The Paul Cain Omnibus (27 page)

I said: “Listen, Mike—something big is going to break and you’re going to be roped into it. If you’ll be on the level about this with me I can fix it.”

He shook his head again and said: “I haven’t sold any stuff for six months. It’s too tough… .”

I got up and looked down at him and said: “All right, Mike—I tried to help you.”

When I started out of the room he sat up and swung around to sit on the edge of the bed. He said, “Wait a minute,” and when I turned around and went back he said: “What’s it all about?”

I used a lot of big words and asked him again about Dale and he hemmed and hawed and finally said he wasn’t Dale’s regular connection but he’d sold her some stuff a few times. He said he’d never done business with Dale personally—it was always through her maid, a German girl named Boehme.

I told Mike I’d see that his name didn’t get mixed up with what I referred to mysteriously as the “Case” and went back out to the cab.

On the way out through Cahuenga Pass I had one of those trick hunches that I was being followed but I couldn’t spot anybody and I wasn’t trusting my hunches very much by that time, anyway.

It was pretty dark. The Steinlen house was lit up like a Christmas tree upstairs. I told the driver to wait and walked up the driveway and around to the back door. A big Negress opened the door.

I said: “I want to see Miss Boehme. It is very important.”

The Negress told me to wait and in a minute a very thin, washed-out woman with dull black hair and very light watery blue eyes came to the door, said: “I am Miss Boehme. What do you want?”

I stepped close to her and spoke in a very low voice. I told her I was a friend of Gorman’s, that Gorman had been picked up and that his address book with her name in it as a customer had been found by the police. I told her Gorman had sent word to me to reach all his customers and tell them to get rid of any junk they had around.

She acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about for a minute, but I pressed it and she finally said okay and thanked me.

Then I told her I had an idea how she could beat the whole business and get her name out of it and said I wanted to use the phone. I went past her into the kitchen when I asked about the phone because I didn’t want to give her a chance to stall out of it. I wanted to get into the house.

She looked pretty scared in the light. She took me through the kitchen, through a dark hall, into a little room that was more a library than anything else. I asked her if there were any servants in the house that might be listening in at any of the other phone extensions and she said only the cook—the Negress. She said Mrs Steinlen was upstairs lying down.

The phone was on a stand near one of the windows. There was a big chair beside it and I sat down and picked up the phone. There wasn’t very much light in the room: there were two big heavily shaded floor lamps and one small table lamp on a desk in one corner. There was enough light though to watch the Boehme woman’s face.

I dialed a number and then I pushed the receiver hook down with my elbow so that the call didn’t register and then I let the hook up again. I was turning my body to watch Boehme when I clicked the hook—she didn’t see it. She was standing by the table in the middle of the room, staring at me and looking pretty scared.

When I’d waited long enough for somebody to have answered I said: “Hello, Chief. This is Red. I’m out at the Steinlen house—I’ve got Boehme and it all happened the way we’d figured… . Mrs Steinlen flew back from Phoenix last night. She’d had some kind of steer that Steinlen was cheating so she didn’t let him know she was coming—she thought she might walk in on something. She did—she walked in on the telephone call from Mae Jackman and listened in on the phone downstairs. She got Mae’s address from that and sneaked back out and jumped in her car and went over there … Sure—she killed Mae… .”

I was guessing, watching Boehme. She’d turned a very nice shade of Nile green; she was leaning against the table and her eyes looked like the eyes of a blind woman.

I went on, into the phone: “Steinlen didn’t know anything about it—he went over and waited for Mae on the corner of Rosewood and Larchmont and she didn’t show so he came home about four. Mrs Steinlen hid out someplace—probably with a friend or at a trick hotel where she wouldn’t be recognized—Steinlen didn’t even know she was back from location till this afternoon. Then she went to the studio and either scared Steinlen into his number or killed him herself and made it look like suicide—and I’ll lay six, two, and even she did it herself… . Uh-huh—a nice quiet girl… .”

Boehme straightened up and turned slowly and started for the door.

I raised my head from the phone and said: “Wait a minute, baby.” I took Tony’s gun out of my pocket and held it on my lap.

Boehme stopped and turned and stared at the gun a minute without expression. Then she swayed a little and sank down to her knees, leaned forward and put her hands on the floor. I put the phone down and stood up and took two or three steps towards Boehme.

A woman’s voice said: “You’re a very smart man, aren’t you?” The voice was very soft, with a faint metallic quality underneath, like thin silk tearing.

Boehme toppled over sidewise and lay still.

