“You can’t get away with this!” his muffled voice snarled. “They’ll pick up your trail from the penthouse. They’ll be combing the city to find me. They’ll—”
“They’ll do nothing of the kind, Willie. I forestalled all that with a little message to Anderson, the discreet personage downstairs. Incidentally, Anderson is the first guy I’m calling on tonight. There’s a quick glazing job to be done on that glass door of yours—it’s probably done already. Then there’ll be a little expert perjury to be arranged. You went away, I imagine, on a drunken bat with a shapely and unidentified blonde. Boy, will that make things plausible! By the way, did you know that Anderson is on my payroll? And werry, werry grateful for past favors?”
Jerry Tracy slipped on the snappy-looking light topcoat, adjusted the expensive grey hat with the snapbrim.
“So long! Okie doke.”
Zigger dived partly out of the chair with an inarticulate cry of anguish. Butch bounced him right back again.
The door slammed. A front window-pane flared briefly in the brilliance of strong headlights. Then the light faded with the diminishing hum of a motor.
Butch said, reflectively: “Jeeze, I sure hope Jerry remembers about liverwurst. How about you, keed? D’yuh like liverwurst?” He licked his thick lips and swallowed with an anticipatory delight. “It’s grand, fried. In buffer. … ”
His big shoulder turned and he gazed at the rows of built-in bookcases. His eyes glazed with a complete lack of interest.
“Jeeze, I sure wish tonight was Tuesday. Nothin’ to read in this dump but books! I could do with a copy of Variety.”
So could Tracy, apparently.
On the following Tuesday the Daily Planet’s immaculately dressed little columnist tilted comfortably back in his battered old office chair. He was reading with frowning attention a brief item in Broadway’s familiar Bible. An item tucked away in a mess of wordage headed “Inside Stuff.”
Butch yawned and made hopeful shufflings on the floor with his thick soles.
“Nearly finished, Boss? Anything new?”
“Yeah. Death notice, Butch. Lemme read it to you.”
The columnist shifted his crossed legs and rattled the paper.
“Krumby Kracker setup canceled unexpectedly Friday (12). Reason unexplained absence from ether of Willie Zigger, m.c. and gag comic. Zigger’s third offense and sponsor takes advantage of trick clause inserted in contract by mutual agreement after last Zigger outbreak. New setup reported to be about same. Name band, quartette and gag comic. Randy Yosseloff and his boys seem to have inside track on band nod. Audish for new comic Wednesday (17) with odds favoring either Walter McKee or Ray Harkins. Zigger out of town and future plans indefinite. Krumby Kracker account handled by MacTavish and Fenn, Bill Bradman directing.”
Butch said, irrelevantly: “How’s the kid and the old lady coming along?”
“Very nicely, Butch. Dropped in on ’em yesterday and had a look. All they need is vitamins and a chance to sleep without alarm clocks for a while.”
He crackled the Broadway weekly in his lean hand and smiled.
“Only one mistake in this yarn here, Butch.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“It says Zigger’s future plans are indefinite. I got a hunch that they’re pretty damned definite.”
“How come, Jerry?”
“He never was a real comic,” Tracy said slowly. “Just pure accident. He got a lucky break—and clicked. He’ll never click again in a million years. Watch him with his next sponsor. He won’t last out the first thirteen weeks. … Nope. Zigger’s plans are definite. He’s going places, Butch.”
“I’ll bite. Where’s he goin’?”
Tracy’s face became utterly expressionless. His voice held neither satisfaction nor sorrow.
“Right where he started, Butch. Where he belongs. In the gutter.”
MURDERER’S GUEST
Jerry Tracy, Broadway wiseguy, is asked to front for a murderer
FAULTLESSLY ATTIRED IN EVENING clothes, formally correct down to the last little accessory, Jerry Tracy rang the front doorbell of John P. Barker’s imposing town residence on Park Avenue.
The Little Guy’s jaunty elegance masked a complete inner bewilderment. There was no sensible reason on God’s green earth why the shrewd and sensational columnist of the Daily Planet should be invited to dinner and a formal evening at the John P. Barkers’—yet here he was! There was a catch in it somewhere, a mysterious riddle of some sort behind that engraved invitation—and Jerry Tracy had come grimly to find out the answer. Jerry was old enough in the horn to know that blue-bloods like the Barkers had no logical reason for inviting a Broadway wise-guy. Okey; so why did they want him here tonight?
