“It strikes me, young lady,” Dolan grunted, with more than a little annoyance, “all you people have been just too damn’ kind tryin’ to keep the poor police from gettin’ off on the wrong foot. Anyhow, now that you’re started, go ahead and tell your story.”
“Anyhow,” Alix repeated, with a disarming smile, “we met as usual. We were very intimate and at once she asked me to congratulate her. She was engaged to Hugh Oliver, who was going to put her on in a play. Now there was just one sort of play she might have made a hit in. You know, Louise. Oscar Wilde up to date, or a French comedy well enough translated to keep its sparkle....I confess I’m so much an actress that my first thought was of the play. ‘What’s your play to be?’ I asked, and when she told me it was the play I had at last prevailed on my manager to take over for me I was stunned. ‘Gorman would never in the world have paid the price,’ was what she said by way of excuse for her breach of faith. You see, she had known for a long time that I had set my heart on that play. ‘Oh, that’s all right. He has cabled his consent to their terms,’ I told her, quite happily, ‘and we’ll find something better suited to you.’ There perhaps I said the wrong thing, making her think I underrated her talents, because she turned in an instant as hard as steel. ‘If you can do it, I can,’ she said. ‘Moreover, you can carry an untested vehicle more easily than I, since your name is made. Sam will be here in a few seconds with cocktails. Be a good sport and drink to my success. You don’t really need this play at all.’ Maybe I was unjust to her. Maybe, as Aimée said, she had not listened to me and did not realize how I would feel. At all events, that was testing me too high. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I merely said to give Hugh my love, he was a lucky man, and that I hoped that they’d both he happy, and then I went out. I don’t remember whether I shut the door or not. Perhaps Sing can tell us.”
“You left it open,” Sing declared. “Mrs. Thorne had followed you to the vestibule. She was talking fast. Excited, a little ashamed, perhaps. ‘Don’t he silly about tins, Alix,’ she said. “You’re a baby yet, while I’m almost thirty. In another year it will be all the same to you, while it’s my last chance. Come on, let’s all have a drink and be happy together.’ But you never answered her and went down in the car without a word.”
“Yes,” said Alix, simply, in a voice that sounded like that of a sad child. “I was crying and I wouldn’t for the world have let her see me. My pride was hurt that I could still care for her when she had treated me so contemptibly. I knew if I stayed I’d end by forgiving her, and I wasn’t ready to do that.”
“But you’re right; you would have,” Sam agreed with her. “We all always did. It’s only a wonder she wasn’t more spoiled than she was. There was something about Connie—she was simply irresistible when she wanted to be.”
“I think it was the heart that shone out in that letter—“ Alix began, when the Inspector interrupted.
“Say, this isn’t a talk-fest. Let’s get on. You left her alone——”
“Left her alone, nothing!” McCurdy, unable longer to contain himself, leaped to his feet and pointed an accusing and brilliantly manicured finger at Sam. “All along I’ve said he was at the bottom of it. You left her alone with the C’missioner, that’s what you did.”
“Not exactly,” said Sing, regarding McCurdy with considerable distaste. “I also was present.”
And Dolan grinned at Sam.
“Your man Friday?” he asked, with a decidedly peculiar intonation.
Chapter XXIII
“Irrelevant interruptions and expressions of opinion by the ignorant render a connected narrative difficult if not impossible.” Sing turned his eyes toward the ceiling and addressed no one in particular. “If the unspeakable person with the shining finger nails is satisfied with his idle inventions, why should I trouble to enlighten him?”
“You win,” said Dolan. “Set down, McCurdy. There ain’t nobody goin’ to get away from you.”
McCurdy retreated to his chair, only taking the precaution to move it so that he commanded the only doorway into the room. There he planted himself solidly, surreptitiously inspecting his finger nails from time to time and wondering what was wrong with them. (Anyhow, she was some looker, that little floozie at the barber shop.)
Having established his ascendency over his audience, Sing went on again.
