The Cases of Hildegarde Withers

by Palmer, Stuart

  The wardrobe door was wide open, disclosing the large cavity within. No—not a cavity, for slowly and with infinite weariness the plump body of a man, his face a dreadful blackish purple, came sliding out. Stiff and wooden, it sprawled and bumped down the steps of the auction platform and slid to a contorted rest against the ankles of the people in the front row.

  Like heat lightning on a summer night were the flares of the official photographers, and the heavy, resolute tread of detectives echoed dully in the empty auction hall. There were louder echoes from the galleries’ offices at the rear, into which the crowd had been herded without ceremony.

  “For no reason!” Auctioneer Varden was complaining. “These people can’t be involved in any way, because whoever put the body into that wardrobe must have done it when it was downstairs in the showrooms during the week. …”

  “Louis Hamish, Hotel Elleston,” wrote down the placid sergeant in charge, who was going through the crowd with his notebook.

  “Bianca Riley, 25 Barrow Street,” said the pretty secretary. Every moment or so she looked down at the tiny jeweled watch on her wrist.

  “The young man will wait,” said a comforting voice beside her, and the girl looked up into the friendly, equine visage of a middle-aged spinster.

  Bianca smiled in spite of herself. “I—I’m afraid not. His train—the train is due in just four minutes.”

  “All right, folks,” the police sergeant announced. “The Inspector will see you now. One at a time into the next room. …”

  The name on the glass of the door was “Joel Klaus, Manager” but at the wide polished desk of Mr. Klaus sat Oscar Piper, a large unlighted cigar in his mouth and a stern expression on his face. He whirled to face his first victim, and then the cigar dropped. “Hildegarde!”

  “Yes, Oscar,” said Miss Withers. The two old sparring-partners faced each other warily. “Was the dead man a Doctor Brotherly?”

  He nodded. “Doctor Carl Brotherly, collector. Identified by staff of the galleries as regular customer. Married, lives at 33 Denton Place.”

  “I know,” Miss Withers said. “I was over there this afternoon. Mrs. Brotherly retained me to find her husband. He’d been missing three days, but called up in the morning and left a message telling her not to worry.

  “Her brother, who lives with them, insisted that she shouldn’t call the police. She didn’t want to, either, because it appears that Brotherly took her pearls to be strung when he left home. …”

  There was a knock on the hall door, and the Inspector spoke briefly to a Headquarters detective. Then he faced Miss Withers again. “Doc Bloom’s been here,” he announced. “Says Brotherly died of strangulation by the silk scarf that was around his neck. What’s more, he died at least forty-eight hours ago! So there’s no use holding those people in there.” He gave orders to the sergeant.

  “With Brotherly dying two days ago, it certainly knocks the skids from under your story about the telephone call. …”

  “Does it, Oscar?” Miss Withers tapped a pencil against her teeth. “On the contrary, I should say that it makes it much more interesting.”

  “I’ve got something interesting, too,” Piper told her. “Something we found while searching the body, tucked inside his shirt.”

  “Not the string of pearls?”

  “No, nothing like that. It was this.” And the Inspector produced a photograph, enlarged to post-card size, of a fingerprint. It showed signs of having been crumpled, then straightened.

  The schoolteacher frowned. “But—he was a rich collector of art objects, not a detective!”

  “This is no police print,” Piper told her. “Amateur photo. My guess is that somebody stole something out of Brotherly’s collection and he was trying to solve the case himself from a print they left. Anyway, we’ll check it soon enough.”

  They came out into the hall, stood aside to let white uniformed men go by with their big wicker basket destined for the Morgue. “Which means that I’ve got to dig up the next of kin and take them down to give formal identification. Want to tag along, Hildegarde?”

  Miss Withers would forego the pleasure. She passed down the stairs and out of the place. Somehow her case was slipping out of her fingers—her first real private case.

  She turned westward at the corner, leaving Madison Avenue and its crowd of curious spectators. Fifty-second Street was dark, deserted except for an empty sedan of great age and equally great prestige which waited against the curb. Deserted—and as Miss Withers immediately noticed, unlocked. That in itself was odd, and Miss Withers was interested in odd things. She peered inside. …

  Then, to her amazement, she heard somebody signaling her, in a low whistle. Looking all around, she saw nothing but office buildings on the corner, the long deserted street of apartments.

