Where There’s Smoke

Chapter Five Stirring Up a Patient

The door of the down car slammed behind Ross. Barney scratched his chin.

“Another influential gent who’s going to give out with pla-a-nty troub’?”

“Queer thing is, he’s one boy who might put it over.” Pedley frowned.

“Who is he?” Barney unpeeled a stick of charcoal gum, slid it into his mouth. “Illegitimate son of a ward heeler?”

“Never speak disrespectfully of a public relations counsel. Brother Ross might get you a nokay notice in the gossip columns.”

Barney grinned; evidently there was, between him and the marshal, none of the stiffness which might have been found in a similar situation between a police inspector and his office clerk. The risks men took together in the Fire Department broke down such rigid relationships as existed in the Army; the top brass among the fire fighters shared the daily dangers equally with the youngest black-shirted probationer laying spaghetti or ventilating a roof.

A blaze-beater had to have the same confidence in his commander as an infantry soldier in the artillery officers who sent the creeping barrage rolling ahead of his path through barbwire and mine fields. When one wrongly directed stroke of an ax could send a wall crashing in the wrong direction; when one misdirected stream might cut off a man’s retreat by driving flames across a door, or weaken a sagging floor — under such pressure of circumstance — a trust based on mutual respect for nerve and coolness of judgment was essential.

But there was one difference between the doughboy and his counterpart in black helmet and rubber coat — the fireman knew his superior officer would be exposing himself to the same danger at the same time. Nobody wearing the Maltese cross — not even the Chief of Department-issued orders from the rear.

The days of political appointments to high place in the department had given way to the era of civil service tests and promotion-on-the-record. Practically every blue-shirt on the city payroll had come up the hard way, gone through the same hard-boiled course of sprouts. Both Barney and his boss had spent long weeks learning how to use the tools of their trade in the Recruit School at Sixty-seventh and Lexington, later at the Company School, and still later, at the Fire College in Long Island City. As graduates of the same institutions — where they’d both learned when to use an L-nozzle or a spinner; how to handle a scaling-ladder so the safety belt wouldn’t slow you down; how to hook your heel into the rung of a ladder and get a knee lock so you’d have both hands free to handle a hose without the danger of being dragged down with the ladder if it should topple; how to jump into a net without breaking a leg and how to carry a hysterical woman on your back down an extension ladder when the wind was trying to blow you both to the street, forty feet below — as competent alumni of the best schools of their kind in the world, Barney and his boss automatically assumed the kind of intimacy which exists between those who have spent undergraduate years on greener and less dangerous campuses.

Barney knew that this peculiarly close relationship entitled him to no special consideration for his disability; he got none from his superior. Since that morning nine years ago when a waterlogged warehouse, burst open by the swelling force of a thousand tons of water on baled cotton, had collapsed and left Barney under the wreckage of steel beams and concrete slabs, the former pipe-man had asked no favors on account of his infirmity.

Perhaps the fact that the warehouse had been torched by a professional firebug who had subsequently been sent to Sing Sing by Pedley for the rest of his natural life added something to Barney’s silent admiration for this weather-reddened marshal. Barney was well aware that Ben concealed, behind his façade of caustic wisecracks, a grimness which was the direct result of knowing a lot of his best and closest friends had gone to their deaths in fires that had been set.

Possibly the circumstance of their having worked together on hundreds of cases — sometimes for days on end without rest or sleep — had made Barney more than normally alert to the marshal’s uncommunicated worries. He recognized such an uneasiness now.

“You figure this Ross character has any real weight to throw around, boss?”

“Depends.” Pedley shrugged into his raglan again. “On what kind of weight you mean. He works for Leila Lownes.”

“Oh, oh! The Thing with that Swing.” The fireman limped across the floor in what was intended to be a rhumba step.

“Ross passes out the flimsies for her.”

“Whatta job — considering some of the flimsies they photograph that fluffy in! Does the crumb take money for that?”

“He represents money. Coin big enough to buy most anything it wants. Except,” he moved toward the elevator, “protection from the B.F.I.”

“When they come around with the writs and the summonses,” Barney called after him, “where’ll I tell ’em to seek you out?”

“I’m going to the hospital. Then to the morgue.”

Barney stared.

“To see the Lownes girl’s lawyer. Paul Amery. Senior member of Amery and Cadawalder. Said gent got a bellyful of smoke trying to lug the Luscious Leila out of her dressing-room.”

“Is he going to check out?”

“No. Then I’m going to Twenty-sixth Street to have a look at what’s left of Ned Lownes.” Pedley thumbed the elevator button. “Say. Get hold of Ollie for me, hah?”

The rhythmic clamping of the clerk’s jaw stopped abruptly. “Oh-h-h! Gonna be one of those cases.” He nodded sagely. “Okey-dory. I’ll get Ollie.”

The private room in the very private Madison Avenue hospital smelled strongly of ammonium carbonate and chloroform when the marshal came in and looked down at the waxy features of the man on the bed.

There was a bandage across the lawyer’s jaw; another around his neck. But there was color in the lips that had been gray; the face was now coldly distinguished rather than merely thin. The eyes that had been dull were clear and sharply blue, but there was still something of shock and fear in them.

It had taken more than a few inhalations of smoke to throw a scare into this man, the marshal realized. That Amery could afford a private room like this — that, in fact, he could get into this exclusive ultra-hospital at all — was evidence of the attorney’s high position in the legal world. Even flat on his back on the narrow white bed, he managed to give an impression of dignity. Yet he was afraid of something—

He recognized Pedley with a lifting of iron-gray brows. “Hello—”

“How you feel?”