The door opened suddenly and Tracy grinned cockily at a stoutish, frigid-faced butler.
“Evening, Michael, my good man.”
“Hunter, sir.” The butler coughed in well-bred reproof. “May I see your invitation?”
“You may.”
He watched the solemn butler glance at it. Tracy himself knew the blame thing by heart. It had arrived early that afternoon and he had studied it frowningly about two dozen times since.
The austere Hunter was smiling, thawing a little.
“If you’ll kindly follow me, sir? Thank you, sir.”
He led the way down the dimly illuminated length of a gorgeous 1890 corridor and threw open a huge Arabian Nights door.
“Mister Tracy!”
Eight or nine people were chatting noisily in the big room. Tracy spotted the hostess instantly. She looked about the same as her rotogravure pictures in the society sheets.
“How do you do, Mister—er—Tracy?” she said.
“Good evening, Mrs. Barker.”
The old guy standing next to her, with the rounded Santa Claus belly, was old J. P. Barker himself. Financier, philanthropist, noted collector of rare stamps, lineal descendant of the John P. Barker who left England in 1620 aboard the Mayflower.
He was gruffly cordial with Tracy but his tufted gray eyebrows rose slightly. He flicked a brief glance at his wife and got the same puzzled glance right back again.
It was obvious that neither of the Barkers had invited Jerry to their exclusive little shindig. Then who had? A pleasant little chill tickled the back of the columnist’s sensitive scalp. This cock-eyed evening, he decided, was going to be good—werry good!
Tracy let himself be taken in tow, nodded politely to a lot of well-dressed bozos. A manservant handed him a biscuit and a glass of magnificent sherry. He sipped and let his eyes go to work.
Nobody here that he knew except by remembered photographs. He could look at the faces and ticket them geographically. That long, rangy lad was from points West; the hawk-nosed gent and his wife were Newport; Cannes and Lido flirting snugly over in the corner; the red-nosed dowager taking another snifter of sherry was Tuxedo Park—hospital committee, or something. …
Tracy’s alert eyes stopped suddenly. He knew that stunning sullen-eyed girl in the gorgeous green outfit. He had never met her—but he knew her plenty! Night-clubs, midnight razzmatazz, fox hunts, tickets for speeding. … The screwy Lily, the only cheeild of Mr. and Mrs. John Barker. Bored as hell. Being nice, with an effort, to a military-looking gent who was buzzing her very quietly and watching his sherry while he talked.
The Daily Planet columnist butted in on them. After a while the military gent shrugged and went away. Lily laughed low in her white throat; a hard, sneering little sound.
“Thank you, Mr. Tracy. Do I know you?”
“We might start now. … Er—who was the gentleman with the nice clean shave? I’m afraid I annoyed him.”
Lily laughed again. There was uneasiness in that laugh of hers, Tracy suddenly discovered.
“Major Robert Griscom,” she murmured. “Do you like people without imagination?”
“I don’t know. In my business I never meet ’em.”
“Lovely! Do you need an assistant? Your bu
siness, of course, being—”
Tracy studied the reckless gray eyes. “Suppose I tell you about it—at dinner?”
“Agreed,” she said promptly. Almost too promptly. “I’ll get Hunter to switch the place cards—and I hope that won’t make you too conceited.”
“It’ll make me sparkle with brilliance,” Tracy chuckled.
He bowed and drifted away. The room was filling with more people. Jerry let a servant refill his sherry glass and thought a little about this hard-shelled, glamorous Lily. More than hard-shelled, if rumor was right. Downright ugly. A girl who liked to smack down things—and people—that got too annoyingly in her way. Exclusive surroundings—if she chose to stick to them—and careful training hadn’t been able to do much about it. Lily Barker was emphatically Grandpa Barker’s girl—that infamous old stock market devil whose piratical millions were now being spent by the pious John P. on peace foundations and pigeon fountains!
