The gun in his hand looked a lot like a 32.
“Take it easy,” Tracy whispered. “Don’t shoot. I don’t know who you are, but I’m not fixing to make any fuss.”
“Never mind who I am.”
The guy looked dangerous. Coldly alert blue eyes, a muddy pallor on his strained face. Keyed up to killer’s tension. As vibrant as piano wire.
Jerry had shut the door of the bathroom before he telephoned. The gunman stared at the closed door and back again at his captive.
“Come on! Fork over that theater ticket!”
“I don’t get you, buddy. What theater ticket?”
“Turn around!” the gunman growled. “Get that back of yours towards me. Try any wise stuff—and I’ll let you have it in the spine.”
He was no amateur at a stick-up; he knew his search business. He frisked the columnist carefully from the rear, one knee bent forward to protect his groin from a treacherous kick.
“Dunno what it’s all about, huh?” His laugh was as cold as an ice cube. “Never heard of the Whalen Detective Agency, huh? And who told you about Mrs. Shale—a mind reader?”
Tracy didn’t say anything. He was trying to stow away in his brain every rememberable detail of the man’s face and figure.
The man chuckled as he found the theater ticket Jerry had bought from Dave Lipmann. He didn’t bother taking the shield; just grunted scornfully and dropped it back in Tracy’s pocket.
“Are you planning to take in Alabama Moon tonight?” Jerry inquired politely.
“Ask Mrs. Shale—if you think you can get away from me!”
He whirled Tracy with a brutal shove of his left palm.
“Get going! Into that bedroom. And don’t try any cop stuff, if you want to keep on living.”
There were three lengths of clothesline lying on the bed in the adjoining room. Under stern necessity Tracy clasped hands behind his back and the gunman tightened the first rope across the joined wrists.
The fellow wasn’t taking a single chance. He made the pseudo Davidson lie down crossways on the bed; on his belly, with his head hanging over the edge. He leaned over Jerry’s helpless wrists and bound his thighs and ankles in a tight squeeze. With a quick gesture, he wadded a handkerchief and stuffed it into Jerry’s mouth. Made the gag immovable with a couple of strips of adhesive tape.
In five minutes he had the whole job done, the connecting door between the two rooms locked—and was gone.
Jerry Tracy rolled stiffly over on his back. His mouth and throat ached like the very devil. He had to get out of this hotel room in a hurry and find out who this Mrs. Claudia Shale was. What kind of a murderous mess had he stuck his nose into, he wondered? A lot of people seemed to be desperately anxious to get hold of that D-101 pasteboard!
In the meantime, here he was, tied up on a hotel bed! As helpless as a trussed chicken—or so the boob with the gun thought.
The Daily Planet’s columnist grinned at the shabby ceiling. He began gently manipulating his overlapped hands. He was slow, methodical, not in the least jittery. That was the beauty of being a Broadway personage! You met everybody worth meeting—and all of ’em knew things. Tracy had never spent much time with the late Henry Houdini, but he did know Joe Dengler. He had spent a whole rainy week-end once with Joe and had discovered with a delighted interest just why God had put thumbs on people’s hands.
In eleven minutes the disguised columnist’s trussed wrists were free. His ankles and thighs took about a minute and a half.
He rode down in the elevator with a gentle and ruminative smile. He could count on a delay of—say—till ten o’clock the next morning before the chambermaid let herself into 729 with a pass-key and discovered the body of the unfortunate Davidson. By the time the chambermaid was rushing out of 729 with a shrill Hibernian yelp of terror, Jerry ought to know a lot more about this theater ticket mystery.
He didn’t walk past the desk on his way out. Instead, he descended three steps in the rear of the long lobby, sauntered inconspicuously through a noisy restaurant and stepped out on the cool sidewalk in the hotel’s rear.
He drove straight home to his comfortably luxurious penthouse up near the sky. He glanced at his watch. Ten after six. A lot to do tonight and no telling how much inconvenience he might run into later on. Might as well freshen up and enjoy the quiet interim.
He removed his clothes and with considerable difficulty got rid of the mustache. The sound of gurgling water sloshing into his expensive bathtub made him hum Alabama Moon cheerfully. He wondered if the long-legged Pat was obeying his orders and hanging around the agency office awaiting a possible phone call. He dawdled in his bathtub, slid without haste into clean silk underclothes, dug a light-weight suit out of his extensive wardrobe.
