Red Gardenias bc-5

by Jonathan Latimer

  "State highway 20-the first farmhouse to the right after the intersection of the Charlesville Pike."

  "Anybody with her?"

  "She went in alone, but the place may be loaded down."

  "We ll be along in ten minutes."

  "Like hell you will! It s twenty miles."

  "Fifteen minutes then."

  Williams was sitting on the running board of a rented coupe. His black eyes blinked at the array of automobiles.

  "You call out the militia?"

  Crane got out of Dr Woodrin s car. "Everybody insisted on coming."

  Carmel March, with Peter in her convertible, called out excitedly, "Where to now?"

  "Women, too?" Williams asked disgustedly.

  "We couldn t keep em at home."

  "There ll be shooting."

  "They ll stay back."

  "Well, let s go."

  Williams had them drive without lights a half mile down the cement road, then signaled for all the cars to stop. About one hundred yards ahead was a side road, a gray streak against the black countryside.

  "We ll walk from here," he said.

  Peter March told the women to wait with the cars. He left a guard to watch the side road. "Stop anybody who drives out," he said.

  In the party were three more guards, Dr Woodrin, Dr Rutledge, Peter March, Williams and Crane.

  While the others discussed plans for the attack, Crane took a flashlight, covered it with his coat so there would be no glow, examined the drive. He felt great excitement when he found a series of small craters on the soft earth. The treads were exactly like those made by the marksman s car at the Duck Club.

  Dr Rutledge, coming over to him from the group, asked, "What are you doing?"

  "I ve found some fresh tire tracks."

  They stood together while the whispered discussion continued. Crane asked the doctor, "Have you any methylene blue with you?"

  "I think so. Why?"

  "We might run into someone who has been gassed." He was thinking of Ann. "How long after would it work?"

  "Depends upon how much gas they ve had."

  "How often do you give the injections?"

  "That depends upon the patient."

  "How often do you spray them?"

  "You don t spray. Where d you get that idea?"

  "I don t know. I thought somebody told me you did."

  The plan had evidently been decided upon, because Williams touched Crane, said, "Let s go."

  They started and Peter March, just ahead, whispered to Williams, "You re sure she s there?"

  "I know she went in."

  The road seemed to be descending. At the same time it began to wind. Clumps of trees, bushes, tall grass lined both sides. They had to halt now and then while the leaders felt out the way. It was very cold and still.

  "How d you follow her?" Peter March asked.

  "She drove slow as hell, to keep from being stopped by cops, I guess," Williams said. "I was able to keep up with my lights off."

  "I mean through this," Peter said.

  "Oh. I didn t come in here. When she turned off I stopped and watched her headlights. I could see her drive down to a house and switch off the lights."

  "And then you went to a farmhouse and telephoned?"

  "Yeah."

  They had got off the road again. One of the guards lit a match. The orange flame showed trees, white faces; then someone knocked the match out of the guard s hand. "You fool!" Dr Woodrin said. "Want to give us away?"

  Williams found the road. It wasn t completely dark, and Crane could see Peter s back, just ahead of him. The sky, above a tangle of half-bare branches, was mauve. It was only an hour to sunrise. Suddenly Williams halted.

  "There s the house."

  Directly ahead of them was a very faint rectangle of yellow light. For a moment it looked as though the light was floating high in the air, then they saw the gray outline of a two-story farmhouse. The rectangle was a window on the second floor.

  "Somebody s up," Williams said.

  Whispering, they decided to send four men around the house. The other four would try to get inside without attracting attention. At the sound of shooting, the four outside would rush the house.

  Williams took it for granted he would be one of the four to go inside. Everybody took it for granted Crane would be another. Peter made it three. That left one more. Dr Rutledge said he d go, but Crane objected.

  "It s not your show," he said.

  Dr Woodrin had been examining the house at a little distance from the group. He returned and said, "I m going. John and Richard… Talmadge… They were my best friends. It s certainly my show."

  CHAPTER XX

  A cautious examination of the farmhouse disclosed locked windows and doors. The color of the night was Oxford gray; in the sky only the big stars remained. There was no wind. Williams led them to the front door, tried a master key in the lock. After a moment it turned and they followed him inside.

