by Paul Ernst
I lifted my glass. Unnecessary to order your Scotch watered down here. “You stole a valuable diamond, and I’m with the insurance company trying to get it back. But even so, let’s bury the ice pick.”
She laughed again. “You don’t care where?”
The lights went down save for a spot, and the orchestra turned sheets of music on its several racks. The orchestra leader, billed as one Dodge Duffy, stepped into the spotlight as Emcee and smiled in a wavy-haired way at the customers.
“Most of you know our boy, Larry,” he said. “Larry Call-me-golden-throat Mansfield. Larry has been investigating the activities of Manhattan at five A.M. and he will now give you his findings in song. Larry Mansfield singing ‘Manhattan Sunrise.’”
Ellen clapped as if she had come to the 50 just to hear Call-me-golden-throat; and the vehemence could have been more sarcasm or it could have been a way to cover the uneasiness I still thought I could feel beneath her flippant exterior.
“Good-looking,” she said, gazing at the wavy-haired orchestra leader.
“Yeah,” I said morosely. I have never been notable for looks myself. “He’s pretty. So is Golden Throat.”
He was, too. The young man smiling into the spotlight was a good six feet two, big in the shoulders and jaw, slim in the waist. His voice was not up to the rest of him, but that didn’t matter; when the clients started throwing peanuts, in a few more years, he could fulfill his destiny as entrancer of middle-aged ladies in luxury hotels.
He sang of what went on in Manhattan at five A.M., and Ellen applauded almost too generously, and in gracious thanks Golden Throat gave with another song and then another.
“For God’s sake,” I said to Ellen, “sit on your hands. There are limits to what can be borne even by dulled senses like mine.”
Dodge Duffy, the orchestra leader, may have felt the same way, for his boys finished the second encore with a note of finality. Golden Throat smiled and smiled and bowed and bowed and then went back through the curtained doorway beside the orchestra dais which led to the dressing rooms in the rear.
Dodge Duffy chummily announced that now we would be entranced by the dancing of the Misses Club 50, and the spotlight broadened and six large shes, any one of whom could have told better than Golden Throat what went on in Manhattan at five A.M., came out and began the Fifty-third Street version of the cancan. I never saw so many legs.
Ellen stood up in the dimness enveloping all the room except the groaning dance floor. “You don’t need me,” she murmured. “I can’t compete with wholesale lots. I’m strictly a retail article.”
“I’m strictly a retail dealer,” I began. But she smiled and said, “Powder room. Back in a minute,” and went off about her business.
I watched.
She moved among the crowded little tables like a dancer, much better than those out on the floor. She moved along the rear of the room to a door over which a dim, boxed light showed the silhouette of a lady with a mammoth powder puff touched to her nose. She went in.
I watched.
I suppose it wasn’t cricket. I suppose I should have been gentleman enough, or cancan devotee enough, to have made sure she did go to the powder room and then have transferred my attention to the Misses Club 50.
But I watched.
Two women came out of the doorway. Behind them showed a dim, tan linen swirl. There was a movement of the curtain over the doorway leading back to the dressing rooms. Miss Keppert had gone to the powder room, all right—and ninety seconds later had slid out and to the next doorway and back to… To see her girl about her mermaid?
I drank some of my Scotch and soda. I was thirsty and the faint flavor of liquor in the ice water didn’t matter. I stared at the dancers, thinking what a curiously awkward and untitillating dance the cancan really is, and thinking, It would be a damn funny thing if Ellen had really told the truth—that she had taken the diamond and was here to get rid of it somehow.
Then I told myself not to be silly, that her visit here concerned something personal that might not stand the light of day, and that if she actually were guilty of course the last thing she would do would be to laugh and say so. Wouldn’t it?
I didn’t see the curtain over the door to the dressing rooms corridor move the second time; I wasn’t watching any more. I didn’t see Ellen till she was at the table, looking oddly breathless and stiff around the lips.
