Murder Up My Sleeve

10

The mournful blasts of fog signals booming from the misty darkness of the Bay were as eerie as the sound of hooting owls in midnight woods.

Terry Clane turned up the collar of his overcoat, and gazed upward at the wall of the apartment house, its grim darkness broken at intervals by the orange oblongs of lighted windows. In the pauses between fog signals, he could hear the steady drip-drip of fog-bred moisture from the eaves.

It was a night of no wind. The white fog seemed to generate as spontaneously as foam on freshly drawn beer.

Terry stepped into the dark doorway. The outer door was unlocked. He pushed it open and entered the lower corridor. He noticed a ribbon of light showing from under a door marked Manager. He tiptoed past this door and climbed the stairs.

After the misty freshness of the outer night, the odors of stale cooking assailed his nostrils with increased potency. To his ears, attuned by the spice of danger to the faintest of sounds, came the various night noises of human tenancy. From an apartment on his left sounded the shrill cachinnation of a young woman who had been drinking. A man was snoring loudly in the apartment on his right. Terry climbed the second flight of stairs. A man and a woman were quarreling in one of the front apartments. He heard the faint creak of springs as a restless sleeper stirred uneasily. The doors and partitions, he realized, were hardly thicker than paper.

Terry walked swiftly down the upper corridor, using the beam of his flashlight to guide him. Juanita Mandra’s apartment was dark. No light seeped from beneath its door. Terry didn’t knock. The skeleton keys, tribute to the ingenuity of Yat T’oy upon an occasion when Terry, suddenly called from Hong Kong, had neglected to leave his servant the keys to his rather extensive domicile, made swift sesame of the door.

Clane had learned in the Orient that the secret of nocturnal silence lies in the exercise of infinite patience. Keying his senses to react to the faintest sound of stirring life from the interior of the apartment, he slowly twisted the knob of the door, and spent some fifteen seconds in the tedious process of discounting a squeaking hinge.

A bedroom opened to the left. He could see it but indistinctly. He used his flashlight now only to point straight down at the carpet, and kept the bulb shielded by his cupped hands.

Crouching forward so that the distance between the flashlight and the floor would be as short as possible, he moved upon noiseless feet towards the table in the corner.

The portrait of Jacob Mandra was just as he had seen it earlier in the day. Despite his shielded flashlight, there was enough light to show him the sombre canvas with the cynical, silver-green eyes of the dead man apparently watching him in sardonic appraisal.

Terry realized he must either move the table or reach across it and raise the portrait far enough to clear the littered ornaments on the table top, where a cloisonné vase hobnobbed with an ornamental tree composed of cemented seashells.

He doubted that Juanita would have retired, yet his every motion must necessarily be predicated upon the assumption that the bedroom contained her sleeping form. He heard an automobile grind slowly up the steep street, to come to a pulsing stop in front of the apartment house.

Terry leaned across the cluttered table, grasped the portrait of Mandra firmly at the top, and with infinite care raised it until it cleared the last clutching arm of the seashell tree. His flashlight, reposing on the table top, gave a faint illumination sufficient to show him the obstacles which he must avoid.

Holding the portrait in both hands, he stepped back from the table and slowly lowered it until its lower edge rested on the floor. A few seconds later he became conscious of pounding feet in the passage. He grabbed frantically at the flashlight, switched it off and stood motionless.

The steps came nearer, two men, walking down the corridor.

Terry looked about for some means of escape and could find none. The steps approached the door, ceased. Heavy knuckles sent a loud knock reverberating through the room.

Terry, nerves tense, listened for the sound of creaking bed springs. The heavy knock was repeated and then the voice of Inspector Malloy said, “Open up, this is the law.”

Terry’s straining ears heard no sound from the bedroom. He stood motionless, hardly daring to breathe, awaiting the next move which would tell him whether Inspector Malloy had followed him to the apartment or was merely searching for Juanita.

He heard Inspector Malloy’s voice say, in a rumbling monotone, “Okay, Dave. She isn’t here. We’ll park the car across the street and wait. You’re certain you can spot her?”

A higher pitched voice said, “Of course I can spot her. I’ve seen her fifty times. She’s dark, a swell figure, not over twenty-four or twenty-five...”

“And she’s the one you saw with Mandra?” Inspector Malloy interrupted.

“Sure she is.”

