He looked genuinely surprised. “Why would he do that?”
I lit my cigarette and dropped the match in a jade ashtray that looked as if it had never been used as an ashtray.
“I said he might have. I’m not sure he did. He might have just been watching this house. He picked me up here and I don’t think he followed me here.” I still had the coin on my hand. I looked down at it, turned it over by tossing it, looked at the initials E. B. stamped into the left wing, and put it away. “He might have been watching the house because he had been hired to peddle a rare coin to an old coin dealer named Morningstar. And the old coin dealer somehow suspected where the coin came from, and told Phillips, or hinted to him, and that the coin was stolen. Incidentally, he was wrong about that. If your Brasher Doubloon is really at this moment upstairs, then the coin Phillips was hired to peddle was not a stolen coin. It was a counterfeit.”
His shoulders gave a quick little jerk, as if he was cold. Otherwise he didn’t move or change position.
“I’m afraid it’s getting to be one of those long stories after all,” I said, rather gently. “I’m sorry. I’d better organize it a little better. It’s not a pretty story, because it has two murders in it, maybe three. A man named Vannier and a man named Teager had an idea. Teager is a dental technician in the Belfont Building, old Morningstar’s building. The idea was to counterfeit a rare and valuable gold coin, not too rare to be marketable, but rare enough to be worth a lot of money. The method they thought of was about what a dental technician uses to make a gold inlay. Requiring the same materials, the same apparatus, the same skills. That is, to reproduce a model exactly, in gold, by making a matrix in a hard white fine cement called albastone, then making a replica of the model in that matrix in molding wax, complete in the finest detail, then investing the wax, as they call it, in another kind of cement called crystobolite, which has the property of standing great heat without distortion. A small opening is left from the wax to outside by attaching a steel pin which is withdrawn when the cement sets. Then the crystobolite casting is cooked over a flame until the wax boils out through this small opening, leaving a hollow mold of the original model. This is clamped against a crucible on a centrifuge and molten gold is shot into it by centrifugal force from the crucible. Then the crystobolite, still hot, is held under cold water and it disintegrates, leaving the gold core with a gold pin attached, representing the small opening. That is trimmed off, the casting is cleaned in acid and polished and you have, in this case, a brand new Brasher Doubloon, made of solid gold and exactly the same as the original. You get the idea?”
He nodded and moved a hand wearily across his head.
“The amount of skill this would take,” I went on, “would be just what a dental technician would have. The process would be of no use for a current coinage, if we had a gold coinage, because the material and labor would cost more than the coin would be worth. But for a gold coin that was valuable through being rare, it would fit fine. So that’s what they did. But they had to have a model. That’s where you came in. You took the doubloon all right, but not to give to Morny. You took it to give to Vannier. Right?”
He stared at the floor and didn’t speak.
“Loosen up,” I said. “In the circumstances it’s nothing very awful. I suppose he promised you money, because you needed it to pay off gambling debts and your mother is close. But he had a stronger hold over you than that.”
He looked up quickly then, his face very white, a kind of horror in his eyes.
“How did you know that?” he almost whispered.
“I found out. Some I was told, some I researched, some I guessed. I’ll get to that later. Now Vannier and his pal have made a doubloon and they want to try it out. They wanted to know their merchandise would stand up under inspection by a man supposed to know rare coins. So Vannier had the idea of hiring a sucker and getting him to try to sell the counterfeit to old Morningstar, cheap enough so the old guy would think it was stolen. They picked George Phillips for their sucker, through a silly ad he was running in the paper for business. I think Lois Morny was Vannier’s contact with Phillips, at first anyway. I don’t think she was in the racket. She was seen to give Phillips a small package. This package may have contained the doubloon Phillips was to try to sell. But when he showed it to old Morningstar he ran into a snag. The old man knew his coin collections and his rare coins. He probably thought the coin was genuine enough—it would take a lot of testing to show it wasn’t—but the way the maker’s initials were stamped on the coin was unusual and suggested to him that the coin might be the Murdock Brasher. He called up here and tried to find out. That made your mother suspicious and the coin was found to be missing and she suspected Linda, whom she hates, and hired me to get it back and put the squeeze on Linda for a divorce, without alimony.”
“I don’t want a divorce,” Murdock said hotly. “I never had any such idea. She had no right—” he stopped and made a despairing gesture and a kind of sobbing sound.
“Okay, I know that. Well, old Morningstar threw a scare into Phillips, who wasn’t crooked, just dumb. He managed to get Phillips’ phone number out of him. I heard the old man call that number, eavesdropping in his office after he thought I had left. I had just offered to buy the doubloon back for a thousand dollars and Morningstar had taken up the offer, thinking he could get the coin from Phillips, make himself some money and everything lovely. Meantime Phillips was watching this house, perhaps to see if any cops were coming and going. He saw me, saw my car, got my name off the registration and it just happened he knew who I was.
