Dan Marlowe - The Fatal Frails

The click of the lock in the door sounded as Johnny turned. Stitt waved from behind the glass, and disappeared.

Johnny shrugged, and continued on down the walk.

Johnny stood in the lobby of the Hotel Alden with the receiver of the house phone to his ear and listened to it ring a dozen times with no response. He gave up, finally, and recradled it. He thought it over a moment, undecided. He would have liked to talk to Jules Tremaine.

“Ah-sir?”

Johnny half turned at the low-voiced inquiry at his elbow, He looked at the skinny, balding little man in rusty blue suit and frayed-collared, pin-striped shirt who stood nervously dry-washing his hands.

“Talkin' to me, Jack?” Johnny inquired.

“Please,” the man said softly. He was not looking at Johnny. “I'm the clerk at the cigar counter. If it's Mr. Tremaine you're looking for, follow me over there.” He was moving away before he had completed the sentence, his gait a stiff-kneed trot.

Johnny watched him as he moved in behind the stand across from the mail desk, picked up a feather duster and energetically attacked a magazine rack. A glance around the lobby disclosed no one taking an interest in the exchange.

Johnny gave him a couple of moments before he followed. “Couple cigars. Somethin' bigger'n a perfecto.”

“Yes, sir,” the clerk said clearly. His bald head flashed as he stooped to remove boxes from the cigar case. “We have three or four excellent blunts, if you'd just have a look-” Slim white hands opened boxes and displayed cigars. “Tremaine?” the man asked without moving his lips. Six feet away, Johnny thought, the voice must be inaudible.

“Yeah.” Johnny fingered a well-shaped blunt from a box and held it up to the light. “Where is he?”

“The police took him away. Two hours ago.” This guy should have been a ventriloquist, Johnny thought. Looking right at him you couldn't see his lips move. “I'll take three of these.” He put the cigars in his jacket pocket and waited for his change. “Thanks, Jack.”

“Thank you, sir.” The faintest possible stress was on the pronoun. The clerk returned to his dusting.

Johnny moved away from the stand. Tremaine picked up by the police? Could Tremaine have been the second man the apartment help insisted had gone up to Madeleine Winters' apartment with Jack Arends? Tremaine in Madeleine Winters' apartment? Johnny shook his head. He couldn't see it. Not the way Tremaine felt about her. Unless-

He headed for the phone booths. Eddie Lake was the man to handle this. In the yellow pages he ran a thick forefinger down the “L's,” then stepped inside a booth and dialed. “Eddie?” He listened impatiently to a voice explaining nasally that it was empowered to deputize for Eddie. “Put Eddie Lake on the line,” Johnny demanded. “Eddie? Johnny Killain.”

“Well, well, well,” a bright voice chirped. “The bear that walks like a man. How much, bail? What's the charge?”

Johnny grinned. “You think I'm in trouble, Eddie?”

“Do I hear from you if you're not?” the tenor piped injuredly. “Six months an' never a word.”

“I been a little busy. So catch me up. Tell me everything you learned in the six months. It won't take long,” Johnny gibed.

“I'll tell you everything we both learned,” Eddie Lake said sharply. “That won't take any longer.”

“Same old Eddie,” Johnny said, laughing. “Quick on th' trigger. Listen.” He turned serious. “Grab one of your shysters an' get over to the precinct an' spring a boy by the name of Jules Tremaine. Residence is the Hotel Alden. He was scooped a couple hours ago.”

“Is it bailable?”

“I doubt there's a charge. I think they're goosin' him on general principles.”

“Anything I should know?”

“A monied party got dusted off the other night. I think they're tryin' to put this boy close to the scene.”

“That's a little bit more than general principles. If they do, my money's no good.”

“You get him out before they do. He's not the type to talk quick an' easy. Bring him up to the Alden. I'll be in the lobby. How long will it take?”

“Not so very if you didn't keep me hanging on the phone answering foolish questions. If I spring him at all. I'll see you.”

Johnny smiled as he hung up. He headed for a lobby chair and sank down into one that commanded a full view of the front entrance. By the time he had taken out and lit up one of his recently purchased cigars, the smile had been replaced by a scowl.

He was remembering the evening he had picked up Gloria Philips at the Spandau office for their dinner date. The redhead had locked up. Jules Tremaine had not been there.

Johnny frowned down at the wreathed blue smoke curling from the cigar ash. Could it actually have been Tremaine with Arends up in the blonde's apartment?

He had time to consider another problem that had been tickling at his consciousness for some time. Where could Claude Dechant have hidden a thirty-pound object measuring eighteen by fifteen inches? Hidden it well enough to escape the eager beavers whose sole idea was its recovery?

Knowing Dechant, he probably wouldn't trust it too far away from him, yet Max Stitt, who should have known Dechant and his ways better than any of them, had been unable to find it.

If you believe him, Killain. If you believe him.

Johnny sighed, stretched out his legs and settled down to wait grimly for part of the answer, at least, to be delivered to him.

If Tremaine had been in Madeleine Winters' apartment with Jack Arends, Johnny wanted a few words with Jules Tremaine.

Dan Marlowe

The Fatal Frails

JOHNNY ROSE TO HIS FEET as Jules Tremaine entered the Alden lobby, a fat man in a flamboyant green suit on his heels. “Eddie!” Johnny called as Tremaine headed for the elevators.

“Ho, there, Big Bear,” the fat man returned in a high, piping voice. “Here's your boy. Good thing I went over there.” He glanced sardonically at the big man, who had stopped and was listening with every indication of impatience. The handsome face looked angry, Johnny thought. “No one was happy to see me, strangely enough. Not Dameron. Not your boy here, either.”

“When I need help, I'll ask for it.” Jules Tremaine bit off the words viciously.

“You needed it when I got there, son,” Eddie Lake told him unruffledly. “Dameron's boys were leanin' all over the apartment help to get a positive identification,” he explained to Johnny. “The first go-round the help had said well, now, we're not sure. After some pullin' an' haulin' the police had one of 'em teeterin' on the verge of sayin' positively. When I got my lawyer in there he broke it up.”

“When I need help-” the big man began again in his clipped, British accent, and looked at Johnny as though a new thought had just occurred to him. “How the devil did you know where to find me? They let me speak to no one.”

Johnny nodded at the cigar counter. “Your friend there.”

“Friend?” Tremaine looked in the direction Johnny indicated. “What friend?”

“The clerk,” Johnny said impatiently. “I don't know his name.”

Jules Tremaine's smile was mirthless. “I'm quite sure I don't, either.”

“What's the gag?” Johnny inquired. “Very hush-hush he told me you'd been picked up. He's not a friend of yours?”

“He'd like to be a friend of mine.”

Eddie Lake chuckled appreciatively and jabbed Johnny in the ribs. “Big Bear, your unsophisticated nature's showing. Don't you know that when a man looks like Tremaine here it's not only the women he has to fight off?”

Johnny looked at the cigar counter again. “I'll be damned. I never had one go to bat for me.”