by Zelda Popkin
"Mr. Chase," Mary breathed.
"Uh-huh." His eyes narrowed. "You're not his wife?"
"Don't be foolish. I told you I was a detective, didn't I? I want to ask her some questions, that's all. In connection with some bills. Bills at a department store. We've got a crook down at headquarters that we believe has been buying on her account."
''Can't that wait till morning?''
"No," said Mary sharply.
He was silent, wrinkling his forehead. "I'll tell you, Miss. You wait here. You sit here. And as soon as the gentleman leaves, I'll take you right up."
He indicated a wide divan in a shallow recess near the switchboard.
"I wouldn't want to embarrass her, and I wouldn't want to embarrass him," he apologized.
"How late does he stay?"
"Sometimes twelve, sometimes a little later. Not much later."
Mary looked at her wrist watch. Half past eleven. "I'll wait," she said. "I'll wait here." She sank on the divan, grateful for its softness and ease. She lighted a cigarette. Of all the ridiculous situations that the day had brought forth, this was certainly the most absurd. Here she was, near midnight, supperless, dog-tired, waiting in the foyer of a fancy apartment house for Horace Greeley Chase to finish his amorous dalliance with Lucille Waverly. And he, she smiled at the recollection, was, according to Margaret Rogers' description, a dried up old man, and she—the girls in the store said—was a buxom, beauteous blonde. But was he a dried up old man? But was he? That was exactly what she wanted to find out. Who was Chase? And why did John Blankfort or someone in Blankfort's office tear up the ledger sheets that told how much the fair lady had spent on frocks and jewels? And why was Blankfort afraid Evelyn Lennon might talk too much?
She tapped her foot impatiently. She put out her cigarette. He was upstairs. After all, it was he that she really wanted to find. She'd rather see Chase than Waverly any day. This was luck. Waiting for him to come down. Suspicion seized her. "Is this the only exit?" she demanded of the attendant. "Where's the service entrance?"
"Oh, don't worry about that, Miss. Mr. Chase always uses the front door."
"Listen," she repeated emphatically," I've got to go upstairs. Right now. While he's there. I don't care what's going on up there. If you don't take me up right now, I'll get a policeman and—"
A light flashed on the switchboard. The attendant plugged in the cord. "Yes," he said briefly. "All right."
Miss Waverly says it's all right for you to go up now. 6E. The elevator to the left."
"No," said Mary Carner stubbornly. "Not yet." She got up from the couch precipitously and dashed toward the street. A taxicab was pulling away from the service entrance. Through the glass she saw a pale, harried face. Its eyes met hers for a second as the cab left the curb. They were full of fear and hatred.
For an instant she hesitated on the curb, making up her mind whether to follow the cab or return to the building. She was trembling a little, but none the less, the quick eye which was accustomed to take in at a single glance the physical characteristics of a suspected shoplifter, took in now and committed to memory the number of the taxicab license, and the features of the man who called himself Horace Greeley Chase. She went back into the building.
"I was right," she told the hall man coldly. "Mr. Chase left by the service entrance tonight. I saw him pull away."
He met her angry stare with an impertinent smile.
"How'd you know you saw Mr. Chase?"
"He's a little man," said Mary Carner quickly. "A little man, a dried up shrimp of a man, isn't he?"
The attendant guffawed.
"Fooled you that time, Miss Detective. You didn't see Mr. Chase at all. He's no dried up shrimp, you can take it from me."
"I know," said Mary Carner. "I know he isn't. I saw him." She walked quickly, determinedly, toward the elevator.
Miss Lucille Waverly in person, clad in a magnificent negligee of orchid satin, heavily hung with maribou, opened the door of 6E.
"Well?" she said.
"May I come in?" Mary's voice was placating.
"This is a fine time to disturb people." Miss Waverly's voice had the huskiness of too many cigarettes and too much annoyance.
"I'm sorry. It is on an urgent matter. I'd rather not talk about it out here in the hall."
"Come in."