“Okay, we’ll wait until she shows. I want to get in here before she has a chance to change her things around any. We wait where we can spot her the minute she turns into the street. Then brace her, tell her we’re the law, and that we want the low-down. We start talking on the street and rush her up the stairs and into this place. Get it?”

“Sure, I get it. But we’ll have to work fast to surprise anything out of her...”

The men turned away from the door, started towards the stairs.

Terry, standing in the dark apartment, took stock of the situation. Inspector Malloy and some other man were going to be waiting where they could see everyone who entered or left the apartment house. If Terry tried to leave before Juanita arrived, Malloy would promptly collar him. If he waited for Juanita, he would be discovered in her apartment. If he took Mandra’s portrait with him, Malloy would confiscate it and demand an explanation. If he left it where it was, Malloy would find it when he came in with Juanita.

Terry waited until the steps had receded in the distance. Propping the portrait against the side of the wall, he tiptoed cautiously into the bedroom. He sent the beam of his flashlight about in a questing circle, then stepped to the bedroom window, opened it, and leaned out.

What he saw was not reassuring. Enough illumination was diffused by the thick fog to show a sheer drop stretching down farther than Terry dared to jump. The side of the building was unrelieved by fire-escape, porch, or staircase, and, moreover, Terry realized that it had no back yard and no back entrance. Stepping into the living-room, he confirmed his first impressions by peering down from those windows.

He was trapped.

Standing in front of the portrait, the attempted theft of which threatened to prove so disastrous, Terry tried to find some way out of his predicament.

He could hear the blast of fog signals, the muffled clang of a gong marking the location of a ferry pier, the noise made by distant traffic, the dripping of fog from the eaves. His racing mind took note of the smell of stale tobacco in the apartment, and, more than all, sensed the mocking stare of the painted eyes of the dead bail-bond broker.

Terry sought to exclude these things from his mind. In China he had been taught that thought has the speed of light, that it requires complete concentration for less than a second to grasp any problem of environment with which the mind can be confronted. He remembered the mental exercises of the cowled monks who were accustomed to sit on sharp stones by a roaring waterfall to practice the exclusion of marginal thoughts.

Yet here was something which was no abstract problem, but a predicament from which there seemed no way out, a predicament which involved not only Terry, but Cynthia. Staring into the mocking eyes of the portrait, Terry concentrated.

Abruptly he pocketed his flashlight, twisted the spring lock on the door, stepped out into the corridor, and gently pulled the door shut behind him. He walked boldly down the two flights of stairs, pulled his hat down low on his forehead and knocked on the door marked Manager. A moment later the door opened to disclose a man in slippers and shirt sleeves, who breathed garlic into the corridor and surveyed Clane with glittering, hostile eyes.

“I’m looking for a room,” Clane said, “either a single or a double.”

“A helluva time to look for rooms,” the man said, but continued to hold the door open.

“I’m sorry. I’m working, and the only time I have is during the evening. I didn’t realize it was so late...”

A woman’s voice said: “Tony, get away from that door.” And the shirt-sleeved figure was jerked out of sight as though it had been a puppet in a Punch-and-Judy show.

While Terry was still marveling at the silent celerity with which the belligerent figure had been whisked into oblivion, its place at the door was taken by a thin woman, whose hatchet face, dark, swarthy skin, long, bony nose, and alert black eyes seemed appropriately framed in the six-inch opening.

“Hello,” she said, “what’s your name and what do you want?”

“I want an apartment.”

“I’ve got two vacant.”

“Something on the top floor?” Terry ventured.

“Top floor back, on the right, a big single, twenty-five dollars. That includes light and water. You pay for the gas.”

“I’d like to look at it,” he told her.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a salesman, on a commission basis.”

“One month’s rent in advance.”

“That’ll be all right,” he agreed, “if I like the apartment.”

Without a word she turned away from the door. Terry heard the jangle of keys. A moment later she walked out into the corridor, a tall, bony woman, who took long, flat-footed strides towards the stairs.

Beneath the billowy folds of her skirt, her feet took the treads two at a time. Terry was hard put to it to keep up with her. As she reached the upper corridor, she strode down towards Juanita Mandra’s apartment, paused at the adjoining apartment, unlocked and flung open the door, and switched on lights.

Terry saw a gloomy, single apartment, the decorations a monotone of drab cheerlessness. A musty smell clung to the place, but the room was scrupulously clean.

Terry gathered that the apartment was thoroughly cleaned only during the periods when it was unoccupied.

