“One of the crosses I have to bear,” said Mrs. Wilder, “is the constant suspicion that I am some sort of a cheap fortune teller. Numerology and astrology are exact sciences, Inspector.”
“Quite so,” said Bradley. He was about to carry on when the studio door opened and Maynard, came in. He looked at Bradley and nodded.
“Thanks, Maynard,” Bradley said. “Just wait in the hall till I call for you.” He lowered one eyelid at Cain. “Relax,” he said.
Cain felt his heart pound against his ribs. They had found Carol! She was all right!
And now Bradley spoke to Margo. “There was another who seemed to fit all the facts. You, Miss Reed. You, who knew Summers … father confessor to hundreds of professional people … intimately. You, who had Royce running around after you and trying to keep it a secret. You, whom Summers would have trusted above all people. You, who tried so desperately to throw suspicion on Mrs. Stoddard when you found those letters.”
“Beany found them!” Margo said breathlessly. “It was Beany! I swear that.”
“Mercy,” said Bradley. “Don’t take it so hard, Miss Reed. You’re no longer under suspicion.” Then he turned on Royce again. The mildness left his voice.
“You know you’ve been lying, Royce! You, know that Beany wasn’t the blackmailer, You know that you are still covering up for the person who gave the orders. Your best chance to avoid a murder rap is to talk … now!”
“So help me God, old man, I … ”
“Stop it,” Bradley said. “I had to play this gently till I was certain Carol Stoddard was safe. Now …”
“You’ve found her,” said Mrs. Wilder, very quietly. The cat jumped down from, her lap and she stood up. Cain stared at her, unbelieving. “Five minutes more and I’d have put her beyond your reach. Then I’d have been running this show, Mr. Bradley. Robert would never have talked. Dear, loyal Robert … with his love nest … where he took other women” — She seemed to choke with sudden fury — “held them in his arms … other women!”
“For God’s sake, Inspector, she’s got a gun!” Royce cried out in terror.
Bradley made a dive for Mrs. Wilder’s handbag and, failing to get it, drove a beautiful left to the jaw that jolted her back into her chair. Handcuffs snapped over her wrists.
“Naomi Wilder,” he said in a grim voice, “I charge you with being an accessory in the murders of William Brackett and Arthur Summers, in the attempted murder of Joseph Egan; with extortion, abduction, and God knows how many other crimes.”
In the confusion the studio door opened and Maynard came in, followed by Carol. It was not to her father or mother that Carol ran, but to Cain.
“Darling!” she said. “Darling!”
Cain found himself holding her very tight. Then he had a wild impulse to hysterical laughter.
“You surprise me, Inspector!” he said. “Any gentleman knows he shouldn’t hit a lady with his hat on!”
3
After Maynard had taken Mrs. Wilder away, Royce talked. He was eager as if he had been holding it in too long.
“She is a devil,” he said. “I met her fifteen years ago in a certain Midwestern city. As early as that she was fronting as a numerologist and astrologer. I … well, I got in trouble with a girl. I was liable to criminal prosecution if the police found out. They didn’t, but she did!
“That was the end of living for me, Inspector. I was beginning to be a success. I had to kick back my earnings to her, or else. Then she insisted that we be married.”
“Holy Joe!” said Cain, whose good arm was around Carol.
“Just a precaution, she said,” Royce went on. “If we were hauled up on blackmail charges, we would neither one of us be able to testify against the other.” Royce’s mouth twisted. “Then she fell in love with me. God! You’ll never know what that was like. Pawing at me … talking baby talk … and all the time holding a knife at my throat. I guess she saw I couldn’t take it, so she let me go. I came to New York and set up here in Carnegie. I was still sending her the bulk of my earnings. Then one day she turned up and took the studio adjoining my office. She had this little worm Beany in tow. I was big-league now. The possibilities were too good for her to overlook. She and Beany gathered the dope on people in the music field; I was forced to apply the heat. She was cleaning up. I think she got more pleasure out of seeing me wriggle on the hook than she did out of the money itself. She saw Arthur as another source of profit and persuaded him to let Beany do a biography. Beany’s real purpose was to get something on Summers so that she would have access to all the confidences Summers received. She thought she had what she wanted when Beany found Mrs. Stoddard’s letters. But I’m getting ahead of myself.” He paused and drank from a glass of water on the table beside him.
“Then I met Lydia Egan.” His voice, quite steady up to now, began to tremble. “I fell in love with, her. God help me, you must believe that. I went to Naomi and told her that I would continue with the racket; I had no choice. But she must give me my freedom to marry Lydia.”
He shivered. “She went off into a terrible rage. She would never let me go! If she couldn’t have me, no one else would. She went to Lydia. She told her I would never be free. That was that. Lydia couldn’t take it.”
“God!” Cain said.
“I don’t know what started Brackett on the trail. I used the apartment on Lexington Avenue really as a hideout from Naomi. It was the one secret I had from her … the one place I could go to get away from her. Bill came to see me the afternoon of the day he died. He said he had guessed about Lydia. He said he didn’t want to make it hot for me, but that he was suspected himself, and he might have to tell in self-protection. He was very decent, although I could see he thought I was a heel.