Miss Waverly led the detective through an overdressed foyer to a still more Ornate living room. It had chairs of needlepoint and brocade and damask; lamps of rose quartz and jade, cushions of silk and velvet—too many cushions, and too many lamps and too many end tables and too many chairs. Gowns, wraps, silk underwear, strewn over chairs, added to this luxurious confusion. An open, half packed wardrobe trunk stood in the middle of the living room floor. Miss Waverly swept a pile of silk and chiffon to the floor to clear a chair for Mary Carner and a corner of the sofa for herself.
She took a cigarette from a cloisonne box. "Excuse the mess," she said. "Packing."
"I had heard you were going away. To Europe, isn't it? When are you sailing?" Mary Carner's tones continued affable. Murder conference, or midnight inquiry, Mary behaved in this woman's flat exactly as though it were a social visit.
''Who told you?'' the other woman demanded.
"One of the girls at Blankfort's. Are you leaving soon?"
"Yes."
"Tomorrow?"
"I can't say."
"Alone?"
"What difference does that make?"
"None whatever. I'm sorry. I may as well explain what I came for, Miss Waverly. I'm at Blankfort's," Mary said slowly. "I have been asked to check up on purchases on your account there."
Miss Waverly's glance grew stony.
"Of all the nerve. By whom? Aren't my bills always paid?"
"Yes," Mary Carner admitted. "But in the last few days they have been unusually large. The credit manager had been checking up on it last night"—she hesitated—"just before he died. We thought possibly someone else had been taking things on your account. Someone, you know, might have heard you giving your name and address and made use of it. That happens, you know. It's a shoplifter's trick."
Miss Waverly snuffed out her cigarette.
"Well, I bought it. I needed it. All of it. So what?"
"Nothing. That's all I wanted to know."
"At twelve o'clock at night? You couldn't wait till morning to find that out? Couldn't ask it over the telephone?" Miss Waverly rose from her damask sofa, towered over Mary Carner. "Say, what did you come here for anyway? Come on, Miss Sneak. What did you come for? Did the old girl send you—or what?" The heavy scent that rose from her plump body was almost overpowering. The orchid maribou tickled Mary's nose. The girl stood up.
"I came," she said, steadily, "to find a torn white broadcloth shirt and a torn blue tie."
Lines of anger tightened around Miss Waverly's mouth.
"You won't find that here. You won't find anything like that here," she shouted.
"Because you threw them out. Put them in the incinerator. Is that it?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Miss Waverly screamed. "I think you'd better get out of here—and fast."
"Miss Waverly, did you ever hear of a man named Andrew McAndrew?"
"No," Lucille Waverly snapped.
"That's funny. Because I think your life's going to be greatly changed by his murder."
Miss Waverly took a step backward. She glanced at Mary Carner incredulously, and then began to laugh.
"Say, are you crazy?" Her laughter rolled out in a wild stream. "Are you crazy? You come in here, ask me a flock of dumb questions—and this one's the dumbest. You'd better get home to bed, before your keepers come for you." She drew herself up to her full height. "Get out of here. Go on. Get out before I call the elevator man to put you out." She seized Mary Carner's shoulder, and turned her toward the door. "I've never heard such impertinence."
Mary wrenched herself free. She did not speak until she was at the door and the knob was turni
ng under her hand.
"Why don't you tell Mr. Blankfort about my impertinence?" she shouted, and she slammed the door behind her.
Through the partition she heard the other woman's voice, screaming:
"Goddamn you, I will!"
CHAPTER XXI
Mary Carner stepped into a drug store, entered a phone booth, and dialed Spring 7-3100.
"Police headquarters? Inspector Heinsheimer's office, please. Is Mr. Whittaker there? Mr. Whittaker of Jeremiah Blankfort's. Chris, is that you? This is Mary. I'm in a drug store at the corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Eighth Avenue. It's finished, Chris. Tell Heinsheimer to send a couple of men out to pick up John Blankfort. Yes. That's right. All right, then, I'm crazy. But do it anyway. He left Lucille Waverly's house at 908 West 58th Street in a cab. The number was 003-084. About ten minutes ago. Believe it or not, Blankfort and Chase are the same guy. He's the gent who wore a white gardenia. Is Katie Kovacs still there? Get her back. Bring her to headquarters right away. Uh-huh. You tried Smith's voice on Katie? And Boylan's? I thought so. Neither Smith nor Boylan were in Blankfort's store tonight, remember. John H. was. You bet. You bet I'm right. It's the kind of thing I can't afford to be wrong about. What did Smith tell them? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. They're still working on him. Oh yes. Tell them to take it easy. After all, he's only a blackmailer. Tell Gus to send a couple of men up to Waverly's to get her and search her place and watch her phone calls. I'm coming right down."
