by Paul Ernst
He gnawed his lip, then stood aside for us to enter. He closed the door after us and I heard the damaged lock click sluggishly into place.
The professionally famed shop of the Venuccias occupied a space no more than fifteen feet wide by thirty long, with a paperboard partition in the center cutting it in two. In front was a dusty and unused-looking showcase with some violin bows, and strings in flat, square boxes. Opposite the counter were wall racks, and leaned carelessly in rows here were bull fiddles and a few cellos. That fixed the front; you can’t park many bull fiddles in anything short of an airplane hangar and have room left.
I looked at the fiddles and there were differences between them, of course; but I didn’t think I could have turned around, faced back again, and picked out any one of them from memory. So which was Barkasy’s, if it were here and not already disassembled?
We went on back, following the fellow I assumed was one of the “& Sons.”
The rear room was a cluttered nightmare. There was a long workbench on which was heaped everything having anything to do with stringed instruments. Parts of same hung everywhere, like stalactites. There was wood dust two inches thick over everything in the place, including, it appeared, an old man at the workbench and another youngish fellow at the opposite side of the room pawing among a miscellany of violins, mandolins and banjos.
The two were looking mad and baffled as they searched around, and the old man glared at me in peppery fashion as we stood in the partition doorway.
“Closed!” he shrilled. “It’s one in the morning. Get…”
“He’s an insurance investigator, Dad,” said the fellow who had let us in. “He happened to be passing, and says he might as well take a report now as tomorrow.”
The old man mumbled something and the other son kept on looking through the miscellany. The one with me said, “There isn’t much to tell. Dad wandered over here from home about an hour and a half ago. He works the craziest hours.” Venuccia, Jr. looked at his father with mingled affection and exasperation. “He got to the door and saw the busted lock, and then he saw a flash of light toward the back of the front room. He’s got no sense. He turned his key and busted right in, and somebody knocked him over like a tenpin on his way out. Dad never had a chance to grab him or see him. He got up and phoned us and then the police—they’ve just gone. Since then we’ve been looking around to see what was taken. We have violins in here worth up to five thousand dollars.”
“And have you found anything missing?” I asked.
He looked perplexed. “Not as far as we can tell. And we have looked over just about everything.”
“Your father saw the light in the front room?”
“Yes. Toward the back of the room. Like a small flashlight, he says.”
“Out by the bull fiddles?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t think anyone would try to run off with one of those, though, would you?”
“People run away with safes,” I said. “Even houses, I’m told. You have checked them?”
“Yes. They’re all here.”
“Better check them a second time, against a list of customers’ names.”
“The list’s in our heads,” he said, stepping into the front room with me. Ellen came, too, making herself as small and inconspicuous as possible. She was so excited that she was shaking a little, but you had to look hard to see it; I don’t think young Venuccia saw it.
He started with the bull fiddle next to the partition. “Shep Connolly. This is Art Ridzida’s…” There were nine fiddles in the line and he went along naming the owner of each with a calm certainty that I found baffling. I couldn’t see how even he could tell at a glance which was which. I didn’t see how any layman could, and I almost sympathized with whoever it was that had broken in here to find something in a bull-fiddle and then had blandly been confronted with a whole row of the confounded things.
“… Ed Barkasy…” my man went on as he got to the next to the last. “Colin Bradey. All here.”
“Fine,” I said. “About through with your check-up in the other room?”
“Just about.”
No one was ever more casual than I—I hoped. “Well, I’ll stick around till you’re through. We’ll stay in front, here, out of your way, and if you turn up something missing I’ll make out a report.”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay. We ought to be done in a few minutes. You and the lady make yourselves comfortable.”
He went through the doorway to the back room.
“Quick,” Ellen breathed, standing near the showcase so that she could warn me if one of the three back there started to come out.
I stepped to Barkasy’s fiddle and shone a pencil flashlight into one of the f holes. I saw Ellen hold her breath.
