Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  “Charlotte, sir. A lady’s maid employed here. I sometimes call her by the shorter nickname for convenien—”

  “Sure. Charlie over the water, Charlie over the sea.” Tracy was watching the butler intently. The guy was scared sick; shaking with a genuine case of the jitters. More than scared—terrified! Tracy had seen too much real terror in his dealings with the police not to recognize it instantly when he saw it again.

  “Exactly what is wrong here, Hunter?”

  “I’m terribly frightened, sir. Mr. Barker—”

  “What about him?”

  Hunter’s face quivered. The fool was sweating, Tracy saw, like a pig in an icebox.

  “He’s in danger of being murdered—tonight. Charlie begged me to tell you. Will you come with me and talk with her—and do something? Neither of us dares to speak to anyone else here. No one would believe us—and it would create a frightful scandal in the household. It’s—it’s awful—and Charlie has no proof—but maybe if you watched the master and kept an eye on him until this damnable evening is over—”

  Tracy’s fingers dug into Hunter’s wavering arm.

  “Where is this Charlie right now?”

  “In the dining-room, sir.”

  “Can we get there by some sort of side entrance?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s why I—”

  “Oke,” Tracy snapped alertly. “Let’s go!”

  Hunter led the way. They crossed a narrow hall, went through a well-stocked pantry and on into the kitchen. A tremendously fat Irishwoman in a spotless white uniform was busily superintending the dishwashing activity of two younger women, up to their wet elbows in soapy water. At sight of Tracy’s faultless evening attire the clatter of dishes stopped abruptly. The cook eyed Hunter with frosty hostility and curtsied briefly to the guest.

  “It’s all right, Ethel,” Hunter said quickly.

  Hunter pushed open a swinging door and Tracy followed him into the vast empty dining-room. A girl in the trim uniform of a lady’s maid rose quickly from a chair and stared timidly at the two men.

  “This is Mr. Tracy, Charlotte,” Hunter whispered. “He was kind enough to come, thank God!”

  She glided swiftly forward like a pale, haggard ghost.

  “You know?” she whispered. “Has Hunter told you what I—”

  She was a woman, not a girl. In the half light of the empty dining-room, the slimness of her figure had deceived Tracy. He saw now that the face of Charlotte was definitely middle-aged. Her eyes were crawling with the same swirl of nameless anxiety—terror—that he had seen in Hunter’s. For a moment they stared at each other, the newspaper columnist and the lady’s maid; and the air of the dining-room throbbed softly with the muted echo of harp music from the room beyond the closed sliding doors.

  “You’ve got to help us, sir,” Charlotte gasped.

  Tracy said curtly. “You suspect murder? An attempt at murder—here, tonight?”

  Charlotte’s face was like marble. “God knows, sir, I hate to accuse anyone, but—” She drew a long, shuddering breath. “Mr. Tracy, as the Lord is my judge, I’m afraid Miss Lily is going to murder her father tonight!”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “She’s hidden the poison, sir. Took it from the medicine chest in the bathroom. Her own medicine chest. That’s where I saw it this morning. I—I thought I might have mislaid it myself, but it was gone. I was afraid and I searched her room while she was taking her bath. I found it in the second drawer of her dresser. I didn’t touch it. It’s—cyanide of potassium, sir.”

  “Well? What of it? Miss Barker might have wanted the stuff for any one of a million different reasons.”

  “Not Miss Lily,” the maid breathed. “She’s a devil. A cold, calculating devil.”

  “You hate her, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do,” Charlotte gasped. “I do! And why shouldn’t I? Her father hates her. So does her mother. Grief and sorrow is all that she’s brought them. I tell you, terrible things are going on in this old house. If you don’t believe me, Mr. Tracy—look at this!”

  She pulled the starched uniform away from her shoulder and Tracy blinked as he saw five little scabs of dried blood on Charlotte’s pale skin.

  “That’s where she clawed me like a—a tigress this morning, sir. While I was combing her hair. You see, she got another one of them phone calls this morning—and she’s always a demon after she finishes talking to that—that man.”

