The desk clerk gave Kells several letters, and a message: Mr. Dave Perry called at 2:35, and again at 3:25. Asked that you call him or come to his home. Important.
Kells went to his room and put in a call to Perry. He mixed a drink and read the letters while a telephone operator called him twice to say the line was busy. When she called again, he said, “Let it go,” went down and got into another cab. He told the driver: “Corner of Cherokee and Hollywood Boulevard.”
Perry lived in a kind of penthouse on top of the Virginia Apartments. Kells climbed the narrow stair to the roof, knocked at the unsheathed fire door; he knocked again, then turned the knob, pushed the door open.
The room filled with crashing sound. Kells dropped on one knee, just inside, slammed the door shut. A strip of sunlight came in through two tall windows and yellowed the rug. Doc Haardt was lying on his back, half in, half out of the strip of sun. There was a round bluish mark on one side of his-throat, and, as Kells watched, it grew larger, red.
Ruth Perry sat on a low couch against one wall and looked at Haardt’s body. A door slammed some place toward the back of the house. Kells got up and turned the key in the door through which he had entered, crossed quickly and stood above the body.
Haardt had been a big loose-joweled Dutchman with a mouthful of gold. His dead face looked as if he were about to drawl: “Well... I’ll tell you...” A small automatic lay on the floor near his feet.
Ruth Perry stood up and started to scream. Kells put one hand on the back of her neck, the other over her mouth. She took a step forward, put her arms around his body. She looked up at him and he took his hand away from her mouth.
“Darling! I thought he was going to get you.” She spoke very rapidly. Her face was twisted with fear. “He was here an hour. He made Dave call you...”
Kells patted her cheek. “Who, baby?”
“I don’t know.” She was coming around. “A nance. A little guy with glasses.”