Green Ace

by Stuart Palmer

  Iris was listening, and watching the door. The house was very quiet, too quiet. There was not even the companionable sound of passing autos outside, or streetcars or anything. Suddenly she was desperately homesick for the friendly, bustling, perpetual din of Manhattan.

  “What a place to hide!” she said to herself. From where she lay she could see the old-fashioned iron key in the door, but it was not locked. She had even got up once to make sure that it wasn’t locked. To make it easy for him. Maybe she had made it too easy for him. Because he didn’t come and he kept not coming.

  For a while after she had been packed off to bed there had been a rumble of voices downstairs in the drawing room, but now that was over. If he had told them—what he had told them, was a mystery to Iris.

  She thought of quietly getting up and going out into the hall and trying to find Bill’s room. If she met anybody in the hall she could say she was going down to the library for a book to read. No, that was no good. There was a book right over there on the table, and as far as Iris was concerned it could stay there. She could say she was looking for the john—no, that wouldn’t work either, because there was a big marble bath attached to her own room, “a bath like a movie set for a not-so-Gay Nineties picture. And if she went prowling and trying doors she’d probably miss Bill’s room entirely and walk in on his mother, that patrician prune, or one of the dowdy wool-stockinged sisters, or the fat aunt who had tried to put her at ease during dinner by discussing Richard Mansfield and Maude Adams.

  Iris suddenly slid out of bed, went over to the full-length dressing mirror and modeled the extra-special, sixty-dollar nightgown for a moment. Satin and pink rosebuds, yet. The salesgirl had assured her that she would look just like a picture-book bride. What she really looked like was a chorus girl who had wandered into a museum by mistake.

  “There is something about this place that makes me want to say four-letter words over and over,” Iris told her reflection in the mirror. She tried it, speaking very softly. Then she made a face at herself, flung off the nightgown, let down her flaming hair and wiped off every bit of make-up, even the lipstick.

  “Now he’ll come,” she murmured. “Sure as shooting he’ll come tiptoeing in and find me looking like the hag at eve.”

  But the door didn’t open. Iris opened the window and stood shivering before it, seeing nothing outside but trees already getting a little gaunt and bare of leaves. Even the air here didn’t smell right. It was flavorless and weak, cut with too much branch water. And it made goose pimples all over her. She turned out the light and flung herself between the stiff, chilly sheets.

  “He’ll come before I count to a hundred by fives,” she promised herself. But she got to five hundred, and stopped.

  “Maybe they locked him in his room. Maybe they sent him away to join the French Foreign Legion, with a threat of disinheriting him if he didn’t. Maybe—maybe he broke a leg. I hope.”

  The house creaked. Even the bed creaked when she moved, protestingly. She was here on sufferance, because Bill had brought her, and the house and everybody and everything in it was waiting for her to realize that she wasn’t wanted, and leave.

  Somewhere, far far away downstairs, there was the muffled ringing of a telephone. It rang on and on for a long time and then stopped, making the silence seem worse than ever.

  Iris could hear her heart beating. She could hear the ticking of her watch. That was all there was, all she had. And after she had waited so long, and worked so hard. After she had done what she had done, and pretended and lied, this was the climax, to be alone in a cold unfriendly bed in a cold unfriendly house. It was, Iris thought, one hell of a honeymoon.

  Finally she slept, on a rather damp pillow. Back in Manhattan Miss Hildegarde Withers was sleeping too, a troubled sleep in which she found herself desperately engaged in working a crossword puzzle—something she would never have bothered with when awake and in her right mind. Possibly one of the abstruse double-crostics in The Saturday Review of Literature, but a crossword never.

  Yet here she was. According to the arbitrary rules imposed by some invisible but menacing tribunal, she could use only a fountain pen to fill in the spaces, no changes or erasures permitted. And there was a time limit, a deadline, drawing steadily closer …

  “Average time 72 hours,” it said at the top of the sheet. No, it read, “Remaining time.” But that was also Andy Rowan’s life expectancy.

