After the second drink he said, “It’s no go, Julia. I’ve got to talk about it.”
Julia sighed. “Go ahead,” she said. “I thought I could depend on you to make a scene.”
“My God, couldn’t you play up to that heel without falling all over yourself—without flopping in his arms?”
“Are you talking about Pierre Laurence?”
“Who else?”
“Are you by any possible chance trying to say very subtly that I’m a pushover?”
“Julia, all I’m saying is that you weren’t merely following my instructions to play up to Pierre. You weren’t just acting with Pierre.”
“No, Tom, I wasn’t. But I’m not sure just how much was real and how much was acting. Truly.”
“None of it was acting,” Norfolk contradicted flatly. “It hasn’t been acting for weeks. I’ve been watching you. I felt it. And tonight, of course, I had positive proof—your face when Pen told you he was dead. You couldn’t even cry. It hurt too deep down.”
“You misunderstood me, Tom. I didn’t say it wasn’t real. I just meant I don’t know when it stopped being make-believe.”
“You really loved the punk, didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure, Tom. I was fascinated. I didn’t want to be, but I couldn’t help it. I must have been like the people who are supposed to be fascinated by the eyes of a snake.”
“You were so fascinated, I suppose, that you even forgot what you started out to do. Did you ever find out what he had on your father?”
“I’m not sure he had anything, Tom.”
“He must have had. Your father was afraid of him. He yelled about him, but he didn’t do anything. He let him come to the house without making one move to toss him out on his ear. That’s not like your father. Your father usually acts first and talks afterward. This time he just talked. Pierre Laurence had him buffaloed—and you missed your chance to find out what time it was.”
“It doesn’t make any difference now,” Julia said.
“But didn’t you find out anything?”
“Just that Penelope Dunne had something on Pierre—some papers that showed he was mixed up in a scandal of some kind in Europe. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but I know he was going over to Pen’s this afternoon to try to steal them back. He—”
She stopped abruptly.
“Go ahead and cry,” Norfolk said. “You don’t have to wait until you leave me.”
“Maybe I don’t want to leave you, Tom. Let’s just get in the car and drive tonight—drive until we’re tired. We could go to Father’s lodge in the Adirondacks. We can still get in. There’s nobody there, and we could say we’ve been there since early this afternoon—if anybody questioned us afterward.”
Tom shook his head. “The elevator boy at Pen’s spoke to me. He’ll remember I was there.”
“Can I do anything, Tom?”
She took his hand. He smiled grimly in the half-darkness. He said, “So you really think I killed Laurence?”
“I’m not asking, Tom. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I just want to help you if I can.”
“To square yourself with me?”
“Call it that if you want.”
Tom’s lips twisted into a curious smile. “It was a grand idea to shoot Pierre Laurence,” he said, “but it would have been simpler just to call any first-class exterminator. One whiff of insecticide and the louse would have curled up and died. They wouldn’t even have to call the cops. Have another drink?”
“Thanks.”
“You don’t think that’s funny, do you?”
“I don’t think you have any reason to be funny right now.”
“Maybe I haven’t. Why don’t you ask me if I killed Laurence?”
“I told you it didn’t make—”
“Go ahead and ask me.”
“All right. Did you kill him?’
Tom drew a deep breath and leaned across the table. He said, “A guy has to be pretty crazy about a girl to kill somebody for her sake. I’m not sure I care that much, Julia. I’m not sure you’re worth a murder.”
Julia did not wince. She met his steady gaze without lowering her eyelashes. “I guess I’ve got it coming to me,” she said. “Go ahead. Say some more.”
“What, for instance?”
“Anything. Anything true. It’s the truth that hurts, isn’t it? Just rub in the salt.”
“Prompt me.”
“Oh, say I’m a cheap, double-crossing slut, a bitch without even the honesty of a two-dollar trollop.”
“Not bad. Go on.”
