The 24th Horse

by Hugh Pentecost

  He felt for his slippers, stood up, and pulled on a blue dressing gown. The pounding continued. Bradley was unhurried. He ran his fingers through his close-cropped red hair, flattened down the collar of the dressing gown, and then ambled over toward the door.

  “Hold it!” he said plaintively. “You’ll have the house down!” He unfastened the safety chain and swung back the door.

  Confronting the inspector was an old gentleman who had been hammering on the door with a bone-handled umbrella. Between the brim of an old-fashioned high-crowned brown derby and the astrakhan collar of a long black overcoat that hung almost to his shoe tops little was visible. From the left-hand pocket of the coat a black metal ear trumpet protruded. He regarded Bradley suspiciously.

  “Humph! Carousing,” he said. The remark was addressed to the young man behind him — a young man with a white, drawn face. “Get rid of her!” he added to Bradley.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Julius,” said Bradley. His mild gray eyes were amused. He looked at Mr. Julius’ companion.

  “This young fool’s name is Curtin—Johnny Curtin,” said Mr. Julius. “Forget him till I’ve asked you a question.”

  “Better come in and ask it,” said Bradley. He pressed a switch by the door.

  The large room had been remodeled from the kitchen of an old private dwelling. A wide brick fireplace with Dutch ovens took up one side. Burnished copper pots hung from a rack over the mantel, their purpose obviously decorative. There was a couch in front of the fireplace, and one overstuffed armchair. A solid square table beside the couch held a lamp, a blue china bowl filled with pipes, a copper tobacco jar. The inspector’s bed, between deep windows, was built into the wall like a ship’s bunk. The woodwork and the casement bookcases had been white, but were now mellowed by smoke and age. At the far end was a door, its top half of glass, opening to a small garden.

  Bradley waved his visitors toward the couch. There were still embers on the hearth, and he laid some kindling and a couple of apple logs on top of the coals. He worked at them with ancient leather hand bellows until the kindling burst into flame.

  Mr. Julius had put his hat, umbrella, and ear trumpet on the table. He removed his overcoat, unwrapped a gray knitted muffler from his neck, retrieved the ear trumpet, and pre-empted the center of the couch. Johnny Curtin waited by the fire, staring at Bradley. As Bradley rose from the hearth, their eyes met.

  The inspector’s look was friendly, yet it was disconcertingly keen.

  “Well?” said Bradley to the old man.

  “What’s that?” The ear trumpet jutted in Bradley’s direction.

  Bradley smiled at Johnny. It was a pleasant smile. Despite the deep furrows in his forehead he could not have been more than thirty five. “Experience has taught me,” he said, “that you cannot force our friend here to come to the point.”

  “Of course I can come to the point,” snapped Mr. Julius. He seemed to have heard quite well without the ear trumpet. “Came here to ask you a question — technical question. Don’t want you hemming and hawing. Answer it straight out.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Bradley. He selected a pipe from the blue bowl and began loading it from the copper jar.

  “Point is this,” said Mr. Julius. “In the case of a homicide how do you high muckymucks get assigned to the case?”

  Bradley grinned. “By the commissioner.”

  “Suppose a crime is committed in the Bronx? Could you want the body discovered?”

  “I could,” said Bradley, “if the commissioner thought I was the man for the job. Naturally, the police in the district where the crime takes place would have charge at first.”

  “Great Scott!” bellowed Mr. Julius. “I ask for a straight answer and what do I get? Does it make any difference in what part of the city the body is found? Could you still be assigned to the case?”

  “Yes, if the commissioner — ”

  “Stop it!” Mr. Julius turned to Johnny. “Told you he’d quibble. Can’t come straight out with anything. This is simple, Bradley. We’ve got a homicide for you. Want you to handle it. Friends of mine involved. Where do you want the body discovered?”

  Bradley had struck a kitchen match to light his pipe. Flame burned down the stick until it scorched his fingers. He dropped it with a muttered exclamation.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said slowly. “You have a homicide for me? Where do I want the body discovered? You can arrange that?”

  “Would I ask if I couldn’t?”

