This Is Murder

Chapter Eight

Phil Duncan had only sixty cents of his original five dollar investment in front of him, when the exit door, which led to the corridor from Moraine’s private office, was shaken violently.

“That’ll be Barney Morden,” Duncan said.

Moraine pushed back his chair, walked toward the door.

“How about putting it all in, and making one hand of showdown?” he said. “Then we can start a three-handed game and perhaps get some of Barney’s money into circulation.”

The district attorney nodded.

Moraine clicked back the spring lock and opened the outer door. Barney Morden came in, pounding his hands, one against the other.

“Cripes,” he said, “but that’s a cold wind.”

“Come in, Barney,” Sam Moraine said. “We’re looking for a little outside money.”

Barney leaned forward and sniffed suspiciously.

“Who has the alcoholic halitosis?” he asked.

“Both of us,” Phil Duncan said. “It’s in the lower right-hand drawer, Barney.”

“My God, don’t you fellows recognize property rights?” Moraine asked.

“Shucks, we’re paying for it,” Barney Morden countered, grinning as he opened the lower right-hand drawer of the desk. “I might just as well sign my salary checks over to you.”

He poured himself a drink of brandy. Phil Duncan, watching him intently, waited until Morden looked up and he caught his eyes.

“Anything?” he asked.

Morden shook his head.

“Heard from the federals?”

“Yes. They haven’t anything.”

Barney drained the brandy and said to Moraine, “Did you know the federals had been shadowing you?”

“Yeah, Phil told me. I feel flattered.”

“Well,” Barney said, “that’s what comes of mixing with crime. Guess they decided to forget it when Duncan came to call on you. There’s no one out there now, but they’d been tailing you. Well, we’ll stick around.”

“My God,” Moraine protested, “can’t the taxpayers provide you birds with an office to work in?”

Duncan looked worried.

Barney Morden made an attempt to be facetious.

“Hell,” he said, “ain’t you a taxpayer?”

“Thank you for the thought, Barney. In my capacity as taxpayer, it will be necessary for me to make a special assessment. This will compensate me for furnishing you birds with an office in which to work, and paying taxes at the same time. It will, therefore, be in the nature of a revolving fund. I pay it to the County, the County pays it to you as salary, you pay it to me as poker winnings.”

“If it’s a revolving fund, it revolves only in one direction,” Morden growled. “You gather it in as fast as I get it. Some day the luck’s going to turn. At that, I don’t mind you winning when you have the cards. It’s the way you talk us into laying down when we have a fair hand and you have nothing, and then talk us into calling when we have nothing and you have a fair hand, that gets my goat.”

“The answer to that is simple,” Moraine told him. “Every time you start to call, lay down. Every time you start to lay down, call.”

Morden was smiling with his lips, but his eyes were hard.

“Perhaps you think you re just being funny, now,” he said. “You almost said a mouthful.”

Phil Duncan started pacing back and forth across the office.

“How many of the people on that list have you accounted for, Barney?” he asked.

“Only one — the boy-friend.”

“You don’t mean, the boy-friend?”

“No, the other.”

“The others you can’t contact?”

“Can’t get in touch with them at all, can’t find out where they are.”

Moraine slid a shuffled deck of cards across the table to Barney Morden.

“Cut the cards, and make a wish, Barney,” he said. “Put ten bucks in the bank, and remember that the dealer has the privilege of calling a jackpot whenever he wants; otherwise, a player may open on suspicion.”

“Wait a minute, Sam,” the district attorney said. “I want to talk with you a little bit before we start playing”

“I’m ready to listen any time you want to talk.”

“What’s your connection with the Hartwell woman?”

“You know what it is.”

“Come clean, Sam. If you’re in any kind of trouble, come clean, and let’s get it straightened out. There are a lot of developments in connection with this thing that are serious.”

“What, for instance?”

“The federal officers aren’t at all satisfied.”

“I never saw her until last night,” Moraine said. “Since that time I’ve seen her just once. That was when I went up to the apartment.”

