Lady Killer

by George Harmon Coxe

  The sound of Tim Orcutt’s voice brought Murdock’s thoughts back to the moment and he heard the special agent say: “I can understand how you knew what to buy from Graham.”

  “Exactly,” Arnold said. “And when Graham understood that I knew values, he came to me when he needed money. I bought what I liked, always insisting that he assure me in writing that the article had come to him through legitimate channels, and occasionally advancing him money on other things. He never cheated me yet and when I got this letter from France I sent him a draft. If Graham said he could get two hundred thousand dollars for a piece of jewelry I was ready to accept his judgment; I still am. He brought other things in from abroad, always paying duty so far as I know, but all that was his problem, not mine.”

  “You didn’t know what he was bringing in?” Orcutt asked.

  Arnold shook his head. “When Sidney telephoned last evening he said the stuff”—his own word—“was in the country but he could not show it to me yet. He said he would see me this morning.”

  Orcutt cleared his throat and said: “Well, this time I’m afraid you’re out of luck, Mr. Arnold.”

  Arnold’s brows arched. “How so? If it is only a matter of duty perhaps I could—”

  Orcutt interrupted to say that he guessed he had not made himself clear. “What Graham bought abroad was a pair of bracelets—if my hunch is right. They were stolen, Mr. Arnold,” he said, and went on to describe them and explain the history of the pieces. When he finished, Arnold sighed softly, his smile crooked.

  “In that case,” he said, “I seem to be out twenty thousand dollars, no matter what happens.”

  “I’m afraid so, sir,” Orcutt said.

  Arnold pushed away from his desk and stood up. “Well, I suppose there always has to be a first time. Sidney let me down rather badly in this matter but I can assure you that I would rather lose the money outright and have all this come out now than to be innocently involved later. I appreciate your taking me into your confidence. If there is anything I can do—”

  He broke off, bowed again with his old-world courtliness, and he must have pressed a button Murdock did not see, for suddenly the houseman was there to show them to the door.

  9

  T. A. WYMAN, the managing editor of the Courier-Herald, had an office partitioned off in one corner of the city room, and when Kent Murdock came back from lunch he went directly to this office and knocked. A muffled voice bade him enter, and when he opened the door he saw that Wyman was talking on the telephone, his feet on the desk and a mangled, half-smoked cigar between his fingers. Without interrupting his conversation Wyman jerked his head for Murdock to come in, jerked it again to indicate the leather chair near one end of the desk.

  Murdock sat down and stretched out his legs. He listened to a little of the one-sided conversation. Finally Wyman said: “All right, all right. Handle it any way you want to but get him off my neck.” He hung up, swiveled to face Murdock. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Harry Felton.”

  “Ahh.” Wyman’s little eyes took on new lights. “It’s about time you told me the story on that.”

  “I would have told you last night if I could have found you.”

  “Tell me now … Wait a minute.” He lifted the telephone and told the operator to hold up all calls for fifteen minutes. He hung up, struck a match and puffed the cigar alive. “Okay,” he said. “Now.”

  It took Murdock about five minutes to tell the story he had in mind and he told it directly, giving all the salient points in a somber monotone that emphasized nothing and excluded very little. When he finished Wyman’s gaze was as somber as his own.

  “It’s bad, huh?” the managing editor said. “No doubt that Felton planted the stuff you brought in, is there?”

  “Not in my mind.”

  “Then it doesn’t look like a story we can sit on, does it?”

  Murdock shrugged. “You don’t ask your photographers what you can print and what you can’t.”

  “Don’t get touchy. I was just thinking out loud. Here’s what I mean. The police have got Graham. Maybe he killed Felton and maybe he didn’t, but it looks like he’s got those bracelets. Eventually there’s going to be a trial of some sort and Felton’s part in the scheme is bound to come out. When it does every paper is going to be in on it.” He looked at Murdock with one half-closed eye. “What’re your plans?”

  “I haven’t got any. Felton used my equipment case to get those bracelets ashore. I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. From here on it’s strictly none of my business.”

  Wyman watched Murdock covertly and chewed on his cigar. He was a keen judge of men, Wyman. He knew Murdock as well as anyone on the staff, but he did not pretend to understand photographers. To him they remained a strange and clannish breed who worked in devious ways and seemed somehow to take a secret delight in being close-mouthed about the methods used in obtaining difficult pictures.

  In Murdock he knew he had the best picture-chief in town. Part of his success came from the people he knew: headwaiters, doormen, debutantes, cops; taxi drivers, grifters, newsboys and gamblers. Another part was traceable to his manners and personal appearance. He was never tough unless he had to be. He could talk the language of many kinds of people. Although he was always neatly groomed and well tailored, there was nothing of the dude about him, and this inherent appreciation of good taste, plus his ability to inspire confidence, enabled him to adapt himself to the occasion whether it meant donning a dinner jacket to photograph a society function, or taking his chances with camera and case while he got pictures of a picket-line riot.

