by Otto Penzler
I liked this Larry Sweet, who was small, slim and almost too good-looking in a careless way to be a homicide cop. Sweet belonged over on the other side of the Hollywood fence, under the Kleig lights.
And Jake Dennis held it, biting down on his lower lip as he scowled at Lew.
“What,” said Farnson, “is all this about? I was not expecting these gentlemen from the police again, Mr. Ryster. They will be going soon.”
He was a fine figure of an old gentleman, all of six feet, prosperous and a little on the stern side, now trying not to be be angry. And behind all of it showing a bewilderment and hurt which left him almost childishly helpless.
Jake Dennis took a deep breath and spoke through throttled emotions.
“Maybe we’ll be going an’ maybe we won’t. You didn’t tell us you’d called the Blaine Agency in on this.”
Farnson’s face hardened.
“You did not ask me. I did what I thought was proper. I am not interested in your opinions of what I do.”
“Now listen,” said Jake Dennis, getting red.
“Hold it, Jake,” Larry Sweet said mildly, and automatically, as if it were a habit with him.
Sweet smiled apologetically at Farnson. “We understand that, Mr. Farnson. No offense meant. Dennis is trying to suggest that he’s surprised you aren’t satisfied with our investigation of this matter.”
I caught Lew’s sour grin. So did Jake Dennis. It was meant for Dennis, and he got redder above the collar.
Sweet must have had eyes in the side of his head. “Hold it, Jake,” he suggested casually, without looking around.
Farnson missed all that. His high forehead had furrowed with emotion. He looked at the girl in the coffin, swallowed and was husky as he answered Sweet.
“I will not be satisfied until I know exactly why my niece is dead. You tell me it was suicide or an accident. I don’t believe you. Why should such a sweet girl want to kill herself? She was happy. Only last week she wrote my wife in Boston, saying how happy she was in her work here, and how much she was enjoying the visit of Nancy Cudahy, who used to be her best friend. And—and the next word we had was the telegram saying she was dead.”
Farnson shook his head emphatically. “No! I do not believe it!”
Jake Dennis opened his mouth to say something, and Larry Sweet beat him to it, soothingly and argumentatively.
“We only suggested suicide, Mr. Farnson. These carbon monoxide cases are hard to pin down. Folks drive into small garages and stay in there for some reason or other with the motor running and the doors closed—and before they know what’s happening it’s all over.”
“No,” said Farnson flatly. “Frances was not so careless. She was always careful. How could she have done so well as a script girl in the moving pictures if she was careless? She has written us how careful she must always be in her work. Every little detail must be considered. And now you tell me she did something that everyone who drives a car knows must not be done.”
Jake Dennis muttered under his breath and rolled his eyes helplessly. Larry Sweet gave him a warning look and went on in the same patient manner.
“We’ve thought of all that. But we’ve checked on your niece at NGN, and among her friends outside. She had no love troubles. She was getting ahead at NGN and on the verge of moving into the writing end on a contract. They tell us her voice didn’t register well or she’d have had a chance at the acting end. No troubles—and more important, she had no enemies. Doesn’t leave much choice but accidental death, does it?”
“This Cudahy girl who was visiting her from the East says it couldn’t have been anything else but an accident,” Jake Dennis grunted, and his look at Lew Ryster and me was a scowl. “So you’re wasting any money you pay the Blaine Agency. They’ll charge you plenty, an’ tell you in the end just what we’ve told you.”
“That,” said Farnson stiffly, “is my business, gentlemen.”
Jake Dennis lifted his hands helplessly. Larry Sweet asked patiently: “Is there anything you’ve forgotten to suggest to us? Anything we may have overlooked before you leave for the East with your niece’s body?”
Farnson was hurt and helpless, but he was stubborn too.
“I am not taking Frances back East until I know why she was murdered,” he stated heavily.
I thought Jake Dennis was going to explode. Larry Sweet stared at him for a moment, and then nodded smoothly.
“You understand, Mr. Farnson, that we’re anxious to do everything we can. Perhaps it would be better if we worked with the Blaine people too. No objections to that, I suppose.”
