Five minutes later we were in a taxi driving back to the St. Anton. I was sure the Beard wouldn’t be there any more. But Iris was bubbling over with hope again.
He wasn’t at the Opal Room, of course. We weaved through the tables, fine-combing the guests. Then we divided forces and started excavating the lounges. I had no success. I was returning empty-handed to the main vestibule when Iris came running radiantly toward me.
“The doorman!” she exclaimed. “He’s a lovely doorman. He got the Beard a taxi about an hour ago. And he heard him tell the driver to go to the Gray Goose.”
The Gray Goose was a half-way fashionable night club in the Fifties. We bundled ourselves into yet another taxi and dashed to the Gray Goose.
We didn’t check our coats. We went straight into the ballroom. Two pianos were playing boogie-woogie. A few couples were dancing; but most of them were snuggled up in booths. We started pushing into booth after booth, systematically, peering. And in the last booth we found him.
He was more majestic even than my memory of him. Words could not do justice to the splendors of his beard.
“Hello,” said Iris.
Slowly, little by little, he moved his head. Slowly his eyes lit up in a wicked, goatish leer. “Buriful girl,” he said.
Iris slipped into the booth, sitting down across from him. I squeezed in after her. She leaned forward, saying urgently, “You remember me, don’t you? The Opal Room. You mistook me for Eulalia Crawford.”
“Y’re not Eulalia Cr’wford.” His great hand unfolded from the stem of his champagne glass, groped forward, and fell—flop—on Iris’s. “Y’re much more buriful th’n Eulalia. Younger. My mistake!”
* * *
—
Such superb drunkenness seemed to nonplus even Iris. “You must remember me,” she pleaded earnestly. “You told me about the white rose and the red rose.”
The Beard’s hand left Iris’s. He giggled. Then, suddenly, he brandished his arm at a hovering waiter. “Drink!” he said. “Drink for the buriful girl. Champagne.”
As the waiter slipped away, the Beard’s aimless gaze settled for the first time on me. “Who’sh tha’?” he demanded.
“He’s just with me,” said Iris. “He’s—he’s not important.”
That was startling, to say the least. Iris was looking rather wild-eyed now. She said desperately, “You’ve got to understand. Please. This is terribly important for us. It’s—it’s life or death. The elephant never forgets. You mustn’t forget. Page eighty-four. You’ve got to help us.”
“Nasty man! Buriful girl.” The Beard sank back into his red leather corner. “Tell that man—go away. Won’t have him here.”
Iris gave a rather sickly smile. Then she leaned toward me and breathed, “It’s no good, darling. He just doesn’t like you. But he likes me. Maybe, if you go away, I can get something out of him.”
“But I don’t want to leave you with that drunken—”
“Go to the bar, darling,” she whispered. “Wait for me there. I’ll try to get him to talk.”
I went to the bar and, perching myself on a high stool, ordered a highball. I was on my second drink when Iris appeared from the inner room. She was looking a little dazed, but rather triumphant, too.
“What a man!” she said. And then, “But I’ve got Lina.”
“You’ve got Lina? You mean—you know who she is?”
“No. But I know her name, where she lives. He’s terribly canny, Peter, the Beard. He’s not telling a thing. But I tricked that out of him. Because he thought it was funny. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘isn’t this funny?’ And he chanted it.”
“Chanted what?”
“A name. Lina Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown. Sixteen-seventeen, Smith Street, Brooklyn.”
Iris chanted it, too. Personally, I thought the Beard was right. It was a riotously funny name.
Iris was looking pale. “I’ve been thinking, Peter. And—and there’s only one thing to do. The Beard is hopeless until he sobers up. Now, Lina…”
“Lina?”
“Lina knows the whole story. This thing that happened to Eulalia—I think it’s going to happen to Lina.”
