After all they had done to us, I expected to see two monsters sinister enough to co-star with Boris Karloff. But at first glance the two men looked disappointingly like any other two respectable citizens.
I had only a brief glimpse of them, however, for at the same moment the door from the outside office opened and Hatch and Bill came in with another policeman. I waved enthusiastically at Hatch, and Iris and I hurried to join the group around the Inspector’s desk.
Hatch and Bill and their policeman stood on the right. The two newcomers and their policeman stood on the left. Zelide and Mr. Catt were in the middle.
As we came up, Inspector Webb said: “Lieutenant Duluth, are you able to identify these two men?”
I stared at them. The one with the green tie lowered his eyes. The one with the red tie stared back at me stolidly.
“No,” I said. “We only saw them in clowns’ costumes. You couldn’t tell. You …”
“I can identify them positively.” It was Mr. Catt who spoke. He swung round with majestic dignity and pointed. “That is Bruno Rose—and that is Ludwig Rose.”
“Yes, yes,” added Zelide intensely. “That ees Bruno Rose and that ees Ludwig Rose, he who was my husband who keel Gino, who keel Eulalia and Lina and try to keel me. Those are them, the peegs.”
Zelide was pointing in the same direction as Mr. Catt.
As I followed their pointing fingers, everything was suddenly as topsy-turvy as a torpedoed destroyer. I heard myself gasp. I saw Iris’s mouth drop open in astonished horror.
Dimly I heard a voice. It was the voice of the newcomer with the green tie. “Yes, those are the men who came into our office Wednesday to make inquiries about Mrs. Lina Brown. The one on the left said he was her brother and wanted to locate her. My partner, Mr. Dagget, will corroborate.”
“Yes,” said the red tie. “Williams is right. Those are the men.”
Both of them were pointing. Mr. Catt and Zelide were still pointing, too. And they were all pointing in the same direction.
They were pointing at the men whom I had known as Hatch Williams and Bill Dagget.
For a moment I was incapable of speech. Then I spluttered: “But it isn’t possible. They’re Hatch and Bill. They were with all the time.”
“They helped us,” peeped Iris.
“They—they even showed me their card,” I said. “They must be Dagget and Williams.”
Stiffly the red tie said: “I am Mr. Dagget and this”—indicating the green tie—“is Mr. Williams. If these two men showed you one of our cards, they obtained it when they visited our office last Wednesday.”
“But…”
The Beard broke in: “And as for being with you all the time, Lieutenant—the whole picture is perfectly plain to me now. Posing as private detectives, they made you virtually prisoners from the very beginning. As their—ah—scapegoat, they could not afford to let you out of their sight. This is most interesting, most ingenious. I am afraid that you and your wife were thoroughly hoodwinked.”
Hoodwinked!
Obviously, relishing my confusion, the Beard gestured at “Hatch.” “Allow me to present Bruno Rose.” He nodded at “Bill.” “And permit me to present Ludwig Rose.”
I stared glassily at our old “friends.” They returned my stare. “Hatch’s” melancholy eyes, whose pessimism had inspired me with such respect, were narrowed now in crafty contempt. “Bill’s” handsome ox face was heavy with sullen, thwarted fury.
Realization of my own folly was flooding through me like sea water through an open porthole. Puppets! Iris and I had called ourselves puppets. But we hadn’t known the half of it. The Rose brothers, with a brazenness that was staggering, had won our confidence and, even while they were murdering, had had time to oversee our every movement and direct us deeper and deeper into the pit they were digging for us.
Bruno and Ludwig Rose hadn’t been just puppeteers. Nothing plain and simple about them.
They had been supercolossal puppeteers de luxe.
CHAPTER XIX
Mr. Catt’s large—ah—rump was planted firmly between mine and Iris’s on the sitting-room davenport of his suite at the St. Francis. He had just opened the fifth bottle of champagne and there was foam on his beard. He was very merry.
We should have been merry, too. Everything had worked out to perfection. Inspector Webb had contacted my commanding officer by telephone, and his extravagant praise had won me not only a five-day extension of leave but also a broad hint that the promotion would go through. Iris’s studio, sensing her publicity value as a heroine-starlet, had consented to let her remain with me while they shot the movie around her. And, to cap it all, Mr. Catt, who was due to leave at midnight for Hollywood, where he was acting as technical adviser to a cinematized biography of Lucrezia Borgia, had gallantly signed his suite over to us. Everybody loved us; we had five full days ahead of us; we had the plushiest hotel suite of any married couple in San Francisco; we were full of champagne.
