Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (19 page)

She nodded. “My father used to tell a story about Paul Bunyan and the way he killed an eagle. The eagle sat on the stump of a dead tree and never took his eyes off Paul Bunyan. So Paul ran around the tree so fast that the eagle wrung its own neck. But I don’t think that happened in the case of Saul Stafford, or the girl either.”

Mr Lothian stared at her. “But you must have some theory about this case….”

“A complete set,” she admitted. “Though I haven’t had time to check up on much of anything.”

“How would you like to have time enough? How would you like to have the studio retain you to work this thing out? You would ostensibly continue your work for Mr Nincom as technical adviser, with a free hand and an unlimited—within reason—expense account.”

She said somewhat blankly that she would like that very much.

“It’s settled, then,” said Mr Lothian. He took a small white card from his pocket, scribbled something on it. “This will be your authority,” he told her. “Use it only when you must….”

“‘Whatever the bearer hereof has done he has done for the good of the state,’” quoted Miss Withers. “That’s what it used to say on a
carte blanche,
at least according to Dumas.”

“Uh-huh,” agreed Mr Lothian somewhat absently. “Now, just what will be your first course, Miss Withers?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But I think it might be a good idea to have a nice long heart-to-heart talk with Virgil Dobie.”

Which was more difficult than she had imagined. Because when she had finally been readmitted to the little circle of Nincom writers she found Virgil Dobie among the missing.

“He hasn’t even telephoned in or made any explanation whatever,” complained Thorwald L. Nincom. “This disappearance act seems to be an epidemic among our little group—”

Miss Withers sensed that he was staring at her and smiled meekly. And the story conference continued. Mr Nincom was at the moment involved with the problem of the murder weapon to be used in his re-creation of the Borden case.

“Perhaps Miss Withers can advise us,” he suggested. “Just what sort of an ax was it, according to the records?”

“I beg your pardon?” Hildegarde Withers wasn’t thinking about axes. She was, as a matter of fact, looking at fingernails. At Frankie Firsk’s claws, bitten down to the quick. At Willy Abend’s, only a shade better, and at Doug August’s squared-off nails projecting from his bandage….

Mr Nincom, somewhat testily, repeated the question. “Oh,” said she. “It wasn’t really an ax at all, in spite of the poem. It was a small hatchet.”

Every face in the room fell.

“A
hatchet?”
echoed Mr Nincom. Miss Withers nodded.

“Maybe it was an Indian tomahawk—we could take that liberty, and nobody would know!” cried Frankie Firsk.

“No,” said Nincom. “Not a hatchet and not a tomahawk. This picture is going to be a Thornwald L. Nincom special, and everything in it has to be
big.
We’ll have Lizzie use an ax—a big shining, double-bitted ax!”

Melicent Manning shook her head sadly. “I still think we ought to leave it up in the air whether Lizzie committed those murders or not. It doesn’t seem right to me that a woman would kill anybody like that….” She patted her hair with fingers tipped by chipped rose-tinted nails—long nails that added inches to her flabby fingers.

Miss Withers shook her head sharply to bring her mind back to the matter at hand. “Or a halberd,” Mr Nincom was saying, a light in his eye. “One of those antique things, like an ax, only twelve feet long, with a blade like a plow!” He turned on the technical adviser. “Wouldn’t it be plausible that the Borden family, with all their shipping business, would have collected a lot of antique armor and weapons, so that the murderer could pick a halberd off the wall? It would be more picturesque.”

The schoolteacher winced. How could she picture for them the Borden house with its tiny square rooms, its haircloth sofas and wax flowers under glass? “I’m afraid not,” she told him. But Mr Nincom wasn’t listening.

“A halberd!” he repeated. “Now we’ve got something with production value! I want Dobie to write the scene this afternoon, lay it on thick. Lizzie, like an avenging angel, with the halberd held high over her head….” He stopped. “That is, if the fellow condescends to come to work.” Nincom pressed a button. “Smythe, call Virgil

Dobie’s office and ask that secretary of his if she’s heard anything from him. Is he coming in today or isn’t he?”

