by Jerry eBooks
The killer had not bothered to remove the murder weapon. It was a woman’s nylon stocking, tight and brown like a snake around the girl’s small throat. Her hands were already cold when Dolliver touched them.
He stood in the darkness a moment, his breathing heavy with quick and violent anger, his eyes touched with pity. A street lamp suddenly glowed with light and spread pointing yellow fingers across the interior of the car. He saw now the envelopes he had almost missed.
There were a dozen all told, when he picked them up. The letters were still inside. In the dull light he made out Marco Pino’s name in fine spidery writing. The address was not the same as his place of business.
DOLLIVER stood beside the dead girl in the car for another long moment, not moving, and his eyes were puzzled. Then he blew open one slit envelope and scanned the letter inside, his face cold and impersonal.
“Indiscreet is the word for Evelyn,” he murmured aloud.
He didn’t bother to read much. He handled the envelopes gingerly, stacked them neatly and put them in his inside coat pocket. He turned his flashlight on the interior of the car, but there was nothing else of interest. There was nothing in the girl’s purse except the usual feminine accessories.
Stepping back, he closed the car door soundlessly, crossed the lawn to his own coupe. His flashlight darted along the soft turf bordering the driveway, paused, steadied on a neat footprint. It was of a woman’s shoe. He stared, puzzled, for a long time before getting in his car and driving away.
At the nearest pay telephone he called Headquarters and reported the death of Vera Poole. He hung up quickly, having put his facts across in brief and succinct sentences. He glanced once more at the address on the lavender-tinted envelopes, then headed his car due west on the wide, winding boulevard that reached into the hills. . . .
The Lemming’s maid who answered the door still looked smart and brisk. The light in the foyer was apparently the only light in the house. The maid’s lip-stick was a little smeared. Somewhere beyond the Gothic door, from amid the collection of antique armor, a clock solemnly bonged seven times. The girl eyed Dolliver for a speculative moment, then said:
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. Mrs. Lemming is not in.”
“When did she go out?”
“I can’t say. I didn’t notice.”
“When is she expected back?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Her lip-stick glistened wetly. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. No one is at home—not even Mr. Lemming.”
Dolliver wondered about her smeared lipstick, but he let it go with a shrug. The heavy door closed with a smooth click behind him. His heels made no sound at all as he walked down the path to the street. Just as he reached the arched gateway he stepped sideward onto the lawn and stood facing the big English-type house from the deep shadow of a box hedge.
From the hedge he moved to the shelter of a neighboring chestnut tree, carefully crossed a flower bed, and smelled the scent of sweet spring lilacs blooming somewhere in the night air.
There was a separate garage in the rear, with servant’s quarters built into the high sloping roof. There was a light in a rear window of the big house.
CHAPTER IV
TWO SHOTS
DOLLIVER looked in the garage first, the glow from the lighted house window showing the way. There was a big town car in the back, but the tires were off and the wheels were supported by wooden jacks. There was room for another car here, but it was gone. He turned back to the lighted basement window in the main house.
A big man with a square, harsh face and tight lips was striding back and forth on the smooth bare floor of the basement room, his cigar dead and cold and forgotten in his mouth. The room was outfitted as a home gymnasium, with electric vibrator, rings, trapeze and parallel bars. The big man was dressed in a camel’s-hair topcoat and a wide-brimmed hat, and the topcoat flapped impatiently as he walked up and down the waxed hardwood floor. He was quite alone. The sound of an approaching car made Dolliver step quickly into the dark shadows flanking the house. Headlights cut like a silent blade over the lawn and through the trees. The car was a long sedan, with a blobbed figure of a chauffeur in the front seat and a white, staring face in the rear. The car stopped effortlessly in front of the garage doors and Evelyn Lemming stepped out, shrugging her furs around her shapely shoulders.
