When Cynthia read this report her ideas underwent a violent process of readjustment. “Mack Townley?” she muttered. Then in a different tone. “Mack Townley! It was he!” Lee shrugged deprecatingly. “But it is clear from this that both Mack Townley and his wife know that Sin is my father’s play.”
“Surely. However, that doesn’t prove that Mack killed him. You must remember that Gavin and Mack were associated for nearly twenty years in putting on plays. It is possible that when this play was offered to Mack he recognised it as Gavin’s work from internal evidence, just as you did.”
“And never denounced the murderer and thief!”
“My dear,” said Lee, “Mack’s trained eye would tell him at a glance that there was a fortune in the play, whoever wrote it.”
“Ah, human nature is disgusting!” exclaimed Cynthia in her bitterness.
“O, not always!” protested Lee.
BRIEFER REPORTS FROM DETECTIVE-SERGEANT J.
IT’S a cinch to watch George Hillman because his life is so regular. The danger of this job is, it’s too easy; I find myself falling asleep over it. Since he returned to town he has been sticking closely to business at the Harvest Restaurant. A couple of weeks ago they decided to keep it open all night and as there is no other all-night eating place in the neighbourhood, the move has been very profitable. I should estimate that they were grossing well over two thousand a week now. Hillman don’t seem to take any pleasure in their prosperity. He’s as worried looking as ever.
Mrs. Hillman is at the desk from nine in the morning until nine at night, and her husband takes it from nine pm until nine am. He goes straight home and goes to bed, getting up at five or five-thirty in the afternoon. The next four hours are his own, but on many days he doesn’t come out of the house until it is time to go to the restaurant. He gets all his meals in his own restaurant. Sometimes he does a little shopping in Tremont Avenue, or just mooches up and down the street without any particular purpose. Whenever he’s out he always drops into some saloon, not to drink, but to play the slot machines. He appears to have no friends. I have never seen him speak to anybody.
Yesterday he departed from this routine. Coming out of his house about six o’clock he proceeded to the East Side subway and took a downtown express. At 86th he changed to a local and got out at Fifty-first Street. I followed him to the Conradi-Winder-mere Hotel and was just behind him when he asked at the desk for Miss Gail Garrett. The clerk told him that Miss Garrett no longer lived there, and that they didn’t have her present address. He referred Hillman to Mr. Bittner, her manager. Hillman then entered a telephone booth. The adjoining booths were full and I was unable to overhear the conversation, but I assumed that he was calling Bittner’s apartment. He then took a Lexington Avenue bus to Twenty-fifth Street and entered an old hotel called the Engstrom, a crummy joint, badly run down. I was just behind him. He asked for Miss Garrett and after telephoning upstairs, they told him she was out. But I could tell (and so could he) that the telephone girl had had her on the wire.
I made some fake inquiry of the clerk and followed Hillman out of the hotel. He looked sunk. For over an hour he wandered aimlessly along the streets of that neighbourhood; Lexington Avenue, Twenty-eighth Street, Fifth Avenue, Twenty-third and so on. At ten past eight he returned to the Engstrom. I couldn’t follow him in a second time because the clerk would certainly have got on to me. Anyhow, he was turned away a second time and came out looking depressed. It was now time to go to work, and he took the subway back to the Bronx.
FROM M. O’B.
I went to the office of the— Co publishers to fish for a little information. The man who received me said they were no longer publishers for Emmett Gundy. “O, has he left you?” I said. “Hardly that,” the man said with a sour smile, ” his last novel was not profitable and we didn’t care to go on with him. You had better go to Miss Flora Chisholm, his agent, for further information.” Miss Chisholm’s office is on the seventh floor of the New York Central Building. Here I made out to be the representative of a new publishing house. I asked her if she had placed Mr. Gundy’s last novel. No, she had not, but several publishers were interested in it. She gave me a sales talk, and offered to send the script to my office. “You can have this fine novel on very easy terms,” she said. I told her not to send it until I let her know.
