by Ron Goulart
I said, “You mentioned that you’d found out something else.”
“In tracking down Kathy Mirabell, alias Elizabeth Boop, to her lair, I was fortunate enough to locate her beau as well,” he said, pacing. “He’s a bit player named Randy Kincaid, and he was Zorro at the Halloween party.”
“The one who heard what the Grim Reaper said to Olmstead that caused him to keel over?”
“That very Zorro, yes,” answered Groucho.
“As I recall, you told me all he’d heard was some remark about a frog or a toad,” I said. “How does that—”
“The word he remembers hearing, Randy now recalls, sounded like toad,” Groucho explained.
“But it could’ve been tod,” said Jane. “The German word for death and dead.”
Groucho halted mid-carpet, nodding. “That same conclusion occurred to me, my dear,” he said, puffing on his cigar. “Now, it could be that the Grim Reaper merely came up to Olmstead and introduced himself in German—‘Hi, I’m Death. Pleased to meet you.’ But it’s more likely that he warned Olmstead that he’d soon be dead if he didn’t do something they wanted. And he apparently delivered his timely little warning in German. He could also be the one who sent Olmstead the code message about forking over the information pronto.”
“Maybe he hadn’t gotten them anything on the Cheshire formula,” I suggested, “and they wanted him to know that time was running out.”
“Suppose he wasn’t the only one they threatened with death?” said Jane.
I said, “Meaning?”
“Suppose he was told that Dinah would be killed if he didn’t deliver?” she suggested. “Granted that any of this stuff you fellows have been spinning is true.”
“I admit that this is all conjecture thus far,” said Groucho. “Still it sounds pretty plausible to me.”
“The FBI must’ve suspected Olmstead, which is why they’re involved in this.”
“And why,” said Jane, “they’ve advised everyone to back off and keep quiet.”
Groucho sat back down, blew out a swirl of cigar smoke. “Pretty soon now, my children, we’re going to have to start making some noise.”
Eighteen
By early Friday afternoon I’d determined that Herman Brix had worn his rented Grim Reaper costume to a Halloween party thrown by Basil Rathbone and his wife. The other three names that Jane’s friend had come up with had also put their Grim Reaper costumes to other uses, and none of them had been in Santa Monica at the Lockwood festivities on the fateful night of the thirtieth.
That left the costume missing from the Warlock Wardrobe Department to find out about.
My agent had set up a meeting for me with Vince Novsam that afternoon to talk about the rewriting job on the Ty-Gor script, and I figured I could also nose around in wardrobe while I was on the Warlock lot.
As I drove out to the valley, I switched from station to station on my car radio. A news commentator was criticizing John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers for staging a coal strike in such troubled times, while on another station the Incomparable Hildegarde was singing “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” The third station I sampled mentioned me.
It was one of Johnny Whistler’s frequent 15-minute Hollywood gossip shows. When I tuned in, Whistler was saying, “ … Though you’ve never heard of Frank Denby, I predict he’s destined to be a major motion-picture writer any edition now. If, and it’s a mighty big if, this talented young scripter sticks to his typewriter and leaves detective work to the professionals. Bumbling along with the aging Groucho Marx and sticking his snoot into what’s none of his business, young Master Denby is only riding for a fall. Think it over, Frankie. And now an Open Letter to Ann Sheridan. Dear Ann, you can have too much oomph, and if …”
I switched back to Hildegarde, turned the radio off a moment later.
“Major motion picture writer’s not bad,” I said to myself. “But I wonder who told Whistler to tell us to lay off.”
While I was en route to the Warlock studios, Groucho was paying a visit to Altadena Community College. He was calling on his friend Professor Ernst Hoffman, a fellow member of the Anti-Nazi League.
Altadena CC stretches across about fifteen acres, and, despite the fact that it’s located in a town that lies just above Pasadena, tries very hard to look like an Ivy League campus. Most of the buildings are redbrick, festooned with considerable ivy.
