“Yes, I made that for the poor girl,” said Miss Amstey. “It was a present from Miss Watlington. She designed it and the yellow underbodice to wear with it, and I must say it looked very well.”
Journey from London for nothing, thought Rason. Out of mere politeness he asked: “And you made this jumper, too, to go with it?”
“No, I didn’t! That’s a cheap line — came out of a shop. Besides, it wasn’t poor Rita’s. It was Miss Watlington’s. I saw her wearing it the very day of the murder. And I must say I thought it frightful. Apart from its being made of cotton and the underbodice made of silk.”
“Then this jumper and this dress don’t go together — they belonged to different women? But you could wear the one with the other if you wanted to, couldn’t you?”
“Well, you could,” admitted Miss Amstey, “but you’d look rather funny. For one thing, it has a collar. And for another, the tops of the sleeves — look, what I expect you call a ‘ridge’ here — would stick out at the sides of the dress. People would turn round and laugh.”
That left Rason with the now simple riddle of the bloodstains. The two garments worn together would produce a ridiculous effect. Yet there were bloodstains, deemed to have been made by Cudden’s hand, at the same time on both. And Herbert had identified both dress and jumper at the inquest.
Rason took it all down and got Miss Amstey to sign it.
Ruth decided that they could without impropriety arrive at the registrar’s in the same taxi carrying the suitcases that had established the legality of their address. In outward appearance she had changed. The talent for dress she had formerly exercised for another was now successfully applied to herself. In the hall of the registrar’s office, Rason accosted Herbert and introduced himself.
“I am sorry, Mr. Cudden, but I must ask you both to accompany me to headquarters. A serious discrepancy has been discovered in the evidence you gave in the coroner’s court.”
They were taken to the Chief Superintendent’s room. Three others were with him. Ruth was invited to sit.
Herbert was reminded of his evidence regarding the dress. Then the pale green sleeveless dress was handed to him.
“Is that the dress?”
“To the best of my belief — yes.” He turned it. “Yes — there’s the bloodstain.”
The yellow jumper was passed to him. After a similar examination he again answered.
“Yes.”
“Miss Watlington, do you agree that these two garments, formerly belonging to the deceased, were worn by you that night?”
“Yes,” said Ruth, though she could guess what had happened and knew that there could be but little hope.
The Chief Superintendent spoke next.
“You will both be detained on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Rita Steevens.”
“No!” snapped Ruth. “Mr. Cudden has told the truth throughout. He knows nothing about women’s clothes except their color. The color of that jumper was near enough for him to think it was the same. They were passed to him separately at the inquest.”
“Ruth, I can’t follow this!” protested Herbert.
“Miss Watlington is making a gallant attempt to get you out of your present difficulty,” said the Chief. “But I’m afraid it will be futile.”
“It will not be futile,” said Ruth. “Will you all remain just as you are, please, and let me go behind the Chief Superintendent’s chair. And can I have that dress?”
Behind the superintendent’s chair she whipped off her fashionable walking suit. Then she put on the jumper and the pale green sleeveless dress, struggling against her nausea.
Then, looking as ridiculous as Miss Amstey had prophesied, she stood where all could see her. The officials were awed into silence.
“Herbert, you have only to answer me naturally to clear up the whole absurd mistake. Was I, or was I not, dressed like this that night?”
“No, of course not. Your neck was bare. And you looked properly dressed. That thing doesn’t fit.”
Ruth turned to the Chief and his colleagues.
“You see, he is obviously innocent.” She added, almost casually: “I am not.”
The Rival Dummy
by Ben Hecht
From the dossier of Ben Hecht: in rough chronological order his vocations and avocations include his being a child-prodigy violinist, a circus acrobat, a theatre owner, a reporter, a novelist, a foreign correspondent, a columnist, a newspaper publisher, a playwright, a scenarist, and a motion picture producer. In a phrase: the background of one of the great storytellers of our time.
“The Rival Dummy” is not among Ben Hecht’s most famous stories. Indeed, it is not well-known at all. Yet it is richly representative of Mr. Hecht’s highly individualistic talent: to paraphrase Mr. Hecht himself, it is strange, weird, and crazy; partly because it tells the story of “the strangest, weirdest, craziest man in New York” — Gabbo the Great, the world’s screwiest ventriloquist.
“The Rival Dummy” belongs to that rare category of fiction which can only be described as “off the trail.” It will remind you, although in an entirely different way, of Marc Connelly’s “Coroner’s Inquest,” in EQMM, issue of September 1944. These unconventional, unorthodox little classics — so odd, so off the beaten track, that they are literally outré — are out-of-season delicacies calculated to stimulate the taste-buds of those fans whose appetites are somewhat jaded by run-of-the-meal murders. Yes, here is murder out of the ordinary, murder out of mania, murder outré...
I was dining in a place where vaudeville “artists” congregate to gossip and boast, when my friend Joe Ferris, the booking agent, pointed to a stocky little man with a gray toupee, alone at a table, and said:
“There is, I think, the strangest, weirdest, craziest man in New York.”
I looked a second time, and noted, despite this identification, nothing more unusual than the aforesaid gray toupee, a certain bewildered and shifty manner about the eyes, and a pair of nervous sensitive hands. He reminded me — this solitary diner — of some second-rate Hungarian fiddler worn out with poverty, alcohol, and egotism.
“That,” said Joe Ferris, “is the man who ten years ago used to be known as Gabbo the Great — the world’s most famous ventriloquist. I guess he heard me” — the booking agent lowered his voice — “but it doesn’t matter. He’ll pretend he didn’t. We’re not supposed to know who he is, you know. That’s what the toupee is for. Disguise. Mad — madder than a cuckoo. It gives me the shivers just to look at him.
“I’ll tell you his story,” continued Ferris, “and maybe you can figure it out. That’s more than I can. But being a newspaper man, you won’t call me a liar. I hate to tell stories to people who are always certain that anything they never heard of before is a lie.
“This particular yarn” — Ferris smiled — “began way back before the war. He came over from Belgium. Gabbo. That’s where a good percentage of the best performers come from. God knows why. Jugglers, contortionists, trapeze acts, strong men, and all that kind of stuff. Belgium and Lithuania sometimes.
“I booked Gabbo when he first landed. The best all-around ventriloquist that ever played the big time — if I do say so. And nuts, of course. But you got to expect that from the talent. I never see a first-rate act that wasn’t at least half nutty.
“The first time I met him I ask him what his last name is.
“ ‘Gabbo what?’ I ask.
“ ‘Gabbo the Great,’ is the answer. And then he adds very seriously, ‘I was born Great.’
“I thought at first this was the foreign equivalent for a gag. But there was less humor about Gabbo than a dead mackerel. He used to sign his letters G. G. Imagine. And — to give you a rough idea of what kind of a loon this baby was — he always opened his act with the Marseillaise.