The Pekinese finished eating, and Matsuki packed away the canine tableware in his black bag. He put collars and leashes on the two dogs.
“You are forevah in this prace when returning, I hope, Mistah Weavah,” he said.
“I may still be here,” Barney said. “If not, I’ll say good night.”
“Nighto.”
The door closed. Barney sat down weakly in a handy chair and burst into perspiration. He mopped his forehead, got up, and went to work.
He first went into the bar, wiped the two glasses, the brandy bottle, the edge of the bar, and the stools—every place where Vivian might have left fingerprints. Next he went into Pen’s bedroom and repeated the process on the closet door and the foot of the bed. He made no attempt to obliterate his own prints, nor Vivian’s prints in other rooms.
He walked to the alcove and had another look at the corpse. He was not particularly interested in how the man had been killed—not now, at any rate. Not even in who had killed him, except to know how the murder was connected with Tony, and Tony’s car with the missing plates, and Vivian’s suitcase, and the warning phone call that Vivian had intercepted. Because it would be too much of a coincidence if all these things were not connected. And if they were, life was going to be mighty unpleasant for Vivian for the next few days.
He leaned down for another examination of the small articles on the floor. He picked up the key. It had a number stamped into the metal, and the words: Self-Checking Lockers. Your key’s your check. Obviously it would open one of the lockers in one of the subway stations. It should be easy enough to locate the station by the number—when the time came.
He was putting the key into his pocket when he heard a familiar voice behind him say with an icy calm, “Better put that back, Barney.”
Barney felt his scalp crawl. His heart began pounding in his throat. It was fully twenty seconds before he was sure enough of himself to say, “Hello, Tony. I thought I might find you here. I was just admiring your handiwork.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Anthony Grove. “Just put that back on the floor.”
Barney turned around slowly. Tony Grove was standing in the doorway, his hat cocked at a rakish angle, his hands in his coat pockets, trying to appear very tough and menacing. He was not succeeding very well. He succeeded only in portraying a very pale, very handsome, very weak, and very scared young man who had got into something over his depth, but who was going to brave it out if it killed him.
“Put what back, Tony?” asked Barney, stuffing his own hands into his trousers pockets.
“Whatever it was you just picked up,” said Tony. “I saw you pick something up, but I didn’t see what it was. You’re not supposed to touch anything until the cops get here. You’ve called the cops, of course?”
Barney managed a smile. He was certain, now, that he had done the right thing in picking up that key. And he was just as certain that he was not going to relinquish it until he had discovered its significance. That meant he would have to complete his research before the police entered the case. He walked slowly toward Tony Grove.
“Tony,” he said, “you know damned well what it was I picked up, and you know why I’m not going to put it back.”
“I don’t know anything,” Tony said, “except that it looks like you knocked off Pen’s boy friend. I always knew you liked Pen, but I didn’t know you were jealous. I always thought—”
“You’re drunk, Tony.”
“I’ve never been soberer.”
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I’ve been here all day. I was in the maid’s room.”
“What happened to Vivian Sanderson’s suitcase last night?”
“Somebody stole it out of my car, like I told you,” Tony said. “I don’t know where it is.”
“Then I’ll tell you where it is. It’s in one of those selfchecking lockers in some subway station. I’ve got a helluva strong hunch that you put it there, and that you want the key to the locker to be found on the scene of a murder just to confuse the issue. Well, it won’t work, Tony. I’m going to keep Vivian clear of this mess if I can possibly do it. So there’s no need for the police to find that key. If it turns out to be a clue, I’ll hand it over to them—later. But first I’m going to make sure that an innocent girl isn’t getting mixed up in something she knows nothing about.”
“Then you’re not going to put it back?”
“No.”
Tony nodded. Then he spun on his heel and hurried down the hall.
Barney hesitated for an instant, undecided as to his next move. He mopped his brow. Then he heard the clicking whirr of a telephone number being dialed, and hesitated no longer.
