“Oh, go ahead and say it’s my mercenary notions and heartlessness that caused poor Frosty’s death and—and—upset Dayles—”
“You said it, I didn’t,” he gently answered, and pillowed her head on his shoulder.
CHAPTER XI
Walking on Air
The suicide note broke in the morning. Ormond paced up and down the sitting room. “My God, my God! That fool calling the police instead of—”
Cragin cut into the tirade. “Well, it’s done, fire the chambermaid or whatever, and settle down to liking it. What’d the note say?”
“How would I know? If I’d seen it—”
He was off again.
And that afternoon the long dammed tide of journalism roared through town as though Old Man River’s levees had surrendered at high water. The papers had been getting prepared in advance. Feature writers had done wonders with voodoo, wardrobe trunk, Mose Wilson’s accident, Dayles Sinclair’s blowing his top at Montalban patio, and the sniping that had preceded it. And the shooting of Davis Thorne was helpful.
Nedra caught hell. “Alleged” and “stated on good authority” hedged the guesses which, of course, had all the impact of facts. Nedra, keeping two admirers, Sinclair and Burnett, in each other’s hair, egging them on, just as a front for Davis Thorne’s and her own speculations.
Columnists, not mentioning names, discussed the foresight of a star, who after five years of success, cornered company stock so she’d get her contract renewed, indefinitely. No one said that anyone had done anything of the sort: it was just a question, wouldn’t it be smart?
Her home town was damning her. She’d been away a long time, and a story was a story. Since the Italian situation was dragging, the public would relish some dessert.
Feature writers pointed out the drama angles: Harry Ormond and Nedra Dalli, starting together in a floor show, parting when she went to Hollywood, meeting at last at their starting place, with death and mystery heaping up, right in the hotel which had been his way to fortune. The pistol he had given her, for protection in the odd corners where they had started their careers, had come all the way to New Orleans to do its bit in a blend of voodoo and corpse-loaded trunk.
When Ormond had wailed himself dry and stumbled out, Cragin sighed. “This is a job for the Hollywood dick if he ever gets here. Or is it? Me, I am going to be rehabilitated and like it. I’m not sure the General would want me to make an appearance now.”
The suicide note, fatally genuine, was on hotel stationery. “Nedra: Good-bye, I’ve always loved you. My going will help. I’ve been a fool and there’s only one cure.”
Cragin finally reacted to the verbal booting which centered on Nedra. Whether too late or not, he was going to get in and pitch until his leave expired or was canceled. Lucky he’d not been in uniform, or he’d have been back in camp before now, and under guard. So, on the principle that hammering anywhere is better than not hammering, he cornered Ormond in his office.
“Harry,” he said to the distracted manager, “what do you know about the big shot from Chicago?”
Ormond stared glumly at his upturned palms. “You don’t think he could be behind all this?”
“He could’ve been worried about the false-front admirers, figuring one might really win a home, instead of just being a sap. And he might’ve been gunned out last night by his own stooge, who’d be getting panicky.”
“Diggs—” Ormond brightened up. “Thorne’s stooge?”
“Sure. Thorne wouldn’t dare squawk, though the stooge might not be sure of that. A white man tinkering with voodoo is plain nuts. Funny thing, though, Diggs is a white man.”
Ormond straightened with a jerk. “What?”
“Sure. I’m looking for a white man who understands colored people well enough to impersonate a pale-yaller and get a job here. When he gunned Burnett he disappeared, leaving us looking for a colored boy who never existed. This suicide is just by-product.”
“Oh, you’re dizzy!”
“Yeah? Moses Wilson told me—just before a taxi conked him—that Diggs was high-nosed and unsociable. Also, that Diggs got Andrew Jackson Cheney stinking drunk out of pure goodness of heart, and then worked Cheney’s shift. Then why the high-nosed and uppity stuff all other times?”
“Well, why?”
