by Jerry eBooks
“That’s what we’ll find out—if we’re lucky.”
Harnock opened a door at the other end of the room. Betty gained a swift, blinding impression of brilliant lights, a motley of faces, buzzing voices. Harnock’s hand was at her elbow, adroitly veering her along the side wall. .
“Take it easy,” he whispered. “I’ll try to fix it so’s you’ll meet them one at a time. Concentrate on remembering names and keeping them straight.”
“Hello, Ken,” he lifted his voice. “Here, I’d like you to meet my wife.”
Ken Mitchell, the one who had found Danny’s body. Betty stared, sure that she wouldn’t have any trouble keeping Ken Mitchell straight in her memory. He looked like a poet, or something. A Greenwich Village kind of poet. His sandy hair sprouted wildly. He wore a sandy, Hitleresque mustache.
His eyes had the flat, unreal green of cactus shards.
“I don’t believe she’s actually your wife, Harnock,” he said, studying Betty’s features.
Ed Harnock sensed the girl’s startled recoil, watched the smile freeze on her lips. She was cold with dismay. What a miserable failure she’d made of it. The very first man who looked at her knew she was only acting. But no. Ken Mitchell twisted his thin lips into a smile.
“I think you’re a mirage,” he told the girl. “A magician’s illusion.” He was trying to be complimentary, Betty saw.
Another man was walking close-by; a plump, pink, perspiring man.
“Don’t you believe him, young lady,” he wheezed. “That’s just his standard salestalk. In another minute he’ll be asking you to sit for him.”
Harnock jiggled Betty’s elbow slightly. “This is Ralph Stafford, Betty. Mr. Stafford, Mrs. Harnock.”
“How do you do?” She was soon looking back at Ken Mitchell. “Sit? Does that mean you’re a painter?”
“I dabble in portraits a bit,” the bushy haired young man said modestly.
“Dabble is right,” remarked the plump, pink man.
“Uncle Ralph believes a good painter is a dead painter,” he said bitterly. “He’s alway’s getting Amy Stafford to buy old pictures, though no one enjoys looking at them. In fact, you can’t look at ’em because they’re kept locked up in a vault. They’re too darned expensive just to hang on the walls.”
“They’re an investment,” Ralph Stafford reminded. “The value of a fine old classic never goes down. A hundred years from now that collection may be worth close to a million dollars.”
Betty gasped. “I didn’t guess Mrs. Stafford was that rich.”
“She isn’t,” Ken Mitchell said. “The collection isn’t worth a million. Thrown on the market today, I’ll bet the whole lot wouldn’t bring fifty thousand.”
“Thrown on the market, nothing you ever painted would bring fifty cents,” the older man retorted.
“You know, Mrs. Harnock,” Mitchell said, turning to Betty, “I really would like to paint you, if your husband wouldn’t object. I’ve really been in need of inspiration, and you’re it.”
Betty was gaining confidence. This wasn’t so hard, after all! She risked an arch glance in Harnock’s direction.
“Are you jealous of me, Ed?” she smiled.
“No,” Harnock said. He didn’t smile back. His voice was filled with meaning. “It’s okay by me if Ken wants to pay you the regular model’s fee. We can’t afford to waste our time without being paid for it.”
“I’d expect to pay Mrs. Harnock for her trouble,” Ken said quickly.
Betty’s lips curved into a smile for Ken Mitchell. Ed’s remark didn’t sound like the kind of thing she’d vision a husband to say. Why not go him one better?
“You don’t have to be so formal about it. My friends call me Betty—or Blondie.”
It was dynamite. Ralph Stafford swallowed, lost color in his cheeks.
“Blondie . . . Did you say Blondie?”
“That’s my nickname,” Betty declared. The man was goggling at her now. He managed to blurt an excuse about having to see Amy Stafford. He must have received one of those blackmail notes. Ken Mitchell, too. He was staring at her with lips drawn tight, greenish eyes hard.
“I don’t like nicknames,” he said abruptly. “I don’t like people who sail under false colors. It reminds me of cheap, cowardly poison-pen letters. I don’t like people who write them, either.” He turned, stalked away.
