The Lady in the Morgue

by Jonathan Latimer

  Chapter Five

  WILLIAM CRANE didn’t feel sleepy any more, but that was probably because he was scared rather than because of the two-hour nap he had just finished. He didn’t feel sleepy, but he didn’t feel so good, either. He sat on the edge of his bed and brooded about his connection with the girl who had been stolen from the morgue. He wished he had never become involved in the matter—at least not to such an extent that the police, a gang of gunmen, and the sinister Mr. Frankie French were all convinced he had the girl somewhere. In fact, on second thought, he wished he had never become involved in the affair at all. Not at all.

  There was a knock at the door. His startled jump brought him halfway across the room, onto his bare feet. “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “The waiter. Your drinks, sir.”

  The waiter was a Greek. He had a tray on which there was a bottle of Dewar’s White Label, a bowl of cracked ice, two high glasses and a siphon. He put the tray on a table, deftly caught a quarter, said, “Thank you,” and departed.

  Crane poured himself a straight one first. Then he filled the glass halfway with the whiskey, dropped in a chunk of ice, squirted seltzer water until the mixture reached the brim. He drank this slowly, sometimes letting the cold liquid stay in his mouth a minute before he swallowed.

  Thirty stories above the street, the room was still uncomfortably warm. There was a steady breeze filled with the distant sounds of roaring motor coaches, of streetcar wheels screaming against steel rails on turns, clattering on steel rails at switches; of automobile horns and, faintly, human voices; but it was not a cool breeze. There was not a cloud in the sky.

  Well into his third drink, Crane was debating whether or not to take a cold shower when there was another knock at the door. He was surprised to find he was still jumpy. He shouted, “Come in.”

  A dapper man with a waxed black mustache, button-bright eyes and black hair with a white streak over the left temple stood in the doorway. “Hi,” he said. His name was Doc Williams and he worked for the same detective agency as Crane.

  “Oh, my God! am I glad to see you?” Crane dragged him into the room, kicked the door shut behind him, shook his hand, pounded his back. “The U. S. Marines to the rescue. Have a drink, marine, have a drink.” He poured whiskey in the other glass, ignored Williams’ twice repeated “When.” He handed him the glass. “My God, I am glad to see you.”

  “Don’t I get any seltzer?” asked Williams.

  “Seltzer? Oh my God, yes, seltzer.” He squirted seltzer in the glass. “Say, did I tell you I was glad to see you?”

  “I think you mentioned it.” Williams tasted the liquor tentatively. “What’s the matter, pal? Some dame after you?” He took a second, longer drink.

  Crane was filling his own glass. “I only wish there was.” He didn’t add any seltzer, simply filled it to the brim with whiskey. “It’s a lot worse than that.” He started to tell Williams about the girl in the morgue.

  “I know about her,” said Williams. “She’s why me and Tom O’Malley are here. The colonel sent us down to meet the dame’s brother.”

  “The girl’s brother!” Holding his glass in mid-air, Crane stared at Williams. “You know who the girl is … was?”

  “If she’s this guy’s sister we do. Tom’s over gettin’ him now. Going to bring him up here. He’s a society dude from New York. The family’s got a pot of dough.” Williams took a long drink. “The name’s Courtland, Chauncey Courtland the third.”

  Crane whistled. “I know that family. His old lady’s got something to do with the opera.”

  “Something to do with the opera?” Williams’ voice rose to a higher key. “Say! that old dame is the opera. Without her the Metro would be playin’ burlesque this very minute.”

  Crane scowled. “Well, if they got all these rocks, what’s the daughter (what’s her name, anyway?) doing in a cheap joint like the Princess Hotel?”

  “The dame’s name is Kathryn, and I don’t know nothin’ about her.” Williams took off his hat, scratched the back of his head, replaced the hat. “We’ll ask brother about her when he gets here. All I know is that the brother of old Mrs. Courtland—the girl’s uncle, that is—is our client. He’s been dealing direct with the colonel.” He rubbed the moisture off his glass, let the drops fall from his finger to the green carpet. “And, incidentally, the colonel’s plenty sore at you.”

