It took three tries before the chain broke and his dog tags fell onto the bed. The next and hardest part of the job was working down and forward until his teeth could reach them. The easiest part, once you’d made up your mind to a little blood, was crashing his head against the window and spitting the tags out through the jagged hole.
Then he relaxed. Collapsed might be the better word. One shoulder throbbed with what might turn out to be a serious sprain. Blood trickled into his eyes from his gashed forehead.
Colonel Razumovsky’s headquarters were a one-time residential estate which the city had caught up with. The door was guarded by two tall huskies uniformed in black leather and astrakhan.
Finch grinned as he looked up from his own police-minimum height to the enormous guard, who reluctantly decided that a police badge was a sufficient passport. A less sumptuous inside guard ushered them directly to Colonel Razumovsky’s office upstairs.
It was at the front of the house. Through the open window you could hear, very faintly, the approaching Red Army music. This time it was the infectious Polyushko-polye—The Song of the Plains—which, with its rhythm of hooves in wide spaces, always sounds most effective drawing near or fading away.
Like Count Silianoff’s study, this office was decorated with the pictorial remnants of a lost regime. There was a forlorn dignity about it that subconsciously made Finch take his pipe from his mouth.
“Well?” Colonel Razumovsky asked affably enough. “And what can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
That was more than Finch knew. He made introductions. “Miss King. And Mr. Noble, a … er … police consultant.”
Razumovsky bowed formally. “I know of Miss King, and am honored.” He paused and looked at Noble expectantly.
“C. P.,” Nick Noble said.
“I beg your pardon?” Razumovsky was playing the suave and courteous officer; this scene seemed to make no appeal to his melodramatic volatility.
“C. P.,” Noble repeated. “Finch here has fixed idea. Thinks it has to be initials, so goes for Chris Potter. But C. P. What does that mean to you?”
Razumovsky’s eyes brightened with delight. He leered maliciously at Judith and slapped his leg. “Ah, C. P. You mean C. P.?”
Judith gasped. “Oh but Mr. Noble—that’s ridiculous. Or is it? There isn’t much that Ben Frawley …”
“Horsefeathers!” Finch snorted. “I get it. What all the bright young people call the Communist Party.”
The Song of the Plains was swelling in a catchy crescendo. Noble gestured toward the approaching parade. “There’s your answer.”
“But hold on,” Finch protested. “Razumovsky here gives him an alibi that—”
The Colonel cleared his throat resonantly. “I must confess, Lieutenant, to a slight and I trust pardonable deception. It seemed so obvious that Chris Potter was guilty that when Mr. Frawley proffered me what I believe you call an iron-cast alibi, I was eager to accept it. It would save me trouble.”
Finch thought of the F.B.I. investigations and understood.
“The fact is, Lieutenant, I did at one point leave the room to … er … wash my hands. Stabbing does not take long.”
Finch nodded. “No longer than … er … washing hands. It makes sense. If Frawley knew how much that will left to his organization… Uh huh. And now his alibi is smashed to bits.”
Noble’s white head jerked toward the Colonel. “So’s his,” he said tersely.
Razumovsky’s voice was as rich as ever. “My dear Mr. …”
“Who had better opportunity? Man left behind or man off “washing hands’? Who had better motive? Frawley, drawing good money from Count regularly, or the Colonel, wanting revenge on his friend for selling out White Russians to Red?”
The Colonel laughed like an operatic basso. “But the initials, my friend, which you so brilliantly interpreted?”
“Oh,” said Noble negligently. “Initials. Well …”
The door opened. The two men who came in were both in uniform, but only one was a cossack guard. The other was a sergeant with an M.P.’s brassard.
“Who’s the boss here?” he demanded.
The rich unruffled voice said, “I am Colonel Razumovsky.”
“What do you know about Pfc Christopher Potter?”
Razumovsky was the only one in the room who did not start. “I know that the police have been seeking him on suspicion of murder.”
This time the surprise was on the sergeant. He whistled. “The boys get around, don’t they? But I don’t suppose you’d be hiding him around here, would you?”
“A ridiculous notion, my dear Sergeant.”
