The bride wore black (18 page)

'Ken Bliss and I and a couple of others were banded together in a sort of informal card-playing club. No dues or charter or anything like that; we'd just meet every other Friday payday for most of us for a stud session, each time at a different guy's room. Then we'd all pile into a car we owned shares in, half-soused, and go joyriding through the town, raising cain.'

"That was all he said, just in the space of time it took the dealer to fill up discards around the board. Now is that worth anything to you?"

Wanger whacked him behind the shoulder, so hard that Corey had to grab the table to keep an even balance. "It's the first break I've had!"

Wanger to superior:

"They belonged to a card club together, Bliss and Ferguson. That doesn't sound like much, does it? But it's what I've said I wanted, so I'm not kicking: the point at which their two lives crossed."

"What does that give you?"

"One thread by itself is not much good. Two crossed threads are that much stronger. Cross a few more together at the same place, and you're beginning to get something that'll hold weight. It's the way nets are made.

"Now I've got to do a lot of plodding. I've got to find out the date, that is the year, on which this Httle amateur social club was banded together. I've got to find out others who were in it, along with BHss and Ferguson. I've got to find out the dates of the month of the particular Fridays on which they got together. When I have, I've got to check those dates carefully to see if I can find just what they were up to when, as Ferguson expressed it; they went tearing around half-stewed. It may show up in the blotter of some out-of-the-way police station.

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156 THE BRIDE WORE BLACK

"Then when Tve got all that built up, I can start looking for this woman from that point on. HI have a fulcrum. I won't be suspended in midair the way I am now."

"Outside of all that," commiserated his superior, but strictly off the record, "you've got practically nothing to do. How you going to spend your spare time?"

Ten days later:

"Get anywhere yet?"

"Yeah, like a snail. I've got the year date and I've got the names of the other two members of the Friday-Night Fiends. But there's a blind spot has developed in it that I don't like the looks of. It may make the whole line of investigation worthless if I can't clear it up pretty soon."

"What is it?"

"No Mitchell. He wasn't a member of the card club; his name wasn't among them. I went checking back through dusty police blotters, and I finally hit something, like I figured 1 might. Four men in a car were pinched on a Friday for drunken and disorderly conduct, reckless driving, smashing a plate-glass window by throwing an empty liquor bottle at it as they went by and finally knocking over a fire hydrant. They spent sixty days apiece in the workhouse, had to pay the damages, and of course their license was taken away from them. Now, three of the names down on the blotter were Bliss, Moran and Ferguson. They gave their right ones, too, thank God. The fourth is a new one, Honeyweather. Also, I got their addresses at that time off the blotter. Ill have an easier time now tracing this Honeyweather, the other member, from there on. But if Mitchell had been a member of the card club, he'd have been in the jam along with them, and he's one of the four she's

killed. So Vm scared stiff that the card club has nothing to do with the killings and I'm barking up the wrong tree."

"Mitchell may have been ill that particular night, or he'd passed out and been dropped off at his home before they got into all that trouble, or he may have been out of town. I wouldn't give up yet; I'd keep on with it like you are. At least it's a positive hne of approach; it's better than nothing at all."

A week later:

"How are you coming now, Wanger?"

"Do you see this look on my face? It's that of a man about to jump off a bridge."

"Fair enough! Only first clean up these Unknown-Woman Murders. Then I'll drive you as far as the bridge approach myself and even pay the toll for you."

"All kidding aside, Chief, it's ghastly. I've finished building the thing up since my last report. I've got it all complete now, not a thing left out. I even filled in the Mitchell blind spot. And now that I'm through it has no meaning, it doesn't help us at all! It has the same drawback to it that each of these murders in itself has had: there isn't any motive there, from beginning to end, to incite to murder. Nothing they did was criminal enough, injurious enough to anyone, to precipitate a deferred-payment blood feud."

"It may be present but you haven't identified it yet. Let me hear your report anyway."

