by Frank Kane
The whiteness of the flesh was scarred by a score or more tiny dots.
“Dope?” Herlehy asked.
Doc Travin nodded. “I thought her pulse was funny. She's probably got a skinful of it.”
“This do it, inspector?” Liddell demanded.
Herlehy nodded. “More than enough, Johnny. Even Deats will be satisfied with this one.” He turned to Travin. “Take the bandages off her head, doc, and see how bad her skull and jaw really are.”
“If the jaw isn't broken, she'll be able to tell us what did happen that night,” Liddell exulted.
“I wouldn't count on it,” a new voice interrupted. “No, doctor. I wouldn't move if I were you.”
Liddell went for his .45, thought better of it at the sight of the .38 in Seville's hand. The hand was steady, the muzzle of the gun loomed as big as a cannon, pointed right at his belly. His hand froze in midair.
Dr. Seville's thick black hair was slightly disarranged and a thin film of perspiration beaded his forehead. He showed no other signs of apprehension.
“I suppose you realize that as trespassers I'm perfectly within my rights to shoot you. You, inspector, have no right to invade my privacy without a search warrant.
You, doctor, have no right either medical or legal to interfere with my patient.”
Inspector Herlehy motioned to the figure on the bed. “Right or no right, we're removing your patient to another hospital, doctor. And we're taking you in on suspicion of murder.”
“I wouldn't bank on that, inspector.” The dark man raised his gun until the blank eye of its barrel looked Herlehy in the eye. “I'm afraid that neither you nor—”
The bark of the gun in the small room was a sharp, malicious spat. The slug caught Seville in the side of the head, spun him half around. He tried to regain his balance, there was a second spat and he was slammed back against the wall, to slide to a sitting position. He was dead by the time Doc Travin reached him.
“Who did it?” Travin demanded.
Liddell pointed to the figure on the bed, a .32 in hand, holding herself half erect on her elbow.
Herlehy picked the telephone off the night table, barked a few instructions in it. “Better get the bandages off her face, doc,” he ordered.
Doc Travin nodded, helped the woman on the bed to a sitting position. He took the .32 from her nerveless fingers, laid it on the night table. From a pocket he brought out a pair of surgical scissors, inserted the blunt end under the bandages, and cut them away. They opened like the shell of an egg, fell away to reveal a youthful face.
“That's not Mrs. Merritt. Who is it?” Liddell demanded.
The girl on the bed shook her head. “I'm Jean Merritt. They kept me here so I couldn't go through with the investigation.”
Liddell cursed under his breath. “What a perfect place to hide her. Why didn't I think of that?”
“Thank God you came. Thank God you came,” the girl on the bed murmured. Her shoulders shook as she wept.
“Your mother, Miss Merritt. Where is she?”
“Dead. They killed her.” She pointed to the dead man on the floor. “He did it. He killed her just like he killed my father.”
“You're sure of what you're saying, Miss Merritt?” Herlehy asked gently.
The girl nodded. “My mother caught him. He had to fix it so she couldn't talk. He threw her down the stairs, then brought her here so she couldn't tell what she knew.” She lifted a tear-stained face to Herlehy. “They told me if I didn't come, they'd kill her. But when I got here she was already dead. They put the bandages on me and kept me here.” She dropped her face, covered it with her hands. “It was a nightmare.”
Liddell sat on the edge of the bed. “I'm Liddell, Miss Merritt. You hired my agency to look into this for you.”
The girl nodded. “I thought they killed you. I heard Seville tell those others to do it.” She shook her head helplessly. “I thought I was all alone. I—I had no one else to turn to. No one.”
“Where'd you get the gun you used on Seville, Miss Merritt?” Herlehy asked. He picked it up with a handkerchief, wrapped it, dropped it into his jacket pocket.
“It was his. I—I saw him put it in the desk one night. I've had it here trying to get up enough nerve to kill myself. But—but I didn't have the courage.” She stole a terrified look at the bulge in Herlehy's pocket. “I—I never handled a gun before. I'm terrified of them. But when I saw that he was going to get away with it again, I—I just pulled the trigger.”
