Gorman was quite satisfied with the space and the slant given to the story he had released. There was room to develop it in the future in any way he found expedient.
Before this news was actually on the street in print Alix’s telephone was besieged by reporters eager for more details.
Mary answered with her usual bland competence and assertion of ignorance. Miss Ruland had gone away for a rest.
Could she say whether Miss Ruland wore white at the masquerade party at which Mrs. Thorne lost her life?
Yes, that much she did know. Miss Ruland had worn a queen’s mantle of purple velvet, edged with ermine—stage ermine...Mary hung up, convinced that she had scored a point for her beloved mistress, who had been notified by Gorman’s secretary too late to stop it, had it ever been possible, of the detailed account her management was about to present to the public.
She assured herself that she did not care for herself, and that so far as Sam was involved, nothing could make her reveal that it was in his living-room that she had had her last short interview with Connie. It really had had no bearing on the crime unless—and here of a sudden, she stiffened—unless Sam, in taking her part, had in some way accidentally killed Connie. That he had killed her intentionally she did not for a moment credit.
Could he have overheard the conversation between them?
She knew the construction of his pantry and its relation to the rest of the apartment, and she at once decided that he could not, unless he had stood in the little passage beside the butler’s lavatory.
And Sam would not have stood there listening.
On hearing the news, she had reproached Connie for taking her play, and Connie had replied with her customary nonchalance, that Alix did not need it as much as she did. Alix could carry any play, even a weak one, while she required a masterpiece to make the success necessary to her. Alix had left her, certain that nothing would persuade Connie to generosity or even fair dealing, and when she had gone down in the elevator to rejoin Gorman, her tears had been for the shattering of her ideal of friendship as much as for the loss of the play.
Had Sam heard that conversation, he would have come out with something to say to both of them. That would have been Sam’s way.
She wanted to see him, only she had told the desk to deny her to all callers and Mary to leave the telephone off the stand. Precautions that prevented the nuisance of calls from outsiders, with the objection that it left Sam no way to communicate with her short of coming there and making his way to the fifth floor unannounced.
“Mary,” she said, “call Commissioner Mellon. Ask if he will be in this evening. If he says yes, tell him I’ll be there. And, Mary, tell him I said to get rid of Sing. I don’t trust him and I mean to go up by the service elevator to avoid that doorman.”
Thus it happened that the coast was already clear when Miss Livingston propounded her astonishing theory to Eliza, to find that fine mind in complete accord with hers.
“You’ve hit it, ma’am,’ Eliza said. “I been sure of it from the beginning. But how you’re going to get in there to search beats me.
“There’s nothing easier. I’m going up the fire escape and through his window, naturally,” Miss Livingston snapped.
To Eliza this did not seem at all natural, but she said, “Yes, ma’am,” as in duty bound, and added: “Only, it would seem as if it was more my place, ma’am. I could go on an errand for you, like, and I don’t know can you manage the fire-escape stairs. They might make you dizzyish.”
“Eliza, all my family were noted for their strong heads.” (“Three-bottle men,” she might have added.) “I never am dizzy, and I should never think of sanctioning the visit of an unmarried girl to a young man’s room. It would be most improper. I’m going myself.”
“Well then,” said Eliza, frightened but stubborn, and entering into her role of faithful retainer with zest, “well then, ma’am, you’re no more married’n what I am, and I’m going with you. I couldn’t let you go alone. I couldn’t, reelly.”
Which explains why Sam, listening for Alix’s ring at the back floor, opened it to see the less lovely face of the trusty Eliza, come to make sure the coast was clear.
‘ Oh, Commissioner Mellon,” she faltered, “I guess Sing isn’t in, if you answer the bell,” and turned to go away, having obtained the information she wanted without questioning.
“No, he’s gone to a lecture on some abstruse subject.” Then, eager to be rid of her, “Anything I can do for you?”
