Murdock had already taken one picture and was, at the moment, reversing his plate-holder and changing flash-bulbs. He continued with his work as he talked.
“I thought it was worth a chance, so I took it. Cusick meant business. The only thing I could reach was the tripod and flash-bulb and—” He continued, explaining what he had done.
Girard took a deep breath. “And what a break for me—all the way around! I didn’t know it was a flash-bulb, I thought it was a gun. After that I didn’t wait. I made a pass at Cusick. I hit the gun, but I couldn’t knock it out of his hand. All I did was stop him from pulling the trigger. And then he crowned me and I guess I went down—and out.”
Murdock said: “And what a break for me you slapped that gun!”
For a few seconds Bacon looked satisfied. Then he turned around and saw Hymie. Instantly a scowl knotted his lean face, and the eyes got hard and bright with interest. He walked to the davenport in slow, measured strides, his head lowered, his eyes studying the gunman.
The look told Hymie what to expect and he said: “Wait a minute, you got nothin’ on me except havin’ the gun. I didn’t do no shooting.”
“That’s right,” Bacon said. “And a nice break for you you didn’t. I had the trigger half pulled when you got those hands up.” He hesitated, put his hands on his hips, and continued in an easy tone that could have been no more ominous if he had shouted:
“But I think you might know a few things. I’m kinda interested.”
“All I know is—”
“Maybe you can’t remember,” Bacon said. “Well, maybe we can help you out.”
“I’m not gonna talk till I get a lawyer.”
“It’ll be a long time, then,” Bacon said. He smiled so that his thin lips drew back against his teeth. “But you’ll talk, punk. And you don’t have to talk here. I’d rather get you down where I’ve got more equipment.”
“Lissen,” Hymie pleaded.
“You listen!” lipped Bacon. “I’ve got two chances and I ought to be able to hang one of them on you. If I can’t make the Redfield—”
“I wasn’t even here,” Hymie protested. “This is just a sort of job. I was in New York the night Redfield got rubbed out and I can prove it. I didn’t get here till the next afternoon.”
“Why?” pressed Bacon.
And then Hymie forgot all about his determination to keep silent, forgot about it or had the background of necessary experience which told him it would be better to talk voluntarily than to take his licking and talk anyway.
“Cusick called me up Saturday morning and said he had a job for me. I came by plane—I can prove it—and I got here around noon. I didn’t know what it was all about until Cusick told me there was a couple guys that needed attention. He said a lawyer had got knocked off the night before and that he had been around the place and you cops were tryin’ to pin the job on him.”
“He knocked him off, didn’t he?” Keogh cut in as he drew up beside Bacon and sucked contentedly on his cigar.
“I don’t know,” Hymie said, and sounded as if he meant it. “He says he didn’t, but—”
“He’d be a sap to admit it, wouldn’t he?” Bacon said. He turned to scowl at Keogh’s interruption, then continued to Hymie: “Go on, let’s have the rest of it!”
“Anyway,” Hymie went on, “Cusick had to hide out and he wanted me to find out things for him. We stopped around to see that guy”—Hymie jerked his head towards Murdock, who had already filled six plates and was bringing his camera towards the group on the davenport—“and we damn near gummed things.”
Bacon nodded. “I know that part. How about Tripp?”
“Well—” Hymie hesitated and his glance was shifty.
“Go on!” rapped Keogh.
“Well, this guy Tripp had seen Cusick on the night the mouthpiece got ironed out. And he got in touch with Cusick and told him to lay it on the line or he’d squeal.”
“Did Cusick pay?” asked Bacon sharply.
“I don’t know if he did or not. I stayed outside the place to see that we didn’t get cornered and the two of ’em talked it over. All I know is that when Tripp went out Cusick told me this Tripp had too many ideas and that he’d made a little date with him.”
“In the alley,” Bacon said.
Hymie nodded; then he seemed to recognize his own danger. He sat up stiffly, spoke jerkily. “But it wasn’t me! Honest to God! Cusick let him have it. It’s the same gun he brought here. You can check it—the slug. I was there, but I never even made a move.”
