Parachute Murder

by Lebbeus Mitchell

  “Where have you been? Why haven’t you communicated with me?”

  “The hunt you started for me helped to convince certain persons that I was out of the way—and I did not want that search ended until I had followed up a clue or two, and a hunch. I don’t show myself at open windows, like the Japanese valet, nor go out in the streets without a disguise.”

  “I’ll have two men assigned to guard you—“ began Brixton, but Kemerson waved the offer aside.

  “That would make me only the more conspicuous. I suggest, however, that you get a policeman to take me handcuffed into your office. If I got out of the limousine and walked in beside you, my disguise would be penetrated at once by anyone who chanced to be on the lookout for me. And I haven’t a doubt shrewd eyes watch every person who enters your office.”

  “I’ll pick up Detective McCarthy at Twenty-third Street,” said Brixton. “He’ll probably enjoy handcuffing you. He hasn’t forgotten, nor quite forgiven, the manner in which you demolished his carefully built-up evidence in the camel’s-hair coat episode.”

  “I’ve made an appointment at your office, Walton, at which I believe we will begin to clear up the Morne case. Now let me sleep until we get within a block of your office. I have not dared to sleep for thirty-six hours.”

  “But first give me a hint of what you have discovered.”

  “That will come out during the day—and the night. A free hand until midnight is all I ask.”

  The actor settled himself in a corner of the limousine and was almost immediately asleep. He did not waken when McCarthy stepped into the car at Twenty-third Street, nor when that puzzled detective locked the handcuffs on his wrists. Brixton warned McCarthy not to mention Kemerson’s name nor the fact that he had returned.

  Kemerson opened his eyes as Brixton called his name softly within a block of the office. He smiled as he raised his manacled hands.

  “I hope you always get your prisoners as easily, McCarthy.”

  “The detective’s life would indeed be a happy one in that case.”

  “Don’t be too gentle in getting me out of the car into the building and up to Walton’s office. Be your natural self. Keen and suspicious eyes will be watching us.”

  “I’ll be natural enough, Mr. Kemerson.”

  McCarthy was as good as his word. He got out of the car and started pulling Kemerson after him.

  “Come on now, there’s no use stalling. We’ve got you dead to rights.”

  Kemerson allowed himself to be half pulled out of the limousine by the handcuffs, stumbling to the walk, while Brixton stood on the curb and watched.

  “I’ve told you all I know about the Scannell robbery,” whined Kemerson, shambling towards the entrance to the building.

  “The hell you have! You’re going to talk, and talk fast!” McCarthy gave a jerk with the handcuffs and the actor stumbled, all but fell.

  “Lay off the rough stuff, will you? You’re cutting my wrist with this bracelet.”

  “Get a move on then.” McCarthy walked rapidly into the building, pulling the bent and uncouth figure of the actor after him, through the small crowd that had quickly gathered. McCarthy continued to play his part until they were in Brixton’s office. “Sorry if I was too rough, Mr. Kemerson.”

  “Just right, McCarthy. Thanks. Now, Walton, I’m expecting Mrs. Morne and Betterling at half past ten. If you’ll have Blake brought over at the same time we’ll clear up their actions on the night of the murder. That will give me an hour and a quarter more sleep, if you’ve got a place where I can stretch out and get some of the kinks out of my back.”

  “There’s a sofa in the inner office. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll call you when Betterling and Mrs. Morne arrive—if they come.”

  “They’ll come.”

  In fact, Mrs. Morne and James Betterling arrived twenty minutes ahead of the appointed hour, but Brixton made them wait until half past ten before he would waken Kemerson. The actor appeared in his make-up as an old man, in worn and threadbare coat and trousers, hair rumpled, wrinkles about his eyes, and wearing the stubbly beard which betrayed little of its artificiality even in the strong light of a bright day. Blake was brought in a few minutes later. None of them appeared to recognize Kemerson until he spoke.

  “Mrs. Morne, I’m giving you a last chance to explain your actions and whereabouts on the night of your husband’s murder. Tell the truth now, in private, or hear it come out publicly tonight. And the same thing goes for you, Betterling, and for you, Blake. If you are innocent of complicity in the murder of Morne, that fact must be established now to eliminate you from the glare of pitiless publicity tonight when the whole truth will come out. Betterling, I am going to start with you. Where were you the night of Morne’s murder?”