  The whistle came again, and an urgent cry, “Bianca!”

  Then she looked up, and caught a momentary glimpse of a face at a high window. As she stared, there came swiftly down to her a dark object tied to a cord, as a spider drops from its web.

  Miss Withers caught it blankly, felt the loosened string descend after it. She was holding a faded, nondescript painting not ten inches square!

  Before she could make any decision about what to do with this manna sent from Heaven, the thing was taken from her grasp. It was the secretary, Bianca Riley, and she was very out of breath from running. “Oh, thank you!” cried the girl. “I should have been here, but I simply had to try to make a telephone call. How in the world—”

  “Just what is this?” Miss Withers demanded. “Second-story job?”

  The Riley girl was amused. “Of course not! That’s the rear window of the auction rooms up there! The police wouldn’t let us take away even the small articles Mr. Hamish purchased at the sale tonight, so we just had to do something. Isn’t red tape stupid? You see, Mr. Hamish simply insists on personally taking away what he buys. …”

  “He seems an opinionated gentleman, this employer of yours.”

  Bianca, clutching the picture to her heart, said, “He’s the wisest, kindest man in the world. No matter what anybody says.”

  “Even if he keeps you working after hours when you’re expecting a young man on the train?” But the meddlesome schoolteacher did not get an answer to this, for there were footsteps behind her. They were joined by a tall, weary man with an eagle face.

  He looked at the schoolteacher, seemed to take in the situation without batting an eye. “Oh, good evening. You’ll excuse us—” And as he motioned, Bianca Riley slid behind the wheel of the car.

  Hamish started to get into the car. “Drive on, Bianca,” he ordered.

  “Not so fast!” And Miss Hildegarde Withers tore at her handbag, found a police whistle, and blew upon it a tremendous blast.

  Eagle-face was wide awake at last. “Good God, woman!” And then to her amazed surprise the schoolteacher was jerked rudely inside the sedan.

  The door slammed and the car roared headlong away.

  Miss Withers spoke first.

  “Kidnapping, eh? Housebreaking, theft…”

  “Applesauce,” Hamish broke in. They turned up Seventh Avenue. “Okay, Bianca.” The car stopped directly under a street lamp. Miss Withers gasped, being beyond words. But Hamish only stepped out politely, held the door for Miss Withers, who emerged with most of her dignity intact, her curiosity aflame.

  “I owe you an explanation,” said he gently. “But I couldn’t give it there. You see this picture?”

  Miss Withers saw. It was an oil, painted, it seemed, upon wood, in a battered frame. As far as she could tell it was a rather painstakingly executed portrait of a youngish man with whiskers, wearing a sort of blue velvet cap. It was very dirty.

  “I bought this tonight,” Hamish said. “For less than a hundred dollars. I couldn’t wait for police permission. I didn’t want to take it past the newspaper men at the door. You see, I may be wrong, but there’s a chance that this is an authentic self-portrait of Hans Holbein, t
he great court painter to Henry VIII of England. It has something that tells me—” He shrugged. “Only study and restoration will tell the truth.”

  Miss Withers was telling the Inspector all about it down at Centre Street next morning. And then Miss Withers frowned, indicating his skinned knuckles. “More quiet work in the back room?” she accused.

  “It was right here, about half an hour ago,” he confessed. “The widow and her brother, a Mr. Bogart, were here.”

  Miss Withers nodded. “The man who didn’t want Mrs. Brotherly to go to the police? A little suspicious, Oscar.”

  He agreed. “Seems that they really came down to raise Cain because no pearls and no money were found on the dead man. Bogart even went so far as to say that some of my boys on the Squad could tell where the pearls had gone!”

