Tracy stood prudently still. He knew that a frightened girl with a gun was more dangerous than a cornered criminal.
“What’s David Corning’s Manhattan address? Where does he live when he’s in town?” he asked.
Pauline Drake said slowly, “Keep that gun pointed, Anne. I’m going to telephone the police.”
“If you’ve got any sense, you’ll telephone Corning. You might save his life.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean your son, Tony Pedley. He didn’t come here, so it’s a cinch he headed straight for Corning. He needs money and he needs it bad. He admitted he stole Drake’s body. He’s wild with rage because he’s found out Corning double-crossed him.”
“That’s—that’s ridiculous.”
But Pauline’s dark eyes had suddenly become pinched—like her son’s when Tracy had shown him the rubber ear-stopple. She sprang toward the phone and whispered a hasty number. There was a long silence, then:
“David! Is that you? David, I can’t hear you! What are you saying? Are you in danger?”
Tracy’s ears were straining to hear the unintelligible mumble on the wire. A voice seemed to be gasping something with a dreadful, sticky slowness. Pauline swayed.
“No, no! David, that’s not true! He didn’t—he couldn’t—”
The dropped instrument made a dull bump as it fell against the polished table. Pauline Drake flung out a weak, wavering hand and pitched forward to the rug in a faint.
Anne Leslie was holding the unnoticed pistol as though it were a block of wood. Tracy snatched it out of her hand. He pitched the weapon to the sofa and yelled an insistent question into the ear of the dazed secretary.
“What’s Corning’s address? Quick!”
She gave it to him automatically in a dead voice. He shoved her toward the unconscious woman on the floor.
“Take care of her. Don’t let her out of here. And don’t do any foolish yelling for help until I can find out just what the hell is going on.”
The elevator dropped him in a hurry to Lexington Avenue. He picked the first of a long line of taxis and spent more money for speed. His route took him across town and south. His goal was the tremendous beehive of a modern apartment development in the lower Twenties west of the Ninth Avenue Elevated. The sort of place a man like Corning would pick as a Manhattan oasis for overnight stays when he was in town. Kitchenettes and dressing-rooms and folding beds. Smart, comfortable living in the midst of an ancient slum section.
The first thing Tracy saw at the curb was Pedley’s gray coupé. The rumble was still locked.
David Corning’s apartment was one flight up. Tracy didn’t bother with the elevator. He rapped a brass knocker against polished wood and waited. Nothing happened. He tried again and again. He was about to slip downstairs and try for a fire-escape route to the rear windows, when he heard inside the apartment the sound of slow, shuffling steps. Fingers fumbled awkwardly at the catch, then the door opened.
It was Corning, his eyes dazed and out of focus. His face was paper white except for the thin, thread-like tracery of blood on his left cheek and jaw. A bullet had creased his temple. There was a gun in one of his dangling hands but he made no objection when Tracy disarmed him and pushed briskly into the apartment.
Tony Pedley was flat on his face on the floor. Tracy turned him over. One look was plenty. The kid had taken a slug straight through the heart. His mouth and eyes were wide open and would stay that way until somebody did the kind thing and closed them.
Tracy didn’t. His own eyes were too busy sucking in his surroundings. The rear window was open. A chair was overturned. There were blood spatterings in a thin trail from the chair to the rigid body of Pedley. Two shots had been fired from Corning’s gun. There was a fire-escape outside the opened window and beyond that was a framed courtyard glimpse of the Ninth Avenue Elevated.
Tracy picked up the swift, helter-skelter facts without any coherent system. But the facts made him eye the dazed lawyer grimly. Jerry’s mind worked with the sensitive speed of a woman. He knew that Corning had been badly dazed when he had opened the door. He wasn’t so dopy now by a long shot; he was only pretending to be.
“Come on! Snap out of it. What happened?”
The lawyer talked hesitantly in a blurred voice.
A murderous attack had been made on himself and Pedley by some unknown assailant on the fire-escape. The first shot had killed Pedley in his tracks. The second had creased Corning, knocking him silly and robbing him of his wits. But he had managed to fire two shots through the window before he passed out. He had seen nothing of the killer except a gloved hand and a smoking gun muzzle. He had staggered across to the window, fallen over a chair and fainted.
