The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  “I gather Hemmet isn’t a close friend?”

  “Hardly. He’s been here a few times over the years, and lately he’s been playing poker with us pretty regularly. But Mario has played once a month ever since we started, and he has always helped to organize my parties.

  He’s not at all like Hemmet or Munrooney, and I know that sometimes he hasn’t been too happy with the way they do things, but he’s married to Munrooney’s sister, and if he pulled out she’d bring the house down around his ears. Anyway, he’s a follower, not a leader. Munrooney swayed the mob the way he himself sways a jury, and while he’s always been dominated by one woman, Munrooney dominated lots of them. Whenever Munrooney said to jump, he jumped. But he’s an old friend and I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

  “Naturally not,” said Timuroff. “But Hemmet can’t complain if you have your own attorneys working with him. You wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings either.”

  “Isn’t having Hemmet in on this sort of like getting the coyote to guard the chicken house?” Pete suggested.

  “Perhaps,” replied Timuroff, “but sometimes it’s a good idea to know what the coyote’s doing, especially when you have a watchdog watching him. That’ll be part of Tommy’s job.”

  It took several minutes for the doctor to run Tommy Coulter down, at the apartment of the young lady at whom he had been looking lustfully the night before, and a few more to persuade him to hurry to the city jail. By then, Mrs. Short and Liselotte had returned, accompanied by Pascoe from the poker parlor, who had paused to say hello, and to make clear that he and most of his companions neither liked Kielty nor agreed with him.

  “See,” said Timuroff. “I told you so.”

  Pete was cheered. He grinned. “Who’s up there sitting with Lucrece until they get her room sealed up?” he asked.

  “Jeff Kerry, the most married man in the Department. She’s safe like in a convent. He should be there fifteen minutes yet.”

  “Good, a little later we’ll go on up and say hello to him.”

  “You staying for a while, Pete?”

  “For a while. You’ve heard I’m taking three weeks’ leave, courtesy of Chiefy? I’ll be in tomorrow early and tidy up.”

  “I’m going in now,” Pascoe said. “You want me to check out your office? Some busy character might get real careless and lose something out of it before you get there.”

  “There’s a notebook in my desk drawer which ought to be good reading on vacation. If Kielty sees you there, tell him I asked you to make sure my files were locked.”

  “The hell with him!” said Pascoe, and patted Mrs. Hanson on the shoulder as he left.

  Pete made sure the front door was locked and bolted. When he came back, Penny Anne and Liselotte were doing their best to comfort Mrs. Hanson, and Dr. Grimwood, his spirits much restored, was telling Timuroff that soon Hanson would be freed, utterly confounding his accusers.

  • Pete sat down on a corner of the doctor’s mighty desk. He listened quietly until his host had finished. Then, “I don’t think you’d better count on it,” he said, pitching his voice so it could not be heard across the room. He raised a hand to forestall Timuroff, who was about to interrupt. “Let’s be frank. We’ve taken sides. The chief and Kielty are trying to stick Hanson with the van Zaam killing—and if they get away with it, where will that leave you? I’ll tell you. Their next step will be to say he did it because you told him to—who else?—probably to keep van Zaam from blabbing that you hired him. That’s what Chiefy has been hinting at.”

  Hector Grimwood lowered himself slowly to his chair. “But—but that’s ridiculous! I despised Munrooney, and I said so. If Mario hadn’t asked me to, I never would have had him in my house. But there was no reason in the world for me to have him killed!”

  “Doctor, Kielty and his pals are going to take the line that they don’t need to prove a motive. They’re going to scream eccentric at you so loudly the jury won’t even hear any logic.”

  “They’ll mean that I’m insane.”

  “Yes,” said Pete.

  “Then what is there to do?”

  “Plenty. Tim and I don’t believe either you or Hanson had anything to do with this—Tim made up our minds about it yesterday.” Pete looked a little wryly at his friend. “And it’s not just because we like you. We know for sure there’s been dirty business going on, but there’s nothing we can do with the evidence we have—not yet. We’ll be racing against time, so that the people who’re trying to torpedo you won’t get the chance.”

