Murders in, Volume 2 (26 page)

“Furnished apartment?” asked Durfee.

“No, none of them is furnished. There was some things the other tenants left; they sold the lease, and they wanted to sell the furniture. She bought it.”

“Just give me the keys. You stay down here.”

The superintendent shifted the baby, got out his keys, detached one, and handed it over. Durfee pressed the Jansen bell, waited and pressed it again. He then crooked a finger impatiently at the superintendent, who unlocked the front door, a troubled look on his dark and sorrowful face.

Durfee, the uniformed policeman, Gamadge and Schenck climbed three flights of stairs, which were neatly carpeted in mouse color. When they at last stood beneath a skylight, facing a blank gray door, Durfee knocked hard.

After a pause, a voice asked: “Who is it?”

“Police.”

The door opened. Durfee inquired: “Miss Lydia Smith?”

T
HE FASHIONABLE FIGURE
which stood on the threshold gazing wildly at them was Miss Lydia Smith, transformed. She wore a short black dress with no sleeves, plenty of make-up, and a complicated array of curls, piled high on her head. She was very beautiful.

“I don't know what you mean, ‘Smith,'” she said. “You got the wrong party. The name is Jansen.”

Her voice, like her face, was almost unrecognizable; she spoke in a higher register than that which she had used at the old Vauregard house, and her words came faster. Her large eyes went past Durfee to the policeman, from him to Schenck, and then to Gamadge. They rested on him, and went blank.

“Mr. Gamadge,” said Durfee, “can you positively identify this woman as the woman who passed under the name of Lydia Smith when you met her on Wednesday afternoon?”

“Yes, I can.” Gamadge returned her gaze regretfully. “Why didn't you take my tip, Miss Smith, and quit in time? I all but asked you to.”

She moved her eyes from him. “What is all this? I'm Mrs. Jansen.”

“Whoever you are,” said Durfee, “you've been going under the name of Lydia Smith, and I have a warrant for your arrest. False pretenses.”

He advanced, and Miss Smith backed before him into a sparsely furnished living room. She said: “I won't say a word, and I want my lawyer.”

“Is your lawyer Richard Vauregard? Because if he is, you can't get him. He's dead.”

“Dead!” She grasped the back of a chair. “You're making it up. I saw him—I know he's not dead.”

“You saw him this evening, about an hour ago; but he's dead, just the same,” said Durfee, watching her.

“What happened to him?” she screamed.

“Accident. Climbing into the Morton house window.”

“Oh, God, he only did it to see me!” She staggered, recovered herself, and suddenly seemed to go mad. She turned, snatched a little boxlike object from behind a cushion, and hurled it to the floor. “Take it! The film's still in it. I wasn't going to throw it away! That Dawson girl can't have her man, if I can't have mine!”

Gamadge closed his eyes. Schenck, greatly puzzled, looked at him, bent, picked up the tiny moving-picture camera, and handed it to Durfee.

“What's all this?” demanded the latter.

Miss Smith sat down on the sofa, breathing heavily, but otherwise mistress of herself again. “Some refugee,” thought Schenck. “I don't blame the old gentleman.”

“What's this movie camera doing here?” asked Durfee, handling it carefully.

“That's what Cameron Payne has been blackmailing my husband with. He hid in the summerhouse, on Thursday; and he took a movie of Dick coming, and me going away, and Dick leaving. I hope it makes him an accessory, or whatever Dickie was always talking about. Poor Dickie did it all for me; he wouldn't have killed them, if it hadn't been to protect me,” gasped Miss Smith, suddenly breaking into tears. “And then to have that awful, limping, grinning…” she sank down on the sofa, but she was far from collapsed.

“Now, Miss Smith—” Durfee was benevolent.

“Don't you call me that. I'm Mrs. Vauregard.”

“Mrs. Vauregard; just tell us all the rest of it, and who got up this swindle, and then you won't have to go through it again tonight. We need the story right now. Was anybody else in the swindle?”

“Nobody but Mrs. Morton. He introduced us, and she taught me all about it, and what to say, and how to act.”

“You are an actress, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“Name?”

“Lily Magnus.”

“Where'd you know him?”

