The D.A. Breaks a Seal

4

The waitress was just taking the dessert orders when Sylvia Martin, sitting where she could look down the aisle, said, “I’ll bet he’s looking for you.”

“What is it?” Brandon asked. “Who’s looking?”

“Frank Norwalk, proprietor of the Madison Hotel. And if he isn’t — yes, here he comes.”

“The sheriff here?” Norwalk asked, then suddenly realizing that he had an audience, lowered his voice. “Sheriff, I wonder if... Why hello, Doug Selby! How are you?”

Selby shook hands.

“Back for long?” Norwalk asked.

“Just for a few days.”

Norwalk nodded, apparently too preoccupied with his own affairs to pay very much attention to Selby’s answer. He shifted his eyes back to the sheriff, said, “A little trouble over at the hotel, Sheriff.”

“Okay,” Brandon said. “I’ll come over as soon as I finish lunch. Sit down, Frank, and have some dessert with us.”

“No, thank you... it’s... I’m afraid it’s urgent, Sheriff.”

The sheriff said, “Okay, I’ll be with you. If you’ll excuse me, Doug.”

“Go right ahead,” Selby said.

“Sorry to break up the luncheon,” Norwalk apologized.

“Quite all right.”

“Well, I’ll be seeing you, Doug,” Brandon said, and followed Norwalk out of the cafe.

“I wonder,” Sylvia Martin said musingly, “just what the trouble is. I think in my professional capacity I’ll drift over that way, Doug.”

“Strange he didn’t call the city authorities,” Selby said.

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Is Otto Larkin still Chief of Police?”

“Sure. He knows how to flim-flam the voters. He’s the same old back slapper, only now he’s changed his attitude toward the county officials. He just bubbles cooperation and good will for the Sheriff’s Office. Every time he... wait a minute, Doug. Here’s Rex Brandon coming back.”

The sheriff’s walk was more rapid and more businesslike now. He moved back to the booth, bent over and said in a low voice, “Doug, Norwalk didn’t tell me until we got to the door. A man’s dropped dead over there under rather mysterious circumstances. Thought you and Sylvia might like to come over.”

“I would,” Sylvia said promptly. “I want the story.”

Selby hesitated. “After all, Rex, I’d just be horning in on things. I don’t want to...”

“Oh, come on,” Brandon urged. “Things are different now from what they used to be. Otto Larkin is very friendly. It’s just a routine that won’t keep us very long. The man dropped dead from heart failure in his room. But he’d been acting sort of funny, and Norwalk wants to be in the clear on the thing.”

“Please come, Doug,” Sylvia urged.

Selby surrendered, paid the luncheon check and took Sylvia Martin’s arm as they walked out of the restaurant to where Norwalk was waiting on the sidewalk.

“It isn’t anything,” Norwalk said nervously, “only I didn’t want to touch the body or move anything in the room until everyone had had a chance to — well, you know, make certain everything was all right.”

“That’s quite right,” Brandon said.

“He evidently wasn’t feeling well. He’d ordered breakfast sent up to his room, had a spell with his heart somewhere in the middle of the meal.”

“Did you get his name from the register?”

“Yes. Fred Roff from Los Angeles.”

“What room?”

“Six-nineteen.”

“Well, we’ll all go on up.”

Norwalk said, “It’s rather — well, it isn’t particularly pleasant. I thought that Miss Martin, perhaps...”

Sylvia said, “If it’s the publicity you’re worried about, don’t run up a temperature. We’ll handle it in the usual way, stating that a body was found in a ‘downtown hotel.’ Not that that will fool anybody, but...”

“I know, I know,” Norwalk interrupted hastily. “But if you don’t mention the name of the hotel, it makes it lots better. The Los Angeles papers might copy your stuff, and if they mention the name of the hotel...”

“Don’t worry,” Sylvia reassured him.

They entered the hotel and went across to the elevator.

“Sixth?” the operator asked.

Norwalk nodded and said, “And don’t stop for anyone on the way up.”

“The city police up there?” Brandon asked.

“I don’t know, Sheriff. I told the clerk to get Chief Larkin and ask him to come up right away. I rang the courthouse myself and they said you were out at lunch. I thought I might find you across the street.”

Brandon nodded.

The elevator stopped at the sixth floor. The elevator operator said in a low voice, “The police haven’t arrived yet, Mr. Norwalk.”

“We’ll go right on in,” Norwalk said, taking a passkey from his pocket. “When the chief comes, show him in.”

