The Frightened Fianc?e

by George Harmon Coxe

  He heard the sound as he stood there thinking, and though it was soft and indistinct he knew that it came not from the wind outside but from somewhere behind him. Startled, he wheeled instantly, peering through the thick shadows at the small figure standing just inside the doorway.

  “Tracy!”

  “Oh,” she said, looking more startled than he was. “I thought I heard something—”

  She let the sentence dangle, not moving, and he went halfway across the room. She wore a white robe with blue polka dots, and underneath pajamas that flopped about her ankles and bare feet. Her hair was tied in back with a yellow ribbon, making a soft dark frame for the pale oval of her face.

  “I came down to look for a cigarette.” Holland stopped, wanting more than anything to take her in his arms because she looked so frightened and alone. Then, because he had to be sure, he said, “You know about Nadine?”

  She nodded. “Nana told us.”

  He waited to see if she would say anything more but she merely stood there silent and unapproachable, like a stranger; more distant than a stranger to Holland because he loved her so.

  “Maybe you blame yourself for that,” he said, and it was a cruel thing and he knew it even as he spoke and could not help himself.

  She took it without flinching, like a person used to pain and inured to its acceptance. “I don’t know, John.” She shivered and pulled the robe about her. “You’ll find cigarettes in that silver box.”

  Then she was gone and Holland stood there, trembling a little as reaction struck him. He knew how he had hurt her. He was ashamed but he was not sorry. He was furious. With her and himself and, most of all, With the one who was responsible for all the tragedy and heartbreak.

  He strode back to the fireplace and began a savage inspection of the stones that made it, pushing, prying, muttering to himself in his frustration. Inside of five minutes he had covered every joint and stone that he could reach and none was loose.

  He stood back and reached for the sconce. Then he stopped, his hand in mid-air, his gaze intent as he inspected the rectangular brass plate which formed the base of the fixture. Out of nowhere the idea came to him.

  How does it stay there?

  And now, his mind focused on the problem and his frustration forgotten, he could find no sign of a nut or fastening in the surface of the plate. His hand shot out. He grabbed the sconce and yanked. Nothing happened. He tried again, twisting it hard, and then, miraculously it seemed, the whole thing swiveled a quarter-turn and came free in his hand, the bulb still burning as the wires pulled out of a six-inch-square hole.

  He saw vaguely the lip on the inside of the plate, the segment of groove cut in the stone recess. He did not stop to wonder about it or even to think; he plunged his free hand into the hole and when he pulled it out he had the gun.

  Holland put the sconce back absently. He twisted it into place, his eyes still on the gun. He stepped back, as sure as he could be without positive proof that this was the gun he had picked up outside the guesthouse. A revolver, it had a tip-up action, and when he broke it he saw that it contained one .32-caliber bullet.

  As he stood there with his mind racing he heard again the sound of the wind outside, and now there came to him a feeling of apprehension and uncertainty. It was nothing that he heard, it was something that he felt, an inner pressure of some kind that made him glance quickly about to make sure he was alone.

  He could see nothing beyond the range of the small bulb. Along the walls and corners, in the adjacent sun-room, there was nothing but blackness. There was no sound here; only the wind and the thudding of his heart.

  Reaching up he turned off the bulb and started across the room, blind now but sure of his course. It was, he knew, nothing but imagination that caused this strange sense of uneasiness but he had no time now for self-analysis. He wanted to get out of here and he moved as quickly as he could, groping his way through the wide doorway to the hall and then seeing the faint glow of the night light on the second floor which helped to outline the stairs.

  He went up on tiptoe, the gun tight in his hand. He continued on tiptoe to the room he had used before, stepped inside. The first thing he did after he turned the light on and found the room empty was to lock the door. This done he crossed to the screen that led to the porch. He hooked it before he drew the curtains.

  twenty

  JOHN HOLLAND was up and dressed at eight o’clock the next morning. He did not shave or shower but went quietly to Crombie’s coupé and drove to Saybrook. Here he discovered that the drugstores were not yet open so he had some breakfast and then went back to wait.

