Time for Murder

Chapter Three Cover for a Crook

Morning newspapers carried headlines which screamed the news of the murder to the world. Gladys Ordway, a beautiful society girl, had been found nude on the bed of her bedroom. She had been stabbed in the back, with some long slender instrument which had penetrated the heart, and the point of which had even pierced the skin of the left breast. Death had been instantaneous.

The chauffeur, asleep in the garage, happening to glance out of his window, had seen lights flickering in the Ordway residence, a light which led him to believe that someone was using a flashlight in the house. He had called police headquarters and the call had been relayed to the radio cars. Car 32 had gone to investigate and had surprised two men running away from the house. The officers claimed to have seen a monkey clinging to the shoulder of one of the men, but subsequent investigation had shown that none of the servants in the house knew anything at all about a monkey.

John C. Ordway had been attending an important conference. The servants had either retired, or, as in the case of the butler, had been spending the night away from the house. The chauffeur had had the evening off, but had returned at about eleven o’clock; he had been restless and had not slept well; he was awakened by some sound. He thought it might have been a scream, but could not be certain. He looked toward the house, saw the reflections of the flashlight, and notified the police. Gladys Ordway was supposed to have attended a masquerade ball. The costume which she was to have worn had been found in the closet of her room. No one knew whether she had actually attended the ball and returned to meet her death, or whether she had not gone to the masquerade. The police were making a check-up for the purpose of ascertaining. They had failed to find a weapon.

Sam West, clad in a pair of brocaded silk pajamas, sat up in bed, read the papers and made a wry face at Brokay. “Well,” he said, “You wanted excitement.”

Brokay, fresh from the shower, with the tingle of youth and health on his cheeks, his hair still wet at the temples, grinned reassuringly. “I’ve got some more news for you,” he said.

West yawned. “What is it?” he asked. “And when do we eat?”

“You notice that the newspaper mentions that the police have some clues that they are running down.”

“Yes,” said Sam West, “it always mentions those things. Those don’t amount to anything. That’s just a sop that the newspaper guys hand to the police.”

“In this case it may not be?” Brokay said.

“How do you mean?” West inquired.

“When we started to run,” Brokay said, “the monkey jittered around on my shoulder; he reached up and grabbed my hair. In doing that he dislodged my hat, and it fell off. I was going to stop to pick it up, but you jabbed the gun into my ribs and I didn’t have a chance to explain.”

Sam West sat bolt upright in bed, staring at George Brokay with wide, startled eyes. “Your hat?” he asked.

Brokay nodded.

“Now,” said Sam West, “go ahead and pour it on, hand it to me right on the chin. Tell me that your hat has got your initials in it.”

Brokay nodded. “And more than that,” he said, “it has the name of my hatter. The police can trace that hat and can identify it, just as sure as I’m standing here.”

The covers flung back as Sam West’s bare feet hit the floor. He started peeling off the pajamas, reaching for underwear.

“We can’t run away from them,” Brokay said. “We’ve got to face the music.”

“The hell we can’t,” Sam West told him. “You don’t know what you’re up against, brother. If the police trace that hat here, and start asking you questions, what are you going to tell them?”

“If necessary, I can tell them the truth,” Brokay said.

“Oh no you can’t, brother. We went into that last night. You can’t explain what you were doing in the house.”

“I might say that I was driving by and saw someone jimmying the window; that I tried to stop him and he ran away.”

“And then, instead of calling the police to help you, you ran when the police came up,” sneered Sam West. “Moreover, they go out in the garage and open the garage door and find my roadster in there, with a neat little bullet hole in the rear of the body. Try and explain that away.”

Brokay nodded. “Get your clothes on,” he said, his jaw pushed forward, his mouth a firm thin line. “We’re going to beat the police to it.”

Sam West paused in the middle of his dressing to regard Brokay critically. “If you’ve got any shabby clothes,” he said, “you’d better put ’em on. Hiding with you wasn’t so hot. If we can get out of here ahead of the police, you’re going to hide with me. The cops won’t think of looking for a burglar prowling around with a society guy, and they sure as hell won’t think of looking for a society guy prowling around with a burglar. Let’s get started.”

“The monkey?” asked Brokay as they started to leave the place.

“Ditch him,” said West.

“Oh no you don’t,” Brokay told him. “The monkey has got to come with us. He’s our clue. What’s more, we don’t dare to let the police find it here.”

Sam West made a gesture of irritation. “What a boob I was,” he said, “when I picked this house for a burglary. And what a bigger boob I was, when I didn’t let you turn me over to the police. Why the devil did I have to get bats in my belfry and take on a dude apprentice?”

