Dapne Sanders (Craig Rice)
Chapter two
WHEN A FAIR-HAIRED, athletic young woman went briskly down the gangplank of the great ocean liner, a little French designer who had been one of her travelling companions sighed deeply.
He had been watching her all the way. The passenger list named her as Bertha McChesney of Colchester, but that was not a great deal of information. And throughout the entire trip, he had been unable to make the slightest impression on her. She didn't pay any attention to him, or to anyone.
But what a woman she was! Diana, no less. Tall, with a straight, slender figure. Far-skinned, though very heavily made up for an English girl. Hair like nothing else than pure gold, worn loose and short. Eyes, thought the little designer, like the blue of the sea itself.
All that, and the least friendly woman he had ever encountered. When all of his advances had been received with an icy look, he had sighed and given up the chase.
He sighed again as he watched her walk down the gangplank, and saw her square shoulders disappear into the crowd. He never saw her again.
Once the formalities of arrival were over, Bertha McChesney went directly to an inconspicuous and reasonably priced hotel, registered, and was given a room.
Within a week she had become one of the great unsolved mysteries of the world, one of the problems that amateur detectives would ponder over in the long winter nights.
As soon as her luggage, inexpensive but in the best of taste, had been unpacked, the young Englishwoman left the hotel. In a few hours she returned, her arms full of parcels. Some time later two or three large packages came to her from a department store.
The next morning the chambermaid found the room unoccupied and the bed undisturbed. No one worried about the matter, however. It was not until the third day, when there was still no sign of the young woman, that a discreet inquiry was begun.
None of the elevator operators remembered taking her down to the first floor. All of them insisted that they would have noticed her, for Bertha McChesney was a striking figure.
The maid who had unpacked for her inspected the room and reported that all the clothing belonging to the missing girl was there, including that which she had worn on her arrival. There was no sign of the purchases she had made. Her purse was in the room, though it contained only powder, rouge, a comb and a lipstick. There were no letters, papers, or money.
Eventually the department store records were examined to discover what purchases she had made. It was found that Bertha McChesney had bought a complete outfit of men's clothing; a neat grey suit, a white shirt, a blue tie, a soft felt hat, shoes, socks, and even underwear.
The investigators jumped to the conclusion that she had adopted men's garb to disguise herself. The truth was that they had the procedure reversed.
When the visitor from abroad had donned the clothes purchased that day, washed off the last vestiges of makeup and brushed back the already short hair, the striking blond English girl had been transformed into a very presentable but not at all extraordinary young man. He was somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, athletic in appearance though slender and slight.
He looked at his reflection in the mirror with satisfaction. Putting that infernal stuff on his face had been a hateful business and his shoes had been devilishly uncomfortable.
Still, it had been necessary. It had been the only way.
He picked up the soft felt hat and went out. At the elevator door he stopped, thought a moment and walked toward the stairs. It was eleven floors down, but he didn't want to take the chance of being recognized. The stairs deposited him near a side entrance to the hotel and he walked quickly into the street. Then he vanished into the crowds on the sidewalk.
At almost the same moment, Donovan sat in his office reading the communication from the French doctor. It was believed that the escaped patient had made no attempt to leave the country. No trace of him had been found but the police were confident that he would be recaptured very soon.
Donovan felt a little relieved. If the escaped patient did not manage to reach New York there would be one less thing to worry about. He had enough on his hands now, the way things were.
Meantime the man in question walked with the crowds, looking in shop windows, gazing at the tall buildings, staring at theater marquees and always looking searchingly, intently, at the faces that passed him.
Everything he saw was familiar. It was like a homecoming. Yet he could not actually remember having been in the city before.
He did not like to try to search that dim and clouded memory. In it there were only a few, disconnected pictures. He knew that his name was John Porter, they had told him that over and over at the hospital until at last he realized it was his own.
One thing had always been perfectly clear in his mind, even from the beginning. He knew he had to get away.
