“They’re probably back at the Waldorf by this time,” Tracy said. “Send someone there with authority enough to yank ’em back here in a hurry. This time I’m on the level, Fitz. Give me a free hand—and I’ll solve the case.”
His grin and the taut pressure of his hand did something to the strained relations between these two old friends. Fitz swore, but he swore the right way, the smiling way. He seemed cheerful for the first time that evening. He was off like a shot.
Back at his parked car, Tracy was satisfied that Fitz would be able to gather in the Midport suspects before they could leave the grounds. It usually took considerable time for visitors to drift out after the last performance had been given in the amusement area. The industrial end of the fair was already wrapped in darkness and silence. Tracy sat on the running-board of his locked car and waited for Butch. He wasn’t sore any longer at the mess the big fellow had gotten him into by wandering off. Even Butch’s wild burst of laughter when he’d seen the bare shanks of the natty little columnist didn’t disturb Tracy’s grim satisfaction.
He merely rose and asked Butch firmly for the loan of his pants.
Butch goggled, but didn’t refuse. Nothing that Tracy ever did surprised Butch. He was loyal to the core. He’d have given Jerry his liver on a platter if the Little Guy had asked for it. And he was remorseful about wandering off just when Tracy had needed him.
Standing in cotton underpants, his big legs looking like mottled oak trees, Butch explained his absence. A nice-sized dame with a healthy bosom had given Butch the eye. They had gone to look over some of the amusement concessions and Butch had spent four dollars and a quarter on her.
“Then I took a chance and she slapped me in the snoot,” Butch said without any particular emotion. “So I came back.”
He grinned foolishly at his reclothed employer. Tracy had turned up the legs of his borrowed pants. He yanked the belt in to the last notch. It didn’t help much. The Daily Planet’s dapper little columnist looked like a pint-sized aviator who had bailed out of a plane and was fouled in his own parachute.
But there was no mirth in his frosty smile.
“Stay in the car and wait here for me,” he told Butch. “Put the lap robe over those massive legs of yours. If your girl friend with the bosom saw you now, she’d probably give you back your four dollars and a quarter and make you a counter-proposition. It’s a nice thought, but we’ve had enough girl trouble on one night!”
He crossed the bridge over the parkway and hurried through the silent darkness of the industrial area to the annex in the rear of the Administration Building.
Fitz was waiting grimly for him. Some of the guests for whom Tracy had asked had already been rounded up. There was a titter from the staring cops as Tracy waddled in, holding tightly to the bunched belt of Butch’s oversize pants. A cold stare from Fitz cut the police merriment short.
Marjorie Field and her brother were there. They sat miserably together in a corner, holding frightened hands. Marjorie was crying. Her brother looked as if he’d like to. Eric Lundy was there, too, as sleek as butter, with a face as expressionless as a papered wall. He exhaled slow cigarette smoke and his eyes blinked briefly.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, pal,” he told Tracy pleasantly.
After a while a couple of cops brought in Allen Webb. Webb wasn’t taking his detention so easily. He had put up a battle when his car was stopped at the north gate. His face was like a thundercloud. But he calmed down the minute he saw Lundy. He seated himself without a word and glared at the politician. Lundy didn’t seem to mind Webb’s wordless scrutiny. He seemed half asleep, contemptuous of the whole proceedings.
Lundy’s head jerked up when Tracy took the sealed package from Fitz and told his guests what was in the parcel. He did this after a very indignant Harold Shipley arrived, a half-hour later, from the Waldorf with his daughter Barbara. Shipley was fuming. He intended to go to the mayor in the morning and have the whole police force fired. He also intended to see to it that Jerry Tracy lost his job on the Daily Planet.
Barbara kept trying to shut up her father. She had little success until Tracy began talking about his mohair pants. He dwelt calmly on the fact that their closely woven texture made an excellent medium for the preservation of fingerprints.
There was sudden silence in the room. Marjorie Field stopped sniffling. Everybody stared at Tracy. He gave the package back to Inspector Fitzgerald and smiled faintly as the pants were locked up in a small safe.
