by Craig Rice
“But,” said Holly, “but don’t you see—”
“Listen to me,” Jake said sternly, “there’s only two possibilities. Either you killed her, or you didn’t. I subscribe to the latter theory. It’s not important, but in case I’m right, it would be nice to prove it.”
She almost smiled.
“There seems so damn little motive for this thing,” he said. “You apparently have a motive, but we know that what looks like a cause for murder to the eye of Hyme Mendel realty wasn’t anything of the kind.”
He paused and grinned at her. “As Glen put it, somebody must have wanted to murder Aunt Alex, or nobody would have. Or more explicitly, before you can murder anybody with a Florentine paper knife, you’ve got to murder him in your mind, with your desire to murder him.”
“Especially,” Helene said slowly, “in a crime as obviously premeditated as this one.”
“It was premeditated,” said Holly suddenly. “It must have been. But if it was—” she paused, thought a moment. “You’d think anyone who came up to that room to—to do what was done—would have brought some kind of weapon along unless—well, unless whoever it was knew that the paper knife was there.”
“Knew that it was there, and that it was deadly enough to be used as a weapon,” Jake said excitedly. “By God, nobody has thought of that before.”
“You see, Holly,” Helene said, “you can help.”
“Who would have known about the paper knife?” Jake asked.
“I would. Glen would. The Parkinses would.”
“Maybelle?”
“I suppose so. Yes, she would.”
“Anyone else? Featherstone?”
“Possibly. No one else.”
Jake sighed. “Six people. Of them, three are out, unless they got together and connived at this. I mean Glen and the Parkinses. And I can’t see them conspiring, somehow.”
“Neither can I,” said Helene.
“But according to all their stories, they were riding through the streets of Chicago at the time Aunt Alex met her Maker. And I’d be willing to bet Mr. O. O. Featherstone will turn out to have an ironclad alibi.”
“We keep getting back,” Helene said, “to the fact that there must be someone we don’t know about involved in this ”
“But who?” Holly asked.
“If we knew who, we would answer a lot of questions,” Jake said. “Someone who had a motive to murder Alexandria Inglehart. Someone who knew that she would have a paper knife on her table, a paper knife that would stab an old woman to death.”
Holly shook her head. “It isn’t possible.”
“But there is someone else involved in this,” Helene said. “We know there is.” She told Holly of the inhabited summerhouse.
Holly listened round-eyed. “Who could it be?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Jake remembered something. “Did you know your Aunt Alex planned to change her will?”
Holly nodded slowly.
“You did!” Helene exclaimed.
“I overheard it. I’d just come back to the house and I sneaked in, because I was late. I heard Nellie telephone to Mr. Featherstone. I don’t know why I didn’t think more about it at the time. I guess I was too excited about running away with Dick to think of anything.”
“Damn it,” Jake exploded, “everything we learn gets you deeper into this.”
“Did you know your Aunt Alex didn’t have long to live?” Helene asked.
Again Holly nodded. “Dr. Neville told me.”
They talked through dinner and through the evening. But when Jake and Helene prepared to go, they had learned nothing more about the murder of Alexandria Inglehart.
Holly had one last idea. “Why was the window opened?”
“Probably the murder was committed by a fresh-air fiend,” Helene said, wrapping her furs around her shoulders. “Which explains the whole thing.” She patted Holly’s shoulder. “We’ll try to figure a way to smuggle Dick in to see you.”
Holly’s eyes glowed. “All this will be over soon, won’t it? I mean, it’s got to be over. And then Dick and I will he together and there won’t be anything to separate us. Not anything. Ever.”
“I’m going home and help watch the summerhouse,” Helene said, down at the car. “And you?”
“I’d come with you. But I want to see Dick, and talk to Malone.”
They found a corner drugstore where Jake phoned Malone’s apartment and learned that the lawyer was waiting for him at the hotel.
“If you didn’t have the summerhouse on your mind,” he began.
“I do,” Helene told him. “I’ll drop you off at the hotel, and then I’m going home.”
He sighed. “Eventually—”
“Eventually,” she said.
He kissed her warmly in front of the hotel, to the delight of the doorman, bought a paper in the lobby, tucked it under his arm, and went upstairs.
John J. Malone was sitting on the bed waiting for him, surrounded by a squirrel’s nest of papers, notes, clothing, and bottles.
“No luck with Featherstone,” he reported; “the Inglehart affairs are in order down to the last ninety-eight cents.”
“Maybe he murdered her for thwarted love,” Jake said, thinking of Helene. “How long have you been waiting here?”
“Since dinnertime. I took a nap.”
“What did Dr. Neville tell you?” Jake asked, spreading open the newspaper he had bought.
“Nothing that we don’t know already.”
Jake didn’t hear him. “My God! Malone!”
“What?”
“Look!” He fairly hurled the paper at the lawyer.
Malone looked and turned pale.
HOLLY’S HUSBAND ALSO VANISHES
ORCHESTRA LEADER DISAPPEARS AFTER BRIDE’S JAILBREAK
Jake was at the telephone. When he set it down a minute later, his face was very white.
