Where There's Smoke

by Stewart Sterling

  “Maybe we can work up to it, gradually. What’d it look like?”

  “I’m not sure I have any right to tell you that much.”

  Pedley’s fist opened. His hand dropped a couple of inches. His fingers gripped the knot of Gaydel’s necktie. He jerked hard. The producer came up to his feet, gasping.

  “I’m not going to play twenty questions with you. I’m after a torch who set fire to a theater and burned a guy to death. I can’t wait for any feeble-minded flathead who thinks it’s smart to play foxy while—”

  “Set fire!” Gaydel whispered. “Are you sure?”

  “My business to be sure.” Pedley let him go.

  “The papers said—defective wiring.”

  “Defective human.”

  “Ned?”

  “Would I be after a dead man?”

  “Then—who?”

  “You could be elected.”

  There was nothing phony about the shocked incredulity on Gaydel’s face now. He shook his head from side to side, unable to answer.

  “You were hot-panting around after this Leila babe!” Pedley made the accusation as if he’d welcome contradiction. If he could jolt this man off his mental balance, irritate him into retorting before he had time to reflect, maybe the producer would say something he didn’t mean to. “Ned Lownes was sore at you. For bedding around with his sister.”

  “Ned didn’t know anything about—Leila and me. He—he wouldn’t have cared, anyway.” Gaydel tugged nervously at the knot of his necktie.

  “You weren’t on the best of terms, put it that way. And you were in that dressing-room where the fire started.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You helped carry Lownes up there. But it never occurred to you to go up and bring him down.”

  “No, because—”

  “I find you rummaging around in Lownes’s things with some screwy explanation about hunting for something you don’t know anything about.”

  “I told you I knew what it looked like. It’s a brown leather case. Italian tooled leather, I believe. About five by seven inches, couple of inches thick.”

  “What’s so important about it?”

  “That’s what I don’t know.”

  “Then why were you going to all this trouble?”

  “Leila asked me to. It’s hers.”

  “You mean she says it is.”

  “Yes.” Gaydel stiffened, as if he resented the implication. “She said Ned—took it from her.”

  “No idea what’s in it?”

  “None.”

  “When’d she ask you to perform this burglary?”

  “About an hour ago. I called up the hospital to see how she was. They told me she’d been discharged and taken home. When I phoned her at the apartment, she said she was pretty fair but she’d feel better if I could find this leather case.”

  “Must be worth heavy dough.”

  “You’re on the wrong track there. Ned handled all her funds, anyway. She wouldn’t care if he’d had a little more or less. Besides, I never knew her to be concerned about money, one way or the other.”

  “Most people are. When they claim they aren’t.”

  “Not Leila. She can make all she wants to, any time she wants to. Make it a lot easier without Ned around, too.”

  “You another one who thought Lownes was a total loss?”

  “Horsing around with a different fur coat every night? Hitting the cork like a dipso? Slobbering away her money in creep joints? Why, he was a drag and a drawback as far as Leila and the show were concerned. But I don’t think he could help himself. Compulsion neurosis.”

  “What?”

  “I told him a hundred times he ought to be psyched.”

  “What was his quirk?”

  “Inferiority. With overtones of sadism.”

  Pedley eyed him narrowly; the producer wasn’t kidding. “Highbrow excuse for being nasty, that’s all.”

  “Oh, no. Not at all. Ned used to be the headliner in their brother-and-sister act on the five-a-day. Eccentric dancer. Tops at it, too, if you believe his clippings. Then Leila gets a break on radio. The act busts up. Vaudeville is dead. Hoofers don’t get across on the kilocycles. But Leila goes big. Ned stays with her—only not as partner. Just manager. All the time Leila is getting up in the bucks. Pretty soon she’s as well known as Kate Smith or Bob Hope. Everybody forgets about Ned. He’s nobody except Leila Lownes’s brother. Naturally it gripes him. After a while the gripe gets ingrown. It becomes a complex. He reacts by being ugly to her.”

  “You figure that all out by yourself?”

  Gaydel scowled. “It makes sense.”

  “Apply your gray matter to what happened at the Brockhurst this afternoon and see where you wind up.”

