ALM06 Who Killed the Husband? (8 page)

"Don't mind if I do," said Lee.

The young man went through the swing door into the pantry. Lee had gained his half minute. Whipping out his notebook, he wrote on a page: "Help! Lee Mappin," tore the page out and returned book and page to his pocket. The young man came in with the beer.

As he sat down again he said: "I reckon you have guessed who I am."

"I have guessed it," said Lee dryly.

The young man said with his gleaming smile: "The beard is false, the hair dyed and the spectacles unnecsary." As he spoke he transferred the glasses to his pocket. Lee recognized him as the host of the Sourabaya night club.

An appealing quality came into his smile. "I took an awful risk in coming here against your will, but I was desperate. Only you can save me and my little family."

Lee hardened his heart against him. "You took no risk at all," he said coolly. "Your errand was doomed to failure before you started."

"Don't say that, Mr. Mappin."

"Did you think you could win me over at the point of a gun? I may look like a timid little fellow, but after all!..."

Al Yohe's face fell. "I haven't pointed a gun," he said. "As a matter of fact, I didn't bring one."

"You've got mine!"

Al pulled himself together. "Well, anyhow, as long as I'm here, you might as well hear my story."

"I can't avoid hearing it," said Lee.

While they talked, his hand was busy in his pocket. The sewing case was a little roll of leather which contained two spools of thread, a few needles and pins, a thimble. Old-fashioned people call it a bachelor's companion. Unrolling it, Lee worked one of the spools out and measured off thread as well as he could in his pocket. He glanced at the height of the ceiling; say nine feet; he would need ten feet of thread.

Al said glumly: "This is not going to be easy if you have resolved to set your face against me...However, I must do the best I can." He spread Camembert on a cracker and put it in his mouth. "My interview with Mrs. Gartrey last Monday was a stormy one. She didn't mention that, I suppose."

"Were you in love with her?" asked Lee.

"No, that was the trouble."

"She was in love with you?"

"Yes, God forgive me, and how! I couldn't string her along any further. She insisted on what she called a showdown. There was..."

"Wait a minute," interrupted Lee. "This doesn't exactly recommend you to me. Under the circumstances, why did you continue going to her house?"

"Mr. Mappin, I'm not going to try to make myself out any better than I am. You may call me a buccaneer or worse, if you like, but I'm no murderer." He broke off to say with a boyish smile: "Lord! I wish I could call you Pop like the girls at the office. It suits you so well!" He paused, studying Lee's face, then said with a sigh: "But I guess I better not try it!"

Lee said to himself: He's just turning on his "charm."

Al resumed: "When I came to New York and was introduced to cafe society, those people, rich as Croesus, unstable as monkeys, empty as blown eggs, I made up my mind to prey on them in a perfectly legitimate way. They craved amusement, being too stupid to amuse themselves, and I was clever enough to furnish it. They were ripe for the picking! I amused them and I flattered them. My God! do you blame me? The merest fraction of Jules Gartrey's income would keep my family in luxury for years!

"As to the reputation J have acquired as a great lover, I didn't foresee that. I swear to you, Mr. Map-pin, that I never made love to their women, you can believe me or not. If you were to ask an honest woman, a woman, say, like Delphine Harley, she would bear me out. As a matter of fact, those empty-headed bits of artifice didn't appeal to me. I like a more natural article. But 'making love' is the principal occupation of these monkeys, and out of sheer perversity, just because I 
didn't
 make love to them, the women began throwing themselves at my head. It became the fashion to fall for Al Yohe. My God, could I help it?"

Lee was sufficiently well acquainted with the gilded crust of society to recognize the truth in what Al said. But it didn't make him feel any kinder toward Al. He said: "Perhaps not. But you haven't answered my question. Why did you continue stringing Agnes Gar-trey along when you saw how things were going?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Mappin. I thought the answer to that was obvious. The Gartreys are topnotchers in that set. He was one of the richest men in New York and she is called the most beautiful woman. They were necessary to me. You may think I have an easy job. Well, so has the man who dances on a slack wire. But he can't relax. I was all puffed up by publicity, but a prick would have deflated me. I had to have eyes all round my head to watch for danger. After all, I was nobody; I had to hang on to those who had something. That's why the Gartreys were essential to me. Particularly the old man. It may surprise you to learn that that hard-boiled old geezer was susceptible to flattery. Well, he was, and I knew how to feed it to him. It was he who put up the money to decorate La Sourabaya in its present sumptuous style. A cool two hundred thousand. And, by the way, I wish somebody would give me a reason why I should have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs."

"All right," said Lee dryly, "my question is answered. Let's get back to Monday afternoon."

Al Yohe rose from the table. "Thanks for a swell meal," he said. "I feel like a new man. Shall we go into the living room?"

They passed through glass doors into the larger room. Al looked around him appreciatively. "Gosh! what a swell place! It looks like the home of a gentleman and a scholar!"

Lee pushed the embers of the fire together and put on fresh wood. Al accepted a cigar and, lighting it, drew in the smoke gratefully. "This must be a private importation," he said. "Such cigars are not for sale." He dropped on a settee at right angles to the fire, stretching his long legs before him.

Lee looked down at him grimly. Handsome, well made, gay and clever, Lee could not help but be attracted. A young man nowadays finds the world a pretty rotten sort of place, he thought; can you blame him for turning buccaneer? He shook this feeling off. Are you going to let him charm you, too? he asked himself.

Lee by this time had broken off ten feet of thread in his pocket, as nearly as he could judge it. He needed another minute alone in order to tie thread to nail file. He went to his little wall cupboard. "Have a liqueur?" he said. "I have brandy, Cointreau, and some of the veritable Chartreuse. For myself I prefer Scotch and soda."

