He shook his head and sighed again. “I’ve been thinking about it all morning. I can’t figure it. If someone thought I knew something and wanted to kill me, why didn’t he walk in on me with a gun, or let me have it on a dark street?”
“To do that,” Devlin said, “a man would need an alibi. What he tried on you doesn’t call for one. No one knows when he planted the stuff and he couldn’t tell when you’d drink it. The doc says those two drinks you had would probably have been fatal if they hadn’t got to you in time. Must have been big ones.”
“They were big enough, I guess,” Calvert said. “I had a couple of ounces, straight. I was fagged out and worried about the show and then about five minutes later I felt so lousy I took another hooker. It must have been the dope working on me but I didn’t know. I just felt like I had to have another drink or I’d be sick.”
Murdock turned his hat over. As he examined the label he said, speaking to Devlin, “Getting back to the time the killer planted the bottle. It had to be after six last night because I was in Nagle’s office until nearly then.”
“That’s right.” Devlin turned back to Calvert. “Did you know a fellow named Rudy Nagle? A private detective.”
“No.” Calvert shook his head and then stopped shaking it abruptly and tipped it slightly, gaze narrowing. “Wait a minute. A private detective? Yes. I walked into Sheila’s office three months ago and Bronson was saying something like Sheila wasn’t the only one who could hire a private detective—I didn’t hear any name, though,” he added. “They stopped talking about it when they saw me, and Bronson went out.”
“Nagle was shot last night,” Devlin said.
“Oh,” said Calvert, and his eyes got round. “After I drank that stuff?”
“I don’t know,” Devlin said. “When did you drink it?”
“Around eight-thirty. A few minutes later, maybe.”
“How long after you came home?”
“Pretty soon after. I’d had a light dinner at a place on West Fifty-Third and went to a movie.” He mentioned the theater and the picture and said, “I got out around quarter after eight and I must have got to my room by eight-thirty or a little after. Couldn’t have been more than five minutes or so when I finished the first drink and I don’t think it was more than ten at the most after that when I put away the second.”
“It checks,” Devlin said. “That would be around quarter or ten minutes of nine and the landlady found you at nine-twenty. You didn’t know what was happening to you, huh?”
“I only knew I felt awful,” Calvert said. “I sat there in the chair and waited for the second drink to take hold and instead of that things got foggier. I guess I just passed out.” He shook his head. “It still seems a funny way to kill a guy. Suppose I’d only taken one drink.”
“How do we know the guy expected you to take more than one? One would have put you out for several hours. The killer could have come back later, whenever it fitted his plans. Who would know it? Who would stop him from taking, say one of your neckties, and wrapping it around your neck and twisting it—like he did to Miss Vincent?” He pushed away from the door and straightened his hat. “You ought to buy that landlady a little present, Calvert. If anyone ever earned one, she did.”
He opened the door, held it for Murdock. He said he might get in touch with Calvert later.
“There’s one thing I forgot to tell you about Bronson,” he said to Murdock when they were in the police car again. “While my boys were looking for him this morning one of them sort of accidentally picked up a glass from the carafe set of his. The prints looked okay—a thumb and two fingers. We should know if he’s Myron Wortman by tonight or tomorrow morning. Where do you want to go?”
Murdock asked to be dropped at any Lexington Avenue subway station and fifteen minutes later he walked up to his hotel desk and found two messages in his box. When he ripped the first one open he saw that it was from Dale Jordan, giving a city number he could call. The other, as he suspected, was a reminder to call the long-distance operator.
He knew this would be another attempt to reach him by his managing editor, and though he wanted to stop then and telephone the girl, he decided it would be better to go to his room and get the business part over while he had time.
In his room he asked for Dale Jordan’s number first and when she answered and he identified himself he said, “A fine thing, running out on me and not leaving any address and scaring me to death. Where are you?”
She mentioned a hotel on the West Side. “I’m sorry, Mr. Murdock,” she said, and sounded that way. “Really I am. I just didn’t think that—well, to tell the truth Keith told me not to.”
“He’s not in town, is he?”
“No. I called him after you left the other night. I told him about Sheila and you and what had happened and how we thought someone wanted to steal the scripts I had. He made me promise to go to a hotel in the morning and take the scripts with me and not to tell a soul.”
“And he was right,” Murdock said. “That was smart.”
“Then this morning I saw a piece in the paper about a private detective who had been murdered. I remembered hearing Sheila mention the name once—Rudy Nagle.”
“Mention to whom?”
“I’ve forgotten. It could have been when she was talking on the telephone. And then I wondered if that had anything to do with the other murder.” She hesitated and her voice became contrite. “So I thought I’d better tell you.”
“You decided you could trust me.”
“That’s not fair,” the girl said. “You know I trusted you. I told you all about the scripts, didn’t I? Only Keith said—”
“Sure,” Murdock said. “I was only kidding. Now will you stay put for a little while? I want to ask you some things. I’ll be there in a half hour, okay?”
When the girl agreed he hung up, stretched out on the bed, coat still on and hat tipped over his eyes, and flashed the hotel operator. He said he was ready to take the long-distance call when she could get it.