When he reached the living-room, Tony was speaking into the telephone.
“Police headquarters? There’s been a murder in the apartment of Mrs. Roger Dunne, three hundred and sixty-nine Riverside Drive… apartment fourteen-A—” Barney Weaver bounded across the room.
“The man’s name is Pierre Laurence,” Tony’s words fairly gushed. “He was—”
Barney jammed his hand down on the bar that broke the contact. Tony looked up, smiling faintly. In a leisurely manner he replaced the instrument in its cradle. He arose. Evidently he was quite pleased with himself.
“You don’t think very fast for a professor,” he said. “You’re too late.”
“What good do you think you’ve done yourself?” Barney’s lips were white. All his pent-up scorn and aversion for Tony suddenly welled up irresistibly. Slowly, tightly, his fingers curled.
“You’re the wise guy who wouldn’t vouch for me last night, aren’t you?” said Tony, still smiling. “You didn’t believe me when I said I was going to be framed? You wouldn’t be my alibi, would you? All right. Now you’re the bird who’s going to need an alibi. Let’s see you dig up one of your own. Let’s see y—”
Tony’s teeth clicked shut, biting a word in two. Barney’s right fist had swung upward in a long, looping arc that smacked against the point of Tony’s jaw. Tony collapsed against him. Barney caught the sagging body under the armpits, pushed him into a chair. His head flopped back, and his arms hung inertly over the sides.
Barney hurried from the apartment, carefully closing the door behind him. He had acted without thinking, but he did not regret having acted. And now there was nothing to do but follow through.
He pushed the elevator button, leaned against the opposite wall, lit a cigarette, and watched the floor indicator. The arrow didn’t move for what seemed a long time, and when it did begin to travel across the dial, it moved with incredible slowness. Third floor, fourth floor—
Barney listened for sounds from within apartment 14-A but Tony was still unconscious. Lucky punch, he told himself. He had been trying for the point of the chin, of course, trying with all the desperate determination of a man who knew he couldn’t fail, and Tony didn’t have his guard up. But it was lucky, just the same—
Ninth floor, tenth floor—The elevator stopped on the eleventh.
Barney could already hear the faint howl of sirens far down Riverside Drive. Another siren was screaming in a different key, probably on Broadway. Two cats making love on a neighbor’s fence—
Fourteenth floor at last. The elevator door slid open. Barney stepped in.
The elevator never went slower than it did on the downward trip. It stopped at nine to let a woman in. Barney removed his hat. At four a man got in. A girl at two. Why didn’t she walk down? Barney thought. He wondered if the police cars would be there by the time they reached the lobby.
When the doors opened at the lobby floor, the howl of sirens was very loud. The cars could not be more than a block or so away.
Barney tried not to walk too rapidly as he crossed the lobby, although he had a hard time restraining himself from breaking into a run. The doorman said good evening as he held the door open. The cold breeze from the river swept into his face.
Barney saw the lights of the police car swing off the Drive
into the 111th Street by-pass, heading for the oneway lane that divided the apartment houses from the little park. The siren was shrieking murder, all right, now.
Barney turned his back on the glaring lamps, held onto his hat, and walked briskly toward Broadway.
VIII
VIVIAN DIDN’T KNOW whether Barney would approve of her talking to Penelope Dunne before going to work, but she felt she had to find out whether it was really Pen who had sent for the pink message slips. It seemed silly for Pen to send for them, since Pen knew who had taken the message—the message that Pen said was a joke but which turned out to be no joke at all. Pen knew, of course, that it was not a joke, since she was following instructions and leaving town.
Vivian was out of breath when she arrived at the Frye house—a three-story chateau in the East Eighties just off Fifth Avenue, very ornate with gables and florid oriel windows and the heavy rococo elegance of a Renaissance façade. She rushed past the marble lions in front, the wrought-iron grillwork on the door, and the Filipino butler, without even powdering her nose. Once within the silk-brocaded walls of the foyer, she had to choose between the monumental staircase and the private elevator. She chose the elevator, even though it was built to hold only two adults or three midgets and took an interminable time to reach the top floor.
