Vanish in an Instant (7 page)

“No, I live here.”

“I just wondered. Earl's never mentioned you. He hasn't many friends and he usually tells me things. I—is any­thing the matter? Where is Earl? Where
is
he?”

“I can't say, definitely.”

“I knew something was up. He always has supper with me Monday nights. Tonight he didn't come, didn't phone. I waited an hour. Everything was ruined. Where is he?”

“In jail.”

“In
jail
? Why, that's crazy. Why, Earl is one of the quiet­est, most
refined
. . .”

“The Sheriff is in his room now. He wants to talk to you.”

“To me? A sheriff? Why I—I don't know what to say. This isn't some kind of trick one of my boys put you up to? They play tricks on me sometimes, not meaning to be cruel.”

“There's no trick,” Meecham said. “I'm a long way from college.”

“A sheriff,” she repeated, in a strained voice. “I'll talk to him, if I must. But I've nothing to say. Nothing. Earl is a perfect gentleman. And more than that, too. You only see him now, when he's sick.” She hesitated, as if she would have liked to say more about Loftus, but decided this was not the time or place. “All right, I'll talk to him. Some mistake has been made somewhere, of that I'm sure.”

She preceded Meecham down the hall, wiping her hands nervously on her apron and casting uneasy glances up the staircase to her left, obviously afraid that one of the “boys from good homes” would come down and see her talking to a policeman.

Meecham followed her into Loftus' room and closed the door. “Mrs. Hearst, this is the Sheriff, Mr. Cordwink.”

Cordwink acknowledged the introduction with a brief nod. “Sit down, Mrs. Hearst. I just want to check up on a few things about Earl Loftus.”

The woman didn't sit down. She didn't even advance into the room, but stood rigidly with her back against the wall, her hands clenched in the pockets of her apron. “I don't understand why you're here. Earl hasn't—
done
anything?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out,” Cordwink said. “How long has he been with you?”

“Lived here? A year, almost a year.”

“You know him pretty well, then?”

“I—yes. We are friends.”

“He confides in you?”

“Yes, you understand, I'm not like a
mother
to him, the way I am to some of my boys. No indeed, Earl's different, more mature. Our conversations are very stimulating. Why, he talks as mature as any man my—my own age.”

“I notice that he has his own telephone and mailbox.”

“Yes, this little apartment is completely separate from the rest of the house.”

“Then you wouldn't, naturally, be able to keep as close track of him as you would of your regular roomers.”

Mrs. Hearst's mouth looked pinched. “I don't have to keep
track
of anyone.”

“What I meant was . . .”

“I know what you meant. You meant, do I snoop in on other people's telephone conversations and examine their mail. No, I don't. And in Earl's case it wouldn't even be necessary. He tells me everything.”

There was a brief silence before Cordwink spoke again, in a quiet, amiable voice: “He seems, on the surface, to be quite an exceptional young man.”

“Not just on the surface. He's exceptional all through. Very intelligent, Earl is, and very polite and considerate, doesn't drink or smoke or run around with women.”

“He's married, isn't he?”

“Married? Why, of course not. He would certainly have told me, and he's never mentioned a wife. Just his mother. He's devoted to his mother. She lives out of town, but she came to see him last summer. A very refined type of woman. She's ill most of the time, that's why she doesn't come to see him oftener. Earl himself isn't very—very well.”

“Yes, I know that.” Cordwink went over to the studio couch and lifted the lid of the suitcase. “I suppose you're familiar with Loftus' clothes?”

“His clothes? That's a funny question. I don't under­stand.”

Cordwink picked up the wrinkled bloodstained trench coat, quite naturally and casually, as if it was an ordinary piece of clothing. There was no indication, in his move­ments or expression, of his extreme distaste for the sight of blood, the feelings it gave him, of loss, futility, vulnerabil­ity. The blood on this worn and dirty coat had been the end of a man and might be the end of another.

He said calmly, “Do you, for instance, recognize this coat, Mrs. Hearst?”

“I—don't know. It's so wrinkled. I can't . . . What are those marks?”

“Blood.”

She drew in her breath suddenly, gaspingly, like an ex­hausted swimmer. “I don't like this. I don't like it, I say. Where's Earl? Where
is
he? You've got no right prying into his things like this! How do I know you're policemen? How do I know you're not a pair . . .?”

“Here's my identification.” Cordwink took his badge out of his pocket and showed it to her. “Mr. Meecham isn't a policeman, he's a lawyer. As for prying into Loftus' things, I'm doing it with his consent. Here are his own keys. He gave them to me.”

The woman sat down, suddenly and heavily. “What—what did Earl do?”

“He says he killed a man.”

She stared, round-eyed, glassy-eyed, into the corner of the room. “Here?
Here
in this house?”

“No.”

“Earl didn't—couldn't—it's impossible.”

“He says he did.”

“But you can't believe him. I've often thought, time and time again I've thought, that someday that terrible disease would affect his mind, would . . .”

“His mind seems clear enough,” Cordwink said.

“But you don't
know
Earl. He could never harm any­one. He hated to kill anything. Why—why, once there was a mouse in his room—last fall—I wanted to set a trap but he wouldn't let me. He said the mouse was so tiny and harmless . . .”

“Mrs. Hearst.”

“I'm
telling
you, Earl
wouldn't
.”

