Fifth Key

by George Harmon Coxe

  At that time Myron Wortman was a lawyer. In the course of his business he handled certain affairs for elderly people and there had been a complaint by one of these resulting in Wortman’s trial for misappropriation of funds. He had been tried, convicted, and while on bail awaiting sentence, had skipped town. The bail was declared forfeit and a search instituted for Wortman which, according to the report, had been without result.

  Murdock thought it over. He had no way of telling how—if at all—Wortman figured in the murder, or why Sheila had wanted the information. Whatever the reason, one thing was clear. The report made a lovely instrument of blackmail in the event that Wortman eventually rehabilitated himself and was trying to live down his past.

  He glanced back over the pages and reread the description of the man as of five years ago.

  Age: 40

  Height: 5' 9"

  Weight: 160

  Hair: Black with gray

  Eyes: Dark brown

  Complexion: Sallow

  Build: Medium

  Habits: Moderate drinker; frequents cabarets and theater.

  In imagination, Murdock constructed such a man and found the description of little value. Too many men might fit into such a category and no one he had recently met fitted with sufficient exactness. He put the report on the bedside table and turned off the light.

  11

  KENT MURDOCK SLEPT WELL and when he awoke at nine he stretched lazily and decided he felt pretty good. He sat up, scratching his head, and presently he went into the bathroom and got down to the business of shaving, inspecting the result without enthusiasm. When he had showered and rubbed down, his skin had a fine healthy glow along the arch of his chest and the firmly molded back, and lay smooth and unblemished except for a spot on the left thigh where an irregular scar, the size of a small apple and still somewhat concave and puckered, remained as his souvenir of the war.

  He did not examine this now but walked naked to the telephone, asked for room service, and, rubbing the back of his head with the wadded towel, ordered breakfast. He was dressed and in his shirt sleeves when the waiter knocked, and it was about forty minutes later, as he was about to leave the room, that the second knock came.

  Opening the door, he found his caller a somewhat untidy individual with an underslung jaw and pale, uneasy eyes which went beyond Murdock and examined the room before he spoke.

  He wore a soiled trench coat, open and unbelted, and beneath that there was a light-gray suit with food stains on the front of it. He had his hands in his pockets and his hat pushed back from a bony forehead. He said his name was Rudy Nagle.

  “I’m a private eye,” he said. “I phoned you a couple of times last night but you weren’t in. Talk to you a minute?”

  Murdock took a second to examine the man whose report he had read the night before. Not answering, he stepped back and let Nagle enter, some latent instinct stirring oddly inside him. When Nagle sat down and pulled a photograph from an inside pocket, Murdock knew what it was before he had it in his hands.

  After the first glance he regarded Nagle levelly, his mind busy. He had intended to look up the man during the day and perhaps get around to the report he had done for Sheila. Now it seemed that Nagle was still concerned with the dead woman’s affairs and somehow it did not surprise him that the detective had the photograph. It would, he decided, be the sort of job Nagle would be good at.

  “So you’re the one who took it?” he said.

  Nagle narrowed one eye and then opened both of them. “How do you know about it?”

  Murdock said, “You weren’t very neat.”

  “That so?”

  “You took two pictures and you took the flash bulbs with you but you used a film pack and you crumpled up the two black tabs and threw them on the floor.”

  “Oh,” Nagle said and seemed a little relieved.

  “I found one of them. A lieutenant by the name of Devlin found the other.”

  “I know him,” Nagle said, and then Murdock inspected the print again.

  It was a nice angle shot, properly lighted and very clear. Sheila was in her slip and there was nothing the matter with her neck. The beige robe was on the chair, its sash in place, and as for him, he was on his back just as he had awakened, crowded a little against the wall, dead to the world. He felt a thrust of revulsion at the sight of himself and turned the print over. When he had finished his examination, he thrust it into his pocket.

  “Thanks,” he said, as though it were unimportant.

  Nagle’s lopsided grin showed discolored teeth. “I got more,” he said.

  “I know you have. How much for the negative and the rest of the prints? Two negatives, that is.”

  “You’re going a little fast for me,” Nagle said. “I’m sort of on your side.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  Murdock tightened against his swiftly spreading resentment. A couple of his best friends were private detectives and they felt about men like Nagle as he did, but with somewhat more emphasis. Now, because he knew the type, it was difficult to sit there and dicker when what he wanted to do was toss the fellow out.

  “Figure it for me,” he said.

  “A shot like this could take the pressure off your neck,” Nagle said. “I took it about one-forty or a little after. I hear she got choked between two and three. You couldn’t have waked up by that time.” He spread one hand and sliced air with it. “Therefore you couldn’t have done it.”

  “You’ll go down to headquarters and tell them so, huh?”

  “Well—you know. I got a license and a bond up. I wouldn’t want to—”

  “How much?”

  “Not much. You know how it is in this business—a dollar here, a dollar there. I don’t like to put the hooks into a guy or make any trouble.” Nagle ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek and tipped his head, squinting one eye. “I was figuring on a couple of yards.”