We should have been in an eighth or ninth heaven, but we weren’t.
It was Mr. Catt himself who was being the rub. We admired him; we were grateful to him; we would probably erect a simple cenotaph to him if he died. But it was ten-thirty and he showed no signs of leaving and even less signs of stopping his monologue.
With his projected essay on the reappearance of the Rose brothers firmly in mind, he had made a painstaking reconstruction of our every movement and emotion. The more champagne he consumed, the more deeply he plunged into the intricacies of psychology. He was on the Rose brothers now.
“Most ingenious, most resourceful.” He gulped his champagne and gave Iris the suggestion of a wink. “I spoke to one of the policemen who had searched their car. Everything was prepared for their getaway, even to bankbooks of deposits made in Mexico City under assumed names. If their plan of using you as their temporary—ah—red herring had worked, Lieutenant, they would almost certainly have been safe across the border by now, with their twisted lust for vengeance fulfilled.”
“Yes,” I said mechanically. I was looking at Iris. She was wearing her black evening gown again with virtually nothing above the hips. We had redeemed it along with the rest of our things from the Rose brothers’ apartment on Fillmore. I was thinking about something that could only happen when we were alone.
“I have rarely if ever heard of murderers with such deftness, such genius for improvisation.” America’s foremost criminologist poured himself another glass of champagne. He still spoke in the rolling phrases of his literary style, but every now and then a slight clumsiness was slipping into his speech. “Let us review once more in its entirety their intricate method of exploiting you two to your uttermost.”
Iris arranged her face into a bright smile. I tried to look intelligent. This would make the fourth time we had heard this routine and, even though every detail of it was familiar by now, the saga of our own gullibility still embarrassed me.
“Let us commence,” said Mr. Catt, “with the two Rose brothers in the lobby of the St. Anton. They have learned that Madame Zelide has a room there and they are looking over the ground with a view to making an attack upon her. It should be clear that Madame Zelide’s arrival in town was the signal for their crimes to begin because it was essential, if they were to fulfill their purpose and escape before the deaths were linked with the Forelli case, that all three women should be killed on the same night. Very well. By a most interesting coincidence they happened to observe your encounter with Madame Zelide—Mrs. Rose, as she was to you—at the desk, and they naturally believe Mrs. Duluth to be the Eulalia whom they have not seen for eight years. Here, they feel, may be a most fortunate opportunity to kill Eulalia, for they have certainly prospected at her apartment and discovered that she has rendered herself inaccessible there. In consequence, Bruno calls you on the house telephone only to discover that they have been mistaken and that the girl they saw in the lobby was merely Eulalia’s cousin.”
Iris yawned. She was very good a
bout it. No one but me would have noticed the slight constriction of her jaw muscles.
“Very good.” Mr. Catt passed a hand over the champagne-sprayed beard. “A pair of lesser criminals would have lost interest at that point, but not the Rose brothers. With a swiftness of thought which, I feel, we must attribute to Bruno, the cleverer of the two, they see at once how valuable Lieutenant Duluth could be to them as a means of gaining entrance to Eulalia’s—ah—fortress. Ludwig is sent ahead to the Turkish bath. Bruno follows. It is simple for Bruno to take his brother’s locker key, substitute it for Lieutenant Duluth’s and slip Lieutenant Duluth’s key to Ludwig. While Bruno keeps an eye on Lieutenant Duluth’s progress through the baths, Ludwig can slip back to the lockers, dress himself in Lieutenant Duluth’s uniform, and betake himself away. Now, were they to stop the grim little comedy there, Lieutenant Duluth might well have created a disturbance and reported the theft of his uniform to the police, which would have seriously jeopardized their plans for murdering Eulalia. Once again Bruno improvises a safeguard against this. Making use of the card which he has taken from Williams’ and Dagget’s office, he seizes an innocent-seeming opportunity to acquaint himself with Lieutenant Duluth and wins his confidence sufficiently to assure the fact that Lieutenant Duluth will not call in police aid for the stolen uniform. In this way, Ludwig’s road to Eulalia is protected.”