“He followed me around trying to make up his mind to ask me for help until I braced him in a downtown hotel and he mumbled about knowing me from a case in Ventura when he was a deputy up there, and about being in a spot he didn’t like and about being followed around by a tall guy with a funny eye. That was Eddie Prue, Morny’s sidewinder. Morny knew his wife was playing games with Vannier and had her shadowed. Prue saw her make contact with Phillips near where he lived on Court Street, Bunker Hill, and then followed Phillips until he thought Phillips had spotted him, which he had. And Prue, or somebody working for Morny, may have seen me go to Phillips’ apartment on Court Street. Because he tried to scare me over the phone and later asked me to come and see Morny.”
I got rid of my cigarette stub in the jade ashtray, looked at the bleak unhappy face of the man sitting opposite me, and plowed on. It was heavy going, and the sound of my voice was beginning to sicken me.
“Now we come back to you. When Merle told you your mother had hired a dick, that threw a scare into you. You figured she had missed the doubloon and you came steaming up to my office and tried to pump me. Very debonair, very sarcastic at first, very solicitous for your wife, but very worried. I don’t know what you think you found out, but you got in touch with Vannier. You now had to get the coin back to your mother in a hurry, with some kind of story. You met Vannier somewhere and he gave you a doubloon. Chances are it’s another counterfeit. He would be likely to hang on to the real one. Now Vannier sees his racket in danger of blowing up before it gets started. Morningstar has called your mother and I have been hired. Morningstar has spotted something. Vannier goes down to Phillips’ apartment, sneaks in the back way, and has it out with Phillips, trying to find out where he stands.
“Phillips doesn’t tell him he has already sent the counterfeit doubloon to me, addressing it in a kind of printing afterwards found in a diary in his office. I infer that from the fact Vannier didn’t try to get it back from me. I don’t know what Phillips told Vannier, of course, but the chances are he told him the job was crooked, that he knew where the coin came from, and that he was going to the police or to Mrs. Murdock. And Vannier pulled a gun, knocked him on the head and shot him. He searched him and the apartment and didn’t find the doubloon. So he went to Morningstar. Morningstar didn’t have the counterfeit doubloon either, but Vannier probably thought he had. He cracked the old man’s skull with a gun butt and we
nt through his safe, perhaps found some money, perhaps found nothing, at any rate left the appearance of a stickup behind him. Then Mr. Vannier breezed on home, still rather annoyed because he hadn’t found the doubloon, but with the satisfaction of a good afternoon’s work under his vest. A couple of nice neat murders. That left you.”
CHAPTER 34
Murdock flicked a strained look at me, then his eyes went to the black cigarette holder he still had clenched in his hand. He tucked it in his shirt pocket, stood up suddenly, ground the heels of his hands together and sat down again. He got a handkerchief out and mopped his face.
“Why me?” he asked in a thick strained voice.
“You knew too much. Perhaps you knew about Phillips, perhaps not. Depends how deep you were in it. But you knew about Morningstar. The scheme had gone wrong and Morningstar had been murdered. Vannier couldn’t just sit back and hope you wouldn’t hear about that. He had to shut your mouth, very, very tight. But he didn’t have to kill you to do it. In fact killing you would be a bad move. It would break his hold on your mother. She’s a cold ruthless grasping woman, but hurting you would make a wildcat of her. She wouldn’t care what happened.”
Murdock lifted his eyes. He tried to make them blank with astonishment. He only made them dull and shocked.
“My mother—what—?”
“Don’t kid me any more than you have to,” I said. “I’m tired to death of being kidded by the Murdock family. Merle came to my apartment this evening. She’s there now. She had been over to Vannier’s house to bring him some money. Blackmail money. Money that had been paid to him off and on for eight years. I know why.”
He didn’t move. His hands were rigid with strain on his knees. His eyes had almost disappeared into the back of his head. They were doomed eyes.
“Merle found Vannier dead. She came to me and said she had killed him. Let’s not go into why she thinks she ought to confess to other people’s murders. I went over there and he had been dead since last night. He was as stiff as a wax dummy. There was a gun lying on the floor by his right hand. It was a gun I had heard described, a gun that belonged to a man named Hench, in an apartment across the hall from Phillips’ apartment. Somebody ditched the gun that killed Phillips and took Hench’s gun. Hench and his girl were drunk and left their apartment open. It’s not proved that it was Hench’s gun, but it will be. If it is Hench’s gun, and Vannier committed suicide, it ties Vannier to the death of Phillips. Lois Morny also ties him to Phillips, in another way. If Vannier didn’t commit suicide—and I don’t believe he did—it might still tie him to Phillips. Or it might tie somebody else to Phillips, somebody who also killed Vannier. There are reasons why I don’t like that idea.”
Murdock’s head came up. He said: “No?” in a suddenly clear voice. There was a new expression on his face, something bright and shining and at the same time just a little silly. The expression of a weak man being proud.
I said: “I think you killed Vannier.”
He didn’t move and the bright shining expression stayed on his face.
“You went over there last night. He sent for you. He told you he was in a jam and that if the law caught up with him, he would see that you were in the jam with him. Didn’t he say something like that?”
“Yes,” Murdock said quietly. “Something exactly like that. He was drunk and a bit high and he seemed to have a sense of power. He gloated, almost. He said if they got him in the gas chamber, I would be sitting right beside him. But that wasn’t all he said.”
