The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

THE DARK GODDESS Schuyler G. Edsall

I checked the flight records at the Trans-Ocean Airline desk to make certain that the man I knew only as Leiderkrantz was on the Constellation due from Lisbon. Then I went down the stairs to the luncheonette and sat over a cup of coffee, listening for the flight’s arrival to be broadcast over the public address system. Watching the steam curl from my coffee, I began wondering again if I were inviting a brush with the police on this job and realized that there wasn’t much I could do about it now. The big clock on the wall above the gleaming coffee urns said 10:27 and already the big Constellation was probably radioing La Guardia Tower for a landing.

It was supposed to be only an escort job; and there wasn’t a lot to worry about if you looked at it from that angle. But, on the other hand, there could be trouble; and the fact that Schweingurt had hired me instead of getting the regular police to handle the assignment gave me something to think about. I couldn’t talk myself out of the argument that this was no routine private case. In the first place, Schweingurt had been restless and jittery when I talked to him earlier; secondly, the little package Leiderkrantz was bringing in from Europe made him a choice target for a slug or a knife in the ribs, or for a quick bath in Flushing Bay, somewhere around Whitestone where it would be dark and deserted. Lastly, I was pretty sure Leiderkrantz was smuggling in the Dionysus statuette; and this is what made me worry about getting messed up with the Customs authorities and the police.

Schweingurt had reassured me about this. “It’s all on the level,” he had said.

“Of course, there must be secrecy up to a certain point because there is a strict prohibition against removing artworks from Greece. The government of Greece has enforced this for fear the country’s artistic wealth will be dissipated. But once the Dionysus statuette arrives here, there will be nothing more to worry about.”

But his small black eyes had been greedy. He had absently wiped the palms of his hands along the knees of his light trousers. They had left a dark, wet mark. I wasn’t so sure I believed what he had told me.

The public address system was announcing the arrival of Trans-Ocean Flight 7. I slid off my stool, swallowed what was left of my coffee and went down to the gate. People crowded the glassed-in barrier. A policeman and a girl attendant, dressed in light-blue and holding a clipboard of flight reports in her hand, stood on the ramp just outside the gate. I flashed my agency shield at the cop, and he scowled, sizing me up and down. For a minute, I didn’t think I was going to make it easily; then he nodded his bullet-shaped head and let me through. I stood alongside the girl in the blue uniform, wanting very much to take a second look at her delicately featured face and honey-colored hair; but I didn’t dare take my eyes from the plane.

It bothered me that I had no idea what Leiderkrantz looked like and I decided the best thing for me to do was to wait until the blonde attendant checked off the passengers as they filed through the gate. I didn’t believe much could happen to him or the statuette between the plane and the gate.

A glistening chromium gangway was shoved across the ramp to the door of the cabin; and a stewardess opened the cabin door, blinking in the morning sun and smiling. She stood aside as the passengers filed out of the huge plane, down the gangway and across the ramp. Mostly, they were familiar faces, influential men in State and Politics, stage and screen idols. A couple of them looked annoyed at the absence of photographers and press reporters.

They passed the girl at the gate, each calling his name as he filed through: Greenleaf . . . Burnes . . . Stettanus . . . Leiderkrantz . . .

He was a short, stocky man of about thirty-four, with rust-colored hair and a carefully trimmed mustache. He wore his clothes jauntily, almost flashily, and was not what you would expect of an art connoisseur. He appeared nervous, shifting his eyes as he gave his name curtly to the girl in the blue uniform. In his hand was tightly clasped the handle of a small black bag which he seemed to protect with an almost fierce intensity. I was pretty certain that the Dionysus was inside that bag. I began to feel a little nervous myself.

I tagged behind him as he hurried through the gate. When we were a little way from the crowd, I palmed the shield from my pocket so he could see it, dropped it back and said, “I have a cab waiting outside, Mr Leiderkrantz.”

He stopped short, looking confusedly at me, pulling the bag back possessively so that it pressed hard against his legs. Then his blue eyes narrowed defiantly; and when he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly harsh. “Police?” he asked quickly. The deep crease between his eyes drew his brows together.

I smiled reassuringly, said, “Private detective. Max Schweingurt sent me to make sure you got in all right.”

He studied me thoughtfully, then nodded slowly. “I see.”

“Do you want me to carry the bag?” I asked and reached for it.

He pulled the bag away quickly, holding the handle with both hands, and pressed it against his legs again. “No,” he cried sharply. Then he smiled and lowered his voice. “No, thank you. I . . . I am quite able to carry it.”

His manner irritated me a little but I decided it would be better anyway to be free to use my hands in case anything happened, rather than be hampered by a heavy bag. On the hunch, I transferred my gun from its shoulder holster to the side pocket of my coat, as I waited for Leiderkrantz to clear through Customs.

I didn’t know what he did about the Dionysus, whether he declared it or not. All I know is that I stood by, keeping my eyes open, and he cleared through in about fifteen minutes less than the usual hour and a half. When he finished we went upstairs and climbed into the cab I had waiting.

I gave the address of Max Schweingurt’s place on Fifty-third Street, and we swung out on the Cross-Island Parkway to the Triborough Bridge. Leiderkrantz was still nervous and he fidgeted in the corner of the cab, smoking cigarettes chain-fashion. The small black bag he kept on the floor between his feet. He didn’t say anything and kept eyeing me suspiciously, as if for some reason he didn’t trust me. I tried to start a conversation to pass the time, asking him about the situation in Europe and about the trip across in the Constellation; but he cut me off short every time. So I quit and leaned back in the seat and lighted a cigarette myself, watching the quaint pattern of buildings that edged the East River as we crossed the Bridge.

Suddenly, Leiderkrantz leaned across me and snapped a cigarette butt out of my open window. It struck the frame and blew back, scattering hot red sparks and ashes into my face, fiinally landing on the seat between my leg and the side of the cab. Frantically, I rubbed the ashes from my eyes. At the same time I turned to remove the burning cigarette from the cab, purely reflex action. I was muttering savagely beneath my breath when suddenly it seemed as if the roof had caved in on my head!

