by Craig Rice
“I’ll tell you that, too,” Helene said. She gave them Annette Ginnis’s story, up to the point where the visitor had arrived.
“Mildred Goldsmith,” Malone repeated thoughtfully. “Where in blazes does she fit into this? In fact—” He paused and scowled. “Lou has enough dough to buy fur coats and jewelry for nineteen wives if he wanted them. And he’s crazy enough about Mildred to give her anything she asked for. But she’s kept right on working in the chorus.”
“She’s a career woman,” Jake said.
Helene’s scornful sniff told him what she thought of that.
“And Annette seemed afraid of her,” Malone went on. “She is a mean-looking babe at that. Lord only knows what Lou Goldsmith sees in her, but every man to his taste.” He wondered how Ruth Rawlson was getting along at the beauty salon. “But maybe that helps to answer a question. The midget must have had assistance in this racket of his. One of Max Hook’s boys provided part of it. We know that, because he was with young Royal last night. And there’s some tie-up between the midget and Max Hook. The rest of the assistance very likely came from Mildred Goldsmith.”
“That’s just a guess,” Jake said.
“Sure it is,” Malone told him. “Care to make a better one?”
“One of them murdered the midget,” Helene hazarded. “Max Hook’s boy, or Mildred Goldsmith.”
“Why?” Malone asked, looking at the end of his cigar.
“In order to work the racket themselves, without having to give most of the profits to the midget.”
“But with the midget dead,” Jake pointed out, “they wouldn’t have had any hold over Annette Ginnis.”
“You think not?” she said coldly. “You should have seen Annette’s face when Mrs. Goldsmith came in. And you should have seen her worrying for fear someone would find out that she’s the midget’s widow.”
“All right,” Jake said. “I won’t argue. Suppose one of them did murder the midget. Then what?”
“Then,” Malone said suddenly, “what was the idea of using eleven silk stockings, all different sizes, to do it with, and of taking the midget home and putting him carefully in his own bed? And how did anyone find out the midget was in the bass fiddle case?”
Helene glared at him. “All right, since we’re asking questions—what did you find out from Ruth Rawlson?”
“That she’s feeling better,” Malone said. He felt a slow flush creeping into his cheeks.
“That’s wonderful,” Helene said. “I hope she continues to feel better. I hope she feels swell. How was she able to tell Angela Doll the midget was dead, and how did she happen to take a drink from that bottle of doped liquor?”
“I don’t know,” Malone said miserably.
Helene dropped her cigarette, and picked it up again quick. “You mean you didn’t ask her?”
“Sure I asked her,” Malone said. “And she told me. Only—” He reminded himself that Jake and Helene were his friends, and that there was no reason for feeling embarrassed. “Only, she told me the damnedest things.” He repeated his conversation with Ruth Rawlson, omitting any mention of the date he had with her, of the beauty salon, and of the white evening dress she was going to buy at Saks’.
Jake scowled. “But she—the midget couldn’t have offered her a drink from that bottle, because—”
In the same moment Helene said, “But she couldn’t have heard about the midget’s murder on the radio, because—”
“I know,” Malone said in a small, unhappy voice. “I figured that out myself.” He failed to add that he’d figured it out after he left Ruth Rawlson’s apartment.
Jake half-rose to his feet. “Well, damn it!” he roared, “If you knew she wasn’t telling you the truth, why didn’t you—”
“She had an appointment at a beauty parlor,” the stricken lawyer said.
“Holy conundrum!” Jake roared. “You let a dame tell you a phony story like that, and then don’t raise enough hell with her to find out the truth just because she has to go out and have her hair combed!” He sank back into his seat, ran a distraught hand through his red hair, and muttered, “Damn it, I’ll get another lawyer.”
“Get another lawyer!” Malone shouted back at him. “Get ten other lawyers. The way things are going, you’ll need them.”