  She got off to a flying start on the horizontals. “Noisy expression of derision,” in eight letters would have to be laughter. “Flora exotic” would be orchid. “Linked ornament,” became necklace, “glass ball” was crystal, and “disguise” was false-face. There was the usual rash of irritating little fill-in words such as puzzle editors love—“the fifth note of Guido’s scale,” “printer’s unit of measure,” “Greek god of love,” “to plant (Saxon verb)” and, of course, the inevitable “winged” which must be alar.

  Which wickedly suggested flight, and the schoolteacher saw her dream dissolve into fleecy clouds, through which she soared free at last from all puzzles and problems. She flapped her arms frantically but something drew her implacably back to earth, back to the crossword. She crash-landed on a field of white squares mottled with occasional blacks in a pattern that resembled a grinning skull.

  There was the fountain pen in her hand again, and she scribbled frantically to make up for lost time. But it was a queer sort of puzzle. Something was wrong with the definitions, as in a bad translation. Instead of being synonyms the words began to go by opposites or quite at random, as if this were a psychologist’s word-association test. “Will” proved to be won’t, and “key” was note. The word indemnity showed up twice, breaking one of the unwritten laws of puzzledom.

  And the verticals were worse yet, when she got around to them. “After death” turned out to be posthumorous, which was silly. Jabberwocky words, like something created by a malevolent Lewis Carroll, began to appear. Then at last the schoolteacher came to number 22 down, which tied the whole puzzle together. Its definition was “Ecce Homo,” which she immediately translated as “Take a look at the murderer.” No, the first word was “Cherchez”—which amounted to about the same thing. In five letters—no, eight. The squares merged and dissolved and shimmered so that Miss Withers wasn’t sure just how many spaces there were. But some of them were already filled in, with overlapping words. Her pen flashed frantically, printing in the remaining letters. It was suddenly all coming right, like apple jelly jelling when you had almost given it up.

  There at last was the name of the murderer. “Good gracious!” cried the schoolteacher. “Of course, I should have known it from the beginning. And won’t Oscar be surprised! But what if I don’t remember it in the morning?”

  For she had a canny way of being aware, even in her dreams, that it was only a dream. But she had got the better of her elfin subconscious before. Craftily she reached out for the book she had left lying on her bedside table, picked up the pen and wrote the all-important name on the flyleaf. “There!” she told herself triumphantly.

  It was all so real, so exceptionally vivid, that when Talley awakened her by scratching on her bedroom door in the early morning Miss Withers sat up straight in bed and seized War and Peace. But there was nothing on the flyleaf, absolutely nothing, except a scribbled “Merry Christmas 1939” above Oscar Piper’s signature.

  “Oh!” she cried in deep disgust. “There are times,” she told the eager poodle as she opened the bedroom door, “when just as every dog is supposed to be allowed one bite, every well-bred person should be allowed one swear-word!”

  Inspector Oscar Piper, for his part, had used up considerably more than his quota of profanity even before he got down to Centre Street that morning. The office was small and bare, comparing not too favorably in size and appointments with the cell up the river in which Andy Rowan waited for his last summons. Its one window had a fine view of a faded brick wall, its decorations consisted of two photographs of forgotten
ex-mayors and a framed group picture of the New York Police Academy class of 1919, and it was furnished with a battered oak desk, a perpetually clacking teletype machine, a bookcase, four uncomfortable chairs and a spittoon.

  But the Inspector loved it. It had been his throne room, his sanctum sanctorum, for almost two decades, barring one regrettable hiatus when he had been kicked upstairs to the temporary grade of acting chief inspector. Now as he opened up the place this Friday morning he realized that it might very well be for the last time.

  His after-breakfast cigar tasted like smoldering rags, and he let it die unnoticed on the edge of his desk. There was the usual pile of mail on his blotter but he pushed it aside, having learned from long experience that if you let letters go unanswered for a week or so they are no longer in need of answering. He sighed, pressed a lever on the talk-box, and said “Smitty, come in here!”