“That I’m really the one that deserved killing.”
“You’re doing fine. What else?”
“I’d better leave something for you to say. I’ve said all I wanted.”
“No, you haven’t. There’s still a question you want to ask.”
“I’m not asking questions, I told you.”
“You’re afraid to ask this one. You’re afraid of the answer. You’re afraid to ask me if it was true that I saw your father on the Drive near Pen’s this evening.”
“Why should I be afraid to ask that?”
“Because you know Papa Frye hated Laurence even more than I did. Every Saturday night for the past month he’s been threatening to kill the rat. He—”
Julia sprang up. Wordlessly she came around the table, stood over Tom Norfolk.
Tom chuckled. “It must be hell,” he said, “not to know whom to hate most. Which would you rather killed Pierre—your father or I?”
Julia put her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t hate you, Tom. I couldn’t. I hate myself.”
“Well,” said Tom.
“Tom, what’s going to become of us?”
“Let’s wait until after the funeral before we decide. Or after the trial. Or both.”
“Seriously, Tom. What is going to happen to us—to you and me?”
“You dope it out.” Tom poured another drink. “You did the handicapping on this one.”
“I certainly bitched it up for everybody, didn’t I? I wish I had it to do over again.”
“That’s against the rules.”
“And I’m so afraid of tomorrow.”
“So am I. We’re both going to have awful hang-overs.”
“Tom!” Julia leaned close until he could feel her words on his cheek. “Tom, why don’t you kill me—”
She stopped, her eyes wide, her lips parted.
“You were going to say ‘too’?” Tom prompted.
Julia nodded. She started to sit on his knees, then her unnerved body seemed to collapse, and she fell limply against him. His arms caught her instinctively. She lay inertly against him, sobbing, and he could feel the feverish beat of her heart against his shoulder. He set down his glass.
XIII
BARNEY WEAVER TOOK another quick look at the furs and closed the suitcase. He stood looking at the door, trying to picture what sort of menace stood behind it. He tiptoed to the door, held his breath, listened. He could hear only the gurgle of gushing water in the adjoining dressing-room.
The knock was repeated.
Barney unlocked the door, opened it a few inches, blinked at an ivory smile in an ebony face.
“You got plenty of towels, gentleman?” the Negro attendant asked with a ten-cent grin.
“Plenty,” said Barney, grinning just as broadly. He reached in his pocket.
“Nothin’ you need, gentleman?”
“Yes,” Barney had a sudden inspiration. “Can you get me some paper?”
“Paper?” The smile vanished. The attendant tried to poke his head into the dressing-room, but Barney didn’t open the door any wider. “Ain’t they no paper in there? I thought I put—”
“Wrapping paper,” said Barney, handing him a dollar bill. “Heavy brown paper. Two big sheets of it. And some heavy twine. I want to make a package.”
The smile reappeared. “Okay, gentleman.”
Barney closed the door, sat down
and mopped the cold perspiration from his brow. He was beginning to see about what strategy the situation called for. Ultimately he would have to find out the significance of the fox pelts and their relationship to the murder of Pierre Laurence, but not quite yet. First he would exculpate Vivian Sanderson—and himself, if possible—by getting rid of the furs and the suitcase separately, so that if later he should want to turn the furs over to the police, he would not have to mention Vivian’s suitcase unless he felt it advisable. Strangely enough, he was not as much worried about the police right now as he was about Anthony Grove. The police might give him and Vivian a good working over and a nasty week or so, but the truth would come out ultimately, he was fairly certain. Tony Grove, though, was linked with more sinister forces that dealt in decisions from which there was no appeal. Tony Grove was involved with murder. Therefore Barney would wait to plan his next move until he knew what story Tony had told the police, whether they had believed him, whether they had allowed him to go scot-free, and whether, therefore, he and Vivian were under any menace from Tony and the murderer of Pierre Laurence—unless they were the same person.
