Lady Killer

by George Harmon Coxe

  Murdock crushed out his cigarette. “There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that what he bought was the bracelets.”

  “Not in my mind anyway.” Orcutt tapped his index finger on the file. “But the thing is those bracelets are supposed to be worth a quarter of a million. Graham wrote Arnold that what he was buying was worth two hundred thousand. That’s close enough. So why would Valliere sell so cheap?”

  “He could be hard up, couldn’t he?”

  “He could be hard up and he could also be a gambler, the gamble being that after Graham took the risk and got the stuff into this country—Valliere didn’t know how but we know Graham did get away with it—Valliere could take a chance at hijacking those bracelets, knowing if he did Graham couldn’t squawk. I’ve said that before and I say it again.”

  Orcutt closed the file and leaned back, his face thoughtful. “I talked to Wilbur Arnold again and I think he worked with Graham in two ways. We know that on the things he bought personally he demanded proper bills of sale and recorded them. He admits that there were other deals when all he did was advance Graham some cash, never knowing what the guy bought or sold and not wanting to know so long as Graham came back with the money and a neat profit. He admits there could be times when Graham didn’t turn over as much profit as he should, but since he didn’t know the deal he could not be sure. In his opinion—Arnold’s, I mean—doing business now and then with Graham on such terms was profitable to him and that’s all he asked. He had faith in Graham’s judgment and ability, and Graham kept Arnold satisfied on the payoff. The way Arnold put it, it was just as if he advanced money to any business associate he trusted who had a deal on but didn’t want to disclose the details. If Arnold trusted a man he put up the dough and it was that way with Graham. I think this bracelet deal with Graham and Valliere was one of those things.”

  “In other words,” Murdock said, “if Felton had played it straight, he would have been paid a fee.” He almost said ten thousand dollars since that was the figure Ginny Arnold had mentioned the evening before. “Graham might later have disposed of the bracelets, maybe by breaking them up, for say a hundred and fifty thousand. He would have turned over a share of that to Arnold for the use of Arnold’s twenty thousand.”

  “That’s the way I get it,” Orcutt said. “On this thing Arnold might technically be classed as an accessory because this deal was crooked, but unless you can prove each step in the transaction you can’t really say he’s done anything wrong. Frankly, I believe him. He’s out twenty thousand bucks, he knows it, and he’s already written it off. His honor and integrity have been unquestioned and I think if he ever did run across those bracelets he’d turn them in.”

  Murdock said he agreed with the theory. He said it looked as if Orcutt’s idea was right.

  “What idea?”

  “About Valliere following Graham over to hijack the bracelets. It looks as if Graham had them and he’s dead. You didn’t find them in that flat he was using. I haven’t got them and neither has Lee Hammond.”

  “Hammond? Where does he come in?”

  Murdock realized that Orcutt did not know about Hammond’s visit the night before so he explained what happened and why Hammond had come.

  Orcutt rose and stood by the window until Murdock finished. Then he said: “The guy is punchy. I don’t know where the leak was that told him that Graham was dead and that you found him. You say the guy you saw in the alley was a big man?”

  “Tall anyway. At least that’s how it looked to me.”

  “One thing: Hammond didn’t get the bracelets.” Orcutt sat down and leaned forward, thinking, his eyes on Murdock. “There’s only one way I can figure Hammond as the killer. That would be assuming that he had a fight with Graham, maybe over the bracelets, and got scared off.” He shook his head. “And that’s not much of an idea either. Hammond’s too dumb. He might beat a guy to death but he wouldn’t think of plugging him in the temple and trying to make out it was suicide. So”—he leaned back again and tipped one hand—“if the guy was tall it sort of has to be Valliere.… Thanks for coming down.”

  Murdock stood up and stretched. He put away the notes he had made and buttoned his coat. He thought about Carlin and Ray Wylie but could see no point in going over their troubles with Orcutt. The special agent was interested in bracelets and there was nothing to indicate that Carlin knew anything about them.

  “Mind if I use your phone?” he asked as something else occurred to him. When Orcutt nodded he asked for an outside line and dialed police headquarters. Presently Lieutenant Bacon answered.

  “Hello,” Murdock said. “Have you found Valliere yet?” He heard Orcutt grunt something uncomplimentary behind him and Bacon’s no was sour and out of sorts. “What about Louis Tremaine?”

  “What about him?”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “He showed up last night. The D.A.’s got him down to his place now.”

  “Which D.A.?”

  “It’s still Quigley’s case.”

  Murdock thanked him and glanced at his watch. He said so long to Orcutt and went down the elevator and out to his car. As he drove off he considered talking to Quigley personally and then decided a telephone call might be better so he went back to the Courier-Herald. Here he went to the studio, chased out Walt Tracy, who was reading a magazine, and put in his call.

  “Is Louis Tremaine still with you?” he asked when Quigley answered. “Well, how long do you figure on holding him?”

  “We don’t know. Why?”

  Murdock played dumb. “He was missing the last I heard but when I called Bacon just now he said Tremaine was with you. Can he be figured for this thing?”