I got up, she sat down. Smiling. But if I’d thought before that there was agitation in the nicely shaped and fitted breast, I was certain of it now. Ellen Keppert was in a tizzy, and no mistake.
“Trouble,” she said lightly in answer to my stare. “I found a stocking run that will look like Jacob’s ladder with another dozen steps. And anyhow I’m tired of the Fifty. Do you mind if we run along?”
I shrugged. “Paid escorts have no opinions in such matters. Why are you so upset?”
“I’m not upset. I just want to go. Now.”
The cancanners took a last kick, backward, and stood erect. There were cheers. The lights came on and I looked around for our waiter to get the check. Ellen was biting her lips, and the color in them was not the vivid red it had been a few minutes ago.
A girl came hurrying out of the curtained corridor doorway, crowding ahead of the cancanners going in. She was in an entertainer’s white evening gown, one of the singers, probably. She looked as white as her dress and she practically ran across the floor and toward the exit door.
Ellen got up abruptly. “I’ll see you outside. This air in here—it’s getting me…”
The waiter came and handed me the check and I paid it and got up with Ellen. I was going to stick with Ellen, too. She was in a chrome-trimmed funk, and I itched to know why. The knowledge wasn’t long in coming.
We went to the reception room door, and I’ll admit I didn’t hurry. I was too curious about Ellen’s desire for speed. We went out to the reception room and Ellen all but loped for the street door. “Hey, hold it a minute,” I said.
“What now?” she snapped.
“Hat. I have a straw skimmer here, and while it may not be something woven under water in Peru it is still good enough to pay a quarter for…”
The street door opened and in came three people. A smooth, sun-lamp-tanned man I’d tagged as the manager of the 50. The girl in the white evening gown. And a patrolman.
“Sorry,” the cop said, spread-eagling before the door as we made for it. “Nobody can leave here for a while.”
“And why not?” demanded Ellen, with a fair display of petulance.
“You just can’t, lady.”
“I have an important engagement in twenty minutes…”
“I don’t care what you have, you can’t leave for a little while. Nobody can. There’s been a murder here.”
I felt as if someone had without warning shot me in the belt buckle. Ellen’s arm was tense beneath my hand.
“Murder!” she exclaimed. “Who?”
“Girl back in one of the dressing rooms,” said the cop. “I don’t know the name—”
“Rose Rosslyn,” supplied the man with the sun-lamp tan. I could see a faint greenish tinge beneath that now.
Ellen moistened her lips, but nothing more came out. I led her toward the right side of the room, toward some chairs and lounges set near the phone booths and switchboard. I seated her, while the cop stayed at the street door and the manager stood in the doorway to the supper room, looking as if he had nothing on his mind other than counting the house.
I said in a low tone to Ellen, “Rose Rosslyn. That’s the girl you went backstage to see, isn’t it? About the mermaid?”
“No,” whispered Ellen.
And I knew she lied.
2
IF YOU don’t think murder in a public place is trouble, you can think again. In such a circumstance a hundred nicely dressed but, in emergency, not so nicely mannered strangers can cause a bedlam shaming the bird house at the zoo when someone tosses in a worm. It is a spot in which, more
than most others, efficiency pays off; and everyone at the 50 was lucky in that respect—save the guilty party—because of the man sent from Homicide to take over.
I don’t know many of the police, aside from the arson squad, but this one from Homicide I did happen to know slightly. I had met him in the course of a life insurance fraud case, for which I was loaned to an affiliated company, and I’d admired him very much. His name was Ryan, and he was a lieutenant though little over thirty. He looked like a high-powered young lawyer, engineer, business executive—anything but a policeman. I watched him come in the door shortly after the patrolman had sealed it off, and I looked at Ellen Keppert and thought, If you do have some connection with this mess, infant, you are out of luck.
Ryan went on through to the supper room as if he hadn’t noticed us sitting there, but in a moment the proprietor came to us and asked politely that we take our table inside again.
