I'll Bury My Dead

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t want to leave the club just yet. Tell me about the fight, Nick.”

“There’s something else I have to tell you. Do you remember Roy?”

He felt her stiffen.

“Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”

“The fool shot himself tonight.”

She half sat up, but he pulled her down against him again.

“Don’t move, Julie.”

“Is he dead?” she asked, her fingers gripping his arm.

“Yes, he’s dead. That was one job he did manage to do efficiently.”

She shivered.

“Don’t talk like that, Nick. How dreadful! When did it happen?”

“About half-past nine. Morilli phoned me in the middle of the party. What a break for him! Of all that damned Homicide mob, he had to be the one to find Roy. And he made sure I knew he was doing me a favor.”

“I don’t like that man,” Julie said. “There’s something about him…”

“He’s just a cop on the lookout for some easy money. That’s all that’s the matter with him.”

“But why did Roy…?”

“Yeah, that puzzles me. Do you mind if I walk up and down? You’re taking my mind off business.” He lifted her, and got up, set her gently in the chair, then moved over to the fireplace. “Why, Julie, you look pale.”

“I suppose it’s the shock. I wasn’t expecting to hear anything like this. I don’t know if you’re upset, Nick, but if you are, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not upset,” English said, taking out his cigar case. “Maybe it was a shock, but I can’t say I’m particularly sorry. Roy’s been a damned nuisance ever since he was born. I guess he was born lazy. He was always getting into jams. My old man and he were a pair. Did I ever tell you about my old man, Julie?”

She shook her head. She was leaning back, staring into the fire, her fingers laced around her knee.

“He was no good, like Roy was no good. If my mother hadn’t gone out and worked when we were kids we would have starved. I wish you could have seen my home, Julie. It was a three-room hovel in the basement of a tenement. In the winter the walls ran with water, and in the summer it stank to high heaven.”

Julie leaned forward to drop a log on the fire, and English touched the back of her neck gently.

“Oh, well, I guess that’s past history,” he went on. “But I can’t understand Roy shooting himself. Morilli says he was short of money and was trying to raise the wind by threatening two or three of his old clients. He was going to lose his licence at the end of the week. I would have been willing to bet Roy wouldn’t have killed himself because of that. I shouldn’t have believed he would have had the nerve to kill himself no matter how bad a jam he was in. It’s damned odd. Morilli says he’s satisfied, but I still don’t believe it.”

Julie looked up quickly.

“But surely, Nick, if the police say so…”

“Yeah, I know, but it foxes me. Why didn’t he come to me if he was so hard up? Maybe I did throw him out last time, but that has never stopped him before. I’ve thrown him out a score of times and he’s always come back.”

“Perhaps he was too proud,” Julie said quietly.

“Proud? Roy? My dear sweet, you don’t know Roy. He had a hide like a tank. He’d take any insult so long as he got money out of me.” English lit his cigar and began to move slowly about the room. “Why did the business collapse like that? When he got me to buy it for him, I took the trouble to investigate it pretty thoroughly. It was paying well then. It was an old-established business. He couldn’t have wrecked it so soon, unless he did it deliberately.” He made an impatient gesture. “I was a fool to have had anything to do with it. I might have known he wouldn’t have worked at it. Imagine Roy a private detective. Why, it’s laughable. I was a mug to have given him the money.”

Julie watched him pace the room. There was a wary, alert expression in her eyes that English didn’t notice.

“I’ve sent Lois to check up at his office,” English went on. “She has a nose for that kind of thing. She’ll be able to tell me what went wrong.”

“You sent Lois there tonight?” Julie said sharply.

“I wanted her to have a look at the place before Corrine takes it into her head to go up there.”

“You mean Lois is actually there now?”

English paused in his pacing and looked at her, surprised at the sharpness of her tone.

“Yes. Harry’s with her. She doesn’t mind how late she works. You sound surprised.”

