by Jerry eBooks
“Vera is gone,” Dolliver said quietly.
She was puzzled. “Gone where?”
“She’s dead,” Dolliver said. “I found her dead in her car. She was strangled.”
THE girl’s blue eyes grew enormous with horror. She clenched her tight hands and swayed, staring at Dolliver.
“He couldn’t!” she whispered. “Why? She had nothing to do with it! She didn’t know anything at all.”
Dolliver shrugged. “Maybe he approached her, thinking she was you. When he got close enough to realize his mistake, it was too late. She was another one who could identify him. So he killed her.” He paused deliberately. “He left the letters, though. Presumably, he wasn’t interested in them—just the pearls.”
“What pearls?” the girl asked.
“There were two pearls in the package Lubelle found in her cab. You haven’t explained how you got the letters yet, by the way.”
“I didn’t get any pearls. All I saw were the letters on the kitchen table. I picked them up.”
“With Walter Korpi coming in after you?”
“There was a moment before I heard his footsteps.” The girl’s face was distressed.
“When I first went in there, the place was stifling with gas. I saw Lubelle and ran to open the windows, but they were stuck. I went into the kitchen, holding my breath, and saw the letters there. Then the man came back through the hall door. I was coughing and choking by then, and I couldn’t think of anything except the idea that the letters might be a clue. I knew Lubelle must have found them in her cab, that they didn’t belong to her. So I snatched them up and ran outside, with Korpi after me.”
Dolliver’s eyes were pools of darkness. The girl watched him anxiously. Then she whispered, quietly:
“Please, you must believe me.”
“Well, there’s another murder to be straightened out,” Dolliver said. “Somebody shot Marco Pino through his window an hour or so ago. I was right there when it happened, but I couldn’t catch the man. I imagine he killed Pino to prevent him from talking. Maybe Korpi and Pino planned to keep the pearls. They weren’t interested in blackmail. I understand the pearls are worth a fortune, and Korpi, figuring he was already up to his neck in murder, might just as well get all the profit by getting rid of his partner, Marco Pino.”
“Yes,” the girl whispered. “It must be that way.”
“Well, that finishes it,” Dolliver said. “We’ll send out an alarm and haul him in in the net. He won’t get away.”
He reached for the telephone and spun out Headquarters’ number. The only sound in the little bedroom was the thin mechanical clicking of the dial and the girl’s smothered sobs. He had only dialed the exchange letters when a man’s voice said:
“Drop it, copper. I’ll save you the trouble. I’m right here.”
The man’s voice was deep and resonant, and Dolliver needed no glimpse of his gun to know what backed it up. He looked at the girl, saw her staring with wide and terrified eyes at the doorway behind him. Slowly he replaced the receiver.
“Drop the gun, too!” the man’s voice rapped again. “Barrel first.”
Dolliver’s gun hit the floor with a thump.
“You, too, baby. Take off the coat.”
The girl sat frozen.
“Shed it!”
The girl slowly shrugged out of her powder-blue topcoat and moved away from it. Dolliver turned to face the man in the doorway.
He was big enough. He was ruggedly good-looking, with a broad brown Scandinavian face and white teeth. His eyes had laughter wrinkles at the corners, but he was not laughing now. The big Colt in his hand was dwarfed by the thickness of his fingers. He wore a faded trench-coat, but no hat. His thick blond hair was unruly. His eyes were pale, hard, alert.
“You’re Walter Korpi, Lemming’s chauffeur,” Dolliver said.
“That’s right, copper.” The big man stared at the girl. “I’m surprised you don’t recognize me, baby. You don’t say hello at all. Seems to me we were sorta married, a long time ago, back in Kansas. Wasn’t your name Korpi once, like Mrs. Korpi, baby?”
The girl stared back at him evenly. Her face was cold.
“I never heard of you before.”
“Sister, sister, you break my heart,” the big man said. “Don’t you remember the bank-bustin’ days, when we knocked ’em over like piggy jars? You always were the hardest wench in the world, Sally. A killin’ dame.”
