”

“I don’t know,” said Aline doubtfully. “Just at this moment, Ralph isn’t in a mood to do me any favors.”

“But he could be put into such a mood without too much trouble,” said Dirk. He rose and strode across the living room, his face grave and deeply troubled. “You and I are both caught in the same sort of trap,” he told her despondently. “Without knowing what we did last night, neither of us can possibly prove we had no hand in Vincent Torn’s death. Once the police get onto the affair and dig into what happened at Bart’s party, we’ll be equally suspect. Don’t you see how perfect it would be for us both if we could alibi each other by swearing we were here in your place together from midnight until four o’clock?”

“It’s the perfect solution,” she agreed. “And no one could ever prove otherwise if I hadn’t made the telephone call to Mr. Torn.”

“About which no one can give evidence except Ralph Barnes.” Dirk strode to her side and took her arm firmly in his grasp. “If I know anything at all about Ralph, you should have no real difficulty persuading him to remain quiet about that. He needn’t actually lie when the police question him. He need only tell the truth about bringing you home from Bart’s and dropping you here. If he doesn’t mention the telephone call, the police will never know you didn’t come directly upstairs to spend the next few hours with me.”

“Wait a minute,” she faltered. “When you speak of persuading Ralph… you know what he will expect in payment?”

Dirk nodded gravely, his eyes holding hers. “I can easily guess. But, remember your danger, Aline. And the position I’m in myself.” His voice was deep-throated and strong. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret later, but think it over very carefully before you decide either way.”

Aline nodded and drew in a deep breath. “Don’t forget about Doris,” she warned him. “She knows I was out on the street at four o’clock without my purse and with no key to my apartment.”

“I think Doris will play along. She isn’t the sort who’d want to make trouble for you. She doesn’t know about the phone call, of course, and has no reason to suspect you were with Torn. You might even tell her that you and I were together, but ask her not to tell Ralph.

“And, of course, Ralph mustn’t know we’re going to tell the police we were together. He knows we weren’t. And he mustn’t know he’s providing me with an alibi at the same time, or he’d probably balk. But if he thinks he’s simply doing you a favor by keeping you out of a nasty mess, I hardly think he’ll refuse.”

“I don’t think he will, either,” agreed Aline breathlessly. “It is the right thing, isn’t it? Since I do know I’m completely innocent but have no way of proving it.”

“Innocent persons have been convicted before this,” Dirk reminded her gravely. “I think I’d better run along now and try to pacify Ina. You’d better have a talk with Ralph right away.”

“I will,” Aline promised, moving with him to the door. “You’ll never understand how much good it’s done me just to be able to talk with you, Dirk.”

“I think I do know.” He smiled wearily. “Remember, I’m in the same boat. Call me about Ralph?”

Aline told him she would. As he hesitated in the doorway, she rose impulsively on her toes and touched her lips lightly to his.

Then he was gone and she was alone in the apartment. She felt almost light-hearted now. It was going to be all right. If she could persuade Ralph not to tell the police about her midnight phone call, no one could possibly prove she hadn’t been with Dirk during the time Vincent Torn was being murdered.

That was the end of Elsie Murray’s manuscript. I laid it aside with an empty feeling of regret. If she had only gone on a little further!

But here was enough, it seemed to me, to provide a definite motive for her own murder. If the events in her story had happened (as she assured me they had) substantially as related by her, it seemed to me that at least one of her characters had a perfect reason for wanting the manuscript suppressed.

Poor silly Elsie! From the way she wrote about Dirk, it appeared that she was wholly unaware how cleverly he had used her in setting up an alibi for himself while pretending to provide her with one.

It is one of the classic gimmicks in detective fiction, of course, and I recognized it instantly.

But who was the man she called Dirk in her script? That was the burning question. She had told me that she had carefully changed all names and physical descriptions of the people involved, but it shouldn’t be too difficult, I thought, to identify him once one learned more about the girl herself and her associates.

The important thing was to get a duplicate copy made before the police came and impounded the one I had.

I looked at the slip of paper on which Ed Radin had written the address of the duplicating firm. It was a low number on West 45th Street. My watch said it was five o’clock. I slid Elsie’s manuscript back into its manila envelope, put on my hat and a light topcoat. With the envelope inside my coat and held through the cloth with my right hand in my coat pocket, no one would notice that I was carrying anything as I left the hotel.

I didn’t try to get out without being seen. I went down in the elevator, stepped out into the lobby briskly and nodded to the clerk at the desk just as though it was my regular custom to take a five A.M. constitutional. I went out onto 52nd Street and turned left to Madison Avenue, took off my eyepatch as I left the hotel and put it in my pocket.

I waited at the deserted corner only a matter of minutes before a cruising cab pulled in to the curb. I told the driver to drop me at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 45th, and he looked puzzled but didn’t ask any questions.

When he dropped me there, I walked west along 45th, taking the envelope from under my coat as I did so.

The address was a small hotel such as that particular district is dotted with. A clerk was dozing at the desk, and he yawned when I asked for the Overnight Duplicating Service, motioned to a corridor leading to the left off the rear of the lobby and said, “I think there’s someone working now. If they don’t answer the door I can call them.”

I went along the corridor to a door with a sign on it, and the word ENTER beneath.

Inside was a tiny reception hall with a waist-high shelf separating it from two rooms. One door was closed, but the other was open and the room was lighted. I could hear movement inside but couldn’t see anyone, and I called, “Anybody home?”

A man’s voice answered, “Be right with you.”

He came out in a moment, shirt-sleeved and weary-faced. I put the manuscript on the shelf and told him, “I’m a friend of Ed Radin, and he asked me to bring this by for him. A particular rush job. Can you knock out one copy fast for him?”

“For Ed Radin, I can and will. Let me look at it and try one sheet and I’ll tell you exactly how long it’ll take.” He opened the envelope and took out a sheet, looked at it with a nod of approval and said, “Ought to go through all right. Just a moment.” He stepped inside the lighted room and went to the rear out of my sight, and was back within a minute with the original sheet and a duplicate of it on good heavy paper in blue ink.