Murder for Two (19 page)

“How about your autograph?” he said, and took an envelope from his pocket.

Dinah King started past him, headed for the door. Something about her, her imperiousness, her icy contempt, fired his annoyance. He knew she was going to the door and open it and tell him to get out, and though he had no intention of touching her until that last second, something happened.

It may have been that his nerves were more frayed than he realized or that he was angry with himself for accomplishing so little. Whatever the reason, he reached out, took her wrist and turned her back.

“Let go!”

“Listen,” Casey said. “This'll get you nowhere. I've got enough dope on you to have the F.B.I. over here in five minutes and if you think—”

Something froze in her face that stopped the next word in his throat. It was, in the first instant, as though he had struck her; then she tried to jerk away.

“Get out,” she said, her contemptuous restraint worse than anger, “or I'll have you thrown out. If you're beast enough to do a thing like that—”

“Who said I was going to?” Casey stormed. “I said—”

“Get out.”

Casey let go of her wrist. Someone said, “Need a little help, Dinah?” and then she was staring past him and he wheeled, unaware until then that the door had opened.

“Yes,” Dinah King said. “I'm afraid I do.”

Two young men stood in the doorway. Tall, nicely built, and somewhat sloppily dressed in sport coats and shoes, they seemed very young to Casey and he glowered at them because inside he felt guilty and he wanted no interruption.

“Beat it, will you?” he said.

One of the youths, the darker of the two, looked at his companion, a half grin on his lips.

“Didn't you hear what Miss King said?” he asked mildly.

They started toward him, smiling, casual, almost good-natured.

“Look,” Casey said. “Run along, boys, will you? Come back in five minutes.”

“I think Miss King wants you to leave now,” the blond boy said.

He reached easily for Casey's arm, and the big photographer, not quite believing it, drew back and put up a protecting hand. After that things happened pretty fast.

Casey let go of his hat and the other fellow moved in. Casey swung, not hard, a sort of pushing movement and said, “Hey, watch yourself,” and then he was pulled off balance and turned sideways and as he tried to clamp an arm around his assailant's neck, the other hit him in back of the knees with a neat hard block, knocking him flat.

All even and knowing what he had to do, Casey could have taken them, either by Marquis of Queensberry or rough and tumble. But because he hadn't believed it was going to happen, because he hadn't wanted to slug anybody, he waited too long. Never having the initiative at any time, he now found himself on the floor with one arm twisted in a hammerlock and his other wrist clamped in some hold which was unfamiliar but painful when he struggled.

“That was clipping, Jim,” the blond said. “You shouldn't hit a man behind the knees like that. It's dangerous.”

“I know,” Jim said. “I'm sorry, Mister. I shouldn't have done it. Will you open the door, please, Dinah?”

Dinah opened it and Casey was advancing reluctantly toward it.
This is crazy
, he thought.
This isn't happening to me. Not by a couple of cropped-headed college kids
.

But he was moving and the pressure on his wrist was so relentless and his surprise so great that he made no struggle until he was going through the door. Then he stiffened and they shoved and his foot slipped. They let go of him suddenly and he went down hard, right on his behind in the middle of the hall.

His hat came sailing out as he hunched around. Somebody said, “Catch.” It was Jim. He had Casey's plate-case and he was grinning. He gave a flip of his hands and the case arced nicely into Casey's lap. Then the door closed.

It took Casey a while to get up. His first reaction—of total incredulity—gave way to one of anger and rage, and then as he thought it over and realized how neatly he had been handled his sense of humor came to his rescue.

“I'll be damned,” he said, pulling himself together. “The bum's rush. And by a couple of infants—but good.”

He brushed himself off and slipped the plate-case strap over his shoulder. He looked down the corridor and back at the door, his eyes smoldering in an amused sort of way. He went up to the door and knocked.