  Murdock had no quarrel with the amount. Two hundred dollars was less than he had expected, and it bore out his original estimate of the man. Nagle was strictly a small operator, weak rather than vicious. Two hundred dollars for the negatives and all prints would be a good buy and he tried to put down his natural revulsion and look at the matter practically.

  He had, on more than one occasion in the past, advised others to pay blackmail when the amount was small and the situation such that there could be no follow-up payments necessary. Now, in the hands of the police, the photograph would certainly warrant his arrest. It might, as Nagle said, clear him of murder in the end, but meanwhile he would have no chance to find out who had hired Nagle, nor would he be able to discover who had deliberately framed him.

  There was, he saw, a certain grim humor in the situation, for in the past it was he who had handed out advice as to how such situations should be handled and only now could he completely understand how others had felt. And in this instance, regardless of the moral values involved, the important thing was to keep Nagle quiet for another day or two, even if it meant paying him something.

  He considered again the amount and found it small. That made him think of something else he should have thought of before. Nagle had been at Sheila’s. He must have spent some time outside the house waiting for the drug to take effect and he might therefore have seen someone else who had come to that house that night. If Nagle was the sort to collect from him, why shouldn’t he try the same thing on someone else—if he thought he could get away with it?

  “Who else are you putting the bite on?”

  Nagle hesitated, his pale eyes telegraphing new activity in his mind.

  “Does there have to be anybody else?”

  “Unless you or I killed her there has to be someone else.”

  “I can go along with you there.”

  “See if you can go along with this.” Murdock lit a cigarette and sat down on the bed. “Someone hired you to frame Sheila Vincent and me. You wouldn’t want to say who?”

  The lopsided grin came again b
ut there was no answer.

  “You had a key.”

  “Let’s just say I could get in,” Nagle remarked.

  “You had to make your first call while Sheila was out in order to plant the Scotch that contained the chloral hydrate or whatever it was; it had to be the same kind of Scotch we’d left there earlier and it was, except for the label.” He explained about the missing corner he had notice and said:

  “You had to spend some time outside watching the place because you couldn’t be sure just when we’d come back. You were probably in a doorway across the street when we drove up and discovered the woman had lost her keys. You were there when we came back and you had to gamble on our taking a drink. You had to wait—”

  “Un-uh,” Nagle said. “I didn’t have to wait. It didn’t make any difference if I came back five minutes after you’d passed out or an hour.”

  Murdock admitted the possibility. “You came back and rang the bell, I guess, knowing if we hadn’t passed out someone would eventually answer it. If that happened you could ask if Mrs. Jones lived there and call it off. If no one answered—and no one did—you could walk in and do your stuff.”

  “That’s good figuring,” Nagle said. “I fix things up, take my pictures, put back the good Scotch I’ve been carrying around and take away the stuff I’d planted. Is that it?”

  “Sure. And my point is you spent a lot of time outside.” He thought about referring directly to the call Miriam Stark had made and decided against it. “You saw at least one person come to that place—and maybe more. Who’s the next sucker after you leave here? Man or woman?”

  “That would be telling. What about the two yards?”

  “I haven’t got that kind of money on me.”

  “You can get it.”

  “Maybe.” Murdock paused, then made up his mind to plug along a little further in the hope of picking up some new scrap of information. “But I’m not so sure I have to.”

  “It’s up to you.”

  “If I don’t you send the picture to Devlin. That’s your threat, isn’t it?” He waited, and Nagle watched him sullenly, and he said, “So Devlin comes to me and hauls me down. Then I tell Devlin that you’re the guy—”

  “You couldn’t prove it. Nobody’s heard what we’ve said.”

  “But I’ve got this print.” Murdock tapped his pocket. “And that will help when they check the paper and one thing or another.”

  Nagle stood up. “Devlin can’t pin any murder on me.”

  “You can lose your license and bond, though.”

  Nagle shrugged, and his mouth was thin and mean. “Suit yourself,” he said, “and take your chances.”

  Murdock produced his wallet, extracted a twenty. “On account,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get a check cashed.”

  Nagle reached for the twenty, the effect of it instantaneous and enlightening. The grin came back and so did his self-confidence. He straightened his shoulders and even swaggered a bit.

  “I figured you had sense enough to play the minute I saw you.”

  “Where can I get you late this afternoon?”

  Nagle mentioned the same West Side address that had been on the letterhead. “I’m in the phone book,” he said and then jumped a little as the room telephone rang. Murdock moved over to answer it. When he hung up a moment later he looked at Nagle.

  “Lieutenant Devlin,” he said. “He’s on his way up.”

  Nagle was instantly moving toward the door. “I’ll shove,” he said. “Call me—and don’t stall.”

  “You could wait for Devlin,” Murdock said.

  “Yeah,” Nagle said, grinning. “Sure. Maybe he’d buy me a drink. Call me,” he said, and went out sideways.

  Lieutenant Devlin looked very neat in his double-breasted topcoat and gray herringbone suit. He had a large brown envelope under one arm and a half-smile on his square-cut face as he handed it to Murdock.

