The Marquis said: “This is kind of painful, Alice.”
Her eyes were terrified. She tried to draw herself up, choked: “You—you’ve made some mistake. My name is not Alice.”
“It was in Detroit—the night the local law raided Silver-haired Elsie’s to help me catch Red Dolan. Though I’ll admit the girls weren’t giving right names that night.”
Years crowded her face. Her eyes wavered and fell before his pin-point regard. After a long minute, she said in a dead, beaten voice: “I was afraid you’d remember me. Oh, God.”
The Marquis stepped over and sat down, eyes intent on the girl’s bowed head. “You’re in a pretty bad spot, Alice. You can’t lose a thing by telling me all about it.”
Her eyes jerked up, dark with fear. “I swear it isn’t that. I swear I didn’t have anything to do with—”
“Was he your husband, Alice?”
“Yes.”
“Did he know about Silver-haired Elsie’s?”
Her cherry mouth was suddenly warped, queer. She said huskily: “He married me out of there.”
The Marquis’ eyes were foggy. He groped: “He must have been a pretty fair sort of gent. Though I will say I don’t think you ever belonged in a drum like that. He liked you pretty well, eh?”
She got suddenly to her feet, turned her back on the Marquis. He was surprised to see she was shaking terribly. Her voice came as a blurted husk: “He was crazy.”
“Oh?”
“Not ordinarily crazy. He was loathsome—a bluenose and a hypocrite. He didn’t marry me because he loved me. He—he had some queer complex. He wanted to feel superior. He felt he was saving me, and he never let me forget it a minute.
“When his family came to see us, I had to go upstairs, so they wouldn’t be contaminated. He lectured me, every night before”—she shuddered—“before we went to bed. And he was never faithful to me from the week we were married.”
The Marquis’ eyebrows were up, his thin, vermilion lips pursed. “Like that, eh? So you got yourself a boy-friend and finished him off?”
“I didn’t! I swear I had nothing to do—” She whirled to face him, but the hysterical intensity of her words, as well as the uneasy light in her eyes, made the Marquis shake his head slowly.
“We’ll get nowhere with that sort of thing,” he said quietly. “I’m trying to see if there’s any way in which I can keep from burning you for murder. Would you believe me if I said I don’t give a damn whether your husband’s killing is ever cleared up or not?”
Her eyes became bright and wary. “No.”
“Well, I don’t—if I can find who did a certain other little job tonight. You can help me.”
“How?”
“It was your boy-friend that did this job.”
“Oh, it wasn’t! He couldn’t have—” She choked.
The Marquis was on his feet now, pinpoints of fire deep in his eyes. “So there is a boy-friend.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“He Promised to Kill Me!”
THE Marquis thought it all over. The room was still, when he spoke, finally. “I get it now. You fell for this outside gent. Maybe I don’t blame you. You wanted your husband’s money—and the other rat’s body. So the two of you killed him together, cooked up that prowler yarn and—”
“No! I swear to God it wasn’t like that!” she almost screamed. “He—he knew me from Detroit. He—threatened to put the heat on me.” She checked herself, blurted in sudden shame. “And besides, I fell for him—at first.”
“Whose idea was it to put the slug to your husband?”
“No one’s.” She wrung her hands, fairly poured breathless words at him. “I swear it was an accident. My husband went out. He was out nearly every night and didn’t come in till three or four. He wouldn’t let me go out, though. Raymond knew how to get in through the service entrance. He was here, and my husband came in. My husband tried to shoot him. He was the type who would, even though he stank of cheap perfume. Raymond wrestled with him, and it was my husband who got shot. We knew we couldn’t tell the police the truth or they would pin it on us, so we—invented the story about the prowler.”
“Why did you hang around here for two weeks? Why didn’t you go home to Detroit, where there wouldn’t be a chance of my recognizing you?”
She swallowed, put a hand to her throat. “He wouldn’t let me. He threatened to cut my heart out if I ran away and left him to take the rap alone.”
