He recalled Slipsky now vaguely, back over the years. A younger and much thinner cop, though with those same sliding green eyes. His nickname had been Slippery or Slippy. Not a particularly good record, Tuxedo Johnny had an impression—a backroom crap shooter. Slipsky had once come to him for help in getting himself out of some jam, he thought. Still that made no difference now.
'Forget it, Slippy,' he said, taking a breath. 'No one could have gone out while you've been here without your seeing him, I suppose?'
But it was an automatic question. The answer was obvious. Bad cop though he had been and still might be, Slippy would have seen anyone going out.
The elevator had come rattling down again. There was no passenger in it. The bald headed, pan faced operator stopped it jerkily at the lobby floor and opened the grilled doors.
'That Kitty Weisenkranz's damned brats again!' he said, with a flat glare, stepping out. 'They're always sneaking up and ringing the bell from the fifth floor and then beating it down again, or setting fires in the halls or dumping garbage down the shaft, or some other dirty trick like that, damn their slippery hides! Why in hell couldn't their mother have kept them in Chicago? McCue doesn't like them, neither, living right across the hall from him. Some day I'll catch them and carve my initials on them. You know me, Slippy.'
The second man he had seen; Tuxedo Johnny ticked him off. Or had met—he had glimpsed the elevator man ascending in the cage as he came down, of course.
'No one on the fifth floor?' he asked automatically.
'That's what I said, sweetheart! Are you waiting to go up?'
'You mustn't mind old Sam, Lieutenant,' said Slipsky, sliding his eyes. 'Greatest dead pan kidder you ever saw. A heart of gold. Him and me was roommates for two years at—at a place we used to live at. Lieutenant Blythe belongs to the cops, Sam. He used to be at the old precinct back when I was. He's just been up trying to get into Mr McCue's apartment, but nobody answers. And there's blood all over the doorknob. He's afraid it looks bad.'
'McCue!' said Boaz. 'You mean somebody had done him in? Why, God a'mighty, if that ain't tough! You mean you want me to go up and see? I got a pass key, but I'm not supposed to use it without permission—'
'I have a key myself.' said Tuxedo Johnny. 'For God's sake, you're new here, or you'd know it. The door is chained on the inside! I couldn't get in. Then when I saw the blood—'
He tried to think. They would have to get in by the back.
'You mean there's somebody still up in the apartment?' said Boaz uneasily. 'Do you think we ought to call the cops? Well, hell, of course you're one yourself, Lieutenant. And Slippy Slipsky here—ain't you, Slippy?'
'He must have got out some other way,' said Tuxedo Johnny— beginning to get calmed down a little and to think about it. 'I'm not a cop myself. I just used to be. When Dan didn't answer and I saw the blood, the first thing I thought of was the front door, to see if I could catch him. But Slipsky's been here, and he couldn't have come out this way. The door chain answers that, anyway. I guess I didn't think. Who's been up to see Mr. McCue this evening?' he added as an afterthought—it was the police thing to inquire.
'Why, Mr. Bean was up to see him about eleven, but he left some time ago,' Boaz said. 'He's been his only visitor.'
'Paul Bean, his lawyer?' Tuxedo Johnny asked mechanically.
'That's the guy. He brought Mr. McCue up a bottle of champagne. I didn't see him go out, but he generally stays only about half an hour. Father Finley said he had gone, anyway—I forgot about him. I don't know what time he went up. I brought him down maybe twenty or twenty-five minutes ago, though, about a quarter of twelve—he said he'd stopped in for a shave. He's a kind of goofy little guy that's nuts on cats, a friend of Mr. McCue's. He isn't a real priest, I don't think, but that's what he calls himself. He isn't there any more, either, anyway.'
'I know him,' Tuxedo Johnny said. 'He gave Mr. McCue's daughter a cat last year that scratched her and gave her blood poisoning. What other ways are there that anybody could have got away, Boaz? Can you think?'
'Well, there's the rear fire escape. A guy could climb down that, if nobody was out in back to see him.'
'Or up and across the roofs, perhaps,' said Tuxedo Johnny—never having been up to the Royal Arms roof, but trying now to get a picture of all other possible ways.
'Not that way,' said Boaz. 'There's an alley between us and the old dump next door that would take a goat to jump. Its roof is two stories lower, anyway. The Susskind loft's on the other side, ten or twelve stories high without a window. If there's been anybody in Mr McCue's apartment all evening besides Mr. Bean and Father Finley, I guess he either got away down the fire escape, or he didn't get away at all.'