  The sergeant appeared almost instantly, looking offensively bright and chipper in tweeds and a blue polka-dot tie. “Good morning, Inspector!”

  “What’s good about it?” growled Inspector Piper. “Anything new, as if I cared?”

  “The Commissioner’s office called, and also the DA. I think they want to know just what charges there are against Wilson.”

  “Naturally. How about possession, of stolen property, firearms, and resisting arrest?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sergeant Smith looked doubtful. “All the newspapers called, too. Not just reporters, either. City editors, managing editors, big shots like that.”

  “Refer ’em to Boylan.” Lieutenant Boylan was the newly appointed public relation officer, working out of the Municipal Building.

  “But he refers them right back here, sir. And the newspaper boys aren’t going to stand for this hold order on the Wilson story much longer. After all, it was the biggest manhunt in years, and thousands of people saw it happen. The press has a pretty good idea that we didn’t turn out most of the available force last night just to pick up a petty second-storey worker for violating his parole.”

  “You and your encyclopedia memory!” Piper jabbed, “If you’d just kept your big mouth shut—” He shook his head.

  “Never mind, I should have known better. Just what was the final score on casualties?”

  “Outside of Banana-Nose himself, five policemen got in their own crossfire, hit by stray bullets or ricochets. None seriously. Seven treated for tear gas, all but two returned to duty. One minor concussion from being hit on the head by a falling gas bomb. Among the spectators, one heart attack from the excitement and two or three minor bruises and lacerations from being trampled in the crush.”

  “Fine, fine!” said the Inspector with heavy sarcasm. “What’s from Bellevue? Is Wilson cold yet?”

  “He wasn’t when I called half an hour ago. But he’s sinking fast; they gave him two transfusions and he’s in an oxygen tent. He’ll be dead for the morning papers.”

  “That will be just dandy. With us not being able to explain why he was being arrested.” Piper picked up his cold cigar, looked at it suspiciously, and laid it down again. “About the only thing we can do is to have the boys on the robbery detail dig up everybody who’s listed as missing stuff lately. Some of them will be able to identify their property from the pile of Wilson’s loot that’s laid out downstairs, and we can toss that to the papers. Maybe one or two of the complainants will be important names, stage or radio people, or somebody out of the social register, which ought to help.”

  “Okay, but it won’t mean anything to the afternoons,” Smitty pointed out. He leaned on the desk, lowering his voice. “Here’s a suggestion, sir. Why not get yourself off the hook by going ahead and pinning the Marika killing on Wilson? He’ll never live to stand trial anyway.”

  “What?”

  “After all, he does fit the description. He’s a known criminal, and he was identified by the Fink woman.”

  “An identification that was busted wide open a minute later.”

  “But do the newspapers or anybody have to know that? The doctor won’t talk, and neither will the boys. And we can button up Mrs. Fink.”

  “But we can’t button up Miss Hildegarde Withers,” pointed out the Inspector. “Besides, some of the stuff found in Wilson’s flat matches the description of the jewelry taken in the jobs pulled down on Barrow and Minetta the night of the Marika murder. He can’t very well have been in two places at once.” Piper shook his head, almost regretfully. “No, Smitty. What you suggest is unethical, and besides it’s too damn risky.”

  “But we wouldn’t actually have to pin the Marika job on him then, we could just say that Banana-Nose was being picked up on suspicion or for questioning in regard to the murder …”

  “Judas Priest no! We can’t risk the suggestion of any connection there. It would all come out sooner or later, and how would it look for the police to shoot a man, even a known burglar, by mistake? But wait a minute. That gives me a sort of idea. If we could just suggest that Wilson was maybe tied up with some other homicide case, something important enough to excuse the big turn-out and his being shot—” Piper nodded. “Only just to be safe it ought to be some case out of mothballs, maybe even one in the Closed file.”

  “Yessir,” said Smitty approvingly. “Lieutenant Boylan would approve of that. And it ought to take the heat off.”

  “It’ll give us a breathing spell, anyway. And we’ll have to toss them something on the Marika murder at the same time. Too bad we can’t do as we used to in the old days, and give them the song and dance about our investigating a hot lead and an arrest is expected at any minute.”