  His voice had risen, and its urgency brought Penny Anne and Liselotte back across the room, Mrs. Hanson following.

  “But who would ever want to—to torpedo Heck?” asked Penny Anne, full of anxiety. “He’s never done anybody any harm.”

  “It may be quite impersonal,” said Timuroff. “Probably it was the setup—Heck’s house, his almost wide-open parties, the passages. Again, somebody may have wanted not just to kill Munrooney but to put Heck on the spot for another purpose. Maybe he owns something someone wants, or is standing in their way. Most criminals, Penny Anne, are pragmatists.”

  Penny Anne shuddered and drew closer to the doctor, and Liselotte looked accusingly at Timuroff. “Why do you always think of such unpleasant things?” she said to him.

  “Because it’s better to think of them than to pretend they don’t exist. It keeps one from being scared.”

  “You maybe, Tim—not me,” said Pete. “The best way for me to keep from being scared is to get after them.” He stood. “Come on, let’s finish what I came here for. I want a peek at Muriel Fawzi.”

  “That’s the spirit!” cried Timuroff. “Lise has been nagging for a chance to meet the girls. We can drop in on Kerry on the way, and Penny Anne can introduce her to Lucrece.”

  “Penny has already introduced me to Evangeline.” Liselotte blushed prettily. “She is so lovely! And so delicately made! But”—she smiled at Penny Anne—“I do not think that I would trust myself alone with her creator. You must not believe the stories about rich seducers—it is these artists one must beware of.”

  Penny Anne looked proud, and Dr. Grimwood shook off some of the depression into which Pete’s estimate of the situation had plunged him. “Madame Cantelou”—he rose and bowed—“at my age, you have paid me a great compliment indeed! All is by no means lost.” He offered her an arm; Penny Anne took the other. “Inspector, will you lead the way?”

  “Huzzah!” exclaimed Timuroff, gallantly letting Mrs. Hanson cling to him. As they set off, he wondered to himself at Liselotte. He knew that she was frightened; yet it had been she who, with a word or two, had brought the doctor back into the fray. She was more than a famous singer, an accomplished actress, he told himself admiringly—she was a great trouper.

  Suddenly, as they turned toward the hall, she cried out, “Wait! I first must see your secret passages! Timmy has told me that they are like those in The Castle of Otranto, but I do not believe him. Please let me see them!”

  Pete, intent on his investigation, frowned professionally, but Hector Grimwood at once took her part. “Come, come, Inspector—it’ll take just a minute. Poor Muriel can wait for us that long. We can start here.” He went to the bookcase by the fireplace. “Bother! Here’s another one of your silly seals!”

  “Okay,” Pete said, giving up and removing it, “but let’s not take too long. I’ll phone Jeff so if he hears noises he’ll know it’s us.”

  With a flourish, the doctor took out his little key. The door slid open. They waited for Pete to make his call; then the tour began. Only Mrs. Hanson refused to go along, not when her Gammy was accused of doing such a dreadful thing down there; she’d wait and have some coffee ready for them when they got back.

  Timuroff, reserving his opinion of secret passages, listened to Liselotte’s cries of scared d
elight at each new twist and turn and hidden staircase. First, they descended to the cul-de-sac where van Zaam had been found, but did not enter it. Then they returned upstairs, and finally, after Liselotte had been allowed to knock sepulchrally, they walked in on Jeff Kerry in Lucrece’s room. He was just starting to seal up.

  “I know you have to leave,” said Dr. Grimwood, “and that nothing must be touched, but would you mind turning Lucrece on for just a minute for Madame Cantelou?” Kerry grinned and pushed the button, and Lucrece obligingly turned her head, raised one hand for attention, and began:

  “From the besieged Ardea all in post,

  Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,

  Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,

  And to Collatium bears the liquid fire,

  Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire,

  And girdle with embracing flames the waist

  Of Collatine’s fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

  Haply the name of ‘chaste’ unhappily set

  This bateless edge on his keen appetite;

  When—”

  Kerry turned her off again, while Liselotte clasped her hands and exclaimed at the excellence of her delivery.