“Shut up,” the girl said tonelessly.
“Now I know,” the big man continued, “why you looked me up here. You wanted a handy peg to hang a rap on when you pulled your next play. It made no difference to you that I was tryin’ to go straight now, did it? But this time I’m not playing it the noble way. This time I don’t take the rap for you. This time, baby,” the big man said softly, “I’m not in love with you any more.”
“Shut up,” the girl said again.
“Let him tell it,” Dolliver said quietly. “It sounds fine.”
KORPI grinned a flat, hard grin.
“Sure. You heard the cop, Sally. I listened to your fancy tale to him, too. It kinda makes me mad, the way you twist truth and fancy around to suit your ends. You didn’t tell it quite right. You were in Lubelle’s before she got home, you were there before she came in with the package, and you were there when she found the pearls.
“Just like that, you decided to keep ’em. Lubelle had been having a few shots and she was a cinch to put out of the way. You turned on the gas. The reason I came into the picture was because Mrs. Lemming sent me over to get the package back. You saw me coming and ran. I had to follow you.”
The big man paused, then went on:
“You tried to frame me then by calling copper. You tried to make out to be running away from me by sending back the letters. That made you look good and innocent. But you had to kill Vera, too, because she got suspicious of you. She knew you were in no danger, that there was no reason for you to be afraid to go to the cops. It’s easy to strangle a girl, isn’t it, with a woman’s stocking? And then you killed Marco Pino from the lawn outside and I saw and chased you, and the copper chased me. And we all played ring-around-a-rosy until right now. You’ve still got the pearls, honey. Haven’t you?”
The girl’s eyes appealed to Dolliver. “He’s making it all up, Lieutenant. You mustn’t believe him. Why should I kill Pino? I never knew him. I never saw him in my life.”
Dolliver looked at the blond man.
“Well, Korpi?” he said judicially, “It’s her word against yours.”
The big man shrugged. “I can make her sing, if you want.”
The girl looked at him with sudden stark hatred in her blue eyes. Dolliver took a deep breath and smoothed his thick hair.
“I’ll tell it myself, then,” he said, and looked at the girl levelly. “Your whole story sounded queer to me from the beginning. But it seems to me that maybe Lubelle never drove her cab last night. She was too far gone with drink. Maybe you took her place. You killed Pino because Pino could identify you as the cab driver last night! You drove Mrs. Lemming home from Pino’s in Lubelle’s cab. You found the package and carried it up to Lubelle’s flat to plant the letters. You thought Lubelle would be passed out and you could look them over and make your plans.
“You didn’t dream Lubelle might still be a little sober. She wasn’t very. The medical examiner reported she was filled with liquor when she died. It helped her die fast. That’s why you were pinch-hitting, driving her cab in the first place.
“But she was awake when you came back. She saw the pearls, and you had to kill her. That’s why you returned her cab without letting anyone see that you were the driver. And you killed Marco Pino because only he could identify you as being the driver who found the package Mrs. Lemming lost.”
It was suddenly quiet in the little room. The girl stared at Dolliver, and the big man was watching the girl with catlike eyes. He was grinning now. Dolliver had been guessing up to now, but they were gue
sses that made sense.
“Another thing,” he said. “We can prove you killed Vera Poole. There were footprints in the mud outside her car, and there was no mud on Vera’s shoes. She never got out of her car. But you did, to get away after you strangled her. Those footprints will match with yours and convict you, Miss Burgess.”
The girl’s face had changed a little with each word of Dolliver’s deliberate speech. A breeze came through the open window and stirred her smooth dark hair. Her lips were thin and hard and white. Her pale eyes were like arctic ice.
When she moved, it was with the speed of a striking snake. The gun came from her thigh with a swift, smooth movement that was all one—the draw, the snap of the safety, the squeeze of the trigger. Her face was distorted with white hatred.
The sharp report of her tiny gun was drowned in the bellow of Walter Korpi’s huge Colt. Her bullet whip-cracked over Dolliver as he dived for his own weapon, his eyes on the girl. She was slammed backward as if by a giant hand, half twisted and then fell, sliding to the floor. Her thin, muscular figure lay in a contorted position at the foot of the bed. She didn’t move after that.
