Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (14 page)

“Derek Laval. An old case in the ‘Open’ file. We had him booked on suspicion of homicide and let him go. Go on.”

“And she wanted you to take the photos to whichever one of the boys here at headquarters was assigned to the case and see if he can identify Mr D.L.”

Piper thought. “That would be Jack Nichols. Sergeant Nichols then, but I think he’s a captain now. Transferred to Narcotics a couple of years ago. Check with him on the pictures. He ought to remember the case—we had enough headaches over it. And wire me here at the Tareyton Hotel, Hollywood.”

“Right,” said the lieutenant.

“And, Georgie—what was the return address on that envelope?” He waited eagerly for the answer.

“Return address—oh, here it is. ‘Mammoth Studios, Los Angeles.’”

“Nuts!” exploded the inspector, and hung up. “The address is still a secret,” he told Sansom. “But if everything goes well this case will be cracked in a couple of hours. Hildegarde Withers had a brain wave. She drew beards on photos of all the suspects and shipped em back to Centre Street. If all goes well I ought to be on my way East with my prisoner in a day or so.”

Sansom brightened. “You mean—you want to take this Laval back to stand trial for that old murder?”

“I want to take that trip back across country with Derek Laval in a train compartment,” Piper said grimly. “I really look forward to that.”

Sansom was definitely happier. “I’ll co-operate with you one hundred per cent then. Because if we can avoid it we’d rather not have the whole thing dragged out here. Murder in a studio …” He shook his head. “Publicity shoots two ways sometimes.”

“Then you’ll help me with getting extradition?”

“Extradition, hell!” said Tom Sansom. “If we pick up the guy I’ll toss him in my car and take the both of you over the state line into Arizona. Then you’ll have first rights in the prisoner.”

They shook hands on that, a bit prematurely, and the inspector sent out for sandwiches. Almost before they had finished a telegram arrived.

CAP NICHOLS PLAYING PINOCHLE DOWNSTAIRS. SAYS HE REMEMBERS HARRIS CASE PERFECTLY. ALWAYS THOUGHT LAVAL GUILTY. HESITATES TO MAKE POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION AFTER SO MANY YEARS BUT THINKS THREE IS BEST BET. SWARTHOUT.

“That’s just dandy!” The inspector’s sudden elation left him. Hildegarde’s plan had worked like a charm—well, better than most charms. Only leave it to her to put numbers on the backs of the photographs instead of the names or initials of the suspects.

“You can have ’em sent back,” Sansom suggested, “and check against the different people….”

Piper nodded. “Even air mail they wouldn’t get here until late Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. That’s no dice.” It was one of the inspector’s deepest beliefs that every hour of delay after the commission of a murder increases threefold the chances of the guilty person’s escaping scot free. Time, he knew, is the criminal’s best ally, time during which witnesses forget and clues grow cold and trails are covered up.

“Now we’ve got to find out where Hildegarde moved to,” he told Chief Sansom. Because, he thought, she must have kept a record of the numbers on those photographs. No handbag had been found in the wreck of the studio courier car, but he doubted very much that she would carry anything really important around with her. Especially when she was so close to the killer.

“We can ask the boys down at the station to make a routine check of rooming houses, apartments and hotels,” Sansom said. “But Los Angeles is a big place, sprawled all over southern California. And, besides, she might have moved to Santa Monica or Beverly Hills or Culver City.”

Piper shook his head. “They wouldn’t start a checkup today in this rain. I wouldn’t do it myself. Besides, I’d like to get a little farther along before calling on the local police. You’ve got authority enough for us right now.” Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “Yes—and you’ve got authority enough to put the bee on every taxi driver who has a stand near the hotel Miss Withers moved out of. She had bags, didn’t she? Well, she wouldn’t walk or take a streetcar. Come on.”

Tom Sansom followed him, still dubious. “This ain’t New York,” he pointed out. “The taxicabs roam around a good deal….”

That was putting it mildly. The doorman outside the Roosevelt said that half a hundred hackmen hung around outside at various times. They didn’t keep regular stands but cruised here and there.

Then he gave them a ray of hope. It was when Piper asked him if he remembered putting a lady into a taxi on Wednesday evening. “She had London and Mexico City labels on her suitcases. Carried an umbrella probably—and she was probably wearing a hat that looked like a bird’s nest.”

