“Judas, no! I mean stag dinners. It’s a quick hundred bucks.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” admitted Miss Withers.
“I know!” offered Natalie. “She means she was baked into pies, and took baths in wine, that sort of thing. I remember one night in Paree—”
Chloris laughed out loud. “That’s specialty stuff, they hire burleyque talent for that. No, all I ever did was to wear a slinky off-the-shoulder evening gown and circulate. It’s not so rough, you don’t have to get in very deep if you remember to keep smiling and sidestepping. You make dates with any of the suckers who insist on it, only they don’t know your right name or where you live, and by the time the party is over they’re usually too looped to care anyway.”
“Keep smiling and sidestepping,” said Miss Withers dryly. “Ill certainly remember that, if the situation ever comes up. But, my dear young woman, if you were away from home doing a dinner as you put it, then how can you swear that your husband was safe beside his own hearth curled up with a good book? How do you know he wasn’t right here in this room at eleven o’clock that night, murdering Miss Harrington?”
“But—” Natalie put in, and then caught Miss Withers’ look.
“Listen,” Chloris said. “The dinner that night was for a bunch of out-of-town furniture buyers, and those boys like to feel the upholstery. It got very drunk out very early if you know what I mean, and I got tired of having my framework appraised. Usually at those things you’re supposed to stick around until midnight at least, but I went to whoever was in charge and soft-talked him into giving me my dough and letting me sneak out early. I got home a couple of minutes before eleven, and there was Riff passed out on the sofa in the living room. He’d been there all evening, too.”
“And how could you tell that?” pursued the schoolteacher mercilessly. “Did you hide his shoes?”
“You’ve never been married, have you? Oh, there’s a dozen ways to tell. By the empties, for one thing. It takes about three pints to put Riff away. And the ashtrays were all full, and newspapers and racing forms scattered around. He’d finished a crossword puzzle, and tried to finish some old song of his that never comes out right, which he only tackles when he’s half-swacked.”
Miss Withers found herself humming a phrase of it, and hastily said, “Go on.”
“Well, I took off his shoes and left him to sleep it off where he was. Next morning he didn’t remember where he’d got his load or what he’d done, so when he heard about the murder of his ex-girl friend he tipped off the boys to alibi for him. Not that the police asked too many questions, because they were pretty sure they already had the case sewed up in a sack.”
“I see,” said the schoolteacher. She scowled at Natalie Rowan, who had her mouth open and was about, it appeared, to put her foot in it. “Well, Mrs. Sprott, you can rest assured that this will be brought to the attention of Inspector Piper at Headquarters.”
“And will you get him to call off his bloodhounds?”
“I shall do my best,” promised Miss Withers, not saying her best what. “Neither Mrs. Rowan nor myself has any desire to make trouble for the innocent. But we are trying hard to make trouble for the one who killed Midge Harrington.”
“Natch,” said the girl. She looked at her watch and gave a little squeal. “I’ve gotta get back to the gin-mill and warble.” She started for the door. “You won’t forget, now?”
Miss Withers shook her head, and the front door slammed. “Well,” said Natalie, “that seems to eliminate one suspect, if she’s telling the truth.”
“Does it? The girl has effectively destroyed her husband’s alibi for that night—an alibi which was good enough to satisfy the police at the time.”
“But—” Natalie frowned with concentration. “She’s given him another one. Only I thought the police figured that Midge Harrington died around ten o’clock, not eleven!”
“Exactly. I baited a little trap, and Chloris fell for it hook, line and sinker. She says she got home at eleven. That would still leave him plenty of time to commit the murder, then come home and set the stage to create the impression he’d been there all evening. It wouldn’t be hard to spread around newspapers and racing forms, dirty up the ashtrays, and maybe even empty a couple of pints of whisky down the drain. Then he could take a stiff drink, pour a little of the nasty stuff over his clothes, and lie down and look and smell exactly as if he’d passed out hours before.”
Mrs. Rowan looked a little happier. Then her face clouded again. “But Riff Sprott can’t be the one we’re looking for. Because even if he doesn’t have an alibi for the first murder, he must have for the second. He’s working in a night club, you said.”
