The Big Midget Murders

by Craig Rice

  “For heaven’s sake!” she said. “Can you imagine anyone doing such a thing!” She paused briefly, then gave him her still winsome smile. “Do you suppose that he knew it had been doped when he gave it to me?”

  “When who gave it to you?” Malone asked. He felt a little confused.

  “Why, the midget, of course. Dear boy. So wonderful to be able to rise as he did, in spite of such a handicap! Don’t you think it was wonderful?”

  “Indeed I do,” Malone said. He mopped his face again.

  “I think the greatest thing in the world is to be able to rise above handicaps. That’s been my most wonderful fortune, to always be able to rise above mine.” She suppressed the very tiniest ghost of a hiccup.

  Malone said, “I’m sure of it. Now, you say the midget—”

  “Simply incredible, the way he’s been able to turn such a terrible handicap to his own advantage! That’s really the thing to do, you know, to turn your handicaps into golden treasures. There was the most marvelous girl in a show with me once, who always used to say that. Of course she meant spiritual treasures, you know, Mr. Malone.”

  “Naturally,” Malone said. He tried another approach. “Do you think the midget could have known the bottle of whiskey was doped when he offered you a drink from it?”

  Ruth Rawlson pouted. “Oh, I don’t—think—so. No, really not. I just dropped in—you know how it is. I know so many dear people backstage at the Casino, and I love to drop in and chat with them. It really seems like old times, you know. Let’s see—where was I?”

  “You’d just dropped in on the midget,” Malone prompted.

  “Oh yes, yes, yes. Such a charming little fellow. I thought I’d just stop by and have a word with him, if he wasn’t busy, and he wasn’t. I didn’t stay long, you know. Just sat down for a few minutes and chatted, and he poured me a few drinks from the bottle on his dresser, and then I just popped along home. Dear me, I’m sure he didn’t know he was giving me anything like—that.” Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and she clasped Malone’s hands. “You wonderful, wonderful man!” she breathed. “Why, you saved my life.”

  “Oh no,” Malone said modestly. He had an uncomfortable suspicion that he was blushing. “No, really, it wasn’t anything like that.”

  “But you did, you did!” She caught her breath. “I don’t know what you think of me, living in this—terrible place. And I must look simply frightful. I know I do.”

  “You look beautiful,” Malone said, from the bottom of his heart.

  The damn thing was, he thought, she did look beautiful. Not like the Ruth Rawlson with the red-gold hair rippling to her knees. But right now, leaning back against the dusty and wrinkled pillow, the haggard lines momentarily erased from her face, she had beauty.

  It was a beauty, though, that needed a hell of a lot of fixing up.

  “Look here,” he said suddenly. “I’ve a hunch you aren’t really a drunkard, you just drink too much.”

  “Why, my dear Mr. Malone!” She sat bolt upright. “Who ever told you I was a—a drunkard! I can’t imagine anyone doing such a wicked thing!”

  “Come now,” Malone said. “We’re pals. Besides, I just said you weren’t a drunkard.”

  “You said I drink too much.” She pouted at him prettily and appealingly.

  “It’s not the same thing. I mean you don’t have to drink. You just do it. I don’t know why.”

  “There just isn’t anything else to do,” Ruth Rawlson said. It was the first time he’d heard a deep, unhappy note in her carefully managed voice.

  Yes, that was it. He glanced around the room again. The kind of tiny pension Ruth Rawlson got wouldn’t pay for more than the barest necessities of life. He remembered the shabby black satin evening dress, and the way her hair had looked the night before. Suddenly he leaned forward and took her hand.

  “Listen,” he said. “I want a date with you.”

  A sudden vision flashed before his eyeballs: Ruth Rawlson, twenty years later, but still Ruth Rawlson, the still rippling hair red-gold again, the still well modelled face carefully made up.

  “Tonight!” he said. “We’ll meet at—at the Casino.”

  “I’d love to!” He saw her face fall, and knew she was thinking of the old black satin dress.

