by Jerry eBooks
“You didn’t drag me into this for a lecture on art,” I broke in. “I’m private law, and murder is police business before it’s mine.” Wallis looked at Powell to carry the ball. The chairman of the Art Center said: “You must understand, Mr. Keel, that we are in an unfortunate position. We have devoted much time and money to make the center a success. If this brutal murder becomes public, we may be forced to close down.”
“So you want me to dispose of the body and eliminate traces of the murder?” I suggested softly.
“Oh, dear, no!” Wallis exclaimed. “But we are aware of your reputation for ingenuity, Mr. Keel; we thought that perhaps you could advise us how to handle this matter with the least publicity before we call the police.”
I could take my choice. They were either fussy old innocents who didn’t know any better, or they wanted to cover up murder in order to save their skins.
I said: “Compounding a homicide mightn’t mean anything to you gentlemen, but it does to me. I’m calling the police. Where’s a phone?”
Mavia Wallis was still on the plush bench when I passed on my way to the office. Her tears had dried up, but she made a picture of dejection sitting forward with her hands between her knees. Her pretty boy friend was gone.
“Where’s Lew Larsen?” I asked.
She looked up at me and then down again. “He went to get a drink of water,” Her voice was utterly flat. More than the shock of walking in on a hideous murder was affecting her. Why, I wondered, should she be so badly scared?
I phoned the office right off the lobby, roused Lieutenant Tighe out of bed. After the first couple of sentences he broke in nastily, as I’d expected him to: “And what the hell are you doing there before the police are told?”
“They figured I’d take a look, ask a couple of questions and then tell them who the killer is. It’s comforting to find my reputation as good as that.”
“Yeah?” Tighe hung up.
I turned to the door and stopped dead, listening to the silence. I don’t think that even a grave can be so utterly hushed as a museum at the dead of night. The voices in the main exhibition room were too far away or else had ceased. The silence was so intense that it had a physical substance, yet something was wrong.
Then I heard the steps again. They must have sounded in my subconscious before to have made me tense. Footsteps shouldn’t have been strange with five people beside myself in the place, but these were. They weren’t walking the way honest feet should; they barely whispered over the stone floor, so softly that only in that deep silence would I have been able to hear them.
Why should anybody be sneaking on tiptoes in the lobby outside?
CHAPTER II
The Birth of Fear
MY GUN fell into my hand. In two jumps I was at the door, looking into the lobby. He’d heard me, of course, but I thought I’d be on him so fast that it wouldn’t matter. The trouble was that he was all the way at the other end of the lobby, toward the statues and the armor.
He leaped behind one of those suits of armor. There was just a single night-light in the vast lobby, but momentarily I had a glimpse of a shadowy, distorted back, and I probably could have plugged him with a snap shot.
But I’m not one to throw lead indiscriminately; I stood against the door-jamb peering into the shadows. Nothing stirred.
“Better come out,” I said. “I have you covered.” My answer was a shot. It would have been too bad for me if he had been able to handle a gun better, because the light in the office splashed over me from behind. Luckily the slug was too high. I slid around the doorjamb, clicked out the light switch and came out to the lobby again. Something stirred behind the armor. I shot and heard the hollow ping of the slug ploughing through the metal.
Then he ran. Actually it was only a twist of his body away from the suit of armor and through the arched doorway which was a couple of feet away. I tossed a second bullet, knowing that it was too late.
As I raced across the lobby, I heard Mavia’s voice rise stridently and distantly; in another part of the museum a man yelled something. I got through the door through which the gunman had gone and found myself in another exhibition room. I kept going, and in the next couple of minutes found out a lot about the Art Center. Four or five exhibition rooms, in addition to the office and the rest rooms, went off the lobby and doors connected each of the rooms with two or three others. It was like a maze. I could go tearing around all night with him always one room behind me, or in front, or at the side.
When at last I came back to the lobby, the four men and Mavia were there, huddled together. They gaped at my gun.
“What in the world were you shooting at, man?” Powell said.
“At a guy who shot at me first,” I told him. “He was sneaking across the lobby.”
“The murderer?” Larsen gasped. ‘Is he still in the place?”
“Maybe,” I said. “He might have doubled back and gone out through the door or slipped out through a window, or maybe he’s in this lobby right now.”
Wallis looked apprehensively at the shadows around him, but Delattre knew at once what I was talking about. He handed out another of his smiles which made my fist itch. “Are you accusing one of us?” he purred.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Where were all of you when the first shot rang out?”
Their answers didn’t enlighten me. Larsen said he’d been in the washroom. Delattre claimed to have been studying the Van Eyck he had come so far to see. Powell stated he had gone into the smaller office in the rear of the building to phone his pal, the police commissioner, to see what could be done about hushing up the crime. Mavia Wallis said she and her father had been sitting on the bench.
I would have liked to have searched them for guns, but I hadn’t the right. Anyway, the gunman would have ditched his weapon during the chase. So we stood around in the lobby, not saying much, waiting for the police.