“Out in California. We've only been married a year, but I knew him before. He came out every summer. I was never East until this spring, when he—when he thought the money was going to some people called Chandor.”

“How'd he think of the swindle?”

“He found that book—the second volume.” Schenck saw Gamadge close his eyes again, and then open them when she went on: “I don't know where he picked it up. He showed it to Mrs. Morton, and they put me here, and she came and gave me lessons.”

“How'd you get down to the Traders Row house in the first place?”

“Dick drove me down in his car, and I walked a few blocks.”

“Where did the costume come from?”

“Mrs. Morton got the materials, and we made it ourselves.”

“How did you communicate with Vauregard?”

“He used to stop on his way home from his office, and get notes I left for him, and leave others for me. We put them in a crack in the wall, to the left of the gates. There was nobody about, at that hour.”

“What about Thursday afternoon?”

“I left a note for him on Wednesday, as soon as Miss Vauregard left with this man.” Her fleeting glance at Gamadge was a frightened one.

“I told Dick everything that was said; about the book, and that quotation from Byron, and that stuff about the arbor being hexagonal, and Mr. Vauregard asking him to come back on Thursday between six and seven. Dick stopped around the corner, on Wednesday, and waited till they left, and then came and got the note. Then he went home, and met this man, and thought everything was all over, because he was sure it would be found out about the other Byron. That night he got that stuff at the vet's. It was just an impulse.”

“Killed old Mr. Vauregard and Mrs. Morton on an impulse?”

“He thought that if I left, old Mr. Vauregard would get some other fad. He just couldn't stand it. Dick wasn't a criminal. We didn't mean any harm. It was just Miss Vauregard insisting on a detective.”

“I swear I don't know why Vauregard didn't kill the old gentleman at the start, and save himself and you all this trouble, and keep you out of it!”

“It was Mrs. Morton's scheme. Dick wouldn't have killed him then, for anything. He was driven to it, I tell you! He couldn't stand being found out. And then Mrs. Morton was going to go back on us!”

Durfee was unable to make any comment for some time. At last he said: “Just tell me how you made your getaway, Thursday.”

Mrs. Richard Vauregard's courage was failing. She leaned back against the cushion, and the policeman brought her a glass of water. She drank some of it, and said: “Dick came up to my room on Thursday, a little before half past five. I had been asleep—I slept a lot, down there; it was all there was to do. He had a coat with him—he bought it for me on Fourteenth Street. He told me to put it on and run. I came up here by subway. I didn't know anything about what happened until I saw the papers. Dick telephoned me not to worry, and not to go out. I didn't see him until tonight, when he brought that camera, and told me to destroy the film. He had to get out of the house and get hold of it—Payne showed it to him after dinner tonight. Dick told me he was used to climbing in and out. Why did he fall? Oh, why did he fall?”

She burst into tears again. Durfee, gazing upon her as upon a portent, asked: “Why didn't you destroy the film, like he told you to?”

“Destroy it?” she almost screamed the question. “Destroy it? It shows me leaving the house, and shows Dick talking to Mr. Vauregard at the library window afterwards! I wasn't ever going to destroy it!”

As she buried her face in the cushion, Gamadge quietly left the room. Schenck followed him downstairs in silence. When they were in the street, and walking away, Schenck collected his wits:

“That girl has good nerve! You could see she was fond of the feller, and she wasn't going to turn him down because he'd committed a couple of atrocities; but she had her defense program all ready, and by gosh, she came right out with it, and no time lost!”

“Life is sweet to her.”

“Payne's an accessory, all right; I don't see why he tried to blackmail Vauregard—he had Miss Dawson's money coming.”

“I don't think a hundred thousand dollars looks like very big money to Cameron Payne.”

“What would a feller like that do when he's found out? Kill himself?”

“Certainly not. Laugh it off.”

“Laugh it off!”

“That's his system.”

“Why were you trying to keep him out of it?”

“My dear man! I wasn't interested in the ramifications of the case. All I wanted was to get Miss Vauregard and her niece out of the mess for good.”

“Pretty bad for them, having it come out about young Vauregard.”