Dolliver’s glance snapped to Walter Korpi. The man was mechanically blowing smoke from the muzzle of his Colt. His pale eyes were no longer hard. They looked wet and shiny, and his chin quivered for a moment.
“She was always quick as lightnin’,” he whispered. “Quick and deadly.” He took a deep breath and gave Dolliver a tortured grin. “There goes the best years of my life,” he said, and he didn’t mean to be funny.
“The pearls?” Dolliver said.
“They’ll be in her shoes. Her heels are hollow. It was a habit with her.”
Dolliver didn’t touch her. He nodded briefly and picked up the telephone again. He could hear people babbling excitedly in the adjacent cottages, but he paid no attention. Big Walter Korpi sat in a chair with his blond head buried in shaking hands. Dolliver poked a finger that was none too steady through the telephone dial and in a quiet voice called through Central for Police Headquarters.
DEATH PAINTS A PICTURE
Russell Gray
A Suspenseful Novel of Diabolical Doom and Paintings That Inspired Murder
CHAPTER I
Murder Imitates Art
FROM the vast lobby of the Art Center, I heard jerky sobbing on my left. A museum is eerie enough at the dead of night, but that half-muted sound of human anguish made my skin prickle. As my feet echoed hollowly over the stone floor, I found myself glancing over my shoulder at the reproductions of Greek sculpture and suits of armor placed in niches about the lobby, and at the inevitable Egyptian mummy in a glass case near the main door.
No, I didn’t expect the mummy to pop up and embrace me, or an armored ghost to hack at me with a sword. I left that to the movies. But when I was dragged out of bed at four in the morning by an urgent phone call, something highly unpleasant was sure to be waiting.
I passed into a smaller room hung with ancient maps and etchings of Morganville just after the Indians had been driven still farther west. The sobbing girl was sitting on a plush-covered bench, a young man had an arm about her shoulder and was trying to comfort her.
There was thick carpeting on the floor, so they didn’t hear me until I was nearly up to them. The girl emitted a frantic little screech and jumped a foot off the bench. That was what told me that her tears were due to terror rather than grief.
She sank back with a deep sigh. She was a trim little thing with a mass of brown curls—nice-looking in spite of her unnatural pallor. The man with her was so handsome that he could be called pretty. His fingers caressing the girl’s shoulder were long and graceful.
“Are you the detective?” he asked.
I nodded and he waved a hand toward a door.
I entered the main exhibition hall. Three men were huddled near the door as if afraid to get too far away from each other. A slight man with finely molded features advanced to meet me.
“Mr. Keel?” he said. “I’m Harold Wallis, curator of the Art Center.”
He led me over to the others and gravely introduced me. One of them I’d seen around: Frank Powell, sixty and suave, prominent Morganville businessman and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Art Center. The stringy, hatchet-faced guy turned out to be the New York art critic, Winston Delattre, who had come out West especially to see the Van Eyck painting.
“You were pretty mysterious over the phone, Mr. Wallis,” I said.
The curator nodded and without another word started toward the other end of the hall. His shuffling walk told me that he was forcing himself to go forward. Powell and Delattre were coming along, but slowly, as if they would have preferred not to.
The ceiling was reinforced by two white pillars on opposite ends of the rectangular room. It wasn’t until I had rounded the farther pillar that I saw the body. A heavy wooden plank had been nailed across the pillar, forming a cross on which the man had been crucified.
I almost slipped in the thick blood which formed a pool at the base of the improvised cross. With a snort of disgust, I backed away, then gingerly stepped around the pool and went close to the body. Spikes had been driven through the palms and ankles; hours of agony must have passed before the man had bled to death.
What a way to kill somebody!
I lit a cigaret and drew smoke in deeply. “What time does the museum close?” I asked Wallis.
“At six for the general public. I was in my office until eight. From that time on Quigg was alone.”
