“Listen, Herman,” Finch heard. “This is Andy Jackson speaking. I’m still on vacation, so I want you right away, and a whole squad with you.”
“What’s up?”
“What’s up? Merry hell and all. I’ve just found Stephen Worth’s body.”
Finch suppressed a gleeful chortle and started to retail this information to the doubting Captain. But Jackson’s next words stopped him short.
“The nice thing about it is,” Jackson went on, “the corpse is still warm.”
* P. 558 is blank.
Chapter 20
“We’d like to hear the newest recording of the Brahms Second,” Maureen told the clerk in the record store. Mr. Evans, from long experience, had recommended that placid symphony as one of the best for stimulating thought processes.
“I am more than ever certain,” he insisted as they waited, “that the key to it all lies in those numbers. It must be more than coincidence that another of our group uses a number code for telephonic communication. I cannot help feeling that we are on the verge of a great discovery. This little piece of paper—” He stopped short, and panic began to creep into his face. Hurriedly he started to explore his pockets. “Where is the paper?” he gasped.
“You had it in your hand,” said Maureen. “Maybe you laid it down on the counter.”
“It isn’t there. And who would take it? Who could have taken it, except—Miss O’Breen, we’ve been followed! He realizes how close we are to a solution!”
“Who realizes?”
“If only we had that paper we should know. But we are in danger now—frightful, immeasurable danger.”
“Don’t be silly, Mr. Evans. This isn’t Victorian London on a foggy night. This is Hollywood Boulevard, now, on a bright summer day. Nothing can happen to us.”
“Can’t it? Then what happened to that paper?”
“There’d be no point to stealing that. It’s only a copy—Lieutenant Finch has the original. You must have dropped it.”
A clerk (not the one Maureen had given the order to) approached them with a stack of records. “If you’ll just step into this booth here—” he began.
Maureen looked at the top record. Two Dukes on a Pier, fox trot, by Larry Wagner and his Rhythmasters. “Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “These aren’t what we wanted.”
“I beg your pardon,” the youth insisted, “but here is your list. You can check the numbers.” And he handed them the now all-too-familiar code message.
Maureen began to laugh so wholeheartedly that the clerk stared openmouthed. “So that’s what our wonderful code is! We rack our brains for hours trying out all our most ingenious ideas, and what are we working on? A list of dance records that Stephen Worth meant to buy.”
For a moment Jonadab Evans had seemed dejected, but now his eyes were alight again. Maureen could almost swear she saw his nose twitch. “Miss O’Breen,” he announced, “this is the greatest discovery since Stephen Worth was shot.”
“What is? That Worth bought dance records? That’s no surprise; he probably used them for aphrodisiacs.”
“You honestly believe that this is merely a shopping list? Come now: do people who mean to buy records list them by number? No; they jot down the title, perhaps the performer. And remember when and where and under what circumstances this list was found. No, Miss O’Breen; these records are no haphazard group of tunes. They are a message!”
“Do you want to hear them?” the clerk asked patiently.
“Go away!” said Mr. Evans sharply.
“I beg your pardon, sir!” The clerk was not unjustifiably indignant.
“Sorry.” Mr. Evans relapsed into his milder self. “Eight records at seventy-five—one fifty—three—That would be six dollars. Here you are. Now go away.”
“And where will you find this message?” Maureen asked. “Do we have to play them all and maybe pick out the forty-third word in each lyric or something? Or is it in the tunes? That would be Holmesian; you could settle down with your violin and solve the whole case.”
“No. It can’t be that. It must be something relatively simple—something that any one of us could read once he had stumbled on the idea that these were record numbers. Now the first thing we must do—”
“Excuse me, please.” It was the first clerk again. “Here’s the Brahms album. Now if you’ll step right in here—”
“You go away, too,” said Mr. Evans, “and stay away.”
“Please excuse us,” Maureen added, “but this is really important. Mybe,” she murmured doubtfully to herself.
“The first thing,” Mr. Evans went right on, “is to arrange the records in the order of the list. What is the first one—number 20518?”
