New York was in one of its habitual summer moods where for days at a time thunderstorms mingled with the heat, producing only additional mugginess without compensating coolness.
Sergeant Archer held true to his promise and sat up front with Swanson, leaving the commodious back seat to Spud, Dreist and Davis. As they flashed downtown toward the Village on the elevated Miller highway, Spud gazed through the thick rain at the electric signs and the lights of Weehawken showing blurred across the river. The occupants of the car were silent except for Dreist, sitting on the floor between Spud’s legs. Occasionally he growled defiance at a particularly vivid streak of lightning or a too-prolonged roll of thunder.
Spud had donned a lightweight waterproof over his evening clothes before leaving and had dug up slickers for Davis and Archer, who were unprepared. The rain had slacked somewhat when he and the sergeant left the car on West 10th Street and instructed Swanson to drive the inspector around to Sheridan Square where he could park opposite the canopied entrance.
Spud’s evening clothes and the powerful dog by his side made him a noticeable figure. Sergeant Archer drew him back into the shadow as they watched the limousine roll away.
“Which house?” Spud asked.
“Two doors down.” The sergeant pointed to a weather-beaten brownstone which had once been a fine residence. Its windows and front door were boarded up.
“If you can get me through to the yard in back, I’ll cover it with Dreist. You can watch the front.”
“I can get you any place in New York,” said Archer. “Come on.” He walked several doors down the street to where a light shone yellowly from a basement window. Inside, visible through the two words On Wong lettered on the window, an impassive Chinese was ironing shirts.
The sergeant led the way into the area and unceremoniously pushed open the door to the small laundry. Spud and Dreist followed. The Chinese held the iron poised a safe distance from a shirt. Apparently oblivious to Spud and Dreist, he asked in unaccented English, “Trouble, Sergeant?”
“No more than usual. I want to get this man and the dog through to the back.”
“Go ahead,” said On Wong. He returned to his ironing, no more interested than if men in evening clothes leading police dogs passed through his shop in a steady procession all day long.
Spud silently followed the sergeant through a dark room, which looked like a kitchen and smelled like soap, into a narrow hallway where bedbug exterminator offended his nose, and down two steps to a dusty glass-paneled door which barred the way. The sergeant drew a bolt and led them out into a weedy yard with a low iron fence to the right and a high wooden one in the back and on the left.
Light shone from the second-floor window of the opposite house, dimly illuminating the yard. The door they had just opened squeaked badly. A girl, clad only in brassière and silk shorts, appeared at the window and looked out. Apparently she could not see them where they stood. She was still for a moment, with her back to the light in the room; then she held a hand out the window, felt the rain, and withdrew to lower the shade. Her figure showed black against it.
“Not bad,” Archer muttered rather sadly, then added, “You’ll have to climb three of those iron fences between here and the yard you want, and then you won’t be in it. You’ll be separated from it by a board fence, like the one on our left. I wouldn’t try to climb it in that soup-and-fish!”
“What good’s it going to do to stay on this side ?”
“There’s a shed in the back of the house. There used to be boxes under it. I guess they’re still there. You can get one and take a look over the wall if you want to, but if anybody tries to take it on the lam, they’ve either got to climb a fence by you or go out through the house I’m watching in front. My advice is to sit under the shed and listen. You got a gun?”
“No,” said Spud. “I’ve got a dog.”
Willie Weiser, the glorified interne of music, in a $200 uniform of shimmering white silk, stepped to the edge of the stage and condescended to show opalescent teeth in a pleased smile. The joint was jammed. Willie appreciated better than anyone the pulling powers of his music. His agile white wrist raised to the proper angle to reveal his real pearl cuff links. His slender three-foot baton writhed like a horsewhip under the snap of his equally agile fingers.
Startled out of a natural lethargy, Willie Weiser’s leather-lipped cornetist fused eight distinct half notes together and breath-blasted them through a trembling horn in a single wail.
