Beagle Scented Murder

9

On Hollywood Boulevard Peel stopped for a moment, undetermined as to whether to go to his hotel on Ivar and have a short nap, or go and call on Wilma Huston at her place of employment. Duty finally won and he cut down Las Palmas to Sunset where he stepped aboard a bus. The man who had followed him from the Lehigh Apartments had to run to catch the same bus.

After the bus passed La Cienga, Peel watched the buildings as they whizzed by; almost every one bore the signs of Hollywood agents. The signs were big; their owners intended them to be seen.

The Horatio Oliver Agency sign sprawled across a two-story building in the last block of the Strip, just before Sunset Boulevard turned into Beverly Hills.

Peel swung off the bus at the next stop and walked back. He entered the Oliver Building and climbed the stairs to the second floor, entering a modernistically-furnished reception room. A switchboard was behind a glass partition.

Wilma Huston was at the switchboard.

A frightened look came to her face as she recognized Peel.

“Hello,” he said quietly.

“I told you I’d get in touch with you.”

“I know,” Peel replied, “but I thought you’d be glad to know that that little job’s taken care of already. Jolliffe won’t bother you any more…”

She stared at him in amazement. “But he… he’s dead.”

“That’s why he won’t bother you any more.”

“I… I saw it in the paper after I called at your office.” A shudder ran through her body. “It’s horrible.”

“Ain’t it?”

The switchboard whirred and Wilma plugged a connection.

“Horatio Oliver Agency,” she said into a mouthpiece. “Just a moment, please.” She made another connection and spoke again. “Dorothy Lamour calling you, Mr. Oliver…”

“No kidding!” said Joe Peel.

Wilma put down the telephone mouthpiece. The interruption had steadied her. “I’m sorry, Mr. Peel, I can’t talk to you here…”

“It’s almost lunch time,” Peel suggested. “How about then?”

“I don’t go until one…”

“Good,” said Peel, “I’ll meet you downstairs at one…” As Wilma frowned “There’s some things I’ve got to tell you… about Jolliffe…”

She nodded. “All right”

It was twenty minutes to twelve by the clock in the reception room. Peel made a note of it and left the agency offices.

Standing in front of the building he saw the sign, across the street, of Ole’s Swedish Baths and was reminded of the aching muscles in his body, mememtoes of last night’s outing on Mulholland Drive. He crossed the street and descended a flight of stairs into the baths.

An attendant led him to a booth containing a cot and some coat hangers. He gave Peel a towel and a pair of crepe-paper slippers.

Peel stripped and, completely nude, carried the towel with him into the hot-air chamber, a narrow room containing three tiers of unpainted wooden benches. The temperature in the room, according to a thermometer on the wall, read 182.

Being midday Peel was the only occupant of the room, but after he had been seated in the chamber for a few moments another man came in. He was tanned, well-muscled man of about thirty and he brought with him a copy of Adventure Magazine. He climbed on the top tier and seated himself.

Peel, seated on the lowest bench, shook his head. The higher you got the hotter it was in the chamber and he could scarcely breath down where he was. The man above was apparently a Swedish bath ‘regular.’

Five minutes in the room and Peel could stand it no longer. He got up, opened the door and stepped into the shower room. He drew great lungfuls of the comparatively cooler air.

A short, amazingly well-built attendant in white duck trousers and singlet, came into the room.

“You’re hardly wet,” he commented.

“I think I’ve got enough,” said Peel.

“Take five minutes more,” the attendant urged.

Peel went back into the hot-air room. The man on the top was reading placidly. Peel gave him a sharp look, started to seat himself on the lowest tier, then looked up at the other man again.

“Don’t I know you?” Peel asked.

The man looked down at Peel. “I get around; maybe.” He went back to his reading.

Peel sat down and leaped up instantly. The bare plank was so hot that it had scorched him. He paced up and down on the tiled floor as the perspiration poured from his body.

Then he could stand it no longer and burst from the room. In the shower room the muscular attendant looked condescendingly at him.

“That ain’t hardly enough; whyn’t you go into the steam room for ten minutes?” He nodded toward a heavy wooden door which had a glass panel in the top of it, but was so clouded from steam inside the room that it might just as well not have been there.

Muttering under his breath, Peel headed for the steam room.

“Ten minutes in there, a nice shower and then I’ll give you a good rubdown,” the attendant said, cheerfully.

Peel pulled open the steam room door and stepped into steam so thick he couldn’t see two inches in front of his eyes. He reached out with his hand.

