Bruno Fischer

by J. Max Gilbert

  “You do know?”

  “George Moon,” I said.

  She frowned up at me. “But that's what we were so sure of in the beginning, and we thought we were wrong.”

  “The irony is that we were right. Everything pointed to Moon. You had told him over the phone that the bag was in the car. He'd be expected to hurry right over for it, but he never showed up. The answer seemed to be that he had come without being seen and got it by murdering Vital for it.”

  “But when he didn't have the bag . . .”

  “It put us off the track,” I said. “Now that we know where the bag was all along, we're back to the original answer. Both men are dead, so we'll never get the exact details, but it's not hard to see what happened. Moon headed directly for the garage. Why ring the bell and ask for the bag? We might ask him to identify himself and prove he was Teacher's brother and perhaps decide to turn over the bag to the police. It was simpler to go and take it without fuss if he could. Vital must have just forced the car trunk open when he saw Moon come down the driveway. His escape was cut off. He hid the bag under the junk in the cabinet and then came forward to meet Moon as he entered the garage. Vital wasn't armed, but he knew that Moon didn't like to carry a gun, so they were on even terms. Probably it started merely as an argument.”

  Esther said: “I was in the house. I didn't hear a thing.”

  “They would have kept their voices low. Moon always did anyway, argument or no argument. There they were, two men who hated each other. Each knew why the other was there, of course, and Moon saw the forced car trunk. I think that Vital told Moon that I had tricked him, that I had guessed at the value of the bag and had hidden it. He was anxious not to let Moon suspect that the bag was still in the garage. But that didn't save him. It wasn't the best time and place for a careful man like Moon to kill anybody, not even a man he was committed to kill for doublecrossing him. Maybe Moon lost his head, the way those slow-moving, slow-speaking men sometimes do, or maybe Vital made a gesture Moon thought was toward a gun. The tire iron was right there in the open car trunk. All Moon had to do was stretch out his hand for it.”

  “And then left without looking for the bag.”

  “At any rate, without finding it,” I said. “Probably he made a hurried search of the car and the garage. If he opened the cabinet, it seemed to contain only the usual junk you expect to find in it. What was more reasonable than that I had become suspicious when two different men had wanted the bag within a few minutes. And he'd come on Vital without warning, as he thought, and Vital hadn't had it, and a garage was hardly the place where I would have hidden a thing as big as that. But the main thing was that Moon was in a terrific hurry to get out of there. It isn't healthy to linger in a place where you've just murdered a man, especially when there are houses and people all around.”

  Esther shuddered. “He might have come into the house.”

  “No. That was the one thing we were spared. With a murdered man in the garage, and one who'd been part of his organization at that, he wouldn't want to be seen in the neighborhood. His size made him too easy to identify. He had to take the chance that I wouldn't hand the bag over to the police. If I still had it next day, he would try to buy it from me or use more drastic methods to get it.”

  “How can you be certain that was what happened?”

  “The proof is Moon's absolute certainty that I had the bag. He knew that the murderer hadn't taken it, because he was the murderer. That left me.”

  “And next day the police searched only the house”' The giggles started again. With an effort, she controlled them.

  “You can't blame the police,” I said.

  “Monday night they'd spent hours in the garage on the usual routine after a murder. Vital had been murdered for the bag; therefore, the murderer had taken the bag with him. They searched the house and my place of business because there was a possibility that I was the murderer or else had hidden the bag before Vital was killed. A garage is no place to hide anything. But a house with all the nooks and . . . “

  The doorbell rang.

  My heart leaped and settled back into place. There was no longer reason to fear the ringing of a bell. The crooks were in jail and the police were welcome.

  “Answer the door, baby,” I said, “while I put this stuff back in the bag.”

  Esther went out to the hall. I heard the door open and her friendly greeting and then I heard a husky voice I would never forget.

  “It’s Miss Crane,” Esther called.

  “I’ll be out in a minute.” I had all the stuff back inside. I lifted the bag.

