Sally's in the Alley by Norbert Davis (best color ereader .txt) 📕

Chapter 1

THIS WILL PROBABLY STRIKE YOU AS HIGHLY improbable if you know your Hollywood, but the lobby of the Orna Apartment Hotel, off Rossmore south of Melrose, is done in very nice taste. It is neat and narrow and dignified, with a conservative blue carpet on the floor and a small black reception desk on a line straight back from the unadorned plate glass door.

At this particular moment its only occupant was the desk clerk. He was small and very young-looking, and he had dark curly hair and a snub nose with freckles across the bridge. His blue eyes were staring with a look of fierce, crosshatched concentration at the pictured diagram of a radio hookup he had spread out on the desk.

The plate glass door opened, and a man came into the lobby with a quietly purposeful air. He was blond and a little better than medium height, and he was wearing an inconspicuous blue business suit. He looked so much like an attorney or an accountant or the better class of insurance broker that it was perfectly obvious what he really was.

He walked up to the desk and said, “Have you a party by the name of Pocus staying here?”

The desk clerk was following the whirligig line that indicated a coil on his diagram with the point of a well-chewed pencil. The pencil point hesitated for a split second and then moved on again.

“No,” he said. He didn’t have to bother about being courteous because he intended to quit the apartment hotel any minute now and get a job at a fabulous salary in a war plant installing radios in fighter planes.

The blond man took a leather folder from his pocket, opened it, and spread it out on the radio diagram. “Take a look at this.”

The clerk studied the big gold badge for a second and then looked up slowly. “You’re a G-man.”

The blond man winced slightly. “I’m a special agent of the Department of Justice. Let’s start over again. What’s your name?”

“Edmund.”

“All right, Edmund. Have you got a party by the name of Pocus staying here? H. Pocus or Hocus Pocus?”

“No,” said Edmund. He cleared his throat. “Will you excuse me for a second? I’ve got to call and wake up one of our tenants. He works on the swing shift, and he has to get waked up and eat before—”

The blond man punched him suddenly and expertly in the chest with a stiffened forefinger. “Get away from the switchboard. You’re not tipping anybody off.” He whistled shrilly through his teeth.

Another man came in the front door. He was short and stocky, and he had sleepy brown eyes and a scar on his nose. A third man came in from the hall that led to the back door. He was very tall and thin, stooped a little. He wore a light topcoat, and he kept his hands in its pockets.

“They’re here,” said the blond man. “Come on, Edmund. Give. Which apartment are they in?”

Edmund stood mute.

The blond man watched him curiously. “Are you scared of them?”

“Yes,” said Edmund.

“Listen, son,” said the blond man. “This is the government you’re talking to now. If either one of them even made a pass at you, we’d put them away in Alcatraz.”

“How do I know they’d stay there?” Edmund asked.

“All right,” said the blond man. “Come on out from behind that desk. Sit down in that chair and rest your feet. Look up the tenant index, Curtis.”

The stocky man went behind the desk, found the file of register cards, and ran through them expertly.

“In two-two-nine,” he said. He looked under the desk. “Here’s the pass key.” He flipped it to the blond man.

“Okay,” said the blond man. “Stay here and watch the board, Curtis. If anybody comes down the elevator, they wait in the lobby. If anyone comes in the front, they wait, too.”

“Sure,” said Curtis.

“You come with me, Barstow,” the blond man said. “We’ll take the stairs. Go easy.”

They went up to the second floor and along a hall that was carpeted in the same dark blue as the lobby, and stopped in front of the door numbered 229. The blond man fitted the passkey in the lock and turned it without making the slightest sound. He opened the door just as silently.

It was a single apartment, and the big combination living room-bedroom was bright and cheery with the sun coming in a warm, slatted flood through the Venetian blinds. There was no one in sight, but a door to the left was slightly open and through it came the pleasantly languid gurgle and splash of bathwater.

The blond man and his tall companion came into the apartment and shut the front door. The blond man nodded meaningly and then, with the tall man close behind him, walked over and opened the bathroom door.

It was a big bathroom and a beautiful one, tastefully decorated now with fat little coils of steam that clung cozily against the ceiling. It was equipped with an outsize sunken tub, and Doan was sitting in it with his back to the door. He was chubby and pink and glistening, and he looked even more innocent and harmless than he usually did. He held a big sponge up over his head and squeezed it and made happy sputtering noises through the resultant flood.

“Now that you’re here,” he said amiably, “would you mind telling me if I’ve gotten all the soap off my back?”

“Yes, you have,” said the blond man. “How did you know we were here?”

“There’s a draft when the front door opens,” Doan answered. He turned around in the tub to peer up at them. “Well! The government, no less. I’m honored.”

“Yes,” said the blond man. “I’m Arne. Department of Justice. This is Barstow. Where’s Carstairs?”

