Death Takes a Bow (20 page)

“Opportunity?” Jerry said.

“Right,” Bill Weigand said. “And motive, in most cases.”

The dose of morphine—what Dr. Francis called a “massive dose”—could have been given either during the dinner Sproul had eaten with his friends before he went to the Today's Topics Club, in which case the food he had taken would delay its action, or in the drinks he had had with Mrs. Williams immediately before he went out to speak. The two times represented, approximately, the extreme limits of the probable period. Those at the dinner had been the two Akrons, Schwartz, Loretta Shaw, the pompous Mr. White and Y. Charles Burden. Not Jung, not Mrs. Williams. But Mrs. Williams had had an opportunity later, at the club. There was no evidence that Jung had had an opportunity; as nearly as they could tell by tracing the drinks from the bar to the consumer, he had had no opportunity. Certainly it was hard to see how he could have put morphine in the first drink, partly consumed before Mrs. Williams took Sproul to the speakers' room. He might conceivably have got near enough to the waiter who was carrying the second drink upstairs to have spilled in the poison, but the waiter was sure he hadn't. Mrs. Williams had had an opportunity to poison either drink; Loretta Shaw had had an opportunity to poison the one served upstairs.

“So did I,” Jerry interjected.

“So did you,” Bill Weigand agreed. “Did. you, by any chance?”

“No,” Pam said. “Sproul was a best seller. Don't be foolish, Bill.”

They came to motives, and Weigand summarized the evidence of the lecture notes. It was, he warned them, cryptic evidence. In no case, for example, was it clear enough to take into court. They were trying to trace down the hints, but that was slow work. The police in Cincinnati were still investigating Schwartz's past, for example. So far they had discovered only that he left a newspaper of which he had been city editor, rather suddenly. They had also discovered a disinclination on the part of the remaining executives to talk very openly about why he had gone.

They had talked to the publishers of White's first and only book, and they were comparing it—a man who was supposed to know about such matters was comparing it—with a manuscript of White's which White's depressed agent had been persuaded to lend for the purpose.

“How—?” Pam began.

“For style tricks,” Jerry said. “I suppose, Bill?”

Bill said he gathered that was it. And would it work?

“If he has mannerisms, it might,” Jerry said. “If he has the same mannerisms now he had when his first book came out. It was damn near unreadable, by the way. If he stole it, not worth stealing. Of course, maybe he ‘improved' on the original idea; made it his own. Maybe it wasn't so bad originally. But I'd hate to guess much on the results your expert gets.”

Bill Weigand said he wasn't betting much on it. But he could think of no better way to check on the scandalous hint which Sproul had planned to make in his lecture. Unless, of course, they could find the man from whom Sproul had stolen.

“We'll work on that too, if we have to,” Weigand said. “Look for a needle in yesterday's haystack.”

No motive was certain. They didn't know enough; it was not a simple, comfortable murder for money or safety or, so far as they could guess, hatred. But it might be any of these. They might be barking—no, whining—up entirely the wrong trees. But they had to use the trees they had, until they got more—Schwartz and Loretta Shaw, the Akrons, Ralph White and Y. Charles Burden.

“And the little dark man, with the funny name, and Mrs. Williams,” Mrs. North insisted. “And German spies. Or Japanese.”

“Mrs. Williams or little Jung,” Weigand agreed, without enthusiasm. “For the record, to keep it straight, and for Mrs. Pamela North. But why Axis spies?”

“Because,” Pamela told him, “Mr. Sproul was really a—a British agent. Or a man from G-2. And he was on their trail.”

Weigand shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Not a British agent. Nor a man from G-2. Nor an F.B.I. man in disguise. Give us some credit, Pam. Sproul was just a man who wrote books, who had lived in Paris, who was about to lecture to clubwomen. With the tacit approval of the O.W.I., to be sure. But he was nothing official.”

“Well,” Mrs. North said, “he had a list of enemy agents in this country and he was going to turn it over to the F.B.I. He found out about it in Paris, because he knew somebody before the war started and got drunk and boasted. Or maybe not a list of names; maybe just some leads we could follow up. And maybe they were more important than he knew, and they killed him because of that. Couldn't it be? You don't know it isn't, do you?”