Morden’s voice suddenly lost its tone of facetious banter. He leaned toward Moraine and said, “You can’t make that stick. You’re mixed up in this thing, and you’re holding out some information. Now kick through.”

Phil Duncan raised his hand.

“Remember, Barney,” he said, “Sam is our friend.”

Barney Morden’s tone did not soften.

“He ain’t a friend if he holds out important information at a time like this.”

“What is it you want to know,” Moraine asked, “specifically?”

“I want to know the whole story of your relations with the Hartwell woman,” Barney Morden told him.

Moraine, staring steadily at him, said, “I was afraid of that, Barney. I was afraid I couldn’t pull the wool over your eyes. You see, she jilted me at the altar in order to marry Doctor Hartwell. I swore that I’d get even so I employed detectives to keep a watch on the place. I learned every one of her habits — where she went and what she did. Then, when she started doing some secretarial work here in the city, I swooped down on her and kidnapped her. I held her prisoner for two weeks in a boat, and she still resisted my importunities. So I said, ‘To hell with the broad. I’d rather have ten thousand dollars anyway.’ Her figure isn’t so good since she got married, and she’s lost a lot of her charming ways. So I took the ten thousand bucks, and charged my romance off on the profit and loss account.”

Morden’s face darkened with rage.

Phil Duncan, stepping forward, put a friendly hand on Moraine’s shoulder.

“Listen, Sam,” he said, “cut out the horse play. This is no time for kidding. Barney and I have plenty to worry us.”

“So it would seem,” Moraine told him. “But you’re not taking me into your confidence. Incidentally, I’m telling you fellows every blessed thing I know about the case — so far.”

“You mean you’re expecting to find out more?”

“Frankly, yes.”

“What is it?”

“I may tell you when I find out. I may not. Why are you fellows so worked up about the case?”

Phil Duncan said slowly, “This case may have a political background. The Hartwell woman had been doing some secretarial work for Carl Thorne. Carl Thorne wanted someone he could trust. The work was very private, and very confidential. Thorne is commencing to suspect that so-called kidnapping wasn’t on the up-and-up.

“A lot hinges on that Hartwell woman. The federal authorities thought her story sounded fishy, but, because of your connection with it, and because of the fact I vouched for you, they didn’t put the screws down as tightly as they would have otherwise. They figured that when you said you’d paid over ten thousand dollars in ransom money, you had done so. They figured that when you said the girl was actually in the custody of kidnapers that such was the case.”

“Well?” Moraine asked.

Morden thrust out a finger, leveled it at Moraine’s chest.

“Sam,” he said, “did you pay ten thousand dollars?”

Sam Moraine stared steadily at Morden for a few seconds, then said slowly, “I told you that I did, and I did. When I tell you birds a thing, it’s so. Incidentally, Barney, I don’t like the way you’re going at this thing.”

“I’m not crazy about the way you’re going at it,” Morden said, in a grumbling undertone.

“Wait a minute, Barney,” Duncan said. “We’re not getting anywhere with this. Suppose you keep out of it and let me handle it.”

“Just what is it you want to handle?” Moraine inquired, his voice showing a growing irritation.

“A great deal may depend upon the good faith of this Hartwell woman,” Duncan observed.

“Well?” Moraine asked.

“The federal authorities would like to talk with her some more, and my office would like very much to ask her some rather pertinent questions.”

“Why don’t you do it then?”

“Don’t you know, Sam?”

“No.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

“She’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared! You mean skipped out?”

“We don’t know.”

“Perhaps her husband can tell you something.”

“Her husband has disappeared.”

“The Bender woman?”

