Meet Me at the Morgue by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

anyway.”
    I thanked him and went west.

 
    CHAPTER 7 :       
The bellhop’s story, true or false
, had touched an internal valve that charged my blood with adrenalin. I walked quickly across the railroad tracks, with no definite idea of where I was going. All I had was a good description and a couple of fairly rickety assumptions.
    One was that the quarry wouldn’t have gone far on the open street with the black suitcase under his arm. If he had stepped into a waiting car and left town immediately, there wasn’t much I could do by myself. As if to emphasize the point, a cruising prowl car passed me slowly. A plainclothesmanI didn’t recognize lifted his hand to the window.
    The anomaly of my position, halfway between policeman and civilian, hit me hard. I felt a powerful impulse to break my word to Johnson, stop the car, set off an all-points alarm. The moment passed. The prowl car drove out of hearing, dragging the impulse with it. I had to act within the limits Johnson had imposed, or not act at all.
    It was nearly two by my watch, almost three hours since the double play with the suitcase. But there was a chance that my man was still in town. Though I assumed as a matter of course that he came from out of town, he had probably spent the night here, since the ransom letter had been mailed the day before. If he had, he had probably stayed fairly close to the station. And there was a chance in a hundred, perhaps one in fifty, that he was holed up in one of the waterfront hotels, waiting for night.
    The harbor area had once been advertised as the Juan-les-Pins of the West. The treacherous years and an unwise city council had given it over to penny arcades and saltwater-taffy booths, carrousels, open-front beer-joints, a grab-bag assortment of hostelries. The latter ranged from fishermen’s flops to fairly respectable motels. I had been in all of them at one time or another.
    A Spanish-American chambermaid in the Delmar Motel, who believed her virtue to be under constant attack, had thrown ammonia in a guest’s face. Three years’ probation with psychiatric treatment. A seventeen-year-old boy, a junior in high school, who was on probation for grand theft automobile, rented a room in the Gloria in order to commit suicide. It took us eighteen hours to bring him out of barbiturate coma. Now he was due to be graduated from college in a month.
    I shook the memories off and looked outward. Girls andchildren in sunsuits, T-shirted men and boys, were strolling along the sea-wall and on the wharf. The white sand below the sea-wall was strewn with brightly costumed bathers. From the edge of the beach, a crew of oarsmen was launching a cedar shell. It slid out onto the water and began to walk on its oars like a waterbug, with eight crewcut heads nodding in unison.
    I stepped into the narrow bamboo-furnished lobby of the Gloria Hotel. The desk clerk remembered me. He was a thin, ageless Italian who had always been there. I described my man. No, he hadn’t seen anyone of that description, today or yesterday. Sorry we can’t help you, Mr. Cross.
    At the Delmar, the ammonia-tossing chambermaid had married the manager and risen to key-girl. Her large black eyes grew larger when I entered. She still had a year to go.
    “Mr. Cross? You want to see me?”
    “Relax, Secundina. Miss Devon tells me you’re doing fine.”
    She came out through the swinging door beside the registration counter, a beautiful girl in a Spanish blouse, with ribbons in her hair. The management liked atmosphere.
    “Miss Devon is a good woman,” she stated. “I am not afraid no more—any more.” She swung her arms in a free movement in order to demonstrate that she was not afraid. The ribbons fluttered.
    I said: “I’m looking for a man.”
    “What man? He is staying here?”
    “You tell me, Secundina.” I described him.
    “He is not one of our guests,” she said with certainty. “
Un momento
. Wait a minute. I theenk—I think I have seen