Thus it appears that Gundy is still up against it, but as far as I can see he isn’t working at anything. On December 6th he moved from the cheap room on East Thirty-fourth Street where he has lived for six months past, and took a room at the Hotel Vandermeer. It was a small room but it must have set him back $3.50 a day. On December 27th he left the Vandermeer and took another cheap room on East Nineteenth Street. As far as I could see he didn’t do anything while at the Vandermeer but pose in the lobby.
He is hard up but not entirely without money. Acts like a man whose time hangs heavy on his hands. About noon I see him come to his window in his pyjamas, yawning and stretching. When he comes out of the house he always looks the pink of perfection. On the night of the 28th he attended a party given by Mack Townley at the Andorra. He spends a lot of time in the cheap movie houses on West Forty-second Street. On the 30th he spent the entire afternoon and evening going from one house to another. On the morning of the 27th I trailed him to the office of his agent, Miss Chisholm, in the New York Central Building. I couldn’t wait in the upstairs corridor for him to come out because it was empty. So I stood in the main lobby downstairs watching the elevators. All the elevators serving the seventh floor came down in the same alcove, and I didn’t see how he could get by me. But he never came down. After waiting a couple of hours I put in a fake call to Miss Chisholm’s office. She said he had been there but had left immediately. On the 28th the same thing happened again. This was the afternoon. He went to his agent’s office and never came down again. I waited until I saw Miss Chisholm and her stenographer going home and then I knew the office was closed. M. O’B.
“This man is a fool,” remarked Lee. “It has not occurred to him that if Emmett discovered he was being trailed all he had to do was to walk upstairs and take an elevator that would land him in a different part of the lobby. I must find a better man.”
FROM V. P.
Alan Talbert has a front of brass. In spite of everything that has been published in the newspapers, he is still going around asserting with a smooth face that he wrote Sin, and no amount of razzing can break him down. He can find plenty who pretend to believe him; to a certain class of people he’s a hero because he has had so much publicity. He has no difficulty in finding some rich woman (not too young) to take him on a round of the most expensive hot spots every night.
Amongst all this chatter I heard Alan say one thing that may or may not be of interest to you. It was at the bar of the Colony Restaurant. An over-stuffed dame upholstered in sables was feeding Alan there and they had lined up for a quick one before going in. Next to Alan stood Rufus Cooley, the critic, who said, laughing: “You will never make me believe that you wrote it! Sin was turned out by a more finished hand than yours, my boy!”
“That is Gavin Dordress’ influence,” said Alan. “You forget that I worked under Gavin for years. He used to call me his successor. He helped me a lot with this play. The quiet effectiveness of the big scenes that you have all spoken of is due to Gavin. I owe Gavin everything.”
Rufus actually seemed impressed by this. “Gavin Dordress!” he said, stroking his chin. “I never thought of that! … Dordress? Why, of course! Of course!” V. P.
REPORT OF E. B. H.
DECEMBER 31st. I didn’t report earlier because I was unable to establish contact with my man. Siebert Ackroyd lives at the Madison along with many another well-to-do young man about town. I thought my best line would be that of the rich young idler and I went to the Madison on Friday morning and took a suite. Ackroyd has lived there for several years and is well known to the staff. The servants talk about him because he has been so much in the news lately. They say
that a change has come over him. One of the most popular young fellows in that set, he has turned solitary and morose. In view of the great success of his play Sin nobody can understand it. They say that he stood to pull down a commission of ten grand from the movie rights alone. They say he is drinking too much, and they resent it because he doesn’t do his drinking at the Madison.
I found it was a tough assignment to track Ackroyd because he takes a taxi every time he steps out the door. It is almost impossible to trail a man through the streets of New York in a car because of the traffic chances. I lost him every time I tried it, so I can’t tell you what his movements were during the day on Friday or Saturday.