  “Hello, Adam,” Molly said.

  She had come into the living room with Esther. She wore her short belted blue coat and the wide blue ribbon tied around her honey-brown hair and the broad double earrings like wedding rings. Beside her, Esther, small and trim in a simple cotton house dress, looked girlish.

  “How are you, Molly?” I said.

  “I’m trying to fight off a cold.” She wasn’t looking at me, but at what was in my hands. “I came to see if you’d recovered.”

  I put the bag down on the table. Molly came forward. “So it was here all along, Adam?”

  Esther said quickly: “This morning I found it in the garage cabinet. Adam didn’t know it was there.”

  Molly moved to the table and touched the slit in the bag and let her hand fall away. “I suppose Jasper Vital hid it?”

  “Just before Moon came into the garage and murdered him,” I said.

  She nodded: “It had to be something like that to make Moon positive you had the bag.” She uttered a short, bitter laugh. “And it was in the garage for anybody to simply walk in and take.”

  I said quietly: “For you and Larry Goodby to walk in and take.”

  Molly smiled. It wasn’t a major effort. The smile was frozen at the comers and didn’t extend to her eyes.

  “Larry and I,” she said wryly. “Oh, come, Adam, not Larry and I. He was hardly my type.”

  “Jasper Vital and you,” I said. “A handsome lad a woman could easily fall for. Was he your husband?”

  Molly, thrust both hands into her coat pockets. An elbow held her alligator handbag against her side. “Not exactly my husband, but the nearest thing to it. Toward the end I almost told you, when we were . . .”

  Her face started to turn toward Esther and stopped and came back to me. “I didn't want you to think too badly of me. But you knew, anyway.”

  “It built up,” I said. “I don't mean because you brought me to your apartment to pump me, and kept your gun always handy, and went with me to Tilly's, and knew a lot of answers. All that could be explained by the fact that you were a newspaper reporter. But there was the coincidence of you driving along that particular street a few moments after Larry slugged me, and the assault was all wrong. A boy could have smashed in my face with a kick, but Larry kicked me twice and didn't do much more than bruise me, though he had plenty of reason to hate me. But coincidences happen and maybe I’d kept Larry from hurting me more. I wasn’t sure of anything about you until you tried to save Larry’s life.”

  Esther’s wide, bewildered eyes kept shifting from Molly to me and back.

  At the moment she was out of it, a spectator. This was between Molly and me.

  “You tried to save Larry’s life,” I went on, “but he did save yours, and mine too. He was watching your window from the car in the lot. You’d phoned him that morning when you when you went down to buy rolls. He was to hang around Tilly's place under cover in case you got into serious trouble and needed him. And when I caught him, he didn't give me away to Moon. He had no reason to want to protect me, but if he told Moon that I was Adam Breen, he would also be exposing you. So he kept quiet, and that told me beyond a doubt that you two were working together. There was irony for you. The story I wanted the police and Moon to believe, that you and Larry had planned my abduction, was true after all.” I paused and then added: “For a while I thought you really were Clara Dar
by.”

  Molly took her right hand out of her coat pocket and let her handbag slip down to her fingers. “I'm not Clara Darby, you can believe that. I got friendly with her a couple of years ago when she and her mother came down to Florida for a few weeks.”

  “I know you’re not. This morning the police spoke to your father in Baltimore.”

  A shadow crossed her face. “What did my father have to say?”

  “That he wasn’t surprised the police were asking about you and wasn’t interested.”

  “He would,” she said bitterly. “My mother died when I was fourteen. My father hadn’t time for me. I guess I was wild anyway, but the way he ignored me didn’t help. When I was nineteen, I left home and never came back. And then he blamed me because I wasn’t the kind of daughter Dr. Crane could be proud of.” Molly scowled as if at herself. “I’m not making excuses. I’m not ashamed of anything I did. Not even . . .”

  She stopped. I knew what she meant, and I was angry at her for having come here. I glanced at Esther who was watching with a kind of breathless fascination that tall, attractive woman.

