The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

“And the knife proves this, too?”

  “Yes—the point is damaged, as I explained. I’ve got it here, with the jacket.”

  “How on earth did you get away with them?”

  “I simply dared them to stop me.”

  “Great Scott!” said young Mr. Castle, feebly inadequate. After a moment he asked: “Won’t they tell?”

  “I don’t know. I warned them not to—but I suppose they know, by now, what I was really after. I don’t care much. The rest of it is up to Dallas. After all, I’m not a policeman.”

  Castle smiled a mirthless smile. “No?” he interrogated; and answered himself with grave irony: “No—I suppose not!”

  They were incongruous figures on the steps of the Detective Bureau—that sinister gray building with its dingy corridors.

  A staring desk sergeant directed them to Dallas’s office. In the outer chamber a hard but smirking secretary stopped them. Dallas, it appeared, was in conference.

  “My God,” said Castle, “do they have them here, too?”

  Miss Cardiff smiled attractively. “If you could just slip my name in to him,” she whispered, “I think he might consent to see us. In fact, I’m sure of it.” She proffered her visiting card.

  The secretary smirked and frowned and smirked again. “I ain’t saying I haven’t heard of you, Miss Cardiff,” he observed. “Well, just wait a minute, and maybe—”

  He disappeared through a swinging door, into a room across which they saw another door. They heard the second door close behind him.

  They waited exactly two minutes.

  Then Dallas came hurriedly into the anteroom. He was very courteous.

  “I’m glad to see you, Miss Cardiff,” he said, ignoring Castle. “But I am busy—there’s no use denying it. If it’s important…?”

  “It is rather important, I think,” answered Miss Cardiff. “I’ve come to tell you who killed Mrs. Letts.”

  The chief of detectives stared, speechless. After a moment, “Oh!” he murmured. After another moment he grinned. “To tell you the truth, Miss Cardiff, we’ve got the fellow, ourselves. Brought him up from Indiana, last night. I was questioning him when you arrived. You were certainly right about his being a man.”

  “He was running away, then?” cried Sally Cardiff.

  “Just as fast as he could go,” agreed Dallas.

  “And he has confessed?”

  “He will confess, before I get through with him,” said Dallas grimly. “At the moment, between ourselves, he’s holding out.”

  “What does he say? Of course, he hasn’t a leg to stand on!”

  “I agree with you, but he hasn’t been able to see that—yet. Look here, have you got proof?”

  “Positively.”

  “Good enough! It isn’t customary to discuss these matters, but with you I will.” Dallas was at once flattering and unctuous. He needed proof—it was all he did need.

  “He admits he attended the opera—privately—but swears he knows nothing of the murder. Gave a very good imitation of a man being shocked, when we told him. Says his presence in Chicago was entirely due to business matters—very important! So important that he came here from the East secretly. Something to do with a bank merger which, if it got out, would upset business to beat the—to beat the band. Affect the stock market, and so on. Very plausible. He had his story all ready, obviously. So secret that, after the opera—and incidentally after the murder—he took a fast plane to get back to New York. Unfortunately, he crashed in Indiana. We were on the job—and we got him.”

  Miss Cardiff had listened to this explanation with growing wonder. “Who under the sun are you talking about?” she asked, at length.

  “Emmanuel B. Letts,” said Dallas. “Former husband of Mrs. Emmanuel B. Letts, deceased. Who are you talking about?”

  “Oh, my goodness!” cried Sally Cardiff. “You’ve got the wrong man!”

  For an instant they stared at each other in silence. It was Dallas who spoke first. “Oh, I think not,” he said. But his eyes were worried.

  “But you have,” she insisted. “I know it!”

  The smirking secretary put his head in at the door for an instant. He made signs to Dallas.

  “Get out of here!” roared Dallas in a fury. Then with an effort he controlled himself. “You were saying, Miss Cardiff?”

  “I think,” said Sally Cardiff, “I’d better tell you my story from the beginning, Mr. Dallas. I’m sure you must have forgotten the most important clue of all—the rouge on Mrs. Letts’s glove.”