“Well, after all it is nearly half-past one. Couldn’t it have waited until tomorrow?”

“Corrine might go up there,” English said, frowning. He didn’t like his orders questioned. “I want to know what Roy’s been up to.”

“I think she must be in love with you,” Julie said, moving so that her back was turned to him.

“In love with me?” English said, startled. “Who? Corrine?”

“Lois. She acts as if she were your slave. No other girl would tolerate working for you, Nick.”

English laughed.

“Nonsense. I pay her well. Besides, she isn’t the kind of girl to fall in love with anyone.”

“There’s never been a girl who wouldn’t fall in love if she’s given the chance,” Julie said quietly. “I should have thought you would have more insight, Nick, than to say a thing like that.”

“Never mind Lois,” English said a little impatiently. “We were talking about Roy. I went to see Corrine tonight.”

“That was nice of you. I’ve never seen her. What’s she like, Nick?”

“Blond, plump and dumb-looking,” English said, coming to sit on the arm of her armchair. “She told me I was responsible for Roy’s death and threw me out of the house.”

“Nick!” Julie looked quickly at him, but was reassured by his smile.

“I guess she was hysterical, but to be on the safe side I got Sam out of bed and sent him down to talk to her. I’ve got to be careful there isn’t a stink about this business, Julie. I have a big pot on the boil at the moment.” His brown hand slid over her shoulder and his fingers gently stroked her throat. “In a few weeks the senator is going to break the news that I’m the man behind the new hospital. The committee know, of course, but the press haven’t got it yet. The idea is to name the hospital after me.”

“Name it after you?” Julie repeated blankly. “But why, for goodness’ sake?”

English grinned a little sheepishly.

“Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But I want it, Julie. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted.” He got up and began to pace up and down. “I’ve made a fair success of my life, Julie. I started from scratch, and now I’m as good as the next man as regards to money, but money isn’t everything. If I drop dead this moment, Julie, no one would remember me in a week’s time. It’s the name people leave after them that counts. If the hospital was named after me—well, I guess I wouldn’t be forgotten quite so easily. And then there’s another thing, more important. I promised my mother I’d make a name for myself, and she believed me. She didn’t live long enough to know I had started on the way up. When she died I was still fooling around with that compass and getting nowhere, but I told her it was going to be a success, and I told her I was going way ahead, and she believed me. She would have got a big bang out of knowing the hospital is going to be named after me, and I’m soft in the head enough to think she’ll still get a big bang out of it.”

Julie listened in a hypnotized silence. She had never had any idea that English could think and talk like this. She wanted to laugh, but instinctively she knew he would be furious with her if she did. To want a hospital to be named after him! All this sentiment about his mother! It was unbelievable and completely out of character. She thought, not without alarm, that she didn’t know him as she had thought she did. She had always regarded him as a completely ruthless business man whose god was money. This new side of him startled her.

“Go ahead and laugh if you want to,” English said, smiling at her. “I know it’s funny. I laugh myself sometimes, but that’s what I want, and that’s what I’m going to have. The English Memorial Hospital! Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”

Julie put her hand on his arm.

“If that’s what you want, Nick, I want it, too.”

“I guess that’s right,” he said, suddenly thoughtful. “But this business of Roy’s may slap a lid on it.”

“But why?”

“Believe it or not, Julie, it took me a hell of a time to persuade the commission to let me finance the hospital. You wouldn’t believe that, would you?”

“What commission?”

