His eyes closed. He recalled Miss Clarkson’s vivid description of Cora’s visit to the brokerage office. The dark-eyed, red-lipped Mrs. Halliday had taken a pearl-handled knife out of her handbag and warned her husband’s gray-haired secretary to keep her mouth shut—or else. The kidnaping job was a phoney. Cora was behind this whole case.
Knowing Tracy’s tenacious habits of investigation she had come out of hiding, trailed him and handed him the old “or else.” Hadn’t even tried to make this one look like an accident. And had taken a hell of a desperate chance to cut him loose from Phil. Phil! What in hell could he tell Phil?
“Step on it,” he said to the taxi-driver. “Make it fast as you can to the Albermarle.”
He and Butch were walking down the soft-carpeted corridor toward the door of Halliday’s suite, when the door opened and Halliday himself came striding out. He was wearing his hat and overcoat and was obviously taken back by the sight of Tracy and his companion.
“Hello! What happened? Did you change your plans?”
“Plans?” Jerry echoed sharply. “What plans? What are you talking about? Where are you going?”
Halliday’s glance had jerked toward the columnist’s bandaged throat. Tracy had loosened his coat collar and Phil’s eyes widened as he saw the faint staining of blood on the bandage.
“For God’s sake, Jerry!”
“A little accident,” Tracy said softly. “What’s that envelope in your hand?”
“Your telegram. I just got it a few minutes ago.”
“Telegram? I sent you no telegram.”
“You didn’t ask me to meet you out in Brooklyn?”
“Hell, no. Let’s see that thing!” He was reaching for the yellow envelope when he heard soft footsteps and saw a bell-boy approaching.
“Inside, Phil,” he grunted curtly and followed the big man back into his room. Butch closed the door with a discreet little click.
Tracy ripped sheet of yellow flimsy from its envelope and read it with frowning eyes:
IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS STOP HAVE LOCATED CORA STOP UNHARMED AND IN GOOD HEALTH STOP MEET ME ONE HOUR AFTER YOU RECEIVE THIS AT TWO NINE-FOUR LAYDEN ROAD BROOKLYN
JERRY
“You say you didn’t send that message to me?” Halliday asked in a puzzled voice.
“No.”
“What’s it mean?”
“It means,” Jerry said quietly, “that we’re getting darned close to a murderer. The person who sent you that telegram did so in the belief that I’d be dead when you got it. I forgot to tell you, this bloody initial on my neck is a souvenir from a killer’s knife. Your number is up at last, Phil, and that’s why you got this phoney telegram.”
Halliday’s big face got slowly chalklike. “You—you think that Cora is dead?”
Tracy was silent for a moment. How in God’s name could he tell this big, decent guy that the woman he loved and trusted was a rat? He laid a steady hand on Phil’s massive shoulder.
“Cora is alive,” he said slowly. “I’ll take my oath on that. It’s the only thing that I’m certain of. You sure you don’t want the police in on this?”
“No, I’d rather not, Jerry. Not till, I find Cora—talk to her.”
“O.K. Butch, I want you to grab a cab and hustle back to my office.” He tossed the big fellow a key. “You’ll find half a dozen guns in the bottom drawer of the steel cabinet. Pick out three. Make sure they’re loaded. There’s a diamond cutter there; get that, too. Then call up my garage and have my car delivered at the curb. Tell ’em not the Lincoln; the Buick. We’ll be along later and you can pick us up outside my office. Got all that?”
“Yeah.”
“Scram!”
He smiled with pinched approval as Butch left the room without a word. Guys like that were worth their weight in gold. Butch had never been in the army as far as Tracy knew, but if ever a guy knew how to obey without a lot of useless gaff, it was that damned lop-eared, fat-bellied ex-pug, whose loyalty to Jerry was so ingrained that it made Jerry swallow fiercely to cover the lump that came galloping into his throat.
“If that place at Layden Road is a trap,” Halliday said curtly, “how are we going to get in without tipping the person behind this plot?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure now. Wait! I’ve got it.”
