Murder for Two

by George Harmon Coxe

  “I’ll remember,” Casey said. “At least we know how we stand.—Watch the steps going down. They’re tricky.”

  He closed the door, went over to his coat and retrieved the folder and the photograph. He switched off the living-room light and took them both into the bedroom.

  Chapter Eleven

  DYNAMITE ON FILE

  CASEY AWOKE at eight-thirty the next morning. Ordinarily he would have stayed in bed awhile but today he had things to do and though it was a frightful effort, he rolled over, groaning and grunting, and reached for the telephone.

  His call to the office was strictly routine. He intended to go over to Rosalind Taylor’s apartment and see what the police had found and he wanted to leave word where he would be. Bennett, the day man, took the play away from him.

  “That was a sweetheart you turned in last night, Flash.”

  “What was?” Casey said.

  “That Rosalind Taylor shot you took. The one of her car.”

  Casey’s face wrinkled up and he squinted at the mouthpiece.

  “We’re the only sheet in town with any picture,” Bennett said.

  “Are we?” Casey said. “Yeah. Well—yeah, that’s swell.”

  He looked at the telephone suspiciously after he had told Bennett what he had called up for and then he sat up and went barefooted to the door, his fingers absently exploring the lump on his head that had gone down some but was still sore.

  There was an Express outside in the hall. Page one carried a two-column head about the murder and he scanned subheads as he crossed the living-room, then turned to page three. When he saw what was there he stared and sat down weakly on the davenport, quite unable at that hour of the morning to comprehend the miracle.

  It took him a while to get up. He lowered the paper, his rugged face a caricature of awe; he looked at the picture again, seeing the familiar details and battling with his incredulity. Suddenly he jumped up and headed for the telephone.

  “Hello,” he said when he got his number. “This is Casey. Did you take that picture on page three of the Express? The one of Rosalind Taylor’s car? Did you send that up to the desk last night?”

  “Tom Wade did,” Karen Harding said. “I haven’t seen it yet, but he wanted to use it. Did it—”

  “Yeah,” Casey said. “It sure did. You were practicing, huh?”

  “I thought it was a good time. When the lieutenant wouldn’t let you take your camera I thought maybe I could use mine. No one paid any attention to me and those blackout bulbs weren’t noticed, so—”

  “Okay,” Casey said. “How much will you charge to give me lessons?”

  Karen Harding’s laugh tinkled in his ear. “And can I go with you today?”

  “No.”

  “But I—”

  “No. I’ll have trouble enough explaining those two you got yesterday to Logan. You do your A.W.V.S.-ing and let me take; some pictures for a change.”

  She was still laughing. “Well, will you phone me this evening? I’ve got to know what’s happening.—I’ll have some whisky this time if you’ll come.”

  Casey quieted down. He actually grinned into the telephone. “Sure, Kay,” he said. “If it isn’t too late.” And he hung up, wondering what he was going to say to MacGrath.

  When Casey pressed the buzzer at Rosalind Taylor’s apartment an hour later a plain-clothes man opened the door, looked him over, grinned, and shook his head.

  “Why not?” Casey wanted to know.

  The plain-clothes man removed his toothpick. “Nobody—and especially no newspaper guys—comes in till the lieutenant gets here,” he said and closed the door.

  Casey scowled at it. He got out a cigarette, inhaled, and leaned against the wall. Presently he thought of something and went down the hall to the next door and pressed that buzzer. With the second buzz the door opened and Helen MacKay stood there in a quilted robe.

  “Why, Flash,” she said.

  Casey grinned and looked her over. Her olive skinwas smooth and clean and fresh-looking and her mouth was red and quickly smiling. She looked very nice for so early in the morning and Casey told her so.

  “I tried next door,” he said, “but they t’run me out till the lieutenant gets here, so I thought—”

  “Come in. I was just having breakfast and there’s plenty of coffee—”

  “Hah!” said Casey and followed her down a hall to a living-room that looked feminine but comfortable, through this to a second hall from which three rooms opened. One was the office adjoining Rosalind Taylor’s, the second was a bedroom and bath, the third a kitchen.