“I went to Naomi. I was really glad of what had happened. I told her the whole world was going to find out about me and Lydia, and that she would have to take it and like it. I never dreamed she would go so far as murder. But she did. She said afterward she couldn’t risk my being questioned by the police. That now I was an accessory to murder, too, since I was part of her organization.
“When Arthur got wise and had to be dealt with, I think I was ready to come to you, Inspector, and tell you the whole story, regardless of the consequences. Then Beany came to see me. He said if I ever opened my face he’d find me and … and … well, he elaborated on what he would do to me. I was panicked. I had to get out of the building. So I did what I did.” He drew a long breath. “I think you can fill in for yourself any gaps I may have left, Inspector.”
“One thing I’d like to know,” said Cain. “Was it you who interrupted Carol while she was searching your apartment?”
Royce nodded. “Only Brackett and Rosokov knew about the place. I didn’t think Rosokov would talk.” He smiled wryly. “It wasn’t much of an apartment, but it was a symbol of safety and peace for me.”
“And mother’s other letters?” Carol asked.
“Gal with a one-track mind,” said Cain.
“You’ll find them in one of Naomi’s safety deposit boxes,” Royce said, “if you can get her to tell you where they are.”
“She’ll tell us,” said Bradley.
4
“I’d like to buy you a drink, Inspector,” said Cain.
He and Bradley and Carol were on the pavement outside Carnegie Hall, a taxi standing by for them. Edgar and Emily had gone off together a moment before, Edgar announcing that he was going to get them both potted.
“I haven’t forgotten what you said about a guy who couldn’t hold his own dame, Pat,” Edgar had said. “You don’t know anyone who’d like to buy some good sets of harness, do you? I hope I’m not going to have time for them any longer.”
Bradley filled his pipe from the red tin. He looked tired but satisfied. “As soon as you produced the blackmail dope for me, Cain, everything began falling into place. Mrs. Wilder was the one best bet. But there was no proof. The only way to put her on ice was to find Carol or to break down Roy
ce.
“Beany had to be in cahoots with her. That phone call that sent Carol upstairs came through him. I figured that Mrs. Wilder had flagged Carol before she got to Royce’s office.”
“She stopped me in the hall,” Carol said. “She said you were all in there. And then when I got inside she had a gun and forced me into her consulting room.” Carol shuddered. “There were no windows in it … only a skylight and she’d had it soundproofed so the noise of people vocalizing in the building wouldn’t disturb her readings. She said, ‘Presently we will move to more permanent quarters, my dear.’ ”
“The more I think about it,” Cain said, “the more I begrudge you that left hook, Bradley.”
“She knew you were getting hot, Cain,” Bradley said. “She foresaw the necessity for escape and one way to hold us off would be to have Carol as hostage. She probably has money cached all over the country. I think she expected to find a safer place to hide Carol while the search was going on. But Beany slipped. He had forgotten to get rid of Joe Egan’s fountain pen and you found it. That blew the top. Before she could do anything about Carol I had Naomi brought down stairs. I couldn’t let her know I suspected her until we’d searched her studio and found you, Carol. As soon as I knew you were safe I let go with both barrels.”
Carol looked up at Cain and her eyes were laughing. “The thing that frightens me is that all her prophecies about us, Pat, were phony. So maybe we’ll have to give up the whole idea.”
“Mercy,” said Bradley, “if I were you two I’d just let nature take its course.”
###
About the Author
Judson Philips, a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award winner, was born in Northfield, Mass. in 1903. He began his writing career in the pulp fiction magazines in 1924, while earning his journalism degree from Columbia University.
In 1939 he won the $10,000 Dodd Mead Mystery Contest, using the pen name Hugh Pentecost, for Cancelled in Red. This marked a turning point in his career, as he created a second body of work for slick magazines and paperbacks as Pentecost.
He continued using both names simultaneously, living between New York and Connecticut, producing more than 500 works. One of his best-known series was The Park Avenue Hunt Club, which appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly.
Philips owned a newspaper, and wrote columns for other newspapers. He owned an equity summer stock theater, “The Sharon Playhouse,” where he wrote and produced plays. In the meantime, he wrote radio and film scripts for movies and television. Later he hosted a political and arts program in Connecticut’s “Northwest Corner,” broadcast out of Torrington.
Philips was married five times and had four children. He died of complications from emphysema in 1989, at age 85, in Canaan, Connecticut.
Other books by this author
Visit our website to discover other books by Judson P. Philips and Hugh Pentecost:
The Inspector Luke Bradley series by Hugh Pentecost
Cancelled in Red
The 24th Horse
I’ll Sing at You Funeral
The Brass Chills
Pulp Adventures magazine #21
“The Lacquer Box” by Judson P. Philips
Judson P. Philips biography
Once a Pulp Man: The Secret Life of Judson P. Philips as Hugh Pentecost
By Audrey Parente
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