Into Tracy’s mind came the picture of a girl. Daisy Furlong—the cute little dancer whom he had helped to a place in Wertheim’s chorus over the nasty objections of Morrie Green. This was a spot where a smart, muscular little gal like Daisy might fit in nicely as a scout. The kid had brains and courage; a match for Cora or any other woman!
He unhooked the phone and called Daisy’s cheap hotel room in the West Forties.
“I’m in a jam,” he told her quietly. “Can you give me a hand?”
“I sure can, boy friend. Where are you?”
“I said jam, Daisy. Something that may get you a bullet in the gut. Are you game?”
He could hear the crisp sound of her oath. It sounded velvety, impatient and sort of nice. “Where are you?”
“Albermarle Hotel. Suite 1124.”
“You woke me up out of a sound sleep, you little bum,” Daisy said. “I’ll be over as soon as I can toss something over the Woolworth lace panties. Hey, Jerry!”
“What?”
Her voice got softer. “Did I ever tell you that your old man had a swell idea when he thought of you?”
Jerry said, “Nuts,” and hung up with a smile.
He was still smiling when the phone rang again. The sound of the bell faded his grin, the voice on the wire wiped it away altogether. Tracy listened more than he talked, said a few non-committal words and hung up.
“Who was it?” Halliday asked uneasily.
“Your friend, Mr. Cullop. Apparently he trailed me after I left his place, witnessed my knife accident and trailed me here. Must’ve tried your name on the switchboard dame. I’m still trying to figure whether he sounded scared or triumphant.”
“What did he want?”
“He wants me to come back and see him. Admits he was in Florida. Says he phonied up that Canadian excuse so he could cover up a two weeks’ sneak South with one of his neighbor’s wives. Offered to squeal on her to prove his point. Nice little guy, eh?”
“Do you think he’s lying?”
Tracy shook his head. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t trust that little red-eyed monkey with a rubber dime. Or Genung either, for that matter. Either one of ’em could very well be the guy who is helping—”
“Helping whom?” Halliday growled.
“I don’t know.”
He turned nervously away from Phil’s rigid stare. Phil would have to take his answer the hard way—the only way—from the cornered Cora herself. It was a situation that Tracy was trying grimly not to think about.
Daisy Furlong arrived presently, very small and slim under her shabby coat. Eying the thread-bare appearance of it, Tracy made a mental note to stake the kid to a decent fur bennie. She could pay him back later from the new dance job. That stuff about Woolworth panties was no joke. She’d been out of work for a long time and she hadn’t sold out either. … Jerry gave a warm, approving glance at her thin, decent little face. Like Butch, she listened, nodded, and asked no questions.
They took a cab downstairs at the hotel canopy and drove to Times Square. It was snowing harder and harder; small flakes filled the air like milky fog and covered sidewalks and pavements with a rapidly growing skim of white.
Jerry’s neck was beginning to hurt like the devil, but he clenched his teeth and tried not to think about it. He paid off the driver of the taxi and they walked the half-block to where Butch waited like a stolid statue behind the wheel of Tracy’s own car.
None of them had the faintest idea where Layden Road was, but Butch asked a traffic cop on the other side of Williamsburg Bridge and wrote down a flock of directions on the back of an envelope.
The address proved to be in Flatbush, in a neighborhood of fa
irly decent looking private houses with lawns, hedges and individual garages. Number 294 was midway down a tree-lined block, and Jerry, thankful for the flying snow, made Butch roll slowly past while he gave the joint a steady scrutiny. The shades were all drawn; no lights in the place except a dim yellow reflection behind the shades on the ground floor. Garage door closed in the back; a sort of furtive weediness to the whole place.
Butch made a slow right turn at the next corner and the car came to an abrupt stop when Tracy touched the big fellow’s arm.
“All set?” he asked the bright-eyed little dancer.
“All set, Jerry.”
He got out of the car with her.
“Go ahead and tell ’em your piece about the ad for a nurse maid. Look dumb and tell ’em 249 instead of 294.” He lowered his voice so that Phil couldn’t hear. “And for gosh sake, watch your step. You’re up against a smart woman.”
She smiled jerkily. “I’m not afraid of any dame on earth. It’s the men that give me all my headaches.”
She wasn’t gone more than five minutes. Her eyes were shining with excitement when she returned. Tracy kept her back out of Halliday’s ear-shot.