“You mean the boy-friend?”
She nodded tensely.
The Marquis stood measuring her, indecision in his small eyes. After a minute, he said: “He won’t hurt you, Alice. I’ll take care of him. Who is he?”
“An actor. He used to work with a stock company in Detroit. He came to see me, then.”
“An actor, eh? Actors aren’t very lethal.”
“He is. Oh, he’s bad, Marquis. He ran with a mob in Detroit for a while.”
“What happened to this loot the prowler was supposed to have taken?”
“It’s in my trunk.”
“Let’s get it.” He swung toward the bedroom.
She croaked, “Wait!” and her hand flew out in a restraining gesture. “I—I haven’t told you it all.”
“No?”
She looked down at her clenched hands, twisted them. “No. I—I did something tonight.”
She looked at his tight black scarf, her breasts heaving. “He called me before midnight. I had to go to your apartment building. He told me I had to wait a few doors down the street. That a blond man would be driving you home and that he was a playboy that hadn’t a drink or a girl in a whole month. When he drove away again, I was to try and pick him up and—bring him here.”
“Good Lord! Hugo Durig!”
“I—I didn’t know who he was.”
“Well, what happened?”
“I picked him up. I brought him up that service stairs and—”
The Marquis blinked. “He’s here?”
“Yes.” She ran at his heels as he strode toward the bedroom. “I—I gave him a Mickey Finn.”
The Marquis took his gun quietly from his hip as he put a hand on the doorknob and explained illogically: “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Alice.”
HE did not need the gun. Hugo Durig lay sprawled on the bed in the spacious, luxurious bedroom. His blond head was pale, damp, but he was breathing regularly, peacefully.
The Marquis shook his head. “Do you know who he is?”
“No.”
“His father is one of the richest men in this town and one of the most powerful politically. If he finds this out, you’ll be in the boob from now on.”
She caught her breath.
“What were you supposed to do with him after you got him here? What was the set-up—”
“He—and another man—were coming to take him away.”
“ ‘He’ meaning this Raymond? What’s his last name?”
“Tracy.”
“Do you know what they wanted him for?”
“They—they said it was a shakedown. That they’d take pictures of him here with me.”
“That’s very funny. Your boy-friend looks like me, doesn’t he?”
“Why—why yes, I guess he does, in a way. I hadn’t thought of—”
“Are you sure you didn’t plan this whole thing—plan to job me by having him make up in my clothes, grab off Hugo Durig who was my alibi and put him out of the way so that I’d be in the grease?”
The shocked bewilderment on her face was too pointed to be faked.
“Never mind it,” the Marquis said. “The point is that your boy-friend pulled a robbery—and a murder—tonight, impersonating me. Fortunately, I had an alibi. But if I hadn’t caught up with you—if your friends had taken Hugo Durig out of here—I wouldn’t have an alibi, I’ll bet ten to one.”
“My God, you mean they were going to kill that boy?”
“Why not? What can they lose now?”
She put her h
ands to her head. “Oh, my God.”
“Who is this other gent he was bringing here to get Hugo?”
“I don’t know.”
The Marquis took a quick turn about the room. His eyes were thin, grim. Finally, he said: “You seem to be facing about three murder raps, a kidnaping and God knows what else. I don’t see what I can do for you, Alice. You’re in too deep. The best thing is for me to walk out and let your sweetheart kill you. It’s easier than the chair.”
There was no mistaking the terror in her face. She began to tremble again. Her voice was almost a whisper—a shaky, controlled whisper. “Marty, you can’t leave me to that. If you can’t help me—you can’t. But don’t leave me to him. I came clean with you, Marty—I would have given any other cop the run-around. If you don’t want to help me, all right—but jug me, for God’s sake! Don’t leave me to him!”
“The only way I could help you,” the Marquis said, “is to kill him for you.” He hesitated, passed a badgered hand over his forehead. “I don’t know if I can do that and get away with it. And certainly if I’m ever going to try, you’ve got to go all out for me, Alice.”