At a special table, supposed to be private owing to the proximity of three potted palms, Duncan Maclain placed one hand over a sensitive ear and reserved the other hand to pat Schnucke’s head so she would refrain from a natural desire to howl. He could not see the advent of the Twenty Village Terrors as they trooped onto the floor; nevertheless he had a lucid picture of the 20 yards of costume which clothed them as the lithe young bodies stamped in unison to Willie’s own rendition of Miss Otis Regrets.
The hard-working dance instructor who trained them would have listened unbelievingly had Maclain told him that Terror Number 3 in the left line and Terror Number 5 in the right were off the beat of the music and dancing badly. Along with many others, he could not have known that the captain’s enjoyment of dancing was harmonic rhythm beating pleasantly on the ears. A false note in footwork was as easily detectable to Maclain as a false note in music.
The Terrors parted and allowed passage for Miss Amy Arden. Without pause, the music switched. Miss Arden went into her song, but neither Maclain nor Dearborn heard her, for the D. A. was leaning across the table talking in a whisper. “It’s a deliberate setup, Maclain; I can’t figure it out. Everybody we mentioned in your office today is here!”
“A tip-off.” Maclain turned his head in short jerks as though he were trying to locate those present. He felt about the table until his hand encountered a dish of crackers. His strong fingers crumbled one to a powder. “Where are they—and who are they?”
Dearborn’s clear gray eyes searched the room, acting for the captain. “Hewitt and his wife are four tables down on this side of the floor.”
“By themselves?”
“There’s another couple with them—I’m sure he’s the Gilbert Fox Spud spoke of.”
“You have seen him before?”
“Once or twice. But I don’t know the girl with him.”
“How are they seated?”
“Hewitt’s wife is facing us. She’s been watching you, I’m sure. He has his back to us. Fox has his back to the dance floor, and the girl with him is facing it.”
“Who else?”
“The firm of Trilby and Shane! They’re in the opposite corner.”
“Girls?”
“They always have girls. One of them I know—Mildred Mills. She beat a rap for bad checks, and she’s been evidence for them in a couple of divorce suits. The other I don’t know.”
“Where’re Evelyn and Chick?”
“How did you know they were here?” There were occasions when Maclain’s quickness startled Dearborn.
“You said everyone was here,” Maclain answered impatiently. “Where are they sitting?”
“They’re across the room from us—about a third of the way down from the stage. That clinches it, doesn’t it?”
Maclain had taken several of the crackers from the dish and was arranging them in orderly designs on the table. “You know it took something more than amusement to get her here tonight, Claude—with Paul hardly out of the morgue. You were pretty smart to have this place covered. I’m afraid there’s going to be trouble.”
“Well, we’ve set the trap as well as I know how.” A line showed along the D. A.’s jaw. “If I just had an inkling—”
Willie Weiser’s music stopped, and a clatter of applause filled the room. The music broke out again, muted, and more sweetly. Amy Arden took up the song.
“You can’t stop something when you don’t know what you’re trying to stop. Wait, Claude.” Another cracker broke under Ma
clain’s fingers. “Listen to that girl!”
The D. A. obeyed for a few bars, politely wondering. “Not so good, is she? She’s the one we’re here to talk to.”
“I know,” said Maclain, “but her voice. Claude—there’s your trouble!”
The D. A. watched Amy’s white satin form with a quiet fascination. The spotlight was dazzling against the pleated sheen of her skirt, which was hardly whiter than her neck and arms and the smooth contour of her back revealed to the waist. Try as he might, he could detect nothing in her voice which might hint at calamity or even sorrow. He told as much to Maclain. “This waiting is getting us. I think we need a drink.”
“I’ve just had one, Claude, but I’ll join you in another. That doesn’t mean that something’s not off color in that girl’s voice. Remember, I can’t see the expressions of those around me. If I want to know how they feel, their voice is my only criterion! It’s taken me years to learn the infallible signs of mirth and despair, energy and fatigue, pleasure and pain—even to differentiate a speaker’s age.”