I started to turn, instantly on the alert in spite of the pain from the blow. But I was too slow. He hit me again, and I slumped down off the seat, grabbing for the coat that moved in a blur above me. I yanked down with one hand, my other hand going for my shoulder holster; then I remembered that I had transferred the gun to my coat pocket back there in the Air Terminal. My hand started for the coat pocket, but it never got there. The roof did cave in! With one final blow, Leiderkrantz finished me. I didn’t remember anything after that.

I raced into Max Schweingurt’s art galleries with a peach of a headache, a sick feeling in my stomach and mayhem in my heart. There were a couple of old ladies studying a Michaelangelo out front and a group of college students in the Grecian Court listening to the droning monotone of a guide. I passed a young black-haired fellow in a gray smock who was busy cleaning a large statue, and went into Schweingurt’s ornate office at the rear of the room.

He looked up at me as I banged the door behind me, and his mouth dropped open. I didn’t give him time to say anything and snapped, “The next time you want me to meet one of your buddies, make sure it’s a woman. Either that, or I’ll put him in a straitjacket before I start.”

He still looked at me incredulously, and his eyes got scared. His thick lips moved wordlessly and weakly, he pushed himself from his chair and stood with his white hands resting on the desk. “What are you talking about?” he asked finally. Then, his voice almost choking him. “Where . . . where’s Leiderkrantz?”

It struck me suddenly that Leiderkrantz was not here; had not been here. I stared at Schweingurt and dropped limply into a chair alongside his desk. “You . . . haven’t heard from him?” I asked slowly, and the words sounded silly the way I said them.

He shook his head and asked again, “What happened?”

I fumbled in my pocket for a cigarette, felt the gun there, drew out a cigarette and lighted it. I offered one to Schweingurt and he refused. He leaned forward intently. I took a couple of long drags, blowing out the smoke noisily and trying to pull myself together, before I told him what had happened.

“Did he have the Dionysus?” he whispered.

“I don’t know definitely. I didn’t see it. But he had a small black bag that he wouldn’t let me touch. How large is this Dionysus thing?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen an original. Forgeries are about . . .” Schweingurt leveled his hand about eighteen inches above the desk . . . “that high. I imagine the original would be the same.”

I nodded. “It would fit in the black bag,” I said.

Schweingurt pinched the end of a cigar, shoved it between his heavy lips and paced the floor behind his desk. He was a big muscular man with dark, graying hair and red-flecked brown eyes. His somber clothes were immaculate and well made. He flamed a match, watched it glow, and said before lighting his cigar, “You don’t know what happened to Leiderkrantz? I mean, after he slugged you?”

I shook my head slowly. It hurt. “The cabbie said he dropped him with his luggage at a hotel in the East Forties. I figured that was just a dodge; that he’d hop another hack and come straight here. He wouldn’t know one hotel from another, unless he’s been in New York before.”

“I don’t know whether he’s ever been here before or not,” Schweingurt explained. “He’s been representing me in Europe only since the war.” He blew out a cloud of smoke. “How long ago was this?”

“I don’t know. The cab driver said he had a time bringing me round after we pulled up out front here. I must have been out quite a while.” I touched the bump on the side of my head gingerly, and winced. “Do you think this Leiderkrantz guy took a powder on you with the Dionysus gadget?”

Schweingurt puffed heavily on his cigar and stared out the window. “He wouldn’t have done that. He wouldn’t have made the trip if he had intended to run out on me. What I’m worried about is – was the man you met Leiderkrantz?”

I had thought of this, but dismissed it. The little man had flown in from Lisbon as Leiderkrantz and had cleared through Customs; so his passport must have been issued under that name and borne his photo. The passport could have been forged, of course, and the switch could have been pulled in Lisbon; but the chances that this had been done were slim.

Schweingurt said, “I’ll cable the representative in Europe and find out if Leiderkrantz made the trip.”

This wouldn’t help, I decided, if the switch had been made in Lisbon, shortly before the Constellation took off. “Get a description of this Leiderkrantz,” I suggested, “and see if it fits our man.”

Schweingurt nodded and picked up the telephone.

The door opened and the dark-haired employee in the gray smock stuck his head in. “A gentleman to see you,” he told Schweingurt. “A Mr Leiderkrantz from the European representative’s office.”

Schweingurt glanced quickly at me, his red-flecked eyes overbright. I tensed in my chair and clenched my hands unconsciously.

“Send him in,” Schweingurt told the attendant. He put the phone down.

I don’t know why I was surprised when Leiderkrantz walked into the office with his small black bag, because I really didn’t expect anyone else. But I was surprised enough in that scant moment to become suddenly suspicious of him; though I can’t explain that, either. He seemed a bit taken aback at seeing me, then he smiled quickly and put out his hand to Schweingurt.

“Leiderkrantz,” he introduced himself sharply. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr Schweingurt.” His voice was flat and unpleasant; and there wasn’t a trace of the accent you would expect from a European.

Schweingurt smiled pleasantly and shook hands. He went back and sat down at his desk, knocked the ash from his cigar carefully into a crystal ashtray and looked up brightly. “You have the Dionysus?” he asked.

Leiderkrantz nodded and placed the bag on the desk. He turned to me and said blandly, “I owe you an apology, I imagine. You are a detective after all?”

I gestured with a flourish of my hand. “Think nothing of it,” I replied with a touch of sarcasm that I didn’t bother to hide. “What’s a sock on the head, or two. You didn’t believe I was a detective?” I asked him.

“I was warned before I left,” he explained, “that there might be an attempt made to steal the Dionysus. I couldn’t take any chances. I couldn’t be sure of your honesty because I had no way of being absolutely sure. So as long as I couldn’t trust you, I decided to escape from you and come here independently.”

“Where did you go after you left the cab?” I asked him. “You didn’t come straight here.”

“No,” he answered willingly. “I checked into the Pittsfield Hotel on East Forty-seventh Street, and left my bags.”

The Pittsfield was about where the cab driver told me he had dropped Leiderkrantz. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t find a hole in his story.