“Then you wouldn’t object to me doing a little searching?”
“I certainly should, without some further explanation.”
“O.K. Here’s Pfc Potter’s dog tags. A kid found ’em in the alley back of here and turned ’em over to us. There’s a broken window over where he found ’em. So now do I search?”
Razumovsky snapped an order in Russian. The cossack started to leave, but the M.P. was in the doorway. There was suddenly a pistol in his hand, and one in Finch’s too.
“Police,” Finch explained. “We’re in this together, Sergeant.”
“Contact,” said the M.P. “O.K., Colonel. You may think you can buck the L.A. police, but this is the army. Do we search?”
They searched.
It was well that the Defenders had used handcuffs to fasten Chris to the bed, because Finch had forgotten his cuffs and he needed these for Colonel Razumovsky. It was also well that Finch had phoned for the wagon, because the wagon was certainly going to be needed in the lively brawl that was breaking out in front of the house between the Defenders and the Red Army parade.
Half-naked and bloodstained, Chris Potter looked like the wrath of an entire pantheon; but once his uniform had been found and his thirst had been quenched (with a little water and a good deal of the Colonel’s best vodka), he was as good as new.
“But I don’t quite see, Nick …” Finch was saying while Chris was on his way to the door.
“Chris darling,” Judith called, “don’t you want to hear how the Lieutenant and Mr. Noble figured it out?”
“Judith my sweet, I started out this morning to see a fight, and the grace of God and a few kidnapers have brought me right to it. Think I’m going to miss it?”
“What’s the fight about?” the M.P. asked. It had taken a little time to convince him that Pfc Potter was not wanted for murder after all, but the vodka had helped.
“The Friends of the Red Army vs. some amateur Fascists.”
The M.P. swung his billy contemplatively. “Think I’ll go along, Potter. Just to watch, yunderstand.”
Judith sighed. “You’d think he would wait to fight. …But I want to hear, Lieutenant. So go on.”
“So, I may add, do I,” Colonel Razumovsky boomed as resonantly as ever. “Since you have found Potter here alive, it is of no use for me to protest innocence. I must die as a good soldier.” He seemed even to find a certain Slavic pleasure in the prospect. “For that traitor’s death, I, His Imperial Majesty’s officer, must die. But I should take an interest in your reasoning.”
“I can see what you’d call the pattern, Nick,” Finch went on. “The Colonel jumped at the chance to frame Chris. When I thought he was phoning the priest, he was telling his henchmen to grab Potter, while he went into his act to stall me. In a day or two Potter’d turn up a suicide and we’d close the case.
“And I can see why Frawley alibied him. He needed an alibi himself to cover his theft of whatever he took from the locked briefcase during Razumovsky’s absence. Organizational plans of the Defenders, I’d guess. And by giving the Colonel the alibi he grabbed at so eagerly, he got one for himself. So you threw suspicion on Frawley to make the Colonel smash both alibis. But how …?”
Nick Noble nodded at the parade. “Told you the answer was there.”
Finch looked out at the brawl and the banners. Some of them said USSR in English. Oth
ers gave it in Russian letters: CCCP.
“Old Count hardly spoke English,” Nick said. “Dying message must’ve been in Russian. So C. P. couldn’t be English. Had to be whatever C. P. looks like in Russian. Saw that much but didn’t know the answer until I saw those banners. USSR in English stands for CCCP in Russian. Take last two letters. SR means CP. C. P. means S. R. Simon Razumovsky.”
“O.K.,” said Finch. “You’re the boy, Nick. It’s the Noble touch.” He glanced out the window and smiled. “Your boyfriend may be clear on the murder count, Miss, but it sure looks like disorderly conduct for him now. Assault too, I shouldn’t wonder. And that cossack was only about twice his size.”
Nick Noble had been rummaging in Razumovsky’s impressive liquor cabinet. At last he found a sherry. The Colonel groaned as the wino attacked the metal foil.
“That wine is from the cellars of the Tsar!”
Carefully Noble put the bottle back. “Then it’s too good for me,” he said simply. “Going back to Chula Negra. I need my liquor bad—and I like it bad.”
