by Craig Rice
In spite of the worries on his mind, Jake grinned at the thought of the havoc Helene must have created at police headquarters. But the grin faded rapidly.
“Malone,” he began, wondering if his voice sounded as hoarse as it felt.
“Go on to the rehearsal,” the lawyer said wearily. “Act as though nothing at all had happened, and don’t let anybody get near Nelle Brown.”
“The contract—” Jake said.
“Have it there ready to be signed,” Malone told him.
Joe McIvers looked up, the first faint look of hope on his face. “Can you find out who the murderer is in the time we have left?” He paused, gulped, and added, “Do you already know?”
Malone looked at him and said nothing.
“For the love of God, Malone,” Jake began.
“Go away,” Malone said crossly, “Go away.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do?”
“I do,” Malone said, “and I don’t like it. But there’s no way out, now. Go away, I want to think.”
Jake paused a minute at the door. “Will we see you later?”
“You will,” Malone told him. “I’ll be at the studio.”
“Bringing the murderer with you, I suppose,” Jake said sourly.
“He’ll be there,” Malone growled. “Get the hell out of here.”
Jake muttered something about unwashed Irishmen and crooked lawyers, and slammed the door behind him.
“All we can do it hope for the best,” he told McIvers. “Malone knows what he’s doing. If he says he’s going to fix this up, he’ll fix it up, so we might as well stop worrying.”
“I suppose so,” McIvers said. “What shall we do now?”
Jake sighed. “This would be a perfect day to get drunk,” he said, “but maybe we’d better get on over to rehearsal.”
Schultz was sitting alone in the control room, munching a sandwich and reading The Daily Racing Form. He looked up as Jake came in.
“Where’d Nelle get the double?” he asked. “She’s a wonder. Sounds almost like Nelle herself.”
Jake looked through the window to where Nelle, still wearing the wig, stood by the microphone, arguing about a song arrangement with Lou Silver.
“I don’t know where Nelle got her,” he said, “but you’re right, she’s a wonder.” He looked around the studio. Yes, there was Helene in a corner, a copy of the script in her lap. The world became a little brighter.
“Of course,” Schultz said, brushing a crumb from his chin, “I could tell the difference, being an expert on Nelle’s voice, but I’d bet the average listener couldn’t. Will she do the show herself? Nelle, I mean?”
“God knows,” Jake said, “but I hope so. Look here, Schultz. We’re going in there and rehearse. You keep everybody out of here. I don’t care who wants to get in the studio or the control room. Keep ’em out—all except a guy named Malone, a lawyer.”
“I get you,” Schultz said, “I won’t let nobody get in.”
Jake nodded, walked in the studio, and looked around. There was Helene, looking cool and exquisite in her corner; Nelle, more than ever resembling Miss Wilson from Lansing; Lou Silver, marking a last-minute change in an arrangement; Oscar Jepps, coatless, red-faced and perspiring; Bob Bruce, pale and worried; an actress whose name he couldn’t remember; two actors whose names he couldn’t remember; a bunch of musicians; Krause fiddling with his sound effects, and Baby. Baby? Oh yes, he remembered. Baby had a part in this week’s show.
Oscar saw him and walked across the studio. “What’s Nelle wearing the furpiece for?”
“She’s a fugitive,” Jake said, “don’t ask questions. How’s the script?”
Oscar said, “I could have written a better one in my sleep.”
Nelle joined them. “What goes on?” she asked, very casually.
“Listen,” Jake said, “as far as you’re concerned, this is just another rehearsal. I want Nelle to keep hidden out for reasons of my own. Schultz is keeping everybody out of the studio, so she might as well take off the disguise. Now get this. The whole mess is going to be cleared up this afternoon. I don’t know how myself, but it is. Meanwhile there’s a show to do tonight. Forget the whole infernal business and rehearse the show. Now get going.”
He signaled to Helene to follow him into the control room, and settled down to listening.
