Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  “Dead very recently,” Max said. “Within an hour, maybe even sooner. Drugged first. Poisoned afterwards. The guy’s a diabetic; I thought at first it might be an insulin collapse. But it’s a poison job, all right. Potassium cyanide or a derivative. Administered hypodermically in the side of the neck. A needle or a long slender pin of some sort, coated with the stuff—probably made a paste of it with glycerine. Hole in the neck closed up almost instantly; but there’s a tiny drop of coagulated blood to show where the jab went in.”

  “Jabbed while he was drugged, eh?” Fitzgerald growled. He glanced at the Daily Planet man. “You were on the spot, Jerry. Any slants?”

  “Call Hunter in,” Tracy suggested. I

  Sergeant Killan got the butler. Tracy smiled faintly and showed the butler the object he took from his pocket. It was a long, slender pin with a round white head. The head was soiled and indented slightly on one side, as though someone had stamped hastily on it with a hard leather heel.

  “Recognize this pin, Hunter?”

  “I can’t say that I do, sir.”

  “Is Miss Barker still wearing her spray of orchids?”

  The butler hesitated, looked uneasy. “I—I don’t think so.”

  “Ever seen a pin of this type before?”

  “I believe it’s the sort of pin that—er—”

  He stopped talking, looked white and unhappy.

  Tracy nodded. “Okey, Hunter. That’s all. Beat it.”

  “Orchids, eh?” Fitzgerald muttered. “A corsage pin. Is that what you mean?”

  “Correct, me lad. Couldn’t possibly be anything else. The kind of pin that you get nowhere else on earth but from a florist. I picked the thing up back of Barker’s chair. It was crushed deep into the rug.” He added, absently: “I noticed that Lily Barker wasn’t wearing her orchid spray when the lights went on, Fitz.”

  “Yeah? Come on, Sarge.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tracy said. “I’d like to make a small guess about the drug angle before you go.” He smiled at little Max Goldfarb. “You were right about the guy being a diabetic. You might try analyzing a couple of the poor old fella’s saccharine pills. You’ll probably find ’em very sleepy-sleepy. He had one of ’em in his coffee tonight.”

  He glanced at the inspector.

  “And Fitz, before I tackled that hard-boiled daughter of Barker’s, I’d talk to the maid, Charlotte, first if I were you. Then Hunter.”

  “Anything else on the ball, Jerry?”

  “See what you make of Carron, the stamp collector. And don’t get too excited if I tell you that Major Griscom is a guy who could stand a lot of questioning. He dates back to the time before you were in favor down at Headquarters. If you can’t get him to talk much—ask Inspector O’Grady.”

  “Hey—where are you going?”

  Tracy stopped at the door. “Just looking around. Page me after you’ve lined up all your dope.”

  Fitz nodded to Killan. “We’ll examine ’em all in the dining-room, Sergeant. One at a time. The maid first—get the Barker girl’s maid.”

  “Name’s Charlotte,” Tracy murmured and closed the door behind him.

  He wandered out to the front hall, nodded genially to the cop on duty, poked unobtrusively about. Hunter went by, looking pale and distraught, and Tracy buttonholed him. He asked the butler questions, and on the answers drew a roughly penciled floor plan on the back of an old envelope, marked the various rooms with quick, nervous scrawls.

  After a while he walked leisurely upstairs to the second floor.

  Lily Barker’s room was about midway from the end of a long carpeted corridor. Tracy rapped briskly on the panel. No answer. He rapped again. Not a sound. He was turning the knob softly when the corridor plunged suddenly into total darkness. He heard the soft thud-thud of feet, tried swiftly to turn—and received a smashing impact on the back of his skull.

  It was a hasty blow, poorly aimed, but it dropped him to the floor in a dazed huddle. Dimly he heard the soft patter of retreating feet. Someone was screaming faintly.

  “What’s the matter? Is anything wrong?”

  The lights came on suddenly and flooded the corridor with brilliance.

  Lily Barker was the one who had screamed so half-heartedly. Her door was wide open. She was standing there looking at the dazed columnist. Staring at him with an expression that Tracy couldn’t be sure was relief—or disappointment.