“Of course it is,” I said savagely. “She’s got the red rose and the white rose and the crocus after her. And, so far as I care, they can all catch up with her and—”
“No, darling. They mustn’t catch up with her. Don’t you see? Time’s everything. Maybe we can still warn Lina in time. And, if we warn her, then she’ll have to tell us the truth. That’s the only way we can get out of this—this jam.”
I was beginning to see. “You want us to go to Lina now?” I glanced at my watch. “Now—at two-forty-five A.M.”
“Oh, I know it’s crazy. Everything’s crazy.” Iris’s lips were trembling. “But, darling—please go to Lina now.”
“Me! You mean I have to go alone?”
“Darling, I can’t let the Beard get away now. I simply can’t. We need him. I’ve got to cling to him through thick and thin. But you don’t.”
I finished my drink in one gulp. I didn’t want to go to Brooklyn.
“Peter, I know it’s late. But here—” She fumbled in her pocketbook and brought out Eulalia’s letter. “If you show her this, she’ll know you’re on the level. You—you will go, won’t you?”
I took the letter. I kissed her. “I’ll go.”
“Darling!” she smiled. “And, as soon as you’re through, go straight back to the apartment. I’ll try and get there as soon as possible—with the Beard.”
“With the Beard? Do we have to adopt the Beard, too?”
“Of course. Tomorrow morning he’ll be sober. Tomorrow morning he’ll be worth his weight in roses.” Iris was adamant. “Remember, darling. Lina Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown.”
I nodded. “Sixteen-seventeen. Smith Street. Brooklyn.”
“Oh, darling,” she whispered.
I kissed her again. She was utterly beautiful and magnificent and exciting. And I left her to the tender mercies of the amorous Beard. I’ve never hated doing anything so much in my life.
IV
Sixteen-seventeen Smith Street was a squat, dirty house in a row of uniformly squat and dirty houses. The Browns, I discovered, lived in the basement, and judging from the lighted window, someone was awake—either Mr. or Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown. I located the buzzer and pressed it.
The door was pulled open almost before I’d stopped ringing. The speed of it all startled me. In the obscure light from the hall I could see the woman who stood there on the threshold only dimly—a dark, fluttering little thing with big, big eyes.
“Oliv—!” She broke off with a birdlike, swooping gesture of her hand. “Oh, I—I thought it was my husband.” And then, before I had time to open my mouth, she was explaining nervously, “My husband works late at the restaurant. He—he forgot his key. I was waiting up for him.”
We stood there in the dark area, watching each other.
“Are you Lina Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown?” I asked.
“Yes, yes.”
Thank heavens, Lina was alive, anyway!
“What do you want?” She started a little chirping laugh and then, as if the unconventional hour of my visit suddenly frightened her, she added jerkily, “What do you want—so late at night?”
“I’ve come for Eulalia Crawford,” I said.
“Eulalia!” The words came in a thin little Phoebe-bird peep, and Lina’s small hands took wing again. Impulsively one hand alighted on my sleeve. She was pulling me into the hall. She closed the door behind us. She was almost running ahead. Her face was ashen.
I followed into the living-room. There was too much old-fashioned furniture in it, but it was kind of pathetically neat. There were two framed photographs on the mantel—
a photograph of a muscular blonde in tights with a toothy smile, and another photograph of a dark little slip of a thing gleaming with tawdry spangles. That second picture was Lina herself. I could tell. She was older now, though.
She was hovering in front of me, staring.
“What is it? Why did Eulalia send you?”
I thought of Eulalia’s letter. That was as good an opening gambit as any.
I pulled the crumpled piece of paper from my pocket. Watching her, I held it out. “Eulalia wrote this to you,” I said.
She stared at the fantastic note. “The white rose—and the red rose!” She looked up. Her lips were as pale as her cheeks. “The roses…”
I didn’t say anything.
Her tongue came out, wetting her lips. I’ve never seen such real terror in any human eyes. “The letter isn’t finished. It isn’t in an envelope. It isn’t finished. You—you brought it—” She broke off. “What’s happened to Eulalia?” And then, in a small, tortured sob, “She’s dead! They killed her!”
