Fashioned for Murder

by George Harmon Coxe

  Finally, he removed the eye-loupe, and when he looked up, he was no longer smiling. To Nason, it seemed that there was no expression in the round face but only in the pale eyes, which, still bright, were no longer merry but intense. Then Wylie was pushing back his chair and rising.

  “I can’t be sure,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me a moment—” And with that he had the pieces in his hand and was going out the door.

  “Well,” said Linda as her breath came out. “At least he seems interested.”

  Nason said nothing. He watched the girl touch her hair and shift in the chair. Presently she rubbed her hands lightly together, shifted her bag. She examined her fingernails, and Nason understood each move because he was just as nervous as she was.

  Wylie came back and put the pieces down. He settled himself in the chair but he kept his gaze averted, and it seemed to Nason that this was a different Wylie. He was still suave and immaculate, but it seemed that he too had acquired a certain nervousness; some inner agitation seemed to compel him to finger the necklace.

  “Very interesting,” he said.

  “Have they any value?” Linda asked quickly. “Yes, indeed!”

  “Oh?”

  “The settings are gold, and quite old. I should say they were worth at least a thousand dollars. To the right party, someone who goes in for this sort of thing, they would be worth more.” He lifted one hand and let it fall on the necklace. “Though, of course, if they contained the original stones, they might be worth a fabulous price, depending on the color and flawlessness of the gems.”

  “But—” Linda swallowed and looked bewildered.

  “What sort of gems?” Nason said.

  “Emeralds, probably.” Wylie turned the necklace over. “Because there are some baguettes in the clasp that are genuine, though so small as to be difficult to remove without spoiling the setting.”

  He spoke casually, with none of his former heartiness, his tone suggesting that all this was no longer of any importance to him. As for Nason, the excitement of this pronunciation was upon him now, and, though he told himself that somewhere far back in his mind he had guessed at some such thing, he could not yet accept it without knowing more. He glanced at Linda, seeing the paleness of her cheeks and the look of stunned astonishment written there. He found his mouth was dry and wet his lips.

  “How valuable?” he said. “How do emeralds compare with diamonds, for instance?”

  Wylie shrugged, still not looking up. “That is a matter of opinion. Even experts do not agree. Generally, I would say that in stones under ten carats diamonds are worth more per carat than emeralds. Over ten carats the emerald becomes more valuable because of the rarity of flawless, properly colored stones of that size.”

  He pushed the three pieces toward Linda with his finger tips. He put his hands on the chair arms, as though preparing to rise. Nason stayed where he was.

  “And, how big are those stones?”

  “Those,” said Wylie, “are glass.”

  “Suppose they were emeralds?”

  Wylie bunched his lips and exhaled audibly through his nose. He took his black cigarette holder from an inside pocket and inserted a cigarette. “In the bracelet, about twelve carats each; in the brooch, two of ten carats, with the center stone perhaps twenty-five to thirty. In the necklace”—he shrugged—“it is hard to say. There are nine stones, the smallest pair maybe three or four carats, the largest somewhere around thirty.”

  This time he pushed back his chair and stood up. Linda opened her bag and put the three pieces inside. When she rose she watched Wylie strangely, as though she, too, was wondering what had happened to his usual affability.

  Nason kept punching. “How long ago was the substitution made?”

  “It is impossible to say.”

  “How long would it take?”

  Wylie lit the cigarette, used it to motion them through the door into the main room. He started to smile. “You are a very persistent young man.”

  “It’s a habit,” Nason said. “I used to work for a newspaper.” He stopped halfway down the shop, eyes dark with thought and his face warped with a superficial grin.

  Wylie sliced air with his cigarette holder. “For a good man, two hours would be enough to measure the stones. Perhaps a day to mold them properly and buff off the mold marks and to apply the enamel. A few hours more to make the substitution—it would not be difficult with open settings like those.”

  “Who would be fooled by such a substitution?”