“Oh, I will! I will! I’ll do anything, Marty—anything!”
After a long minute, the Marquis said: “All right. I’ll try it, but you’ve got to stall him from coming here. If I have to take him in this hotel, I can’t save you. And I want his boy-friend, too. Can you phone him?”
Her voice was a husk. “Yes.”
“Then phone him and tell him that you have Durig in a cab and he’s passed out—that you can’t lug him up the service stairs. Ask him where you should take him.”
She swallowed and she was seeing frightening things. “All—all right.”
“And give me those hundred-dollar bills and that jeweled watch that was supposed to have been taken from your husband.”
SHE ran to a wardrobe trunk, fumbled with it and came back with a sheaf of twenty-five or thirty bills and the watch. She put a hand to her throat as she handed them to him. “Marquis, the bills are hot. The hotel cashed a travelers check for—for my husband and they happened to take—”
“They’ll do me,” the Marquis said. “Now, the phone call.”
He lifted the receiver, himself, and told the room clerk to put Johnny Berthold on, and, to big Johnny Berthold, he said, “See that nobody listens on this wire.”
“O.K., chief.”
To the girl he said: “Pull yourself together, now. Will he be suspicious of your calling at all?”
“No. I had to call him at four, anyway to—to tell him what happened.”
The Marquis looked at his watch. It was almost exactly on the hour.
The girl gave her number—and waited. Presently, she moaned and said: “He isn’t there yet. No one answers.”
“All right. Hang up,” the Marquis said. “Maybe it’s just as well. Where does he live?”
She blurted a number on West Sixty-fourth.
He picked up the instrument and got Johnny Berthold. “Get Asa MacGuire over here as fast as you can. Come up to this suite as soon as you’ve called him.”
He hung up and put short, black-gloved hands in Chesterfield pockets. His round, apple-cheeked face was without expression but his deep-set china-blue eyes were a little kinder. After a full two minutes of silence, he said: “You haven’t had the best breaks in the world, Alice,” he said, “though if you get out of this, you ought to call it square. You’ve got money?”
“Yes. I—I’ll inherit.”
“I mean ready money.”
“I—I have a few hundred.”
He was silent again for a long, long moment. “That’s enough. I’m having a man sent over to guard you. I want you to pack up and be ready to blow. Either this thing will break so that I can let you duck—or we all go down together. If I can cover you, I’ll call you—and I want you to be ready to run. Unless I say different, you better run to South America. And never say a copper didn’t give you a break.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
The Marquis made another call to his apartment. When his Jap answered, he said, “Has Mr. Immerman called yet?”
“Yes, sir—he just hung up. He said he’d call again in fifteen minutes.”
“Good. Write this address down.” He gave the Sixty-fourth Street number. “Tell him I need him there as fast as he can make it—Apartment Six.”
“Asa is on the way,” Berthold announced when he came in.
“You get the hotel to assign you another room. Hugo Durig is in that bedroom. Move him somewhere else. Then you stay here till Asa arrives. But the girl must not be out of sight for a moment, understand? And I don’t want either of you—well, talking to her. The minute he gets here, you come on the fly to—” he repeated the address on Sixty-fourth.
To the girl, he said: “If he calls you—stall him, somehow. It’s up to you to see he’s at his place when I get there.”
She nodded. “Marty”—she had to swallow, to choke it out—“let me come back and make this up to you—”
Berthold muttered, “Well, I’ll be—”
The Marquis scowled. “Fine talk—when there’s no assurance yet that you’re not going to fry.”
CHAPTER SIX
The Changeable Corpse
HE caught a cab down below, snarled for speed, was whirled up to the old-fashioned, white-stone house, immaculate, gleaming, its ornate veranda at street level. There was a light behind drawn blinds on the third floor.