  Bradley struck another match, and this time he got his pipe going. His gray eyes flicked to Johnny. Nothing in that young man’s expression suggested a joke.

  “Suppose,” said the inspector, “we start over. Has this homicide already been committed?”

  “Naturally. And don’t ask questions! Answer mine!”

  “And you propose to move the body so that it will come under my jurisdiction?” Bradley asked.

  “If necessary,” said Mr. Julius.

  “You know it’s a crime to move a body until it’s been examined by the proper authorities?”

  “What do you think a man learns in seventy years? Wouldn’t touch a body with a ten-foot pole. But I never heard of any law against moving the place where a body is found.”

  “Moving the place!” Bradley looked at Mr. Julius in awe.

  “That’s what I said!”

  Bradley drew a deep breath. “Would you mind telling me where the body of the victim in your homicide is now?” he asked.

  “Of course I don’t mind,” said Mr. Julius. “It’s in the rumble seat of an automobile.”

  “And where is the car?”

  “That,” said Mr. Julius with exasperation, “is what we came to find out.”

  “Mercy!” said Bradley. “You came to ask me where the car is?”

  “No, you fool! We came to ask you where it should be if you are to handle the case. The body is in the rumble seat … just where young Johnny there found it.”

  “And where is the car now?” repeated Bradley. He spaced his words as if he were speaking to a small child.

  “The car,” said Johnny in a low voice, “is outside your front door. Mr. Julius and I drove here in it.”

  ***

  About three quarters of an hour before the arrival of Johnny and Mr. Julius at Bradley’s apartment, a taxicab drew up in front of a building on Ninety-First Street, just east of the park. It had once been a storage warehouse, but now the second and third floors had been transformed into apartments with an entrance on Madison Avenue. On the Ninety-first Street side was a wide-arched doorway into which was backed a horse van. To the right of the door a black and gold sign announced that this was the Crop and Spur Riding School run by Captain George Pelham and Miss Patricia Prayne.

  Pat Prayne got out of the taxi and handed the driver a bill.

  “Keep the change. It’s not my money,” she said dryly.

  She walked past the truck into the Crop and Spur. Powerful lights hanging from the ceiling reflected against whitewashed walls. Across the empty tanbark ring, by the ramp to the air-conditioned stables in the basement, were three men: the truck driver; Peter Shea, the school’s head groom; and Captain George Pelham.

  Pelham caught sight of Pat and came toward her. “You want to get the car in, Pat? He’s taking the truck away now.”

  Pat laughed, but she wasn’t amused. “I don’t want to get the car in, George, because I haven’t got it. I’ve been given the finest standing-up of a lifetime.”

  Pelham’s shrewd eyes saw that despite the laughter she was very close to tears. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Johnny!” Pat said. “It’s really very funny, George. He came tearing down to see me after the Championship … said he had to talk to me now, tonight. Tomorrow wouldn’t do. I … I rather got the idea that he’d … well, changed his mind about things. I suggested he wait for me after the show and ride home with me. I carried a lot of junk out to the car and gave it to him to put in
the rumble while I said good-by to Mike and some of the others. When I came back, Johnny and the ear were gone.”

  “The young pup!” Pelham said angrily.

  “But he was very thoughtful, George! Johnny’s always the gentleman, you know. He left a dollar with a cop so I’d have taxi fare to get home.”

  “I’ll be damned! What do you suppose was eating him?”

  “He told the cop,” Pat said, “that he couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “By God,” said Pelham, “when I get hold of him I’ll — ”

  “Hush, George. You can’t hold Johnny responsible for his actions. He’s in love.” The smile she gave Pelham was a trifle wistful. “I wish he’d make up his mind with whom.”

  “Forget him,” said Pelham. He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I haven’t had a real chance to tell you how proud I am of you, kitten. You gave Tangerine the best kind of a ride.”

  “Thanks, George. I … I’m almost sorry Martinson bought him. He’s a grand horse.”

  “Hey, you’re in the business now, young’un,” Pelham said. “You can’t afford to be sentimental. Seven thousand bucks is going to keep away a lot of wolves.”

  “I know it … darn it,” Pat said.

