LITMIR.BIZ

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because Ricky Sperber sometimes visited him in the room and Ricky liked a little drink. He opened the drawer of the dresser and took the bottle from beneath a pile of shirts. He drank directly from the bottle. He replaced the bottle and remembered something else that was hidden beneath the pile of shirts.

      He had brought the army .45 back as a souvenir of war. Now he was glad that like many other soldiers he had never gone to the trouble of getting a license for it. He crossed to the bed, picked up the topcoat and stuffed the .45 in the deep pocket. He also put a few handkerchiefs, a razor, a toothbrush, toothpaste, brushless cream, a comb into a pocket of the coat. This was his luggage. He donned his jacket, coat, hat. He buttoned the collar of his shirt, pulled the loose knot of the tie into place. He was ready to run.

      He turned off the lights. Before he left, he pulled back the window blind and glanced out furtively. The car was still there and the shadowy man was still beside it, watching, waiting. Waiting for Abner Ellison, perhaps.

      The wait for the elevator seemed interminable. When he tossed his key on the desk, the night clerk said, “You going out late tonight, aren’t you, Mr. Ellison?” Abner merely nodded. The Heights Hotel was a quiet family hostelry. The clerk thought there must be some funny business going on for a guest to get phone calls and letters in the middle of the night, then to hurry out looking pale and worried like that.

      The electric sign of the hotel shone on Abner as he stood looking for a cab. Traffic on this side of the street was headed uptown. Across the street, the car and the man still loomed darkly unidentifiable. A few seconds after Abner emerged from the hotel, the shadows of the man and the car melted into each other. The man had entered the car. Abner hailed a passing cab.

      “Turn around and head downtown,” Abner told the driver.

      The driver said, “Ain’t suppose to make a U-turn, mister. But at this time of night . . .”

      He made the U-turn at a corner. By the time the cab was headed downtown, the other car had moved off. Abner saw a tail light disappearing into a side street.

      When they reached the street where a man lay murdered, Abner said, “Turn right here and slow down.”

      The driver obeyed. Seconds later Abner saw what he was looking for. A small knot of people with coats thrown over nightclothes stood outside Linton’s house. Two uniformed policemen stood stolidly in front of them. Police cars were parked in the street.

      “Trouble down here,” said the driver.

      “Step on it,” said Abner urgently. “Take the ramp to the highway and head downtown.”

      The driver swerved past the parked cars, steered for the entrance to the West Side Highway, said, “Slow down, step on it. Make up your mind, mister. And tell me where we’re heading. I gotta make out a call sheet.”

      “Head downtown,” Abner replied. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

      As the car mounted the ramp, Abner took the gun and a handkerchief from his pocket. Concealing the gun under the flap of his coat, he wiped it hard with the handkerchief. He lowered the taxi window. Still holding the gun beneath the handkerchief, he tossed it out the window with a hard back-hand motion, over the highway railing into the little park beside the river.

      The driver said, “You throw something outta this cab, mister?”

      “Only an empty cigarette package,” Abner answered.

      “You want a smoke?”

      “I’ve got another pack,” said Abner, lighting a cigarette to prove it.

      He glanced back out the rear window of the cab. Few cars were on the highway at this time of night. None was in pursuit of the cab.

      He could see the south tower of the Mad Hatter’s castle looming darkly against the pale winter moon like a grim sacrificial altar of the ancient Druids.

      3

      IT WAS two o’clock in the morning.

      One hundred and eighty city blocks south and east of the street where a castle stood and a man lay murdered, J. Dabney Ashton sat in the basement bar of the ancient Washington Square Hotel playing chess. His opponent was a thin, ascetic looking man named Thomas Pirtle who was an architect. Behind the small zinc bar the white-haired barkeep nodded sleepily. The Washington Square Hotel was one of the last buildings in the neighborhood to resist the encroachments of expanding New York University. It had been built during the administration of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, and, judging from their appearance, most of the present employees had been in service at its opening.

      Dab Ashton had no false modesty. He was proud of a great many things, justifiably proud, he believed. He took quiet pride in his blooded Virginia ancestry. He was proud of his reputation as one of Broadway’s most dependable character actors. He was convinced that few men the shady side of sixty carried themselves so erectly, had such slim waists, or such a fine head of wavy white hair. He was vain of his mustache, which he considered dashing and tended carefully with French wax. He thought his taste in such matters as tweeds and Havana cigars and Bourbon whisky was excellent. He was glad that one of his minor accomplishments—a facility at solving puzzles—had been of some small service to his country during the first World War, when he had been assigned to Yardley’s Black Chamber charged with breaking enemy codes. He also believed himself to be an outstanding exponent of the ancient game of chess, an opinion that the position of the pieces on the board now confirmed.

      Dab was about to move a chess piece when Charles, the night porter, limped into the barroom. He seemed to be of an age with the waiter and the barman.

      “There’s a man here to see you, Mr. Dab,” Charles called out in a cracked voice. “I told him you were playing chess and couldn’t be interrupted but he wouldn’t wait. Says he’s a police officer.”

      The big, dark man directly back of the porter obviously had no compunctions whatsoever about interrupting such a serious matter as a game of chess. He was swarthy, bulkily built. In profile, his heavily defined features had an almost classic look. There was a dead-serious air of brooding intensity about him. This made his method of speaking, which was usually a form of cynical raillery, distinctly shocking to those who did not know him well. He addressed everyone except the very highest brass of the Department as “honey boy” or “baby doll.” He was Detective Lieutenant Romano, attached to Homicide at Manhattan West.

      Dab had met Romano before at Philip Linton’s home. He recognized him, said, “Lieutenant Romano! What brings you out at such a witching hour?”

      “A police officer?” said Pirtle. “What have you been up to, Dab?”

      “I’m not quite sure,” Dab replied. “But if John George Arthur, the critic, has been found slain, I’m justly suspect. He once refered to me as ‘that moldy old Virginia ham.’ ”

      “Well, I can give you an alibi from nine o’clock on,” said Pirtle. “You’ve been beating me at chess since then.”

      Romano said, “Can I see you privately, honey boy?”

      “Of course,” Dab answered. “We can go to my rooms. This must be serious, Lieutenant.”

      “Kind of serious, I guess,” Romano replied. “Matter of murder. That ain’t a misdemeanor, honey boy.”

      “Good Lord!” exclaimed Dab. “How on earth can it concern me?”

      “Privately, baby doll. Privately,” Romano answered.

      “You’ll excuse me, Pirtle?” Dab asked, rising.

      Pirtle nodded, obviously swallowing questions he wanted to ask.

      Dab led Romano up a short flight of steps to the lobby. Enormous, inscrutable old Madame Sorel, proprietress of the hotel, acted as night manager herself, because she suffered from insomnia. She sat behind the desk, adding figures in an old-fashioned ledger. She wore a rusty black dress, her rough-hewn face was pallid, she had keen dark eyes and a shock of bright red hair.

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