Groucho Marx, Secret Agent

by Ron Goulart

  On the homeward-bound boat, Groucho and I settled at a small table in the upper-deck lounge. He took the letter out of the breast pocket of his blazer.

  We’d both scanned it while Roger Torres was driving us back to Avalon from the scene of the shooting, but we hadn’t been able to discuss it openly until now.

  Groucho tapped the two handwritten pages with his forefinger. “This document explains quite a lot,” he said. “Even though it doesn’t tell us who killed Olmstead.”

  “It does give us a pretty good direction in which to look.”

  “Perhaps,” said Groucho, gazing up at the ceiling.

  “You still think that we’re dealing with more than spies and espionage?”

  “I simply have a feeling that there’s more to this than Nazi agents falling out,” he said.

  Twenty-five

  Jane, wearing a white terry-cloth robe over her pale blue nightdress, was sitting on the sofa when I let myself into our living room at about ten o’clock that night. Dorgan, who’d apparently been dozing on the carpet near her slippered feet, sat up and commenced wagging his tail.

  “Somebody took a potshot at you,” she accused.

  I approached the sofa and simultaneously kissed her and patted our bloodhound on the head. “Whyever would you say that, my pet?”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m fey and sense such things.”

  “I sure hope you’re not Frank Fay, because I hear he’s an awful lush and tends to—”

  “You telephone me from Catalina, casually mention that you and Groucho have walked into another murder and that you’ll be delayed a while,” she said.

  “Exactly, but—”

  “You walked in on the murderer, too, didn’t you?”

  I sat beside her. “Well, he was just taking his leave when I got there, yes.”

  “A man with a gun and—”

  “Okay, you’re right, Jane—the guy did shoot at me. But that was only once, and the shot was wild. Didn’t, really, come anywhere near me,” I told her, trying to sound matter-of-fact about it. “He was much more interested in making a clean getaway than in potting me.”

  “Lumps on the skull are bad enough, Frank, but now we’ve gotten to potential bullet wounds.”

  “The guy missed me,” I reminded her. “By a mile.”

  “What about Groucho? Did he get shot at as well?”

  “Groucho was only knocked down on his backside,” I answered, reaching into the breast pocket of my jacket. “But because of that, we—”

  “How come he didn’t get shot at?”

  “Because while I was entering this guy Pearson’s cottage by the back door, Groucho was coming at it from the front,” I explained. “By the time he encountered Groucho, he was concentrating on heading for the hills.”

  “You could’ve been killed.”

  “I doubt it, but if you’re really upset, I can quit this whole—”

  “No. We’ll compromise.” Jane put her hand over mine. “Finish up this darn case, but then don’t take on any new ones until our daughter is born. A deal?”

  “Daughter? How do you know it’s going to be a—”

  “It’ll be a girl, trust me.”

  “Then we can’t name her after Groucho.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Groucho Denby would be kind of a cute name for a little girl,” said Jane. “What’s that you keep trying to take out of your coat pocket?”

  “The missing so-called Olmstead confession.” I pulled the letter out of the envelope, handing it to her. “The guy who shot Pearson dropped it.”

  She took hold of it by the edge. “What about fingerprints?”

  “Killer was wearing gloves.”

  Jane glanced at the first page. “If this is Olmstead’s handwriting, he was educated in Europe,” she said. “Not England.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “Read the letter, and then we can talk about it.”

  The letter said:

  Dear Dinah

  I really do love you. Keep that in mind as you read this.

  If I manage to accomplish what I intend to do, without endangering you, you’ll never see this letter.

  I’m very much afraid, however, that there isn’t enough time and that something will happen to me.

  My real name is Ernst Krieger, and I was born not in England, but in Munich, Germany, in 1897. 1 studied English in college and came to speak it well. In 1931 I was recruited to act as an espionage agent. Eventually I was given a British identity and planted in the film industry. They instructed me to bide my time until I was needed. Finally I was sent to America, again told to live my life as if I were nothing more than a successful motion-picture director.