“That makes four shots,” Jerry suggested. “Two from your gun. Two from his. Funny nobody heard anything.”
“There was a Ninth Avenue El train going past at the time. It made a terrible racket. That’s the last thing I remember.”
“You don’t remember hearing the phone ring and answering it?”
“Eh?” He looked fixedly into space as if he were trying hard to think. “By jove, I believe the phone did ring. I have a vague, dreamy recollection of talking to Pauline—Mrs. Drake. I must have roused when the bell rang—Look, my receiver is off the hook.”
“Yeah. So I see. You haven’t told me why Pedley came here.”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean he was killed before he could open his mouth to talk to you?”
“Yes.”
Corning answered so swiftly and so emphatically that Jerry knew he was lying. The columnist’s jaw tightened. He walked over to the dangling phone and jiggled the hook.
“Police headquarters, please.”
“You—you want the police? I mean I—”
“Sure I want ’em. Any objections?”
Corning looked as if he could think of plenty, but he shook his head without reply. Jerry paid no further attention to him. His own eyes were shining with suppressed eagerness. Something that had been bothering him for a long time seemed a heck of a lot clearer now. If his idea was true—and it had nothing to do with the room or the state of the furniture—it explained why Pedley had made such a quick rush to see Corning, and why he had been so promptly killed.
“Inspector Fitzgerald? Tracy! Look, Fitz, get this address down. I’m up at Corning’s apartment. There’s been a murder here. … No, not Corning—Tony Pedley. Huh? The son—Pauline Drake’s son—No, No! Don’t report it yet. Get up here fast. I think I may have this damn thing figured!”
The last sentence must have lit a fuse under the Inspector’s tail. He hung up with an exultant yell. In ten minutes he walked swiftly into the apartment living-room. Sergeant Killan was with the old man. Tracy choked off their prompt questions.
“Wait a minute!”
He sprang eagerly toward the dead Tony Pedley and began swiftly to search his pockets. Before either cop could yell a protest, Jerry had found what he was after—a bunch of keys. He thrust them grimly toward Sergeant Killan.
“Pedley’s car is down at the curb. It’s a small gray coupé. The rumble is locked. Pick out the right key and get that rumble open in a hurry!”
“What’s the idea?”
“I want to find out if there’s a corpse in it. But if I’m right, there won’t be any corpse in that blasted rumble. Scram!”
Fitz nodded and Killan took it on the run. He was back in a few minutes, his beefy face respectful.
“You were right, Jerry. The damned thing is empty. Just a blanket and an old inner tube. No sign of blood anywhere.”
Corning was still sitting dejectedly in a chair, his eyes on the rug where his feet rested. The feet were trembling. So were the hands and knees.
“Ever hear of a man named Amos Brandt?” Jerry asked him.
“No.”
“Ever see this before?”
Corning’s head lifted slowly. He stared at the rubber ear-stopple that Tracy, held g
rimly before his eyes.
“No. I never saw it before.”
Tracy’s gaze held him for a long minute. Then he turned away.
“Fitz, Killan, both of you stick here. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
“Whoa! Where are you going?”
“I’m going to see if I can dig up another ear-stopple exactly like this. If I do, I’ll give you your killer, and Drake’s corpse, too.”
He vanished from the apartment with an eager stride. He was gone nearer twenty than fifteen minutes. But when he returned his face was grimly wrinkled. Fitz halted his uneasy pacing up and down the room.
“Well?”
“How’s this?” Tracy’s palm shot out. There was a tiny pasteboard box in his hand and he opened it and showed a replica of the ear plug he had found on Drake’s body. He laid the two tiny objects side by side. They were identical in shape, size and coloring.
“Where did you get it?” Fitz rapped.
“They belong to a guy named Amos Brandt, who’s been selling Drake Utilities short. He’s the same guy who tipped you to the murder and then called half the columnists in town to ring me in. In short, he wanted that body found—for profit. Go ahead and ring up Homicide. Then grab your hats and we’re off to grab our man!”