Schweingurt had tried to open the small bag on the desk and found it locked. He sat drumming his fingers nervously on the arm of his chair. He said impatiently to Leiderkrantz, “May I see the Dionysus?”

The man turned swiftly, apologizing for the locked bag, but again explaining his need for the utmost care. He opened the bag by rotating a miniature combination lock and removed a tubular, blue-velvet sack with a drawstring at the top. This he placed carefully in front of Schweingurt, who cautiously withdrew the velvet sack from around the statuette. Schweingurt leaned back in his chair and admired the statuette where it stood on the desk. It was a sculpture about eighteen inches high of a scantily clad boy holding a small cask in his right hand, a staff in his left. From its color, it appeared very old; not the color that comes from dirt or dust, but the tinge of age that seems to have substance.

Schweingurt said, “An original Baccus by Orinaldi!”

I glanced at him perplexedly, and Leiderkrantz, who must have had the same thought, corrected him, “An original Dionysus by Orinaldi!” He spoke deprecatingly, but rubbed at his small mustache with a supercilious gesture.

Schweingurt nodded slowly but didn’t say anything. He continued to stare entranced at the statuette on the desk, and his smile reflected his appreciation. But there was something in his eyes that had changed, some vague disturbance that made the red flecks seem brighter. I watched him closely, trying to fathom his faint change of mood.

Leiderkrantz’s bland voice broke the sudden tension that seemed to fill the room when he said, “I must be going now,” and put out his hand. “I’ll be in New York a day or two; so I’ll see you again before I return to the Continent.”

Schweingurt looked up quickly, blinking, as if he had been in a trance. He grasped Leiderkrantz’s hand mechanically – and not too warmly – and said simply, “Yes, yes. Fine!” He immediately returned to his studied appraisal of the Dionysus.

Leiderkrantz glanced at him, nodded to me and went out the door.

I sighed deeply, lighted another cigarette and relaxed in the chair.

When the door closed, Schweingurt looked up slowly, his brown eyes narrowing and a dark frown etching his forehead. He watched the door for a long, silent minute; then, not taking his eyes away from it, he said to me in a brittle, decisive voice. “You better run over to the Pittsfield Hotel. See what you can find out about him. That man is not Leiderkrantz!”

I jumped out of my chair, spilling ashes from my cigarette on the thick maroon rug. “What . . .”

He stopped me with a flourish of his hand. “Take it easy. I think we have plenty of time. Whoever he is, he is not aware we know he is not Leiderkrantz. He must have had some inside information to know that I don’t know Leiderkrantz by sight. But the Dionysus is worth a lot of money that I haven’t paid yet – sixty-five thousand dollars – and he’s bound to make a play for that. That’s why I say we have plenty of time. I don’t think he would turn the statuette over to me, and let me send the money to the European representative. That’s the procedure, of course, but if the guy’s a phony, he’ll make a play for the money, or part of it, anyway.”

“Unless the Dionysus is a phony,” I stated.

“A forgery?” he said and shrugged. “I don’t think so. It appears to be the original, though I can’t be positive by just looking at it. I’ll make tests and call in Dr Homer Bramble from the Lexington Foundation Museum. He’s an expert on this period of art. I wouldn’t want to judge the work solely on my own experience, though I do have an Athena outside by the same sculptor. In fact, it was the only one in the country until I got this Dionysus. If the two don’t compare, I’ll know the Dionysus is a forgery.”

I stepped over and rubbed out my cigarette on the ashtray, wondering above all else how Schweingurt was so certain that the man who had brought him the statuette was not Leiderkrantz. I took my gun from the pocket of my coat and put it back in its shoulder holster, ready to leave. But I wanted the full story before I started.

“How do you know he is an impostor?” I asked.

He took the cigar from his mouth. “I wanted to be certain,” he said, “so I deliberately called the Dionysus a ‘Bacchus’ sculptured by Orinaldi. The fellow corrected me. But Bacchus is the Roman name for the Greek god, Dionysus. An art connoisseur of Leiderkrantz’s caliber would have known that. Also,” he added, “there was never, to my knowledge, a sculptor named Orinaldi.”

I grinned because I couldn’t help it. But when I went out I didn’t think any part of it was funny, and I was glad for the opportunity to settle for a couple of knots on my head.

The Pittsfield Hotel turned out to be an excellent indication that Leiderkrantz was a phony. Schweingurt had sized the guy up right on that point. But Schweingurt had pressed his intuition too far when he claimed that our man would be back. From what I learned, I was pretty sure we would never see Leiderkrantz again.

No one by that name, according to the desk clerk, had checked into the hotel. There had been a man of Leiderkrantz’s description, however, who had checked in shortly before noon. But the clerk was pretty sure the man had come in from Chicago or Milwaukee, or some place out West. Not Lisbon.

If Leiderkrantz had registered under another name, it was logical that he would also falsify his address. I checked the bellhops.

The two bellhops on duty hadn’t recalled carrying any luggage with a Trans-Ocean Airlines tag; but one of them – a young blond kid with fuzz on his plump cheeks and a squeaky voice – remembered hopping for a short, stocky man, flashily dressed, with a dapper, rust-red mustache. The kid especially remembered the nickel tip the man had given him.

I called Schweingurt, learned that he was in conference with Dr Bramble from the Lexington Museum, then sat down in a leather chair in the lobby to wait for the man who had fitted Leiderkrantz’s description. After a while I got restless, went over to the cigar stand and brought a pack of cigarettes, went into the bar and drank two beers – all the time keeping my eye on the lobby, the entrance door and the room desk. When I finished the beer, I went back to the lobby, sat down, got up again and bought a package of chewing gum at the cigar stand. I was walking back to my chair again when the bellhop grabbed my arm and pulled me excitedly behind a huge potted fern.

“That’s the guy I meant,” he told me and pointed to a red-haired man stepping into the elevator. “That’s the bird from Milwaukee who checked in this morning.”

