Nora leans toward Nick, her face strained: “Did you say ‘was’?” Nick nods slowly, his face serious now. Nora, softly: “Poor Selma.”
Dancer, angrily: “I’ve had enough of this. I—” He breaks off as through the open door comes the sound of Polly’s singing.
Nick: “Ah! Another of our travelers has returned. Now if only—no sooner said than done,” he says as Lum Kee comes in. Nick looks from one to the other of them and says thoughtfully: “I wonder which of you would be most frightened if Robert Landis walked in now.” Neither man says anything. Nick: “But you know there’s no chance of that, don’t you, Dancer?”
Dancer: I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t care.” He advances threateningly. “Get out!”
Nick smiles, shakes his head, says: “You said that before and it’s foolish. We’re not going to get out—we’re going to have more people come in.”
He picks up the phone. Dancer, grabbing at the phone: “Give me that phone!”
Nick: “Certainly.”
He raps Dancer on the jaw with it. Dancer staggers back, holding his jaw.
Nora, proud of Nick, says to Dancer: “See?”
Nick dials a number, says: “Nick Charles speaking. I want to get hold of Lieutenant Abrams of the Homicide Detail. If he’s not on duty, will you give me his residence number?”
Lum Kee crosses to the closet and carefully puts his hat away.
On a dark and seemingly deserted part of the waterfront, David gets out of his car, walks to the edge of a small pier, and throws Selma’s pistol as far out into the water as he can.
Through the fog comes a man’s voice shouting: “Hey, what are you doing there?” followed by the sound of feet running toward David. David races back to his car and drives off.
In Dancer’s apartment, Nick is saying into the phone: “Sure, I’ll wait for you, Abrams . . . Well, I’ll ask them to wait, but sometimes I think they don’t like me well enough to do me favors . . . Yes. I’ll tell them.” He puts down the phone and tells Lum Kee and Dancer: “The Lieutenant said something about boiling you in oil if you budged before he gets here. The fellow probably exaggerates.”
Polly has finished her song: the sound of applause comes through the door. Dancer turns on his heel and goes out.
A still larger and angrier group of customers is waiting to use the phone. The hatcheck girl is talking about pajamas. Dancer takes the receiver roughly from her and slams it on the hook, snarling: “Get back to work. What are you going to do? Spend the whole night here?” He goes on toward the restaurant.
In Dancer’s apartment, Lum Kee says: “Dancer not mean anything, please, Mr. Charles. Good man—only excited. Sometime make a little trouble—not mean anything.” He smiles cheerfully at Nick and Nora, as if he had explained everything, and says: “Now we have little drink, you bet you.”
Nora rises, saying to Nick: “I ought to go to Selma’s. She’ll need somebody.”
Nick: “Right. I’ll put you in the car.” To Lum Kee: “Hold everything.” Nick and Nora go downstairs.
Harold is sound asleep now. The taxi-driver is saying: “So I said to these two gobs, I said, ‘Maybe you boys are tough stuff back on Uncle Sam’s battle-wagon, but you ain’t there now,’ I said, ‘you’re on land,’ I said, ‘and you’re either gonna pay that fare or I’m going to take it out of your—’” He breaks off as Nick and Nora come to the car, and opens the door for them. Harold wakes up.
As Nora gets in, Nick asks Harold: “Did you see Robert Landis leave?”
Harold: “No, I would’ve only—” He breaks off, leans past Nick to push the taxi-driver violently with one hand, saying angrily to him: “Putting me to sleep with them yarns about where you told everybody to get off at! I ought to—” He jerks his cap off and turns to Nora, saying earnestly: “Aw, gee, I’m sorry, Mrs. Charles!”
Nick: “Did you see anybody you knew?”
Harold: “Nope, I didn’t notice nobody coming out particular—except there was a kid come out right after you went in, and I only noticed him because he was kind of hanging around”—he indicates the doorway Phil stood in—“for a little while. Why? Something up?”
Nick: “What did the kid look like?”
Harold gives a rough description of Phil, adding: “Why?”
Nick: “What happened to him?”
Harold: “I don’t know.” He calls to the taxi-driver, who is standing back against a wall, looking resentfully at them: “Hey, Screwy! What happened to the kid that was hanging around here?”
