by Steve Fisher
Sam Tulley was backing toward the window. "It's all a lie. It's police fantasy. You can't—" The gun was gripped hard in his right hand. Everyone was watching him attentively.
"You returned here Monday," Johnny West went on. "You sneaked into the house. Knowing the place fairly well, it was easy to get in when the butler wasn't around. You managed to keep out of sight until you had gotten upstairs. But in your excitement you got to the wrong end of the second floor and you put the shoes—wrapped up—in Grant Smyth's closet. His room corresponds with Mrs. Davis' in detail. You then rushed downstairs intending to get out of the house and—"
"But Grant saw him then," Dorothy interrupted. "Grant must have just been coming in and he caught Sam Tulley in the house. Because he mentioned in Mrs. Davis' room about having had beer with Grant on Monday. When he made the statement that he was in Stamford Thursday through to Monday night Grant wasn't in the room to contradict him and remind him that he had been here in the house Monday morning. That would have been a complete give-away." Dorothy caught her breath. "As it was, he had Stamford for an alibi. I didn't remember any of this conversation until Grant was slugged. Then I realized it must have been because Grant knew of some movement the killer had made and was going to tell—"
Sam Tulley said: "I thought I told you—"
West clipped, "You're through telling anybody. We're telling you. After you had beer with Grant on Monday—Grant with his short memory and his slow mind—you returned to Stamford. You were there when Mrs. Davis called your New York office and they transferred the call. At that time you made the appointment to meet Mrs. Davis at the Blue Hour Glass on Fifth Avenue. So you drove in Monday night and met her there. She told you of the people she had invited, she perhaps even gave you a list of their names—since you were to be her head producer—and at that time told you that she was going to revise her plans. She would commence putting on plays with beginners in them at once, instead of waiting until after she died.
"What I say now I got from her lawyers. She told you she was going to change the will and the provisions of your contract the first thing Tuesday morning. That, of course, was the very thing you had been afraid of. The original agreement gave you a free hand. This would be restricted. You were to be told who you were to have and what you were to produce. You knew that she was dying even while she told you this. But you were deathly afraid that she would live long enough to change everything with the lawyers when they arrived Tuesday morning. Then, even though she was dead, you would have lost.
"So you telephoned the new people Mrs. Davis had invited to come out here for the summer. It was your desperate thought that if you could frighten them out of coming out here she would be so infuriated at them for not appearing that she would let the old agreement stand as it was. So you called Miss Noel and Mr. Dell and the five others who didn't appear. But it didn't work. Mrs. Davis did change things. And you—"
Sam Tulley was all the way back to the window. His face had gone white.
"You can't prove any of this! Not in court you can't!”
Johnny West began walking toward him. "Yes, I can. The little boy you paid to get Mrs. Davis' shoes from the cobbler, is in the other room. He just arrived.”
Tulley kicked out behind him. The glass shattered from the French door.
Johnny moved on toward him, sweat trickling down his cheeks. "After you pushed Frances," he went on, "you ran into one of the bedrooms, hung by your hands from the balcony, dropped to the soft dirt below, and came in through this French door that's behind you now. That way it looked as though you had been down here, not upstairs. But you practically told us. You told Mrs. O'Malley at the table that your feet ached and you wanted some mustard to bathe them in."
"Stay back!" Sam Tulley said.
He turned, lifted his hand over his face, and plunged toward the glass. West bolted forward, caught his legs in a tackle. Tulley fell halfway out through the glass. Johnny was still holding his legs. Tulley was halfway in, halfway out. Wiggam rushed over and gave Johnny a hand. They pulled Tulley back into the room. He had dropped the gun. The glass had cut his face. He was blubbering and crying. Johnny put the handcuffs on him. Then he straightened up.
"There's your second act curtain, Mr. Dell," he said.
He moved through the room, shoving Sam Tulley in front of him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was a beautiful morning. The rain had gone and the sun was shining. When Dorothy came into the living-room Grant was sitting in a chair by the window, a bandage around his head, a cigarette in his mouth. Betty was talking to Clifton and smiling while she spoke.
Clifton turned. "Kid!" he said.
"Yes?"
"Guess what?"
"What?" said Dorothy.
"Betty—ah, Mrs. Smyth says—well, she's going to go through with the Rhea Davis Theater movement. For her mother's sake. Everything that was stipulated in the new plans!"