  “Two years ago I met Jasper Vital in Miami,” Molly continued as if relating something remote in time and not particularly important. “He was nicer than the men I had known. Not only handsome. Considerate and kind. To me, anyway.”

  “I owe his memory something,” I said dryly. “He didn’t let Larry come into the house and force Esther to give up her car keys. He sent Larry away with me because he was afraid that the three of us hanging around the garage would bring Esther out of the house got the bag and Moon wouldn’t have had the chance to kill Vital. If Larry had stayed, they would have got the bag and Moon wouldn't have had the chance to kill Vital.”

  “That was Jasper all right. He had a soft spot for women. He kept me away from his racket. Moon and Rufus Lamb and others came down to Florida occasionally, but none of them saw me or even heard of me. That was why I could go openly to Tilly’s.”

  “Just an innocent lass,” I sneered. As soon as the words were out, I regretted them.

  Her gold-flecked eyes looked at me without emotion. “I knew what the score was. I knew what money was paying my rent and buying my clothes. When Jasper and Larry decided that they were being rooked by Moon and came north to eliminate him and take over the organization, I didn’t hesitate to come along. And when Jasper was murdered, I took up where he had left off. I wanted what was in that bag. You were right, Adam — Larry’s attack on you was planned. I wouldn’t let him torture you. I persuaded him that I could make you talk in my own way. But you were too much for me — or I thought you were. I couldn’t understand why, having the bag, you would want to go to Tilly’s. You remember how I tried to talk you out of it. What I was really doing was making you talk so that you would tell me things. When that didn’t work, I went with you to Tilly’s, because I was sure at that time that you had the bag.”

  I shook my head. “That’s only part of it.”

  “Is it?” Molly stepped backward, not taking her eyes off me. Her hands fumbled at the catch of her handbag. “What’s the other part, Adam?” she said softly.

  She shouldn’t have come here. She was making more of a mess of it than it already was.

  “I don’t have to put it into words,” I said.

  Molly twisted her head to Esther who stood with the rapt expression of a child listening to tales of ghosts and witches. “You can’t understand a woman like me, can you Mrs. Breen?” Molly said mockingly. “That’s why you’re the right wife for Adam.” She turned back to me, and a reckless grimace lifted one corner of her mouth. “So you know that too, Adam?”

  “Why talk about it?”

  “Say it, Adam. You’ll say worse about me in a little while. Say I killed George Moon.”

  A sound came from Esther. It was less than a gasp, hardly more than a sharp intake of breath. Molly was right. Esther would never be able to understand her or even quite believe in her reality.

  “You’re anxious to find out from me if there’s evidence,” I said to Molly. “I doubt it. I guessed because I was so close to you all the time. There was the pattern — a woman avenges the murder of the man she loves. More than that, there were overtones of moods, emotions, attitudes. Your changing moods at Tilly’s had me bewildered. You wanted to leave and at the same time you remote, gay and sullen, intense and apathetic. You were a woman under the terrific stress of making up her mind to kill a man. You were dressing when I came into the room after finding Moon’s body. You were ready to leave in a hurry, and at the same time you no longer seemed to care much about what was happening. You’d done your job, you’d had your revenge and there was nothing left for you.”

  Molly waved a hand across her face as if brushing away an invisible obstruction. She said wearily: “It seems pointless now. I felt it was something Larry and I had to do. The gangster’s code of vengeance, and we were gangsters, weren’t we?” She laughed tonelessly. “Larry didn’t think you’d had time to kill Jasper. He would have got the bag out of the car and left before you could have returned. We figured it was probably Moon because we knew he was also coming for the bag. But he hadn’t the bag, which meant that you had it. There were different angles to the two things I wanted — the bag and the killer. But I had to be certain that Moon was the killer. You remember he took me drinking and dancing Thursday night. I told him that in New York I had heard that a man named Breen had killed Jasper and then had stolen a valuable bag which had belonged to him, Moon. He smiled and said that Breen hadn’t killed Jasper, but that he had the bag. He was so sure and kept smiling, and that told me what I wanted to know. And then later that night, when we all stood around Larry's body, he said something else.”