  Piper’s jaw was tight and strained, for he was proud of his boys. “We had a little difference of opinion about that, and—he missed with his left and I didn’t. But it jarred one thing out of him. Bogart confessed why he hadn’t let his sister go to the police. It was this telegram, received the day before yesterday. And if you can make anything out of it…”

  MUST DISAPPEAR BREAK GENTLY TO ANGELA WILL CABLE LATER ABSOLUTE SECRECY IMPORTANT GET RID OF GREEN BUDDHA IN LIBRARY AT ONCE

  CARL

  Miss Withers handed it back. “Well, did he?”

  “Did he what?”

  “Get rid of the green Buddha?”

  Piper snorted. “Bogart and Mrs. Brotherly said they did nothing of the kind. Impossible—because for years Dr. Brotherly has been collecting Oriental statuettes. There are nearly a hundred Buddhas in that library, and more than half of them green!”

  Miss Hildegarde Withers frowned thoughtfully. “By the way, did you make anything of that fingerprint the dead man was carrying?” She picked up the print from his desk.

  Piper shook his head. “Doesn’t check with anything in our files or at the D. J. down at Washington. Nor with any suspect in this case!”

  “Such a shame, Oscar! To have a nice, big, enlarged fingerprint and not have it fit anywhere. Mind if I try?”

  “Hop to it, Hildegarde. Anything else I can do for you?”

  “There is,” she said, after pondering. “Do you happen to have a copy of the auction catalogue for last night?” He had, it developed, a sheaf of them, all wearing on the cover the ornate coat of arms of the Sutton Galleries. Page one she passed over, page two began:

  14. Sung porcelains, pair

  15. Georgian Dining Table

  16. T’ang Horse

  17. Painting, Man in Blue Hat

  18. Painting, Nude by F. Van Brown

  19. Mahogany Wardrobe, Victorian

  The phone rang, and Piper answered. Looking up, he said: “You may be interested to know that the last purchase Brotherly made at the Sutton Galleries was three weeks ago, when he bought a Buddha made of green malachite!”

  “A clue, anyway. That’s what this case needs.”

  “What this case needs is—” Piper stopped as a white-haired, stooped old man appeared in the doorway without being announced. “Oh, come on in, Max! You know Miss Withers, don’t you?”

  Max Van Donnen expressed guttural delight at the meeting. “I had results,” he told the Inspector. He produced a square of black cardboard, upon which had been neatly glued some shreds of broken glass.

  “From the rubber heels of the dead man,” Piper explained to his guest. “Plus some bits of glass my boys picked up in the corner of the auction showroom, where the wardrobe stood. Well, Max, did you get enough to send out to the opticians?”

  The lab expert shrugged. “Enough, Inspector, to show that diss iss not broken spectacles, like we thought. It is only part of a magnifying glass!”

  “Thanks, Max. Rotten luck. We can trace eyeglasses, but not magnifying glasses. …”

  He looked up, surprised. “Where’re you off to, Hildegarde?”

  “The Metropolitan Museum, if you must know.”

  He grinned at her. “Going to check that fingerprint with the mummies up there at the museum?”

  “Something like that, yes.” And, afire with new excitement, the schoolteacher hurried out.

  Dismissing her taxi on the Avenue, Miss Withers ran up the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Straight to the information desk she went. Two minutes later she was in another taxi, headed back to Centre Street.

  She burst in upon the Inspector without ceremony. “No wonder your men couldn’t trace that fingerprint!” she announced happily. “Oscar Piper, do you know whose it is?”

  “Huh?” The Inspector squared his shoulders. “Who is the guy and where can we nab him?”

  “The name,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers gently, “is Holbein. Hans Holbein, and you might be able to dig him up in Utrecht Cemetery, Holland, where he’s been for some hundreds of years.”

  “Hildegarde, are you out of your wits?”

  There was a knock at the door, and the desk sergeant put his head in. “Excuse me, Inspector, but that Boy Scout is here again, and he—”

  “I’ve just got to see you,” announced a tall, obviously unhappy young man, pushing his way through the doorway. He was clad in the dress uniform of a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

  Piper reddened. “Now look here, I told you to go to the Bureau of Missing Persons, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, sir, I know.” The stalwart youth stood at attention. “But they say a person isn’t missing officially for forty-eight hours. They told me to come back tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Well, why don’t you, Mr.—?”