Weigand agreed they didn't know it wasn't.

“However,” he added, “we can think it wasn't. We can think that Sproul was killed privately.”

“Privately?” Mrs. North repeated. “In front of all those people?”

“For private reasons,” Weigand said. “Be yourself, Pam. Somebody killed Sproul because they didn't like Sproul, or what he was going to say, or going to do, or had done or said. For personal reasons, as distinct from impersonal reasons, if you like it better that way.”

The three sipped coffee. Jerry North held up his left hand and began bending fingers down on it.

“Schwartz because of something in his past that Sproul was going to reveal,” he said. “White for ditto.” That took the first two fingers. “Akron and sister Akron for ditto.” He turned down one finger for the two. “Burden for—?” He looked inquiringly at Weigand.

“Ditto, I suppose,” Weigand said. “Or—because for some reason he didn't want Sproul to go on with the tour? I'll admit I can't think of any reason. And Schwartz, to go back, because Sproul had alienated Mrs. Schwartz's affections.”

“All right,” Jerry said, turning down a finger for Burden. “Jung because of something in his past, again; Loretta—” Jerry looked at his hand and discovered that, although he had been forced to utilize his thumb, he had run out of fingers. He moved to the right hand. “Loretta Shaw for what?” he asked.

Weigand shook his head.

“Unless she didn't want to marry Sproul after all, and didn't want to hurt his feelings by saying so,” he said. “Really, I wouldn't know. Nor would I have any idea why Mrs. Williams should kill Sproul, unless at the last moment she felt she had made a dreadful mistake in engaging him to lecture at the club and was doing her best to correct it.”

“Flippant,” Mrs. North said, with disapproval.

“Your flippancy, to start with,” Bill Weigand told her. “She's your Mrs. Williams, Pam. All yours. You can also have Dr. Dupont.”

“Dupont?” Mrs. North said.

“The president of the Today's Topics Club,” Jerry told her. “The old man who fainted.”

“No,” Mrs. North said, “I don't want him. I'm not sure I even want Mrs. Williams. Did the little dark man have the telegram?”

The two men looked at her and then at each other. Finally Jerry North shook his head.

“She's got me this time,” he admitted. “I knew it would come some day.” He turned to his wife. “What telegram, dear?” he said. “If it isn't a secret?”

“The one Mrs. Williams got, of course,” she said. “The one Mr. Jung took. At the restaurant, I told you.”

Bill Weigand looked at Jerry North, and Jerry shook his head.

“You told me you saw Jung and Mrs. Williams talking,” he said. “And that Jung tripped you and you decided to chase him. Then you told me all about the chase, block to block, and about being arrested and what you said to the sergeant and what the sergeant said to you, and about telephoning Bill and having him talk to the sergeant. But nothing about a telegram.”

“Well,” Mrs. North said, “that's funny. Because that was the whole thing. That was what made Mrs. Williams faint. Unless it was too much to drink. A yellow telegram.”

She told them about the telegram which had been delivered to Mrs. Williams at the bar. Weigand said it was better late than never, but—He got up.

“I'll find out,” he said, and went across the wide, main room at Charles to the telephones behind the desk. After a little while he came back, looking unexpectedly annoyed.

“Cooperation!” he said, with vigor. “A fine lot of cooperation they give us!”

The Norths looked at him and waited.

“The Feds,” he said, after a moment of staring with indignation at the wall, “decided they didn't want Mr. Jung. Or, rather, that they didn't want him locked up. They want him loose with a string attached, like their Mr. Heinrich. And so they listen to him, and say ‘Yes, Mr. Jung, certainly, Mr. Jung' with a lot of politeness and turn him loose. And they say they don't want to pick him up again unless we have a charge against him which will stick, because they think he may be very useful roaming around and meeting people. And that is known as cooperation.”

“Well,” Jerry North said reasonably, “do you want him? Have you got a charge?”

Weigand said they could make one; tailor-make it. Long enough to talk to Mr. Jung. But—He shrugged.

“I suppose actually it doesn't matter,” he said. “And Jung is more theirs than ours. They caught him, after all. Only I'd like to clear up this little matter of the telegram. Because he didn't have it, Pam.”