“Most likely he’s at the movies. That’s where he always is!” Eliza ejaculated, wondering if she were missing a sensational picture. “No, sir. Nothing, thank you. I only wanted Sing to buy me a yeast cake. I’ll just use some self-raising buckwheat and maybe Miss Livingston’ll not notice the difference, though she’s awful cute.” She tripped down the stair and into the apartment below, congratulating herself on her ready lie.
“He’s gone,” she said, breathless with excitement. “The gentleman’s at home, but he’ll be ‘way at the front. Now’s our chance, ma’am. Let’s nip out my window. Do you think you ought to have your furs?”
Denying any need of wraps for that short trip, Miss Livingston led the way dauntlessly up the steps, which indeed seemed very open, unprotected, and insufficient, to the platform above.
“Luck’s with us,” Eliza hissed, pointing to the window which was raised about six inches from the bottom. Before lifting it, she covered her hands with her apron, soiling it beyond future use. She knew her movies forward and back.
“Fingerprints,” she whispered, significantly.
“Nonsense!” Miss Livingston was nervous and spoke with asperity to hide it. “Utter nonsense. We aren’t going to steal anything.”
“It’s entering and breaking or something like that,” Eliza insisted, loath to be robbed of her thrill as a marauder.
“Well, have it your own way,” said Miss Livingston, developing sudden and unexpected meekness. “Only, let’s get inside. Take off that apron and use it on the sill. I was a fool not to wear gloves.”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am. This will do just as well if we remember not to touch anything inside.”
“We’ll probably have to risk that, unless I find some of Sing’s gloves for us to put on,” Miss Livingston said grimly, while Eliza thought:
A good idea that. That was what education did for you. Gave you notions like that when you reelly needed ‘em. Sing’s own gloves. Now that was clever. Cunning like a fox the old lady was.
However, by that time they were both inside the room.
“Smells stuffy,” said Miss Livingston, sniffing.
“Like incense at church, only different,” Eliza supplemented. “Shall I turn on the electric light?”
“No. You can hear the switches click all through the apartment. That’s one thing I did remember—a flashlight.”
Out of a bag hanging from her wrist, Miss Livingston produced the needed torch, as the doorbell rang furiously. She jumped so that she nearly dropped it.
“Don’t snap it on,” Eliza muttered, reveling in the thrill of danger of discovery as her mistress did not. After all, exciting as it undeniably was, Miss Livingston was her shield and buckler, her excuse for being there and her protection against the voice of slander. “Like the spare room. It might show at the cracks.”
They stood silent and motionless while Sam welcomed his visitor and their retreating footsteps died away.
Then Miss Livingston exhaled a held breath and lit the torch.
“Don’t let’s waste time,” she said as she flashed the light around the none too neat room.
The furniture consisted of a bed, a Chinese chair of split bamboo, and a low chest of drawers with a mirror over it. There were three doors, as in Eliza’s own quarters; one leading to the bathroom, (me guarding a closet, and the third opening into the passage connecting the kitchen and the back door.
“Where shall we look first?” Miss Livingston questioned Eliza, feelin
g her to be more familiar with such living conditions and waving the light over the top of the bureau, on which a soiled collar, a necktie, and a pair of brushes lay tumbled together. “I hope you will take it to heart, Eliza, that the impression made on a visitor by untidiness is distinctly unpleasant.”
“Yes’m,” Eliza agreed, then giggled giddily, “though I wouldn’t exactly call us visitors, would you, ma’am? I don’t remember getting an invite.” Then of a sudden her eyes were attracted by something hanging on the wall beside the window. “God save us, what’s that? The man is never a good Cath’lic, after all, when I’ve been calling him a heathen Chinee?”
Turning to see what had drawn the woman’s attention, Miss Livingston was, for a moment, equally dumbfounded. Then she recovered her customary aplomb and went closer to examine the object that had called forth Eliza’s exclamation.
