I said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but one idea has stuck with me. I’ve always had the rather absurd feeling that your meeting with me was not accidental.”
She nodded. “Good going. It wasn’t. I heard about you. I had you investigated. I learned that you were friendly with Ricardo & Dana. It was natural for me to go to the Caliente; half my life has been spent in joints like that. Meeting them was simple, too. But my real purpose was to meet you.”
“Why?”
“Because a young lady named Ethel Brower had been killed in your apartment. I read what the newspapers said about it. I wanted to estimate for myself whether you had killed her.”
“You should have known better, Candy. If the police had thought so, they would have arrested me.”
“That had me puzzled. But there was a possibility that I might discover things the police would miss. So I made my pitch.”
I asked, “Why were you interested in Ethel Brower?”
“Because I had met her—when I was going through the kidnaping routine with John Ferguson.”
“She was afraid of him?”
“I don’t think so. But she visited his place in Jersey several times. I think she was the sweetheart of some man who worked for him.”
“And when you discovered that she had been killed in my apartment . . . ?”
Candy laughed. She said, “Nobody can be as dumb as you act. Whatever was happening, Ethel Brower probably knew about it. After my release from what you might call durance vile, she turns up strangled in the apartment of a perfect stranger. The police believe your story that you don’t know her. So if you hadn’t killed her, it seemed to me that Ferguson was elected.”
“Why?”
“Because the gentleman had always kept clear of the law. He has picked suckers like myself, people who were helpless because they were just a little bit over the line. As far as I know, he has no criminal record. He didn’t propose to start one. It might have been that Ethel Brower tried to shake him down for some of the half million dollars I paid. Ferguson wouldn’t like that. He could have followed her to your apartment, figuring that she was planning to sell out to you. He might have ended the argument in his own conclusive way. He has very strong hands.”
I said, “Why me?”
She shook her head. “That’s something I never could figure. Neither he nor Brower could have picked your name out of a hat. There’s some connection that I don’t savvy.”
I got up and walked across the room. I leaned against the mantel. I said, “Maybe I can help, Candy. On January 28th somebody deposited one hundred thousand dollars cash to my credit at the bank. I haven’t the slightest idea who it was.”
That seemed to floor her. She said slowly, “That was four days after my ransom money was paid. Three days after I returned without a wedding ring.”
I fumbled around. “I always connected it with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the first person I ever met who has that much money.”
She laughed; a nice, clear laugh. She said, “It’s the sort of thing I might have done. But I didn’t. I hadn’t even met you then.”
“That’s what I told Max Gold. But there’s bound to be some tie-up.”
“Probably. So I’ll ask you again: Why you? And why do you stand over there when this couch is so comfortable?”
I grinned and seated mself beside her. I said, “Why are you being so frank with me? You must have a reason.”
“I have.” She didn’t evade. “I’m frightened.”
“Of what?”
“Ferguson. If he killed Ethel Brower it was for the purpose of keeping her mouth shut. He might do the same to me for the same reason.”
I got her point. It seemed far-fetched, but so did a lot of other things that had been happening. While thoughts were chasing each other through my head, Candy started asking questions.
She said, “You think Agnes Sheridan was killed by accident, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You believe that whoever killed her meant to kill Dana Warren?”
“Yes.”
“How long has Dana known Ferguson?”
“That’s out. I introduced them to each other.”
“You introduced me to Ferguson, too.”
I said, “But look! That doesn’t make sense. I didn’t know anything about you. I’ve known Dana for a long time. If she had ever met Ferguson before . . .”
“Okay. Don’t get all het up about it. How about God’s gift to the women . . . this Ricardo person? He might have been friendly with Ferguson without your knowing it, mightn’t he?”
“It’s possible.”
“Ricardo knew where you lived. Ferguson could have found out that Ethel Brower was trying to contact you, and checked it up to Ricardo to argue her out of it.”
“But why Ricardo?”
“Don’t be simple,” she said impatiently. “You and Dana are in love with each other. She’s Ricardo’s wife. In addition to that, she’s a valuable piece of dancing property. It wouldn’t be impossible that Ricardo is still in love with her. So suppose that Ferguson and Ricardo were friends. Suppose Ricardo suggested you as the fall guy? The hundred thousand dollars you had suddenly acquired would be difficult to explain. Ricardo would have a lot less to worry about if you were out of the picture. Maybe that isn’t the best answer in the world, but it’s the best we’ve thought of yet.”
I could have dressed her story up. I could have told her that Ricardo had just learned that Dana was quitting the act—and him—no matter what happened. I could have told about his luck piece being found in my apartment. I could have suggested that, if Ricardo already had one murder on his hands, it wouldn’t have been too difficult to nerve himself to commit a second.
I could have told her all that. But I didn’t. Unless or until I found out that there had been contact between Ferguson and Ricardo previous to the Brower incident, it seemed hardly fair. It put me in the position of fitting facts to theories; of merely trying to prove a point.
We did a lot more talking. For all Candy’s lightness, I saw that she was frightened. I said finally, “You’ve given me a lot of information. What do you want me to do with it?”
“Whatever you think best.”