It had taken months to form his plan. Another patient at the mental home had gone away, cured. Before he had gone, he had become a close friend of John Porter and become convinced of John Porter's sanity.
Then the opportunity had arrived and he had managed to get away. The search for him was no more than begun by the time he had located the friend who believed him sane, and told his story of having been kept in the hospital by jealous relatives who wanted the use of his estate. To get back that estate, he had to get back to New York.
The friend had helped him with money and in other ways. Clothes for Bertha McChesney had been discreetly purchased. The matter of passports and tickets had been carefully arranged.
Now, he had arrived at his destination.
Despite the clouds that shadowed his memory, one thing remained vividly clear. That was the thing he had come here to do and the man he had come to seek.
He had forgotten why he hated that man. Only the hate and the terrible necessity remained.
There were no other names in the world that remained in his shadowed mind. But he remembered that one. Hymers.
“DON'T TELL me,” Donovan said wearily. “I know why you're here. You had a letter from some man who signs himself 'N,' threatening robbery.”
Young Wilfred Hume dropped the folded paper he had taken from his pocket and stared at the detective, open-mouthed.
“You must have added clairvoyance to your other talents,” he said at last.
Donovan shook his head. “I didn't even have to guess.”
He looked thoughtfully across the desk at his early morning visitor. Another of the seven who had taken part in that famous stock market coup. Likewise, the only one of the crew that he, personally, had anything like respect for. Hume was a young man, much younger than the other six, handsome, athletic, and extremely likable.
“Let's see it,” he said at last, reaching for the paper.
It was worded almost exactly the same as the notes that had been received by the others. But the article mentioned was the Fordyce coronet.
Donovan read it and laid it aside. “I'd rather expected this.”
This time Wilfred Hume did not show surprise. “So had I.”
“Did you know anything about — other robberies?” the detective asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Not a thing. Except that I rather assumed there had been some, carefully hushed up and kept from the newspapers.”
Donovan said, “You're the one who's clairvoyant.”
“It was a matter of arithmetic,” Hume told him.
“I know all about it, because I know what this man is doing with the money.”
The detective drew a long breath before he said, “Do you mind telling me how you found out?”
“I don't mind in the least.” The young man lit a cigarette. “I have on old friend who lives up in Connecticut — she was my first nurse. Some time ago I discovered that she'd lost practically everything she had in the world at the time Hymers engineered the market for our mutual benefit.”
The young man frowned. “I've wished a hundred times since that I'd refused to have anything to do with it. But I don't know much about business, and I just followed Hymers' lead. At the time I didn't realize what a beastly thing it was.
“Nobody blames you,” Donovan said. “Go on about your nurse.”
“Well, I've been sending her regular checks ever since that time, feeling that I was responsible. A few days ago she came into town to see me, with an amazing story.
“She'd received a letter through the mail containing just what she had lost, less ten percent. There was an accompanying note, explaining that the writer was taking this way of repaying her losses and that he had taken out ten percent for his collection expenses. It warned her to say nothing about it to anyone, and that was all.”
“And,” Donovan said, “the note she received was written in the same handwriting as the one you received, and it also was signed 'N.' “
Wilfred Hume nodded. “I told her to keep the money and not say anything about it.” He paused, and went on in a relieved tone, “Then you know what this man is up to. You can understand how I feel about it.”
“Just how do you feel?” Donovan asked. He looked back at the note. “The Fordyce Coronet. I wouldn't even guess at its value.”
“Its value hasn't anything to do with it,” Hume said. “The Coronet means something to me that hasn't anything to do with money. It belonged to my mother and the Fordyce family owned it over in England for the very devil of a long time before she brought it over here. It's infinitely more valuable to me than it could be to anyone else. Not only sentimental value, you understand — but all the history that's connected with it.”
Donovan nodded sympathetically. “I understand.