  “I was east of the Hudson River.”

  “Can you prove it, here, now?”

  “I have no proof. Only my word.”

  “Have you anything to add to your reply?”

  “Nothing.”

  Kemerson turned to the press agent. “Blake, you have hitherto been evasive concerning your activities on the night in question. Instead of being asleep in your room, as you so stoutly maintained, you were in Philadelphia with a girl—”

  A sudden, sharp intaking of the breath by Mrs. Morne caused the actor to pause and dart a keen glance at her face. He noted her agitation without comment, and resumed his interrogation of Blake.

  “What were you doing in Philadelphia at two o’clock in the morning, and who was the girl with you?”

  “I am under promise not to reveal that, Mr. Kemerson.”

  “You slept in your room how many hours? Two, wasn’t it?”

  Blake lowered his head as if in assent.

  “Time enough to have pursued the Silver Lark, shot Morne as he floated to earth, and got back to New York by airplane.”

  “Have you found an airport where I engaged a plane?” asked Blake.

  “Brewster could have met you at an appointed spot. Kiyoshi’s evasion at the Happy Hours night club may easily have been with your connivance. I did not see Brewster there.”

  “He was there, Mr. Kemerson, and that was the first time I ever saw him.”

  The District Attorney spoke up sharply. “That is what you say, Blake, but you offer no explanation, no proof.”

  Kemerson gestured to the District Attorney to wait. “Mrs. Morne,” he said, “whose was the child you wished to adopt against your husband’s wishes?”

  At the suddenness of the question, Mrs. Morne turned deathly pale; her lips moved slightly but no sound came from them.

  “Who is this girl—this Lora,” continued Kemerson, relentlessly, “about whom the nuns of the convent of the Sacré Coeur in Paris wrote to you so often?”

  Mrs. Morne continued to stare at him in stunned silence, her face as white as the lace about her throat.

  “Was she the natural daughter of Chadwick Morne? Or did she bear a closer relationship to you? Why did Kiyoshi Nimura believe that you would pay handsomely for the letter with a Paris postmark which he stole from your boudoir?”

  Mrs. Morne turned eyes of distress upon Betterling.

  “You should ask me about the child,” said Better-ling. “Lora is my daughter.”

  “Then why did Morne’s Japanese valet seek to blackmail Mrs. Morne instead of you?”

  “She is my daughter, too!” cried Mrs. Morne, springing to her feet in great agitation, and going to Betterling. “She is as much my responsibility as she is yours, Jim. I won’t see you taking it all on your shoulders. Yes, Mr. Kemerson, Lora is my daughter—our daughter. I wanted to adopt her, but Mr. Morne would never consent. I think he wanted to punish me because I had loved a man before I married him. He suspected she was my own daughter but was never certain. She was born in Paris, and I left her there with the nuns at the convent. I was dependent then upon my profession for a living, and I wanted her never to learn there was a stain of illegitimacy on her name. After I retired from the stage I wante
d her with me—to adopt her, to love her, keep her always with me. She would have been a little French girl to all my friends, a war orphan I had taken to raise as my own child—“ Mr. Brixton interrupted the tearful woman. “Why, then, did you marry Morne instead of the child’s father?”

  “Permit me to answer that question, Mr. Brixton,” said Betterling. “I was married at the time. Mrs. Morne, or Doris Davis as she then was, was a member of my stock company in St. Louis. I fell in love with her. I repeatedly asked my wife for a divorce, but she would never consent. She did not want to see me happy with another woman. She loved me, too, in her possessive way, and clung to me as she did to her other possessions. And Doris did not then believe in divorce; thought it wrong for me to put away my wife when she still loved me. My wife died a year ago in a sanitarium in Connecticut. I have wanted my daughter, too; to share her with her mother. That is why I at last persuaded Doris to seek a divorce from Morne, that we might be married and have our daughter with us. She knows we are her parents but not that we are not married. The child grew unhappy in the convent, and we wanted her near us, so we had her sent to New York. She arrived two days before Morne’s airplane flight and murder. Mr. Blake was good enough to find a place where she could stay while we were arranging for her to be taken into the home of my wife’s old nurse in Philadelphia. We did not wish to be seen taking her to that city, and arranged for Blake to take her, at night when there would be no occasion for anyone to question his absence from the city should it be discovered. He agreed to take her to Philadelphia late at night, after he was through with his duties at the theatre. That is what took him to Philadelphia on the night of Morne’s murder. That can all be proved by Mrs. Watson, my wife’s old nurse, who was with her when Lora was born and who now has our daughter.”

