The Corpse Steps Out
Page 20
Malone, musing, ignored him. “That explains why Givvus had sent Paul March five hundred dollars. As near as I can tell from this correspondence between Givvus and St. John—heaven knows why St. John didn’t destroy it when he had the chance—Paul March evidently knew what the situation was regarding the Nelle Brown Revue—as far as St. John’s hope of selling it to Givvus was concerned. Evidently he also knew Givvus, and what Givvus would try to do if he had the chance. At any rate, he sold a set of the letters to Givvus.”
Tootz nodded. “That’s how I figured it out myself.”
“Then,” Malone went on thoughtfully, “when Givvus turned up for the audition, he told St. John that he had his own hold over Nelle Brown and was going to get her show on his own terms, by dealing direct with her, leaving St. John out of the picture. It would have saved Givvus a pile of money. St. John not only saw his own plans go haywire, but he knew that unless he could get Givvus out of the way, he couldn’t sell Nelle Brown to anyone else. With Givvus dead, he could. St. John needed the money and prestige desperately.”
The lawyer scowled. “Naturally everyone assumed that the last person in the world who would have shot Givvus was St. John. As Joe here just said—no agency man would shoot his own client, especially after arranging an audition for him. We all jumped to that conclusion, and St. John knew we would. That audition was arranged to conceal a murder. It must have happened that way. St. John ushered him into the client’s room as soon as he arrived, killed him before the audition, and took the duplicates of Nelle’s letters and his own notes to Givvus out of the dead man’s pockets.”
“But St. John—” Joe McIvers began a little stupidly.
The old man interrupted him. “I thought everything was all right—that every danger was out of the way. Then St. John came to see Nelle, and told her he had the letters. She thought I was taking a nap at the time he was there—I wasn’t. I was listening. I knew I had the letters taken from Paul March’s pockets. Finally, I came to a conclusion which proved to be the right one—that there were duplicate letters.
“At first, I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew Nelle didn’t want to give the audition, and I knew the reason why she was doing it. Then when Mr. Givvus of Philadelphia turned up on a bench in Lincoln Park, I didn’t know what had happened. I did know, though, that St. John was a danger to Nelle. The letters he had might be duplicates—but they were just as great a threat to her as those I had taken from Paul March’s pockets. So I knew St. John had to die.”
Once more the slim old fingers paused, half tangled in Nelle’s hair.
“I went to St. John’s house. He was asleep before his radio. No one else was there. I turned the loud-speaker on full to cover the sound of the shot, and killed him. The letters were in his pocket. I took them, and then I knew that Nelle was safe.”
In the long silence that followed, Nelle looked up at Malone. “How did you know? How did you find it out?”
“I didn’t know,” the little lawyer said, “I didn’t know. I had to guess.” His voice was very tired. “But everything that happened was to your benefit. That, in my mind, narrowed it down to those who loved you enough to commit murder for you.
“But it could be Tootz,” he went on, “only if he were sane. That was the balance point on which the whole thing rested. If his delusions were real”—he smiled—“well, leave it that way. If his delusions were real, it was true that he wouldn’t leave the apartment without you, and in that case, he couldn’t possibly have committed the murders. But if he were sane, his delusion of the men following him and his refusal to leave the apartment gave him a perfect alibi. Because of that chance remark of Jake’s—and because the evidence of the telephone calls indicated that he had been out of the apartment without Nelle on two separate occasions—I believed that he was sane.
“Up to the very last,” he said softly, “up to the very minute when he appeared in the shadows of the control room, listening to what Nelle was saying, I wasn’t sure. It was a shot in the dark, though I was fairly sure of my aim. When I telephoned him that Nelle was in danger of arrest, I knew that if he were sane, he would come here. If he were not then my whole theory was wrong, and the game was up, as far as the program and Nelle’s contract were concerned.”
