ALM02 The Death of a Celebrity

by Hulbert Footner

  The inspector looked at Lee. The latter said: “When you left Gavin’s place on Sunday night you drove home. Shortly afterwards you left the hotel again. You were driven to the Nonpariel Social Club in Bayard Street, where you sent in the driver to bring out a man known as Cagey or Frank Cagey, a notorious gangster with a reputation as a killer. You and Cagey drove away in another cab. About a half-hour later you turned up alone at Gavin’s place. You were carried up in the elevator and let yourself into the apartment with a key. A minute or two later Cagey came and was admitted to the apartment. There are witnesses to swear to this. Nobody saw Gavin alive after that.”

  Gail sprang up from her chair and paced the little room, pressing clenched hands against her temples, a grotesque figure with her frenzied, white-daubed face. Cynthia turned away her head. Old habit was so strong that there was still something theatrical in all Gail’s movements. “I did not kill him!” she cried. “I did not! I did not! But O, God! what a position I am in! How can I prove it! Only Cagey could save me, and he is dead!”

  Lee was not at all moved by this display of emotion. “Quite!” he said.

  “Do you deny that your movements on Sunday night were as Mr. Mappin has stated?” asked the Inspector.

  “No!” she said. “That much is true. You have your witnesses, haven’t you? But I did not kill him! I swear it!”

  “You hired the man who fired the shot,” said Lee.

  “No! No! No!”

  “How can you expect a jury to believe that?” asked the Inspector.

  Gail came to a stand, pressing her head between her hands. “Listen! I’ll tell you the whole story. You’ve got to believe me … Listen! Listen! … It is true that I went mad on Sunday night. I loved Gavin Dordress and he cast me off in the most brutal and cold-blooded fashion! Me! Me!”

  “That’s a lie!” said Cynthia quickly. “My father could not …”

  “Quiet!” murmured Lee. “What does it matter?”

  Gail turned on him furiously. “O, it doesn’t matter what say!” she screamed. “I am nothing, I suppose. You always hated me, Lee Mappin …”

  “Get on with your story,” said Lee.

  “He cast me off in the most brutal and cold-blooded fashion,” Gail repeated, with a spiteful glance at the girl; “and I was mad! I could not endure such a load of shame and grief. I could not live in the same world with the man who had wronged me so. I knew this man, Cagey-never mind how. I knew he would do what I wanted, for money. It’s true that I went to him on Sunday night and gave him money to kill Gavin Dordress. I was mad . . mad!”

  Cynthia’s eyes widened in horror. Lee moved closer to her. “When I went home I wrote a letter to Gavin asking for a reconciliation,” Gail continued, “and I gave that to Cagey to deliver. I knew that Gavin would read it, perhaps answer it, and Cagey was to shoot him then, and make his getaway… .” Cynthia threw an arm over her face. “… But the moment Cagey left me a revulsion of feeling took place, and I was horrified at what I had done. I attempted to pursue him in another cab, but I lost him in the traffic. I offered my driver everything I had on me if he got to Gavin’s place first, and we made it! We got there before Cagey did, Your witnesses told you that! I went upstairs to beg Gavin’s forgiveness. The key?-I had possessed a key to his apartment for years. I let myself in … O, God! …” Gail’s voice was choked by a dry-eyed hysterical sobbing.

  “Go on!” said Lee sternly.

  Holding her head, Gail dropped to her knees. “O, God!” she moaned. Flinging herself at full length on the rug, she pounded on the floor with her clenched hands. “Gavin was dead!” she screamed. “Dead! Dead! … He lay in the studio with a hole in his temple and blood spreading on the floor. His body was still warm! O, God! if I had only had the courage to kill myself then!”

  Lee and the Inspector exchanged a glance. The former said: “Who killed him?”

  Gail raised her convulsed face. “He killed himself! The gun lay where it had slipped from his hand. It was his gun. His letter of farewell was lying on the desk … You know he killed himself I Could I have forged Gavin’s handwriting? Or that ignorant brute Cagey? You have only taken advantage of appearances to bring this charge against me!”