“That really puts me on the spot. I might make a bad guess.
“I’ll take a chance.” Her sense of humor came to the rescute. “I’ve been doing that pretty much all my life.”
It was dusk when I got up to go. Candy helped me with my coat. She said, “Would it hurt much to kiss me?”
I put my arms around her. I kissed her. I did a pretty good job of it. It was she who broke away. She said, “Why didn’t somebody tell me these things?”
I stepped into the hall and heard her close the door behind me. I rode down to the street level. I went to a drugstore, telephoned the homicide squad and asked for Lieutenant Max Gold. He was there. I said I wanted to see him, and he said he thought he’d be able to take it. I grabbed a taxi and gave the address: 230 West 20th Street.
The room in which Gold received me wasn’t much. But it was businesslike. He said, “Let’s have it.”
I gave him the works—from the moment I stepped into Candy’s apartment up to five minutes before I left. When I finished he looked at me a long time. Then he said, “That’s a nice shade of lipstick you’re wearing. But it looks better on a blonde.”
I blushed and rubbed my lips and didn’t say anything. He said, “Nice going, kid. I didn’t think you had it in you.” Then he drummed on the desk top with broad, strong fingers. “It adds up cute,” he commented. “My bet is John Ferguson.”
I remained silent.
“We know a lot about Ferguson,” Max went on. “He’s a smart cookie. Never picks a victim who isn’t willing to take the best of it. We’ve never been able to cook up an indictment that would stick. Like this Candy Livingston thing: the victims are reluctant to testify. But the rest of it checks.”
�
�Not all of it,” I said. “Unless you’re willing to concede that whoever killed Agnes Sheridan was really trying to get Dana.”
He smiled thinly. “Even that checks,” he said placidly “We just got our final reports on Agnes. They’re interesting.”
He took his time. I knew it would be big, but even so I wasn’t prepared for what he told me.
“This is what you might call the missing link,” he said quietly. “Agnes Sheridan was John Ferguson’s wife.”
CHAPTER XXIV
LIEUTENANT MAX GOLD was having himself quite a time. He had let fly with both barrels, and now he leaned back in his creaky swivel chair to watch the effect on me.
I made a rather profane remark which indicated the measure of my astonishment. Then I laughed. Not much: just a little. He said, “What’s funny?”
“I’m thinking about two introductions. I introduced Ferguson to Candy Livingston, who was his ex-gal friend. They were as formal and as blank as that wall in back of you. Ditto with Ferguson and Agnes. ‘How do you do, Mr. Ferguson.’ ‘Delighted to meet you, Miss Sheridan.’ And she was his wife.”
Gold said, “They weren’t working at it. They separated years ago. He’s been sending her an adequate income.”
I said, “Where does she fit in?”
“She’s dead. That might mean something.”
“You’re miles ahead of me.”
“Look . . .” His manner was that of a teacher explaining something to a small—and not too bright—pupil. “Candy Livingston ran off with John Ferguson. But before they eloped Ferguson must have known Candy, and it ain’t unreasonable to suppose that Agnes knew that he knew her. As I remember your story, Agnes was in the Club Caliente when Candy accepted the introduction to Ferguson. Being a smart babe, we can sorta take it for granted that she smelled a mice. So what does she do? She cultivates Candy. And why? Because if there’s been a half-million-dollar touch, she figures she might cut in on it. Follow me?”
“I’m with you this far.”
“Naturally, Ferguson savvies what’s going on. If my guess is correct, he doesn’t like it. So he knocks Agnes off.”
I thought that one over. I said, “I took it for granted that whoever shot Agnes was really after Dana Warren.”
“You may be right, Douglas. I’m not going out on a limb. I’m just giving you a new thought to stew over.”
I said, “Ferguson was in the club the night Agnes was killed. He knew we were going skating after the dinner show. Where was he at the moment the shooting occurred?”
“He’s got a perfect alibi—too perfect. The man he was with says Ferguson never left the table until after the shooting. I never trust anything that neat.”
“Then your bet is Ferguson?”
“My hunch is that way. Ricardo ties up nice, but not as nice as Ferguson. I wouldn’t be too surprised if it turned out to be Ricardo, but my money rides the other way.”
I asked, “How about the Ethel Brower killing?”
“What we figured for Ricardo could also apply to Ferguson. He and the Brower dame knew each other. He wouldn’t have liked it if she spilled to you. Ricardo might have passed his information along to Ferguson instead of using it himself.” He smiled a tight little smile. “That’s the trouble with a murder like this, Douglas: sometimes you got more suspects than you want.”
“But you still think it was Ferguson?”
“It looks that way—Yes.”
“Why not arrest him?”
“For what?”
I made an impatient gesture. “Murder, for one thing.”
Max Gold shook his head. “He could beat that rap, easy. The way things stand now, we haven’t even got any good circumstantial evidence. There ain’t any sense charging him with something until you figure you got a good chance to prove it.”
“I don’t see it that way. You could prove he kidnaped Candy Livingston. Once you did that, the rest would fit.”
“Ferguson didn’t kidnap Candy. He can prove it.”
“How?”