  You must believe me that marrying you was not part of any plan. I really did fall in love with you, but, unfortunately, I never worked up the nerve to tell you who and what I really was. Soon after we were married, I was contacted by a representative of the Gestapo and told to stand by for an assignment. The man who got in touch with me is Werner Spearman, whose cover identity is that of the German consul in Los Angeles.

  I was ordered to visit the Lockwood Aero factory, which would be easy for me as your husband. I would be contacted inside the plant and slipped certain papers that they wished to smuggle out. Initially I balked at this, but they told me that you’d be harmed if I didn’t do exactly as ordered. I was, after all, an agent of Nazi Germany, and my first loyalty was to the Fatherland.

  I acted as a courier up to a point, dear. But instead of passing on the papers I was given, I burned them in the fireplace once we were home. When they asked me where the material was, I lied and said I’d never been contacted at the Lockwood plant.

  But they soon found out that I was lying and began to pressure me to produce the stolen material. They threatened me and you. That was the point when, though it hurt me very much, I told you we had to separate. Again, I wasn’t honest enough to tell you what was really going on, Dinah.

  What I have to do now, no matter what the consequences to me, is go to the FBI and tell them what I know. I’ve already warned Spearman that I’ll do that if he and his agents don’t stop threatening me.

  I’m afraid that I may not succeed in this. If I don’t, then you’ll be reading this soon. I do love you, and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have tried to do what I’m planning.

  Your loving husband

  Eric

  When she finished reading, Jane lowered the letter to her lap. “This pretty much confirms a lot of what you and Groucho have suspected,” she said. “Are you going to show it to Dinah Flanders?”

  “The letter doesn’t tell us exactly who killed Olmstead,” I answered. “We’ll hold on to it for now.”

  “And do what next?”

  “Coming back on the boat, Groucho and I came up with a few notions,” I said.

  Twenty-six

  Monday morning was gray, with a light rain falling. I was sitting on the sofa, talking on the telephone. Open on the coffee table was my notebook with the list of things I had to take care of in connection with the Olmstead case. Make that the Olmstead-Pearson case.

  “As I recall,” Win Mulvane of the Beverly Hills Police Department was saying, “I advised you to take a hike, get lost, and generally scram.”

  “Being a disciple of Horatio Alger, I never give up, believing that with pluck and luck I can strive to—”

  “What is it you want, Frank?”

  I said, “James Pearson, also known as Len Hickman, was shot and killed over on Santa Catalina yesterday, and—”

  “I know about that,” said my cop friend. “And also that you and Groucho Marx just happened to be passing by when it happened.”

  “Can you compare the thirty-two-caliber slugs that killed Pearson with the thirty-two slug that killed Olmstead?”

  Mulvane was quiet for several seconds. “You’re suggesting that they’re from the same gun?”

  “I’m curious as to whether or not they are,” I answered.

  �
��The lid’s been clamped down very tight on this, Frank.”

  “So you mentioned when last we met. I thought, though, that you might be interested, since you—”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Mulvane said. “Let me phone you.”

  “If you don’t within a reasonable time, Win, I’ll—”

  “Give my best to Janey.” The policeman hung up.

  Standing, I wandered over to the open doorway of Jane’s studio. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “Not really, no. If you want to interrupt me, you’ll have to come back later.” She was behind her drawing board, using a blue pencil to indicate where she wanted the engravers to lay a dot pattern on the daily Hollywood Molly she’d just finished. “How are you doing?”

  “I was chatting with Win Mulvane about the thirty-two revolver that was used to shoot—”

  “I meant with rewriting your radio script.”

  I gave a minimal shrug. “If we keep working on this case, which will continue to annoy Warren Lockwood, which may well prompt him to decide not to pick up our show for his radio network, which will—”

  “Sounds as complex as a Rube Goldberg invention,” Jane said. “When the midget dancer on the turntable drops the miniature bowling ball on the porcupine’s tail end, the quills will go shooting out and deflate the beach ball, which in turn will … and so on. You guys can always sell the show to NBC, to their Red Network or their Blue Network or just about any color you—”

  “I guess walking in on Pearson’s murder yesterday has put me in a gloomy mood,” I admitted, “and brought on a bout of pessimism that—”

  The extension telephone on Jane’s taboret rang. She answered, listened for a moment, and handed me the receiver. “For you.”