“Lousy.” Amery didn’t trouble to smile. “But they say I’ll be all right in two or three days if I lie still and don’t try to talk too much.”

“You can talk to me.”

“Afraid I can’t tell you much.” The lawyer’s eyes studied him.

“You’re Miss Lownes’s counsel. You’ll know about her business affairs.”

The attorney struggled to sit up. “She’s not—”

“Relax. She’s home. Be all right in a couple days, same like you. I just want to ask some questions about the business setup with her brother.”

“You think they might have a bearing on the fire?”

“Most arson does have a money angle. Nine out of ten incendiary cases are for insurance.” Pedley sat on the arm of a tapestried chair, swung one leg idly. “Ned Lownes carry any insurance?”

Amery shook his head slowly. “Not that I know of. Not enough to make a fuss about, certainly. He’d have been a bad risk.”

“Miss Lownes didn’t have her brother insured — with herself as beneficiary?”

“Certainly not.” The lawyer’s expression said the very idea was distasteful. “You seem pretty sure the fire was set.”

“Positive. First thing we have to do, to find who set it, is determine whether he was a pyromaniac or a firebug.”

“Don’t they operate much the same?”

The corners of the marshal’s lips came down; he moved his head from right to left, back again. “Pyro’s a pathological misfit who sets a blaze because of an irresistible impulse. Firebug does it for a reason. Usually a dollar-and-cents reason. Sometimes to cover up another crime.”

“I wasn’t thinking of motive.” The telltale wheeze came into Amery’s speech. “I meant their methods.”

“Methods differ, too. Your pyro always works alone. He’s afraid to tell anyone what he’s done; generally he doesn’t know what he’s going to do long enough in advance to get an accomplice. But the firebug has to work with somebody, or for somebody, if he’s going to make any money at it.”

Amery smiled thinly. “Unless he sets fire to his own property.”

“Of course. There’s another difference, more important. From my angle. Most pyros don’t have any system about the way they start their fires. They just cook up a scheme on the spur of the moment, when the fever hits them. But your professional usually has some pet gimmick he’s doped out to delay the starting of the blaze until he can get far enough away to establish an alibi. Maybe the setup varies a little from job to job, but the system is the same.” Pedley licked the burn on the back of his hand. “There was a gimmick in the dressing-room at the Brockhurst.”

“Ah—!” Amery sighed; some of the apprehension seemed to go out of the frosty eyes. “Something you can trace to a known criminal — because of the similarity in the modus operandi?”

“No. New one on me.” The marshal didn’t elaborate. “But I expect I’ll run into it again, or something like it. Might be in a few days, maybe a few months. If the person who torched the theater did it for dough, he won’t be likely to turn another trick until the money he got for that job is spent. On the other hand, if it was done to cover up a crime — say, murder—” He paused; the lawyer was staring up at the ceiling — “then he might strike again in a hurry.”

“Obviously,” Amery said gloomily, “you have somebody in mind.”

“We have some leads. Whenever a bug uses apparatus to get a delayed-fuse effect, the apparatus is evidence. Given enough evidence, we can put the party in a cell. Doesn’t mean we can’t use help. In the way of tips.”

“Sorry I can’t oblige you, Marshal. I haven’t a notion.”

“You were there when it happened!”

“I wouldn’t be here, otherwise.” Amery closed his eyes.

“You saw this Ned Lownes come in the theater, schwocked to the gills, and start ribbing his sister—”

“Oh, that.” The lawyer lifted a hand in deprecation. “That had been going on for weeks. Ned was sore at Leila — because of Gaydel.”

“The producer?”

“Chuck Gaydel. Yes.”

“Was this agency lad playing knees with her, or something?”

“Sleeping with her?” Amery grimaced; the movement of his facial muscles hurt the burn along his jaw. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Leila’s rather — oh — indiscriminate, that way. But that wasn’t what caused the trouble.”

“What was?”

“Ned resented Gaydel’s running the show; telling Leila what to sing, how to sing it, and so on. Left nothing for Ned except a back seat, you see.”

“They’d had disagreements about it? The producer and her brother?”

“Oh, yes. But Ned didn’t dare to blow off at Gaydel. He did that once; Chuck sent him to the dentist for repairs.”

Pedley moved to the bed. “They didn’t patch it up?”

“Well — I guess they did. But after that, Ned took his spleen out on Leila. That’s what was behind that nasty business on the stage, this afternoon.”

“A smart prosecutor,” the marshal said, “could make out a prima-facie case against this Gaydel, all right. He’d had a run-in with deceased, previously. He knew his way around the theater and the dressing-rooms. He could have rigged up this apparatus I told you about. And he was one of the last persons to see Lownes alive. But” — he leaned over the end of the cot — “all that leaves your client in a very bad light. If Gaydel fixed it so her brother’d get burned to death, she’d have to have known about it! Because she was there; she came downstairs with Gaydel after—”

“Stop!” Amery sat bolt upright, coughing. “By God, I won’t have you using my words to — to crucify Leila!” Little blue veins stood out on his forehead like fine lines in marble. “You keep your hands away from her, or—” a spasm doubled him up. Perspiration on the thin face made it leaden. The lawyer choked, fell over on his side in a paroxysm.

A nurse rushed in — glaring at Pedley — snatched at an ampoule.

“Get out of here! You must be crazy, stirring up my patient at a time like this!”

“Your patient—” Pedley went toward the door — “isn’t the only one who’s stirred up. Or the only one who’s been hurt. He’ll be up and around in a day or so. I’m going to see a guy who won’t be.” He turned. “Tell Mister Amery I’ll be seeing him.”