Where There's Smoke

by Stewart Sterling

  And against the east wall, a row of green metal file cabinets which had grown heavier and increased in number from year to year. The names typed on the white cards labeling the drawers might not have been familiar to Barney or Shaner or most of the others who had visited these rooms. There were none of the names of the criminals Pedley had sought, arrested, sent to prison. The top drawer was marked BACH, BEETHOVEN, BRAHMS, and the second, DEBUSSY, DVORAK, FOSTER. Into those files had gone no small part of the Pedley expenditures; out of them had come a good share of the limited number of pleasant hours he had been able to grab from the endless pile of unfinished cases that came to his desk downtown.

  His feeling for what Shaner called “dress-suit music” was one of the reasons for Pedley’s feelings about the girl whom he had just phoned. Not especially the fact that she recognized a good string section when she heard one—and preferred Prokofieff to the “Hit Parade”; it was more than that, deeper than that. When he was with Ollie, he had the same sense of inner peace as when listening to Stokowski conducting a Mendelssohn concerto—a complete absence of the tension which had come to be the normal atmosphere in which he moved.

  There was a knock; he went to the door.

  The girl who came in was tall and willowy, perhaps twenty-two or-three years old. She wore a mink coat that would have roused comment at a furriers’ convention, but she didn’t need the coat to attract attention. Her face said she was sensitively intelligent. Her sloe eyes were subtle invitation, her movements a suggestive challenge. The combined impression was that of a girl who has just worked her way through college by doing a strip tease in a chorus line.

  “I’ll have to do something about those elevator boys,” she said briskly. “I can tell by the way they look at me when I say ‘Two’ that they’re beginning to Think Things!”

  Chapter Nine

  SASHAY LA FEMME

  PEDLEY HELPED HER off with her coat. “Don’t worry; they just think you’re coming to my hotel for immoral purposes. Never occur to them we might be discussing business.”

  “Oh!” She made a face at him. “That’s all right, then!”

  “Fix a drink, while I get a shirt on, Ollie.” He disappeared into the bedroom.

  “What happened to your hand, Ben?” Ollie examined the new album of records, approvingly.

  “Got careless up at the Brockhurst Theater. Doesn’t hurt, to speak of—”

  “I know you, Ben. You wouldn’t pay any attention to a broken leg, if you were hot on a case.”

  He emerged, buttoning his shirt. “You act as if I liked this kind of life!”

  “You’d be miserable—” she rattled ice into tall tumblers—“in any other sort of existence!”

  “Hell I would! Why do you think I bought that acreage up on Lake Candlewood!”

  “You can dream, can’t you?” She knew all about the plans for the little stone cottage up in the Connecticut hills, the big stone fireplace and the picture window overlooking the lake, the wharf for the knockabout sailboat, and the special freezer for the fish he expected to catch. Olive had listened to those dreams more than once and filed them away for reference in some future that seemed to be forever receding into the distance.

  “I’d quit this job tomorrow morning—” he began.

  “Only the bureau’s undermanned as it is,” she recited with the manner of one who knew the answers by heart. “If you could only get caught up once, so you wouldn’t leave such a mess of unfinished business for someone else to take over—” Olive went to one of the record cabinets, pulled open a drawer labeled SCHUBERT, SIBELIUS, extracted one of the fifths hidden behind the brown disc-envelopes.

  “Well, it’s a fact. I certainly couldn’t quit now, with this Brockhurst thing.”

  “That wasn’t a self-starter, I take it.” She poured bourbon over the ice, fizzed club soda.

  “No. Coverup for a killing, seems as if.” He told her about it. “Worst of it is,” he concluded, “an amateur torch like this is scared to begin with—and he’s likely to get more rattled as he goes along.

  “He set fire to the theater because he was afraid of being found out as a murderer. Minute he begins to be scared of being discovered as a firebug—with his right pant-leg slit up to the knee as an end result—he’s going to light up the town again. To eliminate any witnesses who might know the wrong things about him. So—problem is to catch up with him fast, before he can bonfire some other building.”