  “Sore at me? The colonel? The colonel’s sore at me? By God! what for?”

  “He thinks you were a sucker to let them steal the girl’s body from the morgue.”

  “He does, does he?” Crane got to his feet, steadied himself by holding to the foot of the bed. “Why didn’t he tell me he wanted the body watched? Who ever heard of a body being stolen from a morgue, anyway? Hey? If he wanted the body watched all he had to do was to say see, so—I mean so, see? I would have climbed right in with that babe, right in that old steel box.”

  “That isn’t all. He thinks you screwed up the Indianapolis case.”

  “He thinks that?” Crane’s tone was anguished. “Why, I stuck round there at great person’l sacri … sacro … risk until everybody got killed off except that nasty old lady … then had her pinched.”

  “That’s a fine way to look after your clients’ interests—let ’em get bumped off.”

  “Hell,” said Crane; “the old lady was my client.” He released his hold on the bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I am deeply, deeply wounded. Very deeply, indeed.” Crane put his glass on the window sill. “I am going to take a shower.”

  Under the sobering influence of alternately hot and cold water Crane related the story of the body’s removal and the narrow escape he had had in the Princess Hotel.

  “Whooee!” exclaimed Doc Williams when Crane came to the account of his flight from the police through the other room. “You climbed right into bed with this floosie?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Crane was soaping under his arms. “I’m a desperate man.”

  “I’d like to have been there.” Williams, sitting on the toilet cover, sorrowfully sipped his drink, then brightened. “You’ll catch hell, though, when she gives the police your description.”

  “I’ll bet she doesn’t say anything about it.” The soap slipped from his hand, bounced out of the shower cabinet into the bathroom. Williams tossed it back to him. He caught it, said, “No woman likes to admit a man was in bed with her without making any advances.”

  “No advances is what you say,” Williams said.

  “My God!” Crane poked his head out of the cabinet. “You don’t think I’d assault a woman bound hand and foot, do you?”

  “Certainly,” said Williams.

  Crane finished with the shower handle turned clear over on COLD. He dried himself with two towels, put on a clean suit of underwear. He told Williams about the inquest and the conversations he had had in the morgue washroom. He pretended to be hurt when Williams thought it was funny everyone believed he had stolen the body.

  “Frankie French is a big-time gambler,” Williams finally said. “He’s supposed to own some joints over on the North Side, around Oak Street.”

  Crane asked, “But what would he or that other bunch of mobsters want with the body, particularly if she’s a New York society gal?”

  “Why didn’t you ask Frankie when you were having your little chat?”

  “He was doing all the asking.” Crane shuddered at the memory. “He said he’d be around again, though.” He pulled on his right sock. “I’d just as soon meet a rattlesnake.”

  “We’ll handle him all right.” Williams twisted his mustache between his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe we can figure some way of partin’ him from that five grand he’s waving around so careless.”

  “I’d sooner try to rob the Chase National Bank single-handed.” The telephone rang. Crane fastened a button to hold his trousers up and answered it. “Sure, send them up.” He hung up the receiver, said, “It’s Tom and young Courtla
nd.”

  “We better hide the liquor,” said Williams. “Courtland’s sort of a client.” He carried the loaded tray into the closet, closed the door.

  Crane had a clean broadcloth shirt on when they arrived. He shouted, “Come on in.” Williams was seated primly on the edge of the bed.

  Tom O’Malley came in first. He was a handsome, dissolute Irishman; tall and muscular, with deep-set blue eyes. He said, “Mr. Courtland, this is Mr. Crane.” His voice was deep, formal. He weighed 210 pounds, was six feet three inches in height.

  William Crane said, “Well, for the love of Jesus!” He circled the room until he was between the door and the second man, added, “How are you, Mister A. N. Brown of San Diego? And how is Cousin Edna?”

  They sat around while young Courtland explained. He was a nice-looking man with blue eyes that wrinkled at the corners when he smiled. His features were irregular, but he had nice teeth and a good tan skin. He was saying:

  “I grabbed the sleeper plane from New York at midnight last night (had to, because it was the only one I could get after just missing the nine o’clock plane) and landed in Chicago at 3:30. I took a cab right over to the morgue to see if it was sister.