It wasn’t a woman, Daisy told the Daily Planet’s columnist. A man—a little guy with sandy hair and a scrubby blond mustache. He had crowded the doorway and eyed her suspiciously, but apparently fell for her yarn about a want ad. Told her she had the wrong house, that 249 was a block further up. Daisy had managed to get a good look past him and was positive that the house didn’t contain a stick of furniture. No sign of a chair or a carpet—nothing. There was an oil lamp standing on the floor, just inside the entry. The little man had muttered something about being the caretaker and had slammed the door in her face.
“Any sign of a gun on him?”
“No. All he had was a fountain pen in his hand. At least it looked like a fountain pen.”
Tracy uttered a crisp little grunt. “Tear gas—I’ll bet apples on that! I’ve seen pens like that before. I was wondering how they’d tackle a big man like Halliday! Get back in the car, babe, and stay there. And thanks a million; you took a hell of a chance and I won’t forget it.”
A moment or two later Tracy and Halliday walked inconspicuously through the flying snow to the corner of the next avenue. They ploughed through the storm, eying the houses that backed on Layden Road. Halliday wore Butch’s shiny derby and his skimpy blue pea-jacket.
Butch himself had donned the broker’s belted raincoat and his fuzzy gray fedora. He waited in the parked car, a watch in his big red palm, calmly watching the flight of ten minutes. He was under orders at the end of that time to stride rapidly down Layden Road with the air of a man in a desperate hurry, to break into a trot as he turned into 294, and to ring the bell loudly and long. Not to shoot if he could help it when the door opened, but to watch out for a snootful of tear gas.
The swirl of the storm masked Phil Halliday’s big body as he and Tracy hurried down a snow-covered driveway and ducked behind a frame garage. He ripped a passage through a privet hedge and helped Tracy through. There was a six-foot board fence dividing the property from the place on Layden Road, and Phil chinned it and took a rapid look.
“O.K.?” Tracy whispered.
“Yeah. Looks quiet enough to me. Every shade drawn in the back. Seems to be a dim light in the kitchen. How about that neck of yours, Jerry?”
“The hell with it! Up on the fence, Phil, and gimme a hand over. Don’t make any more noise than you can help.”
There was an evergreen bush on the other side, already frosted thickly with snow. The two men ducked silently behind it. Tracy’s arm-pits had taken the full strain of that swift swing over the fence; but it was his neck that hurt. It hurt so that it was hard for him to keep from groaning. He could feel the slow trickle of blood under the bandage. The sifting snow flakes felt cold and good, and he was tempted to pull down his coat collar; but he was afraid that the sight of the bright stain of blood on the bandage might scare Phil and make him want to tackle the show-down alone.
Eight minutes … nine minutes. … With a cautious glance toward the dark garage the two friends slipped shadowlike through the gloom. They waited outside the shade-drawn window of the kitchen. The wind made soft, blubbery moanings around the corner of the house. Tracy took a diamond cutter from his pocket and listened tensely.
Butch’s grim ring at the front doorbell came exactly on the dot and was clearly audible over the howl of the wind. The pane of glass was cut deftly out while the bell was still ringing. Tracy whirled and pitched it into the soft snow. By the time he had turned, Halliday had let the shade softly up on its roller and was inside the kitchen. He drew his gun as Tracy followed him over the window-sill.
The kitchen was absolutely bare except for an oil lamp on an old tub cover.
Through the closed door the columnist could hear the distant rumble of Butch’s fog-horn voice. “I’m Mister Halliday. I gotta telegram from Mister Tracy tellin’ me he was—”
A door slammed with a force that shook the floor. Butch’s voice ended in a shrill, strangled cry. There was no further sound. The house dissolved into quiet.
Tracy was out of the kitchen before Halliday’s cramped muscles could move. He darted like a noiseless arrow through a narrow hallway and into the front room. One side of the room was heavy with thick tendrils of greenish, curling vapor. Butch was on the floor, flat on his face. A little sandy-haired man was backing away from Butch’s fallen body with a handkerchief before his face and a clubbed gun in his hand.