'That's what I was trying to get the picture of,' said Tuxedo Johnny, drawing a deep breath. 'Looks like we'll have to go ahead and get in the back way, Slippy. You've got your gun?'
'Well, Lieutenant,' said Slipsky, sliding his eyes, 'that's one of the things— As a matter of fact, I was sort of thinking it might be a good idea for me to kind of go up and keep watch on the front door, or something, while you went around—'
'For God's sake, are you afraid?' said Tuxedo Johnny, not able to believe that Slipsky really was, that even a bad cop could be afraid of anything, though afraid enough himself. 'Of course not! You're the patrolman on the beat. You'll have to make entrance with me, to see what we find.
'Perhaps you'd better ring up headquarters right away, Boaz,' he added, with an additional flash of police thought, as he was starting for the door. 'Get hold of Inspector Bat O'Brien of homicide. Say you're calling for Tuxedo Johnny Blythe, who's just got in from Washington. Tell Big Bat that I'm breaking in with the beat patrolman into Dan McCue's apartment, to investigate what looks like some bad play, after finding the door chained on the inside and no response. Say that I just wanted him to be alerted, in case something has happened to Dan. I'll call him again in a few minutes from Dan's apartment, if it turns out to have been murder.'
With no idea that it would be two murders up there. With none that, before very long, there would be a third body lying in the black alley down which he and Slipsky were hurrying in a moment more, towards the fire escape in back.
CHAPTER THREE
Over Whose Dead Body
A scant three or four minutes, or perhaps less, had elapsed since Tuxedo Johnny had left old Dan's door and come rushing down the stairs, with the feel of blood on his hands that was slippery and still warm.
So far he had done and was still doing, it seemed to him, the only thing he could have. Having encountered Slipsky and ascertained that there was no possibility that anyone could have got away out the front door of the building. To have inquired who Dan's visitors had been tonight, and what other ways out of his apartment there might be. To hurry back to break in with Slipsky. It was just what Big Bat himself would do, he thought, if confronted by blood on a door knob and a chained door.
As yet he had encountered only Slipsky and the pan faced elevator man. But the whole apartment house couldn't be all asleep. There had been a man's muffled voice behind one door, he remembered, and the sound of dance music behind another. There had been the silences behind the other doors which had almost seemed to shout.
Who lived behind all those doors, those compact and hidden walls, above and below and across from Dan's? Had one of them, on the fourth floor across from Dan's been open just a crack? For the life of him, he could not remember now. He could only remember releasing the knob, with a wild glance around him, looking at his hand with horror, and fleeing.
The anonymity of a city apartment house, where no one knows who lives across the hall! Like the dead within a cemetery. Yet when the trumpet of murder blows, out of their graves they swarm, with staring eyes.
Kitty Weisenkranz's boys, Chicago—suddenly, as he went down the alley, that name which Boaz had spoken clicked in Tuxedo Johnny's mind. Why, she must be Kitty Kane! Kitty Kane diminutive, black eyed, and utterly alluring—of the Joll
ities and the Nestor Club, almost twenty years ago.
He had not forgotten her, with her look of a shy young woods dryad and her loving, sinful heart. Eighteen years old, and old as Egypt. He had been wild about her, romantic young sap that he had been. Once, when he had been a young lieutenant, he had jeopardized his career for her, bluffing and bulldozing a visiting Texas oil man into withdrawing a blackmail charge against her which had her caught cold. He had protected her and loved her, though knowing that there were a dozen more. At least she had always cared for him more than the others, who had been just men with dough.
Years ago she had passed out of his life, marrying O.K. Weisenkranz, the big cloak-and-suit man out in Chicago. Weisenkranz had cut his throat a year or two ago in a fit of depression—had been found lying before his bathroom mirror with his jugular severed and a razor beside him. And though there had been some question as to whether he had been right handed, and also as to whether a man could so nearly decapitate himself, the verdict had ultimately been suicide. Tuxedo Johnny Blythe had heard the details from Big Bat O'Brien, who had known Kitty, too.