Was Lily behind this cock-eyed social invitation? She seemed ready as rain to sit next to Tracy at dinner. Was that “Do I know you?” stuff of hers a bluff? And if not Lily—then who? Somebody had invited him to this solid-plush soirée for some damned good reason!
His attention moved again towards Major Griscom. The major was chatting politely with two aged ladies in a discreet corner. Watching him, an idea came suddenly to Tracy, a fantastic and dopey notion. He had a queer feeling that somebody had rubbed something off the major with an eraser.
Griscom bowed finally, left his two ladies—and Tracy had the answer. Got it from something he hadn’t noticed before. The major’s hip! Some undefined stiffness in that left hip of Griscom’s; a something that imparted a slight side-motion to his walk. And—bango!—a gray mustache jumped into place on the major’s clean-shaven lip. That’s what had been rubbed off. The mustache!
About a year or so ago; Tracy remembered it grimly now. A narrow stage. Hard white lights. Tracy, sitting next to a husky old veteran of an Irishman named O’Grady—Chief Inspector O’Grady to a lot of first-class dicks with black masks over their attentive eyes. Morning lineup at Police Headquarters.
A guy up there on the stage with a suave, sneering smile and a slightly bum left hip. Major Robert Griscom, hell! His name had been Mr. Hubert Eldrick on that brightly lit morning down at P.H. No charge against the guy; just a routine pickup for the lads in the black masks to remember. Suspicion of larceny, suspicion of extortion, suspicion of polite confidence games. … A brief, formal hearing and released. … And now, Major Robert Griscom, if you please! At the John P. Barkers’ exclusive little rootietoot. More suavely at home, damn him, than the Daily Planet’s mystified little columnist.
Is Griscom the guy who sent me that phoney invitation, Tracy wondered. Nuts—it didn’t make sense! If the fake major was here for anything at all, he was here for a finger-finger job. Maybe a wall safe somewhere with a fat string of pearls; maybe blackmail; whatever it was, something that would need careful timing, a good front, a blandly innocent getaway. In that case why should Griscom lug in a shrewd newspaper guy like Jerry Tracy? Nope to that. No dice. …
Then who did send the invitation? The thing was beginning to get Tracy’s goat. Maybe John Barker himself—or his wife?—had some important confidential reason that would come out later in the evening. Maybe Lily Barker, with her smoldering, enigmatic eyes. Maybe even Griscom—if you could figure out why!
The phoney set-up bewildered Jerry. He looked from face to face. Somebody here needed him—for what?
Lily Barker’s harsh little chuckle at his ear startled the columnist.
“Frowning, Mr. Tracy? Don’t tell me the dull, respectable atmosphere of the ancestral mansion is getting you down, too.”
Tracy smiled at her. “Did you have any luck with Hunter?”
“Excellent luck, my friend. The place cards have been changed. In a moment or two you’re going to take me in to dinner.” Her voice lowered suddenly. “Careful! Major Griscom is coming over now to claim me as his table partner. I’ll be very gracious—but efficient.”
She was. If the major felt any disappointment over his rebuff, he hid it gallantly. The enormous dining-room doors slid apart. Hunter’s rolling tones announced that dinner was served.
Tracy enjoyed the meal, disregarding the puzzled glances of the other guests, concentrating on a bright line of Park Avenue gab with Lily Barker. Underneath her careless smile she was studying him intently. She reminded him of his promise to tell her all about himself. He told her in one word. With a grin.
“Typewriters?” Lily pouted and looked baffled. “You mean you sell the things?”
“I write on ’em.”
“That’s better. What do you write?”
“Biography,” he said dryly. “I like to study people. Like you, Miss Barker. Like Major Griscom, for instance.”
The girl’s face flushed queerly. “What do you know about the major?”
“Will you be offended,” Tracy whispered boldly, “if I speak frankly?” He watched her reaction as he handed it to her: “The major, in my professional opinion, is a lead dime, a bit of the ‘queer,’ a phoney, a subway slug, a greasy quarter, a rubber check. … You catchee what I mean?”
There was nothing to read in her face, he discovered regretfully; just the slow beat of a tiny pulse at her temple, the relaxed curve of her fingers around the handle of her fork. He let things go at that. Plenty of time before the evening was over. He tried one last shot.
“By the way, am I indebted to you for my—invitation?”