When the porter came back with the paper and cord, Barney packed the furs and Tony’s license plates into a bundle, checked it at one stand, left the suitcase at another.
Then, as though a great weight had been lifted from his conscience, he discovered suddenly that he was ravenously hungry.
He went to the oyster bar on the lower level and ordered a dozen Cotuits. He ate slowly, because it was too early for the street editions of the morning papers. He toyed with the idea of having a small bottle of Chablis with his oysters, to help pass the time, but in view of the uncertainty of the future and the possible calls on the little money he had in his pocket, he compromised on a bottle of ale.
Barney was waiting in Forty-Second Street when the circulation trucks came by to dump the first bundles of tabloids. He bought a News and a Mirror and went into the waiting-room to read.
The Mirror had a picture of Penelope Dunne on Page 8—Pen on the witness stand with her legs crossed, taken at the time of Tony’s trial.
PARISIAN FOUND SHOT TO DEATH IN BOUDOIR OF WEST SIDE BEAUTY
Pierre Laurence, Parisian Beau Brummell who taught French to wealthy Manhattan women in his expensive apartment in Central Park South, was found murdered today in the bedroom of one of his former pupils, Mrs. Penelope Dunne, 369 Riverside Drive.
Laurence had been shot once through the heart. No weapon was found.
Police were notified by a mysterious phone call, believed to have been made by Barney Weaver, a friend of Mrs. Dunne’s. Weaver had disappeared from the apartment before squad cars arrived and is now being sought by the police.
Mrs. Dunne, tall brunette beauty, only recently reconciled with her husband, Roger Dunne, after a year’s separation, was being questioned by homicide-squad detectives at the West 100th Street station. Dunne, too, was questioned.
Elevator operators at 369 Riverside Drive gave police a list of visitors to the Dunne apartment during the afternoon. Detectives are checking their movements.
Anthony Grove, recently released from Sing Sing after serving time for embezzlement, is a brother of Mrs. Dunne and made his home with her. According to Mrs. Dunne he had been absent all day, but his whereabouts is being checked.
Immigration officials entered the case when Ellis Island lists show no record of the murdered man’s admission to the U. S. Police suspect he may have entered illegally or under another name.
Laurence’s body was taken to Bellevue where an autopsy will be performed today by Dr. Joseph Rosenkohl, deputy medical examiner.
Barney folded the paper carefully and glanced through the News story. It was essentially the same. It was particularly and annoyingly the same in the matter of Tony Grove—that he was not in the apartment when the police arrived.
Tony must have recovered consciousness, then, while Barney was going down in the elevator. He probably made his getaway down the service stairs. In any event he did not wait to tell his accusing story to the police. He had been afraid to wait for the cops. He had abandoned his original plan to shift the bloody burden of murder to Barney’s broad shoulders. Had he abandoned it in favor of direct action?
Barney dropped his papers and walked across town to Times Square. He took the West Side subway uptown and got off at his usual station. He would not attempt to go to his apartment, which was certainly watched, but there was one thing he was determined to see, one indication which might tell him just how desperate Tony Grove had become. It was an observation he thought he could make with impunity.
He walked along his street on the side opposite his house. When he was halfway down the block, he saw with a feeling of dismay that what he feared was true. Tony Grove’s car, the coupé without the license plates, was no longer parked under the street light.
Barney slowed his pace, looking at the other cars parked along the curb, to make sure he was not mistaken. There was no mistake about it; Tony’s car was gone. Not that Barney was entirely surprised. He had suspected Tony would have a duplicate set of keys hidden away so that the fact of Barney’s having one set would not cripple the ignition system permanently. But Tony must have needed transportation in a terrible hurry to have come for the car after the way he had acted the night before. Barney wondered—
“Trouble you fer a light, Mac?”
Two men had come down the steps of the house he was passing and blocked the sidewalk in front of Barney. They were big men with similar dark topcoats, and they wore their soft felt hats pulled down at the same angle. One of them gestured with an unlighted cigarette as he addressed Barney.