“Go Down Moses,” Maureen read from the label, “and I Want to Be Like Jesus, sung by the Tuskegee Quartet. This isn’t even a dance record, like all the others.”
“Then it must be the words. Go Down Moses—I Want to Be Like Jesus—GO—I—Either one of those is a plausible beginning for a message. What is the next—25414?”
“My Kingdom for a Kiss and To You, Sweetheart, Aloha, played by—”
“Never mind. I think we want only titles. MY—TO—I—TO—I MY—No. Ah, this fits! GO TO—Go on, what’s the next one—25723?”
“Autopsy on Schubert and—”
“That’s perfect! GO TO AUTOPSY—We’ll have a message yet. Now the next.”
Each step meant trial and error—weighing the merits of the two initial words and rejecting the one which made no sense. And after eight such steps, the paper before Mr. Evans bore the message:
STEIN
GO TO AUTOPSY THREE TWO SOUTH STREET
SONG
“That’s it!” he calloohed. “Now all we need is a map-find out where Stein Street is, or Song Street—it’s hard to know which it should be—and hurry there before anyone else has the sense to see what these numbers mean.”
Maureen had caught his excitement by now. She did not even stop to point out that it was chance, not sense, which had shown them the meaning of the list. “There’s a bank across the street,” she contributed. “They have maps.”
Clutching the precious records to him, Mr. Evans started out of the store like a back in the clear with the goal posts straight ahead. But in the path hovered a safety man—the second clerk.
“Excuse me, sir,” said this youth, “but do you have eighteen cents?”
Mr. Evans halted abruptly and stared at this monument of effrontery. “And what business is it of yours, young man?”
“The sales tax on six dollars,” the clerk explained patiently, “is eighteen cents.”
Maureen already had her purse out and handed him the change. “Though I don’t know where,” she added as they left the store, “I’ll put that in my budget.”
“It’s strange,” observed Mr. Evans, dodging through Boulevard traffic. “In the East we always hear of California as such a prosperous state, and all people do here is ask you for pennies.”
“Anyway,” Maureen consoled him, “this is a prosperous bank. They give you maps free gratis for nothing.”
Some minutes later she looked up in despair. “It’s no use,” she said. “Somerset Place, Somma Way, Sonora Avenue, Soper Drive—no Song Street.”
“Try Stein then.”
“I did. Stearns Drive, Steele Avenue, Stelle Place, Stephenson Avenue. No Stein either. I never heard of one, but that wouldn’t prove anything. I never head of any of those I just read either. Funny how you can live in a town for years and not know the names of streets.”
“I know,” said Mr. Evans. “All you can be sure of is that there’ll be a Main Street. Main Street—Miss O’Breen! There is a Main Street in Los Angeles, isn’t there?”
“I’ll say there is,” Maureen laughed. “It’s the City Council’s greatest problem. Burlesque theaters, flophouses, Beer Five Cents a Glass—you know the kind of street.”
“And it runs north and south?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s where we’re going. Come on. How can we get to 32 South Main Street?”
“But why Main Street?”
“Don’t you see? What is the full name of the Stein Song? The Maine Stein Song. Probably there isn’t any record beginning with Main; the man who wrote the message had to substitute Stein and trust to luck. Now how do we get there?”
“These red cars on the Boulevard would take us to Fifth and Hill. We could walk from there.”
“And how long would that take?”
“A good three quarters of an hour in traffic.”
“Too long,” said Mr. Evans decisively. “Taxi!”
Maureen, as they rolled down Hollywood and turned onto Sunset, kept sneaking sidelong glances at her companion. The success of his cryptanalysis, even though brought about by pure chance, seemed to have changed him completely. He was no longer a pale and wistful rabbit. Instead he was abruptly a Man of Action and Few Words. This, she reflected, must be the author’s own interpretation of the Honorable Derring Drew.
“Miss O’Breen,” he turned to her sharply, “what is on the other side of the Autopsy on Schubert?”
