by Ron Goulart
“Oh, what a shame,” said the jovial nurse. “That old tosspot checked out at noon and left with a disreputable-looking buffoon who appeared to be three sheets to the wind himself. What paper are you with?”
“I’m not a newspaperman,” I assured her. “She really left?”
“This is a voluntary sanitarium,” the nurse said. “We can’t keep anybody here against their will. You newspaper guys aren’t too efficient, if you ask me. You’re the third one who’s dropped by since she left us.” She leaned a plump elbow on the desktop. “I must admit, though, that your spiel was the nearest to convincing. But I’d get a better fake name, since, like me, a lot of people probably read Terhune’s dog stories when they were tots.”
“How’s Richard Harding Davis?”
She shook her head. “Lot of people read him, too.”
“Frank Denby?”
“That’s good,” she said. “Has that nice ring of nonentity to it. Use that one.”
I asked, “Any idea who it was Clair Rickson left with?”
“He claimed he was Roger Connington.”
Connington was a third-rate screenwriter who worked now and then over at Mammoth. “Was he going to deliver her to her own home?”
“From what I overheard, I’d say she was going to shack up with him for a spell.”
I eased one rose out of the bunch and presented it to her. “Thanks for the help.”
“Who’s going to get the rest of the roses?”
“Thought I’d give them to my wife.”
“That’s very nice.” She placed her rose on her blotter.
Turning, I walked away.
Twenty
Zanzibar the Astounding did look quite a bit like Edmund Lowe. He parted his hair in the middle like the actor, his waxed mustache was similar. The only thing that spoiled the overall illusion was the fact that he was only five foot one.
After he shook hands with me, Nan warned him, “No nickels out of his nose, Larry.”
The magician, who’d been reaching toward my nose, lowered his hand. “Sorry, honey,” he said.
“He’s compulsive about doing tricks,” Groucho’s secretary explained to me.
Zanzibar caused six or seven brand-new nickels to come cascading out of his own nose to clink into his palm. “Nan is more understanding than most,” he said, closing his hand over the coins and jingling them.
It was a few minutes shy of 6:00 P.M. and I’d dropped by the office for a meeting with Groucho. He was, Nan had informed me, across the street visiting Moonbaum’s delicatessen and was expected to return momentarily.
“I’ve got some bad news for you and Groucho,” Nan said after I seated myself in one of the rattan chairs against the wall of the office.
Groucho kept an unusual selection of magazines in the rack and I set aside the copy of Ranch Romances I’d just picked up to ask her, “Bad news about what?”
“Your competition with Miles Ravenshaw,” she answered. “Tell him, Larry.”
Swallowing the cigarette he’d just lit, Zanzibar said, “Ravenshaw and his wife are throwing a big Christmas party this Saturday night at their place in Brentwood. I’m one of the three magicians they’ve hired to roam around and entertain their guests.” Absently, he began plucking colored eggs out of the armpit of his suit coat. When he had five of them, he started juggling.
“Get to the point,” Nan reminded him, frowning.
Zanzibar tossed all five eggs toward the office ceiling and then clapped his hands. The eggs vanished. “The word is,” he resumed, “that Ravenshaw plans to announce the solution to the Felix Denker murder at the party.”
I assumed a skeptical expression. “Publicity stunt,” I said. “He hasn’t solved a damn thing.”
“It could be,” suggested Nan, “that that hambone really has come up with a solution.”
I asked the magician, “Any details of what he plans to announce?”
“Nope, I’ve told you all I heard.” He sneezed, then started pulling brightly colored silk handkerchiefs out of his breast pocket.
“I knew Houdini would eventually come up with a way to communicate with us from beyond the grave,” said Groucho as he came bounding in with his paper bag from the deli. “Signal flags, of course.”
“Groucho, this is Larry Zansky, also known as the Astounding Zanzibar,” said his secretary.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Marx.”
Placing his free hand on the magician’s shoulder, Groucho said, “Whatever you do, my boy, I want you to promise me you’ll never saw this woman in half.”