He voiced his thought: “Like a freshly bathed kid who’s putting in an uncomfortable Sunday waiting for Monday to come so he can get dirty.”

The glittering eyes looked at him searchingly.

“You may be a salesman,” she said, “but you talk like an apartment manager.”

He smiled, shook his head, and, lest he should seem too eager, peered about in the closets and in the little kitchenette, making a critical survey; at the end of which he produced five five-dollar bills. “The name is Sam Pelton,” he said.

She scribbled a receipt. “When do you want to move in?” she asked.

“Right now.”

“Baggage?”

“It’ll come later.”

She nodded, handed him the key and said, “Good night.” She pulled the door shut behind her and Terry stood, listened to the business-like plunk-kerplunk-kerplunk of her flat feet as she pounded down the corridor.

Switching out the lights in his apartment, he opened the door and stood listening, until he heard the muffled bang of a door on the lower floor.

Terry slipped across the few feet of hallway which separated him from the door of Juanita’s apartment and once more his skeleton key clicked back the spring lock. Within less than ten seconds, he had picked up the portrait, tiptoed out of Juanita’s apartment and gently closed the door behind him. He walked into the apartment he had just rented and switched on the lights.

Terry removed the drawing-pins and pulled the canvas from the wooden frame which had supported it. He pulled an edge of carpet loose and inserted the canvas between floor and carpet. Then, replacing the carpet, he placed a chair directly over the spot which concealed the portrait. He broke the wooden backing into several pieces, moistened his handkerchief, scrubbed the pieces carefully, so as to remove any fingerprints, and stacked them on the shelf of the closet, picking the darkest corner he could find.

He was consuming his second cigarette when once more he heard steps in the corridor and this time he detected the rich, throaty tones of Juanita Mandra.

“...a liar. I’m the one that left at two o’clock with that painting. I can prove it. Why did I take it? I took it because that woman had hypnotized my husband. He was going to divorce me... How do I know whether she was serious or just playing around? All I know is he... fascinated by her... didn’t give a damn whether he did a little stepping...”

As they huddled together before the door and Juanita apparently bent over to insert her key in the lock, Terry missed some of the conversation. A moment later he heard the slam of the door.

Terry dragged a chair to the door, stood on it and listened through the open transom. From time to time he could hear bits of conversation, mostly exclamations from Juanita. Inspector Malloy’s voice was, for the most part, merely a suave rumble.

“No, I don’t know any Chinese girl!” Juanita half screamed. “What the hell do I care what she said?”

There followed the rumble of Inspector Malloy’s voice, then Juanita Mandra again, “You can’t pin that on me! I tell you I had the portrait. It’s been stolen!”

Apparently they moved into the bedroom. Their voices all became a mere murmur, punctuated from time to time by an occasional isolated word which meant nothing to Terry. After some ten minutes of fruitless eavesdropping, he heard the door of Juanita’s apartment open and Inspector Malloy’s voice sounded as distinctly audible as though he had been at Terry’s elbow. “Now don’t get all excited. We’re just checking up, that’s all. You see we’d heard about this Chinese girl who said she was a friend of Juanita’s, and naturally we got to wondering who Juanita was. It’s funny you haven’t any idea who that girl could have been, but, if you haven’t, that’s all there is to it. It’s too bad about that portrait. I’m going to tell the D. A. about that. But if it was stolen, why wasn’t something else taken?”

Juanita said defiantly, “I tell you the truth and you don’t believe me. Come, we will go see the manager. She saw the portrait in my apartment. She can tell you that it was here as late as seven o’clock, when I went out. Why do you bother me? Arrest the woman who painted the portrait! I tell you she killed him!”

The door of Juanita’s apartment banged shut, and Terry heard the trio pass directly beneath the open transom, heard them on the stairs, and, a few seconds later, the sound of excited conversation from the lower floor.

Because of her friendship for Sou Ha, Juanita was protecting the Chinese girl. And, in extending that protection, she had automatically thrown the cloak of her silence over Terry’s visit earlier in the evening. To have referred to Terry as a witness who had seen the portrait, would have been to involve Sou Ha. Despite her desire to enmesh Cynthia Renton in the toils of the law, Juanita was protecting her Chinese friend at all costs.

Terry waited until the sounds of conversation on the lower floor had subsided. He had fully expected that Inspector Malloy would take Juanita with him to headquarters for questioning. This would leave the coast clear for Terry’s escape.