“Certainly.” Barney handed over a paper matchbook. “Keep ’em. I’ve got plenty,” he said.
He walked on, his knee joints strangely fluid. Something in the way the two men had looked at him, something about the tone in which one of them had asked for a match, filled Barney with a sense of foreboding. They were police detectives, of course, detailed to watch his house. Well, he was glad he had not looked up to see if there was a light in his window. There wouldn’t be, naturally. Even if there were men waiting for him in his room, they would be waiting in the dark, waiting to pounce on him and cut off his escape. The packed luggage with which his room was encumbered would be sure to give the impression that he had been preparing to flee—and therefore that his coup had been planned in advance.
Barney tried not to hurry his steps. He made a special effort not to look around. The noise of the traffic passing in Columbus Avenue made it impossible for him to hear footsteps on the sidewalk, but he had an idea he was being followed. He turned the corner into Columbus, ducked into a delicatessen which bore the blue medallion of a bell on its window.
A heavy truck thundered by as he dialed the number, and he was not quite sure he recognized Vivian’s voice at the other end of the wire. He decided to take a chance. He said, “Hello, Vivian. Can you talk to me?” There was a long, agonizing pause. Then, in a coolly professional voice, came the answer. “No, sir, not at this moment. But I can take the message.”
“Then listen carefully. Have you seen or heard from Tony tonight? Or know what’s become of him?”
“No, sir. There’s been no word from him tonight. I will be glad to put him in touch with you if he calls.”
“Tony was in the apartment when you left tonight,” Barney said. “He tried to frame me by calling the police. I had to slug him to get out. He probably followed me down, because his car is gone. So watch out for him, Viv. He’s dangerous—for you and me both. He—”
Barney stopped. Through the glass door of the phone booth he had seen the two men come in—the two big men with the soft hats pulled down at the same angle, who had stopped him for a match. Looking at them now, Barney was not so sure they were detectives.
“Would you like to leave your number, sir, so I can have him get in touch with you?” Vivian was saying professionally.
“Look, Viv, I think I�
��m being followed.” Barney drew his sleeve across his face. It had suddenly grown very warm in the phone booth. “I don’t know if it’s the police or pals of Tony’s, but I think I’ll find out soon. If I possibly can, I’ll be at that Chinese restaurant tonight when you get off duty. Look for me there—but don’t wait too long. And for God’s sake, be careful!”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
The dial tone hummed in his ear. He hung up, but did not leave the booth at once. The two men were still in the store, between the door and the telephone booth. One of them was inspecting the assortment of cheese in the glass showcase. The other one was engrossed in a case full of sausages. Neither of them moved when the folding glass door of the phone booth squealed and shuddered open. When Barney emerged, however, they closed in on him from both sides.
“Your name Barney Weaver?” boomed the man who had borrowed a match.
Before Barney could reply, the other one said, “Sure, he’s Weaver. The description fits him like a rubber sock. He couldn’t be nobody else.”
Securely wedged in between the two men, Barney was moving toward the door in spite of himself.
“Better come along with us, Weaver,” one of them was saying. “We want to talk to you.”
XIV
WHEN DETECTIVE KENNETH KILKENNY emerged from the Overlook Arms Apartments, a man who had been sitting in an automobile across the street got out and came over.
“The Sanderson gal is supposed to be on duty till two,” Kilkenney said. “I’ll send you another man at midnight. Call in then and I’ll tell you whether I want you to pick her up or just tail her. I’ll probably come by myself at two.”
The detective got into his own car and drove off to Western Union to pick up the receipt for the message slips which had been collected and delivered to Mrs. Dunne’s apartment. The signature on the receipt was hastily scrawled. The Dunne was legible enough, but the initial could have been either a P or an R. The messenger on that call was off for the day.
See You at the Morgue Page 10