Doc Travin stepped in, motioned them back. “I think Miss Merritt needs a little rest, gentlemen. You can talk to her in a day or two. But she's in no condition to answer your questions now.” He herded them to the door. “I'll stay on here until everything is cleared away.”
Chapter Sixteen
Two days later Johnny Liddell walked through the doors that said Wilson Deats—District Attorney and Private. This time he did not have a uniformed escort.
Muggsy Kiely sat in a chair near the window, a stenographer's notebook balanced on her knee. She was staring out onto the tree-lined street below when Johnny Liddell walked in.
Inspector Herlehy sat at Deats's right, pounding on the ever-present wad of gum. On the other side of the desk was a breath-takingly beautiful blonde, her coloring complemented by the black of her suit. As Liddell came in, she walked over to him, held out her hand.
“I understand I owe my life to you, Mr. Liddell.” Her voice was warm, caressing—even promising. “You won't find me ungrateful.” Her eyes smiled up at him, she turned, returned to her chair.
The district attorney unwound his long, loose-jointed frame from his chair, approached Liddell with outstretched hand. “Nor will you find the district attorney's office ungrateful, Liddell. Inspector Herlehy has told me of the role you played in wrapping this case up.” He wrapped a clammy hand around Liddell's. “I must say that to some extent I disapprove of the extralegal methods you employed, but in view of the successful termination of the case I am prepared to overlook them at this time.” He waved Liddell to a chair, faced the others.
“I've asked you all here merely as a formality,” he began, the Back Bay Boston most pronounced in his voice. “I think this office is about ready to close the case of the death of Miss Merritt's father and the several other cases”—he smiled bleakly in Liddell's direction—“of justifiable homicide that were part and parcel of it.” He walked around his desk, brought the .32 out of his top drawer. “You can identify this gun as Seville's, Miss Merritt?”
The girl nodded. “Yes, sir. In a lucid moment I took it from the desk where I saw him hide it.”
The district attorney nodded, smiled benevolently. “Thank you.”
“Lucky thing for the state that Miss Merritt is such a good shot,” Liddell grunted.
“It—it was almost a miracle, Mr. Liddell. I know nothing about shooting. I—I don't think I've ever fired a gun before in my life.” The girl raised a handkerchief to her lips, made an effort to control herself. “I'm sorry. I—I guess I'm still not over it.”
Wilson Deats fitted a cigarette to his holder, tilted it in the corner of his mouth. “What exactly did you mean by that remark, Liddell?”
Liddell shrugged. “It tied everything up so neatly. It might have been hard to pin Seville for murder. Particularly for the murder of Merritt.”
“What are you talking about?” Herlehy roared. “You were the one who built up the case against him. You were the one who proved that it could be murder because a man would let his doctor shove a gun in his mouth if he thought he was examining his throat.”
Liddell nodded morosely. “I didn't say his doctor was the only one.”
There was a pregnant silence.
“Who else?” Herlehy demanded.
Liddell pinched unhappily at his nostrils. “Suppose it was his wife, or daughter, who was in the habit of spraying his throat. Suppose that instead of a spray she put the muzzle of a gun between his teeth instead.”
Jean
Merritt was on her feet, her face white, her handkerchief pressed against her mouth. “I won't stand for this. You can't believe that my mother would have—”
“Not your mother, Miss Merritt. You! You killed your father. On the pretext of spraying his throat, you shoved a gun in his mouth and shot him.”
“You must be crazy, Liddell,” the district attorney roared. “Miss Merritt was a prisoner of Seville's. You saw yourself that she had been kept under narcotics.”
Liddell shook his head. “Not a prisoner, Mr. Deats.
Check Doc Travin. He'll tell you that they're mostly old punctures. Little Jeannie here has been an addict for years, haven't you, Blondie? Isn't that what all the trouble with your father was about?”
“I'm warning you all,” the girl muttered between clenched teeth. “You're all party to this persecution and I'm holding you all responsible.”