“She’s disappeared, too. We talked with her early this afternoon. Carl Thorne has talked with her. She’s either telling the truth, or she’s the most accomplished liar I’ve encountered since I’ve been in office. She swears that she has always been suspicious of Dr. Hartwell; that she thought he was mentally unbalanced; that Ann Hartwell had been working here in the city, and went to Saxonville to spend the week-end with her husband two weeks ago. She disappeared. Dr. Hartwell didn’t seem particularly concerned about it. Doris Bender knew that Ann Hartwell lived a most unhappy married life. When the girl didn’t show up, she got in touch with Carl Thorne, and through Carl Thorne, got in touch with my office. She had convinced herself Dr. Hartwell had murdered his wife. Then the ransom note came in, and you know what happened after that — that is, you know as much as we do, and perhaps more.”

“Why all the hullabaloo about her disappearance? Why the sudden desire to talk with her? You weren’t so worked up about it last night, and you had all day to talk with her if you’d wanted to.”

Barney Morden growled in an undertone, “Don’t spill anything.”

Duncan said slowly, “I can tell you this much, Sam. It’s entirely confidential. Ann Hartwell has been doing some work for Carl Thorne — very private work. I can’t even disclose to you the nature of that work. She took quite a bit of dictation in shorthand and transcribed it. Thorne, of course, was very particular to see that no copies were kept. In fact, Doris Bender acted as sort of a supervisor to make certain the work was done just the way Carl wanted it.”

“Well,” Moraine asked, “what about that?”

“Her shorthand notebooks,” Duncan said, significantly.

“What about them?”

“They were kept in Doris Bender’s apartment. Doris went to show them to Thorne to-day when Thorne asked if anything had been done about them. Thorne thought it would be a good plan to destroy those notebooks. When Doris Bender got the notebooks out and was going to burn them in her fireplace in her apartment, Thorne suddenly noticed the notebooks had the pages divided — that is, the shorthand operator had ruled a line down the center of each page, and written down each side of that line. That’s a device that shorthand operators frequently use. But that was a habit Ann Hartwell didn’t have. So Thorne started checking over the books. He found that they weren’t Ann Hartwell’s books. They were books that had been procured from some place, and substituted. No one seems to know anything about it.”

“Therefore, you’re investigating the kidnapping in order to see if it has anything to do with the shorthand books?”

“Therefore,” Duncan said, “to be perfectly frank with you, Sam, I’m very anxious indeed to get hold of Ann Hartwell before the federal authorities get hold of her. That’s why I don’t dare to work out of my office. That’s why Barney and I are here. We have every agency at our disposal, trying to trace that woman. They’re going to call us here just as soon as they find anything. We’re hoping we can beat the federals to it.”

“Why?”

“Because if she’s going to talk, we want to know just what it is she’s going to say.”

“You mean she might have been double-crossing Thorne?”

“She might have been. She might have been really kidnapped, and then again the notebooks might have been stolen.”

The telephone rang. Sam Moraine mechanically reached for the instrument, but Barney Morden lunged forward as though he had been a football player retrieving a fumble, grabbed the French telephone, and said, “Hello, what is it?”

The receiver made squawking noises.

Morden said, “Yes, this is Barney talking. The Chiefs right here.”

The receiver made more noise, and Barney frowned and said, “Now, listen. She must have left there in a private car or in a taxicab. If she went in a private car, someone must have telephoned her and arranged to pick her up. If she went of her own free will, she went in a taxicab. Now you fellows start checking on that angle, and...”

He broke off as the receiver chirped into additional noise.

Barney scowled for a moment and said, “I don’t think that changes the situation any. I’ll talk it over with the Chief and call you back if it does. You concentrate on the taxicabs... Hell, I don’t care how she was dressed. She had to leave, didn’t she? She didn’t fly out of the window, even if she had nothing on but panties.”

He slammed the receiver into position, looked at Duncan meaningly and said, “I want to talk with you a minute, Chief.”

“Want me to go out?” asked Moraine.

“No,” Duncan told him, “stay here. What was it, Barney?”

Morden hesitated a moment, then said, “They’ve been checking up on the apartment to find out what she wore when she left.”

“Well, what did she wear?”