  There was another thing that Murdock had which Wyman considered and that was his loyalty to his job and to the paper. He took pride in his profession, not alone from a press photographer’s point of view but from the broad field of the newspaper as a whole. It was this thought that now shaped Wyman’s approach to his problem.

  “Why don’t you stick with it awhile longer,” he said presently.

  “Why?”

  “Well”—Wyman waved the cigar idly—“in the first place you’re already on the inside. Nobody else on the staff can hope to get any favors. Bacon’s a friend of yours; so is Tim Orcutt. You know everyone who is mixed up in the case.”

  Murdock had been staring morosely at the wing-tips of his oxfords. Now he brought his glance up. Regarding Wyman wryly for a moment he said:

  “All I have to do is go out and solve it, huh?”

  “Nothing of the kind,” Wyman said. “Nobody expects you to solve anything. But you’re in a spot to play along with Bacon and Orcutt. You’ve helped out on things like that in the past and if you stay with it you might be on hand when they crack the case.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “In that case”—a slight note of contempt crept into Wyman’s voice; just enough to be noticeable, and put there deliberately—“you are slipping, brother. You’re supposed to be the best in town; at least you get the most dough. For that you run the picture department here and sometimes you’re supposed to come up with something good on your own.”

  Murdock started to interrupt but Wyman cut him off. “What I’m trying to say is that if you stick close to this, and maybe do a little work on it yourself, and if you’re lucky enough to be on hand when they wrap the case up, why then you’ll have an exclusive story. You’ll be there first, won’t you? The Courier can print a story with pictures that nobody else will have until we’re through with it. Felton worked here, didn’t he? A heel in some ways, maybe, but one of the boys. And I say it’s better if we tell his part in this business than to have the News or the Journal or one of the other sheets break the story.”

  He waved his cigar again and turned back to his desk. “I’m not going to offer you any bonus or anything like that. You’ll get one, sure, if you produce, but if you don’t want to find out the whole truth about Harry Felton so we can know what to print and print it first—if you don’t feel th
at way about it why then I’m just wasting my breath.”

  He pretended to be busy with some papers on his desk and now a smile began to work in the corners of Murdock’s mouth. There had been other times in the past when Wyman had talked him into doing something he did not want to do, but never before had he realized that this was part of an act put on by a shrewd and experienced hand who varied his pressure and his method of attack according to the material available.

  This time Wyman was playing on his, Murdock’s loyalty, trying to get him a little sore. You’re good, he thought. You’re very good. And in the back of his head he knew that in some ways Wyman was right. The best way of covering up for Harry Felton was to stay as close as he could to the case, helping out the best he could and hoping for a favorable break. It did not occur to him that his own curiosity as a newspaperman, and his concern for some of those involved, was motivating him. He thought now only of Wyman as he pulled himself out of the chair and straightened up.

  He did not let Wyman see his smile. He played it straight. He said: “I guess you’re right. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.” He sighed for Wyman’s benefit. “All right,” he said moving to the door and not looking back. “I’ll stick with it awhile longer—if you say so.”

  He closed the door quietly and started across the city room. Off to the left he saw someone stand up and move his way, but he did not glance round until he was intercepted at the gate by a young reporter named Phil Doane.

  In his early days as a cub reporter Doane had been a brash, ebullient youth, naïvely in love with his job and laboring under the impression that his work would be patterned along the lines laid out in The Front Page. Perhaps because Murdock was the only one around who remotely resembled any character in the play Doane developed a severe case of hero-worship in his first months with the Courier-Herald. Now, after a few years experience, he had become disillusioned in many unimportant ways but he still retained much of his ebullience—an incredible performance to those who worked with him—and he still lived in hope that the good old days were just around the corner.

  He pestered Murdock regularly in his good-natured way because, he said, he had a theory that he would get more and better stories by just following Murdock around than he would by waiting for the desk to hand out Garden Club assignments. A plump, blondish youth, generally tousled and untidy, he linked his arm in Murdock’s and fell into step.

  “Where you going?” he demanded.

  “Nowhere,” Murdock said, not looking around.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Murdock crowded him at the corner of the stairs so that Doane had to let go of his arm, but when he swung into the studio anteroom, the reporter was right at his heels, talking now of what had happened to Harry Felton and wanting to know how much Murdock knew.

  Murdock sat down and checked over the assignment sheet. When he saw that everything was under control he tried to think, and in this he was only partly successful. For although he knew what he wanted to do next, Doane’s chatter made it hard to concentrate. Finally he faced the youth and spoke with controlled exasperation.

  “Look,” he said. “I have to go out on a call. After that I’ve got a date at headquarters at a questioning.”

  “On the Felton thing? … Then I’m going with you.”

  “It won’t do any good. Sergeant Keogh will probably be there and you know how he feels about you.”

  Doane had made the mistake of spelling Keogh’s name wrong in a story he once wrote and the tough-talking sergeant had never quite forgiven him. Now Doane made a face and shrugged.

  “Keogh,” he said with easy contempt. “I can handle him.”

  “Then go down and wait in my car, will you? Go anywhere. So long as it’s out. I have to make some phone calls.”