  “What man?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Whoever he is, he’s trying to get money out of her, sir—that I’m certain of. For the last week, every single day, sir—she’s been begging and storming at her father to give her fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Fifty grand, eh?” Tracy whistled softly. “You absolutely sure about that?”

  “Ask Hunter. He heard the quarrels and the goings-on, too. They carried on terrible, sir—Miss Lily and her father. He’s a grand old man, lovable and kind—if you forget his foolishness about the stamps—”

  Swift interest flared into Tracy’s eyes. “Stamps? You mean postage stamps? … Never mind. … Tell me more about Lily.”

  “She raved at her father, sir, about that money she wants. Told him he was depriving her of her rightful inheritance. Said he was treating her like an infant, doling out pennies to her that should be dollars—and dollars in her own right. Said she’d have that fifty thousand dollars, if she had to take it from him as his legal heir.”

  “Did you actually hear Lily say that, Charlotte?”

  “I did,” the maid whispered. “So did Hunter.”

  The butler nodded slowly. There was dignity in his bearing, no evasion.

  “I listened at the keyhole, sir,” he said gravely. “I love the master. I’d do anything to keep him from harm.”

  Something in the haggard contour of Charlotte’s face seemed to interest the Daily Planet’s columnist. A vague thought grew in his mind.

  “You sure you didn’t send me my invitation, Charlotte?”

  “Invitation?” His ignorance made her smile wanly. “I’m only a lady’s maid, sir. The social secretary attends to that. Miss Dalton.”

  “I see. And either Mrs. Barker or Miss Dalton should know all about it, eh?”

  “Of course. The mistress always tells Miss Dalton exactly who she wants.”

  Tracy nodded. “Now about the poison. The missing potassium cyanide. Is it still hidden in Lily’s dresser, Charlotte?”

  “I don’t know, sir. It was there while she was taking her bath this morning. It was there before she dressed for dinner tonight.”

  Tracy’s voice sounded confused, nettled. “Mmmm. … What do you want me to do? Blow a police whistle?”

  “You’re a guest, sir,” Hunter said faintly. “You can—watch things, if you will. Keep at the side of the master, see that—” He shuddered slightly, “—that the master doesn’t drink anything that might—”

  In the tense silence Tracy could hear the faint, muted ripple of the harp beyond the closed dining-room doors. Vaguely sweet it sounded, like an endless ripple of golden rain.

  He looked at the maid and the butler; and again, temporarily, he put from his mind a shrewd guess he had made.

  “You said something about stamps,” he suggested.

  “A hobby of the master’s,” Hunter murmured. “I only mentioned it because of the presence here tonight of Mr. Carron, who also is a collector of rare stamps, sir.”

  “What’s he look like?” Tracy snapped.

  “He’s rather a tall man, sir. You must have noticed him. Sandy hair. Light complexion.”

  “Walks with a slight limp?” Tracy asked suddenly. “Something wrong with his hip?”

  “Oh, no, sir. That’s Major Griscom. Mr. Carron is thinner, taller. Surely you must have—”

  “Yeah, I remember him. … What about the stamps? Carron and Barker have an argument about stamps lately?”

  “Well—in a way, yes. They both wanted an extremely rare Siamese one,
with a native tree of some sort that has something to do with the cure of leprosy, I believe. This particular stamp, I heard Mr. Carron say once, is so valuable that it’s worth more than a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “And Barker grabbed it off for himself?”

  “The master bid it in—played a small financial trick on Mr. Carron, I’m afraid. They had a nasty scene or two, but Mr. Carron got over it and they’re still the best of friends.”

  Mmm, Tracy thought, I wonder could it be possible that the very forgiving Mr. Carron is the kind friend who fixed it for me to get that invitation here tonight?

  Harp music beat like the rush of a distant waterfall at the closed oaken doors of the dining-room.

  “By the way, Hunter,” Tracy said in a quiet, conversational tone, “how long have you and Charlotte been brother and sister?”

  Hunter’s face drained to a chalky white. His jaw sagged. He said thickly: “Sir?”

  “You heard me. Come across.”

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “Tell him the truth, Edward,” the maid whispered. She untwisted her hands, squared her tired shoulders. “We have nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Hunter’s eyes glared haggardly at the Daily Planet’s columnist.