“Damn you,” Jake said in a sudden rage, “damn you, Malone. All this hasn’t done any good. It’s found the murderer, yes—but you’ve made everything worse than ever. Goldman will never sign the contract after hearing this. Tootz will go to jail for the rest of his life, and that’s all the good you’ve done.”
“No,” Malone said thoughtfully, “Tootz won’t go to jail. Because outside of the people in this room, no one knows that he isn’t mad.”
A smile crossed the handsome face of Henry Gibson Gifford. “I haven’t a very long time to live,” he said. “I’d hate to spend it in a penitentiary. But they don’t send madmen there, do they, Malone?”
“No,” Malone said, “a pleasanter place. And Nelle will have nothing but the sympathy of the world when the news breaks that her half-mad husband had gone completely mad, homicidal. Even Goldman will sympathize with that. You, Jake, should be able to see that.”
The old man said, “A quiet room in a pleasant place, with a radio set perhaps, and Nelle to visit me now and then—I couldn’t ask for much more.”
Malone stood up. “Shall we go, Gifford? If those horses could convince people all these months, they’ll convince Von Flanagan now.”
Nelle rose, clasped Tootz’ hand. Jake tried not to look at her face.
“You mustn’t cry,” Henry Gibson. Gifford said very gently. “You’ll hurt your throat. And you have a program to do tonight.”
“Yes,” she said, “I have a program to do tonight, and a week from tonight and a week from then—” Her voice broke ever so little. “If you could do this for me, Tootz, I guess I can live up to it.”
He kissed her once, said, “I’m ready to go, Malone,” and walked to the studio door without looking back, as though he had been on his way to receive a decoration.
Nelle stood very still, looking after him. No one spoke. Jake counted the squares in the studio floor and wished someone would say something, felt that someone, anyone, must speak, must say something, anything. And at last it was his own voice that he heard.
“Nelle, you can’t do the program in that dress.”
The tension broke, everyone seemed ready to speak at once.
Nelle seemed to wake from a dream, looked at her watch. “But I’d have to go home to change. And there isn’t time before the broadcast.”
Then Helene came to life again. “Oh yes there is,” she said, “oh yes there is. Have you ever seen me drive?”
Chapter 34
In Von Flanagan’s dingy little office, Henry Gibson Gifford, otherwise Tootz, had finished telling his story of how he had eluded the watchful eye of Nelle Brown and shot and killed Paul March, Mr. Givvus, and John St. John, because they were persecuting him. Something told him to do it, he explained. He produced the gun that had shot March and St. John, apologized for having lost the gun that shot Mr. Givvus, and gave the one he had to Von Flanagan with a little sigh of regret. The only thing he didn’t confess to. Malone said later, was Helene’s driving through a red light.
“We should of known it,” Von Flanagan said to Malone. “We knew Nelle Brown had a husband who was a little over the sill, but we never thought he’d go completely off. We should of seen that these murders were committed by a nut—anybody with half an eye should of seen it right away.”
Malone smiled modestly.
“This sure is tough for her,” Von Flanagan said sympathetically. “We’ll make it as easy as we can for her. Not much fuss, a simple commitment. Everybody knows he’s been crazy for months. Yes, we’ll make it as easy as we can for her. Did you get me her autograph?”
“I will,” Malone promised.
Von Flanagan turned to Henry Gibson Gifford. “How’d you come to pick those particular guys?”
>
Henry Gibson Gifford leaned forward confidentially. “I thought I had to shoot everybody who had anything to do with the radio program. Everybody. I had to. Only Mr. Malone convinced me I ought to tell you about it first.”
Von Flanagan nodded sympathetically.
“It beats all how a frail little guy could of moved those bodies,” he said reflectively.
“Bigges never knew I had the car,” the old man said boastfully, “and I’m strong. I wanted to hide them all in the old warehouse, but I was afraid. It made a nice fire, the whole warehouse. I wish I could see another fire.” He sighed regretfully. “Mr. Malone says I’ve got to go away somewhere. But I don’t mind. It’s all right as long as I can take the horses with me.”