“Until tonight, yes. But the dinner show is seven to nine, supper show eleven to one. I checked that when I visited The Grotto. He had plenty of time between appearances. Judging by the smell of the place, any musician working there would have to go out for some fresh air, and it would be easy to slip away from the others.”
“But—but the police were shadowing him? How could he have got away from them long enough—”
“He didn’t,” said Miss Withers. “Because they weren’t. I just hinted that when we had our heart-to-heart talk that first day, to stir things up. With the idea planted in his mind, the rest of it was just a case of overactive imagination. Riff Sprott is seeing police shadows behind every lamp post.”
Natalie was bubbling over. “Then Sprott has a guilty conscience—you’ve proved it! That means he’s guilty—”
“No, not necessarily. I’ve simply put forward an hypothesis. We haven’t any real proof, not yet. And remember the old saying—if you sent an anonymous telegram to a hundred men picked at random out of the phone book, saying FLEE, ALL IS DISCOVERED! ninety of them would leave town that night.”
“Oh, dear,” sighed Natalie Rowan, very much deflated again. “You just build me up and then let me down …”
The phone went off like a firecracker, and Miss Withers jumped a good inch into the air. “That’ll be Iris,” cried Natalie quickly. “I just knew she wouldn’t disappear without a word, not when I owe her her last week’s pay check.” She rushed out into the hall, cried an eager, welcoming “Hello?” into the phone, and then was silent.
The schoolteacher, straining her ears in vain, became conscious of a sharp pain in her chest, and realized that she was forgetting to breathe. She tried to remember bits of her old first-aid training—if this was another of those maniac calls, Natalie would probably faint or throw a fit. She was about to rise and go to the rescue, when she heard the woman saying, “Yes, I’ve got it. Thank you.”
Natalie came back into the room with what was almost the ghost of a smile on her face. “It wasn’t Iris after all. Just a wire from Mr. Huff, from Ossining. Tomorrow is his day off and he’ll be down in town. He’s so kind and thoughtful—he’s going to drop over in the evening and give me a firsthand eye-witness account of how Andy is bearing up.” She peered at Miss Withers. “What’s the matter? You look so strange. There isn’t anything really wrong about a keeper calling on the relatives of a prisoner, is there?”
The schoolteacher sighed deeply. “No, I imagine not. It’s only that—well, to be frank, I was afraid the call was from someone else. The telephone can be as surprising as a grab bag sometimes.”
“It’s a fearful nuisance as far as I’m concerned,” Natalie said sensibly. “Nine-tenths of the calls I get are a sheer waste of time. It’s an unlisted number, too. But I guess every newspaper in town has assigned a cub reporter to try to get an interview with me, or a picture staged with me weeping over Andy’s photograph. And guess what happened today just after lunch, when I was trying to relax my snarled nerves in a hot bath? Some nitwit called up and when I came dripping down to answer the phone, instead of saying anything he just laughed and laughed! Did I give him a piece of my mind!”
Miss Withers, a little dizzy, found a chair and leaned against it. “Is there anything the matter?�
�� Mrs. Rowan asked anxiously.
“Nothing,” admitted the schoolteacher. “But this phone call—didn’t it strike you as odd or anything?”
The woman shook her head. “Just plain silly!”
“Because, you see, I received one too, and so did Iris. The call then didn’t frighten you into wanting to drop everything and run away and hide?”
Natalie’s smile was scornful. “I don’t scare that easy.”
“But didn’t the laughter strike you as menacing, unearthly and inhuman?”
She shook her head again. “Just silly. But maybe I’m lacking in imagination.”
The schoolteacher hesitated, suddenly self-critical. Would she herself have let the phone call get under her skin if she had not first caught the contagion of fear from Iris? “You’re quite sensible,” she decided. “But all the same, there is dirty work at the crossroads. Our quarry is showing a certain tendency to stop being the Hunted and become the Hunter. Remembering what happened to two women already, do you think it is safe for you to be alone in this big empty house?”