Bacon sucked at his lips. He was smiling now, not broadly, but there was undisguised satisfaction in his face as he turned, went back to Cusick’s sprawled figure, and glanced at the forty-five automatic, the muzzle of which was barely visible under his coat. Girard still sat in the chair, his eyes half-closed. Bacon looked at him wonderingly a moment, then came back to the davenport.
“It’s gonna be a break for you,” he told Hymie, “if that story of yours checks.”
“It’ll check,” Hymie panted.
“Just an innocent bystander,” Keogh grunted. He had his hands clasped behind his back and was teetering up and down on his toes, the cigar jutting upward at a satisfied angle. He shook his head. “Ain’t that too bad?”
Murdock set up his tripod, focused the camera upon Hymie, and shot two close-ups. Then he took out a new plate, another flash-bulb, and said: “All right,” to Bacon and Keogh.
Bacon scowled a moment uncertainly, finally grinned. Keogh’s Irish face was all grin. Murdock said: “How about the cigar?”
“That gives it the right touch,” Keogh said.
Murdock opened the shutter, said: “Hold it!” and the flash-bulb exploded light into the smiling faces of the two detectives. Murdock picked up the camera and began to unscrew the tripod, and Doane pushed up to Bacon.
“Well, how about it?” he plagued eagerly. “Do I have to wait all night after tipping you off to a set-up like this?”
“Shoot it in,” Bacon said. “Say—”
“That this thing solves the murders of Redfield and Tripp,” Doane broke in. “Cusick went to Redfield’s place to get the twenty-five thousand, shot him when Redfield held out. Tripp saw Cusick, blackmailed him, and got rubbed out to make sure he wouldn’t talk. Then this thing tonight when Cusick and his hood came to get Girard. That close enough to be official?”
“Well,” Bacon temporized, “there’s some loose ends, but—”
Murdock, who had not finished unscrewing the tripod, tightened it up again. He set it on the floor, stepped to his case, and took out another flash-bulb. “Hell,” he grunted. “I nearly forgot the most important shot. Hold it.”
“Who?” Doane was goggle-eyed, incredulous. “Me?”
“Yes, you,” said Murdock grinning. “Cub Reporter Balks Gangster Killing. Write your own head. Now hold it!”
Doane was still wide-eyed when the flash-bulb went off, but he recovered quickly. He crossed to the telephone, scooped it up, and barked a number. Bacon drew Murdock to one side.
“There’s a reward,” he said hesitantly. “Arrest and conviction stuff. May not be anything to it. I was thinking—”
“Don’t look at me,” Murdock said, closing his camera. “I just happened to be here when the trouble started.” He glanced across at Doane, who had his discolored felt pushed back and was saying: “Don’t give me any argument. You just hold on and get an earful of this.” Murdock grinned and continued to Bacon: “If there’s any money coming, you ought to split it. Only don’t forget, Doane’s got a share coming.”
“That’s all right then,” Bacon said, looking relieved. He turned to Keogh, growled: “Now where the hell’s that examiner?”
As if in answer to the question, the door opened. A uniformed policeman stood aside and the examiner’s physician bustled in with his habitual “Hello, boys, what’s all this?”
Murdock packed his paraphernalia, then stepped over to one of the front windows and looked out.
The sidewalk below was a milling knot of reporters and camera men who were kept at bay by two uniformed policemen. Murdock recognized one of the camera men as Wixon of the Herald. He went over to Doane then, waited until he had finished talking, and gave him the exposed plates.
“Take these in. Wixon’s downstairs. Give him half of them and you take the rest so—”
“Hell,” Doane said confidently, “I’ll get ’em all right. Van Husan wants me to come in and write an eyewitness story. You don’t need to worry about—”
“Suppose you get run over by a taxi,” Murdock said.
“You split ’em with Wixon. I’m going to be sure some of these get printed.”