She walked with quick strides toward the rear of the house. Light from the basement window showed her white, strained face, her flat, staring eyes. At the sound of the back door opening the big man in the gymnasium abruptly halted his nervous pacing and stood stock-still. Then, deliberately, he took the dead cigar from his taut mouth, placed it on a leather horse, and thrust his big hands slowly into his topcoat pockets just as Evelyn Lemming stepped into the basement room.
Dolliver could not hear the conversation through the window, but he could gather its progress from what he observed. The woman stopped suddenly at sight of the big man, and her face looked aged and drawn. The big man said something, smiled an utterly false smile, and moved toward her. Evelyn Lemming shook her head. The big man repeated his statement, advancing toward her. His right hand came from his pocket and abruptly slapped her stingingly across her white face.
Her hat fell off and lay unnoticed on the waxed floor. She put her hand to her cheek and shook her head again. The big man slapped her a second time, and she cowered back, then turned and fled across the gymnasium to vanish through another door.
Lemming, for the big man must be Evelyn’s husband, stared at his hand for a moment, his hard face working, his mouth twisted in curious dismay. Abruptly he picked up his cigar, jammed it between his teeth, chewed for a moment while staring blankly at the floor. Then he shrugged his coat into shape and strode away. There was something savage about the way he walked.
Dolliver could have tossed a pebble on him as the big man stood in the rear doorway, not ten paces from where he watched in the shadows. The big man’s voice was harsh and penetrating.
“Walter!”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lemming,” a man’s voice answered from the garage.
A car motor started, a big sedan swung around a loop, and paused. The chauffeur’s face was still indistinct behind the windshield. Lemming waited a moment, took something from his hip pocket and checked it with a small metallic clicking sound. It was a heavy Luger. The weapon shone blue and ugly for an instant before he slid it into his topcoat pocket.
Then he snapped an address to the chauffeur in a harsh, scratchy voice and climbed in. Dolliver stood frozen until the car was past him. Then he turned and ran swiftly back toward the street and his own car. The big sedan was out of sight before he started after it.
Dolliver parked at the foot of a winding brick drive and got out, adjusting his shoulder holster securely under his armpit. The night was silent, dark and moonless. A vagrant breeze whispered sibilantly in the tree-tops.
There was a long flight of winding flagstone steps leading up to the square, modern house on the hill. Marco Pino’s talents for dress design had not inhibited his architectural vanities. The house was a prophecy for tomorrow—all white stone and glass brick and terraced porch.
Lemming’s car was parked half-way up the looping drive, and Dolliver approached it cautiously. The chauffeur’s seat was empty. He moved up the flagstone steps again, under a modern porte-cochere, and tried the door. It was ajar. Dim light filtered out to where he stood. Shrugging, Dolliver stepped inside.
A mutter of voices came from a room above. He was in a small hallway, and a brass bannister shimmered in the light that drifted down from the second floor. Dolliver moved ahead on silent feet. The voices grew louder as he ascended—and then, explosive with deadly meaning, came the sudden crash of a gun.
The roar merged with the higher crack of a second gun that went off instantly after it. Dolliver reached the second floor before the echoes died away. Light blasted from a room directly ahead.
THERE were just two men inside. William Lemming whirled as Dolli
ver entered. His mouth was twisted and gray with pain. Marco Pino didn’t move except for a quick, darting glance of his limpid eyes. His ivory skin looked mottled. He had a small-caliber Belgian automatic in his hand, and his fingers were shaking. William Lemming’s Luger lay on the red carpet, and his right hand was a smear of thick, oozing blood.
The smell of cordite was acrid in the air. “That will be enough,” Dolliver said. “Drop your gun, Marco.”
“The policeman,” Marco Pino said. “It is a pleasure.” He pushed his gun aside onto a small kidney-shaped desk of bleached mahogany. His smile was tight and tired. “I am glad to see you again, Lieutenant. This man came here to kill me, and I shot his gun from his hand, as you can see.”
Lemming’s eyes were bitter. He was concerned for the moment with binding a handkerchief around his shattered hand. His mouth was white, pained.
“I had a right to kill the sneaking little—” he growled.
“I hardly think so,” Dolliver said.
