Curtains For Three (22 page)

“Missus?” Skinny demanded incredulously. “Did you say ‘Missus’?”

“Yes. She’s a woman. I’m tied up, but you’ve got her. I’m helpless, so you can have her. You might give me a cut of the ten grand.” The strangler made a movement. “Watch her!”

W-J, who had started for me and stopped, turned to face her. I had banged my head and it hurt. Skinny stepped up to her, jerked both sides of her double-breasted coat open, released them, and backed up a step.

“It could be a woman,” he said.

“We can find that out easy enough.” W-J moved. “Dumb as I am, I can tell that.”

“Go ahead,” I urged. “That will check her and me both. Go ahead’.”

W-J got to her and put out a hand.

She shrank away and screamed, “Don’t touch me!”

“I’ll be - ” W-J said wonderingly.

“What’s this gag,” Skinny demanded, “about ten grand?”

“It’s a long story,” I told him, “but it’s there if you want it. If you’ll cut me in for a third, it’s a cinch. If she gets out of here and gets safe home, we can’t touch her. All we have to do is connect her as she is - here now,

disguised - with Mrs. Homer N. Carlisle, which is what she’ll be when she gets home. If we do that we’ve got her shirt. As she is here now, she’s red-hot. As she is at home, you couldn’t even get in.”

“So what?” Skinny asked. “I didn’t bring my camera.”

“I’ve got something better. Get me loose and I’ll show you.”

Skinny didn’t like that. He eyed me a moment and turned for a look at the others. Mrs. Carlisle was backed against the bed, and W-J stood studying her with his fists on his hips.

Skinny returned to me: “I’ll do it. Maybe. What is it?”

I snapped, “At least, put me right side up. These cords are eating my wrists.”

He came and got the back of the chair with one hand and my arm with the other,

and I clamped my feet to the floor to give us leverage. He was stronger than he looked. Upright on the chair again, I was still blocking the door.

“Get a bottle,” I told him, “out of my right-hand coat pocket… No, here; the coat I’ve got on. I hope it didn’t break.”

He fished it out. It was intact. He held it to the light to read the label.

“What is it?”

“Silver nitrate. It makes a black, indelible mark on most things, including skin. Pull up her pants leg and mark her with it.”

“Then what?”

“Let her go. We’ll have her. With the three of us able to explain how and when she got marked, she’s sunk.”

“How come you’ve got this stuff?”

“I was hoping for a chance to mark her myself.”

“How much will it hurt her?”

“Not at all. Put some on me - anywhere you like, as long as it doesn’t show.”

He studied the label again. I watched his face, hoping he wouldn’t ask if the mark would be permanent, because I didn’t know what answer would suit him, and I had to sell him.

“A woman,” he muttered. “A woman!”

“Yeah,” I said sympathetically. “She sure made a monkey of you.”

He swiveled his head and called, “Hey!”

W-J turned.

Skinny commanded him, “Pin her up! Don’t hurt her.”

W-J reached for her. But, as he did so, all of a sudden she was neither man nor woman, but a cyclone. Her first leap, away from his reaching hand, was sidewise,

and by the time he had realized he didn’t have her she had got to the table and grabbed the gun. He made for her, and she pulled the trigger, and down he went,

tumbling right at her feet. By that time Skinny was almost to her, and she whirled and blazed away again. He kept going, and from the force of the blow on my left shoulder I might have calculated, if I had been in a mood for calculating, that the bullet had not gone through Skinny before it hit me. She pulled the trigger a third time, but by then Skinny had her wrist and was breaking her arm.

“She got me!” W - J was yelling indignantly. “She got me in the leg!”

Skinny had her down on her knees. “Come and cut me loose,” I called to him, “and go find a phone.”

Except for my wrists and ankles and shoulder and head, I felt fine.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” Inspector Cramer said sourly. “You and Goodwin have got your pictures in the paper again. You got no fee, but a lot of free publicity. I got my nose wiped.”

Wolfe grunted comfortably.

The whole squad had been busy with chores: visiting W-J at the hospital;

conversing with Mr and Mrs. Carlisle at the D.A.’s office; starting to round up circumstantial evidence to show that Mr. Carlisle had furnished the necessary for Doris Hatten’s rent and Mrs. Carlisle knew it; pestering Skinny; and other items. I had been glad to testify that Skinny, whose name was Herbert Marvel,

was one-hundred-proof.

“What I chiefly came for,” Cramer went on, “was to let you know that I realize there’s nothing I can do. I know Cynthia Brown described her to Goodwin, and probably gave him her name, too, and Goodwin told you. And you wanted to hog it.

I suppose you thought you could pry a fee out of somebody. Both of you suppressed evidence.” He gestured. “Okay, I can’t prove it. But I know it, and I want you to know I know it. And I’m not going to forget it.”

“The trouble is,” Wolfe murmured, “that if you can’t prove you’re right, and of course you can’t, neither can I prove you’re wrong.”

“Oh, yes, you can. But you haven’t!”

“I would gladly try. How?”

Cramer leaned forward. “Like this: If she hadn’t been described to Goodwin, how did you pick her for him to send that blackmail note to?”

Wolfe shrugged. “It was a calculation, as I told you. I concluded that the murderer was among those who remained until the body had been discovered. It was worth testing. If there had been no phone call in response to Mr. Goodwin’s note, the calculation would have been discredited and I would -“

“Yeah, but why her?”

“There were only two women who remained. Obviously, it couldn’t have been Mrs.

Orwin; with her physique she would be hard put to pass as a man. Besides, she is a widow, and it was a sound presumption that Doris Hatten had been killed by a jealous wife, who -“

“But why a woman'Why not a man?”

“Oh, that.” Wolfe picked up a glass of beer and drained it with more deliberation than usual. He was having a swell time. “I told you in my dining-room” - he pointed a finger - “that something had occurred to me and I wanted to consider it. Later, I would have been glad to tell you about it if you had not acted so irresponsibly and spitefully in sealing up this office. That made me doubt if you were capable of proceeding properly on any suggestion from me, so I decided to proceed, myself.

“What had occurred to me was simply this, that Miss Brown had told Mr. Goodwin that she wouldn’t have recognized ‘him’ if he hadn’t had a hat on! She used the masculine pronoun, naturally, throughout that conversation, because it had been a man who had called at Doris Hatten’s apartment that October day, and he was fixed in her mind as a man. But it was in my plant-rooms that she had seen him that afternoon - and no man wore his hat up there! The men left their hats downstairs. Besides, I was there and saw them. But nearly all the women had hats on.” Wolfe upturned a palm. “So it was a woman.”

Cramer eyed him. “I don’t believe it.” he said flatly.

“You have a record of Mr. Goodwin’s report of that conversation.”

“I still wouldn’t believe it.”

“There were other little items.” Wolfe wiggled a finger, “For example: The strangler of Doris Hatten had a key to the door. But surely the provider, who had so carefully avoided revealment, would not have marched in at an unexpected hour to risk encountering strangers. And who so likely to have found an opportunity, or contrived one, to secure a duplicate key as that provider’s jealous wife?”

“Talk all day. I still don’t believe it.”

Well, I thought to myself, observing Wolfe’s smirk and for once completely approving of it, Cramer the office-sealer has his choice of believing it or not.

As for me, I had no choice.