looked up my record. He gave me a long lecture and in the end he let me go, but he also gave me a warning. He said that if I was picked up once more I would get the full ninety-day treatment behind bars, which is par for the habitual. Ninety days behind bars, or even nine, would be the end of me. But I knew the threat wouldn’t stop me from another binge the next time I blew my stack. So I did the only thing possible. I ran. I figured I’d be safe here in San Francisco, where the police don’t know me.” He paused, and then added tiredly, “Now I’m on record already.”
Mrs. Wilson looked away from him. His words had evoked an image in her mind of Jay Wilson on one of his little binges. But Jay, even at his worst, had never been like this man. Sometimes, when he had gone out drinking, he had failed to come home until dawn, and then in a pretty sodden condition. But, still, he had always come home and for at least a day even the sight of a bottle of whisky could make him ill. Jay had been a heavy drinker, but not an alcoholic. Once again, as had happened so often during the past ten years, she was proven wrong. Oh, God, she wondered, how many more times must I be faced with my own stupidity?
She glanced slyly and curiously at Morgan, who had dropped to his back on the bed and was again staring at the ceiling. He didn’t look like an alcoholic, nor was he her idea of what a writer should look like. If he had said that he was in the advertising business, or sold used automobiles, or was perhaps a clerk in a department store, she would have believed him without question. But a writer—that seemed hardly to fit his highly strung nature and the glib way he talked about himself. He was probably lying to pass the time and because they were strangers. But then she noticed the sensitive mouth and the sharp alertness of his penetrating eyes, even in a weakened condition, and she had a feeling that, regardless of what his background might be, he was a man of unusual—and provocative—intelligence.
The discovery bothered her. For ten years she had been carefully avoiding unusual people, ruling out anyone who might be able to crash through the many barriers she had erected. Her days were planned, her life was serene, and she wanted nothing to alter the condition she had chosen. But give this man a little more time to get well and strong and he would probably enjoy punching holes in her defenses.
She got quickly to her feet and told him, “I must go and help Anna.”
“Anna?”
“Carl’s wife. She’s the housekeeper. I’m having a few friends in tonight for cocktails.”
He stretched his arms and rubbed his eyes and asked, “Incidentally, is there a Mr. Wilson somewhere in this establishment?”
“Not any more. I am a widow.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s quite all right. It happened ten years ago.”
He swung his head on the pillow and watched her as she left the room and closed the door. Ten years? But she couldn’t be over thirty-two. That would mean her husband had died when she was only twenty-two. But a woman that young and that attractive and obviously possessing considerable wealth would certainly have married again. What the devil was the matter with her?
His imagination was titillated and he forgot his own problems and lay there thinking about her. When the door opened again he thought she was returning, but it was a stranger, a dark, little man with frog eyes who was carrying Morgan’s jacket and slacks. He grinned at Morgan and held up the clothes for him to see.
“These belong to you?”
Morgan nodded. Whoever had worked them over had done a very good job.
The cleaner noticed his look of approval and his smile deepened. “Fortunate for you,” he said, “we got a good tailor in the joint and there’s a guy here in the city that specializes in suede. When I first seen the stuff I threw up my hands. I told Mrs. Wilson to chuck ’em in the garbage can. But now look at ’em. It’s a miracle, believe me.”
“And cost plenty?”
The cleaner chuckled slyly and winked at him. “No worry for you. Mrs. Wilson paid. I know what goes on here, chum. You’re the third guy I seen in this apartment the past couple years.” He walked to the other end of the room, put the clothes in the dressing room, and started toward the door.
Morgan called after him, “Wait a minute. Have you been doing business here very long?”
“Twelve years.”
“Good. Then maybe you can satisfy my curiosity. Was the man Mrs. Wilson was married to a very old man?”
“Naw. Jay Wilson was a young squirt, maybe three-four years older’n his wife.”
“Really? But to die so young—”
“He didn’t die, chum. He was killed, right here in this house.” The little man paused, enjoying the moment to the utmost. Then he said, “It was Mrs. Wilson who shot him to death.”
TWO
AS SOON as the cleaner had gone, Morgan got out of bed and stood unsteadily on the floor until he felt some strength in his legs. He went to his suitcase, opened it and saw that the contents were undisturbed. He got out a pair of yellow slippers and slid his arms into a light pongee robe. He found a bowl of fruit in the kitchen and selected a red apple to munch on. The slight exercise of moving about tired him, so he dropped into a leather chair by one of the windows.
He thought of what the cleaner had told him about Mrs. Wilson. Murder was dramatic and suspenseful and highly entertaining—especially when a woman such as Mrs. Wilson had played the leading role on the spotlighted stage of death.
Morgan chuckled and leaned back in the chair with his eyes half closed. His writer’s imagination began immediately to hatch plots and counterplots. Because he knew virtually nothing about the principals involved, he was able to do as he pleased with what he was already calling the Wilson affair. His mind raced with all sorts of conjectures and theories. He was having a splendid time and thoroughly enjoying himself.
Morgan had the capacity to entertain himself without moving a muscle. He could lose himself in a daydream for hours on end, complete with dialogue, Technicolor, three dimensions and a story line on which he was able to hang fantastic situations and incidents and characters. Sometimes his dreaming took on such a sharpness and clarity that he was forced to drop the pose of dreamer and become a writer and critically assess the idea for book material. A large percentage of his stories was derived in such a manner. His dreams, however, were not for that purpose alone. He enjoyed them also for the passing pleasure they afforded him.
His life was composed as much of dreams as it was of solid substance. Rarely did he ever know where one left off and the other began. Though never having played the game himself, he had once written a story about a great tennis star. For the purpose of information and factual background, he had haunted tennis courts, studied rules and regulations and interviewed hundreds of players. In the end, he knew more about the game than most of the champions and so began using bits and pieces of tennis lore in dinner-table and barroom conversations. Ultimately, it was he, himself, who had been the great tennis star and could have been a champion except for an unfortunate fracture of the right ankle just before he was to play at Wimbledon. Whenever his audience was unusually sympathetic he felt such a twinge in his right ankle that he actually limped.
As a child he had learned to lie so plausibly that he was rarely challenged. He had always been the biggest liar in whatever school he attended, and during recess and lunch hours never failed to