Liddell nodded. “We'll take our chances. The way I figure it is your father found out you were on the junk. Maybe your brother told him—the one who was accidentally shot to death. He gave you an ultimatum, placed you under Seville's care, fixed it so you'd have to marry Seville or you wouldn't get a dime of his money.”
“But, Johnny,” Muggsy Kiely put in. “Jean Merritt hired you to prove her father was murdered. If she killed him, why wasn't she satisfied to let it be marked off as suicide?”
The blonde walked over to Liddell, glared at him. “That's right, Mr. Smart Guy. If I killed my father, wouldn't I be glad to have it called a suicide?”
“Not necessarily. A couple of things went wrong. In the first place, your mother walked in on you. You had to shut her up, so you hit her over the head with the gun.”
“That's a lie,” the blonde roared.
“Is it? Then how could you have known what did happen. You described it perfectly back at the hospital. But you didn't see your mother. She was dead when you got there—and she couldn't have told you at the house that night because she was unconscious.”
“I'm not staying here to be insulted,” the blonde screamed. “You have no right to do this to me.”
Deats wiped the perspiration from his brow, raised a hand to stem the outburst. “Let him hang himself, Miss Merritt.”
“Not me, Mr. Deats, but Miss Merritt.” He turned back to the girl. “You needed help, so you called Doc Seville. He took care of things for you by setting the scene for the tragic accident.”
“You still haven't told us why she should call you in,” barked the district attorney.
“She no longer wanted it called suicide. She wanted us to discover it was murder. But she wanted us to saddle the murder on Seville.”
“I won't stand here and listen to these ridiculous insinuations,” the girl screamed. “I'm leaving and nobody can stop me.”
“They're not insinuations, Miss Merritt. They're facts.
You killed your father, were responsible for the death of your mother. Then you tried to cover up by killing Tony Seville and saddling him with the guilt.”
The girl's face was white, haggard. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth. Her cheek was twitching uncontrollably. “You can't prove a thing.”
Inspector Herlehy dropped his hand on the girl's arm. “We can try, Miss Merritt. I'm arresting you on suspicion of murder.”
“Murder? Whose murder?” There was a new, shrill note of hysteria in the girl's voice. “My father's death is listed as a suicide and no amount of talk by this shamus will change that. My mother has disappeared. Tony Seville kidnaped me and was holding me in restraint. Killing him was self-defense.” She started to laugh very hysterically. “You can't hold somebody for murder unless somebody was murdered.”
“Frankie Capolla was murdered, Blondie,” Liddell told her.
The laughter broke off on a high note. “What's that got to do with me?”
Liddell turned to Herlehy. “Got a ballistics report on the thirty-two?”
Herlehy nodded, pulled a typewritten sheet from his inside pocket. “Frankie Capolla was killed with the same gun that killed Seville.”
“It was his gun. Tony's. I told you that,” the girl screamed. “He killed Frankie. Not me. You can't prove I did.”
“Yes, we can,” Liddell told her. “The killer had a key to Capolla's apartment. He never would have given it to a lady-killer like Seville. He would give it to a girl, though. And besides, I wouldn't be surprised if we could persuade Clair Rodes to do some talking about the times you visited Frankie there.”
“Why should she kill Capolla?” Deats asked.
Liddell wiped the thin film of perspiration off his upper lip with the side of his hand. “Because she saw he was the weak link. He could have told Seville that she had hired him to shoot at me—something she knew would make me determined to see the case all the way through. She was also afraid he might break and tell me what he knew—and she would have ended up in the Death House instead of Seville.”
All eyes were on Liddell. No one could move fast enough to stop Jean Merritt from getting the .32 on Deats's desk. She leveled it at Liddell. “All right, maybe you can prove it. Maybe you can't. But it won't do you any good.”
“But you did kill Matt Merritt?” Liddell asked.
“Why not? I hated him. He always blamed me for my brother's death. And I wanted his money, but he tried to fix it so I had to marry Tony to get it. I wanted that money—and I wanted it without Tony.”
“What about your mother?”