“No sooner had Miss Ruland gone than Mrs. Thorne began to dance. It was a strange dance. Is there not a saying about whistling to keep your courage up? So it seemed to me she danced. It was like the flitting of a dragonfly for swiftness and grace, and she hummed to herself as she moved. But it was not gay. She could not make it gay and she knew it, so with one last rapid swoop she again reached the front door and stood there listening, her head on one side. She had heard the elevator before I did and had quickly adjusted her mask. I think she was expecting some one.” He looked interrogatively at Sam, who nodded.
“Mr. Harris, in all likelihood,” he said. “Although, as I understood the arrangement, they were to meet upstairs. She may, on the other hand, have decided that a simultaneous entrance would be more effective, since he no longer had Mrs. Harris to escort. Go on, Sing.”
“At all events, the elevator stopped and the car went on up to the penthouse with other passengers after a man got out...Mrs. Thorne was not pleased to see this man. ‘You!’ was what she said, her tone far from complimentary. He returned, ‘Yes, me.’ Not grammatical, but that was what he said.
“‘Alix has gone,’ she said next. He replied:
“‘I know. I came to see you.’
“‘Waste of time,’ she told him. ‘I made that clear ten years ago.’
“Then he used much language unfit for ladies’ ears. She was a dirty little double-crosser was the least thing he said. Look how she got that ring from Him without any return. She’d give up that play or he’d go to Oliver and blow the whole story. At that she laughed, a laugh that was full of real amusement, and said:
“‘That was exactly what I fancied you’d do, so I told him myself; and he really saw the point of the joke. Hugh has a delicious sense of humor.’
“Thereafter followed a strange and most improper thing. That man went down on his knees to her. He seized her skirt and kissed it like a fool. He said he would do anything—anything, if she would only marry him. He said he was half crazy with love for her. He would divorce his wife. He would pretend to try Ruland in the part and throw her out as incompetent in order to put Connie, as he called her, in her place.
“Amazing was her reply. She fairly scorched him with her scorn. Put her in Miss Ruland’s place? Ruin a real actress for her, who was only going on the stage again out of vanity? He was a low worm to suggest such a thing-—and to her. To her who had always laughed at him and his airs of the conqueror. ‘Get out while you have a chance to go in safety. If I told Sam Mellon what you proposed to do to Alix, he would break every bone in your cringing body!’ She turned her hack on him—on a man beside himself with hate—and he leaped to his feet and stabbed her with an instrument he drew from her own hair.”
“Here in this foyer?” Dolan asked. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, breathing audibly. “Who is this man?”
Sing drooped his eyelids, an expression of Oriental indifference on his face.
“How should I know? I never saw him before...But plainly there was no time to waste. Mrs. Thorne had fallen in a heap and he was shaking like a bamboo in the wind. I slipped out and placed my hands under her shoulders. ‘Take her feet,’ I commanded. ‘We must carry her out of here.’”
“Why, in Heaven’s name, did you butt in?” Dolan demanded.
“My master had been long mixing his cocktails, and clearly she deserved what she had received,” Sing returned, with no hint of apology for his action. “No man could let her live after the things that had passed her lips. I have an excellent memory. I can repeat them categorically if you so desire. And I am sure you will agree that he was justified...Between us, we took he
r out, placing her on the bench in the vestibule, and I said: ‘I now leave you.’ I wished to have no part in that affair and I assumed that, as a man of honor, he was bound to take his own life. I meant to go back into the lavatory, but I heard Mr. Mellon coming, who is a heavy-footed man, and knew there was not time. Softly I closed the door to the vestibule and summoned the elevator. I had my keys. I would go down and make my way up in the rear. To my surprise, the masked man had stripped off the emerald ring and had also seized a jade pin of little worth. ‘Chinese,’ he mumbled. ‘Take both. They’re mine. The’—well, he used a not-nice word—’got them from me by letting me fool myself into thinking she meant to do something she never meant to do at all.’ The ring was a propitious color and I agreed in my mind that if the bargain had not been kept, both ornaments were his to bestow. So I took them and left him there.”
“And, for all that, we got nothing but your word,” Knudsen remarked, skeptically.
Miss Livingston put up her eye-glass.
“And quite sufficient, too, I think all will agree,” she said with decision.
“I guess the guy that croaked her maybe thought his little present might make Sing interestin’ to us,” Dolan suggested. “How about it, Sing? Would you know this man again?”
