Murder for Two

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Let’s not wake the neighbors, bud,” he said.

  Casey got out, bringing his plate-case with him.

  “You can leave that,” Blondie said.

  “Nuts,” Casey said and slid the strap on his shoulder.

  Blondie thought it over as Harry joined him. “Okay,” he said. “This time we’ll humor you. Know who lives here?”

  Casey said he didn’t. Blondie chuckled softly. “Then this ought to be quite a surprise,” he said. “Stay behind him, Harry.”

  He went to the wooden door with the polished brass knocker, tried it, and found it locked. He took some keys from his pocket, and though he scarcely made a sound he had the door open in less than a minute.

  Inside a light burned and they went into a tiny vestibule, climbed three steps, and opened a second door which was unlocked. That put them in a small, high-ceilinged hall that was warm and musty with age. Two doors opened from opposite sides of this, and directly ahead was a thinly carpeted stairway mounting stiffly along the left wall.

  They climbed the three flights silently, Blondie ahead, Casey in the middle. He had stopped trying to guess the answer to this one. It was obvious that they had seen the note Karen Harding had left, getting the address the same way he had; but if they had wanted something from her why had they waited for him?

  Well, that part didn’t matter. He was here and now he was glad of it; for it was better that he should be with her now than let her face these two alone. Take care of her, MacGrath had said that morning. Was that a laugh?

  Blondie stopped just short of the third-floor landing. “You get us in, friend. Just tell her who you are.”

  “Suppose she doesn’t answer?” Casey said.

  “If she’s got a doorbell, she’ll answer,” Blondie said, “or else she’ll get awfully damn sick of hearing it.”

  He went on to the landing and Casey followed. When he reached it he tried to get his back to the wall but Harry jabbed with the gun and stayed behind and that was the end of the only idea Casey could think of. Harry might not shoot but he would certainly slug with that gun the first move Casey made, and if he was laid out here in the hall he couldn’t be much help to Karen Harding. Of course he could yell a warning, but that might scare Harry into pulling the trigger a few times.

  He watched the man press the button, the feel of the gun on his spine. The little hall was hot and humid.

  Presently the faint sound of movement filtered through the door and Karen Harding’s voice said, “Yes? Who is it?”

  Harry punched with his gun. Casey said, “Casey.”

  The latch clicked back. “Stand still, pal,” Harry said. The door began to open and Blondie moved in, widening the crack with his shoulder and pushing the gun ahead of him.

  “It’s okay, sis,” he said. “Just don’t make any noise.”

  Casey heard the girl’s startled, “Oh,” and moved up. She was backing into the living-room and over Blondie’s shoulder he could see she was wearing a green flannel robe, one hand holding it tightly at the throat.

  “Hi,” Casey said, trying to make his tone reassuring. “These guys sort of had me over a barrel.”

  Harry closed the door and stayed there. Blondie waved the gun. “We were coming without Casey,” he said to Karen Harding. “We figured we could imitate his voice, only”—he looked at Casey and showed his crooked teeth—“just as we’re leaving the Express some guy drives him up and out he gets. So we stuck around and brought him too. Where’s the film?”

  Karen Harding looked at Casey. Pajama legs showed beneath the robe and she had her blond hair shoved back of her ears and her face was grave and shiny with cold cream.

  Casey tried to pretend that everything was all right. “I told these guys they were nuts,” he said.

  “What film?” Karen Harding said.

  “The one that goes with this,” Blondie said and brought out a print that had been folded once.

  Karen Harding glanced at it and a tightness came about her cheekbones. She put up her chin and looked right at Blondie. But there was something besides defiance in her gaze and Casey saw it. Suddenly that prickly sensation crawled along his scalp and he was scared. What the hell had she done now? What could she know about any prints?

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “I—I never saw it before.”

  Blondie stopped grinning and his pale, hooded eyes got mean. “Sit down,” he said, taking a threatening step. Karen Harding felt for a chair behind her and dropped into it. “You, too,” he said to Casey.

