“I come to and spot Jean on the elevator. Then, when the lights go out, he follows us downstairs. He’d just as soon have shot me and hung it on Max, except that you bopped him and I got away.
“Only Jean Dahl didn’t get away.
“You probably only stunned him for a second. He took off after Jean and he got her in the hall by the door. He knew the lights were going on any second so he ducked put of sight. As soon as you and I had gone he dragged the body to the foot of the stairs and waited for someone to find her. The someone who found her was Max. And I wouldn’t give you odds for your friend Max’s life either. We’re going to find him with a bullet through him pretty soon. He’s too dangerous.”
Janis Whitney didn’t answer. She was sleeping.
I took the automatic out of my coat pocket, flipped off the safety catch and went out of the room, closing the door gently behind me.
Chapter Thirteen
I hesitated in front of Walter’s door. I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. I swung it open and let myself in. I closed the door behind me.
Holding the gun in front of me, I called out, “Walter! Hey, Walter! Are you in there?”
Then I heard the voice.
“Hopalong Cassidy,” he said. “With the firearms. Somebody could get hurt.”
I whirled around.
He was sitting in the chair I’d sat in earlier in the day. His face was a pasty gray color. His eyes were vicious and cold. His feet were propped up on the small coffee table, and in his hand he held a large, dangerous-looking revolver.
“Roy Rogers,” he said. “Drop the gun. Right there. On the floor. By my feet.”
Walter’s imitation of Max Shriber’s voice had been good. But it did not compare with the real thing.
Max Shriber’s revolver was pointed directly at my chest.
“Drop the gun,” he said.
I dropped it. It made no sound at all when it hit the thick carpet.
Suddenly, Max Shriber groaned. Then he slumped forward until his head was resting on his propped-up knees. He groaned again and his whole body heaved convulsively.
I watched him in fascinated horror. It did not even occur to me to reach down and pick up the gun I had dropped.
When he pulled his head up again, his face was grayer than it had been and it was soaked with sweat.
“You don’t look so good,” I said.
“Dr. Mayo,” he said, in his heavy rasping voice. “A brilliant diagnosis. Frankly, I think I have contracted a case of bullet wound. There’s so much of it going around this time of year.”
He pulled back his coat on the left side. His shirt, high on the shoulder, was bloodstained and plastered to his skin. There was a darker spot in the middle of the dark stain.
“Who shot you?” I said. “Who did it?”
“A good question,” Max Shriber said. “By coincidence this is the very question I am here to discuss with my good friend Walter.”
“Listen,” I said. “How come you’re not in the hospital?”
“I was,” he said. “But I left.”
“I gather they found you, all right,” I said. “The maid was screaming loud enough. She thought you were dead. So did I.”
“I kill hard,” Max Shriber said. “A couple inches one way or the other and I could be. You were in my apartment?”
“That’s right. I came up to see you. I wanted to tell you I don’t like being beaten up by your gangster chauffeur. I had a few other things I wanted to tell you too.”
Max Shriber groaned and then before either of us could speak again the telephone on Walter’s desk began to ring. It rang twice.
“Pick it up,” he said. “It’s only polite. You could take a message.”
I walked to the desk and picked up the receiver.
“Elsa Maxwell,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. “Party giver. Where are you?”
It was the voice. It was Max Shriber’s voice, perfectly reproduced.
“This isn’t Walter,” I said. “This is Dick Sherman.”
Across the room, Max Shriber’s lips formed the question: Who is it?
I moved my lips in silent reply: Max Shriber.
“Walter isn’t here,” I said. “I haven’t seen him.”
“He called me,” said the voice on the phone. “He said he had to see me. I told him to come over here to the Carlyle. That was an hour ago. He’s still not here.”
Max Shriber leaned painfully forward and pushed a button on Walter’s instrument panel.
The picture on the wall began to slide noiselessly on its ball bearings.
Then I saw her.
She looked very ugly sitting naked on the bed talking into the telephone. The cords on her neck stood out as she strained for the guttural, snarling sounds.
If you’d only seen her in musicals, you’d have no idea what an actress she was. You’d have to see her in a few of the scenes from “Lure of the City.”
Or you’d have to have seen her through the mirror talking into the telephone.
I’m still not sure how she made the sound.
She distorted her whole face to do it, I know that. She was a great actress. She even managed to look a little like Max Shriber as she imitated his voice.
“Wait a minute,” the voice on the phone said.
I had my eyes on her face. The cords in her neck stood out even farther on the word “minute.” And her lower jaw shot forward.
Max touched the right button and then we could hear her voice from the next room. I could hear it twice. Once on the phone and once on the loudspeaker. It had an eerie, echo-like effect.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “There’s someone at the door now. This must be Walter. Yeah, it is. I hear him. O.K., Mr. Sherman, I’ll see you around.”
In the next room Janis Whitney replaced the telephone receiver.
I leaned over and touched the button. The picture slid back into place.
“I don’t understand,” I said softly.
