Hue and Cry Read online

  “Skip it,” I said. “He got along all right before I turned up.”

  “Not very good, he didn’t. He used to go two days at a time without eating a thing. Never went to bed.”

  “He still don’t go to bed. But some people don’t need much sleep.”

  “Look how skinny he is,” Dora said. “He ought to eat a lot—fatten up.”

  “His brain’s fat enough to make up for it.”

  “Nobody’s that smart,” she said, “that they don’t have to eat.”

  “Okay.”

  I finished the last of my toast and coffee and lit a cigarette. It was nine-twenty, and I had some bookkeeping to do before I went to the bank, which would close today, Saturday, at noon. But I went into the lobby first to check up on the early morning events.

  The only guy in the lobby was Harry Baird, the day clerk, and he was asleep. His face was red as a beet, which meant he was sleeping one off. Once-a-week Baird we called him. It never failed. Every Friday night. He never got in any trouble, just sat somewhere and got polluted. I hated to wake the old guy up, but—business is business. I stepped up to the desk and slammed my hand down hard. Old Harry came up out of his chair, clawing at the desk.

  “Morning, Harry,” I said.

  “Goldang it!” he said. “Joe, I wish you’d quit that bangin’ on the desk. I wake up easy. Just a little tap or two—”

  “I’ve tried those little taps or two,” I said. “Anything happen this morning?”

  “Nope. Quiet as a grave. Nobody in—nobody out—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  “Mebbe something tomorrow,” Harry said.

  “I’ve heard that before, too. Try to stay awake, Harry. Might be some beautiful movie star would come in—”

  “In this one-horse, moth-eaten hick town?” said Harry. “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Okay.”

  “Nothin’ ever happens here.”

  “All right, Harry. Take it easy. Watch that blood pressure.”

  “Goldang it,” he muttered. “Every day you wake me up and every day it’s for nothin’.”

  I glanced at the lost-and-found shelf under the desk. “I see the boys got their clothes,” I said. “They slept that one off in a hurry.”

  “What boys?”

  I looked at him. “What time did you come on this morning?” I asked.

  “Seven o’clock, same as usual.”

  He shifted his eyes.

  “Wasn’t there a bundle of clothes on the shelf there?”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” he said.

  “You been on the desk steady, ever since you came in?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You didn’t get a call from Number 7, to bring up some clothes?”

  “No. I never heard anything about any clothes.”

  I thought it over for a minute. “Well,” I said, “maybe Jack Pritchard took them up.”

  “Yeah, maybe he did.” Harry looked at me as though I were crazy.

  That must be it, I thought, as I walked away. But I can’t figure out how they woke up so early—unless they just didn’t go to sleep. But that Granger kid was out cold. Or was he?

  The hell with it, I thought, and went into the sitting room. Singer had eaten something, all right. But he hadn’t let it disturb him any. There were crumbs all over his table and the tray was perched on the edge, within an inch of sliding off onto the floor. I took it off the table and set it on the floor beside my desk, which was against the wall opposite Singer’s table. I snapped on my green-shaded lamp and got out my ledger. But I found myself staring at the wall.

  Those two kids couldn’t have been awake at seven o’clock—unless—

  “Singer,” I said quietly, without turning around.

  After a moment he said, “Yes, Joe?”

  I thought about it. “Nothing,” I said. “Why don’t you go to bed?”

  “I will, pretty soon. I’ve been working on your theory.”

  “My theory of what?”

  “Of this Elizabethan murder—the theory that it was a man who did the killing.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Why shouldn’t it be a man?”

  “I think it was,” he said.

  “I see.”

  “Do you, Joe?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why couldn’t it have been a woman?”

  “You trapped me,” I said. “Keep this up and I’ll go to bed. For a long time.”

  Singer was laughing softly.

  “You’re very ingenious, Joe. Why don’t you hire a manager for the hotel and come into partnership with me?”

  “You make me nervous,” I said. “Go to bed.”

  “Does it really mean so much to you, my going to bed?”

  I shrugged. “Only that you make me nervous.”

  Singer sighed. I could hear him rattling his papers.

  His chair scraped back and he stood up, bumping his knee against the under side of the table.

  “And don’t try to sneak that book off to bed with you,” I said.

  In a little while I heard the book slap the table. Singer shuffled across the room to the door of his bedroom. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. At his door he stopped.

  “Joe.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened to your two boys—the ones that woke you up this morning?”

  I began leafing through my ledger. “I guess they’ve gone home by now. Must have left just before Harry came on at seven.”

  I pretended to find my page and studied it. After a while Singer’s door opened. He disappeared and it closed again silently. Again I was staring at the wall.

  “The guy’s uncanny,” I said to myself, and jumped at the sound of my own voice.