“Obviously if this chap steals it, as he says he intends to do, it will be destroyed. He couldn't possibly sell it all in a piece. Nobody would dare buy it. He'd have to break it up and sell the stones singly — and I'd rather lose my right arm than see that happen.”
“Well, put it in a safety deposit box,” Donovan said. “That's the only thing you can do.”
Hume shook his head. “I have another idea. I just wanted to hear what you thought of it before I went ahead. You may think it's foolish, I don't know. But anyway, this man who signs himself “N” knows where the Coronet is kept and how it's protected. So tonight I'm going to move the Coronet, and leave a package in its place.”
“A package of what?” Donovan asked.
“Money,” Wilfred Hume told him. “Money and a letter explaining what I did and why I did it — just as I'm explaining it to you now. The money will be the exact amount that could be realized from the sale of the stones.”
Donovan opened his mouth to speak and shut it again without a word.
“I'm putting it up to him as a purely sporting proposition,” the young man said. “I'm hoping that, in return, he'll leave the Coronet alone.” He waited a moment, then added “What do you think about it?”
Donovan was silent for a while before he answered. “I think it's the act of a quixotic young fool,” he said at last, “and I think I'd do exactly the same thing in your place.”
Wilfred Hume's face brightened. “I'm glad to hear you say that. It does make me feel better. I'll let you know how it comes out.”
For a long time after he had gone, Donovan sat frowning at the door.
He'd expected the visit from the young man. He had been a close friend of the Porter family, so tragically ruined in the crash. The young John Porter who had lost his mind, confined all these years in an asylum, had been one of his intimates.
On the other side of the ledger, there was some rumored scandal about handsome Wilfred Hume, and Renzo Hymers' chorus-girl wife.
Yes, and there was another link. Donovan leaned back, closed his eyes, and remembered everything he could about John Casalis, who had disappeared.
The unfortunate clerk had come from a fine family fallen on hard times and had had an excellent education — provided by Wilfred Hume's father. And Wilfred Hume had been his friend.
The detective sighed. There were too many coincidences in the case. Not the least of them was that all the men in it seemed to be blond, tallish and handsome. That description fitted the man who signed himself “N”. It fitted John Casalis. It fitted the insane man, John Porter. And it fitted Wilfred Hume.
THE SECOND Mrs. Renzo Hymers faced the horrible truth in her mirror. There was no more doubt about it, her looks were definitely going off..
Dorothy Dane, later Dorothy Hymers, had never realized that her beauty was the fragile kind that faded early. The truth was that her air of spring-like youth had been the only real beauty she had ever possessed.
The last person in the world to be aware of the change that had taken place was Dorothy Hymers herself. She had not seen it until the day when she discovered that Leon was blackmailing her.
Dorothy Hymers scowled at her mirror. What a fool she had been. Of course, she should have been warned when she realized that he expected her to pay all the bills.
Leon! Horrible little beast! What could she have seen in him, with his dark, dog-like eyes, his heavily oiled hair and his narrow, pointed shoes.
Well, she told the mirror, she would see the last of Leon today.
She finished making up her face and dressed to go out. If only she could make herself dazzlingly, fascinatingly beautiful just once more and let that nasty little beast appreciate what he was going to lose. Not that she cared what he thought any more.
“Eve!” she called.
“Yes, Mrs. Hymers?”
“Get me a sheet of tissue paper — a big one.”
“Yes, Mrs. Hymers.”
While she waited she unlocked her jewel case, took out a pair of perfectly matched bracelets and sat admiring them for the last time.
It was very fortunate, really, that Renzo had gotten those letters from that weird crook who signed himself “N.” It was odd that Renzo should take them so seriously, but it was working out very well for her.
Of course it was Poppy's disappearance that made those letters seem serious. Personally she thought that Poppy had taken advantage of the affair to slip away for a few days by herself. She would turn up in good time. They weren't going to be rid of the girl that easily.
Yes, she reflected, nothing could please her more than to have this disappearance of Poppy's turn out to be something really serious. The girl might even be dead. That would be a break for her.
