A reporter with a cigaret cached above his ear shouted into the telephone on the desk: “Benny! For the love of Mike, do I get a rewrite or not? Benny!.. Get this. Act of God... No, you dope, act of God! Solly Spaeth’s just been murdered!”
Part Two
V
Gentleman or the Tiger?
Rhys’s heart was a church bell resounding, a measured gong. Val pressed her head against it.
And suddenly it skipped two whole beats.
Val pushed away and looked up into her father’s face. Rhys’s lips parted and framed the word: “Coat.”
“Coat,” said Val, almost aloud.
Coat? Her father’s coat!
They stood still in the bedlam. Inspector Glücke was pinching the tip of his sharp nose and regarding Walter with absorption.
Rhys’s coat, that Walter had taken from the La Salle by mistake. By mistake.
Where was it?
Walter sat stonily behind dead Solly’s desk. His hat, out of shape and streaked with dirt, lay near his left fist. But he was not wearing a topcoat. The camel’s-hair coat, Rhys’s coat, was not on the desk. Nor was it on the back of the chair.
Val no longer feared the dead man. She could return his round frog-eyed stare now without flinching. The coat. Rhys’s coat. That was the important thing. That was the thing to be afraid of.
Casually, carefully, they both made a slow survey of the study. The coat was nowhere to be seen.
Where was it? What had Walter done with it?
The Jardins drew closer together by an inch. It was necessary to concentrate. Concentrate, thought Val desperately. This is murder. Keep your mind clear. Listen.
“Get that reporter out of here,” Inspector Glücke was saying. “How you boys fixed?”
The Surveyor was already gone. The photographers, other men, dribbled off. The room began to enlarge. Then a gaunt young man swinging a black bag came in.
“There’s the stiff, Doc. See what you get.”
The coroner’s physician knelt by Solly’s squatting remains and detectives made a wall about the dead man and the living.
“Take their prints, Pappas.”
“Prints?” said Rhys slowly. “Isn’t that a bit premature, Inspector?”
“Any objection, Mr. Jardin?” rapped Glücke.
Rhys was silent.
The fingerprint man approached with his paraphernalia. Inspector Glücke pulled the tip of his nose again, almost in embarrassment. “It’s only routine. We’ve got the whole room mugged. There are a lot of prints. Weeding ’em out, you understand.”
“You’ll probably find some of mine about,” said Rhys.
“Yes?”
“I was in this room only this morning.”
“Is that so? I’ll take your statement in a minute. Go ahead, Pappas.”
Pappas went ahead. Val watched her father’s strong fingers deposit inky designs on paper. Then the man took her hands. His touch was cold, like the body of a fish; her flesh crawled. But all the while Val was saying over and over inside: Where is pop’s coat? What has Walter done with pop’s coat?
The coroner’s physician broke through the living wall and looked around. He made for the desk.
“Anything the matter?” asked the Inspector.
The doctor spoke into the telephone. “Don’t know exactly. Something queer. C.I. Lab, please... Chemist... Bronson? Polk. I’ve got something for you on the Spaeth murder... Yes, as fast as you can.” He hurried back to the ell and the wall solidified about him once more.
“I think,” began Glücke, when a husky voice said from the corridor doorway: “Hello.”
Everybody turned around.
The bearded young man stood there looking grave; and also looking hard at the scene about him, as if he expected to be kicked out at once and wanted to memorize as many of the details as he could before his eviction.
For an instant Val’s heart jumped. The bearded man was wearing a camel’s-hair coat. But then she saw that there was no triangular tear below the right pocket.
“Here he is,” said a detective beside him. “The guy that bought up all Jardin’s stuff this afternoon.”
“Out,” said Glücke. “Later.”
“Why not now?” asked the young man in a wheedling tone. And he advanced a step into the room, gazing intently at the bandage around Walter’s head.
Glücke looked at him sharply. Walter said in a monotone: “Queen’s all right, Inspector. He merely acted as my proxy in buying up the Jardin furnishings today. He can’t possibly have anything to do with this.”
“No?” said Glücke.
“Fact, he’s a detective.” Walter looked away. “Go on, Queen; I’ll see you later.”
“Queen, Queen,” frowned the Inspector. “Any relation to Dick Queen of the New York police department?”
“His son,” said Ellery, beaming. “Now may I stay?”
Inspector Glücke grunted. “I’ve heard about you. Who killed Solly Spaeth, Queen? You could save us a lot of trouble.”
“Oh,” said Ellery, and he made a face. “Sorry, Walter.”
Walter said again: “It’s all right, Queen. Go ahead. I’ll see you later.”
“He cost me eight hundred bucks,” said Glücke. “All right, Phil, take this down. Let’s go, Spaeth — for the book.”
Val made fists. Oh, Walter, what happened?
Walter looked at Mr. Queen, and Mr. Queen looked away. Nevertheless, he did not stir.
“My father telephoned me at the La Salle about five o’clock,” said Walter in a dreary tone. “He said he was home and wanted to see me.”
“What for?”
“He didn’t say. I drove up here in my car. I had a flat down the hill a way and that’s why I took a half-hour for a ten-minute trip. Well, I parked and began to climb out. As I was stepping off backwards, something hit me on the side of the head. That’s all.”
“We found Spaeth unconscious just after we got here,” explained the Inspector. “On the sidewalk near his car. So you never even got into the grounds?”
“I told you what happened,” said Walter.
“Why’d you park around the corner from the entrance? Why didn’t you drive right in?”
“The mob. I thought I’d stand a better chance of getting inside unrecognized if I went on foot. My name is Spaeth, Inspector.” His lips twisted.
“There wasn’t any mob. There wasn’t a soul near the place late this afternoon, the night man says.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“So you were bumped on the head around five-thirty?”
“Just about.”
“Any idea who hit you?”
“The assault came as a complete surprise.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“How the hell should I know?” growled Walter.
But it was remarkable how he kept looking at Val. Just looking, with the oddest wooden expression.
Val scuffed Solly’s silky antique Indian rug with her toe. Walter didn’t enter the grounds. He was attacked before he entered the grounds. That’s what he said. That’s what he wanted the police to believe.
But Val knew he had entered the grounds. She had spoken to him on the telephone, and he had been on the other end of the wire — Hillcrest 2411, his father’s number. It had been Walter, all right; Val knew his voice better than... better than—
Walter had been in the house.
She studied the intricate floral design. In the house. In the house, for all she knew right at this very extension in the study, where his father had been murdered...
He was lying. Lying.
“Come here without a coat, Spaeth?” asked Glücke absently, eyeing him.