“Well,” said Doan, “if there should be_ a_ fire and you should try to get out of here in a hurry, you’d probably run across him en route.”

Barstow turned around with a jerk to look behind him. “Uh!” he said, startled.

Carstairs was standing in the doorway, watching him with narrowed, greenish eyes. Carstairs was a fawn-colored Great Dane about as big as a medium-sized Shetland pony, only Shetland ponies at least make a try at looking amiable most of the time and Carstairs never did. He looked mean. Probably because he was. He had many responsibilities and problems to shorten his temper. Carstairs was so big that the first sight of him was liable to be a considerable shock. It was as though something had suddenly gone wrong with your perspective.

“Relax, stupid,” Doan ordered. “These are friends—I hope. At least, if they aren’t we can’t do much about it.”

Carstairs watched him for a second and then turned and disappeared from the doorway.

“Wow!” said Barstow. “I’d heard he was a whopper, but I certainly didn’t expect anything like that.”

“People rarely do,” Doan said. He reached over and turned the drain lever. “Hand me that towel, will you?”

Arne handed him the towel. “You were notified to come in and report to us. Why didn’t you do it?”

“I was just getting around to it,” Doan said. “Hand me that robe, please.”

Arne looked in both pockets of the white robe and then gave it to him. “You didn’t get around quick enough, so we did.”

“It was nice of you,” said Doan. “Let’s go out and sit where it’s comfortable.”

They went out into the living room, and Doan lay down with a luxurious sigh on the blue chesterfield that was pushed in slantwise against the corner.

“Have a chair,” he invited. “I’d offer you a drink only Carstairs doesn’t approve of it, and he’s mad enough at me as it is.”

“Where is he?” Barstow asked.

“Behind the chesterfield in the corner where he was when you came in. He’s sulking.”

“What’s he mad at?” Barstow inquired curiously.

“He had to sleep down in the cellar last night. That offends his dignity.”

“Where does lie usually sleep?”

“There are twin pull-down beds behind that door,” Doan said. “He sleeps in one. I sleep in the other.”

“Why didn’t he sleep in it last night?”

“Well, it was like this,” said Doan. “I had a friend calling on me. She’s a very nice girl.”

There was a rumbling mumble from behind the chesterfield.

“She is, too!” Doan said indignantly. “Just because she works in a dime store and chews gum is no reason for you to get so huffy about her, you snob. Anyway, we were sitting here doing this, that, and the other, and she said she positively was not going to do the other any more with Carstairs sneering at her while she did it. So I ran him down cellar. Hey, you. Come up for air.”

Carstairs’ head appeared slowly from behind the chesterfield. He rested his chin on the top of it and looked Doan in the eye without any signs of approval at all.

“Now, look,” said Doan. “I’ve had enough temperament for today. I said I was sorry you had to sleep in the cellar. I apologized.”

Carstairs sighed deeply and wearily.

“And I said I’d buy you a steak to make it up to you,” Doan told him. “A steak. Get it? Slaver-slaver, mumble-mumble, crunch-crunch. Steak. Now come out from behind there and act civilized.”

Carstairs jumped from a sitting position without any visible effort. It was a heart-stopping performance. He sailed clear over the chesterfield and Doan, landing hard enough to rattle the window panes. He licked his chops delicately and politely with a long, red tongue.

“Yes,” said Doan. “I said, steak. But not right now. Wait until I finish my business with these gentlemen. In the meantime, lie down before somebody knocks you down.”

Carstairs sprawled out on the floor and rolled over on his side with a resigned snort.

Doan nodded at Arne and Barstow. “Well, what can I do for you?”

“You’re not a private detective any more,” Arne told him.

“Oh, yes,” said Doan.

“No. You don’t work for the Severn International Detectives now.”

“Yes, I do,” said Doan. “They don’t dare fire me. If I started to talk about that outfit, they’d be bankrupt in five minutes and on their way to jail in ten—if they weren’t lynched first.”

“Maybe. But anyway, they’ve loaned you to the government temporarily.”

“No,” said Doan.

Arne took a letter from his pocket and opened it. “Read this.”

Doan read the letter. He came to the signature, and his eyes widened slowly. He read the letter again, and then he folded it up very carefully and handed it back to Arne.

“If you want to call Washington at your expense, you can verify the signature,” Arne said.

Doan shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. So I’m loaned to the government. All right. What does that make me?”

“A Japanese,” Arne said.

“Oh, I don’t think the Japs would go for that,” Doan told him. “My eyes don’t slant enough.”

“Not a Japanese national,” Arne explained. “A Jap agent.”

“A spy!” Doan chortled, pleased. “Now that’s something like it! I’ve always wanted to be a spy. Does it pay well?”

“To you, it pays nothing,” Arne informed him. “You’re donating your services.”

“Oh,” said Doan glumly. “What services?”