Murder for Two

by George Harmon Coxe

  “I said, come up with me.—Please, Flash,” she said when he shook his head. “For one drink, anyway. You don’t have to stay. In fact”—she smiled now—“I’ll insist that you don’t.”

  Casey made a grin come and tried to shake aside his momentary dejection. Maybe it would be a good idea to forget for a moment that in spite of his chasing around he had so far drawn nothing but a series of blanks. A drink would help. Two drinks would be better.

  “Make it two drinks and you’ve got a client,” he said.

  “Sold,” Helen MacKay said. “If I have to pay for the second one myself.”

  Stanley Furness’s tanned face showed surprise when he opened the door of his suite, but he smiled readily enough when Helen came in and kissed him.

  “Fine,” he said, when she had explained her invitation. He offered his hand. “I’m glad you did, Mr. Casey,” he said. “I met you last night, but that hardly counts, does it? Sit down. Let me take your coat, dear. What’ll you have?”

  Helen asked for a Scotch and soda and Casey requested rye and water. Furness went to the telephone, ordering these and a tomato juice for himself.

  “Casey wants two,” Helen said.

  Furness held the telephone and looked questioningly at them.

  “I was only kidding,” Casey said.

  “Yes, you were,” Helen said. “Go ahead, Stanley. Don’t stare, darling. Order a double one for Casey.”

  Furness gave the order and hung up. He moved over to Helen, looking fondly at her as she took off her gloves and laid aside her coat, and that gave Casey a chance to study the man anew. In spite of the deep tan that covered his face he did not look very robust, nor particularly well. His suit was blue serge, of no particular style, and because of the slight stoop and his thin height, it did not fit him any too well. But he had a slow smile that did much for his face and a slow, quiet way of talking that gave him a manner both serious and gentle.

  Remembering how little he knew about this man, Casey decided he’d like to find out more. He wanted to know the real reason why Stanley Furness had come back to see his former wife. He began by asking if the police had been around for any further questioning.

  “Yes,” Furness said. “I got the impression that I was one of the important suspects. They haven’t found out who killed her yet?”

  Casey said they hadn’t. He said that until the police were satisfied, everyone connected with the case was bound to come under suspicion to some extent.

  “The lieutenant asked me about you,” he said. “I couldn’t tell him a thing. I still don’t know how you happened to be here.”

  Furness smiled. He took Helen’s coat, gloves, and bag and put them on the back of the divan and sat down.

  “It’s hard to make the reason stand up now,” he said. “It sounds a little silly, I suppose; it sounds childish unless you can understand what is in back of it. You’d have to go back nearly ten years—to San Francisco. I was working for a broker and for a while after we were married Rosalind was content to stay home.”

  He inspected his hands, tucked them under his armpits. “If you knew her, you know she couldn’t stand that sort of thing long. I guess it was part of her charm—all that vitality and impatience and eagerness had to find some outlet. A husband was hardly enough, especially one a dozen years older. She started to write, doing stuff for the newspapers when she could at space rates. We did a lot of quarreling, I guess, but it always seemed to work out all right. At least that was what I thought at the time.

  “I don’t know how we started to drift apart; I doubt if I realized it at all. She began to find new interests, and I had mine. I played poker one night a week and I liked to go to the races. I guess probably that was the trouble. I used to lose more than I could afford and we’d scrap about it, because those were depression years and there’d been salary cuts, and I shouldn’t have gambled at all. Maybe it was my fault that she finally left me, and I really never blamed her for that. It was the way she did it.”

  The waiter with the drinks interrupted him. He signed for them and tossed a coin on the tray; then, as they drank, he apologized for the tomato juice.

  “Doctor’s orders,” he said. “The old ticker isn’t what it was.”

  “To hear him,” Helen said, “he has both feet in the grave.”

  “I have to take care of myself now, don’t I?” Furness said, smiling at her. She wrinkled her eyes at him.

  “You’d better, darling.”

