“You don’t get the point! It was only his assistant, silly. But try putting the names together. Doesn’t it occur to you that Cawthor the Great might be the stage name of David Cawthorne? And that Marika Thoren sounds very much like Mary Cawthorne? Probably his daughter. Anyway she did some magic and mediumistic stunts in the act, and later when he became ill she set up shop for herself as a medium and fortuneteller. Naturally she’d keep in touch with her acquaintances in show business and that’s how Midge Harrington became a client—and told Rowan, who said something to his wife about that wonderful little woman up on Ninety-sixth Street! See how very simple it is?”
The Inspector nodded. “Could be. There goes another suspect. After I get back to my office I’ll call off the heat on Cawthorne.”
“But why? Men have murdered their own daughters before this.”
“Maybe. But she wouldn’t have been dancing with her own father.”
“She wasn’t dancing with anybody. I don’t care what that man downstairs said, he’s probably stone-deaf. Marika was playing hymns as mood music for a séance.”
“Then she’d hardly be throwing a séance for the man who taught her the trade. And Cawthorne doesn’t fit the rest of it—he was just out of a hospital, and could hardly have gone leaping over those fences in Marika’s back yard.”
Miss Withers conceded that he had a point. “Those fences get in my way too,” she admitted. “But, Oscar. I wouldn’t be too hasty about calling off the dragnet. If Cawthorne could be located and brought here in time, he could be very useful to us. He knows all the tricks of the trade, and if he’d only consent to lend his talents to a little ceremony Natalie and I have in mind—”
“No!” Piper almost knocked over his coffee cup. “You’re not actually suggesting the corny old routine of a séance, with all the suspects present there in the room where the murder was committed, and a fake materialization of the victim that’s supposed to scare the guilty party into hysterics?”
“Why—why yes,” she admitted, with an odd look in her eye. “Something along that general line.”
“You can’t be serious,” the Inspector said. “That idea’s as fantastic as the old plan of making the suspects touch the dead body on the theory that its wounds would start bleeding again! Besides, nobody would come.”
“They wouldn’t dare stay away! And, of course, you could make them come …”
He sighed. “Police powers are limited by law. If I had them dragged there I’d lose my badge.”
“Not if you found the murderer. And if you don’t you’ll probably lose it anyway. Osear, I have a double-barrelled hunch that I—that we can solve both these murders if we can only get the suspects all together in a dark room, on any pretext at all.”
“You and your hunches—” he began, and stopped. She smiled at him sweetly. “I have another one—a hunch that as soon as you finish your coffee you’re going to get the Governor on the telephone and ask for a reprieve for Andy Rowan!”
“Wrong as usual.”
“Oh, Oscar! I thought you’d come holding out the olive branch of peace. Please listen to me. Will you call?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“If you must know, because I already tried it this afternoon, and got turned down! The Governor wasn’t in too receptive a mood, it seems that some representative of an insurance company tried to work on him along the same lines earlier today. When it comes to that sort of pressure, little Mr. Big is as independent as a hog on ice. He said no reprieve, no stay of execution even, unless I gave him my word that there was some important new evidence, which there isn’t.”
“It depends,” said the schoolteacher thoughtfully. Then she added, “But you did try! Oscar, you’re beginning to see the light!”
“I am not!” he snapped, and then corrected, “I mean I still think that Rowan is guilty. But as I said before, I hate to see a weak link in the chain of evidence. I want to play safe.”
“Thanks very much for dinner,” said the schoolteacher thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I must be running along. I half-promised to see Natalie Rowan tonight, and she’ll be frantic—”
“She’s not the only one,” cried Oscar Piper. “I don’t know what got into you. You’re usually thrusting unwanted advice on everybody—haven’t you anything to suggest now?”
“You could, of course, back up and start all over again, with an open mind. Try believing Rowan’s amended story of what happened that night, just as an exercise of your intelligence, and see where that gets you.”
The Inspector obviously found that a hard lump to swallow. “Then your only theory is still that Midge Harrington was shaking down Rowan, only she got cold feet and called in some old friend, maybe a former lover, to go along for protection? But her protector had been nursing a grudge for years, and the minute they got inside the empty house strangled the girl, then waited around to knock out Andy and take the money out of his pocket?” Piper shook his head.
