Vanish in an Instant by Margaret Millar Page A

smell. I went home by side streets. I don’t know how far I walked, two miles, three miles. No one noticed me particularly. It was late, and it was snowing, big feathery flakes of snow that clung to my clothes and hid the stains. The house was dark when I got home. I let myself into my room and took off the clothes that had blood on them and put them in the back of the wardrobe. That’s where they are now.”
    â€œIn the wardrobe,” Cordwink said.
    â€œYes, 611 Division Street, the left front room. It has its own entrance, that’s why the landlady calls it an apartment.”
    â€œWhat did you do on Sunday?”
    â€œI was very weak, I had to stay in bed.”
    â€œDidn’t see any papers?”
    â€œNot until early Monday morning, that is, this morn­ing. As soon as I read that Mrs. Barkeley was being held, I went down to the jail to see you. You were busy, and I waited in the corridor. Mr. Meecham saw me there.”
    Meecham nodded. “Yes, I saw him.”
    â€œWell, I didn’t,” Cordwink said. “What happened, Lof­tus? Lose your nerve?”
    â€œNo. I suddenly realized, as I was sitting there, that there were a lot of things I hadn’t attended to, and that I’d never get a chance, once I’d confessed. So I walked out again.”
    â€œA lot of things you hadn’t attended to, such as what?”
    â€œPersonal things. I closed my bank account, and sold my car, things like that.”
    â€œListen to this, Loftus.” Cordwink turned over the pages until he found what he was looking for. “ ‘I stabbed Mar­golis deliberately and with intent to kill, and not to pro­tect Mrs. Barkley or myself.’ You still claim that?”
    â€œBetter think before you answer,” Meecham said. “That deliberation and intent business will . . .”
    â€œKeep out of this, Meecham,” Cordwink said, scowling. “You’re not his lawyer.”
    â€œHe needs one.”
    â€œHe’ll get one.” Cordwink faced Loftus again. “Have you any money?”
    â€œA little, yes. The past few months I’ve been able to work. I’m an accountant. That’s what my treatments have been for, not so I could live longer, but so I could carry on with my job, live more efficiently.”
    â€œHow much money? Two thousand? One?”
    â€œOh, not that much.”
    â€œLawyers come high. The more crooked they are, the bigger their price. That’s how they stay out of the booby hatch, by rubbing the lesions on their conscience with greenbacks.”
    Loftus looked a little puzzled. “Well, if I have to have a lawyer, Mr. Meecham will suit me fine. He’s been very kind.”
    â€œKind?” Cordwink raised his eyebrows, exaggeratedly. “This I must hear.”
    â€œWhen he thought I was just a bum, he offered me two dollars.”
    â€œWell, well. Where’d you get the two dollars, Meecham, selling phony oil shares to war widows?”
    Meecham’s smile was a little strained. “I object to the question on the grounds that it is intimidating and forms a conclusion.”
    Dunlop put down his pencil, and said, with a faint whine, “When everybody keeps talking like this, I don’t know what to write down. Everybody shouldn’t keep talk­ing like this.”
    â€œDon’t write anything,” Cordwink said. “Call a patrol car and take Loftus down and book him.”
    I’m going to jail , Loftus thought. But he still couldn’t quite believe it. Jail was for criminals, for thieves and thugs, for brutal angry lawless men. He said, with the sur­prise and disbelief evident in his voice: “I’m going to—to jail?”
    â€œFor the present, yes.”
    â€œWhy do you say, for the present?”
    â€œWe have no facilities at the jail for looking after a dy——a sick man. There’s a prison ward at the County
    Hospital. You’ll be