Murder is the Pay-Off

by Leslie Ford

  His solemn face broke into a happy grin. He put his head down on his hands then and laughed like a crazy fool.

  Gus watched him silently as long as he could.

  “This is supposed to be funny, some way, Orvie?”

  “It sure is,” Orvie said cheerfully. He controlled his mirth with an effort. “At least, I think it is. I think it’s funny as hell. Because she’s right. She hasn’t got an overdraft. Only Dad didn’t know it, and I thought I’d better not tell him. He’s funny about dough, you know.”

  He looked quickly around the room again.

  “Maynard took the checks home with him. I don’t know why. He’s not supposed to, even if he is a director. Dad didn’t know it and he wouldn’t like it. You know, hanky-panky in the bank sort of stuff. But when Maynard took ’em out, he had to cover ’em with his own check. And this is the payoff. I don’t know what Maynard was going to do with ’em, but it was something Mrs. Maynard didn’t like— or thought she wasn’t going to like. She didn’t even know they were checks. All she knew was there was something in the library desk drawer that Maynard and Connie had been talking about. She had me stand guard, and she opened the drawer. She found Janey’s checks with ‘No Funds’ on ’em.”

  He looked at Gus earnestly. “You know what she did? She put ’em in the fire.”

  He rocked with mirth again. “So Janey doesn’t have an overdraft. Maybe you don’t think it’s funny, but I do. I think John Maynard getting soaked three hundred and twenty bucks is funny as hell.”

  His face sobered and he looked at Gus with owlish earnestness. Gus sat there a minute without saying anything. “Orvie,” he said then, “I guess you’ve got something, at that.”

  “Well, I just thought I’d tell you.” He pushed aside his glass. “I’ve got to go rescue Janey from some of those goons with web feet.” He started off and stopped, a sheepish smile on his face. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you, and don’t get sore, Gus, but it was Janey sent me in here. I was supposed to get rid of Connie. Janey’s changed her mind, Gus, about this to-hell-with-you and Connie-can-have-you line she’s been talking. I knew she didn’t mean it. You know what women are like. But she heard you and Connie. She says if you’re going to quit you’ll have to take her and little Jane with you, and if Connie gets the paper you’ll quit anyway. She says Connie’ll be the kind of a boss you could take about two days. So I didn’t tell her about the Wernitz deal. Men ought to sort of stick together. I—”

  Gus put his hand up to his revolving head and held it there a moment. He put it down, got to his feet, and held it out. He shook Orvie’s hand. “Orvie,” he said, “you’re dead right. God help us if we don’t.” He took a deep breath of the stale-grain-and-neutral-spirits air of the Sailing Club and looked at Orvie with fresher and less leaden-weighted gray eyes. “Orvie,” he said, “Orvie, I’d like to buy you a drink.”

  Orvie Rogers’s solemn face lighted up. “Oh, thanks, Gus! Thanks a lot!” He glanced at his watch. Then he glanced at the door. “Why, thanks just the same, Gus,” he said briskly, “but some other time, I guess. I—I see Miss Maynard returning, and count me out. I’m going to get Janey. Now she’s not so upset and everything, I guess she can take Connie on better than I can.” He raised his voice. “Well, sure swell having a chance to talk to you, Gus.” He turned back, lowering his voice again. “You’re not sore, about all this stuff—”

  “Not at all, Orvie. Not at all.”

  He’d said it to Orvie once before that day. It sounded different this time, both to him and Orvie.

  Connie Maynard came swiftly across the room. “Go away, Orvie,” she said. Her voice sounded as if someone was tightening an invisible necklace around her throat.

  “Just going, Con,” Orvie said cheerfully. The glance he gave Gus over the top of her tawny head added, “You’re telling me.”

  “Gus!” She put her hand on his arm. “Gus!”

  “Keep away from me, lady.” He dropped his arm and moved back. Something had happened to her. The purple blotches in her cheeks were gone, and the yellow brimstone.

  “Gus, I’m sorry! I’m terribly sorry! I didn’t mean it, about the paper, or—”

  “You mean your dad just told you?” Gus inquired easily. “That he doesn’t own the paper?”

  She caught her breath and steadied herself. Her fingers pressed hard on the table. “What—how did you know?” she demanded sharply. “Who—”

  “Never mind. It’s my job to know these things.” It sounded good, at least. “But I’m still quitting, if that’s what’s eating you. I’m particular who I work for.”