Norwalk led the way down to 619, opened the door with his passkey and stood back to one side. “There you are,” he said. “Nothing has been touched.”

Brandon stopped just inside the doorway. Sylvia Martin and Selby stood at his side.

“This just the way it was?” Brandon asked.

“Just exactly the way the maid found it.”

“The bed hasn’t been slept in.”

“No, he registered about eight-thirty this morning.”

The sheriff turned to Selby, raised his eyes questioningly.

The breakfast things on the table gave a garish tone to the entire scene. The light which streamed in through the south window was reflected from silvered dish covers, coffeepot, cream pitcher, and emphasized the crisp freshness of the white tablecloth.

The man who lay sprawled on the floor had evidently tumbled from a chair which had been drawn up in front of the breakfast table. In his left hand he held a stained napkin. Coffee had spilled from the overturned cup to make a splotch on the tablecloth. Apparently, the metal covers had not been removed from the food.

The little group stood for a moment awkwardly ill at ease, regarding the dead man with that hushed futility which is the instinctive reaction of the living to the dead. Then self-consciously at first, but gradually with more assurance, they began the routine survey of the premises which was the first preliminary step in their investigations.

“Let’s look around, but be careful not to touch anything,” Sheriff Brandon said. “Looks as though he’d had a spell of heart attack all right — just as he was getting ready to eat.”

The dead man was rather tall and rangy, a man who might have been sixty-one or sixty-two. His dark hair had turned gray. The coarse mustache was close-clipped. His bifocal spectacles had been pushed into one-sided incongruity by his fall and in some strange way lent an oddly facetious note to the occasion, as though these man-made aids to vision were somehow jeering at the final destiny of the eyes they had served.

The man’s clothes were of good quality but possessed a certain ready-made lack of individuality and were badly in need of pressing. The skin at the back of the neck was checker-boarded with a mesh of coarse wrinkles. His hands, which had been strong and powerful in life, showed no signs of physical labor.

Selby moved over to inspect the breakfast things on the table.

“One lump of sugar on a small saucer here,” he said to the proprietor of the hotel.

Norwalk nodded. “We don’t send up a sugar bowl any more with breakfast service in a room. We found that we’d send it up full of sugar cubes and it would come back empty. So now we send up sugar cubes in a little saucer — three to an order of coffee.”

Selby said, “Evidently the man poured himself a cup of coffee, drank it and then became ill. Apparently he didn’t even remove the covers from these other plates.”

“That’s right,” Norwalk said, and then added, “I guess you can have a heart stroke just about any time — playing golf, sleeping or eating.”

“Did he give any street address?” Selby asked.

“No. We don’t always require that on the register. There’s a blank on the registration card where guests are supposed to fill in a street number, but sometimes the clerks get careless and this would have to be one of those times.”

“Did he wire ahead for a reservation?”

“No, just came in about eight-thirty this morning and asked if we had a room.”

“Baggage?” Selby asked.

Norwalk nodded to the one handbag and a somewhat battered brief case over on the stand reserved for baggage.

“He was traveling light. Just the brief case, the bag and his overcoat. I checked on that with the bellboy.”

Rex Brandon prowled around the room, said, “Well, I guess that’s about all there is to it but we’ll have the Doc look him over. He...”

Knuckles pounded a loud and peremptory summons on the door.

“Otto Larkin,” the sheriff said laconically.

Frank Norwalk unlocked the door.

Otto Larkin pushed it open, barely glanced at the dead man on the floor, shifted his eyes to the sheriff, said, “Hello, Rex, how they coming?”

Norwalk closed and locked the door.

Larkin turned to Doug Selby, attempted to correlate the familiar face and the unaccustomed uniform, then grabbed Selby’s hand.

“Doug Selby! Boy, I certainly am glad to see you! I really am glad,” and then in the manner of one who has become accustomed to having his sincerity doubted, added, “I really mean it.”

During the first part of Selby’s term of office, while the paunchy Chief of Police had been outwardly cordial, there had been no doubt that his political sympathies had lain with Sam Roper and the ousted regime. Behind a guise of personal cordiality there had lurked the deadly knife of political enmity ready to be plunged into either the sheriff or the district attorney, or both, as occasion presented itself. Now, with the complete turnabout which the professional politician sees only as a perfectly natural readjustment, Larkin was bidding for the friendship of these two men.

“So it’s Major Selby now,” Larkin went on, his face genial with good humor.

“How is everything?” Selby asked. “You’re looking well.”