  Olive offered him his drink. “Which suspect do you want me to ensnare with my female charms?”

  “You see right through me, don’t you?” He didn’t seem surprised.

  “Um—” noncommittally.

  “I’ve got Shaner tailing Ross and Maginn covering the Lownes apartment. Levinson’s looking up Gaydel’s background. I thought you might see if Wes Toleman could be induced to unbosom himself to you—”

  “As long as you don’t insist on its being the other way round, darling.”

  “My guess is, this announcer knows something. You can’t put him in the chair for that, unless it’s guilty knowledge. But there’s no law says you can’t try to rope him, find out what he does know.”

  “Is he attractive, Ben?”

  “No great big hunk of male, exactly. One of these pretty-boys. Maybe you’ll make a man out of him.”

  “I’ll do my damnedest.” Olive regarded him slyly. “My personal preference isn’t for the shy, retiring type.” She picked up the Third Movement of the Shostakovich, turned to the big phonograph.

  Pedley set his glass down carefully, came up behind her, slipped his hands beneath her armpits, around her breasts.

  She set the needle in place, waited until the low voices of the violas and violins filled the room before she moved.

  The high-pitched discord of a buzzer cut into the symphony. They both turned to the smaller of the “official” phones, Pedley swearing softly.

  He lifted the receiver off the rack.

  Barney spoke into his ear. “I’m down in the lobby, boss. Something with a rush priority has come up, suddenlike.”

  “Does it have to come up to my rooms?”

  “I’d better discuss this matter with you in persona grata.”

  “Trouble?”

  “I’d as leave not go into it via the Bell System, boss.”

  “Okay. Come on up.”

  By the time Barney rapped, Olive had gone; there was only one tumbler with ice in it on the center table.

  “We had a call from the commish, boss.”

  The marshal indicated the bourbon bottle. “Help yourself. The call wouldn’t be about the Brockhurst blaze?” The commissioner had been a pretty smart politician in his day; he’d not go at it as crudely as that!

  “In a sort of backhanded way, it would.” Barney poured himself four fingers, raised it to the light. “The Big Boy wants you should drop everything else and give him a personal report on the work of the bureau for the past twelvemonth.”

  Pedley poured a dollop of straight whisky in his own glass. “Drop everything else.” He sniffed at the liquor. “Personal report on the bureau.” He lifted his glass in toast. “They got to him, Barnabus. They had him in a corner and he couldn’t get out. But he’s a right guy at heart. Here’s to the commissioner.”

  Barney stared at him, stopped midway of a refill. “It’s the first time I ever hear of the Hall mucking up the Fire Department.” He set the whisky bottle down, swirled the liquor in his glass dejectedly.

  “It’s happened before.” The marshal drained his glass. “It’ll probably happen again. But it won’t happen this time.”

  Barney peered at him. “You’re not taking it lyin’ down?”

  “I’m not leaving it.”

  “Supposin’ His Nibs suspends you!”

  “He can. He might. But that’ll take time. Filing of charges. A hearing. The commissioner knows that. He knows I know it.”

  “I catch. He’s telling you to lay off—but he won’t be sore if you don�
�t.”

  “Providing we can get fast enough action to keep the higher-ups from bearing down too hard.”

  “I know what that means!” Barney applied himself to the bottle again. “Where’ll you be when the commish desires me to forward the bad news?”

  “You’re slipping, Barney.” Pedley went to the table, took a shoulder holster out of the drawer, began to strap it on. “You haven’t been seeing your quota of double features lately.”

  “Huh?”

  “When these slap-happy screen dicks come up against a dead end, what do they always do—along about reel six?”

  Barney’s mouth formed a silent “O.” He nodded slowly. “Sashay la femme.”

  “You’ve won four silver dollars. Would you care to try for eight?”

  “The Lownes femme?”