Brokay held out his arms to the monkey. The little animal, chattering delightedly, leapt to Brokay’s shoulder. “Come on, crook,” said Brokay grinning. “Let’s go out and find some more excitement.”

The burglar groaned.

Sam West swept his arm about in an inclusive gesture, indicating the room with its twin beds, the grimy window, the cheap pictures on the wall. “O. K.,” he said. “This is home.”

“Are we safe here?” Brokay asked.

“Safe as we can be.”

“But, I don’t get the sketch,” Brokay said.

“It’s a rooming house that’s run by crooks. Did you notice the girl at the desk? That’s Thelma Grebe. She’s a moll. Whenever anyone wants to hole up, they simply tell Thelma that they’re on the lam. Thelma gives them a room and if any smart dicks come around and ask any questions, Thelma gives them a runaround.”

“What did you tell her about me?” Brokay asked.

“I told her you were on the lam from Chi. You’re supposed to be a red-hot. You can keep in the room as much as you want to.”

Brokay opened the wicker basket in which he had carried the monkey. “Come on out, Jocko,” he said.

The monkey, curled up inside the basket in a neat little nest of rags, climbed up to Brokay’s shoulder, made little patting gestures of affection with his paws on Brokay’s cheeks and hair.

“That little devil sure likes you,” West said, “but you want to keep him out of sight. We’d better fix a place for him in the closet.”

“What I want to do,” said Brokay, “is to find out something about this murder. I want to get more information about it.”

“I’ve got most of the dope on that,” Sam West said. “When I was talking with Thelma, she gave me the low-down on the thing. The job was pulled by a girl named Rhoda Koline. Anyway, that’s what the police figure.”

“Who’s Rhoda Koline?” Brokay asked.

“She was employed as a social secretary by John Ordway. She kept his household accounts and handled his social engagements. You see, the police figure that Gladys Ordway was undressed at the time she was stuck with the knife. Now, she wouldn’t have undressed in front of a man unless it was somebody she was playing around with and she was a nice kid. The police figure that it was a question of some woman being in the room with her and sticking her with the knife after she’d got her clothes off. They started in on the maid, but didn’t get anywhere because the maid had an alibi. Then they started looking around for Rhoda, and when Rhoda found out about it, she took it on the lam.”

“They don’t know where she is now?”

“No.”

“Then,” said Brokay, “they’re not going to suspect us?”

“Only as being mixed up in it with Rhode somehow,” Sam West told him. “If we keep under cover, the thing may straighten out all right.”

“How many other people are in this rooming house?” Brokay inquired.

“You can’t ever tell,” West told him. “Thelma Grebe keeps her own confidences. That’s why she’s on the job. If it wasn’t for that, she’d be found in an alley some night with her throat slit.”

“You didn’t get a paper, did you?” Brokay asked.

“Not the late edition.”

“I want to get one.”

“O. K., but be careful how much prowling around you do. You’re safe as long as you’re here in the house. There’s a room in the front of the house — Number Ten. It’s used as a kind of lobby and sitting room. They keep newspapers in there. There’s also some magazines, and if any of the folks here get to feeling lonesome they go in and sit around for a chat. You can talk to anyone you see there, and you won’t need to introduce yourself. Monikers are considered nobody’s business, except to the guys that own them. Don’t ask anybody’s moniker and nobody’s going to ask yours.”

Brokay put the monkey in the closet, left the room, found the door with the number “10” over it, and pushed the door open.

There was a table in the center of the room. Sunshine streamed through windows on the south. The rumble of traffic came up through windows on the west. There were half a dozen chairs in the room; the table was littered with magazines and newspapers.

A young woman of perhaps twenty-five years of age was standing at the table reading one of the newspapers. She caught Brokay’s eye as he came in the room, and half turned away, as though trying to hide her interest in the newspaper, then she caught her breath, turned back to Brokay and smiled.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Brokay told her. “You staying here?”

“Yes,” she said smiling, “temporarily. And you?”

“Temporarily also,” he told her.

They both smiled. Brokay started looking through the newspapers on the table.

“I’ve got the latest edition here,” she said.

“Take your time,” Brokay told her.

“You might,” she said smiling, “like to look over my shoulder.”

“Thanks,” Brokay told her, “if I may.” He moved so that he could see over her shoulder.

“I don’t know just what you’re interested in,” said the girl, “but I’m interested in this.” Her forefinger swept across the front page of the paper.

Brokay, following her forefinger, saw that she was indicating the account of the Ordway murder. “You interested in that?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”

“Just as a matter of news,” he told her.

She laughed lightly. There was something almost of mockery in her laugh, and yet there was an undertone of nervousness; a certain throaty catch of the voice.