  “You heard him, pal,” Harry said.

  Casey looked at him. It was the first time he had really seen this one, and he didn’t like what he saw. Harry was swart and slender. His clothes were new-looking and too tight except in the shoulders. He had thick black brows that practically touched over the bridge of his nose and beneath this thick black line his beagle eyes were small and bright and pitiless.

  Casey perched on the arm of the couch, craning his neck now to get a look at the print in Blondie’s hand. He remembered what the girl had said in her message. She had put a picture in his drawer. This was it. But it wasn’t the one she had taken of him.

  “Now,” Blondie said, “let’s start straight. You took this picture, sis. We saw you lean out of the cab but the hacker turned his lights on and we got the number. It took us a while to find him. He said he dropped you at the Express and when we got there we saw your note and found this thing”—he held up the print—“in the drawer. We want the film. It wasn’t in this guy’s desk. Now do you hand it over like a nice little girl or do we get tough about it?”

  Karen Harding looked at Casey again and now there was something a little desperate in her eyes. Casey recognized it, knew she had the film. He tried to stall.

  “Let’s see it,” he said.

  Blondie tossed it over. It slid to the floor and Casey picked it up. He took one look and then nearly fell off the couch. He gulped fast and tried to put down his incredulity, knowing at once from the light values of the print that the film was infra-red. Artistically it wasn’t much of a picture. It wasn’t too clear, but it was clear enough to show Harry and Blondie, each one with a suitcase; it was clear enough to show the thin, small form of Henry Byrkman between them.

  Beyond that Casey could not go. He heard Blondie talking to Karen Harding, heard her answer, but it was several seconds before he could swallow his amazement and concentrate on what was being said. He saw, finally, that Harry had moved closer, that Blondie had stepped toward the girl.

  “Sit down,” Harry said when Casey started to rise.

  “Okay, sis,” Blondie said, “if that’s the way it is. Watch him, Harry,” he said and reached for the girl, pulling her to her feet, holding her closely with one arm while the other hand pried in the pockets of the robe.

  This time Casey came up. From the corner of his eye he saw Harry chop at him with the gun, but he swiveled away and lunged at Blondie.

  Karen Harding said, “No!” in a hushed, frightened voice and Blondie swung her quickly into Casey’s path and stepped back, the gun jumping into his hand.

  Casey stopped. He heard Harry behind him and turned slightly and Harry stopped too. Blondie studied the situation a moment, his mouth ugly and a flush suffusing his face. Finally he moved away from the girl and toward Casey.

  “I guess,” he said, nodding to Harry, “I guess we’ve got to take care of this guy first.”

  Casey half turned, shifting his weight and getting his feet the way he wanted them. He winked at the girl and put on his hat. “Okay,” he said to Blondie, “let’s go.”

  “No,” Karen Harding said. “I’ll give you the film.”

  “So—” Blondie grinned and stepped back.

  Casey let his breath come out and some of the stiffness slid away from his legs when he realized that his anger had nearly led him into something he probably could not have finished.

  “We had an idea you had it here,” Blondie said. “Well—”r />
  Karen Harding belted her robe anew and went quickly to the secretary. She knelt and pulled the bottom drawer, opening her patent-leather bag and taking out the roll of film.

  “Here,” she said.

  Blondie unrolled it. He held it up to the light. “Umm,” he said approvingly. “Now you see how simple it was?” He slipped the film into his coat pocket, moved around Casey, and picked up the print that the big photographer had dropped. “Thanks,” he said, and looked at Harry and winked as he started for the door.

  Casey saw the wink, realizing too late that Harry was behind him. Before he could turn, the room fell in on him and the last thing he heard was Karen Harding’s frightened cry.

  At first the voice was dim and faraway but as it grew stronger Casey decided it was a very nice voice, and through the pain that hammered at his brain he thought he recognized it, he thought it was calling his name. He knew he had to answer somehow and tried, but no words came and so he opened his eyes and found himself on the floor with his head in Karen Harding’s lap.