  The hall had a musty smell, like that of a room shut up for a long time. There was a smell of dry leather, of dust, of mildewed fabric, of mice, of rotting wood. The air felt moist and warm on their faces.

  Under their feet, the floor creaked faintly. They halted, holding their breaths.

  There was talking upstairs. The voices were muffled; it was impossible to tell if the speakers were men or women. The conversation was leisurely; a rumble of words, a long silence, a murmured reply.

  A rod of light extended from Williams fountain-pen flashlight to a green rug, so worn that cross threads of the fabric showed through the nap. Further ahead were stairs and a ten-foot landing. On the left the oak balustrade had been partially torn loose from the stairs. It tilted crazily, like a section of railroad track uprooted by flood. Over the landing a tattered piece of muslin partially cloaked a square window.

  Williams touched Crane s arm. They started up the stairs, keeping close to the wall on the right. On the landing Crane was surprised to see that the square window was made up of small, colored panes; green, red, blue, orange and brown. The next flight of stairs looked safer.

  A cold draft flowed along the second-floor hall, numbed their wrists and ankles. The voices were louder now, but it was not possible to distinguish the words. Light stained the hall floor through a crack under a door fifteen feet to the right.

  Suddenly a man laughed hoarsely. Crane nearly lost his balance; his startled jerk carried him against the wall; he put up his left hand to save himself. Cobwebs stuck to his fingers. He realized the man was laughing in the room with the light. He tried to scrape the cobwebs off his hand with the barrel of his revolver. He was scared as hell.

  They went along the hall to the door. A woman was laughing with the man; both sounded a little drunk. The man, between laughs, said in a deep voice:

  "Like a boilerworks, by golly!"

  He pounded a table with his fist, then they both laughed.

  Williams mouth was against Crane s right ear. "The doc hasn t got a gun. He ll bust the door with his shoulders, bust in, and you and Peter and me ll cover…"

  Vicious snarls, loud barking broke out somewhere in back of the house. A pistol went off twice. Crane could see the flashes through the colored window. The dog yelped once and was silent.

  Dr Woodrin said, "Come on." He hit the door with his shoulder; it gave with a crack like a big firecracker. He staggered into the room. Crane, beside Williams and a step ahead of Peter March, followed.

  Two flickering oil lamps on a bare table threw jaundiced light over half the room. They held in uncertain rays a carrot-haired woman in a gaudy cotton wrapper; a quart of rye whisky and two partially filled glasses; a mussed bed on which sat a man wearing a blue skirt and an underwear top. The woman was Delia Young. She was seated on a chair across the table from the bed; her painted face was turned in the direction of the shots. The man was looking that way, too, but his face was in shadow. There was a shapeless bundle of clothes in a corner of the room. A tight bandage circle
d the man s left arm just above the elbow.

  It seemed, to Crane, the action was like that in a prizefight motion picture which has been halted for an instant to let the audience see a particular punch. The crack of the door was the signal for the halt; their arrival in the room started the reel again.

  Delia Young screamed. The man bent over and fumbled among the bedcovers. Dr Woodrin s voice shook the windows.

  "We ve got you this time."

  Delia Young screamed. The bundle of clothes in the corner moved. The man s hand came around in a swift arc. A sliced second before his pistol went off, Dr Woodrin, almost between Crane and the man, dropped on the floor. Like an echo, Williams revolver answered the pistol. Crane fired at the man, too. They both fired again. "You… you…" the man muttered. His body suddenly flabby, he pitched forward on the floor. Delia Young screamed again.

  "Pipe down, tutz," Williams said.

  Crane moved a step forward, his smoking revolver still pointed at the bed. Dr Woodrin got off the floor. Crane looked down at the body. It was Slats Donovan and he was dead. Peter March hurried to the bundle in the corner. Crane lifted the bottle of rye from the table. It was half full. He wiped the neck with the palm of his hand, took a long drink.

  "My God!" he said when he finished. "Oh, my God!"