Brokay stared at her curiously, catching a part of her profile, the curve of her cheek, the long sweep of her eyelashes. It was impossible for him to place her as a crook. He would, ordinarily, have unhesitatingly branded her as a young woman of beauty and refinement. To find her in this crook’s hide-out came as a distinct shock and surprise.

She evidently felt his eyes upon her, for she suddenly turned to face him. “I thought,” she said, “you were interested in the newspaper.” This time there could be no mistaking the mockery in her voice. “As a matter of casual news, of course,” she said.

Brokay devoted his attention to the newspaper account.

There was nothing in the paper which represented any startling developments in the case. For the most part, it merely elaborated what Brokay had already learned from the burglar.

As Brokay finished reading, the girl suddenly turned toward him and gave him a searching glance. “Do you think,” she said, “that the two men with the monkey had anything to do with it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Brokay said, “I try not to think about matters which don’t concern me. I have enough that does.”

“Well,” she said, “I think that those men are the guilty ones. They can say all they want to about some woman being mixed up in it. I think it was a man who killed her. You notice the newspaper account says that the window on the lower floor had been pried open with a jimmy. That doesn’t look very much as though a woman had done it. Does it?”

“That, of course, is an interesting fact,” Brokay said.

“There’s no reason on earth why the woman couldn’t have been killed, when she was undressed, by two men.”

“Would she have turned her back to two men?” asked Brokay.

“She could most certainly have turned her back to one of them,” said the young woman. “If the men had separated, she’d have had rather a difficult time facing in two directions at once.”

Brokay made a little gesture of dismissal. “Well,” he said, “it’s something that I can’t concern myself with. You said you were staying here?”

“Yes,” she said, “I have Room Twenty-one.”

Mindful of what the burglar had told him, Brokay made no effort to inquire her name, but for the life of him, could not keep from staring at her, and wondering how she could be interested in a life of crime, or why such a refined young woman could be, as the burglar had expressed it, “on the lam.”

“I wish you wouldn’t stare at me like that,” she said abruptly.

“I beg your pardon,” Brokay said, “I didn’t realize that I was staring, I was just… er… thinking.”

She met his gaze frankly. “Wondering just what brand of crime I was mixed up in, that necessitated my enforced stay in this house?” she asked.

He felt himself flush. “Not at all, not at all,” he said. “Please don’t think that I’m prying into something that’s none of my business.”

“It’s quite all right,” she said. “To be perfectly frank, I was looking at you and wondering the same thing about you.”

He caught his breath, started to make an indignant comment, then suddenly remembered that he was on the lam. “Oh well,” he said, “circumstances are frequently peculiar and account for many strange things.”

She nodded, place a swiftly impulsive hand upon his arm. “Please forgive me,” she said. “I know the rules of the house. I know that it is quite all right to chat with anyone met here in Room Ten, hut, I know that I mustn’t ask any questions. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Certainly,” he said, “there’s nothing to forgive.” She flashed him a smile, turned and left the room. He heard the quick pound of her steps in the corridor and after a moment, the slamming of a door.

He sat down and studied the paper at length. There was nothing in it which gave him any particular clue, and, frowning thoughtfully, he refolded the paper, placed it on the table, and once more sought the companionship of Sam West, the burglar.

“What did you find out?” asked West when Brokay had seated himself and lit a cigarette.

“Nothing very much,” Brokay said, “just more of the same stuff you’ve given me.”

The monkey in the closet, hearing Brokay’s voice, made shrill chattering noises.

“He’s got to cut that out,” West said.

“He’s just glad that I’m back,” Brokay said. “I’ll open the door for a moment.” He opened the closet door. The monkey came out in a long, flying leap, jumped to his shoulder, and made crooning noises of endearment.

Brokay was stroking the monkey when suddenly the knob of the door turned and the door pushed open. “Ditch that monkey,” said Sam West, speaking out of one side of his mouth, while his hand slid swiftly to the holstered weapon which hung from his hip.

Brokay disengaged the monkey, literally flung it into the closet and stood with his back to the door. The door from the corridor swung open, and Thelma Grebe, the young woman who had assigned them their rooms, stood in the doorway. She saw the tense attitude of Sam West, saw the right hand which had dropped to the hip and suddenly caught her breath.

“Good heavens!” she said. “I came in without knocking, and letting you know who I was.”

Sam West sighed, and his hand came away from his revolver. “You’re going to get yourself drilled, doing that trick some day, Thelma,” he said.

“I know it,” she said. “I usually wait until the corridors are clear, and then I slip in, and sometimes I forget to knock, because I’m in a hurry.” She closed the door.

“What is it you want, Thelma?” asked Sam West.