There it was—a flash of something whitish on the bottom of the box down near the big end. I shook the fiddle. The white thing didn’t move.
“Violin bow,” I whispered to Ellen.
She got the showcase open with a minimum of noise, and handed me a bow. It just would fit down into the f hole. I touched the edge of the whitish thing with the end of the bow and prodded. There was a slight resistance, and then it moved free. I turned the fiddle upside down and shook till the f hole was covered by the white paper.
Ellen already had a nail file out of her bag. She slid this up carefully into the hole and got it under an edge of the object. Then she had the edge between her fingertips and was carefully drawing it out.
A plain small envelope with a bloodstain on one corner, and in the center a blob of chewing gum so that it would stick wherever it hit and not rattle around if someone shook the fiddle. So there it was, the thing that had caused two deaths and might easily have landed Barkasy and old Venuccia on the list of fatalities. The thing that had grown unexpectedly from the holiday sun and sand of a prosaic resort town, surprise spawn of the bronze mermaid…
I heard Ellen gasp, and whirled around.
A face showed at the glass of the front door, a face in which calm, cold eyes were taking in first Ellen and me and then the thing she held.
A hand pointed toward the doorknob. I set the fiddle down against the wall the way I’d found it, and went to the door. There was nothing else to do. I opened it, and Lieutenant Ryan walked in.
“Gimme,” he said, holding out his hand for the envelope.
Ellen looked at me. As if there was anything I could do to help! She would have turned and run, I think, only there was no place to run to. Slowly she reached it toward him—the envelope in which was her future. She’d stolen for it and we had both lied for it, and we’d almost got it. A few more minutes…
Ryan took it by a corner to preserve possible fingerprints on it. “We are now,” he said evenly to us, “going to have a long, lovely conversation at Headquarters.”
14
SO FINALLY the whole damned bloody mess was coming out, I thought, riding with Ellen in the police car. “BLACKMAIL BEHIND CLUB 50 MURDERS. NIECE OF U. S. SENATOR INVOLVED… Miss Ellen Keppert, niece of Senator Keppert, admits paying large sums to Gar Checckia, slain manager of Club 50…”
Ryan was sitting in front with the faithful Stengel at the wheel. I said, “How did you catch on to the second fiddle? Did Barkasy tell you?”
Ryan turned to look back at me, mouth set in a hard line. “Barkasy clammed up when we arrested him. Refused to say anything at all after that. He seems to think he’s being persecuted. No—Hallwig finally let it slip. Said he’d have told sooner if he’d known it meant anything. What’s more interesting is how you knew about it.”
I told him how we had figured it out. He received the information as I had thought he would, with one eyebrow up a fraction and the corners of the mouth turned down.
“And then,” he said, “you came straight to me with your idea. Thanks. Nice of you to help us out.”
“We would have, but…”
“There’s always a ‘but.’”
At least I couldn’t say that Ryan’s attit
ude toward me was inconsistent. All through this it had been colored understandably by the appearance of the Duysberg diamond early in the case. Sixty thousand dollars, of which I presumably got half! That’s motive enough for anything. Ellen’s motive, of course, was in the envelope now in his possession.
“Ryan—” I blurted.
“Yeah?”
“That envelope. There’s stuff in there that should never be introduced as evidence in court. Give Miss Keppert and me a break and let us have it for a minute.”
He just stared at me, as if for once something had surprised him.
“You don’t need all that’s in there,” I repeated, with Ellen’s fingers biting into my arm as she waited with me for Ryan’s reply.
I don’t know why we bothered.
“I’ll judge that for myself,” said Ryan, turning back into place again.
I heard Ellen sigh beside me, but otherwise she kept silent, as she had since Ryan collared us like two children caught raiding the cake box. I got mad and figuratively looked around for something to throw.
“Anyway,” I said, reaching for the only harpoon in sight, “it looks now as if Barkasy and Hallwig are cleared.”
