Free Stab in the Dark by Louis Trimble Page B

and when he came back to the TV show, all he said was the hotel had called. Mrs. Dylan was wound up in the movie and didn’t think much about it.”
    Knox said, “Still she made a point of it.”
    “Not until we asked her if there had been any calls.”
    “Uhm,” Knox said. “How do you figure it, Mel? The murderer called Jock, made a date for a few minutes later, and Jock used the beer as an excuse to go out to the kitchen to see whoever it was.”
    “That’s the way I see it,” Beeker said. “The back door was open. Mrs. Dylan swears she locked it, and I imagine she did. It’s one of those lock and bolt affairs that couldn’t be opened except from the inside.”
    “Doesn’t that establish pretty well that Jock had found out something?” Knox asked. “He tried to put the heat on someone and got stabbed for his pains.”
    “The way I see it,” Beeker agreed. He paused while he looked around for more to eat. Everything was cleaned up. Sighing, he said, “Here’s one more item, Paul. Auffer was stabbed in the belly with an icepick, but it was something else that got him in the eye. Almost like a pick blade but thinner and shorter from what the Doc could tell. And the same instrument got Jock in the eye.”
    “Why the eye?” Knox wondered.
    “Answer that and we may know a murderer,” Beeker said.
    It was a statement that Knox was to remember.

CHAPTER TEN
    I T WAS late when Knox returned to the hotel. The bar was closed; the grill and restaurant were dark. The coffee shop had a skeleton staff and no customers as far as Knox could see. Only the desk clerk and a lone bellhop were in the lobby.
    Sleepily, he started for the elevators. He was about to enter the one still in service when the front doors opened and Natalie Tinsley and her father came in. She waved at him. “Paul—Mr. Knox.”
    “Paul is fine,” he said when they reached him.
    Her father smiled with the faint fatuousness of the slightly inebriated. “Hope you had a better evening than we did. A damned boring party.”
    “I just took a turn in the air,” Knox said. “It helps me sleep.”
    Natalie Tinsley half pouted, making herself look more like a young boy than ever. “Oh, not yet, don’t go to bed. I’ve been screaming bored all evening. Come and have a nightcap with us and tell us about your …” She broke off.
    Knox said, puzzled “My what?”
    The elevator doors slid shut and they started upward. “You will stop a minute, won’t you?”
    He was a good deal more awake than he had been a few moments ago. Being called Paul by someone like Natalie Tinsley and on such short acquaintance interested him. So did their well-timed appearance. Knox wasn’t ready to go so far as to say that it had been more planned than providence, but he was willing to speculate on the idea.
    “I’d be delighted,” he said honestly. He was not only interested in their interest in him but, he had to admit, Natalie Tinsley was nice to look at, very nice, and she wore an intriguing scent. And then a nightcap wouldn’t do any harm.
    “Delighted,” he repeated.
    The elevator took them to the penthouse, depositing them in a small foyer that had two doors opening from it. One, Knox knew from his study of the floor plan, led to the foyer, the other to a bedroom and bath that could be cut off from the rest of the suite if necessary. The Tinsleys, however, had the entire penthouse—living room, two bedrooms and baths, small dinette, kitchenette, and bar.
    The living room Tinsley showed him into was sumptuously furnished but still contained the impersonal aura of a hotel. Their three month’s occupancy had left little impression as far as Knox could see. Knox slipped out of his overcoat and let Tinsley hang it in the closet along with his own and Natalie’s wraps.
    Knox said to her, “About my—what?”
    Her full mouth worked into a quick, doubtful smile. “Did I talk out of turn? I was going to say, about your being a detective. Or is it a