“Excitement?” Gail said.
“Much excitement. Mr. Murdock might tell you about it if you gave him another drink.”
Gail Roberts looked anxiously at Murdock as Louise went up the stairs. “What excitement?” she asked. “What did she mean?”
Murdock told her as much as he dared because he thought she might help him. She stood in front of the fireplace now, her hands behind her, a smallish, slender girl in a checked skirt, cashmere pullover, and a mannish brown-tweed jacket. Her chestnut hair, rich and lustrous in the lamplight, was simply bobbed and even from where he sat he could tell that the lashes above the hazel eyes were thick and black and long. Intent, troubled eyes now, with no sign of the things he remembered most in her—the easy laughter, the quick, sweet smile. Her face as she listened was as grave as his own and when he finished she asked the question he expected.
Why? What was the significance of that painting Murdock called the Jade Venus. He gave her the answer he had given others. He said he didn’t know.
“And you think Uncle Albert did?” she asked anxiously. “He must have thought something or he wouldn’t have rushed off like that alone.”
Murdock had the same idea but he did not say so. “Well, you know how he is,” he said, as though it didn’t matter. “He’s always steaming around about something.”
“You don’t believe that,” Gail Roberts said.
“For one thing, he was steaming about you and a lad named Roger Carroll.”
He saw the quick hurt in her eyes before she glanced away and was sorry he had spoken.
“Yes,” she said. “I—I’m moving into town, Kent.” She caught her lip and then her chin came up and she returned to the subject Murdock had changed. “What could Uncle Albert have known?”
Murdock sighed. “The only thing I can think of is this: Something Erloff said or did may have given your uncle some clue, some idea. I don’t know what else it could be.”
He stood up. There was one more thing he had to do before he left. He said, thoughtfully, “That shipment came three days ago. Who has been in the house since then? What outsider?”
“There were some reporters the day before yesterday, and this morning there was a man named Carl Watrous—he’s the theatrical producer and—”
Murdock said he’d met Watrous.
“And yesterday morning a man named Damon came. I think Uncle Albert showed him the collection too.”
Something stirred in Murdock’s consciousness and his eyes grew narrow and remote. “Damon,” he said softly.
“He’s a dealer. He runs a place called the Art Mart, where you can buy paintings from twenty-five dollars up.”
“I guess it isn’t the same one,” Murdock said. “Who else?”
“No one.… No, wait. A young man came yesterday afternoon. He asked to see Professor Andrada but Uncle Albert wasn’t in. I think his name was Lorello; something like that. He said he’d come back.”
“Did he?”
She said not that she knew of but if it was important she would ask the others—Louise and Mrs. Higgins and Arlene, the maid. Murdock said not to bother now and slipped his arm through hers as he walked her to where his coat and cap were. He said he’d be back in the morning.
“Maybe the old fire-eater will co-operate then,” he said. “Though if you’re still up when he comes back”—he glanced at his watch and found it was just after eleven—“you might ask him to phone me at the hotel. Not that I expect him to.”
Chapter Three
MURDOCK FOLLOWS A HUNCH
LIEUTENANT BACON, of the Homicide Squad, had his hat on and was just getting into his old gray topcoat when Murdock opened the door of his little office at Police Headquarters. He was a tall, graying, stiff-backed man, Bacon, and one seldom given to laughter or any demonstration of surprise. Yet when he saw Murdock he exhibited both.
First he stared, jaw sagging. Then he squinted, first with one eye and then with both; finally he gave a short quick laugh and dropped his coat.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said and shook hands and waved Murdock to the room’s extra chair. “Sit down, boy. How are you, anyway?”
Murdock grinned and sat down and said he was fine.
“Heard you’d been wounded,” Bacon said.
“I got a little clip on the head,” Murdock said, “and a hole in one thigh, but it’s pretty well healed.”
