Lady Killer

by George Harmon Coxe

  He hesitated, his attention centered once again across the room. “What I mean is this: Ginny says she wanted ten thousand dollars. Let’s carry it a step further since we’re still in the realm of speculation. Let’s say she wanted the whole thing—the two hundred thousand, or whatever those bracelets would bring—because with that behind her, she could leave you.”

  “No,” Arnold said, his voice thick.

  “Felton may have done some polite blackmailing here and there but he was never a crook. He agreed to slip those bracelets into my equipment case because Ginny asked him to. We know that he intended to double-cross Graham and run out with those bracelets—and he might have made it if certain circumstances hadn’t delayed him. He knew he had only Graham to fear, since Graham couldn’t complain to the police, but still this was something new for Felton. This was big and I doubt if he would have had the nerve to try it if someone wasn’t in with him to encourage him and promise him certain rewards.”

  Murdock stood up, mouth grim and enigmatic narrowness in his dark eyes. He started slowly across the room, moving easily while the turbulence grew in his mind.

  “You bought Felton off some months back for ten thousand dollars, Mr. Arnold,” he said. “You knew he was seeing your wife regularly, and you were afraid, and you saw a way out. Suppose your idea of paying Felton didn’t work? What happens if Ginny and Felton only let you think it worked? What if they were still in love, even though you sent her off to Europe, and Felton’s attempt to run off with the bracelets was motivated by the thought that with the money he got for them he and your wife could be together? … One thing I’m sure of, Mr. Arnold,” he said. “Ginny must have really hated you to have tipped me off about Valliere. She didn’t care about him. She wanted to hurt you and that was the only way she could reach you.”

  He stopped near the door. “Whoever slugged me the other night didn’t do it with his fist,” he said. “Something bright and shiny swung out of the darkness, and when I learned that Tremaine carried a brass knuckle I thought he might be the one. It did not tie up the way I thought it should but I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind until I saw that knuckle. It was squared and angled on top. That meant the edges were sharp enough to slash and cut. Yet there wasn’t any blood on my head—just a lump.”

  He stooped slightly towards the object which had for so long held his attention, wondering how he could have overlooked so obvious a clue. When he straightened he held Arnold’s gold-headed cane in his hand. He weighed it idly, inspecting the rounded end. Finally he glanced up.

  “This would be more like it, Mr. Arnold,” he said. “A thing like this might cause a fracture without breaking much skin. A thing like this would account for the bump on Graham’s head, wouldn’t it? And you wouldn’t even have to move very close to him to swing it either. Because you know how to use it. You demonstrated that tonight when you knocked the gun from Valliere’s hand.”

  Then, because he had to be sure, he twisted the head, felt the accompanying click. When he pulled, still holding the body of the cane, the top came off, bringing with it a thin steel blade.

  For a long moment then the room was still and an icy feather brushed along Murdock’s spine. He found himself holding his breath, and as he let it out someone else sighed heavily. He heard Ginny cry out but he did not look at her, nor was he sure just what she said.

  He had all he could do in those first seconds to quiet his seething emotions and bring some order to his thoughts. Yet even as he put the cane down, and saw the coat and hat and gloves, the moment of incredulity passed and he realized that for this particular man the weapon was in character.

  So long as there were sword canes left, men like Arnold with their old-world airs and manners would own them. That Arnold should actually carry one seemed somehow to match the archaic personality of the man himself.

  Murdock squared his shoulders and brought his thoughts back to the present. He glanced round, a little surprised to find Arnold still behind the desk, the grayness in his thin face now but his voice controlled as he said:

  “Oh, come now. You don’t seriously think that a man with a heart condition like mine would attempt to murder anyone with violence? I’m living on what my doctor calls borrowed time.”

  “I don’t say you went there to kill Felton,” Murdock said. “But you were there. And he was in a black mood after that beating he’d taken from Graham and Hammond—”

  He did not finish the thought. A voice he had never heard cut across his words, its cadence high-pitched and shrill with despair.

  “You killed him! You did it!”

  Ginny was on her feet now, staring at her husband, her body rigid. For another moment she stood there, her eyes wide with horror as the enormity of her discovery dawned on her; then she seemed to crumple.

  “Oh, how could you?” Her shoulders shook and she buried her face in her hands, her voice a tortured moan. “How could you?”

  Murdock waited, knowing her grief was genuine. He glanced at Arnold, who sat unmoving in his chair, and then reaction struck at Ginny and she dropped her hands. In this same instant her mouth stopped quivering and a new hardness warped it. As suddenly as the shock of her grief had come to her it went away, and now her face contorted and her dark eyes blazed.

  She screamed, then screamed again. Words poured from her that had never been heard in that house, vile words some of them, incoherent, wild-sounding words that accused and denounced. For hysteria was working on her now and she poured forth her hate and vindictiveness upon her husband with every means at her command.

  Murdock spoke sharply, but it did no good. He strode swiftly to her and put his hands on her arms, trying to quiet her. Only when he shook her would she stop her tirade. She caught her breath in a great sob and he said:

  “Stop it! Listen to me!”

