Murders in, Volume 2 (24 page)

“T
HAT'S ONLY CARRROTS,”
murmured Gamadge. “Duncannon's follower. Didn't have his sleep out, after all.”

The plain-clothes man came up the rest of the stairs, and joined them. He appeared to accept their presence philosophically, allowed Gamadge to push the door quietly open, and gazed over their heads to the lighted sitting room beyond the dark passage.

Nothing could be seen of Duncannon but his legs, which were extended to the very foot of the chaise longue. Miss Garfield stood beside it. Unstimulated by cocktails, unembellished by make-up, and soberly clad, she looked like the careworn older sister of the lady in peppermint-stick pink whom Gamadge had met at the Brightstone Inn. Moreover, her gaiety had departed; she seemed not only anxious, but frightened. One would have said that she regarded Mr. Duncannon with a certain amount of apprehension.

“…shouldn't have asked me to come here,” she was saying, in a thin voice.

“Absurd, m'dear girl. This dump is a sanctuary,” replied Duncannon. “Did you get by the fellow downstairs all right?”

“He said it was against the rules, but anybody can call on Mr. Payne. You'll get me into trouble, and I don't know why I came. They'll be looking for you.”

“I'm going quietly back, later, and that fellow will be asleep when I get there.”

Schenck managed a hasty glance at the plain-clothes man, whose expression was one of mild irony.

“I don't like it at all,” quavered Miss Garfield. “You ought to keep me out of it. If the papers get hold—”

“You'll be out of it from now on. That's one of the things I wanted to tell you. The play is off, for good. At least it is so far as we're concerned. Bridge may put it on, but he'll be coming to me for backing, now; and he won't have you in it, not even as an inmate of the House of Convertites.”

“The what?”

“Didn't you ever read the thing?”

“I certainly did not, not beyond where I come in as the ghost and die from kissing your picture. Honestly, what the critics will do to that show!”

“They'll take it and like it. I wanted to reimburse you for all the trouble you took, learning those lines and rehearsing. Hope you don't object?”

Miss Garfield drew a step back. “So that's it.”

“That's it.”

“You don't have to pay me to keep quiet. Everybody except poor Mrs. Morton knew all about us, and your nephew won't protect you—not now.”

Duncannon was silent for a moment. Then his voice came slowly, with a dryness in it: “You almost sound as if you thought I had committed two murders. What a brave little girl you are!”

“I'm not afraid of you, Tom Duncannon.”

“That's why you've been jittering there; wouldn't even sit down. Well, that's very interesting. It never entered my head! Actually never entered it! I knew the police would have to keep an eye on me, ridiculous as it seemed, because of the money; and I knew the Vauregards would elect me, naturally; I'm the perfect fall guy. But I thought I could expect sympathy from everybody else, and most particularly from you. You knew better than anybody that I wouldn't even hurt Angela's feelings, if I could help it; didn't you?”

“I knew you had to keep in with her.”

“Till I got a chance to kill the old gentleman, and then Angela herself? Thanks.”

“Well, Tom, after all, it does look—”

“My heavens, a nice mob you must run around with! Or perhaps you've been getting too much Webster into your system. It's only a play, you know.”

“Somebody did it,” muttered Miss Garfield obstinately. “That Miss Smith business—the papers said you said she was really a refugee. I couldn't help laughing.”

“I still think she was really a refugee, and I think somebody put her on a spot. That little girl—not an ounce of malice in her.”

Miss Garfield said passionately, “You give me that money and let me out of here.”

“Here it is, all I had in the bank. Mind you, there isn't any blackmail in the picture; as you reminded me, we have nothing to hide that the police won't find before we get it out of sight. It's a souvenir.”

“I know all about that; so I'll tell everybody how fond you were of Mrs. Morton.”

“Do that; and then I won't tell anybody that you weren't a bit fond of her. By the way, you got off some very peculiar cracks at the Brightstone yesterday, in front of Dick Vauregard and that detective, what-do-you-call-him—Gamadge. You probably don't remember, because you were on your fifth Daiquiri.”