  “Is it a crime, sir, to help one’s own flesh and blood? One’s own sister?”

  “Not in my book,” Tracy said gently. “We’ll just forget about this private little personal angle.”

  “God bless you, sir,” Hunter breathed.

  Charlotte didn’t say anything. Her brimming eyes said unspoken things that made the columnist feel pretty good.

  Tracy shrugged. “I think that I’ll—”

  A scream, a horrible, knifelike wail, cut across Tracy’s whisper and killed it. Deadened by the closed doors of the dining-room, that shrill screech sounded eerily like a woman locked in a sealed tomb.

  “What—what was that?” Hunter faltered.

  From the music room there echoed a confused jumble of shouting. A dull thump, like the sound of a heavy chair being overturned, made the dining-room floor vibrate.

  “Lights!” a hoarse voice was shouting. “Where are the lights? For God’s sake, turn ’em on!”

  The stupor left Tracy’s limbs. In three swift jumps he had reached the closed doors. A jerk of his muscular wrists sent the heavy sliding doors crashing apart. Hunter darted past him, rushed towards the dim, tapestried wall. There was a faint click and the lights came on.

  All that Tracy’s brain seemed to register at first was the overturned harp. It had fallen to the floor in a dented ruin. The blond harpist in the white robe was trying hysterically to free her imprisoned left foot. The hem of her flimsy robe had caught on one of the big gilded pedals and was ripped halfway up her thigh. Unaware of her near nudity she was struggling hysterically to get her bleeding foot free. Tracy propped up the harp for a second and got her over to a chair.

  At the other end of the room, Mrs. Barker was still screaming, pushing feebly at a suave gentleman who was trying to restrain her. On the rug in front of them both, flat on his face, lay John P. Barker.

  “All right!” Tracy called out suddenly in a hard, clear command. “Stop all that noise in here! Everybody!”

  He advanced slowly towards the motionless figure on the rug.

  Successively, like quick motion picture flashes, the columnist’s eye registered the various marionette figures in the music room. Major Griscom was wrestling gently with the wife of the man on the floor, pushing her soothingly into a chair. Lily Barker kept staring at the body of her father, with a pinched, white look about her intolerant nostrils and a hysterical tremor at her lips. Hunter was still over by the wall, his fingers still resting uncertainly on the light switch. Carron, the stamp man, a bare two feet from the body, was staring down at John P. Barker with a peculiar grimace on his calm lips, that might have been the faintest of sneers. Carron seemed to have his nerves well in hand; he was noticeably steadier than Griscom.

  It was Major Griscom who first dropped to one knee beside the body. Tracy promptly shoved at him, knocked him off balance.

  “Get away!” the columnist ordered. “Keep your paws off him!”

  “Why, you bounder—what do you mean by—”

  “This might be murder,” Tracy snapped. “If so, I’ll take charge until the police get on the job.”

  An elderly, efficient-looking man rushed forward. “I’m the family physician,” he told Tracy. In a soberly quiet silence, he tested swiftly John Barker’s heart, pulse, respiration. He pronounced the man stone dead.

  Jerry’s eyes lifted slightly, measured the assembled company.

  “And don’t any of you people go telephoning for an ambulance,” he said with a premeditated harshness. “We won’t be needing any tonight, thanks.” He watched Mrs. Barker take the news. She hadn’t fainted. She didn’t now. Lily’s eyes were still darkly enigmatic; she looked sick with horror. The major very watchful; not half so angry as he had pretended to be. Carron, the stamp collector, was definitely grinning at the columnist.

  “Exactly what happened in here, Mr. Carron?” Tracy asked him. “Hard to say,” the stamp man replied calmly. “For one thing, it was infernally dark in here—just a dim circle of light around the harp, the rest of the room pretty vague.” He stared coolly at Tracy. “Matter of fact, I didn’t even notice when you left the room, my friend. May I ask when that occurred? And why?” Tracy frowned. “Suppose you let me attend to the questions, Mr. Carron. Did Mr. Barker cry out at all?”

  “No. I thought he was asleep. He usually dozes at—er—musical affairs like this. The first thing any of us I knew was when Barker slid quietly out of his chair and hit the floor with a thump. Then Mrs. Barker screamed and we all—”

  “But you didn’t see or hear anything unusual before that?”

