Escamillo Drive made three jogs in four blocks, for no reason that I could see. It was very narrow, averaged about five houses to a block and was overhung by a section of s.h.a.ggy brown foothill on which nothing lived at this season except sage and manzanita. In its fifth and last block, Escamillo Drive did a neat little curve to the left, hit the base of the hill hard, and died without a whimper. In this last block were three houses, two on the opposite entering corners, one at the dead end. This was Vannier"s. My spotlight showed the key still in the door.
It was a narrow English type bungalow with a high roof, leaded front windows, a garage to the side, and a trailer parked beside the garage. The early moon lay quietly on its small lawn. A large oak tree grew almost on the front porch. There was no light in the house now, none visible from the front at least.
From the lay of the land a light in the living room in the daytime did not seem utterly improbable. It would be a dark house except in the morning. As a love nest the place had its points, but as a residence for a blackmailer I didn"t give it very high marks. Sudden death can come to you anywhere, but Vannier had made it too easy.
I turned into his driveway, backed to get myself pointed out of the dead end, and then drove down to the corner and parked there. I walked back in the street because there was no sidewalk. The front door was made of iron-bound oak planks, bevelled where they joined. There was a thumb latch instead of a k.n.o.b. The head of the flat key projected from the lock. I rang the bell, and it rang with that remote sound of a bell ringing at night in an empty house. I walked around the oak tree and poked the light of my pencil flash between the leaves of the garage door. There was a car in there. I went back around the house and looked at a small flowerless yard, walled in by a low wall of fieldstone. Three more oak trees, a table and a couple of all metal chairs under one of them. A rubbish burner at the back. I shone my light into the trailer before I went back to the front. There didn"t seem to be anybody in the trailer. Its door was locked.
I opened the front door, leaving the key in the lock. I wasn"t going to work any dipsy-doodle in this place. What ever was, was. I just wanted to make sure. I felt around on the wall inside the door for a light switch, found one and tilted it up. Pale flame bulbs in pairs in wall brackets went on all around the room, showing me the big lamp Merle had spoken of, as well as other things. I went over to switch the lamp on, then back to switch the wall light off. The lamp had a big bulb inverted in a porcelain gla.s.s bowl. You could get three different intensities of light. I clicked the b.u.t.ton switch around until I had all there was.
The room ran from front to back, with a door at the back and an arch up front to the right. Inside that was a small dining room. Curtains were half drawn across the arch, heavy pale green brocade curtains, far from new. The fireplace was in the middle of the left wall, bookshelves opposite and on both sides of it, not built in. Two davenports angled across the corners of the room and there was one gold chair, one pink chair, one brown chair, one brown and gold jacquard chair with footstool.
Yellow pajama legs were on the footstool, bare ankles, feet in dark green morocco leather slippers. My eyes ran up from the feet, slowly, carefully. A dark green figured silk robe, tied with a ta.s.seled belt. Open above the belt showing a monogram on the pocket of the pajamas. A handkerchief neat in the pocket, two stiff points of white linen. A yellow neck, the face turned sideways, pointed at a mirror on the wall. I walked around and looked in the mirror. The face leered all right.
The left arm and hand lay between a knee and the side of the chair, the right arm hung outside the chair, the ends of the fingers touching the rug. Touching also the b.u.t.t of a small revolver, about .32 caliber, a belly gun, with practically no barrel. The right side of the face was against the back of the chair, but the right shoulder was dark brown with blood and there was some on the right sleeve. Also on the chair. A lot of it on the chair.
I didn"t think his head had taken that position naturally. Some sensitive soul had not liked the right side of it.
I lifted my foot and gently pushed the footstool sideways a few inches. The heels of the slippers moved reluctantly over the jacquard surface, not with it. The man was as stiff as a board. So I reached down and touched his ankle. Ice was never half as cold.
On a table at his right elbow was half of a dead drink, an ashtray full of b.u.t.ts and ash. Three of the b.u.t.ts had lipstick on them. Bright Chinese red lipstick. What a blond would use.
There was another ashtray beside another chair. Matches in it and a lot of ash, but no stubs.
On the air of the room a rather heavy perfume struggled with the smell of death, and lost. Although defeated, it was still there.