  “At last we are getting somewhere,” said Kemerson. “Where were you that same night?”

  “In a Connecticut farm house.”

  “And Mrs. Morne was with you?”

  “Yes. We had driven to my place in Connecticut on which I am going to have some repairs made in preparation for our marriage, and for receiving our daughter. Returning to New York late at night my car broke down as we neared the state line. We were far from a garage, and we spent the night at a farm house which accommodated tourists. You will find our names on the register—James Betterling and Doris Davis.”

  “Why not Doris Morne?”

  Betterling stared. “I think the answer is quite evident. I wanted no cause for scandal. When we arrived in the city the next day and learned that Morne had been murdered, I judged it best not to let it be known that Mrs. Morne had been out of the city, least of all that we had spent the night in the same farm house. If the newspapers had got hold of that—well, you know how they would have played it up. We got Blake’s promise not to say anything about having taken our daughter to Philadelphia.”

  “Blake, do you corroborate Mr. Betterling’s statement?” asked Kemerson.

  “Yes, every word of it; even to their going to his Connecticut farm. Or at least I knew they intended to go there, and Mrs. Morne told me later about their car breaking down.”

  “If the three of you had been as frank with me at the beginning, you would have saved yourselves much worry and discomfort,” observed the actor. “Nothing of what you have told me would have gone further as no evidence has developed to connect you with the murder of Morne.”

  “There was Lora and her mother to protect,” replied Betterling. “I trust that nothing I have told you, Mr. Brixton, will go further—get into the newspapers.”

  “Not if you have told the truth at last,” said the District Attorney. “Your alibis will be checked. If they are true I see no occasion for publishing the information you have given. You have yet to clear yourself, however, of any complicity in the death of the Japanese valet.”

  “I have told you the exact truth about our relations with him.”

  “What was in the letter you got from Morne’s apartment the night you locked me in?” asked Kemerson.

  “A letter about Lora from the nuns. Morne had written to the convent in an effort to find out who the child’s father was. We knew he had received a reply, and did not want the police to discover the letter. Morne’s valet was evidently seeking the same letter, or anything else which would serve his purpose of blackmail.”

  “It was Kiyoshi, then, and not Brewster who fired at me?”

  “Yes. I flashed my light on him as I turned it away from you. How did you learn about Lora and the letters from Paris, Mr. Kemerson?”

  “I had a pretty good idea of how matters lay from your own actions and from what the butler told me. The clinching information I got from the letter that Kiyoshi purloined from Mrs. Morne’s bedroom. Among his possessions I found a baggage check which I presented at Grand Central Station. I found the letter in Kiyoshi’s checked suitcase; it will be returned to Mrs. Morne after your statement tonight has been verified, or the murder has been cleared up. I think there is nothing more I have to ask you, but tonight at ten o’clock I want both you and Mrs. Morne—you, too, Blake—to be at the projection room of Atlas Pictures Corporation in West Forty-sixth Street to watch an experiment which I have some hopes will solve the parachute murder case, including the murder of Kiyoshi.”

  Mrs. Morne was still shaken from the ordeal through which she had gone, and Betterling supported her out of the office, after she had thanked Blake for his attempts to shield her from too close questioning.

  “Kirk, what is this experiment at the Atlas Projection room tonight?” asked Brixton.

  “I have strung together my theories in a concrete manner, and want the suspects to see them unfolded. I shall want Vanuzzi, Brewster, Betterling, Mrs. Morne, Blake, Mrs. Delano and Miss Vane to be present as well as two or three others whom I shall invite. Will you have your men round up Brewster? Without him the party is off.”

