“But why?” Tracy asked, his lean face alert. “What the devil’s the sense—”
“Let’s get out of this damn place,” Halliday cut in abruptly. “My car’s outside at the curb. I want to ask you a favor.” His eyes burned. “Will you?”
“Sure thing, Phil. You ought to know that.”
They skirted the dance floor where couples were now whirling to the dizzy hotcha of Dink Morgan’s orchestra, and Tracy grabbed his Chesterfield and his derby from a dark, beautiful Jewess made up as a Russian gypsy. Halliday wrapped himself in a belted raincoat and slapped on a fuzzy fedora. His big body made a joke of tailors’ irons. Jerry Tracy had once described him in his Daily Planet column as “a large bag of clothes, fresh from his tailor.”
There was a long sedan at the curb and Halliday squeezed in behind the wheel and stepped on the starter.
“Are we going places, Phil? thought we came out to talk.”
Halliday’s face turned. “I want you to drive out to my house in Scarsdale. Will you?”
“Why, sure, Phil. If you think—”
“I think it’s damned urgent or I wouldn’t ask you. I’m worried sick about Cora. I’m afraid she—”
“Cora?”
“I’m married again, Jerry. I’ve kept it quiet.”
Tracy whistled, gave Halliday a surprised stare. “I’ll say you’ve kept it quiet. Congratulations! Must have been pretty sudden. Do I know her?”
“No. She’s a Florida girl. A—bit younger than I am.” His voice thickened. “One of the sweetest, grandest women that ever walked. Jerry, I—I don’t want to slop over, but I can tell you that if ever a man—” His knuckles on the steering wheel whitened. “I gave her a gun before I left the house. I made her lock every door and window. I’m afraid she may be the next to be—harmed.”
Tracy said sharply, “I’ve never seen you crack up like this before. Snap out of it, keed!”
“Will you drive out with me and talk this thing over with both of us?”
“Mmm. … Just accidents, eh?”
“Just accidents. Scotty—Barney—Nick Devlin, the captain of my boat. The thing keeps creeping closer and closer. I tell you, when it attacked Molly Clarkson—”
“Wait a minute!” Tracy said. “You mean your secretary—the manager of your brokerage office downtown?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know she was in Florida.”
“She wasn’t. She had a—mishap right here in New York today.”
“You mean the accidents jumped from Florida to New York as soon as you came North?”
“Exactly,” Halliday said.
“Have you said anything to the cops?”
“What the hell is there to say, Jerry?”
“Not much, I guess. O.K., Phil, let’s shove off for Scarsdale!”
Phil’s long sedan shot away from the curb. A heavy hand reached tremulously across and vised for an instant on the thin arm of the Daily Planet’s little columnist. “I knew I could depend on you.”
“Nuts. I’m a sucker for puzzles, that’s all.” Tracy was silent for an instant, then his gloved fingers tightened into a fist and punched Halliday gently in the ribs. “I’m also a damned liar,” he added. “I’m not forgetting a certain favor you did for me once or the chance you took when you did.”
The sedan was boring swiftly along the Concourse before Tracy asked any more questions.
“Let me get the facts straight,” he said finally. “First Scotty, the dog, got hit with an anchor. Then the cat, Barney, drowned. Then Nick Devlin, the captain of your boat, had his accident. He was third in the series?”
“That’s right.”
“Did Devlin think it was an attempt at murder?”
“He doesn’t know. The boat was laid up temporarily in dry dock at the time. He’d had a few drinks and he can’t stand many. He’s not sure whether he was shoved off the platform or not. He thinks he was. Anyhow, he was picked up almost immediately—with a broken collar-bone and a couple of fractured ribs, and a nasty gash on his scalp. I was right on the job, suspicious as hell by that time, and you can bet I searched about pretty carefully. Not a sign of any assailant or any shred of a clue.”
“No notes? Queer messages of any sort?”
“None. I thought of that, too. I figured that anyone trying to break down my nerve by such a roundabout method of intimidation must be a crank, a nut. But I’ve never at any time received a single gloating message.”
