The Virgin Kills

by Raoul Whitfield

  Crozier nodded almost pleasantly. I went over to my biggest piece of luggage and opened it. When I came away from it, I handed Crozier the business card I’d found on the smoke-room floor—and the radiogram that had been on the companionway step. I told him about them.

  Mick said, when I got through: “You may be making a mistake, Al.”

  Crozier looked at him sharply. “He’s not,” he said quietly. “When there’s murder—truth is a good thing to share.”

  I said: “Sometimes.”

  If Crozier heard me, he gave no evidence of it. He had finished with the business card; his blue eyes were on the radiogram. I sat down and waited, Mick stood near the port and frowned at me. After a few minutes Crozier looked up and said:

  “I’m getting stupid—it shouldn’t have taken me that long. It’s pretty obvious.”

  I said: “Sure.”

  Crozier said: “Well—Vennell wasn’t betting on California. He had his money on Columbia. A lot of it. He got odds. Tim Burke came out here last night. He rowed ahead of Babe Harron. Harron was morphined and collapsed. California lost. Columbia won. Vennell cleaned up. Then he disappeared. He was found unconscious and apparently hit on the head, his body soaked, on the deck—after four hours. Bryce says he doesn’t seem to be badly hurt, but he can’t seem to talk. He mutters the same half-phrases over and over—something about not paying somebody. And apparently he had been put on the spot. I’ve got a card here that’s a warning, or a note. Reddish ink—very perfect handwriting—”

  He stopped talking. His eyes smiled a little, into mine.

  Mick said: “You didn’t tell me Vennell was betting on Columbia, Al.”

  I said: “Didn’t I? I’m sorry, Mick.”

  “Like hell you are!” he gritted.

  Crozier stood up. He said: “Mind if I keep the business card—and the radiogram?”

  I shook my head. “Risdon doesn’t know about either of them,” I said. “I was going a little easy with him—he acted as though he might go at things pretty roughly. And I’ve got an idea that might not work so well.”

  Crozier nodded. “Agreed,” he said. “For a little while we’ll keep these two things under cover. Anyone else know about them, besides the three of us?”

  I said: “Vennell knows about the card—I showed it to him. And Sonia Vreedon knows about the radiogram.”

  The gray-haired one widened his blue eyes. “Sonia Vreedon?” he said. “Why does she know about it?”

  I smiled at him. “I thought she might have dropped it,” I said steadily. “I found it just after Tim Burke dove from the yacht, and Sonia came up the companionway steps.”

  Crozier said: “Well—”

  I shook my head. “She hadn’t dropped it—she hadn’t seen it,” I said firmly.

  The gray-haired one said slowly: “How do you know that, Connors?”

  “She told me that,” I said.

  Crozier sucked in a deep breath. His face held the suggestion of a hard smile.

  “And you believe her?” he asked.

  I said: “Absolutely.”

  Mick O’Rourke swore. He was staring at me with his mouth slightly opened.

  Crozier turned toward the door of the suite. Near it he stopped and faced me again.

  “You won’t be disturbed if I do not feel as certain about Miss Vreedon as you?” he asked.

  I said: “Yes, I’ll be damned disturbed.”

  Crozier shrugged, smiling a little. “I’m sorry, Connors,” he said. “But I’ve got a job to do.”

  I nodded. “I’ve got one to do, too,” I replied. “It’s to keep Sonia Vreedon from being dragged into a mess—when she doesn’t belong in it.”

  Mick said: “What the hell, Al? You went and fell for—”

  Crozier said calmly: “Babe Harron was dragged into the mess of death. It’s not so bad when we’re older. But he was just beginning to live—”

  “So is the girl,” I interrupted.

  Crozier was silent for several seconds. Then he said very softly:

  “Vennell first—he should be able to talk very soon. There are things for him to explain—important things.”

  I said: “Yes—damned important. But he may have been telling the truth—he may have been on the spot. And we might have the radiogram wrong. Or it might be a frameup—”

  Crozier said: “Yes—it might be that. But when he talks—he can’t afford to make mistakes.”

