by Jerry eBooks
“Fantastic,” Josef smiled. “You think anyone could perform an exhibition like that without being seen?”
“Of course,” Flamond said. “You were a smart killer, Josef. You knew that every eye in the club would be on what should have been another murder in the center of the room. You knew that the human eye can’t resist following the broadest sweep of movement. And you were quite right. We were creating excitement that stopped any chance of your being caught.”
“It’s a frameup,” Josef insisted. His hand darted for his pocket. “And it’s one frameup that isn’t going to work. Stick up your hands, all of you.”
“Hey!” Danny’s eyes were popping. “That’s my revolver you got there!”
“Yes,” Josef agreed. “And I’ll use it on you, too, if you try to get funny. Take one step toward me and I shoot.”
Danny laughed. “You ain’t got the nerve, Josef.” He took a couple of quick, short steps toward the headwaiter.
“I’m warning you, funny man. All right—you asked for it!”
Josef’s trigger-finger squeezed—and a thin stream of water squirted from the barrel of the gun. Flamond jumped into action, locking his hands over a Josef’s face from behind. He jerked the waiter’s neck back and the lethal-looking squirt gun clattered to the floor. Josef followed. He opened his mouth, trying to bite Flamond’s hands, but instead yelled in pain as Flamond’s knuckles began massaging his nose.
Danny Doyle was retrieving his water pistol. “Hit him over the head with it,” he advised Flamond. “Just enough to cool him off a little, like he did with me.”
“Give it to me,” Sheila said grimly. There was a hollow sock as her arm completed a sweeping arc. Josef wouldn’t have much to say for awhile. He relaxed on the dirty dressing room floor.
“Can anyone tell me,” Danny asked, “why Josef would want to louse up my act?”
“Either he wanted to get back the six thousand dollars he’d let Klumb borrow and thought it would be simpler to get it from the man’s estate or he wanted to get control of the Club Lisetta for himself,” Flamond explained.
“He’d tried to buy the joint,” Sheila contributed. “I know that. He had a coupla stooges acting for him in a deal—but Klumb wasn’t interested—not until just lately.”
Sandra wasn’t completely convinced yet. “Miss Ray said Gus Klumb told her to have Josef seat us at that table.”
Flamond could explain that one, too. “Gus Klumb wanted to get rid of Danny Dole’s act. It was breaking him.” Danny started to interrupt. “Because somebody was spoiling Danny’s material,” Flamond mollified the comedian. “I have a hunch that Josef went to Gus Klumb with a plan for getting rid of Danny Dole. He tipped off Klumb that Dole had hired a detective and said he had a way of getting rid of the comedian.”
“How?” Sandra wanted to know. “Josef told Klumb to send Sheila to him with instructions on where to seat the detective—me. He wouldn’t tell Klumb what the plan was but he guaranteed it would work.”
“That adds up,” Sheila agreed.
Sandra still was bothered. “But why did he try to murder me?”
“He didn’t,” Flamond explained. “What was supposed to be murder at the table was simply his method of attracting all attention away from the important murder.”
“A nice guy, Josef,” Danny mused. He did a double-take. “Say!” he growled, “he was the guy that was killing all my jokes.”
“You can’t murder the dead, Danny,” Sheila snickered.
Flamond turned to Sandra. “How about it?” he asked. “Do you want to buzz down to the office and make out the file card while everything’s still fresh in our minds?”
“It’s been a long night,” Sandra sighed, “but—yes. There are still some things I want to find out.”
Sandra stopped typing to take a deep gulp from a paper cup full of coffee. “About through?” Flamond asked. “No,” she said. “You claim you knew right from the start that Josef had to be the murderer.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well,” Flamond said, “first, I could eliminate Danny Dole because the dead duck trick hadn’t worked the night before the murder.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Sandra protested.