The crowd was different now than they had been before. They weren’t talking much any more; they sat and stared at each other and some looked angry and most looked bored and a few looked scared…
I heard Ellen’s swift, indrawn breath and stared at her. Her gaze was on her hands, dropped there from whatever or whoever it was the sight of which had surprised her. I looked around but could see nothing that might have startled her.
Ryan went back down the dressing rooms corridor, and I said to Ellen, “If you’re hiding something—and I think you are—you’re in for real trouble.”
There was no color in her face except the kind she kept in her handbag, but she was keeping eyes and chin and voice reasonably steady. Quite a girl, this Ellen Keppert. “I’m not hiding anything.”
“I might be able to help you.”
Now why had I said that? I had no right to say it. To me Ellen was nothing but a question mark in a jewel theft. It was none of my business what happened to her in a murder investigation. But she did look like such a scared child, whistling hard in the vicinity of that old graveyard.
She didn’t say anything; she stared toward the curtained doorway.
“Anyhow,” I said, “don’t get clever with this man Ryan as you did with me. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, make any cracks about coming here to see a girl about a mermaid.”
Ryan came back out. His unrevealing gray eyes took in the supper room. He called the manager; time to weed out the innocent bystanders. He had him place the orchestra on the dais, for quite obvious reasons.
The curtained doorway was right beside the dais. Rose Rosslyn could not have been killed by anyone other than somebody already back behind that curtain with her, or who had recently passed beyond it. And anyone going into the corridor should have been seen by someone in the orchestra. Perhaps the orchestra leader, who faced the men, and the doorway, at least some of the time; almost certainly by the bull fiddle player.
This man, a somewhat chubby young fellow with a full-moon face, stood or sat at the extreme left and rear of the dais, so near the curtained doorway that anybody passing through would almost scrape his elbow.
Ryan went to him and I saw a familiar look of reluctance on the moon face. Like most citizens, the bull fiddler was chary about talking to officialdom; but he did talk, and he looked around and his gaze came to rest on the girl across the little table from me. Ryan looked, too, at the girl, and then, with recognition in his eyes, at me.
He came over, big, well-built, in an excellent dark gray suit, with only the hard look around his mouth to indicate how tough he could be if he had to.
“Hello, Cates.” He had close-clipped, thick dark hair and could have been one successful Ivy League alumnus greeting another, except that I looked more like PS 36.
He glanced at Ellen and I thought he probably knew her by sight at least, but I wasn’t sure. “Miss Keppert,” I said, “Lieutenant Ryan.”
Ryan nodded to her and then said to me, “Come up here a minute, will you?”
I got up and went with him toward the orchestra dais. Already he had detailed a man at a table near the door to take the names and addresses of those filing out. Beside the man was the bull fiddle player, nervously scrutinizing faces. Ryan halted me beside the orchestra dais, and beside the orchestra leader, who had been left standing in a distraught way on the spot where he usually stood when waving his baton.
“Dodge Duffy,” Ryan said, in hearing of the man. “Not very helpful yet, but eventually he may be.”
Duffy said, distressed, “I’d help if I could. But I can’t. The spot didn’t shine on the corridor doorway, and anyway I was busy keeping the boys with Mansfield during his songs. I didn’t notice anybody going through that doorway.”
“In the number later?” Ryan asked. There was nothing threatening in his tone, but Duffy was sweating a little.
“The cancan? I took the piano myself. From there I couldn’t see who went in or out, and that’s for sure.”
“You didn’t see this gentleman go in?” Ryan pointed at me.
I started, then saw the logic of it. The bull fiddle player had pointed out Ellen as one of those who’d gone down the corridor. I was with Ellen. Perhaps I’d gone backstage, too?
“No. Not him. Not anybody. Sorry.” Dodge Duffy was looking stubborn now.
Ryan steered me along the dais some more till we were by ourselves. “Think he’s telling me the truth?” he asked, as if we were old friends and co-workers, as if my name hadn’t been mentioned.
