The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends

by Hampton Stone

  “There was nothing wrong in what we were doing,” she said. “We were just trying to fix it so you wouldn’t get any wrong ideas. We didn’t know that the killer had stolen Mr. Coleman’s keys. There didn’t seem to be the slightest possibility that we would run into anyone.”

  That brought her to the crucial part of her story, the part where, as they told it, she had been conscious when Art Fuller was not. If they were lying, they had rehearsed their fictions well, because their stories did tally at every point. She had let them into the house. The house had been completely dark and there had been no evidence that anyone was about. She had unlocked the desk and had found the letters she wanted without the slightest difficulty. She’d paused long enough to look at them and make certain she had all of them, and they had started to leave. At the library door she had remembered the picture and had turned back for it. Art Fuller had gone out into the hall without her. She had picked up the picture and turned back to the door with it.

  At that moment she had heard a loud thump out in the hall. She had run to Art and she had found him on the floor with his head bleeding. He had been out cold. She had snatched the handkerchief from his breast pocket and run back to the library where she had wet the handkerchief with cold water from the carafe on Homer Coleman’s desk. She had been bathing Art Fuller’s head when the doorbell had started ringing.

  Art had come around enough so that she could get him to his feet, and she had helped him down the stairs to the basement. They had gone through the basement and had made it safely as far as the little areaway under the front stairs. There they had been forced to wait because I was out front on the sidewalk watching Gibby go in the second-story window. Later I had been on the front steps waiting for Gibby to let me in. All that time they had hidden under the stairs; and, the moment I went in the front door, they had run for it. Art had had time to rest and with her help he had been able to run down to the corner and out of sight around on the avenue where they had picked up a cab.

  Before she could go any further with it, Gibby took her back to that moment when she had heard the thump in the hall.

  “You ran out to Art and found him with his head bleeding,” he said. “Didn’t that frighten you or worry you?”

  “Frighten me?” she repeated after him. “At first I thought he was dead and I was too desperate to be frightened or anything. By the time I had him stirring the bell was ringing and I didn’t think of anything but getting him out of there before someone would come in and find us.”

  “Someone had already found you,” Gibby reminded her. “Someone had cracked Art on the head.”

  She nodded. “I suppose I did realize that,” she said, “but I can’t remember thinking of it at the time. There were too many things to think of just then.”

  “Then you want us to believe that you had no awareness of anyone else in the house with you?”

  “Not that I can remember. Later in the cab when we were going home and I was worrying about the cut on Art’s head and asking him how he got it, then I did realize that there had been someone. I was almost relieved.”

  Gibby pounced on that. “Why?” he asked. “Why did that make you feel better?”

  “I thought that would be the end of it. It came to me that the man who had knocked Art out must still have been in the house. I had seen you outside and going in. I thought you would catch the man in there and that would be the end of it.”

  “But no feeling of his presence in the house? No smell of cigars even or anything like that?”

  “No,” she said. “Nothing.”

  Gibby took up the silver candlestick. She insisted that she had seen no candlestick, had never had the faintest notion of what manner of weapon might have been used to inflict the blow on Art Fuller’s head.

  Gibby asked her why she hadn’t gone to the police once they had been clear of the house, why she hadn’t at least with an anonymous phone call tipped off the police to go to the Coleman house.

  “You were there,” she said. “You’d had so many police at the hotel. I had only the one idea, to get Art out of the neighborhood if I could before we ran into any of your police.”

  The rest of her story was in the same vein. She had, during the night, remembered that in Homer Coleman’s office desk he had some snapshots that the three of them had taken on a country week end. She had gone into the office early with the thought of removing those snaps from his desk. The locksmith had already been there by the time she reached this point in her story, and Gibby already had men going through the desk. He took time out to ask them about the snapshots, and the snaps had been in the desk exactly as she had described them. The boys, however, were finding there nothing else of even the slightest significance.

