Orlo Featherstone unbent at least half a degree. “Distinctly so. Personally, I cannot imagine Paul Palmer doing such a thing. When I visited him yesterday, he seemed quite cheerful and full of hope.”
“You — visited him yesterday?” Malone asked casually. He drew a cigar from his pocket and began unwrapping it with exquisite care.
“Yes,” Featherstone said, “about the will. He had to sign it, you know. Fortunate for her,” he indicated Madelaine Starr with a gesture toward the building, “that he did so. He left her everything, of course.”
“Of course,” Malone said. He lighted his cigar on the second try. “You don’t think Paul Palmer could have been murdered, do you?”
“Murdered!” Orlo Featherstone repeated, as though it was an obscene word, “Absurd! No Palmer has ever been murdered.”
Malone watched him climb into a shiny 1928 Rolls Royce, then started walking briskly toward State Street. The big limousine passed him just as he reached the corner, it turned north on State Street and stopped. Malone paused by the newsstand long enough to see Mr. Orlo Featherstone get out and cross the sidewalk to the corner drug store. After a moment’s thought he followed and paused at the cigar counter, from where he could see clearly into the adjacent telephone booth.
Orlo Featherstone, in the booth, consulted a little notebook. Then he took down the receiver, dropped a nickel in the slot, and began dialling.
Malone watched carefully. D-E-L — 9-6-O— It was Lillian Claire’s number.
The little lawyer cursed all sound-proof phone booths, and headed for a bar on the opposite corner. He felt definitely unnerved.
After a double rye, and halfway through a second one, he came to the heartening conclusion that when he visited Lillian Claire, later in the evening, he’d be able to coax from her the reason why Orlo Featherstone, of all people, had telephoned her, just after leaving the late Paul Palmer’s fiancée. A third rye braced him for his call on the fiancée herself.
Riding up in the self-service elevator to her apartment, another heartening thought came to him. If Madelaine Starr was going to inherit all the Palmer dough — then it might not be such a trick to collect his five thousand bucks. He might even be able to collect it by a week from Thursday.
And he reminded himself, as she opened the door, this was going to be one time when he wouldn’t be a sucker for a pretty face.
Madelaine Starr’s apartment was tiny, but tasteful. Almost too tasteful, Malone thought. Everything in it was cheap, but perfectly correct and in exactly the right place, even to the Van Gogh print over the midget fireplace. Madelaine Starr was in exactly the right taste, too.
She was a tall girl, with a figure that still made Malone blink, in spite of the times he’d admired it in the courtroom. Her bronze-brown hair was smooth and well-brushed, her pale face was calm and composed. Serene, polished, suave. Malone had a private idea that if he made a pass at her, she wouldn’t scream. She was wearing black rayon house-pajamas. He wondered if they were her idea of mourning.
Malone got the necessary condolences and trite remarks out of the way fast, and then said, “What kind of terrible trouble and danger are you in, Miss Starr?”
That startled her. She wasn’t able to come up with anything more original than “What do you mean?”
“I mean what you wrote in your note to Paul Palmer,” the lawyer said.
She looked at the floor and said, “I hoped it had been destroyed.”
“It will be,” Malone said gallantly, “if you say so.”
“Oh,” she said. “Do you have it with you?”
“No,” Malone lied. “It’s in my office safe. But I’ll go back there and burn it.” He didn’t add when.
“It really didn’t have anything to do with his death, you know,” she said.
Malone said, “Of course not. You didn’t send him the rope too, did you?”
She stared at him. “How awful of you.”
“I’m sorry,” Malone said contritely.
She relaxed. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m a little unnerved, naturally.” She paused. “May I offer you a drink?”
“You may,” Malone said, “and I’ll take it.”
He watched her while she mixed a lot of scotch and a little soda in two glasses, wondering how soon after her fiancé’s death he could safely ask her for a date. Maybe she wouldn’t say Yes to a broken-down criminal lawyer, though. He took the drink, downed half of it, and said to himself indignantly, “Who’s broken-down?”
“Oh, Mr. Malone,” she breathed, “you don’t believe my note had anything to do with it?”
“Of course not,” Malone said. “That note would have made him want to live, and get out of jail.” He considered bringing up the matter of his five thousand dollar fee, and then decided this was not the time. “Nice that you’ll be able to pay back what you owe Max Hook. He’s a bad man to owe money to.”
She looked at him sharply and said nothing. Malone finished his drink, and walked to the door.
“One thing, though,” he said, hand on the knob. “This — terrible trouble and danger you’re in. You’d better tell me. Because I might be able to help, you know.”
“Oh, no,” she said. She was standing very close to him, and her perfume began to mingle dangerously with the rye and scotch in his brain. “I’m afraid not.” He had a definite impression that she was thinking fast. “No one can help, now.” She looked away, delicately. “You know — a girl — alone in the world—”
Malone felt his cheeks reddening. He opened the door and said, “Oh.” Just plain Oh.
“Just a minute,” she said quickly. “Why did you ask all these questions?”
“Because,” Malone said, just as quickly, “I thought the answers might be useful — in case Paul Palmer was murdered,”
That, he told himself, riding down the self-service elevator, would give her something to think about.
He hailed a cab and gave the address of the apartment building where Lillian Claire lived, on Goethe Street. In the lobby of the building he paused long enough to call a certain well-known politician at his home and make sure that he was there. It would be just as well not to run into that particular politician at Lillian Claire’s apartment, since he was paying for it.
It was a nice apartment, too, Malone decided, as the slim mulatto maid ushered him in. Big, soft modernistic divans and chairs, panelled mirrors, and a built-in bar. Not half as nice, though, as Lillian Claire herself.
She was a cuddly little thing, small, and a bit on the plump side, with curly blonde hair and a deceptively simple stare. She said, “Oh, Mr. Malone, I’ve always wanted a chance to get acquainted with you.” Malone had a pleasant feeling that if he tickled her, just a little, she’d giggle.
She mixed him a drink, lighted his cigar, sat close to him on the biggest and most luxurious divan, and said, “Tell me, how on earth did Paul Palmer get that rope?”
“I don’t know.” Malone said. “Did you send it to him, baked in a cake?”
She looked at him reprovingly. “You don’t think I wanted him to kill himself and let that awful woman inherit all that money?”
Malone said, “She isn’t so awful. But this is tough on you, though. Now you’ll never be able to sue him.”
“I never intended to,” she said. “I didn’t want to be paid off. I just thought it might scare her away from him.”
Malone put down his glass, she hopped up and refilled it. “Were you in love with him?” he said.
“Don’t be silly.” She curled up beside him again. “I liked him. He was much too nice to have someone like that marry him for his money.”
Malone nodded slowly. The room was beginning to swim — not unpleasantly — before his eyes. Maybe he should have eaten dinner after all.