He was surprised, therefore, to hear Juanita’s step on the stairs, and Inspector Malloy’s booming voice, “It’s too bad about that picture. I know how you must feel about it. And I’m all upset, finding that you’re Mandra’s widow. I wouldn’t have bothered you at a time like this for anything. I’ll be running along now, and we’ll try to get that portrait for you. You just leave everything in my hands. You’ll hear from me again.”

Juanita said nothing. She was, Terry reflected, hardly the type to be impressed by Malloy’s genial sympathy, a sympathy which always seemed directed towards some very definite goal.

Terry stood by the door, listening to the quick tread of Juanita’s feet in the corridor, the sound of her key in the lock. Slowly, he climbed down from the chair on which he had been standing. Inspector Malloy had traced Juanita, had learned of the portrait which she had left in her apartment. He had taken steps to check up on that portrait, and then had gone away!

Why?

Was he setting some trap for Juanita? Had he, perhaps, something else in mind, something more important than the checking of Juanita’s story? In that case, Malloy’s sudden departure would have to do with Cynthia Renton or with Terry Clane, and in either event it boded no good. Juanita had admitted her relationship with Mandra, had admitted that she was the woman who had been seen coming down the stairs at two o’clock in the morning, carrying the portrait of the dead bail-bond broker. She had insisted that portrait had been in her possession as late as seven o’clock; and, more to the point, she had produced evidence tending to prove it.

This made her a most important witness. It also brought her into the case as a logical suspect. If she had had that portrait at seven o’clock, as she claimed, then Cynthia’s alibi must be founded upon a forged portrait. If she hadn’t had the portrait, her admission that she had been at Mandra’s apartment at two o’clock in the morning would make her one of the last persons to have seen Mandra alive. In either event, the logical thing would have been for Malloy to have taken her to headquarters for questioning. Yet he had contented himself with apologizing for intruding upon her grief, had expressed his sympathies for the loss of the portrait — and had gone away.

Malloy’s action was, on the face of it, so completely inconsistent with the man’s character that Terry feared a trap, and, until he knew more of that trap, he was afraid to leave the apartment house.

He smoked several cigarettes, sitting tense, excitedly expectant, waiting for some event of major importance to take place, yet not having the slightest idea what that event would be.

He prowled around his own apartment, trying to find some better means of disposing of the portrait and the broken bits of wood. He could find none. To have tried to burn either the canvas or the wood would have been to fill the apartment house with smoke. To have pitched bits of wood out of the window might or might not have been a good move. He could only tell with the coming of daylight. Yet long before daylight he must find some way of leaving.

Standing in the closet where he had concealed the bits of wood, he became conscious of the sounds of motion. Puzzled, apprehensive, he opened the closet door and made a cautious appraisal of his apartment. It seemed to be just as he had left it, and he could no longer hear the sounds of motion. He returned to the closet, and this time was able to locate the source of the sounds. Juanita was moving about in her apartment, and the back wall of Terry’s closet was as a sounding board, transmitting noises from the adjoining apartment. Evidently it backed up to a closet in Juanita’s apartment, and either the door of that closet was open, or else she was moving about in the closet itself.

Terry was wishing he had discovered this listening post during Inspector Malloy’s visit, when he heard the sound of quick, pounding steps in the corridor. That would be Inspector Malloy coming back. Was he, perhaps, coming to Terry’s apartment? Terry listened in an agony of suspense. The steps passed his door, knuckles rapped on Juanita’s door.

Terry heard the door open, heard Juanita Mandra say, “What is it?” and then heard the close-clipped accents of Doctor Sedler’s voice saying, “You’re the widow of Jacob Mandra?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“My name’s Grigsby. I was a business associate of your husband. We had some joint investments that I wanted to discuss with you.”

“I don’t want to talk about money.”

“This is important.”

“No. I do no talking. Not now.”

“You don’t want some other woman to take what is rightfully yours, do you?” Dr. Sedler asked.

That question proved the key to the situation. Juanita said, “Come in.”

Terry heard the sound of the door closing, and returned at once to the vantage point of his closet. He found that he could hear the conversation almost as easily as though he had been in the room with the speakers.

“Jake and I were partners,” Dr. Sedler was explaining. “His unfortunate death has left matters in confusion. I can understand your grief. I, too, cared for Jake. He was a strong character, peculiar, but likeable, once you got to know him. He had many good points...”