  At three minutes after nine a young man came down the street whistling and swinging a bunch of keys. He tacked into the entryway, unlocked the door, entered. He was taking the key from the door when Holland came up behind him and made his request.

  “Sure.” The clerk closed the door, stepped behind a counter, and produced a blue carton of cotton batting. “This is the largest we have,” he said.

  “Give me four of them.”

  The clerk looked at him with some astonishment, but went away without a word. When he came back Holland said that was fine and would there be a box or a cardboard container out back somewhere.

  “A fairly good-sized one, if you have it,” he said.

  The clerk said he’d see, and Holland followed him around the prescription counter, into the back room, and finally into the storeroom beyond. There were no boxes here but Holland did find a cardboard carton about two feet long and ten inches square. This had been opened at one end, leaving the rest of it intact, and he thanked the clerk profusely and went out fast.

  Back in the car he drove up the street toward Route 1, turning right just short of this and then at the end, when the road seemed about to disappear in marshland, he found he could turn left past a small factory that looked deserted. Three minutes later he had the cotton fluffed out and packed in the carton, and he took this a few feet up the road where there was a bank on one side, the soil of which looked sandy.

  A quick glance about told him no one was in sight so he took out the revolver, held it a couple feet from the open end of the carton and fired.

  By the time the sound of the resulting explosion had dissipated itself across the marshland he had the carton in the car, first making sure that the bullet had not penetrated the end. Then he drove off quickly, detouring past the railroad station where he made a long-distance call to Sam Crombie.

  “I should be in town by twelve-thirty,” he said when the detective answered. “Where’ll you be?”

  “Right here,” Crombie said, “waiting for you. You know any more than you did?”

  “I think I’ve got the murder gun,” Holland said. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  He hung up before Crombie could reply, and when he swung round the drive at the Allenby house ten minutes later the lead slug he had recovered rested in his pocket and his spirits were high. He heard voices in the dining-room as he went quietly along the hall, but the living-room was empty and he had the gun out by the time he reached the fireplace. He listened, hearing only the distant voices. For another moment he hesitated. Then, because he believed that until he was positive about the gun it would be better to return it lest the one who had hidden it discover it missing and be forewarned, he pulled out the sconce, shoved the gun into the hole, and twisted the metal piece securely in place.

  He got back to the car without running into anyone. As he drove off he wondered if someone had called his name, but he did not look back. He shifted from second into high and kept going, not caring now if anyone had seen him or not.

  Sam Crombie was in his shirt sleeves, his bulky body tipped far back in the desk chair. He inspected the bullet that Holland had placed carefully in the center of the blotter pad with narrowed, sleepy-looking eyes. He listened without comment to Holland’s account of what he had done to get the slug. Then he said, “Why didn’t you bring the gun?”

  “Because I though
t the bullet was more important.”

  “You could have turned it over to Lieutenant Pilgrim.”

  “Look,” Holland said, nettled by Crombie’s apparent lack of interest but trying to be patient. “I’m pretty sure that gun killed Drake. What I want to know is did it kill Nadine? I thought if I brought you the bullet you might have a friend down at police headquarters, or wherever they have their ballistics department or laboratory—if that’s what they call it—and if this slug checked with the one they dug out of the upholstery of that chair last night, why then we could narrow things down.”

  Crombie grinned and sat up with a great creaking of springs. He turned the slug over with his finger tips. “Maybe it’s an idea,” he said. “Yeah, I got a friend,” he said, and reached for the telephone.

  Holland sat down. He listened to Crombie ask for a Sergeant Garrity, heard him say, “Oh? When’ll he be back? Okay, thanks … Out to lunch,” he said to Holland. “I’ll take the slug down myself a little later.”

  He examined the bullet again, cocked his massive head at Holland. “You did all right,” he said. “Now maybe you’d like to hear about Keith Erskine.”

  “What about him?”