  “Cadet Robbins, sir. John Charles Robbins. You see, I can’t come back then. I have to go back to the Academy with the rest of the Glee Club on the last train tonight, or I’ll get demerits enough to keep me from getting my second-lieutenant’s bar at graduation this June. And I’m scared, sir—I’m scared pink. Because if something hadn’t happened to her she’d have met that train last night!”

  Miss Hildegarde Withers suddenly pricked up her ears.

  “The girl-friend’s name is Bianca Riley, perhaps?”

  He nodded. “And she didn’t come to her apartment at all last night, because I ’phoned every hour.” Then he stopped. “How did you know, ma’am?”

  “I didn’t,” Miss Withers said shortly. “But I have an excellent imagination. Coming, Oscar? This is serious. Didn’t you catch the name? It’s Bianca Riley!”

  They went speeding northward in a squad car. The car stopped momentarily at 25 Barrow Street, where it developed that Bianca’s door was locked. There was a card sticking out of the mail box, bearing the message, “Sorry Johnny ’phone you later oceans love, Bee.”

  The note gave him no joy, for it was written on the back of an engraved card bearing the name “Louis Hamish, buyer, antiques and objets d’art, 241 East 34th Street.”

  “She wrote she had a job she was crazy about,” the young man said, glowering. “Objets d’art my foot!”

  “That address is obviously his office,” Miss Withers counseled as they got back into the squad car. They turned eastward from the Village, cut to Lexington and rolled north into a region of art shops, print framers, and secondhand bookstores. There was a brass plate outside the doorway of a residence on the corner—“Louis Hamish” nestling among the other plates.

  “One moment,” cried Miss Withers. “I mustn’t forget my props.”

  She was back in a moment, carrying a brown-paper package. Then they went up the stairs, down the hall to a door with another brass plate. There was no answer to Piper’s insistent knock.

  “We can kick it down,” John Charles Robbins suggested.

  And then the door of the studio was suddenly flung open in their faces, closed again as the figure of a pretty, slick-haired girl emerged to face them.

  “Johnny!” she cried happily. “But you shouldn’t have come here—only I am glad to see you!” She started as if to kiss or to be kissed, but Johnny Robbins
wasn’t having any.

  “Tell me one thing, just one,” Johnny blurted. “Have you been here all night?” His tone was brittle.

  Bianca’s cheeks flamed. “Yes, of course. I tried to ’phone the hotel I thought you’d be at. I left a note at home.”

  But Cadet Robbins wasn’t listening. Saying some things in deep bitterness of spirit, the Army turned on its heel and made a dignified retreat.

  Bianca started to re-enter the studio.

  “Come, Oscar,” said Miss Withers, and they pushed inside after the girl. Then they stopped.

  They were in a big, square room, almost totally unfurnished. ‘From a big skylight in the ceiling light poured down on an enormous easel, which held, securely fastened to it, a small picture of a bewhiskered young man in a blue hat.

  Before that easel, on a high stool, perched a little old man in a big apron, wearing a jeweler’s eye-piece. He held razor blades, a tiny sponge, a handful of brushes and a bottle.

  At one side, stretched out in a camp chair and sipping a cup of coffee, was a drowsy man with the long-beaked face of an eagle. He looked up at the newcomers without interest. “Nice to see you, Inspector. But we’re busy right now—and I’ve told you everything I know about last night.”

  “Yeah?” said the Inspector, with definite belligerence.

  Hamish snapped his fingers. “All right, Etienne. Come back in half an hour when we can concentrate.”

  Hamish took his place on the stool. “Go on, I’m listening.”

  Miss Withers whispered swiftly to the Inspector. “Yes—well, Mr. Hamish, I’d like to know just how long it has been since you paid a visit to the home of the late Dr. Brotherly?”

  The man dabbed lovingly with the sponge. “The answer is easy,” he said. “Never.”

  Again the Inspector allowed himself to be prompted. “What you say sort of clinches things, Hamish. The one who killed Brotherly knew him well enough to know that he bought a green Buddha some weeks ago, but not well enough to know that Brotherly had fifty of the things at home!”

  “Go on,” Hamish said wearily. “I have an appointment, but it can wait.”