It was funny how much I was beginning to dislike Carla. I changed the subject.
“What do you think of this party idea?” I asked.
Helena raised her handsome shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t think Sondo Norgaard is quite sane. And I think she was passionately, hopelessly in love with Monty. Love like that is dangerous.”
I was startled. “You don’t mean that because she loved him she might have—might have—”
“Killed him?” Helena said. “No, I don’t think that, exactly. But I think she’s dangerous now. I think she’s out for payment in blood. And her mind is sufficiently twisted so that she won’t be guided by logic in choosing her victim.”
“Then you think this party idea isn’t very wise?”
“I think,” said Helena quietly, “that it might easily turn into a Frankenstein monster that will get out of Sondo’s control. We’ll be lucky if it goes through without disaster.”
She was standing at a window, looking down at the moonlit street, while a finger of one hand absently traced the scratch that crossed the palm of the other.
“There’s someone down there watching the building,” she said.
I was too tired to care. All I wanted was to get to bed. But there was one more question I had to ask.
“Helena, what time of the day was it that Carla Drake came down to exchange that pin?”
She was so quiet for a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she turned away from the window and gave me a long, slow look that was completely inscrutable.
“I don’t remember,” she said, and I knew she was lying.
Cunningham’s was becoming accustomed to murder. Excitement still ran high on Thursday, but the element of horror was less keen among those whose lives had touched the tragedy only from a distance.
For those of us who were close, it was not like that. I thought of a violin whose strings were being tightened to reach a certain pitch.
Keith was in the office when I arrived and I was glad to see him. I’d probably never again be able to step into that room without a twinge of painful remembrance. The swelling behind my ear was down, but I could still recall that moment all too clearly.
“You’ve been invited to a party,” I told Keith at once.
He looked at me without comprehension and I explained.
“Sondo Norgaard wants to have a cozy little group out to her apartment this evening. Just the select few she suspects might have murdered Monty.”
Keith’s eyes fairly popped. “I won’t go to anything like that. I won’t!”
“Good,” I said. “If enough people refuse there won’t be any party.” I was offering him an out, but for some reason he seemed uneasy about taking it.
“I don’t understand, Miss Wynn. What’s she want to have a party for? Do you suppose she’ll be mad if I don’t come?”
“It’s quite likely,” I said.
His gloom increased. “Anyway, there’ll be another one who won’t be there. Tony Salvador.”
It was my turn to be startled, “What do you mean?”
“Tony’s been arrested. They’ve got him over at headquarters now. It happened this morning right after he came to work.”
“I don’t believe it!” I said. “Not Tony. Tony does a lot of barking, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I don’t believe it, either,” Keith said. “Tony didn’t do it.”
He sounded so sure that I asked a point-blank question. “What do you know?”
I began to consider him with a more serious interest than I’d shown before. Now that I thought about it, the state of fright he’d been in ever since the murder seemed a bit too intense to be accounted for by jittery nerves.
“Keith,” I said more gently, “if you really know anything, you ought to tell me. Perhaps I could help you decide what to do. I know you’ve been frightened and worried the last day or so and it would be much better if you got the thing off your mind, whatever it is.”
I saw his eyes turn toward that blank space on the wall.
“I wouldn’t tell you, even if I knew anything,” he said. “There are times when it’s safer not to know. They say that after a person has killed once its easier to kill again—to kill for protection. So I don’t know anything, see? I just don’t think Tony’s the one. I think this arrest is a trick of some kind.”
That was what I thought myself. And I thought I knew who was behind the trick.
“Come along,” I told him. “We’re going over to see Sondo. You’ll have a chance to explain in person that you won’t come to her party.”
He wasn’t anxious to accompany me, but he didn’t dare to refuse. We went over to window display and found Sondo on her knees, busily pasting wallpaper over the panels of a folding screen. The phonograph was wailing Dark Eyes and the first thing I did was to lift the needle and turn off the machine.
“I want some words with you,” I said grimly, “and I can’t think with that thing going.”
She looked around at us with her usual grimace. “Okay, but don’t expect me to stop and serve tea. Even with Tony in jail, those windows have to go in. I’ve had executives in and out of here tearing their hair ever since I arrived. But they have to trust me—there’s nothing else they can do.”
“What’s this about Tony being arrested?” I asked. “You’re behind it, aren’t you?”
She smoothed a strip of bright-patterned paper with annoying deliberation. “And what if I am? Can I help it if I’ve piled up such a nice stack of evidence against Tony? What could I do except take it to McPhail?”
“What evidence?” I demanded.
“Oh, just odds and ends.” Her manner was airy. “About the perfectly whopping scrap he had with Monty when he went after him with that golf club.”
“Tony went after Monty—?”
“Yes, of course. Didn’t you notice how uneasy Tony was over that club. I finally got the truth out of him. He threatened to bash Monty’s head in, but Monty just laughed at him and snatched the club out of his hands. It was one of those old wooden clubs, you know, and Monty took it and broke it over his knee. Then he threw the pieces down and went around to the switch box. Tony picked up the heavy end and followed him to finish the job.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I don’t believe any of it.”
