by Jerry eBooks
She didn’t say anything. She looked down at the check, and then up at me. She looked very puzzled and unsure of things. I gave her a parting smile, and moved toward the door. When I reached it I turned and looked at her.
“I’ll give you this advice for free, Miss Duane,” I said quietly. “If you go to the newspapers, you’ll turn out looking awful foolish. You’ll cut your own box office in half. Good night.”
“Wait!” she stopped me. “You mean, the newspapers would be stupid, too?”
“No, just you would be,” I said. “You see, when they came to me I’d prove to them that Parkins couldn’t possibly have murdered Cordova. Good night, again!”
WITHOUT giving her a chance to ask questions, I went out quickly, and closed the door. There were only a few about now, and they chose to ignore me. That was okay. I headed toward the stage but didn’t quite reach it. In a spot where there were lots of shadows I turned fast and ducked behind some propped up stage settings. Then cat fashion I worked my way around to the deep rear of the stage where in was as dark as the inside of your hat. But by a little maneuvering I was able to keep my eye on the passageway leading to the outside stage door. I settled down comfortably to watch, and to wait.
It was almost an hour before the last person, the theatre manager, left the place. I felt sorry for him as I watched him walk out. Of course the whole show had been stopped right after Cordova’s death, and the customers had been given their money back or rain checks. A night like that could blow an awful hole in a week’s total take. I wondered just how the poor guy would feel, say, this time tomorrow night?
But I didn’t wonder about it long. Maybe five minutes and then I slipped out my small pocket flash, and eased out of my hiding spot. Fifteen minutes was all I needed to do what I had to do. When I was finished I took a chair and placed it where I could reach one of the light switches that worked the passageway between the two rows of dressing rooms. And then, finally, I really settled down to wait.
It was a long, long wait, and as time dragged on and on I began to have more and more fears that Alec Jason wasn’t such a very smart guy after all. He seemed to be simply a first class bag holder. When I heard some distant clock toll two my restlessness went up to a new high. Maybe I had figured my little play all wrong. Before I fell sound asleep at my post, maybe I should try some other angle. But, what angle? That was the catch! What other angle could get me the results I simply had to get in order to wrap the whole thing up proper?
So with fears and dreads nagging at me I batted my brains about for all they were worth, and kept coming up with absolutely nothing worth the effort.
At last I heard the sound. When it wasn’t repeated I started cursing my imagination and jangled nerves. But I did hear it again—the scrape of the latch in the stage door lock. A faint breath of air hit my cheek to tell me that the door had been opened. Then silence, for so long I wanted to yell just to break the tension.
But at the end of a year or so the tiny pencil beam of a flashlight cut the darkness. It hit the passageway floor and came creeping toward where I stood hidden and waiting. But it did not come all the way. It stopped when it lighted up the worn rush mat in front of the late Cordova’s dressing room door. It was at that point I raised my hand and flipped the light switch.
The Duane woman was half bent over, with the hand not holding the flashlight outstretched a little. She froze and turned fear glazed eyes toward me. I had stepped out into the lighted passageway by then.
“It’s just as you left it,” I said. “But don’t touch it. The police like to see those kind of things.”
She didn’t answer at once. Like waking from a deep sleep, she slowly straightened up, undid the purse under her arm, and dropped the flashlight into it. I watched her hand come out of the purse—empty. Very nice for her that it did!
“What are you talking about?” she said in a voice that sounded like it came from a mile away. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” I said. “I had a hunch you’d come back. So, I waited to tell you a couple of things I didn’t tell you before. One is, that I used to fool around with electrical gadgets, myself, years ago. Sort of a hobby of mine. Used to do a lot of stunts at parties. You know, like giving people shocks when they sat down in certain chairs, or picked up their ice cream spoon. Naturally, I didn’t clip-tap any high voltage lines!”
ABRUPTLY I stopped talking, and watched all the blood that was left in her face drain away. She swayed a little and put one hand against the steel fireproof dressing room door for support.