When Eve returned with the tissue paper, she handed over the bracelets.
“Wrap these for me. I'm going to take them to the jeweler's. The catch is broken on one of them, and I'm going to have them both cleaned while I'm about it.”
“But Mrs. Hymers, is it safe to carry them around?”
“Why not? I'm only taking them as far as the jeweler's, and they'll be as safe with him as they are here in my jewel box.”
Eve closed her mouth grimly. She'd done her duty, if anything happened now, nobody could say she hadn't warned Mrs. Hymers.
“Tell Tony to bring the car around.”
She went downstairs slowly, admiring herself in the long mirror at the foot of the stairs. From a little distance, no one could say she wasn't a strikingly beautiful woman.
She entered the car, told the chauffeur to drive her to one of the department stores, and leaned back against the cushions. Something about Tony's back irritated her. There was another person she would be glad to see out of the way. Once she'd suspected that Renzo set him to spy on her.
Well, he could spy on her all he wanted today. Anybody who. could trace her was going to have to do miracles.
Dorothy Hymers reviewed the carefully laid plan in her mind. First, she would lose anyone who might possibly be following her. Then she would go, on foot, to the little apartment she had kept for Leon all these months. He would take the bracelets and drive her- in his car to a secluded spot in the park, and leave her there unconscious. .
Her story, when she was found later, would be that she had hailed a taxi and told the driver to take her to the jeweler's- In the taxi she had noticed that she felt a trifle drowsy, almost dizzy. That would be all she remembered, until she regained consciousness in the park, the bracelets gone.
That would tally perfectly with the story Mrs. Gifford had told of losing consciousness the night her pearls were stolen. She considered adding the touch that she had thought the driver of the taxi was a blond young man. No, that might be too much detail.
“You needn't call for me, Tony. I'm going to the movies when I'm through with my errands.”
“Very good, Mrs. Hymers.”
She watched the long black car slide away in the traffic with a smile of satisfaction. She was rid of Tony. Now she'd just make sure that nobody was following.
She hurried in through the revolving doors. Up the elevator to the third floor, through the main entrance to the women's rest room, out again through the back door so few people knew about, down the stairs to the basement, where she wove in and out of the crowd, up one aisle and down the next, until she felt sure she was safe.
Then she took the stairs up to the main floor and ducked out through a side entrance. The street was crowded, by the time she had gone half a block she knew that she was safely lost in the crowds. She looked around cautiously, then hailed the first taxi that came along, slipped in and told the driver to go to a corner that was near the little apartment.
The apartment was in a made-over building, a rambling old house that had once been a private residence, now converted into what were boastfully proclaimed “studios.” Leon's apartment was one of the studios, large and fairly comfortable, at the rear of the second floor.
She left herself into the apartment and looked around. Leon was not around. Late as usual. And today of all days! Well, there was nothing to do but wait.
She settled down in one of the big chairs, and relaxed. It seemed quiet and very pleasant in the big old room. She leaned her head back against the cushions of the chair and closed her eyes for a moment.
Suddenly she found herself wishing that it was not all over and finished, that she had not come to give Leon the bracelets as a price for his silence, that she didn't know what a horrible little beast he was, that it was all back at the beginning again.
The room seemed curiously stuffy, as though the air was almost exhausted. She rose and went to open the window. Odd, how tired she felt. Almost faint. She hadn't realized it before she got up to her feet.
Before she had time to touch the window, she heard a sound behind her. There, that must be Leon. She turned around quickly. No, there was no one at the door. She stood listening. There was someone behind those green curtains.
At first she thought Leon had hidden there to surprise her. Then below the curtain she saw the toe of a shoe. It was not narrow nor pointed nor shiny.
She drew in her breath, trying to scream, and unable to make a sound. Her limbs felt heavy, her head reeled, and she grasped at a chair to keep from falling. Then the corners of the room began to turn black.
