Eight Faces at Three

by Craig Rice

  She shook her head. “They don’t spin right. Draw me a couple more.”

  Jake and Malone decided it was time to join her.

  “Beer?” asked Malone.

  She nodded. “For breakfast.”

  “Oh, I see. Beer for breakfast.”

  “That’s it. You see, sometimes I like beer for breakfast and then again other times I like beer for breakfast, and still other times I just like—”

  “Beer for breakfast. Now me, sometimes, I like breakfast for breakfast, and sometimes I like breakfast for breakfast, and—”

  “Beer is fun for breakfast,” Helene reflected, “but it’s more fun to throw it than to drink it.”

  She spun another glass perilously down the bar and by some miracle it stopped on the target. The customers cheered.

  “By God,” said Jake explosively, “Dick is missing, maybe kidnaped, maybe dead, and here you two idiots go on babbling about beer for breakfast.”

  “I’d rather babble about beer than cry into it,” observed Helene. The last glass of beer overturned ignominiously halfway down the bar. “Time to quit.” She gathered her furs about her shoulders and paraded regally to a secluded booth. They followed her, the waiter a few lengths behind.

  “Beer,” said Helene. “Rye,” said Malone. “Coffee,” said Jake. “What the hell?” said Helene.

  “I can’t drink,” he told her, “I don’t feel like it.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, what about it Malone? Is he strayed, kidnaped, or just dead?”

  “Helene, for Christ’s sake,” Jake said.

  She lit a cigarette and looked at him without expression. “I don’t suppose you remember all the times you’ve interviewed people in a spot like this, and the things you used to think about them when they went off into spins this way, and how you used to swear that if it ever happened to you, you’d keep remembering that nothing could be done about it, and it was just as easy as not to hang on to your nerve.”

  “How did you know I used to think that?” asked Jake with his first grin that day.

  She shrugged her shoulders again.

  There was a long silence.

  “Perhaps,” Helene said at last, “we could borrow a checkerboard from the bartender.”

  “Oh God,” said Jake suddenly. “Oh God, it’s the sitting here and doing nothing, and knowing there’s nothing to do but sit and wait for news, and wonder if he’s alive or dead!”

  Helene looked at him coldly. “When you get through having your last kitten, let us know.”

  “Stop picking on him,” Malone said.

  “What do you think happened?” she asked.

  “I don’t think ”

  “He’s been kidnaped,” Jake said suddenly. He told Helene what they had already learned.

  “But who’d want to kidnap Dick Dayton?”

  No one answered.

  “Did Dick ever just wander off by himself and get lost? Did he ever lose his memory?”

  Jake muttered impolite words.

  “He’s been under a terrific strain,” Malone said slowly.

  “That doesn’t explain the phone call. Or why he was standing on the corner of the Michigan Avenue Bridge at three o’clock in the afternoon,” Jake said.

  “He was waiting for someone,” Helene said.

  “Who?”

  “Maybe he thought he was waiting for someone and he was really waiting for someone else.”

  “It’s your inescapable logic,” Malone said. “That’s what I really love you for.”

  “I mean, someone called and pretended to be you, for instance, and he went there expecting to meet you and someone else carried him off.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly make an appointment with him at the end of the Michigan Avenue Bridge, would I?” Malone said scornfully.

  “Why ask me? Where do you meet people, Malone? I’d love to know. You meet so many people.”

  “Do you really want to know how to meet people?”

  “How to meet people and make friends.”

  “Try breaking a fifty-dollar bill at a bar,” Malone told her. “To get back to Dick Dayton—”

  “Well, this unknown might have pretended to be somebody who would meet him at a place like that.”

  “Your unknown could hardly kidnap Dick right in the middle of the crowds that would be passing the bridge at that hour in the afternoon,” Jake said. “But outside of that—”

  “Maybe he was drugged,” Malone said wearily.

  “Who drug him and where to?” Helene asked.