“Now never mind,” Helene said gently and understandingly. In the silence that followed she picked up her hat, brushed an infinitesimal speck of cigarette ash from the brim, and performed the miracle of putting it on without a mirror. “For two bits I’d lost my temper, too. Anybody here got two bits?” She surveyed her already perfect face in her compact mirror. “All right, make it fifteen cents. I’ll lose my temper for fifteen cents. Anybody make it a dime? No? Okay, I’ll lose my temper for free.” She brushed a fleck or so of powder on her exquisite nose, snapped the compact shut and dropped it in her purse.
Jake said, “Helene, please—”
“Is anybody else here going to get mad?” she asked, ignoring him. “No? Fine. And while we’re sitting here wringing each other’s hands, poor Allswell is beating against the bars of the jailhouse. Let’s do something about him, before we get really down to calling each other names.”
“Now look,” Malone began.
“It’s our fault he was arrested,” Helene went on, “because we hid the midget’s body. If we hadn’t, he’d have had a perfect alibi. But since we did—”
“He still has an alibi,” Malone muttered. “Angela Doll.”
“Go tell von Flanagan,” Helene told him, “and get Allswell out of jail. After all, he’s your client. In fact,” she added, “let’s all go tell von Flanagan.” She rose and pulled her furs around her throat.
“Now wait a minute,” Jake said, getting to his feet. “What are you trying to do? What are you trying to prove?”
“It may take all three of us,” she said, “to get von Flanagan to let Allswell go. And that’s the first thing to be done.” She began pulling on her gloves. “Because Allswell was closer to the midget than anyone else, and he might be able to tell us who would have wanted to murder him, and who would have wanted that box, and what was in the box.” She picked up her purse and said, “Well?”
“Helene’s right,” Malone said. “We’ve got to get Allswell McJackson out of jail.” He laid an inch of dying cigar in the ash tray, grabbed his overcoat, and stood up. “And it may take all three of us. But on our way—” He looked at his watch. “That doped bottle of whiskey. It might be that the one thing we want to know—” His face began to redden again. “All right, on our way down to von Flanagan’s office, I’ll stop off at the beauty parlor and talk to Ruth Rawlson. She’ll tell me the truth, this time.”
Jake made a rude noise through his nose. The little lawyer pretended not to have heard it.
“She will,” Malone repeated, “or I’ll wring it out of her. And,” he added, looking at Jake, “from you, no comments!”
*Eight Faces at Three
†The Corpse Steps Out
‡The Wrong Murder
§The Right Murder
||Trial by Fury
Chapter Seventeen
“For the luvva Pete!” Madame Bettina said. “You can’t see her now. She’s having her facial.”
Malone stamped out his cigar in the ash tray upheld by two glass cupids. “I’m a bad man to argue with, you know it. I’ll see her now, or you’ll give me back that thirty-two-dollar bottle of perfume I gave you in December 1939.”
He wondered what he ever could have seen in a slightly chubby, round-faced brunette.
“But, Malone.” She stared at him, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Well, it’s your funeral. What’s all the rush about, anyway? Is she one of your precious witnesses?”
“Sure,” Malone said, admiring the pale-grey upholstery of the waiting room.
“Okay,” Madame Bettina said. “I’ll take you in. What kind of a case is it?”
Malone stifled an impulse to swear at her; instead looked carefully aro
und the waiting room; then leaned over and whispered something in her ear.
Madame Bettina started, giggled, poked Malone in the ribs, and said, “You lawyers!” and led the way out of the waiting room.
The walls of the long corridor Malone entered were hung with highly imaginative and very sketchy paintings of lovely ladies between curtained doors. A sign above one of the doors read “Gentlemen’s Hairdressing,” and through the crack in the curtains Malone could see a lanky young man with a permanent-wave machine attached to his head. In a booth two doors down a bored young woman was fussing over the hair of a stout, pleasant-faced matron who was saying, “And I know it’s the truth. She met this man at the house of a friend of mine—” Through the slightly parted curtains of another booth, Malone could see a bored little girl, about eight, her hair in curlers, reading a comic book.
At the very end of the corridor a pair of curtains parted to reveal the most ornate booth of all. The little lawyer took one step inside, and halted. For all that it was a triumph of interior decoration, he found himself remembering the more frantic scenes of Boris Karloff movies, and shuddered.
