“I’m sorry, Miss Peters,” MacDonald said gently. “Hadn’t you better …?”
“No.” She blinked her eyes fast and straightened up. “I’m all right; they said so. And I’ve got to tell you something. You see, I know which one it was.”
MacDonald noticed the reactions: something like relief from the President and Donlevy, mild academic interest from Professor Hammerstein, utter amazement from both suspects. For his own part he said sincerely, “Thank God!”
“Only I can’t say,” she hurried on. “I saw something. Just in that minute before I fainted, when we first looked in, I saw something. And now I can’t remember it. But as soon as I do—”
Now Professor Hammerstein’s academic interest was more than mild. “My dear Miss Peters—Lieutenant, you’ll permit me?—this is a splendid opportunity. I have just been working on new techniques of memory recall, and if you would cooperate—”
“You mean you could make me think of it again? Oh that’d be swell!”
“Splendid. Unfortunately I have engagements this afternoon … but if you and the Lieutenant would come to the Psychology Laboratory at eight this evening …?”
J. Francis Donlevy arose heavily. “That’s that, then,” he said. “You’ll get your solution on a platter at eight, MacDonald. And until then you’ll lay off.” He turned to the two quarterbacks. “Hadn’t you better get under way, boys? Coach’ll be throwing a fit if you don’t show up on the dot.”
MacDonald stood silent as people filed out of the room: Donlevy shepherding his quarters, Professor Hammerstein chatting sympathetically with the girl in green-and-white … He felt impotent, a futile gelded detective. He watched the door close behind a murderer.
“It is indeed fortunate,” the President began mellifluously, “that Miss Peters should be able to—”
A sudden thought hit MacDonald. He ran from the room, leaving a well-rounded sentence withering in the air. He chased down the hall, past an astonished Mulroon, and down the stairs. He plunged out onto the campus, alive with green-and-white sweaters and pompoms and glittering with that crisp suspense that always precedes a Big Game.
He saw Janice saying goodby to Professor Hammerstein on the corner. He dashed through a bevy of giggles and pompoms and caught her by the arm.
“Lieutenant!” Her eyes opened wide.
“Miss Peters! Do you realize that you have just as near as possible committed suicide?”
She said, “You’re hurting my arm.”
A happy alumnus with a ten-foot breath grabbed MacDonald’s hand. “That’s no way to treat a pretty girl,” he protested. “When I was on campus—” MacDonald held on and started walking. “Where are we going?” Janice gasped.
“I’m going to show you,” he said, “what happens to honest coppers.”
“But I’m on my way to the Game.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I should have mentioned: I’m also saving your life.”
The Chula Negra restaurant didn’t play its radio much; the Mexican customers were apt to make their own music. And when the radio was on, it was usually tuned to a local station that played recordings of such current hits below the border as Abur or Tú eres mi corazón, coming as rare oases in the midst of long Spanish commercials for drugstores.
But this Saturday the radio was playing neither music nor commercials. It was speech and sound in English, and Nick Noble jerked his head toward the noise and looked a question at the plump dark waitress.
She said “Fútbol,” and Nick Noble pantomimed a request to turn it up louder. He sat there in his booth (third on the left, of course) and listened expressionlessly. Because Notre Pere was a Catholic college, even though Irish, the Mexican audience was strongly partisan, following the game with enthusiastic Olés and Dales that seemed more suited to a Plaza de toros. Nick Noble’s sharp white face evinced no partisanship; but once in a while, as when in the first quarter Notre Pere had the ball on fourth down on USCLA’s 34-yard line, his eyes glazed over.
Those who knew Nick Noble would tell you what that glazing meant, and how many murders it had solved. In this case it meant that he was doing the thinking for the quarterback instead of for a detective. A trace of satisfaction appeared on his features as the field-goal attempt failed; he had calculated that Woszikiewski’s toe was better for length than accuracy, and that a surprise fourth-down try for yardage could have worked against the line USCLA had in at that moment.
