Nipped in the Bud

by Stuart Palmer

  “At last!” breathed Miss Withers, looking hard at the Kell girl. “You might as well relax,” she said pleasantly. “It’s all among friends. I was just telling Dallas that I am ringing down the curtain on your amateur theatricals. I’ve come to take you back home.”

  Ina seemed to shrink. She flashed an appeal at Dallas Trempleau, who nodded and said, “Ina, it actually seems to be the thing to do.”

  “But—but we don’t have to go! Nobody can make us!”

  “Perhaps not. But Miss Withers has pointed out that our staying here any longer may hurt Winston’s chances.”

  “And besides,” said the schoolteacher, “now that I’ve found you I haven’t the slightest intention of letting either of you out of my sight, so what’s the use?”

  Ina shook her bright head wildly, like a spaniel coming out of the water. “You mean, I actually do have to go back there and testify in court?” She sounded desperate, and confused.

  “Tell the truth, child,” said Miss Withers. “And shame the devil.”

  “But—but if I testify, they’ll find him guilty and hang him! And it’ll be all my fault!”

  “If Gault murdered a man, then he must be punished,” the schoolteacher said.

  “But he didn’t!” Ina’s normally gentle chin was defiant. “If I testify I’ll have to tell the truth and back up what I said before, only it won’t be the whole truth and it’s not fair!”

  “You too?” Miss Withers shook her head. “You maintain that in spite of everything the man is innocent when you yourself caught him practically red-handed? What, I wonder, is this strange power that Junior Gault wields over women, I mean young women?”

  “It isn’t that.” Ina was trembling. “Honestly, I’m not hypnotized or anything. B-b-but honestly, you don’t understand….”

  “Then tell her, Ina,” Dallas said coolly.

  “D-d-do I have to?” Ina shrunk in upon herself.

  “Your teeth are chattering,” observed the schoolteacher critically. “What are you afraid of, child? Nobody is accusing you of anything. Is there anything you’d like to tell me—alone?”

  Dallas Trempleau shrugged and half-rose to her feet as if to leave the bedroom, but the younger girl said quickly, “Oh, no, of course not! I mean—I guess I just took a chill sitting out there in the car, with the sea fog rolling in and everything. I wish—Dallas, is there any brandy?”

  “Why, yes, down in the car. I’ll run get it; we could all use a snort.”

  “Coffee might be more to the point,” put in Miss Withers hopefully.

  “I’ll get the thermos filled,” Dallas said agreeably. But as she rose and moved toward the door, Ina was quicker.

  “I’ll run down and get it,” the red-haired girl cried breathlessly. “I should, shouldn’t I? If I’m your companion then it’s my job to run errands, isn’t it?” The door slammed behind her.

  Dallas Trempleau looked dazed. “You don’t suppose she’s running away, do you?” demanded Miss Withers.

  “I don’t think so. But little Ina is on the unpredictable side sometimes. Anyway, she couldn’t run very far—she had a bad run of luck at the jai-alai games tonight and I don’t think she has more than a few dollars left.” Dallas frowned. “Perhaps I’d better run down and see what she’s really up to—”

  “No, you don’t!” The schoolteacher fumbled beneath the other pillow, and came up with the little .28 pistol. “You’re not going anywhere!”

  “Okay,” said the girl, and sat down and calmly lighted another cigarette. “Though I can see that you couldn’t hit a barn door with that gun. You don’t trust me, do you, Miss Withers?”

  “I don’t trust anybody.” And there was a strained silence until at long last the outer door burst open and back came Ina Kell loaded down with a bottle, a thermos and a bulging paper bag. She had, she explained, had to walk blocks to find a clean-looking all-night lunchroom.

  Even so it turned into quite a feast, with coffee drunk out of bathroom glasses and Talley the poodle gratefully finishing off the remains of the chicken enchiladas. The coffee was strong enough to float a spoon, but it was comfortingly hot. Miss Withers had a refill or two, but refused the brandy with which both the girls laced their own. After all, it was their tongues she wanted loosed, not hers.