“The City Planning Commission,” he said patiently. “It’s unbelievable what a bunch of stuffed shirts they are. All from the best families, of course, but not one of them has ever earned a dime. They’ve inherited what money they have, and they’re damned miserly with it, too. Although I bet their private lives wouldn’t stand investigation, on the surface they are about the finest collection of plaster saints you’ve ever set eyes on. They didn’t approve of me. Two of them even said I was a gangster. The senator had to talk pretty sharply to them to get them to accept my money. At the time, nothing was mentioned that the hospital was to be named after me. If it turns out that Roy was in bad trouble, that he did blackmail his clients, the chances of my name being used is as remote as the snows of Everest. Morilli knows that. The police commissioner knows it, too. They’ll expect to be taken care of if this is to be hushed up. But Corrine’s the difficulty. She may try to cut off her nose to spite my face. If she lets on that I wouldn’t finance Roy, and Roy was forced to raise money by blackmail, I shall be ruled out. A scandal like that will make the commission give birth to pups.” He tossed the cigar into the fire and went on in a suddenly harsh voice, “Why couldn’t the louse have shot himself next month when this was in the bag?”

Julie stood up.

“Let’s go to bed, Nick,” she said, and slipped her arm through his. “Don’t let’s think any more about it tonight.”

He gave her bottom an affectionate little pat.

“You’re full of good ideas, Julie,” he said. “We’ll go to bed.”

VI

At the back of a modest walk-up apartment house on 45th East Place, a small, shrub-infested garden ran down to an alley hedged in on either side by a six-foot brick wall.

During the summer months this alley was popular among courting couples as it had no lights and was shunned by pedestrians during the hours of darkness.

For the past two hours, a man had been waiting in the alley, his eyes fixed on a lighted window on the third floor of the apartment house.

He was a man of middle height, with broad and powerful shoulders. He wore a wide-brimmed brown slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, and in the dim light of the moon, only his thin-lipped mouth and square-shaped chin could be seen. The rest of his face was hidden by the black shadow cast by the hat brim.

He was expensively dressed. His brown lounge suit, his white silk shirt and polka-dotted bow tie gave him the appearance of a well-to-do dandy, and once when he lifted his arm to consult a gold-strap watch, he showed two inches of white shirt cuffs and the tail of a white silk handkerchief he wore tucked up his sleeve.

While he waited in the alley, he remained motionless. He chewed a strip of gum, his jaws moving rhythmically and continuously. His two-hour vigil was conducted with the patience of a cat waiting for a mouse to appear.

A few minutes after midnight, the light in the third-floor window suddenly went out and completed the darkness of the rest of the apartment house.

The man in the brown suit remained motionless. He leaned his broad shoulders against the brick wall, his hands thrust into his trousers’ pockets while he waited a further half-hour. Then, after consulting his watch, he reached down into the darkness and picked up a coil of thin cord that lay near his feet. A heavy rubber-covered hook was fastened to one end of the cord.

He swung himself over the wall and walked silently and rapidly up the cinder path that led through the uncared-for garden to the back of the apartment house.

In the light of the moon, the iron staircase of the outside fire escape showed up sharply against the white stucco of the building.

The man in the brown suit paused under the swing-up end of the escape that was some five feet above his outstretched hand. He uncoiled the cord and tossed the hook into the air. The hook caught in the iron work of the escape and held. He gently tightened his grip on the cord, then pulled. The end of the escape came down slowly and silently, and bumped to the ground.

He released the hook, recoiled the cord and left it on the bottom step where he could pick it up quickly on his way down.

He went up the escape, two steps at a time, without hesitation or without looking back to see if anyone happened to be watching him. He reached the third-floor window he had been watching for the past two hours, and saw with satisfaction that the window was open a few inches at the top and bottom. He noticed also the curtains across the windows were drawn. He knelt down by the window, his ear to the gap between the window frame and the sill and listened. He remained like that for several minutes, then he put his fingers under the window frame and gently exerted pressure. The window moved up inch by inch, making no sound.

When it was fully opened, he glanced over his shoulder and looked down into the dark garden and the darker alley. Nothing moved down there, and except for his own well-regulated breathing, he could hear no sound.

