Sugarfoot was surprised. “Did?” He looked at Homer blankly. “Nothing. What do you mean?”
“You know damned well what he means,” responded Noyes. “Speak up, you little prig, before I forget my native tolerance.”
“Well,” said Sugarfoot, “that’s no way to talk, Bart. I must say you’re acting rather queer. What is it you want to know?”
“You heard him, didn’t you? He wants to know where you went after you left Dick Piper’s office!”
“Went? Why, I came over here. Right over here to my office. I stayed here for a while. Yes. Then I walked back to P.D.Q.’s office. I—”
“Why did you go to Quillan’s office?” said Homer.
“To talk to P.D.Q., of course. I wanted to talk to him.”
“I give up!” muttered Noyes, and walked over to the window. “He wanted to talk to P.D.Q.!”
Sugarfoot was confused. “Why not? I think Homer understands. It’s very clear.”
“Is it?” asked Homer. “Did you think Quillan had something to do with the fracas this afternoon?”
“Of course not! But I knew he had been missing all afternoon. I thought perhaps he could tell me something about the affair.”
Noyes wheeled. “Why should P.D.Q. know anything about it?”
“Hold on,” protested Sugarfoot. “I didn’t say he knew anything. But he might have. He might have seen something. Maybe he was over near the other building when it happened. It was a wild stab, I’ll admit.” He shook his head sadly. “I know if I did discover something, I’d be advanced.”
“I don’t understand,” said Homer. “Do you mean you might have been restored to your old status as a story man if you discovered the slugger? Or were you moved, too, by a friendly spirit?”
“Both. Well—ah—I’m not exactly a good friend of P.D.Q.s, Homer. I know he doesn’t care for me. But I like Quillan. He’s sincere. He might have given me a clue, you know.”
“How long did you wait in his stockroom?”
“A while. I don’t know. Perhaps a half-hour.”
“And during that half-hour you dropped a little package?” Noyes snapped. “A little envelope?”
“What? What do you mean?”
Homer showed Sugarfoot the contents of the manila envelope. “He means this.”
Sugarfoot was confounded. His eyes were full of a panicky surprise. “Hold on, now,” he said. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Homer. If you mean I planted something in P.D.Q.s room, you’re wrong, all wrong. I knew about the last time Quillan was framed with those clippings. It was a low trick—”
“You’re damned right!” shouted Noyes. “Just low enough for a heel like you to perpetrate!”
“Well! That’s enough!” Sugarfoot’s voice shook with a mixture of anger and righteousness. “That’s quite enough, Barton! So you think that, do you?” He reached into a drawer and grabbed a handful of papers. “Then how do you account for these?”
He threw the papers on the desk top. There were a half dozen or more of the same type of clipping Noyes had found in the manila envelope. And all were marked clearly in blue pencil!
Homer studied the clippings. “Where did you find these things, Sugarfoot?”
“In P.D.Q.’s room!”
Barton Noyes’ mouth dropped open.
“On the desk?”
“Well—no. They were in the stock book. I had opened the book to sign for some art supplies.”
“I’ll be damned!” said Barton Noyes.
“Is it the custom to open the stock book?”
“It is, Homer. There wasn’t anybody in the stockroom to check what I’d taken,” said Sugarfoot. “When that happens, we usually sign the book.”
“He’s right; everybody does it,” said Noyes. “Then you took the clippings because you didn’t want them found in P.D.Q.’s room?”
“I took them because I knew very well P.D.Q. hadn’t seen them. He wouldn’t have left them in such a spot, even if he had cut them out and marked them in blue pencil. It was much too obvious. They were planted there, like the others.”
Barton Noyes ran long fingers through his hair. “I’ll be double damned!” he said.
CHAPTER 9
A Peep Out of Homer
The chill Hollywood dusk crept down from the hills and into the halls of the Piper Studios. It was the dinner hour, the hour of quiet emptiness on the lot. That was why Homer and I were making a special tour of desks, he explained. “It’s possible, sometimes, to learn a lot by studying the way a man organizes his desk top.”
