“Who’s that?” I asked Snow White.
She looked at the Little Pig. “Poor fellow. He’s been going through torture tonight too. That’s Bela Strauss.”
“Bella’s a woman’s name.”
“He’s part Hungarian.” (I guess that might explain anything. ) “He comes from Vienna. They brought him out here to write music for pictures because his name is Strauss. But he’s a very serious composer—you know, like...” and she said some tongue twisters that didn’t mean anything to me. “They think because his name is Strauss he can write all sorts of pretty dance tunes, and they won’t let him write anything else. It’s made him all twisted and unhappy, and he drinks too much.”
“I can see that.” I walked over and shook him. The sailor cap fell off. He stirred and looked up at me. I think it was the uniform that got him. He sat up sharp and said something in I guess German. Then he thought around a while and found some words in English.
“Why are you here? Why the police?” It came out in little one-syllable lumps, like he had to hunt hard for each sound. I told him. I tried to make it simple, but that wasn’t easy. Snow White knew a little German, so she helped.
“Ach!” he sighed. “And I through it all slept!”
“That’s one word for it,” I said.
But this thief of jewels—him I have seen.” It was a sweet job to get it out of him. but it boiled down to this: Where he passed out was on that same couch where they took me—right in the dressing-room. He came to once when he heard somebody in there, and he saw the person take something out of a box. Something red and green.
“Who was it?”
“The face, you understand, I do not see it. But the costume, yes. I see that clear. It was Mikki Maus.” It sounded funny to hear something as American as Mickey Mouse in an accent like that.
It took Snow White a couple of seconds to realize who wore the Mickey Mouse outfit. Then she said “Philip” and fainted.
Officer Tom Smith laid down his manuscript. “That’s all, Mr. Quilter.”
“All. sir?”
“When Michaels came in, I told him. He figured Newton must’ve got away with the necklace and then the English crook made his try later and got the other stuff. They didn’t find the necklace anywhere: but he must’ve pulled a fast one and stashed it away some place. With direct evidence like that, what can you do? They’re holding him.”
“And you chose, sir, not to end your story on that note of finality?”
“I couldn’t, Mr. Quilter. I... I like that girl who was Snow White. I want to see the two of them together again and I’d sooner he was innocent. And besides, when we were leaving. Beverly Benson caught me alone. She said. ‘I can’t talk to your Lieutenant. He is not sympathetic. But you... ‘ “ Tom Smith almost blushed. “So she went on about how certain she was that Newton was innocent and begged me to help her prove it. So I promised.”
“Hm,” said Mr. Quilter. “Your problem, sir, is simple. You have good human values there in your story. Now we must round them out properly. And the solution is simple. We have two women in love with the hero, one highly sympathetic and the other less so; for the spectacle of a passée actress pursuing a new celebrity is not a pleasant one. This less sympathetic woman, to please the audience, must redeem herself with a gesture of self-immolation to secure the hero’s happiness with the heroine. Therefore, sir, let her confess to the robbery.”
“Confess to the... But Mr. Quilter, that makes a different story out of it. I’m trying to write as close as I can to what happened. And I promised—”
“Damme, sir, it’s obvious. She did steal the necklace herself. She hasn’t worked for years. She must need money. You mentioned insurance. The necklace was probably pawned long ago, and now she is trying to collect.”
“But that won’t work. It really was stolen. Somebody saw it earlier in the evening, and the search didn’t locate it. And believe me, that squad knows how to search.”
“Fiddle-faddle, sir.” Mr. Quilter’s close-cropped scalp was beginning to twitch. “What was seen must have been a paste imitation. She could dissolve that readily in acid and dispose of it down the plumbing. And Wappingham’s presence makes her plot doubly sure; she knew him for what he was, and invited him as a scapegoat.”
Tom Smith squirmed. “I’d almost think you were right, Mr. Quilter. Only Bela Strauss did see Newton take the necklace.”