“No,” said Natalie. “Only—”
“How about a maid or a paid companion?”
“But if I did call an agency, how do I know they wouldn’t sneak some girl reporter or photographer in under false pretenses? I can’t stand the thought of that.” Natalie shook her head. “Unless—unless you yourself would consent to come here!”
“I?” Miss Withers stiffened a little.
“Especially since Iris has deserted, I’d like somebody around, somebody who knows.”
There were many reasons why not. “I’d miss telephone calls and visitors,” objected the schoolteacher. “And there’s my plants to water, and Talleyrand—”
“You could bring your dog along, he’d be an added protection!”
The schoolteacher snorted. “Talley is in love with the whole human race. If Jack the Ripper crawled in through a window at midnight Talley would probably hold the flashlight for him, or fetch him a rubber ball to throw.”
“He’d be something alive and cheerful around the place, anyway. Oh, do say you’ll come!” She hesitated. “If money would make any difference—”
“Please!”
“Oh dear, I didn’t mean to offend you. But you see, I’m not intellectual like you, or beautiful like the girl who was just here. All I have, all I ever had, is just plenty of money. And I’d spend every cent of it to save Andy.”
“I know,” said Miss Withers. “And I’ll consider your suggestion. But you see, I must be a free agent if I’m to have any chance of success.”
“Oh, you’ll succeed, I know it. As I told Iris that day after you walked in to the rescue like a boat from the blue, I knew right away that you were going to bring my Andy back to me safe and sound. You’re an instrument of Providence.”
“Perhaps,” said the schoolteacher, feeling herself to be a rather blunted tool at the moment. If only she could share Natalie Rowan’s confidence—
The case, to her mind, wasn’t going according to Hoyle. The suspects, in spite of all her efforts, kept dancing away like wills-o’-the-wisp. By this time her intuitive guesses should be condensing into a hard certainty. Had she perhaps made the cardinal mistake of underestimating an opponent?
Again Miss Withers was reminded of the old story about the man on a train who played cards with His Satanic Majesty, and was dealt a perfect hand with all four aces. And then the devil led out the green Ace of Higgogriffs.
“I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.”
—Charles Darwin
9.
THE MAIDEN SCHOOLTEACHER’S FIRST thought on arriving home was of a comfortable pair of slippers, and her second of the telephone. Oscar Piper’s home phone did not answer; he was probably out tomcatting somewhere. But on a long chance she rang Centre Street. The Headquarters switchboard was jammed, but finally she got through to homicide and heard a familiar voice. “Oscar!” she cried. “I have news for you!”
“Ditto here,” he said genially. “Yours first.”
But curiosity was her besetting sin. “Oh, I know what you’ve got to tell me. You traced the license number of that automobile I asked you about, the swanky imported British Jaguar that belongs to Iris Dunn’s boy friend. But that’s beside the point—”
“Is it?” interrupted the Inspector dryly. “Oh, we traced it all right, through the motor vehicle department. But unless you’re barking up the wrong tree again, Iris is moving in pretty high circles. That car is registered in the name of Sir Geoffrey Giddings, a staff member of the British delegation to the UN. Age sixty, three married daughters, Knight Commander of the Bath, hobbies are chess and grouse-shooting. He has an apartment on the third floor of that same building. Of course, some of those old boys like to have a fling, but—”
“No!” she said disconsolately. “Impossible.”
“Sixty isn’t so old!” the Inspector protested indignantly.
“Perhaps not, but nobody named Geoffrey would ever get the nickname of Bill. Besides, the boy who came hurrying into that apartment building and rushed up to Iris’ floor hadn’t even seen twenty-five yet. I’m afraid that when I saw the car I leaped to conclusions.”