“You’re mad—insane!” she finally got out in a hoarse whisper. “I know what you’ve found out. I thought it out myself when I got back to my hotel. I came back to make sure. It was George Parkins. It would have been simple for him to slip in here last night and arrange things, and slip in again tonight without being seen. I tell you—”
“Don’t!” I cut her off. “That’s why I deducted the five bucks for phone calls. Calls to some people I know in certain Government departments in Washington. But you don’t even have to have friends down there to find out what I found out. It was that Sergeant George Parkins was killed in the taking of Iwo Jima. See how you gave yourself away by insisting you’d seen him tonight? If you’d just shut up, instead of trying to build up your story, it would have made it twice as tough for me.”
Her shrill, shaky laugh stopped me.
“I was simply mistaken!” she cried. “You fool! You utter fool! If I had wanted to kill Carlos, would I have come to you? Would I have insisted even after he died that it was murder?”
“Definitely, yes!” I snapped right back at her. “That was the smoothest bit of your build-up—publicity for Diana Duane, the Diving Venus. A million dopes would have mobbed the theatres to see the beautiful wife of the murdered Cordova. Your picture would have been in every newspaper, every edition. But for Cordova to kick over from just plain old age heart failure? Nothing. Of course, too, there may be another angle. Some lad who has more money than Cordova had when you married him, plus being a whole lot younger. Is there?”
“You’re mad—you’re insane!” was all she could tell me.
I didn’t argue. Instead I told her what she already knew. In short, how she had worked it. How she had led a cleverly concealed wire out of the rush mat and over to one of the main power lines. How she had probably done it last night, in view of the fact she was able to get into the place a few minutes ago. How she had soaked the rush mat at some time to make sure, maybe while Cordova was on stage and doing his stuff. How, while he was on stage, she had slipped to the other end of that wire fitted with needle pointed prongs.
How when she saw Cordova dripping wet step on the soaked mat and grab the metal handle of the steel door she had clipped the needle prongs into the main power line—for just a few seconds. How tapping the line at that point killed the other lights so nobody could see how the power shooting through Cordova shook him. How his soaked clothes made a perfect conductor to the steel door that served as a ground. How the amperage was not enough to leave burn marks on his shoes or his fingertips.
How the current stopped his heart, just as it would stop anybody’s heart. How his age and condition didn’t give his heart a chance to kick back, not even with my artificial respiration. How any doctor would call it heart failure just the same.
Yes, I gave her the works, and finished by telling her how she got scared when I assured her in her dressing room that Parkins hadn’t done it. If I could find out he’d been killed in the war so could the police, in time. So, better half a loaf than none. Let it slide as heart failure but get rid of the murder evidence. Her “perfect” fall guy wasn’t perfect any more!
“You don’t fool with murder!” I clipped at her. “Nobody does and gets away with it for very long. So, I guess that’s all.”
I didn’t say any more. She started to play her trump card, but I had been waiting for just that. She had tipped me off to that, too, in her dressing roo
m. I mean, her hand flashed down into her handbag, and came out with a little lady’s gun. But I was moving long before it showed. I ripped up one hand to knock the gun hand upward. But that wasn’t the trump card she was playing. I guess it wasn’t that she was afraid of being tagged for two murders. It was fear of not being able to take being tagged for one. Anyway, instead of jabbing the gun at me and pulling the trigger, she jabbed the muzzle up under her jaw and fired. She fell over backwards, stone dead with the little slug lodged some place in her brain.
For a moment I could only stare down at her, as though it couldn’t possibly be real. She was sprawled out on the worn rush mat exactly the way Cordova had been. Only the way they had died differed. Finally I came out of my trance, cursed softly, and walked over to the pay phone on the wall. I crossed my fingers and breathed a fervent prayer, but it didn’t do any good. I’d be up the rest of the night now explaining, and arguing with Hesse, because it was he who answered my police call. After he barked at me the second time I sighed heavily, and started talking.