  Jake audibly wished them both in hell.

  The bartender brought another round.

  “Gosh, Mr. Justus, I hope Mr. Dayton will turn up all right. Wha’d’ya suppose could have happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Jake said.

  “Some of the band boys were in here around dinnertime, and they sure were upset about it. And he hadn’t been missing so long then, either. Gosh, I hope nothing’s happened to him.”

  “So do I,” Jake said.

  “Funny thing,” said the bartender, wiping the table, “a fella phoned him from in here yesterday.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah. Fancy-looking guy in an iron hat and yellow gloves. Hung around here quite a little while. Called Dayton from the phone behind the bar.”

  “What did he say?” Jake asked with no apparent interest.

  “I dunno. I just heard him ask for Dick Dayton. I wasn’t paying much attention. All I heard was when he hung up he said, ‘I’ll be looking for you.’ Just that. ‘I’ll be looking for you.’ ”

  Further inquiries elicited the information that the little man had worn a Chesterfield overcoat, carried a Malacca cane, and had a trim little mustache. That was all the bartender knew.

  “Probably nothing important. Just forget it,” Jake advised.

  The bartender nodded. “Well, I hope he’ll turn up all right.” He went away.

  “I’ve always said,” Helene remarked, “if you really want to know anything, ask a taxi driver or a bartender.”

  “We know what the guy looked like,” Jake said, “but who is he?”

  No one had any suggestions.

  “It’s possible, you know,” Malone offered, “that this hasn’t anything to do with the Inglehart murder.”

  “Somebody who wanted to kidnap Dick and picked this time to do it,” said Jake slowly.“But who? He doesn’t make that much money.”

  “Maybe somebody who doesn’t like his orchestra,” said Helene, and then suddenly, “Oh God, I forgot. There’s another mysterious stranger still unaccounted for.”

  “What are you talking about?” Malone asked.

  “The man in the summerhouse. The tramp who can’t be a tramp. Didn’t Jake tell you?”

  “I didn’t,” Jake said. “I intended to tell Malone about it as soon as I saw him. Then everything went out of my mind when this happened.” He told Malone what they had seen in the old summerhouse.

  “Butch and I took turns watching all night,” Helene added. “We didn’t see anything, but he’s bound to come back there.”

  “Sure,” said Jake, “he forgot his cigarettes.”

  Malone scowled. “Something needs doing about that.”

  “Something needs doing about this guy who phoned Dick yesterday and made an appointment with him for three o’clock. But what?” lake asked.

  “Well,” said Malone, “I’ll get on his trail. Yon two can’t do that because everybody associates you with the Inglehart case. But I can make inquiries without raising suspicion because after all,” he said, looking at his watch, “after all, by God, I do have other clients.”

  “But what about the man in the summerhouse?” Helene asked.

  “What about the man or woman who murdered Alexandria Inglehart?” said Jake. “We can’t just leave Holly where she is forever.”

  “We’ll get to that,” Malone told him.

  “I still think my original idea is good,” Helene said. �
��Jake and I can park in the back room of the garage and watch the summerhouse. If a light shows there, we investigate. If anybody moves, we leap.”

  “And if anybody leaps, you move,” Malone said, “I hope. And if anything turns up out there, get in touch with me.”

  “We’ll send you post cards,” Helene promised.

  “With pictures of the Blake County jail on them,” Malone said, “and an X marking your window.” He rose, found his hat under his chair, brushed ineffectively at the ashes on his lapel. “Well, breakfast is on me. I hope it isn’t your last.” He paid the check and was gone.

  They walked out to Helene’s car and started north along the drive. The pavement was one wide glistening sheet of ice, almost deserted. For a while they crawled along, watching the great cakes of ice that bobbed up and down in the gray lake.

  “You’d think,” Jake observed, “they’d make these great big imported cars so they’d go faster than this.”

  She shook her head. “It makes me terribly nervous to drive when I’m sober.”