  “Only amateurs like yourselves. I venture to say that if you dropped any one of those pieces into some chloroform or alcohol the enamel would dissolve and you would have only the glass left.”

  Nason thought of one thing more and decided he might as well say it. “I don’t suppose you ever saw these pieces before, did you?”

  “No, Mr. Nason.”

  Wylie answered bluntly and stopped short of the door, while Linda offered her hand and thanked him for his trouble. When he replied his voice was pleasant again. He said he was glad to be of service, and, should Linda wish to dispose of the settings, he thought he could get her a fair price.

  Nason listened to all this without knowing quite what was said. For he was facing the street as Linda stopped, and as he looked out through the one-way glass, he saw something that made him continue to face that way, his gaze intent upon a stocky man who was leaning against a wall diagonally across the street. He could not, Nason knew, see through the door from the outside, and at the moment he was idly inspecting the street and the pedestrians that passed. What made him interesting to Nason was the broad, mustached face. He wondered if somewhere in the immediate vicinity there would not be a gray coupé with a license number that he now recalled.

  Jerry Nason said nothing about the mustached man until they were in a taxi. When it got under way, he knew it was time to discuss this and other matters. He began by telling Linda the incident that he had withheld the night before.

  She listened while he explained how the man had come to Norman Franks’ office and what had happened. He told her that the same man had been waiting outside Albert Wylie’s store and was probably following them now. But if Linda heard she gave no sign. She was staring straight ahead, her young face still quiet, her manner subdued and listless. He let two blocks roll by, then reached over and took her hand, finding it cold and strangely limp.

  “You’re worrying about your mother,” he said.

  “How could I help it?”

  He waited, sensing the despondency behind her troubled voice and wanting to offer something that would comfort her. He said, “Wylie said he couldn’t tell when the stones had been substituted. It could have happened a long time ago.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  He hesitated again and was forced to admit the truth of this. His hunch said that the glass stones had been substituted for real emeralds, and recently. He believed also that the Heath-Fallon combination was responsible somehow for the transfer, and that Norman Franks, alias Fallon, had been killed because of his part in the work.

  He tried to think beyond this and find some readily acceptable reason for his belief, and then he was sorry he had started because whatever the result, it came back eventually to Linda’s mother and her possession of the necklace, bracelet, and brooch.

  “Was there ever any money in your family?” he asked. “A lot of money?”

  “Not that I know of. There certainly wasn’t after Father died. Mother even tried to write stories so she could earn something extra.”

  “What about your father?”

  “He was in the diplomatic service, a secretary or something. We were in South America most of the time. His last post was in Bogotá—that was when we came home, Mother and I.”

  “why?”

  “I’m not sure.” She paused to wet her lips and she was still staring straight ahead. “I think he had been offered some job here in New York that paid more. He sent Mother and me ahead and joined us a m
onth later. Then about six weeks after that he was run down by a car; he died in the hospital the next day.”

  Nason thought it over. He did not know what to say. He hated himself for his persistence, knowing that his questions served only to make the girl more unhappy. He pressed her hand, and it remained uncommunicative beneath his own.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s not worry about it until we’re sure. After all, we don’t even know if Wylie was telling us the truth—yet.”

  She looked at him then, her eyes dry now and speculative. “Yes,” she said. “It was strange, the way he changed. Did you notice it, too? But—” her voice faltered —“he’s an expert Jerry. He should know.”

  “Maybe,” Nason said. “Maybe we can find out more about how expert he is. Look, have you got anything to do this afternoon?”

  “I should go to the office.”

  “Good. Because I think I’m going to be busy. First, we’ll duck the character with the mustache—and we can do it in a hotel very easily—and then I’m going to see a friend of mine on the Times and get the name and address of a good private detective.”

  “A detective?” she said curiously.