  “And wait a minute. I want you to make yourself beautiful for me.” He reached into his coat pocket. “Just a little loan, until—you have your next engagement.”

  “You dear man! You know, I really shouldn’t—but—it has been a long time that I’ve been between shows, and—I’m going to sign a new contract any day now.”

  “Of course,” Malone said hastily. He looked into his wallet, saw a crumpled dollar bill and a torn newspaper clipping. “Yes, of course you are.” He wondered how much his checking account was overdrawn. Suddenly he remembered that cute little beauty parlor owner who used to work at the Chez Paree. “I’ll tell you, my dear. You go to this place—” He scribbled a name and address on a slip of paper. “It’s right around the corner. I’ll call them up and make an appointment, and I have a charge account there. Have anything done that you want. And then I’ve a charge account at Saks.” He remembered the last time someone had used it, groaned inwardly, and hoped for the best. “I’ll let them know you’re coming. Pick out just what you need. But”—he smiled at her—“a white evening dress.”

  “You marvelous, marvelous man!” Ruth Rawlson breathed. “You remembered!”

  “Could anyone forget?” Malone said.

  Halfway out the door, he paused, remembering one more thing he wanted to know. “By the way, Angela Doll says you told her that the midget was dead. It’s none of my business really, but how did you know?”

  She stared at him for a moment before answering, “Oh, that. Why, I heard it on the radio. The news broadcast. One program that I really never miss. I don’t care for much else in the daytime programs, but I always listen to the news. I think a person really owes it to herself to keep up with things.”

  Well, that answered that, Malone told himself. He went on out to the street, where the unseasonable April snow had fallen off to a few white flakes that drifted down now and then.

  Out on the sidewalk, Malone looked up at the overcast sky and talked to Heaven about the number of different kinds of fool a man could be, including the kinds he’d been in the past and would be in the future.

  Still, it was worth it.

  He strolled on to the corner of Rush street, and turned north, thinking happily of the mistakes he had made. Yes, and with reasonable luck his life should be long enough to crowd in a few more mistakes. Quite a few more.

  He paused for a moment at the corner of Rush and Division streets. He was going to have to dig up some dough somewhere. Would it be better to try and borrow it, or to collect from some of the clients who owed him money? As soon as he got to the office, he decided, he’d try both.

  Oh well, who cared about being broke? Make it, spend it. What was a better use for money than to spend it on women and liquor?

  He stopped dead-still in his tracks, his eyes wide.

  Women and liquor.

  That bottle of whiskey in the midget’s dressing room. The midget couldn’t have given a few drinks to Ruth Rawlson. Because the whiskey had been poured out of the bottle after the midget was dead.

  His mind ran quickly back over all she’d said.

  Yes, another thing. She couldn’t have heard about the midget’s death on the radio, because, by the time it was generally known and could have been in a news broadcast, she was passed out cold.

  Malone wheeled around, tore down the street, and arrived, breathless, at the basement door. There he pounded, fruitlessly, for a good five minutes before giving up.

  It was no use. Ruth Rawlson had gone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Pendleton Reddick was sitting on a pale-green and mauve striped davenport in the lobby when Helene arrived back at the apartment house, her cheeks softly pink from the April snow. He looke
d as though he’d been waiting a long time.

  The young socialite’s handkerchief, dangling from one hand, gave all the evidence of having been twisted, knotted, braided, and finally shredded. The ash tray at his elbow was overflowing with cigarettes that had been lighted, puffed at once, and thrown away. And as Helene came in the door, he ran his hand through his hair for what must have been the hundredth time.

  “Thank God!” he said by way of greeting. “I’ve been looking at that door for hours. Looking, and waiting.”

  “If I didn’t know what you were waiting for,” Helene said, plumping down beside him on the davenport, “I’d be flattered.”