  “We don’t know. We’re just having a little talk. He skipped from his hotel and then he came back late last night. Says he realized he made a mistake and thought it would look suspicious.”

  “So?”

  “So he hasn’t got an alibi for the time Graham was killed. Says he was walking around town and went to a movie. He hasn’t got an alibi for the time Harry Felton was killed. Other than that we haven’t got much but we’re checking things.”

  He had other things to say but they held small interest for Murdock. When he hung up he remembered the flaw in Tremaine’s plan to return to his hotel and there it was: he had no alibi he could talk about. Because of some misguided and badly conceived idea he had gone to stay at Elsie Russell’s place and he had, apparently, an excellent and foolproof alibi. The trouble was that he finally realized the danger to her in terms of unfavorable publicity and now he could not tell where he was without hurting the girl he loved. The trouble with all this was that the longer Tremaine remained secretive and evasive about his movements, the more suspicious the district attorney’s office became.

  “It’s a mess,” Murdock said, half to himself, and as the words came to him it seemed somehow that he was responsible for a lot of that mess.

  So far, nearly everything he tried to do had turned out wrong; everyone he questioned had become involved in the case. The minute he talked to anyone trouble started, and as for any tangible results there were none worth mentioning.

  To keep from brooding he went upstairs to see if T. A. Wyman was in. Wyman was, his customary cigar tucked firmly in one corner of his mouth, his heels cocked on the edge of the desk. He told Murdock to sit down but once seated the photographer wasn’t sure why he had come or what he wanted to say.

  “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into it,” he said.

  “Into what?”

  “Into fooling around with this Felton thing. All I’ve done is get people into trouble, and spend the Courier’s money on trans-Atlantic calls, and I don’t know anything more about it now than I did when I started.”

  “Who’s kicking?” Wyman demanded. “We got exclusive pictures last night, didn’t we? And a jump on the Graham story? … Quit brooding,” he said. “Get out and circulate. Grab yourself a couple of drinks tonight and date up some blonde—if you can fin
d one. Just keep playing with Bacon and Orcutt. You’ll get a break before you finish; you always have.”

  It was a line Murdock had heard before but this time when he left Wyman’s office there was no lift to the instructions. He might have brooded some more if a couple of newsworthy incidents had not happened to occupy his mind. A four-alarm fire in Everett was the first of these; the second, a tip that a pair of hold-up artists the police had been hunting had been found holed up in a farmhouse down Quincy way, caught him alone in the office, and after he had notified the desk he started out on his own.

  As it happened the tip was a good one and Murdock arrived while the siege was still on. There was a lot of desultory gun fire which took a long time, and certain tactical maneuvers by the State Police with tear-gas and sub-machine guns. In the end the thugs came out, wounded but not critically so, and Murdock went along with the arresting officers until he was sure nothing more could be gained in the way of pictures.

  It was dinner time before he got back to the Courier, and he developed his own negatives before turning them over to Walt Tracy for printing. He went out to eat then and when he came back he took the waiting prints up to the city room to discuss them with the man on the desk. By that time things were quiet again, so Murdock went up to the library, telling the librarian that he wanted to sit and think awhile where he could be alone and not be interrupted.

  The librarian went back to his desk and Murdock sat down in one corner of the room and began to doodle on a sheet of paper. He wasted little time on brooding now. He accepted the fact that he had made a lot of trouble for Elsie and Tremaine, for Bert Carlin and Ray Wylie. He put all four of them out of his mind and began to think about murder.

  He realized presently that in the past few days he had done very little of this sort of thinking. He had been chasing around talking to people and getting nowhere. He had sat in on investigations and had very nearly witnessed two killings, but he had actually done very little in the way of lining up his facts and suspicions—of which he had practically none; neither had he made any conscious effort to weave them together into some recognizable pattern.

  He wrote down the names of those involved as he doodled, and let his mind go back to the time he first went aboard the Kemnora. He made a little outline of his own, using a word here and a phrase there to give the outline some chronological significance. He took each detail as he remembered it, going over the known facts of the first murder and the second, and when he recalled something hitherto forgotten he would insert it in the proper place.

  For the next hour or so he was completely absorbed in what he was doing. He was oblivious of his surroundings and the movements of the librarian who became busy with some requests from certain members of the staff. At some time—he could not remember when—he slipped off his coat and loosened his tie, his lean face somber, his eyes intent. He smoked cigarettes absently, his mind still on the main objective, and out of all this there finally came to him an idea, nebulous at first but taking shape as he persisted in nursing it along, that perhaps he had overlooked certain things that might be important and that he had also jumped to a conclusion in the murder of Sidney Graham that was not entirely warranted.

  Because he had come to a dead end on this assumption, he now pursued this new alternative that formed the basis of a theory heretofore neglected. At the moment it was not so much that he believed the theory; what intrigued him was that such a theory could exist in the light of what he knew. Now, his interest mounting swiftly, he was able to consider other alternatives in line with the first and by the process of elimination he came to a tentative conclusion that startled him a little. He might have continued along those lines if the librarian had not tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Telephone.”