Before unconsciousness overcame her, for one last moment she saw, clearly, the young man who had stepped out from behind the curtains — slender, handsome, blond — and smiling horribly.
THE MAN who called himself “N” closed the door through which Dorothy Hymers had gone a little before, and looked cautiously down the dark, shabby hall.
The house was silent, apparently deserted. He stood listening for a moment, then went down the hall, opened the door next to the one he had just closed behind him, and entered a small bare, dingy room. At one time it had probably been a large alcove, a dressing room, perhaps, opening off the apartment Dorothy Hymers had rented for her lover. When the house had been remodeled into a rooming house, a thin, wallboard partition had been constructed between the two.
That partition had a great advantage. It made it possible to hear everything that was said in the next room. It had made it possible to listen and overhear the ingenious plans for the twin bracelets.
Clever, but it hadn't worked. Now he was going to be blamed for this robbery, just as the pair had intended. But in addition, he had the bracelets.
The man who signed himself “N” wrapped the bracelets carefully in a handkerchief and stored them in an inside pocket. Next he found an envelope, wrote a brief note explaining to the janitress that he wouldn't be needing the room any longer, put a bill for an extra week's rent inside the envelope, sealed it and laid it on the table.
Those things attended to, he took one last glance around the room, in case anything had been forgotten. Suddenly he stopped still, and listened.
Footsteps were coming down the hall. The footsteps passed by, went on a little way, paused. A key turned in a lock, a door opened and closed.
The sound came from that room next door.
John Moon frowned. He had not imagined that Leon Martelli could possibly arrive so soon to keep his appointment. Arrangements had been made to delay him.
John Moon crossed his room noiselessly, opened the window and looked out. There was a ledge just below the window, about fifteen inches wide, that led along the side of the building to a spot from which it would be easy to jump to the roof of a little garage.
For a few minutes he stood there by the open window, waiting. The footsteps next door began again, this time they sounded a little more hurried. Then after thirty seconds or so the door opened and closed, and again a key turned in the lock.
John Moon slipped out the window. Creeping on all fours, he made his way to the very end of the ledge. Drawing his breath, he jumped like a cat to the garage roof, ran lightly across it, let himself down over the edge and dropped into the alley below.
A few steps up the alley he paused, and decided to wait a few minutes. Beside the garage was a little angle in the building walls where he could stand unseen, and from which he could watch the house he had just left. He slipped into the little niche and began a period of watching.
He was so fortunately placed that he could see fairly well into most of the rooms on the side of the house nearest him. As he stood there, his eyes glued to the windows, he could see someone—he could not tell from that distance if it were man or woman—appear in first one room and then another. Someone was systematically searching the house, room by room.
A smile rose to John Moon's face. He realized he himself was undoubtedly the object of the search. It was a pleasant, almost amusing thought.
A long time passed in which nothing happened. He decided the searcher was going through the front part of the house.
He was about to start on his way, when he saw Leon Martelli coming up the sidewalk in the direction of the front door.
John Moon frowned. Then evidently it could not have been Martelli who was in that room, and who searched the house. But if it were not, who could it have been?
He decided to wait and see what happened.
He did not have long to wait. In a minute or two the sleek-haired little man reappeared and went hurrying down the street as though he had been frightened out of his wits.
Half an hour later John Moon stood regarding himself thoughtfully in the mirror of the big, shadowy room that served him as sitting-room and study. The face that looked back at him was gay and debonair, with curiously tilted eyebrows that slanted up toward his temples.
“There,” Poppy Hymers said. “That's the way I thought you looked all the time.”
She was sitting curled up in the big, shabby lounge chair watching him, her piquant face alive with interest. “I want to see how it's done.”
“It's very simple,” John Moon said amiably, making a little grimace of disgust at the face in the mirror.
He went to a little corner washstand and went to work. First he removed two pieces of smooth rubber from his mouth, where they had rested snugly inside his cheeks. Next he felt under the hair just above his temples and removed two strips of flesh-colored plaster. Finally he dipped his head in the washbowl and rinsed his hair noisily and thoroughly, drying it on a rough towel and brushing it back from his face.