“He was masked and wore a costume made big here like Santy Claus”—Sing indicated a corporation—“yet I am certain I could not mistake him. What matter, since he surely must he dead.”
There were those present who already had no doubt of the identity of the murderer and who well knew that he was alive; but Alix, to make assurance doubly sure, leaned forward and questioned the Chinese.
“Did Mrs. Thorne mention no name when addressing this man?”
“Awful funny name she said once. Like toast.”
“Like toast?” Alix was at a loss.
“Sure. ‘Melba.’ Like toast.”
“Melbourne Gorman. He went as Falstaff!” Alix fell hack suddenly, looking very white, although the confirmation was not unexpected.
“Who’s he?” Dolan demanded. “An’ where can we find him?”
“He’s a theatrical producer, the one you saw at lunch yesterday. He’ll probably be at the theater in Forty-fifth Street. Won’t he, Alix? He’s got a hit running there.”
“The one who put out this hooey about Miss Ruland? Passing the buck, hey, and not so dumb at that. Come on, then, C’missioner, let’s get a move on. We’ll take Sing along to identify the guy. This time we’ll get our man, and no mistake.”
“Why don’t I ask him to come here?” Sam suggested. “He’ll come, I’m sure, if I say his leading lady is here...This deed was done under my roof. The victim was one of my dearest friends and I promised Harvey Thorne that if he would only go away, out of danger of suspicion, I’d do all in my power and more than he could do to bring the murderer to justice. I think we will have him here.” He went to the telephone and remained there until he was answered.
(“I’ll say he took his own sweet time about keepin’ his word to Thorne,” McCurdy whispered to Knudson. That, after all, Sam had not been guilty would always be a bitter memory to McCurdy.)
Dolan was almost equally unappreciative of Sam’s efforts, and not at all eager to acknowledge openly, as he did mentally, that Sam was right in saying that if he had told all he knew, prima facie cases could have been made out against several of his friends, while he himself might even have gone to the (hair. Tet of that last there was no room for doubt. With the weapon, motive, and opportunity all acknowledged, why should he or McCurdy or anyone else have looked farther? Dolan told himself, somewhat fretfully, that these people were almost as hard to deal with as gangsters, “The way they stick together,” he ended, mournfully.
Miss Livingston got up to leave.
“I can he of no further use,” she said. “And I’m sure these girls will wish to he spared the sight of an arrest. I suggest that they come with me until Mr. Mellon is ready to escort them home.”
On the acceptance of this invitation, Sam found Alix’s coat, while Sing, without hindrance from the detectives, took Louise’s to her, deferentially, as would any trained servant, for all he was a prince.
“I am awake now, and my beautiful dream lies shattered,” he whispered. “I must withdraw my offer to marry you. You have seen me disrespectfully treated by two very coarse men. I have lost face before your eyes. No woman who has observed a man at such a disadvantage should ever be permitted to marry into his house.”
Louise, who had expected to be obliged to point out to him how impossible his proposal had always been, accepted her cue gratefully.
“You will remember, Sing, that I never felt sure I could make you happy,” she said. “Good-by.” She was delighted to think that to renounce her was a sop to his pride.
Sam had a number of loose ends to take up with Dolan after the ladies left, so that time passed quickly and they were surprised when a vehement ring at the doorbell announced the arrival of Gorman. The theatrical manager started involuntarily at sight of Sing, who opened the door for him. He wore a soft black hat and the light from above cast a heavy shadow, not unlike a mask, over the upper part of his features. As if he had a consciousness of this, he snatched the hat off and strode in, saying, brusquely:
“Mr. Mellon expects me.”
“Yes, sir,” Sing relieved him of his overcoat and Sam came forward.
“Where’s Alix?” Gorman looked uneasily at the three men who stood talking together at the front of the big room.
“My niece and she went below to Miss Livingston’s apartment for a few minutes,” Sam explained. “There is something she has asked me to take up with you for her. Doesn’t it strike you that your office is doing a very dangerous thing in publishing the story you did today? Suppose the Police Department never find the real murderer, aren’t people going to suggest either that Alix did it herself or that at least she knows a lot more about it than is healthy?”