Barney said, moodily, “As nearly as can be found out from what’s left, she wore a close-fitting brown hat, a mink coat and a brown wool sports dress.”

Phil Duncan frowned, made no answer, but started pacing up and down the floor, his hands pushed deep into the side pockets of his coat.

After a moment Sam Moraine took the cards and dropped them into the drawer of his desk. The phone rang again.

Barney Morden’s hand had been resting within a few inches of the telephone. He picked it up, said, “Hello,” frowned a moment, looked at Moraine suspiciously, then shifted his eyes to Phil Duncan.

“It’s for Moraine,” he said, “a woman calling.”

Morden was still looking to Phil Duncan for instructions, when Sam Moraine grabbed the receiver from Morden’s hand. Morden tightened his grip on it for a moment, and Duncan said, irritably, “Snap out of it, Barney. Are you crazy?”

Barney Morden started to say something, but caught himself. Moraine said, “Hello,” into the transmitter, and heard Natalie Rice’s voice quivering with some emotion.

“Mr. Moraine?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Please come out here. Get out just as quickly as you can.”

“You’re at that place?” he asked.

“Yes, yes.”

“Wait a minute,” Moraine said, “it isn’t going to be easy for me to come out. Are you where you can talk?”

He heard a rumble which seemed to grow in volume, heard her voice crying, almost hysterically, “Come out, come out! Come out at once! You must come. I don’t know what to do. I can’t hear a word you say. Please don’t let anything stand in the way. Come!”

Moraine could hear then that she was crying, could hear some other vague noise coming over the wire. Then suddenly there was a click, and the connection was broken.

Moraine dropped the receiver back into place, stretched, yawned, and looked at his watch.

“No poker?” he asked casually.

“No poker,” Duncan said, watching his face intently.

Moraine looked at his wrist-watch. “How many more calls you boys got coming in?”

“We don’t know.”

“How long are you going to be here?”

“We can’t even tell you that.”

Moraine yawned once more.

“You were right, Phil,” he told the district attorney.

Duncan raised his eyebrows.

“Right,” Moraine went on, “when you said handling this kind of work was a chore. It interested me last night, but I’m commencing to get fed up on it. Perhaps the novelty is wearing off, or perhaps I haven’t had enough sleep to make me feel normal. And I’ve a sweet day ahead of me to-morrow... Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go on home, and you boys can make yourselves at home here in the office. Pull the door shut when you go out. It has a spring lock on it. The telephone’s connected so any incoming calls will ring on this instrument here on my desk. The bottle of brandy is half full. If there’s any left when you leave, put it in that lower right-hand drawer because I don’t want to tempt the janitor in the morning.”

Moraine yawned once more as he went to the coat closet and struggled into his overcoat.

Adjusting his tie in front of the mirror, he caught a glimpse of Barney Morden’s reflected features. They were twisted into a grimace, as he strove to convey some wordless communication to the district attorney.

Moraine turned around quickly. Barney Morden sat perfectly motionless.

“Feel you’ve got to leave?” Duncan asked.

“I feel that I should, yes, Phil.”

“No kidding,” Duncan told him. “It’s an imposition for us to use your office, but I wanted some place where we could be assured of absolute privacy. If we find this Hartwell woman, I may want to bring her in here for questioning.”

Moraine opened a small drawer in the desk, took out a key.

“This key,” he said, “fits the corridor door.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

Moraine buttoned up his coat, drew on his gloves, and said, “Well, boys, be good. Make yourselves at home.”

“Watch your step,” Duncan called after him.

Barney Morden said nothing.

Moraine twisted the brass knob which controlled the spring lock. He opened the door, stepped into the corridor, and suddenly recoiled as something near his left hand swirled into motion. He caught a glimpse of a man’s crouching figure.

“Damn you!” said a mans nervous, high-pitched voice. “Get a load of this!”

