Murder Up My Sleeve

3

It wanted ten minutes to noon when Yat T’oy silently intruded upon Terry Clane.

Clane, stretched out in a wicker chair in the solarium, raised the strip of cloth which covered his eyes against the glare of the sun. Yat T’oy’s parchment-like skin, seamed by innumerable wrinkles, hung loosely from his cheekbones, but stretched tightly across his forehead. Age had shrunk his frame until he was a bare five feet in height, but his glittering eyes missed nothing.

“What is it, Yat Toy?” Clane asked.

“The man with sunburnt skin and pale eyes, whose name tangles my tongue, awaits you,” he said in Cantonese. “It is the man who talks always of horses and money.”

“That will be Levering,” Clane said in English. “Tell him to wait for a few minutes. He wouldn’t call at this hour, Yat T’oy, unless he wanted something. Letting him wait will do him good.” And to illustrate his point, Terry quoted the Chinese proverb that, the longer meat stews, the more tender it grows.

Yat T’oy did not smile, but a general softening of the lines of his mouth indicated his understanding.

Terry gave his visitor ten minutes to stew, and then, entering the living-room, found Levering pacing the floor in ill-concealed nervousness.

Terry shook hands, indicated a chair, dropped into another chair, thrust out his feet, crossed his ankles, and said, “Would Scotch and soda help you say what you have to say, Levering?”

“I can say it without any help,” Levering blurted.

“Go ahead then, say it.”

“You were with Alma last night. You took her to the Raybornes’.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t drive her directly home. You drove her through Chinatown.”

“Quite right.”

“You left her at about three-thirty,” Levering asserted positively, then stared with his pale, speculative eyes at Clane’s sprawled figure.

“So what?” Terry drawled.

“I want to know if you went directly to your apartment after you left her.”

“Yes,” Terry said, smiling, “I went directly to my apartment after I left her.”

Levering’s face showed swift triumph.

“Thanks a lot,” he said, “I just wanted to know.”

“But,” Terry went on smoothly, “I didn’t leave her at about three-thirty. I left her some time shortly after one-thirty.”

Levering, who had half-risen from his chair, gave an exclamation and dropped back to a sitting position.

“You’re mistaken, Clane,” he said. “It’s very easy to be mistaken upon a matter of time. Think back and you’ll remember it was about three-thirty. It just happens that it may be important.”

Clane shook his head.

“Well,” Levering suggested, “you could at least say it was. You could make your recollection agree with Alma’s, couldn’t you?”

Clane picked up a striker, tapped a bowl-shaped gong which sent melodious notes throbbing through the apartment. A door opened and Yat T’oy stood in the doorway, his wrinkled countenance impassive, his eyes bright and alert.

“I’m going to have a glass of plain soda. You’d better have some Scotch and soda, Levering.”

“Very well,” Levering agreed sullenly, and waited until the door had closed before he said to Clane, “Why can’t you make it three-thirty? Why can’t you do that much for Alma?”

“Because,” Terry said, “I wouldn’t like to change the story I’ve told.”

Levering missed the significance of the remark.

“You know Alma well enough to know she’s on the square. You’d just be backing up her story.”

Yat T’oy appeared with a siphon of soda water, a bottle of Scotch, ice cubes, and glasses, placed them upon a coffee table and withdrew. Terry waited until the door had clicked shut and Levering had started mixing a drink.

“I’m afraid,” he said to Levering, “that the district attorney had my story taken down in shorthand.”

Levering had splashed a generous portion of Scotch over the ice cubes in his glass. He was adding charged water from the siphon when the significance of Terry’s remark dawned upon him. His pale eyes widened with consternation.

“The district attorney!” he exclaimed.

Terry nodded.

Levering raised his elbow, gulped down the contents of his glass as though feeling in immediate need of a stimulant.

Without giving him a chance to recover his composure, Terry went on smoothly, “And, by the way, when you leave here you’ll probably be shadowed, so don’t go to Alma.”