“I don’t think I’m going to need those trousers. I have two other methods of determining who killed George Huston tonight. But the prints will cinch it when those pants go to the crime laboratory in Brooklyn for chemical and fluorescent examination. In the meantime I’ve brought you people here because I’m in a hell of a hurry. I can’t afford to wait for laboratory tests. I’ve got a personal itch of my own to scratch.” There was a flush on his lean cheeks. “It so happens that I’ve got to find that killer damned first. An afternoon picture tabloid that would like to see me crucified has a photo of me that’s going to be splashed into front-page circulation in tomorrow’s first edition. It’s a nice flashlight pose of a famous little guy in his drawers, snapped just after he had an assignation with a woman in a parked car. I can’t stop that picture from appearing with a neat libel proof caption that will blow me out of New York on a wave of dirty laughter. But I can top that picture with another! I can make the Star sorry they ever printed it, if I nail my killer right now!”
He nodded to Fitz.
“Let’s go. I want every one of these people taken back to the amusement area. The boathouse, if you please, on the east shore of Fountain Lake. Directly opposite the place where the fireworks display took place this evening.”
Fitz looked startled but he said nothing. He gave crisp orders. The six suspects were jammed into a waiting police car. Tracy stood on one running board. Fitz and a cop got on the other side.
Tracy smiled faintly as he noted that the cop was the rookie he didn’t like. The car sped down Grand Central Parkway and reentered the fair grounds below the darkened magnificence of the Florida State Building. Everything was quiet now. The grounds were empty of spectators.
Leading the way to the boat house float on the shore of Fountain Lake, Tracy pointed to one of the rowboats moored there.
“Can you row?” he asked the cop.
“Yeah.”
“Then take the oars. Get in, everybody.”
Fitz was beginning to get restive. “Jerry, are you sure you know what you’re—”
Obviously Tracy wasn’t sure. He looked ill at ease and uncomfortable.
“It’s got to be over on the other side,” he muttered defensively. “It just has to! I’ll admit that there’s a link missing in the puzzle, an angle I can’t figure out. It depends on something I’m trying like hell to remember.”
Lundy laughed sardonically. The cop bent with a grunt to his oars. He was scornful of this alleged Broadway smart guy, sullen at the indignity of having to row a bunch of people across a lake on the screwy hunch of an amateur dick. The boat moved away from the float. Tracy sat with frowning brows watching the bubbles on the dark water. Suddenly he gave a quick cry.
“I’ve got it! By the lord, I remember it now!”
He sprang to his feet. The overloaded boat tilted. Tracy’s inept movement had dipped one of the gunwales beneath the surface.
Water poured in on the startled passengers. Their quick backward lurch and Tracy’s hasty attempt to regain his balance sent the boat careening in the opposite direction. It turned turtle, spilling everybody into the lake.
Luckily the float was not far away. Tracy swam to it and hauled himself out. He looked soaked and crestfallen.
Fitzgerald said thickly: “Of all the damfool stupidity—”
Shipley was livid with rage. He flopped onto the float like a fat, puffing turtle a moment after Webb and his daughter. Shipley didn’t know many good oaths but he repeated all h
e knew, Lundy didn’t waste words. He took a punch at Tracy’s jaw that staggered the luckless columnist. He was hauled back on his heels by the dripping Fitz. In the confusion no one noticed that anyone was missing until Marjorie Field gave a shrill scream.
“Richard! My brother! Where is he?”
There was no sign of him or of the cop who had done the rowing. Suddenly the heads of both reappeared in a flurry of foam on the black water. The cop was struggling fiercely to free himself from the locked embrace of Field. Unable to swim, Field had clutched with both hands at the cop’s neck and had dragged him down.
“They’re drowning!” Marjorie screamed. “Help!”
But the cop helped himself. Before anyone could move to his aid, he managed to tear one of the drowning man’s hands loose and to twist convulsively in the water. His fist caught Field in the jaw and snapped his head under the surface. Then with a lithe circling movement, the cop was safely behind his man. He caught him by the hair and towed him to the float with a half dozen powerful back strokes.
Field’s eyes were closed. He looked nerveless and dead. Marjorie dropped to her knees beside her brother. But the cop pushed her gently away.
“I’ll handle it,” he said.