  Looking at her, he saw something was wrong beyond what she was saying. She wasn’t listening to him. Her eyes were moving frantically from side to side. She was waiting desperately for him to shut up. There was no use going on, anyway. It was a little hard to explain even to himself, how he could have gone on working for slot-machine dough without knowing it or being coerced by it in any way and get so almighty righteous all of a sudden, without even knowing what was going to happen now the local king of the slots was dead and couldn’t take it with him.

  He stopped and let her have a chance. She took it breathlessly.

  “I’ve said I’m sorry. But that’s not the trouble. Oh, please, Gus! This is on the level. I’m asking you to help me out. Just once, Gus. Something’s happened at home.”

  He pulled himself sharply to attention. His own personal mixup and the handsome roseate dawn of hope that had taken over and dissolved the nightmare of writhing despair inside him, since Orvie’s bumbling confidence, had pretty well anesthetized him to the real purpose of his being there at the club. And Connie wasn’t being funny.

  “What—”

  “I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I—I’m afraid it’s Uncle Nelly. I don’t know whether he’s sick or—or what. Dad wouldn’t say. All he said was for me not to say anything to Aunt Mamie or Martha or anybody but to get Dorsey to come and help do something. And Dorsey’s tight. Look at him over there. I tried to give him the high sign from the door but he won’t pay any attention to me. I don’t want to tell him. One Maynard scene tonight is all the club could take. I’m sorry, Gus—but please help me out.”

  He looked up. Janey had come back with Orvie and was watching them. She couldn’t have helped hearing Connie’s last few words. It was a risk he couldn’t take. Orvie might think he knew what women were like, but he’d be damned if Gus Blake did. Janey might easily change her mind another time and leave him in a thicker, hotter soup than the one he’d just crawled out of.

  He shook his head. “Sorry, Con. You’ll have to get Dorsey home yourself.”

  “That’s mean, Gus.” He winced. It was Janey who said it. She came on the few steps to the table, her blue eyes soft and quite serious. Or apparently. He was no longer sure of anything about this girl Janey. “Go on with her, Gus,” she said earnestly. “Orvie and I’ll stay and dance. We’ll keep Martha here with us.”

  Connie stiffened. It was bitter fruit to take from Janey’s hand. She took it. “Thanks,” she said curtly. As she walked away Gus looked apprehensively at Janey. She nodded almost imperceptibly and moved in behind the table. “Martha!” she called. “Come on over and talk to me and Orvie. We’ve got a wonderful idea.” She gave Orvie an amused smile as he moved in beside her. “Think of one, quick.” Gus followed Connie over to the machines.

  “Come on, Dorse.” She waited for Gus to move in beside her. “Gus and I are going over to Tony Modesto’s.” She thought desperately of some place he might be willing to go to until they could get him outside and tell him about Uncle Nelly. She didn’t want him to go into a crying jag there in the club. “Come on, sweetie. Janey’ll let Gus go if we’ve got a chaperon. Tony’s got kale for fifteen cents a bunch and he’ll give Gus tomorrow’s dope.”

  “Don’t play the horses,” Dorsey said amiably. His voice was a little: thick. “That’s Dad. And I just got three bells.” He put another dime in the machine. “This th
ing’s hot tonight. Or Martha just dropped twenty-three bucks in it, so it ought to be.”

  “Come on, Dorsey,” Gus said easily. “The jack pot’ll be ready by the time we get back.”

  Dosey pulled the handle. The three plums came. “Oh, boy!” he said. He picked up his fourteen dimes and put another in.

  “Come on, Dorsey.”

  He turned and looked at Gus, and seemed to realize something was going on. “Okay.” He followed them to the door. “It’s not— There’s nothing wrong? Dad isn’t sick, is he? He looked like hell tonight.”

  “I don’t know, Dorsey. We’ve got to get out home.” They got their coats in the cloakroom in the foyer and went out, Dorsey staggering a little as the cold fresh air hit him.

  “Wondered why Uncle John was taking him home so early. Where is he?”

  “At our house,” Connie repeated. “Open the window, Dorsey, and breathe. You’ve got to sober up before we get there.”