  “Sure. We need help. We have to find out about Norman Franks and Irma Heath and this guy who’s following us—and, once Lieutenant Treynor starts to concentrate on me, I’m not so sure how much time I’ll have.”

  Sam Duble had an office on the fourth floor of a tired-looking building on the fringe of Times Square, and Jerry Nason, obeying the instructions lettered in one corner of the frosted-glass panel, walked into a small, grubby anteroom, which was equipped for secretarial use but at present quite empty. As he closed the door, he noticed the doorway to a connecting room and walked toward it.

  “In here,” a husky voice called, and then Nason was looking across an office quite as grubby as the anteroom, but more cluttered, at the man who sat behind the flat-topped desk, busily intent with some papers that were spread before him.

  When the man did not look up, Nason moved to the desk, a quick glance showing him that aside from this and a client’s chair, there were two steel filing-cabinets, their tops littered with dust and papers, two glass-front bookcases, a water-cooler, and two small tables, also littered. The man, he saw, was smallish, on the plump side, and none too clean-looking. His brown suit hung shapelessly about him, and, under his pushed-back hat, his hair was thin and lusterless.

  Altogether, the picture was so discouraging that he would have walked out had it not been for the things that McCann had told him when he had looked him up in the Times Building.

  “Don’t let his appearance fool you,” McCann had said. “He looks like a bum and maybe he is; but also he’s smart, he knows his way around, he’s a fast man with a gun when he has to be and, in case you’re interested, he’s honest.”

  Now Sam Duble waved Nason toward the chair. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Nason moved to the chair and saw then the reason for Duble’s industry. For the paper he was studying was the Racing Form, and beside this was a copy of the Telegraph and two scratch sheets.

  “McCann gave me your name,” Nason said, “from the Times. My name’s Nason.”

  “Glad to know you, Nason,” Duble said and glanced up to reveal a pair of shrewd little eyes. “Know anything good running at Tropical Park?”

  Nason stared, wondering if the other was serious. He chuckled and shook his head. “I never follow them.”

  Duble sighed and reached for the telephone. “I can’t make up my mind,” he said, dialing, “but I guess I gotta. Hello, Joe—Duble. Give me a rundown in the third.” He began to review the penciled notations he had made alongside the third race on the scratch sheet, either checking them or changing them and saying, “Yeah-yeah,” as he did so.

  “Okay,” he said when he had finished. He sighed again, frowning hard at the line-up, and said, “I guess it’s Sandy Mac, Joe. Five across—and they’ll probably knock the price down on me to even money.… And in the fifth, Joe.… Yeah … Sir Olony. Five to win. I’ll call you back.”

  He pushed the telephone aside, folding the Racing Form with one scratch sheet and thrusting it in his pocket. He opened a drawer and swept the other papers into it, took out a small tin of baking-soda and a tarnished spoon. Rising, he went to the water-cooler, filled a paper cup, and stirred soda into it. He swallowed the mixture, made a face; he threw the cup into the wastebasket, belched loudly, and came back to the desk.

  “Now,” he said, settling himself. “McCann sent you, hunh? And what’s on your mind?”

  Nason asked for paper and, after some groping in the center drawer, Duble produced a piece. Nason wrote down the license number of the gray coupé and described the man with the mustache.

  “I want to find out who he is.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s been following a friend of mine for a week.”

  “Woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Married?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm,” said Duble, and now Nason was conscious of the shrewd eyes, which had been busy ever since the detective sat down. He had a feeling that not only had they missed no detail of his appearance, but had catalogued as well some of his thoughts. “Has she been throwing curves at somebody?” Duble said.

  “No.”

  “Then why should anyone be following her?”

  “That’s what I want you to find out,” Nason said. “How much will it cost me a day?”

  “Twenty-one bucks—and expenses.”

  Nason speculated briefly as to the reason for this odd amount and decided it was unimportant. “How much do you want now?”

  “If McCann says you’re all right, you can settle when we finish.” Duble picked up the piece of paper and tucked it into his vest pocket. “Guess we can find the guy.”