However, after dinner on Friday night he started out from his hotel on foot, and I after him. He led me to a saloon on Third Avenue. He stood down at the end of the bar away from everybody and ordered a straight rye. I could see by the ugly look in his eyes that it would be foolish to speak to him. He would only have cussed me out, and I would have been no further good on this assignment. So I stood at the bar near him (but not too near) making out that I was a solitary drinker with a grouch, just like himself, and hoping he would notice me. But he did not. He remained there a couple of hours ordering one whisky after another without any visible effect, and saying nothing. He then went home and presumably to bed.
On Saturday evening he didn’t show up at the hotel for dinner. I looked in at the Third Avenue saloon just on the chance, and there he was in the same place scowling at his drink. So I ordered one and stood there scowling at mine likewise, making out not to notice him at all. This night I was in luck because there was three young roughs in the place who were pretty tight. They passed some remarks about Ackroyd because they didn’t like his high-toned style, but he didn’t hear them. Afterwards the three were scuffling in the back of the room and one of them bumped against Ackroyd. He was just drunk enough and sore enough to turn and cuss the fellow out, and all three of them were ready to mix it up with him then.
That was my chance. I lined up alongside Ackroyd, saying I would see fair play, and between us we stretched all three of them. We and the bartender then threw them into the street. “Let’s go over to the Madison,” he said; “I live there.”
“So do I,” I said. “We won’t go into the Madison bar,” he said. “I know too many of those guys. I’m fed up with them. We’ll go up in my room and order a bottle.”
That suited me all right. But even up in his room with a bottle of Canadian Club between us, he had little to say. He apologised for being such poor company, and I said: “That’s all right with me. I don’t feel like talking myself.” That caught his attention and he said: “So you’re feeling low, too, eh? What is it? Woman trouble?” I nodded, and he thrust out his hand. “Put it there, fellow!” He filled up my glass and his own. “After all, whisky’s a fellow’s best friend,” he said.
I started to tell him the story I had made up about my girl’s shipping me. He listened with attention. When I came to the end he burst out: “All these good women are alike: they must have their pound of flesh, like Shylock. The men who treat women as mere playthings to be picked up and dropped again when you’re through with them are right! Love ‘em and leave ‘em, that’s going to be my motto hereafter, Once a woman gets under your skin you’re a goner; she’ll crucify you!”
From that he went on to tell me a little about his own affair, but only in general terms, no particulars. “I had a girl,” he said, ” and I went all out for her. God I how I loved her! I was prepared to lie, to steal, to kill for that woman, and she, O, she was the perfect lady throughout. All this money that’s rolling in on me I aimed to spend on her. It’s only a mockery now.”
“Maybe she might change her mind now,” I suggested. “No, she has plenty of her own,” he said. “She isn’t mercenary. Only too goddamned ladylike! She turned me down because I was too wicked and violent for her taste. She wants a tame man.”
“Did she have any special reason?” I asked. “O, I’ve done things I wouldn’t want her to know about,” he said, ” but she could have made anything she wanted of me! The hell with her! She had ice in her veins!”
When she had read this far, Cynthia broke down in stormy weeping. “This is intolerable!” she cried. “It’s so wicked and untrue! O, I hate him for it! I hate him!”
Lee reached for the report. “Why read any further?”
Cynthia clung to it. “I want to know the worst about him.” She read on: “There was always trouble between this girl and me,” Ackroyd continued. “I loved her too goddamned much, that was the reason. She couldn’t understand it. She didn’t know that if she had given me love it would have softened me like a magic charm. There was a certain obstacle in the way that drove me savage.”
“What kind of obstacle?” I asked. “Never mind,” he said. “It was there. Then it was unexpectedly removed and I thought everything would be all right between us. But no! She backed and she filled; she blew hot and cold. Finally she made up her mind that I was a crook and that was the end.”
“Were you a crook?” I asked with a grin. “Sure,” he said, ” aren’t we all?”
“What particular kind of crookedness was it that she jibbed at?” I asked. The innocent-sounding question aroused his suspicions. ” O, everything,” he said, and shut up like a clam. For a while I talked about other things to smooth him down, and then I beat it.