The corpse wore the blue uniform of a museum attendant. I asked: “Was this Quigg?”
“Yes. The night watchman.”
I MOVED a couple of feet away to avoid blood touching my shoes. “What do you make of it?”
“It’s madness. A hideous jest.”
“A jest is funny,” I said. “This isn’t.” Wallis was staring at the wall directly in front of the pillar. I followed the direction of his eyes and saw what he meant.
The oil painting was in such a position that it was all the tortured man had been able to see in his dying hours of torment. The picture was an artist’s conception of the Crucifixion, except that instead of Christ on the cross, a man in modern clothes was depicted. I suppose it was meant to symbolize present-day man still suffering after nineteen centuries, and as such the artist had done a pretty good job. Against a black background and a dimly indicated cross, that pain-contorted, bleeding body and tormented face was high lighted.
Through my mind flashed a phrase I had heard or read somewhere: Life imitates art. That was true, horribly, in this case, for the murdered watchman might have served as a model for the painting. Except that it had been the other way around—the painting had been a model for the murder.
I said: “Why would anybody want to kill Quigg?”
“I can’t imagine,” Wallis whispered. “And especially to murder him so fiendishly.”
Frank Powell and Winston Delattre were standing a little way off, watching us in strained silence.
“Who painted that picture?” I asked.
Wallis gulped and turned a couple of shades paler. Powell snapped: “What has that to do with it?”
“Don’t you want to answer my question?”
“Certainly,” Wallis said hastily. “The fact that Lew painted it means nothing.”
“Who’s Lew?”
“Lew Larsen, the foremost of our local artists. He—” Wallis’ Adam’s apple rode up and down in his throat—”he’s in the next room with Mavia.”
“Mavia?”
“My daughter.”
I set fire to a fresh cigaret from the stub of my old. The three men were watching every move I made.
I said; “What were all you people doing here at four in the morning?”
Powell answered for them all: “Mr. Delattre arrived from New York on the eleven-forty train. He came two thousand miles especially to see our famous Van Eyck. We went to my house for a little party. Before we knew it, it was three
o’clock; we were about to break up when I suggested we come here to show Mr. Delattre our Van Eyck.”
“And you all came?” I didn’t try to hide my skepticism. “Couldn’t you wait until morning?”
Winston Delattre handed me a tightlipped, supercilious smile. “Evidently you don’t know art lovers, Mr. Keel.”
“But I know murders,” I said sourly, “and there’s never been one without reason. Why not robbery in this case?”
The curator’s head jerked up. “But that’s absurd.”
“Why? I read in the Bugle that the Dutchman’s painting is worth a fortune.”
“What could a thief possibly do with it?” Delattre shook his head over my dullness of mind. “Every gallery and collector in the world would know it had been stolen. It could never be sold.”
“Is it still here?” I insisted.
“Certainly,” Wallis said. “Come this way.” The three of us went to the side of the room. The picture had nearly a whole wall to itself.
I knew all about it, as did nearly everybody else in Morganville. The Art Center had originally been established primarily to display the products of Midwestern artists, especially home talent; and as such few people had paid attention to the place. Then a rich duck who had been born in Morganville died and left the Art Center a painting which a Dutchman named Van Eyck had torn off half a thousand years ago. Value; one hundred and twenty-five thousand. It was the price tag on it that sent the local pride of the townsfolk, who couldn’t tell a Rembrandt from a Rube Goldberg, up to fever pitch.
THE Van Eyck couldn’t have been more than fifteen by twenty inches in size—a Madonna and Child done in brilliant red and blue and gold. It looked pretty good to me, though one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot of fish.
“You are astonished because the canvas is so small and the value so high, Mr. Keel?” Delattre let loose another patronizing smile. “Ah, but Jan Van Eyck’s Ince Hall Madonna is only six inches by nine and valued at a quarter of a million dollars. Note that in spite of the fact that this was painted five hundred years ago, the color is as fresh as if it had just left Van Eyck’s brush. Remark the perfection of the finished surface, the clean . . .”