I poked through the rest of the house, putting lights on and off. Two bedrooms, one furnished in light wood, one in red maple. The light one seemed to be a spare. A nice bathroom with tan and mulberry tiling and a stall shower with a gla.s.s door. The kitchen was small. There were a lot of bottles on the sink. Lots of bottles, lots of gla.s.s, lots of fingerprints, lots of evidence. Or not, as the case may be.
I went back to the living room and stood in the middle of the floor breathing with my mouth as far as possible and wondering what the score would be when I turned this one in. Turn this one in and report that I was the fellow who had found Morningstar and run away. The score would be low, very low. Marlowe, three murders. Marlowe practically kneedeep in dead men. And no reasonable, logical, friendly account of himself whatsoever. But that wasn"t the worst of it. The minute I opened up I would cease to be a free agent. I would be through with doing whatever it was I was doing and with finding out whatever it was I was finding out.
Carl Moss might be willing to protect Merle with the mantle of Aesculapius, up to a point. Or he might think it would do her more good in the long run to get it all off her chest, whatever it was.
I wandered back to the jacquard chair and set my teeth and grabbed enough of his hair to pull the head away from the chair back. The bullet had gone in at the temple. The set-up could be for suicide. But people like Louis Vannier do not commit suicide. A blackmailer, even a scared blackmailer, has a sense of power, and loves it.
I let the head go back where it wanted to go and leaned down to scrub my hand on the nap of the rug. Leaning down I saw the corner of a picture frame under the lower shelf of the table at Vannier"s elbow. I went around and reached for it with a handkerchief.
The gla.s.s was cracked across. It had fallen off the wall. I could see the small nail. I could make a guess how it had happened. Somebody standing at Vannier"s right, even leaning over him, somebody he knew and had no fear of, had suddenly pulled a gun and shot him in the right temple. And then, startled by the blood or the recoil of the shot, the killer had jumped back against the wall and knocked the picture down. It had landed on a corner and jumped under the table. And the killer had been too careful to touch it, or too scared.
I looked at it. It was a small picture, not interesting at all. A guy in doublet and hose, with lace at his sleeve ends, and one of those round puffy velvet hats with a feather, leaning far out of a window and apparently calling out to somebody downstairs. Downstairs not being in the picture. It was a color reproduction of something that had never been needed in the first place.
I looked around the room. There were other pictures, a couple of rather nice water colors, some engravings-very old-fashioned this year, engravings, or are they? Half a dozen in all. Well, perhaps the guy liked the picture, so what? A man leaning out of a high window. A long time ago.
I looked at Vannier. He wouldn"t help me at all. A man leaning out of a high window, a long time ago.
The touch of the idea at first was so light that I almost missed it and pa.s.sed on. A touch of a feather, hardly that. The touch of a snowflake. A high window, a man leaning out-a long time ago.
It snapped in place. It was so hot it sizzled. Out of a high window a long time ago-eight years ago-a man leaning-too far-a man falling-to his death. A man named Horace Bright.
"Mr. Vannier," I said with a little touch of admiration, "you played that rather neatly."
I turned the picture over. On the back dates and amounts of money were written. Dates over almost eight years, amounts mostly of $500, a few $750"s, two for $1000. There was a running total in small figures. It was $11,100. Mr. Vannier had not received the latest payment. He had been dead when it arrived. It was not a lot of money, spread over eight years. Mr. Vannier"s customer had bargained hard.
The cardboard back was fastened into the frame with steel victrola needles. Two of them had fallen out. I worked the cardboard loose and tore it a little getting it loose. There was a white envelope between the back and the picture. Sealed, blank. I tore it open. It contained two square photographs and a negative. The photos were just the same. They showed a man leaning far out of a window with his mouth open yelling. His hands were on the brick edges of the window frame. There was a woman"s face behind his shoulder.
He was a thinnish dark-haired man. His face was not very clear, nor the face of the woman behind him. He was leaning out of a window and yelling or calling out.
There I was holding the photograph and looking at it. And so far as I could see it didn"t mean a thing. I knew it had to. I just didn"t know why. But I kept on looking at it. And in a little while something was wrong. It was a very small thing, but it was vital. The position of the man"s hands, lined against the corner of the wall where it was cut out to make the window frame. The hands were not holding anything, they were not touching anything. It was the inside of his wrists that lined against the angle of the bricks. The hands were in air.