  “I generally eat breakfast in here,” Helen MacKay said, leading him into the office where a small table was spread with breakfast things. “It’s sunnier, and closer to the commissary—Sit down. I’ll get another cup.”

  Casey went to the desk when Helen MacKay went out. The flat top was cleared of everything except a calendar, a fountain pen set, and a glass holding an assortment of pencils, their sharpened points up. He put his plate-case and hat here and sat down.

  “You’re sure this is all right with what’s-his-name?” he said when Helen came in with a steaming cup.

  “Stanley?” She laughed. “Why not? And besides, he isn’t here.”

  “Well,” said Casey with mock concern. “You know me. A guy can’t be too careful.”

  “I know you,” Helen said. “You’re the shy type.”

  She gave him cream and sugar and went back to her own little table and spread marmalade on a piece of thin rye toast. He watched her, held by the lovely line of her throat and shoulders and thinking back to the days when she had worked for a while on the Express.

  “Are you going to marry this guy?” he asked.

  She looked out the window a moment; then back at him, smiling, a touch of sudden color in her cheeks.

  “Yes, Flash. As soon as—well, as soon as it’s decent. He wants to go back to Montana and there’s nothing to keep me here now.”

  Casey sipped coffee. “What’s his name? Furness? Stanley Furness, isn’t it? You waited quite a while, didn’t you, Mac. Is this what you wanted?”

  She nodded, eyes serious now. “He’s kind and good, and he has enough money and he’s enough older—he’s forty-three—to know what he wants too. Besides, he loves me.”

  “Swell,” Casey said, and then, grinning: “I knew you had your sights on something. I never could get anywhere.”

  She smiled at that. “You,” she said. “If I’d ever even hinted I was serious about you, you’d have been scared to death. I’d like to see the woman that could snare you.”

  “Well, you could have tried,” Casey said and they both laughed at that because each knew that it was only talk.

  Casey had taken her out two or three times when she had been in the business office. So had a lot of others; for she was young and beautiful, with a lovely figure and a good mind. She liked to go out and she was good company, but there was no nonsense either and Casey had realized early that she knew what she wanted. He had never been sure quite what it was, but he had always had the feeling that she would get it.

  She’d come from a poor family in one of the then dormant textile towns. She had had a business course and had landed a job as a clerk in the classified department. Her looks helped a lot but she was smart too and Abrahams, the local display manager, made her his secretary. A year of that and she’d sold herself to Rosalind Taylor. That was just before Rosalind decided to free-lance, and Helen had been with her ever since.

  The telephone rang as Casey thought of these things and he watched her pick a pencil from the glass and jot down something on a scratch pad as she talked. When she said, “All right, Stan,” and hung up, Casey thought of something else.

  “Where does this Furness fit in the picture?” he said, watching her fold the slip of paper and return the pencil. “How come he pops on the scene just now?”

  Helen MacKay sat down and lit a cigarette, watching the smoke curl upward and frowni
ng faintly at it before she spoke.

  “He came back to see Rosalind. But not in the ordinary sense. It’s sort of hard to explain and I’m not sure I should, but if somebody you liked played you a dirty trick and left you and later on your luck changed and you went up in the world, why, then you might look up this person to show him how swell everything was with you; to rub it in a little perhaps, for your vanity’s sake, so you could say, ‘Now you can see what a fool you were not to stay with me.’ I think it was something like that, Flash. Of course, Stanley didn’t know just how well Rosalind had done for herself. He found out, naturally, and the first time he came here he met me and, well, you know how those things are.”

  Casey said he thought he did and then someone unlocked the door separating the offices, knocked once, and looked in. It was Logan. He said good morning to Helen MacKay, eyed Casey without enthusiasm.

  “Mr. Giftord’s here,” he said to Helen. “We’re going through Miss Taylor’s things and I thought you could give us a hand, show us where she kept things.”