  He paused as her eyes focused on his own, and he did not ask if she had loved Harry Felton because now he was sure.

  “You were going to leave your husband, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell him so? … When?”

  “The day we came here from the pier.”

  Murdock let go of her and stepped back, things clicking into place in his brain, realizing that her greatest mistake had been in telling Arnold her intentions. If she had not been so sure of herself and of Felton’s ability to make off with the bracelets—if she had kept her secret a little longer—Felton might still be alive. She had known that he, Murdock, had come safely ashore with the bracelets which were to give her and her lover a fresh start, and she had put her confidence in Felton, believing that he would get away with the jewelry before Graham caught up with him.

  And he might have made it, Murdock thought, if I had gone straight back to the office instead of stopping to eat. Then, his thoughts tumbling on, he spoke again to the girl.

  “Your husband took a walk tonight. Does he take one every night?”

  “Yes,” she said, though her stare was vacant.

  “When did he go out last night?”

  “Just before I came to see you.”

  “Was he here when you got back?”

  “He came about ten minutes later.”

  “Valliere. Did he go out too? … When?”

  “Before Wilbur did.”

  Murdock’s nerves were more ragged than he thought. Her leaden tones and simple answers, the knowledge that had she spoken in time there might not have been a second murder, angered him. He started to swear and choked back the words in time.

  “Then why in the devil didn’t you tell me about Valliere last night?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” she said, so bewilderedly that he knew it must be the truth. “I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t made up my mind.”

  He got himself in hand again and turned back to Arnold. “How many telephones in the house?”

  The older man’s face was a shiny mask with obsidian eyes. “Four,” he said, hardly moving his lips.

  “On
the same line? … Yes, they would be,” Murdock said. “I wondered how Valliere knew where Graham was hiding. Graham phoned you, didn’t he? And Valliere overheard enough of that talk to know you were going to meet him. He waited outside and followed you there.”

  He turned towards the edge of the desk and took a breath. “Well,” he said, “I guess it’s about time we got the police in and told them how things really happened.”

  He reached for the telephone and there was no other movement that he could see. All he heard was a voice that said: “One moment, please. I’m sorry but I disagree.”

  Arnold’s tone was quiet but there was in its inflection a quality that made Murdock stop his hand in mid-air. He stiffened and glanced round. It was then that he saw the revolver that Arnold pointed at him from behind the desk, and as he straightened slowly, seeing now the open drawer, he wondered how long the man had been holding it.

  “Oh,” he said, it being the only thing he could think of.

  “I think we might discuss this a little further.”

  Murdock did not like the look in Arnold’s face. He did not like the way the gun angled upwards at his chest. Yet somehow he felt no real sense of fear or surprise. There was even room in his mind for the oblique thought which suggested that for a man like Arnold, who carried a sword and lived in this atmosphere of by-gone years, the only surprising thing was that he was pointing a modern gun instead of a derringer.

  22

  THE silence spread tautly across the room in those fleeting seconds, and when Murdock became aware of it he backed to the chair he had been using and sat down. He kept his gaze on Arnold. He took time to evaluate the situation while an odd anger rose in him.

  In the beginning the subject of this anger was Lieutenant Bacon and all his men. Then, as his mind galloped on, his common sense told him that Bacon was in no way at fault. Bacon had played his hand the way a smart cop should—by staying close to the obvious suspect until he found out what the score was. Bacon would be back, once Valliere talked, but that could mean within the hour, or not for a day and a half.

  Admitting all this as his thoughts settled down, Murdock presently discovered that his resentment was directed at himself. Instead of walking out when he could he had asked his questions, had his say and discovered that his hunch was the right one. He had, in short, stuck his neck out and it was nobody’s fault but his own. He did not know what came next, and while he tried to think of a way out for himself he did his best to appear unconcerned. By that time the germ of an idea, nebulous though it was, started to take shape in the recesses of his brain, and because he needed time to work it out, he began to talk.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s discuss it. Do you want to talk, or shall I?”

  “If you don’t mind,” Arnold said, “I’d like to hear the rest of it. Particularly why you should think I killed Graham.”

  “That one,” said Murdock, “is easy. Graham got the bracelets from Felton and went back to his car. For some reason—probably because he saw you coming up the street—he remained parked where he could watch the doorway. He was in the car when I went into Felton’s, and I say he saw you come out. Later when he surrendered to the police and learned the details of that murder, he knew that you were the lad who did the killing.… Do you want me to guess a little?”

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s start with Graham hiding out. It’s a cinch he wasn’t spreading the word. Lee Hammond might have known where he was but I doubt if anyone else did—until he phoned you. You were his partner. And he had news for you. What did he do, offer you a trade? His temporary silence for your share of the bracelets?” Murdock hesitated, his voice still casual. “It doesn’t matter because you knew that the minute Graham was picked up and had a murder rap slapped against him he’d have to tell the truth about you to protect himself.”

