Go home, stranger - By Charles Williams Page 0,1

said, except that there didn’t appear to be any row to speak of, and the other girl shoved off. McHugh and your sister went up to his room.

“At five minutes past one, some guest of the fourteenth floor called the desk and said he’d heard something like a shot and a scream in the next room. The clerk sent the house detective up there on the double. The door was closed and locked, but he could hear something that sounded like moaning inside, so he passkeyed his way in.

“McHugh was lying on the floor and she was down beside him with his head in her arms, rocking and whimpering, and then she passed out. The detective threw a couple of sheets over them—over her because she didn’t have on enough clothes to wad a popgun, and over McHugh because he was dead.

“He called us. We had some men over there before she snapped out of it. When she did come around she was unraveling all over the place and not much of what she said made any sense. She finally calmed down enough to tell us that she'd been in the bathroom changing into a nightgown when she’d heard voices out in the room, as if somebody had come in to see McHugh. She didn’t look out, she said, because she wasn’t dressed. Then she heard the shot, and she screamed. She ran out of the bathroom, and just as she did she heard the door going out into the corridor slam shut.

“McHugh had been shot in the back of the neck, just at the base of the skull—with a twenty-five automatic, we found out as soon as we got a look at the slug. The house detective didn’t see anybody else in the corridors, and nobody came down in the elevators.”

Reno drew a hand savagely across his face and gestured as he hitched around in the chair. “But how about the gun? There must have been fingerprints on it.”

“We didn’t find the gun until after ten o’clock, and when we did there weren’t any fingerprints on it. There wasn’t much of anything on it. It was—or had been—one of those junior-miss gimcracks with pearl handles, and the pieces of it were lying beside some garbage cans in the alley next to the hotel. The alley is paved, and it was fourteen floors down from McHugh’s room. They don’t make those kiss-me-quick guns for that kind of duty.”

Well, I had to be sure, Reno thought, conscious of the cold void inside him. It was the same way Carstairs had said it was. It was dynamite.

Wayland was looking at him with something like regret. “I’m sorry. But you see how it is. Those hotel windows are closed all the time in summer, because the place is air-conditioned. And that one was still closed when our men got there. It would have had to be opened, the gun heaved put, and then closed again. And she says she came running out of the bathroom as soon as she heard the shot, and that the man she says was in there was already going out the door into the corridor. So, by her own story, nobody would have had time to throw that gun out except her.”

“But wait a minute,” Reno said, shaking his head. “Can’t you see she has to be telling the truth? She’s not stupid. Do you think that if she was going to lie about it she'd make up a dumb story like that?”

“Yes. I know. We’ve thought about that. But don’t forget that your sister is high-strung and hotheaded, and that when she told us this she was just coming out of a faint and was on the edge of hysteria. She said the first thing she could think of, and afterward she had to stick to it. I’ve been in police work a long time, and I’ve never seen a woman on a rampage with a gun yet who seemed to have much logic about it.”

“Then she did it, as far as you’re concerned?” Reno said harshly. “You can quit looking. You’ve got it made.”

Wayland started to make some quick retort, but checked himself. “Cool off, Reno,” he said without emotion. “I know how you feel. But they don’t pay me to draw conclusions, or prosecute anybody. That’s up to the District Attorney. I'm just supposed to dig up the facts.”

“Well, what have you dug up about this guy Mac was looking for?”

“There isn’t anything there, as