“It does,” Ryan said indifferently to the windshield.
“And if you get any fingerprints off that envelope, I’ll eat it. Too easy to smear ’em.”
“You’d better hope they aren’t smeared.”
Which was true enough. I had no harpoons to throw at this man, only boomerangs. I sat back and put Ellen’s arm under mine and held it tight and warm against me. One small dividend of the ride. And I began chasing the merry-go-round again, reaching for the brass ring we needed so badly.
Barkasy and Hallwig cleared, unless some extraordinary new fact were uncovered. So now what? Back to pointless speculation about a mythical “third party”? No, thanks! That was where I’d come in, really accepting my Waterloo, if not immediately admitting it, when I drew a blank from the chef, Parrino.
“Nobody would know about Dick Rosslyn’s dames,” Joe had said. “He didn’t talk about such things. A gentleman, if you catch on.”
And: “Dick’s suitcase came… express collect. So I was called to the door. I paid for it, and turned it over to a helper to deliver. To Rose Rosslyn’s room—she was the guy’s sister.”
And: “He (Amado) took it back and left it in Rose’s dressing room. At least I told him to. He said he did.”
Then from Amado: “Yeah, I took it (the suitcase) back. To Miss Rosslyn’s dressing room. That’s where Uncle Joe told me to take it.”
And so finis; I was all done…
The police car, in no hurry on this particular occasion, waited demurely at a red light, and then moved forward when the light changed, and I sat up straighter as something suddenly batted me in the brain pan. Something that should have come to me when I was with Parrino, but which hadn’t. Another part of the talk of these two which had seemed to have no bearing on anything, but that now abruptly looked interesting.
Joe Parrino: “He (Amado) is no cook. Just took a summer job with me last year.”
And Amado: “… for a few weeks. Till I could get something more in my line. I’m going to be an engineer.” Now, look, I told myself, as I started to sweat. There is nothing here to get really excited about. Probably. It’s a hundred-to-one shot and may not mean anything even if it comes off. And besides, Ryan is about as apt to give it a tumble as he is to escort you home and put you to bed with his own loving little hands.
But I still sweated, and in a minute I said, “Ryan—”
“Now what?”
“An idea. Want to take a gamble?”
He swung around and faced me again across the back of the front seat.
“How nervy can you get?” he marveled to the world at large.
“Sam,” murmured Ellen, pressing my arm, “maybe you’d better not try any more…”
“As long a shot as the daily doubles,” I said, disregarding both interruptions. “If it paid off, I’d be surprised myself. It’s on the third-party deal.”
“Oh, for…” Ryan began.
“Last year, Dick Rosslyn’s suitcase was delivered to the service entrance of the Club Fifty, three days after his death. The chef took it in, express collect, and sent it back to Rose Rosslyn’s dressing room. The youngster he sent with it was his nephew, so he says you can believe what he, Amado, says. And Amado swears he took it right where he was told—to Rose’s dressing room.”
“All right, all right, you’ve told me that before.”
“What I didn’t tell you,” I said, “what I forgot to tell you, was that Amado’s no cook. He’s studying to be an engineer. He only had a short-term summer job with Parrino. For just a few weeks, he said, till he could get something more in his line.”
Ryan kept looking at me. “Long shot?” he said finally. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
“Sometimes you click on them. Give me an hour.” Ryan’s answer was to turn frontwise in his seat.
“It’d probably take less than an hour.”
“Hump it a little,” Ryan said to Stengel. The car moved faster.
“Ryan. You said something about a long, lovely conversation. Which would you rather have it—long, or lovely? You won’t get both.”
There was a muffled sort of grunt from Stengel. Ryan swung around in his seat again. “You,” he said softly, “are trying to bargain with me?”
“I can be stubborn as hell, Ryan. I think you know that. I can promise you that from this minute on I won’t open my trap again except to shovel food in it. Or I can promise that I will answer every question you want to throw at me to the best of my knowledge and to the fullest of my recollection.”
