Edge of Panic

by Henry, Kane,

The dark man came back with Brophy. Brophy nodded at the woman. “How do you do, how do you do.” He went to his swivel chair, disregarded her. “A fine man, Mrs. Martin. A fine man. We’re having his affidavit typed.” He swung away from her. “Now, Miss Landry—”

  “Miss Landry,” the dark man said, “this is Captain Brophy. There are two adjustment windows, Captain. The person behind the other one, though, is a man. Miss Landry has been to the theater, which is why it took so long.”

  “Not long, Foley. Not long, at all. Now, Miss Landry, I’ll be brief, I won’t take up too much of your time. We have a report, this evening, a man came up to your window under rather peculiar circumstances, a man, presumably very excited, asking about a woman, someone he missed, something like that. Now, it could very well be that you don’t recollect—”

  “Oh, but I do, Captain.”

  “Good.”

  “A crazy man.” She shuddered, adjusted the cape over her knees. “A crazy man with scars down one side of his face, and his eyes, his eyes weren’t right—he was crying. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Something about a woman wearing—now, let’s see—a woman wearing a blue coat and a kerchief over her head—”

  “Do you remember such a woman?”

  “Tell you the truth, sir, I do not. That’s not saying there couldn’t have been such a woman, I simply wouldn’t know. I mean, when you’re behind that window eight hours a day, it gets so you simply don’t see the people you’re doing business with. It’s always the same, people asking about changes, people wanting their suites changed, people wanting to know how much luggage they’re allowed, people wanting to shift sailing dates, people inquiring, who ought to be at the Information window, that sort of thing. You don’t hardly look at them—except, something like this, something unusual—”

  “Do you remember what he looked like?”

  “Oh, him, yes. I mean, not really, but, well, his hat was pushed back and there was some kind of blondish hair hanging out, and his face was all wet, and those wild eyes, a lightish color, crying like he was—”

  “Do you think you could identify him if you saw him?”

  “Yes, sir. I think so.”

  He didn’t look at Alice. He opened the top drawer, took out a silver-framed picture, handed it across the desk. The woman looked at it, instantly said, “Yep. That’s him. Of course, he was all messed up.”

  “Thank you.” He took the picture, put it back in the drawer. “Lieutenant Foley will take you next door, so we can get your statement on this. Let it be shown, Lieutenant, that she made positive identification of the photo. Thank you, Miss Landry. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  When they were gone, he said, “A lovely man, the doctor. A real man. May I finish my sandwich, Mrs. Martin?”

  “Did he explain it?”

  “Yes, he did.” He munched the sandwich, made a face. “Lukewarm knockwurst is without pith. It is neither here nor there.” He wrapped what was left of the sandwich in the paper napkin, pushed that into the container of coffee and dumped it into the wastebasket. “It really doesn’t mean a thing, Mrs. Martin. It’s still Harry we want. There’s no other way. So there was no love affair. All right, so there was no love affair. So that was the other Harry. So what? He’s still our boy, Mrs. Martin. He’s the boy we want to talk to.”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. We would have a duly executed confession, with all the embroidery, in ten minutes. I get cranky this time of night, Mrs. Martin. I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”

  “But, please. I broke down the diary, what you presumed was the basis—the motive.”

  “And a very nice job, too. My compliments.”

  “Can’t we try, sir? Just talking. Can’t we try from another direction, another—angle. Now. Can’t we just try?”

  “Yes, ma’am, we can try. You’re entitled to that. Anything you say. But you’re not going out of here again tonight, not without me—and when we go, we’re going to him.”

  She pulled her chair close to the desk, opposite him. “Motive. It’s usual, isn’t it, to begin with motive?”

  “Crime of passion, motive is redundant. It’s good if you got it, it’s just as good if you haven’t.”

  “Let’s think of it—not as a crime of passion.”

  “You can’t, in this setup.”

  “Let’s just try, please, Captain.”

  “Brophy.”