  “But in a way it would be the truth. There’s always Cawthorne, sir.”

  The Inspector nodded. “The more I think of it the more I like him. A lunger doesn’t burst out of a hospital and disappear for nothing. If Marika had been sending him money and then suddenly cut it off without warning, he might blow his top. Okay, announce that we are making a nationwide search for David Cawthorne, wanted on suspicion—no, make it wanted for questioning in regard to the Marika job. See if you can’t get hold of a picture, or at least a detailed description of the man from the Phoenix hospital, and alert everybody between there and here to start tracing him.”

  “Right away, Inspector.” Then Smitty frowned. “But what if we do get a picture, and find he hasn’t got a big nose after all?”

  Piper sighed. “You still don’t get it, do you? The man who killed Marika was somebody she knew, or she wouldn’t have recognized his voice and pressed the button that released the downstairs door. He came there intending to kill her, but he didn’t want to run into anybody who might recognize him later, so he put on the phony rubber nose and glasses as he came in. Outside Marika’s door, of course, he whipped them off again and stuck them in his coat pocket so she’d know him. The one thing we’re sure about is that this murderer doesn’t have an oversized schnoz!”

  “Yessir,” said Smitty meekly. “Is that all?”

  “I guess so. Wait, you better send somebody out for some aspirin.” The Inspector’s headache was not yet the worst in Manhattan or even the worst he had ever suffered, but like a lion’s whelp it showed unmistakable promise of what it was going to be.

  Alone at last, he took out the thin file marked “Thoren, Marika” and thumbed through it, then put it aside. From the top drawer of his desk he produced the thick, dog-eared record bearing the name “Harrington, Midge” and forced himself to study it, though he could have repeated it almost word for word from memory. There was no similarity between the two cases that he could see. Different weapons, different types of victims, different everything. The only parallel was one that Hildegarde had built up out of guesswork reinforced with moonbeams.

  Meanwhile his self-appointed Nemesis was busier, as she herself would have phrased it, than a cow’s tail in fly time. Her first port of call that morning had been the New York Public Library at Fifth and 42nd, where she hurried up the steps past the two benign stone lions only to learn when she got inside
that since her last visit the back newspaper files had all been moved down to the branch at Twenty-fifth Street, Just to make everything more complicated.

  However, now that she was here in the fine old building where almost everything in the world of print is stored if you can only find it, she spent an hour looking up references on such disparate items as Herbs, monocotyledonous (exotic, white), Jewelry (necklaces, brummagem), Laughter, Laughing and Laugh (Teut; OE hlehhan, cf. Dutch and German lachen), and Sound (auditory perceptions of the smaller mammalia), pursuing the latter even through dog-eared, yellowed catalogues under the imprint of His Master’s Voice and Edison, making copious notes.

  Miss Withers then marched all the way down to Twenty-fifth Street, pausing here and there on the way to do a bit of shopping. She had a brief whirl at Macy’s and Gimbel’s. Salesgirls, who had catalogued her on sight as the jet-earring and cameo-brooch type, were surprised at her penchant for the more extreme styles in costume jewelry. As she waited for her change she heard one clerk say to the cashier, “Get her! Do you suppose she hoards the things?”

  The schoolteacher sniffed as she accepted the heavy package, “No, not hoarding,” she whispered mysteriously. “I use them for trading with the natives.” Her exit was something of a minor triumph.

  Her handbag loaded, Miss Withers proceeded to the branch library, feeling immediately at home. There was the same hush, the same smell, and the same musty little men in overcoats poring over the same home-town papers, but she found a vacant table and immediately plunged into the back copies of the Times.

  There was absolutely nothing in the Vital Statistics column for April four years ago about Midge Harrington’s marriage, on the Monday after Easter or any other day. Disappointed but not surprised, the schoolteacher took time out for a visit to the telephone booth in the hall, finding Natalie Rowan safe at home but jittery as a cat on hot bricks.