Pam waited.

“They looked over what he did have,” Bill Weigand told her. “Before they got polite. No telegram. Of course, they had no reason to ask him about a telegram, since you hadn't gotten around to mentioning a telegram. However—probably it's nothing. And we can pick him up and ask him. Or ask Mrs. Williams, if it begins to look important. We can also ask Mr. Jung why he tripped you, Pam.”

That, Pam said, was easy. He had tripped her because he thought she was going to chase him, the way Jerry had. But then he had discovered that she wasn't going to chase him, so he hadn't run, but had merely gone on and had lunch. And then after lunch, she had chased him. But then he hadn't noticed, or hadn't cared. Because by then he had read the telegram and it wasn't important and—and had probably thrown it away. And he didn't know that Pam knew he had tripped her. Pam said it was very simple.

“Well,” Weigand said, in doubt. “Probably we'll have to pick him up and ask him. And ask Mrs. Williams about the telegram.”

Meanwhile, Weigand pointed out, it was all very pleasant, but he had to go back to his office and look at reports. You never knew about reports.

You never did indeed, Weigand thought, looking at the one before him. On Friday morning, some hours before Sproul was killed, Loretta Shaw and George Schwartz, duly provided with physicians' certificates, had applied at the marriage license bureau and had received, in routine procedure, a license to marry.

Weigand, digesting that, looked at another report. Schwartz had been fired, summarily, from a Cincinnati newspaper of which he had been city editor when he was caught permitting the flagrant padding of expense accounts. It was assumed that after authorizing payment of the accounts, he had split proceeds with the two men chiefly involved. Schwartz had admitted initialing accounts he knew to be fraudulent, but denied having profited personally. He had insisted that he passed the accounts only because the men submitting them were underpaid and in emergency need of funds. Apparently there had been some reason to credit this explanation, since the newspaper had not prosecuted and had merely dismissed all concerned.

Jung, on being released by the F.B.I., had gone to his rooming house, and presumably to his room, and perhaps to bed. The F.B.I. was keeping an eye on him, for everybody.

Schwartz and Loretta Shaw had met for dinner and had gone to a musical comedy, where they still were. The detective, watching them, and the show, from standing room, had called during a love duet on stage, explaining that it seemed as good a time as any other to go to the lounge and telephone. Otherwise, the detective said, he was enjoying the show. He said the third dancing girl from the left was a lulu.

Jean Akron and her brother were at home in their apartment on Park Avenue. The detective assigned to them didn't know what they were doing, but thought they were entertaining friends and maybe playing bridge. The doorman, judiciously approached, had said he thought they had guests.

Y. Charles Burden, who lived in Westchester, had gone to Westchester, by train.

And Ralph White, whether intentionally or not, did not appear, had slipped the man who was keeping an eye on him and disappeared. The man, chagrined, was waiting in the vicinity of White's small apartment west of Seventh Avenue for his client to re-appear.

Nobody was following Mrs. Williams, or Dr. Dupont or the other casuals of the affair. Weigand had run out of men.

But it might, he thought, be worth while telephoning Mrs. Williams and asking what Jung had had to say and if he had stolen a telegram from her. He looked up the number and gave it to the police operator. After a few minutes the police operator said that the number did not answer.

Weigand's head ached again. He telephoned his own apartment and Dorian did answer. She said her head ached too, and when was he coming home?

“Now,” Weigand said.

Everything was under control, he decided. Under control and, at the moment, static. But there was no evident need for hurry. This time, at any rate, the murderer seemed to be content with one victim.

11

Saturday, 8:21
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Wilfred Tingle clanged the vestibule door open as the Wall Streeter slowed beside the platform, and attacked the pile of luggage stacked opposite it. He worked fast so as not to hold up his people, already almost half an hour late, and already in bad morning tempers. He beamed at those already standing in the door to Car 620, his charge from Pittsburgh, and said cordially, “Yes, sir, yes, ma'am. Jus' a moment now. Yes, sir.” He shoveled the luggage into the waiting hands of red caps and, when the last piece was lined up with the rest, took his stand on the platform just outside the door. His hand was ready to help, or be helped.