  “I’d be glad to.” Helen rose and gathered her housecoat about her. “I’ll go and get some clothes on.”

  Logan watched Casey get up. “That was a nice picture you had in the Express this morning. I guess you kind of outsmarted me after all, didn’t you?”

  Casey cocked his head, aware that Logan was sore. He waited for the rest of it and pretty soon it came.

  “I take you around and you snap one behind my back. So all morning I have to listen to the other papers yapping about me playing favorites. It’s one thing when you’re alone on a case with me, but last night those other cameras saw you, damn it.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out,” Casey said. “And wrong. I wish I had taken it, but I didn’t. The Harding girl took it,” he said and told Logan how she’d done it.

  Logan listened, but his resentment was too deep-seated to evaporate so quickly. “The Express printed it. You knew about it—Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded as Casey started past him.

  “In there.”

  “Un-unh.” Logan shook his head. “This is strictly police, chum.”

  “Okay.” Casey was elaborately unperturbed. “No favors tor me, no favors for you.”

  “Oh, you’ve got favors, hunh?” Logan said.

  “Well, I’ve got another picture the Harding girl took after she left us last night. And I had a little run-in with two guys that wanted that picture. But I guess you don’t care about that.”

  He pushed away from the wall, buttoned his coat. Logan’s brows screwed down. For a moment he seemed undecided.

  “What two guys?” he said finally.

  “You’re the detective, aren’t you? Find out for yourself.”

  “All right, I will,” Logan said. He watched Casey turn away and then reached out and grabbed him. “Okay,” he said, and grinned. “I ought to know by now you can outluck me. Come on in. What about those two guys?”

  Casey went into Rosalind Taylor’s office. Sergeant Manahan was there and a plain-clothes man, and Russell Gifford. They were looking through the desk and filing-cabinets and Logan took Casey through to the living-room. He listened to a story which was complete, except where it concerned Russell Gifford, and had a look at some corroborating evidence—the bump on Casey’s head.

  “Where’s the picture?”

  Casey gave it to him. “And remember,” he said, “they got the film. This is the only print.”

  Logan looked at it. He sucked at his lips and his dark eyes were threatening; so was his voice.

  “I knew damn well I shouldn’t have let you bring that dame along.”

  “If you hadn’t you wouldn’t have this picture.”

  “Ahh. It isn’t much good anyway. Who could identify anybody from this?” Casey let Logan go on with a lot more of this; when he got a little bored with it he said:

  “It’s your own damn fault. She saw Byrkman’s bags on the bed and she was going to tell you and you didn’t give her a chance. You had to shoot your big mouth off and it made her sore.”

  Logan wasn’t listening. He was studying the print and his interest belied the statement that it wasn’t much good. “These the two guys that jumped you, huh? Well, maybe there’s a chance it could be something.”

  Manahan came out With a folder as they started toward the office. “Threats,” the sergeant said, holding it out. “All threats.”

  Logan opened the folder and Casey glanced over his shoulder. There were thirty or forty of these messages. Some were angry protests, some were of the poison-pen type, others were warnings and direct threats. Most of them were on cheap paper and printed in pencil, though some were typewritten and a few consisted of letters cut from a newspaper and pasted together to form the message.

  “You know about these?” Logan asked Gifford when they went back to the office. Gifford said he hadn’t seen the folder but he knew she had often been threatened. Then Helen MacKay came in and Logan repeated the question.

  “Yes,” the girl said. “She got them all the time.”

  “What do you mean, all the time? Every day?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. They came in bunches—whenever she was exposing some group or individual in her articles. Generally when she was after labor racketeers. Sometimes she wouldn’t get any for a couple of months and then some week she might get three or four.”

  “She didn’t scare much, did she?”

  “No,” Gifford said, “she didn’t. She kept a gun in her desk”—he opened a drawer and took out the short-barreled .32 Casey had seen the night before—“and carried another in her bag.” He hesitated, his glance touching Casey but revealing nothing. “Did you find that she had been killed by a .25 caliber bullet?”