  “Let’s try, sir.”

  “Look, ma’am, under normal circumstances, that’s the way you work, first, motive. Usually money, hatred, jealousy, revenge, lust—there’s only a short list when you arrange motives for murder. There are variations, but it’s really a limited category—”

  “Her brother—”

  “But this isn’t that kind of setup. When it’s a killing with a motive, it’s a killing, period. Sometimes, it’s a very clever killing. But it’s not banging hell out of somebody with a hammer till they’re mashed to shreds. That’s fury—”

  “Her brother,” she said. “Could he—?”

  “He couldn’t. That Washington story stands up.”

  “Could he have sent somebody?”

  “Sure he could have.”

  “Could that somebody have gotten in?”

  “Sure they could have.”

  “Then—”

  “Then, nothing. Anything is possible, anything is also wildly improbable. We’re not playing games. We’re closing out a killing. We’ve got our guy. We’ve got everything shaped up. When we talk to him, he’ll tell us—like he told your lawyer friend.”

  “But, suppose—”

  “That’s it. You want me supposing. You want me supposing that the brother sent someone, that that someone had a key, a means of ingress, that that someone waited until certain pat events happened, these events: that your husband came there, that he was drunk, that he had an argument with her, that he struck her, that he passed out. Then our miscreant slips in, does the job, sticks the hammer in his hand, and blows. That would be real nice pretty, now, wouldn’t it?”

  She stood up and began to walk. “Could he have been drugged?”

  Dejectedly he said, “Now, listen—”

  “Could he?”

  “In the setup I just described, he could also have been hypnotized.”

  “What kind of drug?”

  “Now, look, Mrs. Martin. I owe it to you. You sort of showed us up. You went out and brought in Harry—Joyce Anderson’s other Harry. You did what we didn’t even think of doing. We didn’t handle it right, because, basically, that diary was meaningless, gravy, totally unnecessary to the prosecution of our case. We were pressing too hard, one way. Sometimes when a case is so damn air-tight, you bog down on the tangents. So I owe it to you. But let’s not get crazy.”

  “I’m asking you, sir, if—”

  “I’m not telling the truth.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  He moved in the chair, settling back. “It gets so in this business you don’t know yourself when you’re telling the truth, and when you’re giving out with the schmoos. All right. I’ll tell you just why I’m sitting around talking with you. I’ll tell it to you straight. You know where he is—that’s the only reason. Understand? That’s the only reason. Right now, we’re sitting pretty. We know who did it, and we know that he’s bedded down, so to speak, lodged away. You know where he is. So you’re important. I let you out of here once because I thought you’d take us to him.”

  “Instead, I—”

  “I don’t care what you did. That doesn’t make a particle of difference. You’re important because you know where he is. There are two ways to handle that. I can have you sweating under a big bright light and have it squeezed out of you, noodling all the while about the kid that’s home alone. That’s one way. The other way is letting you talk. Talk, talk, talk, talk—till you realize there’s nothing to talk about, till you’ve talked yourself out. All the time, I hope you understand, you’re under arrest, and that th
ere’s a kid at home that’s going to wake up in the morning with no Mamma and no Papa. I’m doing it the soft way. So talk. But let’s not make it too long, huh?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Chloral hydrate.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the drug. That’s the popular one today. Knockout drops. White crystals. Tasteless, odorless, colorless, instantly soluble. There are even vogues in knockout drops.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “An overdose will kill you. Those who use them have them put up in capsules, with correct dosage, usually a little box of capsules prepared by a crooked druggist with an eye out for an easy buck. There are bad in every business.”

  “And how—how does it affect the person to whom it is given?”

  “Knocks him out for minutes, or hours. Groggy afterward. Depends upon the dosage, the size and weight of the individual, what he ate before—for instance, thiamine hydrochloride, lots of that vitamin B stuff—that’s anti-narcotic. That would lessen the effect. It depends—”

  “Harry always takes vitamins.”