  “Nothing at all. Not a thing. Sorry.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Carron.” The physician moved close to Tracy. “You suggested it might be murder. Had you any reason to suspect that?” he asked.

  “Suppose you tell me what you think,” Tracy countered.

  “It is impossible to tell at once,” the physician answered slowly. “There is, however, a suspicious odor that might be cyanide.”

  “Is there a phone handy in here?” Tracy asked Hunter.

  “Not here, Mr. Tracy. I can plug in a portable directly, sir.”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  The butler turned obediently and Lily Barker’s voice hit him in the back like a hard, icy hand: “Don’t!”

  Tracy said, with the mildest of smiles: “Do you want to climb into a patrol wagon, Miss Barker, and ride to a cell and perhaps have to answer a whole lot of questions—or do you want to behave sensibly? … Go ahead, Hunter. Plug that telephone in.”

  “Do you happen to be a policeman, Mr. Tracy?” Lily sneered. “I should have guessed it earlier—when I first saw the cut of your evening clothes.”

  Mrs. Barker shrugged and sat up straighter in her chair. “Who is this man? I’ve been wondering all evening how he got in here.”

  “You’ll find my invitation on your tray out in the hall, madam,” Tracy said. “As to who invited me—I’m as interested in that angle as you are. Did you invite me?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Did your husband?”

  Mrs. Barker didn’t answer, just glared at him. Very definitely in a shrewish mood. Not so wrought up over the unexpected death of her husband as Tracy had first surmised.

  With a gently quiet mockery the Daily Planet’s wizened little columnist scanned the rest of them.

  “Did you invite me, Major Griscom? Did you, Hunter? Did you, Mrs. Bascomb? Did you, Lily? Did you, Mr. Carron?”

  He repeated the silly query patiently. Nobody answered him.

  Jerry Tracy grinned. “All right—I’m here. What I’d like to know is: Who asked me to come? And why?”

  He took the portable telephone from Hunter. Smiled over the t
ransmitter at the assembled company.

  “And what’s more, radio listeners, I’m gonna stick close to this house till I find out what goes on.”

  He called Police Headquarters, and asked for Inspector Fitzgerald. Fitz was not there. He waited patiently until a switchboard relay carried his voice to Fitzgerald’s modest home up on Cathedral Heights, in the shadow of Columbia University.

  “Hello, Fitz? This is Jerry. Jerry Tracy.”

  He heard a low, angry gasp from Lily Barker.

  “So that’s who you are!” she said harshly. “Jerry Tracy! A cheap tabloid columnist! A keyhole snooper! A—a garbage collector!”

  “Right,” Tracy grinned. “With a proud record of always delivering the garbage. Never muffed a bum tomato in my life. … Listen, Fitz! I’m down here in the John P. Barker residence. Somebody just bumped the old man. … Looks like it. Poison, says little Jerry, and I don’t think I’m wrong. … Huh? Sure thing. I’ll be werry glad to tell ’em, all of ’em. Be seeing you, keed.”

  He gave the telephone instrument back to Hunter.

  “That was Inspector Fitzgerald, folks, in case you tuned in late. He wants me to tell you that if anybody present tries to leave this house before he gets here, he’ll pick ’em up with a warrant and heave ’em in the can—jail, to you.”

  He walked about the room, leisurely examining the rug. They watched him bend over suddenly, pick something up. He examined the object behind his cupped palm, then placed it carefully in his pocket.

  “If necessary,” he told the watchful faces, “I’ll put Hunter and a few of the boys in plush on the doors. But if you’ll take my advice, you’ll forget all about the exits. All people will sit yourselves quietly down and start chewing your nails very thoughtfully. An alibi isn’t going to hurt anybody in here.”

  The police wheels began turning presently, without much confusion. Inspector Fitzgerald took charge, with the inevitable Sergeant Killan at his elbow. The guests were assembled in the library and a uniformed patrolman went on duty at the front door.

  Max Goldfarb, the chubby little medical examiner, got professionally chummy with the corpse. He took his time, examined John Pennington Barker with slow, painstaking thoroughness.