“Can you think of a better theory, Oscar?” Miss Withers gathered up her gloves, and adjusted her hat so that it canted improbably to starboard.
“And you insist that the same person killed Midge and Marika too? Then from what you’ve told me you’ve already eliminated all your suspects! Not just the suspects—everybody in the case!”
“Have I, Oscar?” She gave him an odd look. “How?”
The Inspector was very serious. “Okay, take the men. We’ve just talked about Cawthorne, and Banana-Nose Wilson, and Gresham. All out, for various good reasons. Sprott and Bruner are your pet suspects. They may both be short on alibis, but neither of them got that $5000—the musician couldn’t pay his back union dues for months after the murder, and Bruner got kicked out of his Brooklyn studios for nonpayment of rent. Even Zotos, from what you admit about him, doesn’t seem the type to be able to fight his way out of a wet paper sack. If he couldn’t walk around the block with you and your dog without gasping for breath, then he certainly didn’t bash out Marika’s brains and then leap down the back stairs and vault over those fences …”
“You have a point,” admitted the schoolteacher. “But—”
“Suppose we pursue your argument to the ridiculous,” Piper continued. “Take the women, though I for one don’t believe that the girl would have turned to her roommate or any other female at a time like that. Iris Dunn might have been able to climb fences—but where was her motive? Virla Bruner, the ex-wife, had already had her full measure of revenge when she wrote the letter that queered Midge’s chances of being Miss America. Natalie Rowan would stop at nothing to save her husband—but she’d have stuck on top of the first fence. Chloris likewise. So you see?”
“I do indeed,” Miss Withers told him. “When the impossible is eliminated then whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth. Here are a couple of moot questions for you to answer. First, was there any mark or wound on Andy Rowan when he was arrested?”
“Huh? Why, nothing serious. As I remember there was just a sort of lump on his forehead, probably from bumping the windshield when his car coasted into the back of that truck.”
“Or when he got hit with a sap. Second question—why did the two officers who arrested him show sudden signs of prosperity afterwards—new cars, new fur coats for their wives, that sort of thing?”
The schoolteacher took off. Oscar Piper hastily grabbed up the check and followed her toward the door, saying, “Wait a minute! That’s a serious charge—”
“But I’m not making any charges,” said Miss Withers. “I’m just thinking up questions. That five thousand dollars that both Andy Rowan and his wife admit he had in his pocket the night of the murder is beginning to get in my way, just like the fences in Marika’s backyard.” As he stopped by the cashier’s desk, fumbling for change, she hesitated in the doorway. “Goodnight, Oscar. Don’t bother about a taxi, I can grab the subway at Sheridan Square and be home in ten minutes.”
She could indeed—but wasn’t. Leaving the train at T
imes Square, the schoolteacher sought out a catchpenny novelty store on 42nd near Sixth that offered amazing bargains in cameras, camping equipment, and all sorts of musical instruments. Portable phonographs, Miss Withers discovered, came in various sizes, and prices, made to play records cut at 78, 45, or 33½ rpm. After quite wearing out the salesman she invested a major share of her remaining cash in an instrument and, thus loaded down, put in a short session in a telephone booth, a longer one in a substation stocked with out-of-town telephone books, and then finally bundled everything into a taxicab and headed home, with blood in her eye.
Iris was still at dinner when the call came in. The Greshams dined late, and dressed for dinner. Which might have been fun, only the evening gowns worn by Bill’s mother and aunt and sister ran to sleeves and scarves, and the girl was so acutely conscious of her naked shoulders and the cleavage which remained obvious in spite of her best efforts with a borrowed brooch that she was hardly tasting the overboiled vegetables, the paper-thin slices of ham.
Bill was no help. She hadn’t been able to get him alone all day. Something happened to him here in this house, cancelling out his personality. He didn’t even smile at the butler, who looked so much like Bill Robinson that Iris always expected him to go into his dance. Now the old colored man was saying, in hushed, apologetic tones, “They’s a long distance call from New Yo’k for Miss Dunn.”