  He said: “What you didn’t know was that Valliere must have overheard part of that conversation. Valliere wanted to know where Graham was, and he waited outside the house for you to lead him to the right place. You talked it over with Graham, knowing you’d have to kill him. You picked your time and swung on him with that cane so you could get his gun and fake that suicide …I’m still guessing,” he added. “How does it sound?”

  Arnold gestured with the gun. “Surprisingly close.”

  “You left the bracelets on purpose, didn’t you?” Murdock said. “You had some idea that if Graham were found with those beside him the police might go for the suicide theory, figuring that Graham knew he was trapped, was guilty of the murder of Felton—and the police did think that at the time—and that he took the easy way out.”

  Murdock’s laugh was short, abrupt, and unpleasant. “The trouble was, Valliere waited until you came out. When he went in to see what the score was, the bracelets were waiting for him and he took them. He got out the back way before I had a look at him, and he was found tonight with those bracelets on him, still trying to get away with them. Until he can talk the police have to think he’s the killer.”

  He grunted softly, shaking his head in resignation. “Not until just before Ginny phoned me did I get around to thinking that there might be another motive for murder, that perhaps the bracelets had very little to do with it, actually. It really started with Felton and Ginny, didn’t it? I guess that ten thousand you used to buy him off sort of boomeranged.”

  “You might call it that.” Arnold glanced at his wife and then away. “It seems that Felton showed her the check after I gave it to him and they decided to have the money for another day, the difficulty being that the amount was insufficient to make her leave me.”

  They were watching each other now, speaking quietly, talking about the woman but ignoring her presence.

  “I was right about her hating you,” Murdock said.

  Arnold sighed gently. “We had our troubles. Also, I had my pride. I could not prevent her from leaving me but I had no intention of financing the elopement. You see, Ginny likes nice things. She wanted Felton, but not enough to go to him empty-handed.”

  “So Sidney Graham—with the help of the twenty thousand you advanced him—gave them the chance they had been waiting for.”

  “It would seem so. I never could quite account for the attraction Felton held for her. Perhaps he held the same attraction for others since I understand there were some who called him Lady Killer. At any rate Ginny divorced one husband—that piano-playing chap—only to have Felton desert her. And then last year—” He broke off, as though the effort to analyze such things was too much for him. “But then I never did pretend to understand women. I loved her and did what I could to prove it. She had the best of everything—clothes, jewels, servants—position, a fine home. Apparently it wasn’t enough.”

  Ginny spoke for the first time in several minutes, her voice a choked, malignant sound.

  “It might have been enough,” she said, “if you’d treated me like a partner instead of a chattel.”

  Murdock stood up. He took two easy steps which brought him to the center of the room. He waited, his hands in his pockets, his body relaxed as he studied the man and the gun.

  “And that day she came back from Europe,” he said, “you found that you couldn’t hold her any longer. What, exactly, did she say?”

  “Why—I believe she said she had been waiting a long time to tell me what she thought of me. She said she loved Felton and that she had found a way to get the money she needed. She said she was leaving in the morning.”

  “You didn’t know then about the bracelets?”

  “No.”

  “Until Graham called you.”

  “He called me twice. The first time he gave me much the same information I gave to the customs man the other morning. He said Felton had brought the bracelets in but that he—Graham, that is—hadn’t been able to locate him.”

  “He phoned again some time after seven-thirty?”

  “From Felton’s rooms. He said Felton had his bags packed and was apparently trying a doubl
e-cross, as he put it, and that he and this fellow Lee Hammond intended to take whatever steps were necessary to recover the bracelets.”

  “So you thought you’d call on Felton,” Murdock said. “But not to kill him, not even figuring that if you did kill him Graham would be blamed for it.”

  There was an undertone of sarcasm in Murdock’s voice and Arnold apparently noticed it. His smile was pinched as he replied.

  “As I said, I have my pride. I went there to tell him that if I ever caught him with my wife again, if she made good on her threat to run off with him, I would most certainly kill him.” He tipped his free hand. “And you were right about his black rage. He had lost the bracelets and he had absorbed a beating by being stubborn about it.”

  He said: “He was a big man, you know, and I somehow feel he would have retaliated right then if I hadn’t had the cane—and the sword that goes with it. As it was I felt I had to protect myself and—well, it was over very quickly.… Luckily for me you pressed the buzzer on your way up, and that gave me a chance to switch the lights off and get ready for you.”

  “Luckily for me, too,” Murdock added dryly. “If I had walked in on you I probably would have got the same treatment Felton did.” He shifted his weight, measuring the distance to the desk. “But if what you say is true, what’re you waving the gun for, Mr. Arnold? You might be able to get away with a self-defense plea.”

  “Oh, no he won’t!” The voice was Ginny’s and it shook with hatred. She had not moved and her small face was chalky and stiff with strain. “You went there to kill Harry,” she said, “and you did. You threatened him before, and when I get through telling what I know they’ll believe me.”

  Arnold’s eyes slid to his wife and he pulled them back before Murdock could move.

  “About this gun,” he said, “I’m not quite sure. I don’t have too long to live. The idea of spending the rest of my days in jail is repugnant to me, and from what little I know of you I’m not sanguine about being able to count on your silence. It makes it very difficult.”