She looked at the discs on her lap. “Two Dukes on a Pier—which sounds terribly like Lucky Louie to me.” (Lieutenant Finch, she thought, would disapprove of that crack.)
Mr. Evans rapped authoritatively on the glass. “Driver,” he commanded, “change your destination to 232 South Main.”
He sat back in self-satisfied silence. “But why?” Maureen asked, feeling foolishly stoogian.
“An autopsy,” he explained with only a trace of condescension, “would be held in a known building and the address would not be needed. Therefore the numeral on the other side must have been intended.”
“And if that isn’t right,” Maureen said, “we can go back and try number 32 anyway.”
“We won’t need to,” said the Honorable Derring Drew.
Nor did they. The cab driver had to let them out a half block from the desired address, such was the confusion in front of that building. Maureen saw official cars and men in uniform and for a moment even thought that she glimpsed a now familiar tall and rangy figure, which seemed impossible. She looked at the men in the gathering crowd. If she asked anything of them, she thought with a shudder, they’d think she was—A Salvation Army uniform was more encouraging.
“I beg your pardon,” she ventured, “but could you tell me what’s happening in that building there—the hotel, I think it is, at 232?”
The man gave a friendly smile and tipped his cap. “If I were you, Miss, I’d stay away from there. There’s just been a murder.”
Chapter 21
In the small third-floor bedroom of the Hotel Elite (232 S. Main St.—Beds 25¢, Rooms 50¢ And Up) stood Detective Lieutenants Herman Finch and A. Jackson. The squad had already gone over the room minutely, with the result that it was accidentally cleaner than it had been in years; but it was still not an appetizing abode. A little afternoon sun penetrated through the cracked window giving onto the air shaft, picked out glistening motes in the dusty air, and fell inert on the uncarpeted wooden floor, burned and stained by past smokers and chewers.
The man who had registered as James Moriarty had left little impress of his own personality on the room during his brief tenancy. He had brought no baggage, added nothing to the room’s shabby furnishings save a tablet of yellow paper, a pencil, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and two quart bottles of whisky—one now empty and the other still half full. The rest was the same as when he had arrived—the washstand with its tarnished mirror and rude bathing utensils, the chair with the partial cane bottom, the bed with the creaking springs and the tattered spread.
To be precise, the bed was not the same. It was bloodstained now and half hidden by a ragged screen, and on it lay the body of the man who had called himself Moriarty.
“It’s impossible,” said Finch. “The man who was murdered twice—”
“Double Jeopardy,” said Jackson grimly. “Un-American, that’s what it is. But it’s what comes of a gag sense like his. Playing with murder is like what Catholics believe about playing with magic—there’s no telling when it will turn into the real thing.”
“And Norris was right, damn him,” Finch grunted. “But now that you’ve found him, Andy—and a smart piece of work that was—what have we got? He tried to leave a clue to his murderer—that much is clear.”
“Is it? I’m doubtful about these dying clues ever since the Garnett case. That crumpled knave was a perfect pointer if ever there was one, and look at the trouble it gave us. Let me have another look at our priceless clue.” Lieutenant Jackson took up a piece of paper—half of a plain yellow sheet from a tablet, with nothing on it but cavorting stick men.
“Mind if I think aloud? I want to repeat this and make sure it’s straight. When I walked in here, he was dead but still warm, and this was clenched in his hand. The other half of the sheet was on the floor along with those other papers. They’re all fake messages of one sort and another, mostly with a Holmesian flavor; so it looks as though he was going to make a few more mysteries for us if nobody found him. But somebody did find him—Anyway, Herman, your idea is this: he was still barely alive when his murderer left. He hadn’t strength enough to reach the pad and pencil, so he took one of these papers and tore it in half. What he tore off is supposed to tell us who killed him.”
“If we could figure it. Of course it might be the other half. With a bullet in your chest, you could easy keep the wrong scrap of paper.”
“Right enough. Let’s see the other one, too.”