  * * * *

  The discouraging thing about looking over the hotel accounts was not really the fact that we made such a little bit of money. Because Singer, with the three-thousand per annum his old man left him along with the hotel, didn’t need the money. The discouraging thing was that a lousy seventy-five or eighty bucks’ profit in three months made me look like a poor manager. And I knew I wasn’t. Of course, Singer knew it too, when he stopped to think about it, and he didn’t care anyway. But that didn’t help me in my own eyes. So, as usual after looking over the books, I was depressed. When I get depressed, I get sore. And when I’m sore, I’m likely to be rude. And I was rude this morning when Nancy Wheeler came in to clean up the sitting room, dragging her mop and vacuum, with a dust cloth under her arm, singing to herself and staring pop-eyed at everything through her thick glasses.

  Not only does Nancy have a hare-lip, so that you have to ask her to repeat everything at least six times. She is also hard of hearing. She said something to me and I didn’t get it.

  “What?” I yelled.

  She said it again, coming closer, staring at me, and I still didn’t get it.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Just go ahead.”

  So she started to dust off my desk, pushing papers out of the way and picking up my ash tray suddenly so that I missed it and sprinkled ashes all over the books.

  “My God!” I said. “Don’t start with me. Can’t you see I’m working now?”

  She looked a little bewildered, but backed away, and started the vacuum. The racket it made got on my nerves. I went over and touched her arm. She turned the thing off.

  “You’d better wait till later,” I said. “Mr. Batts is trying to sleep.”

  “Eh?” she said, one hand behind her ear.

  I yelled at her. “Mr. Batts is trying to sleep!”

  I finally got her out and headed for the guest rooms. Pull yourself together, I thought. What the hell?

  But I had a strange feeling, as if I were just hanging around, stalling, waiting for somebody to lay a sap against the back of my neck.

  I shut the ledger and put it away. I took out the bank book and a couple of deposit slips and put on my hat.

  In the lobby I r
an into Pete Haley, his big, rosy face all smiles. He said: “Well, Joe, we’d better get those boys up and dressed. Time they went home.”

  I looked at him. “Those boys,” I said, “are probably no longer here.”

  Pete’s mouth dropped open. “You mean they went already, Toe?”

  “Yeah.”

  I told him about the clothes being gone when Harry Baird came on duty. Pete looked helplessly at Harry, who was asleep again.

  “Maybe Jack Pritchard took the clothes up,” Pete said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Call him up.”

  Pete hemmed and hawed.

  “I ain’t so good on the phone.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll call him.”

  I got Jack on the phone. He didn’t like being waked up. I let him blow off a little steam. Finally he asked, “Well, what is it?”

  “Did you take those boys’ clothes up to them this morning?” I said.

  “I did not.”

  I looked at Pete, shaking my head.

  “Were they still on the shelf when you went off at seven?”

  “Seven! That Harry Baird was late again. I wish you’d do something about—”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “Were they there when you left?”

  “No. They were gone.”

  “Gone? How could they go? Were you on the desk all the time?”

  “According to my usual custom,” he said, “I went out to the kitchen at three-fifteen to get a snack. Emory Batts always—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “All right. Was that the only time you left?”

  “No. I was gone for about five minutes a little after five o’clock.”

  “When did you notice that the clothes were gone?”

  “Not till seven-thirty, when Harry Baird finally came in.”

  “Not till seven-thirty?”

  “That’s what I said. You ought to talk to Harry—”

  “I don’t mean about Harry. How does it happen you didn’t notice the clothes were gone before?”

  I could practically hear old Jack Pritchard drawing himself up.

  “The Hotel has never assumed responsibility for articles not placed in the safe,” he said. “I am not a watch dog. I am a clerk.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m not bawling you out. I’m just looking for information.”

  He calmed down a little. “Anything else?” he asked.

  “I guess not. The clothes could have disappeared between three-fifteen and three-forty-five, or between five and five-oh-five?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and hung up.

  I told Pete the story.

  “But we locked them in,” he said. “How was they going to get out?”

  “You got me,” I said. “Maybe they just oozed out through the keyhole.”

  Pete dragged out a red bandanna and began to mop his face. It was getting redder all the time.

  “I don’t know how they did it,” I said, “but they must have got hold of the clothes, sneaked down the fire escape and gone home. Maybe they’re home right now.”

  Pete brightened up.

  “Mebbe so,” he said. “Yeh. I guess mebbe that’s where they are. Sure. Naturally.”

  “Naturally.”

  But I didn’t believe it.

  “I’ll just hang around awhile,” Pete said, “and mebbe their folks will call up and tell me they got home.”

  “Sure.”

  Pete clomped out the main entrance. He would sit down on the steps out front and hang around. I wished him luck. I walked around to the safe, opened it and took out the last week’s receipts. Harry Baird went right on snoring. I slammed the safe door shut and he didn’t even blink. I went around the desk and slammed it with my hand. That got him. He was just as mad as he had been the first time.

  “Prop your eyes open,” I said. “I’m going to the bank.”

  He glared at me. “You’d think somebody was going to jump a bill or something.”

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well who?”

  “We had a traveling salesman in Number Five last night. I haven’t seen him yet.”

  “Him. He checked out early,” Harry said.

  “He did?” I said, laying the stuff down on the desk. “Five-thirty. Bill’s right here.”

  “Five-thirty. Funny time for a salesman to check out. Who was he? You ever see him before?”