I glanced eagerly through the green fronds of the fern and growled out a curse. The man wasn’t Leiderkrantz. I turned to the blond kid, saw the disappointment on his cherubic face, tossed him four-bits and hurried out of the lobby. It was after five o’clock and I wanted to boot myself all the way cross-town for killing the whole afternoon. It might have been speedier at that. The taxi I grabbed was plenty slow, but it gave me an opportunity to try to figure out the puzzle.

No matter how I added it up, it wouldn’t make sense that Leiderkrantz – rather, the man who had posed as Leiderkrantz – would make the trip from Europe with the valuable Dionysus, risk exposure in order to deliver the statuette to Schweingurt, then disappear.

When the cab pulled up in front of Schweingurt’s place, I was drawing a blank all around, and still didn’t have any answers.

There were a green-and-white police car and an ambulance at the curb when I left my cab. A crowd of silent people stood in front of the art galleries, trying to peer through the huge front windows. A big, perspiring cop at the door was growling at them and endeavoring to move them away from the place. I flashed my shield at the cop, told him I was working for Schweingurt, and he let me through.

“You just lost your job, buddy,” he told me as I passed him.

Max Schweingurt was lying on the floor of the Grecian Court, at the foot of the Athena statue. A doctor from the Medical Examiner’s office was crouched over the body. Schweingurt’s hair was matted with blood and his head was twisted crazily so that his sightless eyes stared up at the statue above. He was very dead. There was a bright crimson stain on the base of the statue, near the foot of the goddess, that trickled down to the floor. Evidently Schweingurt had struck his head on the statue when he fell. I moved over to where a detective was questioning the dark-haired attendant in the gray smock. The attendant’s name was Maurice Cambelli, it developed.

The Medical Examiner got up from his crouch with a grunt and turned to the detective. He gazed down at the corpse and grunted again, running long fingers through his shaggy hair. “This man was dead before he hit that statue,” he said in a rumbling voice. “The right side of his head – where you see the blood – struck the base of the statue. But,” and he pointed to a livid mark behind Schweingurt’s left ear, “he was struck a much harder blow on the left side of his head before he fell. I’m pretty sure that first blow caused his death.”

“Hmm!” the detective murmured and he stepped slowly over to the corpse. “Murder!”

Cambelli gasped, repeating the word as if it choked him.

A police lab photographer took shots of the body before the Medical Examiner’s men removed it, and a fingerprint man studied the room as if trying to decide where to start dusting the place.

I said to Cambelli beside me, “Come on into Schweingurt’s office. I need a drink. And I think you do, too. Maybe we can find a bottle there.” He followed me into the office at the rear, nodding silently as the police detective warned him to stick around the building.

I closed the door of the office and Cambelli went over and took a bottle of Bourbon and a water glass from the bottom drawer of the desk. He poured a good triple shot into the glass, gulped it down, poured a lighter drink and handed the glass to me. I held it in my hand and sat down on the corner of the desk.

He told me he had worked for Max Schweingurt since coming from art school in Italy eight years ago. He wasn’t familiar with the Dionysus acquisition, he told me – Mr Schweingurt had been pretty secretive about it all – but he did know that the Dionysus statuette might possibly be a forgery. Mr Schweingurt had claimed it was, though Dr Bramble from the Lexington Foundation Museum was certain it was the original.

“Isn’t Bramble supposed to be an expert on that sort of thing?” I asked him.

He nodded quickly. “Oh, yes,” he agreed. “The very best. But Mr Schweingurt made tests of it up in the laboratory and proved to his own satisfaction that it’s no more than four or five hundred years old. The original would be several centuries older than that, dating back to around 450 B.C.” He spoke with a certain pride found only in men of his profession, but he spoke of centuries the way we might speak of years, say the turbulent Thirties or the roaring Twenties. “I shouldn’t claim that the Dionysus we received is a forgery, I suppose,” he said; “rather, it’s a copy of the original made by a sculptor of a later era. An excellent copy, too; and worth a great amount of money. But it can’t approach the value of the original.”

He was silent for a moment. I said, “You say that this Dr Bramble from the museum claimed the Dionysus was the original?”

“Yes.” He nodded his dark head. “He and Mr Schweingurt had quite an argument about it.”

“Ah!” I murmured. My thoughts began clicking into some semblance of order.

He leaned forward in his chair aggressively. “No, no! Dr Bramble wouldn’t have done anything like – that! Besides,” and he wiped his fine, smooth hand across his eyes, “the Dionysus is gone. Missing. Stolen! Dr Bramble wouldn’t have stolen it, let alone committed murder for it, whether it was the original or a copy.”

I sipped my drink, gestured with the glass in my hand and argued, “Look at it this way: Suppose the Dionysus was an original, even though Schweingurt’s tests proved it wasn’t. Bramble was so sure it was that he wanted it. An art connoisseur will commit murder for something so priceless as a statuette dating before Christ.” I emptied the glass and watched the thoughtful frown on his face, as he turned the theory over in his mind. He poured himself another drink.

He shook his head. “No. That’s no good. If Bramble were certain the statuette was an original, he could have agreed with Schweingurt and purchased it, as a copy, for a small fortune less than he believed it was worth. He would have done that if he had wanted it badly. He wouldn’t have stolen it.” He took my glass and filled it for himself. “Besides,” he said resolutely, “Dr Bramble wasn’t interested in the Dionysus, which is a decisive point in his favor. He has already bought the Athena – the statue of the goddess outside, which Mr Schweingurt struck when he fell. The Athena is the only original by the same sculptor in the country and is worth even more than the Dionysus. So you see – if Dr Bramble had wanted the Dionysus as representative of that period of art, he might have purchased it as a copy, rather than spend many, many times more for the Athena.”

“The Athena is an original?” I questioned.

“Oh, definitely!”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Well, I hardly think Dr Bramble would have purchased it as an original if it weren’t. He is an expert, you know. And he has been quite anxious to get it these last few days.”

“How long have you had this statue of Athena?” I asked him.

“About two years.” He thought a moment. “Maybe a little longer.”

“And Dr Bramble has been only anxious to buy it in these past few days?”

“Yes.”

“Odd, isn’t it? Especially since Bramble is supposed to be such an authority and would certainly have known of Schweingurt’s having the only authentic sculpture in this country?”