Jackson spread the two yellow halves on the dresser and contemplated them. Both were part of the same message, written in the now-familiar cipher of the dancing men. With the aid of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, the officers had already translated them and penciled the clear message beneath. The first half, which had been tossed onto the floor beside the bed, gave the result:
The other, the half that had been clutched in the dying hand of the so-called Moriarty, read:
“Amy Gray,” said Jackson. “According to Federhut’s story, that was the stepdaughter that died as in The Speckled Band. And that name cropped up in one of those strange phone calls the day of the fake murder. It must all tie in somehow, but I’m damned if I can see—”
“There’s another little gathering tonight at 221B. We’ll see what happens then. And in the meantime I’ve got plenty to do on this new development. So until tonight, Andy—”
“Excuse me, Lieutenant,” said a uniformed man in the doorway.
“Well, Gomez? What is it?”
“There’s a girl downstairs trying to crash. She was just about giving up when she heard your name and says you know her and want to see her.”
“Herman,” said Jackson, “I’ve got a crawling hunch. The name isn’t O’Breen, is it?”
“That’s the name,” said Gomez. “And there’s a man name of Evans with her.”
“Bring ’em both up,” Finch ordered. “So Evans is around here, is he? Isn’t that nice? Right handy for us. We’ll just do a little alibi checking right now.”
Maureen entered hesitantly, still balancing the precious records; but her entrance was bravura itself compared to the timorous manner in which Jonadab Evans followed her. The momentary incarnation of the Honorable Derring Drew had vanished, and there remained only a meek old man who had got into deep waters.
“Lieutenant Finch,” Maureen ventured, “what has happened? Downstairs they wouldn’t—And Andy!”
“Andy?” Finch repeated. “What is this?”
“We drank beer together last night,” the young Lieutenant explained. “It plays hell with the professional relationship. What’s happened, Maureen, is that I’ve just found Stephen Worth.”
“Oh.” Maureen looked relieved. “Is that all? A Salvation Army man told me there’d been another murder. But why should anybody have brought Worth’s body here to this awful place? No thank you, Lieutenant Finch,
I’d sooner not sit down here.”
“You see,” said Jackson, “the trouble is we’re both right, the Salvationist and me. I did find Worth and there has been a murder.”
“Oh!” Her relief had evaporated. “Oh, this is awful. Who—”
“Was it one of the—one of us?” Mr. Evans faltered.
“The man who was killed in this room, Miss O’Breen,” Finch said, “roughly three hours ago, was Stephen Worth.”
“No!” Maureen gasped. “I will sit down!”
“But Lieutenant,” Mr. Evans expostulated, “that’s impossible. This young lady saw Worth shot at 221B night before last. That is,” slowly he drew away from Maureen’s chair, “do you mean that she—”
“No,” said Jackson. “Miss O’Breen’s in the clear. I believe her story is in good faith, just as I might believe a man who told me he saw the Indian rope trick. That doesn’t mean I believe in the trick. I know what you think you saw that night, Maureen; but I still don’t know what you did see. I just figured it like this: supposing, in some freak way that I don’t understand yet, this whole thing is a colossal hoax of Worth’s. That made sense. That fitted in with his character. He could stage a fake murder and then frame all these weird adventures that the group went through yesterday, just to show up the Irregulars as a bunch of bungling amateurs.”
Maureen nodded. “That does make sense. That’s like him. He was all for ribs. Remember what he did to Drew in the commissary?”
“I remembered that. So I said, if this is a hoax, how did he get away from 221B? He wouldn’t take his own car; if that was missing, it might arouse suspicions. His hide-out probably wouldn’t be within walking distance; and writers in the film colony have forgotten years ago that there are such things as streetcars and busses. He probably took a taxi. Well, he did, and the rest was easy. The driver dropped him a block from here. I checked all these hotels, and when I saw James Moriarty on this register, there wasn’t any doubt who that was. So I found him—but somebody else had found him first, somebody who was smart enough to—and by the way! Just how did you two find this place?”
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars Page 23