“Feeling fine,” Larkin said. “Carrying a little too much weight, but I’m going to take some of it off. What have we got here?”

Norwalk said, “A man keeled over with heart failure.”

Larkin glanced once more at the dead man on the floor, then tossed off his verdict. “Bum ticker, all right. Okay, we’ve looked it over. S’pose we’ve got to notify the coroner. Well, that covers things for us here. How about going downstairs and having a cup of coffee, boys, and...”

Selby said, “Take a look at this lump of sugar, Rex.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“See if you smell anything. And notice that it seems slightly damp. Notice the way it glistens.”

Sheriff Brandon looked at the lump of sugar.

“What about the sugar lump?” Otto Larkin asked.

Selby said, “Notice that peculiar froth that came from the man’s lips. Bend over him and you get a slight odor of the oil of bitter almonds.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“It’s benzaldehyde and is characteristic of poisoning by hydrocyanic acid, or cyanide of potassium, and, just in case that remaining sugar lump has been soaked in cyanide of potassium, you’ll find that that slight tendency to absorb moisture from the air is characteristic.”

Norwalk frowned, his manner contained dignified irritation. Otto Larkin’s little eyes were glittering with interest now, and the sheriff was grave.

Sylvia Martin asked softly, “You think it was suicide, Doug?”

“I can’t see why a man would go to all that trouble to commit suicide. If he wanted to take poison, why didn’t he just take it and be done with it? He...”

Once more knuckles tapped against the panels of the door. Norwalk glanced inquiringly at the sheriff, then without waiting for a signal unlocked the door and opened it.

A bellboy stood in the hallway, holding in his hand a small oblong package wrapped in green paper. “Thought you might like this,” he said.

“What is it?” Norwalk asked.

“Package came for Mr. Roff in this room. We tried to deliver it and got no answer, so we left a note in the key box that there was a package for him...”

“What time?” Sheriff Brandon asked.

“The note shows it was nine-thirty A.M.”

“What’ll we do?” Norwalk asked. “Open it?”

The sheriff nodded.

Norwalk untied the string, removed the green paper and disclosed a white cardboard box. He raised the cover from the box and then frowned as he inspected the contents. “What the heck was the guy doing — ordering his own flowers?” he asked.

“What is it?” Brandon asked.

By way of answer, Norwalk held the box up so that the others could see the contents.

In the interior of the box, nestled against a background of crumpled green paper, so that the flower would not become bruised in handling, was a single white gardenia.

Sylvia Martin’s fingers dug into Selby’s arm, pleading with him for silence.

Brandon asked crisply, “How did it happen that flower was sent over here? Did he order it himself or...”

“I guess he ordered it himself,” Norwalk said. “I had his phone calls checked before you folks came over. One of his calls was to the florist. Right after he checked in.”

“One of them?” Selby asked. “Was there another?”

“Yeah, he called the depot at eight fifty-five.”

“The depot,” Brandon said. “...they may remember the call.”

“I already checked on that,” Norwalk told him. “There was only one man in the office at that time. He says he remembered the call because he took it just before the fast freight, Number Nine, came in. He says this call was from a man who wanted to know if Number Twenty-three was apt to be on time.”

“Number Twenty-three,” Brandon said to Selby. “That was the train you came on.”

Selby said quite casually, “And about a dozen other passengers.”

Sylvia Martin’s eyes were pleading with Rex Brandon. When she saw that he had caught their message, she glanced warningly toward Otto Larkin.

“Did he have any visitors?” Selby asked Norwalk.

“No, I checked on that. No visitors and no other calls.”

Brandon said, “I think we’ll all get out of here and we’ll have some fingerprints taken.”

“Sure,” Larkin said easily. “I was just going to suggest that myself.”

“Who has the adjoining rooms?” Shelby asked.

“I don’t know,” Norwalk told him. “I’ll have to look them up on the register.”

“They’re occupied?”

“I think so.”

The sheriff said, “Let’s go take a look at the register. It might be important to see who has the adjoining rooms.”

“Oh, have a heart,” Norwalk pleaded.

“Just routine,” Otto Larkin reassured him, clapping a heavy hand on the worried hotel proprietor’s shoulder.

Norwalk opened the door. They filed out into the corridor, then suddenly stopped as they heard the sound of a bolt snapping back on the door of the adjoining room.

The door opened. The blonde who had been talking with A. B. Carr at the restaurant stepped out into the hallway, gave the little group the benefit of an inspection with a haughty air of impersonal disdain, then pulled the door shut, twisted the key and swept on down toward the elevator.