Sondo was unperturbed. She sat back on her heels and surveyed the screen.
“Hand me that hat, will you, Linell?” she said. “And by the way, what do you think of my idea for Easter?”
I followed her pointing finger and saw that she’d arranged a large green paper plant in a red flower pot. The plant was jauntily wearing a flame colored hat. I handed the hat to her without a word.
“I’m going to have a line of those plants across the back of a window,” she went on, “all wearing hats. Nice, don’t you think?”
“What I think couldn’t be printed,” I said. “Are you trying to send Tony to the chair?”
Her dark eyes were mocking and wicked. “But it’s almost all true. Tony’s admitted it about the golf stick. He’s even admitted that he threatened to kill Monty. McPhail’s got his man. The case is closed.”
“And there’ll be no detectives trailing us tonight, is that it?”
Sondo’s laugh had an ugly ring. “You’re so clever, Linell dear!”
“And you’re so clever,” I said, “that it’s a wonder somebody hasn’t murdered you.”
She held the bright hat up against the beige and flame background of the screen, nodding her satisfaction.
“I can take care of myself. And a night in jail won’t hurt Tony. He can stand chastening. It’s better that way than to go on waiting for slow police force methods. Besides, I’m looking forward to paying off this score myself.”
There was a look so malevolent on her dark little face tha
t I turned away. Helena had been right. The girl was dangerous and I didn’t envy the murderer.
She changed the subject swiftly. “You’re coming to my party, aren’t you?” she demanded of Keith.
He cast a helpless look at me, and then nodded his head weakly. So much for Keith and his firm resolutions.
I’d have started back to my office, but Bill Thorne sauntered unexpectedly into the room. He smiled at me, but his blue eyes were grim as he looked at Sondo.
“Good morning, Madame Machiavelli,” he said, “and how are all the little schemes today?”
She wrinkled her nose at him impudently. “Very well, thank you. Have you heard—?”
“About Tony, you mean? Yes, I’ve heard. But that’s not what interests me.”
He went over to stand lazily before her, his hands thrust in his pockets. Sondo was such a little thing, she had to tilt her head to look up into his face. Her eyes were wicked and unblinking.
“How did you know,” Bill asked, “that the phonograph was going to be smashed?”
Sondo put her hands in her smock pockets, openly mocking Bill. “Why, Mr. Thorne! Whatever do you mean?”
Bill gave her a look full of daggers and ground glass, and turned to speak to Keith.
“That phonograph was all in one piece when you left it at the shop last night, wasn’t it?”
“Sure,” Keith said. “Of course.”
“Bill,” I broke in, “you don’t mean that was what—”
He nodded. “I had a look at the electrical shop the first thing this morning. The phonograph was there all right—smashed to bits.”
Sondo gave a squeal. “I knew it! I knew it!”
Bill ignored her. “How did it happen, Keith, that you took the wrong phonograph out to Universal Arts?”
Keith looked blank and Sondo stopped squealing. But she still resembled the cat who’d swallowed the canary.
Bill went on. “The phonograph you took out to my place wasn’t the one I made the attachment for.”
“But—but I took the one Miss Norgaard told me to take,” Keith stammered.
Bill walked across to Sondo’s phonograph. “This is the one that was intended for the window. How did you happen to send me yours, Sondo?”
Sondo’s look of bewilderment was badly overdone. “Why, you’re right. This is the one that belongs to the store. How could I have been so stupid?”
“I thought you said something was wrong with this one?” Bill turned on the machine, set the needle in place. The music came out clearly, the vibration entirely gone.
Sondo made a fluttery, feminine gesture of confusion that was scarcely in character. “It sounds all right now, doesn’t it? I feel so foolish!”
“Yes, you do!” Bill said derisively. “You made the substitution on purpose. Because you wanted the wrong phonograph to be taken out to my place. Why?”
Sondo dropped her pose of innocence. “Wouldn’t you like to know? But you won’t know. Not till I get ready to tell you.”
And she turned her back on us and went furiously to work.
12
I sent Keith to the office and walked slowly to the elevators with Bill.
“What’s it all about?” I asked. “Why would anybody want to go clear out to Universal Arts to smash up a phonograph?”
“I can only guess,” Bill said. “Did you hear the other one while it was on the blink? How did it sound?”
I tried to remember. “There was a sort of tinny vibration.”
“As if something might have dropped down into the sound box?”
“Why, yes,” I said. “It could easily have been that. But I still don’t see—”
“Suppose the thing that dropped into it was an object of importance to the person who murdered Montgomery. Suppose the murderer had a good idea that object had fallen into the phonograph while it was in the window. Wouldn’t he be willing to go to any lengths to recover it? Even to coming out to my place and smashing up the machine to find it?”
Chills went up and down my spine. If all this was true, then there was a connection between the murder and Universal Arts. The phonograph made a link. And I knew that in the frightening moment the night before, when I’d become aware of the shadow crouching among those white things of plaster, I’d again been within arm’s reach of the murderer.