Iris looked at her watch and exchanged a rather wild glance with me. I fidgeted, but I still felt it would be impolite to remind Mr. Catt of the time. After all, it was his suite. What sort of gratitude would it be to evict him forcibly?
“Now here again, a lessher … exchush me, a lesser criminal might have felt his work was done, but not so Bruno. There was still the risk, slight, of course, but real, that Lieutenant Duluth and Mrs. Duluth would change their minds and pay a visit to Mrs. Duluth’s cousin, after all. This had to be guarded against at all costs since their visit might well coincide with Ludwig’s murderous one. So what does Bruno do? In character as Hatch Williams, the private detective, he strolls over to the St. Anton around nine, ostensibly to report on the stolen uniform, but in fact to keep Lieutenant and Mrs. Duluth under observation.”
He hiccuped, put a large hand to his beard, bowed gravely to Iris, and continued: “Here, indeed, his genius for improvisation was put to a serious test because I appeared in the picture. Of course, he knew me by sight although I flatter myself that, until that moment, I had managed to conceal the fact from him that I was in San Francisco. The moment, however, that you told him of my warning message erroneously given to Mrs. Duluth on the assumption that she was Eulalia, he realized that my presence represented a grave menace to their plans. Bruno Rose also realized that if you two were to learn the whole story of Gino Forelli from me, you could no longer be cat’s-paws—a slight pun there, I believe—but would also become grave menaces. But having heard from you of my—ah—indisposition, he appreciated the fact that there was no immediate danger of that. I had naturally aroused your interest and anxiety for Eulalia, and Bruno Rose could not dissuade you from telephoning to her without stirring your suspicions. Therefore, what did he do?” He looked at us rather blearily over his refilled glass of champagne. “What did he do?”
Iris and I said we didn’t know. We knew perfectly well, but he liked it better that way.
With a broad smile of satisfaction, he continued: “Once again, he made a virtue of nesheshity. And it is here that Ludwig, the less perspicacious of the brothers, added his brilliant contribution to the scheme. Mrs. Duluth had telephoned Eulalia’s apartment just at the moment when Ludwig, having killed her, was going to slip away. He realized in a flash that, having arrived at the apartment posing as Lieutenant Duluth, all he had to do was to persuade you two to come over and you would be hopelessly compromised with the death.” He paused. “This phase will be paid most particular attention to in my eshay. It’sh…”
He hesitated, looking a little vague as if the threads of his argument were slipping. He drank some more champagne and his face brightened.
“Ah, yes, let us return to Bruno. While you were on your way to Eulalia’s apartment and Ludwig was speeding away from it to their hideout, Bruno remained at the St. Anton to keep an eye on me. As I have said, so long as my—ah—indisposition continued, I was no danger to them. But the moment I was restored to health, I would naturally constitute the gravest possible menace, for I would either warn the ladies myself or go to the police. However, at that juncture, it was shafe enough merely to watch me. After some time, having become weary of the St. Anton, I proceeded to the Green Kinomo—ah—Kimono, where Bruno followed me. By that time he judged that. Ludwig had returned to their apartment. In consequence, he telephoned him, informed him of my presence in San Francisco, and advised him to change from the uniform into a civilian suit and hurry to the Green Kim—to the bar and keep an eye on me. Bruno himself, meanwhile, returned to the St. Anton to see whether or not you would come back.”
Iris gave another yearning look at her watch and murmured: “It’s getting a little late, Mr. Catt. I think perhaps if …”
“And here”—Mr. Emmanuel Catt lifted a large hand, almost overturning an empty champagne bottle—“and here comesh a good part. Bruno was smart, very smart. He knew you would have to do one of two things. You could call the police from Eulalia’s and thereby get seriously involved in a murder charge which would give them ample time to kill Lina and Zelide and escape. Or, realizing the dangers of this step, you might return to the St. Anton in search of me. Bruno was ready for either exigency. You chose the second course, returned to the St. Anton, and Bruno was awaiting you.”
I glanced over my shoulder. The bedroom door was open. I could see the bed. It was almost more than I could bear.