“The clincher,” Max Shriber said. “That was supposed to be the clincher. That was supposed to adjust the rope around his neck. The size thirteen and a half noose.”
“Whose neck?”
Max Shriber clutched his side and held on for a minute. Then he said, “You’re slow. You’re slow on the uptake. Walter’s neck. That’s whose neck. She thought she knocked me off this afternoon. Little Sure Shot came pretty close. But she didn’t quite. She should have stayed around a little longer to make sure.”
I shook my head. My knees felt weak.
I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand anything. “Why was she calling Walter?” I said.
“She wasn’t calling Walter. She was calling you.”
“Me?” I said.
“Look, it’s easy,” Max Shriber said. “While she was in the bathroom—you thought she was sick. But she wasn’t sick. She was on the phone calling Walter.”
“The bathroom?” I said. “There’s a telephone in the bathroom?”
He nodded. “There’s a phone in every room in the house. She was in there talking to Walter down in the library.”
“But why?” I said again.
“The frame,” Max Shriber said. “The frame. She calls Walter and she uses my voice. She tells him he’s got to come to my place right away. It’s only a few blocks so he goes. He leaves his guests for ten minutes and he goes. He rides up in the elevator. He rings the bell. No answer. He waits. He rings the bell. No answer. So he rides back down in the elevator again and he comes home. O.K.?
“Only three days from now, bright and early Monday morning, they find Max Shriber on the bed with bullet holes all over him. So it’s all set. The elevator man remembers Walter going up and he remembers Walter coming down again. He don’t know Walter never got inside. All he knows is he saw Walter come up and go down.
“And they can prove good old Max was still alive when Walter got there because you were talking to good old Max on the phone just as Walter came in.
“And Little Sure Shot. She’s got the perfect alibi. She’s in there in the next room, passed out. From too much to drink.
“She’s a great actress. The toughest thing you can play is a good drunk scene.”
That reminded me of something. I walked to Walter’s liquor cabinet, took out the brandy bottle and tilted it. I didn’t bother with a glass, I tilted it. And then I handed it to Max.
He coughed and choked, but he swallowed three or four times.
“Why?” I said. “Why?”
Max looked at me. “Why did she do it?” His voice was quieter. It was harsh and guttural, but it was lower.
“I guess that’s what I mean,” I said. “She has everything. She’s beautiful and famous and rich. Why did she have to louse it up?”
“Sick,” Max Shriber said. “Everybody is sick. The whole damn world is sick. She’s sick like everybody else, only more so.”
He motioned for me to give him a cigarette. I lighted one and handed it to him.
“She’s an actress,” he said. “The greatest. But she’s in musicals, see? And that’s all she’s gonna be in. She’s got a term contract. Seven years and no outside pictures. Her musicals make money so they keep her in musicals.
“You’ve seen the pictures she makes. She’s not dumb. She knows how lousy they are. And look—she’s thirty-one. That ain’t old, but in seven years she’ll be thirty-eight. If she wants to do something else, it’s gotta be now.
“So look. We get a chance to buy this book. This is the way to do it. She owns a piece of the book. If they want to make a picture out of the book, they gotta take her with it. It’s the only way she could ever get the part.
“So she buys into the property. It takes every bit of dough she can raise. She hocks everything she’s got to raise the hundred grand.”
“She raised a hundred thousand dollars?” I said. “I thought it was a three-way partnership.”
“It was. She put up the dough. Walter and I put up our services.”
“You mean both of you were getting a free ride on her dough?”
He ignored me.
“So she buys in for one hundred grand. Walter was tough. He makes her buy in sight unseen. He says it ain’t quite finished and Anstruther won’t let nobody see the book yet. But Walter guarantees there’s a great part for a girl.
“Walter’s a great little salesman. He tells her this is going to be the picture of the year. This is going to be the dramatic part of the decade. Like Scarlett O’Hara in ‘Gone with the Wind,’ or Maria in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’
“So she buys in. You gotta understand ambition. How sick you can get with ambition.
“She reads in the columns, they’re talking about Hayworth for the new Anstruther. Or she reads Bergman is going to make it in Europe. And all the time she knows she owns it. It’s hers. She’s gonna make it. Her. She’s going to make it and be so great that they give her an Academy Award. In her mind she’s figuring out what she’ll wear at the dinner when they give her the award.
“So when she finds Anstruther and she finds there’s no book—she goes off her trolley. It’s not the money. She gets most of the money back. It was lying all over the floor when she shot him. It wasn’t that. She’d decided that if there was no book, they’d fake one. Nothing was going to stop her.
“So everything goes all right. Till Jean Dahl comes into the picture. She comes to me and tries to blackmail me. I give her a grand or so to stall things along. Then I go to Janis and tell her I know what happened.
“Then everything explodes...”
Max Shriber grabbed his side again.
“Sick,” he said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Talk to her,” Max said. “If you don’t believe me, talk to her.”
In a daze I started out of the room.
“Wait,” Max said.
I stopped.