  Casey waited. Just the way Furness looked at the girl told it all. His whole face brightened. He was sold, and he loved the idea and Casey was afraid there wasn’t going to be any more story.

  “So she left you,” he prompted.

  Furness’s glance came back and the light died out of it.

  “Yes,” he said. “Without a word. Without telling me or even hinting that she had it in mind. I wouldn’t have blamed her—I would have minded; I’d have been hurt, yes—but I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d come out honestly and said we were through.”

  He paused, then laughed softly and that laugh held a bitterness Casey hadn’t heard before. “I’d finally made a killing at the races,” he said. “Twenty-seven hundred dollars. I got a little drunk. I wanted to celebrate—ࢭ

  “Who wouldn’t?” Casey said.

  “That’s what I thought. I don’t know if she planned it then or not, but she wouldn’t go out that night. She had a headache. She said for me to go ahead. So I did. Well, when I woke up the next morning—it was a Sunday, I remember—she and her bags were gone and so was the money. I figured I’d spent maybe a hundred. She left me two hundred and the note. She didn’t say where she was going. She said she couldn’t stand it any longer. She felt she was wasting her life. She was sorry and realized it was a dirty trick, but the money would give her the start she needed and later on if I needed it perhaps she could pay it back.”

  “Oh,” Casey said. “Like that.”

  “Like that.”

  “You can understand her doing it, can’t you, Flash?” Helen MacKay said.

  Casey thought it over. He said he could, and he meant it. Nothing ever stood in Rosalind Taylor’s way. He had always known that. She’d fight injustice for the little man, for a principle, but for herself—He put his drink away, thinking about the money Rosalind had taken, and found he had a bad taste in his mouth.

  Furness went on hurriedly and the first part of his story was familiar. He’d been terribly hurt. He drank too much. He lost all incentive. He had a job here and a job there and finally there had been a spot on his lung that drove him from the city. Gold had been revalued by that time and he joined others in tramping mountain streams in search of it.

  “I bought books,” he said, “and studied about mining and mineralogy. My father had left me several hundred acres of what seemed like worthless land and it was only after we were in the war and we began reading about shortages of this and that that I began to do some prospecting there. About a year ago I got it. Magnesite. United Mining put up a plant right on the property. It’s in full operation now and even if it’s abandoned later I’ll never have to worry again.”

  He finished his tomato juice and smiled a little sheepishly. “That’s where the childish part comes in. I’d seen her name on articles but now, no matter how much she had, I had more. I wanted to walk in on her and take her to dinner. I wanted to buy her something expensive—a nice diamond or a mink coat. Sounds funny, doesn’t it, but that’s how I felt. I wanted to do something like that and walk out after I’d told her how they want me to run for Congress, after I’d got across the idea that it was the luckiest day of my life when she walked out on me.”

  He looked over at Helen and the brightness came back into his face. “Only that first day I called, Rosalind was out of town. I stopped and talked with Helen and I was lonely and I asked her if she would have dinner with me. After that it didn’t matter about Rosalind and I knew that any diamond or mink coat I bought could be put to a better
use—a much better use.”

  Casey stood up. So did Furness. “I didn’t mean to talk so much,” he said. “You sort of egged me on, didn’t you?” He glanced questioningly at the girl again. “Perhaps Mr. Casey would like to have dinner with us.”

  Helen looked at Casey, half closing one eye. “Mr. Casey has a date,” she said, and smiled.

  Casey grinned back at her. “Yeah,” he said.

  “I’ll go fix my face,” Helen said, and went into the bedroom.

  Furness came up to Casey, his glance still on the bedroom door, though it was now empty. “She’s never had anything much,” he said, “but that didn’t stop her. She made something of herself, and now she’s never going to have to worry. I’m a lucky fellow, Casey.”