“With what dexshterity,” exclaimed Mr. Catt, “did he walk on thin ishe—ice. Bent upon clearing yourselves of Eulalia’s murder, you were naturally determined to pursue me and learn more of the Roses. As your announced friend, Bruno could not dissuade you. In fact, he welcomed any move that delayed your going to the police and had no fears of me in consequence of any indishposhishion. Therefore he led you both to the Green Nikomo and there introduced you to Ludwig as his partner, Dagget. If you look back you will doubtless recall that Ludwig, when he was known to you as Dagget, spoke very little and then only used words without shibilants so that you would not realize he lishped.”
Mr. Catt smiled rather foolishly. “Now, neither Bruno nor Ludwig obviously dared to be seen by me, for fear that I would recognize them. Therefore, they remained in the bar while you two came into the back room to talk to me. There Mrs. Duluth was successful in obtaining Lina’s address from me. Mrs. Duluth brought the news back to you at the bar and instantly Bruno had his plan for the murder of Lina perfect. It was as simple as it was daring and, if successful, would have disastrously incriminated Lieutenant Duluth.”
Mr. Catt poured all that was left of the champagne into his glass. “When Bruno saw that the Lieutenant was determined to visit Lina and warn her of her danger, he appeared to encourage this step, merely persuading him to go first to the St. Anton and change into the civilian suit. This, of course, was to gain time for himself. For his own plan was to leave Ludwig in charge of Mrs. Duluth and me, to hurry back to their apartment, change into the uniform, send a telephone message to the drugstore which his investigations had told him was across the street from Lina, drive his car to Wawona Avenue, and murder Lina before Lieutenant Duluth, travelling by trolley, could arrive. It was his plan to have Lieutenant Duluth arrive at Wawona Avenue only to find Lina dead as Eulalia had been dead. However, thanks to his chance encounter with Mr. Grey, Lieutenant Duluth got there before Bruno. It was only a lucky accident for Bruno that kept Lieutenant Duluth from saving Lina then and seeing through the whole intricate web of—of desheet.”
My head was spinning. I would have given a great deal for the opportunity to let out a loud, piercing scream.
“Having murdered Lina,” continued Mr. Cat
t emphatically, “hish plan works according to schedule. He drivesh back to his—ah—base of operations, changes out of the uniform, and then, before you have time to return in the trolley, slips up to your room at the St. Anton and puts your uniform back in the closet. Key in pocket. Easy. Now why did he do that? Do you ashk me why?”
Iris looked at me. I looked at Iris.
In a dreadful, croaking voice, I said: “Why?”
America’s foremost criminologist giggled. “I’ll tell you why. Because tha’ wash hish plan. Hish plan was t’put Lieutenant D’luth into so unlikely a position tha’ no polishman on earth would ever believe hish story. An unknown gentleman with beard who warned about roses; two private detectives who didn’t exist; and finally a uniform that had been stolen and yet hadn’t been stolen. Young man, tha’ wash his plan. And it succeeded. Sho unli’ly—no one would’v’ b’lieved.”
It seemed to me that, for the first time, the faintest suspicion had come to Mr. Catt that his—ah—indisposition might be returning. He drew himself up with imposing solemnity, shot a furtive glance at me out of the corner of his eye, and then continued:
“After that—shimple. Mrs. Duluth brought me to your room. You were there. Mrs. Duluth was there. Wha’ hish plan? Leave ush all there! Shay he’ll come back in morning to pick us all up and go to polishe. No intenshun going to pleesh really. Plan to arrive in morning, take ush all into hish car, pretend to take ush to pleesh, make some excushe, take ush to—ah—bashe ’f operationsh, lock ush in, maybe even kill ush, then go to shir-cush kill Zelide. But wha’ happened? I—ashk—you. Wha’ happened?”
He was weaving very slowly back and forth now. Something about him reminded me of Edwina.
“Wha’ happened wash thishl” He leaned towards Iris. “I woke up in mi’l ni’. Left your room, bathtub, wen’ back t’ my roo’. Eshcaped. Put different complexshun enti’ly. Bruno furioush when he found I’d gone. I wash at liberty. Anything mi’ happen. Got to find me before I came out of my indishposh … Wha’ he do? Take you and Misush Duluth to hish ’partment, pershuaded you to wait there for him, tried to loca’ me, failed, went to shircush, thinking you were shafe out of picture in ’partment. Went to shircush, hope kill Zelide, didn’t work … you … me … Shtadium shellar … elephant … Edwina … th’ elephan’ …”
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