Go home, stranger - By Charles Williams Page 0,7

Interval. Reflex time. Whatever you want to call it,” Gage explained impatiently, in staccato outbursts. “You remember what happened when the house detective went up there? The door was locked. It’s a spring lock, like all hotel doors. And remember what she said? She screamed, and then almost at the same time she heard the door close. Get it now?”

“Yes,” Reno said excitedly. “Yeah. I see it now.”

“Exactly. He was going out the door when she cut loose. And in that infinitesimal fraction of a second it took him to realize there was somebody else in the room, he couldn’t stop himself, and had pulled the door shut. And he couldn’t get back in. If she’d screamed a tenth of a second earlier, your sister wouldn’t be charged with murder. She’d be dead.”

“Well, that does it,” Reno said, rising from his chair in his eagerness. “They’ll have to believe it.”

Gage sat down behind the desk again and shook his head. “I hate to tell you this, Reno,” he said, “but they won’t believe a word of it.”

“They have to!”

“I’m sorry. It’s conjecture, pure and simple. Courts deal in evidence, and there’s not the slightest bit of proof there was ever anybody except your sister in that room.”

He went back to the hotel at last because there wasn’t anywhere else to go, and as he approached the doors he noted absently that the airport limousine was discharging passengers under the marquee.

Two or three guests were checking in at the desk. He got his key and had started to turn away when something the clerk said arrested him with the suddenness of a gunshot. It was a name.

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Conway. We have your reservation.”

He stopped dead still, and then took out a cigarette and carefully lighted it as he let his face swing back toward the desk. She was a very pretty woman in her early thirties, a little over average height and very smartly and expensively turned out in a suit that was out of place in this climate. San Francisco? He wondered. She had the look. But hell, the world was full of Conways.

She was reaching for the registration card the clerk had pushed across the desk. Reno walked slowly over to the sand-filled urn beyond her, dropped the match in it, and as he turned back let his gaze sweep across the card. Excitement whispered along his nerves.

“Mrs. Rupert Conway,” it said. “San Francisco.”

He stepped over to the newsstand adjoining the desk. Picking up a magazine, he started leafing idly through it while he strained his ears to catch the clerk’s voice. He heard the tinkle of the bell. And then it came.

“Mrs. Conway to Twelve-o-six.”

He heard the boy gathering up the bags and the sound of their footsteps retreating toward the elevators. Dropping a quarter on the glass to pay for the magazine, he turned and picked them out of the drifting throngs in the lobby. There was no one with her except the bellboy.

The boy came down in a few minutes and he strolled leisurely into the elevator, hiding his impatience. She’d be alone now. “Twelve,” he said. They went up, and when he got out and walked along the silent corridor looking at numbers, he was conscious of the excitement again and the feeling he was getting close to something. Why had she come? Was she still looking for Conway? Suppose she won’t talk? He thought. He wished he had Mac’s personality and gift of gab. He was too abrupt and blunt himself for anything requiring finesse.

He knocked at 1206, and wondered if he should try to get his foot in the door. He’d have to talk fast. He heard her moving around inside, and then the door opened a crack and he could see the big violet eyes, a little apprehensive as they peered out at him.

“Mrs. Conway?” he asked quickly. “I wonder if I could talk to you a minute. I’m—”

He didn’t have a chance to finish. To his amazement she pulled the door back. “Yes,” she said urgently. “Yes. Come in.”

When he was inside she closed the door and turned to face him, obviously under intense strain and trying to control herself. “How did you know I was here?” she asked. “I just this minute—”

“I was down at the desk when you checked in,” he said, puzzled. Who did she think he was? Getting in had been too easy.

“Please,” she said hurriedly, not even listening. “What do you know about my husband?”

Reno