A Most Immoral Murder

by Harriette Ashbrook

  When he had gone the stamp dealer approached the tall, blondish young man who for almost half an hour had been consulting the catalog at the other end of the counter. For a moment the young man let the stamp dealer look him square in the face, before he spoke. There was no flicker of recognition in Koenig’s eyes. Young gentlemen who slouch in easy chairs with their faces half-hidden in their hands in dimly lighted libraries are not easily identified later.

  “I have a collection here,” the young man explained somewhat apologetically. “Not a very valuable one, but it belongs to my young nephew and I thought I’d like to get an estimate on it.”

  Koenig smiled as he picked up the grubby, battered little album. “You are not a collector yourself?” he asked.

  The young man shook his head.

  “I did not think so. The real collector is not interested in price. Price is nothing. It is the thrill of owning, of having, of discovering.” There was subtle reproof although his tone was gentle. He turned the pages of the album, smiled with kindly tolerance at the miscellaneous collection.

  “He likes air mails, I see.”

  “Yes, they’re his passion. By the way, there’s some new Russian air mail stamp he’s awfully keen about.

  If you’ve got it, I’ll take one and—” He broke off.

  Koenig was staring. His little fat hands holding the album trembled slightly. For a moment he said nothing. Just looked at the page before him. When he spoke his voice seemed to stick in his throat.

  “Your nephew—he—where—where did he get that one?” His finger pointed at a stamp—black on magenta, the rough design of a sailing ship, a Latin inscription.

  “Oh that,” said the young man lightly. “That one I put there myself, today. It was—given to me.”

  “Given—to you? Who—who?” His voice rose fiercely, anxiously.

  Suddenly the young man’s manner changed. He stood facing the stamp dealer now, eyeing him steadily. Behind him the door to the shop was half ajar. He kicked it shut with his foot, but still facing Koenig, he turned the key, put it in his pocket. Then he approached the little round man.

  “A woman gave it to me,” he said quietly.

  “A woman! Lind—” Koenig broke off abruptly, realizing too late his involuntary betrayal. A look of horror and fear crept into his eyes.

  Spike nodded. “Yes, Linda. Linda Crossley. I’ve come to take you to her.”

  CHAPTER XII - Just a Couple of Damn Fools

  BACK IN THE QUIET ROOM again with the evening sun slanting through the western windows, and the woman on the bed sleeping, but quietly now. No troubled frenzy of delirium. No terrorized recoil from the menacing phantoms of fever.

  At the foot of the bed stood two men—Spike and Koenig, waiting. And as they waited they continued their watchful scrutiny of each other. From that moment, three hours before when they had faced each other over the counter, and that cry, half fear, half joy had burst from the lips of the stamp dealer, distrust had sprung up between them.

  They had said little to each other. It was as if each feared the most casual conversation. They had gone into the back of the shop where Koenig had his private apartment, and very briefly Spike had related the events of that stormy Monday night when Linda Crossley had first stumbled across his threshold.

  “But how is she—is she well—is she—” There was frantic appeal in the little man’s eyes, begging for reassurance.

  “She is better. Her mind is clear. But she is very weak. She asked me to send for you.”

  “Yes, yes, I must see her, my poor Linda. We must start immediately. Come.” He had snatched his hat from the closet, started out of the room, but Spike had called him back.

  “You’re not,” he said, “going to leave that—like that.” He pointed to the grubby stamp album lying on the table, abandoned by Koenig in the first anxious excitement of the news which Spike had brought.

  Koenig had turned, looked back at the stamp album, seemed suddenly to remember its precious, terrifying burden. He came back to the table, turned the pages until it was open at the British Guiana, one cent. Slowly he raised his eyes to Spike.

  “But how,” he said quietly, “did you get this?”

  “I said a woman gave it to me.”

  “And did she?”

  “Well—no. I took it.”

  “Where did you take it from?”

  “From Miss Crossley’s handbag.”

  Koenig’s hand holding the album had whitened around the knuckles as his grip stiffened.