“Your business?” Juanita interrupted.

“We had an interest in an automobile insurance company. Not in the insurance itself, but in settling accidental losses which were incurred. It’s too complicated for me to explain the details. But there were several cases pending at the time of Jake’s death. There’s a chance to make some adjustments which will bring money into the estate. But, before I can make those adjustments, I’ll have to know just what Jake had done. I’d been out of town for a couple of weeks. I flew back as soon as I read of his death... Now if you’ll get his books we can look up... well, for instance, there’s a Cynthia Renton who’s paid twenty thousand dollars. I can’t get the proper releases until I can prove that payment and...”

“Renton?” Juanita interrupted. “Cynthia Renton?”

“Yes.”

“She is the one who killed Jake.”

Dr. Sedler said in a crisp voice of a professional man, “That is a startling statement. But I’m not interested in who killed him. I want to...”

“But I,” Juanita cried, “am interested in that!”

“I’m sorry. This is a business matter...”

“A business of murder. She killed him! She shot him with that sleeve gun, and then she lied to the police! She claimed that she was the woman who left Jake’s apartment at two o’clock, carrying the portrait. I’ll find her and choke the words down her throat. I’ll twist her lies into a rope to braid around her neck. I’ll...”

“Now listen,” Sedler interrupted, “I’ve got to know about what settlements Jake had made. This other stuff of yours is for the police. This of mine is business. It’s something we’re both interested in. Where are his books?”

Juanita’s laugh was scornful.

“Where are his books? You come here and ask me that. You say your name is Grigsby and you and my husband were partners. My husband had no partners. Grigsby! And you want to see his books! Do you think I am a fool?”

Sedler’s voice was so low that Terry Clane, his ear pressed against the paper-thin wall, could barely hear what was said. “Shut up. Don’t blab it to the whole apartment house. You’ve heard your husband speak of Dr. Sedler.”

“What if I have.”

“I’m Sedler.”

Her laugh was scornful. Terry heard the rustle of motion, the sound of whispers, and then Sedler saying, “I guess that proves it, doesn’t it?”

Juanita’s voice was surly and defiant. “What do you want?”

“You know what I want. Jake double-crossed me.”

“You lie!”

“I’m not lying. I tell you I can prove it. He collected twenty thousand dollars...”

Juanita drowned out his voice. “I know nothing of his business affairs. I know that he had some arrangement with a Dr. Sedler. You seem to be that one. I know nothing about the business which you had with my husband. But I do know that Jake said you were a crook and he distrusted you...”

“Shut up, you little fool!” Sedler exclaimed, his voice booming through the thin partition of the closet. “Lower your voice and come down to earth. We’re in this thing together. You can’t double-cross me. I know too much. I know all about the sleeve gun that killed Jake. I got that gun for him. I know it was in his apartment the night of the murder. And I know how that sleeve gun was returned! Now would you rather get Jake’s books for me, and play fair for a change, or...”

Terry’s straining ears heard that unmistakable smacking sound which comes when flesh strikes flesh. He heard Juanita give a choking cry, heard her panting fiercely, and was able to hear the little exclamations with which she interspersed her efforts.

“That’s my answer... damn you... get out!... I’ll claw out your eyes... You dragged Jake into... You devil — let me go... Let me go...”

Terry heard the sound of bodies bumping against furniture, heard Sedler’s gasping voice calling out the names which men of a certain type invariably use as words of abuse to women. Then he heard Sedler exclaim, “So, you’re going to try that, eh? Get a load of this!”

There was the solid sound of a blow, and then the thud of something falling. Steps across the room, and Inspector Malloy’s voice, “Well, well, what’s happening here? No you don’t, Buddy! If it’s a fight you want...”

Inspector Malloy’s voice was swallowed into the grunting preliminary of physical effort. Terry heard a terrific blow, a crash and Malloy’s voice saying, “Get the bracelets on him, Dave, and take a look at the woman. Then we’ll just have a look around...”

Juanita, Malloy, the man called Dave, and Dr. Sedler were all closeted in that apartment. If Terry was going to reach Cynthia before it was too late, he must take advantage of that opportunity. It might be hours before another presented itself. He wanted to know what was going to happen next in that apartment, but he also wanted to get to Cynthia.

He left his point of vantage in the closet, tiptoed silently out into the hallway, down the stairs and out into the fog-filled darkness of the wet street.