Logan shut the door and sat down at his desk. His color was still high, his mouth taut. He picked something from his desk and handed it to Casey without looking at it.
“Ever see that before?”
Casey took it. It was a photograph. which had been folded down the middle. He thought he knew what it was, but he didn’t want to believe it, he didn’t want to look at it; instead he glanced at Forrester and Lyda Hoyt.
“Well,” Logan snapped. “Look at it.”
Casey did. And seeing that picture of Lyda Hoyt he had locked in his desk the night before, a curious sense of resignation came over him to mix with his bewilderment. He didn’t try to figure it out, but handed it back to Logan. “Where’d you get it?”
“In the mail.” Logan held up an envelope, across which had been printed in crude penciled letters his name. “This morning.” He put the picture and envelope on the desk. He leaned back, watching Casey narrowly. “So you held out again?”
“Yeah,” Casey said. “I held out. What about it?”
“What about it?” Logan looked indignant.
“Sure,” Casey said. “Let’s get straight. I work for the Express. They pay me pretty well for taking pictures. But even on them I hold out sometimes. I take pictures that I find out may do more harm than good. That one there is one I held out—until I found out some things. And if I can hold out on MacGrath and the Express I can hold out on you.”
Logan sputtered a moment. “That ain’t the point,” he said. “She was at Endicott’s last night.” He pointed at Lyda Hoyt. “You knew it and you didn’t tell me.”
“All right,” said Casey. “I didn’t tell you.”
Logan had more to say on the subject and Casey let him go. He knew how it was with Logan. Logan was a cop and a good one. He had a job to do and he did it to the best of his ability, playing no favorites. He wasn’t sore about the picture, as such; what annoyed him was that he found himself suddenly confronted with a new angle to a murder case that he might never have known about, had it not been for this picture which had come through the mail.
“Look,” Casey said finally. “If I’d told you Miss Hoyt was there last night, what would you have done?”
“Done? Why, I’d have gone to see her—asked her—”
“Well, go ahead. You got her now. Ask her.”
“It’s not your fault I got her,” Logan said. “And I intend to ask her. But first I’m asking you. Where’s the negative of that picture?”
Casey thought it over. There it was again. That’s what happened when you did favors for people. He remembered the things Jim Bishop had told him the night before and looked at Lyda Hoyt. She was sitting very straight in her chair, her hands in her lap. She wore a simple cloth coat and a little hat about the size of a saucer. She did not seem pretty now, nor even beautiful, and he knew why. What made her beautiful was her personality, the vitality that projected itself across the footlights so that every man and most women in the audience got the idea she was putting on the show for his benefit. He could remember only two comediennes who could do that trick—Gertrude Lawrence and Ethel Merman.
But she wasn’t on the stage now. There wasn’t any musical background, nor any scenery save this drab office. She couldn’t sing a song now, or laugh, or speak bright lines. She had to sit there and wait for him to speak, and try to signal him with her eyes because she was afraid. He knew that and he knew why. Jim Bishop must have told her about his trip to see Casey; now she knew that Casey could tell the truth and smash a secret she and Jim Bishop had decided to keep—the secret of their relationship. She knew what had happened to the negative, but she could not tell Forrester or Logan; she could do nothing now but sit there and watch him.
It would have saved her much anguish had she really known Casey. She would have had no cause to worry then. Having made a commitment to Jim Bishop, nothing could make the big photographer renege except the certain knowledge that she had actually done the murder. He smiled at her with his eyes and said to Logan, “I destroyed it.”
Logan closed one eye. “Yes, you did.”
“Okay.” Casey leaned back and lit a cigarette.
“What for?” Logan said when he realized no elaboration was coming.
“It was dynamite. I didn’t want to leave it around.”
“You kept the print.”
“Yeah. Because I wasn’t sure what the score was then. I locked it in my desk. And those two new boarders of yours cracked the lock and grabbed it. Ask them about it.”
“I will.”