  Hunter came running down the corridor. The blond Mr. Carron was right at his heels. Together, they helped Mr. Tracy to his feet, murmuring shocked and puzzled words. There was a ragged gash in Tracy’s scalp and he dabbed at it gingerly with a handkerchief.

  “What in the world has happened to you?” Carron said suavely, with the faintest tinge of mockery in his voice.

  “Who just turned on those corridor lights? Did you turn ’em on again?”

  “Not I, my friend.”

  “I did,” Hunter said slowly. “I heard someone scream—sounded like a woman—”

  “It was I who screamed,” Lily said. “Pardon the emotional outburst.” She kept staring at Tracy. It was disappointment, Tracy decided, not relief. Behind the mask of her smooth face, Lily was grimly disappointed about something.

  “—ran upstairs from the main hall,” Hunter was saying. “Saw that the corridor was dark. So I threw the hall switch properly—and there you were, sir.”

  “Yeah. There I was. … Whose room is that by the corridor switch? Barker’s, isn’t it? The dead man’s room?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anyone in there?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “Maybe I can. Stay here, all of you.”

  Tracy went down the hall, opened the door. There was nobody inside. Everything quietly normal. However, to Tracy’s morose eyes, the picture on the south wall looked the least wee bit askew. He lifted it and smiled briefly as he saw the tiny wall safe behind it. The safe was closed and locked.

  He went back to the group in the hall. “Battle’s over, folks. Not much of a battle, at that. Too small for Fitz even to hear it downstairs. Which may, or may not, mean something.”

  Lily Barker started to close her door and he laid a sternly detaining hand on her arm.

  “May I come in and chat a while?”

  “Is that a request or a command, Mr. Tracy?”

  “What do you think?”

  She shrugged and turned her back. He followed her inside and closed the door.

  “Why didn’t you answer my knock before, Miss Barker? I knocked twice, you know, and got no answer. Were you—afraid?”

  “I’m afraid of nothing,” she told him gravely. A flame blazed briefly back of her coldly somber eyes. She glanced at his cut scalp. “Not even of you, Mr. Jerry Tracy. Or weren’t you going to ask me about that?”

  “Did you poison your father, Miss Barker?”

  She laughed at him. A hard and musical little jeer. “Do you think it’s the usual thing for daughters to murder their loving parents? Oh, I forgot—you’re Jerry Tracy, of the dirty little Planet. Of course I murdered Dad! Picture on page two! Have you your camera all ready? A small one—hidden in the leg of your trousers, perhaps?”

  “Leave the sarcastic cracks to me,” Tracy said. “I do that stuff much better. They pay me dough for it.”

  Again Lily Barker laughed. She was holding herself in check with an iron will. But she was horribly nervous.

  “Have the servants told you about my shrewish temper, Mister Dirt Gatherer? Have they told you how I hate this horrible old tomb of a house—and everyone in it? Have they told you that I think my sainted mother is a pious fake and my father a tyrannical old fool? If they haven’t, Mister Tabloid Columnist, I’m telling you now. And you can tell your moron readers of the Planet that I’m bearing up bravely under the shock of my father’s unfortunate demise. Tell them that, Mister Snooper.”

  Jerry was completely unimpressed.

  “A little old-fashioned bawling act would make you feel a wh
ole lot better,” he growled. “You’re on the verge of hysterics. You hardboiled dames give me a pain.”

  “Finish talking and get out of my room, damn you!” she shrilled at him.

  “Okey. Let’s both stay hard. We’ll skip the murder charge for the present. I came in to see you about something else.”

  She got calmer all of a sudden. Watched him warily. “Hadn’t you better talk about the three things you haven’t said much about?”

  “All right.” Tracy chuckled. “Name three.”

  “A motive. A weapon. An opportunity.”

  “Make it four,” Tracy said. “Add an accomplice.”

  “May I ask what you have in mind now?”

  “You may ask, Dollink, but you won’t get any answers.” He pointed negligently towards her dresser. “Mind if I get nosey?”

  “Not at all. Try and not leave any dirty thumb-marks on my underthings. I’d hate to have to burn them.”

  He went through the dresser very carefully. She watched him with a sneering, triumphant smile.

  “Find what you wanted, Mr. Keyhole?”