I turned my head slowly and looked at the doorway on my left. There was a woman there in the semidarkness of the hallway. As I looked at her she came forward into a little light; she was a very beautiful woman with soft golden hair caught into a big knot at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were large, heavily shadowed; her mouth was very red, very sharply cut. She wore a close-fitting light blue negligee and she held a heavy nickel-plated revolver very steadily in her right hand, its muzzle focused squarely on my stomach.

I was holding Tony’s automatic down at my side and I didn’t know whether Mrs Steinlen had seen it or not until she said, still in that gentle, unexcited voice: “Put the gun on the table.”

She still moved towards me slowly; she was no more than six or seven feet from me. I looked at her without turning my body towards her or moving; I didn’t know whether to make a stab at using the gun or to put it on the table. She was in the full light of one of the floor lamps now and there was an expression in her eyes—the hard glitter of ice—that made me figure I’d lose either way.

I took two steps forward so that I could reach the table, but I didn’t put the gun down. I held it down stiff at my side and looked at her and tried to calculate my chances.

She said: “It is too bad so smart a man must die.”

She circled slowly until she was on the other side of the table; we were facing each other squarely across the table.

Then a shadow came silently out of the dark hallway behind her—the hallway that led to the kitchen. Tony moved towards her slowly; he walked like a somnambulist with his arms outstretched; his eyes were glazed, fixed in a blank, meaningless stare on the back of her head.

She raised the revolver slowly and I saw the muscles of her hand tense a little. I think she felt there was someone behind her but she did not trust her feeling enough; she raised the revolver and stared at me with cold, glittering eyes.

Then one of Tony’s arms went around her white throat and his other arm went smoothly, swiftly out along her arm, his hand grasped her hand and the revolver. They moved like one thing. It was like watching the complex, terribly efficient working of a deadly machine; Tony twisted her arm back slowly, steadily, his arm tightened around her throat slowly, Her eyes widened, the white transparent skin of her face grew dark.

Then suddenly the muzzle of the revolver stopped at her temple and I saw Tony’s finger tighten on the trigger. I moved towards them as swiftly as I could around the table and there was a sharp choked roar and I stopped suddenly. Tony released her slowly and she fell forward with the upper half of her body on the table, slid slowly off the table down on to the floor; the revolver with her fingers tightened spasmodically around its butt banged against one of the table legs.

I did not move for several seconds; I stood staring at Tony. He was standing with his legs widespread, looking into space, looking at some place a million miles away. Then, slowly, expression came into his eyes—a curious, almost tender expression. He glanced down at the woman at his feet and smiled a little. She was lying on her back and the small black spot on her temple grew slowly larger.

Tony smiled again and said very softly: “That is for Mae, my beautiful lady.”

I went to him very swiftly. I said: “How the hell did you get out here?” He did not answer; he stood smiling a little, looking down at the dead woman. I shook his shoulder. He raised his smile to me, said: “I have been following you all day. I saw you from the window, from that girl’s room when you went to the Derby. I went down and got in my car and waited until you came out and followed you to the studio. I have been following you all afternoon—I knew finally you would take me to the one who killed Mae… .”

I jerked my head towards the kitchen, asked: “Did the Negro girl see you come in?”

He shook his head. He said: “A woman came out and went upstairs above the garage right after you came in. Maybe that was her—maybe she lives there.” I shoved his gun into his hands. I said: “Get out of here—quick.” He shook his head, shrugged, gestured with one hand towards the woman on the floor.

I repeated: “Get out—quick.” I put my hands on his shoulders and shoved him towards the hallway.

He turned his head and stared at me in a puzzled sort of way with his lips pursed. Then he shrugged again and went slowly to the hallway and disappeared into its darkness.

I sat down and called the
Post
; after a minute or so I got Scheyer. I said: “Here’s your scoop. Sheila Dale murdered Mae Jackman. I think she murdered Steinlen, too, or at least she bullied him into killing himself—we can check on that. She shot herself about two minutes ago—very dead. I saw her do it but I couldn’t stop her. Tell your boss to hold the presses for an extra and grab a load of law and get out here to Steinlen’s. I’ll give you the details when you get here.”

I hung up and went over and looked Mrs Steinlen over pretty carefully to be sure there weren’t any marks on her throat or any chance of Tony’s prints being on the revolver. Then I went out to the kitchen and got a glass of water to see what I could do about snapping Boehme out of the swoon.

The Negress came in from outside while I was getting the water. Her eyes were big as banjos. She said: “Didn’t ah heah a shot, Mistah?”

I told her she had, that Mrs Steinlen had shot herself. Her eyes got bigger.