  Casey picked up his hat and nodded, finding it easy to agree.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think you are.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  MODIFIED MAYHEM

  AT NINE-TWENTY THAT EVENING the lull at the Club 17 was going full blast. The bar, which accommodated sixty, held four widely separated men and a woman. There were three tables of late diners, an empty dance floor, and no orchestra on the stand. It would reappear when the dancing and supper customers dropped in but right now there was nothing but a fill-in piano player doing his best to keep the quiet away.

  Casey skirted the dining-room, went through the passageway alongside the orchestra stand, and continued down the corridor to Dinah King’s dressing-room. He wasn’t sure why, even as he knocked. He didn’t know what he intended to prove—if anything. His main interest remained with the two gunmen who were responsible for the sore spot on his head and apparently for the murder of Rosalind Taylor and Henry Byrkman as well; but Casey had been around enough to know he was wasting time trying to duplicate police effort. Running down such characters was something the authorities could do much easier and much quicker than he could—unless he was lucky—but this was something else. This might even be a pleasant way to kill a half hour.

  He was a little surprised when someone bade him enter, but he opened the door and what he saw was all right too. For Dinah King was at her dressing-table. She had on a black, sleek-looking robe, which she gathered quickly when she saw who it was, but not before Casey had a glimpse of shorts, brassiere, and a lot of that milk-white flesh.

  “Oh,” she said, and she was startled, all right. “I thought it was—”

  She didn’t say whom she expected but when she saw Casey’s grin she smiled and belted the robe. He slid his plate-case alongside the door and took off his hat.

  “Go right ahead,” he said, still grinning. “Don’t let me interrupt you.”

  “All right.”

  Dinah King picked up her nail file and started to work on her maroon-colored nails. Casey got a cigarette going. He took a folded copy of the Standard from his pocket and examined a short, one-column story about Henry Byrkman. It was the usual thing when someone of no importance is killed in a large city. In substance it said that a man tentatively identified as Henry Byrnes or Henry Byrkman had been found shot to death in his room at the Hotel Walters. It said Byrnes, or Byrkman, had registered the night before, and as far as was known, entertained no visitors. It said the police were working on it but as yet had discovered no tangible motive for the crime. There was no suggestion that the murder had any connection with that of Rosalind Taylor.

  Casey put the paper away. So far Logan was all right. Very few people knew of the existence of Henry Byrnes. Fewer still knew about Henry Byrkman, and only those who knew what Rosalind Taylor had been working on could have known of the connection. None of these was on the Standard and only one—MacGrath—on the Express.

  “You know a guy named Byrkman?” Casey asked, deciding he might as well take a chance.

  Dinah King put down her nail file. She said she didn’t, and who was Byrkman. Casey got out his picture of the man and went over to her table.

  “Ever see this lad before?”

  Dinah King looked at the picture quite a while. “No,” she said finally, “I don’t think I have. Is that Byrkman?”

  Casey said it was. “I think,” he said, “he knew who killed Rosalind Taylor.”

  “Oh?” She thought this over. “Well? What about him?”

  “He’s dead.” Casey leaned back on the couch. He didn’t like what he was going to do but he couldn’t forget Rosalind Taylor, and experience had shown him clues as well as exclusive pictures often came from unexpected places. “I hear,” he said, “that your boy friend inherits everything his wife had.”

  “Does he?” Dinah King said.

  “He does. And by the way, where were you around nine-thirty last night? I don’t think you told me, did you?”

  “What is it with you? Have you turned detective?”

  “Sort of. Where were you?”

  “I was here, naturally.”

  “No, you weren’t.” He watched her face him and stand up. There were spots on her cheekbones now that matched her auburn hair and her mobile mouth was compressed. He remembered the folder he had, and the faintly accented cadence of her voice; he took time out again to admire the magnificent proportions of her body. “I’ve been asking questions,” he said. “You weren’t here at ten minutes of ten. The maid says so.”

  “I think you’d better go,” Dinah King said.

  “Relax,” Casey said, “I’m not finished.”

  He rose to meet her and he was thinking now of something that had been in the back of his mind ever since he had considered coming here. That thing was the fragment of a check that had been found in Rosalind Taylor’s pocket. The signature of that check had ended in ing and he wondered if Logan had done anything about it.