“Except, of course, questions that involve Miss Keppert,” Ryan said sarcastically. “You being such a knightly lad…”
I looked at Ellen and she looked back at me, a little white, a little sick. I felt my stomach cave as I guessed what she was going to do. That wasn’t in the picture; I couldn’t gamble that. I shook my head hard—and she just looked at me, and she didn’t know what it was all about, but she said, “Miss Keppert will answer all questions, too.”
“That’s great,” said Ryan. “Little honor students, both of you. Of course I could believe you implicitly!”
“I take it back,” I mumbled, looking at Ellen.
“No,” Ellen said clearly, “you don’t.”
It was my turn to shiver. It might or might not be my neck if this thing did not pan out. But if it didn’t, it would certainly be Ellen’s!
Ryan was watching us both now, in an interested way. “Got more than you bargained for, didn’t you?” he said to me. “But then what’s a long shot unless you really have a bet on it?”
I didn’t say anything; I was just wishing I’d clapped a hand over Ellen’s mouth before she could register quite so much trust in my ideas.
“Okay,” said Ryan. “Don’t think you’ve made a trade, Cates. You have nothing to trade with and you know it. But anybody who thinks that much of an idea ought to get a chance to try it out. You’ve got your hour.”
Smart, smart Cates! Just call me poison to those who come to trust me.
“We can save a little more time,” I said sullenly, “if you have Stengel stop now and phone Parrino to send his nephew, Amado, down to the Fifty.”
Ryan said to Stengel, “Phone here. The Eagle Hotel. Then we’ll go on up to the Fifty.”
I can’t think of anything drearier-looking than an empty night club. With customers decorating the place and with the lights diffused with cigarette smoke it can look all right. But empty, the worn spots all show glaringly and it’s like a badly gilded shell of death. In this case, of course, rather too literally so.
We went to the supper room, with Stengel flicking lights on from the switchboard near the door. By mistake, he switched on the big overhead spot, too, and it glared bleakly down on the vacant dance space. He didn’t bother to ferret out the swit
ch that turned it off; it didn’t matter.
A separate control turned on the dimmer lights in the corridor behind the curtain, and Ryan went back and clicked that, and now—knowing where to look and what to look for, and by going up close to the orchestra dais—you could catch a glimpse of the corridor between curtain and doorjamb on the left-hand side.
I stared at it—the curtained doorway that had admitted four outsiders the night Rose was killed: Siltz, Denham, Bohr and Ellen. I thought of the timetable of everybody’s movements which I’d rather sheepishly made up and from which, if you were a good chess player, you should divine the answer. And I thought maybe I had better take up chess, because the answer had been there, all right.
“We should have thought of that bull fiddle before,” I said to Ryan. “Right after the cops came, for a while everybody was all over the place, including the orchestra. The bull fiddle would be standing there unattended, like a mailbox waiting for someone to stick a letter in it. Which somebody did.”
“Brilliant,” Ryan said. “Left to myself, I never could have thought that one out.”
He walked away from me, looking around, experimenting to see how well—if at all—one could see out of the bright spotlight and into the dimmer corridor through that small crack. I went over to where Ellen sat, straight and tense, at an uncovered table.
“You shouldn’t have backed my play like that,” I said. “I’m scared stiff, now.”
“I’ve been scared,” said Ellen, “for so long that I’m getting used to it. But I hope you weren’t bluffing!”
“Only partly,” I told her. “I do have this notion. It’ll be nice if it works out.”
And not so nice if it didn’t. Because Ellen, too, had promised to answer any question Ryan threw at her, if it did not, and she was a person who would keep promises. Yes, I stole the Duysberg diamond. Yes, I brought it here to give to Checckia. Yes, yes, yes.
As for me? Yes, I knew Ellen stole the diamond—and me an insurance man! Yes, she slipped it into my pocket before she was searched. Yes, yes, yes.