Overmire glanced sideways at me and lifted an eyebrow. "End of the line, or do you have some more?"
I said, "When I walked into that house out on Grace Street tonight, I saw a couple of things besides Wirtz's body—two things, one leading naturally into the other, that made me see this whole picture from a fresh angle. On the surface it looked as nuts as a pecan orchard. But thie more I thought it over, the more beautifully simple it became."
The lieutenant blew out a mouthful of smoke with an impatient snort. "You sound like you're trying out for Inner Sanctum. Spit it out, will you ?"
I said, "To begin with, none of us knew where Wirtz was hiding out. Benbrook was dead; he couldn't lead anybody there. Then I got my brainstorm, called Mrs. Benbrook to check on that address, then went tearing out there myself, wath Lola Wirtz for company. Yet, according to Mrs. Benbrook, Wirtz was dead when she walked in a few minutes ahead of Mrs. Wirtz and me."
Constance Benbrook was out of her chair. "He was dead, you fool! Don't think for a minute you can put the blame on me. I had no reason "
I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back. "When I blame you for anything you'll know it. Sit down and keep out of this."
It left her with her mouth open and no words.
While she was sinking back into her chair, I said, "If Jafar Baijan is the one who killed Wirtz—and you'll never convince me he wasn't—and since no one was still living who could lead him there, there's only one answer you can get: Wirtz must have telephoned Baijan and told him where he was hiding."
No one said anything but their expressions indicated they'd fallen off on that last curve.
"That," I said, "was number one of the things I realized. The second had to do with a mistake both Louie Antuni and I made, the mistake of assuming Jafar Baijan would see my name in the paper and get in touch with me. You see, Jafar Baijan had already contacted me—in fact, I was working for him."
Bishop McManus smiled gently. Still smiling he put his hand in the drawer among his lozenges and brought out a gun.
It was coming up fast when I unfolded my arms and shot him through the head.
It was beginning to get light over to the east across the lake. A long way from dawn yet, but still the hint of a dawn was there. Up on the fifth floor of Central Station, on the Wabash Avenue side, there were no buildings between me and the horizon, which was why I could see so far.
There were three of us sitting in Overmire's private office up there. Connie Benbrook had been sent home in near hysterics, leaving Lola Wirtz to see me through the tough hours ahead. Nobody was going to send her home—Over-mire had tried it and so had I. But she stayed, and was still there when I was finished with dictating reports and going from room to room.
The lieutenant came out of a silence to say, "I still can't see how in hell he expected to get away with a crazy impersonation like that. A bishop, man! Bishops know a million and twelve people. Theirs is a highly specialized profession, if you can call it that. How did this guy expect to get away with it?"
My throat was hoarse from talking, but it seemed it was going to be a lot hoarser before I had a chance to rest it.
I said, "Look, the guy was really smart. You don't get to be a crook of that stature unless you've got more guts and imagination than any twelve people should have. In the first place, he expected the impersonation would last only one day. Why? Because he had followed Wirtz to the rectory
202
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two weeks before the real bishop got back from New York, or wherever he was. He knew Wirtz would be back the first day the bishop returned. So he went East himself, intercepted the real Bishop McManus, studied his mannerisms, voice and appearance. It was a break for him that they resembled each other in a loose sort of way—as a lot of men around the same age and general build do. Believe me, if they hadn't had that same general appearance, Baijan would have found some other method of pulling a coup. Then when the time came for Bishop McManus' return, Baijan killed him and got rid of the body."
"But to fool people who knew him intimately—even for one day!"
"Think a minute," I said. "All bishops look alike, in the same way all harness cops look alike. You see the uniform, not the man behind it. Where was Baijan's greatest danger of failure? His secretary and the woman at the reception desk. Easy to do, Overmire. He called up from the station the minute he arrived in town and ordered his secretary to take his vacation immediately; he went through the reception room fast, up to his office. And there by God he stuck— except for the couple of nights when he snuck out to kill Ben-brook and Wirtz.