We were bending over Ephy De Cluny’s little nest. It was neat. There were a few piles of Benny story sketches in one corner. A bottle of India ink in another. A copy of Harper’s magazine. A copy of Roget’s Thesaurus.
“Neat,” I said.
“A keen observation,” said Homer.
He pulled open the bottom drawer. It was crammed full of old copies of Esquire, Collier’s, Judge, Life and Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang. I flipped one open and found all the gag cartoons had been neatly clipped out.
“I change my deduction,” I said. “The guy is obviously a gag goniff. He’s pulling all his stuff from my good pals in the magazine business.”
Homer lifted a big brown envelope from another drawer. “Neat,” he laughed. “In this folder he has catalogued the gags. He probably has a system for his thievery.”
“He’s probably only trying for situation stuff for Benny,” I said. “A lot of funny men work that way, Homer. It’s called visual stimulus. You look at a picture until it suggests a gag situation.”
“Then it’s perfectly legal?”
“Up to a point.” I thumbed through the pile of story sketches De Cluny had just completed for the Benny picture. Then I made up my mind. “But the way De Cluny is doing it, it smells to high heaven of rookery. Look here—he’s swiped at least a dozen pantomime gags from Ed Nofziger’s beasts in The Saturday Evening Post!”
Homer had opened another drawer. “If nothing else, De Cluny is thorough, Hank. Look here—he’s got The Thesaurus of Humor, 5000 Jokes and How to Tell Them, The Gag File and a scrapbook of jokes as big as a phone book.”
“An original humorist,” I said, and flipped open the big scrapbook. The pages were plastered with magazine cartoons from every periodical from Hollywood to Shanghai. I recognized the work of all my old pals in the business: Schus, Nofziger, Lariar, George Wolfe, Ned Hilton and Colin Allen.
“This is the book that Lloyd must have seen,” said Homer. He returned the book to the drawer. “Aside from all that, your first observation isn’t far from wrong—De Cluny is neat.”
“A neat goniff,” I said.
The search of De Cluny’s desk almost completed our research for the day. Only Clark Threadgill’s office remained. We had already visited Mark Richmond’s pine-paneled sanctum and found nothing but a box of expensive cigars, a chrome thermos jug and a few water glasses. Homer had seemed content to examine the desk blotter, play with the water jug and give the Venetian blinds a few tentative flips.
Jimmy Boomer’s desk was his piano. We found several unfinished scores festooning it. Many others were scattered among the cigarette butts on the floor.
Cianchini’s office was a madhouse of film cans, story sketches and stale cigars. It would have involved hours of patient search to examine every one of the miscellaneous oddments he had piled upon his desk. Homer searched the top center drawer and gave up.
The others had followed in their turn. We revisited P.D.Q.’s stockroom, Sugarfoot’s office, Barton Noyes’ den, and Moses Kent’s little cubbyhole. At all of these places, Homer paused but briefly to flip through the papers on the desk tops or run through the drawers quickly.
The office of Hugh Pentecost held us longer than the others. Here Homer had a double chore, for he lingered over Ellen’s desk for a long ti
me, scanning her many memorandums. The pile of publicity blather on Hugh’s blotter intrigued him. Pentecost and his department were fighting the growing rumors in the East with counter propaganda, flowery tales of the great progress in the studio, the perfect accord among the slaves; the spirit of good fellowship on the lot. It was funny, and I laughed right along with Homer.
But all that seemed hours old. Now I was hungry. And I had lead in my legs. “What next?” I groused.
“Threadgill.”
I moaned. “Must we visit Threadgill’s emporium now? My stomach is screaming. I need food!”
“Forget it,” he said. We were out in the air again, crossing the lot at a snail’s pace.
At the main entrance Homer hesitated.
“Threadgill’s office is this way,” I said, pointing through the door. “Changed your mind?”
He motioned me back. “Just one thing more, Hank—the parking shed. Perhaps we’d better take the left side of the building this time; I’ve never walked around this way.”