* * *
The clock in Police Inspector Heinsheimer's office had crept around to two o'clock and Mary Carner had been refreshed by two cups of coffee and a sandwich before two detectives brought in John H. Blankfort. In the interim, too, she had made the acquaintance of William Smith, had found him affable, smooth and not unattractive. Mr. Smith was busy, in executive session with certain heavy handed members of the force, who were set upon filling in the blanks in the telephone conversation Mary Carner had recorded on a match book in Tony's. She had time, too, to chat with Katie Kovacs who, pacified by reassurances that she was serving justice, God and good morals, had agreed to remain quietly seated in the next room, beside a slightly opened door, until the incomprehensible police found out something that they wanted to find out.
Blankfort was a pitiable sight. He bore marks of combat in a discolored lip and a bruised cheek. One sleeve of his coat was half torn out. His coat was dirty and mud splashed. His necktie was awry. His face was chalk white, and his eyes burned in it, black and menacing.
"He attacked us," a detective announced. "He wouldn't come peaceful. He put up a fight. He's no easy baby to lick."
John Blankfort's eyes swept the room. They dropped on Mary Carner, sitting quietly beside a desk, smoking a cigarette. When he saw her, his face began to twitch, his hands turned into clutching claws.
"You," he screamed at her. "You bastard. You sneaking bastard. You did this. You're responsible for this."
A woman's voice rose shrilly, its hysteria matching Blankfort's. "That's the one I hear. That's the voice. The same bad words."
* * *
Chris Whittaker took Mary over to an Italian place on Forty-ninth Street for luncheon. It was an elaborate lunch, with clams, minestrone, chicken, spaghetti and red wine.
"It's the first decent meal I've had since dinner night before last," Mary said.
"Well, eat hearty, girl. It may be the last for a good long while. With the boss under arrest for murder, the general manager booked as an accessory, and the business just this side of the rocks, anyway, there may be no jobs for anybody at Jeremiah Blankfort's pretty soon."
Mary put down her fork. "Will John H. beat this, Chris?"
"It'll be self-defense, of course. The shirt and tie will help him. They found the shirt all right. In Lucille's place. He'd gone there to change it. The blue tie was there and a black and white one, which the Lennon girl identified as McAndrew's. Lucille didn't know anything about it. She really didn't. He had come there about eleven the night before, said he'd been in a little accident, stayed a while, changed his shirt. Didn't let on what happened. At least that's what she says. He asked her to get rid of the stuff for him, but Lucille didn't have time. Too busy getting ready for the big get-away. It just slipped her mind. They booked passage on a ship to Greece. Sailing tomorrow. Small boat. No ship news reporters. A quiet get-away. They had passports in their own names. But reservations in Chase's. Pretty smart, eh? You got to them just in time." He smiled at Mary. "We turned up Chase today, too. He paid the bills for John's fun. The bills John couldn't very well send his personal check for the bills that would have sent Mrs. John to Reno. Poor Mrs. John. A nice woman, even if she's a dodo. Horace knew about the financial mess the store was in and he didn't feel any too good when Lucille's bills kept getting bigger and bigger. Then a gentleman named Smith called on him the day before yesterday and made some cracks about the Waverly account. He got jumpy and ran to Blankfort and belly-ached.
"It was that night telephone conversation with Smith that cooked Mac's goose. It's all right to talk about illegal things like abortions over the phone, but you've got to be mighty careful when you talk about blackmail. Andrew must have been pretty sure he was alone when he talked to Bill, or he wouldn't have let slip a line like 'I know who this Chase is paying bills for and we'll have to move pretty carefully.' That's what he told Smith and Smith told us. That guy must have enough salted away to make it worth while for him to take a rest up the river."