  “I don’t suppose we’d better demonstrate how she defends herself,” Dr. Grimwood said regretfully, “under the circumstances.”

  Kerry walked out with them, sealed the door behind him, said good-night, and left.

  “And now we’ll visit Muriel Fawzi,” announced Muriel’s maker, crossing the hall again and opening the door of the room beyond Lucrece’s. “She doesn’t have a secret passage of her own, and I’m afraid she has to share a bathroom with Lucrece, but we’ve really gone to endless trouble to give her the right atmosphere.”

  They filed through into a vision of Araby the Blest, as it might have been conjured up by a little girl from Cairo, Illinois, yearning for a long-lost Arabian father. The color scheme was lush with rose and scarlet, gold, green, and brilliant blue. Rich Oriental carpets adorned the floors and walls. The window frames and fireplace were intricately tiled and inlaid with quotations from the Koran. There were no chairs, and only one low table, but luxurious cushions and silver bowls of Muslim sweetmeats were everywhere.

  The doctor flipped a switch, and at once the room was filled with a vast male voice, ululating melodiously.

  “That was the muezzin calling her to prayer,” declared Dr. Grimwood proudly, turning the muezzin off. “In a moment you’ll see her start to—”

  He stopped. He stared. They stood there motionless. From the center of Miss Fawzi’s cushions protruded two badly twisted, complex sets of rods, which at the muezzin’s call had started to turn and jerk and quiver.

  But Muriel Fawzi was nowhere to be seen.

  Nor was she in the room. It was, Timuroff thought, as though she had just stepped out daintily to reprove a eunuch, or to order rosewater or hashish from the bazaar. “She—she’s been kidnapped!” Dr. Grimwood cried. There was a long and terrible silence, while the shadows they had half dispelled closed in on them again.

  Then Pete said, much too sensibly, “How could she have? The seals haven’t been off ten minutes. Jeff and the detail have only just now left. And we’ve been through the passages. Not even Houdini could’ve managed it!”

  Hector Grimwood’s eyes darted from side to side, as though he hoped to catch her hiding coyly behind a pile of cushions. Nobody said a word.

  Abruptly then, deep in the bowels of the house on Kemble Street, they heard a laugh—a man’s wild laughter, suddenly released and just as suddenly cut off.

  “There can’t be anybody in those passages!” Pete almost shouted, as though to challenge the impossible. “What’s going on?”

  Again silence fell…and Liselotte whispered, in a very small and frightened voice, “Listen! That laugh was not from Hector’s secret passages, through which we came. I have known many, many stages, theaters, opera houses. I have been through them, behind them, under them. And I have much experience with the human voice. It did not come from there!”

  “It c-couldn’t have been from the house—I mean the rooms and hallways,” Penny Anne put in apprehensively. “I know this place so well that if it had I—I wouldn’t feel this way.”

  “You are right,” said Liselotte, “it was not from the rooms. It was not from the passages.” She faced them, white as death. “That laughter came from—from somewhere else.”

  A KILLING IN SWORDS [Part 2]

  CHAPTER IX

  The Phantom of the Opera

  Nobody said it, but the same image came to all their minds, the old familiar one—remembered from how many reruns?—of that terrible, fleshless face, deep underground beneath the Paris Opera, suddenly turning from the keyboard to confront the audience—and all the old familiar shock and horror returned with it. Who could be lurking in whatever unknown spaces had been hollowed out under that house? What could it be that might be moving there beneath their feet?

  There are ideas which should not be allowed to grow; and Timuroff came in swiftly. “Heck,” he said, in a voice as unruffled as a croupier’s, “could anyone have planted a tape player somewhere down below?”

  The death mask did not vanish instantly, but he could feel it getting frayed around the edges.

  Hector Grimwood considered for a moment. “Tim, I can’t imagine how or where. I don’t have Madame Cantelou’s sense for sound, but I do know every nook and cranny of this house—and I too feel the laughter came from none of them.”