  She was entirely sober herself. The crack on the side of his face had probably done a third of it, Gus thought, her conversation with John Maynard the rest. She drove now as if she’d been a white-ribbon girl all her life. There were two other cars in the drive in front of the white-pillared porch. Connie’s hands were cold as she switched off the engine. If Uncle Nelly was really sick, they’d have taken him to the hospital, not here. It was something else. Aunt Mancie?

  She slid across the seat after the two men and waited until Gus slammed the car door. Nobody but the family knew how much Aunt Mamie depended on the weedy, unobtrusive prop that Uncle Nelly was. Inside the door, she stopped and listened. She ran across and opened the library door, Dorsey behind her, Gus behind him.

  “Oh,” she said. She stopped short.

  “Come in, both of you,” John Maynard said.

  His jaw tightened as he saw Gus. “You better come in, too, now you’re here, Blake.”

  Gus looked through the open door at Uncle Nelly. He was sick, but he was at least still alive. He sat huddled in the leather armchair by the desk, as green almost as the leather itself. His eyes were fixed on the floor, his long bloodless fingers kneading his forehead.

  “We’ve got a little serious business that don’t get into the paper, Gus,” John Maynard said quietly. “Come in and shut the door.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  GUS BLAKE SHUT THE DOOR behind him, and started a little in spite of himself. John Maynard and Uncle Nelly were not the only ones there. In the place of honor at John Maynard’s desk sat Orvie Rogers’s father, his brows beetling, his face set. His dead-fish eyes were fixed on the guy who was going to turn in early to take his son duck shooting at daybreak. Jim Ferguson looked as if he was about to turn in deeper and longer than he’d said.

  “Dad!” Dorsey Syms went forward quickly toward his father, his face pale and alarmed. As his eyes fell on the man who had been sitting on the sofa facing John Maynard in front of the fireplace he came to a sudden stop. Mr. Hugo Vanaman took a step nearer the desk and Nathan Rogers. Gus’s eyes followed Dorsey’s as they moved around the room. He stared for an instant at Williams of the city police and Carlson of the county constabulary standing by the curtained windows, together and yet somehow curiously apart from the others. Dorsey Syms turned back, his eyes moving from one of them to the other, fixed in turn on each one of them, the sick-faced men and the grim-faced men. He took another step toward his father. “Dad, are you— What is this? What’s going on here?” The eyes of every man in the room except his father rested on him. Uncle Nelly was staring in sick helplessness down at the floor.

  John Maynard said softly, “It’s all up, Dorsey.”

  Dorsey swung round to him. “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. It’s all up. You’re goin’ to be put under arrest, Dorsey. These men—”

  Dorsey Syms stared at him. “What do you mean, I’m going to be put under arrest?” he asked coolly. His easy smile came to his lips. The Maynard smile, Gus Blake thought. The Maynard charm. The Maynard confidence. Dorsey looked around the room. He swayed a little. The cold air had sobered him up some, Gus thought. Not enough, perhaps. Always cocky when he was tight.

  “Under arrest?” Dorsey repeated. His voice had a shade of good-natured irony. “Don’t be silly. You’re joking, aren’t you? There’s such a thing as proof, you know. You can’t prove a goddam thing on me, you and your flatfoots, and don’t fool yourselves I don’t know it. I was at the races. I was nowhere near the Wernitz house last night.” There was silence in the room, heavy cold, deadly, filling every part and corner, enduring. It prolonged, dragged on inexorably, unbearably, it seemed to Gus Blake, second after second. It was as if some giant steel coil, wound to its last possible turn, had met and absorbed another and held tight, no one daring to move or breathe for fear the monster would burst loose, shattering itself and them. The silence held, seemed to gather, swelling, with some kind of quality of shock, of stupefaction, expanding as if it would burst the room itself. Gus looked at Swede Carlson. His face was not expressionless now as he stared silently at Dorsey, his jaw sagging a little, his colorless eyes slowly lighting. It came to Gus then in an instantaneous blinding flash. The Wernitz murder had nothing to do with why these men were here. It was not the Wernitz murder they were arresting him for. And Dorsey Syms didn’t realize it. He stood there handsome and arrogant, swaying a little, almost erect, smiling his pleasant smile, any surprise concealed, cocky as a teen-age goon swaggering down an alley in the slums.