  “Yes,” Logan said.

  “Then it was probably her own gun,” Gifford said.

  Logan gave the folder back to Manahan and told him to put it aside. Casey sat down and watched the others continue their search among Rosalind Taylor’s papers. Presently Gifford made a funny sound and said, “Take a look at this, Lieutenant.”

  He was at the filing-cabinet. He had another folder that he had taken from someplace near the back, and Casey thought he sounded excited when he came over to Logan.

  The lieutenant took one look and a sudden brightness kindled in his eyes. He thumbed over whatever was inside and looked up, his quick glance moving from face to face.

  “Ever seen this before?” he asked Gifford. “You, Miss MacKay?” he added when Gifford denied he’d seen it.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What’s in it?”

  “A lot of information about Matt Lawson and Henry Byrkman.”

  The girl shook her head. She said she hadn’t seen that folder, but she knew Rosalind Taylor had been trying to find out things about Byrkman. She knew the name.

  “Rosalind had a private detective working with her,” she said. “Is there a man named Jarvison? He used to come here.”

  “A good man,” Manahan said, nodding to Logan.

  Casey remembered the folder on Dinah King. He looked at Russell Gifford, then asked Logan if Jarvison was with the Northeast Agency.

  “Yes,” Logan said. “Why?”

  “I just wondered,” Casey replied. “The name sounded familiar.”

  Logan watched him narrowly a moment. He looked again into the folder and the room was suddenly very quiet. Finally Helen MacKay spoke, her voice, low, hesitant.

  “Do—do you think that could be what those two men came here for last night?”

  “If they were working for Lawson, it sure could,” Logan said. There was a thin little smile of satisfaction on his lips now but his eyes remained thoughtful. “It sure could,” he said. “I wonder why they didn’t get it.”

  “They could have overlooked it,” Manahan said. “They wouldn’t know where to look anyway. A guy could pass up a thing like that. Those folders all look alike—those that I saw.”

  “There could be another reason,
” Helen MacKay said. “Most of my work here was on articles and correspondence—she had a terrific mail—and there were other things that she kept to herself. She could use a typewriter, and did. I know she was a great believer in copies. She had at least one of everything. She might have made copies of the things that are in there, mightn’t she? I don’t say that she did, because I don’t know. It just occurred to me that if she had and those men had come across it, why then they’d stop looking, wouldn’t they?”

  “Uh-hum,” Logan said. “Do you remember if they stopped all of a sudden? Did they say anything that—”

  “They hardly said a word,” Helen MacKay said. “I was on the floor in the hall. I couldn’t hear very much and the only time I could see them was when they went in and out of here.”

  Logan nodded. He looked at Casey and gave him a silent order with a jerk of his head. “Keep going,” he said to Sergeant Manahan. “I guess Mr. Gifford will help.—If you’ll just show the sergeant where the things are that you know about,” he said to Helen MacKay. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  Casey moved toward the door to the hall. Presently Logan joined him. “Let’s take a ride,” he said. “Let’s go see Byrkman.”

  “You don’t expect to find him, do you, after that picture?”

  “I don’t know what to expect. That’s the ducky part of this racket,” Logan said dryly, “it’s always so full of surprises.”

  Chapter Twelve

  A HALF HOUR WELL SPENT

  BY DAYLIGHT the house where Henry Byrkman lived was a squarish, nondescript structure, painted gray and weathered to a monotone of dullness. The front door was locked and Logan led the way round a lilac bush, down a narrow walk, hedged in close to the house by barberry, to where a gnarled and ancient apple tree stood guard over a small yard. The back door held an old-fashioned lock and when Logan punched out the key that had been left on the inside he attacked the keyhole with a skeleton of his own.

  “This is against the law,” Casey said.

  “So they tell me.”

  “If the neighbors call the police, where’ll we be?” Casey cracked.