  “Do you—do you know—what it is?”

  Spike nodded. “I read the papers.” He picked up the album and carefully extracted the British Guiana. From his pocket he took the tiny steel case, placed the stamp inside, snapped it shut. Koenig watched him.

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Return it—put it back where I found it.”

  “No!” It was more than a mere negative. It was a command. Koenig held out his hand for it. Spike hesitated. Koenig’s eyes softened. “If they—if anyone should find it—on her, on Linda-No, no.

  It is better here, in my safe.”

  Spike had surrendered the little steel case with its precious burden, saw it locked in Koenig’s safe.

  Their drive to Saugus in Spike’s car, and their trip across the bay in the motor launch had been made in almost complete silence, broken only by an argument just before they mounted the stairs to the upper room. On the first landing Koenig had turned toward Spike.

  “I must see her alone; you will wait down here.”

  Spike had eyed him warily. “I think I’ll stick around, too,” he said.

  “But—”

  “I said I’ll stick around, too.” There was something firm, unmoving in the repetition. Koenig had hesitated, then submitted. There was nothing else he could do.

  Together they had mounted the stairs and entered the room. And now they waited. The woman slept quietly. Once Mrs. Parsons came in to make sure that nothing was needed. Koenig sat on a chair beside the bed, and in the gaze that he turned on the figure under the white counterpane there was deep affection and anxious concern.

  At last she stirred. He grew tense, leaned forward, touched her hand. She opened her eyes and saw him. His arms were suddenly around her, and she was sobbing softly, quietly, like a weary child who has at last reached a safe haven.

  Spike went to the window and for a long time stared out into the dying day, his back to the two figures at the bedside. He could hear them murmuring—gentle, comforting words from Koenig; soft, sobbing syllables from the woman.

  Presently she lay back against the pillows, her hand in Koenig’s. She closed her eyes, rested gratefully from emotion. Then she began to speak, slowly with long pauses between sentences as if rallying her pitiful strength.

  “I must tell you—what happened. You and the gentleman over there. You must know—and he has a right to know. He has been good—so good to me.” She paused, then went on.

  “It was that night—I don’t remember exactly. It was so long ago—and I have lost track of time. The maids had gone out and we were alone in the house—he and I. I went out for a walk in the park. I was out a long time—I don’t know how long, but it was a long time. It was late when I came back. I went by the library door and it was open. I could see him. He was—”

  She broke off, covered her eyes with the back of her hand, pressing in hard as if to shut out a memory of horror. There was a deathly silence in the room. Neither of the two men moved, stirred. Spike stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her. Koenig sat, immobile, tense. Her voice when she spoke again was almost a whisper.

  “He was—I thought he was—asleep. There was only the reading light on the desk and it was dim. His head was forward on his arms. And one arm was stretched out—and I could see—in his hand the little box—open. It was—it was a stamp—a very valuable one, the most valuable in the world, and I thought if I could steal it from him—I could make him—”
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br />   She broke off again. But now she seemed to grow strong. She opened her eyes and looked into Koenig’s. It was as if her gaze carried a silent message that only he could understand. “I thought I could use it—could make him tell me—something I wanted to know. So I took it. I stole it.”

  Her voice rose almost to shrill defiance. “I left the house and I spent the night at a hotel. I didn’t use my own name. I thought he might try to find me. I was going to hide it where no one would know but me. And then I was going to force him to tell me—tell me what he’s kept from me, what I must know if I’m to go on living—what I’ve got to know. And then the next day before I had decided just what I was going to do—I saw—it—in the papers.” Her voice had sunk away again into a whisper. A slight tremor seemed to shake Koenig, but it was a tremor of tension relieved.