The man was not leaning. He was falling.
I put the stuff back in the envelope and folded the cardboard back and stuffed that into my pocket also. I hid frame, gla.s.s and picture in the linen closet under towels.
All this had taken too long. A car stopped outside the house. Feet came up the walk.
I dodged behind the curtains in the archway.
THIRTY.
The front door opened and then quietly closed.
There was a silence, hanging in the air like a man"s breath in frosty air, and then a thick scream, ending in a wail of despair.
Then a man"s voice, tight with fury, saying: "Not bad, not good. Try again."
The woman"s voice said: "My G.o.d, it"s Louis! He"s dead!"
The man"s voice said: "I may be wrong, but I still think it stinks."
"My G.o.d! He"s dead, Alex. Do something-for G.o.d"s sake-do something!" something!"
"Yeah," the hard tight voice of Alex Morny said. "I ought to. I ought to make you look just like him. With blood and everything. I ought to make you just as dead, just as cold, just as rotten. No, I don"t have to do that. You"re that already. Just as rotten. Eight months married and cheating on me with a piece of merchandise like that. My G.o.d! What did I ever think of to put in with a chippy like you?"
He was almost yelling at the end of it.
The woman made another wailing noise.
"Quit stalling," Morny said bitterly. "What do you think I brought you over here for? You"re not kidding anybody. You"ve been watched for weeks. You were here last night. I"ve been here already today. I"ve seen what there is to see. Your lipstick on cigarettes, your gla.s.s that you drank out of. I can see you now, sitting on the arm of his chair, rubbing his greasy hair, and then feeding him a slug while he was still purring. Why?"
"Oh, Alex-darling-don"t say such awful things."
"Early Lillian Gish," Morny said. "Very early Lillian Gish. Skip the agony, toots. I have to know how to handle this. What the h.e.l.l you think I"m here for? I don"t give one little flash in h.e.l.l about you any more. Not any more, toots, not any more, my precious darling angel blond man-killer. But I do care about myself and my reputation and my business. For instance, did you wipe the gun off?"
Silence. Then the sound of a blow. The woman wailed. She was hurt, terribly hurt. Hurt in the depths of her soul. She made it rather good.
"Look, angel," Morny snarled. "Don"t feed me the ham. I"ve been in pictures. I"m a connoisseur of ham. Skip it. You"re going to tell me how this was done if I have to drag you around the room by your hair. Now-did you wipe off the gun?"
Suddenly she laughed. An unnatural laugh, but clear and with a nice tinkle to it. Then she stopped laughing, just as suddenly.
Her voice said: "Yes."
"And the gla.s.s you were using?"
"Yes." Very quiet now, very cool.
"And you put his prints on the gun?"
"Yes."
He thought in the silence. "Probably won"t fool them," he said. "It"s almost impossible to get a dead man"s prints on a gun in a convincing way. However. What else did you wipe off."
"N-nothing. Oh Alex. Please don"t be so brutal."
"Stop it. Stop it! Stop it! Show me how you did it, how you were standing, how you held the gun." Show me how you did it, how you were standing, how you held the gun."
She didn"t move.
"Never mind about the prints," Morny said. "I"ll put better ones on. Much better ones."
She moved slowly across the opening of the curtains and I saw her. She was wearing pale green gabardine slacks, a fawn-colored leisure jacket with st.i.tching on it, a scarlet turban with a gold snake in it. Her face was smeared with tears.
"Pick it up," Morny yelled at her. "Show me!"
She bent beside the chair and came up with the gun in her hand and her teeth bared. She pointed the gun across the opening in the curtains, towards the s.p.a.ce of room where the door was.
Morny didn"t move, didn"t make a sound.
The blond"s hand began to shake and the gun did a queer up and down dance in the air. Her mouth trembled and her arm fell.
"I can"t do it," she breathed. "I ought to shoot you, but I can"t."
The hand opened and the gun thudded to the floor.
Morny went swiftly past the break in the curtains, pushed her out of the way and with his foot pushed the gun back to about where it had been.
"You couldn"t do it," he said thickly. "You couldn"t do it. Now watch."