  “That rouge!” said Dallas scornfully. “It had nothing to do with it.”

  “It had everything to do with it. Does Mr. Letts use rouge?”

  “Of course not. At least, I’m certain he doesn’t.”

  “So am I. If you’d said he did, I’d have been bothered. Listen, Mr. Dallas. Mrs. Letts wasn’t killed by anybody in the audience. She was killed by someone on the stage.”

  Into the harassed eyes of the detective chieftain crept a look of relieved understanding. He understood it all now. This attractive girl had simply gone cuckoo. She had been thinking too hard about the murder. It often happened that way.

  He smiled tolerantly. “I hardly think that can be the case, Miss Cardiff,” he said. “After all, the people on the stage had their own business to attend to. They were singing—and dancing—and carrying on—and Mrs. Letts, you will remember, was killed during the first act.”

  “You think I’m crazy?” Sally Cardiff laughed delightedly. “I give you my word, Mr. Dallas, if you arrest Mr. Letts for this crime, you will have a very nasty time on your hands—afterwards!”

  The worried look again crept into Dallas’s eyes.

  “Well, well,” he cried jovially, “let’s hear your story, Miss Cardiff. I’m sure it will be an interesting one—and very clever.”

  For the second time she opened her tiny purse and extracted her envelope. She laid it in his hand. Then she fumbled with her parcel. There emerged a shaggy jacket of theatrical aspect and a gaudy dagger somewhat battered at the tip—but all the more formidable by reason of the damage. A toy that had become an ugly weapon.

  “The envelope,” continued Sally Cardiff crisply, “contains a few threads of Mrs. Letts’s dress. These other things came out of a theatrical warehouse, this afternoon—the warehouse where ‘The Robber Kitten’ is in storage till its next performance. This is the knife that murdered Mrs. Letts. The threads clung to this battered tip, you see, and later were transferred to the jacket of an actor who was murdered in the play. Not really murdered, you understand. In the opera! It took nerve to pretend to murder a man on the stage after really murdering a woman in the audience!”

  She paused impressively; but Dallas had no words to utter.

  “There is a rehearsal on at the opera house, right now, Mr. Dallas. It will last until five o’clock. Our man will be there. Will you come with me?”

  For a long minute Dallas met the challenge of her eyes. Then he wilted.

  “And Letts?” he questioned.

  “Why not bring him along?”

  There was another silence. Then Dallas spoke with epoch-marking decision.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “Wait till I get my hat.”

  * * *

  —

  The orchestra was hard at work and, miraculously, playing something tuneful. But there was little time for listening, and after a few moments of unconscious lagging Castle hastened after his companions. No questions were asked of them. Here and there in the darkened house were other groups, standing or sitting: officials, critics, members of the company not engaged on the stage.

  They crowded through a small door, concealed by curtains, climbed a flight of steps, and suddenly found themselves backstage. Only Letts and Dallas—and on different errands—had been in such a place before. A numb
er of performers were standing around; but small attention was paid the newcomers. The light behind the scenes was gratifyingly dim.

  “Now, Mr. Dallas, we must work quickly—before we are suspected. I almost wish you had worn a disguise.”

  “Good Lord!” gulped Dallas. “I never wore one in my life.”

  “We’ve simply got to find the telephone he used,” said Sally Cardiff. “The one he must have used. Remember, it was a public telephone. He would never have operated through the switchboard. Now where would the dressing rooms be, Mr. Letts?”

  The mountainous Letts indicated.

  “I see. Very well, then—he would go first to his dressing room, remove his mustache and his furry ears, pick up his dagger, then return to this section. Without his costume—it was only a headdress, after all—he would appear to be just a man in evening garments. The house was in darkness—the play was going on. Everybody was intent on the story. His make-up would not be noted. If he left by the door by which we entered, he would be out among the audience in a jiffy—just a quiet man walking up the aisle.”