“I don't believe it,” Poppy Hymers said.
He turned toward her, smiling. The round-faced, sleek-haired young man with the curious eyebrows had vanished. This John Moon had a thin, ascetic face, grave grey eyes, narrow, level brows and pale, wavy, unruly hair.
“That's all there is to it,” he told her. “Just the hair and the shape of the face.”
“But even your eyes are different,” she said almost indignantly, “and you didn't do anything to them.”
“It's the eyebrows,” he said. “That's what does the trick.”
She was looking at him searchingly. “You still look different than you did this morning.”
“I'll fix that,” he said. He dug under his sofa for a pair of old carpet slippers and substituted them for the shoes he had been wearing. “Take a look.”
“They look like ordinary shoes,” Poppy said. She gave them a closer scrutiny. “No they aren't ordinary shoes.” She stared up at him. “How much taller do they make you?”
“About an inch and a half,” he said. “Enough to make the difference.” He slipped off his heavily padded coat and tossed it over a chair.
“You're damned near thin!” Poppy said.
John Moon laughed. “It's a good transformation, isn't it. I'm described as tallish, with broad shoulders.” He opened a little cupboard in the wall. “I'm going to make a drink. Frankly, I need one.”
He handed a glass to her and took one himself. “Well, Poppy.” Suddenly he laughed wryly. “Here's to crime!”
“Do you think I'll be any use to you?”
“I think you'll be a great deal.” He put down his glass. “Tomorrow you go home. I'll have Joe deliver you. I hope it won't hurt your feelings if I don't let you know the location of this house.”
She lit a cigarette. “You're the boss. What is my first little chore going to be?”
“Just a matter of gathering information. I'll give you all the details tomorrow.” He frowned. “I suppose under the circumstances, I ought to give you back your emeralds.”
“If they really belonged to me, I'd raise hell until you did. But I don't care if you steal a string of emeralds from my old man.”
“I thought you'd feel that way. I actually don't have any scruples about keeping them, I was just being polite. But here's what I am going to do. I'm going to provide you with such a good replica that you won't be embarrassed by any questions about them.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I'd been worried about that. And as far as the question of where I've been is concerned, you can leave that to me.”
DONOVAN STARED indignantly at the telephone.
Here he was, comfortably settled in his easy chair, with his oldest slippers on, his favorite pipe in his hand and a pile of unread books on the table beside him. Now that infernal thing had to set up its racket.
At last with a weary groan he lifted the receiver.
“Mr. Donovan? Just a minute, please.”
There was a brief pause, then, “This is Renzo Hymers. Come over to the house right away. Mrs. Hymers has disappeared.”
Donovan promised to leave right away and hung up. What the devil had happened to Dorothy Hymers? He changed his clothes hurriedly, went out and called a taxi, telling the driver to hurry.
He had forgotten his weariness and his annoyance at being disturbed by the time he ran up the steps of the Hymers' house. The door opened as he reached the top step and a cold-eyed butler showed him into the library where Renzo Hymers was waiting for him.
There wasn't a shadow of emotion on the financier's face. Donovan had never seen one there. But there was a note of relief in his voice when he spoke.
“I'm glad you got here. Sit down and I'll tell you what happened — at least as far as we know.”
Donovan obeyed. “How long has Mrs. Hymers been gone?”
“Since early this afternoon. She went out shopping. Tony—my chauffeur — left her at a department store. She told him not to call for her as she was going to a movie later. That's the last we know of her.
“What time was she expected back?”
“Later in the afternoon.” He paused. “Here's the thing, Donovan. She had her bracelets with her — that pair of twin bracelets. You know the ones.”
The detective nodded silently.