For the first half-hour, rehearsal was strained and listless. By the time Jake began to give up hope of an even presentable broadcast, the group began to be too absorbed in the show to think of anything else. By four o’clock, the script had been shortened, lengthened, rearranged, and rewritten, and everyone rested and drank coffee. By five o’clock, a final rehearsal went off with a smoothness and vitality Jake would not have believed possible. As the musicians prepared to leave, he walked into the studio.
“Lou, you can get your boys out of here. You can go, too,” he said to the unnamed actress and actors and to Krause. “The rest of you stick around.”
“What’s up?” Bob Bruce asked.
Jake looked toward the control room and saw Malone. “I think we’re going to learn the truth about the murders,” he said.
“What murders?” Oscar said innocently, taking his face out of the script.
Jake sighed. “It must be wonderful to be an artist,” he remarked, and called into the microphone, “Come on in, Malone.”
The little lawyer walked into the studio. He looked very pale and very tired.
“You all know John J. Malone, I guess,” Jake said, looking around.
“Have you done something, Malone?” McIvers asked anxiously. “Is the contract safe?”
Malone nodded and sat down heavily in one of the leather-and-chromium chairs. “I know the whole story. I might as well be honest. I’ve known the important part for several days now.” He paused a moment. “There’s a way to handle it that will save things, I think. But I hate to do it. Because I know it’s going to hurt.” He paused again and looked up. “I’m sorry, Nelle. I’m sorrier than I can say.”
Chapter 32
“What are you talking about?” Jake asked. His voice seemed to come from some perfect stranger.
Malone didn’t appear to hear him. He was looking at Nelle. The radio singer seemed to know what he was going to say. She turned very white.
“It isn’t worth it,” she said. “The contract, the show—nothing is worth it. Nothing in the world.”
Malone looked up at her. “It’s for you to say,” he told her.
“Nelle,” McIvers said wildly, “Nelle, the contract.”
“Shut up,” she said, as casually as though she were slapping a fly. “The program doesn’t matter any more. It all seemed so important all along, and now suddenly it isn’t.” She turned to McIvers. “Joe, you can sell Goldman something else. It’ll take a little time, but you can do it. I’m sick of the whole thing anyway. I’m through. I’m not broke. I’ve saved a hunk of what I’ve earned this year. Enough for Tootz and me to live on for a while.” She flung an arm out in a wide, frantic gesture. “I don’t want much. Just Tootz. Just a little corner somewhere—where we can settle down and just live and forget all this, and be together, and perhaps find a little happiness someone else hasn’t used up. I’m getting out. I’m through with all this. I don’t give a damn who murdered Paul March, or Mr. Givvus, or John St. John. I don’t give a damn what happens to the program, or the contract, or me. The hell with it all.” Her voice broke suddenly.
Oscar Jepps laid a huge paw on her shoulder. “Nelle—”
She didn’t seem to know he was there.
“I’m sorry, Nelle,” Malone said again. “I’m sorry. It was the only way. And it’s too late to stop things now.”
He looked toward the door. All their eyes followed his. The door opened slowly, very slowly, and Henry Gibson Gifford, very dignified, very beautifully dressed, and very debonair, walked into the studio.
“I’m glad I heard your speech, Nelle,” he said quietly, “even
though you didn’t mean it for me.” He laid his hat and stick on a chair, very deliberately.
“You heard it!” Nelle said.
“Through the loud-speaker,” he explained, “in the control room. The operator had you still—hooked up is the word, isn’t it?”
“But how did you get here?” Nelle asked. “You didn’t come here alone! You couldn’t have—”
“I telephoned him,” Malone said wearily. “I telephoned and said Nelle was in danger of arrest. I thought he’d come here. I had to find out, someway, if he’d go out alone, without Nelle. I mean—I had to prove it. I knew.”
“Oh no,” Nelle said, “no. It can’t be this way.”
“It was the only thing I could do for you,” Henry Gibson Gifford said very simply. He reached in his pocket, took out a little package, and gave it to her. “This is the only thing I have ever been able to give you. I meant to send it, anonymously. Perhaps this was the better way after all.”