“Daid?” I said: “Daid.”

I went back to the library and worked on Boehme. She came around in a little while and sat up and stared at Mrs Steinlen and at the revolver in her clenched outstretched hand, then she put her hands up to her mouth and started moaning.

I told her to shut up and asked her if she knew where the check was. She acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about and I reminded her that if she’d help me all she could I’d see what I could do about forgetting the junk angle—about her acting as go-between and laying herself open to a bad rap on a narcotic charge.

She looked a lot more intelligent when I mentioned that, and when I asked her about the check again she said she thought she could find it.

I was out of cigarettes but I found some in a box on the desk. I found an old edition of
Stoddard’s Travel Lectures
on one of the shelves and I sat down and made myself comfortable and read about Constantinople and waited.

D
ecker, the big, bulldog jowled city editor, swung around and yelled: “Gay!”

The purplish moon of his face wrinkled to a scowl, split to another vast bellow:

“Gay!”

Every typewriter had stopped and a leaden, foreboding silence hung over the long room. Decker’s swivel chair wailed shrilly as he swung forward, stood up.

In the dusk of the farthest corner of the room a lanky figure slowly disentangled itself from the ill-assorted debris of a flat desktop and stalked unsteadily out of the shadows. As the light grew upon it, it materialized almost magically into a man.

Johnnie Gay stood six-foot-three in his socks. His long, leathery, good-natured face, heavily lidded blue eyes, and wide mouth went with six-foot-three.

He strolled down the double file of desks until he came to Decker’s and then he leaned forward and put his hands on the desk and very carefully and deliberately yawned in Decker’s face.

Decker leaned forward, too, and tapped a small stack of copy paper slowly with the back of his hand.

“This,” he said, “is the swellest damned newspaper story I ever read in my life.” He said it almost belligerently as if inviting argument. He raised his big head and swept the room with his scowl, repeated in booming crescendo: “… In my life!”

Gay looked very serious and bobbed his head up and down slowly.

Decker sat down. He leaned back in his chair and regarded Gay with what he probably considered a benign smile.

“Now I want you to hustle over to the Shepphard,” he said, “and get the inside on Pamela Arno’s marriage. They smuggled her in from Hollywood this afternoon and I’ve got a tip she an’ the Prince sail on the Ile at midnight. Take Peanuts with you and get some pictures… .”

He spoke very swiftly. He leaned forward, picked up an enormous blue pencil and started scribbling busily.

Gay said: “Uh-huh.” He shook his head slowly.

Decker’s head snapped back.

Gay repeated, “Uh-huh,” turned slowly away.

“Uh-huh what?” Decker’s roar filled the room.

Gay didn’t turn back. He stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered back up the room, out the swinging doubledoors at the far end. He stopped at the third door on the left in the corridor, stared sleepily at the legend:
Martin L. Beresford. Managing Editor
.

Then he went into the small outer office, closed the door softly, crossed to the one marked:
Private
. He opened it.

Beresford was leaning back in a heavily carved chair, gazing dreamily at the ceiling. His secretary was sitting beside the wide desk, her pencil poised over a notebook. They both turned swiftly to stare at Gay as he crossed, leaned lightly against the desk and smiled down at them.

Beresford cleared his throat, rumbled: “Well, sir—what can I do for you?”

He was a broad, potbellied man with heavy sloping shoulders and a curiously thin face. His eyes were small dark-brown beads divided by a narrow nose.

Gay tilted his head a little to one side, spoke to the secretary: “Will you please leave us alone, Miss Cort?”

Beresford and Miss Cort both looked vastly surprised; she glanced questioningly at Beresford and then closed her notebook, stood up and went swiftly to the door. She turned in the doorway, asked: “Would you like me to type what you’ve given me, sir?”

Beresford nodded. She closed the door softly.

Gay said: “You’ve had Decker riding me for three weeks—ever since you’ve been here. The Old Man sent you in to reorganize this sheet and that meant getting rid of me and Peanuts and Grayson as far as you were concerned. You’ve hated me ever since I showed you up for the louse you were on the old Times in Chi. You couldn’t hang the can on Peanuts or me because the Old Man liked us, so you’ve tried to work us to death—an’ tell us how good we were… .”

He slid around the corner of the desk until he was almost directly above Beresford.

“I’ve been on the Crandall graft probe,” he went on gently, “washed it up tonight. Fifty-eight hours without sleep. Now Decker puts me on the Arno story because”—he leaned, over Beresford, almost whispered—“you happen to know Pamela Arno and I were engaged, and that she gave me the air—and that I wouldn’t go near her… .”