“Is that the truth?” Grant Forrester leaned forward. He had a mouse under one eye and a blue lump on his cheekbone, all from that one punch, and seeing this, Casey felt compensated for the soreness in his own face.
“You thought I mailed it in?” he said.
Forrester flushed. “I—that is—I didn’t know what else to think.”
Casey shook his head. “That ought to make me quite a guy.”
Forrester’s flush was crimson now and he went ahead quickly. “Miss Hoyt called and said she’d been asked to come down here. I came along and when we walked in the lieutenant produced the picture and—I knew you took it and—” He broke off as Logan cut in.
“All right. Never mind that now.” He looked at Lyda Hoyt. “I guess the picture doesn’t matter much. Whoever sent it had an idea it would make a nice fat red herring. It would have been a lot simpler if I’d known about it but—the important thing, Miss Hoyt, is this: what was your business with Stanford Endicott?”
“I don’t believe she has to answer that here, Lieutenant,” Forrester said.
“No, she doesn’t.” Logan pinned him down with steady eyes. “But we’re not quite sure of the motive behind that murder. I’m afraid that a grand jury might want to know why Miss Hoyt had to see Endicott last night. Why she had to hurry there during intermission; why she could not wait to see him until this morning.”
“Yes,” Lyda Hoyt said. “I see what you mean.” She glanced down at her gloved hands. When she looked up again, her eyes met Casey’s for an instant and he saw she wasn’t afraid any more. There was a softness there, a fleeting impression of gratitude; then the moment was gone and she was looking at Logan. “I can tell you what my business was.”
“Lyda!” Forrester said.
“It’s all right.” She smiled at him. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know,” she said, and then Casey realized that she had not told Forrester what this business was either.
“It concerns a very dear friend of mine,” she began. “An old friend—who got in trouble with the police many years ago. You know of such people, don’t you, Lieutenant? Men and women who have slipped once and come a cropper when young and have never made a misstep since?”
Logan nodded. “We have a whole file full of such cases. A locked file, Miss Hoyt, so that no one can ever use that record against them.”
“Yes— Well, it’s like that with—my friend. It happened ten years ago. She was out with a boy—I’m not going to give you details—and he tried to hold up a jewelry store. She hadn’t known the boy but a few days, had been dancing and to the movies with him, but that made no difference to the authorities. They were both arrested. He went to prison and she was sentenced to the House of Correction for a year, but on the way there was an accident and she ran away.”
She paused to wet her lips before she continued. “Somehow, she found a job—she had no family—and later managed to make a place for herself in the theater. That’s how I happened to know her. I never knew the story until a few weeks ago and I think she told me because—well, the past was more than ever on her mind. She had married. She has money and position. She is about to have a baby. And although she knew that the chances were that the past would stay dead, there was in her mind the possibility that it would not.
“You see, it wasn’t just that she had a record. That would not have been so bad, since she would have paid any debt she owed. But she had not paid. For all she knew
there was still this sentence hanging over her. Every now and then she would read in the papers about some man being taken away to serve sentence—or to stand trial—for something that had happened years ago. So she came to me. She wanted a pardon so she could have peace of mind, and she was willing to take the risk of getting one. I went to Mr. Endicott. He got it for her, quietly—this all happened in the Middle West—and came back yesterday.”
“I see,” Logan said, but, watching him, Casey still saw traces of doubt in the angles of his eyes. “And you went to his office between performances—”
“It sounds silly now, doesn’t it?” Lyda Hoyt smiled faintly and unfolded her hands. “I know it does. He phoned me around dinner time but it was too late then. And during the first act—well, I read that he’d been arrested and that worried me and”—she caught her lip—“the impulse struck me and I obeyed it. I didn’t I want anything to happen now after all our trouble, and I knew I’d have time—so I went.”
“But you didn’t get it,” Logan said.
“No. And that has worried me even more than the picture that Mr. Casey took. I was afraid you might find something that—” She broke off and took a breath. “You haven’t found it, have you? That pardon?”