The curtains hung well clear of the window, and he slid into the room without disturbing them. Cautiously, he turned and began to close the window, again moving it inch by inch, and again in silence. When the window was as he had found it, he straightened, turned and parted the curtains a few inches. He looked into darkness. The oversweet smell of face powder, stale perfume and cosmetics told him he had made no mistake as to the room. He listened, and after a moment or so, he heard quick light breathing not far from where he stood.

He took out a pencil-thin flashlight, and shielding the bulb with his fingers, he switched the flashlight on. In the faint light, he saw a bed, a chair on which were some clothes, and a night table by the bed on which stood a small shaded lamp, a book and a clock.

The back of the bed was to the window. He could see the outline of a figure under the blankets. Hanging on the bedpost was a silk dressing gown.

Careful to keep the shielded light of his flashlight away from the sleeper in the bed, the man in the brown suit reached forward and gently pulled the silk cord of the dressing gown through its loops until he had disengaged it. He tested its strength, and, then satisfied, he reached forward and picked up the book that was lying on the night table.

With the dressing gown cord and the flashlight in his left hand and the book in his right, he stepped behind the curtains again. He turned off the flashlight and slipped it into his pocket, then, still keeping behind the curtains, and holding one of them aside with his left hand, he tossed the book high and wide into the air.

The book landed on the polished boards of the floor. Coming down flat-side up, it made a loud slapping noise that was intensified by the silence that brooded over the whole apartment.

The man in the brown suit closed the curtains and waited, his jaws moving rhythmically as he chewed. He heard the bed creak, and then a girl’s voice said sharply, “Who’s that?”

He waited, unmoved, his breathing normal, his head a little on one side as he listened.

The bedside lamp went on, sending a soft glow of light through the curtains. He opened them slightly so he could see into the room.

A dark, slim girl in a blue nylon nightdress was sitting up in the bed. She was looking toward the door, her hands clutching the blankets, and he could hear her rapid, alarmed breathing.

Silently he took one end of the dressing gown cord in his right hand, and the other end in his left. He turned sideways so that he could push aside the curtains with his shoulder. He watched her, waiting.

She saw the book on the floor, and she looked quickly at the night table, and then back to the book again. Then she did what he was hoping she would do. She threw back the blankets and swung her feet to the floor, her hand reaching out for her dressing gown. She stood up and began to slide her arms into the sleeves of the dressing gown, turning her back on the window as she did so.

The man in the brown suit pushed aside the curtains with his shoulder and stepped silently into the room. With a movement too quick to follow he whipped the cord over the girl’s head, crossed the cord and tightened it around her throat. His knee came up and drove into the small of her back, sending her down on her hands and knees. He dropped on her, flattening her to the floor. The cord bit into her throat, turning her wild scream into a thin, almost inaudible cry. He knelt on her shoulders and his two hands tightened the cord.

He remained like that, chewing steadily, and watching the convulsive heaving of her body and the feeble movement of her hands scrabbling at the carpet. He was careful not to use too much violence, and kept the cord just tight enough to stop blood flowing to her head and air getting to her lungs. He had no difficulty in holding her down, and he saw with detached interest her movements were becoming less convulsed, until only her muscles twitched in a reflex of agony.

He remained kneeling on her, the cord tight, for three or four minutes, then when he saw there was no longer any movement, he carefully took the cord from her throat and turned her over on her back.

He frowned when he saw that a trickle of blood had run down one nostril and had made a smear on the rug. He put his finger on her eyeball, and when there was no answering flicker, he stood up and dusted his trousers’ knees while he looked quickly around the room.

He went to the door opposite the bed, opened it and looked into a small bathroom. He noted with a nod of his head the sturdy hook screwed to the back of the door.

He spent the next ten minutes or so arranging the scene to his satisfaction. His movements were unhurried and unruffled. When he had finished what he was doing, he surveyed the scene with quick, bright eyes that missed no detail nor overlooked anything that might afford a clue.

Then he turned off the lamp and went to the window. He opened it, turned to adjust the curtains, stepped out on the fire escape and pulled down the window, leaving it as he had found it.

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