“I’d put him in a bottom drawer anyway,” Bradley said. “The man had urged Lydia to keep the affair secret. That would fit with Brackett if he was a heel. He was a big shot. And he was engaged, however unofficially, to Carol Stoddard, one of the richest girls in the country. So I followed Brackett’s trail until I found that two days before Lydia died he called her at her hotel. She was out, and he left his name with the operator. He’d never have done that if he was trying to keep a relationship secret. Operators would remember.”
“Do you know why he called her?”
“That’s what I went to the Tinsel Club last night to ask,” Bradley said. “The Joe Egan business prevented my talking to him. So I asked him when I first saw him here tonight.”
“What did he say?”
“He suggested,” said Bradley, with a sigh, “that I go fly a kite! I couldn’t third-degree him at a party, so I put off pressing the point. Now …” He let it rest there.
“It’s going to be a field day for the newspaper boys,” Cain said, “A crooner, a deb, an opera star! Even an Indian Chief!”
“And a romantic soldier of fortune,” said Bradley.
“Who’s that?”
“Why, you!” said Bradley.
“Nuts!”
“Which brings me to a point, Cain. You liked Brackett, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. I’d only just met him, but I liked him.”
“You’d like to see his murderer caught?”
“Of course.”
“You could help, you know.”
“How?”
Bradley hesitated. “I know you’ve just moved in, but you’re on the inside, Cain. You’ll be seeing and talking to all of these people when they’re not under the eyes of the police, They’ll have unguarded moments. They … ”
“And you want me to be a stool pigeon?” Cain said.
Bradley looked pained. “All police work is based on some form of stool pigeoning,” he said. “I wish we could solve cases by deduction, by analyzing cigar ashes or finding the owner of the missing half of a cuff link. It just doesn’t work that way. We wait for someone to say too much or too little, to make either a guilty move or one that is too innocent. I hope I’m not disillusioning you.”
“Look, chum, deal me out,” Cain said. “I’ve been patting myself on the back ever since I found out that you were my alibi. I’m just an innocent bystander. I don’t know from nothing.”
“Can I count on that?”
“I don’t get it.”
“You’re not the innocent bystander type,” said Bradley. “You were in Spain, you know. Not your quarrel.”
“This is different.”
“Maybe. Until I start putting the heat on someone you decide needs a little help.” Bradley squared his shoulders. “I’m afraid we can’t put it off any longer. Got to go to work, beginning with Carol Stoddard. She was the poison-cup bearer.”
Cain frowned. “This has been a pretty tough wallop for her. Couldn’t you give her a chance to catch her breath?”
Bradley shook his head, dolefully. “There, you see, Cain? Less than thirty seconds of innocent by-standing.”
Chapter Eight
1
Cain saw fear on every face as he followed Bradley into the reception room.
Mrs. Wilder, the numerologist, and Beany Cook were missing from the group. Sergeant Snyder and the police matron apparently were conducting their body search in one of the upstairs rooms.
Bradley’s gray eyes moved from face to face. Then he muttered some excuse and went up to the second floor to confer with his assistants.
The tension lessened.
“They’ve taken him away, Pat?” Edgar Stoddard asked.
Cain nodded. “Out the side door.”
“And there’s no doubt about it?”
“Doubt?”
“It is murder?”
“That’s the way it is,” said Cain.
“Perhaps you can tell us why we’re being pawed over by these people,” Emily Stoddard broke in. “Why they should think that one of us … ”
“Oh, mother, do shut up!” Carol was sitting on the corner of the couch; her hands, white with pressure, locked in her lap. “Bill is dead. He was poisoned. It couldn’t have been pixies.”
Mr. Bartholomew Schenk, the dramatic coach, jerked down his cuffs. “What has happened?” he said. He stepped forward to the center of the room. “Something is torturing the young man in his mind. What shall I do?” Mr. Schenk clapped a hand to his forehead. He was now playing the role of Brackett. “Life is no longer bearable. Shall I hurl myself before an onrushing subway train? No, no, not that! Shall I leap from a window to the pavement below, smashing myself to bits on the concrete?”