She took the package almost mechanically, released the rubber band that held it, saw that it contained letters.
“But where,” she began, and stopped. “Where did you get these?”
“From John St. John’s pocket,” Malone answered.
Jake’s hand groped for a chair. “You mean,” he said, “you mean that he—” He paused and frowned. “But Malone, you said yourself that he wasn’t—mad. Not that kind of madness.”
“These murders were committed by a sane man,” Malone said. “That was the key to the whole thing, that he was sane.”
His eyes and the fine gray eyes of Henry Gibson Gifford met in a look of understanding that excluded everyone else in the room.
“When did you know?” the white-haired man said.
“It was Jake who told me first,” Malone said. “It was Jake who made me see the whole thing.” He turned to Jake. “First, when you said—‘It’s a good thing Tootz isn’t sane, or this situation would drive him crazy!’”
Jake nodded slowly.
“That told me,” Malone said, “and then there was another thing, more definite. Tootz would not go out of, the apartment without Nelle. That was pointed out to me time and again. Yet on two separate times when Jake telephoned the apartment, no one answered the telephone. Tootz would have answered if he had been there. And both times, we knew that he was not with Nelle. Obviously, he must have gone out alone. If he would do that—he was sane.”
“I don’t understand at all,” Nelle said.
Malone smiled at her very gently. “When you married him, he was a very wealthy man. He adored you. He looked forward to giving you everything you wanted. Then suddenly he lost everything.
“You came home and told him you’d signed the contract for your program. He was just realizing that he was through, finished. Suddenly the whole situation was reversed. From then on you’d be supporting not only yourself but him, and the whole world would know. That afternoon—was the first time Henry Gibson Gifford thought he saw horses in the living room.”
There was a long silence.
“You mean,” Nelle said, “he pretended?” Suddenly she flung herself on her knees in front of Tootz’ chair, grasped his hands. “You pretended, all the time? You never saw any horses? Not any at all?”
“Not any horses at all,” he said softly, “nor any men following me.” He looked over her head and smiled at Malone. “You must admit the horses were a very nice touch, though.”
“They were,” Malone said. “A very nice touch.”
“But why?” Nelle demanded wildly. “Why?”
He stroked her soft, shining hair very tenderly. “Perhaps I should simply have gone away. Perhaps I should have gone out a window, as so many men did. But you were too precious to me, Nelle. Precious, and I felt too that you needed me. Yet—I couldn’t simply stay on and be the bankrupt husband of Nelle Brown, living on the income from her artistry. I could stay and be a harmless old madman. Do you understand? Do you forgive me, Nelle?”
“You talk of forgiveness,” Malone said, “after what you have done for her.”
“The imaginary men following me,” the old man went on, continuing to stroke her hair, “were for another reason. I wanted to know all that was going on. I knew you were as impulsive as a child. I thought there might be a time when you would need help, protection perhaps. When everyone believed I wouldn’t leave the house without Nelle, I always had a perfect alibi whenever Nelle was away.”
Jake looked up. “That’s what’s been fooling me all along,” he said.
The white-haired man nodded. “I didn’t plan it as an alibi for murder. But it came in very handily. I planned it so that I could keep an eye on Nelle.” The graceful old fingers paused, half tangled in her hair. “I knew all about Paul March. It all but broke my heart that I couldn’t comfort you when you needed it so. I knew all about”—he looked up to smile at Baby—“this young man. Those things haven’t mattered. Only your goodness to me mattered.”
Nelle was very still, her face buried on his knee.
“I knew what Paul March was, and I was afraid for you. Then that night a week ago you brought your script home, and I glanced through it and saw the impression left by his note to you. I knew, then, that the only thing to do was to kill him.”
Jake had never known that a room could be so still.
“I remembered the program that came just after yours, and I was sure the sound of the shots in that program would cover the sound of mine. I was confident Paul March would have his radio on, turned to your program, and I was right. I was in the hall just as your program finished, listened for the start of the other one, and walked in without knocking. He was in the kitchenette. I went up to him and shot him.”