He nodded down at the gun I had left on the floor.
“In case you find out I’m right,” he said. “Take it.”
I reached down and picked up the gun.
Then he slid forward, off the chair and onto the floor.
I stood for a moment, undecided. I started to help him. Then I stopped. “The hell with you,” I said.
I left the room without looking back.
Chapter Fourteen
I went back into the room.
I had the gun in my hand.
Janis was lying on the bed as I had left her. She was covered by the sheet. She was sleeping like a baby. Breathing gently. Her face in repose was beautiful again.
But I couldn’t forget how she had looked on the telephone.
I walked over and picked up the telephone.
I picked up the phone but I kept my finger on the button so that the phone was completely dead.
I dialed three numbers. The way you do to get one of Walter’s inside extensions.
“Is Mr. Heinemann there?” I said into the dead telephone. “All right. I’ll wait.”
I kept my eyes on her face while I was talking. Her eyelids didn’t move. Not a flutter. She could have been completely asleep.
Silently, I eased the receiver back onto the hook.
Then I sat down on the foot of the bed holding the gun waiting for her to open her eyes.
I sat there watching.
She looked very beautiful.
“Hello, Walter,” I said. “This is Dick Sherman. I’m here in Janis Whitney’s room. She’s asleep. Walter, I want to talk to you. There’re a few things that are bothering me. I want to talk to you about them.
“Walter, what I want to ask you is this. Do you think it’s possible that Janis Whitney killed Charles Anstruther? Do you think she killed Jean Dahl? Do you think she tried to kill Max Shriber? Do you think that’s possible?
“You see, Walter, I just got through talking to Max. He’s in the next room with a bullet in his shoulder. He says Janis shot him. He says Janis murdered Anstruther and Jean Dahl. And the funny thing is, Walter, it could have happened that way. She could have arranged to meet Jean Dahl at your cocktail party. I don’t know why she wanted to meet her. I have an idea about that, but we can talk about it later.
“Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that Janis met Jean Dahl at your party, and let’s just say that Janis fed her a loaded drink.”
Janis Whitney slowly opened her eyes. She saw that I had no phone in my hand. She saw that I did have a gun. You couldn’t tell from her expression that she had seen anything.
She just looked at me.
I went on talking. “Jean Dahl was supposed to go home and pass out. When they examined her they’d find that she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and that would be the end of that. Only I happened to come along and spoil it. I kind of put Janis on the spot.
“The only thing she could do was follow us upstairs. Then she phoned me from the room across the hall. She used Max’s voice when she called.
“I’m glad I didn’t see her. She doesn’t look so pretty when she does her imitation of Max. The cords in her neck stand out and her face takes on a strange expression.”
I reached into my pocket and took out my cigarettes.
“Just a minute,” I said. “Let me get a cigarette.”
I did not let go of the gun.
I lighted a cigarette for me. Then I lighted one for Janis. I handed it to her. She reached up, took it, and continued to watch me, not smiling, and with no expression at all in her green eyes.
“I didn’t see her when she slugged me as I came out the door,” I said. “And I didn’t see her doing her stuff in the dark at Walter’s. I’m glad I couldn’t see her face when she came up on Jean and me and stuck that flashlight in our faces. Then she did her imitation of Max again. I’m especially glad I didn’t see her during those few seconds when everything went crazy and the light fell on the floor and someone got hit on the head with a lamp.
“Wha
t’s that, Walter? You want to know if Janis was the person holding the light, who did she hit on the head? She hit Jean Dahl. That’s who she hit. She hit her very hard and very fast a couple of times. She hit her hard enough to kill her.
“How did she move the body? First to in front of the door where it was when the lights went on? And then to the foot of the stairs where it was found?
“Now, Walter, really, that’s a silly question. She didn’t have to move the body to the door, because that’s where we were standing when Jean Dahl got hit. I didn’t know it then because I was lost in the dark. But Janis knew it. She knew the layout of the house and she had a flashlight. She belted Jean Dahl and left her lying right where she was. Then she grabbed my hand and off we went.
“Janis herself is still wondering how the body got from the door to the foot of the stairs. You could tell her, couldn’t you, Walter? You moved it yourself. Not because you murdered her, but because you wanted to hide the fact that a murder had been committed.
“You played right into her hands because you didn’t want an investigation right now. There was too much going on. There was too much at stake. You saw a chance to make it look like an accident and you took it. When the body was found at the foot of the stairs it was just as much of a surprise to Janis as it was to me.”
Janis sat up very slowly, without taking her eyes off my face. There was still no expression in her eyes.
She held the burned-down cigarette in one hand. With her other hand she held the sheet in front of her.
I took the cigarette out of her hand and flicked it across the room into the open fireplace.
“Well, goodbye, Walter,” I said. “I think I’d better hang up now.”
Janis sat up on the bed.
She held the sheet in front of her.
“Darling,” she said very softly, “help me.”
I looked at her, waiting.
“Help me, darling,” she said again.
Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer Page 12