"I tried to trace this Honeyweather, the fourth member, from the address he gave that night of their quadruple arraignment. And I've lost him entirely. Gone from the face of the earth. I was able to keep up with his movements for about a year afterward and God knows he moved around plenty! Then he seems to have dropped

from sight, vanished as completely as this woman herself has only without the subsequent reappearances she makes!"

"What line was he in?"

"Seems to have been chronically unemployed. He sat in his room all day pecking away at a typewriter, from what his last landlady tells me. Then he left there and never showed up anywhere else."

"Wait a minute, maybe I can give you a lift on that," his superior said. "Unemployed pecking away at a typewriter; maybe he was trying to be a writer. They sometimes change their names, don't they? Have you got a pretty recognizable description?"

"Yes, fairly accurate."

"Take it around to the various publishing houses, see if it fits anyone you know. Now, what about Mitchell? You said you cleared that up."

"Yes. He was the bartender of a place they frequented at that time. They took him with them in the car more than once. Chiefly, I gather, because he chiseled liquor from his employer's shelves and brought it along with him each time. So that although he was not a member of the card club itself, he was very much present when they went skylarking around afterward. Which at least keeps my whole line of investigation from collapsing, the way I was afraid it was going to; those Friday-night tears in the car are still the point at which all their lives intercross. But the main difficulty still remains: they don't seem to have been guilty of anything that would warrant bringing this on, what we're up against now."

"Are you sure of that?"

"As far as all police records go, anywhere within the city limits during that period; and I've even covered the nearby outlying communities."

"But don't you realize that it was bound to be something that escaped police attention at the time, otherwise

they wouldn't still be at large today? It must have been a crime that was never attributed to them on the official records."

"More than that," Wanger said thoughtfully. "It just occurs to me it may have been a crime that they didn't even realize they committed themselves. Well, I've got a way of finding that out, too! I'm going to sift through the back files of every newspaper that came out, on the particular dates of their get-togethers. It must be in one of them somewhere, hidden, tucked away, not seeming to have anything to do with him. That's what libraries are for. That's where I'll be from now on. The tougher it gets, the harder to lick I get!"

Wanger to Fingerprint Department, by telephone:

"Well, what the hell happened to that gun? D'ja lose it? I'm still waiting for a report."

"What gun? You never sent us any gun, whadaya talking about?"

Incoherent squeak, as when a tenor voice goes suddenly falsetto. Then: "I never what! I sent you a gun to be checked over God knows how many weeks ago and not a peep out of you since! I'm still waiting! It wasn't supposed to be a Christmas present, y'know! What kind of a place are you running there, anyway? It's up to you guys to get it back to me, or didn't you know that? You're a fine bunch of crumbs!"

"Listen, thunder voice, we don't needa be told our job by anyone. Who the hell do you think you are, the police commissioner? If y'da sent us a gun to be tested, we'da sent it back to ya! How we gonna get something back to you we never got from you in the first place?"

"Listen, don't get tough with me, whoever you are. I got a gun coming to me and I want it!"

160 THE BRIDE WORE BLACK

"Aw, look up your assignment and see if that's where you left it!" Cloppl

City home of a popular and successful writer, three weeks later:

"Mr. Holmes, there's a gentleman in the outside room who insists on seeing you. He won't be put off."

"You know better than to do this! How long have you been working for me?"

"I told him you were dictating into the machine, but he says it simply cannot wait. He threatened, if I didn't come in and inform you, to come in himself."

"Where's Sam? Call Sam and have him thrown out! If he gives you any trouble, call the police!"

"But, Mr. Holmes, he is the police. That's why I thought I'd better come in and let you "

"Police be damned! I suppose I parked too long by a fireplug or something! Right while I'm in the middle of the biggest scene in the whole book, too! D'you realize this whole interruption has gone into the machine, that ni have to start over again from the end of the last record? I'm sorry to do this. Miss Truslow, but you've broken one of my first and most inflexible rules that was impressed on you over and over when you were first taken on to help me with my work. No intrusion while I'm creating, not even if the building is burning down around me! I'm afraid I won't need you anymore after today. You finish up the typing that you have on hand, and Sam will give you your check when you're ready to go home.