“No court in the world would convict me.” The big man looked at Marco Pino’s elegant little figure with naked hatred. His hat lay tilted on the red carpet at his feet. His sandy hair looked wet under the shine of the light. “A man has some rights,” he said heavily.
Pino said something vicious in a foreign language.
“You are a fool, Mr. Lemming, and your wife is a silly, vain woman,” he said then, in English. “You gave me no chance to explain. I am not a man of violence, therefore I am glad the policeman arrived to prevent further unpleasantness. There was nothing between Evelyn and me. It is true I loaned her much money, and eventually she gave me the pearls as security. Last night she paid what she owed me and our relationship ended. I wish to be quit of this affair. It is sordid and foolish, and I do not care to be bothered by stupid men like you.”
Lemming listened with a tight face. “Where are the pearls now?”
“I do not know. I know nothing about them now. I do not care.”
“What about the letters my wife wrote you? Where are they?”
Dolliver said nothing about the envelopes in his coat pocket. He made no effort to interfere with the two men.
Marco Pino studied his fingernails. “Many women fancy themselves interested in me. I do not encourage them. I returned Evelyn’s letters last night, together with the pearls.”
“Then you were playing around!” Lemming said thickly.
“She is a foolish woman,” said Marco Pino. “That is all.”
It was a damaging statement to make. Almost simultaneously there was an interruption. A door opened at one side of the room, a door hidden by a heavy tweed curtain. The white-haired hostess of Pino’s dress establishment glided in. Her lovely face was distorted with violent hate. Her deep purple eyes were insane. She held a small nickel-plated revolver in her hand, and it was pointed at Marco. She ignored Dolliver and Lemming.
“I’ve warned you, Marco!” she said in a high, querulous voice. “I’ve warned you again and again!”
The small man whirled, his lips trembling. He started to snatch for his gun on the desk, then stood still. His eyes slid to Dolliver, then back to the woman. He licked his lips.
“Jackie, honey, I’ll explain later. It’s all so involved, I—”
“Yes, it is involved,” she said tightly. “Too involved for me. This will simplify everything.”
Her finger twitched on the trigger. Dolliver swung his gun, but had no chance to fire. Nor did the woman. A gun fired three times in rapid, coughing succession. The glass in the wide window behind Marco Pino shattered with a loud crash, then fell apart altogether. Marco Pino seemed to stretch his short frame upward, as if to stand on tiptoe. His hands fumbled at his chest, then slowly and carefully he went down on his knees, facing the woman. His shirt was suddenly a welter of dark, bubbling blood. He coughed once, then collapsed on his face. His blood slowly merged with the scarlet carpet.
There was that sudden second of silence when death appears in a violent and ugly form.
The woman’s eyes were wide and sightless.
“The shots came from outside!” Lemming said in an awed whisper.
But Dolliver was already pounding down the stairs. For a moment he was blinded by the darkness outside. There were no more shots. Then he heard the dull thud of feet, and he whirled that way. He got a glimpse of a big man, flitting through the shadowed shrubbery. He fired once, his gun spitting flame at the vague, hulking figure, then the man was gone.
He gave chase, hurtling a low picket fence, landed in rough ground that sloped sharply down to a chuckling creek. The darkness was deep and dangerous within the ravine. Ahead there was a crackling of underbrush as the killer threshed his way free. Dolliver snapped another shot in his direction. Flame suddenly spat back at him. He ran forward, stumbling through the uneven growth, splashing across the little stream.
There was no further sound. Dolliver, halted, breathing hard, in the dark shadow of a wild eucalyptus tree. Below was an abrupt drop to a little street fifty feet below. There was no movement there. He cursed softly, waited another moment, then turned and strode back to the squat white house on the hilltop.
The front door was wide open and the house was empty as he searched swiftly through the rooms. The white-haired woman was gone. There was no trace of Lemming. He went quickly down the flagstone steps to the street. The Lemming sedan was gone. He stood alone and pocketed his gun with exasperation. He felt angry, baffled and defeated.
