Green Ace (11 page)

“Sometimes I wish I were,” said Miss Withers as she pushed forward into a smallish living room whose wall bed was still down. “Whom were you expecting?”

“Oh—the rental agent,” Iris said.

Sensitive as a cat to her surroundings, Miss Withers felt a tingling up her spine as the door closed behind her. Something was wrong here, very wrong. As the Inspector would say, the joint was jumping, alive with vibrations. It was not just that the room was a shambles of strewn clothing and feminine belongings, with a portable phonograph, trimmed in red leather, playing
You’d Be So Easy to Love
… The bed was covered with dozens of varicolored evening gowns, the floor cluttered with a heap of framed photographs, most of them autographed by second-magnitude stage and variety stars, which Iris had evidently been trying to tie together with string and newspaper padding.

“Down come the Lares and Penates, eh? Is it moving day?”

“Oh, sure,” said Iris, too brightly, as she shut off the music. “My lease, you know.”

“A nice little furnished flat, isn’t it?” Miss Withers could see partway into a bare little kitchenette, and through an open door into a large and almost luxurious dressing room and bath. “Too bad you have to lose it.”

The girl fidgeted. “Yes, but the place is inconveniently located, you know. It isn’t within walking distance of anything, except maybe Macy’s when there’s a good tail wind.” Iris dumped an armful of summer dresses into an expanding suitcase, every which way.

“Today’s the sixteenth of the month, is it not? Odd that your lease doesn’t end on the first or fifteenth, as they usually do.”

The girl stood stock still. “Why—” She was wound up tight as a spring, hiding something behind a smile that never quite took. Somehow, while perhaps she did not seem as poised and pretty as she had at their first meeting, now she was considerably more engaging, a little younger and more natural. “You know show business,” she said with assumed lightness. “Here today and gone tomorrow.”

“I’ll not keep you long,” said Miss Withers as she removed four pairs of dancing shoes from a chair and planted herself firmly. “So you’ve changed your mind about remaining in the city and are going to take a job with a road company?” She showed her surprise. “And all the time I figured you might have had personal, shall I say romantic reasons for wanting to stay in hot, stuffy New York all this past summer.”

“Not exactly a road company—” Iris began, and stopped.

“Summer stock—in September?”

“No! I’m just going away, if you must know. Hollywood, maybe. I’ve never tried Hollywood.”

“Many others have, particularly in these days of television, without setting the Los Angeles riverbed on fire. But it’s a place to go, especially when one wants to forget a dead romance.” She stared hard at Iris.

“Romance? Heavens, no. Whatever gave you that idea? I’m the bachelor girl type—”

“So I see by the collection of evening dresses spread out for packing. Was it something that happened last evening that changed your mind about staying in town?”

Iris dropped an armful of dresses, with a clatter of hangers. “What?” She swallowed. “Why should it?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” admitted the inquisitive schoolteacher quietly. “Only you do seem a bit wrought-up today. Did some young man forget to send you an orchid, or—”

“I hate orchids! They give me the creeps. And I tell you there
isn’t
any young man! I only wish there was!”

“Was it something that happened when you were out last evening—?”

The girl shook her head, harder than seemed actually necessary. “I wasn’t out, I was home all the time!” she said firmly.

The Withers eyebrows went up. “But child—”

“Oh so it was
you
that called, then!” Iris said too quickly. “I just—well, I had a headache and didn’t feel like answering the phone, that’s all.”

“And having thought things all over here alone with your headache last evening, you came to the conclusion that you ought to stop trying to help poor Mrs. Rowan and me solve the Harrington case, and go gallivanting off to Hollywood?”

Iris came closer, eyes blazing. “That isn’t true! You don’t understand. Why should I get mixed up in a thing like that—I’m not a detective or anything. I didn’t know Midge Harrington very well, and I wish I’d never heard of her at all. I—”

“Just how did you two meet, by the way? I’m not just curious, I’m fishing for possible leads.”

Iris sighed wearily. “Oh, the usual thing. It was one of those revival weeks when they were trying to get vaudeville back at the Palace. They dug up some acrobats and a Swami who did mind reading and magic and a trained dog act and all the old corny stuff. I was playing a stooge, a straight woman, for Flip Jayen, the comic with the big cigar …”

“I thought they all used cigars,” put in Miss Withers.