Logan said he hadn’t, and what was her friend’s name. When she said she would not tell, he asked how he was to know if the police did find the documents.
“Mr. Endicott told me it would be in an envelope,” Lyda Hoyt said. “He said he’d put my name on it and if I should come and he wasn’t in, I could get it from his secretary.”
There wasn’t much left for Logan to say. He asked a few more questions and then nodded and rose. “All right,” he said. “I’ll let you know if we run across the envelope, Miss Hoyt. And you needn’t worry about this picture of Casey’s. I’ll keep it locked up for a few days and perhaps by then I can return it to you.”
He opened the door. “If I were you, Mr. Forrester,” he said dryly, “I’d pick somewhere else for my boxing exhibitions. I think I’d stay in my own class too. Casey’s a bad guy to have sore at you.”
“I hope he won’t be,” Forrester said. He gave Casey his hand. “I’m sorry, old man. I hope we can be friends. I’m afraid I ruined that watch of yours but I’ll replace it if you—”
“That’s okay,” Casey said. “I bust it all the time.”
Lyda Hoyt came up to him and offered her hand. “We’re closing the show this week,” she said, and hesitated, and he saw that the blue in her eyes was soft and moist. “Could you come and see me before I go, please?”
Casey had to clear his throat. “Sure,” he said gruffly. “I’d like to,” he said.
Logan grew thoughtful when the door had closed and he returned to his chair. “There’s a woman for you,” he said. “She’s not pretty, but she’s got something. Class or something. You can feel it. It sticks out all over her.”
“You mean you like her,” Casey said.
“Yes, you louse.”
Casey unstrapped his watch and looked at the smashed face. He dropped it in his pocket, sighed, touched the bruises on his cheek. “Me too,” he said.
Sergeant Manahan came in. “Bernie Dixon’s downstairs,” he said.
“Bring him up,” Logan said.
“Dixon, huh?” Casey looked interested. “Finding out things?”
“Lots of things.” Logan sucked his lips and traced a circle in the dust on his desk. “Lots of things. It’s beginning to look like Endicott had his finger in other things besides hot bonds.”
“And you figure Endicott—”
“We don’t know—yet.”
“And you haven’t picked up Garrison yet either, have you?”
“No, damn it!”
The door opened and Manahan came in with Bernie Dixon. He looked like a million dollars, sartorially speaking.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. Or is it afternoon? Casey, how are you?”
Logan said hello and sit down, and Casey said he was all right. Dixon unbuttoned the smooth-fitting gray coat, took a chair and crossed his legs, reaching for a cigarette case as he did so.
“What’s on your mind?” he said. “And what’s this about Perry Austin?”
Logan said they weren’t sure yet. “We’ve got a couple of hoods from Jersey downstairs that may know something about it,” he said, “but for now—”
“From Jersey?” Dixon blew smoke toward the ceiling. “What’re they doing here?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Logan said. “And who hired ’em.”
Dixon was very much at ease. He hooked one arm across the chair back and swung his leg on the other knee. He got very cozy, asking questions, and Casey, watching Logan, could see irritation and resentment creeping into the lieutenant’s dark eyes; he knew that Logan’s opinion of Dixon was the same as his own: that for all his present polish and success, Dixon was still a racketeer.
“You figure they knocked off Endicott?” Dixon asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they were hired after Endicott was shot—to cover up, one way or another.”
“You mean they were hiding out in town?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. We’re finding out a lot of things about Endicott we didn’t know, but that’s not why I asked you to stop in.” He leaned back in his chair, studying Dixon with steady eyes. “What I want from you is where were you last night between eight and nine-thirty?”
Dixon smiled, or thought he did. He had practically no lips and be generally kept them closed so that his mouth was just a line that curved in various directions, depending on his mood. Now it curved up at one corner. “You mean you want an alibi? Well, I happen to have one.”
“Where were you?”
“With someone.”
“Who?”