He shivered and the racing sedan swung past a slower moving car. They were on the Bronx River Parkway now, humming smoothly along in the darkness. Halliday sent the needle of the speedometer climbing steadily.
“Tell me about your secretary,” Tracy said. “Miss Clarkson was the fourth victim?”
“Yes.”
“When? And how?”
“This afternoon. Not more than three hours after I had called up my brokerage office to tell her that I’d come unexpectedly back to New York. She was pushed off the subway station on her way home. Went headlong to the tracks. Train coming into the station damned near ran over her. Motorman threw on his brakes and stopped barely twenty feet away. There was quite a mob on the station and she said she thought it was an accident. She called me up at my home in Scarsdale and—and joked about it.” Phil Halliday’s big body shuddered. “She said I shouldn’t have cut short my vacation in Florida, that I was hard luck.”
“Did she know about these other queer happenings?” Tracy shot at him.
“Of course not. How the hell could she? She sent me a daily letter about office affairs and wires when they were necessary, but I certainly don’t discuss my personal affairs with her, if that’s what you mean.”
“Did she know that you were married again?”
The sedan curved from the Parkway and hummed along a dark, tree-bordered road that lay cold under the frosty stars.
“No,” Halliday said. “Miss Clarkson has no knowledge whatever of my recent marriage in Florida, or for that matter, of the existence of Cora.”
“By the way, what is your wife’s maiden name?”
“Cora Barfield.” He turned the wheel suddenly and drove into a chipped-stone driveway. “Here we are now—and thank God, there’s Cora! I’ve been scared every second I’ve been away.”
A woman was standing framed in the yellow light of the opened door of the house. The strong light silhouetted her figure and face, made it impossible for Tracy to see what she looked like. Halliday slowed the car as a clear, rather sweet voice called out vibrantly: “Is that you, Phil? Is everything all right?”
“Yes, dear. Go indoors; you’ll catch cold.”
“Did Mr. Tracy come with you?”
“Yes. We’ll both be right in as soon as I put the car up.”
The woman’s voice seemed to catch with a kind of clipped sob. “Thank God!” Jerry heard her whisper. He watched her as she turned away. She seemed to be tall, graceful, with a pale, lovely face under a heavy swirl of dark hair. The car rolled onward toward the garage.
“I like her voice,” Tracy said quietly.
“I love her, Jerry,” Halliday whispered. “More than I’ve ever known it was possible to love a woman.” He had stepped out of the car. His huge, bulking figure in the doorway of the garage was suddenly touched with dignity. “We’re going to have a child. We—we weren’t certain until just before we left Florida.”
“That’s nice. That’ll be good for you, Phil. I’m damned glad to hear of it. You always did want a kid.”
“Yes. I—” His hand clutched the sleeve of the columnist. Tracy winced; Phil’s big fingers bit like steel pliers. “It’s not myself I’m frightened about, Jerry. They can kill me—if they can—and be damned to them. But they won’t; don’t you see?”
“Come on, Phil. We’ll talk the whole thing over with your wife.”
“Wait! I’ve got to make you see what this means to me. Can you see how they’ve been striking deliberately closer and closer to the few things
I really love in this world? My dog and my cat—then Devlin, my captain, as grand a little man as ever walked. And now, by God, Miss Clarkson! My secretary—as loyal and faithful as they come. I think enough of her to cut her in for a sizable share of my money when and if I kick off.
“The thought that sent me scouring the town for you tonight is—who’s next? Can’t you see that it can be no one but Cora? If I only knew what was back of it all—what they want—”
“Who do you mean by ‘they,’ Phil?”
“I don’t know.”
Tracy shoved a hand through the big man’s dangling arm. “Let’s go inside. I’ve got a hunch on this thing already.”
He had, of course, nothing of the kind; it was merely a device to snap Phil out of his talkative spree and get him into the house. Jerry had seen enough terrified people in his career to know that fear sometimes made people drunkenly garrulous, sent even normally tight-lipped men off on a wordy jag of repetition and reiteration.
They crunched up the stone pathway toward the house. It was a two-story stone structure, built in the Norman style, covered with dark ivy, very lovely under the silver of an almost circular moon.