The Taxi-Driver: “I don’t know. I guess he went down the street half hour ago.”
Harold warns Nick: “Maybe he never even seen him. What’s up, Nick?”
Nick: “Plenty. Drive Mrs. Charles back to her aunt’s,” then to Nora: “Going to stay all night?”
Nora: “I think I ought to.”
He nods, says: “I’ll stop over in the morning.” He stands at the curb staring thoughtfully after the car as it drives away.
Upstairs in the Li-Chee, Dancer meets Polly as she leaves the floor and asks her: “What are you doing back here?”
Polly: “It wasn’t my fault, Dancer. You know how drunks are. We got outside and he insisted on going home—his home—and I couldn’t talk him out of it. I couldn’t strong-arm him, could I? So I thought I’d better come back and tell you. I couldn’t stop him.”
Dancer: “Okay, sister, dress your dolls the way you want to.”
Polly: “I don’t understand what you mean, Dancer.”
Dancer: “A cluck, huh? All right. I’ll tell you so you can understand. Somebody cooled off Landis tonight, and the heat’s on plenty—right here. You’re in it with me, and you’re going to be in it with me, because the first time you step out of line—get the idea?”
Polly: “You don’t have to try to scare me.” (But she is scared.) “I’m shooting square with you.”
Dancer, sneering: “You mean starting now? That’ll help some. Where’s the paper?”
Polly: “In my bag. Shall I tear it up?”
Dancer: “Maybe you are as dumb as you act sometimes. Listen. Try to understand what I’m telling you. Landis is killed—dead. Maybe we’re going to need that paper bad. So you don’t let anything happen to it—be sure you don’t.”
Polly: “All right, but I still don’t get it. I don’t know what you—”
Dancer: “Shut up and do what you’re told.”
At this point, as they move toward Dancer’s apartment, they pass the head of the stairs and are joined by Nick, returning from the street.
Nick: “Now let’s have that little drink Lum Kee was talking about.”
Dancer: “Swell! And, Mr. Charles, I want to apologize for losing my temper like that.”
Nick, linking arms with them: “Don’t give it a second thought. Some people lose one thing, some lose another, but they all like a drink afterwards.”
To Polly, sympathetically: “Tough you couldn’t do a better job of seeing Landis got home all right.”
Polly, sullenly: “It wasn’t my fault. I did the best I could.”
Nick says: “I’m sure you did,” as they go into Dancer’s apartment.
Lum Kee is at the telephone saying: “Better you come right away . . . You bet you.” He hangs up, explaining blandly to Nick: “Mr. Caspar. He our lawyer. Sometimes good thing when you have trouble.”
Nick: “You bet you.”
Dancer: “Maybe, but I think you’re going to a lot of trouble over nothing. It’s a cinch none of us shot Landis—so what do we need a lawyer for?”
Nick: “Maybe to help you explain how you know he was shot.”
Dancer: “Well, whatever way he was killed, it’s still a cinch we didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Nick yawns, says: “A cinch is no defense in the eyes of the law,” and makes himself comfortable on the sofa.
Dancer smiles ingratiatingly at Nick and says: “I don’t blame you for thinking maybe we’re t
ied up in this somehow. It’s our own fault for starting off with you on the wrong foot, but—let’s have that drink first and talk things over. We can show you we’re in the clear.” He pushes a button for a waiter.
Nick, indifferently, lying back and looking at the ceiling: “Don’t worry about me. Talk it over with the police.”
Dancer catches Polly’s eye and jerks his head a little toward Nick. She nods and moves as if aimlessly over to the sofa. Lum Kee looks from Dancer to Polly, then goes over and sits on a chair not far from the sofa, but behind Nick.
Dancer calls: “Come in,” as the waiter knocks, and moves over so that he is between Nick and the door. (None of these movements should be definitely threatening, though it should seem to the audience that Nick is being surrounded.)
Dancer, to Nick: “What’ll you have?”
Nick: “Scotch.”
Polly and Lum Kee say: “Same.”
Dancer: “And a glass of milk.”
The waiter goes out. Polly sits down on the sofa beside Nick and says: “Do you suppose that David Graham could have killed Robert?”
Nick blinks in surprise, then says: “I’m no good at supposing. What do you know about David Graham?”