How had she guessed that? What was I to say? “Mrs. Brown—” I began, and found it difficult to go on.
She stepped back. “They killed Eulalia. And you brought this letter to me. You brought it!” She was still backing away. “You’re one of them. You’ve come to get me, too. The roses…”
It was then that the sound of the front door buzzer echoed sharply in the hall. Lina swirled around. “Oliver!”
She dashed away from me, calling her husband’s name despairingly. I could hear her little footsteps pattering in the hall. “Oliver!”
I heard the basement front door open.
“Oliver—”
Lina’s voice stopped in a little choking gasp. There was a moment of entire silence. Then another voice sounded, a man’s voice—a voice that stammered hesitatingly. It said, “H-hello, Lina, d-darling. I’m sure you’re g-glad to s-see me.”
The sound of that stammering voice toppled me off whatever solid ground there was left. The stammering voice which had answered Iris over Eulalia’s phone, the voice of the man who had murdered Eulalia!
I glanced wildly around the stuffy Victorian room. I took a pointless step toward the hall.
And then, ripping through the silence, two revolver shots sounded in brutal, rapid succession. One…two…just like that.
The nearness of those shrill explosions was appalling. The quiet that came after was appalling, too. And then, sprouting out of that quietness like a thin, weak tendril, twined a small wailing sound that shriveled into a hissing sigh. A sigh—then the small, subdued noise of a little body crumpling to the floor.
All that came in a second. I hadn’t time even to move a finger before it was over, and I heard the clatter of footsteps running away from the door.
I dashed forward out of the living-room into the hall. I knew what I was going to see, of course.
Lina was there, tumbled in a little limp heap by the open front door. There was blood. But it wasn’t the blood that was the worst. Thrown over the little prostrate body, like a bizarre funeral canopy, were roses—dozens of pure white roses.
Some of the petals weren’t white any more. They were a vivid scarlet where the blood had splashed them. I dropped to my knees, bending dazedly over Lina. The red rose and the white rose—they mean blood!
Vaguely, as I knelt there by the night’s second corpse, I realized I could still hear the running footsteps of the murderer growing fainter on the dark street outside. Blindly obedient to impulse, I jumped up and ran out. I clambered up the iron stairs to the street and stood there at their head.
I could just see the man. He was running to a parked car. I could make him out, a thin, tall figure. I had been thinking, instinctively in terms of the man with the gray trench coat, who bit his nails. But, as he reached the car, I caught a glimpse of his profile in the light from a street lamp. It was gaunt and angular, but it wasn’t the same profile. He wasn’t wearing a trench coat, either. And the most arresting thing about that fleeing figure was his hair. For it was a vivid, gleaming white.
So there were two men with guns abroad that night!
Long before I could have done anything to stop it, the murder car sprang forward and roared away out of sight. I stood there at the head of the iron stairs, trembling under the delayed impact of shock.
The gunfire had not shaken Brooklyn out of its small-hours’ sleep. Probably the cavernous pit of the basement had muffled the reports. In any case, the alarm had not as yet been sounded. But soon Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown himself would return from the restaurant. Soon the cry of “Murder” would echo through the night, shattering the stillness, spreading like ripples across a black lake.
That brought me back to thinking violently about myself. Here I was hopelessly committed to this second corpse—I, Peter Duluth, the man who, almost certainly, was under suspicion of one murder already.
There was only one possible thing to do next. Poor Lina was dead, her secret still undisclosed. There was nothing I could do for her. So long as I stayed there I was jeopardizing my entire future and Iris’s.
Get away, Peter Duluth. Get away—now. Scram!
I made my second major retreat that night. I walked out on Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown, the waiter or whatever he was. I left him to face his tragic homecoming—alone.
