Читать книгу The Big Midget Murders - Craig Inc. Rice - Страница 6

Malone stared at the spot where the fiddle case had been, rapidly added up the events of the evening in his head, and privately resolved he would never take another drink, not as long as he lived.

For a moment Jake appeared to have been petrified. Then, without a word, he strode across the room to the closet where the bull fiddle had been stored and flung open the door. The bull fiddle was still there. He stared at it for an instant, then kicked the door shut again.

“It’s nonsense,” he said at last. “I don’t believe it.”

Malone leaned against the dressing table and stared bewilderedly around the room. There wasn’t a place where the fiddle case could have been concealed, not another closet nor cupboard, not so much as a curtain.

“How—” he began.

“The question isn’t ‘how’,” Jake told him. “It’s ‘what’. What the devil are we going to do now?”

“Search the rest of the place,” Helene suggested.

Jake snorted indignantly. “I suppose you want to go around asking everybody you meet if he’s seen a bass fiddle case with a dead midget in it.”

“No,” she said calmly, “but we can search the place from end to end for a pair of gloves I mislaid somewhere before the show.” And while he stared at her admiringly, she went on, “After all, it’s your night club, and you can search it if you want to.”

“So it is,” Jake said. “I keep forgetting that. Come on, then.”

Half an hour later they returned to the midget’s dressing room. By that time, save for Al Omega’s boys packing up their instruments and preparing to leave, the Casino was deserted. And the fiddle case was definitely nowhere in the building.

Malone unwrapped a cigar and stared at it for a moment before lighting it. “Well,” he said at last, “there’s nothing you can do about it. You didn’t move the body from the premises, and you don’t know who did. Maybe it’ll turn up again and maybe it won’t. In the meantime, go home to bed and stop worrying.”

“Pleasant dreams to you too,” Helene said acidly. “But just out of idle curiosity, I wonder who did take it away?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the murderer. Maybe some other person.”

“How did this unknown person—whether he was the murderer or not—know the body was in the fiddle case? After all, the case was locked.”

The little lawyer glared at her. “Obviously, he had X-ray eyes.” He ignored the face she made at him.

Jake drew a long breath. “Malone’s right. The best thing for us to do is go home to bed.” He scowled. “Tomorrow’s bound to be a bad day, whatever happens.”

Malone nodded. “Whether the body turns up or; not, there’s going to be excitement when the midget; is missing. Where did he live, anyway?”

“In our hotel,” Jake said. “Had a very fancy suite there, I’ve been told. I’ve never seen it myself.”

“Well,” Malone told him, “maybe you’ll be informed that he’s disappeared. Maybe you’ll be informed that he’s been found up an alley somewhere. Whatever happens, just remember you don’t know a thing about it.”

Jake said, “Don’t worry about that. Do you think; I’m a dope?”

“Yes,” Helene said suddenly. Her face had turned very white. “I think we’re all three of us dopes.”

The two men stared at her.

“That bottle,” she said, in a voice that threatened, to develop a quaver. “The bottle of Scotch. Malone thought it was poisoned. And being three dopes, we went off and left it here.”

Jake frowned. “Well damn it,” he said, “we could hardly have carried it out and set it on our table.”

“And besides,” Malone began. He paused and said, “Between hiding the midget’s body and your announcement about the stockings, the bottle just slipped our minds.”

“In the meantime,” Helene said, “someone’s come in and drunk half of it.”

Malone wheeled around, picked up the bottle, stared at it, and set it down again.

“Someone,” Helene said, “is going around with half a bottle of poisoned liquor in his insides.”

Jake felt for the chair, found it, and sat down hard.

“And,” she finished, “we don’t know who it is!”

For a good thirty seconds, the silence could have been cut with a knife.

“Look here,” Jake said weakly. “Malone could have been mistaken. That Scotch may not be poisoned at all.”

“Do you want to drink it and find out?” she asked.

“No,” he confessed.

Malone unscrewed the cap of the bottle and sniffed. “Smells all right. But there’s still some of that whitish stuff along the edge.” He pointed to the neck of the bottle. “When the liquor was poured out, it washed the powder off one side of the rim, but not the other.” He picked up the cap, held it to the light, and ran a finger inside it. The finger came away with its tip covered with white powder. He sniffed at it thoughtfully.

“Don’t taste it,” Jake said. “I’ll take your word for it. It’s poisoned.”

“I’ve got a friend who’s a chemist,” Malone said. “Tomorrow morning I can have him analyze this and find out what it is.”

“Damn it,” Jake said. “What’s the difference what kind of poison it is, I want to know who got it. Anybody could have wandered in here, seen the room empty and a bottle of expensive Scotch sitting on the dressing table, and helped himself.”

“It could have been the murderer,” Helene said.

“Not if the murderer put the poison in the bottle,” Jake pointed out scornfully.

“Then if the person who carried away the fiddle case wasn’t the murderer, it could have been the person who carried away the fiddle case,” Helene said.

“Your wonderful reasoning powers,” Jake said. “That’s what I really love you for.”

“Or,” she said, “it could have been one of the orchestra men, or one of the waiters, or one of the chorus girls, or—anybody.”

“For the love of Mike,” Malone said suddenly. “Jake, have you any liquor around this place that isn’t poisoned? Because if you have, I need it bad. After all, this is supposed to be a saloon.”

“Don’t call it a saloon,” Jake said, “and all the liquor is locked up for the night. That’s the last thing the head bartender does before he goes home.”

