“Did they bring out the words, Mr. Lumsden?” I asked.
“Will you never learn proper titles, Willie? I’m a Detective Sergeant. When you want to speak to me, address me as Sergeant Lumsden.”
“Yes, sir, if it makes any difference.” He looked like he was really feeling his oats, after the time he’d spent with the scientific men. He pulled away in the wet night. Traffic wasn’t so heavy now. It was a little after midnight. I said again, “Did they bring out words?”
He laughed and said, “They dropped a motive right in my lap. Willie, your silence has done her no good. According to those papers, Cal Eurich had socked away, unknown to anyone but a chosen few, over thirty thousand dollars of crooked money. Catch? If he had declared it, the source of his income might have been exposed and a lot of his crookedness brought to light. But not in declaring it, he was running the risk of tangling with the Feds. He was planning on stashing the dough in some trustworthy, secret place. Evidently, he had it at his house tonight and she killed him for it. Some of it is guess work, I’ll admit, but I’d lay six, two, and even that I’m dead right. It has to be that way.”
Then he twisted the wheel, and I had a hunch where we were going. To Mr. Eurich’s Golden Swan night club, where Madeline Lester sang her songs. To pick Madeline up for murder. I felt sick and my heart thunked until I was gagging on it.
When we got to the Golden Swan, we didn’t go in the front way. Lumsden parked in the alley, told me and Barney to get out, and herded us through the back door.
We were in a dim hallway. The far end was covered with heavy drapes, opening out in the club. We could hear music, Madeline singing a soft tune. It made your breath hot and thick in your throat, the way she sang.
We passed along the dressing-room doors that opened off the hall. Lumsden pushed back the fancy velvet drapes, and we took a look out in the club. It was pretty dark in there, with just tiny lights on all the packed tables. Except for her singing you could have heard a pin drop. The customers were all leaning forward, smoke trickling up from cigarettes, drinking her in.
And, Mister, she was something to drink in. That blue-black hair of hers was falling around her bare shoulders. In the changing colors of the spotlight her skin was like some of the cream Ma used to skim off rich milk. She was wearing a long white dress and her body didn’t move. It flowed along. There wasn’t a man in the place; she was a witch who’d turned every last one of them into a panting wolf.
Lumsden punched me and Barney, and the three of us turned, quiet as snakes, and went back down the dim hallway to her dressing room.
Inside the room, Lumsden closed the door and said, “She’ll finish with her number in a couple minutes more. We’ll just make like a reception committee.” Then he started prowling over the cluttered room, pulling her fine dresses around on the rack in the corner.
The mirror over her dressing table was a big one, with lights all around it. I looked in it, then at her dressing table, at the jars of cream and rouge, and I began touching things with my finger. You know the way you’ll do sometimes, just standing around like that and thinking hard.
Then I picked up the big box of face powder, and I stopped thinking all at once. Cold chills went over me. My hand shook a little, and I put the box of powder down as easy as I could.
Lumsden was watching me, and my eyes couldn’t meet his. I licked my lips, and he stared hard at me. He came over to the dressing table, picked up the big powder box himself, hefted it, and his mouth turned down at the corners, like he was smiling upside down.
Then he dumped the powder in the middle of the dressing table and the heavy thing in the bottom of the box plopped in the middle of the pile of powder, sending a little cloud of the stuff up in the close, hot air.
It was all covered with the powder, but you couldn’t mistake it. A small gun, a twenty-five automatic, had been hid in the bottom of the powder box.
Lumsden laughed, and it sounded like that bite of rotten lemon had hung in his throat. “Well,” he said. “Well!” He picked up the gun, wrapped it in his handkerchief. “I’ll do a little more guessing,” he said. “Except it really isn’t that. It’s just plain reasoning. One will get you a hundred that this is the gun that killed Cal Eurich. She was going to face it out, maybe got herself some kind of alibi. Or maybe thought it would take us a day or two to get on her trail. Anyhow, she decided it would be better to come back here and do her show tonight, as if nothing had happened; then poof! She would vanish and no one would know she’d gone until it came time tomorrow night for her show. In twenty-four hours she would be a long way off. Thus by taking time to do her show tonight, she’d actually gain a whole day without rousing any sort of suspicion.
“But she had a problem — the gun. One will get you another hundred that it’s registered, could be traced to her. Maybe she bought it to protect herself from muggers, since her work makes her keep such late hours. It’s that kind of gun, a purse gun.
“And she’d used it for murder. She couldn’t just toss it away. She couldn’t afford ever to have it found. She needed to get it at the bottom of a river. Or buried down, deep, in some forgotten place. But she didn’t have time to do that and still make her show tonight. So she was either stuck with the gun or faced with a premature search to see why she hadn’t appeared for her show. She needed time. Later she could handle the detail of the gun with no worries.”
You can see that this here Lumsden was one smart man. He didn’t miss a trick. I thought about her, singing like a white flame, and Lumsden putting her in the electric chair.
And I looked up, and she was standing in the door. She slammed the door. She looked hard-boiled, staring at Lumsden. “What the hell is this?” she asked.
Lumsden smiled his upside-down smile and showed her the gun and started talking. Like a dandied spider he put a web around her and she got white and all the hard-boiled shell went away. She looked helpless and scared, like she wished somebody would take her hand and lead her away.
Barney Thomas watched her and smoked. She looked at him, saw no mercy in his eyes. Then she looked at me and said, “Willie.” Like a hurt puppy pleading. My fare got tight and I felt my arm muscles busting my shirt. Lumsden slammed himself back away from me. He knew that with one lick, I could knock him in the next county.
But I didn’t get the chance. He was too quick on the draw. I stared down the muzzle of his gun and let my arm fall. I felt like hell. I had to get Madeline away. I was going to. I looked at her, and she caught the message in my eyes. I didn’t see how I was going to do it, but I knowed she’d be ready.
“Willie, you watch yourself or somebody will have to buy you a coffin,” Lumsden said as the room sort of cooled down.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I will, Mr. Lumsden. I’m sorry.”
He snarled a bad word at me, herded us out in the hallway, turned toward the back door of the club.
I knew what he was figuring. He’d put me and Barney in the front seat, making one of us drive. He’d put Madeline in back, and he’d sit over in one corner of the back seat, covering us all with his gun. And when he got us to the police station, he’d start in, with a dozen fellows helping him. He’d make me and Barney admit we had seen her leaving Mr. Eurich’s. He’d get every thing, Lumsden would. He was one smart man.
In the hallway Madeline stopped, wringing her hands. “Can’t you see,” she said, “that somebody is doing this to me?”
Lumsden didn’t say anything.
She’d already told him there in her dressing room when Lumsden, like a dandied spider, had been putting the web around her. Now she told him again with tears in her eyes. “You’ve got to believe me! You’ve got to believe what I said about the two phone calls, Sergeant Lumsden. I received the first call shortly before eight. I couldn’t quite recognize the voice. It sounded muffled, far-away, and I simply thought the connection wan bad. The man said he was Cal Eurich.