Severed Key

by Nielsen, Helen

  “Oh, Simon!” she cried. “You should have been there. It was delicious!”

  “Idiot!” he said. “You could have been killed. Where did you get a sword cane?”

  “From an admirer—years ago. In Rome, I think it was. When the driver dropped me off at the hotel he kept the large suitcase in the boot—”

  “I saw that. Tell me what happened?”

  “But I am telling you! I went to the registration desk and asked for Sigrid Thorsen’s room. There was a lovely young thing on the desk who probably never reads the newspapers—or had forgotten all about the airline crash if she did. She checked the reservations and found that the room was still being held. I registered and went up to the room. There was a lovely balcony and when I went out on it I saw Chester two balconies away on the same floor. He waved to me and I went back inside. It was quite a nice room. I prefer a more continental-type hotel but it was spacious and I had time to kill. I ordered tea and it came very quickly delivered by a charming Asiatic—”

  “Florentine,” Simon urged. “Tell me about the man who was supposed to kill Sigrid.”

  “That was nasty, wasn’t it? Well, I freshened up and waited for your call. Finally the telephone did ring but when I answered a man’s voice said he was the hotel manager and was inquiring to see if the room was satisfactory and did I require any service. That’s when I became suspicious. Thirty-five years ago I would have taken such a call as a matter of course, but this was a commercial hotel and I was no longer a star. I thanked him and said everything was quite all right, and then I called Chester’s room and told him something was wrong.”

  “And ordered caviar and champagne.”

  “Of course! How often do I get to a first-class hotel any more, Simon? I wasn’t going to miss the chance. When the waiter came he wasn’t the charming Asiatic—he was an enormous Caucasian with very badly bleached hair. He was rude. He didn’t even transfer the order from the trolley to the table. Instead, he took an ugly looking gun from under the napkin and ordered me to walk out to the balcony. I think he meant to push me over. So I took the cane—I told him I had sprained my ankle and couldn’t walk without it—and then I pushed the spring and struck the gun from his hand with the sword. You see, Simon, I learned early in life never to trust a strange man in an hotel room regardless of race, age or sexual preference. That was all there was to it.”

  “That was all?”

  “Well, I did run out into the hall just as Chester came running in and then there was the police thing. But you know about that.”

  “You’ve had a long day, Hannah. I’d better take you home.”

  “Home? I’d much rather go back to the hotel. I promised one of the reporters an interview for his TV news programme tomorrow. If I photograph well you can’t tell where it might lead. I did fool a lot of people into thinking I was a girl in her twenties. Oh, Simon, look! It’s Raul—no, it’s Juan Sandovar, of course. He’s even more handsome than I remember his father.”

  Sandovar, accompanied by two plain-clothesmen, had walked into the station unnoticed. He was wearing dinner clothes and seemed in high spirits in spite of the escort. He didn’t notice Simon or Hannah but proceeded directly into Lieutenant Howard’s office. Simon left Hannah and followed close behind.

  “Really, Lieutenant,” Sandovar said, “I think this could have waited until morning. I did report that my car was stolen from the hotel garage, but even if you’ve found it—”

  “We found it,” Howard said curtly, “and it is morning.”

  “You found it? Splendid. I hope it’s in good condition.”

  “It isn’t, Mr Sands. We found it smashed into a steel fence down in the harbour area.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. But it is insured—”

  “Mr Sands, we didn’t bring you down here because your automobile was found. We brought you down to make some identifications.”

  “Identifications?”

  The lieutenant opened a folder on his desk and took out the first of three photographs. He handed it to Sandovar.

  “This is the face of a dead man. He was shot and killed a few hours ago. He has been identified as Luis Morengo. Do you know him?”

  Sandovar’s face betrayed no emotion beyond normal curiosity. “The face of a dead man is much different from the face of a man alive,” he said.

  “Does the name mean anything to you?”

  “Is there a reason why it should?”

  “If he was your bodyguard—yes.”

  Sandovar laughed. “I have no bodyguard, lieutenant. It may be ego, but I fancy that I’m able to take care of myself.”