It seemed a long way back to town.
CHAPTER V
GUN WOMAN
IT WAS midnight when Dolliver tried Sally Burgess’ bungalow address again. This time there was a light in Number 8 at Terrace Gardens. He parked at the entrance and went quickly up the concrete walk with the little stone gargoyles leaping along beside him. He took a deep breath to quell his excitement as he stood on the red brick steps.
“Sally Burgess,” he said aloud, waved his hand downward in a queer little gesture, then briefly thumbed the bell.
It had been a long day since his search for Sally had begun right here, at her own place.
There was no immediate answer to his ring. He tried again. He was dropping his hand away when the door inched open and a girl peered out at him. He glimpsed the shine of a gun in one hand, quickly covered as she stepped back with a little exclamation of relief.
“It’s you,” she said. “Come in. Hurry!”
He stepped in and she leaped back against the door with a long sigh and a brief, tired smile. Her gun had disappeared somewhere in her powder-blue topcoat. She was wearing a saucerlike hat like a miniature Mexican sombrero with a jaunty feather of red in the beaded band. But her face was not jaunty. It was white and strained, and her eyes were deep pools of fear. Her face was thin, like a boy’s, and her black hair, cut close to the shape of her head, gave an impression of severity. But she looked better than the passport photo Dolliver had seen. He took a deep breath.
“So you’re Sally Burgess.”
Her smile trembled. “I’ve given you a merry chase today.”
“Not so merry.”
“No.” She shivered, left the door, and walked past him to the bedroom. There was a half-filled suitcase on the Hollywood bed. The bureau looked ransacked. She ignored the suitcase, pulled down the blinds, and turned, reaching for a cigarette in a shell box. Her fingernails scratched noisily as Dolliver waited.
“I don’t know how to apologize to you, Lieutenant, for all the trouble I’ve caused,” she said. “But somebody had to know that Lubelle was murdered. All I could think of was you. I wasn’t sure you would remember me, but I took that chance.”
“Why didn’t you come directly to me?” Dolliver said.
“I was too frightened. Korpi was after me all day.”
“Who is Korpi?”
“Walter Korpi. He’s Mr. Lemming’s chauffeur. He’s been trying to kill me all day.”
Dolliver watched her light the cigarette.
“Did Walter Korpi
kill Lubelle Satterlee?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m sure of it. I saw him and could identify him. That’s why he’s been after me all night and all day.” Her large eyes were suddenly moist and filled, and she no longer looked boyish. She looked helpless and frightened and feminine. “I’ve been panic-stricken. I didn’t know what I was doing today. Even now—” she gestured toward the suitcase on the bed—“I was going to run away. I’m glad you’ve come at this time.” Dolliver’s eyes were dark and distant. “What makes you so sure Walter Korpi is our man?” he said after a moment.
“You received the letters, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” He nodded briefly. “I got them.”
“Well, first of all,” Sally Burgess said, “Walter Korpi knew of Mrs. Lemming’s affair with this Marco Pino. He drove her back and forth, and knew what was going on. And Mrs. Lemming probably babbled to him of her troubles. In a way, it was coincidence. I had just come off duty and stopped at Lubelle’s for some tea—she never drank coffee. I passed this big man on the stairs and went inside. The gas was on and poor Lubelle was there on the floor dead.”
She paused and shuddered. She looked small, white, and tired.
“I had no time to think or cry out. I heard the man’s footsteps come back upstairs, running. He must have been watching me, because he came back, knowing I’d seen him come out of there. He—he looked insane. I ran out through the kitchen and saw the coffee pot there, and I knew it was murder, because Lubelle never drank coffee, so it must have been for this big man.
“I escaped him, and I must have been half hysterical. I stopped to call the police and thought of you, because you had taken my cab several times. While I was telephoning, I saw the man coming in and I had to run away again. I managed to get in touch with Vera Poole and she helped me hide, though I didn’t dare go out again until it was dark. I haven’t seen Vera since I sent her to meet you with the letters.”