Halo in Blood

by Howard Browne

  I sat down and lighted a cigarette. Royden went over and leaned against the wall next to the aquarium.

  Abbott leaned back, getting a complaining squeak from the springs of his oak swivel chair. He studied me through a pair of small deep blue eyes and puffed a time or two on his pipe before he took it out to say:

  “It’s a long time between killings in Glencoe, Mr. Pine. This is a quiet community, and some of the wealthiest and most respected citizens have residence here. Our police force is small but efficient—highly efficient. We don’t like criminals to come into our community, and we don’t like crime—especially murder.”

  I said, “Where is Miss Sandmark?”

  That hurt his feelings. He had another paragraph or two of preface to get through before talking business. He said shortly, “She’s here. I’ve heard her side of it. Let’s hear yours.”

  I told him the truth, but I left out everything that had names in it. He might have heard about Leona Sandmark’s connection with Jerry Marlin’s death, but I didn’t mention it and neither did he. I didn’t talk about the first time I’d seen Baird, either. There was no point in complicating matters.

  While I talked he sat dreamy-eyed and puffed at his pipe and rocked himself gently in the swivel chair. When I was through, he took his pipe away from his teeth and rubbed a square palm thoughtfully against the bowl and nodded. He said. “The young lady said you were a private detective. Show me.”

  I passed over my wallet and he looked through my cards. He tossed it back to me and said, “Are you carrying a gun, Mr. Pine?”

  “Not in these clothes.”

  “Then the gun used was Miss Sandmark’s?”

  “I told you that.”

  “You don’t mind my asking again?” He was polite, with steel in it.

  “I don’t mind. It was her gun.”

  “Rather an unusual thing for a young lady to carry with her on a date, I would say.”

  “It was her first date with me. That probably explains it.”

  It was worth maybe a small smile but I didn’t get even that. Abbott said, “Miss Sandmark gave me an explanation for having the gun. She also told me, almost word for word, the same story you’ve given me. Perhaps that’s why I’m wondering a little. I’ve learned to distrust identical stories, Mr. Pine. They sound too rehearsed. Too pat.”

  “That’s true,” I said, to make him feel good. “Of course, ours isn’t a long story and it wouldn’t be complicated. Anything short and simple would have to sound pretty much the same, no matter how many people told it.”

  He worked his lips in and out and watched his hand rub around on the pipe bowl. He was thinking. When he was through thinking, he put his small blue eyes back on me and said, “I wonder some about a private cop running around with an heiress. There’s usually a reason for something like that . . . other than an ordinary date, I mean. I’m curious, Mr. Pine.”

  “It’s a shame,” I said, “that I can’t figure out some movie stuff to make it a more interesting story. But I thought you might like some unvarnished truth. That alone should make this situation unique.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out and pushed himself back away from the desk. He fumbled open the middle drawer and took out a gun and put it down on the bare wooden surface in front of me. He said, “Is this the gun Miss Sandmark had in her bag?”

  I looked at it without peering and I made no move to touch it. It was either the same gun Leona had brought with her to my apartment three days before, or one exactly like it. A Colt .32, small, compact, deadly. Nice for a woman’s handbag. A gun a woman could shoot. It wouldn’t stop an elephant, but Baird hadn’t been an elephant.

  “It might be,” I said. “This is the first time I’ve had a look at it.”

  There was a knock at the door behind me and a uniformed man came in and put some papers and a brown alligator billfold in Abbott’s hand and went out again.

  The police chief took his time digging through the stuff. There was quite a thick slab of bills in the money compartment of the wallet; also some identification cards. The papers were two or three envelopes, with enclosures, and a couple of invoices or bills. I could have known more about it if Abbott would have handed them to me, but he didn’t.

  Some pencil marks on the back of one envelope caught his eye and he looked at them for a full minute. He kept working his thick lips in and out; probably a trick he’d picked up from reading Nero Wolfe mysteries. He was built for the part, all right. He lifted up his blue eyes and gave me a keen Stare. “This is very strange, Mr. Pine. Very strange indeed.”