“Not as big as his. Midge was in a dance act, though she only did one harem number and then a sort of poor man’s Denishawn scarf thing. We got acquainted, and when the week ended and the thing folded we decided to move in together to save money. It was just after she’d busted up with Riff Sprott.”

“I see. It must be fascinating to be in the theater. One meets such interesting people.”

“That’s what you think,” Iris told her bitterly. “The girls are mostly birdbrained and the men are all so much in love with themselves they have nothing left over. All I’ve ever wanted to do was to kiss show business goodbye and settle down in the suburbs—”

“With a husband and a bassinette and a window-box full of petunias?” The schoolteacher nodded. “They say it’s nice work if you can get it, though I wouldn’t know. But first things first. You have honest eyes, young lady, and I believe you have a conscience. I can’t believe that you are seriously considering running away right at this time, when we are tottering on the brink of success. How can you let down poor Mrs. Rowan, and that man in the death-house? Things are beginning to happen—”

“And
what
things!” Iris shuddered.

“You mean the murder last night. Yes, the man who killed your former roommate has now made the major mistake of coming out into the open again. I feel in my bones that it is a direct result of the conference we had the other day in Mrs. Rowan’s living room, and what came after. Even if the police are still too myopic to realize the significance, we three women can still alone and unaided—”

“We too can be corpses this new easy way!” the girl interrupted wildly. “Save the rest of the pep talk, I don’t want to do or die for dear old Rutgers.” She came close to her obviously unwelcome visitor. “Do you want to know really why I’m running away? It’s because I’m simply scared witless, that’s why. Do you want to know why I’m even afraid to answer my phone or my doorbell? Because the murderer knows my phone number, he knows where I live!”

Miss Hildegarde Withers cocked her head on one side, like a curious bird. “But I don’t see—after all, anyone can look in a phone book or dial Information.”

“You still don’t understand. He—he actually
called
me!”

The schoolteacher leaned back and took a deep breath. “At last!” she whispered. “Now we’re getting somewhere. He called you and tried to scare you off? What did he say? What was his voice like? How do you know it was the murderer?”

“I just know!” Iris blurted out. “I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to think about it even. The first time was early this morning. The phone rang and I picked it up and answered, and I—I heard somebody laughing.”

“
Laughing?
But—”

“I knew you’d think what you’re thinking. Anybody would. That’s why I didn’t report it to the police. I thought at first that it was just some drunk with the wrong number, or a crossed wire or somebody clowning. But it sounded sort of
wrong
, somehow.” Iris bit her knuckle. “I hung up and tried to forget it. And then about an hour ago, just when I was in the middle of reading in the paper all about what happened to that Marika woman, the phone rang again. I thought it was—well, I thought it was somebody I knew, so I picked it up. And there he was
laughing again
.”

“You said
he
?” asked Miss Withers soberly.

“It was a man, all right. But I can’t describe it. It was funny laughter, not funny ha-ha but funny peculiar. I dropped the phone, and when I picked it up two or three minutes later it was still going on, believe it or not. So I admit it, I’m scared. See why I’m packing? I’m afraid to stay here alone. I don’t want to wait and be killed like Midge Harrington, and Marika last night. I don’t want to play detective. I’m too young to be murdered, I want to live and have wonderful things happen to me, I want to get married someday and—” Suddenly the girl flung herself face down on the bed, completely unwound.

“Get control of yourself,” snapped the schoolteacher. “We are dealing with a very nasty specimen indeed, but if he had any intention of murdering you he’d be at it, wouldn’t he, instead of wasting his time on pointless, anonymous phone calls?”

Iris remained uncomforted.

“What probably happened is that your telephone line is out of order, and when somebody calls you, instead of hearing them you just hear a sort of howling on the line—like static on the radio or snowflakes on a television screen.”

Iris reached out blindly and mopped her eyes with something. Or
was
it so blindly, Miss Withers wondered—for the girl’s fumbling hand had somehow avoided clutching the chartreuse satin of what was obviously one of her best evening dresses and had caught up a cotton blouse.

