He then led the way back to the casino, where a roulette table had been set in the middle of the floor for his convenience, with chairs for the jury and a single chair as a witness stand. He sat down and Mr. Flynn sat beside him, rapping for order with the croupier’s stick and announcing the opening of an inquest into the death of (with a glance at a memorandum he held in his hand) Victor Alexis Olaf Hermann Adlerkreutz, and summoning all who had knowledge of the event to come forward and give their evidence. He then directed witnesses to hold up their right hands, so that they might all be sworn together. Quite a few hands went up, including a number of constabular hands. He then bound them to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and the Coroner cleared his throat and called the young interne who had pronounced Vicki dead. He gave his testimony briefly, and the orderlies, on inquiry from the Coroner, said that was how they remembered it. Next was the physician who made the autopsy. He reported with considerable medical verbiage. Then police photographers were called and identified their work. Tony was called. He hadn’t witnessed the shooting itself, he said, but he had supplied the gun on Mr. Spiro’s plea they wanted to rehearse a picture scene. Mr. La Bouche was next, and repeated what he had said earlier in the day, with gruesome details this time, about how he had been manipulating the imaginary camera, as represented by the electric fan, and had seen the handkerchief tighten on the trigger, paying not the least attention to it, and not even realizing the significance of the pistol report for some moments, so accustomed was he to blank cartridges in his work. The Sheriff stared at him, after this glib and wholly convincing tale, in wonderment.
It must have been an hour before Dmitri was called, and he took his place in the chair with the air of one who had indeed played many tragic roles in his life, not all of them on the stage.
Prompted by the Coroner, he told once more the harrowing tale he had told in the afternoon. But he filled it with little variations, he noted how odd he had thought it that Vicki should insist on all this pother to understand a scene which was really the director’s business anyway, a point he hadn’t bothered to mention before. He told how he expostulated at the time it was taking, on the ground that he was hungry, a bit of evidence that drew a smile from all, even the Coroner. At one point the Sheriff interrupted sharply: “Are you trying to tell us that this here Adlerkreutz killed himself?”
“I don’t know, Sharf. I really don’t know. It was all very funny. I tell you, I feel sure I saw Tony take shell from a gun. How did one more shell enter this gun? Did Vicki put it there? I don’t know. I only tell what happened.”
The Coroner looked at him sharply, and said: “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You didn’t say one word about this today.”
“I was upset. I don’t know what I said today.”
“Did Adlerkreutz say anything about killing himself?”
“To me, no. Don’t know about odder people.”
Dmitri looked hopefully at Sylvia, but she was staring stonily at her gloved hands. He looked at the Sheriff, but got only a puzzled frown in return. The Coroner said: “I don’t get this. A Coroner’s jury is reluctant to return a verdict of suicide under any circumstances, but here you, without adding any item of evidence, make a lot of mysterious remarks about what you thought, and intimating that the deceased must have put the shell in the gun, and I don’t understand it, that’s all. Are you holding something back?”
“No, plizze, I hold nothing back.”
“This is all conjecture?”
“Con—”
“Just guesswork?”
“Absolutely, yes sir, guesswork.”
Irritated, the Coroner led Dmitri through the rest of his story, encountered much less gabbiness. Dmitri stood down. Then he walked off to one side. Then, to his horror, he heard the Coroner say to his jury: “O. K., then as soon as the Sheriff identifies this other stuff for the record, I’ll instruct you in the law and you can consider your verdict.”
He caught Mr. Layton outside, between the parked cars, where he had followed when that gentleman got up and hurried out of the hearing. But when he grabbed Mr. Layton’s arm, he was flung roughly against the side of the building. “So that’s the kind of a cross you pull on me, hey? Get up there and mumble something about how funny it looks, and then go off in a corner, and that’s supposed to make it a suicide, hey? Where’s that letter she was supposed to get?”
“Plizze! We wrote the letter! We—”
“Then where is it?”
“I gave it to the Sharf! He took it! He—”
Waiting no longer, Mr. Layton strode off to the rear, no doubt to drag his surprise witness out of his car and parade her in to the Coroner. Dmitri didn’t wait to see. He turned to the open window at his side, dropped his elbows on the sill, and quite unrestrainedly began to weep. He seemed to have his head in some kind of storeroom, and his tears splashed down on big green dice in an open box on the floor.
He was in a dreadful spot all right. But he had become part of a business that is accustomed to dreadful spots, and has been well-schooled in what to do about them. When a crisis arises, some writer usually bellows: “I got it, I got it, I GOT IT! Cut to those sirens! Cut to those motorcycles coming down to street! Maybe it’s not story, but it’s ACTION!”
That may have been why Dmitri suddenly straightened up, fished a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, and dropped it into the box of celluloid dice.
Chapter Eleven
The sirens were a success, quite as much of a success as they invariably are in a fast, gangster movie. They came screeching out from town at 80, motorcycles in front, the chief’s car behind that, the salvage truck behind that, the ladder truck behind that, and the pump behind that, a fine, glittering, noisy, 100 % American midnight motorcade. Even so, it was tame in comparison with what went on inside the Domino. The inflammable dice, if they had been all, might not have amounted to much, and Dmitri’s desperate scheme might have failed for the simple reason that a fire takes a great deal longer to get going than a theatrical imagination realizes. But the box happened to be sitting within an inch or two of the big intake cable that led from the connection outside to the electric meter at rear. So when the dice flared hotly up they did not ignite the wall, for it was made of some sort of fireproof composition, but they did melt the cable, so that the first result of the cigarette was that the place went completely dark, without so much as a fuse blowing out. For a minute or so, as Americans versed in the idiosyncrasies of power houses, the gathering sat around without saying a word: one or two muttered gags about a blackout were rebuked by the Coroner, who said it was not a frivolous occasion. But when another minute went by and no light came on, the Coroner said: “Well, we got to get on with this. Tony, do you think you could get us a few candles?”
“I’ll do it.”
It was the voice of one of the girl dealers, and at once there was the sound of her heels clicking off to a corner, and then out. At once came her scream, and then another, and then another. “It’s on fire, the whole storeroom is burning,” she called, as soon as she could run back into the casino. At once came the Sheriff’s voice: “Out, everybody. Take it easy, but get outside.” The front door opened, making a big rectangular patch of light from outside, and Mr. Flynn’s voice said: “This way.” Several photographers, carrying cameras and evidently concerned for their pictures, hurried out. But hardly had Mr. Flynn spoken when Tony, frantically, yelled: “The cash! Girls, the cash! Girls, don’t let me down without getting the cash out!” For the cash, amounting to several thousand dollars, had been rung up on the registers, but it had not been put in the safe, and Tony’s voice betrayed only too well what he stood to lose if the place went up and took this precious paper with it.