“Maybe she’s just tired—or worried at our being here.”
“No, it’s not that.” Maclain’s own voice showed he was searching back into the past. “If the thickness of speech in intoxication weren’t so apparent, I’d say she’d been drinking.”
There were tears in Amy Arden’s voice as it trailed away into vociferous applause, but Maclain heard more than that. Clear as a black line was the place where the tears met and merged into underlying laughter. The juncture of the two was still there when she said, “Thank you—thank you so much—all of you.” The laughter was haunting him, along with the patter of her footsteps behind the stage.
Then a whir sounded over the restaurant as electric fans went on for a brief space between Amy’s song and the feature dance to follow. With the starting of the fans a warm breeze struck Maclain, carrying with it from the direction of Willie Weiser’s orchestra the veriest hint of a sweet, strange smell.
Maclain’s hand flattened down tight on the crackers. “She’s not drunk,” he told Dearborn. “She’s been smoking marihuana!”
Chapter Fifteen: THE DANCE OF THE INFERNO
The Twenty Terrors went through a routine number and were followed by a hard-soled hoofer who imitated railroad trains. Willie Weiser’s voice, pitched to pellucidity, foretold the oncoming of “Miss Cora Braithwaite—famous soprano—secured by the management at enormous expense!”
Miss Braithwaite could have shed 60 pounds without being too slender and was in a transient period of blondness. She thrust herself into the spotlight, perspiring freely under a shell of powder thick as coconut meat. Surprisingly enough, her appearance was forgotten when she began to sing, for her voice was accurate and pure and had real feeling behind it. She won her audience into three encores. It was in the middle of the second song that Amy Arden slipped into the vacant chair between Dearborn and Maclain.
“You’re the district attorney, aren’t you—and it’s all right to talk to you, isn’t it ? I won’t get fixed up—mixed up—with this.” She had trouble with her words, checking them with strange little hitches of the breath, and straightening them out again into their proper sequence and meaning.
“I’m the D. A.,” said Dearborn. “If you’re afraid to talk to me and Captain Maclain, you certainly picked a bad place. Why didn’t you come to see me instead of asking us to come here?”
“I’m not talking for myself. I’ve got nothing to be afraid of. I’m trying to clear an innocent man.”
“Innocent of what?” asked Maclain.
“Murder.”
He could hardly hear Amy over Miss Braithwaite’s voice, but her respiration was clear enough—a series of hard, scratchy gasps, tumbling out, one over the other.
“I want to be seen. I promised I’d trel you—tell you—the truth.” Again she had to fight her words.
“Are you ill?” Maclain asked.
“No.” The single negative was frightened. “You think a man killed Paul Zarinka last night—he didn’t!”
“What man?” asked Dearborn.
“You know what man—you’ve tried to get him before. He never left this place all evening.”
“That means nothing to me,” Dearborn spoke, voice frigid. “Benny Hoefle’s paid for the death of others besides Zarinka.”
“I didn’t say Benny.”
“But you meant him.”
She gave a chill-provoking giggle. “Ask your own answers, Mr. Dee-Lay. You want to listen, or shall I go?”
“Go on, Miss Arden. We’re most anxious to hear what you want to say.” Maclain was reassuring and most friendly.
Amy’s short gasping breaths grew longer. He had an idea that she might not reach the end of her talk without succumbing to the influence of the powerful drug. He knew that, after the primary exhilaration, too much marihuana induced sleep profound as death. Human resistance against it was fruitless. The girl’s lengthening respiration warned him. “The man you want is here tonight. Hewitt’s his name.”
“Where is he sitting?” Maclain asked softly.
She pointed a hand, then said, “You’re blind, aren’t. you? He’s a tall dark man with a twisted nose.” Her giggle was inane. “A twisted nose,” she repeated. “He was here last night and he fought with his wife. He’s terribly jealous.”
“You know him well,” Dearborn stated.
“I know him well.” Again she giggled. “He paid me money to tell him about Zarinka and his wife. I called him last night and told him she was here.”