He shrugged indifferently. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “Certainly, Dr Bramble wouldn’t have stolen the Dionysus. I can’t understand why anybody would want to steal a copy.”

“Schweingurt told me the original was worth about sixty-five thousand dollars,” I said. “How much was the copy worth?”

“A couple of thousand, maybe.”

“Plenty of murders have been committed for less than that,” I told him. “Besides, whoever did steal it may not know it’s a copy.”

“Which would leave Bramble out of the picture.”

“Yes.”

Cambelli stared suddenly at the Bourbon in his glass. “Even stealing an original would be stupid,” he mused. “An original Dionysus would be too hard to dispose of. No art connoisseur would buy it unless he knew exactly where it came from. And no one but a connoisseur would be interested in it.” He sipped his whiskey thoughtfully. “There’s a lot more to this than robbery,” he added.

“Much more,” I agreed and let it go at that.

When we left the office, Schweingurt’s body had been removed and the lab men were packing their equipment. I hung around a few minutes near the Athena statue to see if I might pick up some faint clue to the murder, but found nothing and started to turn away when I saw what appeared to be a pencil-shaped object made of marble lying near the base of the statue. I stooped to pick it up when a rough voice behind me bellowed, “Keep your hands off that!”

I straightened quickly, my hands at my sides and stared at the object on the floor.

The voice came alongside me and said, in a friendlier tone, “Oh, it’s you, Mike.” I glanced up at the big, red, Irish face of the plain clothes man. “Sorry,” he said. “Reilly don’t want nothin’ touched. He’s comin’ back in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” I told him. “That pencil-shaped thing caught my eye.” I recognized it as the tip of the staff I had seen on the Dionysus statue, and it told me something – Schweingurt probably had been holding the statuette when he was murdered, the tip of the staff had broken off as he fell.

“What does Reilly think of this job?” I asked the cop.

“Reilly don’t know. The place was closed and there was only the assistant here.” He glanced furtively at Maurice Cambelli standing nervously near the door to Schweingurt’s office. “He thinks maybe there was a robbery motive . . . but he’s not so sure but what Cambelli might have something to do with it.”

I shook my head. “He had no motive,” I argued, thinking of what I already knew about the case – the statuette, Leiderkrantz, Bramble. “I don’t think he had anything to do with it.”

The cop shrugged. “Reilly just isn’t sure about him, that’s all.” He moved away, turned and said, “You won’t touch anything, will you, Mike? Reilly would raise hell with me if you did.”

I nodded, said, “The answer isn’t here, anyway, Grady.” I walked out of the place.

Picking up Leiderkrantz’s trail was a hopeless cause, but it was the only lead I could think of. It kept me busy for three days, picking up pieces, querying people who might have known him or seen him – and running up against a dead end every time. The Customs and airlines representatives were looking for him without success. I finally decided to give up that angle.

A week passed, a week in which I accomplished nothing. Then, one morning I picked up my newspaper and read that Maurice Cambelli had been slapped in jail for the Schweingurt murder. That night I had two visitors, Reilly and Grady from the detective division.

I pulled out a bottle and poured three drinks after they arrived. Reilly looked at the drinks, then at me. “This isn’t a social call, Mike,” he said gruffly and shook his head at the drinks. “We want to know how much you know about the Schweingurt murder.”

I waved my hand at him and got up from my chair. “Okay,” I told him. “Ignore my hospitality. Besides I’m an unsociable guy.” I went into the bedroom, put on a lounging robe and came back. Two of the drinks were gone. That made me feel better. I don’t like the law to be out of sorts with me.

“What about the Schweingurt murder?” I asked. “I thought you’d grabbed the Cambelli kid for that.”

The fire had gone out of Reilly’s eyes. “Don’t try to sell it, Mike,” he said softly. “Maybe you know something, maybe you don’t.” He shrugged. “We grabbed the Cambelli boy. But that doesn’t solve the murder. We found out that a statue was stolen – a thing called Dionysus – and figured there probably was a robbery motive. We found the statue in Cambelli’s room.”

I glanced at him quickly, lowered my eyes and slowly lighted a cigarette. “That should clear up the whole case,” I said carefully, though I didn’t believe it. I still couldn’t tag Cambelli as the murderer.

“It should,” Grady put in. “But a couple of things have happened, Mike. You remember that big statue outside Schweingurt’s office?”

I nodded. He meant the Athena goddess. “It was to be delivered to the Lexington Foundation Museum,” I said.

Grady moved his head at Reilly. “Tell him, Reilly,” he said.

Reilly said, “The statue was delivered to the Lexington Museum the day after the murder. It was stolen from the museum that night!”

“Stolen?” I snapped. “People don’t steal something like that. They’d need a derrick. It weighed a ton!”

He lowered his eyebrows. “Just the same, it was either stolen or picked up its skirts and walked out of the place. It’s gone!”

Grady interrupted. “Tell him where the old gal went when she picked up her skirts.”

Reilly’s expression didn’t change. “To Mexico!” he said.

I didn’t say anything for a minute, dropped my cigarette into an ashtray beside my chair and picked up my drink. I couldn’t catch up with them and asked simply, “Mexico?”

Reilly bobbed his big head up and down. “The insurance company that covered it picked it up in a museum in Mexico City and flew it back to New York. And all this in a week . . . It doesn’t seem on the level.” He cocked his head to one side and looked at me narrowly out of his left eye. “Cambelli told us that Schweingurt hired you for a job the day he was murdered. We wondered if there is some information that we haven’t run across yet. Something you may know.”

I took a drink from my glass, made a face and glanced up at him. “About Cambelli having the Dionysus statuette in his room – did you get a tip on that?”

He raised his bushy brows, still looking at me with narrowed eyes, and said. “Yes. As a matter of fact, we did. Why?”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know. It was one of those things.”

“I see,” I replied slowly. “Do you know if this Dionysus statue was an original?”

“Yes, it was an original. A guy named Bramble from the Lexington Museum said it was an original. He’s supposed to be an expert on that sort of thing.”

“Was it broken?”