Surmounting a carved bracket, in a colored, carved, and gilt frame, was the picture, evidently cut from the rotogravure section of a Sunday paper, of a blond young woman. Before Ibis joss sticks had been burned, and on the shelf, in an exquisite saucer of translucent jade, the missing green jade leaf and the emerald ring lay beside a single flower of white camellia, offerings as to a goddess.
“Well, of all the nerve!” Eliza ejaculated. “That’s that awful pretty Mrs. Harris who’s here so much. C’missioner Mellon’s niece, the boys say she is. And I took the picture for the Holy Virgin.”
“There is all the evidence we need,” Miss Livingston moved toward the door into the apartment, and Eliza stopped her in alarm.
“Oh, ma’am, where are you going?” she demanded. “We can’t go that way. We’ll be caught.”
“We can’t go that way because that villain Sing has the key in his pocket,” Miss Livingston snapped, having tried the door and found it locked. “Besides, I’d better sit down and make sure what I’d best do before I do something I’ll be sorry for later.”
“Like my grandmother used to say,” Eliza having polished the doorknob was spreading her apron over the window sill once more. “‘Take time to blow your tea, the way you won’t be burning your mouth.’”
“Exactly,” said her mistress, scrambling through the window and down the fire escape with most surprising agility.
Chapter XXI
“I am becoming a reader of the evening papers,” Sam told Alix. “Perforce, as it were. They contain such choice bits about my intimate friends. When I read this about you, my first impulse was to find Gorman and punch his head.”
“It’s my head that ought to be punched,” Alix explained. “This is really all my fault.
It’s possible I couldn’t have helped it, but the other night when he returned after you left, I filled him up with all sorts of crazy ideas and coached him in what to say to Hugh Oliver. I mean I put him up to saying all the things I could think of that would make it certain Hugh wouldn’t sell him that play. You see, I thought that would end the matter. You remember I phoned you not to let the two men meet? I was frightened at what I had done, but I still thought that Gorman’s views, conveyed through Hugh’s lawyer perhaps, would be sure to let me out of my difficulty...And now what am I going to do? I may be arrested any minute.”
“You’re going to see a lawyer tomorrow, let him look over your contract and point out to Gorman that his publicity has made it doubly impossible for you to play in ‘This Business of Being a Woman.’ If you went on in it, I verily believe you’d be hissed off the boards as Connie’s murderess. It would certainly be said openly that you had rid yourself of her to get your play back.” Sam preferred to center her mind on the professional angle. He himself was unsure what view Dolan and his subordinates might take, but he hid his anxiety and Alix nodded.
“And Gorman thinks that would be good advertising. He claims curiosity would fill any theater.”
“The man must assume that his stars have hides like a rhinoceros—or like his own.”
“Do you know, Sam, I feel as if my career were ended. I don’t believe I’ll ever again be equal to facing an audience. Certainly not unless you catch the murderer.”
“That’s now.” Sam returned. “It’s a result of shock. You couldn’t give up the theater. It wouldn’t let you. And sooner or later we’ll find you another play. How about something from the Chinese? Our brilliant Sing might help us there.”
“I’ve meant to speak to you about him for some time,” Alix began, diverted from her own situation. “What do you know about that man? He isn’t the usual type of houseman. At least he doesn’t seem so to me.”
“How does he seem to you?” Sam asked, lazily. It was not often that he had Alix to himself like this and he was enjoying it.
“I’m afraid sinister is the only word I can suggest at the moment. And it isn’t because he’s Chinese. I’ve met a lot of Chinese, on and off, and I like most of them extremely. They usually have such a keen sense of humor. Now I’ve never seen this man smile.”
Sam laughed. Alix was always so delightfully earnest.
“I see. First requirement for houseman, can he see a joke? What do I try him with? Wodehouse or the New Yorker! The jokes in it are sometimes a trifle subtle.”
Alix ignored his frivolity.
“Where was Sing the night that Connie—died?”