“What time did he leave?” the D. A. asked her.
“About nine-thirty—it wasn’t so long before the show began.”
A waiter brought the drinks Dearborn had ordered.
“Can I have one?” Amy asked.
“By all means,” said Maclain. “Take mine.” A clink of ice and a swish of seltzer followed.
Miss Braithwaite was finishing her third number, climbing into the high scales along with the trilling flute. Over her voice Maclain caught the scratching flare of a match and the soft puff of Amy’s lips as she lighted a cigarette.
“Nine-thirty he left—not long before the show. He’s the man who killed Zarinka.”
“I’m afraid I need more than that, Miss Arden,” said Dearborn.
Again Maclain’s sense of smell told him that Amy Arden’s cigarette contained more than tobacco.
“Give me a drag, will you?” he requested pleasantly and held out his hand. He knew a marihuana smoker, under the influence, will almost unconsciously obey a suggestion. Acting without volition, she placed her cigarette between his fingers. His left hand had already located the ash tray. He snubbed the acrid cigarette in the glass tray, reached for his case in his side pocket, and tendered it to the girl.
“Take one of these.”
She did so, and again he heard the scratch and flare of a match, but, as he feared, the harm was already done. A single inhalation of marihuana is powerful in itself, and Amy had already had more than enough.
There was a fanfare from the orchestra. “We now introduce,” said the voice of Willie Weiser, “the feature which brings people from all over the world to this spot of gaiety and good food—a dance which has become famous from Rome, Italy, to Rome, New York—from Bayonne to Barcelona. For the high spot in our unequaled program, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Señor Sebol and his charming partner, Senorita Sabolina, in that marvelous fantasy of their own invention—‘The Dance of the Inferno!’”
“Half-past nine he left,” said Amy. “Half-past nine—to commit a murder—to murder a committee.” Her voice was smothered in laughter which mixed with a rising flare from the orchestra on the stage. Cutting through the notes of the music, Maclain heard a gentle thud. The girl’s head had drooped slowly to the table. He reached out a hand and touched her soft hair.
Dearborn’s voice was grave with concern. “She’s passed out, Maclain. What the devil had we better do?”
Maclain’s f
ingers found the girl’s wrist and closed on her pulse. It was thin and wavery. “You’d better get a doctor, Claude,” he suggested, “but do it quietly. She’s highly drugged, but I don’t think there’s any danger—and she’s as safe here at the table as any place else. I’ll stay here with her.”
Dearborn signaled a near-by waiter and handed him a check. “Get my coat from the cloakroom,” he ordered curtly.
The waiter paused for a moment, looking at Amy’s head resting between her arms. ‘“Miss Arden all right?” he asked without much solicitude.
“Certainly,” said Dearborn. “Hurry with that coat. You want to make a scene?”
“Not me,” said the waiter. He had seen many young heads, blond and brunette, in the same position before. He went on his errand, figuring it would end in the ladies’ rest room and a taxi, as it always did.
“If there’s a side door out,” said Dearborn, “I’ll bring the doctor in that way, and we can take her back to the dressing room if he thinks it’s necessary.”
“Will she be noticed here?”
“I don’t think so. The lights are all down except for the spots on the dance floor, and you’re pretty well shielded behind some palms. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Maclain released his hold from Amy’s wrist, lighted a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair. The noise of the dancers’ light skillful feet was almost inaudible against the weird wind music which led them on.
If Amy Arden’s story were true, the meshes about Howard Hewitt had grown strong, tightened to the point of strangulation, but stories which rang true had a pattern—they were systematically perfect—without an ugly protuberance to spoil their design. Once cut and polished, and their luster brought to light, they glowed with the beauty of a genuine stone, secure in its own value. Amy Arden’s statement had no such life. Twist it and turn it as he would, Maclain could not free it from ragged edges and a backing of paste. The only thing which stood the test was Amy’s hint that the triangular interview just terminated came at Hoefle’s behest.
The Last Express Page 9