Lew Ryster grinned.
“Glad to have you help, Sweet—for what it’s worth—and as long as we get credit for what we do. Jake, that’s agreeable, I suppose?”
“What do you think?” Jake Dennis growled. “And now you’ve got that settled, what are you going to do that we ain’t done?”
Lew looked solemn.
“We’re going to bring all the facilities of our organization to bear on this, Dennis. With our usual success, I hope. Suppose you two drop around to the office late this afternoon for a conference. Mr. Harris has some matters to check, and then we’ll be in a position to collaborate on any steps that we may be taking.”
Larry Sweet’s lip curled slightly in amusement. Jake Dennis looked his disgust at the smear of Hollywood oil Lew had given them. But Farnson was pleased.
“Just what I want, gentlemen,” he said eagerly. “I will be at the Ambassador waiting for any word from you.”
So that was our interview. I took a last look at the dead girl as we all went out. She made our cross-talk seem poison and useless. And I was scathing when I drove Lew away.
“So you dragged me back for a carbon monoxide case that probably was an accident like the police have decided. Any mug on your payroll could handle this.”
“But not satisfy Farnson,” said Lew cheerfully. “He’s a Boston investment banker and lousy with money. He’ll spend high to prove he’s right about this. That girl meant more to him than a daughter. He and his wife reared her. And if he thinks it’s murder, we might as well try to prove that it’s murder.”
“Maybe you are a rat!” I snapped. “You’ve been around Hollywood too long. You know damn well the Blaine Agency never chisels for money if they’re sure there’s not a case. And to think I let you scramble my vacation on a play like this!”
Lew chuckled.
“Jake Dennis is a headline hog, Mike. Never give that guy a break or he’ll break you. I’ve done business with him before. And Larry Sweet is so smooth he’ll be around you before you know it.” Lew pursed his lips. “I only hope Larry really believes it is suicide and thinks we’re giving Farnson a run-around for his money.”
“Aren’t you?” I said disgustedly.
“Maybe,” said Lew. “You saw the dead girl and heard most of the fact. She made a try for pictures, and when her voice didn’t click, she tossed society life back in Boston overboard, rolled up her sleeves out here and went to work with the lower third. Was making good on it too, and then yesterday morning she was found dead in her coupe at the bungalow court where she lived. Garage doors closed, car windows open, the girl behind the steering wheel with her hat on, cigarette between her first and second fingers, just as if she’d driven in and sat there smoking and thinking and forgetting to cut the motor off.
“I guess, Mike, you didn’t notice it there in the coffin, and I didn’t want to point it out with Dennis and Sweet around. There was a mark on her finger where the cigarette had burned down against the flesh.”
“I didn’t notice it,” I said. “So what?”
Lew grinned.
“If you’d looked close, Mike, you’d have seen that there was the slightest sign of cigarette stain on the other side of her second finger, and on the inside of her third finger. She had an awkward way of holding a cigarette, between her second and third fingers, instead of the usual first and second fingers. And yet she died, holding a cigaret
te the usual way. As near as I can figure it, Kid, that little fact is going to turn you into a screwball and make you a disciple of the Great Truth, Father Orion.”
CHAPTER II
PEACE, BROTHER
A truck cut over in front of me and I stood the coupe on its nose, and shaved a wreck and said violently:
“Somebody around here is a screwball—and it’s not me! What kind of tripe is this about the Great Truth, Father Orion? And how do you know so much about cigarette stains on that girl’s fingers?”
“I’m good,” says Lew smugly. “The body was found by the girl friend, Nan Cudahy—who’s due to inherit a couple of million one of these days, if that makes her any more attractive.”
“It doesn’t,” I said. “What’s the dope on the cigarette stains?”