Iris was watching Bill’s face, and at the “Miss Dunn” he had, she thought, the grace to blush.
“My husband,” thought Iris. “For better, for worser.” Then, as she started to put down her napkin, she heard the old crocodile—correction, she heard her esteemed, though unknowing mother-in-law at the head of the table say, “Tell them she’s at dinner, Thomas. Ask them to call another time …”
“Oh, no, please!” Iris cried, louder than she meant, and ran hurriedly out of the dining room. The telephone was all the way down a long hall, and as she came toward it she promised herself that no matter who this was, no matter what they had to say, she’d tell the Greshams that an emergency, some sudden illness of a rich uncle or something, was calling her away. Immediately. She could pack and make the ten o’clock train to New York …
Then she remembered that nobody knew she was here, nobody in the world. She was supposed to be hiding out. Her agent didn’t know she was here, nor Actors Equity. She picked up the phone under some strange compulsion she could not understand, and it was cold to her fingers. “Y-yes? This is Miss Dunn speaking.”
Some operator said, “Here’s your party, go ahead.” And then it came, just as she had somehow known it would come. The laughter again, the roaring, slow, inhuman laughter from hell!
“Oh, God no!” Iris cried. And then it stopped.
“Don’t be alarmed,” came a crisp feminine voice from the other end of the line. “Just testing, my dear. Was that the way it sounded when you heard it before?”
“Yon k’n hide de fier, but w’at you gwine do wid de smoke?”
—Uncle Remus
12.
IT WAS LATE WHEN MISS Withers arrived at the house on Prospect Way, loaded down with an overnight bag, a paper sack containing Talleyrand’s pan and water dish and rubber ball and chocolate-flavored bone, and the inevitable black umbrella and oversized handbag. It had been a considerable wrench for the schoolma’am to tear herself away tonight from her own fireside, her own beckoning bed. But when she had finally phoned Natalie Rowan, hoping to beg off, the woman had been almost frantically insistent.
Of course, the poodle, still of an age when every change in routine presaged adventure, was delirious with joy. He had enjoyed the taxi ride uptown, as usual doing his best to bark simultaneously at every car passing on either side. He liked the new smells of the trees and shrubs on the Rowan lawn, he liked Natalie Rowan when she came cautiously to the door to let them in, and he even liked the burly man in the blue serge suit who sat in the biggest chair in the living room, smoothing his tight gray curls with one hand and holding an especially odorous pipe in the other. The room was blue with smoke.
“Thank heavens, you finally got here,” Natalie exclaimed. “Of course you remember Mr. Huff, Miss Withers?”
“I do indeed.” The schoolteacher acknowledged the introduction somewhat frostily, and was openly unimpressed by the news that the keeper from Sing Sing had stuck around just in hopes of a word with her before he left.
“If I’d known what you were up to last Sunday,” the man said heavily, “I wouldn’t have gave you away. Because any friend of Mrs. Rowan and her husband is a friend of mine.”
“How cozy,” muttered Miss Withers under her breath. Then she got hold of herself, and politely asked after the health and well-being of the prisoner.
“You never saw nothing like it,” Huff told her, without taking the pipe from between his strong yellowish teeth. “I certainly don’t see what keeps him going, but he shows no signs of cracking.”
“Evidence of a clear conscience, do you suppose?”
“Of course it is,” Natalie put in breathlessly. “Anybody could see that.”
Huff rubbed his jaw. “That, or something else just as good. I’ve seen a lot of them come and go, and Rowan certainly doesn’t act like the others in the condemned row.”
“And do you know the latest?” Natalie Rowan said. “Andy’s writing his autobiography, imagine that!”
The schoolteacher imagined it without too much strain, and remarked that it was possibly a very good thing for the man to have some way to occupy his time. “I wonder if he’s bringing out any new facts in his story?” she added.
“Nobody’s read it,” Huff admitted. “Not even me.”