The left side was very much like the right. But there was a difference. The path circled the parking lot and didn’t run between two buildings. That was why we came to a sudden stop behind a cluster of California shrubs. There were faint voices coming from somewhere dead ahead. We squatted in the shelter of the foliage.
“Can you make them out?” Homer whispered.
I strained, but couldn’t identify the murmurs. “Two guys. Or is it three?”
Homer shrugged. The muffled chatter continued for a moment and ended abruptly. We heard the sound of footsteps on the parking lot turf. I jerked my head out of our hiding place and peered into the darkness. A familiar figure was waddling through the shadows, making for the street exit.
“That’s Shmendrick, Homer.”
He joined me over the shrubbery. “He’s tall and he’s fat. What makes you think it’s Shmendrick?”
“His tail,” I said. “I’d know that jello gyration anywhere. Did you spot the other?”
Homer shook his head. “Whoever they were, they’re still in the building. Nobody’s crossed the parking lot but Shmendrick—if it was Shmendrick. Let’s go.”
Further on we could make out the vague silhouettes of several cars, parked close to the rear of the building. I counted seven. Homer must have been counting, too. “Those cars don’t mean anything, Hank. Noyes told me many of the higher paid technical men leave their cars here at quitting time. They’ve probably taken a walk along the boulevard to a restaurant and will return to the studio to work tonight.”
I pointed to a long, low roadster, nestled in a far corner. “That one doesn’t belong to any Piper slave, Homer. It has all the earmarks of a special edition.”
“It is,” said Homer. “You’ve got eyes like a second-hand auto merchant. Can you tell me the license number?”
I swallowed my comeback. We were at the door to the parking shed. The parking shed, for my money had nothing at all to do with parking, and it wasn’t a shed. It was a small, squarish building, tacked onto the rear of the main diggings, but sporting a lower roof line and no windows at all. The door itself seemed makeshift—the type of entrance you’d expect to find on a barn. My hand was on the knob when Homer tapped me on the back. I released my grip to join him in his sudden start for the right side of the building. I followed him around the side of the shed, where he stood gazing up at the one lighted window in the main building. And again we heard the sound of voices. Two? Three?
“That’s Dick Piper’s office,” Said Homer. “I’d like to take a squint inside, and there’s only one way to do it—the roof of the parking shed.”
The roof was low enough for a boost. I eased Homer to the top and managed a Douglas Fairbanks on my own. From a vantage point along the right edge we were able to look into Dick’s office at an oblique angle. It was a bad angle, for it encompassed nothing but a corner of Piper’s desk and a superb view of his swivel chair. And to make it even worse, the garbled sounds from within came to us like double talk through a wave of static. The window was open only an inch or two from the top.
“I can make out Dick’s voice,” I whispered. “But who are the others?”
“One of them is Threadgill.”
“And the other? Mark Richmond?”
“Possibly.”
“Don’t you want to make sure? Why not let me boost you up to the window ledge like I did this afternoon at P.D.Q.’s window?”
“Too much of a chance. If any of them saw me, we’d go out of here on our tails. I don’t want that. This business is getting interesting.”
We listened. We looked. Once Dick Piper sat in his chair and we had a clear view of his long face. He seemed troubled, angry; nervous. He said something to somebody. And somebody answered. He stood again. Then he walked around the desk and the light went out.
“They’ll be coming past this place,” said Homer. “We’d better get down—fast!”
We crawled to the roof edge. But it was too late. Not more than fifteen yards away from us the door opened, lighting the path in a square patch. Two men walked out. I held my breath. Homer held my arm and squeezed. They walked toward the parking lot, whispering urgently.
“Dick and Threadgill,” said Homer, in my ear.
“We’d better scram,” I said. “If one of their buggies happens to be turned this way when they switch on the headlights, my face will be red.”