  “This is just crazy,” Dorsey Syms said. His voice was easy and courteous. “You gentlemen can’t be serious about this. Even supposing I’d done it—let’s be realistic. No jury’d take a Filipino slot-machine mechanic’s word against mine. If that could be what you’re banking on. You haven’t got an atom of proof. I wasn’t anywhere near the Wernitz place. But—even that lucky piece you were all groping for. You couldn’t prove it belonged to—anybody in particular. And you couldn’t prove I ever touched it, even if it did belong to anybody in particular. You—” Swede Carlson came out from the windows.

  “Now you sort of foolishly bring the matter up, Syms,” he said, “I sort of guess I can. And I can prove a lot more.” He took a handful of white cleansing tissue out of his pocket and laid it on the table. He unfolded it. A metal powder container glittered softly in the light.

  “This is Janey Blake’s compact. It was in her bag at the Sailing Club tonight when you were sitting beside her on the bench. You saw it slip out of her lap when she got up to go out with Gus. You got the lucky piece out and dropped the bag on the floor again so nobody could see you. This compact’s got prints on it that aren’t Janey Blake’s, Syms.”

  Dorsey laughed. “Nuts,” he said. “Nuts to you, Carlson. I saw a bag there. I opened it to see whose it was.”

  “And dropped it on the floor under the table?”

  “It must have got knocked off the seat.”

  His eyes moved from face to face.

  “And I’ve got another print to show you.” Carlson turned and nodded to Williams.

  Dorsey’s smile was still easy. “Do people go around leaving fingerprints these days? I thought every fool knew enough to—”

  “This ain’t a fingerprint.”

  Carlson unwrapped the object Lieutenant Williams handed him.

  “This is a footprint, Syms. It’s made from a cast of a footprint you made—in the Blakes’ back yard, when you went over there at night to get the lucky piece you knew you had to get, that you took out at Wermtz’s and put in the slot machine here by mistake. That’s what Williams and I came here for, startin’ to find a shoe that’ll fit this.”

  “That lucky piece doesn’t mean a thing, Carlson. You don’t know where it came from, anything about—”

  “That’s where you’re wrong again, Syms. It came right from Doc Wernitz. It’s been described to us by a friend of Wernitz’s who knew about it and’s seen it. Janey Blake’s father, Syms. That’s somethin’ you overlooked, too. You figured because th
at Filipino boy you slugged still can’t tell us anythin’ about it we couldn’t find out about it. But you knew it could be a dead giveaway. That’s why you had to get it back. That’s what you were doin’ when you made this footprint here, in the Blakes’ back yard. Looks mighty like the shape of your foot, Syms. You mind takin’ off your right shoe?”

  Dorsey Syms’s face was suddenly as gray as ashes. Swede Carlson looked at him curiously.

  “It couldn’t be you’re such a conceited, arrogant so-and-so,” he asked slowly, “that you still got it on you? And, by God, that’s where it is? Take that right shoe off, Syms.”

  “The hell I will.” His voice was thicker. “I’ve got rights. This is absurd. I—”

  The elder Rogers spoke, his voice steely. “Take that shoe off, Syms.”

  Dorsey hesitated. He raised his right foot and reached down to it. Carlson took a quick step forward. He caught Dorsey’s hand, caught his foot, took the shoe carefully off. He held it out at arm’s length, turned away from Dorsey toward the others and turned the shoe slowly over. There was a bright small flash, a soft thud as a small object hit the carpet. It rolled and was still. Swede Carlson bent down and picked it up. He held it in the palm of his hand.

  “You got anythin’ else to say, Syms?”

  “Yes.” His face was white now. “This is— I didn’t even know Wernitz. I haven’t any motive— You’ve got to prove—”

  Gus jerked his head around as John Maynard spoke in his deliberate drawl.

  “You’ve talked too much already, Dorsey. Ain’t much more for you to say. I reckon your motive couldn’t be much clearer. I told you when you came in it was all up. You misunderstood me, Dorsey.”

  “What do you mean, I—”

  “We didn’t know nothin’ about you and Wernitz when you came in this room. We got you here for somethin’ entirely different, Dorsey.”

  The ashy-gray of Dorsey’s face turned slowly white as he stared at his uncle, speechless for an instant. He found his voice. “I—don’t know what you’re—”