Lieutenant Tighe sailed in, in front of the Homicide detail and in back of his potbelly. His belly was really something to see; all of him sloped down and up and sideways to it. He ordered some of his men to herd the five into the main office and gave me the nod to show him the cadaver. Tighe was as tough as they come, but he blanched when he saw it. “Give, Joey,” he said.
There wasn’t much except for the guy who had tried to liquidate me. He clucked his tongue and said: “You working on this?”
“I doubt it. I didn’t deliver in the first few minutes, and now that I’ve called the coppers I assume they’ve dispensed with my services.”
“Hang around, Joey,” he said.
IT WAS a couple of hours after dawn before Lieutenant Tighe was finished with the five in the office. Presently I saw them leave, Powell and Delattre striding out together and then Mavia Wallis hanging onto the arms of her father and her gorgeous boy friend.
At the door she glanced back and our eyes met. Her lips parted; she started to pull away from her father and Larsen to come over to me. Then she checked herself, and a moment later they were gone.
I looked after her, wondering if what I had seen in her eyes had been the fear of death, or fear for somebody else. I had taken no more than two steps after her when Lieutenant Tighe called me into the office.
Tighe dropped into a modernistic chair behind a streamlined desk and thumped his belly. “What do you make of it, Joey?”
“Wallis was the last to leave Quigg alive at eight; at least he says he did. Wallis might have done the job before leaving. It must have taken Quigg a long time to bleed to death.”
“That’s a big help,” Tighe said sourly. “Powell has no alibi either up to the time he left home to meet Delattre at the station. Delattre is out; he didn’t get to town till eleven-forty and then was with the others, though he might have come in on an earlier train. Anyway, we’re wasting time considering those three; I can’t see them murdering. That leaves Lew Larsen.”
“No alibi,” I guessed.
“That’s right. He was alone in his studio
painting till it was time to rush to the station to meet Delattre.” Tighe leaned across the desk. “And he has motive.”
“So there’s method in this mad murder?”
“There always is,” Tighe declared. “I phoned Vernon Davidson, who’s art critic of the Bugle. Lew Larsen was just another dabbler until a year ago. That was when an artist named Mario Farr disappeared after he’d been banged up badly in an auto accident. This Farr was so much ahead of his field that nobody paid much attention to Larsen. Now, with Farr gone, Larsen is the number one artist of the state, but that doesn’t mean more than that a handful of people know that he’s alive.”
“I get it,” I said. “Larsen’s painting of the Crucifixion was the model for Quigg’s murder. Now that picture will be reproduced in hundreds of newspapers and magazines in connection with the murder. Larsen will be famous; people will speak about him and know his name when they hear it.”
Tighe leaned smugly back in the chair. “What other motive is possible? But keep it under your hat, Joey. I can’t put the pinch on the lad because of a beautiful theory.”
“Good hunting,” I said and went home to make up for lost sleep.
At noon the ringing of my phone woke me abruptly. It was Mavia Wallis, and she sounded scared. “Mr. Keel, would you mind coming right over to see me?”
“Anything happen?”
“I’m not sure, but I must talk to you.”
“Expect me in ten minutes,” I said.
I don’t believe in premonitions or any such mumbo-jumbo, so why did I slip the hackie a couple of bucks extra to step on it? I was even sore at myself for not having stopped off to do justice to a steak. There was plenty of time for a talk and I was hungry, but all the same I was in a hurry to get there.
The neat little white house was set back from the road. As I went up the walk, I saw that the front door was partly open. That probably meant nothing, but it might mean something, and I wasn’t buried six feet under years ago only because I don’t like to take chances. There could be traps, and somebody had tried to burn me down a few hours ago in the museum.
So I slipped around to the side of the house to have a peek in a window or two. Suddenly a dog started to howl.
He belonged to the house next door, and was a cross between a police dog and a collie and the devil. He had foam on his mouth and blood in his eyes, and he was raging because the chain to which he was attached prevented him from getting at my throat.
A woman stuck her head out of a window of the house next door. “Quiet, Caesar. That man is just going to visit that nice Miss Wallis.”
In the Wallis house somebody ran. I heard the front door slam shut, but by the time I returned to the front of the house there was nobody around. Bitterly I cursed the dog.
I had reached the front door when I heard the sound. It was like somebody screaming who had no tongue.
MAVIA WALLIS lay on the carpeted floor. Her hands and legs were tied; there was a blindfold over her eyes and a gag in her mouth. She was lying as still as death, but those weird, muffled whimpers trickled through her gag.
I dropped down at her side and touched her. Her torso arched upward in fear of impending death. “You’re all right,” I said. “I’m Joey Keel.”
She subsided. I tore off the blindfold and gag. “Thank you!” she breathed. “You came just in time.” She pushed the back of her head against the floor and looked up at a big oil painting on the wall behind her.
I’m less than an authority on art, but didn’t take much to be gripped by the power of that canvas. It was an artist’s plea against war. In the background, the mechanized weapons of modern mass destruction were depicted flowing away from the shambles of a city. In the foreground lay two corpses—a soldier and a woman in white. A bayonet protruded from the soldier’s heart, and one of his outflung hands lay across the woman’s bosom. She was tied and blindfolded and gagged, obviously depicting Truth or Justice or something like that. Blood poured from her severed throat.