“A nice performance, Miss Dunn,” said the schoolteacher as she rose to her feet. “But the audience is walking out. Laughter over the telephone indeed!” She stalked out and closed the door firmly. Halfway down the hall she stopped, tapped her front teeth with a fingernail, and then tiptoed back.

Even with her ear to the panel of the door she could hear nothing inside. But a little adroit manipulation with a hairpin pushed back the metal cover of the peephole in the door—not enough so she could actually see into the apartment, but enough so she could now finally hear Iris’ voice, low and desperate.

“… can’t wait until tonight. Bill, you’ve simply got to come now, right this minute …” She must be on the phone, then, having made a quick recovery from her fit of the vapors. But her voice was jagged as broken glass. “No, I’m not packed, but I’ll throw the stuff together somehow. What? No, not that again. But The Hat was just here snooping around, and, darling, I’m positive she’s beginning to suspect!” The rest of it was of a more intimate nature, and Miss Withers removed the hairpin and went quietly back down the hall.

“I certainly am beginning to suspect,” she said to herself. “But just
what
?”

She lurked in the downstairs lobby for exactly thirty-one minutes, and then pretended to be deeply interested in the names on the mailboxes when a young man came dashing madly in from the street and headed for the automatic elevator. Miss Withers watched calmly while the indicator rose to the 18th floor level and stopped.

“Check,” said the schoolteacher, making mental note of the fact that Iris Dunn’s Bill was tall, thin, and underfed; affected a worn tweed jacket and stained flannels, could have done with a haircut, especially on his upper lip. Hardly, she thought, a tower of strength for Iris in her hour of need.

Besides, she had seen him before. On the very first day of this investigation she had run into him at the back door of Natalie Rowan’s house. Only then he had said he was reading the gas meter.

Which seemed very unlikely. Young men who read meters do not drive expensive new automobiles. She had no doubts whatever about which one was his. A long yellow teardrop stood in a no-parking zone a little way down the street, its lines so contrived that it seemed to be moving when it was standing still. Around it a small group of neighborhood children were gathered.

“It’s a Jaguar, ma’am,” announced one grubby urchin. “British job, guaranteed to do over a hunnert ’n thirty.” Miss Withers nodded, and copied down the license number.

“All things have two handles; beware of the wrong one.”

—Emerson

“D
ON’T MOVE!” SAID THE
Inspector from the doorway as he returned to his office later that afternoon. Miss Withers, who had been shamelessly peering at the papers laid out on his official desk, gasped and started.

“Because I always want to remember you just the way you are this moment,” said the little Irishman melodramatically. Then his voice changed from syrup to sandpaper. “With your long nose in somebody else’s private business, as usual!”

The schoolteacher swiftly regained her composure, and sniffed a scornful sniff. “Sticks and stones,” she reminded him. “At least, Oscar, it’s a pleasant change for once to come into your office and not have you make rude remarks about my hat.”

Piper registered mock surprise. “Is that a
hat
? I thought maybe it was just some flotsam and jetsam left behind by the tide.” Then he dropped down behind his battered old oak desk, and sighed.

There was an odd light in Miss Withers’ eye, but she only said, “What’s the matter, Oscar? No arrest yet in the Marika murder?”

He shook his head. “I just came back from the photo files. That Fink woman ought to crawl back in the funny papers where she belongs. The boys showed her over three thousand photographs, all men known to have been mixed up in crimes of violence against women, and she can’t make up her mind about any of ’em. First she thinks maybe and then she thinks no. And then she complains that the pictures are beginning to make her eyes tired and can’t she please go home and come back some other day.”

“One can hardly blame the poor creature,” said Miss Withers sympathetically. “Three thousand plug-ugly criminal faces in one session—”

“It’s her duty as a citizen to cooperate with the police!”

“Assuredly. But when
I
try to cooperate you say I’m interfering.” She nodded toward his desk. “I see you got a report from Phoenix.”

“You don’t miss much, do you? Too bad I don’t keep a diary in my bottom desk drawer, you’d probably have skimmed through that too!”