Mr. Quilter laughed. “If that is all that perturbs you...” He rose to his feet. “Come with me, sir. One of my neighbors is a Viennese writer now acting as a reader in German for Metropolis. He is also new in this country; his cultural background is identical with Strauss’s. Come. But first we must step down to the corner drugstore and purchase what I believe is termed a comic book.”
Mr. Quilter, his eyes agleam, hardly apologized for their intrusion into the home of the Viennese writer. He simply pointed at a picture in the comic book and demanded, “Tell me, sir. What character is that?”
The bemused Viennese smiled. “Why, that is Mikki Maus.”
Mr. Quilter’s finger rested on a pert little drawing of Minnie.
Philip Newton sat in the cold jail cell, but he was oblivious of the cold. He was holding his wife’s hands through the bars and she was saying, “I could come to you now, dear, where I couldn’t before. Then you might have thought it was just because you were successful, but now I can tell you how much I love you and need you—need you even when you’re in disgrace....”
They were kissing through the bars when Michaels came with the good news. “She’s admitted it, all right. It was just the way Smith reconstructed it. She’d destroyed the paste replica and was trying to use us to pull off an insurance frame. She cracked when we had Strauss point out a picture of what he called ‘Mikki Maus. ‘ So you’re free again, Newton. How’s that for a Christmas present?”
“I’ve got a better one. officer. We’re getting married again.”
“You wouldn’t need a new wedding ring, would you?” Michaels asked with filial devotion. “Michaels, Fifth between Spring and Broadway—fine stock.”
Mr. Quilter laid down the final draft of Tom Smith’s story, complete now with ending, and fixed the officer with a reproachful gaze. “You omitted, sir, the explanation of why such a misunderstanding should arise.”
Tom Smith shifted uncomfortably. “I’m afraid, Mr. Quilter. I couldn’t remember all that straight.”
“It is simple. The noun Maus in German is of feminine gender. Therefore a Mikki Maus is a female. The male, naturally, is a Mikki Mäserich. I recall a delightful Viennese song of some seasons ago, which we once employed as background music, wherein the singer declares that he and his beloved will be forever paired, ‘wie die Mikki Mikki Mikki Mikki Mikki Maus und der Mikki Mäserich.‘ “
“Gosh.” said Tom Smith. “You know a lot of things.”
Mr. Quilter allowed himself to beam. “Between us, sir, there should be little that we do not know.”
“We sure make a swell team as a detective.”
The beam faded. “As a detective? Damme, sir, do you think I cared about your robbery? I simply explained the inevitable denouement to this story.”
“But she didn’t confess and make a gesture. Michaels had to prove it on
her.”
“All the better, sir. That makes her mysterious and deep. A Bette Davis role. I think we will first try for a magazine sale on this. Studios are more impressed by matter already in print. Then I shall show it to F. X., and we shall watch the squirmings of that genius Aram Melekian.”
Tom Smith looked out the window, frowning. They made a team, all right; but which way? He still itched to write, but the promotion Michaels had promised him sounded good, too. Were he and this strange lean old man a team for writing or for detection?
The friendly red and green lights of the neighborhood Christmas trees seemed an equally good omen either way.
THE CASE IS ALTERED – Margery Allingham
Mr. Albert Campi
on, sitting in a first-class smoking compartment, was just reflecting sadly that an atmosphere of stultifying decency could make even Christmas something of a stuffed-owl occasion, when a new hogskin suitcase of distinctive design hit him on the knees. At the same moment a golf bag bruised the shins of the shy young man opposite, an armful of assorted magazines burst over the pretty girl in the far corner, and a blast of icy air swept round the carriage. There was the familiar rattle and lurch which indicates that the train has started at last, a squawk from a receding porter, and Lance Feering arrived before him apparently by rocket.
“Caught it,” said the newcomer with the air of one confidently expecting congratulations, but as the train bumped jerkily he teetered back on his heels and collapsed between the two young people on the opposite seat.