“No white man, however made up, can board or fraternize with colored folks and not be checked up, no matter how much he knows the African mind. Diggs had to keep to himself, instead of boarding out.”
Cragin fumbled for a smoke, then for a match. Ormond fanned his pockets.
“I did have a lighter. Where in hell—?”
Cragin got matches from the desk. “Economy, using ’em direct, instead of taking one to light the lighter if you had it here. Anyway, this angle the papers play up, of Thorne cornering the stock. Suppose Nedra had tumbled for one of the false-front lovers, and one’d married her, and all her Globe-Colossal stock? I’m looking further into this Thorne business, even if he is in the hospital.”
Cragin found Thorne at Touro, with a police guard. This last, for protection, gave the man high blood pressure.
“Hello, Cragin! Why aren’t you on the job? Come in, come in, now that you’re here, have a drink. Medicos trying to make an invalid of me!”
He beckoned to the servant. “Brandy-soda, Simon!”
“Good for me, too.”
“Very good, suh.”
Simon got busy.
Then Thorne opened up: “I still don’t know whether the fellows in the hall are to protect me or whether they suspect me! They had Simon on the carpet; I had to prove he arrived with me, and not earlier.” He chuckled sourly, jerked a thumb at the papers. “Suing them all is just too much! Difficult as knocking off all Nedra’s platoon of Hollywood boyfriends, which is what they’re implying!”
“How’re the bullet holes?”
Thorne’s color answered that. “In the last war, I carried twice as many. This is just protective custody, that’s all.”
“And Simon is now the mysterious Montgomery Diggs?”
“If you’re as good as Nedra says you are,” Thorne went on, “dig in, dig in! I’ll give you a bonus that’ll ease off the pains of rehabilitation.”
“You’re really not under suspicion.”
“No, but I am beginning to figure Nedra is an institution instead of a woman. Platoons of—er—admirers—massacring each other and committing suicide—does it or does it not finally get one down? Even you got shot at in a clinch with her!”
Before Cragin could answer, there was a tap at the door. The nurse stepped in from the ante-room where the dicks were parked. Thorne’s booming voice had undoubtedly carried well through the panel. “A visitor, Mr. Thorne.”
Nedra stepped in. She must have heard the blast. Thorne waved airily, “Hello, darling. What’s new?”
Her smile was on the strained side. “I don’t think I’m to be an institution much longer. They’ve just told me that ‘Pirates’ will not be produced for some time. Much mumbling about priorities, and that I need a chance to recuperate from the strain. And the way they avoided such words as contract was pathetic.”
“Mmmm. It’s practically up to Cragin to produce in a hurry?”
“I don’t think that’ll have any effect. The list of discarded suitors is twice as long in the evening paper.”
Thorne frowned. Nedra as a headliner was one thing, Nedra as a has-been was something else.
Cragin hitched well to one side, and kept an eye on Simon. It was easy, palming Thorne’s cigarette lighter. Then he reached for his hat and said, “You’ll be out of here before you know it.”
“Just watch me,” Thorne promised. And Cragin left with a large query: just how would Nedra’s embarrassing position affect a man who specialized on the biggest, the best, the most distinguished, and the costliest of everythi
ng?
And an even larger query concerned the things one could do with cigarette lighters.
He needed one more.
Nedra’s visit at the hospital could not have lasted long. Half an hour after Cragin’s return to the Iberville, she phoned, and he went down to her suite.
She led off, “I just wanted to tell you you’ve been the only friend I have in the whole mess. I’ll dedicate that army appearance to you; I’ll make it tonight or any other night.”
Then she kissed him, and he had her in both arms. When he caught his breath, be said, “If this happened often enough, I’d begin to believe it. Are they freezing you out?”
“I may not wait to see. Stars do last eight and ten years, but I’ve had my share. I’m fed up with being an—an institution.”
“So that’s it? Well, don’t go wild.”
She laughed. “Oh, he did care for me in his way. I always sensed that he wanted me as a trophy, but it was never as plain as it was today.”