Bill read my face. “You’re all right now. Don’t start falling apart at this late date.”
I made an effort to ignore my wobbling knees and attend to the confusion of my thoughts. “But why should Sondo—?”
“She probably figured the thing out herself and wanted a chance to find what was in the phonograph. So she sent off the wrong one with Keith and kept the other until she had time to investigate. Not being in a hurry, she could do it more tidily. Since the machine’s all right now, the chances are she found what she was looking for. All clear?”
I shook my head. “If she had any real evidence, why is she throwing this party? Why doesn’t she take the whole thing to McPhail?”
“It suits Sondo’s peculiar temperament to go about it in her own way. Besides, the evidence, whatever it is, may not be conclusive.”
A suddenly brilliant idea struck me. “Bill! All we have to do is figure out how many people knew the phonograph was out of order and that it was going to Universal.”
“Good enough,” Bill said. “Start figuring.”
“First of all we can put you down,” I told him. “Though I must admit you’d probably take the thing apart with something more delicate than a crowbar, or whatever was used. And you couldn’t have been in two places at once. I mean in your office and biding in the workshop too.”
“Thanks for small favors,” he said. “I wish I could vouch as well for you. But you certainly knew about the affair. You could even have been breaking up the phonograph while I was working. And you could easily have staged that whole episode of the prowler.”
“I think I’ll go back to the office,” I said haughtily.
He caught my arm and his eyes were laughing. “Wait a minute, Miss Flighty. Let’s do some serious checking.”
It wasn’t as easy as it looked at first glance. When Tony had brought the phonograph in to play it, there had been Sondo, Carla, Helena, Tony and myself in the room. Carla and Helena left before Tony suggested that Keith take the machine out to Universal. To all appearances, only Sondo, Tony, Keith, Bill and I knew about that. But—and here was the thing that made our checking hopeless—anyone speaking in an ordinary voice could be heard in the corridors or several rooms away.
Anyone at all could have lingered outside Sondo’s workroom and heard what was going on. In that case, we’d have to include Owen Gardner, who’d been up there being fingerprinted. Even Chris and Susan had been in the store that day, and it would have been possible, though not likely, for them to have been within hearing distance.
“A lot of help you are,” Bill said. “We’re right where we started. But maybe Sondo will get somewhere tonight. Which reminds me that I’d better get downstairs and date up the lovely Carla.”
“Without an introduction?” I asked. “Who do you think you are?”
“You underestimate my charms,” he told me, with that idiotic grin on his face. “I’ll let you know how I come out.”
I sniffed something about not being interested and went toward the office with my chin in the air.
“Mrs. Montgomery’s been trying to get you,” Keith said when I walked in. “She’s going to call back. She sounds excited again. Say, what was all that about the phonograph anyway?”
I had no intention of getting into a long wrangle of speculation with Keith, so I shook my head and gave him some letters to type. The phone rang and it was Chris.
“Hello,” I said. “I know—you’ve got to see me.”
“Why, how did you guess?” she asked,
and the innocent surprise in her voice pricked my conscience.
“I’ll meet you,” I assured her contritely, “but I can’t take another minute off till lunch.”
“Any time before twelve-forty is all right,” she said. “That’s when the train leaves.”
“What train?”
“Why, the one Susan wants to take,” she said, as if I should have known. “That’s why I want you to meet me. So we can stop her. She simply mustn’t go, Linell.”
This was getting too complicated for the telephone. “I’ll see you at twelve,” I told her. “Wherever you say.”
She mentioned the waiting room of one of the big stations and hung up. I sat for a few minutes with my hand on the phone. Now what went on?
It rang again promptly and this time it was Bill. His whistle was vulgar, but expressive.
“The lady exceeds her reputation,” he announced smugly. “I’m taking her to supper tonight and then over to Sondo’s.”
“Do you think she’ll be safe?” I asked sweetly.
“Oh, I’m the type women trust,” he said. “It’s my youth and innocence that appeals.”
I wished him luck and hung up. Bill’s kidding was something to keep the two of us sane and postpone as long as possible the inevitably approaching time when all that was frightful would crowd closely about us and laughter would die on our lips.
For the rest of that morning I managed to free my mind of questions and suspicions. The pressure of work on my desk was increasing and I had to get out from under to some extent.
I can’t say that the copy I wrote during those days was brilliant, but I am amazed now that I could respond to necessity and accomplish anything. I did manage, however, and when I left the office to go to meet Chris, my conscience was a little clearer as far as my job was concerned.
I found Chris on one of the big benches in the station waiting room, with Susan beside her. Chris was talking animatedly, waving her hands, evidently pleading. Susan sat listening to her—plump, dowdy, silent, and very, very stubborn. Heaven preserve me from the stubbornness of a woman who is ordinarily gentle and yielding!
“Oh, Linell!” Chris wailed the moment I joined them. “You’ve got to talk to her. She’s going off to Florida and she simply mustn’t.”
The Red Carnelian Page 12