  I took the phone. “Yeah?”

  “Is that you, Frank?”

  “To the best of my knowledge. And you are—”

  “It’s me. I was using a disguised voice.”

  “Hello, O’Hearn.”

  “Listen, Frank, if I put you in touch with somebody you’re anxious to talk to, is that worth an extra ten bucks?”

  “Depends on who it is and what he wants to talk about.”

  “It’s a she,” corrected O’Hearn. “Somebody you asked me to track down for you. Turns out she doesn’t want to talk to the cops or the G-men, but she’s willing to—”

  “This is Pearson’s girlfriend?”

  My informant said, “You guessed it, Frank—this dame was Len Hickman’s sweetheart. She’s a little scared and lying low, but she wants to tell you and Groucho Marx about why he was posing as Olmstead’s valet and why he got bumped off.”

  “Yep, that’s worth an extra ten,” I assured him. “Who is she, and where do I find her?”

  “Her name is Linda Gilkinson,” he said. “You can call this number in Westwood.” He gave me a telephone number. “They’ll set up a meeting.”

  “Thanks, Tim. I’ll get the dough to you by tomorrow sometime.” I handed the receiver back to Jane, and she hung it up. “That was—”

  The telephone rang again.

  “That was O’Hearn,” I finished.

  Jane answered the call, told me, “It’s Larry Shell.”

  I took the phone again. “Hi, Larry.”

  “I understand you and Groucho are interested in the pictures I took the other night.”

  “We were, but then we heard that the FBI—”

  “When I unpacked my stuff after I got home from Ensenada last night, I discovered two rolls of film that I’d overlooked. So, if you’d like to see seventy or so shots of the Lockwood Halloween festivities, Frank, I can run off a few sheets of contact prints. Can you drop over late today?”

  “We’d like to see them, yeah. You’ll be at your studio?”

  “The place in Santa Monica,” the Times photographer said. “Anytime after four.”

  “I’ll try to get there between four and five, with Groucho in tow,” I promised.

  “I haven’t told anybody else about this yet,” added Shell.

  After ending the call, I said to Jane, “Larry found some more pictures of the Halloween party.”

  “Those might prove helpful.”

  “We’re hoping so.”

  “What did O’Hearn want?”

  “To tell me a close lady friend of Pearson’s is willing to talk to me and Groucho.”

  “That could be helpful, too,” said Jane. “But be extra careful, huh?”

  The rain had continued throughout the day, increasing in intensity by early afternoon. The windshield wipers on Groucho’s Cadillac made whining noises every third swipe.

  “Then you don’t agree that was an obscene gesture, Rollo?” he asked as we neared the shut-down King Neptune Playland at the Beach.

  “I think the kid was just waving at you.”

  “With a clenched fist?” He guided the car onto the deserted parking lot next to the closed-up amusement park. The Pacific Ocean was gray and choppy.

  “He was smiling,” I reminded, referring to the teenager who’d passed us in his jalopy a few minutes earlier. “He’s probably a Marx Brothers fan.”

  “They don’t grant drivers’ licenses to people like that.” Groucho parked the Cadillac near the wooden gate in the high wall that had been put up around Playland. “The state insists that you have to have an IQ at least equal to that of Louis B. Mayer before they let you operate a motor vehicle.”

  The rain was thumping heavily on the roof of the car. “Okay, you’re probably right. The kid just saw you singing ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’ in At the Circus, and he was expressing his anger.”

  “No, it’s more likely he mistook me for Chico and thinks I owe him money.” Turning, kneeling on the seat, he reached into the backseat for a furled umbrella. Stepping out into the early afternoon rain, he opened the small polka-dot umbrella. “Step under this with me. It’ll protect you from the elements.”