“No . . . I’m sure it wasn’t broken. Dr Bramble would have remarked about that, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I guess he would have.” It occurred to me that Dr Bramble had insisted that Schweingurt’s Dionysus had been an original; but later that had been broken. I had seen the broken tip of the staff near the scene of the murder. I was sure of that. So another statuette had been switched in its place – possibly the original for the copy – and I wondered when this had been done.

The man who had posed as Leiderkrantz may have actually brought the original from Europe, switched it for a phony after I lost him that morning and brought the copy to Schweingurt. But he couldn’t have made the switch with Cambelli, because I had seen Cambelli in the galleries during that time, cleaning the Athena statue. Still, the original Dionysus had turned up in Cambelli’s room. He was either working with someone else, someone besides Leiderkrantz’s impostor, or the statuette had been planted on him to frame him for the murder.

Reilly suddenly said, “Are you holding out on us, Mike? That would be bad. You’re liable to lose your license if we catch you holding out on us.” His heavy, black eyes were smoldering.

I poured another drink.

I said, “I’m not holding out anything, Reilly. I’m in the dark. There’s an answer some place, but the Cambelli kid isn’t it. You don’t believe Cambelli is the murderer, do you?”

He moved his big shoulders and looked up. “I think maybe he was in on it. Where, I don’t know. But I think it was more involved than a robbery-murder job. It may be an inside job – which would mean Cambelli.”

I shoved the cork into the bottle and struck it with the palm of my hand. “This statue that was picked up in Mexico,” I said, “have you seen it since it was flown back?”

“No. It’s back in the Lexington Museum, as far as I know. Why?”

“You said yourself that something about that part of it didn’t seem on the level. It may be the clue we’re looking for. I think it would be a good idea to take a look at that statue.”

Reilly’s dark eyes brightened and he pushed himself from the chair. “You think we might find the answer there?”

I slipped out of the lounging robe and shrugged into a suit coat, strapped the shoulder holster under my armpit. “It’s just a hunch,” I told him. “Still, we may find something.”

The museum was a huge, impressive-looking brownstone between Fifth Avenue and Madison in the Sixties. The dull glow of a street light flickered dimly off the heavy iron bars at the windows; and here and there the motionless form of a statue was silhouetted against the darkened glass. A guard at the massive front door glanced at Reilly’s police shield, sighed wearily and said, “Another dick! What’re you guys doin’, holding a convention here?”

Reilly glanced at me over his shoulder, raised his heavy eyebrows and then walked into the building. Another guard led us through a dimly lighted hall to the rear.

Dr Homer Bramble’s office was not unlike that of Max Schweingurt. There were a large walnut desk, cases of richly bound books, a thick expensive rug, and odd bits of bric-a-brac, statuary, rock samples and the like. Bramble himself complemented the room. He was a tall, cadaverous-looking man in his sixties, with thick gray hair and piercing black eyes. He had a thin, tight mouth in a pinched, gray face; and his clothes, old-fashioned, of rich black broadcloth, were dust-flecked and ill-kept.

He fixed heavy black-rimmed pince-nez on his long nose as we came into the office, cleared his throat and stared coldly at us.

Reilly said brusquely, “I’m Lieutenant Reilly from Police Headquarters, Doctor Bramble. We’d like to see the statue you purchased from Max Schweingurt.”

“The one that was returned from Mexico City,” I put in meaningfully.

Bramble glanced at me, a wary sarcasm in his sharp eyes. He removed the pince-nez, letting it drop on the black silk ribbon that hung around his neck. “The museum is open at ten o’clock tomorrow morning . . .”

“I beg your pardon,” Reilly interrupted him, “I said we were from Police Headquarters.”

Bramble shrugged. “Very well.” He pressed a button on his desk, picked up a sheaf of papers and, ignoring us, hunched forward on his desk and began to study the papers intently.

In the tense silence I heard the faint sound of footsteps coming toward a door, not the door through which we had entered from the hall, but one to the left of Bramble’s desk. The others seemed to pay no attention, if they heard at all, and I looked at Bramble. In the light from the desk lamp, I saw his eyes darken and a tense expression came over his pinched face. His fingers turned white at the knuckles as he gripped the papers in his hand. I glanced back at the door. The knob turned slowly; then, before the latch clicked, the knob turned back again. The footsteps retreated almost soundlessly away from the door. I watched Bramble wipe a nervous hand across his forehead. The papers trembled in his fingers.

At that moment, the guard who had ushered us to see Bramble came into his office.

Bramble, looking up, said hoarsely, “Take these men to the Athena statue.”

I caught Reilly’s eyes and nodded significantly.

Reilly said sharply, “You too, Doctor,” and added, “if you don’t mind.” The tone of the detective’s voice told Bramble that if he did mind, he’d probably be dragged along anyway.

Bramble’s thin lips drew back against his teeth. He pushed himself from his chair, muttering angrily beneath his breath as he led the way. I stepped aside as Reilly and Grady followed. As they turned into the corridor, I ducked swiftly back into the room and through the door I had been watching a moment before.

I played a narrow beam of a pencil flashlight about the short hallway, narrow and dusty, and followed it till I came to another door at the end. This opened upon a steep, worn stairway which led down into solid blackness. The stairs creaked eerily beneath my cautious step, and I stopped, turned out the flash and held my breath. I could hear nothing. The dank, musty odor from the basement put an unpleasant taste in my mouth, and the dust smarted in my nostrils. Snapping on the flash, I went on down the stairs with each step seemingly shrieking louder in the smothering silence.

At the bottom of the stairway, some instinct seemed to prompt me. I switched off the flash. The blackness pressed down upon me like a great cat. I took three steps slowly, carefully; and my foot struck something. There was still no sound.

With my foot, I felt around in the dark and touched that something again. An icy coldness trickled along my spine.

Using the flash again, I shielded it with my hand and crouched down. A man lay on the concrete floor at my feet. A dead man. He looked about thirty or thirty-five years old, was wearing an ordinary brown suit and had light-brown hair. He was lying on his side, but his clothes were covered with dirt and his shoes were scuffed as if he’d been dragged here. His head had been smashed in horribly and the blood stained the collar and sleeve of his suit coat. I swept the light to the stairs. No blood marks there. He had not been killed upstairs, apparently.