“Stop it!” Joe Egan got up from a chair on the far side of the room.
Mr. Schenk strode across the rug and back. “I shall die among my friends. There will be sympathetic ministering hands. And, they will see that I have expiated for my crimes. They will see…”
“Shut up!”
Mr. Schenk stopped, offended, “I am simply trying to reconstruct the poor young fellow’s psychology.”
“Really, old man!” said Robert Royce.
“Bill did not keel himself,” said Rosokov, in a somber voice. The Russian was sitting in a big chair by the studio door, his wife perched on the arm beside him. “He was nice boy. People who are always laughing are not keeling themselves. And I am not believing this about him and Lydia Egan. No, no. Not Bill. He was nice boy.” And Rosokov shook his head. “All but his singing … which was stinking with that sliding into notes like a trombone! Am I right, Arthur?”
Summers, behind Margo’s desk, head in his hands, looked up. His face was haggard. “I loved that boy, Dmitri,” he said. “I can’t believe that any of you, who are all my friends, could have killed him. But I can’t believe, either; that he took his own life.”
“We have to face facts,” Royce said. “Unfortunately.”
“Suicide is not one of the facts,” said Cain. “I can tell you that Bradley doesn’t suspect any of you, particularly. He wants your cooperation. And I figure, if you give it to him, you’ll be much better off.”
“Why doesn’t he stop playing cat and mouse!” Joe Egan cried. “Why doesn’t he arrest me and be done with it? He’ll pin it on me in the end.”
“Take it easy, chum,” said Cain. He walked over and sat down on the couch beside Carol.
“I make a nice suspect, too, Joe,” she said.
“Don’t be so God-damned bright and cheery,” Cain said in an undertone. “This guy Bradley is no fool. His business is seeing through phony fronts.”
She looked at him. For just a second the assurance faded from her eyes and he saw there a miserable, frightened child. Then her guard went up again.
“I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, thank you,” she said.
2
Bradley came down the stairs from the second floor into a well of silence which he made no effort to disturb. He stood in the center of the room, filling his pipe, looking thoughtfully at all of them.
“Well, let’s have it, Inspector,” said Arthur Summers. “Pat says there’s no doubt about it’s being murder.”
“None,” said Bradley. He slipped the red tobacco tin back into his pocket.
“Cain says you want our cooperation,” Margo Reed said. It was almost a whisper. “What can we do?”
“You are all, with the exception of Mr. Cain” — eyes shifted to Cain, regarding him as if he were some tare tropical fish — “being searched now,” Bradley said. “We are looking for the container which held the poison. So far we haven’t found it.”
Silence.
“Someone of you poisoned that drink. It was done between the time Miss Stoddard took the glass from Brackett, had it refilled, and returned it to him. A minute … perhaps a minute-and-a-half.”
“Who made the drink?” Emily demanded. “That seems to be the obvious answer, doesn’t
it?”
“I made it, Emily,” said Summers.
Bradley struck a match on the sole of his shoe. He held it to his pipe till the tobacco began to glow. “I’m afraid this is the last call for volunteers.”
No one rose to the bait. Bradley was about to continue when Chief Golden Wolf, standing in a corner of the room with his arms folded across his chest, spoke.
“We of the Five Nations have a way of extracting information which is willfully withheld,” he said. “It is the test by fire. The innocent bear the pain in silence, but the guilty will scream out. I suggest you have each of us remove our shoes and stockings. Then … ”
“Oh, my God!” Cain laughed in spite of himself. “The original hot foot!”
“There’s a better way than that,” said an acid voice from behind Bradley. It was Beany Cook. He and Mrs. Wilder had just come down from the floor above. “Let Naomi here figure it out from the stars. I’ve always wanted this hocus-pocus put to a real test. How about it, Naomi, can’t you spot a murderer for us and save the good inspector time and effort?”