"Nonsense," said Mary. "They won't do much to Bill Smith. Just scare him out of business for a while. They won't get any of his customers to testify against him. Those men paid for privacy, remember."
"Bill didn't know a thing about that note to Evelyn Lennon. Tony slipped him a wink that there was a cop with Evelyn and he beat it. He was the guy you heard running up the steps. But you found a newspaper, and so that was that! John H. must have been pretty desperate to take a chance like that. He was probably scared stiff that the Lennon girl knew something about the Waverly account, too, and he was determined to see that nothing would spill till he could get safely away. Lord knows who the kid was that he sent the note by. It wasn't anyone in the store. Of that we're sure. And except that it will help the D.A.'s case, it really doesn't matter. It seems that Pursell was ready to help out the boss as long as it looked as if Blankfort was going to get away with it. It was worth money to him. He'd been promised real dough. But now, no more friend, no more protection. Every man for himself. Pursell's talking now. Plenty.
"But to get back to that telephone call. McAndrew didn't dream that John H. had had his ear to the door when he was talking to Bill. After all, he didn't have eyes in back of his head. He must have assumed that John H. had gone down when the rest of the directors went down, or he wouldn't have talked as freely as he did. But John H. and Pursell had come back up in an elevator that Pursell ran. McAndrew went downstairs in that very car with them later. Pursell ran it. Pursell was told to stay outside when Blankfort invited McAndrew to step out back for a quiet talk. Pursell said McAndrew was none too anxious to go. Mac smelled a rat, but he was on a spot and couldn't refuse. Pursell was suspicious too. He hadn't heard the phone call, but he had seen Blankfort outside the credit manager's door, and he knew something was doing. He heard a scuffle and some voices and when he came in it was all over. Blankfort begged him to help him, and he helped push the body into the closet. It was he who took out the suitcase. He was really very pleased when he met Mrs. McAndrew at the door. He took them upstairs all right, thinking what a help their appearance might turn out to be later on."
"Yes," Mary answered. "A good and faithful servant. What strange loyalties there are around here. Back up the boss, back up the store at all costs, even if you have to sacrifice an innocent woman. Blankfort thought he was smart, too. He thought that by sticking around and tending strictly to his business, he would direct suspicion away from himself. And he might have if he hadn't such a rotten disposition. Bawling out old Liz, for instance. What a dumb stunt tha
t was! He must have heard somewhere that the best defense is a strong offensive and tried it on a poor old flower woman. Thought he'd scare her out of an identification of him. But he just scared her into it. Let that be a lesson to you, Christopher, don't bawl people out." She smiled at him. Chris reached across the table and patted her hand affectionately.
"What's this?"
He smiled back. "Just a token of my devotion."
"Nice," said Mary, "but irrelevant. One thing at a time. We're talking about crime. Stick to business. If we hadn't found the trail that linked him to the Waverly girl and the Chase account, we'd have just thought Blankfort was a cranky old dog, and the flower woman's identification just a coincidence—because, after all, she did sell more than one gardenia day before yesterday."
"He wasted all his better nature on Lucille," Chris added. "He was mighty good to that woman," Chris added. "He had told Lucille to load up with all the stuff she could. Probably to start a department store in Athens!"
"Looting," Mary exclaimed. "What a dog! The ship was sinking. He grabbed all he could and got ready to run away. He knew the bills would never be paid. Yet that was probably all the crime he ever set out to perpetrate. But one thing leads to another and that's what happens when you leave the straight and narrow path."
Mary poured herself another glass of wine from the bottle on the table.
"Do you know," she said, "I suspected you more than half the time. When we decided that someone connected with the store had murdered McAndrew, it narrowed right down to Blankfort or Pursell, or you! But I couldn't imagine how you were planning to pay the Waverly's bills." She grinned. "That Chase account worried me as much as it did McAndrew. I was sure it was important, but I couldn't figure out why. For a minute I thought it might have been Mike, after the attack on Katie Kovacs. But I kept seeing Blankfort in the picture all the time. Blankfort had heard Katie Kovacs' evidence. Blankfort had good reason for shutting her up."
"He might have been waiting for you or me, you know," Chris said.