"Why, even when he got panicky enough to call in a private investigator to find Wirtz, he couldn't be sure he wasn't getting hold of some friend of the real Bishop's. When he first called me he asked if we hadn't met and I said no. But I wasn't in his office ten minutes the next day before he brought up the question a second time, just to be sure.
"Yet with all these precautions, he damned near threw a >hoe. That old maid receptionist has pretty close to a camera ;ye. My first day on this case she told me Bishop McManus
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was a changed man, that he was older and thinner and had new Hnes in his face. She put it down as due to his being worried about something—just as I did when I heard his story about that manuscript. But that was stupid of me, Lieutenant. The thing T forgot is that he came in ofT the train looking that way, according to his receptionist's own statement. How could he have been worrying about that manuscript before he had any way of knozving about such a thing? Why, hell, I myself noticed he'd worn his hair parted on the side up until recently. Shave a spot on top for approaching baldness, a bit of face wax here and there—and he's in. Look, it can be done—he did it."
I got up and went out and down the hall to the washroom. I could hear a drunk yelling away off some place in the building. Men with a hard manner and suspicion in their eyes passed me in the hall. Not hard and suspicious because of me; they were always that way.
When I came back they were still sitting the way I had left | them. Overmire was back with his pipe again, not getting i much joy from his tobacco to judge from his expression.
I sat down and put my feet up on an empty chair. "I'd like to go home. Lieutenant Overmire. I really would."
"Sure, sure." He rubbed the back of his neck with slow care. "I'd still like to know where he stashed that manuscript."
"Maybe he didn't get it," I said.
His mouth fell open. "What kind of a crack is that? You,; yourself, told me he wouldn't have killed Wirtz without getting it first."
"I don't think Wirtz had it with him," I said. "I do think; Wirtz called him at the rectory and asked that he come out and get it. I think he told Baijan where it was and convinced
I
HALO FOR SATAN 205
him he was telling him the truth. You see, Lieutenant, if Wirtz had handed Baijan that manuscript, I don't think he'd have ever gone back to the rectory. But my guess is that he meant to go out some time this morning, pick the thing up and then blow town."
"Then why kill Wirtz at all ?"
I grinned at him. "Are you going to let me do all the work?" j He glared at me and repeated the question.
"I'll have to guess," I said, "but I think I can make it . sound reasonable. Baijan, forced to wait until morning to get actual possession of the manuscript, might have been I afraid Wirtz would reconsider and block him off at the last minute. Or, once Baijan, as the Bishop, disappeared, Wirtz I would have realized he'd been snookered and he might let out ja yell. This way, with Wirtz dead, Bishop McManus' disappearance would have been a nine-day wonder, period. Nobody would have known about Jafar Baijan."
I let my feet slip off the chair, then stood up and took
my hat off his desk. "Time's up. If you think of any
,more questions, write 'em down. When I'm retired and
, I busy with my memoirs, come around and ask me. Come on,
jblond
ie."
At the door, I turned around and looked back at him sit-jlting there. "You know why it took us so long to see the (^[answer, Lieutenant? Because we thought of Baijan as a [bishop instead of a man. A man—any man—can be a killer and open to suspicion. But not a bishop; by the very nature of his calling he's above such flaws. All of us—no matter how calloused we get from rubbing against the wrong kind of people—never look on the clergy with the eyes we have tor ordinary people. We give them a halo, which is as it
should be. But this time we gave a halo to the wrong guy. This time it was a halo for Satan.
"I have made a speech. Good morning, Lieutenant."
She came by for me at twelve o'clock, as arranged, and we walked down half a block from the Dinsmore Arms' entrance and got into the Plymouth. The rain had stopped about four but the sky was still the color of a grammar school, blackboard.
While I was starting the motor, she said, "Where are we going, Paul?"
"Didn't I tell you while we were on the way home from Central Station a few hours ago ?"
"You know you didn't! You just said to drop aroundi about noon and we'd go for a ride."
"All right. There's your answer,"
"I don't see why you have to be so secretive about it."