  Delia Young stopped screaming. Her eyes were frightened behind smears of blue mascara. Williams put his hands under Donovan s armpits.

  "Give me a hand, Bill."

  They put the body on the bed. Crane discovered blood on his left hand, his left wrist. He couldn t find a handkerchief in the pockets on his right side and he didn t want to spoil his clothes by searching with the left hand. He opened his coat, wiped the hand on his shirt. It was only a two-dollar shirt.

  Peter March was lifting the bundle in the corner. It was Ann Fortune, and she had been bound and gagged. Crane felt a great relief. He wondered how she had found the house. She was smiling at Peter.

  Crane said, "Lucky for you, baby, we came along."

  Ann smiled at him. "Hello, Bill," she said. Her hair was the color of the straw that champagne bottles come in. "I d almost given you up." Her green eyes went back to Peter. "Thanks for untying me," she said to him.

  That s gratitude for you, Crane thought. You risk your life saving a gal, and who does she thank? The other guy!

  Williams said disgustedly, "All this work chasing after clues, and it turns out to be a plain gangster job."

  Dr Woodrin was looking at Donovan. "That was a close one." There was no pink in his face.

  Williams said, "It took guts to do what you did without a gun." He stared at Dr Woodrin s white face. "He didn t wing you, did he?"

  "No."

  "Where d his shot go?"

  Nobody knew, and Williams added, "Good thing Bill and I were quick."

  Delia Young was watching them. "Damn you all for a bunch of murderers," she said in her husky voice.

  Dr Rutledge and the guards had come upstairs and goggled at the body and Delia Young. Williams was describing the shooting when Carmel and Alice March arrived in two of the cars.

  "We just had to know what happened," Alice said.

  Carmel s dark eyes were on Ann, beside Peter. "How in the world did you get here?" she asked.

  Ann said, "I thought Slats Donovan was the murderer. So I found out where Delia Young was through a girl at the Crimson Cat, but Donovan surprised me trying to get into the house."

  Carmel said, "Slats Donovan killed John and Richard?"

  "And Talmadge." Peter March looked at Ann. "It was clever of you to figure that out."

  "Just a lousy gangster job," Williams said.

  Ann said, "It wasn t so clever to get caught."

  "But what happened here?" Alice March persisted.

  Peter repeated the story of the shooting to Carmel and Alice.

  "I m glad you re safe," Crane said to Ann.

  "You didn t show it." Her voice was cool. "Letting somebody else untie me."

  Crane shrugged his shoulders. He sat on the table and crooked a finger at Williams.

  "Get Doctor Woodrin s medicine bag for me," he said in a low voice. "One of the gals brought his car down."

  "Hell!" Williams said. "Donovan s dead."

  "I want it."

  Williams black eyes were suddenly alarmed. "He didn t wing you, did he, Bill?"

  Crane smiled at him. "Get the bag."

  Peter March was still talking. "You really ought to thank me for saving you," Crane said to Ann. "Me and Doc Williams. I couldn t untie you because I was too busy with Donovan."

  "That was close," she admitted. "I don t see how his shot missed you."

  Crane saw Williams in the hall. He went out and took the bag from him, opened it, fumbled among its contents.

  "What re you looking for?" Williams asked. "A drink?"

  Someone in the room called, "Crane!"

  There were a number of medical articles in his hand: a silver thermometer case, a steel probe, some cotton, an atomizer, a glass bottle of capsules. He carried these back into the room.

  Peter March asked, "Any reason we can t cart away the body?"

  "I don t know of any."

  "What ll we do with the woman?"

  "Let her go," Ann said. "She was practically a prisoner."

  Alice March was standing with Dr Rutledge. "I don t understand why Donovan killed Richard… and and everybody." Her plump face was bewildered.

  Williams jerked a thumb toward the bed. "Why don t you ask him?"

  Peter March said, "He hated the whole March family because March amp; Company fired him."

  Crane put the medical objects on the table beside the bottle of rye. He didn t feel so good. He took a drink, sat on the table, put the bottle down. He sat with his back arched, his stomach pulled in.

  Ann was watching him. "Are you all right, Bill?"