  “The films we borrowed yesterday,” he said. “We made prints. I hope they’re all right.”

  Murdock glanced at the eight-by-ten glossy prints he had taken at the Universal Studios. He said they were fine.

  “Now if we could only find the one that was taken in Miss Vincent’s place the night before last,” Devlin said, “we’d have something.” He fanned out his coat and sat down. “She used to work on your paper, didn’t she? Faulkner, too. Tell me about them.”

  Murdock told what he knew of their history, sticking to facts and stating an opinion only when Devlin asked a specific question. After twenty minutes of this Devlin said, “I’m going calling. You want to come?”

  Murdock, feeling the inspection of the other’s steady eyes, sought an excuse, but before he could think of a good one, Devlin said, “I called Boston. They say you’re all right. They say sometimes you have ideas.”

  “I haven’t any now.”

  “You might think of something.”

  “I might make a slip, too.” Murdock’s tone was more sardonic than amused, so was his look. “If I stay with you long enough and talk enough, maybe I’ll make a slip—you hope.”

  Devlin gave him that half-smile that warped his mouth and left his eyes wise and observant. “You’re not exactly in the clear,” he said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  Murdock pretended it did not matter one way or the other. He got his hat and coat, but he wasn’t fooled. Nothing that had happened had changed his mind about Devlin’s shrewdness or ability. He also knew how easy it was to let a word or phrase pop out that would give a man like Devlin something to work on.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’d like to see you in action. Let’s go.”

  Devlin drove first to Lois Edwards’s apartment and it was soon apparent to Murdock that she did not have the same poise and assurance in front of Devlin that she had had with him the day before.

  It was only by comparison that he noticed this but it seemed to him that there was a nervousness here that had not been present before, and though her voice remained pleasant and controlled there were overtones of strain in its connotations and a certain anxiety in her green eyes. There was also a marked difference in her attitude toward Murdock, and this coolness and diffidence in looks and manner was something he could understand.

  She knew he had her handkerchief; she knew where he found it and he had an idea she thought he had told Devlin about it. That made it bad because he could not be sure she would not decide to bring the matter into the open of her own accord and be done with it, thereby giving Devlin one more charge to file against him. She was, he guessed, the sort of woman who would do a thing like that if she thought she might later be trapped, and there was nothing he could do now but simulate casualness and confidence as best he could.

  “I just came along for the ride,” he said. “The lieutenant wanted company.”

  “I always like to keep my suspects where I can get my hands on them,” Devlin said, and though he smiled then, the impression remained that there were certain elements of truth in the statement.

  He turned to the woman and said he wanted to ask some personal questions. He said he could not insist that she answer everything he asked but he would appreciate any help she could give him. Then he got down to business, bringing up her association with Sheila and Owen Faulkner, asking other questions about the radio show and touching briefly on the family life of George and Miriam Stark.

  Lois Edwards was quite frank. She made no attempt to minimize her feelings toward either Owen Faulkner or Sheila, but she did not speculate on the affairs of others and when, fifteen minutes later, Murdock got into the police car, Devlin made no comment on what he had heard, nor was there any clue as to what he might be thinking.

  “We’ll go downtown,” he said. “I’ll buy your lunch.”

  Murdock waited until Devlin got the car headed downtown. “What’s on your mind,” he said, “that makes you need me along?”

  “I want to check up on some things at Centre Street,” Devlin said. “And after that one of the district att
orney’s boys would like to have a few words with you.”

  “And after that?”

  “I thought we’d go up and talk to Miss Vincent’s maid and then go see Mrs. Stark. You can introduce me.”

  Murdock let ten blocks slide swiftly by and then knew there was no reason why he should not tell Devlin about what happened last night in his room. He gave the complete story—omitting only the script and handkerchief the two men took—and it was a relief to tell a story without worrying about holding something back.

  “We’ll stop in the Bureau of Identification,” Devlin said when he’d heard the story. “You may be able to pick those guys out. Why should they bother you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There must have been some reason.”

  “Certainly there was a reason but that doesn’t mean I know it.”

  “Hmm.” Devlin deliberated the length of a block. “What did they take?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But they searched the room and they searched you. How do you figure it?”

  “I think they were after something I didn’t have.”

  “Somebody sent them,” Devlin said, “figuring you might have it, is that it?”

  “That’s the way it looks from here.”

  “And you’ve got no idea what it might be? Very funny,” Devlin said. “Very funny. Did it ever occur to you that a lot of things happen to you—for a guy who never knows why?”

  “Constantly,” Murdock said. “It’s beginning to look as if I’m in the middle, somehow; it’s wearing me down—and you’re not helping much if you want to know the truth.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Devlin said. “What I want is a killer.”

  It was three o’clock before Devlin turned off Lenox Avenue and parked next to a garbage can in front of a high-stooped, narrow-front brick house. Marie Waterman, Sheila’s maid, had a ground-floor room and kitchen at the back. She was young and on the heavy side, with a round face that looked scared when Devlin identified himself.