“Oh, Miss Rawlson,” Madame said, coyly, “someone to see you.”
The figure on what looked like an ornamental operating table stirred slightly. Its hair was concealed behind a cloth. Its face was completely covered with what looked like an African witch doctor’s mask. Its arms, instead of ending in hands, became shapeless lumps of greyish clay just above the wrists.
“It’s me—Malone,” the little lawyer said hoarsely, sniffing the odor that was a combination of perfume and chemicals, and wondering what it was.
The white mask moved. “My dear man, what are you doing here?” said the beautiful, throaty voice of Ruth Rawlson.
Malone waved to the beautician to leave them alone, and said, “I couldn’t wait until tonight to see you.” He waited till Madame Bettina was out of earshot and added, “And besides, I did have something I wanted to ask you.” He cleared his throat, and wished he were anywhere else in the world. “What time did you have your drink in the midget’s dressing room?”
After a moment, “It was—Oh, it was late. After two,” said the mask.
Malone wondered if he dared light a cigar in this sanctuary. “The coroner’s office has established the midget’s death as being sometime before that. How could he have invited you to have a drink if he was dead?”
“Oh my goodness, he couldn’t have! Did I say he invited me? I must have been thinking of some other time.” There was a slightly volcanic movement of the mask. “No, no, it wasn’t last night that I saw him. It was night before last. Last night—”
“Go on,” Malone said. He made up his mind to be firm if it killed him. “He didn’t give you that doped whiskey.”
“No, he didn’t,” Ruth Rawlson’s voice said very slowly and deliberately, as though she were trying to remember. “Oh yes, I know. It was Angela. We were chatting, you know, and when we went down the hall she said, ‘Oh, I wish I had a drink,’ and I suggested we stop at the bar for one, but she didn’t want to do that, with everybody staring at her—you know, Mr. Malone: one of the penalties you pay for being beautiful!—and so she said, ‘Let’s stop in the midget’s dressing room. He always has a bottle on his dresser, and he won’t mind.’ So we did—and really, I felt terribly strange about it, since he wasn’t there. Dear, if I’d known he was dead! Oh Mr. Malone, can you imagine anything so awful!”
“There, there,” Malone said soothingly. He wished Ruth Rawlson had a hand, instead of a lump of clay. He’d have patted it.
“Dear Angela is such a thoughtless child,” Ruth Rawlson murmured.
“She is indeed,” Malone said, glad he had everything cleared up. He felt a little angry with Angela Doll. She might have told him that. Suddenly he started. “You must have been thinking of another time,” he said quickly. “Because last night Angela Doll went home right after her last performance.”
“Did she?” said Ruth Rawlson. “I don’t blame her a bit. It must be a terribly tiring act, though goodness only knows, when I was with—”
“What I mean,” Malone said in a subdued roar, “is that this matter of the doped whiskey—”
“You don’t think it’s done me any permanent harm, do you?”
“No, no, no,” Malone said. “I mean”—he drew a long breath—“the midget was dead, and Angela Doll had gone home, and how did you happen to drink it?”
There was another faint movement of the white mask. “Oh Mr. Malone, you won’t think I’m too terrible a person, will you? Especially since he told me to.”
“Who told you to do what?” Malone asked. He wondered if the fumes in the beauty parlor were getting him down.
“The midget. The thoughtful little man. That time I did stop by and have a drink with him, he said, ‘My dear Miss Rawlson, there’s always a bottle of whiskey in my dressing room, and any time you want a drink and I’m not here, don’t hesitate to come in and help yourself.’ And you know, honestly, I never would have taken advantage of it, but last night I felt terribly upset, what with his death and all, and there wasn’t a soul I knew backstage, and I felt too shattered—much too shattered—to go out to the bar with all those strangers, so I said to myself, ‘Well after all, Ruth, he told you to help yourself,’ and I just popped right in and took one quick little teensy-weensy drinkie and popped right out again, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Well,” Malone said, “that clears that up. Do you know what time it was?”