“You know me,” says Lew. “Always on the spot at the right time. When Farnson retained me, I ducked around for a talk with this Nan Cudahy. She was taking it hard and didn’t have any more to tell me than Sweet and Dennis know. But she let slip one thing. She’d been thinking, she said, how terribly symbolic it was that her friend should have been holding a cigarette between the first and second fingers when all the girl friends had teased her so much about the awkward way she had always smoked. Wasn’t it symbolic, the Cudahy gal asked, with her eyes big and round, that Miss Farnson should have changed an old habit that way just when she died? Crossing the threads of the subconscious like that just as the threads of life got all tragically mixed. The Great Truths of existence, Miss Cudahy said tearfully, get all tangled up like that unless they are interpreted right. And maybe if the dead girl had been a little more of a believer in some things, the terrible accident wouldn’t have happened.”
“I’m dizzy but able to stand more,” I said. “What kind of a screwball is this female?”
“Tut-tut,” says Lew. “You’re talking about two million bucks. She’s a poor little girl who came out to Hollywood on a visit and got on the track of the Great Truths of Life.”
“Yeah?”
“Heaven knows,” said Lew more seriously, “I’d have thought two million dollars could keep its head. But I’ve seen bigger ones tumble. Miss Cudahy never saw anything like this village, Mike, and before she could catch her breath she went Hollywood nuts. That’s the only explanation I can make. Not that I gave a damn after her crack about the dead girl holding a cigarette between the wrong fingers. And the cigarette staying there until it burned into the skin! Get it?”
“It can’t be kosher,” I said. “The cops would be howling bloody murder. If true, it means that someone shoved a lighted cigarette between the wrong fingers after the girl was dead, and left her there in the car with the motor running to cover up.”
“Now,” says Lew brightly, “we see all, know all. So it gets murder and I thought fast and hauled you back here. Miss Two Million Bucks didn’t tumble she’d said anything that mattered. She had just thought of the cigarette while talking to me. I’m the only one who knows about it. She’s been questioned by the police and newspaper men, and has testified at the inquest, and had her picture taken, and her soul is harrowed with grief, and all she wants now is to Get Away From It All, and let the Great Truths of Life assuage the tragedy of losing her best friend.”
I had the car parked near Hollywood and Vine by then, and I sat there with a hand on the door eyeing Lew warily.
“Are you nuts?” I wondered. “Or was Miss Millions feeding you a line? It’s been a long time since I’v heard such addled talk. And that brings me back to your crack about screwballs and someone called The Great Truth, Father Orion.”
Lew was enjoying himself.
“Name your brand of nut and I’ll pick it off the Hollywood tree,” he offered. “Father Orion hangs up on one of the top branches, out near the tip. He doesn’t go in for publicity, but I run across his name now and then. His Shrine of Truth is located away out in the hills beyond Laurel Canyon. He’s got plenty of acres inside a burglar-proof fence out there, and his buildings and land are worth money. Some of the people who go for his line would rate headlines in any newspaper. And they’re not all local folks. Disciples make pilgrimages here. He’s got guest houses on the place for the ones who rate lodging while they’re hanging around getting injections from the fountain of wisdom itself.”
“What is it, a yoga racket?”
“Heaven knows,” said Lew. “But it’s profitable. You can tell me more about it after you come back from the joint.”
“Say that again.”
“You’ve going to be a disciple of The Great Truth, Father Orion,” Lew informed me.
“Like hell I am!”
Lew was in fine fettle as he lighted a cigarette and sat there grinning at me.
“You’ll arrive from the East with a pocketful of money, Mike. And if we’re lucky, you’ll get into the inner circle around Father Orion and inspect the skeletons in the closet. I’ve got it all figured out.”
“When you figure anything out, it’s time to run,” I cracked back. “Why should I get next to this Father Orion?”
And for the first time Lew grew serious.
“That girl was murdered, Mike. Her contacts and life around Hollywood don’t offer a reason. It wasn’t even robbery. Her purse with money in it was beside her on the seat. I don’t think this Cudahy girl knows anything. But from the way she talked, I gathered the dead girl wasn’t in favor of her interest in Father Orion. Is that a motive for murder?”
“Is it?”
“You’ll have to find out,” says Lew, still serious. “And don’t think if we pin this murder on someone after the police have called it accidental death or suicide, that it won’t mean plenty of local business for the Blaine Agency.”
“If,” I repeated sarcastically. “And you had to plaster the job on me. All right—how do I become a disciple of this Father Orion?”