HAND OF GUILT
Sam Bayne
Nancy hurried into the hotel suite to give that millionaire customer a manicure, but what he needed more was—a coffin!
IT WAS Nancy Horton’s job to hold hands with men. Nancy was hotel manicurist for the swank Crystal Towers and, being a very pretty blond girl, was much in demand for holding hands. Any proposition that went further she could usually stave off tactfully, for Nancy was not only blond and pretty, but she was a very smart cookie also.
Walking briskly down the tenth floor corridor, her manicurist’s equipment in a small black bag, she thought with approval of her next client, old Carlton Lansing. He was a millionaire and considered on the crusty side, but he was invariably nice to Nancy, never made any passes and tipped liberally. Moreover, he had his nails done frequently.
“Got to keep ’em trimmed,” he told her. “Bust ’em on these blamed typewriter keys if I don’t. Made a million in oil, and now I got time to try doing what I always wanted to do—write a book. I got stories to tell, young woman!”
“I’ll bet you have,” Nancy said to herself. Lansing still had a gleam in his eye that told her he must have been quite a character in his youth.
She turned a corner of the corridor and nearly bumped into a tall man, immaculately dressed in dark morning coat and striped trousers. He jumped nervously.
“Ah, there, Miss Horton!” he said. “You startled me.”
“Me, too,” Nancy said ungrammatically. She looked him over with the air of a mother examining a child starting off to school. As assistant manager of the hotel, Mr. Basil Hyde dressed the part. “Your carnation’s wilted,” she told him.
“Ah, uh, yes,” Mr. Hyde said, dropping startled eyes to his lapel. It often seemed to him that the Horton girl lacked proper respect. “I must get a fresh one. Well, don’t let me keep you, Miss Horton. You’re busy, I’m sure.”
Nancy let that go. “By best client called me,” she said, “Mr. Lansing. He’s in a rush today. Usually doesn’t have me come up until noon but here it is only ten and he’s already phoned down to the barber shop for me.”
“Ten fourteen and a half,” said Mr. Hyde, glancing at his watch. He prided himself on being exact. “Better hurry along now.”
NANCY gave him a nod and continued down the hall. The politeness between them was only a watchful truce, for she didn’t care much for the stuffed shirt and suspected Mr. Hyde didn’t like her much either.
The door to Lansing’s suite, 1047, was open. This was not unusual, for Lansing liked lots of fresh air. Moreover, he had a bad case of gout from over-eating and over-drinking that kept him profanely hobbled to his chair.
Nancy liked him despite his hard shell. He was courteous and generous with her, usually giving her five dollars for each manicure. And his lusty tales of adventure in the Oklahoma oil fields fascinated her.
She rapped on the door, calling as she did so, “May I come in, Mr. Lansing? It’s the manicurist.”
There was no answer. She thought he might not have heard her and she was a sure he was home, so she stepped through the open door. Then she stood rooted to the spot, her mouth opening and closing in speechless horror, her is eyes distended with fear.
Carlton Lansing was sprawled in the big, overstuffed chair he liked so well. He was fully dressed, but his gray coat was marred by a blotch of blood that was still wet and shiny. Inches below his dangling fingers, an automatic pistol lay on the rug.
A scream tore itself through the block in Nancy’s throat. She heard a muttered exclamation from out in the hall and a step.
“Something wrong?” asked a deep masculine voice behind her.
She swayed, turning a little. A lean, dark-haired young man, strange to her, stood in the doorway.
“It’s Mr. Lansing!” she choked. “He—he—I think he’s been shot!”
The young man’s face stiffened. He moved past her, bent for a moment over the still form in the chair.
“He’s dead,” he said, straightening up. His eyes were steady, they measured her without suspicion, but appraisingly, as though wondering about her part in this. “Shot through the heart.”
Nancy’s throat tightened again. She was suddenly sick and wondered if she should make a dash for the bathroom. But she was afraid her knees wouldn’t carry her there.
