Murder for Two

by George Harmon Coxe

  “We did so want to see where you worked,” the tall one went on. “We thought you might let us see your equipment.”

  “We wanted to see how a real professional works,” the short one said. “It’s all right to tell us but it’s so much more interesting when one can see for herself, don’t you think?”

  Casey said he guessed so. He said there really wasn’t much to see.

  “Oh, but I’m sure there must be,” the tall one said. “Now you go right ahead with what you were doing, and we’ll just tiptoe around and see for ourselves.”

  “And we thought you could tell us more about focusing,” the cute one said. “I never did get it straight. Was it thirteen feet or eighteen feet you are supposed to set your camera at? You know,” she said when Casey hesitated. “You said there wasn’t always time to use a built-in-focuser, even if you had one, and until we got used to judging distance we could just—”

  “Yeah,” Casey said, and took a breath. He had told them that in taking pictures of people walking on the street it was easier to set the focus and then watch the subject through the finder, forgetting about distances but pressing the shutter release when the subject was full length to the eye, leaving just a little rim of space at top and bottom.

  He explained again. He said it was just an approximation but with a camera set at an ordinary stop and with a reasonable depth of focus, it wouldn’t matter if you missed a foot or so one way or the other, though with practice you could generally hit it on the nose.

  They went into the depth of focus again. He got out his camera and let them practice judging how much thirteen feet was. When they got tired of this they wanted to see the darkrooms, so he took them into the printing-room and listened wearily to their cries of wonder and delight.

  “And this is your developer?” the tall one said, pointing to the large tray near the sink. “And your fixing-bath? But they’re enormous. My poor little tray—”

  “We do a lot of pictures here,” Casey said.

  “Of course,” they said and inquired into the mechanism and theory of the ferrotyper. When at last they had had enough, one of them thought about film development.

  “Yes,” the cute one said. “We would like to see the darkrooms—if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  Ordinarily he liked this cute one but now— “There’s nothing to see,” he said a little desperately. “It’s just an alley full of dark cubbyholes with a couple of trays.”

  It was no good. The tall one was already on her way and Casey followed the others out of the room, down the short corridor. Here at the end there was a narrow doorway to the right, and beyond this nothing but the alley of darkness. The tall one took the turn and stopped.

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s so dark. Why, it’s positively spooky.”

  And then, out of the stygian blackness, came a low, sepulchral voice in a one word answer.

  “Booh!” it said.

  The tall one let out a shriek; then she jumped backward three feet down the hall, her mouth open but no more sounds coming out.

  She looked at Casey, her eyes bulging. She swallowed and he thought: That damned Finell! and tried to keep a straight face.

  “There was someone in there.”

  The tall one had one hand at her ample bosom now and she looked to her companions for confirmation.

  “I heard him.”

  “Yes,” they said.

  “Yes,” Casey said. “He’s developing something. He’s in there most of the time. I guess it’s making him goofy.”

  The cute one looked at him, a doubting grin at the back of her eyes. The fat one was suspicious. The tall one brushed past, flushed now and trying to regain her composure. Before she could speak, the phone rang and Casey leaped for it.

  It was Tom Wade. He said he was over in East Boston and was there anything else he had to do over there before he came in.

  “No,” Casey said, and then, hurriedly: “Yes, sir, right away.”

  “What?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What is this?” Wade yelled. “Are you nuts?”

  “Yes, sir,” Casey said. “I’m on my way now.”

  He started to put down the instrument but he heard most of the next remark. “The guy,” Wade said, talking to himself, “has blown his top. Hey, Casey—”

  Casey dropped the phone. With feverish haste he grabbed hat, coat, and plate-case.

  “I’m sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “Rush assignment. Got to run. See you in class, girls.” And then he was gone, his last view showing the three of them standing there gaping at him.