  “Not so far, it isn’t,” I said.

  “What,” he asked heavily, “do you think I find written in pencil on this envelope?”

  “You’ll have to tell me,” I said. “My crystal ball is a little cloudy this morning.”

  “Written here,” he went on, as though he hadn’t heard me, “is your name and address on Wayne Avenue in Chicago; also another address—office, I suppose—on East Jackson Boulevard.”

  I didn’t like that but there was very little I could do about it.

  “In that order?” I asked. “I mean, is the Wayne Avenue address first and the office address second?”

  He put the envelope down and continued to stare at me, his expression puzzled and a bit angry because he was puzzled. “Exactly. Why do you ask that?”

  I held my cigarette stub between a thumb and forefinger and looked around: man hunting for ash tray. Abbott scow led, but he opened a side drawer and took out a glass tray and shoved it over to me. I leaned over and ground out the stub and sat back again and looked interested.

  The chief held his temper but it wasn’t easy for him. “Why did you ask that, Mr. Pine?”

  I shrugged. “It seemed the kind of question a smart detective would ask.”

  He put his hands slowly on the desk top. palms down, and anger began to color his square face. “Don’t try my patience, damn you. I’m chief of police in this town and don’t you forget it. You’re involved in a murder, Mr. Pine. I’d talk kind of small if I were you.”

  I was beginning to get a little fed up with this. “I’m not you and it’s not murder. If you’re a policeman, for Crisakes act like one with some sense. Miss Sandmark and I were parked near the lake and somebody came along and tried a boost and got bullets instead. That’s not murder, even if you sit there and sweat off fifty pounds trying to make it murder. The fact the guy had my name and address may make it something more than attempted robbery. I don’t know that and you don’t know that.

  “The thing for you to do, if you’re on your toes, is to fingerprint the corpse, get them classified and call Central Station in Chicago to see if they’ve got something on the guy. You’ve got papers from his pockets; even from here I can see there are names on them. Central may have him under those names. Get the guy identified, find out if he has a record, then start calling Miss Sandmark a murderer.”

  Before the chief could let loose at me, somebody knocked on the door. A little guy with glasses and a bookkeeper’s face sidled in, said, “Excuse me, Chief Abbott,” in a scared voice and put a sheet of glossy cardboard in front of the boss, then slid out the door again.

  Abbott smiled smugly and put the cardboard in front of me. The surface was ruled into ten squares, and in each square was an inked fingerprint, the print wider than you’d expect because the inked tip of each finger and thumb had been rolled on the paper to get a complete surface. In a ruled box under the prints were the symbols giving the classification.

  I used one forefinger to push the sheet back to him. “Nice timing,” I said. “I sit here and tell you your business, while all the time you’re way ahead of me.”

  He liked that. He liked it so much he wasn’t mad at me any more. In fact, he was so pleased that he reached for the phone on his desk and went ahead and followed out the rest of my suggestion. Maybe he had intended to do that all along.

  It wasn’t more than a minute before he was talking to
somebody in the identification bureau at Central Station in Chicago. The chief gave his own name and position and said:

  “We’ve had a little trouble out here, Sergeant. I wonder if you have any record of a man calling himself—” he squinted at one of the envelopes from Baird’s pockets— “Charles L. Hogarth. Address given: 2996 East Fifty-eighth Street, in Chicago. . . . I’ll wait, sure. Incidentally, I have an F. P. classification on him. . . . All right.”

  He put the receiver down on the desk and dug through his pockets until he found some matches to use on his pipe. He got it going and picked up the receiver and said, “Hello,” just to make sure no one was waiting on the other end, then settled back in the chair. He closed his eyes and sat there, the receiver propped against one ear, clouds of blue smoke floating up from the pipe bowl. . . .