As usual there were several card tables set up just inside the arched wrought-iron entry gates. These were staffed by students distributing pamphlets and flyers for such organizations as the World Federalists, the Young People’s Socialist League, the Cinema Club, and Moral Re-Armament.
Stopping by this latter table, Groucho inquired, “Do you have any literature on Moral Dis-Armament?”
The plump blonde behind the rickety table said, “Scram, chump. I get fed up to here with the same old wheezes, especially when they come from middle-aged geezers who think … oh, my God!”
“What am I witnessing here? A religious conversion?”
“You’re Groucho Marx!” She stood up, pointing at him with one flapping hand.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Although I’ll deny it in court.”
“May I ask you something?”
“So long as it doesn’t have anything to do with long division. That’s always been my weak spot,” said Groucho. “Well, and I have another weak spot right about here.” He tapped at his lowest left rib. “It may only be gas, but—”
“No. I just saw At the Circus, and I wanted to ask you what Eve Arden was really like.” The plump young woman remained standing.
“Ah, I hate to disillusion you, my child, but Eve Arden is actually a huge, cleverly constructed ventriloquist dummy,” he explained. “If you look closely the next time you suffer through At the Circus, you’ll notice Edgar Bergen immediately behind her with his hand in her—”
“Groucho Marx!” Other students had noticed his advent by this time and were converging on the table.
A thin young man in a letter sweater asked, “Who’s your favorite comedian?”
“Lionel Barrymore,” Groucho answered promptly.
“He’s not a comedian.”
“No wonder he got so annoyed when I laughed all through his last movie.”
A pretty blond coed asked, “Did you ever have a real moustache?”
“I did, yes, but my parents thought we already had too many moustaches around the place, and they put mine in a gunnysack and drowned it,” he replied, fishing a cigar out of the pocket of his boldly checkered sport coat. “I was beside myself with grief. And if you’ve ever had Groucho Marx beside you, you’ll realize how unpleasant that can be.”
A young man in an ROTC uniform asked, “How come Zeppo isn’t in your movies anymore?”
Groucho’s eyebrows climbed. “He isn’t? No wonder there was so much dead air in At the Circus every time I said, ‘How are you, Zeppo?’” He lit his cigar. “There was also a lot of dead herring, but that’s another story. The title of which is How Green Was My Herring, and it will soon be available in better bookstores everywhere. Plus in a few not-so-hot bookstores right here in Altadena.”
A serious young woman asked, “Are you an isolationist?”
“On the contrary, miss, although many people keep trying to isolate me.”
The girl said, “I notice that you tend to exaggerate your lack of social approval, Mr. Marx.”
He shrugged his left shoulder, blew out smoke, and replied, “All I know, my dear, is that I was turned down for membership in the pariahs. And Devil’s Island rejected my application.”
There were about forty or fifty college kids surrounding him by now. From the back of the group, someone asked, “Do you think you’ll ever play in a serious movie?”
“I thought we already did that in Room Service.”
“Do you do your own singing, or is it dubbed?”
“In At the Circus Kenny Baker dubbed my songs, and since I felt it was only fair, I
dubbed his.”
“Is it true you had a fling with Maureen O’Sullivan while you were doing A Day at the Races?”
“The real events have been distorted. What actually happened was that she flung me out of her dressing room one afternoon.”
“Do you read Hemingway?”
“No, only English and Yiddish.”
“What’s your favorite novel?”
“The Girl of the Limberlost,” he answered. “And its sequel, The Girl with the Limber … ah, but I must be going.”
The campanile had just sounded for one o’clock.
As Groucho made his way through the circling crowd, someone said, “I read in the newspaper that you’re investigating another murder. Is that true?”
“Everything you read in the newspaper is always true,” he said, starting uphill.
I was walking across the Warlock lot, following Lockwood Lane to the Producers’ Pavilion, when someone behind me called my name.