"Me, too," said Al.

"You'll have to fetch ice cubes from the refrigerator, then."

"Sure!" Al hastened out.

Left alone, Lee measured his piece of thread against his arm. The length was about right. He tied the end to the nail file, and pinned the file through the note he had written. Hearing Al coming back, he thrust it all in his pocket.

The drinks were mixed and they sat down facing each other on the two sofas. "Go on with your story," said Lee.

"Agnes Gartrey was bent on having what she called a showdown," said Al contemptuously. "I expect you know what that means; crying, beating herself, pulling her hair out straight. Lord! if I could have photographed her then! Most men are scared out of their wits by that kind of show, but not me! It turns me hard."

"Did she want you to marry her?" asked Lee.

"No indeed, she had no intention of separating herself from Moneybags."

"Go on."

"I was afraid somebody would hear her. I knew Gartrey would be home sometime or other, though I didn't expect him so soon. I didn't want him to smell a rat. He has a mortgage on the Sourabaya. So I suggested to Agnes that we go somewhere where we could talk privately."

"Where could you go where you wouldn't be recognized?"

"To my place. It was all I could think of. She rose to that; thought she'd have me dead to rights in my place, but I didn't have any intention of taking her there. So she went into the next room, her dressing room, to get ready."

"Was the maid in there?" asked Lee.

"Yes."

"Then she must have heard all that was said."

"Sure. Probably had her ear glued to the crack of the door. However, I don't suppose that Eliza has many illusions about her mistress left. Women like Agnes feel pretty safe with their maids, because, you see, if a maid ever blew the gaff on her mistress and it became known, no other woman would hire her."

"I am learning," said Lee. "Go on."

"When Agnes went into the dressing room, she left the door partly open and we continued talking back and forth, though of course she wasn't cursing me like she did before. Then after a bit somebody pulled the door shut and I could hear no more from in there."

"You couldn't hear the two women talking?"

"Not a sound."

Lee got up. "Don't you find it a little chilly here?" he casually suggested.

"Suits me all right," said Al.

Lee went to the open window. That end of the big room was in darkness. Leaning out of the window, he satisfied himself that it was not the window immediately underneath which was open. So much the better. It gave him a larger area of glass to tap on. Keeping hold of the end of the thread, he dropped the nail file over the sill and had the satisfaction of hearing it knock against the glass below. He pulled down the sash, pinning the end of the thread under it.

"Lovely night," he said, returning to the fire, "but turning colder...Go on with your story."

"I was sitting in the boudoir, twiddling my thumbs while Agnes changed into street clothes in her dressing-room. Quite a while passed. I thought nothing of that, because getting dressed to a woman like Agnes is the most important thing in life." Al paused, staring straight ahead of him. "God! how vividly that moment comes back! Me sitting there in the pink boudoir surrounded by Agnes' gimcracks--she collects antique porcelain figures just because they're expensive...and the shot out in the foyer!"

He was silent so long that Lee was forced to prompt him. "Go on!"

Al passed a hand over his face. "It gave me a horrible shock! I guess things have always come to me too easy. First time I ever had to face anything serious...I thought Agnes had turned a gun against herself. I had never for a moment taken her seriously, but you can't tell about a woman. What a spot for me to be in! Made me feel sick. My one idea was to get out of the place, but I couldn't get out without passing through the foyer. I ran out there..."

"Which way?" put in Lee.

"By the corridor. Agnes was lying against the door into the foyer. But when I turned her over I saw she had no wound. She had fainted. I stepped over her and went into the foyer. I saw Gartrey lying on the parquet floor with a bullet hole in his head. I knew he was dead. I saw the gun and I thought he had shot himself. That made me feel a little better because it wasn't my fault if his wife...Well, anyhow, my one idea was to beat it away from there. Can you blame me? I got my hat and coat out of the hall closet and started for the service entrance. Unluckily I met the butler on the way out and that put the kibosh on my chances of clearing myself. Naturally I looked wild."

"When you ran into the foyer did you see anybody?" asked Lee.

"Nobody but the dead man."

"It's your idea, I take it, that Gartrey was shot by his wife?"

"I'm not saying so," said Al. "I want you to figure it out for yourself."

"What motive had she for killing her husband?"

Al shrugged. "How can a man tell what goes through a crazy woman's mind? A spoiled beauty like Agnes believes that nothing can touch her. She would figure that with her money and her position she could get away with it. Perhaps she thought that after she had inherited Gartrey's millions I would be crazy enough to marry her. But I don't think that. If she had all that money, why should she marry again? I believe she planned to plant the crime on me, thinking she could get me off later and that she would then have me under her thumb for keeps. Or perhaps in her rage she was deliberately trying to send me to the chair. That would explain the gun."

"How did your gun get there?" asked Lee mildly. Al shrugged. "All I know is, it was stolen from me."

"When?"

"I can't tell you that. I didn't miss it until after this happened. It's a couple of months since I have seen it."

"Where did you keep it?"

"In a chest of drawers in my bedroom."

"Did Mrs. Gartrey know it was there?"

"She did."

"Has she ever been in your apartment?"

"Sure!"

"In the bedroom?"

"Yes." Al smiled suddenly. "But not with me! She went in to powder her nose."

"Has Robert Hawkins, her ex-butler, been to your place?" asked Lee.

Al looked at him quickly. "Why do you ask that?...Oh, I see, you are canvassing all the possibilities. Yes, Hawkins has been there on two occasions. The old boy had an interest in photography, and I told him to come around and get a few pointers on developing. The last time was about ten days ago. I left him in the kitchen, washing prints while I went into the dark room I have improvised. He could have gone into the bedroom without my knowing it."