  “Yes.” He opened his eyes. “Wait a minute.” He found a pencil and a scratch pad in the middle drawer. “Go ahead. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . .” The pencil was working all the time. “Michigan State Penitentiary. . . . Yes. . . . Fine.” He picked up the fingerprints. “Go ahead. . . . Check. He’s the man, all right; that agrees with the classification I have here. That will do it, Sergeant. I’ll give you a report on my end of it later in the day. Thanks again.”

  He put back the receiver and looked at me. “The man Miss Sandmark shot is known as Charles Hogarth. He was a criminal of the worst sort. He served a sentence in Michigan for stealing cars, a sentence in Atlanta for counterfeiting, a sentence at Joliet for robbery with a gun. He had been booked on suspicion of grand larceny, of operating a confidence game, of murder. None of those last charges resulted in a conviction, but it seems pretty certain some of them should have. His last sentence was a short one at Michigan, and he was paroled April 28, this year. He had a string of aliases as long as the Atlantic cable.”

  I nodded. “Now what?”

  “Well. . . .” He pulled on the pipe. “I’m pretty much satisfied. Your story and that of the young lady match up, as I said before. We tested her hands for nitrates; she fired a gun all right. But in view of the dead man’s record and the more or less obviousness of the case, I’m inclined to allow Miss Sandmark and you to return to Chicago. The inquest won’t be before Saturday; I’d like you both to be here for that. Miss Sandmark is socially prominent and the daughter of a very wealthy man. There’s no point in causing her or her father any unnecessary embarrassment.”

  “Besides,” I said, “you never can tell when they might move to Glencoe.”

  It took him a minute to figure out what I meant by that. When he did, it wasn’t anything he was fond of. He pressed a buzzer and the uniformed man put his head in at the door.

  “Have Miss Sandmark step in,” Abbott said.

  A moment later the door opened and Leona came in. She crossed over to me as I stood up. “I want to go home. Paul.”

  “The chief says we can leave,” I said.

  “Why, of course we can leave. We’ve done nothing wrong. It isn’t against the law to defend yourself against a criminal.”

  Abbott said, “It turns out you’ve done the country’s police quite a service, Miss Sandmark. The man was a hardened criminal, with a staggering record. The only thing I must ask you and Mr. Pine to do is attend the inquest. We’ll notify you both in time.”

  She gave him a smile I wouldn’t have minded getting myself. “Surely. And I want to say that I’ve never met an official as intelligent and understanding as you have been.”

  He did everything but loll out his tongue. “Just my duty, Miss Sandmark. Just my duty.”

  He took the .32 off the desk and handed it to her. “I took the liberty of firing a test bullet from your gun, Miss Sandmark. Routine, you know.”

  “That’s quite all right,” she said carelessly. She dropped it into the bag and snapped the catch. “May we go now?”

  Abbott punched the buzzer again. When the cop outside looked in, the chief ordered the Packard brought around to the front of the station.

  He went out with us, opened the car door for Leona and bowed her in. I opened the door on the other side myself and nobody bowed me in. But I was satisfied.

  There were stains on the floorboard just inside the door next to the driver’s seat. I closed the door and said good-by in a polite voice, started the motor and stepped on the gas.

  We were three blocks out of Glencoe before I took my first deep breath since Baird had been shot.

  CHAPTER 17

  The first time she spoke was when we were well into Evanston. “I was scared to death they would call John, darling.”

  “It wouldn’t have made much difference,” I said. “He’s bound to learn about it. You’ll get a lot more room in the papers over this than you did on the Marlin killing.” I chuckled briefly. “You’re getting to be a bad risk for suitors, baby. Guns have a habit of going off around you.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

  “You’re right. . . . But, as I say, the papers are going to nail you plenty on this one. I don’t know of another time when a doll as socially prominent as you ever was mixed up in two homicides within a day or two of each other. So there’s no way you can keep John Sandmark from finding out what happened.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said slowly. “I want to be the one to tell him what happened tonight. Can you imagine the state he would be in if that police chief had telephoned and said I just killed a man? That, on top of the call this State’s Attorney’s man is going to make on him today, would just about drive him out of his mind with worry.