  “Speaking of wolves,” said Pelham, “your father and Aunt Celia have some kind of supper for us upstairs. Linda’s there, too. I promised to take her home afterward.”

  Pat sighed. “Oh, boy, I could hit the hay for about a month! It … it takes it out of you, George, riding in competition like that.”

  “You were tops,” Pelham said. “Come on. We can slide up the back way.”

  The Praynes’ living room was crowded with furniture that had plainly come from a more prosperous period in their lives—the sort of pieces which would be given up only in the last extremity.

  Douglas Prayne sat in an armchair by a coal grate. He was in his late fifties, his hair graying. He wore tweeds with an air that suggested his country squire, somehow out of place in a New York apartment. He rose as Pat and Pelham came into the room.

  “Congratulations, darling!”

  Pat stared at him. “You weren’t there, Father!”

  “Of course I was there. You were magnificent.”

  “In those clothes!” Pat wailed.

  Douglas Prayne looked down at the worn tweed affectionately. “No-o. But I got out of the boiled shirt as soon as I got home.

  “You’re a beast, Father. I never get a chance to see you dressed up, and you look so darned handsome when you are.”

  “Well, in any event, I was there. Linda Marsh very sweetly shared her box with Celia and me. They’re out in the kitchen now, whipping up a lobster Newburg. Drink, George?”

  “Thanks, I’ll help myself.” Pelham went to a sideboard and poured himself a whisky. “Well, here’s to a big year for the Crop and Spur. That ride of Pat’s will help.”

  “I was proud of you,” Douglas Prayne said. Then he frowned. “I rather expected Gloria. But I suppose she was somewhere about with friends.”

  “Of course,” said Pat hastily. “I’ll see if I can help in the kitchen.”

  Miss Celia Devon, Pat’s aunt, stood by an electric chafing dish in the kitchen, stirring the Newburg. She wore an apron over a black lace dinner dress. Celia Devon had been a beautiful girl, and she was now a handsome older woman. Though she kept house and did the cooking for the Prayne ménage, she always managed to convey the impression that it was

  “the maid’s night out.”

  “I was beginning to wonder if you were coming home!” she said. “We were about to start without you.”

  “We were doing nothing of the sort,” said Linda Marsh. She was piling bread and butter sandwiches on an oval plate. “After your performance tonight, angel, we’d have waited till doomsday! Pat, I’d give my eyeteeth to ride like that!” Linda Marsh had coal-black hair and a milky skin. Her mouth was smooth and scarlet. She was often referred to as one of the best-dressed women in New York — which wasn’t surprising since clothes were her business. Her dress shop on Fifth Avenue did well by both society and Hollywood.

  “You’d better come take some lessons,” Pat said. “We need the money, darling.”

  “I wish I had the time.”

  “I should have thought,” said Celia Devon, “that Gloria might have had the decency to stop by the box this evening to speak to her father! We haven’t so much as heard her voice for three days. I’ve been asking Linda what she does with herself, but she doesn’t seem to know.”

  Linda and Pat exchanged a quick glance. “I’m always in bed when she gets in in the evening,” Linda said, “and gone to business before she gets up in the morning. I’ve got her trained.”

  “In my opinion,” said Celia Devon, “it’s an imposition for her to spend days at a time with you when she has a perfectly good home of her own.”

  “But I love having her,” Linda said. She busied herself with the sandwiches.

  Miss Devon disconnected the chafing dish and lifted, it onto a tray.

  “Bring the sandwiches, Linda,” she said. “You might take the coffee, Pat.”

  “Of course, Aunt Celia.” The moment the older woman, disappeared, Pat spoke to Linda. “No news?”

  “Sorry, darling. Not a word.”

  “You’re sweet to pretend to Father and Aunt Celia’ that she’s with you,” Pat said. “But, if she doesn’t turn up tomorrow, I’m afraid they’ll have to be told. It’s getting serious, Linda.”

  “I shouldn’t worry too much,” Linda said. “She’s off on a binge with some of her gang and has just forgotten to tell you.”

  The telephone in the hall rang shrilly.

  “I’ll get it,” Pat called over her shoulder. She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Pat!”