“Oh, but it does,” Flamond insisted. “One person in the room and only one wouldn’t be particularly impressed by the duck’s descent—one person who might possibly see the murder. Danny Dole. He’d seen the duck fall so many times it wouldn’t have any effect on him, ordinarily. And the murderer had to be sure Danny would have his eyes on the duck. He made sure by fixing things so there was some doubt about the duck’s working. That way, Danny’s thought processes forced him to watch it the next night. The pattern had been broken.”
“All right so far,” Sandra agreed. “But Sheila Ray—how could you be so sure about her?”
“I’ve already explained,” Flamond said. “She admitted she delivered the message from Klumb to Josef. Had she actually been implicated, she’d have done exactly what Josef did—planted suspicion on someone else, not herself.”
“But what,” Sandra persisted, “made you suspicious of Josef?”
Flamond laughed. “His saying he’d seen Klumb across the room when we carried you down to Klumb’s office. That was a dead give-away.”
Sandra frowned. “I don’t see it.”
“If Klumb had actually been there,” Flamond explained patiently, “he’d have gone down to his office with you, himself. It’s beyond my experience in human behavior to imagine the owner of a place staying away from the kind of excitement we created. How about you?”
Sandra nodded, and her fingers banged on the typewriter keys.
“If I ever want to use this file card for one of your radio dramas,” she said, “I have a honey of a title.”
Flamond leaned over her shoulder to read.
At the top of the file card, she typed, “The Case of the Squealing Duck.”
GIRL OF FEAR
Francis K. Allan
“I could see you in my dream, Carol. A tree limb was scratching the cornice and the clock had just struck one in the morning. And I heard a man’s voice say, ‘Farewell, my darling,’ just before he killed you!”
IN NEW YORK, just an hour ago, Carol had been laughing and the glow of love had shone on her slender face. Later, Chris had whistled a tango as he’d managed the coupe through the twilight traffic of Queens. Darkness, cool off the ocean, had stretched across Long Island and the car had sped on. The laughter had faded from Carol’s lips. The slow paralysis of dread had wormed its way through her. And now, with a stiff breathlessness in her throat, she pointed and said, “The stone gates there at the right, darling. Turn there.”
Night was complete. The headlights thrust a wavering finger up a steep and winding drive. Trees rose out of unkept fields and their branches swayed like mourners at a temple. Then the long red mansion rose up, ugly and dark at the top of the lonely hill.
“You can park under the archway,” Carol said. The motor died. An almost unbelievable silence folded over the coupe and the subsurface beat of the nearby ocean grew half-distinct. Home, Carol thought strangely. He’s waiting in there somewhere.
“Afraid of something, darling?” Chris asked quietly.
She turned to him quickly and held him. She had tried to warn him, to explain, but now she was afraid. She had to get it straight. Nothing must happen to their love. Nothing, ever.
“Chris, listen; Father isn’t like he will seem at first. I don’t want you to hate him, or fear him. We won’t stay here, but we must—”
“Darling, you don’t need to—” he started.
“No, please let me explain. All his life he was—well, maybe ruthless. Wealth was everything to him. Immense wealth. Along the way he must have hurt many people. Many people hated him for himself, and many more hated him for his newspapers. They were cruel and savage. You know those things. Finally it did something to him. Perhaps he be
gan to feel the wind of hate that blew upon him, and it made him afraid. He tried to hide behind his thick doors and walls. But the fear and distrust was inside him. Finally it made him ill. For years this sickness of fear, maybe of guilt, has tortured him and made him suspicious and twisted. I am not proud of him, Chris, but I love him. And I am sorry for him. He is the most lonely man in the world now.”
Chris struck a match to light a cigarette and for a moment their faces shone in the glow. He was a thin man, with black curly hair and bright black eyes. He had an Intense and handsome face. She was watching him anxiously. Her eyes were brown and her hair was gold. She was beautiful, and she was frightened. He bent down and kissed her.
“I’ll understand. It will be easy,” he promised. And so they went in, Carol and Chris Warden. They had been married just thirty hours.