“My dear chap, so we noticed.” murmured Campion, and he smiled apologetically at the girl, now disentangling herself from the shellburst of newsprint. It was his own disarming my-poor-friend-is-afflicted variety of smile that he privately considered infallible, but on this occasion it let him down.
The girl, who was in the early twenties and was slim and fair, with eyes like licked brandy-balls, as Lance Feering inelegantly put it afterward, regarded him with grave interest. She stacked the magazines into a neat bundle and placed them on the seat opposite before returning to her own book. Even Mr. Feering, who was in one of his more exuberant moods, was aware of that chilly protest. He began to apologize.
Campion had known Feering in his student days, long before he had become one of the foremost designers of stage decors in Europe, and was used to him, but now even he was impressed. Lance’s apologies were easy but also abject. He collected his bag, stowed it on a clear space on the rack above the shy young man’s head, thrust his golf things under the seat, positively blushed when he claimed his magazines, and regarded the girl with pathetic humility. She glanced at him when he spoke, nodded coolly with just enough graciousness not to be gauche, and turned over a page.
Campion was secretly amused. At the top of his form Lance was reputed to be irresistible. His dark face with the long mournful nose and bright eyes were unhandsome enough to be interesting, and the quick gestures of his short painter’s hands made his conversation picturesque. His singular lack of success on this occasion clearly astonished him and he sat back in his corner eyeing the young woman with covert mistrust.
Campion resettled himself to the two hours’ rigid silence which etiquette demands from firstclass travelers who, although they are more than probably going to be asked to dance a reel together if not to share a bathroom only a few hours hence, have not yet been introduced.
There was no way of telling if the shy young man and the girl with the brandy-ball eyes knew each other, and whether they too were en route for Underhill. Sir Philip Cookham’s Norfolk place. Campion was inclined to regard the coming festivities with a certain amount of lugubrious curiosity. Cookham himself was a magnificent old boy, of course, “one of the more valuable pieces in the Cabinet,” as someone had once said of him, but Florence was a different kettle of fish. Born to wealth and breeding, she had grown blasé towards both of them and now took her delight in notabilities, a dangerous affectation in Campion’s experience. She was some sort of remote aunt of his.
He glanced again at the young people, caught the boy unaware, and was immediately interested.
The illustrated magazine had dropped from the young man’s hand and he was looking out of the window, his mouth drawn down at the corners and a narrow frown between his thick eyebrows. It was not an unattractive face, too young for strong character but decent and open enough in the ordinary way. At that particular moment, however, it wore a revealing expression. There was recklessness in the twist of the mouth and sullenness in the eyes, while the hand which lay upon the inside arm rest was clenched.
Campion was curious. Young people do not usually go away for Christmas in this top-step-at-the-dentist’s frame of mind. The girl looked up from her book.
“How far is Underhill from the station?” she inquired.
“Five miles. They’ll meet us.” The shy young man turned to her so easily and with such obvious affection that any romantic theory Campion might have formed was knocked on the head instantly. The youngster’s troubles evidently had nothing to do with love.
Lance had raised his head with bright-eyed interest at the gratuitous information and now a faintly sardonic expression appeared upon his lips. Campion sighed for him. For a man who fell in and out of love with the abandonment of a seal round a pool, Lance Feering was an impossible optimist. Already he was regarding the girl with that shy despair which so many ladies had found too piteous to be allowed to persist. Campion washed his hands of him and turned away just in time to notice a stranger glancing in at them from the corridor. It was a dark and arrogant young face and he recognized it instantly, feeling at the same time a deep wave of sympathy for old Cookham. Florence, he gathered, had done it again.
Young Victor Preen, son of old Preen of the Preen Aero Company, was certainly notable, not to say notorious. He had obtained much publicity in his short life for his sensational flights, but a great deal more for adventures less creditable; and when angry old gentlemen in the armchairs of exclusive clubs let themselves go about the blackguardliness of the younger generation, it was very often of Victor Preen that they were thinking.