“When it got to be nearly ten o'clock I asked her maid — Eve — if she had any possible idea where Mrs. Hymers had gone. She didn't — but she did tell me that Mrs. Hymers took the bracelets with her this afternoon. She said she was taking them to the jeweler to have one of them repaired and both of them “cleaned.” He paused again. “Maybe you'd rather talk to the maid yourself.”
“If you please,” Donovan said quietly. He was remembering the letter Renzo Hymers had received about the bracelets, signed “N.”
Eve had evidently been waiting in the next room. She appeared almost at once. There was a grimly triumphant “I told you so” look in her eyes as she told of wrapping the bracelets in tissue paper.
Tony the chauffeur was next. Donovan had seen him innumerable times before, yet always he glanced at the man curiously. He was a dark, surly fellow, more like a bodyguard than a chauffeur.
“You drove Mrs. Hymers to the department store?”
“Yes sir.”
“Did you see anything of her after that?”
“No sir.”
“Do you know anything of where she could have gone?”
The chauffeur hesitated for a moment. “Yes sir.”
Both the detective and Renzo Hymers looked up quickly. “Where?”
Tony stared at the carpet for a full minute before he answered. “I — well, I've been — what you might call— a little suspicious of Mrs. Hymers once or twice She had a way of telling me she was going shopping afternoons, almost every day. But she never seemed to buy anything. And that didn't seem entirely natural to me,”
Donovan barked, “Never mind your motives, and never mind that carefully rehearsed speech. What did you do, follow her?”
Tony looked up at him with eyes full of hate. “I took that liberty, sir.”
“Where did she go?” Renzo Hymers demanded.
“Usually to the Scarlet Swan, sir, to the tea dance. It's a kind of cafe.”
Donovan stole a look at Renzo Hymers' face. It was like polished stone.
“Go on, Tony,” the great financier said. “She met someone there, I suppose.”
“Yes, Mr. Hymers.”
Not one muscle moved in Renzo Hymers' face. “Do you know who he was?”
“Yes sir. He's a man named Leon Martelli. A professional dancing partner at the Scarlet Swan.”
Donovan went to the telephone, hunted briefly through the phonebook, and dialed the number of the Scarlet Swan.
“I'd like to speak to Leon Martelli.”
A disinterested, metallic, female voice answered him. “He isn't here.”
“Could you give me his home telephone number?”
“I'm sorry, we do not have that information.”
Donovan banged impotently on the telephone hook for a few seconds, then shoved it aside. “I guess I'd better go down to the Scarlet Swan and have a word with the manager. I know him.
There were no words spoken as Tony drove them to the Scarlet Swan. The blue-jowled manager was willing to be helpful but that was about as far as he could go. Leon Martelli? What should he know about Leon Martelli?'' The man was a good dancer and the dames liked him. Here was his address if that would do any good. Yes, his telephone number, too. ' Donovan called the number, waited an interminably long time while it was rung, and finally asked the cross-voiced woman who answered if he could speak to Mr. Martelli.
“He ain't here. He's gone away? “Are you his landlady?” he asked quickly before she could hang up the receiver and go back to bed.
“Yeah.” It was half word, half yawn.
“Do you know where he's gone?”
“Uh-uh. He came in about four this afternoon, packed a bag and left. He said he didn't know when he'd be back.”
Donovan turned away from the phone and repeated the information, adding, “he may have left town.”
The manager came to his rescue at this point. “Say, there's one person here might know something about him.” He picked up a house phone from among the carved elephants on his ornate desk. “Send Flo up here.”
“Who the hell is Flo?” Donovan asked. He was tired and cross.
“She's a girl in the show here,” the manager told him, lighting a cigar. “She's Martelli's girl-friend, or she was anyway. He treated her plenty mean and she's still burning about it. If she knows anything about “him, she'll throw it in your lap.”
It was only a few minutes before the girl appeared, still in costume. She was young, flamboyantly lovely and, thought Donovan, probably with the devil of a temper.
The manager said “Miss Stan, this is Mr. Donovan and Mr. Hymers. Mr. Donovan is a dick, but he's a friend of mine. Give them any help you can.”