  In the somewhat more relaxed and cozier atmosphere, the schoolteacher plumped two pillows together behind her back and took the floor. “Now!” she said firmly. “Let’s get down to cases. All I know about this business is what the inspector and Mr. Hardesty chose to tell me—the latter, Ina, being very disappointed in you.”

  Ina said quickly, “But if he knew why I ran away, he’d understand.”

  “Perhaps he would, but I most certainly do not. Of course, it’s only by hearsay several times removed that I know anything about what happened in Tony Fagan’s apartment that morning last December. Young woman, just what do you mean when you say that Winston Gault, Jr., is innocent but that if you tell the truth in your testimony you’ll convict him?”

  It was a moot point. Ina hesitated, looking at Dallas Trempleau, who nodded encouragingly. “Go on,” Dallas said. “She’s supposed to be an expert.”

  “Well—” Ina studied her long, pale fingernails. “I’ll have to start at the beginning.”

  “Of course.” Miss Withers smiled. “‘Go on until you come to the end and then stop.’ That’s from Alice.”

  “I hadn’t slept a wink all night,” Ina said. “I was charged. My first night in the city and all that, I just couldn’t sleep. So I lay there and listened. The city at night is full of noises, you know, and I amused myself by making up stories about everything I heard—the foghorns and steamship whistles and taxis and sirens and the voices and the tinkle of the milkmen’s carts. It was childish, I guess.”

  “Go on,” said the schoolteacher. “Believe it or not, I spent my first night in New York City once, when I was young and full of fancies.”

  Ina smile gratefully. “Well, I heard the fight next door, in the same apartment where there’d been the party earlier. So I peeked out of the door and heard the loud final crash, and then I saw Mr. Gault come out after a few minutes and go on down the hall. But—but I didn’t go right out then and there and find the body, the way the police think. I—I—”

  “What did you do, child?”

  “I closed the door and went back inside. It was five or maybe ten minutes later that I began to think about how quiet the next apartment was, nobody moving around or anything. Then I remembered that I hadn’t heard the door close when Mr. Gault—I mean when the man I know now was Mr. Gault came out. Whoever was inside, the other man in the fight, should have closed the door and I should have heard him moving around and cleaning up or having a drink or going to bed. It was just like waiting for a clock to strike.”

  “Or for the man in the hotel room overhead to drop his other shoe,” said the schoolteacher. “I know exactly.”

  “So then I guess I got curious,” Ina confessed. “I got to imagining I did hear things out in the hall. So I couldn’t stand it any longer and so I went out and down the hall and found the body. But don’t you see? There had been time for someone else to come and find the door open and Mr. Fagan lying there unconscious, and kill him.”

  Miss Withers sniffed a dubious sniff. “But after all, you seem to have heard everything else that went on that morning. You’d certainly have heard anybody going down that hallway and back again!”

  Ina shook her head stubbornly, and Dallas Trempleau spoke, a weary smile on her face. “No, she wouldn’t. Because she was otherwise occupied.”

  “What?” Miss Withers looked from one to the other, forehead wrinkling into a frown. Then her eyes lighted with amused wonderment. “Ina Kell! Do you mean to tell me that when the police questioned you, you were actually too modest to say that you’d had to go to the bathroom?”

  “Yes.” With one finger Ina drew an imaginary picture on the coverlet. “Oh, I know it was silly. But when they were q
uestioning me … all those men around with their notebooks.” She looked a little sheepish. “And later I didn’t dare to say anything, I didn’t even dare to say that I heard—I think I did hear somebody out in the hall just when I was coming out of the bathroom, because Mr. Hardesty warned me that I mustn’t change my testimony for anything. If I didn’t stick to my statement I’d get into serious trouble, and put him into a very embarrassing position in court. And he’s such a nice man—”

  “He’s a fool,” said Miss Withers sharply. “Not that that makes him unique.”

  “So now perhaps you understand,” spoke up Dallas quietly, “why I thought it would be a good idea to bring Ina down here, where she could think things over and where at least she wouldn’t have to go into court right away and help convict Winston.”