  Gibby turned back to drawing from her the rest of it and the rest also ran to pattern. She could or would add nothing to what she had already told us about the attempt on her own life. When we had discovered that her keys had been taken she had known full well that she hadn’t left them at home. She had been terrified of our going home with her because she had been afraid we would find Art Fuller in her apartment; and, if not that, she had been certain that we would find there her picture of Art and the picture of Art and herself that she had taken from Coleman’s desk.

  When she had gone through all the scattered things in her apartment and had not found the pictures, she had assumed that Art—obviously interrupted just as he was about to eat his breakfast—had had the time and the presence of mind to rip the two pictures from the frames and take them away with him. She had thought they were safe, or she would have thought it but for one disturbing idea she said had come into her mind, a thought of the killer.

  “I was afraid,” she said, “that this murderer might have the pictures. I could see that he had been in Mr. Coleman’s house last night and he must have seen me take the picture of Art and me out of there. That worried me. As I saw it, it would seem to the murderer that it was a chance to throw suspicion away from himself. If he knows about Art and Art’s trouble, he could have had the idea that he would get into my apartment and get the pictures and send them to the police and that would send you after Art and he would be safe.”

  “Did you have the pictures hidden?” Gibby asked. “Did he have to look hard for them?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, “since that isn’t the way it happened. The murderer didn’t take the pictures. You did.”

  “I asked you a question,” Gibby growled. “Please answer it. Where did you have the pictures?”

  “Art’s picture was where it had always been, on the table beside my bed,” she said. “The picture I’d taken from Mr. Coleman’s desk was on the chest in my bedroom. I just put it there last night and didn’t even think of what I would do with it. I was busy taking care of Art’s head and getting him to bed.”

  I expect Gibby might have gone into that further but we were interrupted at this point. There was a call for us. Mr. Lansing was asking if he could trouble us to come down to Branch Banking. He would wait for us there. A matter had come up, a matter almost too absurd to concern anyone, but he did feel we should know about it and he would appreciate our assistance with it.

  We went down to Branch Banking. It was a mass migration because we took Rose Salvaggi and Art Fuller with us; and the trouble-shooting Cary Willard—looking thoroughly trouble shot—trailed along. He was almost as frayed as was his chewed cigar.

  The department looked much as I had expected it would look. Girls sat at tables sorting checks. These were our Amazons of the night before. In their office clothes they looked less Amazonian. There was a battery of adding machines and boys sat on high stools at those. Everywhere were the black canvas straps. In the corner, behind shoulder-high, glass partitions, was a small office. That small office was blue with cigar smoke and it seemed rather full. Behind the desk sat James Sully. Beside him sat Nicholas Cooper Lansing. At the other side of the desk sat Gert Cullinan—the leader of those babes we had tangled with at the But
terfield—and against the glass partition leaned Jeb Wilberforce. He was a surprise. I hadn’t expected him. They all had big cigars—all but Gert.

  Lansing saw us and came out to speak to us. Wilberforce waved a greeting at Rose and Art, and flashed them an encouraging, thumbs-up signal. The whole room quivered faintly with soft music. There were pipes somewhere around that room and they were oozing a Straussish waltz played by strings. I had heard of this brain wave of the efficiency engineers, some notion that people did mechanical tasks more efficiently to a musical accompaniment, but I couldn’t see that we had anything much in the way of a case in point. Nobody seemed to be doing anything too efficiently. The girls and boys at their tasks were all obviously taking time out to steal glances in the direction of the glassed-in cubicle and to steal other glances at us. I spotted several of the girls who had been involved in the episode of the pants, and I looked for Albert Gleason but he wasn’t there. There were a couple of idle adding machines, and the thought hit me that one of them might have been his. I could well imagine that he might not have the face to turn up at work that day after having distinguished himself so signally at the Bank Club party.

  “It’s good of you to come down, gentlemen,” Lansing said.

  He was just turning from us to speak to Rose and Art when Gibby spoke up and brought him right back to us.