The mask moved slightly from side to side. “I have no idea. My watch is being fixed.”
Malone remembered the size of the teensy-weensy drink that had vanished from the quart bottle. He decided to light a cigar anyway, beauty parlor or no beauty parlor.
“You don’t think I did anything wrong, do you, Mr. Malone?” said a faint, wistful little voice from behind the mask.
“Oh no,” he reassured her quickly. “Just what I would have done, in the same circumstances. And now there’s just one more thing—”
“Yes?” It was like a note played on a violin.
“About how you knew the midget was dead. You couldn’t have heard it on the radio, because the news wasn’t on the radio until after you woke up. So how did you know about it?”
“Did I say I heard it on the radio? I must have been thinking of something else. Oh Mr. Malone, you know how awful I felt this morning. I really wasn’t thinking what I was saying. You know how that can be.”
“Of course I do,” Malone said, sympathetically. “But just how did you know about it?”
“Why, Annette Ginnis told me. How silly of me to have forgotten that! Poor child, she was so terribly upset about the whole thing! She’s such a young thing, you know. It’s no wonder she was upset.”
Malone remembered what Helene had told him, and thought no indeed, it’s no wonder at all.
“I felt so sorry for her,” Ruth Rawlson’s voice went on. “Things like that can be simply terrible when you’re so—well, so juvenile. I don’t suppose she even knew him except to speak to, but when a thing like that happens right under the same roof with you”—A sigh escaped from behind the mask. “I remember once, a long time ago—Oh, but no, I can’t tell you about that. I remember it too, too vividly, even now.”
“There, there,” Malone said soothingly. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you like this.”
“Oh, it’s quite all right.” A faint little giggle. “I know how you lawyers are. You always ask so many questions. Just so you don’t ask me what this stuff on my face is, I won’t mind.”
“I won’t,” Malone said, from the bottom of his heart.
A white-clad beauty operator brushed her way between the curtains and said, “I’m afraid we must ask you to leave now. It’s time for us to remove madame’s mask. Madame is going to look very lovely.”
Malone gulped, “I’m sure of it,” took one more quick glance at the ghastly mess, shuddered, gasped, “Good by,” an
d fled.
Chapter Eighteen
“Just what we figured out in the first place,” Helene said coldly. “She peeked into the midget’s dressing room, saw a bottle of hooch with no visible owner, and went in and helped herself.” She swung her car around the turn into Michigan avenue, and added, “How in blazes can Ruth Rawlson afford to be having her hair done at Bettina’s, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Malone said miserably, looking out the window.
“Maybe she’s found an admirer,” Jake hazarded. “If she has, I hope it’s one with money. What’s the matter with you, Malone?”
“Me? Nothing,” the little lawyer lied. “Just bit on a sore tooth.” He remembered that, in addition to everything else he had on his mind, he had to wring some money out of some source, enough at least to spend on Ruth Rawlson.
Helene shot the big car expertly between two taxi-cabs and a bus. “Annette Ginnis. There’s something funny there.” She was silent a moment, concentrating on piloting the car through a bad patch of April slush. Suddenly the car leaped ahead. “I know!” It slowed down again, as quickly.
“Whatever you know,” Jake grunted, “don’t kill us before you tell what it is.”
“She—I mean Ruth Rawlson—told Malone that Annette Ginnis told her the midget was dead. Well, Annette Ginnis left the Casino immediately after her last performance, and she didn’t come back again. Ruth Rawlson was already groggy when we saw her leaving the Casino, and she couldn’t have seen Annette during the time she was there, because Annette was already gone. And if you’re trying to tell me someone woke Ruth Rawlson up from that sleep to tell her anything—”
Malone said, “But—” and shut up again.
The car traveled a block and a half, no one saying a word.
“I told you not to believe her,” Helene said severely.
“All right,” Malone said. “Next time, damn it—” He paused. “But if you think I’m going back to that infernal beauty parlor again, you’re crazy.” He relit his cigar and chewed savagely on the end of it.
“And what’s more,” Helene went on, “the way she found out the midget was dead may be important.”