  Mick said slowly: “I don’t think anyone in this tub—can afford to make mistakes, now.”

  Crozier looked at him with a peculiar expression in his eyes.

  “You reason well, O’Rourke,” he said. He smiled a little at me, went outside, closing the door after him. His footfalls died away along the corridor. Mick frowned at the door.

  “That guy’s shrewd,” he said. His eyes went to mine. He spoke with a touch of grimness. “And you fell for Sonia Vreedon!”

  I said: “Did I—or would it be nice to have one or two people think I’ve fallen for her?”

  The big fellow said: “Jees, Al!”

  He was thinking hard, his eyes almost closed. He said very slowly, after almost a minute:

  “That guy’s going to get something. He’ll get it from Vennell—and it won’t be long now!”

  He swore softly. Then he turned his back and looked out of the port. When he faced me again, he said almost cheerfully:

  “A lot of moon and stars—it’s a swell night.”

  I looked at the door and thought suddenly about Griggs and the way he had glanced at the spot in the smoke room from which I had lifted the business card. Mick said again:

  “It’s warm and clear. Jees, what a night!”

  I said grimly: “And so far as the Virgin is concerned, it’s just about wasted.”

  Mick shrugged. “Well, we’ve got more guests than we started out with,” he said.

  I nodded. “And we’ll go back with less than we started out with, maybe.”

  The big fellow yawned. “I don’t feel right about taking that five grand from Vennell, Al.”

  I looked at his serious face. “Go along and hand it back,” I suggested.

  Mick shook his head. “He can’t talk,” he said.

  I said: “What’s his ability to talk got to do with it?”

  The big fellow looked at me with narrowed eyes. He tapped a shoe against the suite floor.

  “He’d want to thank me, wouldn’t he?” he replied.

  But he didn’t smile as he said it.

  8

  TWELVE-THIRTY

  THE way I felt, it was a little rough working up stuff for the chatter column. But I got enough done, and a pretty tight story of Babe Harron’s collapse. I threw in a few sidelights and wrote some words to be tapped to Shaley, the city editor. But I left out a lot. It wasn’t my job, anyway, and I knew that the papers would be smeared with the crew murder stuff. I found Risdon on deck and told him that I wanted to get the stuff over the wire to my paper. He grunted and said he’s sent ashore Cy Dana’s stuff an hour ago. I was slow.

  I nodded. “It’s the warm weather,” I told him. “Couldn’t be anything else—nothing ever happens around here.”

  He took my typewritten sheets and said he’d get them ashore and to the telegraph office. I asked him how Vennell was and he looked pretty grim.

  “He’s not talking yet,” he said. “But Doctor Bryce says he’ll be around pretty quick now. Shock, he says.”

  I nodded. Risdon said: “This fellow that flew up here from New York, the one Harron, senior, sent up, he’s got a strong idea that the stroke was murdered in the boathouse—given the shot there. But he thinks the thing was handled from the yacht.”

  I said: “It sounds like the bunk to me.”

  Risdon smiled a little. “Everything sounds like the bunk to you, Connors—to your pal, O’Rourke, too.”

  I nodded. “We’re just a couple of big cynics,” I said. “Where’s everybody?”

  The lean-faced detective
looked over the water of the Hudson, toward the new bridge.

  “Most of ’em are in the big saloon, trying to be blasé as hell,” he said grimly, and moved away from me.

  I went inside and ran into Rita Velda. She looked tired.

  “Where’s everybody?” she asked me in a weary voice. “This is terrible.”

  I said: “Most of ’em are in the saloon, trying to be blasé as hell.”

  Her eyes widened a little. She went toward the big saloon. Near the smoke room I ran into Bryce. He was getting matches. I said:

  “Is Vennell alone in his suite?”

  Doctor Bryce shook his head. “Certainly not,” he said sharply. “Crozier is with him just now.”

  I said: “Why certainly not?”

  Bryce scowled beyond me. “Orders of his, and of Risdon’s, that Eric isn’t to be left alone.”