"Is this the man? Just what do you mean by forcing yourself in here and creating a disturbance like this? What is it you want to speak to me about?"

Wanger (softly): "Your life."

Part Five

HOLMES, THE LAST ONE

ft seemed to me behind my chair there stood A spectre with a cold and cruel smile, lifeless and motionless.

de Maupassant

THE WOMAN

T,

HERE WERE FOUR OF them in the dormitory room, all in varying stages of night attire. One was sprawled across the bed in reverse, her chin and arms dangling over the foot. One was sitting perched on the windowsill, balanced with one pointed toe touching the floor, like a frozen ballet dancer. The third was sitting on the floor, clasping her reared knees, chin atop them. The fourth and last, the only one audible, was in a chair. Not sitting in it, as that position is commonly understood. She was spread across it flat like a lap robe. One chair arm supported her elbows, her legs rippled across the other. In the middle, where she sank in to meet the part of the chair usually reserved for sitting, a book balanced unsupported, rising and falling with her bodily breath. Rising and falling fairly rapidly at the moment.

"There's a cabin waiting among the spruce and firs that needs a woman's touch. Miss Judith," he said.

"She smiled shyly and her head dropped upon his chest. His strong arms slowly encircled her.'"

At this point the reader's own shoulders twitched ecstatically, as though they were receiving the embrace in question. She let the book slide languishingly to the floor.

"I bet he's just like that himself," she rhapsodized dreamily, "Strong and reliant, and sort of bashful with

it. Do you notice how he kept calling her 'Miss Judith' right through to the end, sort of respectful?"

"I bet with you he wouldn't have been that respectful."

The girl on the chair exulted: "You bet not, I would have seen to it he stopped being that formal right after the first chapter."

The one on the bed said, "She's sure got it bad."

"I dreamed about him last night. He rescued me from an igloo that was just going to cave in."

The other three tittered. "What else did he do?"

"That was all there was time for. The eight o'clock bell woke me up dam it."

"Pass around another cigarette," somebody said.

"There's only one left."

"Oh, what's the difference? We'll get another pack for tomorrow night."

"Yes, and don't forget it's your turn to bring them in next. I supplied this one."

"All right, here goes. We'll have to open the window again. If the smoke gets out in the hall and old Fraser comes along "

The one in the chair gave a deep sigh that buckled her in the middle momentarily. "Why do you have to be old before you meet anyone thrilling, before anything exciting happens to you?"

"She's still thinking about him:"

"How do you know he isn't married, and with about thirty-two kids?"

"I know he isn't, he couldn't be."

"Why couldn't he?"

"Because it wouldn't be fair."

"Poor thing, I hate to see her suffer so."

The one on the bed said impatiently, "Oh, all she does is talk about it, and it ends there. If she ever met him face to face she wouldn't know what to do, she'd probably drop through the floor."

The chair sprawler reared defiantly. "Is that so? I'd show you a thing or two. I'd have him eating out of the hollow of my hand in no time."

Her detractor on the bed taunted, "I bet you wouldn't even get past the front door."

"I bet I would, if I ever made up my mind to! How much do you want to bet?"

"How much do you want to bet?"

"IT! bet you my whole next month's allowance from home!"

The one on the bed eyed her vindictively. "All right, mine against yours. And you either go through with it or keep still about him from now on. I'm sick of hearing about him."

"Yes, get it out of your system once and for all," one of the more sympathetically inclined listeners suggested. "It's no use just going on pining like this."

The skeptic on the bed said, "Howll we know she's telling the truth when she gets back?"

"in bring proof back with me."

"Bring one of his neckties," one of them suggested jocularly.

"No, that's no good, I know something better. She has to bring a snapshot of the two of them standing together."