“But—” Fitzgerald shut up suddenly as he saw Jerry’s averted eye drop in a sly wink.
Corning was still staring at the floor, his whole attitude one of lax inattention. He sat stolidly as Fitz barked a brief official alarm over the wire. He didn’t even raise his dazed head when Fitz said sharply, “You wait here, Corning, until the police and the medical examiner get here. Don’t touch anything in the room. Understand? Hey, wake up and listen!”
“I—I understand.”
Killan, Fitz and the Daily Planet’s perspiring little columnist hurried downstairs and out to the street.
Killan growled, “What’s the idea of a dumb run out like this? You guys gone nuts?”
“Where’s your car, Fitz?” Tracy said.
“Around the corner.”
“Swell. Come on! Duck across to that grocery doorway.”
They squeezed in out of sight behind crates of vegetables and fruit. Tracy kept his eye anxiously on the entrance of the apartment house diagonally opposite and the gray coupé of Tony Pedley’s that was still parked at the curb. For three long minutes nothing happened. Then David Corning came out of the building entrance. He walked quietly toward Pedley’s car. He had washed the blood from his cheek and chin and his hat was drawn low over the shallow bullet furrow at his temple. He sprang into the gray coupé and sent it whizzing around the corner. The car vanished rapidly north.
Killan muttered, “For gosh sake! Where’s he going?”
“To Drake’s boarded-up mansion on East 56th,” Tracy said. “Where the corpse has undoubtedly been hidden all the time. Come on, Sarge! Let’s see you show a little speed.”
Killan obliged grimly. He was an excellent driver and he sent the car humming through the gathering dusk. But he slowed whenever traffic cops loomed in front and he skipped no lights. Tracy didn’t want any publicity—not yet. They made excellent time to East 56th and slowed at the rear of the Drake mansion.
Fitzgerald swore suddenly. The familiar gray coupé was parked at the curb. Corning had more than matched their speed and held his desperate lead.
The grilled gate to the rear courtyard was slightly ajar. There was no sign of the plainclothes man Fitzgerald had left on guard. They found him in a limp huddle in a dark angle of the private garage’s wall. Someone had slugged him on the skull before he could yank his gun. The butt of his half-drawn weapon lay impotently under his unconscious hand.
They tiptoed to the rear basement window of the house and Killan pried the wood gently away. The lower floor was in complete darkness. But as they climbed the rear staircase and crept noiselessly toward the front reception room, Fitz’s hand close tautly on Tracy’s arm. Light was visible through the pierced doorway of the high-ceilinged old room.
The next instant Fitz and Killan were diving headlong at a man who had whirled with a frightened squeal.
“Take him, Sarge!”
“I got him!”
Handcuffs clicked. The wrestling match ended as suddenly as it had begun. David Corning stood sullenly, head downcast, staring at the grisly figure that lay on the floor at his feet. The hilt of the knife still protruded from the chest of Edgar Drake. Rigor mortis had frozen the corpse forever into the ugly knee-drawn posture that Tracy had witnessed twenty-four hours earlier.
Fitz gave only a scant glance at the body and the captured prisoner. He was staring at the wall where a square opening disclosed a closeted recess from which all the shelves had been removed. The tapestry that had hidden the opening had been slid aside into a slitted groove in the wall. The inside of the ghastly little crypt was smeared with the brownish stain of dried blood. The soiled Chinese rug was in there. So was the white fleeced one from the foot of the stairs.
“Looks like we’ve found the body,” Fitz said dryly. “That’s what you asked us to do, wasn’t it, Mr. Corning?”
“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t!”
“Shut up!” Killan snapped.
Tracy was about to say something when there came a sudden rush of feet in the hallway outside. Killan’s gun snapped level—and lowered again. A woman was swaying in the doorway, her lovely face twisted by terror out of all semblance of beauty. She was holding tightly to the arm of Anne Leslie, holding it with a grip that made the trembling girl wince.
Corning raised his muscled hands in a gesture of despair. “It’s no use, Pauline. They’ve got me.”
“No!” she gasped. “No!”
