Collection of Stories
- Автор: Стерлинг Стюарт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Collection of Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
“What were they battling about?”
“You couldn’t prove it by me. I only horn in on it a minute. I figure it’s one of them things and none of my business. Except I wonder how Check gets away with bein’ off his desk so long.”
“What were they talking about?!” Pedley stepped in close again.
Harris retreated a step. “Near’s I can make out from the little I hear,” he muttered defensively, “Check is bawlin’ her out for fidoodling around with some other joe. An’ she’s tellin’ him to peddle his papers, she’ll do like she pleases.”
“That all?”
“Well, Check gets pretty sore, from the way he sounds. I figure he’s about due to come bustin’ out of the room. So I mosey along. Last thing I hear him say is — “I’d rather see you dead than living this way, Doris!”
Pedley waved brusquely at the short, dapper youth in the snappy bellman’s uniform.
“Sit down, Wayner.”
Check Wayner didn’t make any move toward the straight-backed chair beside the manager’s desk. “You got no right to hold me.”
“Get the idea out of your mind, fella. I’ve the right to hold you, arrest you, try you and convict you — right here and now. At the scene of a fire I’m cop, prosecutor, judge and jury, all in one. You better take my word for it but it won’t make a damn bit of difference whether you do or not. What you know about this blaze?”
“Nothing.”
“Still alarm came in at one-seven ayem. Fire had a ten, maybe a fifteen minute start by then. Where were you, around ten minutes to one?”
“Taking a bucket of ice up to somebody, chances are.”
“Your call sheet doesn’t show any entries after 12:25.”
“Then I was in the lobby.”
“Weren’t up on the fourth?”
“No.” Wayner’s eyes became wary.
“Not in 441, maybe?”
“No.”
“When was the last time you were up in that room?”
“Don’t the call sheet tell you that, too?” the bell captain inquired sullenly.
“You were up in Mrs. Munson’s room about quarter past twelve. How long’d you stay?”
“I don’t remember...”
Pedley looked unhappy. He got up from the chair behind the desk, shucked his coat. “I’ll lay it on the line, kid. This hotel was torched. The fire started in Mrs. Munson’s room. It was set so it would look as if she’d been smoking in bed and fell asleep...” He rolled up his sleeves; Wayner watched him.
“A lot of people got killed,” the Marshal went on. “A lot more got hurt, some of ’em so bad they’ll die. Most of ’em were guests in this hotel but some of them were firemen. Friends of mine.” He stared down at his big hands, flexing the fingers slowly. “I’m going to find out who touched off this blaze. I don’t know whether it was you, or not. But you know something. I’m going to get it out of you, one way or another. Up to you, how I do it...”
Wayner spoke through set teeth. “You think I’d start a fire that put my sister in the hospital?”
“Mrs. Munson your sister?”
“Yes. I got her the job on the switchboard here.”
“What were you quarreling about, tonight?”
“We weren’t.”
“Les Harris says he heard you when he came past 441 on his twelve o’clock tour.”
The bell captain snarled: “He’s a liar.”
“He says he heard you tell Mrs. Munson you’d rather see her dead than living the way she was. What was that all about?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
Pedley turned, tapped the telephone. “The doctors just told me she wouldn’t be answering any questions, Wayner.”
“She’s dead?” He breathed it, as if it hurt him to speak.
“Not yet. She’s going to die.”
The youth whirled for the door. Pedley caught him:
“If you want to see her before she goes, you better loosen up, kid. I can’t let you go until you do.”
Wayner’s lips trembled, he stared blankly at the carpet, his head rocking from side to side in misery. “All right. She was fooling around with the manager here and—”
“Broodman?”
“Arnie Broodman, yuh. Doris—” tears began to stream down his face — “she was in love with the crumb. He tells her he’s going to marry her — all the time he’s got a wife an’ a couple of kids out on Long Island. He keeps sayin’ he’s going to get a divorce so he can marry Doris but I know better. He don’t intend to do nothing of the kind. I been trying to get her to break it up, quit her job, move out of the hotel. She tells me to keep out of it, she’s old enough to know her own mind. Maybe she is, but she don’t know Arnie’s... and now—” he closed his eyes and lifted his face toward the ceiling.
“Was your sister drinking heavily tonight?” Pedley didn’t ease the pressure.
“Some. Arnie’d been up to see her around eleven an’ he brought her up a fifth of brandy. To celebrate the good news, he says. He was feeding her a lot of yatadada about the hotel closing down for six months — repairs or something — an’ him going down to Miami to run another place so that’s when he’ll split up from Mrs. Broodman an’ marry Doris. I tell her she’s feeble-minded if she falls for an old line like that but she laughs me off. Finally I ask her how long she’s going to stand for the runaround an’ she says if Arnie doesn’t file suit or whatever as soon as the hotel closes here an’ he goes to Florida, then she’ll know he isn’t on the level and she’ll raise plenty of hell with him.” He opened his eyes, staring fiercely at Pedley. “Y’know what I think? I think she told Arnie that, too — an’ he hadn’t any idea of bustin’ up his home, so he was afraid of what Doris might do and he beat her to it, tonight. That’s what I think!”
“You didn’t see him go up to the fourth again — after you left?”
“I didn’t see the crumb at all!”
“Not after the alarm went in?”
“No. Soon’s I heard those sirens I grab one of the service elevators and run it up to take people off the eighth — that’s where Harris says the fire is...”
“You don’t know where Broodman was, from the time you left your sister’s room until the apparatus began to come in?”
“No.” Wayner’s mouth hardened. “But I know where he’ll be when I get my mitts on him! I’m going to—”
“—go out in the lobby and sit down and keep your mouth shut. Understand me?”
“You said you’d let me go to see my sister.”
“I’ll tell you when you can go.” Pedley rolled down his sleeves, put on his coat, opened the door.
“Ed...?”
“Yeah, Ben?”
“Keep an eye on this kid. Send Broodman in.”
Arnold Broodman was a tall, gaunt, sandy-haired individual with deep frown-creases slashing the bridge of his nose; he had a golf-course tan and a slightly disheveled look about him, as if he had dressed hurriedly.
Pedley didn’t ask him to sit down. “A week ago,” the Marshal read from a tissue carbon, “the Bureau of Fire Prevention wrote you as follows:
ARNOLD J. BROODMAN
RESIDENT MANAGER, HOTEL GROLIER—
You were directed by the Fire Commissioner on... March 7, 1947... to:
1. Equip with steel doors all exits from all floors
2. Install acceptable fire breaks on floors 2 to 10, inclusive
3. Satisfactorily enclose two elevator shafts
4. Erect an additional fire escape on the Forty-fifth Street side of the building
5. Provide for an automatic smoke alarm system