He whirled with a breathless snarl as he heard the patter of Tracy’s onrushing feet, and Tracy clipped him accurately on the temple. The fellow went down with a rush, and stayed down. Tracy kicked the gun out of his quivering hand with one grim swing of his snow-caked toe. Halliday, half-hidden by the cloud of tear gas, was trying to lift Butch in his big arms. He began to cough and so did Tracy.
“Drag him out to the kitchen, Phil! We’ll be blinded in a second if we don’t. I’ll take the little guy.”
“O.K. Slam the door after you. Got to keep this damned stuff in here.” He picked up Butch and staggered back to the kitchen. Tracy tried to drag the little guy out, but it was too much for his waning strength. His head felt as though it were held on to his body by a wavering silken thread. Halliday came running back and picked up the fallen thug, and Tracy slammed the door weakly.
On the kitchen floor the two slumped figures of Butch and his assailant were still dead to the world. There was an ugly contusion on Butch’s forehead; his nose and left cheek were smeared with blood.
Halliday was staring with perplexity at the smaller man. “Who in God’s name is he, Jerry?”
“He’s your jailbird brother-in-law, Phil,” a feminine voice said very quietly.
Both men whirled. They stiffened helplessly under the menace of the woman’s gun. Halliday uttered a choked cry of amazement. “Why what—Is this a joke?”
“Drop the guns,” she said. “Drop them—or die right now!”
There was a double thump as the weapons fell to the bare floor. The smiling woman advanced two very cautious steps and kicked the guns toward the dusty base-board.
“I was sure I had killed you,” she told Tracy with a fixed, bloodless smile. “I can see now that the knife didn’t quite work. That was an error and a bad one.”
“My compliments to you, Miss Clarkson,” Tracy said huskily. “You fooled me completely.”
Her young face under the premature gray hair was softly attractive; she looked almost pleasant. Only the baleful glitter of her eyes betrayed the hate lurking within her. Halliday’s choked cry made his secretary’s lips writhe with cruel enjoyment.
“Your wife,” she said, biting out the words from behind even white teeth, “is dead. I killed her. The same as I’m going to kill you and your snooping friend, Tracy—and that overgrown body-guard of his on the floor. You’re all going to march out to the garage presently to be painlessly asphyxiated; then you�
�re going for a ride along the north shore of Long Island—and over the edge of a convenient cliff.”
Halliday groaned and his muscles twitched as he gathered himself for a forward spring.
Tracy caught Phil’s sleeve. “Don’t!” he whispered. “She’s lying about your wife. Cora’s still alive.”
Time. … Play for time, a warning voice whispered in Tracy’s brain. Halliday’s murderous secretary was gloating visibly, crazily-proud of her cunning.
“Nobody really pushed you off the subway platform,” Jerry said in a flat murmur.
“Correct,” she chuckled. “If you’d lifted the adhesive tape on my forehead, you’d have found the skin unbroken.”
“You flew down to Florida, of course?”
“Of course. You see, Mr. Halliday was foolish enough to write a letter about his marriage to his brother in California at the same time he was writing to me about office affairs. He put the wrong letter in my envelope and I got the news of the marriage. I turned over the office here to a friend and took the first plane south. I determined to kill you, Phil, but to torture you first as you’ve tortured me.”
Her eyes became shiny and menacing. Tracy, staring at her, felt a shudder of comprehension.
“How—how did I ever harm you?” Halliday faltered.
“Fifteen years of drudgery—the best years of my life. … For what? A salary? A bonus at Christmas? Don’t make me laugh! It was marriage I wanted. I’d have worked it, too, if it hadn’t been for that sly slut in Florida.”
“You’re crazy, raving mad,” Halliday breathed.
“Am I? You took me to shows, dinners, put me in your will—”
“I liked you, of course. I felt sorry for—”
“Just a part of the office furniture, eh?” Her laughter was chilling, horrible. “You don’t know the half of it. I’m in a bad spot, my friend. For years I’ve been systematically robbing you. I’d have had it all after I’d married you. But now I’ll have to be satisfied with what I’ve already chiseled out of you—and it’s plenty. There’ll be no new will and no Mrs. Halliday. And I’m not going to jail, either.”
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 59
