“You’re drunk!” old Ludwig thundered. “Well, Josiah, don’t stand there gawking! Get him up to his room!”
Josiah said a hurried “Yes, sir,” and bumbled around the car. He got the door open on Buddy’s side.
“Joshiah, you’re a good egg,” Buddy patted the servant’s shoulder, “but I can make it up under my own power, shee? Poor Marilyn. Dead in the night shomeplace!” He staggered across the veranda, into the house.
“That young pup should be thrashed within an inch of his life,” Ludwig decided glaring toward the house.
“I’m sorry he’s in that state, myself,” Archer agreed. “There was a question or two I wanted to ask him. About his investment in Lon Montague’s Starlight Club.”
“Eh? Oh, I can tell you anything you want to know about that, Mr. Archer.”
The chief looked a little stunned, his face drawn in the light spilling over the drive from the house. He’d expected, I guess, secret blanks in Buddy’s past, and for the first time in his career, I saw complete puzzlement rising in David Archer’s eyes.
Chapter 4
The chief drew old Ludwig out with questions, and from the way the grandfather spoke of Buddy’s relations with Lon Montague you had the feeling that it was truth.
Yes, Buddy’s first wife, Sue-Carol, had been killed in the auto accident. The police had looked into all that. And yes, Buddy came into quite a spot of cash. He’d always been an idle young man, but with Sue-Carol gone, he’d wanted something to put his mind and time to. Buddy had known Montague for several years; he’d hung around nightclubs such as Lon’s until he knew every habitué. Furthermore, night-life had always fascinated Buddy, and he had believed that the sort of club Lon Montague now ran could do well by itself. So Buddy had gone to Montague — and not Montague to Buddy — and suggested buying in a more or less silent partnership. Montague had agreed.
“I tried to talk him out of it, sir,” Ludwig assured us, “the idea of a VanDyke running a nightclub! But Mr. Montague came to me one day privately. He showed me facts and figures, how the club could show a handsome profit; he pointed out that Buddy might be better off, and far more content, if he got in business — even the nightclub business. He spoke with sense, as a good business man, this Montague.”
“And it was strictly business from beginning to end?”
“What do you mean by that, sir? Of course it was business. The finest firm of lawyers in this city drew up the papers. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go up and throw that young pup under a cold shower and give him a good tongue-lashing!”
Archer turned toward the sedan. “Okay, Luke, let’s go back to the office. It looks,” he grouched, “as if we’re going to have to find that Pekinese, Priscilla, and see if Priscilla can’t give us a line on this case!”
I could tell by his tone that he wasn’t ribbing. I could feel the frantic sense in him of time slipping away. Two girls had died. Once started, there’s no telling where a chain of death would stop, or who would be next. But how he planned to break that chain with a Pekinese dog was completely beyond me!
Our office was cold with the chill of night, the huge building about us so silent it felt haunted. Big buildings are made for people, for the rushing hum of busy days. There’s nothing more stifling to a sense of well-being than a deserted, dark, office building. Or maybe it was the thing in the chief’s eyes that made me feel that way. He tossed his hat on the desk, said, “The lad we’re up against this time, Luke, is plenty smooth. The closer we get to him, the more dangerous he gets. I would not like to get myself shot up for a hundred dollar fee — even if the old lady was sweet and made a sucker out of me.”
I didn’t hanker on getting shot either, and I knew what he meant. “So what do we do now?”
“Get on the phone,” he said. “Call the dog-pound first — and heaven help us if they’ve got a three-pawed Pekinese there.”
As usual, he was thinking way ahead of me. I was in a fog, and I knew he wouldn’t enlighten me until he felt like it. I called the dog-pound, got a voice finally. The voice said it would look for a long time; then the voice was back on the phone. I hung up.
I shook my head at Archer. “No Peke like that at the pound.”
“Good!” his eyes brightened faintly. “Take the red book and get the name of every veterinary and animal hospital out of it; phone them all. When you don’t get an answer, look up the animal doc’s name and home address in the alphabetical book and phone him at home. If any are not home, find out where they can be reached and phone there, even if you have to drag one or two of them from a nightclub table. Ask them if the dog has been brought to them. Being veterinarians, any of them would have noticed and remembered a Pekinese with an amputated paw.”
Archer hated tasks as routine and monotonous as this, but I think he would have been just as comfortable doing the phoning himself as he was watching me, practically ready to gnaw his knuckles.
I started down the line. The first two animal docs didn’t have the dog. The third I couldn’t locate anywhere. The fourth, his wife informed me, was very ill and had closed his pet shop. The fifth and sixth were blanks.
I was chain-smoking, and the office was getting heavy. Number seven was a Doctor E. R. Thoms, with an animal hospital and boarding kennel on Dixton Street. He was pay dirt.
I slammed down the phone. “He’s got the dog. This Doc E. R. Thoms!”
“But you didn’t find out who left it there!” Archer snarled. “Get him back on the phone, get...”
“He hung up on me, quick-like. Chief, I think we better get out there!”
The layout of Doctor Thoms was big, and nice. A long, white building faced the sidewalk, a sign over its door announcing, Small Animal Hospital. The kennels were ranged in back of the building, dimly seen; a dog in one of them began whimpering. Off to the left rear of the animal hospital was a wide lawn, at the base of which we could make out the outlines of a two-story frame house, Doctor Thoms’ home.
Everything was dark, silent, except for the whimpering dog. Archer and I entered the edge of the yard, keeping to the shadows of shade trees. The chill of night bit into us, turning the perspiration that had broke out on my forehead to a cold sheen, like ice. My stomach was throbbing with the quiet, with the waiting for something to happen, with the memory of the way Thoms had hung up on me...
We drew nearer to the dark, silent house. In the kennels behind us, a dog suddenly raised his muzzle and howled, like an animal dying, or sensing death. Gooseflesh rippled down my spine.
We hung back a moment, there under the shadows of the tree nearest the house. Nothing happened. Archer touched my arm; we broke and started for the house. We didn’t expect it to happen right here in the open; we expected it when we stepped inside. And that’s what the lads laying for us figured we’d expect — so they banked on surprise. We were within ten feet of the house, on open lawn when they opened up on us — a gun flaming from each corner of the house.
We’d have been cold meat if we’d lost our heads, paused, or tried to beat a retreat. But the chief and I had been in spots before; we knew that to turn and make for the shade trees would only waste time, cause us to be motionless for a split instant there in the open lawn. We dropped low, put on steam, and plowed straight ahead for the porch, and kept plowing, shoulder to shoulder, when we hit the front door. The average door was never built to take a shock like that. The latch burst with a twang of metal and tearing of wood; the door slammed open; the glass upper half of the door shattered. We were inside the house.