  “And then Cagey came,” prompted Lee.

  “He rang the bell,” sobbed Gail. “I let him in because I was afraid to leave him standing there.”

  “And then?”

  “I can scarcely tell you. We left together.”

  “But that was nearly an hour later. What were you doing during that time?”

  “I was looking for my letters. I had written Gavin many letters; foolish, loving letters. I couldn’t bear the thought of having them read by others.”

  “Did you find them?”

  “No. Gavin must have destroyed them.”

  “Why did you pay Hillman such large sums of money?”

  “I never gave Hillman a cent!”

  “Then why did you send Cagey to Hillman’s house?”

  “I didn’t send him there.”

  “That I am sure is a lie,” said Lee.

  “What do you think of the rest of the story, Mr. Mappin?” the Inspector asked, low-voiced.

  “She is probably speaking the truth,” said Lee. “It fits in with the other circumstances that I told you of.”

  Gail, amazed, partly raised herself, and started to scramble towards Lee’s chair on her knees. “Oh, Lee! thank you for those words,” she cried. “You are my friend. You will stand by me.”

  Lee sprang up with surprising swiftness, and backed away from his chair. “Don’t touch me!” he said sternly. “You plotted to kill my friend!”

  “But I repented!” she wailed, beating the floor. “I got there before Cagey. I am not guilty!” Seeing no mercy in Lee’s face, she collapsed, shaken by dry sobs.

  Inspector Loasby said: “What action do you wish me to take, Mr. Mappin?”

  Lee said: “I suggest that you take no action for the present in respect to her. Our business lies elsewhere.”

  They left the theatre.

  AT this point in the investigation. Lee Mappin, after consultation with Cynthia and Inspector Loasby, changed his tactics. Suspecting that the real murderer of Gavin Dordress was close enough to them to be able to inform himself of all their movements. Lee undertook to lull him into a false security by making believe to drop the investigation. On the day following the scene in the Greenwich Theatre, therefore. Lee and Cynthia returned to their respective apartments; Gavin’s personal effects were stored, and the penthouse subleased to an oilman who had made a strike in the South-west and had come to New York to spend his gains.

  The interest of the press in the case ceased with the funeral. Word was dropped in the proper quarters among Gavin’s friends that there had seemed to be suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, but that Lee Mappin, after making an investigation, was satisfied that it was a case of suicide. Young Alan Talbert was the principal medium used by Lee to circulate this story. Talbert was a playwright of mediocre talents who was still among the great unproduced, but he was a lively, talkative young fellow and an assiduous frequenter of theatrical parties.

  In order to cover his tracks more completely, Lee did for a while abstain from making any moves in the case. Stan Oberry was paid off, and his operatives recalled from their assignments. The man sent to Reno had not been able to get anything out of Bea Townley. When Lee started cautiously to put out new lines, he employed other agents and changed them frequently. Meanwhile he resumed his ordinary unhurried life, devoting himself to his writing and showing himself freely in public. He cultivated the society of Alan Talbert at this time. He did not care particularly for that shallow young man, but Talbert was flattered at being taken up by the noted Lee Mappin, and Lee was thus sure that his doings would be reported in the right places.

  During these days Lee and Cynthia avoided private meetings. The telephone was safer. When they had first laid their plans Cynthia expressed a wish to take Siebert
Ackroyd into the secret. “I can’t play a part with Siebert,” she said.

  Lee’s face, usually so gentle to Cynthia, turned hard. “Not with my consent,” he said. “Wait until I have cleared him of all possible suspicion.”

  “Very well,” she said sadly. “Then I won’t see him at all.”

  “Just as you think best.”

  Siebert was not the man to take this tamely. After Cynthia had put him off a couple of times, he flew into a rage and swore that he was through. Thereafter they heard reports that he was drinking too much and otherwise living recklessly, and that made Cynthia sore. She tried to lose herself in her work at the hospital and to put Siebert out of her life for good.