  “I remember,” I said. “Moon said that a few days ago there had been two rats and now there was none. If that meant anything, it meant that he had killed them both,”

  “Yes.” Molly opened the catch of her handbag and snapped it viciously shut. “I wouldn’t have killed him!” she burst out. “All at once I saw that it wasn’t important to me whether he lived or died. And I saw that Jasper hadn’t been very important to me, either. Maybe it was because I’d met you. I’d never known a man like you; you made me see things differently. The bag was still important, yes — it was worth something, but murder wasn’t.” She stared at the floor. “And then they shot down Larry.”

  I didn’t get it. “Did Larry mean so much to you?”

  “No. Larry was a mug. But he worshiped me. I think he would have given his life for me. In a way he did. He knew the danger of coming to Tilly’s and watching over me. He didn’t expose you because he knew that would expose me. And Moon had him shot down. I hadn’t cried when Jasper died, but that night I cried.”

  I looked at Esther. She had retreated all the way to the club chair. One hand gripped the high back. Her eyes were never so big and dark.

  Then Molly was saying in a voice suddenly strong and crisp: “I hate to do this, Adam, but I want that bag.” I turned back to her. She had opened her handbag and had taken a gun out of it.

  This, one was a revolver and bigger than her pearl-handled automatic, but she held it as steadily and competently. The muzzle pointed at my heart.

  There was' a breathless moment of silence and then I heard Esther start to whimper. She leaned one hip against the club chair and stared at the gun as if it were an incredible thing from another world.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” I told her. “She’s not going to shoot anybody.”

  Molly said: “All I want is the bag.” I hadn’t moved from the table since Molly had entered the room. The bag was no more than twelve inches from my hand. I put the backs of my thighs against the edge of the table. “So you knew the bag was here, Molly?”

  “Oh, God, I told her!” Esther’s fingers clawed at her mouth. “She phoned me this morning that you were safe and resting, and I asked her to tell you to call me as soon as you awoke because I had found something important.”<
br />
  “She was too excited to be subtle,” Molly commented. “So I came here as soon as I could.”

  “With a gun,” I said dryly. “Moon had taken your automatic. You were delayed getting another gun.”

  Her mouth had a to-hell-with-it twist. She didn’t like to do this, but she could do whatever she thought she had to. Her broad shoulders were very square. She looked as indomitable as when she had faced Moon and Rufus and the others in the sitting room with a smaller gun in her hand.

  “Listen,” she said. “Once George Moon was offered one hundred thousand dollars for those tools. That was during the war when cars fetched almost any price in the black market. Now they’re worth less — say fifty thousand dollars, or at least twenty-five thousand. I know some men who’ll put cash, on the line for them. Listen! We’re the only three people who know you have the bag. I’ll handle the sale and give you half.”

  “You know the answer, Molly.”

  “At least twelve thousand dollars for your share. Maybe double that. Adam, think of what you can do with all that money.”

  “You’re a good salesman,” I said, “but not that good.”

  Her head jerked back. The yellow flecks in her gray eyes glittered. “An honest man!” she said derisively. “Do you know what your honesty did?”

  “I know.”

  “Jasper offered you five hundred dollars for that bag. Do .you know what would have happened if you had taken it? Jasper and Larry wouldn’t be dead how. I wouldn’t have killed George Moon. Your wife wouldn’t have gone through hell, and you and I through worse than that. What did honesty get you?”

  I said: “You’d better go, Molly.”

  “Go?” She brought a hand up to her face and realized the gun was in it and turned the muzzle back toward me. Suddenly there was a fever in her gray eyes and her red lips quivered. “I thought you’d be like that, Adam. That’s why I brought a gun. I’ll go with the bag. Get away from the table.”

  “Don’t do it, Molly,” I said. “You’ll compel me to tell the police that you went off with the bag.”