“Lord!” I breathed. “Again!”
“Yes,” she said hoarsely. “I was going to die the way the woman in that picture had died.”
Then I saw the straight-edged razor. It lay near her head. Maybe, I thought, it was the dog that had saved Mavia’s life. If his barking hadn’t scared the killer into flight, I might have entered the house too late to have saved her.
I took out my claspknife and sliced through the rope which bound her. “Who was he?” I asked.
“I didn’t see him. I came into this room and he stepped out from somewhere, grabbed me from behind and held a hand over my mouth so I couldn’t make an outcry. He didn’t let me turn my head until I was blindfolded.” Her breath was still ragged. “I—I remembered this picture. I knew that he was going to cut my throat.”
I helped her up to her feet. She swayed against me and I wound an arm about her to support her.
“Did he wear gloves?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I felt them against my mouth.”
There’d be no prints on the razor. I looked up at the painting. It was telling me something which wasn’t clear.
I said: “Did Lew Larsen paint that?”
“No. An artist named Mario Farr.”
“I heard something about him today,” I’ said. “He was supposed to be pretty good. And he disappeared.”
A light came into her eyes which made me drop my arm from about her. I know love when I see it.
“He was a very great artist,” she said in a tone of pure worship. “But last year he had a horrible auto accident. He was a fine, sensitive soul and he couldn’t endure people he knew looking at his deformity and pitying him. Then one day he vanished; nobody has heard of him since.”
“And you still love him?”
She turned her head away from me. “I don’t see where that’s any concern of yours.”
“It is if you want me to help you.”
“I’m sorry I spoke like that.” She tried to smile up at me, but got only a wan, pinched effect. “Mario and I were to be married.”
I was still studying Farr’s painting, trying to understand some hidden message that it contained.
“Why did you call me this evening?” I asked. “Did you know your life would be in danger?”
For long moments she gnawed on her lip. Then she said: “Lew Larsen phoned me. He was very excited. He said he had got hold of something startling, but couldn’t bring himself to tell the police until he had a talk with me. He’s supposed to be here soon. I wanted you to be here to show him how absurd his idea is.”
I said quietly: “You think he’s going to accuse Mario Farr of Quigg’s murder? That’s what’s been frightening you all along.”
“How ridiculous! Mario was so badly crippled that he couldn’t walk. How could he have overpowered Quigg and then have done those horrible things to him?”
“But it’s bothering you?”
She looked away. “I have a sense of something horrible closing in on all of us. Why would Mario have murdered an innocent man? Why, above all, would he want to kill me?”
“He’s jealous because Larsen took his place in your affections.”
“But that’s not true,” she protested. “Lew and I are merely good friends.”
Besides, I told myself, Quigg’s murder would only enhance Lew Larsen’s fame, if not his reputation, as Tighe had pointed out. And that war painting on the wall was still bothering me.
Then I got it. The killer was a stickler for following the broad death patterns of the paintings. There were two dead people in Farr’s, canvas, yet the killer had used it only as a model for Mavia. Had he intended to complete the reproduction of the picture with live models when Lew Larsen arrived?
Or perhaps he had planned to separate the murders into two sections—one here, the other at Larsen’s place.
I leaped to the phone and told Lieutenant Tighe to meet me at Larsen’s. He demanded details, but I snapped I hadn’t time and hung up.
&nbs
p; Mavia had been listening. She leaned white-faced against the wall. “I’m going with you.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m not leaving you out of my sight.”
CHAPTER III
Models for Death
WE BEAT the police up to Larsen’s walk-up apartment because we were nearer. I went up two steps at a time with Mavia panting behind me. I listened at the door and heard somebody inside. Probably Larsen. Possible not.
I took out my gun and shoved the door in.
We were too late. Lew Larsen lay sprawled on his back with one arm outflung as had the soldier in Farr’s painting. Blood soaked his shirt at his heart.
But the bayonet wasn’t in his body. Frank Powell was holding it in his hand. He stared stupidly at me.
“Don’t try anything,” I said.
Powell blinked and wet his lips. “You don’t think I murdered him?” The ceiling light glistened down on the wet blood which covered the bayonet.
“That’s not a toothpick in your hand,” I said.
Mavia moaned. I caught her as she swayed.
“Look here,” Powell said hollowly. “I came up here to visit Larsen. We were to discuss a painting of his which he was trying to persuade the Art Center to purchase. I found him—dead.”
“And you decided to take the bayonet for a souvenir.”
“I wasn’t sure he was dead.” His voice was desperate. “Without thinking I pulled out the bayonet. I suppose I had an idea that I might be able to save him.”
Feet pounded outside. Lieutenant Tighe burst into the room, trailed by his squad.
In that studio room, with the medical examiner going over the body and flashlight bulbs flaring and fingerprint men doing their routine, Tighe listened to my story and then to Maria’s. I kept my arm about her; she was in a pretty bad way.
“How about letting me take her home?” I suggested.
He glanced at where Frank Powell sat slumped on the couch with palms pressed against his temples. “It’s an open and shut case, Joey,” Tighe said, “but I want you around just the same. I’ll send one of my men with Miss Wallis.”