  With the disappearance of Siebert, Emmett Gundy began to constitute himself Cynthia’s squire. Cynthia was a rich woman now. Emmett aimed only to be the faithful friend, never obtruding himself, but always at hand when wanted. His daily calls on the phone to see how she was, his little inexpensive gifts, lapped her in kindness. Little by little she overcame her initial dislike of her father’s classmate. They talked much of Gavin. There was no envy in Emmett now. One day Emmett and Siebert met accidentally in the anteroom of a publisher’s office. There were no witnesses to what happened, but Emmett suffered a black eye. This had the result of further angering Cynthia against Siebert, and making her kinder to Emmett.

  Louella Kip no longer appeared at the little gatherings of their circle, and Emmett, when questioned, said that he had not seen her lately. Lee, becoming anxious, looked her up. He found her absolutely without means, about to be evicted from her cheap boarding-house, and with no place to go. She was still defiantly loyal to Emmett and would hear no word against him. In spite of her protests, Lee took care of her financially, and through theatrical connections of Gavin’s-not Mack Townley-succeeded in getting her a small part in a new play.

  Gail Garrett continued to appear in White Orchids at the Greenwich, but it was obvious that she had lost her grip. Audiences are very quick to sense that sort of thing. Business fell away with startling rapidity; the play closed, and for the first time in many years the famous actress found herself “at liberty.” She was no longer seen around her former haunts. In order to account for her failure, people began to say that she was taking drugs.

  Hillman, when he was relieved of his duties as butler, disappeared from view. Mrs. Hillman was still doing an excellent business at the Harvest Restaurant, and Lee, having learned that she was in communication with her husband, let Hillman go for the moment, satisfied that he could lay hands on him at any time. After a week or two had passed, Hillman returned to town and took up his duties in the restaurant. Inspector Loasby kept him under surveillance.

  In the course of time the police were able to produce the man who had made the duplicate key to the garden door of the penthouse. It was a Jewish locksmith from the lower East Side. His description of his customer tallied with that already in the hands of the police; a tall, heavily-built foreigner with stooped shoulders. Wore thick glasses that caused him to peer in an odd way, and spoke broken English. The Jew, however, insisted that he was a Wop. Wore a leather cap that completely covered his hair, and an old yellowish overcoat that had sagged out of shape. The various people who had seen this man could not agree as to the colour of his eyes. One said black, one said grey, one said blue. This description had been put in the hands of every policeman in New York.

  Early, in November there was an announcement in the dramatic columns of the New York dailies that Mack Townley had discovered a remarkable new playwright. His name was John Venner and he had written a play called Sin, which was so good that the astute Townley had bought it on sight, and was preparing to put it into rehearsal as soon as a cast could be assembled.

  Every few days thereafter the public was fed an additional bit of news about the new play. There was a mystery about the author. Mack Townley had not laid eyes on him. All their business had been conducted by correspondence. The Townley office declined to give out his address. Though this was presumably Venner’s first play, he had had the assurance to stipulate that no changes should be made in it, and Townley had actually agreed.

  Very little about the play itself was given out in advance. It was said to deal with a strange case of the transference of personality, and, while not a horror play in the usual sense, to have breath-taking overtones of terror and mystery. Another account described it as an allegory in modern dress.

  It was soon announced that the cast had been completed and rehearsals started. The play was to open at the Townley Theatre on Christmas night. It would have one of the most expensive casts ever brought together. The principal woman’s part would be played by Miss Beatrice Ellerman (Mrs. Mack Townley), who had recovered from her recent illness.

  Lee smiled grimly as he read this last item. Bea was back in town. The fact of her brief stay in Reno had not been published in the Press, and nobody but Lee and his close associates knew that the couple had separated and come together again. One morning Lee met Bea coming out of the most fashionable beauty salon on the Avenue. The tall Bea, in her dark slenderness and grace, was more dazzlingly beautiful than ever. Everybody on the sidewalk turned to look at her. She moved across, smilingly conscious of her power. Her greeting to Lee was nicely graduated between pleasure at the sight of an old friend and grief at the recollection of their common loss. “Lee!” she murmured. “How good it is to see you! Dear, dear Lee! You were his closest friend!”