  “Now isn’t that nice? Good for Harry. So he was drugged, and groggy later, which explains his vagueness, his seeing women in blue coats and kerchiefs. Fine.” He sighed. “Okay. What else, ma’am?” He looked at his wrist watch.

  “The brother, what’s his name?”

  “Dale Allen.”

  “You said he was the—the sole heir.”

  “We check. We check everything pertinent. We saw her lawyer. She never made a will, no reason to, nobody special she wanted to leave her money to, young enough not to want to think of wills. There are no relatives, there was only the brother and sister.”

  “And he—what sort of man?”

  “You’ll love this. A no-good. Just the kind of guy you’d like him to be. A wonderful subject to tie the can to, if only there was a can to tie, if only it wasn’t all Harry Martin.”

  “What sort of man, sir?”

  “Used to be a dancer, like his sister, only he never worked at it, really. Taught in one of those cheap dancing-schools, regularly in trouble with the girls. Then the sister hooks this guy, this old millionaire, and that helped. She gave him money, dressed him up, got him work. He was a press agent for a while. Then he had a joint in Harlem, which she backed, one of those gambling-joints with all the wheels. Went all right for a while, till cops mosied in and broke it up. Now he owns the Casa Rouge—”

  Dr. Earl came back. He knocked, said, “Oh, excuse me, I thought—”

  “Come in. Come in.”

  “I wanted to thank you, Captain.”

  “Skip it. I’m the one to thank you.”

  “And I may depend—?”

  “Implicitly.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Listen, that diary is of no damn use to us. Whatever’s in it is a private record, unless it pertains to our case, which, it seems, it doesn’t. We’re not running a gossip department here.”

  “Thank you. Do you need me?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Good night, then, Captain Brophy.” He stopped in front of her, bowed, said, “Good luck,” and went away.

  “Where were we?” Brophy said.

  “Casa Rouge.”

  “Yeah, the Casa Rouge, a strip-tease joint with three-inch steaks. He’s doing fair to middling, but a big spender and always broke. I’d imagine the sister was tired of shelling out for him. He was in Washington all day, talking to talent for a new show in his honky-tonk. It’s iron-clad, down there, air-tight. He was in Washington, period. What else can I lecture on now, Mrs. Martin?”

  She walked the room, touching the tops of the chairs, putting her hands together, tampering with her fingernails.

  “The woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “The woman he saw.”

  “Listen, she’s dead. She’s not running around, without a face, making conversation at adjustment windows.”

  “No. No. My way.”

  “What does it mean—your way?”

  “We’ve thrown out the other thing, the fury, the crime of passion. We say he was drugged. We say the brother—”

  “You say.”

  She came to the chair, leaning her elbows on the desk, crying, talking. “You’ve been good, sir. You’ve been patient. Things are grating inside my head—like stones churning in a cement-mixer… I’m talking wildly, I know it, I know it, I can’t help it, I can’t believe it, any of it, any of it, please, please, I beg you—”

  “Take it easy, Mrs. Martin. I know how you feel. Believe me.”

  “Suppose—suppose you are wrong. Suppose—it were somebody else—in line with my conviction that Harry—my husband—couldn’t possibly have done this—couldn’t have taken a hammer in his hand, drunk or sober, sane or insane, and beaten a human being to death. Suppose, somehow—you were wrong. Isn’t there anything else? Couldn’t you turn your mind to any other possibility? He’s running away, you say. He sees a woman, he sees this woman, he’s so positive, he knows what she’s wearing, a blue coat, a kerchief—Oh!” She screamed, standing up, her fingernails scraping against the wood of the desk, her jaws locked, sobbing through white lips.

  “What is it? What’s the matter, Mrs. Martin?”

  She stood back from the desk, crossing her arms over her chest, rubbing her hands against her shoulders. “You’ve been kind. You’ve realized that I’ve been talking against time. You’ve realized that I’ve been ranting, pushing it away, unable to accept it. And you were right. But, not now. Not now.”