  “Nope. I was looking for a bottle of silver polish.”

  “I should think brass polish would suit you better. Why not look downstairs in the kitchen?”

  “Or your bathroom?” Tracy suggested. He drew a blank on that. She didn’t register a thing.

  “By the way, what happened to your orchid corsage? Wilted?”

  “Yes. I always throw flowers away when they wilt. I can’t bear to wear them after that.”

  He bowed suddenly. “Sorry to have disturbed you. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll run back home to my newspaper cesspool.”

  Lily Barker made no comment to that. Walked to the door with her back as straight as a poker and shut him out.

  The servants’ stairs were at the rear of the hall. Tracy went down the flight and paused on the landing, his brow furrowed thoughtfully. Suddenly he stiffened, his ears became alert. Was that a groan he had heard or did he imagine it? It was very faint; but he was sure he had heard a groan. A man this time, too, not a woman!

  His tensed fingers undamped from the stair-rail. He bounded upstairs to the second floor and stared down the long carpeted corridor. Lily Barker’s door was still closed. The corridor was very quiet, bathed brightly in prosaic yellow electric light. Everything seemed exactly the same as it had been a minute or two before. Except—

  The little columnist’s breath sucked in sharply. A bedroom door was open! One that he had carefully closed himself. John Barker’s door. The dead man’s room!

  Tracy sped silently down the corridor. An idea ran hand-in-hand with him; the memory of a framed etching hanging slightly askew, with a wall safe behind it. Was someone at it again? The same guy who had tried it before?

  The bedroom was dark, the shades tightly drawn on the windows. The light from the hallway showed Jerry a dim figure lying face-down on the floor, beyond the bed. The Daily Planet columnist sprang into the room, fumbled for the light button, clicked the room into sudden brilliance.

  He turned over the man on the floor and grunted disgustedly. It was Hunter, the butler. Hunter’s eyes were closed and his face a pasty white. The back of his scalp was damp with blood where someone had struck him. The same sort of ragged little gash as the one that still throbbed uneasily on Tracy’s own scalp.

  Hunter’s eyelids fluttered. He groaned weakly: “I believe I’ve been—hit, sir.”

  Jerry got an arm under him and helped him up to the chair. The butler’s eyes widened with horror as he saw the framed picture lying up-sidedown on the bed. He pointed weakly.

  “The picture, sir. Someone—”

  “So I gather,” Jerry said shortly. His glance jerked across towards the tiny safe in the wall. The door of the safe was still apparently shut. He walked over, reached up and tried it. Locked, as before.

  “Feel all right now, Hunter? Can you talk now?”

  “I’m—I’m all right, sir.”

  “What happened?”

  “I—I scarcely know, sir.” He put a shaky hand to his scalp and winced. “I was on my guard, sir, so to speak, after what had happened to you. I loitered down below stairs, wondering whether the fellow who had attacked you might not be still hiding somewhere up here. I thought that perhaps I might watch to see whoever came down the stairs later and make a mental note of it, sir, for your information.”

  “And it turned out to be a bum idea? Go ahead, Hunter.”

  “And then, suddenly, it seemed to me that I heard a tiny noise—like someone tapping with a hammer on metal. It came from up here. There was no policeman in sight, I didn’t know where you were—so I crept silently up the stairs. The master’s door was closed. I opened it very cautiously, stepped inside to investigate—and someone struck me from behind and—well, knocked me silly, sir, if I may use the expression.”

  “Who was it? Get any kind of a look at the guy?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t. You see, the fellow sprang at me from the rear and—”

  “Okey. Or rather—nuts!” Savage disappointment rode high in Tracy’s eyes. “Tell me something, Hunter. Who else besides the dead guy—this John Barker gent—knew the combination of that wall safe?”

  “No one, sir.” The butler shook his bleeding head positively. “It’s the master’s own private safe.”

  “No one? Are you sure? His wife, maybe? How about his daughter? Wouldn’t they know?”

  “No, sir. To my own personal knowledge, no one had ever closed or opened that safe but the master.”

  “Any idea what’s in it?”

  Hunter hesitated. “I’d be only guessing, sir.”

  “Go ahead and guess.”