I searched his pockets. There was an insurance investigator’s identification in his right pocket. Some envelopes and papers in the inside pocket of his coat, I glanced through hurriedly. There were a couple of personal letters, a railroad timetable and a telegram reading:

It was signed by the Central-Union Indemnity Company.

I searched for some other information concerning the telegram, a verification of it, perhaps, but found nothing. The dates between the third and seventh of August were before Schweingurt had expected the Dionysus to come from Europe, many days before in fact. And I wondered if such communication between Bramble and Lisbon referred to the Dionysus, or to something else. The insurance company, as far as I knew, was not concerned with the Dionysus statuette, and probably didn’t even know about it. It was interested, however, in the Athena statue, particularly in the quick removal of the statue from New York to Mexico City.

In the tense seconds it took for these thoughts to rush through my churning mind, my flashlight rayed over the dusty concrete floor, picked out a scattered trail of bloodstains and followed it behind a stack of wooden crates. The place was cluttered with huge boxes, grimy art objects, some with only enough ancient clay chipped and washed away to be recognizable as statuary; others were covered with canvas that had become damp and odorous. The fetid, musty smell parched my throat.

I followed the bloodstains behind the crates, stooping low. Some warning sense caused me to pull the gun from my shoulder holster. I gripped it. My hand was hot and wet against the cold metal.

I thought I heard the faint scuff of a footstep behind me. I started to whirl, but in that instant I was struck violently across the shoulder. I fell, sprawling against the crates. My arm went numb and the flashlight slipped from my lax fingers and clattered across the concrete floor.

The swishing sound of a heavy weapon slashed by my head as I ducked away from my former position. There was a splintered crash from the crate beside me as the object landed. I crouched in the darkness, brought my gun up and fired blindly. The bullet whanged off the solid wall opposite me, ricocheted through the basement and whined menacingly close to my face, embedding itself in a box behind me.

The attacker whirled, frightened by the shot, and I sprang in his direction from where I had been hiding against the crate. The force of my body smashed him to his knees as he struggled frantically to keep his balance. I caught a handful of hair and brought the gun down. We rolled across the narrow space of floor. His feet shot out and caught me in the stomach, exploding the breath from my lungs. The pain in my shoulder was torture. I shot out my left fist, felt my knuckles rake his face. I brought the gun around again. The force of the blow tingled all the way up my arm. He rolled away from me, and I scrambled to my knees and went after him. And then I realized he was lying very still.

I stayed in that position about thirty seconds, maybe more, waiting for him to move. The gun in my hand was pointed toward the figure, shrouded in darkness. My finger was tense on the trigger. The man did not move. His breathing, loud in the stillness, was the breathing of a man unconscious.

I got up, wondering if the sound of the shot had been heard upstairs and why Reilly and Grady weren’t down here by now. My flashlight still glowed near the crates where it had dropped; and when I picked it up it was wet and sticky with blood. I rayed it over the spot, saw where the trail of blood ended and smiled grimly, thinking of how really far the trail had come. Before me was a Grecian statue, its canvas covering partially thrown off. The goddess, Athena. The statue that had been smeared with Max Schweingurt’s blood. And now the dark goddess stood above the blood of another victim, the insurance investigator who had discovered her here.

I went back to the unconscious man on the floor and swept a beam of light over him. He was beginning to recover consciousness.

The man struggling dazedly in front of me was the one who had posed as Leiderkrantz! He looked up at me, fright so stark in his eyes that it give him a crazed look. He dropped his head, shaking it weakly, and started to feign unconsciousness. I was not in the mood to let him play possum. I prodded him roughly with my foot.

“Get up,” I ordered. I stabbed the revolver into his ribs.

I pressed the buzzer on Bramble’s desk and sent the guard after Reilly. Then I sat down, placed the gun on the desk in front of me and wearily lighted a cigarette. The man I had met as Leiderkrantz sat near me, nervously rubbing his hands together and staring sullenly at the floor.

Reilly didn’t look friendly when he, Grady and Bramble came into the office. He looked at me narrowly and said, “It’s no good, Mike. We went over the statue with a fine-tooth comb. We couldn’t find anything suspicious.”

“What were you looking for?” I asked him and grinned.

He looked sheepish, covered it with anger in his eyes. “I don’t know, but you said the answers . . .”

I stopped him with a nod of my head. “I found another corpse. Another statue. A murder. Maybe two.” I dragged on my cigarette long enough to watch the tension get the best of Bramble, and said, “Arrest Dr Bramble for the murder of Max Schweingurt!”

“Preposterous!” screamed Bramble.

“Sit down!” Reilly ordered him sharply. “This is worth looking into. Mike usually doesn’t talk unless he’s sure of himself. Give us the story, Mike. Why do you think Bramble is the murderer?”

Reilly seated himself where he could keep watch over both Bramble and the man I had caught just a few minutes before. Grady sat near the door, the entire room under his surveillance.

“First, let me explain what I have been doing since you three left this office for a look at the statue. I didn’t accompany you for a very good reason. While we were sitting here awaiting the arrival of the guard I was quite certain that someone sneaked up to that second door, there, and started to open it. Bramble’s facial reactions at that time corroborated my suspicions. So I decided to investigate. I realize I should have let you know my plans before I did anything. But I was afraid that if Bramble guessed he might be able in some way to tip off whomever had been on the other side of that door.

“So I went along to investigate. I found, on the other side of that door, a long hallway at the end of which is another door and stairway. At the bottom of those stairs is a dead man. He has been murdered. And ironically enough, he is lying near the very same statue beside which Max Schweingurt was murdered.” I paused to let that sink in.

“But . . . but . . . that’s impossible.” Reilly was almost explosive at this point. “We just examined the statue beside which Schweingurt was killed. It is out in the main part of the museum.”