  He ran all the way to the stairs and started up. At the landing he slowed down and when he reached the floor above, he stopped to put down his plate-case and mop his face. He put his hat and coat on one of the benches outside the city-room railing and sat down to get his breath, reminding himself that he owed both Wade and Finell a drink.

  When he had a cigarette going he slapped through the gate and stopped to slide a thigh over the corner of a desk. Engle, a rewrite man, looked up from a piece of copy and asked how he was.

  “Did you hear about the reward?” he asked.

  “What reward?” Casey said.

  “On this Taylor thing. Five thousand bucks. Not bad, huh?” He lit a cigarette and threw the match on the floor. “It was a cinch they’d do something like that. You know how it is with newspapers, always protecting their own. I understand the News and Standard are chipping in. It reads good for home consumption. The good fight. Loyalty. The sanctity of the Press. Remember that guy Lingle in Chicago, and the one in Ohio.”

  Casey rubbed his nose and said he remembered. “And could it be that I detect a note of cynicism in your remarks?” he said.

  “Could be.” Engle gave him a crooked grin. “But don’t mind me. I was just talking. I’d like to get a piece of that reward myself—as if anybody but a bunch of cops would.”

  Casey shoved off the desk and moved in the direction of MacGrath’s office. He knocked tentatively and went in. MacGrath was tipped back in his chair, staring out the window, and when he saw who his caller was he went back to his staring.

  “Nice shot you turned in last night,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Casey said. “Only it wasn’t mine.”

  MacGrath turned slowly, rolling his unlighted cigar to the corner of his mouth. “Say that again.—Whose was it then?”

  “Karen Harding’s,” Casey said, and explained how she happened to get it and how the Express eventually received it.

  MacGrath said, “Well, I’ll be damned,” and lapsed into silence. Casey watched him a moment, seeing now the harassed lines about MacGrath’s eyes. Ordinarily the managing editor would have had more to say on the subject but he let it ride. Casey knew how troubled he was.

  “I understand there’s a reward,” he said. “I understand the News and Standard are in on it.”

  MacGrath said that was right. “It wasn’t my idea,” he said. “They wanted to get in on it. I didn’t think we should let them. On a thing like this I think we should go it alone. But the Old Man said to go ahead and let them in.” He removed his cigar, looked at it, replaced it.

  “You were there last night. You saw her yesterday afternoon. What did she want? What do you know about it that I don’t?”

  Casey told him about Byrkman and John Perry. He made his report brief, but he did tell about his talk with Perry that morning. “I told him to come see you,” he said. “I thought if that rubber business he says he’s got is anything, we ought to do something about it.”

  “Sure,” MacGrath said. “I’ll see him. But this Taylor thing has got me whipped. We talked with the Commissioner and the District Attorney. They say they’re doing all they can—and I guess they are because they know the publicity is going to be bad if they don’t. Taylor wasn’t any thirty-a-week reporter—though if she was we’d still yell—she was a name, a personality.”

  He swiveled his chair and leaned forward, sliding his th
ick forearms across the desk. “What about you?” he demanded. “And don’t give me that innocent eye. I’ll lay you three to one you know more about the case than you’ve told me. You cameras are all alike when it comes to talking. You’d rather be secretive until you can come in and slap something hot on the desk, and that’s okay. I don’t give a damn what you tell me, or what you know. What I want is the lad that shot Rosalind Taylor.”

  “Even if it’s Matt Lawson?”

  “Especially if it’s Lawson.”

  “What am I?” Casey said. “Sherlock or Philo this time?”

  “You’re Casey,” MacGrath said. “You get around, you’ve got pipe lines. You’ve got something besides a vacuum between the ears and you’ve cracked things like this before—”

  “Luck,” Casey said.

  “If you say so. Okay, get lucky again. For the next couple of days forget pictures. Let the rest of the staff take care of that and you keep digging on this other. Go on, now. Get out. Circulate. If you need help, yell, and if you get in a jam—”

  “You’ll front for me,” Casey finished.