  “Flash,” she said, wiping the moisture from his forehead. “Oh, how could they. Oh, damn them—” She saw his eyes open and gave a little joyful cry. “Flash. Oh, Flash. Are you—”

  “Nah,” Casey said, and grinned. He felt relaxed and comfortable and the pain didn’t seem so bad. “I’m okay,” he said, but he didn’t get up right away. He waited until he was sure his head would stay on and then he remembered what had happened and the grin went away.

  He sat up, struggling to his feet in spite of her protests. She rose with him, holding to his arm and telling him to come with her into the bathroom.

  “How long have they been gone?” Casey wanted to know.

  “Oh—three or four minutes. And please let me fix your head. Take that coat off. Please. Now you come with me.”

  Casey was seething but he went, letting her help to support him though he needed no help now. She made him sit on the bath tub. She draped a towel around his neck and then made cold compresses for his head and in spite of his protests she insisted on bathing the lump on his scalp and applying mercurochrome because, she said, the skin had been broken.

  “I had my hat on,” Casey said. “I’ve had worse lumps than this. It doesn’t even hurt now,” he lied.

  Karen Harding said she was glad. She said she had been practically sick with fright. She put the soiled towels away after Casey had dried his hair and face and smiled at him. He looked at her with one eye and said severely:

  “All right now. Come clean. How’d you get that picture? You went back to Byrkman’s after we put you in the cab.”

  She lowered her glance and then looked up through her lashes. “Yes,” she said, and told him all about it when they went back into the living-room.

  Casey listened, his amazement mounting as he realized what this slip of a girl had done. When she had finished he leaned back in his chair and sighed heavily.

  “Look,” he said. “You haven’t got a drink here, have you? I didn’t think you would,” he said when she said she was sorry. “All right. You sat there in Byrkman’s living-room and saw the bags in the bedroom. Why didn’t you say so? Why didn’t you tell Logan?”

  Karen Harding had curled up on the couch, her feet tucked under her; now she shrugged and began to pick at the hem of her robe.

  “I intended to,” she said, “as soon as we got out. And then—well, the lieutenant said I had to go home. He made it quite plain that he couldn’t be bothered with me and so I thought, all right, I’ll find out for myself.”

  Casey sighed again, deciding that only a woman would think of such reasoning—and who was he to understand a woman’s mind. Then he thought of something else.

  “Why?” he asked. “You didn’t go back there just because you were stubborn. Was it the murder of Rosalind Taylor? Did you think you might get a lead? Or was it John Perry?”

  “I—I guess it was John Perry. Miss Taylor was going to see Byrkman. She intimated she had found out some things. And if Byrkman was running away, why then maybe we’d never find out the truth for John and—I couldn’t let him get away without trying to do something, could I?”

  “I guess you thought a lot of John Perry once.”

  Karen Harding huddled a little deeper in the corner of the couch. In that green robe, with her hair pushed back and her shiny face and nose, she looked about sixteen, Casey thought, all but her eyes, which seemed even older than her years as they fastened on something near the windows and the distance came into them.

  “Yes,” she said simply. “I think we would have been married. He’d gone to M.I.T. with my brother and he was three years older than I and he was out to the house a lot. It wasn’t anything sudden. It just seemed to grow, being together like we were, until it seemed to be the thing we wanted most.”

  She paused, twisting her lips. “My family didn’t like the idea much. John was an orphan and his people had been—well, just folks, and he’d never had much in a material way. He had to work his way through school and when he finished he hadn’t anything but prospects—as if that weren’t enough—and Dad tried to break it up. John was terribly proud. He wouldn’t let me run away; he said we’d have to wait and that probably my father was right.

  “He had a job with a paint company in Somerville and evenings he worked on this formula at the plant and sometimes at Tech. Finally he thought he had it. He was in debt then, from going to school and from carrying on his experiments, and he didn’t go to one of the larger oil companies because he thought it would take so much longer and that perhaps he would be lost in the shuffle. Mr. Lawson had a small oil company not far from John’s factory and somebody suggested him, so John went to him.”