Bacon opened a desk drawer and lifted the lid of a cigar box. The long black stogies inside which he bought at an average cost of three for a dime had been the object of insulting innuendoes in the past and he did not offer Murdock one now, but selected one for himself and began patiently to manicure the end.
“Yeah,” he said when he saw Murdock’s grin broaden. “The same old Little Wonder Panetelas. And if prices keep going up these’ll come under the head of good cigars before long.”
He rolled the stogie between his lips until he was satisfied with the feel of it. He asked Murdock about Italy and the war and lit the cigar. He nodded and puffed contentedly for a few minutes and then he ran out of questions and the conversation died. Finally he examined the burning end of the stogie, then let his glance come up to Murdock’s face.
“I forgot to ask,” he said. “Was this a personal call or have you got ideas about something?”
“Well—both.”
“Um, Well, it’s a relief to have you come in without a camera in your hand. Where’d you find the body this time?”
“No body,” Murdock said. “But maybe you can give me a hand.”
Bacon sighed. “I shoulda known, I shoulda known.” He leaned back and planted the cigar in the corner of his mouth. “Okay, give out with it.”
Murdock sat up and told Bacon what had happened to him at the station and gave a description of Erloff and Leo. He paused before telling what had happened at Andrada’s and then went ahead and told what he could about that. He had not forgotten what Andrada had said about the police but Bacon did not have to make this official and what Murdock wanted was something else—information and perhaps a little non-official co-operation.
Bacon pulled at his nose and looked skeptical. “It don’t make sense,” he said. “A guy putting the slug on Andrada for a picture that had no value.”
Murdock ducked that one. He said, “A fellow named Damon looked over the Andrada collection a couple of days ago. I understand he runs a place called the Art Mart. I wonder if it could be George Damon.”
“Sure it’s George Damon.”
Nothing moved in Murdock’s face but his mind started to race and presently he began to talk, not to Bacon but to himself, slowly, as if unaware that he was speaking at all.
“George Damon made a lot of money the last few years of Prohibition. He made a lot more on pinball machines and he started the first dog track before he retired. He traveled abroad in ’37 and ’38 and began to collect paintings. There was a law about bringing art work out of most countries at the time and I heard he got a few things into this country by having the original canvasses painted over and then having them restored here.”
“You mean,” Bacon said, “he’d buy a painting, say in Italy, and know he couldn’t take it out of the country so he’d hire some artist to paint another picture over the original—a bad enough picture so the authorities would let Damon bring the picture here. Then when he got around to it he’d have somebody who knew how remove the cheap picture on top.”
Murdock heard all this as so many words without meaning. He was still concentrating on his original thought. “So now Damon’s running a place called the Art Mart,” he said.
Bacon’s rain-gray eyes were thoughtful. He waited, watching his companion, saying nothing. Finally Murdock sat up and looked at him.
“I think I’ll call on Damon.”
“Now?” Bacon frowned. “Hell, it’s half-past eleven.”
“I’ll take a chance on catching him up. Look, here’s what you can do for me.”
“Wait a minute.” Ba
con was very patient. “I’m a homicide cop, remember? Find me a body or something and I’ll have to go to work. But anything else is out of my line and you know it and if you go chasing around—especially after a sharpshooter like Damon—”
“George Damon could have hired Erloff and Leo,” Murdock said.
“Not to steal a lousy painting that has no value.”
“If I can talk to Damon,” Murdock said, ignoring Bacon’s point, “and if I can leave the idea that maybe we’ve got a line on Erloff, and this place I was taken to tonight, maybe Damon will try to get in touch with Erloff.”
“It’s out of my line,” Bacon said.
Murdock started to argue, then stopped. His patience matched Bacon’s but added to it was a mixture of resignation, scorn, and disgust. He nodded, his eyes sardonic. He stood up.
“Okay, if that’s the way it is. It was just an idea. I didn’t expect you to do anything officially but I thought maybe you could do me a little favor. I thought if you could check a phone call for me I might—But the hell with it. Forget it.… Well, it’s good to see you.”