  “I haven’t the faintest—about how the fire started.”

  “You were up in the dressing-room all the time Miss Lownes was there with her brother?”

  “No. After he snapped out of it and began calling Leila six kinds of a bitch, she decided we wouldn’t wait to locate Ned’s private watchdog, a guy named Staro. She asked me to go bring her car, drive it to the end of the alley, and come back to help her get him away from the theater.”

  “So she was up there alone with him for a while.”

  “I couldn’t say.” Gaydel didn’t like the direction the questions were taking.

  “You don’t know anything. What you came over here to find. Or who was here ahead of you. Or why you practically jumped out of your socket when I walked in on you.”

  Gaydel said, “There’s nothing mysterious about it.”

  “Not much. No. If one of Lownes’s friends found you in here with the place turned upside down, it wouldn’t be too hard for him to draw the conclusion you’d pushed the button on brother Edward. Then you might get yours—without benefit of jury.”

  “That’s silly. When I came in here, I wasn’t even aware Ned had been murdered. If I had known, of course, I’d never have come near the suite.” He edged toward the door. “Apparently I can’t be of any help to you in your investigation. So if it’s all the same—”

  “As you were.” Pedley sauntered up to him, patted his pockets, shoved a hand inside the producer’s coat, drew a thin sheaf of blue papers from the inside pocket. “What have we here?”

  “Contracts.” Gaydel chewed his lower lip.

  “Your property?” The marshal scanned them briefly.

  “As agency executive, I have a right—”

  “Bushwa! These were Ned Lownes’s property. Signed by the Winn Coffee people. So you didn’t find what you were looking for. You ran across these and decided they might come in handy. They might. But they won’t come in with you. You’re out.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “Roll your hoop.” Pedley stuck the contracts in his own pocket. “Before I roll you downtown.”

  Gaydel went quickly, shut the door behind him. Pedley didn’t go through the waste motions of searching the room; the others had done that too thoroughly to overlook any Florentine leather case. Maybe the thing hadn’t been there at all. Maybe the first search party had located it. All he could be sure of was that Gaydel hadn’t.

  The maid might have some ideas about the identity of the first ransack-artist. She might still be on the floor. It was worth a try. If Gaydel had been able to bribe her, she could be made to talk.

  He went to the door, stuck his head out. He didn’t see who was behind the door—but he felt the blow coming. That was all he felt.

  Chapter Eight

  IN A MEDIUM SWIVET

  IT WAS DARK and wet and cold. He ached so it was torture to attempt movement. When he did attempt it, he found he couldn’t.

  It took him a while to realize that his right arm was strapped to his side with surgeon’s tape, his feet bound together and his mouth plastered shut with the same adhesive.

  He was propped up awkwardly in a bathtub, his left wrist locked to the end faucet with his own handcuffs. Someone had i
ntended him to stay put.

  If he could just get a leverage with his feet, twist around so the fingers of his left hand could reach the tape binding his right arm—

  After a while he gave it up.

  This must be Lownes’s bathroom. His assailant wouldn’t have run the risk of lugging him out of the suite. And the man hadn’t meant to kill him; there’d have been plenty of opportunity for that while Pedley lay unconscious. A possible exception occurred to him—maybe the slugger was coming back to attend to unfinished business.

  Maybe he was back already—somebody was moving around in the next room. Still, it might be that floor-maid the marshal had been looking for—

  It was a sweating effort to lift his feet off the tub, bang his heels on the porcelain. Probably the person in the next room wouldn’t pay any attention to what sounded like a steam-pounding in the pipes, anyway—

  The knob rattled, the door was kicked open, light flooded in. For an instant, Pedley could only make out an ominous silhouette in the doorway. The ominous part was in the man’s right hand—an automatic, outlined against the bright light.

  The man in the doorway murmured surprised profanity. He came into the bathroom a step. Then he threw back his head and laughed, raucously.

  Pedley knew that harsh guffaw—and the man who belched it out so heartily. Practically the last person in the world the marshal expected—or wanted—to see was Sime Dublin. Captain Simon Dublin, of the Eighteen Karat Squad.