  “Come, come!” put in the schoolteacher. “She could have gone on the stand—”

  “Yes. And even if she could have brought herself to conquer her modesty and blurt out the whole story, wouldn’t it look only as if the defense had got to her somehow? Hardesty would have brought out her original statement and with it torn her to pieces. And can’t you see, Miss Withers, that even if this trip of ours only postponed the trial for a while I hoped that something would turn up—some new evidence—”

  “Or perhaps you hoped you could convince the child that she’d heard dozens of murderers prancing up and down that hallway?” The Withers sniff was almost a snort. “If anybody else did go down that hall it was probably only the milkman.”

  “No,” Dallas put in. “The milkman would have found the body, then.”

  Ina was pressing both hands to her forehead. “Oh,” she cried, “it’s so hard to remember everything. I was scared and excited—but it somehow seems to me that the door was different when I looked out into the hall again!” She shivered.

  Dallas brought out the brandy bottle. “Give her a double dose,” suggested Miss Withers wickedly. “In vino Veritas—perhaps it will help her to remember.”

  The girl took a big sip, made a wry face, and gagged. “I’m doing my best,” she told them. “Honest I am.”

  “Very well.” Miss Withers patted her shoulder. “You said just now that the door was different. Different how? Speak up, child.”

  “Well,” Ina said meekly, her eyes faraway, “when Mr. Gault went out the door looked as if it was shut, only I didn’t hear it click behind him. But later—the time I found the body—the door was quite a way open. Somebody could have—” She stopped, and shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know!”

  “A draft, probably,” Miss Withers sensibly pointed out. “There was an open window somewhere in the Fagan apartment.”

  “Maybe,” the girl agreed doubtfully. “But anyway, it wasn’t the milkman, no matter how open the door was or wasn’t. I know!”

  “But how can you say you know a thing like that? Unless … Of course! I forgot that you said you’d heard the milkman earlier, even before the fight. That was one of the night noises of Manhattan about which you were romancing, wasn’t it?”

  Ina nodded. “I—I guess so.”

  “And you told the police that when Junior Gault came out of the Fagan apartment he almost stumbled over the bottles of milk outside the door, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Ina.

  “How many, and what color were they?”

  “I don’t remember … Two or three, I think. White ones.”

  “Bluish-white, if I remember our New York milk. Very well. So if anybody did go down the hall at the crucial time we’ve settled who it wasn’t, if that’s any help.” The schoolteacher sighed. “All this is a little disappointing, but pertinent to the inquiry, and I think the authorities will have to know about it.”

  Ina nodded. “Then I—I really have got to go back to New York right away?”

  “Of course you have,” prodded the schoolteacher crisply. “Luckily there’s still time to get your whole story on the record, for what it’s worth. Though it boils down to just this—that there’s a faint possibility that while you were in the bathroom some hitherto unsuspected enemy of Tony Fagan’s came in and killed him and got away again, unseen and practically unheard. That’s a frail straw at which to clutch—”

  “But it is something,” Dallas put in stoutly. “And whoever it was wouldn’t necessarily have gone both ways, not right then. He could have been in the apartment, perhaps hiding somewhere, and on his way out paused to finish Tony. Or he could have come in after the fight, found Fagan unconscious and killed him, and been waiting inside—maybe washing his hands or something—when Ina found the body, and left afterwards.”

  Miss Withers looked doubtful. “Too complicated, I’d say.” She turned to Ina. “Are you sure that Fagan was actually dead when you found him?”

  “Wha-a-at?”

  “It’s not easy for a layman to tell. Did you feel his pulse, or hold a mirror to his lips, or anything?”

  “I—I touched him. He was dead.” Ina barely whispered it.

  “Even so, not everyone knows where a pulse is located. He was unconscious and covered with blood, and you leaped to the obvious conclusion that he was dead so you ran back to your own apartment—”

  “Yes, to call the police!”

  “Fiddlesticks. There your story falls to pieces. You couldn’t possibly have held a dead phone for ten or fifteen minutes; everyone who has ever attended the movies knows about dial tones. We know what you were actually up to.”