Moraine saw light glitter from nickel-plated steel, as a gun was pushed into his stomach. He sensed the stiffening of elbow and shoulder against the jar of a recoil. He lashed out desperately with his left hand. The blow caught the man on the cheek bone, staggered him slightly off balance.

His motions impeded somewhat by the top coat which flapped about his legs and restrained the free swing of his- shoulders, Moraine shot across a right hook. It was a glancing blow. He could hear the other man’s labored breathing, saw him lunge. Light caught the drawn face, showing the red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes, pale skin, the angle of an unshaven jaw. There were haggard circles under the eyes.

Richard Hartwell.

Moraine caught the wrist that held the gun, turned it downward. Barney Morden came through the door on the run — a hundred and ninety pounds of beef and action. His right fist struck with a smashing impact. Moraine felt Hartwell’s arm grow limp in his grasp, saw the man sink to the floor.

Barney Morden stooped, grabbed him by the collar.

“What the hell!” he said, and dragged the inert form into the office.

A nickel-plated revolver lay on the floor of the corridor. Phil Duncan picked if up, looked at it, frowned, broke the cylinder open and stared at Moraine with a puzzled expression on his countenance.

“It isn’t loaded,” he said.

Hartwell stirred on the floor, opened his eyes, sighed. Morden prodded him with his foot. “What the hell’s the idea, guy?” he asked.

The man moaned and said nothing.

Duncan looked inquiringly at Sam Moraine.

“That,” Sam Moraine said, “is Dr. Richard Hartwell.”

“And we’ve been looking all over hell’s half-acre for him!” Barney Morden exclaimed. “And so have the federals. The son-of-a-gun was parked outside the door, waiting for Sam to come out so he could shoot a load of lead into his guts.”

He stooped, picked up Hartwell by the collar, and raised him to a sitting position. His left hand slapped Hartwell’s face sharply.

“Come on, guy,” he said; “snap out of it. You’ve got some talking to do.”

Hartwell opened his eyes and stared with punch-groggy concentration at Morden’s face.

“What’s the idea?” Morden asked. “What were you trying to do?”

“I want to kill him.”

“Why?”

“He broke up my home.”

“What makes you think he did?”

“I know he did He’s my wife’s lover.”

Phil Duncan said, “You’re mistaken, Doctor. He just acted as intermediary. He paid over the ten thousand dollars to the kidnapers.”

Dr. Hartwell’s eyes lost their glazed look. They glittered with hatred.

“That’s a damn lie. He was with her all the time. She wasn’t kidnapped. He lured her away from me. They were on a honeymoon together. Then they hatched up this scheme to get ten thousand dollars. It was going to make a nice little dowry for them.”

“You didn’t pay the ten thousand, did you?” Duncan asked.

“No. Doris Bender did. But Ann is a gold digger. She didn’t care where it came from just so she got it. This is the man that put her up to it.”

“How long,” asked Morden, “have you been waiting outside that door?”

“I don’t know, an hour I guess.”

“Where were you when I came in?”

“When you fellows came in, I heard you coming and ducked around the bend in the corridor each time, and waited until after you’d gone in.”

Sam Moraine caught Phil Duncan’s eye.

“He’s going to get into trouble sooner or later with that gun. I guess we’d better put charges against him, and hold him in jail until after he’s calmed down some. You can get a doctor to give him a hypodermic, can’t you?”

“He’s going to jail, all right,” Barney Morden said grimly. “There’s been too much hide-and-seek around this stuff.”

He turned back to Dr. Hartwell.

“What the hell was the idea of sticking that gun into Moraine’s stomach?”

“What do you suppose? I was going to kill him. Then I was going to kill myself.”

“But your gun isn’t loaded,” the district attorney said.

Hartwell started to say something, then a spasm of expression crossed his face.

“Isn’t loaded!” he screamed.

“No. There isn’t a shell in it.”

Hartwell started to get up from the chair. Morden pushed him back. Hartwell kicked, lashed out with his arms, tried to bite at Morden’s restraining hands.

“He’s nuts,” Barney Morden said.