  MacGrath looked at him. He had to grin a little. “Beat it,” he said. “I’ve got to do some more worrying and you cramp my style.”

  Casey stopped at Engle’s desk again on his way to the stairs. The reporter had a city edition of the Standard in his hand now and he pointed to a page-one head. It read: Police Shake-up Near as Taylor Murder Goes Unsolved.

  “Logan’ll love that,” Casey said.

  “He and all his buddies.” Engle put the paper down and then said, “Yeah,” as the desk called him. He grabbed some copy paper and stood up.

  “Take it in three,” Bennett called from the desk, and Engle stepped into one of the booths along the wall and shut the door.

  Casey spread the Standard out and scanned the story. It did not tell him much. A veil of official secrecy clouded the investigation, it seemed, though the identity of the killer was supposed to be known and an arrest was expected shortly.

  When he had read enough he stood up and watched Engle thread his way between desks, stopping en route to speak to Bennett.

  “Anything?” Casey asked.

  The rewrite man shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Some bum got knocked off down in the Hotel Walters.” He sat down, tapped a half dozen sheets of paper together, and rolled them on his machine. “Shot in the back of the head,” he said and began to compose his lead.

  Casey stood very still, a curious sensation at the pit of his stomach and a sudden turmoil in his brain. The thing in his stomach began to tighten. “In the back of the head,” he said softly.

  Engle glanced up questioningly. Casey knew what came next. He had to say it.

  “What was his name?”

  Engle consulted his notes. “Name of Byrnes. Henry Byrnes. At least that was the name he registered under.”

  For another moment Casey stood there, nothing moving in his face, his gaze sightless and fixed; then he turned and strode off, heading for the elevators and snatching up his hat, coat, and plate-case from the bench outside the railing without even breaking his stride. Engle watched, amazed. He shook his head. The remark he made to himself was similar to the one Wade had made over the telephone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A ROOM WITH A CORPSE

  THE WALTERS HOTEL was a five-story brick structure with a grimy, cinder-blackened façade and a discouraging outlook. The railroad ran through a cut-out almost directly in front of it, and though a man would need earplugs to sleep, the rates were from a dollar up and the desk clerks were careful not to ask embarrassing questions.

  Two police cars and an ambulance were parked out front and a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk to see what the net result would be. There was a uniformed officer at the entrance, keeping the immediate area cleared and when Casey started in the man stopped him.

  “Live here, do you, mister?”

  Casey said he did and the officer, one of the few who did not know the photographer by sight, gave him a final inspection and let him pass. Casey went directly to the desk.

  “I’m from headquarters,” he said. “Where can I find Lieutenant Logan? There aren’t any reporters around, are there?” he asked when the clerk told him he would find Logan in room 427.

  “There were a couple, I believe,” the clerk said, “but I think they’ve gone.”

  Casey nodded and stepped to the elevator, aware that the situation was as he had hoped it would be. He’d known there would be no photographers because a routine murder in a hotel like this was not the sort of thing you sent a man out for—unless the victim was a newsworthy name. As for reporters, this thing could be covered almost as well from the press rooms at police headquarters and unless Logan told of the connection between Henry Byrnes and Rosalind Taylor any who came would not linger. And Logan, if he was still in his right mind, would be saying nothing at all.

  There was another uniformed officer from the precinct house in the fourth floor hall and this one knew Casey. He grinned and shook his head when Casey approached the door he was guarding. Casey pretended the man was a figurehead.

  “Hello, Dineen,” he said and reached for the doorknob.

  “Now, now,” Dineen said and grabbed Casey’s arm. “’Tis the lieutenant’s orders, you know.”

  Casey looked hurt. “You mean I can’t go in.”

  “That I do.”

  “What’ll you bet?”