E. B. H.
“This is worse than I had expected,” murmured Cynthia. “There is a phrase here: ‘ I aimed to spend this money on her.’ That proves that Siebert had been planning the crime for weeks.”
“It is possible,” said Lee.
“You were right about Mack Townley,” she went on. “He didn’t do it. What Siebert said to this man is as good as a confession.”
“I have expressed no opinion either one way or the other,” said Lee. “Let us keep open minds.”
REPORT OF R. F. S.
THE Royal Typewriter Company has two service shops in New York. I visited both of them without result. No employee could remember having received an order to add an exclamation point to the keyboard of an old Royal machine. Other Royal shops in the New York district are in Brooklyn and Newark, N.J. In Newark I finally struck pay dirt. The machinist in charge of repairs remembered the man who wanted an exclamation point, though it was about two months ago, he said, when this customer came in. It was fixed in the machinist’s mind because the order was an unusual one, and because the customer was such a queer-looking guy.
His description of the man tallies with other descriptions of the man in the yellow overcoat. The machinist said he brought the typewriter in under his arm, and carried it out again when it was fixed. It was in bad order and the machinist tried to get an order to repair it, or to sell the customer a better machine. But he had no money, he said; all he wanted was an exclamation point, “because he had to write dialogue.” The machinist tried to get in talk with him but he only gave curt answers.
The customer’s actions were so mysterious the machinist thought maybe the typewriter was stolen, and he checked it with the list of stolen machines that is furnished to all branch offices. But the number wasn’t on the list. The serial number of the machine was 117284. It was of the model that was put out in 1923 and had had hard usage. Scratched in the paint on the under side of the frame were the words “Reliable O.S. Co.” The machinist said he thought his customer was from New York, because he came and went in the direction of the tube station.
The New York telephone directory furnished the name of a Reliable Office Supply Company on Sixth Avenue and I went up there on the chance. I was in luck. This is the store where the man in the yellow overcoat bought the typewriter; the date was November 8th. (“Two days after Gavin was killed,” remarked Lee.) The store, which is near the corner of Forty-ninth Street, sells all makes of second-hand typewriters. The salesman remembered this customer because of his queer appearance, and because when he tried the machine in the store, though he cou
ld write fairly fast, he used only his two forefingers in striking the keys. When a remark was made about this he said he had taught himself to type. He paid fifteen dollars for the old machine. The salesman offered to let him have a boy to carry it home, but he said he didn’t mind carrying it himself; he didn’t have far to go. A few minutes later he returned and bought a box of typewriter paper and a dozen sheets of carbon. This suggests that he had established himself somewhere near by.
I made inquiries in Forty-ninth Street. I got no line on his hangout, if any, but I found where he had left an old pair of shoes to be patched at a repair shop in that street. This was a week ago. I ought to have assistance in watching the shop in case he comes for the shoes. It is open from eight in the morning until eleven o’clock at night.
R. F. S.
AT the hospital Cynthia served as aide to the doctors of the neurological clinic. Her job was to receive the out-patients, to enter their names, to arrange for their appointments with the doctors, and to keep up their case histories. Hundreds of cases passed through her hands weekly, but they were still individual to her and human. Some of the warped brains were very difficult to deal with; stubborn, suspicious, full of fear and hatred of the world where they found themselves at such a disadvantage. Cynthia laid it on herself to treat such cases with a special patience.
The clinic was open in the afternoons only. As there was no regular provision for social service in the hospital, Cynthia had volunteered for the work which was especially necessary in connection with her department. Most of her mornings were spent in visiting the homes of the patients, to find out why they had failed to keep appointments with the doctors, to follow up the progress of those discharged as cured, and to investigate cases of illness reported by other patients. The funds available for such work were limited; when they gave out, Cynthia drew on her own well-filled pocket-book and kept no account of it.
ALM02 The Death of a Celebrity Page 16