“It's all bad for them, but this isn't the worst that could have happened; not much affection there, I gathered; and besides, I was afraid he might try to do some framing. Things looked black for Duncannon, things didn't look too well for Payne, some mud might have stuck to Miss Vauregard, or Miss Dawson, or both. Vauregard had the means to plant what clues he liked.”

“Miss Dawson won't like this business about Payne.”

“There were so many things she mightn't like, one had to choose among them.”

“You didn't like it, when that camera flew out from under the cushion and hit the floor.”

“Forget it. What I like doesn't matter a damn.” They had reached Lexington Avenue, where Schenck proposed to board a bus. “I'm greatly obliged to you,” said Gamadge. “I had to have a witness.”

“Only too glad; I always enjoy your parties.”

Schenck stood on his corner, and watched Gamadge out of sight. His face was very thoughtful, and his sharp eyes glinted. Mr. Schenck was thinking furiously.

It had turned very raw and cold, with a slight drizzle; but Gamadge walked the half mile home. With his hat pulled low, his coat collar up, and his hands in his pockets, he was a dejected and forlorn sight as he mounted his own front steps. Within the hall, however, a pleasant odor greeted him, apparently wafted down from the second story. He cast his hat and top-coat on a chair, and took the elevator.

When he reached the library, he found that Harold had built a fire and was toasting muffins on the embers. A jug of chocolate—Harold's favorite beverage—stood keeping warm on the hearth; plates, cups and a dish of butter occupied a cleared space on the writing table, and Martin lay dozing among manuscripts. Harold had put on his white laboratory blouse to cook in; there was defiance in his eye when he looked up from his toasting operations, but Gamadge dispelled it.

“I like a man who knows when to disobey orders,” he said. The largest chair had been pulled up in front of the fire; he sat back in it, and stretched out his legs.

“How'd you know when to start this collation?”

“Mr. Schenck telephoned, a few minutes ago.”

“The deuce he did.”

“From a drugstore. Said you looked as if you were going to walk it, and it was coming on to rain, and he thought I might as well make a fire.”

“I'm touched. I don't know why he thought anybody would hear the telephone, at this hour.”

“Mr. Schenck knew I wouldn't be in bed.”

“Bound to hear the end of the story—that it?”

Harold said, stiffly, that that was it.

“Miss Smith is discovered—she was married to Dick Vauregard. He's dead. Fell getting in the window, and smashed himself.”

Harold again reacted in his own peculiar way. He said, after buttering two muffins and handing them to Gamadge, “The Dykinck bird won't be sorry when she reads the papers.”

“You forget the Dykinck bird! You never heard of her, remember!”

“I drove down there after I left you, and stuck around a while.”

“No, did you?” Gamadge regarded him gravely over the rim of his chocolate cup. “What for?”

“We were responsible for her. There was a light in the third floor front. She was sitting up, all right, but I wasn't sure that it was only desperation. I thought she might be waiting to let the feller in.”

“After he'd shaken us off and escaped over the rooftops. I see.”

“The light went out after a while, and I came away.”

“I wonder you didn't drive up to The Humbert and watch over the slumbers of Payne. You didn't know that he was comfortably dug in at the Waldorf.”

“I wouldn't care who killed that guy, or when.”

“You don't share Theodore's admiration for Mr. Payne, I gather.”

“I feel about him,” said Harold, sugaring his chocolate, “the way Miss Dawson does.”

“Miss Dawson!” Gamadge sat up, thoroughly startled. “What are you talking about?”

“She's on the way to the booby-hatch,” said Harold. “Didn't you notice that he gives her the creeps?”

“You must be crazy.”

“I guess you never saw her look at him when he wasn't looking, and she thought they were alone.”

“You need sleep, that's what you need. Leave this mess the way it is, and for goodness' sake go to bed.”

“T
HE WHOLE TROUBLE WAS,”
said Gamadge,“ that I never dreamed he'd go after Payne so early. I thought he'd wait until later, when things inside and outside the house looked safe. I thought he'd lead us to Miss Smith, and then go on down to The Humbert; I meant to telephone Durfee, or somebody, the minute I was sure I knew where Smith was. The police would have headed him off.”