“Hey, Frank, wait up.”
I stopped and looked back. “Hi, Enery. How come you’re here?”
“Auditioning for a part in the new Ty-Gor picture,” said my actor friend, catching up with me.
“Now there’s a coincidence. I’m here to see about doing a rewrite on the script of Ty-Gor and the Lost City.”
Enery frowned. “I thought the title was Ty-Gor and the Ivory Treasure,” he said as we resumed walking. “But I guess we’re talking about the same impending movie.”
We halted at a corner while two covered wagons loaded with settlers’ provisions went rolling by, headed in the direction of Soundstage 5.
“Same movie, new title and plot.”
“My agent says there’s a big part for a cannibal chieftain. That’s one of my specialties.”
“I know, everybody in our Cannibal Fan Club ranks you pretty close to the top of—”
“You think maybe they’ll cut the cannibals out of the new version of this thing?”
“How can they have a Ty-Gor movie without cannibals?”
“You’re absolutely right,” said Enery. “If you get the rewrite job, see if you can pad my part. If I get the part.”
“I can even suggest they change the title again, to Ty-Gor Amongst the Cannibals.”
“This is where I turn off. Good luck.” Enery headed left on to the walkway that led over to the Executive Wing.
Little did I realize as I continued on alone how close I was coming to another bop on the skull.
Nineteen
“Yes, a new office and a new department,” Professor Ernst Hoffman was saying. “I’d been feeling increasingly uneasy being in the German Department. Now I’m called a professor of World Literature.” He was a small, neat man in his middle fifties, and he had a slight European accent.
“By the time Hitler gets through burning books, there’ll be a lot less world literature to teach,” said Groucho. Even though his friend had a new, larger office, it still offered only hard-bottomed straight-back chairs to sit on.
“My wife and I saw your new motion picture two evenings ago, Julius,” said Hoffman. “As you know, I don’t attend films often, but I felt I had to see how you were doing. Anna found it very amusing, specially your singing of the tune about the tattooed lady.”
“There are rumors that Bing Crosby has turned green. But nobody’s sure if it’s from envy or nausea,” said Groucho. “Your wife like At The Circus somewhat more than you did, Ernie?”
“Always I enjoy seeing you on the screen,” the small professor assured him. “Yet I more admire your serious side, the person I see at the Anti-Nazi gatherings and the fund-raising dinners for—”
“Nix, don’t go around telling people I have a serious side,” he warned. “It could ruin me in the movies.”
Sitting down in his desk chair, Hoffman said, “I read in the Los Angeles Times that you and your young writer friend are investigating the death of Eric Olmstead. My assumption is that you came to talk to me about that.”
“Yeah, because I’ve got a hunch we’re mixed up with German spies again,” he told the professor. “Since you’re an expert on what the Nazis are up to in Southern California, I figured I’d better drop in on you.”
“There was certainly a Nazi agent invovled in the murder of Felix Denker last year,” he said. “You did an admirable job cleaning up that mess, Julius.”
“With some help from you, Ernie,” he said. “As to the Olmstead murder, we—”
“So it’s true, as the newspapers report, that you and Frank Denby don’t think it was a suicide?”
“It wasn’t suicide, no,” Groucho assured him, and then he explained our reasons for not accepting the suicide notion.
When he finished, Professor Hoffman said, “You suspect that Eric Olmstead was engaged in espionage work and that when he failed somehow, he was killed?”
“That’s one possible scenario, yeah,” agreed Groucho. “It’s also possible that Olmstead decided he didn’t want to be a spy anymore and was planning to go have a heart-to-heart talk with the FBI. That would have given his bosses another splendid motive for doing him in.”
Standing, the professor moved over to one of the wooden filing cabinets along the wall. Hunching slightly, he tugged the middle drawer partially open. “I’ve been wondering about Eric Olmstead for some time now.”
“Suspecting the lad?”