  “I see. Now here’s a photograph of a man who is alive—temporarily incapacitated, but alive. His name is Vincent Florentine. Do you know this man?”

  Sandovar accepted the second photograph and shook his head. “No,” he said firmly, “I do not.”

  “You have never seen him?”

  “Never.”

  “I’ll jog your memory. You might have seen him in the company of his father-in-law, Angelo Cerva.”

  Sandovar placed the photographs on the lieutenant’s desk. “So that’s what this is all about,” he said. “I have been seen in the company of Angelo Cerva, a suspected racketeer.”

  “More than suspected, Mr Sands.”

  “That may be. I don’t know. I have met with Mr Cerva on a few occasions. I was considering purchasing some property from him in Las Vegas. I don’t know any of his family and I have never seen this man you call Vincent Florentine. Now, may I claim my automobile?”

  “In due time, Mr Sands. I have one more photo here. Look at this man. He’s alive and talking in one of our interrogation rooms. His name is Alvin Jackson.”

  “Alive and talking,” Sands repeated. “But not about me, I’m sure, because I have never seen this man before.”

  “What about the man standing just behind you? Have you seen him recently?”

  Sandovar placed the photograph on the desk and turned about slowly. He looked at Simon for several silent seconds and then smiled. “Of course! It’s Simon Drake, isn’t it? We met a few mornings ago at the pool at my hotel.”

  “Beautiful,” Simon said. “Really beautiful! I never knew the Latins came so cool. What about that apartment over the garage at Gerard Rentals truck depot in the harbour area? I suppose you’ve never seen that!”

  “Oh, yes, I have seen it,” Sandovar answered. “It belongs to my uncle, Tomas Arriba. He lives mostly on his yacht but he has such apartments in the strangest places all over the world. Elegant apartments over garages and old storehouses or on the roof of a factory—always in a harbour area where he can see the sea and have complete privacy. A very eccentric man. Do you know my uncle, Mr Drake?”

  “No,” Simon answered, “but I know a man named Pridoux who has twenty thousand dollars that you put into his hands last night.”

  “Pridoux?” Sandovar puzzled over the name. “I did play cards last night and I did lose heavily—but I can’t remember a man with such a name. Is that why I was brought here? Because of the gambling? This was a private party. I can give you the name of my host. He may have the names of the other players. But if I am being booked on a charge of illegal gambling—”

  Lieutenant Howard slammed his fist down on the photo folder and muttered an oath. “You aren’t being charged with anything, Mr Sands, or Sandovar, or whatever else you choose to call yourself. Not by me. But you are being warned. You’ll be questioned by the FBI, you’ll be questioned by the AEC—even the Treasury Department may get in on this one. You may have all the right answers. God knows you’ve got enough millions to hire the right lawyers—you’ve even got enough to break me down to a Meter Maid if it strikes your fancy. But right now I’m busy working on two murder cases and I suggest that you go down to the vehicular department and put in a claim for one busted Ferrari. Unless Simon Drake has any more fancy ideas.”

  Simon Drake was clean out of ideas. He could sympathize with the lieutenan
t’s frustration, but if even half of what Sandovar had told him about his wealthy coconspirators was true Sandovar would be harder to convict for being involved in the hijacking than the seagoing Cerva. And somewhere, sometime Sandovar and his friends would try again and succeed because luck would be on their side. An airliner wouldn’t go down into the sea, and a boy and a girl on a beach wouldn’t dig through a pile of seaweed.

  Sandovar didn’t need a second invitation to leave. He stepped briskly to the door that opened into the corridor, and then he stopped and clung to the doorknob for support.

  Simon had left Hannah seated on a chair in the corridor, but she must have moved because he could see, beyond Sandovar’s shoulder, a slender, blonde woman moving towards them with the well-practised Thorsen walk. She came closer and he noticed that she didn’t carry a cane. She came still closer and he noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wig. She came to within a few feet of the doorway and he noticed that she couldn’t possibly be more than twenty-two.