  He remembered that first ride in from Maple Park and shuddered.

  “Really,” she said thoughtfully, “I’m the safest driver you ever saw. Butch taught me how to control a car in any circumstances. Watch this.”

  She selected a wide expanse of ice-covered pavement that was entirely deserted, put on a little speed, did sudden and peculiar things with the pedals. The big car suddenly spun around like a top, continued to spin halfway down the block, and, just as suddenly, after four complete revolutions, straightened out and went on as before.

  “I wish I could do that with a glass of beer,” Helene observed thoughtfully.

  Jake felt a strange loneliness where his stomach had been a moment before.

  “I rather wish you’d practice with glasses of beer,” he told her, “especially when I’m along.”

  “By God, I’ve got it! I know now!” The big car slid sideways, missed a lamppost by inches. “Oops, sorry!”

  He had hardly noticed. “What is it? What do you know?”

  She laughed exuberantly and pounded the wheel in sheer delight.

  “Who did it, Helene?”

  “Did what?”

  “The murder.”

  “Oh, that. I don’t know. Look, Jake, I’ve got it. The trick is the same with the glass of beer as it is with the car. You reverse it suddenly and—”

  He leaned back against the cushions and talked indignantly to God about Helene.

  She drove through the Park, turned onto North Clark Street, and stopped the car in front of a little barroom. Jake sighed and followed her in.

  “Five beers,” said Helene, peeling off her gloves, “and stand aside—”

  Chapter 21

  Jake stared unhappily from the rear window of the Brand garage across the expanse of snow and desolation to the Inglehart summerhouse. Butch had cooked them a magnificent dinner in the little kitchen and vanished to tinker with the car. Malone had telephoned the news that he had had no success in tracking down the mysterious man with the yellow gloves, and that there was no word from the missing Dick Dayton.

  Jake’s spirits had been slowly lowering, were down almost to zero. He glanced now and then at Helene’s clear, pallid profile in the semidarkness.

  Hell, there was no one in that crazy summerhouse. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it if there was. The case was all up in the air. They would never figure it out now. Dick had disappeared, perhaps was dead. Everything was all shot to blazes. For two bits he would walk off that bluff. Yes, by God, he would. But meantime he was here, and Helene was here. That was something.

  In fact, it was everything.

  He drew her into his arms, touched her cheek with his fingers. Strange that skin looking so delicately cool could be so warm to the touch. A lifetime was short and they had wasted too much of it already.

  At that moment his eye caught the faintest gleam of light through the darkness outside the window, a flickering light that moved a little this way and that, a light that vanished and appeared again.

  “Jake, somebody’s near the summerhouse with a flashlight.”

  “Yes, I see it.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I’m going to investigate. You wait here.”

  “Wait here my eye!”

  “All right then, damn it, come on.”

  As they stepped into the bitter cold, he could see that the light was in the summerhouse. They crept up to it, slowly and quietly. The light vanished and reappeared through the windows like a firefly as someone moved through the rooms.

  Through the window they could see the dim outline of a figure stretched out on the floor.

  Then suddenly the light went out, and at the back of the summerhouse a door banged.

  “He’s seen us!” Jake breathed. He crept around the conrer of the low building, Helene behind him.

  A man shot from the shelter of the doorway and raced for the lake shore. Jake ran after him, stumbling in the snow, tripping over hidden boulders, while Helene followed as best she could. The air was filled with a thick, heavy mist that seemed to merge into the snow itself.

  Jake could hear the roar of the lake as it beat against the jagged rocks of the bluff, and knew that they were near the edge. The man was following the line of the lake shore, almost lost in the mists.

  Suddenly he heard a cry behind him and wheeled just in time to see Helene topple and fall. Before he could reach her she had slipped halfway over the edge of the cliff. He threw himself full length on the snow, grasped her wrists just as she fell, and held her there for a moment. A sharp rock under the snow was the miracle that kept him from going over with her.