  “But that’s all over with now. When the police learn the dead man in the hotel was not my real father, they’ll stop bothering John and go after the logical suspect.”

  I said, “And it makes no difference to you that the ‘logical suspect’ is your real father?”

  “Not in the least,” she said calmly. “How could it? I never saw him before that night at the hotel; in fact, I hardly knew his name until the night Jerry told me of meeting him.”

  “All right,” I said. “I can understand that.”

  For the next few miles neither of us had much to say. It was getting light over to the east. It was going to be another cloudless hot day.

  “Paul.”

  “What?”

  “Have you any idea who killed Jerry?”

  I sighed. I was tired of Jerry Marlin. “Idea, yes. Proof, no.”

  “Who do you think killed him?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, baby, you may have avenged Marlin tonight.”

  She gasped, and I felt her body tense where it touched me. “Paul! Do you mean the-—the man I shot—?”

  “That’s what I mean. You see, I had a run-in with this guy before. His name was Baird.”

  I told her the story of Baird’s call on me, of the phony money, of the very handy arrival of D’Allemand’s boys in “time” to keep my head in one hunk. I told her the rest of it too; of Clyne and his death, of my showdown with D’Allemand, connecting the last with the fact that Baird had tried to kill me less than two hours afterward.

  What I didn’t tell her was the blackmail angle aimed against John Sandmark, and that the deaths of Marlin and Clyne tied in some way with the twenty-five-year-old robbery and murder at the Gannett Express Company. It wasn’t time for her to know about those things. It might never be time for her to know.

  It kept her thinking until we reached the Outer Drive south of Foster Avenue. Then she said, “That would make D’Allemand responsible for all three deaths, wouldn’t it, Paul?”

  “What three deaths?”

  I knew she was staring at me strangely. “Why, Jerry and Clyne and even this man Baird. I mean, if Baird hadn’t been sent out to kill you he wouldn’t have been shot.”

  I said, “You asked me if I had an idea. That’s one of them.”

  “It seems conclusive to me,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What are the other ideas, Paul?” she said, a shade too casu
ally.

  I moved the wheel about a tenth of an inch, which was enough to follow a tight curve in the road. I said, “My mind gets into some funny places when it hunts ideas.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Your stepfather could have hired Baird to get rid of Marlin.”

  She jerked away from being near me and her voice came closer to being shrill than culture should have permitted. “I thought so! You don’t miss a trick, do you, Mr. Detective! Well, let me tell you something! John Sandmark is the finest man who ever drew breath. He would no more hire a killer than he would—would kill me! So you can just put that idea where it won’t do anybody any harm, you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” I said. “I could still hear you if I were in Omaha.”

  That brought her voice down. “I didn’t mean to shout,” she said sullenly. “But, honestly, you make me so—so darn mad at times.”

  She spent the rest of the ride thinking, and she didn’t seem so satisfied any more. Probably, I figured, my remark about her stepfather had gone in pretty deep.

  It was ten to five when the convertible rolled to a stop at the curb in front of the yellow-brick apartment building. I got out and went around and opened the car door and helped her out. When we were in the foyer, I pushed the elevator button to bring down the cage, and said, “Well, get some sleep, beautiful. You’ve a tough day ahead.”

  She put a hand on my sleeve. “Come up for a drink, dear. I’m all unstrung.”

  “I’m not much good at restringing.”

  Her cheeks pinked up but her eyes never wavered. “Please, Paul.”

  I followed her into the cage and we rode in silence to the sixth floor. She unlocked the door and went in ahead of me and pressed the wall switch, lighting the lamp in front of the mirror in the hall.

  I had one foot over the sill when a gun went off in the dark living room and a thin line of fire streaked at Leona Sandmark. She screamed once, slumping to the floor as the gun went off a second time and my fingers hit the switch.