“Listen here,” said Gorman. “Perhaps you know my business better than I do. Every time I see you, you tell me how smart you are, and yet I doubt it. In these rotten times, between the sensational radio programs and the films, you’ve got to give the public a great kick before they so much as wake up. Ruland’s a sensational actress in a sensational profession. This is going to put money in her pocket. She gets a nice fat percentage when we take in over a certain amount.”
“If she’s not in prison,” Sam reminded him, dryly. “If not—well, even then I don’t think it would compensate her for the questioning looks and averted heads she will meet. There is only one remedy. I must arrest the real murderer. Sing?”
The Chinese had been awaiting this question.
“Yes, sir. Indubitably,” was his answer.
It was hardly out of his mouth when McCurdy slipped a handcuff on Gorman’s wrist. At last McCurdy was a happy man. He had made the arrest in the Thorne case.
Gorman drew a deep breath and rose stumblingly.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Naturally, I consider this an outrage. Beyond that I shall say nothing until I see my lawyer. I assume that I shall be permitted access to a lawyer?”
“Certainly,” Sam told him, and watched the officers take him away. Arrest for murder seemed devoid of dramatics, altogether a tamer affair than he had anticipated.
“All right, Sing,” he said, with an attempt at lightness. “I hope you and I are in the clear this time, hut we’ll have to watch our step in the future.”
“Yes, sir.” With a wooden face Sing brought his hat and coat.
Farewells on the seventh floor were soon said once he had told them of Sing’s identification. As they were leaving, Sam stopped, turning to Miss Livingston on a sudden memory:
“You promised to tell me why you were so sure Harvey didn’t kill Connie. Was it the time element? Because I fancy the police would have been hard to convince about that.”
Miss Livingston treated him to the cold stare through her monocle which of late she had merciful
ly spared him.
“Which story did I eventually tell you? That I went out to see why the lift had stopped, found the body, and called for help to Harvey? I had to provide an alibi, of course quite untrue. I was alone when I heard the lift. So far as time went, he could have done it. I always play bridge twice a week, and when he phoned to ask if lid be in, I explained this and told him to come at 10:30. I’d hurry home. Because of the snow the bridge-players cried off. I failed to connect with him again and when he eventually came up in the elevator he found his wife. Fortunately, there was no one else in the car. He rang for me, wanting whisky, help. So you see there was ample time after he left you, and had he been crazy it might have been possible. Well-born people sometimes go crazy. Harvey was sane. Ergo, he was innocent. No son of a friend of mine, a girl who went to school with me and whose bridesmaid I was, could possibly be a murderer...How about Harry Thaw, did you say? I know nothing of Pittsburgh upstarts, sir.”
“And you kept this from me?” Sam infused all the reproach possible into the question.
“You’d not been a policeman very long. How was I to know you didn’t fancy yourself a sleuth? I had enough trouble subduing my own detective instincts without having to battle with yours.” Miss Livingston still maintained the superb arrogance of her pose, but there was a faint trace of apology in the modulation of her harsh voice.
“Didn’t I tell you she was marvelous? She is what I call a grand person,” Louise declared. “Let’s take Alix home first, then we’ll walk. I need exercise.”
It was not the arrangement Sam would have preferred, but, as usual, Louise had her way.
At the Gotham Sam left his niece on the pavement with a muttered excuse and followed Alix into the lobby.
“See here,” he began, conscious of having not a moment to spare. “What time tomorrow can I see you?”
“I don’t know,” Alix averted her face. “I’ll be terribly busy from now on. I need clothes elegant enough to impress managers. I’ll not be obliged to go on with the Gorman organization when it’s lost its head. I’ll have to find a new play. It might be wise for me to go to London to see this drama, ‘Supreme Moment,’ that agent suggested. And my hands are a scandal for lack of a manicure, while my hair simply must be waved. Wait, though. The Archers are coming to tea. Will that suit you?” Sam made a violent gesture of negation and she went on: “No? Too bad. In the evening Louise, Ed, and I are going to the theater. A movie where no one will know us. So you see it’s a very full day. Was there anything special you wanted to see me about, and will it take long?”
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