It was just after that play that Janice followed Lieutenant MacDonald into the Chula Negra. On the drive downtown she had heard a little about where they were going, and about how Lieutenant Nick Noble, the cleverest detective the Los Angeles force had ever boasted, had taken the rap for a higher-up twenty years ago and had sunk now to nothing but a sharp reasoning machine existing inside a wizened sherry-filled body. But for all the explanation, she still found the cheap little Mexican restaurant an odd place to come for an answer to death, and she shrank within herself a little, clutching to her the green-and-white pompom which she still carried almost unconsciously.
Nick Noble lifted his pale blue eyes and said tonelessly, “Mac.”
MacDonald indicated Janice. “Nick, allow me to present an up-and-coming young candidate for murder.”
The thin little man nodded gravely at Janice. “Sit down,” he said. “Tell me.”
Janice got the odd impression that Nick Noble was using his two ears separately. With one he was absorbing MacDonald’s story; with the other he was listening to the Notre Pere-USCLA game. She couldn’t help listening to the game herself. They were both playing—Tim Cross and Gloomy Dane. It’s a fortunate team that has two grade A quarters, especially when using a T formation as USCLA was that season. You can spell them and avoid a 60-minute strain on an essential key man. So Cross’s name and Dane’s alternated and interwove on the radio as they did in MacDonald’s narrative.
Once Nick Noble held up his hand for silence. It wasn’t especially a crucial play, and Janice wondered why he was so interested. It was in the second quarter with the score tied at 7-7. USCLA had marched from its own 20-yard line to the Notre Pere 40 when the Irish line began to stiffen. On third down there were still four yards to go. Tim Cross called for a punt formation.
Nick Noble leaned forward. There was silence, and then the announcer’s voice, “It’s a high spiral, out of bounds on the Notre Pere 3. So the Irish take over on their own 3-yard line …” Nick Noble relaxed and gestured MacDonald to continue.
MacDonald went on, uninterrupted save by a burst of Mexican enthusiasm when the Irish made their second touchdown a little later (and failed to convert). “So there it is,” he said finally. “The slickest damned murder I’ve ever seen or heard of. One of those two men saw his opportunity, took it on the spur of the moment, and then told exactly the same story as the innocent man. But which?”
Nick Noble sipped his sherry and said, “Why?”
MacDonald said, “Each of them’s got a motive of sorts. Not too strong but possibly enough.”
Janice found her voice. “I think you ought to know: Those motives are stronger than they sound. Gloomy has a choice of swell jobs lined up for him through the alumni, and some movie work after the Rose Bowl; if he’s dropped for ineligibility, all that’s gone—and this is his senior year. And Tim needs money very badly; there’s a girl he wants to marry, and she’s the kind that wouldn’t be apt to wait for a man going through a legal course.”
Nick Noble said, “Thanks. But wasn’t what I meant. Why come to me?”
MacDonald hesitated. “Because I was in a jam. Ordinarily I could’ve arrested them both and sweated it out of them. J. Francis crabbed that.”
“Arrest after game. What’s the hurry?”
“I think I’ll be up against J. Francis and Silver-Mane until after the Rose Bowl, unless I can pin it down to one of them. And there’s another reason …” He looked sidewise at Janice. “This truthful young idiot had to go and blat out before both suspects that she knew a vital clue
and couldn’t remember it. How much do you think her life’s worth until I make an arrest?
Nick Noble nodded. “You,” he said to Janice. “You know both?”
“Yes.” Janice looked into the faded blue eyes and felt somehow compelled to add “… sir.”
“Tell about them.”
“Well, Tim—Tim’s something special. He’s nice-looking and fun and a wonderful quarterback only he’s got brains too. He made Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year and he’s got a scholarship to law school. He’s like Whizzer White or Terence Marshall—whether on the football field or in his classes he’s—well, you might say great.”
Nick Noble slapped at his thin nose as though brushing away a fly. “Dane?”
“Gloomy? Well, Gloomy’s a good joe—at least he was … I mean, I thought…” She paused awkwardly and resumed, “Anyway, he isn’t too bright. He’s swell on the field and he’s awfully good with motors and things, but when it comes to reading and writing … Well, that’s what the trouble with poor Professor Cross was. Gloomy’s just a dope.”