Mrs. Wilder’s heavy make-up stood out on her face in blotches. She looked old arid tired, but the fluttery voice and hands were missing. “That’s not a joke, Beany. Perhaps I could. But the responsibility is too great. As it happens I told Bill over and over that this was a bad period for him. He just laughed.”
“A bad period!” Beany giggled. “It was terrific!”
“Beany, do you always have to be such a little twerp?” Margo Reed asked.
Beany flushed a bright red. “People who live in glass houses,” he said, “should be extremely careful of what they say to other people, Margo.”
“Sit down, won’t you, Mr. Cook? And you, Mrs. Wilder.” Bradley sounded tired. “If none of you has anything to offer, then I must handle this my own way.” He turned to Carol. “Do you feel up to answering a few questions, Miss Stoddard?”
“Of course,” said Carol.
“One of the troubles with this thing is that it doesn’t follow the proper pattern,” Bradley said. “My first interest in you people and my reason for coming here tonight had to do with finding the man responsible for Lydia Egan’s taking her life. But the results of my snooping were negative.”
Carol looked down at her hands. “You haven’t found him?”
“No. But I had come to one conclusion. It wasn’t Brackett.”
“Not Bill?” Carol stared at him, her eyes wide.
“Did you think it was?”
Her old sharpness came back. “Mr. Cain has undoubtedly told you exactly what I thought.”
“Mercy,” said Bradley, “all he did was to suggest I was being a louse to question you tonight.”
Faint color appeared in Carol’s cheeks. “Anyway,” she said, “it wouldn’t have made any difference. I wasn’t jealous. Bill was free as air.”
“Not a usual attitude to have toward one’s fiancé,” Bradley said.
“Well, it was my attitude.”
Bradley sighed. “Brackett told Cain he’d done some successful detective work on his own. And now he is dead.”
“You think he was murdered to keep him quiet?” asked Summers.
“Can any of you suggest a better motive?” Bradley countered.
Nobody could.
“Then let’s get down to what happened, Miss Stoddard. Brackett asked you to get a fresh drink for him, didn’t he?”
“Not really,” Carol said. “He was telling a story about some movie star who’d kicked up a row at the Tinsel Club. Several of us were listening. I noticed his highball glass was empty so I asked him if he didn’t want it filled.”
“And?”
“He said he’d love another so I took his glass and brought it out to where you and Mr. Cain and Mr. Summers were standing by the table and I asked Arthur to fix a highball. He did; and I carried it back to Bill. Bill had just finished his story … which he’d told me earlier … and everyone was laughing. He thanked me, took the glass, and drank some ...” Carol’s lips trembled. “It ... it was so dreadfully quick. Just a swallow, it seemed, and he dropped the glass and began to … to writhe! I … I think I screamed. Then he fell down on his hands and knees … but you were there.”
“About the people who were listening,” Bradley prompted.
Carol lifted a hand to her forehead, pressing fingers against her temples, “It’s hard to remember, she said. “There was Chief Golden Wolf. I remember that because he was having difficulty getting the point of the story. Madame Rosokov. You were there, weren’t you, Madame?”
“I was there.” The blond Russian woman shuddered.
“I was not there!” said Rosokov. “Mrs. Wilder is backing me into a corner telling me I should not making an audition which I have already made because I will not getting a job which I have already got!”
“And Beany,” said Carol. “He never misses anything that passes for gossip.”
“I was there for part of it,” Beany said. “But I had heard the story before and I walked away while Bill was going strong. I wanted to hear the news broadcast.”
“Please go on, Miss Stoddard.”
“Robert … and Margo … and Mr. Schenk, I think. It’s so hard to be certain, Inspector. I mean, everyone was sort of milling around. And I wasn’t trying to fix it in my mind, of course.”
“There’s no reason why you should remember exactly,” Bradley said. “But sometimes when you go over the ground you remember things that have gone out of your mind at the time. I want you to try that now, Miss Stoddard. You saw that Brackett’s glass was empty.”
“Yes.”