  “Can you think of a better one to sashay?”

  Chapter Ten

  LEII.A THE LUSCIOUS

  THE MAID WHO OPENED the apartment door for Pedley at Riveredge House wore a crisp white cap and a starched white apron. But there was no starch in her manner. She drooped; even her voice was depressed.

  “Miz Lownes ain’t in, sir.”

  “She’s in. I checked, downstairs.”

  “She ain’t seein’ nobody.” The Negro woman started to close the door.

  “She’ll see me.” He pushed past.

  “You cain’t come in, mister!”

  A brisk feminine voice called, “Who is it, Netta?”

  “’Nother one them reporters, way he shoves himself in where he ain’t wanted. I told him Miz Lownes wasn’t to home.”

  A stout, chesty brunette appeared at the other end of the little lobby. She had a bland moon-face with a pert, uptilted nose; she wore a tight-fitting vermilion suit that could have been seen a mile on a dark night.

  “Maybe I can help you.” She smiled pleasantly.

  “I doubt it.” Pedley kept on toward the sunken living-room. “I want a minute with Miss Lownes.”

  She stepped in front of him quickly. “I’m Kim Wasson. Her arranger. Secretary, sort of. If there’s any way I can help—?”

  “Sorry, Miss Wasson. Accept no substitutes. This is official.” He held out his badge in his cupped palm. “Where is she?”

  “In bed. But—”

  “She won’t be the first girl I’ve talked to that way. That her room?” He walked past a lot of low-slung, white corduroy furniture and a concert grand, glanced at oil paintings of bleached bones and tree stumps on grotesque deserts, crossed in front of a huge stone fireplace where big hickory logs crackled, to a door opposite the little lobby.

  Kim Wasson hurried along beside him, caught at his arm. “If you’ll just wait—”

  Pedley opened the door quietly. The girl in the bed didn’t bear any great resemblance to the limp figure he’d carried down the dressing-room stairs. The bronze hair was glossy as new metal shavings, now; there was color in her cheeks and on her lips. The fuzzy bed jacket didn’t quite hide the sheer black nightgown—the nightgown wasn’t meant to conceal what was under it.

  He took off his hat. “I think we’ve met before.”

  “I don’t remember it.” She pulled the jacket a little closer together; it was one of those gestures designed to draw attention rather than distract it. “You don’t wait to be invited into a girl’s bedroom, do you?”

  “Not when I’m on business.”

  “You have no business—” the singer shook her head as if resentful—bronze hair fanned out over the pillows—“bothering me at a time like this.” Her tone didn’t carry out the suggestion of resentment; Pedley thought she was waiting to determine what sort of an impression she’d made.

  The Wasson girl cried, “Don’t talk to him, Leila. He has no right to crash in like this!”

  Pedley gave the room the once-over. “No idea how much latitude the Fire Investigation Bureau has when it’s looking into an arson case.” The bedroom was a decorator’s delight. Nice furniture. Period pieces. There was a glimpse of polar-bear rug showing through the open door of the bathroom. Somebody had taste—

  Leila murmured, “Arson?”

  “The blaze that killed your brother wasn’t any accident, Miss Lownes.”

  “I don’t believe it.” She sat bolt upright. Her eyes were those of a child who has heard something too horrible to understand. If she was acting, he decided, she was one hell of a good actress. The eyes that stared at him in disbelief were really green, he noticed—not the hazel-green many red-haired girls have, but the delicate shade of fresh mint.

  “The theater was torched especially to get your brother.”

  Kim Wasson muttered, “Oh, God!”

  Leila put one hand to her eyes, sank back helplessly on the pillows. It was very effective. Very little-girl helpless.

  “You want to help identify the person who caused your brother’s death?”

  She nodded, numbly. “What can I do?”

  “Answer a few questions. In private, preferably.”

  She took the hand away from her eyes. “I won’t have anything to say that Kim shouldn’t hear.”

  “I might have.” He didn’t make it sound disagreeable.

