Man Sinister

Chapter VIII

Probably it gave Wilfred a turn when I allowed him to stay in the cottage, for he’d expected a forced return to the Cranford house. I was certain, though, that he wouldn’t run further now, and I didn’t want him near Harold when I sprang the business about the doctored gun. I had a purpose for Harold. I was certain of the identity of the murderer, but the only way I could convince Hagan of my belief was to give him everything Harold also had to tell.

Harold was lingering in the lower hallway when I slipped back to the house. I guessed that he was waiting for me. I nodded. “Wilfred was in the bungalow.”

“Did you learn anything? Does Wilfred know enough to get the police off our necks so Vera and I can settle Papa Joe’s estate and get out of here?”

“Perhaps. At least he told me enough to prove to you that McGinty is still alive.”

Harold’s face tightened. “You and I both know what happened to McGinty,” he said with a rasp in his voice. “What do you want — for me to say or do something that will guarantee you’ll never be implicated?”

“We’ll both know in a minute what happened to McGinty,” I corrected. “Do you know you went to the bungalow with an unloaded gun?”

“Steve, you are crazy! I checked the gun.”

“Naturally. You broke the cylinder of the revolver and there were the rims of five unfired bullets. You also heard the crashing of the gun in the bungalow. But Wilfred had already taken the teeth out of the bullets with a pair of pliers. Here is one of them. The rest he carried away.” I held the slug up before his face between my thumb and forefinger.

He stared at the bullet. Then he took a deep breath to recapture his bravado. “What are you trying to make me admit with this cock and bull story?”

“Only the truth. For Hagan’s ears.”

“Good night, Steve.”

My voice stopped him at the bottom of the stairs. “This thing is real, whether you want to believe it or not. McGinty will come again. Or he’ll phone. He’ll let you know that he’s still alive, more determined than ever to nail you. A man who followed you all the way from New York won’t give up easily. When he comes or calls, I’ll be waiting, Harold. I’ll do what I can to help you, in exchange for the truth.”

His gaze stayed fastened to my face a moment longer, then he turned and mounted the stairs.

I went into the parlor. McGinty, I was certain, would not be long in bringing my prediction to pass. He had given Harold time to consider himself safe. Now was the psychological moment to strike.

I picked up a book, settled myself in an armchair under a lamp, and opened the yellow pages. I had read a dozen paragraphs before it occurred to me that I had not bothered to take a look at the title.

The phone rang at ten forty-five. I allowed it to scream three times before I picked up the receiver.

A heavy voice asked, “Cranford?” I heard a click as the extension in the upper hallway was raised from the hook.

The voice repeated, “Cranford?” And on the extension Harold asked, “What is it?”

I replaced the receiver and began to count the minutes. When five of them had passed, Harold and Vera came downstairs.

He was a picture of abject defeat, of utter misery, of nerves too long stretched beyond the snapping point.

He stood before me, his face a pale thing of hollow shadows. Vera stood beside him, not once taking her eyes from his face.

“McGinty phoned,” he said.

“I know.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked dully.

“I want to know everything there is to know.”

“All right.” He looked around, as if searching for a place to sit down.

“And I want Hagan to know it later,” I said.

The effort to bring his ego into the battle revealed itself on his face. The effort failed, and he said in a limp voice, “It’s the only way out. I can’t go on with things as they’ve turned out to be. You’ll guarantee your help?”

“All I’m able to give. Now for a few details. First, the girl. The one you painted after she tried to commit suicide off a dock one night.”

“McGinty rescued her,” he said.

“That much I know. He brought her into the café where you were eating and you saw the girl. Was it for the first time?”

“Yes,” he said, speaking like a robot. “I asked her to come to my studio, and gave her the address. I didn’t really expect her to do it, but she came. I started the portrait. I suppose she felt she was entering a brand new world. We — kidded around—”

He glanced at Vera, and a slow flush spread over his pallor. He looked at her, at her lovely blonde beauty, the swelling curves of her beautiful young breasts as emotion quickened her breathing, he looked at her slender waist and the smoothly turned thighs under her clinging frock — and he didn’t know what to say, what he could say. Here was beauty and purity, the woman he wanted always to hold in his arms as he must now be remembering to have held her — how could he go on with a sordid story?

Suddenly he blurted, “Must we go into that, Steve? You’re a man — you know how it is, h-how things can happen. I... I—” My silence was his answer, for he drew a long, hard breath and said, “Well, after that I introduced her to some of the people I knew. She was taken with the idea of being a model, and annoyed two or three artists who gave her an opening. All of them knew — they told me — that she was a wild little thing. Completely primitive, she was, but... but she could grip a man. Sex was her whole existence.”

He stopped, his eyes alive with memories. He deliberately avoided looking at Vera now, though I had a feeling from a glance at her face that all this was no new story to her, though there might be something new in the telling.

“And where does McGinty re-enter?” I prompted.