Twilight was closing in outside as Groucho walked over to the marble-topped café table he kept in one corner of his private office. Slumping into one of the cane-bottom chairs, he uncapped the thermos he’d fetched back from Moonbaum’s. “You’re absolutely certain, Rollo, you don’t want any borscht?” he inquired while he poured purplish soup into his Shirley Temple cereal bowl.
“Absolutely, yes.” I was perched on the edge of his desk and facing him.
Groucho lifted a matzo cracker out of the open box sitting on the table. “Did you know that borscht contains all the essential vitamins and minerals—plus, according to an erudite article in the latest edition of The Lancet, several other vitamins that won’t do you a damn bit of good whatsoever?”
He was breaking the cracker into crackly bits when the phone on his desk rang.
I picked up the handset and held it out to him.
Bouncing up, he took the phone. “Hollywood Crematorium and Columbarium,” he answered. “What do you mean it lacks dignity, Zeppo? What’s more dignified than an undertaking establishment? But surely you didn’t invest in a telephone call merely to chastise me for my girlish tomfoolery and … You did? That’s splendid. Hold on, I’ll take notes.”
I handed him a yellow legal pad and his fountain pen.
Groucho put the pad across his knees: “Proceed, Zep … . Golly, can such things be? No, I’m not doubting your word nor the veracity of your London sources … . Give me the name of the store again. Bland’s Book Emporium on Museum Street. A clerk, you say, until he was suspected of dipping in the till … Toured with whose provincial company? Hannibal Swineford? That must’ve looked enticing up in lights … . Next a chorus boy in West End musicals, followed by bit parts in the British cinema. Also a brief stint in Berlin in the early 1930s? But never so much as set foot in Scotland Yard? Yes, I know that’s what you’ve been telling me, brother dear, but I like to sum up things in my well-known pithy fashion … . No, I haven’t developed a lisp. What about … All right, I know you’re a busy fellow, Zeppo. Just living down the disgrace of putting your brothers in a fiasco like Room Service sounds like a full-time occupation to me and then you’ve … No, seriously, I am eternally grateful. Not to mention internally grateful and infernally grapefruit. And I live for the day, however distant, when I can return the favor. Good night, sweet prince.”
“So Miles Ravenshaw’s an even bigger phony that we thought?”
“I asked Zeppo to check with some of his theatrical cronies over in Great Britain about Ravenshaw’s background.” He nodded at the phone. “He just reported his findings. That hambone never set foot in Scotland Yard, he never even strolled by the joint on his way to work as an absconding bookshop clerk.” He set the pad on his desk, returning to his soup.
“We ought to make this news known to the public,” I suggested, “in the most interesting way possible.”
Groucho snapped a cracker in half above his borscht. “What better setting for our exposé than Ravenshaw’s Christmas festivities this Saturday night, Rollo?” he said, brightening. “We’ll have the Astounding Sani-Flush smuggle us in as mystic assistants and, just before the ham of hams rises up to offer his erroneous solution to the murder case, we’ll unmask and reveal Ravenshaw as the four-flusher he is. It will be a dramatic moment equal to Eliza crossing the ice or Ted Healy poking all three of his Stooges in the eye simultaneously.”
I was leaning a
gainst the office wall next to the eagle-topped brass coat tree that held a raccoon overcoat, a paisley shawl, a faded fez, and one of Groucho’s Captain Spaulding pith helmets. “Ravenshaw might be able to top us, though,” I pointed out. “If he does announce the name of the killer and he happens to be absolutely right.”
“He won’t be right.”
“But just suppose he is.”
Groucho ingested three spoonfuls of borscht, thoughtfully. “Then we’ll simply have to offer our solution to the case immediately after we expose him as a poltroon,” he concluded. “Or maybe we ought to expose him as a macaroon, which might go over better with the crowd.”
“I hope you won’t write me off as a hopeless pessimist, Groucho,” I mentioned, “but I see one possible snag in this plan.”
“Yes, so do I, Little Lulu,” he conceded. “We don’t yet have a crystal-clear idea of who the murderer is.”