  When Doane withdrew Murdock called the Rendezvous. A glance at his watch told him the call would probably be fruitless and in this he was right since there was no answer. He then phoned upstairs, got the man who covered nightclubs and restaurants on the line, and asked him to do some checking. Five minutes later he had what he wanted, and when he wrote down the address he went downstairs and found Doane waiting impatiently in his coupe.

  They drove across town and past Massachusetts Avenue to a beige-brick apartment just off Hemingway Street, a four-storied building with a tailor’s sign in one ground-floor window and a No Vacancy card in the other. Doane reached for the door handle and Murdock grabbed for his hand.

  “I told you all you were going to get was a ride,” he said. “You can wait until I can come back and I’ll give you another ride, or you can get out and start thumbing.”

  He slid out from behind the wheel, crossed the sidewalk and went up the steps to an entryway that needed a coat of plaster and some paint. There were some mail boxes on one wall but most of the cards were undecipherable so he went on into the gloomy hall and started up the stairs. There were, he found, two apartments to the floor and the one he sought was on the top right hand side.

  There was no buzzer so he knocked, hearing almost at once the sound of movement in the room. Then the door opened about a foot and stopped while a pair of brown eyes inspected him.

  “Yes?” said a voice that was pleasant but held no hint of recognition.

  “Hello, Miss Wylie. I’m Kent Murdock. I met you last night—”

  “Oh, yes. I didn’t recognize you at first.” She opened the door a little wider and he could see the uncertainty in her eyes. For another moment or two she stood there, hesitant and embarrassed, as though groping for words that would not come.

  “Bert told me about you,” Murdock said. “Could I talk to you a few minutes?”

  A flush touched her cheeks then and she opened the door wide. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not usually this impolite. Come in.”

  He saw then that she was dressed in blue slacks and ballet slippers, with a white blouse that had a black ribbon worked into the rounded neckline. He waited for her to close the door, noticing now the plainness of the living room and the worn furniture. There was a studio couch with a slip cover, a couple of upholstered chairs, some lamps and tables, all of it suggesting that the apartment had been rented furnished.

  She offered him a cigarette from a wooden box, and then couldn’t find any matches. Her cheeks were still flushed but other than this she wore no makeup and her hair was caught in the back in a net, as though she had recently been working on it and was preserving its wave. Finally she settled in one of the chairs, crossing one leg under her. He laid aside his hat, smiled at her.

  “Bert tells me you were in the U.S.O.”

  She brightened a little at this opening and nodded her head. “Yes, I was. For two years.”

  “Were you in Italy by any chance?”

  “No. Were you?”

  “For awhile.”

  “I was in the Pacific.”

  “As a singer?”

  “Mostly. I played piano some when there was a piano. A lot of the smaller places didn’t have any but we had a guitar player with us. There were six in our troupe.”

  “Sounds rugged.”

  “It wasn’t bad.”

  She smiled then and it gave an animation to her face that he had not seen before. The tired lines around her eyes went away and the slackness around her chin and mouth seemed unimportant. This way, her nice teeth showing, she was attractive, and he had noticed before she sat down that her figure was well modeled, and, if not exactly slender, pleasantly rounded.

  He had an idea she was younger than she looked and he wondered why it was that so often the girls in the entertainment world, those at least who had to work for what they got, were inclined to look older than they were. With some he knew it was simply a matter of late hours, too many parties, and too often too much liquor. With others he thought it might be a weariness that came with the constant effort to please, to find work; always acting a certain part yet never being able to reach the point where one could relax and take things easy.… H
e saw that she was watching him and realized he must have been staring.

  “Where are you from originally?”

  “Buffalo.”

  “And you came here from New York?”

  “To the Cape first and then here after Labor Day.”

  “Bert told me how you came to the Rendezvous,” he said. “You’ve been there about a month? And how long had you known Harry Felton?”

  He was looking right at her, giving her no warning, and he saw fear growing in her eyes where the smile had been. They slid away from him, the blankness coming in them now as the lips pulled into a straight, firm line.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with an air of simulated detachment. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Harry Felton,” Murdock said. “Bert said he’d been coming to the Rendezvous regularly. I don’t think Bert knows that you also went to see Harry Felton.”

  She caught her breath at this and a paleness grew about her mouth. “I—I didn’t,” she protested. “It’s not true.”

  “Do you know what Felton did to Bert and his first wife?”

  “No.”

  She spoke too quickly. She put her chin up and tried to meet Murdock’s gaze but presently she faltered.

  “Not until the other day,” she whispered.

  “You know Harry was killed last night?”

  “I saw it in the paper.”

  “You were there.”

  “No! No, I tell you! Not then. Not—” She caught herself too late. She put her fist to her mouth to stifle a sob and her eyes began to fill. Finally she put her head down and let the sobs come.

  Murdock stood up and walked about the room, his face moist with perspiration. At the moment he felt no satisfaction at what he had done; he felt like a heel, and he had led her on, unsuspecting, because it seemed the most effective way. Now he came back to his chair and took out the pale-blue handkerchief he had found under the table in Harry Felton’s room—the one thing he had held out from the police.