“You mean tonight? Are you serious?”
Smiling at her, he shook his head. “Just joking,” he said.
Lily Barker gave up after a while and over the salad and dessert got quietly morose. Once Tracy caught her gray eyes squarely on him and saw what he had half expected to see—anger, apprehension, hate. It was gone in an instant like a shutter banging closed on a window.
The ladies were rising now. John P. Barker beamed from the head of the table; and coffee, liqueurs and cigars appeared for the relaxed males. Barker’s fingers dipped shakingly into his pocket and he dropped a tiny white pellet into his black coffee. He caught Tracy’s glance, smiled apologetically, made a pathetic little gesture of self-derision.
“Saccharine tablets,” Tracy thought. “The poor old guy is a diabetic.”
He tried to keep Barker’s attention, to give the old guy a chance to send him a private eye-signal that would mean: “Stick around, Jerry! We’ll talk later on. I sent you that undercover invitation myself. On the quiet. Keep it under the hat for the present.”
But Barker sent no such signal. Somebody else got talking to the old man and he got busy in a long wheezy conversation. Hunter came in presently and slid back the big doors. They passed through into the music room.
Tracy found a chair and sat quietly down near the Barkers. Major Griscom was diagonally across from him, talking deferentially to the older man. Barker listened to him without much interest, eyelids drooping sleepily, hands twined together over his fat stomach. Next to him, his wife watched the preparations for the concert with a tight little smile that Tracy thought looked mean. He watched her keenly. Occasionally she turned a little to listen to some whispered comment from her scowling daughter. What a family!
A patter of applause sounded. Into the tiny circle of dim light in the far corner around the harp, came the bared, sandalled feet of a slim girl in a flowing white robe that was just translucent enough to be interesting. Señorita Lora y Gil. A pale blonde with supple wrists and softly gracious arms. She smiled, bowed, seated herself.
And then, suddenly, the gold harp strings quivered—and Tracy forgot everything but the lovely ripple of exquisite music. In spite of himself he forgot the room, forgot the almost invisible guests, drifted in the darkness with glorious music. …
A hand nudged him. Half drowsily, he shook it off. Again the hand nudged him. Furtively. Insistently.
Tracy’s head turned. In the darkness he could barely
make out the butler’s livery. It was Hunter, almost invisible in the darkness. The slight backward jerk of Hunter’s head said unmistakably: “If you please, sir. Back this way, sir.”
He melted out of the room. The folds of a velvet curtain swayed together without sound behind him.
Jerry Tracy took his time getting up. Nobody noticed him as he passed quietly behind the curtain. Beyond it a door stood ajar and Hunter was there, beckoning urgently, waiting to close it. Tracy followed the butler through a dimly lit sitting-room and into another. The music of the harp was a faint, tantalizing echo.
Jerry scowled and dropped his bored manner. “Okey, Hunter! Your turn at bat. What are we playing now—cops and robbers?”
“Please!” the butler whispered. “They’ll hear you, sir.”
“So what?” He eyed the man’s face. “Wait a second! Don’t tell me that you sent me the invitation?”
“Invitation, sir? I don’t understand.”
“To this party here, dope!”
Still Hunter didn’t seem to understand. His fleshy face was twitching with nervous terror.
“For God’s sake, sir, you must help! You—you really must. I recognized you the instant you came in the door tonight. Aren’t you Mr. Jerry Tracy, sir—the columnist and police investigator?”
“Did I say no?”
“Oh, thank God! I told Charlie I was right! It’s a lucky godsend that brings you here tonight, sir.”
“Yes? Who is this Charlie that you tell things to?”
“Not a man, sir. A woman.”
“Huh?”
Hunter groaned suddenly and wrung his hands. “Please, Mr. Tracy, we’re wasting precious time. I’m horribly afraid. I tell you that any second there may be—”
“Yeah? Hold your horses! Let’s get something else settled first. Did you send me an invitation to the party here tonight?”
“I? No, sir.”
“You didn’t know I was coming until I showed up here tonight?”
“No, sir. I recognized you instantly and I told Charlie that she ought to—”
“Okey. … Tell me something else: who is this Charlie that turns out to be a woman?”
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 26