It was dusky, and for a miracle, quiet. Hollywood had surrendered. There was nothing left to be tried, so Nedra was alone. Cragin was sorry that he had other business. He took a cigarette from the box on the table, and rose to get the pedestal lighter just beyond the arm of the lounge. Nedra said, “Here’s one—someone left it—why, it’s Harry’s.”
“Nice.” He flicked it. “Works. Must be a present. Gold and platinum.”
“I gave it to him last Christmas. Wonder he didn’t forget his head; poor guy’s fit to be tied. Well, I’ll give it to him on my way down.”
“He’s not been going home; he’ll probably be in the suite he has here and never uses. Oh, and another thing, I have to give him my latest deductions on where to find Dayles Sinclair. I’ll need help. Someone with a pull.”
“Tell me.”
“No. Bad stuff to know. I’ve got to find Sinclair before anyone else does. He’d done about all the damage he can, but I want first look, just in case—”
“In case there’s something you can hide or hold out? Oh, but that’s dangerous, it couldn’t help me, I’m definitely through even if they do offer me another contract. I mean it.”
He caught her wrists, tightly. He said, eye to eye in the gathering dusk, “Don’t mention I picked up this lighter. Not to anyone at all.”
A moment of silence. “All right, Cliff. Not to anyone at all.”
“One more thing: if anyone asks you, say you are marrying me.”
“Cliff—after all—Cliff, what is this?”
“Do as I say. It’s natural, a kick-back from your bust-up with Dave Thorne.”
“Mmmm…I don’t like this.”
“Very few gals ever went for the idea!”
“I mean—it’s fatal—why, the night you kissed me—”
“Huh! I’ve not been the same since, but it wasn’t fatal. Anyway, I’m spreading it, and go ahead and make a liar of me if you want. You can back down later, change your mind, be in character!”
She eyed him. “You’re being live bait. For me.”
“Oh, to hell with you! I’m doing it for Captain Howes, for the General, for myself.”
After leaving Nedra, Cragin ate a couple dozen oysters and polished off a beer. By then, Royal Street was a murky glamour, broken by dim electroliers and the furtive gleam from deep-set windows.
He stepped into the cavernous archway from which he had emerged on leaving the shack that fronted on Governor Nichols Street. Before he made his play, he had to have a final good look at what must be Montgomery Diggs’ one time hide-out. He had to be right the first time, or else let the cops take over. Their laboratories could do things he could not.
As he moved silently through the darkness of the patio, a chill trickled down his spine. For some paces, his back was exposed to the “slave quarters” along the wall. The time seemed much longer than just the few seconds required to reach the embrasure in the back wall, and then to step into the alley.
Cragin crawled through the littered backyard, and this time, without a light. He did not disturb or rattle a single rusty can. The back steps did not creak, nor the hinge of the door.
At the kitchen threshold, he literally smelled his way. There was an odor of liquor. Someone had been sick, very sick. Someone had been in the place since Cragin’s discovery prowl.
He took his flash, held it in his left hand; arm fully extended sidewise, he twisted his wrist. Then, gun drawn, he flicked the light.
The beam did not draw a shot. There was no stirring or creaking. But the place was not empty. The pencil of light picked out feet, some distance above the floor.
“Man walking on air,” Cragin muttered, and straightened up.
He had found more than he had expected.
The man hanging by his neck from the lintel was Dayles Sinclair. A heavy spike secured the strangling rope. Nearby was the stool which had been kicked away before the adjustment of the noose.
Sinclair wasn’t a bit handsome now. Cragin preferred to look at the man’s shoes. They were cut by rubbish. Ashes from the yard caked the soles. He had taken the back door to death.
There was an almost emptied bottle of bourbon lying on its side. Sinclair’s hands were cut and dirty, from catching himself as he fell about. Slivers in the palms. He’d been plenty blotto.
Cragin set the stool upright. He was not surprised when this confirmed his suspicion: it wasn’t suicide at all.