“He hasn’t been seen since about noon. He left the hotel and just vanished. Didn’t show up for rehearsal. Hasn’t shown up since. My God, Malone—what’s happened to him?”
Chapter 19
“There isn’t anything you can do,” Malone kept repeating. “You’ll only be in the way. There isn’t anything you can do.” He kept saying it over and over like a cracked phonograph record.
“The hell there isn’t,” said Jake, tying his shoelace.
“You need sleep.”
“I had some last night,” Jake said. “That ought to hold me for a while.” He lit a cigarette, puffed at it nervously “Naturally they figure Holly’s escape and Dick’s disappearance are part of the same thing. So now they’re looking for the pair of them. A fine mess.”
“What do you mean?” asked Malone, watching the tall man closely.
“Because they’re looking for an escaping couple and not for two separate individuals, which makes everything very squirrelly. The chances of their running down Holly are subsequently lessened. That was almost zero anyway. But their chances of finding Dick are also just that much less. Oh hell.”
“Well, of course,” Malone said, “if you’d been satisfied to let well enough alone ”
“I couldn’t foresee this, could I?” He began combing his hair nervously.
“It looks to me as though you couldn’t foresee anything,” Malone said severely. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
“I’m going out and find Dick.”
“Where?”
“Wherever he is, you fat fool.”
“And just where,” Malone asked icily, “do you intend to look?”
“I’ll start at the Tribune Lost and Found bureau,” Jake said nastily.
“You don’t know where he’s gone,” the lawyer continued, “you haven’t the faintest idea where he might go, or what might have happened to him. There isn’t anything you can do.”
“I can try to trace him. I can ask questions at the desk and—”
“You won’t find anybody to
question, at this hour of the night. Try to get some sleep.”
“Hell, no. I’m going out and look for Dick.”
Malone looked at him thoughtfully. The tall man was swaying on his feet, his gray eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.
“Stop arguing and get into that bed.”
“No. Get out of my way—”
Malone collapsed him with one nicely calculated punch. With the help of a bellhop he tucked him into bed and went away, locking the door behind him and leaving the key at the desk downstairs, with instructions to call Mr. Justus and let him out at eight in the morning.
It was nearly eight when he returned, from a night spent listening to police reports, following the search for Dick and Holly. He found Jake still sleeping, brought him to a sudden and profane awakening with a splash of icy water.
“Dick?”
“No news.”
Jake dressed hurriedly, muttering to himself. “Among other things, what happened to the band last night?”
“That skinny clarinet player handled it.”
“Oh, Steve. I guess that’s all right.”
“They tell me the Casino was packed.”
“It would be. Do you think Dick is dead?”
“No. Why would anyone—”
“I don’t know.”
“He maybe passed out in the back room of a bar somewhere,” said Malone.
“Not Dick.”
“People do. I remember once when you disappeared for five days, and—”
“Yes, but not Dick.”
“But where the hell could he have gone?”
“That’s what I asked you,” Jake said irritably, tying his tie. He pulled on his hat with a vicious jerk. “Hoist your fat bucket out of that chair and come on.”
“Someone may have come here to see him,” said Malone thoughtfully. “He may have left the hotel with someone. He may have had telephone calls.”
The girl who had been on the switchboard was taking the day off, and was home, sleeping. She answered Jake’s telephone call in a drowsy and indignant voice.
“You’d be cross too, Mr. Justus, if someone got you out of bed at this time in the morning. Yes, Mr. Dayton had a telephone call in the early afternoon. Just one. It was around one o’clock. I’m sure of it because I always notice the calls that come for him.”
“You didn’t notice what was said, did you?”
“I have plenty of other things to do besides listening in on Mr. Dayton’s phone conversations.”
“All right, all right. And then what?”
“Then he tried to get in touch with you.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, you. He spent about half an hour calling every place he thought you might be. And I must say, Mr. Justus—”
“Leave my personal habits out of this,” said Jake hastily “What then?”
“Then he came downstairs and left a message with A1 at the desk, and went out. That’s all I know.”
“Thanks, sister,” said Jake. “You’ve been a help. Go back to bed.”
“One phone call. Might have been anything,” Malone said.
Al, the desk clerk, was just coming on duty. He remembered that Dick had seen no visitors, had come downstairs some time after one o’clock, and left a message at the desk.
“It was for you, Mr. Justus. Just that if you phoned or came in, you were to wait, because he was coming back in a couple of hours. He said he wanted to see you as soon as he could, because it was very important.”
Jake groaned. “But he didn’t come back, Malone. He was trying to locate me. He tried to find me, and I wasn’t around, and he went off somewhere on his own. And he didn’t come back. He expected to come back, and he didn’t.”
“You couldn’t help it,” Malone told him.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” He lit a cigarette, took one puff, stamped it out under his heel. “We’ll try the doorman.”
The doorman remembered that Mr. Dayton had called a taxi and told the driver to take him to Ricketts. Jake breathed a sigh of relief.
“That’s a start, anyway. They’ll remember him at Ricketts, and someone may remember who he came in with, or if he met someone there.”
“We hope!” said Malone soulfully.
They drove to Ricketts.