  “Nope. Came around noon yesterday. Carryin’ a new line—cutlery. Nice stuff. He showed me.”

  “Where was he from?”

  Harry consulted the register. “Gives a Detroit address.”

  “Detroit firm he represents?”

  “He don’t say.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Stephen W. Pfeffer.”

  “Five-thirty this morning?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay. Keep your eyes open anyway. Somebody might come in.”

  “Yeah.”

  I picked up the pass book and went out the front door. It was a warm spring day. There was a balmy breeze floating down Front Street and the usual gang sitting on the steps. Pete was there, “hanging around,” along with half a dozen of the old boys that used to be farmers and now, having sold out and moved into town, lived their last days sitting on the hotel steps in the summer and, in the winter, beside the stove in the harness shop next door. I had once suggested to the ownership that we would do better to build a porch around the steps and turn the place into a sanitarium.

  I leaned against the door and listened to the old boys’ conversation. There wasn’t much of it and what there was didn’t amount to anything. Every time somebody walked by the talk would stop and all the heads would turn and follow whoever it was practically out of sight. Then somebody would spit and start talking again.

  I twisted around to squint at the little bronze plaque on the brick wall beside the door, wondering whether it would be worthwhile to ask Nancy to polish it up. The plaque read:

  HOTEL PRESTON

  Owner—Singer Batts

  Manager—Joe Spinder

  That last name is mine.

  I decided against having it polished. I felt a little guilty about Nancy.

  I got a good grip on the bank book and went down the steps. On the way I stopped beside Pete Haley and said: “Harry’s awake now, but I don’t know for how long. If you hear the phone ring, you better go in and make sure it gets answered.”

  “Oh—sure, Joe. Sure,” Pete said.

  I went on to the bank. It was cool and quiet in there.

  I went up to Tommy Rowe’s window.

  He was sitting on his stool in the cage, his elbows propped up, his head in his hands. Another hangover. The guy couldn’t leave the stuff alone. I remember thinking that if his old man didn’t kill him, liquor would. But I knew his father wouldn’t kill him. He was too proud. Send him away maybe. He’d bought Tommy out of trouble time and again. Mr. Rowe was too good a businessman to let an investment like that go to waste.

  I pushed the book and the dough through the window and said, “Hi, Tommy.”

  He raised his head slowly and blinked his red eyes at me. He reached for the pass book and counted the spinach. He stamped the deposit slip and dropped the money into a drawer.

  “Hello, Joe.”

  “You look terrible,” I said.

  “I feel terrible.” He handed the book back to me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Joe.”

  “Yeah?”

  He handed me a long white envelope. His hand was shaking so that he almost dropped it.

  “Will you put this in Marian’s box for me?” he said. “I want her to get it this morning.”

  “Sure.”

  I put the envelope in my coat pocket.

  “And Joe—” he said, “don’t mention it to the old man.”

  “Okay.”

  I walked away.

  “What the hell,” I thought. “You drive a Buick phae
ton and run around with the most beautiful babe in town and you can’t even let your old man know you wrote her a letter. What a lousy life!”

  Mr. Rowe, Tommy’s father, a big white-haired guy with a face like old leather and great big hands, looked up and grinned as I went by.

  “Morning, Joe,” he said. “That old shack of yours still running?”

  “That old shack,” I said, “will run as long as your bank stays solvent,” and grinned back at him.

  “You worried about my bank, Joe?”

  “No,” I said. “Are you?”

  He laughed.

  Mr. Rowe was all right. I liked being on good terms with him. He was one of the best guys in town to be on good terms with. He had it pretty tough. His kid was a wastrel and his wife had bad heart trouble. Folks said he spent all his spare time taking care of her—like a nurse. But he was always cheerful and he’d kept that bank going great when everybody else’s bank was flopping all over the place.

  “Seriously,” Mr. Rowe said, “how’s business?”

  “Seriously, it’s lousy.”

  “You ought to work up a few more permanent guests.”

  “No money in it,” I said. “Anyway—who wants to live in an old hotel for six bucks a week when he can rent a whole house for twenty-five a month?”

  “Well,” he said, “you and Singer get along all right.”

  “Singer and I—we’ve got an especially nice set-up. You couldn’t get that for six bucks a week.”

  “Singer’s a nice boy,” Mr. Rowe said.

  “Sure,” I said. “But no head for business.”

  Mr. Rowe sighed.

  “Maybe that’s all to the good,” he said. “Sometimes I wish I had a head for something besides business.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that so I let it pass. And just as I was getting ready to say good-by to him the door of the bank flew open and in came Harley Granger. He didn’t look happy. He was out of breath and his thin lips were twitching. He didn’t notice me at first but tore right up to Mr. Rowe’s desk.

  “Jonathan,” he said, “something’s got to be done about that damned Pete Haley. Got the sense of a crawfish.”

  “What’s the matter now?” said Mr. Rowe.

  I began to get a tight feeling in my stomach.

  “Last night,” Granger said, “my boy was out with Josh Blake’s kid, Roy, and—well, boys will be boys, you know—I guess they’d had a little too much and got to carryin’ on. So somebody called Pete and he picked them up.”