I closed my eyes and thought how nice it would be to be rid of Brandon and have a good, honest Captain of Police like Mifflin in charge at Headquarters. How much easier it would be for me to get co-operation instead of threats of dark alley beatings.
Then it occurred to me that Nurse Gurney had been away longer than it was necessary to collect a few groceries, and I sat up, frowning. I couldn’t hear her talking. I couldn’t hear anything. I set my drink down and stood up. Crossing the room I opened the door and looked into the lobby. The front door was ajar, but there was no one to see. I peeped into the passage.
The door of the opposite apartment looked blankly at me and I returned to the lobby. Maybe she was in the johnny, I thought, and went back into the sitting-room. I sat and waited, getting more and more fidgety, then after five minutes I finished my drink and went to the door again.
Somewhere in the apartment a refrigerator gave a whirring grunt and made me jump halfway out of my skin. I raised my voice and called, “Hey!” but no one answered. Moving quietly, I opened the door opposite the living-room and looked around what was obviously her bedroom. She wasn’t there. I even looked under the bed. I went into the bathroom and the kitchen and a tiny room that was probably the guest-room. She wasn’t in any of these rooms.
I went back to the living-room, but she wasn’t there either. It was beginning to dawn on me she wasn’t in the apartment, so I went to the front door, along the passage until I arrived at the main corridor. I looked to right and left. Stony-faced doors looked back at me. Nothing moved, nothing happened; just two lines of doors, a mile of shabby drugget, two or three grimy windows to let in the light, but no Nurse Gurney.
V
I stared blankly out of the window of the small living-room at the roof of the Buick parked below.
Without shoes or stockings she couldn’t have gone far, I told myself, unless… and my mind skipped to Eudora Drew, seeing a picture of her as she lay across the bed with the scarf biting into her throat.
For some moments I stood undecided. There seemed nothing much I could do. I had nothing to work on. The front-door bell rings. She says it’s the grocerman. She goes into the lobby. She vanishes. No cry; no bloodstains; no nothing.
But I had to do something, so I went to the front door and opened it and looked at the door of the opposite apartment. It didn’t tell me anything. I stepped into the passage and dug my thumb into the bell-push. Almost immediately the door opened as if the woman who faced me had been waiting for my ring.