  She went on. “I suddenly realized—what people would think. I was afraid. I tried to get hold of Mr. Fairleigh. Then I seemed to lose my head. I—thought of Saugus. I remembered what that woman had told me. You said it was silly. I guess it was. I don’t know. I can’t remember clearly. I know I got on a train but when I got to Saugus I went crazy. I thought I must get away. There was an island. I could see it from the mainland, and a man with a ferry. He brought me over. There was a storm—rain, wind. I wandered around—I don’t remember—I—that’s all—”

  The little strength she had was exhausted, drained from her. Her hand lay weak and helpless in Koenig’s. Her eyes were closed. She seemed like one dead.

  But presently she opened her eyes again, looked up at Koenig.

  “Do you—” she whispered. “Do you—believe me? Do you believe—he was already—dead—when I went in there—to him?”

  “Liebling!” In the quaint old endearment there was reassurance, passionate, tender. She smiled faintly and her fingers pressed his.

  A half hour later downstairs in the library the two men faced each other.

  “You did not tell her,” said Koenig, and his voice was hard, “you did not tell her—you believe her?”

  Spike gave no answer. His eyes faltered, fell before the accusing gaze of the other man.

  “Do you?” Koenig persisted. “Do you believe her?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  Koenig was thoughtful. Then he spoke again in the same guarded tone. “Did not the papers say that the police had searched this island?”

  Spike nodded.

  “Did you see the police officers when they were here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how—”

  “I lied to them.”

  A pause.

  “Why—why did you lie to them?”

  “Because,” Spike said quietly and this time his eyes met Koenig’s squarely, “because I’m a damn fool.” Koenig’s round face broke into a grin, and tiny wrinkles sprayed out from his eyes. In some strange fashion the barrier of distrust between them seemed suddenly to melt away.

  “Good!” he said warmly. “So am I a damn fool. We shall get along, my friend.”

  CHAPTER XIII - Enter—a Man of Honor

  PUG WAS PUZZLED.

  He knew, of course, that there comes a time in the life of every butler when he must, perforce, do a bit of pinch-hitting, be a gentleman’s gentleman as well as a butler. He knew, too, for his varied reading had once included one of the Jeeves opera of Mr. P. G. Wodehouse, that among the services expected of a gentleman’s gentleman is the “laying out” of a gentleman’s “things.” But what, he asked himself, if the gentleman has no “things?”

  He stood in the doorway of the guest room and pondered, and presently the opportunistic instincts which had once stood him in good stead in the roped square came to the rescue. He went to Spike’s room and returned with arms laden. The pajamas he arranged on the bed, arms outflung across the pillows, legs a-sprawl upon the counterpane that there might be no mistaking their function. With rare thoughtfulness he turned up a deep cuff at ankle and wrist.

  “The little wart’ll be lost in ’em at that,” he commented half aloud.

  The bathrobe he shook out and draped over a chair, and on the dresser he arrayed purloined toilet articles in a tasty symmetrical design he had once noted in a Second Avenue drug store window. Then he stood back and surveyed his handiwork and found that it was “class.”

  A few minutes later he appeared in the doorway leading to the verandah, having in the meantime made a quick professional change from gentleman’s gentleman to butler. His chin was slightly elevated and his posture had that dignity peculiar to those who get racing tips from dukes and snoot vulgar American upstarts.

  “Dinner is served, sir,” he announced in a quiet, discreet voice.

  The meal, despite the dampening effects of British dignity, was a pleasant one. The two who sat opposite each other even laughed a bit, an inevitable reaction after the strain of that scene two hours before in the upper room. Spike told Koenig of Milo Taylor and his hodge-podge shop, and related local fishing superstitions he had learned from the Saugus natives. Koenig described the peasant ritual surrounding the launching of seine boats on Lake Walchen in his native Bavaria.

  It was not until they had adjourned to the verandah for coffee and cigars that the conversation turned once more to the immediate problem of Linda Crossley.

  “I think,” said Spike, opening the subject, “she should stay here. Try and persuade her.”

  “She must stay,” Koenig agreed. “I shall command her and she will do as I say. In the first place she is too weak to be moved, and in the second place—” He broke off, unwilling to complete the sentence.