  “They figure on holding him.”

  “You mean arrest him? On account of last night?”

  Crombie shook his head. “No. Up in Connecticut. They’ve got him up there now and I had a talk with Pilgrim over the phone.”

  Questions began tumbling over themselves in Holland’s brain but he took time to arrange them in an orderly sequence. “Why did they pick him up last night?”

  “It’s funny how things work out sometimes,” Crombie said thoughtfully. “The town cops made a routine check of Miss Winsor’s building along with the others in the block. Just looking for a lead, you understand. Well, they got one from the guy who manages her building. He lives in the basement apartment and it seems Erskine called on Nadine before. The last time she wasn’t in and he runs into the manager polishing the mailboxes and he says if the manager should see Miss Winsor to tell her that Mr. Erskine called. So when the cops buzz the guy last night he remembers the name and he remembers the snappy convertible Erskine drives. He also remembers that he saw that convertible—or one like it—out at the curb around six forty-five last night.”

  Holland got out a cigarette and forgot to light it. His gaze moved past Crombie to the window and fastened there without knowing what lay beyond. He was trying to remember the medical examiner’s estimate of the time of Nadine’s death and when the details came to him he said, “What did Erskine say about it?”

  “He admits he went there. He says he went up and knocked three or four times but there was no answer so he came back down and drove away. He wouldn’t say why he wanted to see her.”

  “The door was unlocked.”

  “The cops reminded him of that and Erskine had an answer. According to him trying doorknobs is like opening other people’s mail. Unthinkable.”

  “But they let him go.”

  “Temporarily. Now Pilgrim’s got him. Pilgrim says he’s the guy you saw throw the gun off the pier that night. Of course Pilgrim doesn’t know about that landing-float that nearly crushed your skull so he didn’t ask about that.”

  Holland took a breath, brow creasing and wrinkles digging in around his eyes as he tried to assimilate what Crombie had said. He discovered the cigarette and lit it.

  “How does Pilgrim know?”

  “Erskine admitted it,” Crombie said, “after they started to break him. One thing, they traced the gun. It belonged to a friend of Erskine’s, a guy he shared an apartment with last winter. When Pilgrim’s men braced the guy he said the gun was missing and they asked him did Erskine still have a key to the apartment and the guy says yes.”

  Crombie leaned back again to the sound of creaking springs. “Now it may seem funny to you, but the more intelligent a guy is the easier it is to crack him once you catch him in a couple discrepancies. A dumb character just says, ‘No, I wasn’t there,’ and sticks to it no matter if all the evidence is dead against him. A lad like Erskine sees how ridiculous the whole thing is and once he starts to talk you’ve got it all.”

  He said, “Pilgrim started with the gun. He had witnesses to say that Erskine was seen near Saybrook as late as one-thirty on Friday night and so was his car. So Erskine is caught off base and takes it from there. Remember the anonymous letter Drake wrote to Erskine and his wife and signed George? Well, the dame inserted the ad in the Bulletin, not knowing who George was but wanting to find out about what hubby had been doing and maybe save herself twenty thousand bucks. Erskine, on the other hand, must have got wise to Drake, probably because Drake was tailing Erskine now and then to get this evidence and Erskine may have spotted him.”

  He paused and said, “Anyway, Erskine is scared. He needs that twenty G’s to open this new shop, but he’s leery of Drake. He gets this gun, not intending to use it but thinking he can throw a scare into Drake and maybe cut the ante ’way down. There’s maybe a bit of geezer in the guy and he can’t work up enough nerve until he’s had a few drinks so he hangs around, getting loaded, and then drives back to the Point after two o’clock. He turns the car around and parks in that wide place just short of the point, walks down toward the guesthouse. He’s halfway there—he says—when he hears the shot.”

  “But why throw the gun away?” Holland asked, no longer able to ignore the point. “It wasn’t the gun that killed Drake.”