Sam started, all the banter gone immediately.
“By Jove, Alix!” he said. “By Jove! The little beggar lied to me about that and I’ve no idea why. He said he was going to a lecture at the Town Hall, and when I asked him about it the next morning, he told me it had been Very informing,’ and in the paper, staring me in the face, was the statement that it had been necessary to disappoint the audience because the lecturer was caught in the blizzard on his way East.”
In sudden excitement Alix seized his arm and shook it.
“Can we have stumbled on the murderer?...By accident, like this?...Oh, Sam, where could he have hidden?” She bent her brows, then her face cleared. “I know!” She exclaimed. “In the lavatory off the pantry.”
“Possibly,” Sam agreed. “No, on (second thought, impossible. I went in there to get rid of lime rinds.”
“Is there no place that he could have concealed himself from you? How about back of the door?”
“The vacuum cleaner fits in there, leaving no room for anything else.”
Just then the telephone rang, and on Sam’s going to answer it Alix jumped up and went out to the pantry; as he put down the receiver, she called to him, sharply:
“Sam, the vacuum cleaner isn’t here.”
“The devil you say!” Sam exclaimed.
“Open the lavatory door,” she called, peremptorily, from inside.
He obeyed, to find the little room apparently empty.
“You see?” She stepped out from behind the door. “And on the floor there I picked these up.”
“What are they?” Sam inquired.
“Chewing-gum wrappers,” Alix told him. “Sing chews gum. I’ve seen him trying to hide it when I came here unexpectedly once or twice. Oh, Sam, what ought we to do?”
“To my mind, we ought to lay all our cards on the table. I’ve concealed too many things too long,” Sam acknowledged, with no attempt to minimize the seriousness of the situation. “I’m sure I ought to call Dolan and tell him the whole truth. If he thinks I’m in it up to my neck, I can’t help it. There’s one other reason for phoning him,” he added as he took up the telephone: “Miss Livingston called me to let me know that she can inform us where Connie’s emerald ring—your emerald ring—is. She wanted to come up and tell me all about it. She says she can’t be mistaken. Both she and Eliza (that’s her maid, a character, too) have seen it. I told her to come along...The question is whether to bring Dolan here before she comes or after?”
“Why not consult her?” Alix suggested. “That is, if you think she’s a sensible person.”
“I never met a more sensible one,” Sam returned, taking up the telephone, “or one less likely to go off at half-cock. If she says
she knows where the emerald ring is, she knows, and it’s all over but the shouting.”
Miss Livingston’s reply to his question about Dolan was characteristic.
“Certainly we want him. I can’t tell this story over a dozen times. I knew you’d need him, so I called to make certain of him before I spoke to you. You see, I was sure you were at home. I’m waiting for him now.”
Sam hung up.
“The thing for me to do is to resign and have her appointed Police Commissioner,” he said, meekly. “I adore that woman, but she certainly has me intimidated. She’s so damned efficient, and her single eye-glass bores a hole in me right clear through to my backbone, which it turns to jelly.”
“Does she use a single eye-glass—honestly?” Alix demanded. “You’re joking.” Then as Sam’s face answered her question. “If you catch me studying her too hard, pinch me or something. I don’t want to disgrace my profession, but I intend to embalm her in my memory. The day is bound to come when I’ll have to take to dowagers; and when I act an old aristocrat I want the impersonation to be beyond cavil. Louise assures me that Miss Livingston is the real thing.”
“The realest thing I know. She must raise the batting average of the Four Hundred appreciably. The way she took charge of Harvey Thorne and hustled him out of the city right from under McCurdy’s paws is something to talk about.”
“Harvey Thorne?” Alix was startled; it was Sam’s first mention to her of his name.
“Yes, he was here that night.”
“But, Sam——”
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Sam said, in haste. “He adored Connie right to the end, although he did advise me never to fall in love with an actress.”
Death Wears a Mask Page 18