“But this is the important part,” Natalie continued, her voice high and strained. “Andy’s going to keep right on writing it up to—as long as he’s in that awful place. And he plans to ask the warden himself to do an introduction, and then leave the manuscript to any New York newspaper who will publish it and use the proceeds to establish a fund for the benefit of persons convicted of murder on purely circumstantial evidence!” She gulped. “Not that that will do Andy personally any good.”
“I keep telling Mrs. Rowan,” said the man from Sing Sing, “that she’s got to prepare herself. No harm to keep on hoping, but only about one in fifty who ever gets into the death-house comes out alive.”
“We are dealing, after all, with a man and not just a statistic,” began Miss Withers. Then she saw Natalie Rowan’s face, which was suddenly streaming tears. “Take it easy—” she said.
“I’m sorry! But I just can’t stand any more …” The woman turned and ran blindly out of the room, upsetting an end table. There was the slam of a bedroom door.
The silence was heavy, and uncomfortable. “You can’t blame her,” said Mr. Huff, as he felt for his highball glass on the floor beside him and carefully emptied it. “Well, I’ll run along. Hope you work something out, because I sort of like the guy.”
Miss Withers saw him to the door. “Just what would be the chances,” she said in a low voice, “of your getting hold of that manuscript of Rowan’s so I could see it?”
“Like I told Mrs. Rowan when she suggested the same thing; no dice, ma’am. A death-house prisoner’s personal property is his. While he lives, that is. Maybe afterward?”
“Afterward would be too late.” The schoolteacher cleared her throat. “If it’s a question of money—”
Huff looked shocked. “Lady, I shouldn’t even be doing this!”
When the door had closed upon him Miss Withers went upstairs and did her best to get Natalie Rowan calmed down, mingling reassurances with hot-water bottles and aspirin and bromides. “I’m sorry I went all to pieces,” Natalie finally whispered. “Right in front of that nice Mr. Huff, too.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” the schoolteacher said.
“But you won’t leave me? You’re staying the night? You’ll sleep right across the hall, so we can hear each other if anything should happen?”
“Nothing is going to happen,” said the schoolteacher. “Now you get to sleep. I’ll straighten up a bit downstairs, and see to the lights and the doors and everything. Talleyrand can stay in the kitchen, and keep an eye on things.”
Natalie nodded sleepily. “Don’t bother to empty the ashtrays,” she murmured. “It’s so nice to see signs of a man around the house—any man.” Then her eyes opened wide. “And if the phone rings, let it ring. It would only be another of those awful things …”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about those laughing phone calls,” Miss Withers said. “By the way, was the call that came today any different really from the first one?”
“I—I don’t know. It just hit me different, I guess.”
“I think I know why,” the schoolteacher told her. “I had in the meantime infected you with the virus of fear. You were susceptible this time, you were prepared to be scared because I had been. That’s what Iris did to me. If I hadn’t been made hypersensitive by her story of the first phone calls I’d probably have hung up on the laughing hyena and thought nothing of it. Would you like your window open?”
“Please,” Natalie said. “But—but who infected Iris, then?”
“Yes,” said the schoolteacher. “But no more of this tonight. We’ve both had what might be described as a hard day.” She turned out the bedside lamp and tiptoed out of the room.
Downstairs in the middle of the room in which Midge Harrington had died Miss Withers stood still for a moment with her eyes closed, trying to envision the place as it had been that night more than a year ago, with the girl lying strangled in the middle of the Aubusson carpet, and Andy Rowan walking unsuspectingly into the trap—
But it was only a room, full of fumed-oak furniture. She looked up at the portrait of Emil Fogel, the esteemed cotter-pin manufacturer. “If only you could talk!” said Miss Withers. “But you did, didn’t you? Only you should either have kept silent or else said just a little more …”
He stared back glumly, and the schoolteacher hastened to straighten up the room a little, carrying out glasses. Then in the kitchen she washed up the dishes remaining from Mr. Huff’s supper, which had evidently consisted of potato pancakes and applesauce. Talley begged for and received a cold-remaining pancake, and then bedded down obediently in a corner, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. But all the same his mistress tied the refrigerator door shut, and barricaded the swinging door of the kitchen.
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