“This is his coat, isn't it?”

She turned her head away and stared at the wall. “Yes.”

“And this suit? The shoes? Please look at them, Mrs. Hearst. You can't identify something without looking at it.”

She glanced briefly at the suit and shoes and then away again. “They're Earl's.”

“No question about it?”

“I said they're Earl's. Now can I go? I've had a great shock, a terrible shock.”

“In a minute,” Cordwink said. “The trench coat, and the serge suit—were these the clothes Loftus usually wore when he was going out in the evening, say?'

“Why?” she said bitterly. “Don't you think they were good enough to go out in? Well, maybe they weren't! But they were the only ones he had. He couldn't afford any more.”

“When I saw him an hour ago he was wearing a new topcoat, new suit, new shoes. All of them looked expen­sive.”

“I don't care! I don't know what you're implying, and I don't
care
!”

“Did you ever lend him money, Mrs. Hearst?”

“I—no! Never! He'd never have taken it, never have borrowed money from a woman, never!”

“All right,” Cordwink said. Privately he wondered how much, and when. “Then you didn't lend him any money, say, this morning?”

“No!”

“Did you see him this morning?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When I was shoveling off the walk, about seven-thirty.”

“What exactly did you say to him?”

“I said—I said, ‘Earl you can't go like that, in just a sweater and slacks, it's winter, you'll catch cold.' “

“And he said?”

“That he'd sent his coat to the cleaner's and that anyway he wasn't cold. I asked him where he was off to, so early. And he said he was going downtown to see about selling his car. He said it wasn't working so well, it was just a nuisance in the winter, so he thought he'd sell it, and then, in the spring, maybe he'd—he'd be feeling better and could work more and buy a—a new car. I said, just joking, how about a Cadillac, then you can take me for a ride. And he said there—wasn't anyone he'd rather take for a ride in a Cadil­lac than—than me.”

She looked toward the window as if she was trying to see, not the dark of a winter night, but a morning in spring, with Earl well again and at the wheel of his new car.

“As you know now,” Cordwink said, “he didn't send his coat to the cleaner's. It was here all the time, locked inside the wardrobe. He had approximately forty hours to dispose of it, but he apparently made no attempt to. That's curi­ous, don't you think, Mrs. Hearst?”

“Curious,” she repeated dully. “Yes. It's curious. Every­thing's curious.”

“Do you clean Loftus' roo——apartment?”

“Go on,
call
it a room. It's not an apartment, it's just a room. I know it's just a room, and Earl knows it and every­one . . .” She stopped, holding the back of her hand to her mouth. “I clean it twice a week, Tuesday and Saturday. I don't have to do it, it's not included in his rent. I do it for—because I like to,” she added defiantly. “I
like
to clean.”

“Take another look around now, Mrs. Hearst. Is this the way his room usually looked?”

“No.”

“What's different about it?”

“A lot of his things are gone.”

“Clothes?”

“Not clothes. Personal little things, like his desk set, for instance. He had a very nice desk set, onyx, quite expen­sive. His mother gave it to him. His mother's picture is gone too, it was in a silver frame. And his radio—he used to keep his radio on the table over there.”

“Have you any idea what happened to the missing ob­jects?”

“They could have been—s-stolen.” But she stumbled over the answer. It was fairly obvious, both to Meecham and to Cordwink, that she didn't believe the articles had been stolen.

“Or pawned, maybe,” Cordwink said. “Was he in the habit of pawning things?”

“He—when he
had
to, when he was desperate. He had such terrible expenses. And then there's his mother, he sends her money. Last fall he scrimped and saved to send her some and when he did she blew it all in—went out and bought the desk set I told you about, and mailed it to him. It was a nice gesture, of course, only it was such a
foolish
thing to do. But then, she's very refined, she doesn't realize that people have to scrounge around for money these days.”

“You think, then, that Loftus pawned this stuff of his that's missing?”

“Yes.”

“Any idea where?”

“There's a little place in the east end, right next to the bowling alley. Devine's, it's called.”

“Did Loftus tell you that's where he usually went?”

“I—no. No, he didn't.” Her skin looked flushed. “I found a pawn ticket once when I was dusting his bureau. It was for his wrist watch. He never got the watch back. He told me he'd lost it. It wasn't a real lie, Earl never lies. It was just a fib to save his pride. Being poor,” she said, “hav­ing to pawn things, that's nothing to be ashamed of. But Earl isn't used to it the way some people are. His father was well-to-do—he was a broker in Detroit before he died—and of course when Earl was working steadily he got a very good salary. Being poor is new to Earl. It's his disease that's dragged him down, his disease and his mom——No. No, I won't say that. His mother can't help herself, she's very re­fined.”

Cordwink lit a cigarette. He rarely smoked, and the package from which he had taken the cigarette looked as though it had been in his pocket for months. He said, “When did you last see Loftus wearing this trench coat?”

“Saturday night. I was on my way to the hockey game, one of my boys is on the team. I met Earl on the sidewalk out in front of the house. I stopped to chat, I always do, and Earl said he'd just finished dinner downtown and that he was going to bed early because he was tired.”

“After the game you got home around . . .?”

“Eleven, it was just about eleven. Earl had gone to bed by that time.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Well, I
thought
he'd gone to bed. It never occurred to me that he hadn't, and his lights were off.”