“Yes? That is what everyone is supposed to think. But I am the second person, other than Dr Bramble and his friend here, to know that the statue in the museum is not the one which was purchased from Max Schweingurt. It was never inside Schweingurt’s galleries. The other person who made this discovery is in the basement, dead. I would be in the same position, too, if our friend who calls himself Leiderkrantz,” I nodded at the man, “had succeeded in his attempt to bludgeon me to death a few minutes ago.

“I didn’t find the answer for myself, really. I more or less got it from a telegram I found in the dead man’s pocket. And when I discovered the second statue of the goddess, the entire story seemed pretty clear.”

I could tell Reilly was ready with a hundred questions, but he was a fair man and was patient enough to let me tell the story my own way.

I read the telegram to them.

“The statue on the floor of the museum is the original. There is no doubt of that. Dr Bramble wouldn’t display any other but the original, of that I am sure. Therefore, the statue in the basement is a copy of the original, a very fine copy, we may be sure, since it had Max Schweingurt fooled for two years while it stood in his galleries. All this time, Dr Bramble knew the statue was in the gallery. But he evidenced no desire to own it for some time. We may, therefore, conclude that he always knew it for the copy which it was.

“Then, suddenly, Dr Bramble wanted to purchase that statue – the one we now know to be only a copy. Why? . . . He learned through a secret source that the original Athena was being smuggled from Greece and was to be placed in a museum in Mexico City. He wanted that original Athena – wanted it badly. He knew he would never be able to strike a bargain with the Mexican museum. They wanted it for themselves. So he schemed and finally hit upon an idea so perfect it almost worked. It was just a little too smooth, though, and excited the suspicions of the insurance company.

“Bramble’s plan was to buy the copy of Athena from Schweingurt, paying the high price and never letting anyone know the statue was not the original. After it had been placed here in the museum it would be ‘stolen’, it would simply disappear. Then the insurance company would get a ‘tip’ that the statue was in the museum in Mexico City, just after the time it arrived there. The statue would have been smuggled into Mexico. There would be no proof of its purchase and the museum would not be able to prove how it had gained possession of it. By putting some pressure to bear, the insurance company, completely innocent of any duplicity, could bring the original statue to Bramble.

“All these plans were carried out. But there was a slight interruption. Schweingurt, in his enthusiasm about the original Dionysus, a creation of the sculptor of the original Athena, confided in Bramble that the gallery would soon be displaying the Dionysus statuette. Bramble was horrified. He realized that if the original Dionysus were compared with the copy of Athena, Schweingurt would realize that the Athena was a copy and Bramble’s plans would be ruined.

“He sent a man of his own to Lisbon to do away with the European representative, Leiderkrantz, steal the original Dionysus and return to this country posing as Leiderkrantz.

“I was hired by Schweingurt to protect Leiderkrantz on his trip from the airport to the galleries. But the fake Leiderkrantz slugged me, contacted Bramble and switched the original Dionysus for a very good copy which had been stored in the basement of the museum. He then delivered the copy to Schweingurt.

“The two copies could now be compared as they had both been made by the same sculptor, which Bramble knew.

“But Schweingurt had found out that the man who had delivered the statuette was an impostor. He was suspicious. He made tests of the statuette and found that it was not the original. He called Bramble into conference and told him. Bramble insisted, in the face of contrary evidence, that the statuette was the original. Since the Athena had been the only work of its kind in this country, Schweingurt had always taken its value for granted. Bramble was apparently afraid that Schweingurt would become suspicious and would make tests disproving the authenticity of the Athena.

“He left the galleries but returned later, after the closing time. He either found Schweingurt comparing the Dionysus with the Athena and making tests which were disclosing the age of them both, or he may have already discovered that the Athena was a copy. He may have told Bramble since he knew Bramble would not be interested in buying anything other than the original. There would be a tremendous difference between the two and a reputable dealer would be bound by ethics to refund the money for an object which turned out to be other than represented.

“This meant the ruin of Bramble’s plan. But he wouldn’t give up too easily. He turned on Schweingurt and killed him. He stole the copy of the Dionysus which Schweingurt had held in his hands as he fell, dead, against the Athena. But as Schweingurt fell, the tip of the staff in the hands of the tiny figure was broken. In his haste, Bramble did not notice the break until he was away and it was too late to recover the lost piece. He had no way of knowing that it had been discovered by the police since the fact was never published.

“The Athena copy was delivered to Bramble as scheduled. The next night he hid it in the basement storeroom and reported it stolen. Then, to further the theme of murder for robbery and to try to definitely pin suspicion on someone, Bramble took the original Dionysus, which he didn’t wish any one to discover in his possession, and planted it in Maurice Cambelli’s room. It was he who tipped off the police.

“With the original Athena eventually brought to his museum and the original Dionysus discovered in Cambelli’s room, the two could be compared without any danger to Bramble. They were both the originals, as they were thought to be.

“The copy of the Athena is in the basement storeroom here. A laboratory test may bring out traces of Schweingurt’s blood on the base of the statue and prove that the copy is the one that Bramble actually bought.

“The insurance company smelled a rat and did a little investigating of Bramble. The investigator discovered the copy of Athena in the basement. As far as Bramble was concerned, there wasn’t a chance of his continued success in the deception. But . . .” I paused, swinging my body slowly in the chair. “This guy,” I pointed to the man we had known as Leiderkrantz. “This guy killed the investigator!” I shot the words out hoping to get some sort of reaction.

“Oh, no. You don’t pin that on me,” the fellow cried shakily. He waved his arm desperately at Bramble. “Bramble killed him. You’re not hanging no murders on me. I was just . . .”

He slumped in his chair, staring sightlessly at the wall. His face was the gray color of ashes and his lips compressed in a tight, bluish line. His thin shoulders were slumped in defeat.

Reilly turned to me.

“How did you know Bramble murdered Schweingurt? Why didn’t you think this Leiderkrantz fake did the job?” he asked.

I smiled wryly. “Only Bramble would have planted a sixty-five thousand dollar Dionysus to frame a murder motive. That meant that something even more valuable must be at stake – the original Athena.”

They had to lead Bramble by the arm when they took him away. He was completely dazed – he couldn’t comprehend how his perfectly planned plot could have backfired.