  “I know. The police…”

  They smoked for a while in silence, sprawled at ease in wicker porch chairs, and for the first time Spike had an opportunity to really study his guest. Their previous meetings—in the Crossley library, at the stamp shop, in the upstairs room—had been too fraught with emotion to permit of quiet survey.

  Koenig looked forty-five, perhaps fifty, but an exceedingly well-preserved fifty. His skin was firm and rosy, and he had, even in repose, a vigorous liveliness. There was, too, about him a sartorial elegance that somehow seemed incongruous. His clothes were obviously the product of an excellent tailor, and there was quiet taste in tie and socks and shirt. His shoes only were a discordant note. They were comfortably old, looked as if they had been made by a village cobbler, and they needed a shine. Spike noted with an inward gleam of amusement that the heels were slightly high, as if their wearer had sought thus to mitigate Nature’s shortcomings in the matter of height.

  Presently Spike took up the conversation again. “Tell me something about Crossley. Who do you think might have…”

  Koenig shook his head. “I can imagine no one…”

  “Then he was one of those lovable old gentlemen without enemies?”

  “Oh, I would not exactly say that. He had no enemies that I know of, but he was not—lovable.”

  Spike flung away a half-smoked cigar and reached for the more familiar cigarette.

  “You know, Koenig, I’m terribly in the dark, and I feel that I am—that I have a right to a little enlightenment. More than a mere right. If Linda Crossley is to stay here, I think I could hold up my end of it a bit better if I knew a little more about her—and old Crossley.”

  Koenig was thoughtful for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “you’re right. Perhaps I should tell you.”

  His cigar had gone out and Spike held out his lighter. In the glow of the tiny flame he could see that Koenig’s face was sober and troubled.

  “I have known Prentice Crossley for three years,” the stamp dealer began at last. He spoke with just enough of an accent to lend a certain charm to his voice. “I met him shortly after I came to this country the second time. I lived in America many years ago before the War. I was in business here, textile importing. After the War I remained in Germany. I made money, not a lot, but when I had enough for comfort I quit. I thought I would travel. I had always liked New York so I came back here. I
t was just about the time of the International Stamp Exhibition. I had always been interested in stamps and knew a lot about them. I even had a small collection of my own. I started it when I was just a boy in school in Munich. I collect ‘howlers.’ ”

  “ ‘Howlers?’ ”

  “Stamps with crazy mistakes in them—you know, ships with their flags blowing against the wind, and animals with their anatomy against Nature and—Well, take for instance, the St. Kitts-Nevis.”

  Koenig’s reminiscent manner left him and he warmed to his subject like a woman suddenly given an opportunity to talk about her children.

  “The 1903 St. Kitts-Nevis. It shows Columbus on his ship discovering America—with a telescope.” Koenig chuckled.

  “Well, what should he have discovered it with—a divining rod?”

  “No, no, but the trouble is that in 1492 there wasn’t such a thing as a telescope. It was not invented until several generations later. Then there is the Jamaica, two-and-a-half-penny with the Union Jack in the left border reversed, and the Belgian air mails of 1930 showing—”

  “That,” Spike interrupted firmly, “is all very interesting, but it isn’t telling me about Prentice Crossley.”

  Koenig’s eager face fell. Then he laughed. “Ah, my friend, you do not know what you have let yourself in for. Stamp collectors! Ach! Give them a chance and they’ll talk stamps until Doomsday.”

  He settled back in his chair and puffed quietly at his cigar for a few minutes.

  “Still,” he continued, “my ‘howlers’ were really responsible for my meeting with Crossley. He owned at that time a whole pane of the twenty-four-cent U. S. air mails with the airplane printed upside down in the middle of the stamp. These are among the most valuable ‘howlers’ in the world today. Of course, we would never think of actually calling them ‘howlers.’ They are much too grand. But just the same that is what they are, and I wanted to see them when I went to the stamp exhibit. I knew that Crossley had some of them, so I went to his exhibit. He was there and we got to talking. Stamps are like babies and dogs. They are an open sesame to conversation.