“As usual,” Piper told her. “But never mind that now. Remember what I said last night about having the murderer of Marika in forty-eight hours, and this afternoon about cutting it to twenty-four? Too bad you didn’t bet with me. Because just for your private information we’ve got Banana-Nose—”
“Oscar!” she shrieked. “You haven’t arrested that Wilson man, you mustn’t! He didn’t—”
“Oh yes, he did. I was about to say, we’ve got him pinned down in a tenement over on Tenth Avenue. He’s armed and desperate, and the main problem is how to get hold of him without losing any policemen in the process. A whole city block is roped off, and the boys are taking no chances.”
“Good heavens!” she cried. “Who’s responsible for that—not you, I hope?”
“I sent out the pick-up order, and one thing leads to another.”
“Goodbye, Oscar,” she said.
“Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t you have something to tell me?”
“All I have to tell you at the moment,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers acidly, “is that now you’ve put your foot in it up to your ears. I can’t explain why now—I’ve got to rush down there to the scene of this three-ring circus and put a stop to it.” She hung up.
The Inspector buried his face momentarily in his hands. “Holy Saint Paul and Minneapolis,” he moaned. “When Hildegarde gets into one of her Curfew Shall Not Ring moods—” Then he pressed a key and shouted into the talk-box, “Order me a car, quick!”
But the schoolteacher, with a considerable head start on him, was already in a taxi headed south. “Lady, what number on Tent’?” the driver demanded.
“Just keep driving. You’ll know when you get there.”
It seemed that everybody in Manhattan knew, for the massed humanity outside the police lines was only slightly less than at the Polo Grounds on a hot Saturday afternoon. Emergency trucks, ambulances, squad cars, and firemen’s hook-and-ladder trucks blocked the street at both ends, while mobile floodlights made everything brighter and whiter than day. People had been evacuated from the tenement, the neighboring buildings and those across the street, and now more than three hundred policemen crawled over the rooftops, sniped from commandeered windows across the way, and blockaded the stairway leading up to the top-floor cold-water flat where the fugitive had holed up and dared anybody to come in after him. The glaring lights, the roped-off street, and occasional popping explosions gave it all the festive air of a Fourth of July neighborhood block party. But the only firecrackers were shots from the Browning automatic rifles, the riot guns, or the police-positive .38s and the heavier .45 automatics, as some overenthusiastic policeman let go in the general direction of the invisible guest of honor, with no appreciable result except the shattering of a good deal of window glass.
Since the building was four storeys high, most of the tear-gas grenades aimed at the gaping front windows fell back into the street to add to the confusion. Those that did hit the target were warmly applauded by the crowd outside the ropes, who also cheered lustily when Banana-Nose scooped them up, red hot though they were, and hurled them back at the little groups of snipers. Some he must also have tossed down the stairs, for the squad of officers who had been working their way painfully up toward the top floor erupted suddenly into the street again, gasping and crying for gas masks.
Somehow, in spite of the best efforts of police and firemen, a large number of neighborhood urchins infiltrated the lines, as did newsreel cameramen with portable Eyemos, press photographers, and a few amateur lens hounds with miniature cameras and homemade Press cards hopefully stuck in their hats. Also Miss Hildegarde Withers, who somehow managed to sneak under the ropes and scuttle forward under desultory fire to the spot where Captain F. X. Carmody had set up command headquarters in the partial shelter of a doorway.
“This has got to stop!” gasped the schoolteacher. “You can’t butcher this man to make a Roman holiday! He happens to be innocent, and—”
“Lady, go away,” said the captain over his shoulder, not daring to take his eyes from the blank, gaping windows high across the street.
“But the Wilson man didn’t commit that murder, and I can prove it!”
Captain Carmody didn’t care if the fugitive was wanted for murder or for mopery, he was sniping at cops. “Get outta here, lady—do you want to get shot?”
“I don’t want anybody to get shot! Can’t you declare an armistice or something for half an hour?” As the man still ignored her, she added, “If you won’t listen, I’ll go to the Commissioner, I’ll go to the Mayor!”
Captain Carmody brightened. “That’s a fine idea, ma’am.” He seized a patrolman who had just come up for instructions. “Here, Schwartz, this lady wants to explain to His Honor why the whole shebang has to be called off right away. Take her down the street and show her where his car is, will you?”
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