It was past eight when the Daily Planet’s fastidious columnist departed. He strolled across 52nd and down Broadway. Alabama Moon was an 8:40 musical and Jerry made the crowded lobby of the Parkhurst with almost five minutes to spare.
“Nice gross last week, Paul,” he told the gray-haired veteran at the door.
Paul chuckled, nodded with a friendly grin. “Capacity business, Mr. Tracy. Coming back for another peek at that smash opening number?”
“Yeah.”
He squeezed in with the mob and hunted up a harried-looking girl in a crinoline costume. She handled Center Orchestra and she looked as busy as a colony of ants.
Tracy touched her arm and she smiled at him and listened attentively.
“Do me a little favor, Edith. Is D-101 still empty?”
“Just a second, Jerry. … Yeah.”
“Listen,” he whispered. “I want to squat in D-101 for just a minute or two of the opening number.”
The theater orchestra was blaring the overture blend of Alabama Moon, I’d like to cotton to you, and Howja get so Southern?
Tracy leaned closer to the usherette and talked fast:
“If the seat-holder arrives right away, stall for a minute. I don’t want to be discovered, see? I’ll beat it the minute you show up with your flashlight. It’ll be a cinch on account of the blackout opening. Can do, honey?”
“Okey. If it doesn’t get me in a jam.”
“It won’t. And thanks a lot. I’ll remember the favor, sweet.”
He hurried up the aisle. The overture ceased. Footlights and house lights faded and plunged the theater into total darkness. The curtain rose. On a jet-black stage the magnificent Cotton Boll Number began getting slowly luminous.
Tracy was already in D-101. He paid to attention to the stage, was entirely oblivious to the gasps of admiration that ran through the invisible audience at the gorgeous spectacle of faintly luminous nudity poised against a black sky under nodding head-dresses of fluffy white cotton. The music from a pit flowed warmly, like a caress. A wave of handclapping swept like a sudden rainstorm through the darkened theater.
With a flickering match cupped under his palm, Jerry Tracy was examining D-101 in lightning detail. He looked swiftly at the seat, at the wire hat-rest underneath. He fingered the brass number plate, tested the screws, tried to lift it. He examined the opera glass contrivance on the seat in front. Nothing—not a damned thing. … He even felt the floor carpet, fingered it swiftly for a cunning slit, a pouch underneath, the telltale bump of something hidden. Still nothing. …
His match went out and, feverishly, he struck another. People all about him were tapping inpatient feet, “shushing” at him with sibilant irritation. A voice growled in a harsh undertone: “Why don’tcha look for it in the intermission, dope!”
He blew out the second match and glanced backward down the dark tunnel of the center aisle. The tiny yellow oval from the usher’s flashlight was racing up the carpet toward him. Coming straight toward D-101. Tracy squirmed out of his seat like an eel and, dropping his face slightly, but not his eyes, walked swiftly towards the rear of the theater.
He passed the two of them, taking care to go by on the usher’s side. The guy with her was a young man. Jer
ry perceived, without any astonishment, that it was the same young fellow with the pallid face, who had stuck him up with a gun in the Hotel Cantwell an hour or two earlier.
The mugg was blinking like an owl. He didn’t tab Jerry’s face. Wouldn’t have helped him if he had! The only time he had ever seen Tracy, the columnist was wearing a ragged brown mustache and carrying a tin shield from the Whalen Detective Agency.
Jerry Tracy didn’t hang around the back of the auditorium. He sidled toward the red light where late-comers were still trickling in. He pushed past Paul into the glare of the lighted lobby.
Paul gave him a puzzled stare. “ ’Smatter, Jerry? Had enough already?”
“Yeah. Just wanted to take another look at that opener of yours. It’s still a wow, Paul.”
“I’ll say it is. Greatest smacko opener a musical’s had since poor Ziggy died!”
Jerry Tracy went out to the sidewalk and hesitated a moment. A short distance away a mounted traffic cop was sitting idly on his horse talking to a couple of cute wrens on the curb. Jerry drifted over and rubbed the animal’s sensitive muzzle.