Bacon watched all this through narrowed lids. He wasn’t fooled; at least not much. It was an act of Murdock’s and Bacon had seen it before. The trouble was that Bacon kept remembering other times when Murdock had ideas and had talked him into co-operating against his better judgment. Sometimes the ideas were bad, but always they were intelligent, and very often the idea turned out to be sound and productive in the light of what happened later on. Experience had shown that the odds, if any, were likely to be on Murdock’s side and in the end Bacon shook his head and his lips moved in what, for Bacon, passed as a smile.
“Wait a minute,” he said sadly. “Do you have to pout?”
Murdock stopped, his smile smothered in the depths of his gaze.
“You think you can worry George Damon—assuming he had anything to do with this job tonight—into maybe phoning Erloff. You want me to get the telephone company to check on any calls that come from Damon’s house after you leave.”
“You’ve got friends in the phone company.”
“I want to keep them, too.”
“Just for an hour after I leave,” Murdock said. “I’ll be there by twenty of twelve or so and I’ll be gone by midnight. Anything that goes out of his house phone during the next hour—”
“Okay, okay.”
Murdock grinned. “Thanks.” He stepped to the door, his thoughts sobering. “Probably nothing’ll happen.”
“Probably not.”
“It’s just an idea and—”
“Beat it,” Bacon said. “And remember! Even if the idea is good, even if you turn up this Erloff and Leo, don’t come to me. Go to the D.A. if you want and sign a complaint. This is still out of my line—unless you happen to knock one of them off.”
It was only a four-block walk from Police Headquarters on Berkeley Street to George Damon’s house. It was in the middle of the block, a four-storied, old stone house with ugly circular bays ogling at the street and heavy stone steps leading up-to an arched stone doorway. It was on the far side of the street as Murdock turned the corner and he was nearly opposite it when the light spilled from the opening door.
His first thought was a happy one: that he was in time and Damon had not gone to bed; his next reaction was more impulsive than anything else. There was a parked car in front of him and when he saw the door close and the man start down the steps, he moved closer to the car and waited, his pulse quickening as a new wild hope came to him.
The hope died when the man paused on the sidewalk to button his coat. It was dark there and Murdock did not know who Damon’s visitor was but he could tell the man was too tall to be Erloff and too husky to be Leo. He stood still and watched the visitor start briskly up the street, finding nothing familiar about the figure until it crossed the street and passed diagonally under the light at the corner; then Murdock knew. The thick neck, the squarish face, the powerful shoulders under the balmacaan told him this was Carl Watrous.
Murdock stood frowning in the darkness until Watrous had gone and then moved across the street and up the steps to the stone doorway. There was a push button set in the pilaster. He pressed it in one long ring, and was about to press it again when he heard the latch click. Light from a hall beyond the entryway flowed about him and a thin, slightly stooped man in a short black coat and a bow tie looked out at him.
“I’m afraid Mr. Damon has retired, sir,” he said when Murdock asked his question.
“Will you see, please? Tell him it’s important. Tell him it’s Captain Murdock.”
The butler hesitated, finally stepped back. “If you will wait here, sir,” he said when they were in the hall. He closed the inner door and started up the stairs, keeping to the middle, his head up, his feet making no sound.
Murdock glanced about. A single light encased in a frosted glass cone hung from the ceiling on a heavy metal chain and the illumination cast did not reach the obscure corners beyond the stairs. The walls were paneled and dark. On the right were two oils in gilt frames and on the left where the stairs mounted were three others, so spaced as to move upward parallel with the line of the stairs to the landing above.
The butler was halfway down the stairs before Murdock saw him. He still kept to the middle, looking straight ahead and saying nothing until he stopped in front of Murdock. Then he said, “This way, sir,” and turned and started up again.
