Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“Did he say anything to you?”

No, he had just looked at him kind of funny, and Eddie hadn’t known what to make of it.

I did, though. I was beginning to see things clearer and clearer every moment. I was beginning to have a little trouble with my breathing, it kept coming faster all the time.

“Time’s up,” said the nurse from the doorway.

“Not yet it isn’t,” I told her. “I’m not going to have to do any questioning after today, so back out while I take a couple minutes more to wind it all up.” I turned to Eddie. “And when you ran into him again at the Lyons he said ‘Young fellow, are you following me around?’, did he? And smiled at you, did he? And gave you a tip for no reason at all, did he?”

Eddie nodded three times.

I clenched my teeth tight. I had everything I needed, knew all I wanted to, and yet — I couldn’t have made the slimmest charge stick and I knew it; I didn’t have any evidence. A ten-dollar tip, a hasty departure, an everyday wisecrack like “Are you following me around?” — you can’t bring charges against anyone on the strength of those alone.

“What’s he like?” I asked.

Short and dumpy, came the answer. He wore a black beard, not the bushy kind, but curly and trimmed close to his face.

“Did he always have it?”

Not at the San Pablo, no. He’d only had a mustache there, but he’d grown the beard after he moved to the Lyons.

Just in case, I thought, the cigar-chewing gentlemen with the iron hats showed up again. That wasn’t very clever. Something told me that this Dr. Avalon was not quite right in his head — which made the whole thing all the more gruesome. Frozen-face’s gangsters were angels of light and sweetness compared to a maniac like this.

“Did he ever act a little strangely, I mean different from other people, as far as you could notice?”

No, except that he seemed absent-minded and used to smile a lot about nothing at all.

I only asked Eddie one more question. “What was his room number at the Lyons?”

He didn’t know for sure, but he had always taken him up to the eighth floor.

I got up to go.

“I won’t be in to see you tomorrow,” I told him casually. “I’m going to drop by the hotel and collect the half week’s wages they still owe you.” But there was a far bigger debt than that I was going to collect for him. “In case I don’t get around for the next few days, I’ll have the wife stay with you to keep you company. Not a tumble to her or to those two flatfeet, either, the next time they come around on one of their semi-annual visits.”

I think he knew. He just looked at me and narrowed his eyes down, and we shook hands hard.

“Don’t worry, Eddie, everything’s under control — now.”

When I got back to my own house I put the revolver in an empty suitcase and carried it out with me. From there I stopped off at the shop and put in several lengths of copper wire and an awl and a screwdriver and some metal disks and a little black soundbox with some batteries inside it, something on the order of a telephone baseboard. I also put in several other little tools and gadgets you’d have to be a master electrician to know anything about. I told my assistant to keep things running, that I was going out to wire a concert hall, and I rode down to the Hotel Lyons and checked in. I signed the register “T. Mallory, Buffalo,” and told them I was very particular about where I slept. The seventh floor wasn’t quite high enough, and the ninth floor was just a little too high. How about something on the eighth? So they gave me 802.1 didn’t even know if he was still in the hotel at all, but it was taking too much of a chance to ask; he might have gotten wind of it. So I paid for three days in advance and said: “Don’t be surprised if I ask you to change me in a day or two. I’m a very hard customer to please.” Which was perfectly all right with them, they told me.

When I got up to the room I just put the valise down without unpacking it and killed a little time, and then I went downstairs with a newspaper in my pocket and grabbed a chair in the lobby that faced the entrance and sat there from then on. From six until eleven I sat there like that with the paper spread out in front of my face. I never turned a page of it because that would have covered over the two little eye-holes I’d made in it with the point of a pencil. At eleven-thirty they started to put the lights out around me and I couldn’t stay there any longer without attracting attention. So I got up and went up to my room. He’d never shown up. For all I knew he’d beat it right after — what he did to Eddie; maybe he wasn’t even living in the building any more. I had to find out and find out quick, otherwise I was just wasting my time. But how, without asking openly? And I couldn’t do that, it would give me away.

In the morning I thought of a way, and it worked. I remembered a song of years back that strangely enough had the same name as the man I was tracking down — Avalon. When the chambermaid came in to clean up the room I got busy and started singing it for all I was worth. I didn’t know the words and I didn’t know the music, so I faked it, but I put in plenty of Avalon. She was a friendly old soul and stood there grinning at me.

“Like it?” I said.

“What’s it supposed to be?” she asked.

“It’s called Avalon,” I said. “Isn’t that a funny name for a song?”

“It is,” she admitted. “We got a doctor in this hotel by the same name.”

I laughed as though I didn’t believe her.

“What room is he in?” I asked skeptically.

“815,” she said. “He’s a permanent, that’s how I know his name.” I went down to the desk and said: “I didn’t sleep a wink last night; you’ve got to give me something else.”

The clerk unfolded a floor-plan and we began to consult it together. 815, I saw at a glance, was a suite of two-rooms-and-a-bath, at the end of the hallway. It sealed it up like the cross-bar of a T. All the others were singles, lying on each side of the hallway; only two of them, therefore, adjoined it.

I pointed to one. “That’s a nice layout. 814. How about that?” They had someone in there.

“Or this?” I put my finger on 813.

No good either.

“What’s it worth to you to put me in one of those two rooms?” I said abruptly. “I’ll double the rate if you switch me in and move the other tenant elsewhere.”

He gave me a funny look, as if to say, “What’re you up to?” but I didn’t care.

“I’m a crank,” I said. “At home I sleep on three mattresses.” I handed him a cigar wrapped in a five-spot and half an hour later I was in 814 and had the door locked.

I spent the next half hour after that sounding out the wall, the one between me and him, with my knuckles and my eardrum. I had to go easy, because I didn’t know whether he was in the room or not at the time and I didn’t want to arouse his suspicions.

Just when I was wondering whether I should take a chance or not and go ahead, I got a break. The telephone on the other side of the wall, his telephone, started to ring. All that came through to where I was was a faint, faraway tinkle. It kept on for awhile and then it quit of its own accord. But it told me two things that I wanted to know very badly. It told me he wasn’t there to answer it, and it gave me a very good idea of just how thick the wall was. It was too thick to hear anything through, it needed fixing. I opened my suitcase, got out my tools, and got busy drilling and boring. I kept my ears open the whole time because I knew I’d have to quit the minute I heard him open his door and come in. But he never did. He must have been out for the day.