Hartwell quit kicking. Profanity streamed from his lips. He shook his fists at Moraine.

“By God,” he said, “I’d forgotten. That’s the son-of-a-bitch that took the shells from my gun. By God, you’ll find those shells in his wastebasket. Give them to me!”

Phil Duncan stared curiously at Sam Moraine, then crossed to the desk, picked up the wastebasket, and gave it a preliminary, shake. He could hear the rattle of solid objects. He pulled out some of the papers, looked down into the wastebasket and said to Barney Morden, “At that, the chap’s right.”

“Yes,” Moraine said, “he busted into the office and Natalie Rice saw the gun. She thought he was going to use it on me. Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn’t.”

“I didn’t intend to at the time,” Hartwell said. “I wanted to find my wife’s kidnapers.”

Barney Morden gave a low whistle, and said, “Well, you’ve got to hand it to this guy, Moraine, for one thing. When he starts mixing into a case, he mixes in it from more different angles than any guy we’ve ever had to monkey with.”

“He took the shells out of my gun and gave it back to me,” Dr. Hartwell said. “I intended to go right down and buy some more shells, and then I was so excited I forgot about it. And then when I found out that he had broken up my home, I must have gone crazy. I just wanted to kill him. I forgot about everything else. I almost caught up with him before he came to the office, but he got in the elevator just ahead of me. I had to take the next elevator up. I’ve been waiting for him to come out ever since.”

Duncan said, sternly, “Do you know that the only reason you’re not going to be hung for murder is that this man took those shells out of your gun?”

“I’d never have been hung for murder,” Hartwell said. “I was going to kill myself after I shot him.”

“As a matter of fact,” Moraine remarked, “he never had a chance to pull the trigger. I knocked him off balance with my left, hit him with my right, and grabbed the gun. I didn’t know, of course, it wasn’t loaded. It certainly gave me a thrill.”

“Well,” Morden told him, grinning, “you wanted to mix around in criminal cases so you could get a thrill out of them. Now you’re getting one with a vengeance.”

Moraine turned to face Dr. Hartwell.

“Who told you I was intimate with your wife, Doctor?”

“None of your damned business.”

Moraine regarded Phil Duncan thoughtfully.

“I was calling on Doris Bender,” he said. “I think she was going to do a little high-pressure vamping, but someone who had a key to her apartment opened the door and walked in. She passed me off as Ann Hartwell’s boy-friend in order to square it. Now then, do you know who it is I’m referring to, the one who had the key to her apartment?”

“No, I don’t,” Duncan said.

“You’d better find out,” Moraine told him, “because apparently Dr. Hartwell got his misinformation about me from this same source.”

“Or else,” Duncan said, slowly, “someone is deliberately making you a fall guy.”

“Or else,” Barney Morden added ominously, “this guy is outsmarting both of us, Chief.”

Moraine whirled on him angrily, but Duncan caught his arm.

“Steady, Sam,” he said, “we’re all upset about this thing.”

Moraine hesitated a moment, then turned again toward the door.

“Wait a minute, Sam. You’ll have to go down and swear to a complaint against this fellow.”

“I’m not swearing to any complaints,” Moraine announced. “What’s more, I have other things to do. I’m on my way. Good night.”

Morden started to say something, but, at a glance from Phil Duncan, remained silent.

Moraine swung back the still open door to the corridor. Just as he was closing it, he heard Dr. Hartwell saying, in an incredulous voice, “For God’s sake, isn’t he the one who’s been intimate with my wife?”

Moraine closed the door before he heard the answer. He took the elevator to the lobby, remembered what Duncan had said about a federal operative having been posted in front of the building. He flattened himself against the side of the building, looked out cautiously. No car was parked there.

Moraine stepped out, braced himself against the night wind, walked rapidly to the corner, turned to the right, walked half a block, and crossed the street.

No one was following him.

He signaled a cruising cab.

“Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst,” he said, “and drive like hell.”