He gave Tracy a wet, angry look and then forgot him. He went to work on the half-drowned man, pressing rhythmically on chest and stomach, his soaked body astride the victim’s stretched legs.
Tracy stepped back to where Fitz stood glowering. There was a tight smile on Tracy’s lips. He leaned for an instant toward the inspector’s ear. His whisper was barely audible. But it stiffened Fitz as if Tracy had just slugged him on the skull with a lead pipe.
Tracy didn’t pause to note the inspector’s reaction. With a quick whirl he was back at the spot where Richard Field lay.
“What this poor fellow needs is air,” Tracy said in a clearly distinct voice. “Better let me remove his shirt—and his pants.”
He leaned downward.
His clutch at Field’s soaked shirt sent the buttons popping. It was a foolish thing to do, for it left Tracy’s arched stomach vulnerable to attack from the man beneath him. Field’s eyes flew open. He had only been shamming unconsciousness. His dripping legs hinged at the knees with a motion so quick that it was like a blur. The feet caught Tracy in the stomach. The impact sent him head over heels into a gasping huddle at the edge of the wooden float.
The next instant Field dived at the surprised cop who was still kneeling alongside him. A wet hand clutched at the police holster. The barrel of the captured gun sent the cop sprawling with blood dripping from a ragged gash on his forehead.
There was a hammering crash of gunfire as Field backed up. He was like a stiff carving of death behind the muzzle of the stolen gun. His sister was the only one who remained on her feet. The rest flung themselves flat at the roar of the bullets.
“Richard!” Marjorie screamed.
She was whimpering with horror. She began to run toward her slowly retreating brother, but Fitz kicked at her and sent her sprawling. He had drawn his gun only an instant after Tracy’s warning whisper; but Field’s attack had come so fast that Fitz was slow getting into action.
He fired from where he lay, one hand supporting his wrist and forearm. He missed. Field’s answering bullet sent a long splinter tearing upward an inch from the prone inspector’s cheek. The rip of the splinter and the roar of Fitz’s second shot came along simultaneously.
Field dropped his gun and pivoted slowly, both hands clasped tightly over his belly. He sat down with a thud and went over backward. Fitz reached him in a couple of swift strides. He kicked the dropped gun into the lake.
“Looks like you were right, Jerry,” he said pantingly.
Tracy didn’t reply. A grim heave of his hand completed the ruin of Richard Field’s torn shirt. It showed that he had been badly wounded. Blood poured from his abdomen from intestines ripped apart by a .38 slug.
But Fitz gave the bullet hole only a scant glance. On his limp body under his clothing, Richard Field was wearing a white silken bathing suit. From one of his coat pockets Tracy took out a rubber bathing cap. From the other he showed Fitz a metal-capped lipstick.
“I wasn’t completely sure about him until the last moment,” Tracy said harshly, “but you can see now how he could get away with his clever masquerade. His thin, youthful face and his hairless body made the trick an even gamble for him. Any smooth face under a tight rubber bathing cap is practically sexless.
“Field helped things along by using a lipstick. Rouged lips are the first thing you notice in a woman’s face. A quick glimpse—and your mind works automatically. Your mind says ‘woman,’ and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you’d be right. Field counted on that and nearly got away with his deception. Remember, also, that the cape muffled his upper body and his head, and it was damned dark on the two occasions I saw him.”
Field’s eyes opened slowly. His eyes were like flickering coals in a face whiter than ash. He was dying and he knew it.
“All right and so what? I did it—and I’d do it again.”
“Why did you kill Huston?”
“Because the skunk had it coming to him. There’s a nameless kid in a baby farm out in Midport that belongs to my sister—and to George Huston. He told Marjorie he loved her and promised to marry her. She was foolish enough to believe him. Then Huston ducked when he made his tie-up with Shipley and got into big politics. He wanted to cap his political and social ambition by marrying Shipley’s daughter. Well, he’ll marry nobody now!”
Field’s words trailed. Blood dribbled from his straining lips. His voice was fainter than the flutter of a feather.
“Marjorie—knew nothing of my—plan. … I tried to save her the—Marjorie didn’t know a single damned—”
That was all. He died with his glazed eyes trying to smile at his sister. With a moan Marjorie fainted.