She found Pen and Julia sitting over a bottle of Irish whisky. Even without looking at the bottle, Vivian knew that Penelope had been helping herself lavishly. When she had been indulging, Pen’s eyes were not only mysterious and Oriental; they were positively tropical.
“I had to see you, Pen,” Vivian announced at once. “Something awful has happened.”
“Of course it has, dear,” Pen said. “Julia and I have been racing down the road to ruin because Tom Norfolk is hours late in getting here. The room has begun to revolve slowly on its axis and you look a little blurred at the edges, Vivian dear. Is it really dark out, or am I getting alcoholic cataracts?”
“The days are getting shorter,” Vivian said. “Pen, this is important—”
“Let me fix you a highball,” Pen interrupted, “and nothing will seem important.”
“No, thanks. I’ve got to work.” Vivian wondered whether she should brutally announce her news, or whether Pen already knew, and was making herself pot-valiant to face the situation.
“But you’ll have another, Pen darling,” said Julia Frye, picking up the bottle.
“Perhaps I’d better not,” Pen protested weakly. “If I did, I might tell you exactly what I think of you, dear.”
“Don’t bother, darling,” Julia said. “I’m sure I know exactly what you think of me.”
“But you can’t, my dear. You’re much too young. You simply haven’t the vocabulary.”
“I’m quite precocious, Pen darling—for such a little bitchy girl.”
“You’re all of that. Yet I’m very fond of you, my dear.”
“Is there any reason why you shouldn’t be?”
“Yes,” said Pen, putting down her glass and giving the younger woman a long stare. “There’s Pierre.”
Pierre! Vivian felt suddenly ill. She tried to say something, but her throat seemed paralyzed. How could they fight over Pierre, just as though he wasn’t lying dead in Pen’s bedroom? They must know, surely. At least Pen must know. Julia, however, picked up the challenge promptly.
“Pierre?” Julia’s eyes could not have been more round with surprised innocence. “Why Pierre?”
“My dear, you don’t really think you’re getting away with anything, do you—even if Tom Norfolk is a blind fool?”
“I shouldn’t even try to get away with anything where you’re concerned,” Julia said. “Only I shouldn’t think you’d blame me for taking Pierre away from you. A man who can be stolen as easily as all that isn’t really worth keeping.”
“So you’ve found that out, have you?”
“I’ve never had any illusions about Pierre. He’s a fraud and a reprobate.”
“That apparently hasn’t stopped you from going overboard after him.”
“He’s a charming reprobate,” Julia said pensively. “He’s like a bad habit, I suppose. I’ll have to get over him eventually.”
“And what about Tom Norfolk in the meantime? I suppose you expect him to overlook the whole business indefinitely.”
Julia shrugged and drained her glass. “I don’t know what to do about Tom. I deserve to lose him, don’t I?”
“You do. Fill my glass again, my dear, and I’ll tell him all about it when he comes in.”
“Jolly idea,” Julia said. “Might enliven a dull weekend. Wonder where Tom is, anyhow?”
“Probably buying arsenic bonbons for Pierre,” Pen said. She gave Vivian a curious sidelong glance, and for a moment Vivian was almost sure that Pen knew—almost, but not quite.
“You know, Julia,” Pen continued, “the only thing I object to in this business of you and Pierre is your bad taste. You’re showing execrable taste in making a fool of Tom, and not much better in trying to make a fool of me. For instance, there was really no point in pretending over the phone this afternoon that you were trying to locate Pierre. You were probably sitting in his lap at the very moment.”
Julia’s expression changed slightly. She reached for the bottle. “Do you really think so?” she asked.
“I’m positive. At least you were near him. Because your voice is different when Pierre is around, my dear. You can’t help it. It’s a reflex. When he touches you, something happens to the vocal cords. I know.”
“Pass me your glass, Pen darling.”