He straightened.

Beresford stood up, cleared his throat noisily. “This is entirely uncalled for,” he blustered. “I assure you that—”

Gay smiled, said softly: “
That’s
the way I wanted you… .”

His right fist shot suddenly up and out and there was a sharp smack; Beresford’s head snapped back. There was a second sharper smack and Beresford slid slowly along the arm of the chair, crashed to the floor. He held his hands over his face, yelped: “Help!”

Gay leaned over him. “And I’ll tell you what you can do with the
Star-Telegraph
and the job,” he said. He put his hands on the chair and leaned very close over Beresford and whispered.

The door flew open and Miss Cort stood a split second on the threshold, her eyes wide with stunned horror, then she screamed.

Gay straightened and turned to smile thinly at her. He went round the desk, across to the door. Miss Cort leaned against it weakly, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide on Gay. He patted her shoulder as he passed, crossed the outer office and went out into the dim corridor.

The double doors to the city room burst open and Decker rushed out, followed by several men. He almost ran into Gay in the semidarkness, stopped so suddenly that one of the men behind bumped into him.

Gay pressed the elevator button.

“Where you going?” Decker roared.

Gay leaned close to the bars of the elevator shaft, looked down and pressed the button again. Then he turned to Decker, said softly: “To bed.”

The phone at the end of the short, almost deserted, bar tinkled merrily. The bartender picked up the receiver, said: “Hello… . Mister Gay? … Who wants ’im? … Mister Decker? …”

He turned to regard Gay expressionlessly. Gay shook his head. The bartender said: “He ain’t here, Mister Decker—ain’t been here for two or three days… .”

He hung up, waddled back to lean on the bar facing Gay. “What’ll it be? Same thing? … .”

Gay finished his drink, shook his head wearily, said: “No, Paddy—I’m going to bed.” He slid a quarter across the bar and turned away. He turned back in the doorway. “And if there are any more calls tell ’em I’m dead and don’t want to be disturbed.”

He went through a short narrow hall, turned abruptly and climbed three flights of carpeted stairs.

The phone was ringing in his apartment. He took up the receiver and balanced it delicately against the edge of the table lamp, undressed swiftly and fell into bed. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

It was about five minutes later when he was awakened by someone shaking him, launched a swing at the dim noisy disturbance that would probably have been lethal if it had landed. Instead, it whistled harmlessly through the air and Gay, following through, fell very definitely out of bed. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and his bumped head.

Peanuts Nagel gazed down at him sadly. “That’s right,” he said. “Try to kill a guy for trying to help you… .”

Gay muttered, “G’way,” and started climbing back into bed.

Nagel was a rosy-cheeked stocky youngster from Wyoming. He had the reputation of being the best news photographer in New York but he was a great deal prouder of having once been known as the best rough-and-tumble fighter in Cheyenne. He grabbed Gay’s limp shoulder and swung him around and shook him until his teeth clicked.

“Listen,” he shouted. “Decker’s on the level about this! I never saw him so worked up! He says it’s a matter of life and death!”

“T’hell with ’im.” Gay put his hands up groggily and pushed thin air.

Nagel knocked his hands down, sighed deeply, drew his open hand back and took very deliberate aim; then he slapped the side of Gay’s face, hard.

Gay snapped to his feet as if some secret spring had been released. He was suddenly fully awake; his expression was no longer weary but tight, grim, menacing.

Nagel said: “I’m sorry, Johnnie, but it’s the only way I could snap you out of it… .”

Gay took one step forward, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet. Nagel stepped back, said: “Johnnie—if you’ll only—”

The door flew open so hard that it banged against the wall and a chubby, breathless little man rushed into the room. He stood a second, blinking at Gay and Nagel, and then he trotted over and stood glaring up at Gay with blazing eyes.

“Where’s Pamela?” he demanded.

Gay stared down at him dumbly, then he closed his eyes and shook his head sharply, opened his eyes and glanced swiftly at Nagel.

He said sourly: “What the hell is this—a gag?”

“Where’s Pamela?” the little man repeated in a slightly higher key.

Nagel moved his head slowly from side to side. “All I know is Decker said I had to find you. He said Pat Mulhearn, Pamela Arno’s manager, had called up and said it was a matter of—”

“Life and death… .” Gay interrupted. He jerked his thumb at the little man. “This is Mulhearn—an’ if you’ll tell me what he’s talking about I’ll be very much obliged.”

He turned and snatched up a dressing gown from the foot of the bed, slipped into it.