Barbara Shipley stared at the limp figure of the girl for an instant. Then she ran forward and pillowed Marjorie’s head in her lap. Beside her, Allen Webb dropped to one knee, his arm around Barbara’s shoulder. He kissed her. His eyes dared Shipley to utter a word.
Shipley kept quiet. So did Eric Lundy.
There was a strained look of relief in Lundy’s pale blue eyes. Politics was all he was interested in. And politics, the inner circle brand of Midport, had nothing to do with Huston’s death, after all. But Lundy’s calm fingers were a bit tremulous as he fished out a soggy cigarette. He tried vainly to light it with a damp match. His foolishly persistent effort showed how nervous he really was under the mask of his relief. Tracy paid no attention to him.
“I thought first there were two people in the museum garden where Huston was killed,” Tracy said. “A man and a woman. The sex guess of a woman was merely a deduction on my part. But the man’s fist on my jaw was real! Afterwards I remembered something that made me think a man was the only foe I had to deal with. I never actually saw anything but the cloaked figure that jumped the hedge into obscurity before I was socked. When I went down with my hat jammed over my eyes, I heard only one pair of feet run away.”
Tracy’s voice continued grimly.
“I eliminated Shipley because of his girth and his age. It could have been Lundy, or Webb or Field. I figured on Field after the second attack in the parking area. There was no sense to that holdup unless it was done deliberately to give his suspected sister an alibi. Whoever attacked me and stole my pants to keep me from chasing him, thought that Marjorie was in police custody and wanted to clear her of suspicion by a second appearance.
“Who cared enough about Marjorie to take that desperate risk of capture? Lundy? He’s a cold-gutted louse who loves no one but himself. Webb? His only thought was of Barbara. It could only be Marjorie’s neurotic, soft-spoken, girlish-faced brother.”
“Why the boat upset?” Fitz asked.
“Because the fleeing murderer I almost caught in the garden where Huston was killed—couldn’t swim! Otherwise there’d have bee
n no race around the long end of the garden pool. Richard Field took that long way to the garden exit because he didn’t dare risk a dive across the pool! Proving, if he had only thought about it, that it completely exonerated his sister who swims like a fish in the Aquacade show.”
Tracy’s voice sounded tired.
“The second clue that I was pretty certain of was the silken swim suit itself. It was a tough disguise to get away with in the lighted thoroughfares of the fair. Field had to make a quick change after he left me dazed in the garden back of the museum. He also had to change quickly both before and after he attacked me again in the parking area. There was only one way a man could do that so damned fast—by wearing the swim suit under his own clothes.”
“I guess that’s all,” Fitz nodded.
“The hell it is,” Tracy growled.
His eyes were suddenly bright. The baffled, unpleasant look that had characterized him all evening was gone. This was the old Jerry Tracy, the hard-shelled, quizzical, nasal-toned little Broadway columnist who had endeared himself to Fitz by a thousand past favors, He quivered as he clutched smilingly at Fitz’s wet sleeve. He was like a lean, sawed-off hound eager to slip the leash and race away at top speed.
“Quick! Can you get me a motorcycle escort to help me break the speed record into Manhattan?”
“What’s the idea?”
“It’s about a picture,” Tracy snapped, his face agleam with a smile as thin as a razor blade. “A photograph that a certain dirty-minded evening paper is going to print in tomorrow’s first edition. I want the Star to print it! I want that artistic shot of me with my pants off to appear all over town. But I want a chance for the Daily Planet to print one, too! There’s going to be a lot of laughter in New York tomorrow—and it’s going to shrink the circulation of the Star to zero.”
Fitz said, “Huh?”
“I’ve got a date to pose for the Planet’s art department. Jerry Tracy with his pants off! I’ll write the caption myself. When it comes to nailing a murderer, Jerry Tracy never misses, if he has to strip to his drawers! The Star will wish to God they had never tried to frame me with a fake scandal photo and some nasty innuendo. They’ll be on the newsstands fifteen minutes before we release our first edition. Before they can recall the issue they’ll be sold out—in more ways than one!”
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 89