“A fine thing,” Helene said. “Own your own night club, and you can’t get a drink. Wait a minute.” She was out the door and down the hall before either man could stop her. In two minutes she was back again with three paper cups and a nearly full bottle of rye. “It’s Angela Doll’s,” she explained, “but she won’t mind.”

Malone poured three drinks, said gloomily, “I wonder if this is poisoned too,” and drank his. “We’ve got to do something fast, but I don’t know just what.”

“We could call up all the people who might have come in here tonight, and ask them how they feel,” Helene suggested.

“Wonderful!” Jake said nastily. “And the one who doesn’t answer the phone is ‘it’.”

“It couldn’t have been a quick-acting poison,” Malone said very slowly, “or the person who got it wouldn’t have lived long enough to leave the Casino. So, that person may still be alive now.”

“And could still be saved, if we found him in time,” Jake added.

“If we knew who it was,” Helene said.

“Maybe Helene was right,” Malone said. “Maybe the thing to do is call up everybody who might possibly have come in here tonight and give out a warning. It looks like the only thing to do.”

Jake said, “And thereby advertise the fact that we knew there had been a bottle of poisoned liquor in the midget’s dressing room the night of his disappearance—or murder, if his body turns up. We’re trying to keep out of trouble, not get into it.” He paused. “Still, we can’t let some perfectly innocent person die, just to keep out of trouble.”

“Oh, but Jake,” Helene said with a little gasp, “there’s forty or fifty people who might have come in here. And by the time we got to the right person on the list—”

“Besides,” Jake said gloomily, “we don’t have all their telephone numbers, either. Heaven only knows where Ramon Arriba’s boys hang out.”

Helene lit a cigarette very slowly and deliberately, and poured herself a drink of rye. “Well, we can eliminate Angela Doll. She left the Casino before the midget finished his last performance. And all of Al Omega’s band. They were on the bandstand all the time between when we were first here and when we came back. We can eliminate the girls in the chorus because I gave a party for them and none of them will touch Scotch. They all stick to rye or gin.”

“Good bright girls,” Jake said admiringly. “So do I.”

There was a momentary pause. Malone strolled over to the dressing table, picked up the bottle, and looked at it again.

“That’s a hell of a lot of liquor for just one person to drink in that short a time,” he observed thoughtfully, “unless he or she had the capacity of a tank car.”

Helene dropped her paper cup on the floor. “Of course!” she exclaimed. While the two men stared at her, open-mouthed, she jumped to her feet, pulled her wrap over her shoulders and began fastening it. “Ruth Rawlson!”

Jake had only started to say, “But look here—” when she put her hand over his mouth.

“Ruth was telling us about having a nice chat with Angela Doll, when we knew Angela had gone home. I thought she’d been chinning with the chorus girls, but now when I think about it, I know they’d all have gone home by that time. They don’t lose any time getting out of here after their last show. There’s only one other place where she could have been: here, all by herself, in the midget’s dressing room.”

Jake jerked his head away and said, “Not necessarily—” That was as far as he got.

“Listen to me!” Her eyes were like blue fire. “She was wandering around back here looking for someone who’d buy her a drink. She stuck her head in here and saw that the room was empty and that a bottle of Scotch was sitting on the dressing table.” Helene paused long enough to draw a quick breath and went on, “Malone just said whoever drank that much liquor in that short a time must have the capacity of a tank car. That’s a thumbnail description of Ruth. And you said yourself—when you put her in the taxi she was practically paralyzed. That wasn’t from the liquor—it was from what was in it!”

“She’s right,” Malone said.

Helene stamped her foot impatiently. “Come on, then. This isn’t any time to stand around talking about it.” She wheeled around and started for the door. “I know where she lives, and my car’s parked right outside. And Malone, stick that bottle of rye in your pocket. We might need it to bring her to.”

“If anything would bring her to,” Jake prophesied, “that will.”

Snow—a light, damp, April snow—was falling as they went outside. Malone shivered, growled something about the spring weather, and looked ominously at the streets. He’d ridden with Helene before when she was in a hurry.

It was nine blocks from the Casino to the dreary Walton Street rooming house where Ruth Rawlson lived. Jake and Malone preferred to forget how short a time it took for Helene to make the trip in the blue convertible.

She slid the car neatly up to the curb directly in front of the doorway and said, “Ruth’s light is on. That’s her place—the English basement.”

Jake grabbed her elbow as she started up the walk. “Wait a minute. Suppose you’re right about this, how are you going to explain it to her?”

Helene shook her arm free indignantly. “When somebody’s been poisoned, you pump the poison out first and explain things afterward.” As an afterthought she added, “If she asks any questions, I’ll tell her you put the poison there for me.”

At the steps Jake paused. “But if you aren’t right—if she didn’t get the poison—then how do we explain this three-o’clock-in-the-morning visit?”

Malone growled, “Tell her I couldn’t wait till tomorrow to see her again. Besides,” he added, “she may not be here.”

“I told the cab driver to see that she got here,” Jake said.

Helene peeked through the window into the basement room. “She’s here all right. I can just see one foot through the window, but I’d know those slippers anywhere.”

Jake rang the bell. Fifteen seconds later he rang it again. The third time, he simply pushed one finger against it and left it there. Malone went into the hallway, found the right door and pounded on it, long and loud.

There was no answer. After one final try of ringing and knocking, Helene took another look through the window. Ruth Rawlson hadn’t moved.