“And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Pierre put you up to the idea of calling me on some pretense or other—just to find out if I’d left yet.”
“Really?”
“Really. I don’t suppose he’s told you, but Pierre still has a key to my apartment. I imagine he might be there at this very moment, rummaging around. I have a little object there that he’d give anything to have.”
“That’s ridiculous, Pen!”
Somewhere deep in the house a bell rang. Julia got up, visibly relieved at the break in the conversation. “That must be Tom,” she said.
As soon as Julia had left the room, Vivian turned frantically to her cousin. “Pierre’s dead, Pen!” she blurted. “You know it, don’t you—that Pierre’s dead?”
“What are you talking about?” Pen demanded archly.
“Somebody killed Pierre in your apartment,” Vivian said very loudly, as though loudness would help Pen understand. “He’s been murdered. In your bedroom.”
Pen stared at her blankly.
“I found it out by accident,” Vivian went on, “and I came to warn you, just in case—You won’t say I told you, will you, Pen? You won’t tell anyone that I came here—that I knew?”
Pen got up and walked unsteadily into the next room. Vivian heard her talking on the phone.
When she came back an instant later she walked very straight, very stiffly. There was no color in her face. She was quite sober now, but she was dazed.
“It’s true!” she said. “I just phoned the apartment. The police are there now. A detective named Kilkenny answered. They’re sending a car over here for me. Vivian, what—”
She stopped abruptly. Tom Norfolk walked into the room, with his arm around Julia. He was a plump, well-fed looking young man with keen gray eyes and an alert manner. He shook hands as though he were about to sell a large bill of goods.
“Sorry to keep you gals waiting,” he said. “Leave it to me to get things mixed up. Hello, Viv. You coming, too?”
“I just dropped by to say hello,” Vivian said.
“Tom thought the date was for a week from next Friday. Didn’t you, Tom?” Julia asked sweetly.
“I could have sworn you told me to go by and pick up Penelope first,” Tom Norfolk said, “so I did. What’s the matter, Pen? Have you been reading Conrad again? You look seasick.”
“Pen and I have been tippling while waiting for you, my swee
t,” Julia said. “Pen darling, you do look as if you’d had a drop too much.”
“I haven’t had enough,” Pen said in a funny, tight voice. “Not nearly enough. And neither have you. Better pour us all stiff ones. Then sit down while I break the news. Tom, did you say you just came from my apartment?”
“It may have been an hour ago that I called by.”
“Did you go in?”
“I got as far as your door. I rang repeatedly, but the only response I got was those Chinese beagles of yours, baying at me from behind the door.”
“You did go upstairs, then?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh, my God. And what have you been doing in the hour since you left?”
“Well, to tell the truth I met Papa Frye—”
“My father?” Julia demanded.
“None other. And I offered him a lift—”
“What was my father doing at Pen’s?”
“He wasn’t at Pen’s. He was running down Riverside Drive toward Cathedral Parkway—the windiest corner in Manhattan, I may add—in pursuit of his hat. Since it was obvious what he was doing at the time, I didn’t think it was my place to question him further. He asked me if I would give him a lift as far as his club, which I did. I confess that I had two drinks with him, inasmuch as I was already late, and wanted to steel myself for the ordeal of being bawled out.”
“Tom, you didn’t see the police in the house while you were there?”
Norfolk gave Penelope a peculiar stare. “Police? No,” he said. “Why?”
“You didn’t see anybody else—but Mr. Frye?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Tom, Pierre Laurence was murdered this afternoon—in my apartment!”
Pen watched Julia as she spoke. The girl did not move for a long minute. Then her arm seemed to tighten a trifle around Tom Norfolk’s waist. Her lips, too, seemed a little tighter, but her eyes did not blink as she returned Penelope’s stare. Suddenly she darted a quick glance at Tom Norfolk. Pen, too, looked at Tom. He had gone deathly pale.
“Are you joking, Pen?” Julia asked at last.
See You at the Morgue Page 6