Cora was waiting in the chilly doorway, her face white. Phil Halliday swept his wife into a taut, murmuring embrace. Tracy, a cynical expert in such matters, was convinced instantly that both these frightened people loved each other. He followed them into the living-room and Tracy noticed that Halliday locked the door.
He introduced the Daily Planet’s columnist to his wife with a blurred smile. “Jerry Tracy, dear. A friend when you need him. That’s why he’s here.”
She held out her hand and Jerry held it for an instant. It was cold as ice, but very steady. The columnist found himself liking this Cora Barfield who had married his good friend, Phil. Very lovely. A soft, pleasant voice, with just the barest slur of the South in it. Clear, dark eyes, very bright, and dark hair, thick and vital looking.
The only jarring note was her mouth; it was tight, small, thin-lipped; he couldn’t decide offhand whether it was the type of cruel little rosebud that went with a quick, selfish temper, or whether it was an added note of determination to match her lovely dark eyes. At all events, he was certain at once that Phil’s wife was neither a child nor a clinging vine.
He glanced about him. “No servants, Phil?”
“Just us two. I’ve been afraid to—”
“Naturally. You want my advice?”
“Of course,” Cora said instantly.
“All right. I’m advising you both to leave this house tonight. Just in case there’s anything really serious behind the facts you’ve already told me. I’ll drive you both back to town and you can take a suite at a good first-class hotel, where you’ll have a better measure of protection than in an empty house here in Scarsdale. I’d suggest the Albermarle. Agreed?”
Phil nodded. Cora said, “Yes.”
Tracy asked Phil’s wife a few routine questions and was answered with a sure steadiness—almost too steady, he thought, with a quick awareness of her tension. She was just as frightened as Phil, but a different kind of fright; a sort of inner desperation that stiffened her tall, slender body. He marked the swift rise and fall of her bosom under the stretched material of her moss-crepe gown.
Cora Barfield. Twenty-five. That made her exactly twenty years younger than Phil. A native Floridian. An orphan. No relatives on earth.
“None?” Tracy asked her incredulously.
She nodded instead of answering. Afraid to trust her voice, Tracy decided. His eyes and his ears told him she was lying. And not used to lying, either. Tracy let the matter drop and turned the subject to the last series of “accidents,” the attempt on the life of Halliday’s secretary.
“How did the woman sound when she called up, Mrs. Halliday? Was she frightened? Did she think it was an attempt at murder?”
“I don’t know,” Cora said. She added, quietly, “Phil took the phone call.”
“I see. How about it, Phil? She kidded you about being a hoodoo, didn’t she?”
“Miss Clarkson was inclined to think it was pure accident,” Phil Halliday nodded slowly. “Although afterwards, when Cora got home and we talked it over—”
“Oh, you weren’t home at the time?” Jerry asked Mrs. Halliday.
Her hesitation was like the flirt of a bird’s wing, so hastily did she cover it with her smile and her soft voice. “No. I’d been shopping. I—I needed a few things to wear.”
“Naturally,” Tracy said. To himself he thought, “Oh, yeah? Scared to death, convinced that your husband’s life and your own are in deadly danger, and off you go shopping, all by yourself? Nuts, lady; that doesn’t wash.”
Cora was watching the smiling little newspaper columnist with an unfathomable expression. She blinked suddenly and swayed. Her big husband sprang forward with a solicitous murmur.
“I’m all right,” Cora said. “I’m a little tired. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll lie down until we’re ready to leave.”
She turned toward the small console table against the wall and picked up her handbag. Jerry, alert to small things, wondered why she wanted the bag. It looked stuffed; there was a ridge in the cloth as though a square of stiff cardboard might be jammed inside. A mounted photograph? Jerry wondered. She flushed as she saw him staring at the bag, and walked rapidly upstairs.
Phil, staring anxiously up the staircase, said gently, “Lock the door of your bedroom, dear. I’ll call you when Jerry and I are ready to leave for town. And take a look at the windows, too.”
They heard the door shut and the lock-click. Halliday made a brief, embarrassed gesture. “Sounds silly, all this precaution, but, frankly, I’m jumpy.”