Dancer is regarding the girl with a puzzled look.
Polly: Only what Robert told me—that he was in love with his wife.”
Nick: “Oh.”
Polly, putting a hand on one of Nick’s as if unconsciously: “Wasn’t he?”
Nick: “Everybody’s in love with somebody’s wife—I guess.”
Polly, moving a little closer to him on the sofa: “Are you?”
Nick, still looking at the ceiling, takes his hand out of Polly’s and puts his arm around her, making himself more comfortable. He says: “Everybody doesn’t admit it.”
Polly, bending over him a little, smiles and says admiringly: “I bet you could admit a lot—if you wanted to.”
The waiter comes in with drinks, but halts in the doorway at a signal from Dancer. Nick pats Polly’s shoulder and says lightly: “My dear, for a girl who’s had so much practice giving men the works for Dancer, your technique is remarkably—ah—unpolished.”
She jerks away from him angrily.
Nick: “There’s the fellow with the drinks. That’s what we’re waiting for, isn’t it?” None of the others moves.
Harold begins to apologize again as Nora gets out of the car in front of Selma’s: “I feel like busting myself in the nose for that—”
Nora: “That’s all right, Harold. Go back for Mr. Charles.”
Harold stands looking after her, scratching his head and putting three fresh pieces of gum into his mouth, as she goes to the front door.
The door is opened immediately by one of the detectives who was with Abrams earlier that day. He touches the brim of his hat with one finger; she smiles at him without saying anything and goes down the hall to the open drawing-room door. Aunt Katherine, Abrams, and Dr. Kammer are standing in the drawing room. Dr. Kammer is a powerfully built middle-aged man with very pale skin, thick, short-cut black hair, and large, dark, staring eyes. He speaks very precisely, with a barely noticeable accent, and, though he does not use a cane, one of his legs is stiff at both ankle and knee. His dress is dandified, more European than American, and—except for the dragging of his lame leg when he walks—he has a decidedly military carriage.
As Nora reaches the door, Abrams is saying gloomily to Dr. Kammer: “Okay, Doc—if you still want to take the responsibility for not letting me talk to her.”
Kammer: “My dear sir, it is not a case of responsibility. Mrs. Landis has suffered a great shock. It was necessary to give her something to quiet her. Can she talk to you in her sleep? She will not be awake for hours.”
Abrams: “And then?”
Kammer: “And then we shall see.”
Abrams sighs, says: “This is making it pretty tough for me. Well, let me ask you—”
Nora, coming into the room, interrupts him impatiently: “What are you wasting time here for? Nick’s waiting for you at the Li-Chee. Robert was there tonight and left with a girl who lives in that apartment house Pedro owns. Pedro Dominges, the man who was killed at our place. She’s back there now, and Dancer and the Chinaman, and Nick’s with them waiting for you.”
Abrams, stolidly: “Good evening, Mrs. Charles—or I guess it’s good morning. Did you see him there? I mean Robert Landis.”
Nora: “Yes.”
Abrams: “What happened?”
Nora: “Nick knows. Go down there. He can tell you everything.”
Abrams, not very hopefully: “I hope somebody can tell me something. These people!” He looks gloomily at Aunt Katherine and Kammer, and shakes his head, then continues: “Anyhow, I got to ask a couple more questions. Dr. Kammer, do you often have to give Mrs. Landis things to quiet her?” Kammer stares at him. Abrams turns to Nora for sympathy, saying: “You see—that’s the way it’s been going.”
Nora: “But surely you don’t think Mrs. Landis—” She breaks off, looking from one to the other in amazement.
Abrams, patiently: “How do I know what to think if nobody’ll tell me anything. Well, Dr. Kammer, let’s put it plain: does she take dope?”
Aunt Katherine: “Mr. Abraham, you’re insulting.”
Kammer: “Certainly not.”
Abrams, paying no attention to Aunt Katherine: “Okay. Check that off. Then is she crazy?”
Kammer: “My dear sir, why should you think that?”
Abrams: “Easiest thing in the world. I’ve seen you three times in my life before this, and all three times you were on the witness stand testifying that somebody was nuts.” He begins to count on his fingers. “First it was that guy Walter Dabney that killed a guy in a fight; then it was that Harrigan woman”—he opens his eyes a little wider—“by golly, she shot her husband, too; and then it was—”
Nora goes up to Abrams as if she were about to smack him, and says angrily: “Too! What right have you to say a thing like that?”