We squirmed again, and then the pressure of Homer’s hand on my arm tightened. I froze. There was another man below. He appeared suddenly, head and shoulders silhouetted against the light on the ground. He drew back his torso when the sound of a motor starting reached our ears.
The headlights just missed us. The car must have been facing directly into the rear of the building. We saw the flash hit to the right of Dick’s window, then swing left and away. Whoever had been standing in the doorway missed being seen by a fraction of a minute. But where had he gone? Was he still somewhere in the building? We waited breathlessly for his return, our eyes on the patch of light.
I was squatting on my heels, Yogi fashion. But I’m no Yogi. My shanks quivered under the strain and the muscles in my legs were slowly petrifying.
“Let’s go,” I whispered. “This is—”
“Shut up!” said Homer.
I shut. The silence crept around us. A sudden sound startled me. There were two others crossing the parking lot now. They must have left through the main entrance. A car door slammed. A motor started. Headlights gleamed again. And again we were lucky—they shot their light directly into the lot, pointed toward the gate, and the car rolled away. We saw it approach the small gatekeeper’s building. Then a sudden laugh, low and long, broke the silence and died in the distance.
Homer struggled to his feet. “The show is over, Hank. I’d know that laugh anywhere.”
“Give yourself a brownie,” I said. “It sounded to me like a dying coyote. Who was it?”
“That laugh belonged to Katie Hinds.”
He was right. Nobody else in California could laugh that way. But did it mean anything? “So what?” I asked.
Homer didn’t answer. We entered the building, by the door through which we had seen Dick and Threadgill leave. It led directly into an anteroom of Dick’s office, then joined the main corridor. Homer tried Dick’s door and smiled.
“Locked,” he said. “It’s the first one in the studio that’s been barred to us.”
“Why not? Isn’t it normal to lock your door?”
“Is it? The open door seems au fait in this place. A man who preaches the gospel of brotherly love should practice what he spouts.”
“If you want to get in, we can open that window and do a Bulldog Drummond.”
“Not now,” said Homer, and led me down the corridor to Threadgill’s office.
The door was open. It was a large place, similar t
o Mark Richmond’s, and almost as barren. Homer surveyed the room from an easy chair.
“Soft,” he said. “I’ve often wondered what a company lawyer did with his time.” He rose, walked to the desk and commenced to play with a small batch of legal-looking documents. “Rubbish. An intelligent law clerk would fill this man’s job at twelve-fifty a week and Piper could save a lot on overhead.”
The desk drawers were locked. The blotter was virgin white. Homer let his eyes wander. They came to rest on the waste paper basket, and he lifted it to his lap and began to rummage through the few scraps. Then he whistled.
“A doodler,” he said, holding up a shred of paper.
It was covered with the sort of figured scrollwork you create in phone booths. There were curly-cues, done in a careless scrawl. There were geometric patterns, broken into all sorts of patterns. And there were many numbers and letters.
“So?” I asked. “The guy is a doodler. Are you going to analyze his stuff?”
“Pooh!” said Homer. He had arranged a few of the doodle papers on the desk. “The man repeats himself. He likes certain numbers: Look here—each one of these slips repeats a set of numbers: 31—9—8—9.”
He was right. The intricacies of the doodle designs were wound around these numerals. They were drawn in all sorts of ways—in a careful Spencerian scrawl, in simple blocked style and again in heavy, shadowed numbers.
“Maybe he plays the numbers game,” I suggested. “Or it might be the phone number of a pet floozie.”
“No exchange,” said Homer.
“He’d be a dope to doodle the exchange.”
“He didn’t do these things consciously. This type of artwork stems from the subconscious, and he’d likely tell us the babe’s exchange along with the phone number.” He pocketed the slips “Remind me to look at these things again.”
“I can’t remind on an empty stomach,” I said. “Do we go to eat now?”
“We eat.”
But we stalled again in the hallway. This time Homer decided to look in at P.D.Q.’s office.
I moaned. “This is the last straw and I can’t eat it. If you’re going to horse around in here, you horse by your lonesome.”
He Died Laughing Page 7