“He fell in love with the girl. Probably it started for him when he found her there on the dock. He worshiped her. He married her.”

“Is that so bad?”

“She was going to have a baby. My baby.”

In the silence that crimped on the room only Harold’s breathing was audible. I managed words after several seconds.

“And then?”

“She must have told McGinty about us — her and me, I mean. She hated me wildly after she had to tell him. She threatened all sorts of crazy things. Her last phone call was a demand that I see her. I went to the apartment where she and McGinty lived. She had worked herself into a half crazed state. I was there alone with her when she jumped — from a tenth story window.”

His voice choked him. After a moment, he was able to go on.

“I’d been careful not to be seen entering the apartment, walking up all ten flights. I was even more careful when I left. McGinty found a cigarette stub in the apartment. She didn’t smoke, and he smoked cigars. His suspicions fastened on me immediately. When he found out the brand of cigarettes I smoked, he was certain I’d been in the apartment. Of course, he took it to the police and they dragged me in. But the cigarette is a common brand and they had no proof that I’d been near the place. McGinty was different. He decided to force it from me — a confession of murder.”

He brought his haggard gaze up. “Steve, I swear it was suicide, but you see the spot I was in? I thought McGinty would cool off. He showed no disposition to do so, making my life hell with phone calls, following me on the streets. If I pulled the police back into it there was too strong a possibility of their discovering I had been in the apartment. Perhaps some pair of unknown eyes had seen me and would remember if circumstances were arranged just the right way. Perhaps they would call it murder. I thought I had shaken loose of McGinty when we drove down from New York, but he was following, and must have been only an hour or so behind us.”

For an instant fire gleamed again in his eyes. “You see what this has cost me? My work, my peace of mind, everything!”

That blow hit Vera the hardest. It hadn’t cost him entirely everything until this moment when he had voiced the thought, reducing her love to nothing.

He said, “I was no more to blame than the girl from the wharf was. And I was wholly blameless for her death. She was destined for suicide. It was a part of the very fibers of her mind. She had tried it once, hadn’t she?” A long silence followed his words. Then he said, “What will you do now to help?”

“I’ll help you face it. It’s the only way you’ll ever get free of McGinty. Papa Joe’s death was a mistake. The poison was intended for me — to insure my silence. Papa Joe killed himself.”

Harold burst out, “He’d never commit suicide?”

“I didn’t say that. He murdered himself. You and Papa Joe believed that you’d murdered a man in the bungalow last night. You two believed that I was the lone witness who would speak, who did in fact state flatly that he would speak. You believed that I relented and removed McGinty for you. That left only Papa Joe to regard me as highly dangerous, desperately dangerous. He was fighting, remember, for his own flesh and blood, his only son, against a man he considered unspeakably inferior, an outsider.

“I can picture the working of his mind. He would meet me when I returned to the house, sound me out. If there was no chance at all that I’d keep my mouth shut, then he’d appear beaten and pour us a drink, in which he’d already dumped his sleeping capsules. Only he wouldn’t drink his and later he’d force enough whisky down my gullet and over my clothes to make it seem that my efforts to turn alcoholic had succeeded only too wall.

“McGinty would be spirited away, I would be found dead in my bed, and the doctor of Papa Joe’s choice would have little reason to doubt Papa Joe’s words as to my recent activities with a bottle. A death certificate would be quickly signed that would end it. But a drink from the wrong bottle spoiled it for Papa Joe. When Hagan has all the facts, he will have little trouble checking up to discover the truth of what I am saying. In the light of this knowledge, that weak motive he thinks I might have had for harming Papa Joe will go pale. Hagan will have method and means, the instrument of police science at his beckoning. For instance, there may be fingerprints on the Old Seaman bottle, or little signs in Papa Joe’s room, little signs all around for Hagan to read when he knows what to look for. Be that as it may, it’s a chance we’ll have to take, all of us.”

Vera turned and started from the room. Harold pushed himself up out of his chair with her name on his lips. She stopped at the doorway, and he caught her hand. She looked at him. Yes, she was sure of her man — but not for the reasons she had believed.

He had lost her. She might stay with him; she might even grow old with him; but Harold had lost his beautiful Vera forever. As she moved again, the soft curves of her breast were as full and promising as ever, but their promise was no longer for Harold.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he pleaded.

She stepped aside to allow him to walk ahead of her.

She glanced back at me.

“You never know what tomorrow holds,” I said. “I thought it was all over for me once, too.”

She said nothing, but turned to follow Harold. I picked up the phone. There were two calls I had to make. The call to Hagan could wait a few minutes. First things first.

I dialed, and the room clerk at the Lang Park Hotel came on the wire.

“We do not have a Mrs. Bryanne Martin registered,” he told me. “The only Martins registered are a Mr. and Mrs. Steven Martin.”

“Mrs. Steven Martin will do nicely,” I said. “This is her husband calling.”

While I waited for them to call her room, I thought, Mr. and Mrs. She registered for both of us.