  Pen Reddick groaned. “This isn’t any time to make jokes. Did you ever sit and watch for someone to come through a door? But only strangers come, and finally you start making resolutions like you won’t look at your watch again until the elevator behind you goes up and down ten times, or you’ll wait until twelve more people have come through the door and then—”

  “Did you ever try making a resolution,” Helene said sternly, “to keep calm?” She lit a cigarette, and wished that her stomach would stop pretending it was a bouncing tennis ball. “I saw Betty Royal, and she’s all right, and nothing’s worrying her now, and she’s gone to get some sleep. So if you’ll please stop tearing your hair—” She broke off suddenly and stared at him. “Where’s Jake?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” Pen Reddick said miserably. “Where is he?”

  “But—!” Helene gasped, dropped her cigarette, and caught it just before it set the rug on fire. “You were going somewhere together, and now here you are, and he isn’t here—”

  “We decided to separate at the corner near the Casino,” Pen Reddick said hastily, “because there was a man in a green overcoat.”

  The cigarette, twisted double between Helene’s fingers, finally fell into the ash tray. “As long as it wasn’t a little man in a bright green suit,” she said, “with a pointed green cap on his head, I don’t care. Pardon that twanging sound you heard: it was just my last nerve snapping off.”

  He smiled with pale, tense lips. “I’m sorry. Jake is all right. It was just that—” He told her what had happened.

  “Oh,” Helene said. “I was beginning to think you’d garroted him and dropped his limp, motionless form down a drain.” She lit a new cigarette, and the color began to come back into her cheeks. “A perfectly natural conclusion to leap to, all things considered.” She looked at her watch. It said twelve-fifteen. “Then he ought to be along any minute. Jake is seldom more than fifteen minutes late.” She began watching the revolving doors.

  “It’s that damned box,” Pen Reddick said. “I can’t tell you how important it is. If he’d only come in here, with it under his arm—”

  “He will,” Helene said consolingly, “any minute now.” A heavy-set woman in a mink coat came through the revolving doors; then a motion-picture star in Chicago on a personal appearance tour; then two chattering debs meeting a luncheon date in the lobby; then a dignified, white-moustached man in a derby hat; then a professional model accompanied by a newspaper photographer. “Any minute,” she repeated. Automatically she began counting. When ten more people had come through that revolving door, none of them Jake—

  The ninth person who came through the door was Malone.

  The little lawyer was pale, out of breath, and looked as though he were hunting for nails to bite. His forehead was like a freshly plowed field, one damp lock of black hair had escaped from under his hat brim, and even the gaudy necktie which had crept up to his left shoulder registered a badly suppressed fury.

  He strode up to the davenport as though he were about to destroy it with his bare hands, met Helene’s coolly quizzical gaze, and said indignantly, “None of your double-damned business! Besides,” he added, attempting unsuccessfully to straighten his tie, “she’s still a very beautiful woman.”

  “I’m sure of that,” Helene said. “And as long as you didn’t believe anything she may have confided in you—”

  “I didn’t,” Malone told her, his face reddening. He took off his hat, made an ineffectual stab at pushing the hair back from his forehead, pulled up a chair and sat down. “Well, now that we’re all here—” His voice broke off suddenly. He stared first at Helene, and then at Pen Reddick. “Jake! Where the hell is he?”

  Helene said, “He’ll be along any minute now.” She directed one more hopeful glance at the revolving door, then looked at her watch. It was twelve-twenty-five.

  Pen Reddick repeated his story of the man in the green overcoat, and why Jake had gone to the Casino alone.

  Malone lit a cigar, glared at it as though it were responsible for all his misfortunes, and said, “Oh well, in that case, he’ll be here pretty soon.”

  “Yes, of course,” Helene said, not looking the least bit worried.

  For five minutes nobody said anything. Finally Helene tore her gaze away from the door and said brightly, “It never occurred to any of us that he might have called the hotel and left a message. Just a minute, and I’ll ask at the desk.” Before either man could offer to run the errand for her, she was up on her feet and halfway across the lobby.