  “The gentleman wants you to leave, darling.” Leila forced a wan smile for the arranger. “Don’t go far away.”

  “I’ll be within screaming distance.” Kim Wasson marched out, left the door open.

  Leila shifted her pillow. The marshal made her uneasy; she resented the unfamiliar sensation. She was accustomed to men being disturbed by her, to having them more or less automatically at an emotional, or perhaps a glandular, disadvantage as soon as they got close to her. The reversal of positions was disturbing.

  Everything about Pedley was slightly alarming. His muscular compactness, that burn-scar on his face, the high-cheekboned features, the tightly sensitive mouth. In the way he had come into the room—the way he moved about it, restlessly—there was an expression of intense and concentrated alertness.

  His eyes searched hers with obvious suspicion. When she spoke, his head inclined almost imperceptibly as if to make certain he caught the slightest overtone in her voice. His whole attitude was a challenge.

  “I don’t like to come at you like this, when you’re sunk, Miss Lownes. But no use beating about. You’re right up at the top of the suspect list.”

  Leila pulled bits of white fur from the cuffs of her bed jacket. “Do you have to be nasty?”

  “I’m trying to show you what you’re up against. The firebug had to have a motive for putting your brother out of the picture. You had one. Maybe even a good one.”

  “You’re a liar.” There was no rancor in her tone.

  “The bug was at the Brockhurst and in the dressing-room where the fuse was set. You were at both places.”

  She put her knees up under the bedclothes; the movement disarranged the bed jacket again. “What’s that supposed to prove?”

  “The fire was touched off right after you helped carry your brother upstairs. About the time you sent Gaydel downstairs so you’d be alone with Ned. I’ve known Grand Juries to vote true bills on less than that.”

  She pushed the bronze helmet of hair back off her forehead. “I’d like to know what makes you think I’d want to murder my brother.”

  “If this was just another murder, I wouldn’t run a temperature about it. First place, it’d be a matter for the police, not the Fire Department. Second place, I’ve known occasions when a good, clean murder might not have been such a bad thing.” He wandered past the doorway where he could see the Wasson girl; she was at the telephone, talking so softly he hadn’t even heard her put in the call.

  “But this was arson, Miss Lownes. For my dough, an arsonist is ten degrees lower than a child murderer. And ten times as dangerous. Your murderer kills in hot blood. Unless he’s a paid chopper he generally stops at a single manslaughter. Almost always he knows his victim, confines his attack to that one individual. But incendiarists are madmen running wild in crowds, w
ith machine guns. Don’t know who they may kill. Don’t care. I hate ’em all, seed and breed.”

  “You don’t have to hate me, then.” She was solemn about it.

  “It wouldn’t be easy.” He looked at her with frank admiration. “But being a glamour babe doesn’t make you innocent. There are certain points you’ll have to dear up before we cross you off the list.”

  “Such as—?”

  “Why’d you change your mind so fast about taking your brother away from the theater after Ross knocked him for a loop? First, you wanted him taken up to the dressing-room. You got Amery out of the way by asking him to phone Ned’s bodyguard. Then a few minutes later you sent Gaydel down to get your car, to take your brother to his hotel.”

  “I was afraid Ned had been hurt seriously; at first I wasn’t sure it would be safe to have him moved. Then when I found out he was all right—”

  “He wasn’t all right. He was full of poison booze that would have killed him in an hour or so, anyway. That was what kept him from getting out of the dressing-room when the fire began.” She hadn’t asked him how it started; that was queer, on the face of it.

  “Where’d he get bad liquor?”

  “You’re the one who’s supposed to be answering questions.” Why was she glancing at the bathroom door as if she expected to get a cue there?

  “Ned drank anywhere they wouldn’t throw him out. Afraid I can’t help you on that.”

  “Try this one, then. What’s in the leather case you asked Gaydel to get from your brother’s rooms?” She was ready for that one. Gaydel must have phoned her what to expect.