Mulhearn spoke so rapidly that the words were all run together: “Pamela left the hotel at five o’clock. She came to my room and said you were in trouble and had sent for her and she was going to see you. She said she’d be back at seven at the latest.” He stuck up a pudgy hand, and looked at his wristwatch. “It’s ten after nine and I ain’t heard from her… .”

His voice had risen to a plaintive wail. He almost sobbed: “What’ve you done with her, Johnnie? …”

Except for Mulhearn’s panting it was entirely still. Gay stared from Mulhearn to Nagel, back to Mulhearn with wide bewildered eyes. Then his arm shot out and he gripped Mulhearn’s shoulder, shook it savagely.

“Is this a joke, Pat? You know we’ve been washed up for almost a year. You say she said she was coming to me? …”

Mulhearn nodded.

Gay laughed. There was bitterness in the sound of it, and a kind of joy, too.

“She didn’t mean it,” he said. “She was stringing you… .”

Mulhearn noticed the telephone suddenly, grabbed it and jiggled the hook. He called the Hotel Shepphard and asked for Suite 14-R. Then he said: “Hello, David my lad. Have you heard from Pamela?”

Then he listened, and his mouth fell open slowly and the dark blood mounted in his chubby face. He hung up and closed his mouth and swallowed.

“Somebody’s got her,” he said.

Gay leaned over the wide central table in the drawing room of Suite 14-R and studied the sheet of yellow paper intently.

The message was neatly typewritten. It read:

“If you want to see Miss Arno alive send one man to the northeast corner of 34th Street and 11th Avenue at 10:30 p.m. sharp with $100,000 in unmarked tens, twenties, and fifties. If you let the police or newspapers in on this you’ll never see her again. Remember—one man and nobody else. We mean business.”

He glanced at his watch; it was nine twenty-eight.

Prince David Sanin, Pamela Arno’s fiancé, sat on the opposite side of the table, his thin face haggard with worry. Mulhearn paced up and down, muttering inaudibly.

Sanin said: “I’ve called everyone I know—my bankers, my attorney, everyone… . It is impossible to get so large a sum that soon; perhaps if we had another hour… .”

Gay drew one hand slowly down over his face. “Did you tell ’em what you wanted it for?”

Sanin indicated the piece of yellow paper, shook his head. “I was afraid to over the phone,” he said.

Gay nodded. “How did this get here?”

“They put it under the door. I was telephoning friends to see if—uh—Miss Arno was there and when I turned from the phone it was under the door… .”

Someone knocked. Gay crossed swiftly and opened the door a little. It was Nagel.

Gay said: “I thought I told you to wait downstairs.”

Nagel edged in past him. “Sure—only I wanted to tell you the lobby is full of leg-men. Maybe somebody’s been tipped off… .”

Mulhearn stopped pacing to snap: “We’ve had reporters in our hair all afternoon. They’re after the marriage story and pictures. They know we intended to sail on the Ile at midnight, but they can’t know anything about this… .”

Gay said, “You’re sure you didn’t tell Decker what you wanted me about?”

“’No. I told him I wanted you an’ I made it strong—that’s all.” Mulhearn shook his head impatiently.

Gay crossed to one of the tall narrow windows and stared out into the darkness. It had started to rain and thin wind-swept sheets whipped across the panes, made Fifth Avenue a black and yellow blur. Gay’s face was a cold implacable mask but there was deep pain in his eyes—the shadow of tearing anxiety.

Nagel was reading the yellow paper. He whistled softly and fumbled self-consciously with the small camera which he always carried.

“Maybe I’d better get a shot of this now,” he said.

Gay turned slowly and Nagel took one look at his face and slipped the camera back into his pocket.

Mulhearn put his hands flat on the table, leaned forward and squinted at Gay.

“Who’d know about you and Pamela, Johnnie?” he asked. “Who’d call and say they were calling for you and that you needed her?”

Gay shook his head slowly. “Lots of people know about us,” he said. “But I don’t know one who’d fake a call from me and expect her to come… .”

Mulhearn said: “There’s where you’re wrong, my lad.” He glanced quickly at Sanin, went on to Gay: “This is a desperate situation an’ no time to spare people’s feelings. There’s many the time Pamela herself hasn’t been at any pains to hide the way she felt about you. I’ll stake my life she would’ve come any time you sent for her… .” There was something very suggestive of tears in the little man’s eyes. “It’s the likes of me that’s to blame for things like this—driving her away from the things she wanted, making a career for her, making her a Princess! …”

He sat down. “We got her a career,” he went on forlornly. “In less than a year she was the biggest box-office name in pictures—an’ she was almost a Princess… . And now what good is it?”