“I recognize the hat at any rate,” admitted the schoolteacher. She squinted, trying to see Riff Sprott, or Nils Bruner, or even little George Zotos in the rough sketch. Then she shook her head.
“None of your Three Musketeers? That’s what I thought.” Piper pressed a button on his desk, “Smitty? Have the Fink woman brought back over here.”
They sat in silence. “Oscar,” said the schoolteacher, “while you’re not busy there’s an auto license number I’d like you to check for me.” She handed him a slip of paper. “Would it be too much trouble to find out who owns this car?”
“Sure, sure.” Piper took it, and then stuck it on a spike on his desk when Mrs. Fink was ushered in. But the landlady was evidently fed up with the police and out of sorts with everything. She absolutely refused to look at anything more until she had a cigarette, a cup of coffee, and a nip. However, she finally settled for the first two items and a promise of the other on her way home—just as soon as she had made her decision as to how close the artist had come to re-creating her description of the man who had passed her on the stairs last night.
“Beautiful!” was her first verdict. She stared at Gino, obviously surprised that he didn’t wear a beret, a Windsor tie, and a smock. “You did that?”
“What we want, Mrs. Fink, is for you to tell us what changes the artist should make. All we have to go on is the hat, and your description in your statement.”
“Well,” the woman said doubtfully, “the hat’s wrong.”
Miss Withers choked, and the Inspector said, “Wrong? But that’s the one thing we’re sure of!”
Mrs. Fink shook her head stubbornly. “It’s still wrong.”
“If I might make a suggestion,” put in the schoolteacher gently, “perhaps the brim was turned down?”
“Try it, Gino,” ordered Piper wearily.
The young man took a bit of blackened gum from his pocket, magically removed the brim of the hat, and turned it down in front with a few quick strokes of a soft black pencil.
“Better,” admitted Mrs. Fink judicially, as she sipped her coffee. “But I think maybe it was down in back too.”
Gino attended to that. “Anything else wrong?” the Inspector demanded.
Mrs. Fink labored long, and finally decided that the mouth was too large, also the ears. Swiftly the pencil made changes, corrections. “The eyes are too wide apart,” she said. “And—” She stopped, uncertain.
“And what?”
The man I saw coming up the stairs looked cold, somehow,” admitted the landlady. “You know, like people look coming in out of a snowstorm?”
“But there wasn’t any snowstorm,” Inspector Piper objected. “Look, lady, it’s been a warm September!—”
“Wait, Oscar,” put in Miss Withers. “I think I know what she means. When my pupils used to come in off the playground on a cold winter day their noses and sometimes their ears were almost white. Do you suppose—?”
The Inspector nodded to Gino, who swiftly made nose and ears several shades lighter than the rest of the pictured face. “Now that’s him!” sighed Mrs. Fink in weary approval.
“Okay, Gino, wrap it up.” As the artist spread a protecting coat of fixative over the drawing from a little atomizer from his pocket, Piper pressed a button on his desk, “Smitty? Order a car and have somebody take Mrs. Fink up to Ninety-sixth Street. Oh yes, and first she’s to have one for the road, understand …?”
But Sergeant Smith, instead of being where he belonged at the other end of the line, was standing in the open doorway, a hopeful smile on his face. “Is it all right for me to take her up myself, sir? I live up that way, and I’m off duty anyway in half an hour.”
“Why—” the Inspector frowned, and then said, “Okay, okay.” He turned to Miss Withers. “You want a free ride uptown too?”
The schoolteacher declined with thanks, feeling in no mood for racing through late afternoon traffic in a police car with sirens screaming. Then she noticed that the sergeant, about to usher Mrs. Fink triumphantly out through the door, had stopped short to stare at the drawing propped up against the Inspector’s desk. Smitty walked slowly toward it, whistling.
“Hello!” cried the brisk young officer. “If it isn’t Banana-Nose! What’s my old pal been up to now?”
“Judas-Priest-in-a-jug!” whispered the Inspector after a moment of turgid silence. “Smitty—do you actually—I mean, do you recognize this face?”