“The fool. She blundered in after I shot him. She was going to yell. I had to hit her to keep her quiet. Then I lost my head and I called Tony for help. He threw her down the stairs so it would look like an accident. But from then on he knew—and I couldn't let him go on living knowing that I killed my father.” The gun pointed unwaveringly at Liddell's midsection. “Everything was going fine. I had Tony all set up as a fall guy. But you had to spoil everything.”
Her finger was tight on the trigger, her knuckles white from the pressure. “You were too smart, Liddell. Much too smart.”
She squeezed the trigger twice. There were two metallic clicks as the hammer fell on the empty cylinder. Herlehy jumped forward, pinned the girl's arms to her sides.
Liddell wiped the perspiration from his face. “None too smart, I'll admit, Blondie, but just a little bit smarter than you. Smart enough to know that they always take the shells out of a gun when they do a ballistics check on it.”
* * *
The city room of the Advance was in the grip of the anticlimactic stupor that afflicts newspaper offices after the last edition has gone to bed. Johnny Liddell picked his way through the organized confusion of the desks, passed a group of men in their shirt sleeves pecking away at typewriters of varying ages and vintages. At other desks men were sitting back, drinking coffee out of paper containers, running through smeared galleys of stories they'd filed for the edition. Scraps of copy paper, crumpled newspaper, telephones that had lost their luster were scattered all over the room.
Liddell headed for the city desk where a lean, grayhaired man with sharp, inquisitive features presided. His gray eyes widened as Liddell stopped in front of his desk. “Hi, Jim.” He nodded.
“Johnny Liddell!” He got up from his chair, shoved out a gnarled claw. “Didn't expect to be seeing you tonight. I thought the D.A. would have you on ice until he got the story of how he broke the Merritt suicide.”
Liddell grinned, shook his head. “He can get enough of me awful easy. Besides, the Merritt kid cracked wide open. You knew that, didn't you?”
Kiely nodded.
“Where's Muggs?”
Kiely looked up at the fly-specked face of the clock on the far wall. “Blew out of here about half an hour ago. Didn't even wait to see how the story looked.” He picked up a blackened briar from his desk, clenched his teeth on it. “She got a call from the Coast tonight, Johnny.”
“Want her back?”
Kiely pressed the tobacco down in the bowl of the pipe, applied a match. It made a sucking noise when
he inhaled. “She didn't say.” He stared at Liddell with sharp gray eyes. “Going to try to stop her?”
Liddell shrugged. “With what?”
Kiely nodded, watched while a copy boy deposited a damp proof of the front page of the Advance on his desk. The Merritt story was splashed blackly across the entire page, Muggsy's by-line over three columns in fourteenpoint type. Kiely pointed to her name with the stem of his pipe. “Imagine her blowing out of here without waiting to see that spread?”
Liddell grinned.
“She must be sick.”
“Got Hollywood fever again, I guess,” the older man grunted. He pulled the page proof over, checked through it, initialed it with the stub of a copy pencil, pushed it at the copy boy. “Tell them to run it, kid.”
“I thought she said she didn't want to stay there?”
Kiely grunted. “Who the hell knows what a woman wants? Especially the woman herself?” He jammed the pipestem between his teeth. “She probably had some blowup with somebody out there, now that she's getting her way she's on her way back.”
“Guess she's headed back to the apartment, eh, Jim?”
The older man nodded. “That's as good a place as any to start trying.”
* * *
Muggsy opened the door in response to his knock. Her face was wiped clean of all make-up, the bridge of freckles across her nose was prominent. “I've been trying to reach you every place, Johnny.” She took him by the hand, pulled him in, closed the door after him. “The most wonderful break has happened—”
Liddell nodded. “You're going back to Hollywood.”
“How'd you know?” she demanded. “Did Pop tell you?”
“I dropped by the shop as soon as the D.A.'s strongarm boys were done with me. They really gave you a spread on the story, you know.”
Muggsy's eyes were dancing. “Tomorrow that'll be forgotten. But the assignment they dished out to me in Hollywood—Johnny, it's the biggest break of the year.” She led the way through the French doors out to the sun deck.