  Sandovar looked as if he were about to be sick all over the lieutenant’s floor.

  “Hallo, Johnny,” Sigrid Thorsen said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SANDOVAR BACKED SLOWLY into the room as Sigrid moved towards him. She was now inside the lieutenant’s office but she seemed oblivious to anyone but Sandovar.

  “I haf talked to a Miss Lee who impersonated me today,” she said softly, “and someone tried to push her off the balcony of that hotel room you reserved for me. That was what was intended all the time, wasn’t it? I was to be killed.”

  “No,” Sandovar protested. “I knew nothing about that—”

  “But you did know, Johnny. Maybe you didn’t want to know that you knew. You try so hard to be a gentleman playboy but you are so filled with hatred. A woman knows that. When she sleeps with a man she knows that. That’s why I was leaving you to go back to Arne.”

  “You were not leaving me!” Sandovar shouted. “I told you to go!”

  Lieutenant Howard came to his feet and cleared his throat loudly. “Young woman, I’m the officer in charge here! Will you please explain who you are and what is the nature of your business?”

  She became aware of him then. She turned towards the desk and impaled him with her large blue stare. “My name is Sigrid Thorsen,” she said, “and the nature of my business is to explain why I am not dead and why Private Detective Keith is not guilty of the murder for which he is being sought.”

  “Keith?” Howard repeated. “Do you know where he is?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “All right, where is he?”

  Sigrid nodded towards the doorway. “In the corridor. He has a radio that receives police calls. He has been listening to it all evening until about an hour ago when he said: “Sigrid, it’s all right now. It’s safe for you to go to the police.”

  Keith didn’t wait to be called. He came into the office and closed the door behind him. “Hi, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m closing the door so the reporters out there won’t hear enough to make them tear the place down.” Then he looked at Simon and grinned. “I told you I had a secret weapon,” he said.

  “Sigrid Thorsen—not dead,” Howard exclaimed.

  She smiled at him. “Not at all dead,” she said. “You would like to hear my story now, yes? It is simple. To begin with Johnny—I knew him as Johnny Sands—was my good friend in New York. He helped me to get jobs. Jobs are difficult for an actress to find. I don’t know what I was to him, but for me he was my great romance. My really great romance. That’s why it hurts so much to be used—”

  “That’s not true!” Sandovar protested. “It was a business deal. Strictly business. You knew that. I tried to help you out because you were so young and vulnerable.”

  “Please, Johnny, don’t. It has to all come out now. You see, Lieutenant, I had decided to come west to be with Arne. At first Johnny was angry and said I was foolish to do that when he could do so much for me in New York, and then, very suddenly, he changed his mind and said it was a good idea. He said he was coming to Los Angeles, too. In fact, he had a reservation for a flight a week ahead of my reservation. Then a business proposition came up in Las Vegas and he had to go early. He asked me to take his reservation instead of mine and deliver a suitcase to a driver who would meet me at the airport. He gave me one half of a key to use as identification and told me what I must do to be sure that I got this certain driver. The driver had the other half of the key. After I gave him my half of the key, he would drive me to the hotel where a room was reserved for me for the week I must spend before I could contact Arne. He said this was important because Arne might be jealous if he thought I was still accepting favours from another man. In addition, he gave me one thousand dollars in cash. He laughed about that and called it my dowry.”

  “Did you know what was in the suitcase?” Simon asked.

  “No. I never saw it. Johnny checked it aboard the plane before he made the flight to Las Vegas. I took only the hand luggage. The important thing, you see, was that I must not contact Arne Lundberg and let him know I was coming early. I wasn’t to call him until the night before he planned to meet my plane. I was to tell him then that I had got a last minute cancellation and couldn’t wait another day. He would never know anything about the suitcase I delivered to the driver.”

  “This is preposterous!” Sandovar protested. “Lundberg’s death must have unbalanced the girl!”