  “Johnny! Johnny Curtin! Of all the nerve…”

  “Pat, listen! I can’t explain now about the car, and I know you can’t talk at that end. The reason I went off and left you … well, it was on Gloria’s account.”

  “Johnny! You know where — ”

  “Yes, Pat.” Johnny’s voice was very grave. “I know where she is. Look, you’ve got to come downtown right away … Washington Place. Number 22B … name of Bradley. Got that?”

  “Yes, Johnny, but the family … I mean they’re having a little party, I — ”

  “You come, Pat! And listen, darling, things aren’t very nice, I mean … there’s been an accident.”

  “Oh, Johnny!”

  “You must come, Pat!”

  “Yes, of course. Washington Place, 22B … Bradley.” She turned back to the kitchen, where Linda Marsh was just starting for the living room with the sandwiches. Pat’s eyes were wide and frightened.

  “Linda, that was Johnny. It was about Gloria. He says there’s been an accident.”

  “Pat!”

  “He didn’t say what it was, but it’s urgent. I don’t want the family told. Tell them … tell them I forgot something at the Garden. I’ll slip out the back way.”

  “Of course, angel,” Linda said. “You don’t want me to go with you?”

  “Johnny’s there,” Pat said. She was already in the hall.

  The sharpness in Linda’s voice stopped her. “Pat, listen.” She looked anxiously at the younger girl. “If anything has happened to Gloria, you’ll let me know at once?”

  “I will, Linda. Johnny didn’t explain …” Pat was struggling into a coat.

  “It’s important,” Linda Marsh said. “Because if something has happened to her I may be able to help.”

  “I know you would, Linda dear. But it’s our mess.”

  “You don’t understand, Pat. I’ve been afraid … afraid for almost two weeks that something would happen to her. Let me know at once, Pat. Promise!

  “I promise,” Pat said.

  Chapter 3

  Mr. Julius twisted around from his position on the couch as the door of Bradley’s apartment opened. Johnny Curtin, still wearing his overc
oat, stood in front of the fire as though he were frozen. It was Bradley himself who came in. He dropped his hat and coat on a chair by the door.

  “You telephoned Miss Prayne?” he asked Johnny.

  “Yes. She’s coming.”

  Mr. Julius stirred impatiently. “Well, damn it, what about it? Do we have to pry information out of you?”

  Bradley was exploring his pockets. His mild eyes held an unaccustomed glint of anger.

  “It’s murder, right enough,” he said quietly. “She was strangled to death with a silk scarf, presumably her own.” From a red tobacco tin he began filling the bowl of a stubby black pipe. His gaze was on Johnny. “Why?” he asked.

  “I … I don’t get it.”

  “I’m asking you why she was killed!” Bradley said. “She’s only a kid — twenty-three or four at the outside. From your account she comes from a decent family. She’s not a gangster’s moll or a harlot. She’s not the kind of girl who dies this way.”

  “The Colonel’s lady and that O’Grady person,” Mr. Julius said with a dry chuckle. “Don’t ask this young fool about Gloria. He’s all mixed up about her and her sister. He’s all mixed up about the facts of life.”

  “Do you know why she was killed. Julius?” the inspector inquired.

  “Certainly,” said Mr. Julius.

  “Why?”

  “Because somebody hated her or she was dangerous to someone.”

  “Who?” Bradley’s tone was resigned.

  “How the devil should I know? That’s your job.”

  Bradley shrugged and turned hack to Johnny. “They’ve taken the car to headquarters. Fingerprints…photograph the body before it’s removed. Not that I expect them to find fingerprints after you and our friend here have climbed all over it.”

  “No use in it anyway,” snapped Mr. Julius. “She wasn’t killed in the car. Coat, gloves, purse thrown in on top of her. Killed somewhere else … indoors. Body put in car afterward. Possessions dumped in helter-skelter.”

  “So you noticed that?”

  “My eyesight is unimpaired.” said the old man crisply. “How long’s she been dead?”

  “We’ll have to wait for a report on that,” said the inspector. “But it’s been a good many hours a day or two perhaps.”