Murder with Pictures

by George Harmon Coxe

  “So make up your mind. Play ball with me or you’ll play ball in the District Attorney’s office.” Murdock’s voice was sharp now and there were beads of moisture on his forehead. “Because I’m going to crowd you. I’m in love with Joyce Archer and I want the chance to live a normal life with her. I’m going to get that chance. You do as I say or I’ll talk to Bacon.”

  “You’d be a damn fool,” Girard argued, “to raise the stink when they can’t hang it on me. What good would it do to—”

  “I guess I haven’t made myself clear,” Murdock cut in. “Maybe I should have expressed the idea in another way—or maybe you’re too thick-headed or stubborn to see what I mean. I’ll try it once more.”

  Murdock looked at the glass in his hand, seemed to be studying the sparkling amber liquid for a moment. His face was still white and tense, and when he looked back at Girard his eyes were hot and narrowed.

  “You take Hestor so I can get a divorce,” he said grimly, measuring his words and keeping his voice low, “or I’ll turn you over to the District Attorney. And if I do, the only way you can stall off a prosecution is to prove your alibi. I’ve got just about enough half-baked evidence to make the D.A. curious. You’ll have to prove—and Hestor will have to swear to it—that you were in her apartment. And when you do that—and you will if he corners you—I’ll have what I need to get a divorce.

  “There you have it.” Murdock took a long drink and stood up. He shouldered his plate-case, retrieved his hat. A tight, mirthless smile stretched his lips flat, and his voice continued low, the emphasis in the meaning behind it rather than in any accented delivery.

  “And that’s the kind of a heel I can be. I’m going to crowd you. I can’t convict you of anything, but by God I can get free of Hestor and I’m going to, one way or another. You’ve got your choice, but make up your mind.”

  Girard sat motionless until Murdock reached the door. Then he said: “Well,” and stood up. The little smile that lifted the corners of his mouth and tugged at his mustache was passive and bitter and resigned.

  Murdock said: “You might even marry her.”

  “No.” Girard shook his head and continued to smile. “But like I said before, you think of things. I guess there’s a break in it for both of us. You’re entitled to yours; you sort of made it for yourself. And you offer me one and I argue with you, huh?” He shook his head. “Just a chump—always out of my class.

  “The way you’ve got it figured out”—his tailored shoulders moved in a suggestion of a shrug—“it’s the sort of an idea that grows on me. The south of France might be a good place for both of us—for a while anyway. Hestor may be expensive, but there are some compensations.”

  Murdock’s lips curved, relieving the set look of his mouth. Color began to ooze into his face. As he opened the door and backed from the room he said: “And don’t forget the note, either.”

  23

  T. A. WYMAN WAS smoking furiously and chewing the end of his cigar as though he genuinely enjoyed the taste. His thick, muscular face was flushed; his eyes were bright with interest.

  “And you’re the guy,” he said disgustedly, “that wants to get out of the newspaper business.”

  Murdock stretched out his legs and surveyed the tips of his shoes. His lean face was tired-looking now, but there was something about the set of the mouth, the relaxed expression of his eyes, that lent an air of satisfaction and contentment to his pose.

  Wyman fidgeted in his chair, took out the cigar and spat savagely at the cuspidor beside the desk. “You’re nuts!” he grunted. “Just like I told you. The way you and Doane turned this thing in tonight just proves what I—”

  “Luck,” Murdock grumbled.

  “Luck? Sure. Everybody’s got luck.”

  “I just happened to be there when it happened.”

  “Sure. But that isn’t all.” Wyman jabbed the cigar back in his teeth and swiveled it to its accustomed corner of his mouth. “You kept plugging. If you’d been sitting here in the office wearing out the seat of your pants like most of my trained seals, where’d you’ve been?

  “The point is you get pictures. You’ve got brains and you use ’em to think with. When you get a chance, you know what to do. You know people, you get around, you—damn it! You get pictures and that’s what interests me. Who cares how you get ’em.”

  Wyman pulled open a drawer of his desk and Murdock looked up. Wyman had a check in his hand. He scowled at it, growled: “You made a liar out of me. I didn’t think you could do it, and I don’t know yet how or why you put it over. But you did it. I’m giving Doane a raise for the story and his part, but it was you that had the idea and took him with you. Here, damn it!”

  Murdock took the check, looked at it. He was conscious of a definite warmth to his blood, an inner glow of some kind that he could not analyze. It may have been his reaction to Wyman’s praise; it may have been the knowledge that Girard would play his part; perhaps it was the thought that Joyce Archer was waiting for him. In any case he cast from his mind all doubt about the ethics, the moral responsibility of what he had done.