  Ina looked scared, confused, bewildered and guilty, all at once.

  “Relax, child. What you were actually doing was getting yourself into a more becoming negligee and brushing out your hair and fixing yourself up to be the belle of the ball; it’s nothing to be so ashamed of. Only you took so long primping that the boy delivering papers came along and found the body before you were ready, so you missed your big scene. Isn’t that the truth?”

  “Yes.” Ina swallowed.

  “And if Fagan wasn’t dead but only unconscious when you found him, then the actual murderer—always conceding for the sake of argument that it wasn’t Gault—could have done his nefarious work after you went back to your apartment to get yourself all prettied up for the police and the photographers?”

  “No!” said Ina. Then she nodded. “Well, just maybe.”

  “Exactly!” Miss Withers nodded triumphantly. “That settles that. Your secret is out, and not much of a secret at that—though perhaps Sam Bordin can use it to plant a seed of doubt in some juryman’s mind. You say that at the moment he knows nothing of it?”

  Both girls shook their heads, but Ina said, “I did try to phone him once. But he wasn’t in.”

  “Perhaps not that time,” said Miss Withers to herself. Yet this was no time to ask too many of the wrong kind of questions, not with these wild creatures eating almost out of her hand. Abruptly she changed the subject. “By the way, why on earth did you girls want to get in touch with a private detective here in Tijuana?”

  Ina looked blank and bewildered, but Dallas Trempleau said calmly, “Oh, yes. The man Nikki was going to find one for me.”

  “A bodyguard, eh?” said the schoolteacher.

  “Yes. A bodyguard.” Dallas turned quickly to the younger girl. “I didn’t want to alarm you, dear. It was just a wild hunch of mine.”

  “But whatever for?” Ina whispered.

  “She was undoubtedly thinking,” put in the schoolteacher, “that you girls might be in some danger here. Which explains the pistol she left under the pillow.”

  Dallas said nothing, but there was an odd expression on her face, as if she had swallowed something lumpy. “You’ve both been taking certain risks,” went on Miss Withers. “But running away is never the answer to anything. I know what I’d do if I were as sure of Junior Gault’s innocence as you both claim to be. Suppose for the sake of argument that Junior was guilty only of assault and that somebody else found Fagan unconscious and killed him. That somebody is still at large, confident that he is getting away with i
t. But deep within him he must carry a weight of apprehension. Suppose we could prevail upon the inspector and Mr. Hardesty to cooperate with us to the extent of playing a little game? It is no secret back in New York that there’s a surprise witness; that somebody was eavesdropping in the apartment house hallway that morning. Suppose that accidentally on purpose it leaked out that she had caught a glimpse of somebody else in the hall, and had kept silent up to now because of fear? The real murderer, if any, would then have to come out of his silence and make an attempt at erasing Ina, wouldn’t he?”

  Both girls were wide-eyed as she explained. “It’s the old East India trick for shooting tigers. You tie a calf or goat to a tree in the jungle, and then wait. There’d be some risk, of course, but perhaps less than you’re running now. Back in New York the authorities could see to it that you’re surrounded by stalwart detectives night and day.”

  “Wow!” breathed Ina softly, eyes shining. “It would be the thrillingest thing!”

  “Thrilling to have all those handsome young detectives around?” Dallas smiled.

  But Ina didn’t hear. “I bet I could do it,” she said, in a voice that would have done credit to her favorite movie star in the role of Joan of Arc. Then she added, “Do you suppose that if I agreed to a stunt like that maybe John Hardesty would forgive me for running away?”

  The schoolteacher thought privately that the assistant D.A. would forgive Ina for any misdemeanor and most felonies. “He would certainly forgive you if it worked,” she admitted cautiously. “Neither he nor the inspector would relish pinning a murder on the wrong man.”

  “I’d be a sort of heroine, huh?”

  “You might be a dead heroine,” Dallas put in. “I’ve read about how they hunt tigers in India, and I never heard of the calf or goat winning the decision.”