There was a short lapse of time during which Nincom elaborated on his plans for the halberd. And then the phone rang. “Yes?” he barked, clenching the receiver with fingers that were tipped by longish yellow claws.

A rosy flush crept over the face of Thorwald L. Nincom. “Oh, really!” he rasped. “So Miss Madison hasn’t seen fit to show up for work either? What goes on here anyway?”

“You’re not the only one who is wondering,” said Miss Withers softly, and tiptoed swiftly out of the sanctum sanctorum.

Up on the third floor of Writers’ there was little enough information. Neither Virgil Dobie nor his secretary had appeared for work—that was all. Nor reported sick.

Miss Withers cut short Gertrude’s efforts to discuss the tragedy of last night. “Do me a favor,” she begged. “Try to get Mr Dobie at his home.”

The plump girl plugged in on her board, dialed a number. “No answer at Mr Dobie’s apartment,” she reported. “Miss Withers, do you really think that Lillian—?”

“I haven’t had time to think,” retorted the schoolteacher. “Try Jill Madison’s number, will you?”

Gertrude had to call stenographic to get the number. She dialed it, and again the results were a total blank. “Shall I keep trying?” Gertrude wanted to know. But Miss Withers didn’t think that would be of any use.

She went back to her own office, sat down at the desk and stared at the funeral lilies on the wall. There were plenty of pieces in the jigsaw, but instead of fitting together they kept dividing into smaller pieces….

Then there came a sharp knock on her door, and Buster Haight entered. That young man looked considerably the worse for wear this morning. If he had slept at all it was in the suit he was wearing now.

“I just had to see you, Miss Withers,” he exploded. “It’s about Jill—”

“I know. She didn’t come to work this morning. After last night perhaps she didn’t feel up to it.”

“Yes, but—” He shook his head. “She didn’t come home last night. I know, because on my way down this morning I stopped at her place. I sort of hoped I could buy her breakfast or something. And her porch light was still on, and the morning milk and the paper were on the step.” v

Miss Withers nodded. “Excellent deducting, young man. The milk and paper alone might only mean that she hadn’t risen, but the porch light rather proves your point. And just what do you want me to do about it?”

Buster leaned over her desk, and, in spite of herself, Miss Withers couldn’t help looking at his nails. Long and well manicured. With a transparent liquid polish too. Some men used that, but the schoolteacher disapproved. “I want you to use your influence to find her!” he demanded. “You’re hand in glove with the police—everybody knows that. And she went off last night with that Dobie—you know what he is!”

“I don’t see that it is any of my business—” the schoolteacher began.

“But it is! You don’t suppose she’d stay out all night of her own free will! Something’s happened to her!”

“You want me to report her disappearance to the police, is that it? I warn you, they won’t pay much attention. People have to be missing more than a few hours before they take it seriously.”

“Well, try, please!” Buster was very serious about this. Miss Withers, however, was saved the trouble. Because at that moment her telephone rang. It was the inspector, who said that he was down at headquarters in the office of the lieutenant.

“Just thought you might like to know that one of our suspects has taken it on the lam,” he announced.

“I know, Oscar, I know. It’s Virgil Dobie—and his secretary is likewise missing.”

“Well, maybe here’s something you didn’t know,” Piper snapped back. “The lieutenant here tried to fasten a tail on Dobie this morning, but it was too late. The guy had already hired a plane out at Glendale Airport and taken a powder.”

Miss Withers had a chill feeling at the base of her spine. Yet there was something wrong about all this, something that didn’t fit into the picture at all.

“Oscar, where did he take off for? I mean, aren’t planes supposed to register their destination so they can be traced if they show up missing?”

“‘Supposed to’ is right. But this one didn’t. It was a Vultee low-wing job—capable of around four hundred miles an hour wide open. So by this time Virgil Dobie could be in Canada. Anyway, the lieutenant has ordered a general alarm sent out covering all airports. We ought to hear something soon, unless they set down in a cow pasture.”

Miss Withers hung up and looked at her unhappy caller. “Do you really love her so much?” she asked.

Buster shrugged. “How do I know? They say it takes two people to be in love, and it’s only now and then that Jill knows I’m alive. All I know is, the girl is always in my mind. Maybe I love her, maybe I hate her. I think maybe it’s both….”