“Why, sure.” Sergeant Smith closed his eyes, snapped his chubby fingers, and rattled off: “Rollo Banana-Nose Wilson alias Rob Wills, age about 36, numerous arrests as cat-burglar and second-storey worker, served four years Auburn and minimum of three to ten Sing Sing, now out on parole.” He opened his eyes and smiled. Miss Withers half-expected him to run forward toward the audience, arms outstretched for applause, like an oldtime vaudeville acrobat.
“Okay, okay!” Inspector Piper, whose memory was not quite what it once had been, often found the sergeant’s demonstrations useful, but they always rubbed him the wrong way all the same. “Was this Banana-Nose Wilson ever accused of any strong-arm stuff, especially involving women?”
Smitty looked blank. “Not as far as I know. As a rule most sneak-thieves avoid crimes of physical violence, going unarmed and trusting to stealth—” The sergeant was going good on chapter three of “the book” but the Inspector, who had after all helped to write it, cut him off with a curt nod. He was already on the phone, demanding records and photographs of Rollo Wilson.
“We had you looking in the wrong photo classification, Mrs. Fink,” he told the woman. “If you’ll just wait here a few minutes—”
Mrs. Fink, who had little or no choice in the matter, waited long enough to take a look at the photographs, front and profile, of Banana-Nose—and to admit wearily that apart from his not wearing hat or glasses, he looked like the man who had passed her on the stairs on his way up to Marika’s apartment.
Piper was beaming. “Smitty, give her two for the road before you take her home,” he commanded. “And an egg in her beer if she wants it.” He turned to the talk-box. “Pick-up order on Rollo Banana-Nose Wilson. To all precincts, sheriffs’ offices and state police, greater metropolitan area. Arrest on suspicion of homicide. Take no chances, this man is dangerous and may be armed …” He turned and whispered as a jubilant aside to Miss Withers, “Say, when we were arguing last night did I say something about having the killer in forty-eight hours? Make it twenty-four! Now what have you got to say about the police machine at work?”
The schoolteacher sniffed, but realized as she did so that it was not one of her more convincing efforts. The moments when Hildegarde Withers was nonplused were few and far between, but this time she was downstairs and waiting for a taxi before she thought of an adequate comeback.
“Police machine indeed!” she said. “It’s pure Rube Goldberg! From a crumpled hat and a description of a man seen momentarily on a dark stairway comes an artist’s sketch, and purely by accident an eager-beaver desk officer gets a peek at it and thinks maybe it looks like some obscure criminal he once saw somewhere, and now that poor unfortunate Mr. Banana-Nose is going to be rounded up and arrested and charged with the murder of Marika Thoren. He’ll, of course, prove his innocence eventually—” She stopped. But would he? Andy Rowan hadn’t.
Standing on that lonely, windswept street corner, Miss Withers suddenly felt very lost and ineffectual. Her world was out of joint. “Oh cursed spite,” she said aloud, “that ever I was born to set it right. Hamlet.”
A taxi-driver, who had pulled up and stopped just in time to catch the last of her soliloquy, eyed her dubiously as he held open the door. “You all right, lady?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, being occupied with watching a handful of noisy East-Side urchins go hurtling past on rollerskates, most of them already decked out six weeks or so in advance of the calendar in Hallowe’en costumes, masks, and all the other trappings of the old blackmail game of trick-or-treat.
“Because it’s a new hack, lady, and I own it,” the driver went on, drawing certain erroneous inferences from the fact that she happened to be standing in front of a saloon. “You’re not going to be sick or anything?”
Miss Withers turned on him a countenance which was, for her, almost radiant. “No, I’m not going to be sick,” she told the man. “But between you and me and the lamppost, I know somebody else who is—and it serves him perfectly right!”
He pushed down the flag with unnecessary firmness, and the meter started clicking. But still Miss Withers lingered. “Driver,” she said as she finally climbed inside, “have you ever been hemmed in with the spears and then all of a sudden out of nowhere comes a patch of blue sky?”
“Look, lady. I should listen to your sad story? Maybe you’re from out of town. Maybe you seen movies and read articles about how all New York cab-drivers are characters, full of philosophy and whimsy and stuff. We ain’t. Maybe bartenders got to listen, but we don’t. You tell me where you want to go, I take you there, you pay me what it says on the meter—finis!”