A broad, brown-faced servant opened the door. The doors of Vaden Drake’s mansion were always locked and a huge rawboned black police dog glided into the hall and stared at them. His shining eyes softened faintly as he recognized Carol. He stared at Chris without warmth or malice. “Friend, Max,” Carol said carefully. “Remember. Friend.”
The dog seemed to nod, and prowled away. “This is Mr. Warden, Joseph,” she said to the servant. “Tell father we want to see him.”
HE WAS sitting in a wine-red chair in an overheated study when they entered. He had once been an immense man and the great bones were left, dangling and gaunt. The skin was like old parchment. His black eyes were like furnaces, gone dead in their pits. His egg-bald head glistened. A shawl clung to his shoulders, and his bony fingers plucked at the folds of his throat. He stared across the room. “Who is that man with you, Carol?” His voice was rusty.
“This—” Carol drew a long breath, “is my husband, Chris Warden.”
“Husband?” Vaden Drake echoed. His fingers tightened on his throat. A glint, of alarm or perhaps malice, lit his eyes. He looked Intently at Chris, first leaning forward and then drawing back deep into the chair until he seemed like a man in hiding. “Nearer. Come nearer to me, Chris Warden,” he whispered.
Carol felt her muscles tighten. It was as though she were watching some silent drama unfolding before her, a drama she could not understand. Chris stood before her father’s chair and tried to smile at him. There was no smile in Vaden’s face. Then he said, “Yes. Yes, I know.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Chris said.
“You would not understand. Will you leave me alone with Carol for a few minutes?”
Chris nodded. Carol smiled anxiously at him as he passed her. The door closed. Her father beckoned. “Here beside me. Come here.” She knelt down on the rug at his feet and he looked deep into her eyes. “How long have you known this man? What is his business?”
“Only two weeks. It isn’t long, I know, but it can be enough. He is a lawyer. He’s been away in the Army for four years.”
“Are you happy? In the last few weeks, I mean.”
“More happy than ever before,” she said. Vaden tilted his head and probed the regions within her skull.
“You are lying. You scarcely know it, but you are lying, Carol.”
“But I’m not! I don’t know what you—” His eyes stopped her. Her words evaporated. Then, suddenly and harshly, she sobbed, and she buried her face against his robe. “I won’t let myself think of it, whatever it is! I am happy! I am! I am! I know that I—”
“It does no good to tell yourself lies. Look at me. There is something you must know before I am gone.”
He lifted her chin. “Your mother died twenty years ago, when you were two. I’ve never told you about it, but it was the first time I began to understand myself. For a week before she was killed, I knew something was going to happen to her. I knew it, although she was happy, beautiful, healthy, and had never made an enemy in the world. I knew. It was a sixth sense of tragedy in me. And I knew I was right when I found her lying on the floor of the bathroom with a revolver in her hand. There was a note which told me she had been unfaithful and had killed herself. But she did not kill herself, Carol.
She was murdered. My sixth sense of tragedy had told me. Nothing was ever proved, but I knew.”
“But how—I mean, I don’t understand—” Carol stammered.
“It isn’t something that anyone can understand in the normal way. It must simply be accepted. Listen: I used to have my driver take me to the office in New York. One morning, for no reason, I suddenly knew I must not get in that car. I took a cab. At noon that day the driver was killed when he tried to start my car; it had been wired with dynamite. And once, for no reason I can explain, I sent a case of Scotch to a chemist. It was poisoned—all of it. Those are only a few things.”
“But father, if—” Carol stopped. Some band of brittle glass seemed to tighten around her heart. She wanted to speak. She couldn’t.
“I can’t explain, but I will try,” Vaden said heavily. “When I first started publishing my paper, I was unkind. Ruthless. Before your mother was killed, I had published a story about a man’s affair with another woman. His wife killed herself. I cannot prove it, but my sixth sense knows that the husband murdered your mother in revenge against me. I know it as surely as I know my name.