A vital image—a still remembered flame. She would be thirty-six or seven now, and with her two boys by Weisenkranz. But her slender burning beauty could have hardly changed. She was the sort of girl who would never grow old. She must have come back to New York fairly recendy, to live in the Royal Arms here, right across the hall from old Dan's apartment, Boaz had said. At this very moment not far away from him, perhaps, alive and breathing and awake.
I wonder if she would remember me still? thought Tuxedo Johnny Blythe, with a pounding of his heart. And knew the answer as he asked the question: Of course! Of course she would . . .
'Jeez!' Slipsky croaked behind him, stumbling against an ash can with a bang. 'There goes another one! I don't see how you can see, Lieutenant. It's darker than the bottom of the ink. Cripes! Was that another dead cat?'
Kitty Kane!
They had come to the spiked iron fence that enclosed the rear areaway of the Royal Arms. Tuxedo Johnny Blythe found the latch of the gate. With Slipsky at his heels, he pushed on through.
The small high silver moon, just tipping past the edge of the tall surrounding roofs, shone down on the pavement in a crazy rhomboid design, with sharp rectangular edges of blackness. There was a square of yellow light from the rear basement door, standing open, with a vista of rows of ash cans and a boiler room inside. A grilled fire escape zigzagged up the rear brick wall, its bottom ladder moored by chains to hooks against the wall.
A red eye seemed to brighten and glow a moment in the black edge of the areaway, near the light of the basement door.
'Rasmussen?' said Slipsky, in a croak.
'Ya.'
'What are you doing there, Swede?'
'Smoking mine pipe.'
'How long have you been out here?'
'About ten minutes.'
'Swede Rasmussen, the janitor, Lieutenant,' said Slipsky, panting. 'He's a friend of old Sam Boaz's, too. He lives on the ground floor at the back.'
'The janitor? That's who I thought it probably was,' said Tuxedo Johnny, with an unavoidable croak himself.
The janitor of the Royal Arms came forward into the yellow basement door light—a small hunchbacked figure, dragging one leg after him, with a slow deliberate twisting of his hip. He had a dark ridge of hair like a clipped horse's mane, and a dish shaped face set with deep sockets, out of which peered his burning eyes, behind slow smoke.
The third man, thought Tuxedo Johnny Blythe, I've seen since leaving old Dan's door.
'This is Lieutenant Blythe, Swede,' said Slipsky. 'He thinks we ought to climb up to Mr. McCue's apartment and investigate. There's blood on his doorknob and nobody answers. The door is chained on the inside.'
'Ya?'
'You've been out here fifteen minutes, Rasmussen?' said Tuxedo Johnny, watching those burning eyes. 'Happen to see anything?'
Rasmussen sucked his pipe to a red glow. 'Vot sort of ding?' he said.
'Anything particular. I thought if there was something wrong with his apartment—'
'Dere is nutting wrong vit' McCue's apartment dot I know of,' said Rasmussen, smoking. 'Maybe a faucet vasher needs fixing, dot iss all.'
Tuxedo Johnny looked at him a moment. 'All right.'
'Lieutenant Blythe means about the old man himself, Swede,' said Slipsky uneasily. 'I know you, you cagey old coot. You like to have it dragged out of you. What do you know about Mr. McCue?'
'McCue?'
'For hell's sake, Swede!'
Rasmussen took his pipe out of his mouth.
'McCue iss dead,' he stated.
'How do you know?' said Tuxedo Johnny. 'Have you been up there? Where have you been?'
'Here,' said Rasmussen, putting his pipe back in his mouth. 'Yoost here, Mr. Policeman. Out smoking mine pipe and looking up at det moon. But I see McCue's lights go out not fife or six minutes ago. And den I see dot deffil flying out det vindow.'
'What devil?'
Rasmussen sucked his pipe to a glow.
'I see det vindow slide up vidout no noise,' he said. 'I see dot deffil creeping out on det fire escape, like he vas going to fly away. Ya, ya, I say to mineself! Ya, ya, I know who you are yet, Mr Deffil, and I know vot you haf been doing!'
Tuxedo Johnny Blythe felt a coldness rushing down his spine. The burning eyes of the hunchbacked man were uncanny and inhuman. His thick guttural voice wasn't manlike. He looked like a demon himself. Like the living fiend. 'You saw some man you knew leaving Mr McCue's apartment a few minutes ago, Swede?' said Slipsky uneasily, asking the question which Tuxedo Johnny Blythe might have asked but for the coldness of his tongue.
'Atet,' said Rasmussen, smoking.