Dr. Kammer bows to Aunt Katherine and says: “Miss Forrest, in view of this definite accusation of the gentleman’s”—he bows to Abrams—“I think you would be justified in insisting that your attorney be present at any further interviews members of your family may have with the police.”
Aunt Katherine continues to regard Abrams in stony silence, as she has throughout this scene except for her one speech.
Abrams groans wearily and says, though not apologetically: “Anybody’s tongue’s liable to slip.” Nobody says anything. He addresses Nora as if he were disappointed in her: “It’s what you’d expect out of them—but you ought to know better.” When she does not reply, he shrugs his shoulders and goes out.
Nora wheels to face Aunt Katherine and Kammer, asking: “Where’s Selma?”
Aunt Katherine: “She’s sleeping, my dear,” adding quickly as Nora starts toward the door: “Don’t disturb her. Dr. Kammer says she must not be disturbed.”
Nora looks at them for a moment, then says very deliberately: “I won’t disturb her, but I am going to be with her until she wakes up,” brushes past them, and goes out of the room.
Aunt Katherine puts a hand on Kammer’s arm and in almost a whisper asks: “Well?”
Kammer says: “I think there is as yet no reason for alarm.”
Nora goes into Selma’s bedroom, where a dim night-light is burning, and stands for a moment by the bed, looking down at Selma. When she turns away to take off her coat, one of Selma’s eyes opens cautiously; then she sits up in bed and whispers: “Nora!”
Nora runs to her, exclaiming: “But they told me you were—”
Selma: “I know.” She unwads a handkerchief while she speaks, showing Nora two white tablets. “They gave me these to put me to sleep, but I didn’t take them. I wanted to see you. I knew you’d come.” Selma and Nora go into a clinch. Then Selma asks: “Has David come back yet?”
Nora: “I don’t think so. He’s not here now.”
Se
lma: “Will you phone him for me—see if he’s home?”
Nora: “Of course.” She puts out a hand toward the bedside phone.
Selma, catching her arm: “No, not here. That’s why I was afraid to phone. The police might be listening in. Go to a drugstore or something. Or—better—go to his apartment—it’s a only a few blocks.”
Nora, puzzled: “But I don’t understand.”
Selma: “He took the pistol and told me to come back and not say anything and I want to know if he’s all right.”
Nora: “The pistol!”
Selma, explaining rapidly, unconscious of the effect her words have had on Nora: “Yes. I took it and ran out after Robert when he said he was going away—you know, to scare him into not going—and he’d insulted me so terribly. And he turned the corner before I could catch up with him, and then there was a shot, and then when I turned the corner, there he was dead, and after a while David came and took the pistol and told me to come back home and not say anything to anybody. And now I don’t know whether he’s all right or—”
Nora: “Then you didn’t shoot Robert?”
Selma, amazed: “Shoot Robert? Nora!”
Nora puts her arms around Selma, saying: “Of course you didn’t, darling. That was stupid of me.”
Selma: “And you’ll go find out about David? I was in such a daze or I wouldn’t have let him do it; and I’m so afraid he may have got into trouble.”
Nora: “I’ll go right away.”
Selma: “And you’ll hurry back to tell me?”
Nora: “Yes, but do try to get some sleep.”
Selma: “I will.”
They kiss and Nora goes out.
Nora goes softly downstairs and out of the house without seeing anybody, but as she hurries up the foggy street a man comes out of a dark doorway and follows her.
Aunt Katherine and Dr. Kammer are sitting in silence, as if waiting for something, when they hear the street door close behind Nora. In unison, they look at each other, then in the direction of Selma’s room. Neither speaks. They rise together, and slowly—he dragging his lame leg, she leaning on her cane—they go to Selma’s room. Selma lies as if sleeping. Kammer feels her pulse, then picks up her handkerchief and finds the tablets. He does not seem surprised. He pours a glass of water and says, not unkindly: “Come, why must you be so childish? Take these now.” Selma, very sheepishly, sits up in bed and takes the tablets and water.
Crime Stories Page 110