Dorothy said: "That's—that's—"
"Do you know what it means?" Clifton roared. "Do you know what it calls for? You heard West say. But let me tell you. It calls for the production of my play 'Saturday' next season. My play! On the boards. In a Broadway theater. First night. Critics. George Jean Nathan and Walter Winchell. My name in lights. Me making curtain speeches!"
Dorothy glanced at Betty. "It's the least I can do," Betty said quietly, "and it was Mother's wish. Roy left this morning, Miss Noel. I'm sorry if I've seemed to you to be—"
"But you haven't," said Dorothy. "Really you haven't."
"Listen," Clifton said, "are you interested in this or not? It's the biggest thing since the Japs bombed Shanghai. Bigger. We're going to get a cast together to rehearse this summer. We're going to go over it and over it. Wiggam's going to be publicity agent and he'll help me. I'm going to polish the lines so hard they'll explode in your mouth before you get them half way out. I'm going to have the audience yelling for shock absorbers after the first intermission. It's going to be like nothing that's ever walked across the boards since—since—well, Shakespeare, if he was good. Since him. We're going to ring down the third act and send the critics running into the streets screaming praise to the world!"
"That's fine."
"And you're the lead. You're the girl in 'Saturday.’ You've got to do it just like you did on Seventeenth Street. You've got to swagger through the role. You've got. to laugh and cry and go crazy. You've got to sweat out; your life blood in 'Saturday's' heroine. Every night you've: got to do that. Me, I'm going to retire as an actor. I only did it because of the shortage. I'm going to sit out front; every night and watch you. Then I'm going to go home; and write some more. I'm going to light a great big torch, and run through 44th Street with it. You and I are going; to do it! The Lunts! Ha! Who are the Lunts? What: are they compared to an actress-playwright team!"
"But I—"
"You what, Dorothy?"
"You're thinking of him? That detective?"
"Yes."
"You didn't forget him last night? You didn't forget all about him the moment he walked out of here last night with that killer in his bag?"
"No," she said.
"Then you're nuts."
"Am I?" she said.
"You're throwing away the world."
"Is that all?"
"No," he snapped. "The universe. Posterity. Immortality."
"Only those things?"
"And me," he said, "you're taking those things away from me, too."
She looked at him, and then she heard the front door open, and when she turned Johnny West was there. He was there at the door. Clifton looked at him.
"It's all right, Dorothy," Johnny said.
"What is?"
"About Henry Myers."
She had forgotten almost.
"I had one sweet time," Johnny went on, "but your girl friend, Sherry Moore, had softened the guy for me a little. I scared the living hell out of him. I took him down to the station and looked up past records of cases where girls had ko
nked guys and beat it. There's more than you think. I showed him what happened when the guys kicked about it afterward. A couple of the boys helped me out. Myers won't be around any more. You won't see him again."
"I don't know how to thank you, Johnny."
"You don't have to. Only it'd be kind of hard for us to get married if he was still around."
Dorothy said vaguely: "What?"
"Get married."
"Oh, yes," she said.
"I thought maybe we could go to Harrison this noon. Because I got to go to Port Chester tonight and see about that murder up there. They're having trouble."
"Johnny."
Clifton turned toward the window.
Johnny moved forward. "Yes?"
"Johnny, next time you fall in love—"
He stopped, "Next time I—"
She nodded, tears in her eyes suddenly. "Next time you fall in love, make sure the girl isn't hysterical because of—of anything. Of a murder or anything else. Meet her when she's sane and on her own ground. If she's an actress meet her in the theater. If she's a librarian, in the library. If she's a ten-cent-store girl, in Woolworth's. Give her an even break. Because it's instinctive in a woman to run to a man who can protect her. And in a murder case a detective—" She stopped and turned away. "There is no excuse outside of that. I know there is none. I—"
"It's all right," he said quietly.
She looked toward him again. "If I've hurt you—if I've—"
He slapped his felt hat back on his head. He put a cigarette in his mouth, but he didn't light it. "No," he said. "It's okay. Maybe a jolt. But you get to live life that way. You get harder as you go along."
Clifton had turned around. He was watching Johnny West and his eyes were shining wet. Johnny was backing toward the door. He seemed to be awkward and unsure of his footing.
"It's probably better," he went on. "It gets kind of dreary out here in the Fall. The grass dies, and the leaves all turn brown, and—it reminds you too much that time is passing."
He lit the cigarette, drained on it, then took it out of his mouth and looked at it. He glanced up. "Well, so long."
He was gone. The front door slammed shut.
THE END