“Anything they want,” the girl said. She tossed her dark-brown glistening hair off her shoulders and looked from one man to the other.
“Do you know a man named Leon Martelli?” Donovan asked quietly.
She stared at him without a flicker of emotion on her face. “Heard of him.”
“We're very anxious to find him. Anxious to get in touch with him, wherever he is.”
“I'm not surprised,” she said coldly. She turned to fix her eyes on Renzo Hymers. “Are you trying to get her back, or what?”
“I have no idea what you mean,” Renzo Hymers said.
She snorted rudely and said, “Pardon me, gents, I've got to get back to the floor show.”
Donovan caught her arm just as she reached for the door knob. “This isn't for fun, Miss Starr. This is something really serious.”
“Then why don't you call a cop?” she said lightly. She lit a cigarette, it cast a soft reflection on the sequins of her gaudy costume as she walked across the room to face the man who had come with Donovan.
“You're the husband of Dorothy Hymers, aren't you?”
Renzo Hymers said, “Yes,” and made it sound like a pebble falling on an icepack.
“No wonder you're looking for them.” She blew a cloud of cigarette smoke under his chin. “It's about time you began to tumble to what went on. You're the sucker who's been paying for all the swell presents she bought him. You've been paying the rent for that cute little place and buying those expensive pajamas and dressing gowns —”
The sound of the slap was like the snapping of fingers, and so quick that neither Donovan nor the manager of the Scarlet Swan saw the hand move. It was only a shadow of a second, but suddenly Renzo Hymers was standing just as he had before, a pillar of granite and Florence Starr was back against the farthest wall, her hand to her face. Before Donovan could make a move she was herself again.
“And I don't blame her for it, you dirty bastard.” she screamed at him, rubbing her cheek.
The manager said, “I'm sorry if —” and Renzo Hymers said, “Make her behave herself — “all in the same instant. Donovan walked slowly and calmly across the room and laid one hand on the girl's shoulder.
“It isn't one of those things, sweetheart, he said very quietly. “This is something else. We just need a little help, that's all. You wouldn't turn down a good guy, would you?”
She stood there a moment looking from one to the other, casting resentful glances across the room. “I wouldn't turn down a good guy,” she said sullenly, “and maybe you're one. What do you want me to do?”
“Do you know where Mrs. Hymers had been meeting this Martelli?
“Know?” The girl laughed harshly. “Do you think I'm blind or just crippled? No flat-haired lug like Leon is going to put anything over on me. I've followed him enough times.”
Donovan managed to avoid looking at Renzo Hymers. “I thought you probably did. Will you show me where it is?”
“For you I will,” she said. “Not for any other son of a bitch. When?”
“Right now, darling. I told you this was important.”
The girl looked at him in surprise. “You're really not letting the grass grow under your feet, are you? All right, I'll get a coat and meet you at the front entrance.”
No one said a word on the way. Once there, a series of long rings on the bell roused a sleepy and indignant landlady. Yes, she had seen that blond lady that afternoon. Miss Ford, that was what she called herself. Came in at two-forty-five. No, she didn't know what time the lady left. Didn't know one thing about it. It wasn't any of her business, and anyway she'd been asleep ever since she got back. They could all go and look at the room if they liked.
She led the way, puffing slowly up the stairs. Annoyance at having been disturbed sounded in every flap of her slippers as she went down the hall and unlocked the door.
“I'll go first,” Donovan said.
He didn't know what might be in that room, but he wanted to be there ahead of Renzo Hymers.
He paused right by the door, reached for the light and switched it on.
In the same instant a shrill scream from Florence Starr made him turn to look at her before he glanced into the room. Her face was white and contorted under its paint.
Donovan caught his breath, looked at where she was pointing and crossed the room.
After a moment he looked up at Renzo Hymers.
“I'm afraid this time we'll have to call the police. Mrs. Hymers is dead.”
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