  “How about your autograph?” he said, and took an envelope from his pocket.

  Dinah King started past him, headed for the door. Something about her, her imperiousness, her icy contempt, fired his annoyance. He knew she was going to the door and open it and tell him to get out, and though he had no intention of touching her until that last second, something happened.

  It may have been that his nerves were more frayed than he realized or that he was angry with himself for accomplishing so little. Whatever the reason, he reached out, took her wrist and turned her back.

  “Let go!”

  “Listen,” Casey said. “This’ll get you nowhere. I’ve got enough dope on you to have the F.B.I. over here in five minutes and if you think—”

  Something froze in her face that stopped the next word in his throat. It was, in the first instant, as though he had struck her; then she tried to jerk away.

  “Get out,” she said, her contemptuous restraint worse than anger, “or I’ll have you thrown out. If you’re beast enough to do a thing like that—”

  “Who said I was going to?” Casey stormed. “I said—”

  “Get out.”

  Casey let go of her wrist. Someone said, “Need a little help, Dinah?” and then she was staring past him and he wheeled, unaware until then that the door had opened.

  “Yes,” Dinah King said. “I’m afraid I do.”

  Two young men stood in the doorway. Tall, nicely built, and somewhat sloppily dressed in sport coats and shoes, they seemed very young to Casey and he glowered at them because inside he felt guilty and he wanted no interruption.

  “Beat it, will you?” he said.

  One of the youths, the darker of the two, looked at his companion, a half grin on his lips.

  “Didn’t you hear what Miss King said?” he asked mildly.

  They started toward him, smiling, casual, almost good-natured.

  “Look,” Casey said. “Run along, boys, will you? Come back in five minutes.”

  “I think Miss King wants you to leave now,” the blond boy said.

  He reached easily for Casey’s arm, and the big photographer, not quite believing it, drew back and put up a protecting hand. After that things happened pretty fast.

  Casey let go of his hat and the other fellow m
oved in. Casey swung, not hard, a sort of pushing movement and said, “Hey, watch yourself,” and then he was pulled off balance and turned sideways and as he tried to clamp an arm around his assailant’s neck, the other hit him in back of the knees with a neat hard block, knocking him flat.

  All even and knowing what he had to do, Casey could have taken them, either by Marquis of Queensberry or rough and tumble. But because he hadn’t believed it was going to happen, because he hadn’t wanted to slug anybody, he waited too long. Never having the initiative at any time, he now found himself on the floor with one arm twisted in a hammerlock and his other wrist clamped in some hold which was unfamiliar but painful when he struggled.

  “That was clipping, Jim,” the blond said. “You shouldn’t hit a man behind the knees like that. It’s dangerous.”

  “I know,” Jim said. “I’m sorry, Mister. I shouldn’t have done it. Will you open the door, please, Dinah?”

  Dinah opened it and Casey was advancing reluctantly toward it. This is crazy, he thought. This isn’t happening to me. Not by a couple of cropped-headed college kids.

  But he was moving and the pressure on his wrist was so relentless and his surprise so great that he made no struggle until he was going through the door. Then he stiffened and they shoved and his foot slipped. They let go of him suddenly and he went down hard, right on his behind in the middle of the hall.

  His hat came sailing out as he hunched around. Somebody said, “Catch.” It was Jim. He had Casey’s plate-case and he was grinning. He gave a flip of his hands and the case arced nicely into Casey’s lap. Then the door closed.

  It took Casey a while to get up. His first reaction—of total incredulity—gave way to one of anger and rage, and then as he thought it over and realized how neatly he had been handled his sense of humor came to his rescue.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, pulling himself together. “The bum’s rush. And by a couple of infants—but good.”

  He brushed himself off and slipped the plate-case strap over his shoulder. He looked down the corridor and back at the door, his eyes smoldering in an amused sort of way. He went up to the door and knocked.