  Lee’s answering smile was a thought dry. “I’m glad to see you, too. Your last message to me was not quite so friendly.”

  “Ah, forget it, my dear!” she said, laying a, hand on his arm. “I was so distracted by grief at Gavin’s death I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “I understand,” said Lee soothingly.

  A shade of anxiety appeared in the handsome dark eyes. “The fact that I went to Reno doesn’t mean that there was any trouble between Mack and me,” she said. “I have a dear friend living there and I simply wanted to be with her in my grief.”

  “I never gossip,” said Lee.

  “Why on earth did you send that person all the way to Reno to ask me questions?”

  “Well, there were certain suspicious circumstances in connection with Gavin’s death, but they are cleared up now.”

  “But why question me?”

  Lee smiled his blandest smile. “My dear, you were overheard applying very uncomplimentary epithets to your husband. In fact, you called him .. a murderer.”’

  Bea paled under her make-up and bit the deliciously painted lip. “Lee! Who said so?”

  “A servant.”

  “Maybe I did,” she murmured. “But a woman out of her mind with grief and hysteria-it means nothing.”

  “Quite!” said Lee.

  He handed her into her car. Driving away, she did not look quite so sure of herself.

  Several nights later Lee saw Mack Townley at the annual dinner of the Pilgrims. Mack, who had large interests in London as well as New York, was at the speakers’ table. Lee marvelled at the transformation in him. Gone was the savage look of pain and defeat. Mack had returned to his usual smooth and astute self; the handsomest and the best-dressed theatrical manager of two continents. His speech in the prevailing hands-across-the-sea vein, was the wittiest of the evening. Mack had not written it himself, of course, but he delivered it admirably. Lee did not run into him until the party was breaking up. “Hello, Mack!”

  “Well, Lee!” said Mack coolly; he was never a demonstrative man. “How are things going?”

  “As usual. I hear great tales about your new play.”

  Mack became the promoter at once. “In this case, Lee,” he said seriously, “the ballyhoo is not exaggerated. It is really an extraordinary play. I have never seen actors so deeply affected by their parts. The play inspires them.”

  “Splendid!” said Lee.

  “You shall have two tickets tor the opening,” said Mack, hurrying away.

  “Thanks, old
man.”

  Day by day little advance notices designed to whet the public appetite for the new play appeared in the dramatic columns. The author, it appeared, had declined to take any part in rehearsals, but it was evident that he was keeping in touch with their progress, because he had objected to the unsuitability of Mr. Martin Sears in the part of the country doctor, and Mr. Sears had therefore been replaced by Mr. Everard Welcome.

  On another day: “Mr. Basil Hoare, the celebrated young English actor who had been brought over to play the character in John Venner’s play, Sin, who represents the spirit of evil, is so powerful in the part that Miss Phoebe Wistar became hysterical during a scene with him yesterday, and the rehearsal had to be called off for the day.”

  As the date of the opening approached, the contention for tickets became intense. Any Mack Townley opening was an event in New York’s social year, and this was considered to be exceptional. “The greatest play I ever produced,” Mack had said. Not to be there was to confess oneself unknown. Mr. Townley’s mailing-list had to be supplied first, of course; what tickets were available to the public were snapped up within an hour of being put on sale. The few that fell into the hands of the agencies were quoted at fantastic prices.

  From the Herald-Tribune of December 20th: “Two seats for the opening of Sin at the Townley Theatre on Christmas night were sent to the author, the mysterious Mr. John Venner, in the usual course. The astonishment of the management can be better imagined than described when they were returned yesterday with a note from Mr. Venner stating that he did not expect to attend! An author not coming to the first night of his first play! Incredible! However, upon thinking it over, one realises that if Mr. Venner had occupied the numbered seats sent to him he would immediately have been identified. No doubt he will be present, but in a place of his own choosing.”

  Lee Mappin received his tickets in due course. He called up Cynthia to ask her if she would go with him. “Thanks, dear,” said Cynthia, “but I haven’t seen a show since, well, you know when. I have a sort of dread of entering a theatre. Ask somebody else to go with you.”