  “If you’ve had us down on any little matter of Mr. Wilberforce’s,” Gibby said, “we’ve been into his little matters exhaustively and haven’t time for them now, Mr. Lansing.”

  Lansing smiled at us. “I know,” he said. “Jeb’s told me all about it. I understand perfectly. Jeb was still with me when this other matter came up. It concerns our Miss Cullinan and Mr. Gleason. I believe you spoke with both of them last night.”

  Gibby grinned and looked interested. I couldn’t see that he had any right to expect that they would provide anything beyond comic relief, but he did look interested. Lansing examined the look shrewdly and it satisfied him. He again turned to Rose and Art.

  “My dear,” he said to the girl. “I need not tell you that I am horrified that you should have been put through these terrors. I hope you will feel that you can turn to me, that you can depend on me just as you would have depended on Mr. Coleman.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Lansing,” the girl said softly.

  Lansing turned his smile on Art Fuller. “Jeb Wilberforce thinks highly of you, young man,” he said. “We shall have to be friends.”

  “Better not, sir,” the boy answered bitterly. “I bring my friends no luck.”

  Lansing waved that away with the air of a man who has no time for defeatism. He came back to us. “As I told you,” he said, “this is almost too absurd, but I don’t know about these things and you do. I should like your opinion, since the young man was at the party last week and he does seen an extraordinarily hotheaded and violent young man.”

  That was too much for Rose. “But he isn’t, Mr. Lansing,” she protested quickly. “He isn’t really.”

  “Not your young man, my dear,” Lansing said. “Miss Cullinan’s young man. He was here only a short time ago and he was making threats. Miss Cullinan is terrified.”

  We went into the cubicle with Lansing. We left Rose and Art outside with Cary Willard. Wilberforce went out to join them, and Gibby made not the slightest effort to pretend that he regretted the man’s going.

  James Sully rose to greet us. He was in fine shape. In fact, if we hadn’t been seeing him in his own office I might hardly have known him. He looked another man entirely with the green out of his face. He looked healthy and smug—neither of which he had looked the night before at the Butterfield. He had to be in fine form. Otherwise he could never have stood up under that cigar he was smoking. The fumes of the thing made me feel as though I might be turning a bit green myself. It could have been that I’d been spoiled by Wilberforce’s Corona.

  On the other hand, with Gert Cullinan things were quite different. As much as there had been an improvement in Sully, so much had there been a deterioration in the Cullinan girl. She had been weeping and even now, despite a good deal of vigorous nose blowing, she seemed to be deliquescing some sporadic sniffles. Her eyes were darkened with fear and she was frankly trembling. The sanguine color had faded from her skin and her face looked like a slab of uncooked veal on which somebody, in tasteless fancy, had scribbled with lipstick an unsuitable cupid’s bow.

  Sully was scowling at the girl. His scowl had in it all the ferocity one might expect of a bossling in the exercise of his little authority. I was not a little astonished to see the erstwhile formidable Gert cower before this scowl. The police had not disturbed her in the slightest. I was wondering what manner of thunders James Sully might have in his arsenal to move her so. Lansing stationed himself behind the girl’s chair. He looked with evident disapproval at the Sully frown; and, shaking his head at Sully, he patted the girl on her shoulder.

  “There, there, my dear,” he said. “You mustn’t distress yourself.”

  Gert crumpled under this little kindness. She began whimpering.

  “Stop that immediately, Cullinan,” Sully snarled at her. “Behave yourself.”

  “Gently, Jim, gently,” Lansing whispered.

  With a small, gruff noise that might have been a snort, Sully retired behind a cloud of cigar smoke.

  “What’s wrong now?” Gibby asked impatiently. “More pants?”

  Gert’s whimper grew into a wail. “I told him all about it,” she whined. “I explained and explained. I thought he was going to kill me.”

  “Who?” Gibby asked.