There was a long silence. Jake felt Helene’s hand, very cold, slip into his own.
Henry Gibson Gifford drew a long, sighing breath. “The letters were in his pocket. I looked for any other reminder of you, Nelle, and found nothing. But I found money in his wallet, and that bothered me. I knew you hadn’t come and bought the letters. Finally I concluded he must have been blackmailing someone else.
“Just then I heard your steps in the hall. I hid out on the fire escape and watched you search the room.”
She looked up suddenly. “Then I was being watched when I was in that room! I felt it—and yet I thought it wasn’t possible.” She caught her breath sharply. “I was watched—and by you!” She buried her face again.
The old man went on as though there had been no interruption. “There was now another danger. Your coming to the apartment might involve you when the murder was discovered. Then this young man”—he indicated Baby—“came, and I stayed on the fire escape until he had gone. Then I stayed there trying to think what to do, and while I was there, first Jake arrived, and then McIvers. I stayed out on the fire escape nearly two hours while a perfect procession of people came into that room.” He paused and smiled. “It was almost like watching a parade.”
Jake cleared his throat harshly. “All that was needed was a guide and a rubberneck wagon.”
Tootz’ gray eyes met his appreciatively.
“Then I,” Joe McIvers began, and stopped to stare at the old man. “You must have thought I was insane.”
Henry Gibson Gifford shook his head. “I understood why you were doing what you did. But when you moved the body of Paul March, I followed you and saw you hide it in the old warehouse.”
Joe McIvers blinked. “I didn’t dream that anyone was watching me—following me.”
Tootz smiled. “I was very quiet.” He paused and drew a long, sighing breath. “I thought everything was settled. Sooner or later the body of Paul March would need to be destroyed. There was no immediate hurry. I knew that when the time came, a fire in the old warehouse would cause an explosion in the refrigerating chamber that would probably destroy the body beyond recognition.” He smiled wryly. “When that time came, I didn’t know that the body had been removed.
“I’m afraid,” he said slowly, “I’m af
raid I bungled things badly.”
In the long silence that followed, his fingers began stroking Nelle’s hair again, slowly and rhythmically.
“But damn it all,” Helene began. Her voice broke off suddenly, she scowled and began again, “You said you took the letters from Paul March’s pocket. Then how did St. John get hold of them? What happened to St. John?” she paused and scowled again. “And Mr. Givvus. None of this explains who murdered Mr. Givvus.”
Henry Gibson Gifford nodded toward the letters Nelle still held limply in her hands.
“They explain who killed Mr. Givvus,” he said quietly. “Who and why. They explain—everything you asked.”
Chapter 33
Nelle picked up the big envelope and shook it. Three packages of letters fell onto the studio floor. Jake picked them up, stared at them.
“But they’re all alike,” he exclaimed.
Malone almost grabbed them from his hand.
Henry Gibson Gifford said, “Paul March was a forger as well as a blackmailer.”
Malone was looking hard at the letters. “There were three sets of letters, exactly the same!” He looked up at the old man.
“Paul March was a clever man,” Gifford said. “He knew of three people who would be customers for them, so he forged two duplicate sets of letters. I don’t know myself which is the real set. Yes, a clever lad. Too bad he ended up as he did—he could have gone far in the world.” He reached in the big envelope, pulled out several notes written on odds and ends of paper and handed them to Malone. “Those are even more explanatory.”
Malone took them, handed the three sets of letters to Nelle. She looked at them a little stupidly.
“But where were these others?” she asked. “Who had them?”
“St. John had one set, bought from Paul March,” Henry Gibson Gifford said. “Mr.’ Givvus of Philadelphia had the other, also bought from Paul March.”
“He had them,” Malone said, looking up, “until St. John killed him for them.”
After the very long pause that followed, Joe McIvers said, “you can’t tell me an agency man would shoot his own prospective client.” He took a long breath and added, “Especially before an audition.”