“Wondering at least.” Extracting a manila folder, he shut the drawer and returned to his desk. “The Germans have a very thorough fifth column and espionage network in place in the United States,” he said, resting his right hand on the unopened folder. “They have agents who collect information, others who transmit it to Germany—they might send code messages, they might use short-wave radio. There are other agents who act as couriers and actually carry information to Germany.” He paused, drumming his fingers on the folder. “And, of course, there are Gestapo representatives here, as well as some very gifted saboteurs.”
“I’m guessing that Olmstead was in the information-collecting division of the setup.” Groucho reached into a coat pocket for a cigar, thought better of it, and brought out his empty hand.
“As things grew worse in Europe, as you know, a great deal of emigration began,” said the professor. “Among those who fled Germany, Austria, Poland, France, and other countries where it was no longer safe to be Jewish or an outspoken intellectual were quite a few creative people. Actors, directors, screenwriters, novelists, graphic artists. Many of them ended up settling here in Southern California.”
“And, as we found out in the Denker case, pretending to be a refugee intellectual can be a darn good cover for an espionage agent,” said Groucho, trying to shift to a more comfortable position on his hard wooden chair.
“Because of my extracurricular interests,” continued Hoffman, “I’m in touch with several people who make it their business to determine who some of these emigrant creative people are. I keep notes on quite a few of them. It’s spying in a way, yet I feel it’s justified.”
“You came across something on Olmstead?”
“Eric Olmstead falls into a somewhat different category,” said the professor. “He wasn’t a Jew, and he never claimed to be on the run for political reasons. He simply moved from England to Hollywood. However, we’ve found that in the past few years, Germany has used England as the first stopover in the shipping of agents to the United States.”
“What’ve you got on Olmstead?”
Hoffman opened the folder. It contained a few typewritten sheets and what looked to be two carbon copies. “We became especially interested in Olmstead after he married Dinah Flanders and it was learned that he and his new bride and Warren Lockwood had visited the Lockwood Aero plant down in Hawthorne. On at least three occasions.”
“Could Olmstead have found out anything important that way?”
“With the cooperation of someone already planted inside the facility, Olmstead would have been an excellent courier,” answered Professor Hoffman. �
�That is, he could’ve been passed copies of plans and notes. An employee would be searched each day before going home. But Olmstead, traveling in Lockwoood’s private limousine with Lockwood himself, could easily have smuggled something out. On each of three occasions, perhaps.”
“That was what the code message was about,” said Groucho. “They wanted Olmstead to hand over whatever it was he’d snuck out and to make it snappy.”
“For some reason the man apparently refused.” Professor Hoffman again looked at the typed report. “We traced back on Olmstead’s trail, Julius, and found that he has no background before nineteen-thirty-six or—”
“That’s what Zeppo turned up, though without much in the way of details.”
“It’s nice to see Zeppo working with you again,” said Hoffman, smiling. “There’s no evidence that Eric Olmstead existed much before nineteen-thirty-six. The information in the biography Warlock Pictures hands out is a complete fiction for his earlier years.”
“How’d he just walk into Gifford Studios in England and start directing a movie?” asked Groucho.
“The man who was running the studio at the time, calling himself Oskar McNeeley, hired him,” said Professor Hoffman. “We believe that McNeeley, who was killed last year in what was made to look like a hit-and-run accident near the Strand, was another plant. He’d been in England since the early thirties.”
Groucho leaned back as best he could in the straight-back chair. “If you know about the possibility that Olmstead was a hidden German agent, then the FBI must know, too.”
“No doubt,” answered Hoffman. “And, I imagine, Warren Lockwood was by this time also aware that Olmstead was not exactly what he claimed to be.”
“This lad James Pearson who was pretending to be a valet for Olmstead—do you have anything on him?”
“Nothing at all.”
“He was probably put in there by either Lockwood or the FBI to keep tabs on Olmstead,” said Groucho. “I’d really like to talk to him.”