“But I don’t know where Alma is,” Levering blurted, and then pattered out frightened questions: “When did the district attorney grill you? What did you tell him? What makes you think I’ll be shadowed?”

“Well,” Terry said, staring in amused scrutiny at his visitor, “let’s see if we can’t deduce what must have happened. The district attorney tells me that Alma has disappeared and that her bed wasn’t slept in last night. I left her shortly after one-thirty this morning. You drop in to see me and very casually remark that I left her at about three-thirty. Evidently you hoped that I wouldn’t be quite clear as to the time I had left her. You figured you could make the positive statement that it had been after three-thirty this morning, and that my mind would absorb the suggestion, retain it as a definite impression, and repeat it later. Therefore, Levering, I would say you knew of some reason why it would be important to have it appear I’d left her after three o’clock instead of an hour and a half earlier.”

Levering jumped to his feet. “That insinuation,” he said, “is a dirty crack, and you have no right to make it!”

“To make what insinuation?”

“The one you just made.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I’m not going to argue with you... Dammit, Clane, I’m strong for Alma. You know that. I’d lay down my life for her.”

“Yes,” Terry said, “you’re as attached to her as a kid is to Santa Claus at Christmas time. But, tell me, when did you last see her?”

“I had a cocktail with her about five o’clock yesterday evening.”

“And, if you haven’t seen her since, how did you know that it was important to make me believe I’d been with her until three-thirty this morning?”

Levering cleared his throat, started to say something, grabbed for his glass and poured more liquor into it, then said sullenly, “I saw Cynthia.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“And what did Cynthia have to say?”

“Cynthia asked me where Alma was last night. I told her she was with you. Cynthia said she thought you’d probably have driven Alma through Chinatown, since you’d been telling her some stuff about Chinese colors. She thought it’d be a good idea to impress it on your mind that you hadn’t left Alma until some time about three-thirty.”

“Did she,” Terry asked, “say why she thought it would be well to establish this fact?”

“No... Now suppose you answer my questions. Why’s the district attorney interested in what you were doing or what time you left Alma?”

“That,” Terry said, “is something that isn’t entirely clear in my own mind. I think you’d better ask the district attorney.”

“In other words, you don’t trust me enough to confide in me, is that right?”

“In other words, I have nothing to confide.”

“Haven’t you some inkling?”

“Inklings,” Terry said, “are dangerous. Was there anything else you wanted, Levering?”

Levering got to his feet and said savagely. “Oh, hell! I know you don’t like me. You made that very apparent when I was here with Alma the night before last. You think I’m a cross between a gigolo and a sponge. Well, some day you’re going to find out how wrong you are.”

Having drawn himself up with dignity, he delayed starting towards the door long enough to gulp down the last of his drink. Then, with no word of farewell, he crossed the room, opened the door and slammed it shut behind him. A moment later Terry heard the clang of the elevator door.

Stepping to the window, he stared down the street.

He saw nothing which impressed him as unusual, save a paneled delivery van parked near the curb just behind Levering’s flashy sports car.

Terry sighed with relief as he saw Levering emerge from the apartment house and cross the sidewalk to his car, without being accosted by any official-appearing pedestrians.

Levering’s hand was reaching for the ignition switch of his car when a broad-shouldered man jumped from the rear of the paneled delivery van, and walked with swift purpose to Levering’s car. He placed a foot on the running board just as Levering was reaching for the gear lever.

Terry saw Levering’s startled motion of apprehensive surprise, as the man pulled back his coat lapel. He saw the man march with slow deliberation round the front of the car and climb in beside Levering.

The car slid from the curb and turned to the left at the first street intersection.

Terry Clane pressed a buzzer button which summoned Yat T’oy. When he heard the door open and the shuffle of the Chinese servant’s feet, he said over his shoulder, his eyes regarding the delivery van in moody appraisal, “You may remove Levering’s glass, Yat T’oy.”