I said I didn’t know. “With the spotlight on, his eyes would be geared for light. If he looked out of it toward the dark he might not see much. And for a fact he stood facing the crowd most of the time, giving the customers a charm treatment.”
Ryan shrugged. He said, in the same tone, “That’s Senator Keppert’s niece?”
I nodded.
“You were on the Duysberg diamond case?”
I’d been a little slow.
Here was a girl connected with the disappearance of a valuable gem—oh, entirely innocently, should anyone have libel suits in mind—but still, connected. And here was the insurance investigator who had passed on the validity of the claim. The two together, thick as thieves in this not-too-glittering night spot. It could certainly look like collusion to a man in Ryan’s position.
“It was hardly a ‘case,’” I countered as easily as I could. “Ellen Keppert, Marylin Keppert, and Howard Denham, the fellow Marylin’s to marry, said the thing was stolen. Mrs. and Senator Keppert backed them up. There was no evidence to the contrary. I okayed the claim.”
“How is it you’re with Ellen Keppert tonight?” Ryan lit a cigarette. “You can duck these questions if you want to.” That question I did want to duck. I didn’t want to say that I had trailed Ellen because of the queries still in my mind about the diamond. I looked over at her, face set and expressionless—eyes those of a frightened kid. She was in a bad enough jam without my adding to it.
But if I didn’t explain my presence here at the 50 I was encouraging in Ryan’s mind that nasty intimation of collusion. And if he got to thinking that—Well, anyone who will steal eggs will kill chickens, so to speak.
“I had dinner at the Auberge de Marseilles,” I told him. “You know the place?”
He nodded his crew-cropped head.
“I was walking east, toward my apartment on Madison, and I saw Ellen—Miss Keppert—” I saw him register what might have seemed a slip—“in front of this place looking around. She may have been stood up. I’m a bear for punishment. The Duysberg case, if you want to call it that, was closed, but I didn’t think it would hurt to have a few more words with her. I offered her a drink and a dance, she took me up.”
That sounded pretty tenuous when I conned it over, but Ryan just nodded, very pleasantly. “Anyhow, I’m glad you’re here. You might be able to give me a leg-up. Want to come back here with me?”
“Back here” was through the curtained doorway and along the corridor; and if I hadn’t suspected before that Ryan had me high on his doubtful list, I’d have suspected
it now. Because any help a man like me could have given a man like him was something for the comic books.
The corridor was long, badly lighted, and lined with doors. The first door on the left had Manager, Mr. Checckia, on it. The next was unmarked, but a jumble of feminine voices sounding from behind it indicated it was a general dressing room. Across from Manager Checckia’s door, on the right, was one with a star pasted on it, possibly for a gag. Down the line on the same side were two other doors.
The center of these three doors on the right was open and the small room inside was as bustling as the interior of an agitated atom, with print men, photographers and coroner as protons, neutrons and mesons. The activity centered around something that lay very still in the approximate center of the dressing room.
Rose Rosslyn.
She had been a pretty girl, ash-blond, shapely, with long nice legs, a lot of which showed with the disarray of the dressing robe she’d worn when she was killed. She had been shot, and in a curious way. The bullet had entered under the chin, gone up and back through her head, and had come out the top. Her hair was matted there, but not too much. With a brain wound causing instant death there’s often little blood; though in this instance the amount was small enough to be surprising any way you looked at it.
I looked away, and saw that while I’d been staring at the body Ryan had been staring at me.
The room seemed to get quite still in spite of the movement around us. I could hear this and also, through partitions as thin as cereal boxtops, sounds from the dressing rooms to each side and from the kitchen, which backed up to the rooms. They didn’t register much for a moment.
I said, “Where’s the gun?”
“We haven’t found it,” Ryan said.
“The bullet? It went through and out.”
“We haven’t found that, either. Small caliber, low velocity. Could be a twenty-two palm gun, or something of the kind.”
Ryan turned to the coroner, who shrugged. “Head wound death instantaneous no other marks of violence. Through with her? Out the rear way?”