  “Mickey. I didn’t want him to come here. I swore to him he was wrong.” She was in no shape to give it to us easily. Lansing filled in for her. Mickey, it appeared, was her young man. He had been at the party the night before; and, when Gert had disappeared for an hour and more, Mickey had grown angry. Mickey’s angers, apparently, were formidable rages, and his was a wrath that was not easily turned away. Gert had given him all the soft answers but they had availed her nothing. Mickey had threatened to poke her in the eye. It had been a narrow squeak, and she had been spared from damage only by the fact that Mickey had gotten it into his head that in the affair of Albert Gleason’s pants somehow or other Gleason had been the aggressor.

  He had left her in a rage but only because he had gone to find Albert Gleason. There had been no change in his intentions, only a change in the object thereof. He had decided that it would be Gleason he was going to poke in the eye.

  Sully took it up. “He wasn’t talking that way when he turned up here today,” he said. “He was talking murder.”

  Lansing made a deprecatory gesture. “I hardly think the young man meant it,” he said.

  “Whose murder was he talking?” Gibby asked.

  “Albert’s,” Gert wailed. “He’ll kill Albert. Just as soon as he gets his hands on Albert, he’ll kill him.”

  Sully interrupted her. “That was just wild talk,” he said. “It was the rest of it I thought you ought to know about. I asked Mr. Lansing to have you down because I don’t know where that crazy fool will go talking, now that I’ve had him thrown out, and I thought you ought to know about him before he makes trouble.”

  “You’ve had him thrown out?” Gibby asked.

  “I couldn’t have him disrupting the whole department. I phoned down to the guards, and they came up and got him. They’ve bounced him out of the building. They tell me he was yelling he’d go to the cops.”

  “To tell them he’d been bounced for creating a disturbance here?” Gibby said. “That won’t excite the police department much.”

  “To tell them,” Sully said, “that Albert Gleason attacked the girls in the hotel suite and that he killed Mr. Coleman because Mr. Coleman caught him at it.”

  Gibby turned to Gert. “Where did he get that idea?” he asked.

  “That’s Mickey,” she sobbed. “When Mickey gets sore, he just goes crazy. When he gets sore, you never know what ideas he’l
l be breaking out with.”

  “Meanwhile,” Gibby asked, “where is Gleason? Didn’t he come in to work today?”

  “He came in,” Sully said vaguely. “I haven’t had time to ask where he’s gone. I was so glad he wasn’t around when that lunatic stormed in here, I let it go with that.”

  “Albert,” Gert sniffed. “Where would he be? That one. I bet he’s hiding in the gents’ room.”

  “We might go find him,” Gibby suggested, “I’d like him to hear these accusations. He should be given a chance to answer them.”

  Sully rose and started showing us the way. Lansing hung back.

  “Gentlemen,” he said gently. “We must remember the source of these charges. I would discount them completely. You could see how this young man might have such thoughts, but certainly the fact that they are understandable gives them no validity.”

  “Are they understandable?” Gibby asked.

  “Sure,” said Sully smugly. “When I saw what was going on in those hotel rooms last night, I thought some pretty bad stuff myself.”

  “Was all that new to you?” Gibby asked him.

  “I’ve never been more shocked in my life,” Sully said.

  He had led us to the door of the men’s room.

  “I thought you were one of the people Mr. Lansing counted on,” Gibby said. “I thought it was the good common sense of the chiefs that was expected to keep such goings-on within decent limits.”

  Sully paused with his hand on the doorknob. “You sure would have thought so,” he said. “You sure would have thought they’d have that much sense.”

  “And you?” Gibby prodded. “What about you?”

  “It was my first time,” Sully told him.

  “Jim is no party man,” Lansing explained. “He wouldn’t have been there last night if Homer Coleman hadn’t persuaded him that his staying away had a bad effect in his department.” He turned to Sully. “Mr. Coleman did insist that you come, didn’t he?” he asked. “Even if it was only after dinner.”