Owls Don't Blink

Chapter Twenty-Four

Lieutenant Pellingham came stamping into the office about 12:45 Tuesday. Elsie Brand told me he was out in the other office, and I went out to talk with him.

“I hope you don’t hold any hard feelings, Lam.”

“I don’t if you don’t.”

“You should have told me you were trying to protect Roberta Fenn because you thought she was in danger.”

“Then you’d have taken her into custody and dragged her back to New Orleans.”

“Well,” he admitted at length, “there may be something to that.”

“To say nothing of Edna Cutler,” I went on.

He said, “Lam, you’re rather a deep one. I wish you’d tell me exactly what happened in New Orleans.”

“You mean Nostrander?”

“Yes.”

I looked at my watch, and said, “I’ve got an appointment down the street in twelve minutes. It’ll take me just about ten minutes to walk there. I’ll want to be on time. What do you say we get started? We can talk as we walk.”

“All right. I’ll appreciate any tip you can give me. My mission out here has been a failure. Louisiana may extradite Roberta Fenn, but I don’t think so, not on the evidence available at the present time. If I could go back with a solution of that murder case, it would be a big feather in my cap.”

I said, “All right, let’s go.”

I picked up my hat, walked over to Elsie Brands desk, and shook hands.

Her face showed surprise. “Going away?” she asked.

“Yes. I may be gone for a while. Take care of yourself.”

There was a strange look in her eyes. “You make it sound very final.”

“Oh, I’ll be back.”

We walked out. She followed me with her eyes until the door closed.

Just as we were getting out of the elevator, we met Bertha Cool. Bertha put on her best smile for Pellingham. “Heard the news, Donald?” she asked me.

“What?”

“Sergeant Rondler found the gun Cutler had used where it had been thrown out of the window of Edna Cutler’s apartment. A test bullet fired from it showed that it was the same gun that killed young Craig. Cutler’s yelling frame-up, but they’re really going to town with him now, giving him a real third degree.”

“That’s good.”

“Where are you two going?” Bertha asked.

“Just down the street a way. Walk along with us. Pellingham said he wanted to talk.”

She looked at the elevator as though wondering whether to come along, then said, “We-e-ll, I wanted to go to the office. I’ve ordered a bunch of genuine silk stockings. I want to see if they’ve come. Oh, well, I’ll walk along, yes.”

We walked three abreast down the sidewalk, Bertha on the inside, Pellingham in the middle, while I walked along on the outside.

Pellingham said to me, “You really think Hale went up to that apartment at two-twenty in the morning?”

“I’m sure he did. What have you found out about him?”

He grinned. “He isn’t a lawyer at all.”

“I didn’t think he was. A private detective?”

“Yes. Head of a New York detective agency. Cutler employed him to get some admissions out of Roberta Fenn, or to get something on her. To tell you the truth, I think he planted that whole evidence there in Roberta’s New Orleans apartment, hoping he could bring pressure to bear on her by threatening to open up that old murder case and make it appear she was the guilty party. The price of his silence was to be her giving testimony that would make it appear there was a conspiracy between her and Edna Cutler.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said.

“Where they fell down,” Pellingham went on, “was in not realizing the gun they had dug up somewhere and planted in the desk would eventually be checked to see whether it had fired the murder bullet.”

I said, “Of course, if Roberta had caved in and done what they wanted, the gun and the clippings would have been delivered to her.”

“That’s right, yes. I’d never thought of that.”

I said, “Perhaps all they wanted was to bring pressure on her.”

“There’s something to that,” Pellingham said. A lot of it isn’t clear as yet-little details. There are some angles on this, however, that I think you could clear it up.

“Such as what?”

“Giving me a hint on which I could work on Nostrander’s murder. Did Hale do that?”

I looked at my watch. It was five minutes to one. “I’ll tell you something,” I said, as we waited for a signal to change. “Bertha Cool and I were the first ones to find that body.”

“What!” he exclaimed in surprise.

Bertha said sharply, “Donald!”

I said, “It’s all right. They can’t touch us. We reported it. I’m the one who telephoned the police.”

“Let’s have the rest of it,” Pellingham said as we moved forward with the changing signal.

“We pressed the buzzer of Roberta Fenn’s apartment. Somebody answered the signal and buzzed the door open. We got up to where we could look in the apartment. We could see Nostrander’s body. I dragged Bertha away because I thought the murderer must have been in the apartment.”

Pellingham nodded.

“He wasn’t,” I said.

“How do you know he wasn’t?”

“Because we watched the building. He didn’t leave. No one left the building, except a somewhat elderly woman. Then the police came.”

Pellingham said, “That’s the strange thing about it. After the police got that anonymous tip over the telephone, two detectives went down there. They rang Fenn’s apartment, and somebody buzzed the door open. They went up, and there was no one in the apartment.”

I said, “The night I went up to call on Roberta Fenn, Nostrander knocked at the door. He hadn’t buzzed the outer door. Roberta stalled him along, and then told me I’d better leave. I left right after Nostrander did. When I got out of the street door, I looked up and down the street. I didn’t see Nostrander anywhere.”

“Well, what’s the answer?” Pellingham asked impatiently.

I said, “Nostrander must have had some other friend in the apartment house, a friend on whom he’d been calling pretty regularly. It’s pretty reasonable to suppose that this would be a girl friend, and that when she realized that Nostrander was still infatuated with Roberta Fenn she’d be pretty jealous. Marilyn Winton has the apartment right across the hall from Roberta’s apartment.”

“After the murder, various people came to that apartment house, rang the bell of Roberta Fenn’s apartment, and the entrance door was promptly buzzed open. If Roberta Fenn had returned to her apartment, she’d have been killed, but whenever the wrong people entered the apartment, they didn’t find anybody there. What every one has overlooked is that the occupant of any apartment can press the buzzer which opens the street door. Figure it out for yourself.”

Pellingham scowled savagely.

I said, “Marilyn Winton says she heard the sounds of the murder taking place at two-thirty. She’s the only one that did. I think if you give Hale the right sort of third degree, you’ll find that he was actually talking with Nostrander at about two-thirty. Suppose after he left, Marilyn Winton walked into Roberta Fenn’s apartment, looking for a showdown.”

“But she heard the sound of a muted shot at two-thirty.”

“She says she did. If I intended to go into someone’s apartment and kill him at three o’clock, I could manufacture a pretty good alibi by telling my friends that just as I opened the street door of the apartment I’d heard a shot at two-thirty, couldn’t I?”

Pellingham kept looking at me as though I’d jerked a veil from in front of his eyes.

Bertha Cool said, ‘“Fry me for an oyster!”

Pellingham gave a low whistle. He reached a sudden decision. “All right, Lam,” he said, “you’re going back to New Orleans with me.”

“That’s what you think,” I told him, and walked up the stairs and through the entrance to the Navy Recruiting Bureau, before either of them knew where I was going.

I said to the man behind the desk. “Donald Lam reporting for duty.”

“Okay, sailor. Go through that door. There’s a bus waiting out in back, get in.”

Bertha and Pellingham got in each other’s way, each trying to get through the door first. Pellingham had forgotten his Southern manners.

A man in uniform stuck a bayonet across in front of them. They stopped as though they’d been figures performing on a picture screen and the film had stopped.

Pellingham pointed his finger at me. “I want that man.”

The man behind the desk said, “So does Uncle Sam.”

I turned and blew a kiss to Bertha. “I’ll send you a postal card from Tokyo,” I said, and walked through the back door.