“Mr. Dayton?” said the bartender thoughtfully. He stood polishing the bar for a moment. “Yes, he was in yesterday afternoon. Just a little before two, it was. He looked pretty rocky, too. Like it had been a big night, if you know what I mean. And he acted like he had something on his mind, too. No wonder, with his wife in all that trouble. Not friendly and cheerful like he usually is. Couldn’t blame him, either. Had two beers.”
“Beer,” said Jake shuddering, “on the hang-over he must have had!”
“That’s right, two beers. He sat here about half an hour and kept looking at his watch all the time. Then he called a taxi and left.”
Jake swore.
“I could probably find you the driver,” the bartender added helpfully. “He hangs around here most of the time.”
“I could kiss you!” said Jake. “Find him!”
An errand boy was dispatched to scour the neighborhood. After what seemed endless moments of waiting, he returned with the taxi driver, who had been breakfasting in Thompson’s next door.
The driver remembered picking Dick Dayton up at Ricketts a little after two.
“He told me to drive him around until three o’clock.”
“Three o’clock?” said Jake suddenly.
“Yes, that’s right. He said to drive around until three and then let him out at the northwest end of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. I drove up Michigan to Lincoln Park, down State to Schiller, over Schiller to the Drive, along the Drive to Oak, turned east, and—”
“Never mind the guide to Chicago,” said Jake hastily. “Tell me where you ended up.”
“At the bridge, like he told me. Got there at three o’clock, right on the nose. When you’re doing this all day, you get so you can estimate just where you can drive in how long. He got out at the bridge, right by the Wrigley Building, and tipped me fifty cents. Last I saw of him he was standing there at the end of the bridge, looking up and down the street like he was waiting for somebody. That was right at three o’clock.”
There the trail ended. There was no one near the bridge who might have remembered seeing him, no newsstand boy, no doorman, no one. Only people passing there by the hundreds, few, if any, noticing the tall blond young man, fewer still recognizing Dick Dayton. And even those who had recognized him could never be found now, and even if they could be found, they would not know what had happened to Dick Dayton after he disappeared from the northwest end of the Michigan Avenue Bridge.
They gave up the trail and settled down to the obvious things. In a few hours the hospitals had been covered, the police stations and the morgue were ruled out, every associate of Dick’s had been investigated, and still no one knew where he was. The newspapers went insane, the American printed Dick’s handsome face in the second largest picture ever seen on its front page, the Times gave its cover to the words: “Where Are Dick and Bride?” The News abandoned itself to: “Nation Hunts Dick and Holly.” And Jake and Malone retired to Jake’s room to confer.
Jake sat thinking for a few minutes. “He went wandering off by himself and got drunk and hasn’t sobered up yet, or he had an attack of amnesia, or he got into a dive and somebody rolled him. Only all that is out because Dick never goes off on a drunk like that. Or he disregarded my orders and went looking for Holly. But that doesn’t account for the telephone call.”
“Or for his going to meet somebody at the Michigan Avenue Bridge,” Malone said, adding, “of all places.”
“At three o’clock,” Jake said. “That three o’clock business keeps on repeating itself like the chorus of a lousy song.” He thought of a question he had meant to ask Malone. If he had asked it, the Inglehart murder might have been settled a day sooner, and at l
east one life might have been saved. But his mind was too full of Dick. “Malone, where is he?”
“Don’t ask me,” Malone said.
“Somebody wanted to lure him away,” Jake said.
“Somebody did lure him away,” Malone corrected him.
“But why?”
“There aren’t any whys in this Goddamned case,” said Malone peevishly.
“All right then, who?”
Just then the phone rang. It was Helene.
“Yes. I’ve read the papers,” she said. “I’m downstairs. Get on your horse and come down and meet me. I’ll be in the bar, on the third stool from the left as you go in. If you can’t find me, I’m the one in black with the red rose in her hair.”
She hung up before he could offer other suggestions.
Chapter 20
As they walked into the bar they saw her, gazing at the bartender with an air of utter absorption. She wore black, a deep, rich, glossy black, tailored and close-fitting on her long, slender body. Furs hung carelessly over her shoulders. Her delicate profile showed, exquisitely pale, against the black of her wide felt hat.
Jake paused for a moment and forgot his troubles, and thought he had never seen anyone so perfectly patrician, so completely the colonel’s lady.
“You’ve got to get more spin to it,” the bartender was saying.
He gave a sudden whisk to a glass of beer so that it spun down the length of the bar and stopped smartly in front of a plumpish customer.
Helene watched carefully, nodded, and repeated his procedure with the glass of beer he handed her. It spun the length of the polished bar and crashed noisily on the floor.
“Too far,” she murmured abstractedly.
“You don’t have the control,” the bartender told her.
Jake and Malone stopped to watch, fascinated.
The bartender drew her another glass. This skidded down the bar, ricocheted against an ash tray and slid neatly into the lap of the plumpish customer.
“Sorry,” said Helene.
The plumpish customer rose, bowed. “I apologize,” he muttered. “Should have ducked.”
“Perhaps,” said the bartender, “perhaps you should practice with empty glasses. Miss Brand.”