“Bingo,” I said. “That’s the same flaw I spotted.”
Standing, Groucho pointed a finger toward the ceiling. “What we have to do immediately, if not sooner, is compare notes on all that we’ve learned in our separate investigations today,” he said. “That may well put us close to the solution.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” I said.
Twenty-one
The framed poster on the office wall was for A Night at the Opera. Groucho was standing with his back to it, rubbing his hands together and making a gratified chuckling noise. “We’ve got it, Rollo,” he told me, “I do believe we’ve worked out a very plausible solution to the whole mess.”
I’d been sitting at his desk, making notes in the legal pad. “Sounds like it, yeah,” I agreed. “Though we’re still pretty short on proof, Groucho.”
“Okay, let’s go over this once more and see if mayhap we can fill in some more blanks.” He held up his left hand and started ticking off fingers. “Firstly, using the finger of the first part, Marsha Tederow decided to give blackmail a try. That was the precipitating factor, the knocked-down domino that started the rest of them to tumbling over.” He moved away from the wall and commenced pacing in a fuzzy circle. “She’d learned something about somebody and figured she could cash in on it. And what did she find out?”
“Something to do with Dr. Helga Krieger,” I said without consulting our notes. “We’re assuming that back in the early 1930s somebody fairly high up in Nazi circles determined that Dr. Krieger ought to come to the United States, probably to stand by for spy and espionage work. Only problem was that, loyal Hitler supporter that she was, she was also well known as a Nazi. So she lost some weight, had her features altered, and assumed an entirely new identity. The dodge worked and she got safely settled in Los Angeles. Nobody suspected who she really was and she just had to wait around until her bosses in Germany contacted her.”
“And how did Marsha tumble to the masquerade? Where’d she get those books by the good doctor?”
“Obviously from somebody who knew about the switch.”
“We know that Felix Denker became suddenly solvent at about the same time that Dr. Krieger dropped out of sight in the dear old Fatherland,” picked up Groucho, his knees bent a bit more. “It seems probable, therefore, that he was approached by somebody affiliated with the Nazi party and offered a deal. You help us smuggle the new, improved Dr. Krieger into America, Felix, old bean, and we’ll see that all your gambling debts are settled and you get a few bucks extra to boot.”
“Which would mean he probably wasn’t as much of an anti-fascist as he pretended.”
“Hell, maybe the guy wasn’t even as Jewish as he pretended,” observed Groucho. “All right, he marries a lady who’s supposedly a respected historian named Erika Klein and they migrate to the Golden West. Erika might really be Erika, but it’s more likely that she’s really Helga after a very profound nose job.”
“That’s something we can’t prove at the moment,” I said. “But it fits what we think must’ve happened. Denker, who’s never much liked his fictitious wife, starts to fool around. And, when he eventually gets involved with Marsha, he lets slip to her that his whole marriage is something cooked up by the Nazis for espionage purposes.”
“He shows her the books by Dr. Helga that he’s had stowed in the attic. He maybe even suggests that the FBI might be able to use the picture of the original face to compare with Erika’s new puss and prove scientifically it was the same lady.”
“Marsha turns out to be even more mercenary than Denker realized. She sees a way to make quite a bit of extra money,” I said. “If Erika is an important planted German agent, then there must be people with considerable money behind her. Her bosses in Berlin wouldn’t want her exposed, they wouldn’t want anybody even to hint that Erika wasn’t what she seemed. Marsha approaches Erika and says she’ll go to the FBI unless she’s paid off on a regular basis.”
“The first time she approaches Erika with her proposition, Erika loses her temper, calls Marsha names, and belts her one,” said Groucho. “That’s what Dr. Watson overheard part of while pussyfooting around backstage.”
“Then Erika figures she has to do something to keep Marsha quiet. She’ll con her into thinking she’s going to pay off. That explains the phone call inviting her to the meeting at the Cutting Room with the cowboy.”
“The cowpoke seemingly agrees to Marsha’s terms, says she’ll get her first payoff sometime tomorrow, and goes ambling off. But he waits outside, follows Marsha, and forces her car off the road,” says Groucho. “Maybe he slips downhill into that gully to make sure she doesn’t get out of the burning car.”