T. A. Wyman, the managing editor of the Courier, was annoyed and at once made clear the subject of this annoyance. Murdock let him talk, not interrupting and agreeing mentally that he was guilty of all the things Wyman accused him of.
“I know it,” he said, when Wyman’s voice began to suffer from lack of breath. “Sure,” he said.
“The only thing we got on that Vincent thing,” said Wyman, “was what we picked up from the press association wires. I didn’t want to crowd you so I let you alone, figuring you were working on some angle. I never have crowded you, damn it. You’ve always produced and I knew I could count on you for pictures if anyone could get them. But I don’t hear from you. Not even a lousy wire. And when I call yesterday you’re out—or you won’t accept the call—and you’re out last night and this morning. What the hell goes on?”
“A homicide lieutenant by the name of Devlin has been breathing down my neck.”
“Well tell him to lay off.”
Wyman was off again, and Murdock let him go. Now and then he made some reply of conciliation and in the end he quieted Wyman down by saying he had some pictures of Sheila Vincent’s show and expected to get some more.
“You told me to come down here and get some rest,” he said, and now that he thought of the idea he began to work up a certain resentment to things in general, grasping this outlet for complaints hitherto denied him. “Instead of that,” he said, “I’m up to my neck in murder. ‘Take it easy,’ you said, didn’t you? And what happens?”
He said other things. He said if he hadn’t been lucky he might have been thrown in jail for twenty years. He said he was going without sleep and getting held up and shot at and pushed around by cops and hoodlums.
“And what does it get me?” he demanded, working up to the climax of this presentation of indignation and ill treatment. “Abuse. You sit up there with your cigar in your big executive’s chair and con me into a job I didn’t want and with my luck it has to wind
up with murder. Furthermore—”
“Wait a minute,” Wyman said. “I have to find out what’s going on, don’t I? How do I know you’re working on the thing unless you tell me?”
“I’m surprised at you,” Murdock said, grinning into his hat now and knowing he had Wyman on the run. “You tell me I’m the best man you got and you pay me the most money—according to you—and yet if I don’t make out a daily report like a hairpin salesman you get miffed.”
“I’m not miffed,” Wyman shouted. “Forget it, will you? I’m sorry I mentioned it. Pretend I didn’t call you. Maybe one of these days I’ll get smart enough to know I can’t out-talk you. Come back when you can and be damned sure you bring some pictures. Lots of pictures. Good-by.”
Murdock felt better. He hung up and closed his eyes. The bed felt comfortable and its invitation to rest was almost irresistible. He lay quietly, considering its attractions for five blissful minutes; then he remembered Dale Jordan and what he had to do. He stood up, groaning, straightened his hat, and started on his way.
19
THE WESTLEY WAS a ten-story, pressed-brick structure with a grimy façade and a vertical sign suspended in front that spelled out the name. There had at one time been an addition to the sign which said: Rooms $1.50 up but this had long since been tossed aside, and if you were lucky you could now get one of those rooms for four dollars if you paid in advance.
It was on the south side of the street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues and there were five others like it in the block, distinguishable only by the color of the brick and the signs which advertised them. This one had a narrow, downward-sloping entrance foyer, flanked on the left by a coffee shop so that the lobby had no windows except at the rear overlooking a narrow court, and Murdock went straight to the elevators, ignoring the operator’s inspection as they rode up.
Dale Jordan opened the door as soon as he knocked, and when he saw her smile he felt good all over because she was so young and genuine and so frankly glad to see him. She wore a green skirt and a yellow pullover which molded affectionately her slenderness, and her legs were bare except for the short wool socks and loafers. When she closed the door and saw him glance over the worn furniture and painted wooden bed she chuckled.
“It was all I could get,” she said. “I telephoned eighteen hotels and I couldn’t even talk to the room clerk. So I packed a bag and started walking.”
He counted the magazines on the bureau and found seven. “It looks as though you’d been staying in,” he said. “With the door locked, I hope.”
“Constantly. Except to let the maid and the waiter in.”
She asked him to take off his coat, and he said he wouldn’t stay long. “I just wanted to check up on those scripts.”
“Then you do think they have something to do with—with what happened to Sheila?”
“I don’t know. I’m just trying to figure how they fit.” He sat on the edge of the table-desk. “Forget about the ones you pasted together—the stories your husband wrote. What about the finished ones, the advance ones Sheila had written? You said she had three ahead, not counting the one she had sent to Faulkner.”
“Yes.”
“But the copies she kept of those three weren’t in her living-room desk that first morning. And when I got to her office after Lieutenant Devlin let me go, there were no copies in her file. Who would want to steal those?”
She looked at him, lips parted, and shook her head slowly, her long bob brushing her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“Think a minute,” he said. “What does it suggest to you?”
She took her time. She went over to the window and stared down at the narrow street. Her face was still thoughtful when she turned but presently she said, “That somebody wanted to prevent Sob Sister from continuing.”
“That’s the way it looks, doesn’t it?”
“But”—she paused, her expression puzzled—“I mean, it wouldn’t stop it. Not really. Because Keith can write the program, I know he can.”