Jim opened it. He sighed and glanced over his shoulder at his partner. “He's back, Larry.—Look, Mister—”

“Okay,” Casey said. “I'm entitled to a re-match, ain't I? Hey, Dinah,” he called. “Can I come in?”

Dinah King was watching him between the two sets of square shoulders and no matter what had happened before there was a half-smile in her mascaraed eyes now. Deep down, conflicting emotions battled there and when she hesitated, Casey said:

“If I behave?”

He waited, his broad face creased in his crooked, knowing smile. Dinah shrugged.

“All right.”

“If you say so, Dinah,” the pair said.

Casey went in and got rid of his plate-case. He looked at the youths and they looked back, warily grinning.

“What are you guys, wrestlers?” he asked.

“Jim stroked the crew,” Larry said.

“And Larry pulled number seven.”

“I guess they got courses in mayhem at Harvard now,” Casey said.

“Modified mayhem,” Larry said. “You get a little of it in our officer's training course. I guess you could have made it tough for us, though, if you'd really wanted to.”

“I'm glad I didn't,” Casey said. “Wouldn't I look funny going around with a couple of broken arms.—What do you do to get a drink around here, Dinah? I guess I ought to buy one.”

Dinah pushed a button and presently a colored maid came in. Casey ordered rye for himself and Scotch for Dinah. The two youths ordered beer. By the time it arrived they had warmed up to Casey because he was that kind of guy. He asked questions about their work and had to tell them who he was and what he did. They said they'd heard about him and now they were a little awed, as though realizing what a job they had done in throwing him out.

“Will you do me a favor?” he asked when the drinks were gone. “I want to talk with Dinah a couple of minutes privately. Wait in the hall if you like. And if you hear her raise her voice you can come in and toss me out again.”

They got up without question. They said, “Sure,” and thanked him for the beer.

“I guess you didn't know I had that folder,” Casey said when the door closed. “I guess Gifford didn't tell you?”

“No,” Dinah said.

“How I got it doesn't matter and I wanted to tell you the same thing I told Gifford. I don't go around getting people in jams, but you're in this country illegally and you're technically at least an enemy alien. I guess you couldn't be deported because there's no place to deport you to now. But you're guilty of fraud on that passport violation and that's what they can throw you in jail for.”

“I know,” the woman said. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing, I hope. Unless I get an idea you had something to do with Rosalind Taylor's murder and then I guess the passport business would be small potatoes, wouldn't it? Now how about that autograph?”

He held out the envelope again, offered her a fountain pen. “Never mind what I want it for. You can't be hurt if you're innocent, can you?”

“No one is ever entirely innocent,” Dinah King said, but she took the paper and pen and wrote her name for him.

He thanked her and said he was sorry he'd got tough about it. She went to her dressing-table and began to make up her face. She didn't look at him again, nor speak as he went out.

Outside the night was blustery and there was a bite in the wind that whipped in from the Atlantic when Casey stepped from the dimly lighted marquee and started along the narrow street. He had no particular destination in mind and so it happened that when he reached the corner and turned left he saw the Bacon Building a block away and thought at once of Morris Loeb.

He had phoned police headquarters earlier in the evening, to tell Logan about the lawyer, but Logan could not be located. Now Casey started for the building, with no great hope of finding Loeb there now, at ten o'clock, but simply because the office was close.

It was a small building of four stories and the wind half-pushed him into the foyer when he opened one of the glass doors. There was but a single elevator, operated during the day by a man and automatic at night, and Casey stepped in and pushed the button marked 3.

The third floor hall was quite dark save for the single bulb which burned halfway along its length and it took him a second to see the shadowy figure at the far end. When he remembered that Loeb's office was down that way, he quickened his step, trying to peer past the light until he walked under it and had it at his back. Then he saw the figure was a woman. A cleaning-woman apparently, for she had a mop and pail, and she was just about to unlock the door of Morris Loeb's office.

She turned, hearing his heels pounding toward her, and waited, a heavy-set woman with straggly white hair and tired eyes. Casey stopped in front of her, realizing now that no light came through the frosted glass panel.