Von Flanagan looked up, puzzled. “Horses?”
Henry Gibson Gifford looked all around the room, and smiled. “Horses. My horses.” He said it so convincingly that for a moment the police officer caught himself looking around to see if they were really there. Then his eyes met Malone’s in a long glance of deep and sympathetic understanding.
There were only those last few minutes before the show went on the air. Jake Justus stretched his long legs in the control room and wished the next half-hour was safely over.
Papa Goldman had been extremely sympathetic. The occurrence would make Nelle Brown a heroine in the eyes of her public. Malone had promised that the story would not break until after the rebroadcast for the Coast. In the meantime there would be the show; after the show the contract would be signed. Right now the photographer was waiting in the studio lobby.
Everything was settled, everything was serene. Nelle was out of trouble. The contract would be re-signed. In—he looked up at the control-room clock—thirty-three minutes and fifteen seconds the show would be over.
That is, if Helene had managed to get Nelle back to the studio in time! For a horrible moment he thought of everything that might happen—accidents, arrests, traffic jams.
In the studio Bob Bruce, serene and smiling, was making his regular weekly spiel about the show, the star, and the sponsor, and “Quiet in the studio, please, except when laughter or applause are indicated.” Bob Bruce was pale, but his face was happy. He was going to see Essie St. John after the rebroadcast.
Joe McIvers tiptoed into the studio, his long, thin face pleasant and relieved.
Everyone was happy, Jake thought, except Nelle. Nelle was the one who had been hurt. How would she ever go through a broadcast after what had happened in the afternoon? But she would. She’d make it the show of a lifetime, so that listeners all over the nation, picking up their newspapers tomorrow morning, would remember it. After the broadcast, what?
There was Baby, standing among the members of the dramatic cast, anxiously watching the studio door. What was it Baby had said? Oh yes. “When it does come, if somebody like me is there—” Well, he was there. Someday Nelle Brown would abandon him as casually and carelessly as she would abandon a song she had sung too many times, but this was Baby’s hour.
Even in the glass booth, he was aware of the sudden hush, the breathless expectancy that had come over the studio audience.
“—and here she is herself, ladies and gentlemen, the star of Nelle Brown’s Revue—Nelle Brown in person!” (Applause cue.)
There she was, and Jake sighed with relief. She was back in time.
The control-room door closed behind him, and Helene slipped into the chair by his side.
“Special permission to sit in the control room,” Schultz said with a grin, offering Helene a chocolate.
How pale Nelle was!
The sign-off of the program just ending came suddenly from the control-room loud-speaker. Jake held his breath.
There was the station break, and the chimes. Then Schultz made a sudden, rapid twisting of dials, a quick, emphatic signal to the studio, whispered, “Take the baby,” as though they could hear him through the pane of glass, and drew a bag of salted peanuts from his pocket to eat during the show.
And then her voice filled the little, silent room—warm, rich, dramatic, and calm as a lake at early evening.
“Golden moon—over the midnight sky—”
Jake suddenly remembered one line he had intended to suggest revising.
Well, there was no revising to be done now.
He settled back in his uncomfortable chromium-and-leather chair, and laid his hand over Helene’s.
Twenty-nine minutes and forty seconds later he reflected that it had been the best show of the series. Everything was settled, everything was perfect. It was just a great big wonderful world.
All except one thing.
He sat straight up in his chair and swore unhappily.
There wasn’t time to drive to Crown Point and be married between broadcasts!
About the Author
Craig Rice (1908–1957), born Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig, was an American author of mystery novels and short stories described as “the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction.” In 1946, she became the first mystery writer to appear on the cover of Time magazine. Best known for her character John J. Malone, a rumpled Chicago lawyer, Craig’s writing style was both gritty and humorous. She also collaborated with mystery writer Stuart Palmer on screenplays and short stories, as well as with Ed McBain on the novel The April Robin Murders.
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ISBN: 978-1-5040-4846-0
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