“I did finally get a look at a copy of the accident report,” I said. “Initially the police didn’t find anything suspicious.”
“They may if they go over the stuff again, because the cowboy has to be the one responsible for the girl’s death.”
“And who is he?”
“Another Nazi agent, somebody Erika rounded up for the job.”
I tapped my eraser on the legal pad. “I wonder if Marsha had ever met this guy Gunther.”
Groucho frowned, thinking. “Yeah, if she’d never seen the lad, he could have simply donned a wig and Western togs and played the part of the go-between.”
I said, “Okay, when Denker hears that Marsha’s been killed, he realizes what’s happened. He broods about it, tries to work up enough nerve to at least confide in his old buddy Professor Hoffman.”
“But then he gets to thinking that if he turns Erika in, he’s not going to look too good with the authorities himself,” said Groucho. “Finally, though, by Monday he decides to have a showdown with Erika. He’ll accuse her of having his lover killed and tell her, come what may, he’s going to turn her over to the law.”
“They arrange an out of the way meeting on Soundstage Two in the Two-twenty-one-B set. But instead of agreeing to turn herself in, Erika shoots Denker—maybe with his own gun—and leaves him sitting in Sherlock Holmes’s favorite chair.”
“And that’s why Denker was trying to scrawl a swastika as he was dying. To point to a hidden Nazi.” Groucho frowned. “The only problem with all this is the fact that Erika officially signed out of Mammoth a good two hours or more before Denker was shot.”
“Mammoth isn’t Devil’s Island or Alcatraz,” I reminded. “She could’ve sneaked back in for their rendezvous.”
He nodded. “It makes sense, the whole scenario, Rollo. But, as you so wisely pointed out, we sure as hell don’t have much in the way of proof.”
Getting up, I started pacing in his wake. “Suppose we can find Franz Henkel?” I suggested. “We turn him over to the cops and establish that he positively didn’t kill Denker. That would convince Sergeant Norment to take a look at Erika and our theories about—”
“Very well, we’ll nab Henkel,” agreed Groucho. “I’ll pick you up at your seaside villa about nine-thirty and we’ll slip into Siegfried’s Rathskeller looking guileless and for all the world like Hans and Fritz Katzenjammer. I’ll even wear my goy nec
ktie and … the letters!”
“Huh?”
“Who really wrote those threatening letters dear Erika gave me copies of?” He sprinted to his desk, yanked open a drawer, and grabbed out a manila folder. “If Henkel isn’t the killer, then maybe he didn’t write these letters either. If they’re faked, experts can determine who really—”
“Could be Erika penned them herself,” I suggested. “Let me show them to Jane. She’s very good at spotting lettering and handwriting styles. It won’t be official, but it—”
“Good, rush them to your missus. Tomorrow at the funeral, I’ll contrive to swipe a sample of the dear widow’s handwriting,” Groucho volunteered. “And, while I’m at it, I’ll gather up all the spare change that’s slipped under the seats in the hearse.”
The moment I turned onto our driveway, the front door of the house flapped open and Jane came running out.
I hit the brakes, turned off the engine, and jumped from the car. “What is it—what’s wrong?”
She was wearing a short yellow terry cloth robe and was barefoot. “Are you okay? You’re all right?” she asked, running across the lawn to put her arms, tight, around me.
“Far as I know, yep.” I hugged her with considerable enthusiasm. “Were you expecting otherwise?”
Jane started to laugh, then stopped and hugged me again. “I guess I got carried away,” she said. “After reading that note they left.”
“Okay, easy now,” I told my wife. “Let’s go inside first, okay?”
“I called Groucho’s office as soon as I read it, but his answering service girl told me everybody’d just left for the day.”
I put my arm around her shoulders, guided her along the path to the lighted doorway. “You aren’t wearing much,” I mentioned.
“I’d just come out of the shower, when I heard a noise on the porch,” Jane explained as we crossed the threshold. “I saw a folded note being slipped under the door.”