V
When I let myself into our apartment, it was in total darkness. Iris wasn’t there. I turned on all the lights, hating Iris’s not being there. It was half past four. Surely all the night clubs were closed by now.
I mixed myself a drink and gulped at it while I paced up and down the room. I was full of forebodings. Iris had already been shot at that night. And the Beard—we knew nothing about him. Why had we assumed so readily that he was a friend? For all we knew, he was one of the gang.
Why had I left Iris to cope with him alone?
I worked myself up into a frenzy of nerves. I’d never felt so helpless. And then, about half an hour later, I heard the incalculably sweet sound of her key scratching the front door lock. I ran out into the hall just as the door opened. And she was there. Iris was there.
She stepped into the apartment and then turned back to the corridor, crooning, “Come on, Pussy. This way, Pussy.”
I started toward her, saying, “Iris…” Then I stopped dead in my tracks.
Slowly progressing into the room was a large, ponderous figure in black, a figure with the massive dignity of a Supreme Court Justice. But, defying all laws of probability, he was moving on all fours. One large hand padded forward and then another, the substantial rump proceeding soberly behind. The solemn face with its majestic black beard looked unutterably out of place when it stared up at me from six inches above the floor.
The Beard navigated the threshold. Iris closed the door behind him. She turned to me. She looked beautiful but frayed.
“Hello, Peter,” she said. “He’s been like this ever since we came out of the elevator. He thinks he’s a pussy cat.”
She was trying hard to smile.
I was still suffering from my gnawing anxiety at her absence. “Where—where have you been?”
“Driving up and down Fifth Avenue,” said Iris, “looking for Easter Bunnies.”
“You can’t see Easter Bunnies in September,” I said sensibly.
“He can.” Iris shot a withering glance at the sportive Beard. “He could see Niagara Falls in Times Square at this point.” And then, despairingly: “Peter, what shall we do with him?”
“You haven’t got anything out of him?”
“Nothing!” Iris wrung her hands. “It’s hopeless. I don’t even know his name. He—he just says to call him Pussy.”
“Pussy!” said the Beard gravely.
And started a laborious attempt to sit up on his haunches. Fantastically, altho
ugh I’ve never seen a drunker man, he had not lost one particle of his dignity.
I looked at Iris over his head. She looked back at me. “At least I managed to bring him home,” she said wearily. And then, thinking about me, “But—but Lina. Did you see her? Did you get anything?”
“Lina,” I said, “is dead.”
“Dead! Iris’s lips went pale. “You mean you found her dead like—like Eulalia?”
“She was alive when I got there. She was murdered right under my nose.”
Iris’s eyes were bleak. Very softly she breathed, “And the roses?”
“Of course the roses. White roses. Her body was strewn with them.”
“Peter!”
The Beard, who had been squatting there imperviously, suddenly sat down on the carpet. Iris and I exchanged a harassed glance.
“We’d better get him on a couch in the living-room,” said Iris. “I can’t bear this—this weaving around.”
Somehow we managed together to propel the Beard to a couch. He seemed to like it. He nestled back and closed his eyes.
“Now,” said Iris to me, “tell me everything.”
I did. I told her that whole miserable Brooklyn saga. When I had finished, we both turned and stared at the Beard.
“He’s our only hope now,” breathed Iris. Ponderous lids still hid his eyes. Impulsively Iris bent over him, took his large shoulders and shook him. His eyes popped open. “You’ve got to listen,” said Iris passionately. “Lina’s dead. Eulalia’s dead. The white rose and the red rose—they’ve murdered Eulalia Crawford and Lina Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown.”
“Eulalia,” repeated the Beard slowly. “Lina.”
“Yes, yes. You’ve got to help us. Eulalia and Lina are dead—murdered!”
The Beard lifted a large hand and started beating solemn, unrhythmical time in the air. “Eulalia, Lina…Zelide, Edwina,” he said. “Eulalia, Lina…Zelida, Edwina.”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 122