  “There are no telephones in the auditorium proper, Miss Cardiff,” said Emmanuel B. Letts positively. “They’re all in the lobbies and lounges.”

  “Yes—and so he did not go out into the audience. The nearest exit light is over there.” She walked swiftly to the door she had indicated and opened it. “Exactly! This is an entrance to the mezzanine lobby—an exit, if you like.” She put her head outside and cocked it at an angle of interrogation. “And at the far end of this corridor there’s a telephone booth! Quite perfect, you see. He knew beforehand exactly what he would do. He knew the number of the other telephone he was to call. From the first booth he called the second booth; and when a boy answered, he asked that Higginson be summoned from Mrs. Letts’s box. Higginson came—and was asked to hold the wire. Then the other man quietly stood his receiver on the shelf and hurried to the front.”

  She stepped into the corridor, and the others followed.

  “Why did nobody see him?” asked Castle suddenly. “The lobbies and lounges are studded with pages and ushers.”

  For a moment Sally Cardiff was stunned. It was a question she had never asked herself. Was it possible, after all, that there had been more than one person in the plot? Had somebody seen the murderer and kept silence?

  “For that matter,” said Dallas, a shrewd eye suddenly on Emmanuel B. Letts, “why did nobody but the boy who summoned him see Higginson go to the telephone and return? We questioned the whole staff about that.”

  But Emmanuel B. Letts knew the answer. “I think I can answer both questions, Miss Cardiff,” he said gallantly. “The opera was being presented for the first time. The ushers, once their charges were safely seated, slipped off to their own points of vantage—wherever they may be—and watched the opera. They always do it, unless it is something familiar and boring to them. Most of them, in fact, are students of music—that’s why they have these jobs.”

  “Why, yes,” smiled Sally Cardiff, “I think that must have been it. At any rate,” she continued, briskly, “he met nobody—nobody, at any rate, who later connected him with the crime. He knew Mrs. Letts’s box, and he slipped in quickly. Then I think he dropped softly to his knees. Mrs. Letts’s back was to him. She must have been very close to his hand.

  “He knelt,” she continued, “at a moment when the orchestra was playing its loudest, or when the orchestra and chorus were in full swing together. Obviously he had no immediate business, himself, on the stage. Everything was planned with the utmost care.”

  “And the rouge?” asked Dallas.

  “He had it on his face. It was part of his make-up. Some of it he rubbed off, no doubt, before leaving his dressing room. But it worried him. He knew it would be noticed if he was noticed. I think as he hurried along the corridors, before reaching the lounge and entering the box, his nervousness kept him dabbing at his cheeks—possibly he thought that way to conceal his features. The rouge would adhere to his finger tips, and then—after the murder—when he tried to remove the glove—you see?”

  Dallas nodded unwillingly. “The rouge was on the finger tips of the glove,” he reminded her. “It was once your opinion—”

  “No, yours—yours always! I said it might have been a woman or a man; but I always believed the murderer to have been a man. First he attempted, as I pointed out, to tear the glove off by turning it inside out—a wholly masculine idea. It wouldn’t work that way—so, he tugged at the fingers.”

  “Why did he want the ring?”

  “I don’t know—but I think, now, that robbery was not his motive. I doubt that he knew the necklace wasn’t genuine. To him it would seem real enough. It was only when I saw it at close quarters that I realized it was false.”

  “Why did he kill her?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Dallas—I only know he did.”

  “What was she to him?” persisted the chief of detectives.

  “I can only guess.”

  Emmanuel B. Letts was registering embarrassment. He coughed deprecatingly. “One hears gossip,” he said. Then he stopped and tried again. “I don’t pretend that this has hit me very hard, Dallas. There’s been nothing between Mrs. Letts and myself for a long time. Still, I’m shocked; and I’d like to see justice done. As I say, one hears gossip—whether or not one wishes to. People persist in believing that I must still be interested in her actions.” He shrugged and his face twisted.