“I thought he was very attractive; nobody told me he was a detective,” said Miss Garfield in a rising wail.

“He'll remember what you said, anyhow. I hope he got your type. I'd go on the stand and swear you wouldn't murder anybody, not even for money, and positively not for love. Too bad you can't do the same for me.”

As Duncannon came into sight, a roll of bills in his hand, the three observers fell back. They all made for the stairs, and the plain-clothes man took it upon himself to watch, and report proceedings. This involved much ducking up and down, and a great deal of hoarse whispering.

“She's coming out. Stuffing the roll in her bag…Rung the elevator…Not a sign of him…She keeps lookin' over her shoulder, got the jumps…Elevator coming…She's gone down.”

“Then we can go, too. I suppose you're staying on?” inquired Gamadge politely.

“You suppose right.”

“Why don't you go on in there and get your nap? Payne won't be along for some time.”

“This Duncannon might have a date with some other dame.”

“So he might. Well, you have our prayers.” Gamadge led the way down, passed the elevator without arousing the again somnolent operator, and strode rapidly to the corner of the street. Schenck, keeping up with him breathlessly, panted: “All over?”

“Just starting.”

They got into a cab, and drove past garages and restaurants to Sixth Avenue. Here they turned north, followed Fifty-ninth Street, turned north again on Fifth, and stopped at Seventy-fourth Street.

Gamadge paid the driver, and he and Schenck walked eastward through wide, dark, quiet streets until they were opposite the Morton house. It loomed across the black, clean asphalt, its ornate facade in shadow, except where a thin yellow gleam issued from between the drawing-room curtains. Far up the block a street lamp glimmered through the branches of a tree.

The house in front of which they stood was boarded up, and its deep, old-fashioned area was a well of darkness. Gamadge descended into it, sat on a corner of one of the stone steps, and leaned forward to look out between the stout balustrades. Schenck, perching on the other end of the step, did the same.

“That the Morton house?” he asked, impressed.

“That's it.”

“Quite a mansion.”

“Quite.”

“Who're you interested in?”

“All of them. Payne is calling there, as it happens.”

“Police in there?”

“Three of them.”

“Are we waiting for Payne to come out?”

“Can you stand it?”

“All right with me, only I'm glad you lent me the coat.” Schenck arranged a double layer of it under him; cold brown-stone had already struck chill through his tropical worsteds.

“Sorry you can't smoke.”

“Don't mention it.”

A shadow drifted past the area; Gamadge addressed it in a murmur, and Harold's short, square figure took form and descended the steps. It dematerialized again as footsteps echoed hollowly from the west. They approached. A policeman sauntered by, with a glance up at the Morton house; when he had passed, Harold came out of his dark retreat to whisper: “The car is around the corner, halfway to Seventy-third Street.”

“Can you watch this block?”

“Yes. There's a doorway.”

“Wait till you see us come out and follow somebody. If the party takes a cab, I'll have to depend on you. We'll come on as best we can.”

“O.K.”

Harold drifted back along the block, and disappeared.

Ten slow minutes passed, by Schenck's luminous, streamlined dial, and then the front door of the Morton house opened, and two men emerged from it. One of them was blue-coated and brass-buttoned; the other, Schenck recognized as Cameron Payne—the light from the hall revealed smiling features which had often adorned the sporting pages of newspapers.

His cheerful good night came clearly across the street. The policeman asked him something, and he laughed, shook his head, and waved his stick. He came down the steps lightly and easily; the policeman went back into the house and shut the door.

Payne hesitated, glanced to right and left, and then came directly over to the south pavement. He reached it not two yards from the spot where the watchers crouched invisible, hung his stick over his arm, got out a cigarette case and a paper of matches, and lighted a cigarette. His fair, masklike face and bright hair sprang out for an instant against the dark; they disappeared, and the cigarette glowed. Payne threw away the match, took his stick in his hand, and walked at a leisurely pace up the street towards the west.

