She closed the door quietly. “So nice of you gentlemen to call,” she said. “Please be seated — on the davenport, if you don’t mind. And keep your hands in sight — on your knees, I think would be fine.”
Marion was standing with her back to the door. She acted as if she knew what she was doing. She wasn’t going to come close enough for one of us to jump her, and at that range she couldn’t miss. The chips were very definitely down, and we all knew it. It was her play.
“To what am I indebted for this charming visit?” she asked, adding, “As if I didn’t know.”
I smiled, or tried to. “We thought you might be a good kid and tell us about Maxine and Wally.”
She thought about it for a minute. Her gun didn’t waver. Neither did Clark or I. “Wally killed Maxine, then lost his nerve,” she said, calmly. “I had to kill him.”
“Why did Burke kill Maxine?” Clark found his voice.
Marion shrugged. “I asked him to — she’d done enough to spoil our lives.”
“You lying devil!” Clark exploded, half-rising.
The muzzle of Marion’s gun pin-pointed the second button on his vest and he sank down beside me. He was very mad, very dangerous, but he knew he was on the wrong end of the gun.
“So what are you going to do about us?” I asked.
“Anxious, Marty?” she chided.
“No, just curious,” I replied. “I don’t suppose you can get any more for killing four people than for two, but up to now you’ve been a pretty smart baby about these things. I just wondered how you’d figured this one out.”
“Well,” she said, “there’s really no point in keeping you in suspense. I’m going to shoot you with Clark’s gun, which he is going to toss over to me in a minute. Then I’ll shoot Clark with this one.”
“I suppose I’m thick, but I’m missing the point. It’s an interesting switch, but what does it accomplish?”
“I’m disappointed in you, Marty,” she replied, “but I think when the police find a certain letter Clark wrote to Maxine in your pocket, they’ll believe you and he got in a row, he shot you, and then in self defense, I shot him.”
“Good, good. Then you’ve had the letter all the time?”
“Naturally.”
If I had to be in this kind of a jam, Clark was a good man to have on my side.
“What if I don’t toss my gun over, lady?” he asked. “I hate to spoil your act, but I think you’re taking a lot for granted.”
“Don’t worry, Clark, you aren’t crabbing the act,” she replied, without even a trace of annoyance. “It doesn’t matter really who is shot first. Now, do you want to throw your gun over to me — carefully?”
Clark looked at me and winked. “It looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, chum.”
He withdrew a .38 from his shoulder holster, butt first, and tossed it toward Marion. “Here it comes, sister.”
It was a good throw, a little short. I got the idea.
Marion moved to get it, keeping her own .32 on us. As she stooped for the gun, we both took off. Marion fired and I heard Clark yelp as we hit her. She went down under us — her gun flying out of her hand.
Clark and I were concentrating on the main chance. I went after her gun, and Clark was busy collecting his own. In the scramble, Marion somehow got off the floor and escaped into her bathroom before we could stop her.
We looked at each other foolishly. Clark had a bum wing, where her bullet had taken him, but nothing dangerous. The next thing was to pry her out of the bathroom. With some dames that’s a big proposition.
I beat on the door. No response. I told her to stand clear, I was shooting the lock off the door. Still no sound from the bathroom. A couple shots for the lock and we walked in — just in time to see her jump from the tiny bathroom window. It was four flights straight down to a cement driveway. She spread herself on the yell going down.
I turned away from the window, and for the first time saw what she’d written in lipstick on the mirror. It was for me:
I hope I can do this one authentic enough
for you, Marty.
I got to the telephone and called the inspector. “Hillman,” I said, “it’s that man again. Yeah, Fowler. Look, Inspector, I hate to do this to you, but I’ve got another dead body on my hands and don’t know what to do about it.”
I gave him the address and told him I’d hang around until he arrived. Then I called the desk and told them they’d better send someone around to keep the souvenir hunters from walking off with Marion’s body.
Clark was standing in the center of the floor. He looked a little green around the gills. I pushed him into a chair. “Relax, Johnny. The rest of this is strictly for laughs.”
Hillman arrived in a covey of subordinates and police reporters. He eyed Clark and me sourly. “I knew it was a mistake to let you out,” he commented.
The docs couldn’t do anything for Marion, but they put a dressing on Clark’s arm. By the time they finished, Hillman was back from viewing the body. He nosed around the apartment, then turned on me. “I imagine I might just as well hear your version of it.”
I told him all there was to our little rough-house with Marion. Clark backed me up.
“What about the note on the mirror?” Hillman asked. “What’s that mean?”
I smiled. “Of course, I didn’t discuss it with the lady, Inspector,” I explained, “but it would seem a couple of other suicides she staged didn’t hold up so well.”
“Keyes and Burke?”
“Isn’t that what she’s telling you?”
Hillman thought about it for a couple of minutes while he chewed his cigar. “Maybe,” he conceded, “but I still want to know why.”
“The Inspector,” I explained to Clark, “has a complex about these things. He spent hours today asking me: ‘Why did you kill Keyes and Burke?’ Now he wants to know why Marion killed them. Don’t ever let him start on you.”
I thought Hillman’s complexion was a little unnaturally ruddy. “As a comedian,” he growled, “you stink!”
I laughed. “That’s not nice, Inspector. I think you’re a swell comedian. But just to show there’s no hard feelings, I’ll give you a tip — Marion was jealous.”
“Jealous?” he echoed.
“You know, the green-eyed monster. Look, two lovely young ladies reach into the Hollywood grab-bag. For one there’s stardom — for the other, crumbs as her stand-in. That was pretty rough for a girl with Marion’s ambition.”
Hillman shook his head. “So she decided to kill off the competition. I can’t buy that, Fowler.”
“Naturally, it didn’t happen quite that way,” I explained. “At first it was just a matter of sniping at Maxine’s reputation. She was clever about it. She always planted her lies, while seeming to defend Maxine. Everyone knew she was her best friend. I imagine the first time she really felt her power to destroy Maxine was when she sold Johnny here on the idea his wife was playing around with Jake Reed. Reed was killed and there was one helluva scandal that just about wrecked Maxine’s career. But not quite. Maxine pulled out of it, and Marion had to start from scratch.
“This time, she played Maxine’s director, a bird named Zolta, off against husband number two, Burke. Zolta was killed in a hunting accident and Marion was the only witness. My guess is she let Maxine in on the fact that it was really murder. At least something happened to come between Burke and his wife, and start her boozing.
“That wrote finis on Maxine’s career and gave Marion the go sign. Incidentally, she picked Burke up on the rebound, so she was really filling Maxine’s shoes. Then when Marion is just getting her own career under way, she’s engaged to Burke, and Maxine is flat on her fanny. That’s the time my friend Johnny Clark blows into town with a part for his ex-wife.