'I thought you said you knew him, Swede—'
'Ya.' He pulled on his pipe once more, deliberately. 'It vass neider man nor voman,' he stated. 'It vas nuttings human, but it vass det Old Vun out of hell dot had come to get his own. "He valketh up and down like a raging lion, seeking vot he may devour," det Book says. Det soul of dot bad old man has belonged to him already. And ven I see him coming from det vindow, dere is someding comes and tells me inside here—' he rapped his knuckles—'dot old Dan McCue vill nefer bodder mine daughter Hulda, and try to make her take a drink vit him ven she goes up to clean his apartment. Climb up, and break in all you vant, if you do not belief me. You vill find der Old Vun inside vit him, munching on his bones. It iss too late, yentelmen.'
He put his pipe into his mouth and puffed contentedly, with his hands behind him.
Cracked! thought Tuxedo Johnny Blythe. He felt a crazed desire to laugh, on the rebound. The janitor's weird portentous manner and glaring eyes had almost made him believe in the devil, himself. But Rasmussen was just a crackpot with a religious streak, enjoying being important and the centre of attention. The preposterous exaggeration of the gnome man was a relief in itself. It mustn't be anywhere near as bad as he had thought, Tuxedo Johnny told himself. He felt himself, for the first time, curiously steadied.
'You mean he's still in there?'
'Ya. He did not fly away. Ven he looked down and saw me standing smoking mine pipe and vatching up at him, he yumped back in, vidout no sound, and closed det vindow quick. Vy? I had mine Testament in mine hip pocket. It took det vind out of his sails. He could not pass it. He vent pack to finish his meal and vait for me to go away. But I haf been vatching.'
'How do you reach the fire escape, Swede?' said Slipsky, looking up uneasily.
'I don't,' said the lame janitor. He took his pipe out of his mouth. 'You can go in det basement and up to mine apartment, and out through Hulda's vindow,' he said. 'She hass gone to midnight church, so it iss all right. If you do not belief me.'
But Tuxedo Johnny Blythe had already turned to the high spiked fence that enclosed the areaway, where it joined the rear wall. He stepped up on the horizontal crossbar of the fence halfway up, and reached up to the bottom of the slanted iron escape ladder, which overhung the buil
ding corner.
Holding it by his finger tips to steady himself, he stepped to the top of the fence, from where it was only another four foot stretch up onto the moored up ladder. He made it, with a voiceless little grunt, and went along the edges of the ladder steps to the first floor landing. Slipsky, as a qualified flatfoot, though a few years older than he was and overbellied, could make it with even less effort, he thought.
Slipsky didn't, though. As Tuxedo Johnny Blythe paused on the landing, he saw the shoulders and padded hindquarters of the overgrown patrolman disappearing into the basement doorway underfoot.
'Iss too fat,' said Rasmussen below. Pulling on his pipe and looking up, he followed Slipsky in. 'Slippy iss afraid he vould split his breeches. Iss going up t'rough mine apartment, mine girl Hulda's room. He vill make it yoost as quick.'
The lame gnome went in, closing the basement door behind him. Without that yellow light it was dark as pitch now in the areaway, though the escape above was visible against the lighter sky. Tuxedo Johnny sweated.
Slipsky did make it as quickly, perhaps, or quicker than he could have climbed the fence. After thirty or forty seconds the door of a bedroom, beyond the dark open window beside the first floor landing, was flung open, emitting a strafe of light from a hall beyond, and Slipsky's bulky form came tiptoeing across the semiobscurity of the room, with the gnome janitor standing smoking at the door behind him.
If Slipsky had quit, if he had fled, Tuxedo Johnny would not have gone on up alone. He would have quit, would have fled with him— his tautened nerves cried out to. But Slipsky, though uneager, was the solid blue clad law. To Slipsky, he was still to an extent the law himself, he understood in part, though not too comprehensively. As the overbellied patrol man stepped out over the window ledge with a sighing groan, Tuxedo Johnny Blythe was already starting on up.
No one shouted out at him; no one, awakened previously by any sound from Dan McCue's above, was starting forth in terror. Incredible that anything had happened to Dan within the last half dozen minutes. Tuxedo Johnny Blythe had a crazy feeling that he had been fantastically mistaken, that it was all a dream. But the feel of the blood was still upon his hand, and on his mind the terrible silence there had been in old Dan's apartment.
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