Murdock gave her a few seconds to think around the idea. “But who knew about Keith when Sheila was killed?”
“Why—” She groped for a word and then seemed to forget what she had intended to say. “Oh,” she said, and then Murdock knew she had caught his inference.
“You knew about Keith,” he said. “Sheila knew she had stolen his scripts and plot ideas. No one else could know unless—”
“Unless what?” she said, a little breathless now.
“The only possibility might be Bronson. He was her agent. She might have discussed it with him, maybe back in the beginning when she decided to plagiarize your husband’s stuff. I don’t say she did and at even money I’d bet she didn’t; but I don’t know anything about her relations with Bronson so there’s no way we can be sure.”
He hesitated and said, “It’s pretty obvious that the one who stole the copies from Sheila’s desk and office filing-cabinet did so after she was murdered—but before he knew about your husband. And for my money the one who stole them murdered her, was seen or maybe even photographed by Rudy Nagle, and then, while pretending to agree to pay blackmail, made his plan to kill Nagle.”
“Then who came to my apartment the night you went home with me?” the girl asked.
“That,” said Murdock, “is one I can’t answer. It may have had something to do with the murder but it doesn’t have to be that way. Apparently someone wanted to get those pasted scripts and stories your husband wrote. If he had got them there would be no tangible proof that Sheila plagiarized them—except your story—or that your husband actually created Sob Sister.”
He slid off the desk and tossed his hat up, examining the crease when he caught it. He had, he realized, said about all he had to say and except for clarifying his own thoughts he could not see how he had made any progress.
“With Sheila dead and your husband out of the picture,” he said, “Owen Faulkner would own Sob Sister.”
And then it struck him hard and he stood bright-eyed and immobile as the idea blossomed and its implications became clear. For two seconds he stood that way, mind racing; then he snapped his fingers, and the sound seemed loud and startling in the otherwise quiet room.
“Look,” he said. “With those scripts and stories in the hotel safe and the typewriter your husband used to write them somewhere that only you and he know about you can prove he created Sob Sister, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He said, “But if you couldn’t prove it, Faulkner would still own the show—because it was—in the absence of that proof—Sheila’s property.”
Dale Jordan sank weakly on the bed, her hazel eyes enormous and her mouth pale. Murdock walked to the door and came back.
“According to Devlin she left no will and had no relatives. Faulkner will inherit everything she has.”
The girl took a deep breath and spoke softly. “Owen wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“Hah!” said Murdock. “Wouldn’t he? He had plenty of motive without that,” he said and was about to remind her how Faulkner had hired Nagle and framed him and then he remembered that the girl did not know about this. “And right now, with what we know, Faulkner is the only one who had a motive for wanting to steal those patched-up stories and scripts.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. He asked when her husband was coming, and she said Monday. That made him think of the past Monday, when he had come down so blithely from Boston. It was now Thursday and seemed like three weeks.
“Be a good girl,” he said, “and stay right here until I can phone you again.”
He gave her a wink of confidence that she did not return and went out. When he crossed the sidewalk a minute or two later he found a taxi and told the driver he wanted to go to the Universal Broadcasting Company building.
It was shortly after three when Murdock opened the door of Faulkner’s office, and it was instantly apparent that an atmosphere of gloom prevailed. Faulkner’s sandy hair was tousled and his chronic e
xpression of harassment had added new lines to the corners of his mouth. He waved one hand weakly and let it fall but had no word of welcome to offer.
George Stark stood gazing out the window. He no longer looked so dapper. He had his coat off and when he turned round Murdock saw that his collar was open at the throat and his tie loosened. His bony face was dark and sullen and his little mustache seemed to have assumed a quality of resentment.
Murdock fanned his coat out and sat down on the only chair not strewn with typescript or objects of apparel. He got a cigarette going and stretched out his legs, waiting for some break in the mood but in no hurry. After perhaps another fifteen seconds Faulkner stirred in his chair.
“Anything new?”
Murdock said not much. He said he had seen Arthur Calvert at the hospital and understood he was to be released after lunch.
“He was in for a minute,” Faulkner said.
“Asking if my sponsor was going ahead with the show,” Stark said savagely. “As if he were the only one with a stake in the program.”
“He looked sort of peaked,” Faulkner said and eyed Stark with some irritation. “If you didn’t have anything but this show, like Arthur,” he said, “you’d be anxious, too, George.”
“What the hell does he think?” Stark said. “When I sell a sponsor on a program and when Gray & Rankin backs it, nobody’s going to cancel it—not for thirteen weeks, anyway.”
“All he was worried about was whether the contracts were signed yet.”
“Are they?” Murdock asked.
The two men considered him and exchanged glances.
“No,” Faulkner said.
“But not because my man doesn’t want the show,” Stark said. “The thing is”—he drove his fist into the palm of his hand nervously—“we need a writer. And a clear title to the show before we can sign anything.”
“You mean you have to wait until Keith Harding shows up?”
“If he can prove he originated the idea. The Jordan girl says he can prove it, but how the hell do we know that?”
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