  “Not now, what?”

  “I used the telephone once tonight. Dr. Earl—”

  “He told me.”

  “Once more. I want to use it once more. If I’m wrong, if it doesn’t work—I’m finished. I’ll do anything you say.”

  “Better, ma’am. That’s much better.”

  “I want to talk to—Dale Allen.”

  “Sure.” He waved at the telephone. “Talk.”

  “No. I want somebody near him. I want somebody near him to stop him from calling back—if I’m right—to keep him from checking back. Will you do this for me, Captain? Just this. After that—whatever you say.”

  He looked at her, tense, her arms crossed, hugging herself as though she were cold. He poked the key on the inter-com. “Give me Crawford. Send him in here.” They were silent, eyeing each other, until Crawford came.

  “Look,” Brophy said. “Take a car and go over to the Casa Rouge. You know where it is, three minutes from here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Call me just before you go in there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I want you to get that Dale Allen into his office, on some pretext or other, just the two of you alone. We’re going to call him from here. The point is—we don’t want him calling out again after he hangs up. So, right after we speak to him, I’ll call you. If there are any instructions, I’ll tell you then. So far, you’re dropping in on him for some gentle confab. You don’t know from nothing. Do I sound like I’m taking hashish, Fred?”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right. Get going, boy.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Thank you,” she said when they were alone. “I hope—”

  “This is finish, Mrs. Martin. This is the last capriccio. Maybe, at that, it’s better than putting the screws on you. I’m a patient man. I play ball. But I’ve gone all the way with you. I’m telling you right now—this ends it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No more, after this.”

  “I’m going to want you to listen in.”

  “A pleasure,” he said. “An honor and a pleasure. We do that in the adjoining room.” He pushed back out of the swivel chair. “Come on, Mrs. Martin.” He took her next door, where there were many desks, and many chairs, and seven policemen in seven postures of relaxation, and clusters of telephones, and the constant clack of a teletype. “Outside, boys,” he said. “The old man wants to be alone
with a lady.”

  Chairs moved. Men straightened and departed. Brophy took out a cigar, bit it, lit it, pulled out a seat from close to a desk, slumped, pointed at a phone. “This one rings simultaneously with mine next door.”

  “Yes,” she said, walking, looking at maps on the walls, glancing at the teletype, walking, touching corners of desks, examining pictures on the walls, walking, walking—until the phone rang. Brophy picked it up.

  “Yes. Yes. Fine. Okay, Fred.”

  He hung up. He came out of the chair, touched her arm. “Ever see how these work?” He took her to the teletype, showed her the purple scribbles, stood over her, looked at his wrist watch. “Listen, how about a drink? Would you like a dab of that brandy?”

  “Yes, sir, please.”

  They went back to his room. He brought out the bottle and the glasses, said, “You pour.”

  She poured a drink for him and one for her. She drank hers quickly; he added more to his glass. “I’m a big man,” he said. “I require bigger doses. It’s against regulations. So—why don’t they let me retire? Skoal.” He drank his drink, set the glass down. “Let’s go back in there.”

  He took her back, turned off the teletype, pushed a phone in front of her, sat down beside her, put his hand on the cross-bar of another phone. “All right. Make your call, ma’am.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know the number.”

  He closed his eyes, remembering. He pulled the phone near, dialed, listened with her for the sound of the ring, gave her the phone, lifted his. She gulped, waiting.

  “Hello?”

  Her hand was over the mouthpiece. “Dale?”

  “Hello. I can’t hear you.”

  “Dale?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t talk. Listen.”

  “Talk louder, will you? We got a lousy connection.”

  “I left the box up there.”

  “Box? What box? Who is this?”

  She kept her hand over the mouthpiece, her lips close to her spread fingers, whispering. “What do you want me to do? Draw you diagrams?”

  “Talk a little louder, this is one lousy connection. Now, what? What did you leave?”

  “The box of capsules. I—”

  “What?”