  “Try to get a foothold,” he gasped.

  Inch by inch he hauled her over the edge. For one terrible moment he felt her slipping from him and clung to her desperately, the sharp rocks bruising his arms and wrists. Then she gained a firmer foothold, little by little was dragged back to safety.

  For a moment he stood looking at her as she lay exhausted in the snow, thinking that her face was only a shade less pale than the snow itself, and that if she had gone over the cliff, he would have gone with her.

  “I’m all right, Jake. I can get up now.” She managed to get to her feet. “But that man. He’s gone. We lost him.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Helene. As long as you’re all right, it doesn’t matter.”

  She leaned against him for an instant and he put his arm around her very gently.

  “First a laundry chute,” he murmured in a disgusted tone, “and then you fell off a cliff.”

  Her eyes looked over his shoulder, suddenly grew wide. He turned around.

  Ahead of them stood the man from the summerhouse, hazy and unreal in the shifting vapor, but clear enough so that they could see what was in his hand.

  “Stay right where you are. Don’t come any nearer.”

  “Don’t point that damn gun this way,” Jake shouted.

  “Stay where you are,” the man repeated.

  Jake said, “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”

  An eerie laugh came through the quiet night. “You want to know a lot.”

  “We sure do.”

  “I’ll tell you this much. You’re the people I want to see.”

  “Jake, for God’s sake,” Helene whispered.

  The figure moved a little closer through the mist.

  “What do you want?” Jake called.

  “It’s not what I want, it’s what you want. You want to know who killed Alexandria Inglehart.”

  “The man’s mad!” Helene murmured.

  “Shut up, damn you,” he whispered fiercely. “Do you know?”

  No answer save that weird laugh through the mist.

  “How do you know?” Jake shouted.

  “I was there. I’m the man who opened the window. Didn’t you wonder why the window was opened? I opened it.”

  Jake felt Helene’s hand in his, like a sliver of
ice.

  “And I know why she was murdered, why she had to he killed, and that’s the most important thing. I know the motive.”

  “All right, what was it?” Jake called.

  “The motive? I was the motive,” laughed the dim figure.

  A whisper. “Jake, what are we going to do?”

  And then. “How much is my information worth to you?” came the voice through the mist.

  “So that’s it,” Jake muttered. “How much do you want?” he called.

  “A thousand dollars in cash. No checks.”

  “Tell him yes,” Helene whispered.

  “I heard you, Miss Brand,” came the floating voice. “I’ll take your offer.”

  “Just a minute,” Helene called. “How will we know you’re telling the truth?”

  “I’ll bring proof.”

  “Where?”

  “The summerhouse. Ten tomorrow morning.”

  “It’s a deal,” Helene called.

  “Wait a minute,” Jake shouted. “First turn that flashlight on yourself and let us have a look at you—so that we’ll know you tomorrow.”

  After a moment’s hesitation there was a flash of light in the mist and the figure stood revealed. They saw an oddly dapper little man, not the tramplike creature they had expected. Derby hat, Chesterfield overcoat, waxed mustache—all oddly incongruous in the setting of snow and ice-packed boulders. Then in an instant it was gone, the light went out, and the eerie figure had vanished.

  “Was it real,” Helene gasped, “or something we dreamed!”

  “It was real enough,” said Jake grimly, “and something else is real, too. There was someone on the floor of the summerhouse. We may have discovered another murder.”

  “Jake! That man! Did you recognize him?”

  “Never saw him before in my life.”

  “You fool! He’s the man that bartender described to us—the one who telephoned to Dick!”

  “By God, you’re right!”

  “Then—Dick—”

  “That body in the summerhouse,” said Jake harshly. “Come on, let’s go.”

  They fought their way through the snowdrifts to the summerhouse. The door was locked. Jake battered vainly against it for a few minutes, gave it up, bashed a rock through the nearest window, reached through the shattered pane, opened the window, and climbed in. Helene followed him.