  Her mouth twisted in a smile that seemed too bitter for her young face, and her eyes were suddenly dark.

  “I guess you know what happened. John got five thousand dollars. The papers he thought he signed also gave him fifty percent of any royalties Lawson collected—that was because Lawson had to advance money for a small plant and to take over the marketing of the product. Only the papers that John really signed—at least the one he brought home and the one Lawson had a copy of—said that for the five thousand he relinquished all rights. He didn’t find it out right away. We were making plans to get married when he discovered what had happened. Of course he went to Mr. Lawson. I don’t know what happened. John said Lawson knocked him down twice and in desperation—he was much smaller—he hit back with the ash tray.”

  She spread her hands and looked back at Casey. “But who would believe him? Lawson had him arrested. He had money and influence, and he had the signed agreement.—John wouldn’t see me when he was in jail. He wouldn’t answer my letters. Dad hustled me off to Florida—bodily, practically. I was only twenty then and—well, tonight I thought—”

  “Yeah,” Casey said, and seeing her try to smile at him now he felt a thrust of compassion that left him deeply moved. Remembering the smiling eagerness she wore as a bright protecting garment for the unhappiness within her, he found himself wishing he could do something to help. “We’ll find Byrkman,” he said. “If Rosalind Taylor had something maybe we can find out what before we get through. It’s too bad we lost that picture—”

  He broke off when he saw her jump up and go to the secretary. He watched her open her handbag and take something out.

  “I saved this,” she said. “Will it help? Can we make other prints from this?” she asked, and handed Casey the duplicate of the one she had left in his desk.

  He looked at it and then at her. He shook his head, rolled up the picture and put it in his topcoat. “All right,” he said, his grin wry but respectful, “I give up. I’ve got a nerve, teaching you anything about taking pictures. You and Wade made two prints, huh?”

  She nodded, the brightness coming back in her smile. “One for you and one for me.”

  “You think of everything,” Casey said and rose, reaching for his coat. She sat down again, watching him, frowning now, and
finally she said:

  “Do you think those two men were the ones who killed Miss Taylor?”

  Casey said he didn’t know. He said it sort of looked like it.

  “Then why,” Karen Harding said, “did they wear dark glasses when they tied up Helen MacKay and leave them off when they brought you here? Why should they go to all that trouble to get the picture when we can identify them anyway?”

  “It’s a little different,” Casey said. “If they—or one of them—killed Taylor and went to the apartment afterward, they knew they were dealing with murder. Helen won’t be able to identify them—at least I don’t think she will. It’s tough enough when you’re scared and keeping one eye on a gun to identify anyone even when you get a good look at him. Dark glasses, especially big ones, make a lot of difference. She never really saw the two men and any good defense lawyer would discredit such an identification even if she tried to make it. There would have to be something else to make it stick. This thing here is nothing but assault.”

  He put on his coat, thinking as he spoke. “If these two guys are what I think they are—hired muscle men or killers—they won’t worry much about an assault rap. With Lawson behind them they could do a stretch like that standing on their heads. They might even beat the charge—it’s been done before. As for the pictures—well, people are funny about pictures. Lawson knows we saw this blond guy in his office this afternoon. You and I saw him there, but without this picture, only you saw him with Byrkman. Suppose Lawson doesn’t want these two hooked up with Byrkman? You saw them at night. You didn’t even have a real flashbulb. You can say you’re positive they were with Byrkman but in court I doubt if that identification—under the circumstances—would stick.”

  “Yes,” Karen Harding said. “I see.”

  “Anyway, that’s Logan’s worry. I know damn well he’ll be glad to see that picture.” He buttoned his coat, moved toward the door. “Well—thanks for the first aid and don’t worry too much about John Perry.”

  He turned, waiting for her to say something. She was still sitting down and now she was watching him with troubled eyes.