“He’s a quarterback,” said Nick Noble tersely. Then he gestured for silence again and concentrated both ears on the game.
It was a moment to listen to. A minute and a half to play in the first half, with the score Notre Pere 13, USCLA 7. USCLA’s ball on their own 35-yard line, third down and three to go. Gloomy Dane took the ball himself on a quarterback sneak over right tackle, but gained only one yard, leaving it fourth and two, with over a minute to play.
“Punt formation,” the announcer proclaimed mechanically, then his voice rose excitedly as he shouted, “It’s a pass—a long high one down the center of the field to Stroud! He’s got it on the Notre Pere 35 and he’s in the clear. He’s down to the 30, the 25 …”
Irresistibly Janice found herself standing on the seat, waving her pompom and cheering the runner on. He made it; and not until Gloomy had booted the extra point (USCLA 14, Notre Pere 13) did she sink back into the booth, oblivious of the glares of the Mexican Notre Pere partisans, oblivious almost, for that one thrilling instant, of the morning’s tragedy.
As Nick Noble’s eyes unglazed, he looked at her coldly. He said “Read many whodunits?”
“Quite a few,” she faltered. “Why?”
“Poor Professor Hammerstein.”
“Why poor?”
“Nice experiment. Only nothing to learn.”
“I—I don’t understand you …”
“Whodunit cliché. Murderer goes for gal-who-knows-too-much. Decided to use it for trap.”
She tilted her chin up firmly. “All right. That’s true. I don’t know anything. I didn’t see a thing that’d prove which. But I thought if I did say that, then he’d try and—Don’t you see? He couldn’t get away with. He killed a nice sweet old man.”
Lieutenant MacDonald stared at her. “And you deliberately risked your life with that lie? Why you idiotic blithering goddamned fool little—” He paused for breath and then concluded softly, “—heroine.”
Nick Noble coughed. “Cliché works only in novels. Real murderers don’t kill off witnesses; fight it out in court. Durrant, S.F., ’95—only case I know killing witness.”
Janice looked half relieved, half disappointed. “Then it won’t work?”
“Doesn’t matter. I know murderer. Now how to prove it.”
“You know …?”
“Go powder your nose. Got to talk with Mac.”
Dazedly Janice left the booth. And as she was almost out of ear-shot she heard MacDonald saying, “That’s all very well about clichés, Nick. But murderers read mystery novels too.”
And Nick Noble answering gravely, “I know.”
The police car drew up in front of the one-time mansion that was now a rooming house. It had to double-park; the street was lined with the overflow of cars from the stadium.
Lieutenant MacDonald watched Janice go up the stairs. His smile was mingled with admiration and exasperation. He turned to the uniformed driver and said, “You’ve got it straight? Wait here for her to get her things—she shouldn’t be five minutes—and then drive her over to her aunt’s in Pasadena. Don’t let the house out of your sight for a second.”
The driver said, “Oke, Loot,” The two monosyllables were solidly reassuring.
MacDonald set out for the stadium in long rapid strides. That end was going to be his own.
He had listened to Nick Noble’s arguments and found them convincing. The identity of the killer was clear, but proof was still lacking. They could use Janice’s trap, and yet remove her from danger. The killer was safe until the game was over; MacDonald had men at the stadium—and he trusted Coach Harkins even more than his own guards to keep his man there. Then let him make his attempt—after Janice was safely in Pasadena and the police (complete with dictaphone) were in her room.
But he’d taken no chances meanwhile. He’d kept Janice with him after he’d left the Chula Negra and gone to Headquarters for necessary routine—including a lecture from Captain O’Halloran who couldn’t see why the Irish had to play against a murderer. And now Kofutz had his eye on the house—and Kofutz, with annual regularity, won the department’s pistol-range contest.
Everything was under control.