“I wish the wagon would get here,” Judith exclaimed, “and stop that …”
Finch looked out the window grinning. Nick Noble’s thin body was threading through the riot. With fists and clubs on all sides of him, he was meticulously brushing the invisible fly from his nose.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: To forestall indignant correspondence, perhaps an explanation is necessary. Some of you may wonder (as indeed your Editor did) why, if CCCP equals USSR, and C stands for S and P for R, still the U of USSR also turns into a C. Answer: the Russian words for Soviet and Socialist and Republics are nearly identical cognates of the English, but the Russian for Union is the Slavic word Soyuz, which, like the other S-words, begins with the Cyrillic C.
(1943)
Rumor, Inc.
“This isn’t my field,” Lieutenant MacDonald said. “I’m homicide, and this—well, I guess it’s properly the F.B.I.’s job. But there’s an open season on all evil in times like these.”
“In times like these,” Nick Noble repeated. “Tuesday they ran out of sherry …” He cradled his waterglass of wine between his thin white hands as though it might run out again.
MacDonald controlled his smile. He knew the past history that had turned the most brilliant detective on the Los Angeles police force into a wino living out his days in this cheap Mexican restaurant (La Chula Negra, third booth on the left); and it wasn’t funny. “I’m glad there’s sherry today,” he said. “Because I need that wonderful sorting-and filing-machine you call a brain.”
Nick Noble brushed the non-existent fly from his nose and said, “I’m listening.”
“I’ll condense it as much as possible. I ran onto this lead in the Steiner killing. He was shot by a jealous husband—his murder’s irrelevant except that it brought me in. I was with him when he was dying, and he wanted to talk. It sounded like babbling and nobody else took it seriously, but I …” MacDonald paused, then asked abruptly, “Nick, where do you think rumors come from?”
“Minds without patterns.”
This time MacDonald did smile. “Patterns are your obsession, aren’t they? But I don’t mean common-or-garden rumors. I mean big stuff—rumors that hurt the war effort. Where do they come from?”
“Goebbels,” Nick Noble said tersely.
MacDonald nodded. “But there’s got to be a go-between, there’s got to be someone to plant them here. More than one. An organization—Rumor, Incorporated. And that’s what Steiner was trying to tell me. He’d been in it and broken away and still was afraid to inform on it. But now that he was dying anyway… It’s a woman that runs it; I did gather that much. But when I tried to pin him down on her name, he got cagey. He was feeling better; he thought he might live—
“So he said to me in that odd voice of his—I never did learn what his past was, but there was a trace of education and culture buried somewhere under his toughness—he looked up and said ‘Detective, ain’t you? Smart guy, huh? Want to know her name? O.K. Horace’ll tell you.’
“He died then,” MacDonald went on. “They say sometimes you do feel better just before … I went through all his papers and addresses. No Horace anywhere. I checked roughly on all the women’s names I found. Most of them I was able to eliminate almost at once. I’ve got four left.” He shoved a piece of paper across the table.
Nick Noble picked it up and read:
Margaret Harkness, M.D., 35, 1548 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.
Lizette Turnbull, welder, 22, 1230 La Corona Dr., Glendale.
Lally Chilton, actress (?), 28, 4916 Franklin Ave., Hollywood.
Mrs. Odile Fancourt, 31, 5527 Cashmere Rd., L.A. Unhesitatingly his finger pointed to the third name.
“That question mark?” MacDonald said. “She hasn’t worked for months, but she lives in style. However, there might be a simpler explanation than a rumor ring.”
Nick Noble shook his head. “That’s your girl.”
MacDonald had hardly expected so prompt an answer, even from Nick Noble. “Why?”
“Horace. Lally. What’s it apt to stand for? Lalage. Girl in Horace’s verses. Other names couldn’t be. So—‘Horace’ll tell you’ her name.”
MacDonald grinned. “So I’m a dope as usual. And I’m laying any odds—or should it be odes?—that you’re right. The next thing indicated is a little chat with Miss Chilton; and if you are right, Nick, by God there’ll be fewer rumors from now on.”