  Murdock glanced up, unaware that it had rung.

  “It’s the operator,” the librarian said. “You can take it right here.”

  Murdock reached for the telephone on the table behind him and the operator said she’d been looking all over for him. “I have a message that came in about fifteen minutes ago. I don’t know what it means, but maybe you do.”

  “Who’s it from?”

  “She wouldn’t say. She sounded in a hurry and when I couldn’t locate you she said to please give you a message and that it was important. She said: Quote—please tell Mr. Murdock that Ginny says Valliere is here—unquote.”

  Murdock mouthed the words silently while he squinted sightlessly at the stacks beyond the table. A strange uncertainty that was both bewildered and urgent began to work on him and he sat motionless until the operator spoke again.

  “Did you get that?”

  “Yes,” Murdock said. “I got it.”

  He hung up then and walked quickly from the room. He did not yet have any plan in mind and moved absently to the stairs and back to the studio. He put on his hat and coat and checked his equipment case, still moving automatically and not knowing quite what he was going to do.

  He left the room without a word to the night man, rode the elevator to the main floor along with a couple of overalled stereotypers, and walked halfway to the revolving door before he came to any definite decision. Then he wheeled and went into the lighted classified department and the telephone booth in the corner.

  He still did not understand the reason for the message; he found it difficult to believe that one had been given to him at all. Yet for all of this he knew he had to go to the Arnold home and speak to Ginny. He had to be sure that the message was authentic, and in this he needed help. That he hesitated at all was due to the fact that Ginny had not called him personally. He did not know why; all he knew was that he needed someone in authority with him.

  “Lieutenant Bacon speaking,” a voice came to him presently.

  “Meet me in front of the Arnold home,” Murdock said.

  “Hunh?” said Bacon. “When?”

  “Now. Maybe you’d better bring Keogh—and phone Orcutt.”

  “Wait a minute.” Bacon’s tone grew irritable; Murdock could practically see him scowling over the telephone. “What is this? You got something? If so, spill it.”

  “I don’t know if I have anything or not,” Murdock said. “I got a tip I’m not even sure I believe but I’m going to check on it. If you want to come I’ll see you there; if not, forget it.”

  He hung up before Bacon could argue and walked out to the alley and his car.

  20

  LIEUTENANT BACON’S mood had deteriorated somewhat when Kent Murdock walked up to the police car which had parked in a No Parking area outside the Arnold home. He had left his own coupe around the corner in a side street, but he carried a camera with the flash unit attached, and in his pocket were a couple of extra bulbs and a spare filmholder.

  “What the hell is this all about?” Bacon demanded.

  Murdock leaned in the car window trying to get his thoughts in order as he watched the swift-moving traffic that slid by in the night. He glanced at Sergeant Keogh’s blocky figure. He looked at Bacon. Finally he told them both about the message and how it had come to him.

  “Valliere?”

  Bacon was trying hard to get his irritation in hand. The policeman in him had been outraged by Murdock’s secretive experiment but he kept his voice controlled after a fashion.

  “Then why,” he demanded impatiently, “didn’t you say so over the phone? Jeeze! If the guy is in here I want to stake out the place and—”

  “Take it easy,” Murdock said. “You can’t crash a house like Arnold’s without something definite. You have no warrant. We’re not even sure Valliere is there.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Will you wait?” Murdock snapped. “And listen a second? Mrs. Arnold called me. I’m sort of a friend. I can go up there and ring the bell and probably get in. You and the sergeant wait and see what happens. If I don’t come out in fifteen or twenty minutes you’ll know it’s time to move in.”

  “Nothing doing.” Bacon shook his head. “When you go
in I go with you and the sergeant can cover the outside until Orcutt gets here. If Valliere is in there that’s where I want to be. If he’s not, if the tip was a phony, I’ll still have some questions to ask. Come on … and leave that damn camera here in the car, will you?”

  With that he opened the door and stepped out, leaving Murdock to follow. Murdock did so. Like an orderly: two paces to the rear and well to the left. Along the walk and up the stone steps to the heavy door and the fanlight above it which shone brightly from some illumination beyond. Bacon pressed the door button hard, turning slightly as Murdock joined him.

  “Get up here,” he said. “Front for me.”

  He opened his coat and shifted his service revolver from its holster to his pocket. He started to push the button again and then the bolt clicked and the door started to open.

  Ginny Arnold wore a trailing green hostess gown. Her small face showed nothing in the shadows but the painted outline of her mouth and the luminous spacing of two wide-open eyes.

  “Ohh—” she said, catching her breath. “Kent.”

  Murdock moved up as he took off his hat, not exactly crowding her but forcing her to step back.

  “Hello, Ginny.… This is Lieutenant Bacon. He was here the other day.”

  “Yes,” Ginny said. “Yes.”

  They were in the vestibule then, a marble-floored affair, narrowed by a projection from the left wall, apparently a coat closet of some sort since there was a door here which stood ajar. Ginny backed up some more and then they were in the hall proper, with doors on the right and left, and at the end beyond the curving staircase, the lighted library where they had talked to Wilbur Arnold the other morning.