  “That’s only part of it.”

  “Let’s have the rest.”

  “I want you to go with me while I develop some pictures. I want you to look at one of them and see if you know who the man is.”

  “Now?” said Duble.

  Nason nodded and stood up. Duble rose regretfully and straightened his hat. He picked up a trench coat, which had been thrown across one of the tables, and started for the door.

  Jerry Nason had already borrowed Linda Courtney’s key and he took Duble to her apartment, where he unloaded his camera and telephoned the Jewelers’ Guild. Miss Edwards told him she had a room reserved for him, and, on the ride to the hotel, he took the envelope containing his Boston negatives from the suitcase, and then, upon registering, sent the bellboy to his room with the case.

  Now, at four o’clock, he sat with Sam Duble in the reception room of a photographic studio on the East side while a secretary took his name in to a photographer he had once worked with in the Pacific. When, shortly thereafter, Alec Mailing came out to welcome him heartily, Nason felt immediately better and stated his request.

  “Certainly you can use the dark room,” Malling said. “I’m shooting a thing now, but I’ll show you where it is and you can do your stuff.”

  Nason thanked him. He introduced Mailing to Duble and they all went inside, Duble reaching for his Racing Form and quickly replacing it when he saw what Malling was doing. It was a large studio and well equipped, both with photographic paraphernalia and with models. It was they who made Duble forget his horses.

  The trunks of two fake palm trees had been set up near the center of the room, and some sand had been spilled around to simulate a beach background. The camera was shooting from a high angle, and while one of Malling’s assistants adjusted a light, four models sprawled on the sand in bathing-suits. One wore a one-piece creation, a second sported a dressmaker suit, and the other two were clad in two-piece affairs that looked intriguing on these two particular girls but made Nason wonder what would beep the bandeaus up on those less fortunately endowed.

  “You want to wait here?” he said to Duble, who was
pulling up a chair.

  “Are you kidding?” the little detective said. “Just take your time, that’s all.”

  When Nason came out with his prints an hour later, the models were dressed and kidding with Sam Duble, from the sound of their laughter. Nason motioned to him and the detective joined him regretfully, shaking his head, his round face content.

  “That,” he announced as they went through the reception room, “is my idea of how to spend a pleasant afternoon. Do we do this often?”

  He did not sound as if he expected an answer, and Nason gave him none, because he was thinking about the little print he had made from the film in his camera and was anxious now to show it to Duble. He made himself wait until they were in a taxi, and then produced it.

  It was a good print, contrasty and well lighted, showing Norman Franks from the waist up and picturing clearly the thin, bespectacled face, with the stamp of death upon it. Duble looked it over, and when he angled a glance at Nason, his little eyes were no longer amused.

  “When did this happen?” he said quietly.

  “Last night.”

  “I guess it didn’t make the papers. Is it all right to ask here you got it?”

  “Not now,” Nason said. “If you mean do the cops now about the man—yes. They don’t know I have this and I don’t want them to know—yet. McCann said I could trust you.”

  “Within limits,” Duble said.

  “Lieutenant Treynor is investigating. We had a session last night after it happened.”

  “I know him.”

  Nason indicated the print. “What about this?”

  “I know him, too. Name of Norman Franks.”

  “A jeweler?”

  “Sort of. A gem cutter. Did a stretch for breaking up and resetting hot jewelry. Last I heard he was still available.”

  Nason leaned back, thinking of Linda Courtney and trying not to. He put the picture away and found the future discouraging when he considered the fact that the same information would be readily available to Lieutenant Treynor. He shook himself mentally so that he might get his mind back to the present and said, “See what you can find about the license number.” He gave Linda’s address, said he was having dinner with her and would be at a party at Paul Sanford’s apartment later. “As far as I know this guy will be following her, and if you pick us up this evening, you can probably get a look at him.”