“I’m Mark Tilford,” said the young man. “I have a room across the hall. Who are you?”
“Nancy Horton—manicurist,” she managed to answer.
“We’ll have to call the manager and have the police notified. This is murder, Miss Horton.”
“Murder! How do you know?”
He didn’t answer her. He picked up the phone and asked that the manager be sent to 1047 at once. It was important, he said.
“The hotel is sound-proof,” he went on, after hanging up. “There isn’t much chance of the shot having been heard if the door of this suite was closed.”
“It was open when I got here,” Nancy told him.
Tilford shrugged. He glanced around the room and his eye fell on Lansing’s portable typewriter where it stood on its stand. There was a sheet of paper in the machine. Tilford bent over it and Nancy could see his brows draw together in a frown.
Basil Hyde stepped into the room, looking important. He saw the dead man in the chair and came to a shocked halt.
“What’s happened to Mr. Lansing?”
“He’s been murdered,” Tilford said bluntly.
“This is terrible,” Hyde said weakly. “Murdered! The hotel—” He went to the door and closed it. “We mustn’t have any publicity. The Towers has too good a reputation. Murder! Who did it?”
“I’m sure none of us know,” Tilford said blandly. “Better call the police, Mr. Hyde.”
IN A dazed nightmare, Nancy saw the police arrive, saw them scatter with professional efficiency through the apartment. Flashguns popped, fingerprint men were busy, the medical examiner’s men were in and out. Then finally, the body was removed.
Nancy, Tilford and Hyde were moved into Lansing’s bedroom. A round-faced cherub with a brown mustache introduced himself as Inspector Tom Blair and began to question them with deceptive gentleness.
“You say Mr. Lansing phoned for you to give him a manicure this morning, Miss Horton. What time was that?”
“It must have been just about ten,” Nancy said. She looked at Hyde.
“Remember when I met you in the hall, you looked at your watch and said it was just ten-fourteen and a half.”
Hyde’s eyebrows rose incredulously. “Miss Horton, I’m afraid I don’t understand. I didn’t meet you in the hall this morning. The first time I saw you today was when I came into this suite in response to a call from Mr. Tilford and found you here with him.”
He managed to make “with him” sound incriminating somehow.
Nancy flushed indignantly. “Why, how can you say that?” she demanded furiously. “I nearly ran into you and you said—”
“I said several times to you,” Hyde interposed smoothly, “that it would be advisable for you to stop coming up here since Mr. Lansing had asked you to stop annoying him.”
“Annoying him!” Nancy was completely taken aback. “What are you talking about?”
Hyde glanced apologetically at Inspector Blair. “This is very embarrassing under the circumstances,” he said, “but Mr. Lansing seemed to think that Miss Horton was trying a polite kind of blackmail. I had planned to have a talk with her later today.”
“This is a serious charge, Miss Horton,” the Inspector said. He picked up the phone and talked to the hotel operator. “Did you have a call from this suite to the barber shop this morning? Thank you.” He put the instrument down. “There were no calls of any kind from this suite today.”
“But—but I did get a call today,” Nancy insisted. She knew, even as she said it, how weak it sounded.
A police lieutenant came in with a sheet of paper in his hand.
“Found this in the typewriter, Inspector,” he said.
Blair read the sheet and looked at Nancy again. “Listen to this,” he said, and read: ‘Ever since she has come into my life I live in fear of death. I can see it in her eyes when she looks at me, in her expression when she thinks I am not watching her. I am afraid-afraid!’ ”
“They always overdo it,” Tilford said to no one in particular. “No wonder he never sold any.”
“What are you talking about?” Blair snapped. “And would you mind telling me who you are, anyway?”
“I’m an attorney,” Tilford said. “And I represent Miss Horton. She doesn’t have to answer any of your questions, Inspector, upon advice of counsel.”
“No?” snapped Blair, like a badgered woodchuck. “Well she’s under arrest on suspicion of murder, Mr. Tilford, and let’s see what you can do about that!”