“You’ll get over it,” she promised him. “‘Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love….’”

Buster didn’t think he was likely to get over it. And when he had left Miss Hildegarde Withers shook her head sadly. She was very much afraid that young Haight would have to get over loving Jill whether he wanted to or not. A grim and unpleasant certainty began to grip her, and deep in the back of her mind a little red light began to glow….

It was lunch time, but that seemed unimportant now. She took out her notes, stared at them blankly. No new light could be, at the moment, shed upon them. Then there was the list of comings and goings for this floor on the afternoon of Stafford’s murder. She frowned over that tor a while.

Every writer on the floor had had an opportunity to kill Saul Stafford. But that didn’t preclude the possibility that some outsider had done it. There had been several callers on the floor that afternoon between the hours of three and five. A Mr Pape—that would be the insurance man. She made a small check after his name. Then Wagman, the agent. And someone with the intriguing name of Parlay Jones had asked for Dobie—several times earlier in the day too.

She went down the hall and consulted Gertrude. “I want to talk to this Mr Harry Pape,” she admitted. “Do you know where I could find him?”

Gertrude knew. But nobody ever had to seek out Mr Pape. All that would be necessary would be to hint that she would let him into her office with his brief case. “Getting him out is tougher, though,” the girl added. “I’ll make an appointment.”

With Mr Pape’s call arranged for, Miss Withers turned to the other two names on her list. There was not much point in worrying about Wagman—he had lost an excellent meal ticket when Stafford died and would hardly have cut his own throat. But as for Mr Parlay Jones …

“He’s easy, too,” Gertrude told her. “That’s the bookie who comes around every noon taking bets, and every night to pay off. He’s probably in the studio right now. I’ll check at the gate.”

Ten minutes later Miss Hildegarde Withers was closeted in her office with a lean and serious young man who looked like a certified public accountant. He produced copies of the
Daily Racing Form
and scratch sheet and waited hopefully.

“So sorry,” said Miss Withers. “But I only bet on the horses once, and then I bet every horse in the race to win.
*
I made three hundred and sixty dollars on it too. Which was a good time to quit.”

Mr Jones was very mildly interested. He was not interested at all when she tried to pump him about the betting transactions of Virgil Dobie.

“Trade secrets, lady,” he said. “I never talk about my clients….”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to talk about this one,” she came back, and produced Mr Lothian’s little white card. “I’m of the opinion that he would gladly bar you from the studio if I asked him.”

“Lady,” said Parlay Jones earnestly, “he’d bar me from the studio if he knew who I am and why I’m in it.” The starch had gone out of the man. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know the exact amount of Virgil Dobie’s account with you.”

He took out a small notebook, ruffled the pages and said, “Seventeen hundred and forty-two dollars—up to today, and I guess he hasn’t picked any horses, because I haven’t heard from him.”

“You won’t,” said Miss Withers. “Just a minute—don’t go. How much did the late Saul Stafford owe you?”

Mr Jones ruffled his notebook pages again, frowned and reported, “Exactly six hundred and fifty. Which I’ll never get—not unless they pay off in hell.”

“Thank you, that will be all,” the schoolteacher told him stiffly. Then she noticed that he was staring down at a scrap of paper on her desk. “Where did you get hold of that?” he demanded. “I thought you didn’t bet?”

She looked and saw that it was the sheet on which she had copied the cryptic lines of figures she found in Virgil Dobie’s desk drawer, the one beginning, “****Pix.” “Never mind where I got it—what is it?”

He almost smiled. “I call it the ‘Bookies’ Curse.’ It’s a system, lady. The god-damnedest system that ever was. Because if you play it and stick to it you can win about a hundred bucks a day, day after day.”

Intrigued, Miss Withers wheedled him into explaining further. “Look, lady,” he said. “That first column under the heading ‘Pix’—that means the picks made by the handicapper you want to follow. In this system you never try to pick the horses yourself, but follow some good clocker like the boys in the
Racing Form
or one of the newspaper handicappers.” He took the sheet, added a few words here and there.