  Sime was as smooth as greased glass—and as difficult to see through. The resentment which Pedley held against him had nothing to do with the apocryphal feud between the Police and Fire departments. Empowered with special and secret authority direct from the Police Commissioner’s office, Sime’s ways were dark, if not actually devious. He never said just what he meant or did just what he said he was going to. Pedley’s manner was brusque and direct. Naturally, they grated on each other’s nerves. For Dublin to find the marshal in this predicament was gall and wormwood of the bitterest.

  The switch on the wall clicked. Dublin came to the tub, squatted on his heels with his dark blue jowls close to Pedley’s face.

  “Ought to take your clothes off before you get in the tub, Benny.” The bright black eyes traveled from the tape over the marshal’s mouth down to the handcuffs.

  Pedley mumbled under the adhesive. The line of scar tissue on his right cheekbone whitened.

  “Oh—so you’re ready to talk.” Dublin used the police phrase with amusement, ripped the tape from the marshal’s mouth with a careless hand.

  “Key to cuffs—fob pocket.” It hurt Pedley’s lips to say even that much.

  Dublin went to work on the tape around the right arm; took his time about it.

  “Unlock those cuffs!” Pedley spat out a little blood; the tape had taken some of the skin with it.

  “Telling me how to run my business?” Dublin complained. “This stuff is stuck to your belt. How can I get to your panty pocket?”

  Pedley wrenched his arm free, flexed his fingers, fumbled at the pocket under his belt. “Save the cracks. I just had one.” He got the key around to the handcuffs with difficulty.

  The captain of the Special Headquarters Squad let Pedley wrestle the tape loose from his ankles. But when the marshal got his knees under him, Dublin gave him a hand, yanked him upright with a jerk that nearly dislocated the marshal’s shoulder.

  “Who played you for a mummy, Ben?”

  “At a guess, the same person who left Ned Lownes to fry in his own fat. Maybe you have the party in custody, already?”

  “All in good time, my impetuous fire-eater. You can dismiss him from your thoughts. This one isn’t down your alley.”

  Pedley sat on the edge of the tub, massaged his wrists. “Who says it isn’t?”

  “Medexam’s office. They report enough poison in Lownes’s system to kill two marines.”

  “He didn’t check out from denatured alky,” Pedley said. “He was an arson victim.”

  “The fire wouldn’t have finished him if it hadn’t been for the blind staggers.”

  “You ever go in to the dee-aye with one of those ‘if’ cases, Sime?”

  “I’ll go in with this one.” Dublin smiled charmingly. “I’ve just been talking to him about it.”

  “Keep on fidoodling around if you want to. I’m going to get an arson indictment.”

  “You can get nice odds it’ll turn out to be a presentment for homicide. It you want to make a little side bet, I wouldn’t be surprised if I could find a few bucks that claim the fire was started by Lownes himself. Accidentally, of course.”

  Pedley went to the washbasin, sopped cold water on his head. “Who’s putting the pressure on, Sime?”

  “Pressure?” Dublin cocked an impish eye. “Perish forbid. ‘I seen my duty and I done it.’”

  Pedley sopped a wet cloth against the lump over his right temple. “You’ll be a big help, I can see that. Impounding evidence for Homicide. Tying up witnesses when we want them for examination.”

  “Why don’t you step out of it, Ben? What you looking for? A citation?”

  The marshal leaned forward, tapped the captain’s top vest buttons with the back of his fingers. “I’m looking for a firebug, Sime. Anybody gets in my way is liable to wind up saying ‘hello’ to a surgeon. Eighteen Karat shooflys not excluded. Pass the word along to the Prosecutor’s office if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “Benjamin! Such a way to talk! To one who has just delivered you from durance vile!”

  “Do as much for you someday, I hope.” Pedley went into the living-room, recovered his hat and overcoat from the corner where his attacker had tossed them, strode out.

  He stopped at the desk to ask about the maid. The suave deskman was still on duty. He was duly impressed by authority; very sorry he couldn’t be of assistance. The floor-maid was off duty. Wouldn’t come on until seven tomorrow. He didn’t have her address, no. Or any phone number where she could be reached. Doubtless the agency which supplied the Elegante with help would be able to give that information.