"Who's secretive?" I turned west into Pratt Boulevard. "I've got a kind of a job to do and I thought you'd like to go along and watch me play detective."
Air through the open car window moved the shining glory of her hair. She said soberly, "Something to do with Raymond's death, Paul?"
"His and five others, counting the two bishops. A lot ol blood, Mrs. Wirtz."
"But it's all over with now. Isn't it?"
"The killings? I think so."
"Then "
I said, "You came to this town for something, Mrs. Wirtz And I don't mean to deliver a gross of compassion for th( bewildered man you married."
"Paul!" Pier fingers bit into my right arm and her eye:
HALO FOR SATAN 207
were glowing. "You mean the manuscript? You know where it is? Is that where we're going?"
I pulled up at a stop light set against us. "You're giving me a bad opinion of widows, you know that, don't you? When a husband dies, isn't his wife supposed to go around with swollen eyes and a black-edged handkerchief clutched in her trembling fingers ?"
1 She took her hand from my arm and let it drop to her lap,
I turning her face away. "Don't joke, Paul. I do feel terribly depressed by Raymond's death. But I didn't love him and
we were separated this last year. I've told you that."
"Yeah." We started moving again, past a small lake at the
' intersection, a reminder we'd been having rain and might have more of it any minute, "You're the only client I have left, Mrs. Wirtz, and I'm on the job. When Lieutenant Over-mire dropped in at my apartment yesterday afternoon while you were there, he said something—something that makes me think I may be able to come up with this manuscript after
I all. If I do get it, you, as Raymond Wirtz's widow, have a
iclaim against it. But I'm not going to turn the thing over I)to you."
Ij Anger and panic struggled in her lovely face. "But you jihave to! It's mine! I've thought of nothing else. . . ."
I i "I know. Twenty-five million bucks can get in the way of imost anything. But it isn't money so far, Mrs. Wirtz; it's just some pieces of paper. I'm going to turn the manuscript over to Louie Antuni and you'll get your money from him. Maybe not right away and certainly not that much. You can go back to Los Angeles and sit on your patio, and one day !the mailman will drop around and make you rich. // I can jfind the thing to begin with."
She said tightly, "You don't have the right to make deals with something that belongs to me."
208 HALO FOR SATAN
I said, "Let's not be technical. Actually that manuscript didn't belong to your husband to begin with. Would you like it to go into the police files and lie there while efforts are made to find the real owner ?"
She was silent for several blocks. Then: "Why are you doing it this way, Paul ?"
"I made a promise to Louie Antuni. I like to keep my promises, Mrs. Wirtz. Louie gets his Heavenly passport and I get my fifty thousand dollars. I'm a rich man, Mrs. Wirtz."
"I wish you'd stop calling me that!" She was smiling at me now, and her shoulder was pressing against mine. "You're also something pretty wonderful—and a little frightening. You . . could have quite a honeymoon with fifty thousand dollars."
"Sure. But you need a woman for a honeymoon."
"I'm a woman, Paul." I barely heard her.
I smacked my lips. "Just think: poor, hard-working Pine, the people's punching bag, married to an heiress."
"I didn't say anything about marriage—just a honeymoon."
"I ever tell you about my school days?" I said. "Football was my dish; one of the best pass throwers in the league. But! I always threw them, Mrs. Wirtz. I wasn't much good at catching them."
Silence the rest of the way.
I turned into a quiet street lined with look-alike houses and • drew into the curb in front of one not far from the corner. ^ Red brick, green trim at the windows and door, neat lawns where they belonged.
I w^ent around and opened Lola Wirtz's door for her and we went up the walk and onto the porch.
A brown-haired woman, about thirty-five and willing tc
HALO FOR SATAN 209
look it, opened the door to my ring. She was lovely enough to get herself stared at, dressed in a flowered print. She looked questioningly at Lola Wirtz and me standing there.
I said, "My name is Pine, Mrs. Taylor—if you are Mrs. Taylor?"
"I'm Irene Taylor, Mr. Pine. What was it you wanted?"