“I loved your mother. When she was killed, the last shred of charity in me died. Suddenly I thought of my newspapers as a weapon against the world. As a means of hurting, stripping people in public shame, making everyone pay and suffer for my loss. I did those things, and I have never been sure I was sorry. I loved her so much. But—” He tubbed his bony hands across his bloodless lips and trembled.
“FINALLY I was old. Old before my time.
I was ill and no doctor could learn why. For ten years I have been sick and tormented and frightened. Why? I think it is this sense, this curse of tragedy. Out there in the world,” and he moved his arm, “are countless thousands whom I have hurt and ruined. They all hate me. A thousand hates building up into a great tidal wave that is slowly sweeping in to kill me. I feel that! And I have felt it so long, I am sick. And my sixth sense tells me I cannot escape. Now—” He paused for a long moment. “Why am I telling you this? Can you remember a summer evening three years ago on this estate? You suddenly decided to go back to your apartment in New York. You said you couldn’t explain. You simply had to get away—”
“i remember,” Carol breathed softly. “I kept feeling a gray shadow behind me. It was like a nightmare while I was awake.”
“Strange. I too feel that gray shadow. And I knew that you did. So after you left that evening, I turned out all the lights. I waited.
At midnight I heard crackling sounds. The house was burning. You remember now? The whole left wing was destroyed. The wing with the bedrooms. It was arson, of course. You may have saved our lives. Because, Carol, you have learned from me the sixth sense of fear and tragedy.” He paused and then he whispered, “And even though you won’t admit it to your own heart, you feel that same thing now!”
She stared at his eyes. She choked suddenly. “What—what are you trying to tell me, father? I know, and yet I don’t know!”
He lay back in the chair with his eyes closed. “I don’t know why I started telling you these things. . . . Yes, I do know. I will be gone by tomorrow. I will be dead. As surely as I knew about your mother’s death, I know of my own. And I am too tired to care.
I am sick of living, Carol.”
He reached out and clutched her hand. “The certainty of my death came to me lately. Less than a month ago. And with it came an image in a dream. I was watching you from far away; I had already died, you see, Carol. And I watched you. You stood in the midst of money—a great deal of money all around. You will be very rich when I die, Carol. And in the dream, the wind was moaning under the roof. You were in your bedroom down the hall, and a tree-limb was scratching the cornice. The clock had just struck one in the morning, and then I heard a voice, a man’s voice, saying, ‘It was lovely, but farewell, my darling.’ He said that and he killed
you.”
Vaden Drake stared into her eyes. “Remember that, Carol, when I am dead. The clock striking one. The wind and the limb and the man who will call you darling.”
“What in God’s name do you mean?” she breathed.
“I cannot explain. It is the sixth sense, born of fear, bred in hate, nourished in tragedy. You have it, as I do. But you have not committed my sins. You do not owe the penalty. If you can only—”
Those were the last words Carol’s father ever uttered. The gun sounded, brittle and sharp. The glass of the terrace window shattered. The neat round hole in his forehead swelled and burst with crimson, and his bony fingers flopped into his lap. He pitched forward into Carol’s arms and his blood flowed over her skirt. He died in her arms as she tried to whisper his name. And when the hall door burst open and Chris rushed in, Vaden Drake was dead.
Nine people stood in the rain at his grave, and the minister prayed swiftly. He did not want to catch cold.
The detective captain tried to explain. So many people disliked him, you know. Practically a case of a million suspects, and not a footprint. Not a trace of evidence. Of course they would keep working, but after all. . . . Carol told him she understood.
When he wondered about her plans, she said, “No, I won’t be leaving the big house. I am going to stay there. Until the wind blows and the clock strikes one. It won’t be long.” There was a strange thin smile on her lovely face, a smile that the detective did not understand.
“HE WAS tired, Carol, and frightened,” Chris said. And Carol nodded, as if she were listening to the wind that had not blown yet. And then she smiled into the dark black eyes of her husband.
“Let’s have a martini, Chris. Dad didn’t believe in melancholy.” And while he mixed the drinks, she heard the clock striking ten. Ten o’clock at night. And the wind was rising. . . .