“Anybody in here?”

There was no reply and Peel concluded that he was the sole occupant. He inhaled steam, choked and cleared his throat and inhaled more lungfuls of steam. Ahead was dim light and he groped toward it.

His fingers touched hot wet tile and he stopped.

Behind him the steam room door opened, banged shut. Peel turned.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” said another voice.

Then suddenly Peel remembered where he had seen the man in the hot-air chamber. He was the man who had come out of Wilbur Jolliffe’s office the day before, the furtive man with his coat collar turned up.

And just as he remembered that, a fist swished through the thick steam and almost drove Peel’s Adam’s apple through his spinal cord. Peel went back against the tile wall, bounced off it and into a fist that bent him double.

Gasping in anguish, Peel’s arm flailed out and encountered hot, wet flesh. He clawed for it, secured a slippery arm and endeavored to wrap his other arm about a torso.

A powerful arm circled his head, pulled Peel to the other man’s body.

“Teach you to mind your own business,” a voice gritted in Peel’s ear. It was followed by a fist in Peel’s face.

“Lemme go,” Peel choked.

“Get out of town,” exclaimed the other man. “Get out of town and stay out, if you know what’s good for you.”

Peel tried to wrestle with the other man, but could obtain no grip on the slippery body. He dropped to one knee and a hard fist smashed down on the back of his neck. Peel’s chin hit the floor.

And that was all that he knew until the masseur-attendant dragged him out of the steam room and under a cold shower. Peel revived with a gasp.

“Can’t take it, eh?” said the masseur.

“Where’s the fellow who hit me?” Peel demanded.

The Masseur held him steady under the shower. “What fellow? You passed out in the steam room.”

“I passed out because somebody smacked me,” Peel retorted.

The masseur looked closely at Peel. “You got a kinda bruise on your chin, but that musta been where you fell…”

“What about this eye?” Peel snarled, touching his right optic.

The masseur exclaimed. “Say… that is somethin’!”

“I got that by falling, too,” Peel snapped. He stepped out from under the shower and strode into the dressing rooms. The Masseur followed.

“If you mean the other guy, he just left. He didn’t want no massage…”

“He gave me one,” said Peel. He glowered at the attendant. “D’you know him? He looked like a regular…”

“He’s been in once or twice, but I never got to know his name. He paid cash…” He threw a rough bath towel over Peel and began to rub him dry.

“He followed me here,” said Peel. “I remember now seein’ him on the bus…”

The masseur looked suspiciously at Peel. “What’d he wanna follow you for?”

“Because he didn’t like me.”

The masseur fanned Peel with the towel. “How about the rubdown, now? You need it, after what happened to you…”

Peel was quite willing to agree. What he had just suffered after the night before was enough to make any man want a rubdown. He went into a booth and climbed up on the rubbing table. The masseur poured olive oil on his hands and began to knead the muscles of Peel’s arms.

“You’re in pretty bad shape,” he observed. “I don’t mean on accounta what just happened, but in general. You oughta come here for a few weeks and I’ll get you in condition.”

“I’m in good enough condition,” Peel said crossly.

“Yeah? That guy who banged you up wasn’t so big. I coulda tied him in knots myself. Look…” he flexed his biceps. They were very nice to look at, but Joe Peel wasn’t in the mood.

“He took me by surprise,” he said.

“Nobody could surprise me,” the masseur said. “Why, I was reading a story in Adventure Magazine where this sailor went into a dive in Panama and four natives jumped him. The sailor picked up the first guy and used him as a club to knock out the other three…”

“That was in a story.”

“Yeah, but I could do the same thing. I had a little scrap myself down on Olvera Street a coupla months ago. A big Mex pulls a knife on me and I take it away from him and knock out four of his teeth and I hardly hit him at all.”

“Pretty strong, are you?”

The masseur began to work on Peel’s stomach. “Oh I do all right,” he said modestly. “I don’t smoke or drink and I take a swim in the ocean every mornin’ of the year — even in winter. And this work keeps me in trim. By the way, what’s your line?”

“I’m a detective!”

The masseur stopped kneading. “A detective! Well, whaddya know? I wouldn’t a guessed it. I always thought I’d like to be a dick myself. I was readin’ a piece in Clever Crimes Cases only last week where it says there’s a lot more murders committed in this country than people realize. Some of the suicides, this piece says, ain’t suicides at all — they’re clever murders, but the cops don’t know it. There was a case in the paper this morning — a suicide the cops say, but it looked to me like murder…”

“What case was that?”