“Your wife have any enemies?”
“None.”
“And you don’t want the police in on this thing, you say?”
“No.”
“Any special reason?”
“I just don’t want ’em, that’s all. What is there to tell ’em?”
“Not a damned thing,” Tracy said cheerfully. “How about yourself, Phil? You’re a broker, a man of affairs, independently wealthy. Any enemies?”
The clock on the mantel ticked monotonously.
“I’ve thought of a possible two,” Phil said slowly.
“Men or women?”
“Men.”
“Let’s hear about them.”
“Well, the first one seems a bit silly. I wouldn’t have thought of him at all, except for the fact of my recent marriage. A man named David Cullop. A malicious little devil. We once had a kind of ridiculous set-to. It all dates back to the time I married my first wife, You see, Cullop and I—”
Jerry’s upflung hand stopped him. “Wait!” the columnist cried. He was on tiptoe, listening with a queer rigidity.
“What the devil!” Halliday cried.
Tracy pivoted, ran swiftly toward the window, jerked the heavy curtains aside. He hadn’t been mistaken! The faint sound he had heard was the slur of tires on packed gravel. He was just in time to see the red tail-light of an automobile whirling out of the driveway into the road. It was gone in a flash. A second later he heard the unmistakable sound of a motor accelerating to racing speed down the road.
Halliday’s face, behind Tracy’s hunched shoulder, was white. “My car!” he gasped. “It’s gone. Someone has stolen it!”
“Quick!” Tracy cried. “Upstairs! The bedroom!”
Fast as the little columnist was, Phil’s pounding feet left him behind. Phil was rattling the knob of the locked door as Tracy reached the top of the stairs.
“Cora! Are you all right? Cora!”
No answer. He shouted, pounded on the panel with his fist. But there was no reply.
Halliday whirled frantically toward the stairs but Jerry’s hand stopped him.
“No sense in that, Phil. The car’s gone. Break down the door!”
Halliday sent his big body plunging against the frail wood. It shivered and groaned as he b
ounced off the barrier.
“Any way she could have been taken out the window?” Jerry shot at him.
“Yes. There’s a shed roof right under—”
This time the lock snapped and the door burst inward with a rending crash. Halliday fell flat on his face and Tracy leaped over his prostrate body. The bedroom window was wide open, the curtains fluttering in the icy draught. There was no trace of Cora Halliday.
Tracy stuck his head briefly out the window and jerked it back again. He dashed about the room like an excited little terrier, peering, searching.
“What are you looking for?” Phil asked him thickly. He seemed dazed, utterly bereft of motion in the center of the room.
The handbag that Cora had brought upstairs with her was gone. Had she really been kidnaped, Tracy wondered grimly, or had she. … He motioned to Halliday and the two men raced downstairs and out to the garage. The doors were wide open. Jerry remembered now that Phil hadn’t locked the garage when they had driven in. They had been in too much of a hurry. But Phil had locked the ignition. Jerry remembered that distinctly.
The floor of the garage was painted white, with a soft, flaky substance like whitewash. There were footprints visible in the narrow space alongside the wall where two people had squeezed in past the parked car. Two! The mark of a woman’s high-heeled slippers and the broader imprints of a man’s shoes. A little man. Tracy laid his shoe over one of the marks. It was almost an exact fit.
“My God,” Halliday moaned. “Someone kidnaped her. Took her out the bedroom window, lowered her from the shed roof, forced her into the car—”
“How? The car was locked. You’ve got the ignition key, haven’t you?”
“Cora had a duplicate key in her handbag. Whoever meant to kill her found it in her bag and decided to kidnap her instead.”
Jerry shook his head. “Your wife walked,” he asserted in a level voice. “There’s the marks of her feet, right alongside the man’s. Could she have gone willingly, do you think?”
“You’re crazy,” Halliday shouted. “Look there—what’s that?”
He pointed with a shaking finger and Tracy got down on his haunches and studied the dark drops on the concrete floor. He touched one of the smears with a finger-tip and his lips tightened. It wasn’t oil as he had surmised at the first glance, but blood. Fresh, smeary blood that made his finger-tip ruddy.
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 56