  He smiled at her. "Sure." He wished he didn t like her so much. He picked up the atomizer, pointed it at his nose, gave the rubber bulb a tentative squeeze. He sneezed.

  Dr Rutledge said to Peter March, "There must have been more of a motive than revenge."

  Crane put the atomizer on the table, began to clean his nails with the steel probe. "There was," he said.

  "What was it?" Peter March asked.

  Crane ignored him. He put the probe down, took his revolver from his pocket. He gave it to Williams.

  "Don t let Doctor Woodrin leave the room," he said.

  There was silence as Williams aimed the revolver at the physician.

  Then Dr Woodrin said, "What s the big idea?" His pink-and-white face was angry. "If you re playing a joke, I don t…"

  "Save it," Williams said.

  "Drop him if he moves," Crane said.

  Carmel March exclaimed, "You must be mad."

  "Am I?" Crane took the atomizer, squirted it at her. "With this I purify you." He gave the rubber bulb a couple of squeezes. He felt a little light headed.

  They certainly thought he had gone crazy. Even Williams was a little dubious. He thought, maybe he s just drunk. He wondered if the rye was doped.

  The fine spray from the atomizer fogged Carmel s head, beaded on her mink coat, floated past Peter March.

  "Perfume!" he said.

  Carmel cried, "My gardenia!"

  Crane gave the atomizer a final squeeze. "Would a corpse by any other name smell so sweet?" he inquired, and turned to Peter March. "Can you search the doctor s car?"

  Peter March nodded to a guard by the door.

  Crane spoke to Dr Woodrin. "Clever idea, wasn t it, to try to implicate Carmel?"

  "You re insane," Dr Woodrin said.

  Dr Rutledge said, "I know I am. For God s sake, Crane, tell us what it s all about."

  Crane felt very tired. The rye didn t seem to do much good, but he took another drink.

  "It s about perfume, oily water, a plagiarist and duck shooting," he said.

  Carmel March gasped. "Duck shooting?"

  "Well, the D
uck Club then. They ve found oil in Michigan, near Lansing, and in Illinois." Crane spoke to Peter March. "But there s probably a hell of a lot more right under your great-grandfather s land."

  Even the guards gaped at him. He went on: "Woodrin knows this. Having been an oil-company doctor, he d be bound to know a lot about oil. Oil seepage; the geologic formation of the duck grounds tipped him off, but he couldn t buy the property."

  The guard who was searching Dr Woodrin s car appeared with a Scotch-plaid blanket and a tennis net. "They were in the rumble," he said, going away again.

  Crane continued, "There was little danger of the oil being discovered since the Marchs aren t oil people, even though oil seepage killed fish in the pools, and there are no wells within five hundred miles to make them think of oil. But as a trustee of the great-grandfather s estate, Woodrin could sell the land to himself… once the last March had died."

  His face incredulous, Peter March stared at the doctor. "All those murders to get possession of an oil field?"

  "Oh, he hated all of you, too."

  Carmel gasped, "Hated us?"

  "Sure. You were rich; he wasn t. When he had a chance to make money, with Donovan and Talmadge, in the night-club business, John spoiled it. So he went after the oil. How much is an oil field worth? A million dollars? Fifty million?"

  Williams said, "Some guys ll murder for fifty bucks."

  Dr Woodrin s round face was the color of caramel ice cream. "Do you believe all this nonsense?" he demanded of Peter.

  Crane put an elbow on his thigh, leaned his chin on his palm. He was more comfortable doubled over, but he felt lousy. He said, "Now for the murders, in the order…"

  The guard interrupted him by tossing coils of white rubber hose on the floor. "That s all," he said.

  "Swell!" said Crane, looking at the hose. "There s the real proof."

  Williams revolver went off with a tremendous boom. It seemed as though the noise had caused Dr Woodrin to make a startled leap for the door, but it must have followed the leap because the bullet caught him just as he entered the hall. He took two heavy steps forward, crashed headlong down the stairs.

  Alice March screamed, but Carmel silenced her, saying, "Shut up, you fat fool!"