  “Currency, perhaps. Securities, maybe. Possibly stamps.”

  “Postage stamps, you mean?”

  Hunter nodded. “I’m familiar with most of his collection, sir. That is, most of them are kept in large books with no attempt at concealment. But some of the more valuable ones might be in the safe.”

  Tracy’s eyes got narrow and thoughtful. “Like that Siamese one, for instance?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He never showed that stamp to me.”

  “And he never told you—or anyone else as far as you know—the combination of the safe?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Check.” Tracy grinned ruefully. “Let’s get the hell out of here and find us a place to wash. We can both stand a bit of scalp-scrubbing, I guess.”

  Sergeant Killan almost bumped into them as they stepped into the hall. The sergeant stopped short and his eyes bulged with blank amazement.

  “Hello! What the hell have you lads been doing? A fight, or something?”

  “Yeah,” Jerry said dryly. “Didn’t you hear it?”

  “Not me. I was just coming up here to get that young Barker dame. Fitz wants to talk to her.” His eyes narrowed. “What goes on, Jerry? This lad Hunter been pulling a fast one?”

  “Nope. Someone has been bopping Hunter and me on the dome—one at a time.”

  “Yeah? Something phoney up here, eh? Stick around a second. I’ll get Fitz up here right away.”

  Jerry shook his head to that. “Don’t bother. You go ahead and get the girl down to Fitz. I want to go downstairs myself. Got an idea I’d like to look around. How about you, Hunter?”

  Hunter shuddered and nodded wanly.

  “Downstairs will surely seem a lot more comfortable to me, sir,” he quavered.

  They waited at the head of the stairs for Killan and Miss Barker. She looked at the butler’s bleeding head with a small, tight smile.

  “What in the world has happened to you, Hunter?”

  “Someone struck me, Miss.”

  “What—again?” She laughed out-right, spoke jeeringly to Tracy: “You two gentlemen really ought to be in a shooting gallery. Don’t you ever remember to duck?”

  For once in his cocksure life, Jerry Tracy had no comeback. Instead, he said gruffly to Killan: “Keep all this stuff under
the hat. I’ll talk to Fitz about it later on.”

  They all went downstairs and Hunter walked unsteadily back to the kitchen.

  Tracy wandered soberly through the music room and the library, scowling at the scattering of men and women who stole silent, interested glances at his damaged pate.

  The faint chuckle of Major Griscom infuriated him, but he managed to keep his rising temper in leash.

  “Seen Mr. Carron anywhere about, Major?”

  “Why, yes. He was in the dining-room answering questions for your jolly old inspector friend a little while ago. Then he took a book, I believe, and went into the library. … What happened to the head, old fellow? A lump, by Jove! You’ve an egg on the scalp, old fellow, like a bloody ostrich affair.” Tracy whirled irritably away from him towards Mrs. Bascomb.

  “Tell me, madam, has this alleged British humorist been in here during the last five minutes or so?”

  “Why, no.” Mrs. Bascomb stared at him mildly. “Major Griscom came in here just before you did.”

  “I see. Thank you, madam. … Where were you, Griscom?”

  “Oh—just knocking about. Rather a bore here, don’t you think?”

  “Upstairs, maybe? Were you, Major?”

  He chuckled musically. “Oh, dear, no. Wouldn’t think of it. Slight imperfection of the jolly old hip makes stair climbing a bit of a nuisance.”

  He was manifestly enjoying himself. Tracy nipped his chuckle neatly in half. “Tell that gag to your friend, Mr. Hubert Eldrick.”

  The major’s eyes glared suddenly, then went dead and fathomless. “Beg pardon, old fellow?”

  “The inspector is saving it, I see,” Tracy murmured. “Were you ever on the stage, Major? A narrow stage where the lights are very bright and very concentrated; where the audience is always very, very attentive? Think it over, Major, and give my regards to Mr. Hubert Eldrick.”

  “I—I still fail to see your point, old fellow. I assure you that I’ve never been on the—the theatrical stage. I don’t think I’m being stupid when I say that I—I fail to see just what you’re driving at.”

  “You’ve been a lot more stupid than you realize, Major,” Tracy told him curtly and walked on into the library.