He let out the gears, roared the motor, and the cab leaped ahead like a greyhound out of the starting box, jamming Miss Withers’ incredible hat down over her eyes. But even that cavalier treatment could not, at this moment, dampen her spirits. She started to give her own address, then changed her mind and said, “Driver, just what sort of place is the Duke Hotel?”
Turning a jaundiced eye, he said, “You wanta know? It’s a flea-bag, a meat and potatoes joint half a block off Times Square, full of bookies and rum-hounds and floozies and actors. Better you should go to the Martha Washington.”
“I think,” Miss Withers said firmly, “I’ll first try the Duke, just for size.”
“Here is another bead on the string of confusions.”
—William E. Woodward
7.
IT WAS A NARROW, TORMENTED little hotel, squeezed tight between a dark legitimate theater and an office building with a bar on the ground floor. The façade was vaguely classic; it must have had certain pretensions once, but that would have been when Miss Withers was in pigtails: Perhaps the great gilt mirrors in the lobby had reflected the glitter of Diamond Jim Brady and the flaming Titian of Lillian Russell’s hair, but now they showed even to the inquisitive schoolteacher a wavering and distorted parody of herself. The peeling leather chairs scattered between marble pillars were all empty, and uncomfortable enough looking to explain the fact. A hundred ancient odors, too mixed for any identification, pervaded the place.
The man behind the desk had little shiny dark eyes and rodent’s teeth, giving the impression that he had seen everything years ago and didn’t much like it. Looking Miss Withers up and down, he said a noncommittal “Yeyuss?”
“You have a Mr. Sprott registered here?” she opened bluntly.
Beady eyes turned briefly toward the slot marked 14B, which held a key fastened to a brass marker the size of a playing card. “They’re out to dinner, I guess. Any message?”
“No—” She hesitated a moment. “Yes, I believe there is.” Miss Withers reached into her handbag, and then placed a crisp five-dollar bill on the counter. “Shall we say it’s a message for you, young man? My inquiry isn’t official, and it probably won’t go any further. But was Mr. Sprott at home last evening?”
“Lady, I wouldn’t know.”
“Would you know for ten dollars? It’s just—just the matter of establishing possible witnesses to an accident.” After all, she temporized with her conscience, murder was a sort of accident, and a murderer was certainly a witness to his deed.
The man shook his head. “Oh,” continued the schoolteacher swiftly, “I know Mr. Sprott and his orchestra are playing at The Grotto. But between the dinner show and the midnight show there’s a couple of hours or more unaccounted for—”
He reluctantly refrained from picking up the money. “Lady, I’m trying to tell you. I wouldn’t know. I’m only on days. Come back after six o’clock and ask the night clerk.”
“Oh,” she said. “You may keep the money, perhaps it will help you to forget that I was here.”
“KO,” he said, and the five did a disappearing act. Miss Withers marched out into the street again. But half an hour later she was back, carrying a secondhand suitcase loaded with convincingly heavy oddments, a prominently displayed copy of Billboard and Variety, and, of course, her handbag and black cotton umbrella, which added up to quite a burden. The night man was a slightly more recent edition of the other, except that he had a bad cold and smelled of gin.
“Room and bath, please,” announced the schoolteacher. “Professional rate.”
His look added new force to the meaning of the word askance. “Professional how?”
Miss Withers, who had just written “Martha Vere de Vere” on the register slip, held the theatrical magazines so he could get a good look at the covers, and said haughtily, “I’m Aunt Abbie on the Sunshine Soap hour. Don’t you ever listen to the radio?” And as he hesitated, looking at her dubiously, she added, “I’ve just been auditioning for a TV program, that’s why I’m still in costume.”
“Okay,” the clerk said. “Most of our people are permanent, but maybe—” He looked at the slots, and chose a key. “I’ve got just one, with shower, three dollars. In advance.”