  I smiled a little. “Funny how well those two get along,” I said. “In the books, when there are two dicks on a job—”

  Bryce said: “Well, this isn’t happening in a book, Connors. And Crozier isn’t a dick. He’s an investigator, and a friend of Babe Harron’s father.”

  I nodded. “I still think it amounts to the same thing.” I returned. “Crozier hasn’t any more authority—”

  The doctor interrupted again. “He’s got more money behind him, and he’s directly interested. Risdon has the police behind him—and they’re working from the shore.”

  I said: “Vennell able to talk yet?”

  Bryce shook his head. “Shock,” he muttered. “Beats me—where he got to—or what happened. How he ever got back—”

  He broke off, a puzzled expression on his face. He started for the door of the smoke room, but I stopped him.

  “You’ve heard that the autopsy proved Harron had been morphined,” I said. “Could it work out that way?”

  The doctor frowned at me. “What way?” he asked.

  “If the Babe had been given the needle jab at the boathouse, say. How about the length of time it would take?”

  Bryce looked at the floor. He spoke as though he were reciting.

  “Morphine works through the system—the greater the resistance, the longer it takes. Harron was strong, in perfect shape. He was exerting himself. The exertion fought the poison. The murderer came very close to making the mistake of not administering the poison soon enough. There wasn’t much delay at the start of this race.”

  I said: “As a doctor, how long would you say the poison took to work, in Harron’s case?”

  Bryce shrugged. “It’s very difficult to say,” he stated. “Doctor Vollmer thinks, from the size of the dose, that it was administered about forty minutes before Harron collapsed. It might have been thirty, or it might have been an hour.”

  I said: “Thanks—and how do you account for the fact that the Babe didn’t feel the injection?”

  Bryce smiled coldly. “I don’t account for it,” he said. “I know nothing of the facts—I’m a medical man. I do feel convinced that Harron died from the effects of a morphine injection. I think it was murder.”

  He nodded his head and moved from the smoke room. I went over and sat down in a comfortable chair. I decided that things looked bad for Vennell. We could come pretty close to proving he had lied about his bets. And yet the next minute I wasn’t so sure that we could come pretty close. There was the radiogram. But Vennell had stated that the apparatus hadn’t been working. Captain Latham had backed him up. He could claim he knew nothing about the radiogram.

  Babe Harron had been murdered, and California had lost a race in which they had been the favorite. They had been leading when Harron had collapsed. He was the stroke, the most important of the oarsmen. His failure would affect the crew more than the failure of any other man. The motive for murder pointed toward the loss of the race for California. It pointed in that direction from several angles, and yet it was not a surety. It required proof.

  I thought of Vennell again. I wondered if he had other proof of the fact that he had been put on the spot, aside from the business card I had found and the entry of the masked man to his suite. I nodded my head almost unconsciously and decided that he probably had something that would serve as proof. Vennell was no fool. But, then, who had he turned away, when Columbia had won, staggering along the deck into the rain and darkness that had come with the storm? Was it because he had known that Babe Harron was dead? Was it because he had won a great sum of money—and that had been the reaction? Or were we wrong—and had he lost, after all?

  I breathed to myself: “He was watching Sonia Vreedon so closely, before the race. I caught him at it several times. And Tim Burke swam out—talked with her—”

  I broke off, got to my feet. It was growing late, but I did not think many of those aboard had turned in. I went from the smoke room and passed Cy Dana’s cabin. He was shaving, with the door partly open. I said:

  “Got a date, Cy?”

  He swore at me. “Just good form,” he replied. “Freshens my brain.”

  I said: “You flatter yourself,” and went inside his cabin.

  “Where’s Torry Jones?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him around much, though I hear he complained about Mick throwing him overboard.”

  Cy grinned. “He’ll be around soon,” he said. “It seems that Mick socked him in the jaw when he was dragging your intellectual down for the third time. Torry’s giving the jaw the cold towel treatment, and it can’t be done in public.”

  He put powder on his face and looked at me. He said:

  “It begins to look a little rough for our host, Al. When he starts to talk—”

  He broke off. I nodded. “Venell’s hard,” I said. “It may take more than Poughkeepsie police and a private investigator to worry him. And he may not be mixed up in this, Cy.”