Ed Harnock’s deep whisper boomed into the girl’s ear.
“You made a mistake there, kid.”
Hot color smouldered in Betty’s cheeks. She slowly lifted her blue eyes to Ed’s lean, tanned face. He was grinning.
“Your mistake was trying to catch two fish on the same hook at the same time.”
“Oh-h.”
“Suppose one of ’em was guilty? He couldn’t risk making a play in front of the other, could he? Besides, both of them have found out now that the other also got one of those warnings.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Ed,” she said miserably.
Harnock’s eyes softened. He was beginning to like her. Before, he’d just felt sorry, as he would have felt sorry for any lost-in-the-woods kid. Now he was admiring the spunk with which she faced the facts, admitted she’d been at fault. Most babes—and most guys—would have tried to alibi, and shift the blame from their own shoulders onto his.
“You’re okay,” he said approvingly. “You’re new, but you’ll learn the angles fast.”
“Thanks,” she muttered. “Skip it. Here, we’ll park a minute and get the layout.”
The room was large, crowded. Its central decoration was the gigantic birthday cake studded with seventy-one candles. They hadn’t been lighted yet and wouldn’t be until Amy Stafford made her entrance, at any moment. Amy Stafford wasn’t anywhere in sight.
“Not all of these people are important to us,” Ed Harnock said. “You can count out the little bald man with his freckled wife. They’re the Roanoke Staffords, from San Francisco. They couldn’t possibly have been mixed up in the murder. You can also count out the old chap, talking to Albert Kisley in the corner. He’s Amy’s brother, Gerald, one of the foremost philanthropists in the city. The shy little woman who keeps twisting her rings is Betha, that’s Uncle Ralph’s wife.”
“Just who is Uncle Ralph?”
“Another brother, the youngest. He was the family genius, until Ken came on the scene. He wanted to be a painter, too. The reason he doesn’t like Ken, I think,” Harnock said, “is plain jealous fear that the boy will succeed where he failed.”
“Will Ken succeed,” Betty wondered out loud. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s a Mitchell. He lacks drive. That branch of the family is soft, wishywashy, interested only in living off the Stafford money. Danny was the sole exception. He was a playboy, but he could work, too. Ken’s artistic occupation is just an excuse for not having an occupation.”
“And the others—are they Mitchells or Staffords?”
“Mostly Mitchells. I want you to notice Crath Mitchell especially. He’s Ken’s brother. The big fellow, the one with the All-American shoulders and the Latin haircut.”
“I see the one you mean. He’s handsome,” Betty observed.
“He’s just beautiful,” Ed said.
She looked up. “Ed, you are jealous!”
“Listen, kid,” he said soberly. “You’ve already ticketed yourself as the blonde every cop in town is looking for. You’ve practically admitted being the author of a lot of blackmail letters. Don’t, for Pete’s sake, make it worse by falling for Crath Mitchell. That’s a warning.”
“I thought you just said the Mitchells were all soft, wishy-washy.”
“So’s mud. So’s slime.” Harnock checked himself. “Here he comes. No, he’s going outside. Probably has a flask on his hip.”
“And here’s Mrs. Stafford. She’s beckoning at you, Ed.”
“Wait here,” he said. He crossed to the other end of the room where Amy Stafford had just entered. Female relatives hu
ddled toward her, but she waved them aside imperiously. A servant was lighting the candles on the cake. Amy Stafford lowered herself into a Gothic chair facing it.
“Well, Harnock?” Her eyes glittered. “Nothing yet.”
“And why not?”
“These things take time.”
Amy Stafford looked significantly at the flickering flames on the cake.
“I haven’t got much time.”
“You can’t expect results in a minute.”
“I expect results tonight,” she said. Her voice was chilling. “I intend to see Danny’s killer punished before I die, Harnock. Punished, I said. Not just arrested. Arrested, tried, sentenced, and punished.”
Harnock wasn’t listening. He had turned, looked back at the wall. Betty Lorell wasn’t there. His glance darted, glimpsed the slim, evening-gowned figure slipping through the opened French window.