  “Well, she met him in Italy, when she was there. She helped him, as she had helped others. I suppose, ultimately, she thought she had fallen in love with him. She was not—” he hesitated—“wholly admirable. I’m sorry to say that. For him, of course, it was—to be brutal—just duck soup! An elderly woman with tons of money; and all she asked in return was a little—shall we say?—attention.”

  Sally Cardiff looked at him with horror and compassion. And over and above and backgrounding his unhappy disillusionment rose now from the theater the triumphant strains of a great love chorus.

  “Then that,” said Sally Cardiff, in a low voice, “explains a great deal, Mr. Letts. When she discovered that—”

  “Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?” demanded Dallas, annoyed.

  “He was the co-respondent in the Colchis-Palestrina divorce,” said Sally Cardiff. “Obviously, he was through with her—with Mrs. Letts. She had helped him to rise, and then when he no longer needed her—”

  Dallas digested this information. “That would give her a reason for hating him,” he agreed. “If she had killed him, I could understand it. But—”

  Miss Cardiff nodded. “It’s still puzzling,” she admitted.

  “It’s crazy,” said Dallas.

  “Unless she were going to break him, in some way,” contributed young Mr. Castle, with sudden inspiration.

  Miss Cardiff looked startled, as so did Dallas. Emmanuel B. Letts, wiser in the ways of the world even than the policeman, only nodded his head.

  A glorious tenor voice was now ringing through the auditorium—soaring on wings of song. When its last note had died away there came from the stage and from the interior of the house a burst of spontaneous applause that reached the group that stood and plotted in the lobby.

  Then voices were heard—closer at hand.

  “They’re coming,” gasped Sally Cardiff, in sudden panic. “Mr. Dallas—shall you—shall I—”

  For the first time she was nervous. But it was not fear—if anything it was stage fright.

  “Leave it to Dallas,” counseled young Mr. Castle; and he attempted to draw her away. But she slipped from his grasp and stepped quickly through the lobby door into the wings.

  A tall young man, obviously Italian, was striding toward the dressing rooms. His face was still flushed with pleasure at the recognition of his peers. He paused and looked with benevolent curiosity at the
group that suddenly confronted him—prepared, if it was their wish, to be amiable for a moment or two. Perhaps an autograph…

  “Mr. Diaz,” said Sally Cardiff casually, “there is only one thing that still bothers me. Well, two! But first of all—what was your reason for murdering Mrs. Letts?”

  Orlando Diaz did not collapse. For an instant, though, he wavered, and Dallas stepped forward. Then a long sigh passed the tenor’s lips and he drew himself upright. He bowed profoundly to the small person who stood before him.

  “It was because, dear lady, she had threatened to end my operatic career—and because I knew she could do it.”

  “And the ring?” she continued. “The ring you took from her finger?”

  “It was my own, dear lady—one that I had given her. It was foolish to take it. It would have been foolish to leave it. Either way, it would have pointed to me.”

  She nodded her understanding, and, turning, took the arm of Arnold Castle. Even as they moved to leave they saw Dallas again step forward.

  But at the door she stopped him. “I can’t go yet,” she said. “I simply can’t, Arnold. Run back, like an angel, and find Palestrina. I’ve simply got to know. Ask him if he has a brother in the orchestra.”

  Mr. Castle ran back. After a time he returned.

  “He has,” he reported. “A twin brother.”

  “I was sure it must be something like that.”

  * * *

  —

  After a long silence, during which the car sped nowhere in particular, his secret admiration burst its seals. “Sally,” he said, “you’re simply great! Do you mind if—like good old Watson—I ask one final question?”

  “Of course not, silly!”

  “What under the canopy was the first thing that led you to suspect Diaz? Someone on the stage, rather than someone in the audience!”

  “It was that belated curtain call. You remember it? They clapped and clapped and clapped—and still he didn’t come. At last he did come. It was most unlike him—unlike any opera star. I wondered where he had been, and what he had been doing. And after a while I knew something had kept him. He just got back in time—and I think it was a very narrow squeak for Diaz.”