“How are things shaping up, Herman?”
“Pretty good, Mr. Tracy.” The cop smiled down at the two shapely wrens. “I can’t complain.”
“Glad to hear it.”
He kept hanging around. Finally, the wrens pouted and beat it. Tracy kept chatting idly with the mounted cop, his careless eye on the entrance of the Parkhttrst Theater, He wondered keenly whether the guy in D-101 would stick for the whole performance—or would he show up pretty soon?
The guy showed.
He came out in a brisk hurry, took a quick, nervous look up and down the crowded sidewalk. Then he turned on his heel and hurried east toward Broadway.
Tracy said, idly. “S’long, Herman. Remember me to the missus.”
He drifted east in the wake of the guy he was interested in. He wondered, moodily, whether the guy had gone into Alabama Moon to pick up something—or whether, like Tracy himself, he had gone in on a pure hunch. There was no indication that the gunman had gathered any prize package during his brief stay in the theater—unless the swift streak he was making for Broadway was a hint that he had located what he was after and was about to go places.
The Daily Planet columnist stepped along a bit faster himself. He was still some distance behind, however, when the guy reached the corner and went fffwt out of sight.
Tracy frowned, broke into a little trot and went fffwt himself. He rounded the corner just in time to see his quarry race out into the gutter and climb into a miraculously empty rolling cab.
At this hour on Broadway no roller had a right to be empty, Jerry thought savagely. He hooked his eyes up and down for another. No dice.
A voice roared: “Hey, wanna lose all your toes, Stupid!” and Tracy skipped nimbly back to the curb. By the time his nervously shrill yelp had got him a Checker, it was too late. The mysterious gunman in that damned Yellow had scooted through a honking maelstrom of traffic into invisibility. The columnist swore grimly and changed his mind about following him.
“Beat it,” he told the Checker driver irritably. “I don’t want you now.”
Tracy walked a slow half block to get the disgust out of his system. By that time he came to the Liggett’s drug-store on the next corner he had all the useless anger out of him—and an absolute honey of an idea in.
He was tagging the wrong end of this thing, anyway! The logical stunt was to stick his curious nose in on this Mrs.— what the devil was her name?—this Mrs. Claudia Shale, of 225 Clayborn Avenue. Up around Columbia, the box-office man had said; just off Riverside Drive. The stunt was to find a cockeyed excuse for dropping in on the dame.
Jerry grinned: His scheme was plenty cockeyed.
He shouldered into Liggett’s and raced a fat guy to the only empty phone booth. He won, only to remember with a silly grin that he didn’t know the phone number. He came out and the fat guy snorted victoriously and went in.
Jerry turned over a flock of dog-ears in a chained Manhattan book and concentrated on the S’s. Monument 1-0902. He crowded the end booth and grimly saw to it that he was next.
In a few seconds a middle-aged female voice said faintly: “Hello?”
“Is this Mrs. Claudia Shale?”
“Why, yes. … Who is this, please?”
Tracy put ripe Southern culture into his voice.
“I hope you’ll pardon me, Mrs. Shale, for calling you up to tell you of an almost unbelievable coincidence that has just occurred to me. You see, I’m a stranger in town. I just bought a theater ticket for Alabama Moon.”
He heard a faint, smothered gasp but he kept right on.
“The seat was for the orchestra. D-101. And here’s the amazing part of it. Your name and address was written in pencil on the back of the ticket.”
“Impossible. I’ve bought no ticket for that show.”
“It’s written on the ticket, I assure you,” Tracy insisted courteously. “And the coincidence was so—well, so absolutely astounding—that I didn’t go to the show. I decided to call you up and tell you about it.”
Mrs. Shale sounded puzzled, confused. “That’s all very interesting but I don’t quite understand what you mean by coincidence. Just what coincidence are you referring to?”
“Oh, yes.” Tracy chuckled. “I beg your pardon. I forgot to tell you in my excitement. You won’t believe it—it’s really too silly for words—but my name happens to be Shale, too. Mr. Edwin J. Shale.”
“I—I see. That’s—that’s certainly quite unusual, isn’t it?”