“… it’s only a slight injury, folks. He’s walking off the field under his own power. Captain Johnson of the USCLAns is talking to the referee and—yes, it’s a penalty of 15 yards against the Irish for unnecessary roughness. Here comes a substitution onto the field; it’ll be a new quarterback for USCLA and of course—Just a minute, folks, just a minute. Well, this is a surprise and it just goes to show that anything can happen in a ball game. It’s number 43, Waldo Eglevsky—playing his first major game this season. That’s one for the book, folks; all season Coach Harkins has alternated Cross and Dane, and at this crucial moment in the biggest game of the year he gives a new man his chance to win the greatest laurels. Yes, like I was saying folks, anything can happen in a ball game; but if you want to be sure of what’s happening in your car, you just stick to that good old Amalgamated Motor Oil …”
If only it had been true, Janice was thinking as she walked into her room. If only she had noticed some little item that would tell her everything … But you don’t notice the little items. You see what the scene means, not the details that compose it. You see that poor dear old Professor Cross is dead, and Gloomy has Tim by the throat …
She passed the ashtray in her packing, automatically emptied it and went on. Pajamas and hairbrush and underwear and … That strange little man said he knew which one. How could he? And both of them such nice boys too only there isn’t anything nice about taking your handkerchief and grabbing a knife and …
Janice stopped dead. Maybe you do notice the little items without thinking, and then … She hurried back to the wastebasket and looked at the cigaret stubs she had just dumped in.
One of them had no lipstick stain.
She stood stockstill and stared frantically around the room. It was at the back of the house—no chance of calling out the window to that nice moon-faced cop in the car. She began moving abruptly with meaninglessly hurried steps. She went to her door and shot the bolt and then thought of the man in the haunted room and the voice from inside the four-poster that said, “Now we’re locked in for the night.” She unbolted the door and stepped back to her overnight case on the bed. She started to shut it and then said, “Toothbrush.”
The commonplace word was loud in the silent room.
She started to the bathroom, but her quick steps stopped in front of the door. She said very softly, “Where else …” She started to back away.
The bathroom door began to open from the inside.
Even a stadium locker room had rarely heard such language as Lieutenant MacDonald inflicted on Officer Tully. But the Lieutenant cut his tirade short and concluded abruptly with, “So you let him slip away. That’s done. Now, man, we’re moving.”
There was only a blur of time between leaving the
stadium and pulling up in Tully’s car before the one-time mansion. Officer Kofutz looked up with surprise but asked no questions. He simply drew his service .45 and followed.
MacDonald had not allowed his mind to form a picture of what he might find in the room. Whatever picture he had drawn could not have approached the truth.
In the center of the room stood Janice. Her chin was still high, her eyes still brave. But her skin was dead white, her sweater tom, and she looked as though she could be knocked over by a feather. Or, as she in fact was, by the entrance of men with drawn guns.
At her feet as they entered (by her side a moment later) lay Gloomy Dane, the base of his skull bleeding from a worse concussion than he had ever sustained on the football field.
And over him towered the thin pale police-minimum-height figure of Nick Noble, with a sherry bottle in his hand.
The sherry came in handy for reviving Janice, and MacDonald decided he could use a little himself. Reviving Gloomy was a job for professionals, and they were on their way.
“Heard the radio just after you left,” Nick Noble said. “Tim Cross injured, Coach sends in new substitute. Meant Dane had slipped away. Tried to get you—missed connections. Grabbed a taxi, came out here. Porch to window—easy. Smelled smoke, guessed he’d take bathroom. I took closet.”
Janice said, “Mr. Noble, that was downright nob—well, anyway, it was swell of you. And for that you get a kiss.”
Nick Noble accepted the kiss expressionlessly, but his eyes were not quite as MacDonald had ever seen them before. “Save one for Mac,” he said, and Janice blushed.
“But tell me, Mr. Noble,” she said hurriedly. “How did you know which one it was? Was there a clue after all?”
“In two men,” said Nick Noble. “Characters.”
“Characters? But Gloomy was such a dope; he couldn’t think quick like that.”
“I should have seen it,” MacDonald put in. “Nick’s right; no man can be a dope and a great quarterback. It’s the one position that demands a brain. Gloomy wasn’t good at book-larnin’; but he could think on his feet. And he thought in that elevator.”
Exeunt Murderers Page 10