Dixon shook his head, lips still curved. “That I can’t tell you now.”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
Logan chewed this awhile. “You can be made to tell.”
“Maybe.”
“Mrs. Endicott?”
Dixon uncrossed his legs and stood up, nothing changing in his face. “If I have to, I can tell you,” he said. “But I don’t have to tell you now— Was that all you wanted, Lieutenant? I’ve got a busy afternoon.”
Logan turned back to his desk, a muscle twitching at the hinge of his jaw. “Okay, Bernie,” he said. “Beat it.”
Logan watched the door close, his lids coming down and the lines of his face set. He sat that way for quite a while before he said, “He could be our boy. He might have been with Mrs. Endicott—they say he’s been cuttin’ corners there—but he could still be our boy. Endicott had a pretty fancy organization, and Dixon is the kind of a guy that could have pulled a lot of strings.”
Casey waited, wondering what Logan meant by organization. When he saw that there wasn’t going to be any further explanation he reached for his hat. He was thinking so hard he went out without bothering to say good-by.
Chapter Fourteen: AN ORDEAL FOR CASEY
AUGIE, THE TAXI DRIVER, pulled to a stop halfway up the hill and waved proudly toward a somewhat dismal-looking red-brick house that was built flush with the sidewalk. “There you are,” he said. “Pay me.”
Casey got out and gave the house the once-over. It was a three-storied, age-crusted affair, plain, no different from its neighbors except for the color of the trim on the door. He took out a five-dollar bill, squinted one eye at Augie. “How do I know she’s here?”
“That’s where I brought her.”
“I said I’d give you a fin if you found out where she lived.” He paused, watching Augie’s face cloud. “And anyway, you’re not so damn smart. I even found out what her name is.”
“Well, hell—” Augie began.
“Here.” Casey gave him the bill. “If I’m not out in five minutes that means you’re right. Only”—he winked—“you have to take the fare out.”
He tried the door, found it unlocked, and stepped into a fl
agstone-floored vestibule with six name cards on the wall. After a glance, he went up three steps to another door, opened it, and started climbing. Nancy Jamison lived on the top floor and Casey was wheezing a little as he knocked on one of the two doors at the head of the stairs. When he saw the knob turn he stepped close, not sure what he was going to say, but determined to get in.
She opened the door herself, and he saw the lashes snap back, the quick surprise in her hazel eyes. He saw her red lips form an O and heard her gasp; then he heard a lot of voices and looked into the room beyond.
There were at least 20 people there, mostly women, standing around with plates in their hands and talking their heads off, looking over at him and then letting the conversation trail off into silence. Casey got his hat off before confusion made him mute. He glanced at the girl and saw her shoulders come back and her chin lift. Her mouth tightened and then, suddenly, she was offering her hand and saying, loud enough for all to hear, “Oh, how nice. How very good of you to come.”
Casey wanted to run but he couldn’t make his legs move. He felt her firm warm hand in his, knew he was being drawn into the room. As she closed the door he had to turn to get out of her way and she leaned toward him, spoke softly. “What’s your name?”
“Casey.”
“I’ll take your things,” she said, her voice normal once more.
She reappeared, smiling. “Now come along and meet some people, Mr. Casey,” she said. The next few minutes became a lifetime of sheer agony for Casey. He moved as in a trance, the girl’s hand on his arm, mumbling names and saying, “How do you do,” over and over and feeling the sweat on his face and the burning in his neck and ears.
“You’d like a drink, wouldn’t you?” Nancy Jamison said. “Or”—he wondered if there was a smile in her eyes—“would you prefer tea?”
“A drink, please,” Casey said.
“Cocktail or highball?”
“Scotch would be fine.”
“Scotch, Norine,” she told the maid and then, smiling up at Casey, “Now if you’ll excuse me—”
He turned to look over the other guests. The four or five men present were sleek and middle-aged, and they had cornered every woman that was young and attractive. A trio of angular females drifted around him before he realized it.
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