  Pen Reddick leaned forward and said in a hoarse, low-pitched voice, “It would have been my fault. I could never forgive myself. You don’t imagine anything’s happened to him, do you?”

  “Hell, no,” Malone said with a hollow-sounding cheerfulness, knocking a half inch of ash off his cigar. “Nothing ever happens to Jake.” At least, he reminded himself, nothing had up to now.

  Helene came back from the desk, her cheeks very pale, her eyes bright. “He’s an inconsiderate so-and-so! At least he might have telephoned to tell us he’d be late.” She sat down and lit another cigarette.

  Malone pretended there was still more ash on his cigar, avoiding her eyes. “Oh well,” he managed at last. “You know there’s bound to be a lot of things Jake had to tend to today: tonight’s show, publicity, the reporters, everything. There may have been people waiting for him at the Casino, and he might not have had a chance to let us know he’d be delayed.”

  “That’s probably it,” Helene said, much too calmly.

  It was Malone’s turn to watch the revolving doors. The next person who came through them might be Jake. The next person was not Jake, nor the next, nor the next, nor the next. Perhaps Jake would telephone. A bellhop was going through the lobby now calling someone. The bellhop came nearer and apparently was calling a Mr. Snazzlefassle. Nothing could have happened to Jake; nothing ever happened to Jake. The doors remained motionless for a terribly long time.

  Malone tried to blow a perfect and nonchalant smoke ring. It came out as a pale-blue blur. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had turned out as a double ring, an eight, eight for eight-ball. That look on Helene’s face! He’d seen it before, half terror and half determination, and a hundred percent good manners. And this guy, Pen Reddick, tearing his hair out one wisp at a time. What the hell was in the midget’s damn box anyway? What could be worth anything like this?

  As soon as seven more people had come in through that revolving door, Malone resolved, he’d get up and telephone the Casino.

  The seventh person who came through the door was a tiny, bewildered old lady in sealskins who turned out to have come to the wrong address.

  Malone rose, said, “Pardon me, gotta make a phone call,” and strolled across the lobby to the Outside Telephones, repressing an urge to break into a gallop.

  He dialed the Casino number, listened to the repeated buzzes, told himself, “If there’s no answer after they ring it ten times, I’ll hang up,” and finally hung up just after he lost count.

  “Was there any answer?” Helene asked as he came back, looking up with that terribly bright smile.

  “No,” the little lawyer said. “He must be on his way here now.”

  He sat down again, concentrating on keeping his eyes away from the door. By shifting his arm a little, he discovered,
he could look at his watch without Helene seeing it.

  It was twelve-thirty-six.

  “I wonder if I ought to go and look for him,” Pen Reddick said helpfully.

  “Oh no,” Helene said. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  Twelve-forty. Malone wondered if he could count to sixty before the second hand went all the way around, discovered that he couldn’t, and decided the watch was wrong.

  “Jake could take care of himself anywhere,” Helene said.

  “I should imagine so,” Pen Reddick said.

  Malone wondered if he could count to sixty before the second hand went all the way around, if he were looking the other way. He beat the second hand by twenty.

  It was twelve-fifty-five.

  “Even if anybody—” Helene paused, and then said, “After all, nobody knew he was going there except us.”

  “That’s right,” Pen Reddick said. His handkerchief by now appeared to be nothing but lint, and he dropped it in the ash tray. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Of course not,” Malone said. If the next person who came through that door—make it the third one—no, if the fifth person who came through the revolving door wasn’t Jake, he’d call the police.

  By the time the third person had come through the door—a tall woman in black, with an extravagant bright-green veil—the little lawyer was laying a completely ruined cigar to rest in the ash tray. At the fourth person’s arrival—a thin, cross-looking man wearing a derby hat—Malone was on his feet.

  “Just one more!” he told himself.

  The door remained motionless for what seemed like a century or so, then spun around to vomit out a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman in a Persian lamb coat, carrying an armful of rental library books under her arm.