“As I say, I’m a stranger in New York. My home is in Alabama. Just a few miles outside of Montgomery. Is your family—er—Southern, Mrs. Shale?”
She was hesitating again. Scared sick about something or Jerry was all wrong. That D-101 had hit her right in the kitchen sink!
“My people,” the faraway voice murmured slowly, “come originally from Tennessee, I believe.”
“In that case,” Tracy said drawlingly, “there’s a good chance that we are actually related. My uncle Albert has lived for years in Nashville. Mrs. Shale, I hesitate to ask it, but you can do me a very gracious favor if you will. May I come and see you for just a few minutes? I wouldn’t bother you if it were not for the fact that I’m here in New York for only a day or so. May I present myself as a namesake from Alabama, a very homesick Shale asking a few minutes indulgence to talk with you?”
He lied persuasively. “There is only one other Shale in the New York book—and I’ve already called him. He’s a news agent in the Times Building and no relation at all. May I come and talk with you? Please!”
Her voice was very low and very tremulous.
“I’m—quite busy. However—that D-101 theater ticket puzzles me. If you care to call, I’ll—I’ll see you.”
“Thank you,” Tracy said softly and hung up. There was a film of sweat on his imaginative forehead. He frowned.
He said in a shaky whisper to the black-rubber transmitter: “We-uns are sho’ nuff makin’ headway, Masser Shale!”
The inevitable taxicab hauled Jerry Tracy swiftly northward along the diagonal trail of Broadway. There was a temptation to close his eyes and wonder what this Mrs. Shale looked like, to speculate why she seemed so frightened over the wire about this D-101 business. But Jerry was not the guy to go wool gathering unless there was something to be gained thereby. His main difficulty, of course, was the fact that he couldn’t produce the D-101 pasteboard with the old gal’s name written in pencil on the back. Half of the damned thing was in the ticket box at the Parkhurst; the other half in the pocket of the tough young guy with the gun. However, the lack of Exhibit A didn’t worry Jerry too much. He’d hand this Shale dame a line of malar key. Jerry never had much trouble soaping people, particularly females.
He got out of his cab at 116th and Broadway and walked down the steep hill to Clayborn Avenue. It was a short residential street, the last thoroughfare before you hit Riversid
e Drive. Two-Twenty-five was a tall, gray-faced elevator building of the old style, drowsing quietly in the darkness across the street from the huge dormitories of Barnard College. Looked like a stodgy and sedate joint, the kind apt to be inhabited by professors and the more successful of the neighborhood retailers.
Apartment 1-C was on the ground floor directly in the rear of an imitation-marble lobby. It adjoined the elevator shaft. The elevator door was open and a sleepy, gray-thatched negro rolled smoky eyeballs inquiringly at the visitor; but Tracy shook his head and punched the bell button of 1-C.
He punched it three times before he frowned and snapped over his shoulder: “Come here a minute, Alfred!”
The negro laughed as though at a marvelous joke. “Ah ain’t no Alfred, boss. I’se Phillip.” He frowned helpfully at the closed apartment door. “Don’t she answer, boss? Maybe she ain’t home.”
“She is home,” the columnist contradicted sharply. “I was talking with her on the telephone not more than ten minutes ago. Did she go out during the last ten minutes or so?”
“No, sah. She sho’ didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Cause Ah ain’t rode but one pusson up in de last half hour. Dass how Ah knows. I been right here all de time, sorta cogitatin’ ’bout things.” He laughed with a rich chuckle. “Ah’s a great feller for cogitatin’.”
With a queerly sober face Tracy rang the bell again, held his finger against the button for a long fifteen seconds. No answer.
“Yo’ done think they’s somethin’ wrong, boss?”
“I don’t know. Looks damn funny to me. You people got a master key to these apartment doors?”
“Yassuh. Sho’ has. But—But—”
“Go get it!” Tracy had a flash of inspiration and remembered something in his pocket. He gave the negro a half-second glimpse of the dead Davidson’s detective shield. “Don’t give the Super any story about me. Tell him a tenant forgot his key and wants to get in. Make it sound ordinary. Understand?”
“Yassuh. But I sho’ wish—”
He departed rather unwillingly. When he reappeared his black face was wrinkled with worry.
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 36