“Harnock! Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Ed replied. He guessed nothing could happen to the girl by her mere wandering out onto the porch while Crath Mitchell was there. Yet he didn’t like it.
Amy Stafford’s voice went on. She had to keep it low, for others were peering curiously at them. She made up in thoughts what the words lacked in volume. The servant was clicking off the light switches now, leaving the wraithlike flickers of tiny candles the only source of illumination in the room.
“God!” Ed Harnock involuntarily breathed. A scream, wild, vibrant, terrorized, was shrilling in through the French windows. Ed Harnock scattered gaping Mitchells and Staffords as he dashed toward the balcony.
CHAPTER IV
Danny’s Wallet
In the candle-tinted gloom he couldn’t see which was the open window. Harnock simply pitched his shoulder into the nearest, went through it, and stumbled onto the porch in a shower of splintered wood and tinkling glass.
A drape tangled his ankle as he kicked past it savagely.
There was fear in him, and rage. He would never forgive himself if anything had happened to the girl—and he would never forgive the responsible party, either. He almost bumped into a motionless figure as he groped hurriedly in the very pale moonlight.
“Betty!”
The slim, affrighted girl stopped backing away from his onrush.
“Oh, Ed, it’s you?”
He grabbed, closed his fingers on her young bare shoulders. “You’re all right? What’s going on out here?”
“I don’t know—” her voice faltered. “What were you screaming about?”
“Me? I didn’t scream.”
“You didn’t scream? Well then who did?”
“I don’t know, I tell you. It seemed to come from over there.” She gestured with her right hand.
Harnock could see the gesture well enough. The lights had clicked on in the room and shafted through the windows. Practically all the people were pouring out onto the verandah.
Betty was pointing toward the west end of the big porch. It made an L-turn, conforming to the irregular architecture of the house. The house was H-shaped, its main entrance set back in the bar of the H.
“Where’s Crath?” Ed bit off. “I don’t know that, either. I haven’t seen him, Ed.”
“Turn on some light out here!” Harnock called. It was intensely dark around the tip of the H. Shrubbery grew tall near the porch rail. The night was clotted with formidable shadows.
Something moved, cutting through the distant light from the front door.
“Stop there!” Harnock challenged.
The porch lights flooded down as he spoke. He was facing Crath Mitchell. Crath had been pressed next to the house wall.
“Well, Mitchell?”
“I heard a yell for help.” Crath breathed gustily. “I’ve been trying to find out what’s wrong. I . . .”
“You’re drunk,” Harnock said.
He knew Amy Stafford’s sentiments on the subject of liquor. She was strictly prohibitionist. She would not allow intoxicants served in her house. It explained why Crath had sneaked outside to build up the breath he was wearing. In fact, that was the trouble. It supplied Crath with a perfectly plausible explanation for his presence on this end of the porch.
“You heard a yell. Didn’t you see anything?”
“No,” was the reply. “Where did the yell come from?”
Crath hesitated. “Out there.”
Nothing was visibly wrong on the fully lighted verandah. Harnock spun around, vaulted over the railing, dropped down into the shrubbery. He patrolled it, eyes alertly scanning the shadows.
“Harnock!”
It was Amy Stafford, severe in shawl-wrapped dignity at the railing above.
“Harnock, come up here. There’s nothing wrong. We’re all here, all accounted for. Stop your fiddling and fussing, man.”
“But there was a scream,” Betty Lorell insisted as she moved next to her.
“It might have been a cat.” Ken Mitchell’s voice interceded. “They sometimes make almost human sounds.”
“A cat!” Harnock said contemptuously. He hadn’t been able to find anything wrong in the shrubbery. He climbed the front steps.
“Who cares what it was?” Amy Stafford met him, muttering grimly. “You know your job. It isn’t investigating stray sounds in the neighborhood. The next time I talk to you . . .”
“Fire!” a high shrill feminine voice screamed into the conversation. “What next?” Ed Harnock blurted.
The surge of bodies along the porch barred his path. He wrenched open the front door, ran through the hallway, rounded into the room he had recently left.