Schenck looked at Gamadge, but the latter was not preparing to rise and follow; he did not seem to be interested in Payne at all. His eyes were fixed on the facade of the Morton house, just below the open second-story bay, where masses of stone—foliage in high relief—divided into festoons and drooped to the drawing room windows.

Schenck, following his gaze, saw nothing to interest him in the fruit, flowers and immense curled leaves; but as he stared, he suddenly became aware that a portion of the stone-work had apparently detached itself from the rest, and was sliding downwards. The next moment he realized that a dark figure was lowering itself from one foothold to the next, moving slowly but with precision. It reached the drawing-room window ledge, then that of the basement, and dropped lightly to its feet on the flagstones of the area. It turned, crossed the street as Payne had done, but soundlessly; and was on the other's heels in a moment.

Payne swung about with a short, startled cry which changed into a laugh.

“Hello,” he said. “How did you get here? Bribe a cop?”

A low voice answered briefly: “Give me that thing.”

They faced each other, Payne's slight figure almost hidden behind the other's bulk. Payne stepped back.

“You can't stage a holdup here, with the house across the way full of cops,” he said. “Don't be silly.”

“Hand it over, you white rat.”

“Nonsense. You won't risk a row.”

“There won't be any row. Hand it over, or you'll find out why.”

“Listen, Dick; have sense. One yell out of me—”

Vauregard closed up on him and put a hand on his shoulder. “You won't have time to yell. Just raise your voice, and you'll see. You won't get away with this, anyhow.”

“Oh, go to the devil.” Payne took something out of his pocket, and suddenly tossed it over Vauregard's shoulder. It fell to the sidewalk with a clatter. Vauregard whirled to pick it up, and as he did so footsteps again sounded, coming from the west. Payne, without a glance behind him, turned and limped quickly towards them.

Vauregard snatched up the object which lay on the flags, put it in his pocket, and walked eastward. He was almost at the corner before Gamadge, with Schenck at his side, came out of the area and followed him. The tall, bulky figure, in the old tweed suit and the felt hat with its brim turned low, crossed the avenue and proceeded along Seventy-fourth Street at a fast walk, hands in pockets and head down.

At the corner, Harold popped out of his doorway. After a word with Gamadge he got into the latter's car, and the pursuit divided itself into three; Gamadge on the south side of the street, Schenck (acquiescent and bewildered) on the north, and Harold crawling between, somewhere to the rear.

Vauregard went on, past brightly lighted avenues and along dark blocks of houses, keeping always to Seventy-fourth Street. He looked neither to right nor left, and he did not slacken his pace; he went like a man not pursued, but irresistably drawn; his rubber-soled shoes carried him along as silently as if he had been a ghost. Schenck, not given to fancies, was conscious of a fatal quality in the atmosphere of this pursuit, as if the whole thing were settled, finished and foredoomed.

“It's Gamadge,” he thought. “Feller knows what it's all about, he knew what was going to happen. He knows where Vauregard's going, I shouldn't wonder, and what's going to happen there.”

They were nearing the river, and a cool easterly gust of air blew in their faces. This last block had been “reclaimed,” and was a neat and trim oasis, with newly planted trees, three-story brick houses provided with dooryards or balconies, a good deal of bright paint on woodwork, and Venetian blinds behind clean, small-paned windows. Vauregard turned into the vestibule of a white-trimmed brick walk-up. The pursuit halted; Schenck and Gamadge arrived at the car together, and Harold leaned out of it.

“Now what?” Harold's eyes were burning, but his face remained properly impassive.

“Stay here. I'm going after him. He must have gone in. I'll have a look at the names in the vestibule.”

Gamadge walked down the street, and also disappeared into the little house. Presently he returned. “There's evidently a superintendent in the basement,” he said, “and six tenants. I have an idea that Jansen, top rear, is the party we want. The others seem more informative on their cards than Jansen does. All right, Harold; go on home. We're leaving.”

“Listen.” Schenck was unable to maintain his role of silent witness a moment longer. “There's nobody but us after this guy; aren't you going to tip off the police this time?”

“No. Come on, back to our hideout.”