“By you. The defense would get you on the stand and make you chirp. Being fairly honest, you’d have to repeat what Candy told you. So it wasn’t a kidnaping.”
I said, “Ferguson still got the half million dollars, didn’t he?”
His bright eyes got brighter. “That money was just a gift from a girl friend. She gave it to him voluntarily.”
I said, “Other things become clearer, now that I know about Ferguson. Maybe he put the hundred thousand in the bank for me.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I haven’t any reason except that it ties in with the certainty that he took a lot of trouble to become friendly with me. He wasn’t planning any office building, but he worked hard to make me think he was. I’m trying to figure why.”
“You get the answer to that one, and I’ll kiss you.”
“That’s something to look forward to.” I grinned at him. “Ferguson’s weakness is his interest in me. The answer must be hidden right there.”
“Okay. You find it, and we’ll slap him in the cooler so quick it’ll make his hair curl.” Max spread both of his powerful hands on the top of the desk. “It shapes up like Ferguson,” he said. “I never was too willing to buy the Ricardo set-up. But even yet there’s some angle that we’ve both missed. Maybe I can find it—maybe you can. But I want to warn you of one thing: Keep your guard up. Ferguson could be a cold, bad baby if he was pushed.”
I left him and started walking. I got to Broadway and turned left. Far ahead the big signs were blazing against the frozen sky. I remembered that I hadn’t eaten since lunch time. I dropped into a cafeteria which looked bright and warm. I made the rounds, grabbed myself a table near the window and tried to think by concentrating on the people who were hurrying by outside; a never-ending stream of people without personalities.
I was commencing to readjust my ideas. The more I thought, the less it looked like Ricardo. There were still a lot of things I couldn’t understand, but the only real motives I’d ever been able to pin on Ricardo were jealousy—which I didn’t believe—and bitterness over the fact that Dana was quitting the act.
The job of estimating Ferguson’s position was simpler. Ethel Brower had seen him with Candy. It could be presumed that she knew that the kidnaping wasn’t a kidnaping, and that the ransom money looked good to her. The same applied to Agnes. Ferguson wouldn’t like women who knew too much. I put my money on Ferguson. What I wanted, though, was to uncover the thing that was missing, so that the District Attorney could put him through the wringer.
I got a hunch. Arthur Maybank. He and Agnes had been playing around. How intimate they may have been, I didn’t know. But they had been alone a lot and Agnes must have done some talking. Maybe she had dropped remarks which wouldn’t mean a thing to Arthur, but might be significant in the light of what I knew now.
I thought of something else. Someone had tried to kill Arthur. That could come out Ferguson, too, without wasting a lot of logic. Ferguson might have thought that Agnes planned to upset his applecart. He might even have known that she had done too much talking already. It was better than any other theory I’d been able to concoct about the shooting of Arthur. It was worth discussing with him, at any rate.
I picked up my little pink check with the holes in it, and paid the cashier the amount opposite the last hole. I went to the nearest subway station and rode uptown. I walked across to the dreary edifice which was the McKinley Hospital.
Arthur was there. He was sitting in the accident room, doing nothing. He seemed glad to see me. I broke the news. He looked little, incredulous and frightened. He said, “And all the time I would have bet it was Ricardo.”
“We all thought that,” I agreed. “But we didn’t know anything about Ferguson being a crook.”
I felt sorry for Arthur. He looked scared to death. I told him what I wanted. I asked him to think back over everything he and Agnes had ever talked about. I explained that our answer might be hidd
en in some casual remark of hers which wouldn’t have meant a thing until now.
We started checking. I hated to do it, because some of the things we discussed were intimate. There hadn’t been many women in Arthur’s life. I gathered that he was hit hard and that this, coming on top of her tragic death, was just a little more than he could take without danger of cracking.
In the middle of our conversation, an accident call came in. The burly ambulance driver appeared from nowhere and said, “Let’s get goin’, Doc.”
Arthur looked at me helplessly. He said, “You’ll wait here?”
“How long will you be?”
“I never know.” He rushed across the room and buttonholed a tall, slim, nice-looking boy who had just walked in. They talked earnestly for a few minutes, and then Arthur came back. “He’s an interne,” he explained. “He says he’ll take over when I get back from this call. He’s going upstairs now to change.”
I said, “Suppose I go home, and you join me there. I’d like to telephone Dana. I haven’t spoken to her all day.”
He said he’d come to my apartment as soon as he was free. The ambulance sirened impatiently from the parking lot. Arthur scuttled off. I left the building and walked home.
I snapped on the reading lamp and settled myself in the easy chair under it. I picked up the telephone and called the Caliente. I had to wait a few minutes, but it was worth it. Dana’s voice always sounded good. At the moment, it sounded better than that.
I told her I’d run into a lot of new and exciting information. She wanted to know all about it. I said I thought it would be better not to talk over the phone. Our connection was through the club switchboard, and I didn’t know whether the operator might be listening in.
She saw my point, but it didn’t make her any less curious. I told her I’d have lunch with her the next day and explain everything. She asked me to come over to the club and sit through the supper show, but I said that was impossible. I was waiting for Arthur, who would be along any minute. I had a lot of talking to do.
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