“No. He didn’t want to sit in the gas chamber and he didn’t at the time see any very good reason why he should, if you kept your mouth good and tight. So he played his trump card. His first hold on you, what made you take the doubloon and give it to him, even if he did promise you money as well, was something about Merle and your father. I know about it. Your mother told me what little I hadn’t put together already. That was his first hold and it was pretty strong. Because it would let you justify yourself. But last night he wanted something still stronger. So he told you the truth and said he had proof.”
He shivered, but the light clear proud look managed to stay on his face.
“I pulled a gun on him,” he said, almost in a happy voice. “After all she is my mother.”
“Nobody can take that away from you.”
He stood up, very straight, very tall. “I went over to the chair he sat in and reached down and put the gun against his face. He had a gun in the pocket of his robe. He tried to get it, but he didn’t get it in time. I took it away from him. I put my gun back in my pocket. I put the muzzle of the other gun against the side of his head and told him I would kill him, if he didn’t produce his proof and give it to me. He began to sweat and babble that he was just kidding me. I clicked back the hammer on the gun to scare him some more.”
He stopped and held a hand out in front of him. The hand shook but as he stared down at it it got steady. He dropped it to his side and looked me in the eye.
“The gun must have been filed or had a very light action. It went off. I jumped back against the wall and knocked a picture down. I jumped from surprise that the gun went off, but it kept the blood off me. I wiped the gun off and put his fingers around it and then put it down on the floor close to his hand. He was dead at once. He hardly bled except the first spurt. It was an accident.”
“Why spoil it?” I half sneered. “Why not make it a nice clean honest murder?”
“That’s what happened. I can’t prove it, of course. But I think I might have killed him anyway. What about the police?”
I stood up and shrugged my shoulders. I felt tired, spent, drawn out and sapped. My throat was sore from yapping and my brain ached from trying to keep my thoughts orderly.
“I don’t know about the police,” I said. “They and I are not very good friends, on account of they think I am holding out on them. And God knows they are right. They may get to you. If you weren’t seen, if you didn’t leave any fingerprints around, and even if you did, if they don’t have any other reason to suspect you and get your fingerprints to check, then they may never think of you. If they find out about the doubloon and that it was the Murdock Brasher, I don’t know where you stand. It all depends on how well you stand up to them.”
“Except for mother’s sake,” he said, “I don’t very much care. I’ve always been a flop.”
“And on the other hand,” I said, ignoring the feeble talk, “if the gun really has a very light action and you get a good lawyer and tell an honest story and so on, no jury will convict you. Juries don’t like blackmailers.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “Because I am not in a position to use that defense. I don’t know anything about blackmail. Vannier showed me where I could make some money, and I needed it badly.”
I said: “Uh-huh. If they get you where you need the blackmail dope, you’ll use it all right. Your old lady will make you. If it’s her neck or yours, she’ll spill.”
“It’s horrible,” he said. “Horrible to say that.”
“You were lucky about that gun. All the people we know have been playing with it, wiping prints off and putting them on. I even put a set on myself just to be fashionable. It’s tricky when the hand is stiff. But I had to do it. Morny was over there having his wife put hers on. He thinks she killed Vannier, so she probably thinks he did.”
He just stared at me. I chewed my lip. It felt as stiff as a piece of glass.
“Well, I guess I’ll just be running along now,” I said.
“You mean you are going to let me get away with it?” His voice was getting a little supercilious again.
“I’m not going to turn you in, if that’s what you mean. Beyond that I guarantee nothing. If I’m involved in it, I’ll have to face up to the situation. There’s no question of morality involved. I’m not a cop nor a common informer nor an officer of the court. You say it was an accident. Okay, it was an accident. I wasn’t a witness. I haven’t any proof either way. I’ve been worki
ng for your mother and whatever right to my silence that gives her, she can have. I don’t like her, I don’t like you, I don’t like this house. I didn’t particularly like your wife. But I like Merle. She’s kind of silly and morbid, but she’s kind of sweet too. And I know what has been done to her in this damn family for the past eight years. And I know she didn’t push anybody out of any window. Does that explain matters?”
He gobbled, but nothing came that was coherent.
“I’m taking Merle home,” I said. “I asked your mother to send her clothes to my apartment in the morning. In case she kind of forgets, being busy with her solitaire game, would you see that that is done?”
He nodded dumbly. Then he said in a queer small voice: “You are going—just like that? I haven’t—I haven’t even thanked you. A man I hardly know, taking risks for me—I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m going the way I always go,” I said. “With an airy smile and a quick flip of the wrist. And with a deep and heartfelt hope that I won’t be seeing you in the fish bowl. Good night.”
I turned my back on him and went to the door and out. I shut the door with a quiet firm click of the lock. A nice smooth exit, in spite of all the nastiness. For the last time I went over and patted the little painted Negro on the head and then walked across the long lawn by the moon-drenched shrubs and the deodar tree to the street and my car.
I drove back to Hollywood, bought a pint of good liquor, checked in at the Plaza, and sat on the side of the bed staring at my feet and lapping the whiskey out of the bottle.
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