  He still believed he was right. It was better for Howard and Rita, for Joyce, immeasurably so for himself. Even Hestor might get what she wanted. Girard would pay, but in a different way. But, and his eyes were at once morose with the thought, right or wrong, he was glad he’d worked it as he had.

  He said: “No,” and handed the check back to Wyman.

  “No?” exploded Wyman. “No, hell! Take it, you earned it!”

  Murdock grinned as Wyman pushed the check back. He picked it up, folded it neatly, and tore it in small pieces.

  Wyman opened his mouth to speak, closed it with a snap, and seemed to collapse back in the chair. Murdock kept grinning.

  “It wasn’t a very good idea. I sort of forced you into meeting the News offer. Besides, the pay-off was on arrest and conviction and—”

  “Cusick’s dead,” Wyman protested. “That’s arrest and conviction enough. When the police are satisfied—”

  “I don’t like the idea of taking money under false pretenses,” Murdock said enigmatically.

  “What?” Wyman’s face cracked in a puzzled scowl.

  “Never mind,” Murdock said hurriedly, and straightened up in his chair. “I’ve changed my mind about several things. Is that proposition of yours still open, about heading up the photograph department?”

  This sort of conversation Wyman could understand. He recovered quickly and spoke naturally once more.

  “Will you take it over?”

  “On a contract?”

  “I told you, write your own.”

  Murdock’s grin broadened. “Suppose,” he said slowly, “suppose I tell you what I want in it. If it’s not too tough you can have it drawn up.”

  Wyman said: “Shoot!”

  “Three years,” Murdock began.

  “Five,” pressed Wyman.

  “Well—”

  “Check.”

  “And,” Murdock seemed to be taking special pains with his words, “I think the ninety bucks a week you’re paying me is probably more than I’m worth so let it ride for the first year. Make it a hundred for the next two and let it slide up to one fifty for the last two.”

  “Okay.” Wyman was still grinning.

  “Two weeks’ vacation each year.”

  “Check.”

  “And don’t forget it, either,” Murdock said. “I’ve never been able to get two weeks at one time since I’ve been here.”

  “We’ll take care of it from now on,” Wyman said. “That’s all?”

  “One thing more.” Murdock hesitated. “My spare time is to be my own to do all the experimenting I want on advertising work or portraits or anything else that isn’t newspaper stuff. Because some day I might change my mind after all.”

  “You won’t,” Wyman said, and put out his hand.

  The clasp was firm, hard. Murdock stood up and put on his hat. “I’ve got two more unofficial reque
sts,” he said.

  “I’d like a two weeks’ bonus for signing the contract. A two weeks’ vacation.” His lip lifted and the corners of his eyes wrinkled with a smile. “I want to make it a honeymoon.”

  “A—” Wyman was speechless.

  “Yeah,” Murdock said. “Which hinges on the other request. I’m getting evidence—divorce evidence—together. I’ll have all I need within a week. When I get it, I want you to pull every string you can think of to put through a decree for me in a hurry.”

  “Can do,” Wyman said, and, taking out a fresh cigar from a partly opened desk drawer, sank back in his chair with a sigh and the satisfied air of a man well pleased with himself and temporarily content to rest on his laurels.

  Joyce Archer was sitting bolt upright in the wing chair. She did not move when Murdock opened the door, nor when he closed it. She did not move when he moved towards her and stopped in front of her chair. The concentrated rays of the floor lamp put her face, her eyes, in shadows and he did not sense her mood until he bent down and put his hands on the chair arms.

  He saw then that her face was somber, tight-lipped; that there was a sullen, hostile look in the smoky-blue eyes. The intensity of her gaze made him forget his own elation. He felt a certain helplessness before her, all the more poignant because he did not understand it. He said:

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You said you’d let me know just as soon as—”

  “Oh.” Murdock breathed a sigh of relief and laughed lightly. That was rather a mistake; he realized it when the hostile expression remained unchanged. He said: “I came as soon as I could,” defensively. “I had to go to the paper and—”

  “You could have called me.”

  “Yes, I—”

  “You didn’t think of it,” she challenged.

  Murdock straightened up then, and his mood reacted to hers as it had done the first time he ever saw her. Anticipation had fired his imagination; the let-down was all the more severe and he found a stiffness in his voice when he spoke.