He whipped a handkerchief out and bent to pick the gun up again. He pressed something and the gate fell open. He reached his right hand into his pocket and rolled a cartridge in his fingers, moving his fingertips on the metal, pushed the cartridge into a cylinder. He repeated the performance four times more, snapped the gate shut, then opened it and spun it a little to set it in a certain spot. He placed the gun down on the floor, withdrew his hand and handkerchief and straightened up.
"You couldn"t shoot me," he sneered, "because there was nothing in the gun but one empty sh.e.l.l. Now it"s loaded again. The cylinders are in the right place. One shot has been fired. And your fingerprints are on the gun."
The blond was very still, looking at him with haggard eyes.
"I forgot to tell you," he said softly, "I wiped the gun off. I thought it would be so much nicer to be sure your prints were on it. I was pretty sure they were-but I felt as if I would like to be wiped the gun off. I thought it would be so much nicer to be sure your prints were on it. I was pretty sure they were-but I felt as if I would like to be quite quite sure. Get it?" sure. Get it?"
The girl said quietly: "You"re going to turn me in?"
His back was towards me. Dark clothes. Felt hat pulled low. So I couldn"t see his face. But I could just about see the leer with which he said: "Yes, angel, I am going to turn you in."
"I see," she said, and looked at him levelly. There was a sudden grave dignity in her over-emphasized chorus girl"s face.
"I"m going to turn you in, angel," he said slowly, s.p.a.cing his words as if he enjoyed his act. "Some people are going to be sorry for me and some people are going to laugh at me. But it"s not going to do my business any harm. Not a bit of harm. That"s one nice thing about a business like mine. A little notoriety won"t hurt it at all."
"So I"m just publicity value to you, now," she said. "Apart, of course, from the danger that you might have been suspected yourself."
"Just so," he said. "Just so."
"How about my motive?" she asked, still calm, still level-eyed and so gravely contemptuous that he didn"t get the expression at all.
"I don"t know," he said. "I don"t care. You were up to something with him. Eddie tailed you downtown to a street on Bunker Hill where you met a blond guy in a brown suit. You gave him something. Eddie dropped you and tailed the guy to an apartment house near there. He tried to tail him some more, but he had a hunch the guy spotted him, and he had to drop it. I don"t know what it was all about. I know one thing, though. In that apartment house a young guy named Phillips was shot yesterday. Would you know anything about that, my sweet?"
The blond said: "I wouldn"t know anything about it. I don"t know anybody named Phillips and strangely enough I didn"t just run up and shoot anybody out of sheer girlish fun."
"But you shot Vannier, my dear," Morny said almost gently.
"Oh yes," she drawled. "Of course. We were wondering what my motive was. You get it figured out yet?"
"You can work that out with the johns," he snapped. "Call it a lover"s quarrel. Call it anything you like."
"Perhaps," she said, "when he was drunk he looked just a little like you. Perhaps that was the motive."
He said: "Ah," and sucked his breath in.
"Better looking," she said. "Younger, with less belly. But with the same G.o.dd.a.m.ned self-satisfied smirk."
"Ah," Morny said, and he was suffering.
"Would that do?" she asked him softly.
He stepped forward and swung a fist. It caught her on the side of the face and she went down and sat on the floor, a long leg straight out in front of her, one hand to her jaw, her very blue eyes looking up at him.
"Maybe you oughtn"t to have done that," she said. "Maybe I won"t go through with it, now."
"You"ll go through with it, all right. You won"t have any choice. You"ll get off easy enough. Christ, I know that. With your looks. But you"ll go through with it, angel. Your fingerprints are on that gun."
She got to her feet slowly, still with the hand to her jaw.
Then she smiled. "I knew he was dead," she said. "That is my key in the door. I"m quite willing to go downtown and say I shot him. But don"t lay your smooth white paw on me again-if you want my story. Yes. I"m quite willing to go to the cops. I"ll feel a lot safer with them than I feel with you."
Morny turned and I saw the hard white leer of his face and the scar dimple in his cheek twitching. He walked past the opening in the curtains. The front door opened again. The blond stood still a moment, looked back over her shoulder at the corpse, shuddered slightly, and pa.s.sed out of my line of vision.
The door closed. Steps on the walk. Then car doors opening and closing. The motor throbbed, and the car went away.