  “He is under surveillance and will be there, but aren’t you getting rather theatrical in your investigation?”

  “Am I not an actor? Drama, situations, emotions are my stock in trade. What harm in carrying them into the detection of crime? You may answer that question after you see my demonstration, or experiment, tonight. I shall attempt to work upon the emotions of the suspects as I try, on the stage, to work upon the emotions of the audience. If I am a good psychologist and a good actor and stage director the experiment should succeed. I shall require the services of three or four policemen in addition to those who guard Vanuzzi and Brewster. If you have two detectives who look like ordinary citizens, manage to seat them on either side of Brewster, or just behind him. I fancy he may feel inclined to leave in a hurry, and I would hate to have my little party interrupted. And keep two or three officers outside the door.”

  “Any other orders?” asked the District Attorney, facetiously. “A police wagon or an ambulance?”

  “A police wagon by all means. Thanks for the reminder. A physician at your own expense might also be a good idea. And now if you will be good enough to have a policeman take me in a taxi to an address which I will give the driver I shall come out a different man.”

  CHAPTER XXVII — A CRIME IN SHADOWS

  THE projection room of the Atlas Pictures Corporation was a talking picture theatre in miniature, with a seating capacity of a hundred. There were a dozen or so persons in the little auditorium when Lieutenant Brewster was brought in by two uniformed officers and conducted to a seat half way down. One of the policemen sat beside him. A few minutes later two burly men in civilian dress quietly took the end seats in the row back of him.

  Brewster let his eyes roam about the auditorium, noting every person present—Vanuzzi with a policeman on each side of him, Stephen Blake and Edith Vane sitting together, Mrs. Delano, District Attorney Brixton near the center of the room with James Better-ling and Mrs. Morne at his side. At the back of the room, almost hidden by half a dozen policemen, was Chester Garman, the real estate agent. Several very husky detectives in plainclothes occ
upied seats near the entrance.

  “The police are out in force,” observed Brewster to the officer at his side. “Are we going to see a picture? Does the District Attorney wish to entertain all the witnesses and suspects in the parachute murder case?”

  “Don’t ask me,” replied the policeman. “I was told to bring you here and that’s all I know about it.”

  “It’s too bad Kentaro Kawatami can’t be here. He was a movie fan.”

  “Well, if we are to be treated to a movie I hope it’s a good one—a George Arliss or a Lionel Barrymore. There are two real actors. I never miss one of their pictures at our neighborhood theatre.” The policeman had lowered his voice in deference to the air of quiet expectancy which prevailed.

  “Tom Mix and Jack Holt are more my style,” said Brewster. “Why is everybody so quiet? It might be a funeral.”

  “Don’t ask me,” repeated the policeman.

  The lights in the auditorium were gradually dimmed until the windowless projection room was in absolute darkness. The policeman pressed an arm tightly against Brewster’s side.

  “Afraid I’ll walk out on the show, buddy?”

  “You wouldn’t get far. Notice the men outside the door?”

  “I’m not blind.”

  “Two of the best shots on the force.” The officer lapsed into silence.

  In the darkness and the silence, the feeling of nervousness which overtakes many persons when they can see absolutely nothing became evident: a nervous shifting about in seats, a breath sucked in audibly was heard; someone whispered; a man coughed, tried to stifle it. More coughing followed; throats were cleared; a renewed rustling as of leaves in a wind arose.

  “I’ll scream if something doesn’t happen soon,” said a feminine voice, with a note of urgency.

  Brewster did not stir, but the policeman at his side shifted in his chair; his hand closed about Brewster’s arm. Another hand rested on the back of his chair, the fingers touching his shoulder. Brewster leaned forward and the clutch on his arm tightened.

  Without warning the roar of a starting airplane engine came from the screen as a ray of light leaped from the operator’s booth in the rear diagonally down to the silver sheet, throwing upon it the picture of an airplane in night flight. It was a passenger plane, for its half dozen windows were lighted up, and human heads were silhouetted in them. The plane turned and headed straight out towards the auditorium, then nosed sharply upward as a searchlight beam fell athwart the under side of its body, picking out the name, the Silver Lark.