  Cy grunted. “Water may not be mixed up in Scotch,” he said slowly, “but the chances are it is. The big thing is—who else is mixed up in this kill?”

  I didn’t say anything. Cy Dana said: “Vennell was on the yacht at about the time the masterminds are figuring Babe Harron was poisoned. We all saw him here—or most of us, anyway. Someone on the inside used the needle. Who?”

  I didn’t say anything to that, either. There were times when I liked to hear Cy talk. He had imagination. It was Cy who had tagged a wop named Mantilla the Milan Mauler. It developed later that Mantilla had never been any closer to Italy or Milan than Brooklyn.

  Cy said: “There are a flock of rumors floating around the Virgin—”

  I nodded. “There are always a flock of rumors floating around any virgin.”

  Cy frowned at me. “These are different,” he said sternly. “Sonia Vreedon comes into this deal. And Mr. Timothy Burke.”

  I said: “That’s rot.”

  He nodded. “Know anything about Burke?” he asked. “Has he got any money? Wouldn’t he like to have some? It might take a little to do the right thing by Sonia Vreedon. Accustomed as she is to the better things in life—”

  I groaned. “With your imagination—you should write a novel, Cy.”

  He nodded. “I can’t punctuate,” he replied.

  I said: “How about the publishers?”

  He shook his head. “They can’t either,” he replied. “So that’s out.”

  I leaned against the wall of his cabin and half closed my eyes. Cy said:

  “How’s that palooka of yours going to come out, when this gets real messy?”

  I looked serious. “You refer to Mr. O’Rourke?” I said coldly.

  He nodded. “Yeah—the guy that nearly killed Dingo Bandelli with his bare fists. The guy that was Andy Dormer’s bodyguard for a while, until Andy got economic.”

  I stood up straight and smiled at Cy. He smiled back at me and started to tie his tie.

  “So you knew that—all along,” I said softly.

  He nodded. “Sure, but I believed you when you said he was a funny guy, Al. I always believe you.”

  I swore at him. “That’s one thing abou
t this yacht,” I said. “Everyone is so trusting. Everyone believes everyone else.”

  He nodded. “Just a big happy family. Eric Vennell and His Friends on the Hudson, or Al and Mick at the Regatta.”

  His voice held sarcasm. I said: “Well, Vennell called me up and said he had a three or four day job for a guy that was tough and could shoot. He said he wouldn’t have to do either, he didn’t think. Mick wasn’t exactly busy, so I got him. He’d never seen a regatta.”

  Cy nodded. “And when he gets through with this one, he may not want to see another for a long, long time!” he said grimly.

  2

  There were a lot of people in the saloon. The blonde who had been so shocked when Hunch had brought Mick and me aboard and had used a bad word—she was talking with the dignified-looking gentleman who had felt that the yacht burned crude oil. Torry Jones sat in a corner, with his back turned to most of the room. Don Rayne was talking with a man named Burns, and Rita Velda tapped cigarette ashes into a tray near the center table. The gray-haired woman said in her too loud voice:

  “It is growing steadily warmer.”

  Rita tapped her straight, reddish hair and smiled wearily. I watched a short, chunky girl who it seemed to me had been referred to as “Bubbles,” as she moved toward the cabinet radio. Someone said: “Please don’t, Miss Lacey.” She sighed and went toward Torry Jones.

  Carla Sard was sitting near the center table, reading. I looked around the room several times before I discovered Sonia. She was seated in a low chair that had been placed in a sort of alcove spot. Risdon was seated close to her and they were talking in low tones.

  I went over near Carla and looked at the cover of the magazine which she was reading. It looked literary—and a little analytical. There were high-sounding titles and foreign-sounding names on the cover. I said:

  “Anything of Balzac’s in that issue, Miss Sard?”

  Rita Velda laughed nastily, and Carla’s body stiffened. She flashed me one of her Hollywood smiles, and it wasn’t at all bad.