The doorman brightened. “Wait! Maybe I remember—”

“Did she give you a dime tip?” Piper asked. The other nodded. “That was Hildegarde!” cried Oscar Piper. “What cab did you put her into?”

The doorman shook his head. “How should I know? It was a Yellow—but practically every hack in Hollywood is a Yellow.”

“So that’s that,” observed Tom Sansom. “Well, Inspector, I don’t see what more we can do. If you ask me—”

“I’m asking the cab company,” Piper said. “They usually make drivers keep a trip record. They’re filed away somewhere at the company garage.”

Sansom was still dubious. “Probably closed on Sunday. And I don’t s’pose they’d be willing to look through all their records—”

“We won’t ask ’em; we’ll tell ’em,” Piper said. “It usually works.”

It worked. After considerable intensive research at the company garage the inspector discovered that Yellow taxicabs had picked up three fares at the Roosevelt during the hour when Miss Withers was known to have checked out of the place. One trip was to the new Union Station. One was to The Beachcomber’s bar. And the last and most promising was to a number on Cowbell Canyon Drive.

They moved off, to the click of windshield wipers, into what seemed to be a minor waterfall. And finally Sansom pulled up beneath vast, untidy palm trees against a curb that was barely an inch above a roaring, muddy torrent.

“Could be
that
one,” indicated Sansom. They slid out of the car and made a run for the archway. There a plump woman in a silk raincape was doing something to a list of tenants on the farther wall. Using a pair of manicure scissors, she pried out a card, threw it away.

“Looking for an apartment, gentlemen?” She turned toward them hopefully. “I’m Mrs Dermott, the manager here. I’ve got a nice double, just vacated….”

Suddenly the inspector realized what apartment she must be talking about. He flashed his gold badge, hoping that she hadn’t noticed the difference between the heraldry of Los Angeles and New York. “Police!” he said tersely. “That’s the apartment we came to see you about. It was occupied by a Miss Hildegarde Withers, wasn’t it?”

The woman stared at them blankly. “Whatever—?”
`

“It’s all right. Will you show the way, please?”

“But that isn’t the apartment I meant. I have another one vacant. Miss Withers paid me a month in advance and she didn’t say anything about—”

“Okay, okay.” The inspector followed the accepted police technique of never letting anyone have time to collect his thoughts. “Which way is it? The Withers’ apartment, I mean?”

Mrs Dermott led the way, shaking her head. “Ten years in this business—you ask anybody around here—and this is the first time anyone of my tenants have ever been in any trouble with the police….”

“All right, all right,” the inspector told her. “You coming, Sansom?”

The other man seemed oddly reluctant. “Uh-huh, I guess so.” He followed after, shaking the water from his topcoat.

“I hope there won’t be any trouble. I mean, any publicity,” Mrs Dermott rattled on. “Because I’ve had most of my tenants for years, and they’re all the most respectable people, and—” She puffed up the stair.

“What did she do? I mean, what is Miss Withers wanted for?”

“Just open the door for us,” Piper ordered. “Thank you.” He stood in the doorway, watching Mrs Dermott as the woman went uncertainly back down the stair. When she was out of sight and he was reasonably confident that she would not come sneaking back he opened the door, and the two men went inside.

The inspector liked to think that he was as unemotional and hard bitten as an old cavalry mule, that his years on the force of one of the wickeder cities of the world had made him immune to qualms. But he hesitated now, catching his breath.

For Hildegarde’s rooms were faintly redolent of the lavender toilet water she always used. They were as neat and stiff and proper as that amazing lady herself. He had a feeling that he ought to wipe his feet dry on something, take off his hat and watch his grammar. It was definitely an uneasy feeling.

“So now we’re here, what do we do?” Sansom demanded. “Pack up her duds?”

Oscar Piper frowned at him. The little living room in which they were standing showed Miss Withers’ portable typewriter in its case on the desk, her handbag on the table. There was even a small blue bowl filled with dark red Jonathans on the table, and an ash tray held a neatly bitten white core.

Somebody else, decided the inspector, would have to pack up all these things and arrange for sending them back to Miss Withers’ married sister. In Iowa or someplace, he thought. That melancholy task was something he would definitely avoid.