She came slowly toward Fitz. The yellow light from the floor lamp made her look tall and ungainly like the sheeted furniture.
“David is lying. He’s trying to protect me. He hid the body and meant to take it away. I—I killed Edgar!”
She drowned out Corning’s shrill cry of protest.
“Edgar found us both here and threatened a scandal to ruin David and me. I killed him. Then Tracy came and I fled upstairs. David’s only crime is that he attacked Tracy and hid the corpse. You see, I had already told him about the Bible closet and he—”
“Bible closet?” Fitz grunted.
Her smile was ghastly.
“That empty recess behind the tapestry. This house is very old. The original owner used to hold divine services in this room. The hymnals and Bibles were kept in that wall cupboard. It—it pleased my husband to cover the closet with a wooden-backed tapestry and use the space to keep business records. He thought the idea was—amusing.”
Corning had found his voice.
“It’s no use, Pauline. You can’t get away with it, darling. They’ve caught me and I’m tired of pretending. Drake was a damned dirty louse. I love Pauline and I couldn’t stand his treatment of her. So I—”
“So you’re willing to shoulder the blame for a murder you never committed,” Anne Leslie said suddenly in a queerly choked tone.
She faced Inspector Fitzgerald defiantly. “Corning thinks Pauline did it. Pauline thinks he did it. The simple truth is that I killed Drake and I had plenty of provocation. He made my life a hell with his slimy back-door attentions. He maneuvered me into a position where I had either to leave Pauline or give him what he—wanted.”
Sergeant Killan wheeled toward the blond secretary. “Say, what the hell is this? A game?”
“No game,” Anne replied steadily.
She gave Pauline a misty look that was redolent of loyalty and devotion. Tracy, watching silently, realized anew the power of Pauline Drake. Her charm was like something palpable, hoops that bound closely to her everyone with whom she came in contact, men and women alike. Except her husband. …
Tracy moved back a step. Another. His toes turned sidewise but he was still facing the group, smiling a little. The pale light from the floor lamp in the corner threw his lean profile into strong relief.
He was staring at a silk embroidered Chinese screen that stood in a dark corner of the room. There were two things about that screen that made Tracy’s heart beat quicken. The screen had been moved fully ten feet from the spot where it had stood the night before. And it was now upside down! The embroidered stork on the front panel was standing on his head. Someone had jerked that screen in such guilty haste toward the dark corner that he had dropped it and replaced it in an inverted position without noticing his error.
Corning and the two women were glaring with tragic fixity at Inspector Fitzgerald. Tracy said slowly over his shoulder:
“All three of them are lying, Fitz. The killer we really want is two other guys. A sort of smart Siamese twin. Gentlemen and ladies, allow me to present to you Mr. Amos Brandt—alias Fred Hammer of the Club Pom-Pom!”
Tracy whirled like a flash and threw himself at the inverted Chinese screen. He was clutching grimly for it when it was thrown violently aside, knocking the charging little columnist off balance. Fred Hammer was on his knees, gripping two flat automatics. Flame streaked toward Fitz and Killan, sending them leaping apart. Before they could swing into action, Hammer was on his feet with Tracy a helpless shield in front of him, a gun muzzle digging viciously into the columnist’s spine.
The second weapon peeped over Tracy’s shoulder, menacing Killan and the inspector. Their hands jerked unwillingly upward.
“O.K.,” Hammer gasped. “Now move together, all of you! Make a nice tight bunch.”
His low laughter rasped behind Tracy’s ear.
“And keep away from that telephone, friends. I don’t want any emergency trucks tossing tear gas at me. I’m going out of here without—”
His gun roared without warning. Elian’s hand had dropped like lightning toward his hip as he doubled sidewise, but Hammer’s bullet broke his arm before he could clutch and draw.
“Any more like to try?”
“Easy, Fitz,” Tracy gasped. “I’m in a spot.”
He didn’t have to put any deliberate waver into his voice. He was sick at heart. But his damned flair for theatricalism had given Hammer the play, when he could just as easily have whispered a warning to Fitz about the screen. Time. … He had to play for time. …
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 70