For a second after his cab had gone, he stood in the shadows opposite. He knew the layout of these old-fashioned, roomy houses. Two apartments to a floor, two large rooms to an apartment, with a bath and a kitchenette slipped in somewhere, the fire-escapes behind, dropping into a yard. A fence separated that yard from the yard of the house fronting on the next street above.
A cab whirled around the corner, came racing up to drop Johnny Berthold almost at his feet. The big man was panting.
“Take your cab,” the Marquis told him, “and go to the house above this one. Get through the house, somehow, and park yourself in the back yard. And get this into your head. If anybody comes out that back door—shoot to kill. Understand? Because no one will come out except the killer we want. Don’t waste a second trying to find out who it is in the dark. The minute the back door opens—let him have it.”
“But—but how do you know?”
“Damn you, will you do as I say—now?”
The big man’s cab rolled away. The Marquis crossed the street, taking a leather case from his pocket, his blue eyes flinty and thin on the lighted window above. Locks on these buildings are not very complicated, and the fourth master key he tried did the trick. He let himself into a darkened, miniature, old-fashioned foyer of maple, no more than ten feet square. The staircase elbow-bent at a level lower than the ceiling, directly in front of him. He drew his gun.
He had one foot on the bottom step when the muffled shot came from above—and his heart turned to ice.
He was up the stairs like a tearing fury, his face congested. When he reached the third floor, he did not even try the knob of the door. He drove his shoulder against it, with all the weight of his chunky body. It sagged, held. He drew back, ran three steps and catapulted himself. The lock gave with a ripping, tearing, crash, flinging him into the high-ceilinged, octagonal living-room.
Lights were on in the bedroom, and he charged in.
Sweat sprang out on his forehead. A man of about his own build, with the same round, red-cheeked face and deep-set blue eyes lay on the rug at the end of the bed. There was no sign of hurt on him, but his face was bloodless, eyes unseeing, glazed, bewildered, and his head was sinking slowly to the floor as the Marquis came in.
Behind him, the breeze fluttered a curtain in the open window. The Marquis ran to it, oblivious of the target he was making of himself, jumped out onto the fire-escape and crouched, every sense twanging for the slightest sound below him.
There was no sound.
; He suddenly let the strong beam of his pocket-torch rake the iron landings and steps below him—and then above him. There was no human in sight.
He dived back in the window, strode across to the side of the shot man. The man was now limp, completely unconscious. Under him, blood was seeping. He was still breathing. The Marquis guessed that he had been shot in the back.
Flinging trapped eyes about him, he saw a crinoline, fluffy-looking doll on a small end-table, jumped for it and whipped the doll away. It was a telephone. He snaked a small, printed book from his pocket, thumbed it open, ran a finger down the page.
He got a break. The home address of one of the assistant medical-examiners was in almost the exact block in which he stood and he whipped the instrument from its cradle, barked the number.
With the medico’s startled, “Right!” in his ears, he hung up, ran back to the wounded man.
THE man’s pulse was feebler and there was a little blood on his lips. The Marquis’ eyes raced around the room, located a bottle of brandy on a dresser, uncorked it and slopped a few fingers in a water glass, forced it between the man’s lips. He coughed, his eyelids fluttered. But he sank again.
Sweat was huge beads on the Marquis’ forehead. In the seconds that he sat there, waiting, he thought as fast and as desperately as he had ever thought before in his life. He dared not move the shot man to examine the wound. He dared do nothing. For locked behind this man’s lips was the secret of two murders—one of them the one that had put the Marquis in the shadow of peril. Not for one instant had he thought that this actor was the brains behind the careful, crafty thrust. But the actor knew who the brain was, worked for him. To move him might kill him. And if he should die without revealing the name—it would be almost impossible ever to get evidence as to who was the master-mind.
He ran to the window of the living-room, peered down at the street. Already, a small black crowd was forming, attracted up through the cement pavement, for all the Marquis knew. He pushed the window up as, down the street, he saw a man with a small black bag, running toward the house. And at that minute, a prowl-car whined around the corner, came scudding toward the door.
The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1 Page 7