I had already seen what I hoped to see: a redness to her eyelids and indentations in her lower lip where her teeth had bitten.
I said, "I'm a private detective, Mrs. Taylor. This is Miss North, my secretary."
Irene Taylor's eyes became suddenly guarded. She started to say something, stopped, saw the expectant look on my face.. . and stepped aside. I "Please come in."
We went into a modest-sized living room, furnished sparingly with period pieces. There were the remains of a small fire behind the screen of a tiny fireplace, and two red bowls lof sweetpeas on the white mantel.
When Lola Wirtz and I were sitting on the couch across ifrom her, I said, "I'd like to extend my sympathies, Mrs. iTaylor."
r She tried to act surprised, but her grief was too recent and 'coo real to let her bring it off.
I nodded. "I mean Raymond Wirtz, of course. While I ,iever met him personally, we had some mutual acquaint-mces."
Lola Wirtz was sitting as stiff as a Puritan's conscience, iitaring at the other woman and digging her fingers into the pray leather bag in her lap.
1 "How did you know?" Irene Taylor whispered. "But you ouldn't! Not even Myles Benbrook knew."
210 HALO FOR SATAN
I said, "I didn't know, really. Not until you opened the, door to us. But you'd been crying, Mrs. Taylor—something the death of Myles Benbrook hadn't made you do. When Lieutenant Overmire told me that, yesterday, I wondered about it."
She looked at me stonily. "Myles Benbrook was never any more to me than a wonderful friend, Mr. Pine. I was hisi secretary for years, and when he closed his business he gave me this house as an expression of appreciation for those: years."
"And Raymond Wirtz?" I said.
"I loved him, Mr. Pine—from the moment he walked in that door with Myles four days ago. I knew he was afraid of something or someone, but he never told me. He couldi have, because there wasn't anything I wouldn't have done foU him."
Lola Wirtz said, "I wonder if you know, Mrs. TayIor,i that "
I had a hand on her shoulder by that time and her rushij of words stopped sharply when my fingers bit in.
I said, "While Mr. Wirtz was here, he left something with you, I believe."
The guarded loo
k flooded back into her eyes. "Left something with me? I don't believe I "
I said, "Think a minute, Mrs. Taylor. There wasn't anyone else he could trust—not even Myles Benbrook. The possibility of his leaving it with you didn't really register with me until the police lieutenant told me how you took the neW! of Benbrook's death. I figured you were strictly for Ben brook—that if this thing ever got into your hands you'd see that he got it."
Nobody said anything for a long moment. Lola Wirt2 seemed to be having trouble with her breathing.
Finally I said, "He did give it to you to hold, Mrs. Taylor?"
"Yes, Mr. Pine."
I let a breath flow out of me. "Thank you. I'll have to ask you to let me have it. I'll see that it gets into the hands , of the person it should go to."
j ' She started to say something, then stopped with her mouth i open when Lola Wirtz opened her bag and took out a Colt i:.25 revolver and pointed it at me. She was standing by this ; time and now she backed away where she could keep Irene ,| Taylor covered too.
She said, "I'll take that manuscript, Mrs. Taylor." I There was a real silence now—the kind called stunned. I Isaid, "Is it because you're just impatient or have I missed something ?"
That earned me a sneer. Even the gun muzzle seemed to .sneer. "This time you missed something, Paul," she said. ^I'Tm not Lola Wirtz—I just borrowed her name for a while. ,jl let you think me as no more than a grasping ex-wife, whose compassion for her husband was obviously false. You were so completely self-satisfied with that answer that you didn't take the trouble to investigate me beyond that."
"I hope it teaches me a lesson," I said. "Just for the hell of it, what name shall I use when I go around telling people how you outsmarted me ?"
Sneer number two. "My name would mean nothing to ly^ou. I've been after that manuscript ever since Kurt was mur-iered by Jafar Baijan in Los Angeles. I'm the girl who :ame to America with Kurt. Antuni told you about me; A^eren't you listening?" I didn't say anything.
The Long escape Page 18