It was enough to search for her private notes and papers, to scout and peer and comb in the hope that she had left a record behind.

Especially of the numbers she had marked on those photographs. Well, they might as well get at it.

“You take the bedroom,” Piper ordered. He himself picked up Miss Withers’ handbag. Some silver, a few bills, the other half of her railway ticket, hairpins, a tiny flashlight and an employee’s pass through the gates of Mammoth Studios. Trust Hildegarde not to keep anything of importance there.

He looked in the typewriter case. Nothing in the machine. Nothing but a wad of blank white typewriter paper in the compartment in the top of the case. The desk drawer held a bottle of ink and a blotter.

Piper felt definitely uneasy. Somehow things looked just a bit too neat, almost as if a stage had been set.

There was something wrong with the room. The knowledge came to him at once and of a sudden. He went to the window and looked out at the dreary slather of endless rain, at the sodden, dripping fronds of the anachronistic palm trees.

Nothing was wrong outside, barring the liquid sunshine. No balcony for anyone to be hiding on.

He came back, looked into the little closet by the door. Here was a hat, obviously one of Hildegarde’s. Nobody else would wear a headpiece that resembled a full-rigged ship in a gale. There was also a coat, a sensible tweed coat which he recognized. Nothing in the pockets. Nothing under the shelf paper, nothing tacked to the bottom of the shelf.

But still something was wrong with the place. Some note was jarring, some detail was out of place in the primly neat picture. The inspector shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs. Then he noticed the little wastepaper basket in the corner, went over to it and said: “Sansom!”

Tom Sansom appeared in the door of the bedroom. “Nothing in here that shouldn’t be,” he reported. “Just a bed and a chair and a bureau. Unless there’s a false bottom in one of the suitcases.”

“There isn’t,” Piper told him. He pointed. “Take a look at that.”

Sansom peered into the wastebasket. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. It’s a cigar!”

Piper nodded. “Hildegarde didn’t smoke. Especially she didn’t smoke cigars. She wouldn’t even let me into her apartment when I had a stogie going good.”

They looked at each other. Sansom seemed amused.

“This is important,” the inspector said. “Somebody has been here.” He leaned over, picked up the cigar. “Still moist,” he told the other officer. “Somebody has been here within the last half-hour!”

Tom Sansom looked very dubious. “We haven’t found anything because somebody beat us to it!” insisted the inspector. “Somebody went through this place with a fine-toothed comb, and recently too.” He pointed. “And there’s more proof if you need it. That apple core there!”

Sansom scowled at it. “So it’s an apple core. I don’t see—”

“It’s
white!”
The inspector smiled. “I happen to know that when the flesh of an apple is exposed to the air certain fruit acids make it turn brown within a few minutes. That apple was eaten within the last twenty minutes.”

The other looked nervous. “Maybe the guy that did it is still here somewheres?”

Both men turned toward the door of the kitchenette. “Let’s have a look,” Piper demanded.

It was the first room in which they should have looked. They came through the doorway and stopped short, staring down at the linoleum floor. Starting at the back door and coming straight toward them across the linoleum was a line of footprints. They were large footprints, too large for a woman. And they were still wet.

“There!” said the inspector with a sort of weary triumph.

Sansom squatted down and stared at the prints as if he expected some revelation from their moist outlines. “Could be the houseboy,” he suggested hopefully. “Some of these places have Filipino houseboys who come to cart away the trash….” His voice trailed away doubtfully. Not even Tom Sansom could visualize a Filipino with feet that size—or one who would be doing his odd jobs on a Sunday afternoon.

There was no use searching the place any longer. They were stymied, and they knew it. “If we’d arrived a few minutes earlier we’d have nabbed somebody right here,” Piper said as they came back into the living room.

Sansom shrugged. “Like the farmer’s boy who said he
almost
heard the cowbell? Well, what’s next, Inspector?”

“I don’t know. If there was only some way of finding out what Hildegarde Withers was up to! She must have been on the verge of solving the whole mix-up, or the murderer wouldn’t have struck at her. But if he’s come back here and got hold of her notes …”

“The town’s full of spiritualist mediums,” Sansom said dryly. “They breed like flies in this part of the world. Or maybe you’d like to try to establish communications with your friend through the ouija board?”