“And … ”
Carol closed her eyes. “I said, ‘Can I fetch you another drink, Bill?’ He said, ‘That would be swell, darling.’ ”
“Then?”
“I took the glass and came out here to the reception room.”
“And on the way you spoke to … ”
Carol thought a moment and then opened her eyes. “I don’t think I spoke to anyone … I … oh, damn! There was father. He was sitting by the radio. He said, ‘You can be barmaid for me when you’ve filled that order.’ ”
“Which you never did,” said Edgar placidly. “I could have used it.”
“How close were you to your father, Miss Stoddard?”
“Why, I was in the doorway. Hc was over by the radio.”
Edgar chuckled. “Not close enough to have poured the lethal dose, Inspector.”
“You think somebody may have put something into the glass while I was taking it to be filled?” Carol asked.
“Or taking it back to Brackett.”
“Or while it was being made. That’s a possibility, isn’t it, Bradley?” It was Summers who interrupted.
“That’s a possibility, Mr. Summers.” Bradley looked back to Carol. “Did you speak to anyone else?”
Carol frowned. “There was Joe Egan,” she said, “He stood aside to let me through the door. I don’t think I said anything to him. Just sort of smiled.”
“And was he still in the doorway when you went back?”
“I … I think he was!”
“You’ve accounted for everyone but your mother, Miss Stoddard.”
Carol’s lips tightened. “She did stop me as I was taking the drink back. She said something about leaving presently.”
“Tomorrow is my busy day at the Red Cross,” said Emily. “I wanted to leave early. Carol said she was not going home with us. I assumed … ” She paused.
“That she was going somewhere with Brackett?”
“Yes.”
“Were you, Miss Stoddard?”
Carol nodded, her eyes lowered, “We were going for a ride in his car. There’s a place on the Jersey side where they cook hamburgers over charcoal. We often went there. Bill said he … he had something to tell me!”
“Give you any hint what it was?”
“No. I … I thought he was getting ready to confess to the Lydia Egan business. I meant to be a big
-time-Charlie and forgive him.”
“He was probably going to tell you the results of his detective work,” Bradley said. “It’s too bad he didn’t get round to it. It would be safer for all of us to know what he knew.”
“Then you think it was a man who killed Bill?” Margo Reed asked.
Bradley gave her his disconcerting, level stare. “Or someone who wanted to protect a man, Miss Reed.”
Cain began to see that was a trick of Bradley’s: to open a new vista of possibilities and then change the subject. He did it now.
“Of the fifteen people here tonight, Miss Stoddard, who hated Bill Brackett?”
Carol said nothing.
“Surely he must have talked to you about all of these people at some time.”
“I suppose he did.”
Bradley shifted his attack to Emily. “1 got, the impression that you weren’t overly fond of Brackett, Mrs. Stoddard.”
“I had nothing whatever against Mr. Brackett, personally,” said Emily, in her crispest manner. “1 simply didn’t think it was an advantageous match for Carol. I tried to discourage it.”
“And you, Mr. Stoddard?”
“I liked the boy,” said Edgar. “Liked him a lot.”
Chapter Nine
1
Rube Snyder appeared on the landing.
“Still two to go, Red,” he said.
“All right, Rube.”
“Miss Stoddard,” said Rube, “And you!” He pointed at Royce.
Carol got up from the couch without looking at Cain and made for thc stair.
“Bring your handbag with you, Miss,” said Rube.
Cain picked it up from the couch and took it to Carol. Then he stepped away to let Royce follow her up the stair.
“Thanks, old man,” Royce said.
“You’re welcome, old man,” Cain said. He went back to the couch.
Bradley still stood in the center of the circle. His silence created more strain than his questions. Cain could see that every face in the room was set in a defensive mask. He wondered which of them would crack first.
“That seems to be that,” said Bradley, as if he had come to a decision. “I’ve been talking to you all in a group because I wanted you to have a chance to check on Miss Stoddard’s story … to add to it, to voice your suspicions, to defend yourselves. That hasn’t happened.”
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