“I suppose that will have to do until you can move me to something better,” she said, and laid her umbrella down on the desk while she fumbled in her handbag. Then somehow her change purse slipped out of her fingers, spilling silver in a little cascade across the desk and down into the dark recesses behind it. “Oops!” she cried. “How could I be so clumsy!”
The man hesitated, and then with a heartfelt sigh bent down and began to pick up the money. He was red-faced and out of breath when he finally reappeared to plunk a handful of coins down on the counter with what seemed unnecessary firmness, only grunting at Miss Withers’ profuse thanks. She paid him three dollar bills for the room, and then was somewhat surprised to see him come out of his cubbyhole and pick up her bag.
“Bellhops both out somewhere,” he said over his shoulder. “This way, Aunt Abbie.” They rose haltingly skyward in an elevator that really should have gone to the Smithsonian as a relic of Mr. Otis’ first efforts, and she was taken down a dimly lighted hall and let into a small room smelling of stale cigarettes, mildew, and human feet. Miss Withers gave the man a quarter to go away, and when he looked at it pointedly she almost reminded him that the change he had retrieved from the floor was seventy-five cents short.
At last alone, she was about to sit down on the bed and plan future operations when she took a second look at the coverlet and decided it would be more restful to stand up. But at least she was inside the hotel. And clutched in her hand was Riff Sprott’s key, which she had deftly hooked with the tip of her umbrella while the clerk was down on his hands and knees. She was now on the fifteenth floor, which meant that she had only one flight of stairs to descend.
Only it was a bad hour for prowling. People would be coming home from work, or going out to dinner. And most of the guests were permanent, the clerk had said. That meant that a stranger would stand out like a sore thumb.
But a quick look told her that the hall was empty, and she whisked out and down the stairs like a ghost. In the middle of the lower hallway she was caught flat-footed by the sudden opening of the elevator door. A young man and a not-so-young woman came mirthfully and unsteadily toward her, carrying clinking packages and evidently well on their way toward tomorrow’s hangover. Miss Withers resisted the tendency to scuttle back toward the stair or to hide her face, and gave them a critically disapproving stare, with the result that they quieted down and hurried on past with what seemed a distinctly sheepish air.
An attack was the best defense, she reminded herself, and marched on toward the door of 14B. Entering, she quickly closed it behind her and switched on the lights. She found herself in the living room of a suite that was furnished and decorated in a surprisingly pl
easant manner, with a new carpet, chairs covered in rose and green slips, and bright pillows on the divan. There was a large radio-phonograph-television set, a spinet piano, two vases of asters and zinnias on the mantel and a lot of late, frothy magazines and even a few books, not all of the latter dealing with music.
Miss Withers went on into the bedroom, put down her handbag and umbrella, and made a quick survey. Someone had bathed and changed recently—the bath was soggy and steamy, and a mist of powder floated in the air, mingled with some heavy perfume. The bedspread was rumpled, with an open, almost full box of chocolates and a magazine or two nearly crowding the phone off the bedside table. Not much of a housekeeper, the singer Riff Sprott had married on the rebound. But she took excellent care of her belongings. Dozens of pairs of shoes hung in pockets on the inside of the closet door. On hangers were rows of evening dresses, most of which the schoolteacher thought would be apt to give the wearer a bad chest cold. These, in addition to some slacks and sweaters and a few negligees, were evidently about all that Chloris ever wore.
Bits of trumpery jewelry, earrings and the like, were scattered over the top of the dressing table. But no sign of any necklace—that would have been almost too much to expect.
Miss Withers was not at all sure what she was looking for, but she had an idea that she would know it when she found it. It was her pet theory that while almost anybody might under the right circumstances commit a murder, he then suffered a change that set him apart from the rest of the human race. The dark secret locked in the recesses of his heart must subtly poison everything about him from that time forward. He would never react exactly the same as a non-murderer under any stimulus. He would be overalert and suspicious, defending himself from attacks that were only imaginary, fleeing when no man pursueth.
And a man’s home, like his handwriting, reflected his personality. If Riff Sprott had killed a girl a year ago last August, if he had killed again last night out of an unreasoning, superstitious fear that a professional medium would disclose his secret, then there should be traces, signs, tracks in the snow here, if anywhere.
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