  Dineen looked puzzled, finally grinned. “That is neither here nor there, me lad. If I was a gambling man—which I’m not—”

  “Tell him I’ve got a picture for him,” Casey said. “Go ahead. I promise I’ll wait right here.—Why, you don’t think I’d stoop—”

  “Never mind what I think,” Dineen said, but he opened the door and stepped inside. Casey leaned against the wall. When the door opened, Logan was with Dineen, and the lieutenant’s face was dark and annoyed.

  “How did you get here?” he wanted to know.

  “I flew in by carrier pigeon.”

  “Aren’t you the card,” Logan said. “Can’t we have just one little murder without you horsing around and getting in the way?”

  Casey knew now—though he had never really been in doubt—that his hunch had been correct. Logan was harried and morose and he wanted to sit on this new murder until he could figure out what had happened and where he stood.

  “Not today,” Casey said. “Not when the victim is shot in the back of his head. Not when his name is Byrnes.”

  “Where’s the picture?”

  “Here,” Casey said, and took out the print he had stopped to get from Finell in the studio.

  “Well?” Logan held out his hand.

  “When I get inside,” Casey said and then, his impatience rising: “Or do I have to phone in a story about Henry Byrkman myself?”

  “Come in,” Logan said, and stepped back.

  Casey went in quietly. The room was crowded but what Casey saw first in the glare of the police photographer’s lights was the figure at the little writing-desk. In his shirt sleeves, small and skinny and lifeless, Henry Byrkman had slumped forward, his head on the desk and his arms hanging straight down, the side of the face and the upper part of the shirt darkly stained. Over to one side, near the window, a half-finished water color stood on the easel, and a paper had been spread on the chair to protect the seat from the paints and brushes, and there was a glass of colored water with which to wash them out.

  The deputy examiner was putting on his coat and two morgue attendants waited in a corner, one of them leaning on a rolled-up stretcher. The police photographer worked silently and the room around the body was one big glare as he exposed his final plate. He nodded to Logan, who spoke to the examiner. The two men with the stretcher unrolled it and Casey moved away, nodding to Sergeant Manahan and a plain-clothes officer.

  Logan moved up and Casey handed him the print of Byrkman. Logan glanced at it, gave Casey a disgusted stare, and passed it to the po
lice photographer.

  Casey made a mental note to keep his mouth shut. He knew how it was with Logan now, and when the lieutenant got this way he was likely to be bad news for anyone who crossed him. He had counted on finding Byrkman—alive; now what was supposed to be his star witness had been taken away. Casey moved over to the far corner and sat down on the floor with his back against the wall.

  By the time he had a cigarette going the body had been removed and the examiner had gone. The police photographer shifted his tripod and lights and began taking more pictures. Now and then the door opened and a man came in to speak in low tones to Logan and then go out again as the official investigation was continued.

  Watching all this, a blanket of depression settled heavily upon the big photographer. From the moment Engle had told him of the man named Byrnes who had been shot in the back of the head, Casey moved on impulse alone. This was the first chance he had had to think and as the significance of his thoughts struck home he found them more and more discouraging.

  He had no way of telling how much Logan knew. The picture Karen Harding had taken the night before took on a new meaning now, and the half-finished water color was mute testimony that Byrkman had not been killed last night. He realized, too, that the case against Matt Lawson was now circumstantially much stronger, yet what bothered him most was the thought of John Perry—and Karen Harding.

  To Matt Lawson, Henry Byrkman stood for prison; for John Perry, Byrkman meant his one great hope of vindication, perhaps even a pardon. Now that hope was gone. The only one who could ever clear him now was Lawson—and Lawson would never talk.

  Casey got up to put out his cigarette. Questions were stumbling over themselves in his brain now, but when he looked at Logan he knew he dared not ask them. Not yet. This was Logan’s job and his eyes were stormy, his temper short. Already the newspapers were riding the department and a solution was farther than ever away. He could keep this second murder separate and comparatively unimportant—for a while—unless some reporter put two and two together and got eighteen. But eventually the connection would become known—