“Frank Compton’s downstairs,” she said.

“The fence?” he asked.

“The fence,” she answered.

“What does he want?”

“He wants to see you about pulling a job.”

“How does he know I’m here?”

“I don’t know how he knows you’re here. It’s some hunch that he’s got I think. He says he’s simply got to see you; that he has a job you can make some money on.”

“You didn’t tell him I was here?” Sam West asked with sudden suspicion.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Of course, I didn’t tell him you were here.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that you weren’t here, that I didn’t have any idea you were coming in, but, that if you did, and wanted to get in touch with him, I’d have you give him a ring.”

Sam West frowned thoughtfully. “Compton’s all right,” he said. “He’s a good fence. He’s put me out on a couple of jobs that I’ve made money on. If he wants to see me, I have an idea it’s about something that would put some cash in my pocket, and I may need some money right now. I may have to get out of the country. Tell him it’s O. K.”

“Do you want to telephone him?”

“No, you telephone him and tell him to come on up, right away.”

The young woman turned toward the door. As she turned, Brokay stepped a little away from the closet door; almost immediately there was the sound of scurrying motion. He turned, but it was too late. The monkey made a long flying leap from the closet, grabbed the tail of his coat, and ran up the garments until he had nestled up close to Brokay’s cheek, where he sat, with his furry tail wrapped around Brokay’s neck, his hands caressing the short hairs over Brokay’s temple.

“Good God!” said Thelma Grebe. She stood staring from Brokay to the monkey.

Sam West, his face snarling, pulled the revolver from his hip pocket, pointed it toward the monkey.

Brokay turned so that his head and neck were between the monkey and the burglar. “Take it easy, Sam,” he said.

“I’ve told you to keep that damn beast in the closet,” Sam West said.

“All right,” Brokay told him, “take it easy. Thelma’s all right. She knows that we’re here, so it won’t make much difference about the other.”

Sam West stared at Brokay with a mouth that was clamped in a firm, thin line. His nostrils were dilated and there was murder in his eyes. “I should have killed that damn monkey the first time I saw him,” he said.

“Shut up,” Brokay said.

Thelma Grebe laughed lightly. “My God!” she said, “the monk gave me a start. I couldn’t imagine what it was. What the hell, boys, there’s nothing wrong about having a monkey, is there? I just didn’t know you had one. There’s no rule against pets in the house.”

Sam West turned to her. “I don’t want any misunderstanding about this, Thelma,” he said. “You keep your mouth shut about that monkey. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” she said. “I keep my mouth shut about everything.”

“And a damn good thing you do, too,” he said. “Go ahead and get Compton on the telephone and tell him to come up here.”

Thelma Grebe slipped through the door, closed it behind her. When the latch had clicked into place, Sam West turned to Brokay and his face was white with rage.

“Damn it,” he said, “that’s what I get for mixing up with an amateur. You’ve bungled everything so far. I should have killed that monkey and taken it on the lam in the first place.”

“You’re crazy as hell,” Brokay told him. “That monkey represents the best clue we’ve got. He’s going to lead to a solution of the mystery one of these days.” He reached up his hand and patted the monkey’s head.

“I’m warning you right now,” Sam West said, “that we’re finished. We’re going to dissolve partnership.”

“O. K. by me,” Brokay said. “Personally, I’m going to clean this crime up. I might say, that it served me right for teaming up with a burglar that didn’t know his business.”

“What the hell do you mean, I didn’t know my business?” West flared, irritated at the aspersion cast on his professional ability.

Brokay laughed. “I was just kidding,” he said, “so that you could see how it felt. Come on, old man and snap out of it. We’re in this thing together; we’ve got to see it through together. Now the question is, do you want me in here when the fence comes to call on you, or not?”

“I most certainly do not,” West said. “You get out of here and stay out for ten minutes, then you can come back. When you come back, knock on the door. If I’m still busy, I’ll tell you to keep out; if you don’t hear anything from me, you can come in. And put that monkey in the closet and leave him there.”

“I want you to promise me,” Brokay said, “that you’re not going to do anything to that monkey. You’re not going to try to get it out of the way.”

“Oh, it’s all right now,” the burglar said. “The damage has been done. I didn’t want Thelma to know why we were on the lam.”

“Do you think she knows now?” Brokay asked.

The burglar laughed scornfully. “You think she’s a fool?” he inquired.

“Well, we can trust her discretion, can’t we?” Brokay asked.

“A woman doesn’t have any discretion,” the burglar said. “But get the hell out of here and let me see what this fence wants. Probably he’s got some pretty good job staked out. If he has, I’ll take a whirl at it, and make enough money to get out with, if I have to take a plane to Mexico City or some place.”