The stool was not high enough. Or, the rope wasn’t long enough. Even after stretching, the rope held Sinclair’s toes a shade above the level of the seat.
Cragin laughed. He could not help it. Too much had poured in on him. The end was unexpectedly near. “Give a calf enough rope,” he said, giddily, “and it’ll hang itself. Haw! How about when they don’t have enough rope?”
CHAPTER XII
Africa Again
When Cragin reached Royal Street, he had cooled down. He knew that he was doing a tightrope act. Now that he had found a corpse and evidence of murder, instead of just information, he was, at least technically, an accessory after the fact unless he at once reported his discovery. He needed help. There were two prospects. Both, through their New Orleans properties, had a much needed drag.
He called on Ormond, the handiest.
“Harry, I’m out on a limb,” he began, as he barged into the manager’s rooms. “I can get Nedra in the clear, if you help me.”
Ormond stared incredulously.
“Uh-huh. Sinclair’s not a suicide.”
“What?”
“Murder, not suicide. Proving that will hose out the worst dirt.”
“That note—” Ormond snatched a paper. “His writing—”
“Regardless, he was murdered. I found the corpse.”
“You found the corpse. With search parties turning the whole parish inside out?”
“I just looked in the right place.”
“Where?”
“Go whole hog, or it’s no game. Protect me for protecting her.”
“What can I do?”
Cragin explained the not enough rope angle, and went on, “If I offer any cockeyed yarn about just happening to run into things, you know where I’ll land. I’m dirt now for having covered Sinclair when he lied about his movements when Burnett was knocked off. I’m at large because it didn’t really make any difference, only the cops don’t love meddlers.”
Ormond shook his head. “You’ll have a hell of a time proving you didn’t take the penitent drunk, as you describe him, talk him into writing a bluff suicide note to make Nedra sorry, and then hanging him when he passed out.”
Cragin whistled. “I didn’t think of that. It’s even worse than you put it.”
“Really?”
“I might as well tell you. Nedra’s through with the movies. I want to clear her on my own account, our account,
personally. We’re getting married. She’s through with Thorne.”
Ormond digested all that, then thrust out his hand. “Congratulations. And since her career is just history, why not forget what you’ve told me? You don’t care, do you? About the papers? You know too much for your own good.”
“Nuh-uh. You had me stampeded for a second. I got a case, if you can throw enough weight to help me. I found two cigarette lighters in Sinclair’s pocket. His own, and one without an engraved monogram. He must’ve pocketed the one belonging to the fellow who hanged him. Gold and platinum.”
“What? Thorne was phoning the desk, yelling at the whole staff, he’s lost one.”
“Thorne phoning the desk?”
“Good Lord, yes,” Ormond answered. “He left the hospital and luckily, I had a vacancy for him. He’s in 1214.”
“So he’s been in circulation this afternoon and evening?”
Ormond’s eyes gleamed. “It’s hard to believe—it’s incredible—but why not an anonymous tip?”
“Say! You got something. Lord, I must be up in the air!” He picked up the phone, then replaced it. “Nuh-uh. This can’t be a boner, I got to see the man, size it up, there must be some explanation.”
Without waiting for an answer, Cragin dashed for the door.
When Cragin went into his dance, the moment he was admitted to Thorne’s room, he used the build-up he had tried out on Harry Ormond, except that he improved it in spots. While he gave considerable prominence to cigarette lighters, he did not mention his conversation with Ormond.
He concluded, “So there it is. You and Nedra are washed up; but what the hell, you’ll go to bat for her?”
“Why all the fuss? An anonymous tip would settle that.”
“After all, I want all the credit I can get. It’ll be ticklish work, playing for credit, and keeping my nose clean. That’s where you come in, just in case I slip somewhere along the line.”
“You mean, you’re going to start co-operating with the police, and in a way that won’t make you admit openly that you’ve been holding out on them from the start—and also, in a way that will keep them from hogging the credit?”
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