  “It’s nowhere big enough.” I eased out of the car, pulling my hat further down on my head. “That’s more a parasol than an umbrella.”

  “Look on the bright side,” he said as I joined him. “It could’ve been a parasite, and then there wouldn’t be room for even one of us under it.”

  “True, but-”

  “Or it might’ve been a paradox, in which case I wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to open it.”

  “That’s also very—”

  “Then again, it could’ve been a Perry Mason, and we’d have to go through a tedious courtroom scene before we—”

  “What say we head for the gate?”

  “Jolly good idea, old man. That is, if you’re quite through with your conundrums.” We started walking rapidly across the rain-swept asphalt. “And remember, Rollo, always wear a conundrum when visiting a house of ill repute, or you’ll contract some vile malady. If I were a low burlesque comic, I’d now sing a chorus of ‘A Pretty Girl Is like a Malady.’”

  “Good thing you’re not.”

  We’d been here at King Neptune Playland at the Beach when we were working on the Frances London case. Groucho had been part of a show that was staged in honor of our then sponsor’s birthday. The entire vast amusement park had been rented for the night. During that night a crooked cop had tried to shoot both Groucho and me, and some underworld types had tried to persuade me to retire from the amateur sleuth business.

  Groucho reached up and knocked on the wooden gate. “You’re just about the only chap I know whom hoodlums took for a ride using a roller coaster.”

  I have a mild middle-ear balance problem, and that enforced trip had left me feeling pretty close to rotten. “I’d prefer to let that incident remain in the past.”

  After thirty or so rainy seconds, a chain rattled on the other side of the gate. Then it creaked open about three feet, and a large, barrelchested man of about fifty gazed out at us. He was wearing a yellow rain slicker and holding a large black umbrella. “Well, if it isn’t Groucho Marx,” he said, grinning.

/>   “If it isn’t Groucho Marx, I’ve got an awful lot of monogrammed hankies I’m going to have to toss out,” said Groucho. “What in the dickens are you doing here, Miles?”

  “I work as the off-season watchman, Groucho.” He opened the big gate wider, beckoning us to enter.

  By then I’d recognized him as Miles Duncan, a muscle builder who’d played Ty-Gor in three or four silents back in the early 1920s. “You were a great Ty-Gor,” I told him.

  “I sure as hell was,” the one-time actor agreed. “But I went out of fashion.” He flexed his left arm, and, even inside the raincoat sleeve, the arm showed as massive and muscular. “Nowadays, the guy they got playing the part is a beanpole—a pansy, if you ask me. What was he before he got into the movies? A guy who won a few medals for the 100-yard dash, for Pete’s sake.”

  “We were told,” said Groucho, relatively dry under his small umbrella, “we’d be able to rendezvous with Linda Gilkinson here, Miles.”

  “The poor kid, she’s plenty scared,” said the erstwhile Ty-Gor. “You’ll find her about a quarter mile down the main stem, holed up in Madam Ayesha’s Fortune-Telling Parlor. That’s a couple doors down from the Filmland Wax Museum. If you want, I can escort you to—”

  “We know our way there,” I said.

  “I’ll go back in my guardhouse then,” Duncan said. “I was just listening to Johnny Whistler on the radio. I like to keep up with the movie business even though I’m washed up.”

  “It’s never too late to make a comeback,” said Groucho.

  The actor grinned again, went trotting back to a nearby wooden shed.

  As we began making our way along the main street of the amusement park, Groucho gestured at the large show tent we were approaching. “Within those canvas walls, Rollo, I danced a tango with Rita Hayworth.”

  “I remember, yeah. That was just before she developed that unsightly limp.”

  “I’ll have you know that our performance put the audience into a frenzy,” he said as we made our way along the rainy street. “In fact, there were so many of them that they didn’t all fit into the frenzy and some had to go into ecstasy. Those were somewhat disappointed, because they were expecting to go into Ecstasy, that gamy flicker that featured Hedy Lamarr wearing no noticeable costume of any kind.”