Free Mourn the Hangman by Harry Whittington Page A

for Dickerson — at Arrenhower’s — just like you did.”
    Blake’s shoulders sagged. “It don’t figure,” he whispered.
    Bricker stepped away from the door and gestured for Blake to pass through it on his way out. “But that’s the way it is, Steve. I guess Dickerson wanted to know what you were doing, too.”
    Blake moved slowly past Bricker. At the door he stopped. “Well, this is it, Bricker. Four years shot to hell. I don’t want you to think it hasn’t been wonderful. Because it hasn’t.”
    He turned and walked across the outer office. God, how his little part of the world had tumbled about him. But beside the grief and loneliness he felt at the loss of Stella, losing this partnership and this office and even the plans he’d had for it, meant nothing. To care about things was another luxury peculiar to the living, he told himself bitterly. And there was no place in him for anything except finding Stella’s killer.
    Manley had been in town. Bricker had sold him out. Dickerson had tossed him over. Arrenhower had discovered his secret. Those were the things Blake had found out. He had to stay free until he found out what those things meant. Maybe, if he could stay free long enough to get to Arrenhower in Tampa tonight….
    He was positive now that Stella had been killed as part of a plan to eliminate Steve Blake via a framed-up murder.
    He pushed through the stairway door and started walking slowly down the open iron stairs. Down. Around. Down. The building throbbed with its unaccustomed Sunday morning silence. At the ground floor, Blake stepped out the rear exit into the alley. He looked both ways. He smiled grimly and started walking east in the alleyway.
    At Third Street there was a current of churchgoers. Blake counted this as fortunate. He mingled with them, moving sedately in their midst to the corner of Central. He crossed the street then, remembering to wait for the green traffic signal. There was no sense in getting arrested for an ordinance violation.
    He still had the key to his room in the Regal Hotel. He wasn’t sure when a day ended in this scabby establishment, but he meant to find out.
    He climbed the stairs slowly. There was a clerk on duty in the second floor lobby, but he only looked up disinterestedly as Blake crossed the wide corridor and started up to the third floor landing.
    Daylight lent no enchantment to the dim hallway with its pockmarked doors closed and locked against theft, the shabby runner and the ceiling with the paper torn and peeling. At 305, he listened for the radio. But the room was silent. Maybe the girl — Sammy Anderson — could sleep now, in daytime and silence.
    At the door of 308, Blake fitted the key into the lock and sighed a little as the door swung open. He didn’t envy Sammy Anderson living in a place like this, but at least 308 would be a haven for a few hours more.
    He had already closed the door, hearing the lock click into place, before he was aware of the man across the room.
    He was sitting on a straight chair that was propped on two legs against the window that he’d opened to the morning sunlight. He was wearing a lightweight topcoat, and his gray felt hat was in his lap. He wasn’t a handsome man and he wasn’t a big man. He was about medium height, with sandy, thinning hair, a thin nose and tired blue eyes. He was the most patient man that Blake had ever known. His name was Ross Connell.
    He was a lieutenant in the homicide bureau of the Gulf City police.
    “I thought you were smarter,” Connell said mildly. “Why’d you come back here, Blake? You ought to know. First thing we do is put a check on hotel registers. How long’d you think it would be before we found out you’d been here?”
    Blake shrugged. “I thought you’d give me credit for more sense. I thought you’d figure I knew about the hotel check and would stay away.”
    “Yeah,” Connell said. “That’s what I thought you’d figure. That’s why I waited.”

8
    AT