  “I’m coming to that,” Crombie said patiently. “I’m not saying it’s the truth, I’m just giving you what Erskine told Pilgrim. This shot scares hell out of him but he has to find out what it’s all about. He goes on down there, seeing no one else, according to him, takes a look through the side door at Drake lying there in the chair, and damn near collapses. He gets back to the car and there’s this gun in his hand and he can’t think straight now. He heaves the gun into the bushes without even stopping to wonder why and gets the hell out of there. That must have been his car you and Carver heard.”

  Holland accepted the explanation, aware from his war experience that in moments of panic a man could do almost anything. The rest of the hypothesis he found less acceptable.

  “Then why come back and hunt for the gun?”

  “Because when Erskine had time to think it over he realized he’d made a dumb play. You and Carver mentioned hearing a car. If the police gave that place out there a good going over they’d find the gun, with Erskine’s prints on it. He knew the gun could be traced. That’s why, when he found it that night, he chucked it off the pier.”

  “All right,” Holland argued. “But that gun didn’t kill Drake. It didn’t have any shells in it.”

  “That’s Erskine’s point, too—now,” Crombie said. “But figure it this way. Suppose Erskine walked into that guesthouse with a gun. He was scared of Drake anyway and he could have searched him, couldn’t he, and done the shooting with Drake’s gun?”

  “Did Drake have a gun with a tip-up action?”

  “I don’t even know if he had a gun.” Crombie grunted softly. “You’re a tough man to argue with. I’m only saying Erskine could have done it—and been seen by Nadine. He was Johnny-on-the-spot in both killings, and Pilgrim figures he’s got enough to hold him until he can check on some other things.”

  Holland said no more. He could understand the part about Erskine’s throwing the gun away and later going back to find it and dispose of it for good. There were other details that did not seem to fit at all, but he did not say so.

  “Where’ll you be,” Crombie asked, “while I’m checking on this slug?”

  “I’ve got a couple of things to do,” Holland said. “Why don’t you wait down at headquarters—or wherever you’ll be? Give me the number and I’ll ask for Sergeant Garrity.”

  Upon leaving Crombie’s office, John Holland went directly to the office of the Morning Bulletin. Here he spent a half hour examining certain back copies, after which he made two telephone c
alls before he got the address he wanted. The man he sought occupied a grubby office off Tenth Avenue and was protected from itinerant callers by a bleached blonde who sat at a desk near the inner door reading a confession magazine. Her thin brows were black, the blue eyes shadowed; her painted mouth was busy chewing gum. She glanced up without enthusiasm when Holland asked if Mr. Whaley was in.

  “Who shall I say?” she said.

  “Mr. Starke,” Holland said. “From the district attorney’s office.”

  She rose reluctantly to disappear in the other room. When she came back she said Holland could go in. She stepped aside, easing the door open for him, and as he entered a man came from behind an oak desk to meet him, a tall, paunchy man with blue jowls and oversized ears.

  Unfriendly black eyes inspected Holland in one swift-moving glance that narrowed as it moved. “Starke?” their owner said. “From the D.A.’s office? Let’s see your buzzer.”

  Holland had no idea what a buzzer was—he guessed that it might be a badge—but he knew at once he had muffed the impersonation somewhere and discarded it immediately.

  “Okay,” he said and shrugged. “That was just a gag to get in. I wanted to talk to you about the man who was shot a couple of years ago coming out of your apartment building.”

  “Why?” The voice was flat, discouraging.

  “He happened to be my best friend. I was in South America when he was killed and I wanted to get the story straight.” Holland hesitated, wanting to sound both convincing and pleasant. “According to the newspaper you were the business agent for some stevedores’ local and—”

  “I still am.”

  “There’d been some trouble along the water front,” Holland went on doggedly. “A couple of shootings and some bad feeling. Some jurisdictional matter, wasn’t it?”

  “Newspaper talk.”

  Holland tried again. “The police seemed to think otherwise. They were pretty convinced that someone with a gun waited outside your building in a car and mistook George Vanning for you.”