“Hello, mother,” he said. “I guess Mr. Loeb's gone for the night, hasn't he?”

“I guess so, sir,” the woman said. “He's almost never here when I come along. You might get him at his home, though.”

“Yes,” Casey said. “Well, I just thought I'd stop since I was down this way. Good-night.”

“Good-night, sir.”

Casey started back along the hall, hearing the door being unlocked and then, faintly, the click of a light switch. He was twenty feet from the elevator when he heard the scream, high-pitched in horror and slamming down the corridor to stiffen him and send his scalp crawling.

He spun instantly. He saw the light spilling out into the hall from the open doorway; then the scream came again and he started to run.

He hit the doorway, bounced through. Beyond, the inner door was open and the woman was standing there, her hands at the sides of her face. Somehow he got through the gate and into the room before the woman screamed again. That was when he saw the man on the floor before the open safe and the dark stain on the carpet beneath his shoulder.

Chapter Seventeen

N
OT
Q
UITE
D
EAD

T
HE WOMAN
had opened her mouth to scream again when Casey reached her side and for a few seconds he had to ignore the man on the floor and pay attention to her.

“Stop it!” he said, and when she looked at him with blank eyes and moaned, he took her shoulders in his hands and shook her. “Now, now, mother,” he said. “You're all right.”

She said something then but the words were garbled and Casey turned her firmly toward the anteroom.

“Come on,” he ordered. “I'll take care of him. How am I going to get a doctor if you don't pull yourself together?”

He got her into the stenographer's chair, drew a cup of water from the cooler, and made her drink it. “Now you sit right there, understand? That's a good girl.”

She looked at him then and recognition touched her glance. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I'll be all right. But Mr. Loeb—”

“Sure,” Casey said and went into the office.

The man, if he was Loeb, was short, plump, and baldish. He lay partly on his side and partly on his stomach and when Casey knelt beside him he could see that the vest was blood-soaked. He touched the face and found it warm. He saw then that a pulse beat feebly at the temple and felt a wrist for corroboration. Then, swearing softly, he jumped up and reached for the telephone.

“Hello,” he said when he had the
Express
operater. “This is Casey, honey. I want a doctor—and don't interrupt me, will you? Get the one the office uses if you can, but get somebody, anybody, and quick.” He gave her the address and the office number. “And while you're at it,” he said “connect me with the studio.”

Tom Wade answered. “Okay,” he said when Casey told him what he wanted. “I'm on my way.”

Casey went out to take a look at the cleaning-woman. She was right where he left her. He asked if she wanted more water and she shook her head.

“There'll be a doctor right along.” His voice was understanding, calm. “Mr. Loeb isn't dead, you know. He'll probably be all right. Do you want to go somewhere and lie down, mother, or do you want to stay here?”

When she said she'd stay there awhile, he went into the office and sat on the edge of the desk, the telephone in his hands. He made himself wait three or four minutes. This wasn't murder yet, he told himself. The doctor was on his way, which was the important thing; the next important thing was that he get a picture while he could. Maybe he'd use it and maybe not, but this time he wasn't going to be gypped out of it by the police.

“You want to come over to room 322 in the Bacon Building?” he asked when he had been connected with Lieutenant Logan.

“I might,” Logan said. “You got something?”

“A lawyer named Morris Loeb. I think he was Byrkman's lawyer and somebody shot him.… How do I know when? I've got a doctor on the way.… Sure, he's still alive.”

Logan made an explosive noise in the receiver and hung up. Casey put down the telephone and went over to the door just as the doctor came pounding down the hall with Tom Wade at his heels.

Wade did not ask many questions, nor did the doctor. He made a superficial examination and put an emergency dressing on the hole in Loeb's chest while Wade took pictures.

“I'll have to report this to the police,” he said.

“I already have,” Casey said. “What do you think his chances are?”