During the next half-hour Hymie was hustled off to headquarters. The examiner completed his inspection of the body and had it removed. Bacon and Keogh were the last to leave. Girard still sat lazily in his chair, and Bacon, who had been walking around in circles and looking extremely pleased and calm, stopped in front of his chair, spoke curiously.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m taking it easy,” Girard said. “That was a healthy crack I got.”
“Oh.” Bacon nodded. “Sure. Well.”—he buttoned his coat—“I’m damn glad the mess is cleared up. No hard feeling for that questioning the other day?”
Girard shook his head. “No. But I’m damn glad it was Keogh and not me that shot Cusick or you’d probably try to railroad me again.”
“Heh, heh,” Bacon laughed, “don’t be like that.”
Keogh, who had been standing near by, still sucking on his cigar butt and glancing longingly at the silver humidor, finally succumbed to temptation. He opened the lid, took two, one of which he thrust into his mouth, the other in his breast pocket.
“Not bad, these,” he said patronizingly. “I’ll have to get me some.”
Bacon stopped at the door and looked at Murdock. With the look something akin to suspicion filmed his alert eyes. “Say,” he drawled, “just how the hell did you happen to be here right when things busted wide open? I guess I forgot to ask you.”
Murdock felt his muscles tighten. He did not answer until he was sure he could make his voice bored, indifferent.
“You really have to know, huh?”
“Yeah,” said Bacon, his suspicion becoming more apparent. “Why?”
“Well, it was a personal matter.”
“You had the camera.”
“I generally do, don’t I?”
“All right, what’s the personal matter?”
“You’ve got to know that too, huh?” Murdock said, his voice now a bit scornful.
“Yeah,” challenged Bacon.
“My pal, huh?” Murdock said. He shrugged. “All right. You know my wife?” And when Bacon said he knew who she was, “Well, she’s been running around with Nate—and you can check that if you want to—and I wanted to find out just what the pay-off was going to be.”
“Oh,” Bacon said, and sounded embarrassed. “I thought it was something else.”
Again Murdock felt his muscles tense, the dampness at his palms. He shot Bacon a quick, covert glance, but the Lieutenant had his eyes fixed on some remote object.
“I thought,” Bacon went on casually, “maybe you were sore because I closed down on the information. I thought you’d got hold of a lead and was holding out, trying to crack something all by yourself.”
“Oh,” Murdock said, and let his breath out slowly.
“Yeah,” Bacon said. He opened the door, grunted to Keogh, who filed out ahead of him. Then, as he went through the doorway, Bacon turned, spoke over his shoulder with a grin.
“Anyway, I was right about one thing, right in the first place. You come in here to talk about your wife and leave that kid in the taxi; he sees Cusick and tips us off. If it hadn’t been for that kid—”
Bacon sighed. “Boy! With your kind of luck I’d be a millionaire. No matter what you do, bingo! Smack into the breaks every time.”
22
NATE GIRARD STOOD UP, felt gingerly of the lump over his ear, and made a slow, complete circuit of the room. Murdock sat down in the chair by the magazine stand. He lit a cigarette and puffed thoughtfully at it until Girard came back and sat down opposite him.
“I’m just beginning to get back to normal.” Girard reached for the silver humidor and took a cigar. “And for once my luck was in.” He bit off the end of the cigar, rolled it gently between his lips. “If you hadn’t stopped in here to talk about Hestor—” He broke off, lit the cigar, and puffed silently, his eyes on the ceiling.
Murdock said: “Yeah.” His voice was neutral and his narrowed, searching gaze never left Girard’s face. He sat that way for perhaps a minute without shifting his eyes, and when he leaned forward in his chair his mind was made up. “You said you had a couple thousand here.”
Girard’s eyes jerked from the ceiling, narrowed. “Oh.” He started to smile, but the effort faded into a puzzled expression and he finally added: “You need some. Is that it?”
“I could use all of it,” Murdock said, keeping his voice flat.
“A loan?”
“Call it that if you like.”
Girard’s cigar twisted around in an impatient arc. For a moment Murdock thought he was going to refuse. Instead he shrugged, put his palms on the chair arm, and pulled himself erect. He went through the doorway to the inner hall and was gone nearly a minute. When he returned he had a neat stack of new bills which he handed to Murdock without speaking.