  Pedley didn’t press the matter. No point inquiring about some unknown and undescribable individual who might have been loitering outside Suite 48-49 an hour or so ago.

  It was snowing softly when he reached the street. In another hour the rusty brown of the traffic lanes would be covered by a clean, white blanket. There was a parallel there somewhere, he mused; it wouldn’t take long to cover up certain other dirty traces, the way things were going.

  The electric clock on the mantel over the old, black marble fireplace said five minutes past ten when he unlocked the door of his suite at the Metropole. And one of the three phones was ringing. He picked up the receiver.

  “Mister Pedley!” The hotel operator sighed with relief. “There’s been a party trying to get you for the last half-hour!”

  Pedley tucked the receiver between his shoulder and ear so his hands would be free to open the flat, brown-paper package that lay on the side table.

  “Should I be concerned?” He knew that if the call had been urgent, it would have come in on one of the other phones, those with pink number cards tucked under the plastic discs and no exchanges typed thereon except OFFICIAL 270.

  “Well—it was that Regent number.” The operator pouted, audibly.

  “Oh! Makes different. Get it for me, will you?” He ripped the wrapping off the package—an album of phonograph records on the cover of which was a picture of a cannon spouting fire, and lettering; Dmitri Shostakovich—The Seventh Symphony—

  “Hello?” The voice in his ear was music of a more intimate kind.

  “Ollie—!”

  “Ah, you rounder. From what disreputable dive are you calling?”

  “Just got back to the Metropole. Can you come over?”

  “Mmmm?” The girl at the other end tasted the invitation, tentatively. “Do I hear lust raising its lovely head?”

  “Could be. Also, less agreeable matters.”


  “Barney said you were in a swivet.”

  “A medium swivet. Can you ditch your date and give me a hand?”

  She laughed. “I have no other dates but you, darling. I’ll be over before you can recite the Bureau of Combustibles Code.”

  After she hung up, he called room service, ordered ice and setups. Then he took the first record out of the album, went to the only modern piece of furniture in the suite, a big radio-phonograph that had cost him as much as a car. He put the platter on the felt turntable with the air of a woman trying on a new hat.

  When the opening chords of the Philharmonic began to fill the musty corners of the big living-room, he went into the bedroom and changed his clothes.

  He’d taken these second-floor rooms for living-quarters nearly ten years ago with the one proviso that he might play his recordings any hour of the day or night. That wouldn’t have been possible in one of the newer, up-to-date hotels with their thinner walls and low ceilings.

  But the Metropole had been built nearly fifty years ago, when its Twenty-third Street location, between Seventh and Eighth, put it right in the middle of the then fashionable midtown district. The solid masonry and high-vaulted construction smothered sounds that otherwise might have disturbed neighboring tenants. Also, the second-floor situation was convenient for a man who sometimes had to dash out in the middle of the night without waiting for a sleepy elevator boy.

  Little of the furniture in the suite had been changed during the marshal’s tenure; he had become so accustomed to the McKinley-period pieces he’d have felt uncomfortable in more up-to-date surroundings. But the rooms had nevertheless acquired considerable evidence of the individual who occupied them.

  Over the mantel was a standard department signal box with the gong removed and a wooden block placed where the tapping arm would hit it. On the walls were framed photographs which were, of themselves, a kind of progressive record of Benjamin R. Pedley in the Fire Department.

  A snapshot enlargement of him as a probationer in his first helmet—a posed group in front of old Hook-and-Ladder Twenty with Pedley sitting at the rear steering wheel of the big truck, and the rest of the company on the running board; a yellowed cut and accompanying clipping from the Tribune, showing the chief pinning a medal on the chest of a very self-conscious hook-and-ladder lieutenant; a flashlight picture of a beefsteak party given by his division officers on the occasion of his promotion to battalion chief; an inscribed photograph of the then-mayor congratulating Pedley on his appointment as Chief Fire Marshal. And a score of others, taken at banquets, clambakes, at the scenes of conflagrations—usually ten or a dozen in the group, friends who had drunk with him, argued with him, battled with him, risked their lives with him.