Lew grinned broadly again. “That’s why I wanted you on this, Mike. I’ve done my share. The rest is up to you.”
So I thought it over, grabbed an east-bound plane, and in the morning was at Chicago Police Headquarters with Brophy, one of the Blaine vice-presidents.
I framed the telegram that went out from the Missing Person’s Bureau to Father Orion, Los Angeles.
AMNESIA VICTIM CARRYING LOS ANGELES AIRLINE TICKET AND CONSIDERABLE SUM OF MONEY ON PERSON IN CUSTODY OF THIS BUREAU AND UNABLE TO REMEMBER ANYTHING BUT DESIRE TO SEE FATHER ORION AT LOS ANGELES. PERSON UNABLE TO REMEMBER WHETHER CATHOLIC OR NOT. PLEASE ADVISE COLLECT TELEGRAM ANY KNOWLEDGE YOU MAY HAVE OF PARTY.
LIEUTENANT HOWELL
And in less than two hours the Lieutenant had a wire back.
PLACE AMNESIA VICTIM ON LOS ANGELES PLANE AND WIRE HOUR OF ARRIVAL. FATHER ORION WILL ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY.
JOHN PAIGE,
SECRETARY TO FATHER ORION.
“Hook, line and sinker,” says I, in Lieutenant Howell’s ofice. “Who could resist an amnesia victim with a pocketfull of cash?”
The Lieutenant, a gray-haired fatherly-looking man, scratched his head.
“It ain’t according to the rules,” he informed Brophy and me. “We’d usually investigate further before we let an amnesia case go off to strangers.”
Brophy was more than dubious. He was worried. “Take good care of that money, Harris. I don’t like to see so much of the Agency’s cash being exposed to risk. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”
“You never can tell what’ll happen in an amnesia case,” I cracked, and back I went to the airport and headed west again with eight thousand dollars and some extra bills in my pocket and amnesia on my mind.
How does amnesia feel? I wouldn’t know. L.A. was a vast blanket of sparkling lights when the big silver plane eased out of the late evening sky and settled on the airport. And the pretty little stewardess who gave me a parting smile and I walked down the portable steps into the blaze of light beside the plane.
Nine of us left the plane. Three were movie stars, and they walked into waitin
g photographers, flash bulbs and friends surging to greet them. And I walked past all that with a glassy look, wondering who was going to meet me and could I put this over.
A hand touched my arm. A smooth voice intoned: “Father Orion sends his greeting, Brother.”
I said, “Ahhhh …” and then almost strangled as I caught sight of two men well off to one side who had stopped and were staring at me.
Jake Dennis and Larry Sweet if I never had a bad dream. Sweet’s hand was on his stocky companion’s arms. I could almost hear him saying: “Hold it, Jake.”
Meanwhile Father Orion had sent his greetings.
Sweet and Dennis had caught me offguard. I didn’t know what my face had revealed to the man who had touched my arm.
He was a head taller than I, a jolly, well-fed young man with pink smiling cheeks and a stare that took me apart.
“I’m John Paige, Father Orion’s secretary, Brother. I’ve never seen you before, have I?”
I shook my head and mumbled: “I was hoping you’d know me. Will Father Orion know me?”
The hand he put to my elbow wore a curious jade ring. His manner was cheerfully confident. “This way, Brother. Father Orion knows all Truth.”
Dennis and Sweet were still watching as we walked away. I was in a sweat as to whether they’d hail me, and in another sweat as to whether they’d follow us.
“Everything went blank …” I mumbled to Paige.
“Yes, yes,” he said soothingly. “But Father Orion has the light. Here’s the car, Brother.”
At least Father Orion gave the faithful good taxi service. Paige stowed me into the front seat of a big blue Cadillac sedan and we rolled away. I tried to see if we were being followed and had no luck. But those two flat-feet from Headquarters would at least get the license number.
“How long have you followed the Master?” Paige inquired.
“There’s a—a wall in my mind,” I said forlornly. “In Chicago all I could remember was the name of Father Orion. I asked the police and— and they put me on the airplane.”