Murdock glanced at them, fanned them out slightly. He looked back at Girard, tapped the bills against an open palm, and finally laid them on the top of the magazine-rack. The tension he felt was within himself, but it was an effort to break the grip and speak normally. Perhaps he overdid it; his voice was casual, nonchalant.
He said: “I suppose you read about Tripp?”
Girard nodded, took out his cigar, and looked at it; he thrust it back in one corner of his mouth without speaking.
“I was there when they found him,” Murdock went on. “And I was down to headquarters the next day. Tripp had about twelve hundred dollars on him—I don’t know if the papers told about that or not—and a thousand of this was in new fifties—like these.”
Girard crossed his legs and watched Murdock with a steady-eyed gaze that was fathomless, waiting.
“Bacon was pretty well satisfied that Cusick was the one who got Redfield, especially when I told how Cusick tried to scare me out of talking. I saw him, you know, earlier the night Redfield was murdered.” Murdock ground out his cigarette, blew out his final inhalation in a thin blue cone. “And Bacon had the idea that Tripp knew more than he told. When they found him, Bacon felt sure about it. He doped it right—part of it. We found that out tonight. Tripp tried to blackmail Cusick, and Cusick put him away for good.”
“What do you mean, part of it?” Girard asked softly.
“His hunch was that Cusick paid the thousand to silence Tripp and get him off guard, then made another date and shot him.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Cusick was hard up. I don’t think he’d be the kind to leave a thousand around on a dead man. The only way I could figure it was that he did not know the money was there. So I wondered—just wondered, you understand—if maybe Tripp had seen somebody else that night, and that that somebody had paid.”
Girard’s eyes flicked to the stack of bills on the magazine-rack, and he jerked them back. Murdock saw the shift. Girard must have sensed this, because he looked away and had trouble clearing his throat before he spoke.
“Just how far have you got this theory worked out?”
“That one,” Murdock said, “is all worked out.” His smile was a searching stare. “The numbers on those bills Tripp had were consecutive. I made a point to memorize the first and last numbers. These bills continue to run consecutively with Tripp’s thousand!”
“I see.” Girard’s voice was bitter, disgusted. “This is more blackmail, after all?”
“And that’s the kind of a heel you are?”
“That’s the kind of a heel I can be when I have to.”
“Just a chiseling bast—”
“Wait!” rapped Murdock, sitting erect. “This is more than you think.”
Girard broke off as Murdock reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his tiny camera. He watched fascinated as Murdock snapped off the case, pulled out the lens, and began to adjust the shutter. When Murdock reached for the bills, Girard’s face went gray and he leaned forward in his chair as though ready to spring.
Murdock dropped the bills and his hand shot to his coat pocket. His fingers found the gun there which had been returned to him by Keogh. He took it out. He did not point it at Girard, he just placed it on the table within easy reach.
“Let’s not get melodramatic about it,” he said, and there was an ominous thinness to his tone. “I’m playing my hand face-up. Don’t forget I could have taken this money and photographed it some place else—say at police headquarters.”
Girard held his position for a few seconds and his angry scowl was constant. Then he seemed to relax. He took his hands from the chair arms, leaned back.
Murdock spread the new bills out on a newspaper and, still watching Girard, leaned down and unstrapped his plate-case. Taking out the single photo-flood bulb which he carried for emergencies, he unscrewed the regular light-bulb from the floor lamp, substituting the five-hundred-watt affair. He directed this cone of blue-white light down on the bills. He stopped his lens down to get more depth of focus and took six pictures from different angles and distances.
Girard’s cigar had gone out. He was slouched down in the chair again; his lids were lowered so that his eyes looked sleepy. When Murdock finished and put the automatic back in his pocket, Girard said:
“You’ve got more than that. This was luck. You didn’t know if I had the money—couldn’t know it would check. It was luck.”
“Yeah,” Murdock said.
“But you came here with some other idea,” Girard said slowly. “You stayed behind to see about these bills. What else?”
Murder with Pictures Page 20