The library was nearly as dark as the hall. A lamp with a parchment shade burned on the long, carved, table-desk but the rest of the room was so shadowed that all detail seemed lost against the background of books and paintings. George Damon stood in front of the desk, his back to the light so that his face was in shadow and without expression. He wore a silk dressing-gown and leather slippers and smelled faintly of Eau-de-Cologne.
“Captain Murdock.” Damon spoke slowly and his voice was smooth and thoughtful. “Your face is familiar but—”
“I used to work for the Courier-Herald,” Murdock said.
“Oh, yes. You’re the photographer. Kent Murdock, isn’t it? Sit down.” He waved toward a heavy leather chair diagonally in front of the desk. “What’s on your mind that’s so important, Murdock?”
Murdock took his time. He reached for cigarettes but Damon forestalled him and offered an ebony box. Murdock took one and accepted flame from a table lighter, but even then the illumination did not seem to touch Damon’s face.
“It’s about that collection of paintings that Professor Andrada got the other day. I understand you looked it over.”
“A fine collection too,” Damon said. “Very interesting. More variety than I expected. Some religious things from the Renaissance but also some of the impressionists. There is a Degas, for instance, that I wouldn’t mind owning and two very good Monets. A Renoir too, though I prefer the two I have. Of the older things there’s one of Tintoretto’s that’s a sweetheart. Of course he did hundreds of canvases and a lot of his work is uneven—they called him Il Furioso because of the speed and intensity of his work—but this one in the Andrada collection …”
Murdock let him go. There were about five more minutes of the same thing and he didn’t know half the names mentioned nor have any idea of the value of the items Damon specified; he did, however, get the idea that at least part of the lecture was a demonstration of some sort and he listened quietly until Damon checked himself.
“I had an idea when I went that maybe Andrada would consider selling one or two things.” Damon chuckled softly. “It was a bad idea. Andrada was giving it to the museum, lock, stock, and barrel.… But that wasn’t what you came to see me about, was it?”
Murdock said he’d been in Italy and knew something about the Andrada collection. He said he’d come up from Washington to check over a few things.
“There were three other pictures in that collection,” he said. “Moderns. On the surrealist line. Did you see them?”
“The things I saw were genuine.”
“Do you know a man named Erloff?” Murdock was watching Damon’s face but the shadows balked him. He could see the eyes and knew they were dark but that was all. He described Erloff.
“Um,” Damon said. “Not that I know of. Why?”
“He picked me up at the station tonight. He and a lad named Leo.” And then he told what had happened and where he had been taken.
Damon was leaning against the desk now. He had his arms folded and he seemed to be watching Murdock’s face intently. When he spoke there was something beneath the smooth cadence of his voice that had not been there before. At least that was what Murdock wanted to think and he listened carefully to every word.
“What’s that got to do with me?” Damon said.
“Erloff came up to Andrada’s place, slugged him when the old boy got suspicious, and ran out with the picture I call the Jade Venus. I was just wondering.”
“Wondering what, Murdock?”
“Wondering why a man like Erloff, who had never been in Andrada’s house, would want a picture like that. He went to a lot of trouble for a picture he had never seen.”
“You think somebody hired him?”
Murdock stood up and straightened his coat. “Somebody who had seen that picture described it to Erloff.”
Damon moved to the door and pressed a button. He stood back, his face still in shadow. “So maybe someone did. What makes that important to me?”
“I don’t know that it is.” Murdock kept his tone casual, without emphasis. “It’s important to me though, and you run a place called the Art Mart and if this Erloff knows something about painting I thought you might know him. I wondered if perhaps he was a customer of yours.”
“I don’t know the name,” Damon said. “But a lot of people come in my place I don’t know and—”
“Sure.… Well, I just thought I’d ask.” He saw the butler open the door and stand aside. “I think we’ll probably get him anyway. We’ve got a pretty good idea where the house is—the one they took me to—so it’s just a question of elimination until we nail the right one. We might want you to take a look at Erloff when we get him. You might know him under some other name.”
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