  “When I got here I found the place in a devil of an uproar. The body had been taken, but I found that out too late to draw back. I certainly didn’t want to drag in the family name, particularly as we weren’t at all sure it really was Kit. So I used the name of a passenger on the sleeper plane, Mr. A. N. Brown, and made up the stuff about Cousin Edna. That seemed the only thing I could do.”

  “That was a good idea,” said O’Malley, “but you’ll be in a jam yourself if the police catch up with you, Mr. Courtland.”

  “Hell,” said Doc Williams, “if it ain’t his sister the police’ll never see him again, and if it is he can explain he didn’t want to get mixed up in the thing until he was sure.”

  Crane asked, “How are you going to find out if it is his sister or not?”

  “That’s up to you.” The lid dropped over one of Williams’ bright eyes. “Master Mind!”

  Courtland said, “I’m almost sure it isn’t Kathryn, after all. You see, I hopped over to the hotel the woman was staying in to look at her clothes. That captain——”

  “Grady,” said Crane.

  “Yes, Grady. He took me over to see if I could identify anything. We had some trouble getting into the room (I think a sneak thief was supposed to have been inside and to have jumped out the window when we tried the lock) and the police had to break down the door, but I examined all the clothes, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t the kind Kit would wear. They had Marshall Field’s label on them, and she’d been getting things from Best’s and Saks ever since I can remember.” Courtland thought for a time, then shook his head. “Besides, I’m certain Kit wouldn’t have had so few clothes. She wouldn’t travel without a trunk.”

  “Look,” said Crane; “we can settle this right away, if you have any pictures of your sister.”

  Courtland produced an ostrich billfold. “I’ve got a passport photo taken of her some time ago.” He pulled out a small photograph and handed it to Crane. “Always carry it with me. Of course, we have some studio portraits of her at home.”

  Crane walked to the window with the photograph. It showed the head of a young girl about nineteen—a rather plump young girl with blond hair and an excited, anticipatory expression about her lips and eyes. There was a white background, and that, with the strong light used by the photographer and the fact that the girl’s face was turned toward the camera, made it impossible to determine what sort of a nose and chin she had. There was a comb in her unbobbed hair.

  Courtland said, “It was taken nearly four years ago, and you know how passport photos are, anyway.…”

  Crane gave the photograph back to him. “I know,” he said. “It doesn’t look much like her. Your sister’s fatter.… I mean fuller in the face, for one thing.”

  “Kit was fatter, then.” Courtland held the photograph, watched Crane’s face. “She was fat as a little kid, clear up to the time she was twenty. Then she suddenly lost weight. It showed especially on her face. I used to kid her about dieting secretly. D’you think it might be her, if you made an allowance for the difference in weight?”

  “It might be.” Crane sat on the bed beside Williams, leaned backward so that his elbows were resting on the green spread. “It might be, but she’d have had to change a lot. A hell of a lot. I don’t think that photo is going to do us any good.” He looked up at the ceiling. “I bet you could take the photograph of almost any pretty blonde, and she’d look something like the girl in the morgue, especially if you had to allow for a difference in weight and four years in age.”

  O’Malley had been sitting on the straight-backed chair by the writing desk, his blue eyes attentive. He said, “Maybe you could have one of the portraits sent on to Chicago, Mr. Courtland?” He turned around to Crane. “We’d probably do better, Bill, if we showed it to some of the people in her hotel. They saw her alive.”

  “Of course.” Courtland’s face brightened. “I’ll wire Mother to send it air mail.” He ran his hand backward through his short blond hair, left it tousled. “You know it’s damnable to have something like this happen to you. The uncertainty. Most of the time I’m sure it can’t be Kit. It isn’t like her to kill herself … and then there are the clothes and the puzzle of why anybody would steal the body, if it was her.” Emotion made his voice husky. “But every now and then I have a terrible conviction she is dead. You know she hadn’t lived at home for two years, since she and Mother quarreled, and we didn’t know exactly what sort of life she was leading.”

  Crane sat up on the bed, used Williams’ shoulder as an armrest. “She couldn’t have been hard up, could she?” he asked. “I mean, your mother didn’t cut her off …?”