The pay phone in the Chula Negra is up front by the cashier’s desk. MacDonald looked up the Chilton number, noted it on his paper, and dialed.
Even on the phone the voice that answered did something to the base of his spine. He had heard rich throaty voices before, but never one that made him wonder how he could carry on an interrogation if his caudal vertebrae went all unprofessional at the mere sound of a “Hello.”
He managed to say “Miss Chilton?” and she said “Yes.” That made three syllables he’d heard in that voice, and each was more potent than the last.
In silence he swore at himself and aloud he said, “Joe Steiner gave me your number. He said maybe you could throw some work my way.”
Across the wire he heard a buzzing, and Lalage Chilton said, “Hold on just a minute. There’s the doorbell.”
He held on. He heard the chink of the phone being set down, then a step and the click of the doorknob. He heard the door swing open and Lalage say, “Why, Mr. Patrick! How—”
Then he heard the shot and the sound of Lalage’s body slumping to the floor.
The expensive chastity of the Hollywood apartment must have provided the ideal contrast to the lush exuberance of Lalage Chilton. She still dominated it. Even her corpse was more vibrantly alive than any woman MacDonald had ever known.
He tried to keep his mind on the contents of her desk. But even though the police doctor now bent over her head and hid them, her open eyes still stared into his mind. They were violet. He’d read about that and never believed it, but they were. There was a scent in the air that he half identified as Chanel number something; but it still puzzled him until he realized that the other factor was simply the odor of Lalage’s flesh. That would change soon …
The doctor said as he rose, “Shot through the heart at close range—powder burns on left breast. Probably a tallish man—about your height. Some time in the past hour. But you know the time better than I do, if you heard it.”
MacDonald said “Thanks” and concentrated on the desk. It was worth concentration. It was, in fact, a gold mine.
Lalage Chilton had been a methodical woman. There was a file of employers, a file of underlings, a file of material. The employers went back to such names as Wiedemann and Ferenz, which the F.B.I. knew very well by now, and up to some new names which the F.B.I. would soon know equally well. The underlings … it was doubtful what charges might be brought against them, but they’d probably repay watching.
The material was carefully filed by subject, each card bearing a set of symbols which
MacDonald soon deciphered as meaning the hirelings assigned to spread that particular rumor and the places and people they were to work on. Such diverse statements as No real need for West Coast gas rationing and Onion shortage due to government bungling were patently aimed at different economic and mental levels.
MacDonald felt hatred and contempt and a sort of bitter admiration for the callously capable Lalage. And at the same time he saw the violet eyes and smelled the odor that was not Chanel (but would soon be charnel) and was glad that he had met her only when she was dead and almost disarmed.
“The sergeant tells me,” the doctor said, “you heard her call her killer by name. That’s a break.”
MacDonald said, “Is it?” He picked up the address book. “There’s two Patricks here.”
The doctor looked at the book. The page for P hung loose, half torn out. It was headed by a Patrick, Alan, who lived nearby on Beach-wood. Then after Pell and Pillsbury and Porter and (unbelievably) Putzenschimmel came Patrick, Francis, at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
“Neither of them in the files. But I had to check through this desk to get enough background on La—the woman to question them. Now I’ll try to see which Patrick got rid of this serpent.”
The phone bell rang and MacDonald picked up the French instrument. White fingerprint powder still clung to it. (There had been a useless assortment of prints, with Lalage’s on top.) “Hello,” MacDonald said.
“Hello. May I speak to Lally?”
“She’s not in just now. May I take a message?”
“That’s the luck of the Patricks for you.” The voice had a grating, gravelly quality. “Just tell her Mr. Patrick called.”
“Hold on,” MacDonald said hastily. “Alan or Francis?”
The voice sounded surprised. “This is Jerry Patrick,” it said. “Jerry for Gervase.”
MacDonald stopped in at the Chula Negra on his way to the Biltmore. “Remember, Nick, what I said when I left here this morning?” ‘This is one case I won’t need your patterns on; the victim’s already told me her murderer’s name.’ Ha!”
There was a half-smile in Nick Noble’s pale blue eyes. “She double-crossed you?”
Exeunt Murderers Page 7