“Some guy right over here in Beverly Hills. I forget his name, Wilmer Jolley or something like that.”

“Jolliffe.”

“Yeah, that’s it — Wilmer Jolliffe. According to the paper the guy knocked himself off, blaming Otis Beagle for some trouble he was supposed to be in. I remember the case on account of Beagle. He’s a client of mine…”

“Oh, is he?” asked Peel, suddenly interested. “What sort of a fellow is he?”

“A big shot. He ain’t been in lately, but he useta come in every week, sometimes two-three times and he never tipped less’n two bucks. Knows everybody. Solved some of the best cases in this town. He’s told me about a lot of them. Remember the Onthank Affair last year? He broke that.”

Peel remembered the case only too well. He had never worked harder on anything in his life. Beagle hadn’t lifted a finger toward helping him.

“I’m glad to hear that about Beagle,” he said to the masseur. “Then I guess he hasn’t got anything to worry about in this Jolliffe affair.”

“Not a thing. Somebody’s trying to do him dirt, but you watch, in a day or two, maybe four-five days, Beagle’s gonna prove that Jolliffe didn’t commit suicide at all. It was murder and he’ll have the guy that done it in the clink.”

“You may be right. What’s your theory about it?”

“A dame,” said the masseur promptly. “This Jolliffe was married to an old dame with dough. He was doing a little chasing on the side and he probably told the dame he’d divorce his wife and marry her. But he couldn’t divorce the old lady on account of she had the money. The dame finds this out and she knows she ain’t gonna get any big pile of dough. So what does she do? She goes up to Wilmer’s house at night and they have a big row and she plugs Wilmer, see…”

“The she writes the suicide note?”

“Yeah, sure…”

“And all this while she’s having a fight with Wilmer, shooting him and writing on the typewriter. Wilbur’s wife is quietly sleeping…”

“Naw, naw, she’s in on it. Don’t you see — she knows Wilbur’s a two-timing no-good. If the other dame’ll knock him off, that’s fine, but the old lady’s society, see — she don’t want the stuff spread all over the papers. A suicide, y’understand, don’t get the notice that a murder does and in a day or two people forget it. But no murder.”

“I see,” said Peel, “but if this, uh, dame wrote the suicide note after knocking off Wilbur, how come she mentioned Otis Beagle in it? How come she even knew Beagle?”

“I ain’t figured out that angle yet.”

“Neither have I,” said Peel.

“Huh? You interested in the case yourself?”

“Kinda. On account of I happen to be Otis Beagle’s partner.”

“Huh?”

“Peel’s the name — Joe Peel. And the next time Beagle comes in here, tell him he’s a big stuffed shirt and it’s Peel who solves the cases and not Beagle. Tell him that from me, will you?”

“Quit your kiddin’!”

“I’m not kidding. That Onthank Case you mentioned — it was me solved it, not Beagle.”

“That ain’t the way I heard it. I know Beagle; he’s class with a capital K. He never tips, less’n two bucks.” The masseur dug his fingers into Peel’s stomach, causing him to emit a sudden groan. “Now, turn over.”

Peel turned over onto his stomach and the masseur gave his spinal cord a savage massaging. In this position Peel could not defend himself and the masseur spent ten minutes extolling the virtues of Otis Beagle. Finally he slapped Peel’s shoulder and exclaimed, “There you are!”

Peel went into the main room and saw the clock on the wall. He gasped. “Hey — it’s ten after one. I had a lunch date at one o’clock.”

“You didn’t tell me,” said the masseur.

Peel jumped into his clothes and whipped out some money. “How much?”

“Four bucks.”

Peel handed the masseur a five dollar bill and waited. The masseur scowled. “I’ll see if I got some change.” He went into the other room, finally came back with a half, a quarter and a quarter’s worth of small change. He dumped it into Peel’s hands. Peel handed him back a quarter.

“What’s that for?” exclaimed the massuer.

“A tip.”

The massuer looked Peel squarely in the eye. “Give Mr. Beagle my best regards.”

“I’ll do that.” Peel turned for the door. Behind him the masseur took the quarter and hurled it to the floor.

It was twenty minutes after one when Peel reached the Horatio Oliver building. As he had expected, Wilma Huston was not there. She wasn’t the type who would wait twenty minutes for a man… especially a man she did not want to see.