  “Oh Lord, no! Mother couldn’t bother her.” He laughed, deeply amused. “Mother gets an allowance from the estate, just like the rest of us.” He was smiling now. “I’d hate to think what would happen if Mother was in charge of the family purse. Money’d go for a chorus composed of famous tenors or a Theosophist temple the size of the Empire State Building.”

  Crane asked, “Do you mind saying how much your sister received?”

  “Not at all, if it’s any help.” Courtland was sitting on the edge of his chair, hands thrust in his coat pockets. “She had fifteen hundred a month until she married.”

  “Then what?”

  “She gets one third the estate.”

  Doc Williams’ eyes were black and shiny. “Fifteen hundred should keep her out of the bread line.” He wet his lips with his tongue.

  Crane asked, “Who has charge of the estate?”

  “Father named Uncle Sty in the will as general trustee, but …”

  Crane interrupted. “Uncle Sty?”

  “Yeah,” said Doc Williams. “He’s our client.”

  O’Malley said, “Stuyvesant Courtland.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Crane. “Go ahead, Mr. Courtland.”

  “All I was going to say was that I handle most of the details of the estate.”

  Crane rubbed his right ear. “Then you know that your sister was receiving her fifteen hundred dollars regularly each month?”

  Courtland nodded. “I’ve been adding it to her account at the Hanover Bank even though she apparently stopped using it six months ago.”

  “Was that when she quarreled with her mother?” Crane asked.

  “Oh no. That was two years ago, as I told you.”

  “Oh!” Blinking his eyes, as though he were trying to remember, Crane said, “I think it would be simpler if you told us about your sister chronologically, about the quarrel, I mean, and what she’s been doing since then.”

  Courtland leaned back in his chair, thrust out his legs. He bent his neck so that he was looking over Crane’s and Williams’ heads. “The trouble with Mother started about the time Kit came back from a year in France—some school down at
Tours. Mother hated the crowd Kit took up with, objected to her going down to Greenwich Village all the time with a lot of half-baked artists and writers. She also disapproved of Kit’s drinking.

  “Finally, one morning, Kit cleared out after Mother had waited up until six o’clock to bawl her out. She packed her clothes, while Mother yelled and raged and raised hell generally. I remember there was some little squirt there—” his voice was faintly amused “—with a beret and a velvet jacket (I thought those things went out with Oscar Wilde) and when Mother screamed something at him he hopped behind Kit and shouted, ‘Don’t you dare strike me,’ and burst into tears. Mother told Kit she needn’t bother to come home, that she never wanted to see her again.

  “Kit said, ‘You never will,’ and that was the last time Mother saw her.”

  There was a momentary pause. The shrill voice of a newsboy floated up from Randolph Street. Wind blowing through windows around the hotel corner sounded as though someone were pulling a heavy rug across a waxed floor. It was still hot.

  Courtland continued, “I had sided with Mother in some of the earlier shindigs (I didn’t see a damn bit of sense in going around with a lot of unwashed Cubists and Joyceans when Tom Bowers—he’s with Dillon, Reed—and half-a-dozen other decent fellows were crazy about her) and Kit told me she didn’t want to see me, either. I went around to her place on Fifty-fifth Street seven or eight times, but she was nasty, or maybe I was, so finally I stopped trying to see her.

  “I guess the last time I ran into her was at the Cotton Club in Harlem. That was about five months ago. The funny thing was that it was after 4 A.M. and she was at a table all by herself, but she wouldn’t join our party. She said she had a date later!”

  “The hell!” exclaimed Crane. When Courtland looked at him he grinned, added, “I just thought of something. Please go ahead.”

  “I got worried about her two months ago and stuck my nose into some of the old haunts in the Village, but they said there that they hadn’t seen her for five or six months, either. They said she had just dropped out of sight. Her apartment was closed—she was still paying rent on it, and her things were there—and the janitor said he thought she had gone to Europe. At the Hanover Bank her account showed that she had drawn out six thousand in February and not a cent since then. It did look as though she had gone abroad for a jaunt, until Mother got the letter from her.”