  Sigrid turned back to Sandovar and nodded. “Oh, yes, it did that,” she said. “But that was later. What happened, Johnny, was something neither of us expected. You went on to Las Vegas and I intended to go on that plane just the way you said. Last Saturday morning I took a taxi to the airport and checked in. I even sent my hand luggage aboard. And then one of my friends came down to the airport and insisted that I must return to the city just long enough to make a screen test at his studio. Some director had seen one of my commercials and was considering me for a part in a television series. It would take only an hour or two and then I could catch a later plane. It was the chance I had been waiting for, so I went back with him. I didn’t think it would matter. The luggage would be held at the Los Angeles airport and I could still deliver the suitcase to the driver.

  “Well, you all know what happened. I made the test and my friend drove me back to Kennedy. I got the later plane. I knew nothing of the crash until I reached Los Angeles and then, of course, no one was looking for me because I was supposed to be dead. It is a shock to realize that you are dead. I was afraid to contact the driver at the rental agency because the suitcase was in the ocean. I was afraid to contact Arne because I needed a new story for him. I didn’t know where you were, Johnny, so I went to a hotel near the airport and waited to see what would happen. I was very nervous, so I took a lot of sleeping pills. I slept until Sunday afternoon and then tried to call my friend in New York—the one who had made the screen test—but he had gone off on the director’s yacht and left word that he wouldn’t be back for two weeks. So, you see, I was really dead. That night I saw the newspapers with the picture of Arne crying over my hand luggage and I decided that I would have to ring him and have it out. I saw Johnny’s picture in the paper, too, and I wanted somebody with me when I told him what had happened. Johnny has a very bad temper.”

  “Were you afraid of Johnny Sands?” Simon asked.

  Sigrid whispered her answer. “Yes. For a long time I was afraid. Oh, he could be kind. So very kind. And generous. The first time I told him about Arne—that was months ago—I mentioned that Arne was having a hard time in Hollywood. Johnny made a telephone call and Arne got a job right away. Not acting, but a job. But there was so much of Johnny’s life that I had no part of. Friends he had that I never saw. Business deals and trips that he never talked about. But there was one thing he talked about that worried me. Sometimes, when he had been drinking, he talked about his heritage—his honour. Something he must do. I couldn’t understand. He seemed to have all the money in the world but he wanted somethin
g more.”

  “Did you phone Arne Lundberg?” Lieutenant Howard asked.

  “I phoned him on Monday. I phoned three times but there was no answer. Perhaps he had the telephone off the hook. I decided that I would go to his apartment the next day but then I remembered Mr Keith and decided to see him first.”

  “Remembered?” Simon echoed. “You’ve been holding out on me, Jack.”

  “Don’t jump your guns,” Keith said. “Let Sigrid finish her story.”

  “I remembered Mr Keith before I left New York—right after Johnny told me what he wanted me to do to deliver that suitcase. It was a strange thing to ask, and paying me one thousand dollars made it seem even stranger. I wondered where he had got so much money and what I might be getting mixed up in if I went through with it. And then I remembered that he had got Arne his job and worried about that, too. I had met Mr Keith briefly when he arranged Wanda Call’s release from her kidnappers. I had a small part in Wanda’s play at the time. I knew he was a private detective and so I wrote him a letter on my late father’s stationery and gave it to one of my friends who flies for SAS. The letter was sent from Stockholm and asked Mr Keith to check on Arne Lundberg’s associates. I put some money in it. I knew Mr Keith would do a good job and if Arne was mixed up in anything crooked or dangerous he would find out about it.”

  “The Stockholm letter,” Simon said.

  Jack Keith took the letter from his coat pocket and placed it, open, before Lieutenant Howard. “My credentials,” he said. “I was working on the case the night Drake and I barged in on you at Lundberg’s apartment. That’s why I didn’t think it was suicide.”

  “Suicide!” Sigrid scoffed. “When I read of Arne’s death I knew it couldn’t be suicide. You Americans think Swedish people kill themselves so easily! The highest suicide rate in the world. Rubbish! It isn’t true! Why do you say such things? He would have killed Johnny if he had known what was planned for me when I checked in to the room reserved for me—but I never went to the hotel.”