He stood now a little to the left of the compartment window, leaning idly against the wall, his chin up and his heavy lids drooping. At first sight he did not appear to be taking any interest in the occupants of the compartment, but when the shy young man looked up. Campion happened to see the swift glance of recognition, and of something else, which passed between them. Presently, still with the same elaborate casualness, the man in the corridor wandered away, leaving the other staring in front of him, the same sullen expression still in his eyes.
The incident passed so quickly that it was impossible to define the exact nature of that second glance, but Campion was never a man to go imagining things, which was why he was surprised when they arrived at Minstree station to hear Henry Boule, Florence’s private secretary, introducing the two and to notice that they met as strangers.
It was pouring with rain as they came out of the station, and Boule, who, like all Florence’s secretaries, appeared to be suffering from an advanced case of nerves, bundled them all into two big Daimlers, a smaller car, and a shooting-brake. Campion looked round him at Florence’s Christmas bag with some dismay. She had surpassed herself. Besides Lance there were at least half a dozen celebrities: a brace of political highlights, an angry looking lady novelist, Madja from the ballet, a startled R. A., and Victor Preen, as well as some twelve or thirteen unfamiliar faces who looked as if they might belong to Art, Money, or even mere Relations.
Campion became separated from Lance and was looking for him anxiously when he saw him at last in one of the cars, with the novelist on one side and the girl with brandy-ball eyes on the other, Victor Preen making up the ill-assorted four.
Since Campion was an unassuming sort of person he was relegated to the brake with Boule himself, the shy young man, and the whole of the luggage. Boule introduced them awkwardly and collapsed into a seat, wiping the beads from off his forehead with a relief which was a little too blatant to be tactful.
Campion, who had learned that the shy young man’s name was Peter Groome, made a tentative inquiry of him as they sat jolting shoulder to shoulder in the back of the car. He nodded.
“Yes, it’s the same family,” he said. “Cookham’s sister married a brother of my father’s. I’m some sort of relation, I suppose.”
The prospect did not seem to fill him with any great enthusiasm and once again Campion’s curiosity was piqued. Young Mr. Groome was certainly not in seasonable mood.
In the ordinary way Campion would have dismissed the matter from his mind, but there was something about the youngster which attracted him. something indefinable and of a despairing quality, and m
oreover, there had been that curious intercepted glance in the train.
They talked in a desultory fashion throughout the uncomfortable journey. Campion learned that young Groome was in his father’s firm of solicitors, that he was engaged to be married to the girl with the brandy-ball eyes, who was a Miss Patricia Bullard of an old north country family, and that he thought Christmas was a waste of time.
“I hate it.” he said with a sudden passionate intensity which startled even his mild inquisitor. “All this sentimental good-will-to-all-men business is false and sickening. There’s no such thing as good will. The world’s rotten.”
He blushed as soon as he had spoken and turned away.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, “but all this bogus Dickensian stuff makes me writhe.”
Campion made no direct comment. Instead he asked with affable inconsequence, “Was that young Victor Preen I saw in the other car?”
Peter Groome turned his head and regarded him with the steady stare of the willfully obtuse.
“I was introduced to someone with a name like that, I think, ‘ he said carefully. “He was a little baldish man, wasn’t he?”
“No, that’s Sir George.” The secretary leaned over the luggage to give the information. “Preen is the tall young man, rather handsome, with the very curling hair. He’s the Preen, you know.” He sighed. “It seems very young to be a millionaire, doesn’t it?”
“Obscenely so,” said Mr. Peter Groome abruptly, and returned to his despairing contemplation of the landscape.
Underhill was en fête to receive them. As soon as Campion observed the preparations, his sympathy for young Mr. Groome increased, for to a jaundiced eye Lady Florence’s display might well have proved as dispiriting as Preen’s bank balance. Florence had “gone all Dickens,” as she said herself at the top of her voice, linking her arm through Campion’s, clutching the R. A. with her free hand, and capturing Lance with a bright birdlike eye.
Murder Most Merry Page 13