  “A closet or an air shaft, something like that?”

  “I suppose so, but we can’t possibly start a search tonight.”

  “No, we can’t!” Penny Anne’s voice trembled on the thin edge of hysteria. “Maybe there isn’t anyone down there, but I’m not going to spend another night here till we find out. Oh, Hector, let’s get out of here! Let’s go to a hotel!” The phantom evidently had not dissolved enough for her; and Timuroff, with a quick glance at Pete, agreed that leaving might not be a bad idea. “You’re right—even if there’s nothing there, this house is too much with you. You need to get away from it.”

  “But not to a hotel!” cried Liselotte, full of sympathy. “They must come to me! Timmy, together we have plenty of room.” She hugged Penny Anne. “Listen, I shall make an omelette, and we shall have some wine. Please, say that you will come!”

  “Heck, why don’t we? Can’t we, Heck?”

  “I don’t know, Penny. After what has happened, I can’t have Mrs. Hanson staying here alone, even in her apartment.”

  “You don’t have to leave the place alone,” Pete said, “not if you don’t mind spending a few bucks.”

  Timuroff looked at him inquiringly.

  “Bill Traeger’s between jobs—at least between big jobs. Remember Bill? His agency can get all the men we’d need to guard this place down here in half an hour.”

  A weight seemed to lift from Hector Grimwood’s vast, stooped shoulders. “Is he reliable?” he asked.

  “Like a gold certificate in Teddy Roosevelt’s day. His line’s protecting property and people—he leaves divorce stuff to the private-eye voyeurs. He won’t even let Chiefy in without a warrant unless you say so.” Pete grinned as though the Phantom never had been there. “Besides, he thinks Kielty pollutes our sweet environment, and that it ought to be de-Kieltyfied.”

  Timuroff, watching Dr. Grimwood, was amazed at his resilience. His eyes sparkled once again. He returned Pete’s grin. “I’m convinced,” he said. “Your Mr. Traeger has the best of references. Would you mind phoning him, and making whatever arrangements you think best? When I was practicing, Penny Anne and I could pack our bags and be ready in five minutes, and we still can be out of here just as fast—and I admit it’ll be good to get away.” He turned to Liselotte. “If you’re re
ally sure we won’t get under foot—?”

  “Of course you will,” she answered, “but I will wear soft, small slippers, and you will not be hurt. And if perhaps you are”—she smiled at them—“then I will sing to you.”

  “She means she’ll play you some of her own records,” said Timuroff.

  ‘That would be simply lovely,” said Penny Anne.

  “See?” said Liselotte, sticking her tongue out at him. “There’s no point in all of us waiting here for Traeger,” Timuroff said. “Heck, why don’t you and Penny Anne and Liselotte go on in your car? You do drive, don’t you?”

  “He drives a Phantom III,” Penny Anne answered proudly.

  Timuroff ignored the famous Rolls’ coincidental name. “Well, it’ll be quite safe in our garage. If you can trust Pete and me to brief Traeger’s people, I’ll join you after they get here.”

  “Tim, I’m tired enough to take you up on that. Of course, I want to meet Mr. Traeger, but that can wait. What special instructions should I leave for him?”

  “Tell him that no one is to be admitted, and that all official calls must go through your attorneys. That means the press too. Otherwise, you’re simply not available. Incidentally, we ought to have a set of keys to all your passages so that Traeger can have access to them.”

  “That’s simple, Tim. You won’t need a set” Hector Grimwood fished out a leather key container. “Here is the master key. The others are selective—they open only certain doors. But this key gives access to every secret passage in the house. That’s how old Albright planned it.” He chuckled. “I suppose for his own dark and devious purposes.”

  Timuroff took the key. Dr. Grimwood and Penny Anne took off upstairs with Liselotte to get their bags. Pete Cominazzo took up the telephone.

  “Tim,” he said, “your expression tells me you’ve just caught the canary.” He began to dial. “Maybe you’ll tell me what it tastes like?”