Albert Kisley was dancing an eccentric jig in the middle of the floor. It looked like a candle dance performed in Russian cafes. In the rush for the windows, apparently, somebody had knocked the birthday cake off the table. Kisley’s eccentric jig was a frantic effort to stamp out the scattered flames of seventy-one candles, already licking upward from the expensive Persian rug. His plump legs pumped, kicked, shot out at weird tangents. Cake and creamy frosting smeared his patent leather footgear and trousers halfway to his knees;
“Ye-a-ah! Cakewalk! Stomp on down.” Crath Mitchell guffawed in alcoholic mirth.
It really wasn’t funny. Blackened, half-dollar-sized spots showed where the thickly napped rug had taken fire. The whole room might have been ablaze but for Kisley’s prompt action. Kisley backed away, braced himself with a hand on the table, gasping for breath.
“I—I—spoiled your cake—Mrs. Stafford,” he puffed. “I’m sorry I had—had to.”
The cake was a ruin all right. It looked as though it would have to be scraped up with a shovel, Harnock thought. Something in the ruin caught his eyes. He bent over, closed thumb and forefinger on a frosting-daubed oblong of leather.
“You dropped your wallet, Kisley.”
“That isn’t my wallet,” the attorney stated. Amy Stafford burst toward them. “It’s Danny’s! That’s Danny’s pocketbook! How did it get in my birthday cake?”
Ed Harnock exhaled a sound of astonishment. He flipped the wallet open.
“Empty. No money.”
But there were cards in the compartments. Danny Mitchell’s driver’s license, an identification tag issued by an insurance company, a hotel courtesy card, a selective service registration certificate. A card that said, W. Wintrop, Van Briesen Galleries. Another from an official in the city prosecutor’s office. And then one that took Harnock’s breath away—The Escortette Bureau, “Guaranteed Glamor Girls for All Occasions.” The Bureau’s phone number and street address were printed; and, in pencil, the scrawled number:
W0-4433 read Harnock. “Why, that’s my number . . .”
Too late. She saw she’d fumbled. All those eyes locking with hers. Instant, harsh suspicion was on every face.
“I mean,” she gulped, “the number of the Girls’ Club where I live—lived, before I married Ed, of course.”
Harnock stood there scowling. “Kisley! Mrs. Stafford! I’ve got to talk to both of you, right now,
alone.” He crossed to the study door, opened it with impatient haste. Kisley went in first. The man was still breathing hard. Amy Stafford stopped at the sill, looking around at her relatives.
“Which one of you did it?” she said harshly.
Silence, stricken silence, shaking heads . . .
“One of you.” The old lady’s eyes smouldered. “One of you put Danny’s wallet in my birthday cake. I’ll find out who.” And she went in angrily.
“Coincidence won’t stretch this far,” began Harnock as he pulled the door shut. “It can’t be accident, just happenstance, that you called that same escort agency, Mrs. Stafford! What made you think of it, anyway?”
“I found a card.”
“Where? When?”
“I think Ken dropped it. No,” she paled, “it might have fallen out of Danny’s things—the things they let me have from his apartment for keepsakes. The maid might have dropped it in the hall and I thought it was Ken’s.”
“Never mind,” Harnock answered, swinging toward the lawyer. “You, Kisley. You went out on the porch with the others after the scream?”
Kisley nodded. “I did.”
“And the fire. You were the first to turn back? You discovered it?”
“I think so, yes.”
Ed Harnock punched his fist into his palm. “I’m beginning to see! Yeah. How much I’m beginning to see . . .”
It was an empty, ugly moment for Betty Lorell when Harnock pulled that study door shut. He left her encircled by the grim-faced, resentful tribe that was Amy Stafford’s family.
“So-o!” Ken’s hand caught her arm. “So Danny had your phone number, did he, Blondie?”
“No. I mean, it isn’t—wasn’t—just my number. Lots of other girls live there, too.”
“Quit pretending.” Ken sneered. “You’re not married to Ed Harnock. In the first place, he’s probably eight, ten years older than you are. In the second, look at you. Look at what you’re wearing. You have an evening dress. Ed’s wearing a business suit. A husband and wife don’t go to the same party, one formally dressed and the other not.”
“You don’t know my husband.” She tried to bluff it through.