  “I wanted to tell you myself,” he said. “I knew you would be here and I loved you for deciding to wait. The news I had was good, too good, I thought, to tell over the telephone. I wanted to get my arms around you before I—”

  Joyce Archer forgot her grudge, her complaint, or whatever it was. Instantly she dropped the sullen, hostile mask; her tanned face was alive, her eyes bright, sparkling.

  “Good news? You mean about Hestor?”

  Murdock could not shake off his own resentment so quickly. He backed up, sat down on the davenport.

  “They got Cusick tonight,” he said finally. “He came to kill Girard. I happened to be there, but the police—”

  “Oh!” Joyce Archer’s cheeks whitened and a hand flew to her throat. “That’s why you had the gun. You didn’t use it? You didn’t have to—”

  Murdock shook his head, and his resentment vanished with the appreciation of her concern. “No, I didn’t use it. Some day I’ll tell you the whole story. It’s too long now. The police shot Cusick, arrested a witness to prove he killed Tripp. It sort of cleans up the Redfield job. You won’t have to worry about Howard—”

  Joyce Archer came out of the chair with a single lithe movement. She ran to the davenport and gave a little jump which landed her on her knees at Murdock’s side and facing opposite him.

  “Oh, Kent,” she wailed, “I’m such a little beast! But it seemed so long, and I worried so. I called the office twice and they said you hadn’t come back and—”

  She put her head down with a little sob. Murdock reached out and her arm went around his neck as he crushed her to him. For five minutes there was no need for talk; they just clung together until she let her arm slip from his neck. Murdock lifted his head and slackened his hold while they caught their breath; then Joyce Archer snuggled down with her head and shoulders in his lap.

  “Then it’s all right—about Hestor?” she asked him finally.

  Murdock nodded. “I’ve got what I wanted—what I needed. And I don’t think I’ll have to be bothered with alimony.”

  “How long will—”

  “Two weeks—a month, maybe. No longer.”

  It seemed impossible that Joyce Archer’s blue eyes could brighten any more, but they did. “Then you’re not going to New York. You won’t have to give up your job?”

  Murdock kept smiling.

  “Why do you say it that way?”

  “You like it, don’t you? Your work?”

  “I like it now. And I’ve got sort of a raise. I mean there’ll be enough to keep us alive anyway, and I’ll have some time to keep on with my experiments. But”—Murdock broke off, then continued bluntly: “There’s no social prestige in being married to a fellow with my kind of job.”

  Joyce Archer’s eyes clouded, fastened on Murdock’s lapel. “All my life,” she said, with just a shade of bitterness, “I’ve had social prestige; some little bit at least. It never brought me happiness or love or very much kindness. If I have the chance to have all three with you—”

  Murdock bent down and kissed the moist warm lips lightly, as though kissing a little girl.

  She would not be denied. She smiled at him, but she kept talking the moment he let her.

  “Your work is yours alone. It doesn’t make any difference what it is, does it, so long as it’s your job? If you like it, and you are good at it—and you are—you’ll come home happy. That’s what matters. Be happy in your work and save the rest of yourself for me.”

  They were silent then, for a minute or so, content with their individual thoughts. Joyce broke the mood first. Struggling, helped by Murdock’s arms, she got turned around and sat down beside him.

  “A month seems long.”

  Murdock grinned. “To me, yes. But you”—the grin broadened—“it’ll be short enough when you start to get your clothes together. And we’ll have two weeks—a poor man’s vacation. And I’ve got a ring.” He looked away.

  “I hope you’ll like it. It’s in a safe-deposit box. It was my mother’s. Just a thin gold band with a solitaire. Maybe it’s a little old-fashioned, but the diamond is quite good and—”

  “Did Hestor—” Joyce Archer began, her voice troubled.

  “No,” Murdock said. “It was in the same box then. We were married Saturday night. By Monday I didn’t think—I wasn’t so sure I wanted her to have it. I bought her another.”

  “I’d love it,” she said, and kissed him. He held her tightly and she said: “I don’t want to go.”

  Murdock said: “I don’t want you to, but—”

  She said: “But,” and got quickly to her feet, snatching up her camel’s-hair coat from the arm of the davenport as she moved. “But—” she smiled until he smiled back at her and stood up.

  “But what?” he demanded.

  “But you’ve done such a good job of keeping me respectable, it’s time you had a little co-operation, don’t you think?”

  “Now that you mention it,” Murdock said, grinning until his teeth flashed in the reflected light, “I do. I may not be entitled to a respectable wife, but it sounds like a good idea. If we start respectable and you spend enough time on me, maybe you can fix it so I can keep respectable and still be a button-pusher.”