“I have the analysis on those granules when you want ’em, Marshal.”
“Haven’t located any to check against them yet, Sol. But the boys’ll come up with something from the cleaners, don’t worry.”
Ollie poked a finger toward a twisted shape of aluminum wire.
“What do you expect to find out from a coat hanger, Ben?”
“Came from the dressing-room, Ollie. Buckled in the heat. Shows the temperature went above twelve hundred. Wood doesn’t burn that hot. Proof there actually was naphtha in the bottle.”
He stopped at the door of a long, hall-like room where two men were working with a spectrograph. One of the technicians pointed to a segment of charred wood, a piece Shaner had cut out of the dressing-table. The “alligatorings,” which checked the burned surface into cracked, irregular squares, had been cut through to show the depth and extent of the char.
“Comes to about eighteen minutes, close as we can average it, Marshal.”
“Thanks, Johnny.” To Olive he explained, “Length of time the blaze had been going. Figured from the time the wood started to burn until spray cooled the surface enough to crack it, like that. Fixes the hour the fire was set. Some wise-boy for the defense is sure to challenge an offhand opinion, unless we can back it up with data.” They walked through into a photographic studio, with more elaborate equipment than any Olive had ever seen. A sergeant in an undershirt greeted Pedley boisterously.
“I must of heard Shaner wrong, Marshal. I thought he told me those pages of script had been burned in a grate fire.”
“They were, Matt.”
“If you say so. But they could have as well been ignited by spontaneous combustion.” The sergeant flushed, glancing at Olive. “Beg your pardon, miss. If that’s your handwriting—?”
“It isn’t.” She laughed reassuringly. “I just came along for the riot.”
Pedley said, “Maybe it’s too torrid for her to see. She’s a young thing and should not shock her mother.”
“We-ell.” The sergeant rubbed his hands. “They’re hotter’n a cookstove at threshing time but there’s nothing to hurt a girl who’s free, white, and been around.” He indicated chairs facing a small, silvered screen mounted on the wall at one end of the room. “We haven’t had time to make negatives of the lot, but if those we have so far are a fair sample—” He whistled much as Barney had, in the cigar store.
Pedley asked, “What are they? Letters?”
“No. Not exactly a diary, either.” The sergeant switched off the wall lights. “It’s more as if this jane was doing a strip tease on paper. It’s a cinch she didn’t think her stuff would ever get on the screen.”
An illuminated square showed on the wall.
“We magnified eight diameters. Lost a lot of it because the surface of the burned pages wasn’t flat. But what we have ought to give you a working basis. This is one of her milder moments. We’ll work up to speed, gradually.”
On the screen appeared what looked like a crumpled white sheet with huge gray writing scrawled on it. Occasionally an entire line would fade away into illegibility but for the most part it wasn’t difficult to read:
I’m writing this at the Lord Calberry and Chuck has just left me. We quarreled pretty much last night but finally Chuck said nothing in the world mattered to him except having me. Not even Ned, or his own wife, or anything. I couldn’t tell him so while he was here with me but I’m much more disturbed in my mind than he seems to be. Chuck is the most exciting man I’ve ever known and he leaves me pretty limp but whether I love him or not—
The frame disappeared.
“Wonderful what ultraviolet can do,” murmured Ollie.
Pedley said, “I’ve had a bigger kick out of Mickey Mouse, many a time. Does it get better as it goes on?”
“This one will keep you on the edge of your seats.” The sergeant pushed another slide into the projector. “There aren’t any dates on these pages: the way they were mixed up when Shaner brought ’em in, no telling which came first. I expect this one was written before the one you just saw.”
The white-sheet effect wasn’t quite so pronounced now, the writing just a little less readable:
I told Chuck about Ned tonight and it just about broke him up. He really hasn’t had much experience with troupers, so I couldn’t blame him for not knowing that a lot of brother-and-sister acts aren’t really brothers and sisters but more likely husband and wife. Chuck said he wouldn’t have started taking me out in the first place if he’d known Ned and I were married. Then I told him a sort of lie — that Ned and I haven’t actually been two-ing it for quite a while and that seemed to make him feel a little better. I guess he really is that way about me. But maybe his wife won’t look at things the way Ned—
The frame vanished.
Ollie let out a long breath.
“She was Mrs. Ned Lownes!”
“Yair.”
“That explains everything, doesn’t it?”
“I wish I thought so,” said Pedley.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Behind This Orgy of Arson
“Ollie.” Pedley set down his cup of thick Turkish coffee. “There’s something I want to ask you.”
“Why, Ben, dear!” She leaned eagerly across the Aleppo’s rather soiled tablecloth. “Just — ask me.” Her eyes were dreamy.
He put his hand over hers. “Will you be my — secretary?”
She sighed and closed her eyes. “I shall remember this moment all the rest of my days. The answer is ‘Yes,’ Benjamin. ‘Yes’ — with all my heart. When shall it be?”
“Immejut. I don’t want to call Barney myself, because by now a certain highly placed gentleman may have left orders for my clerk to notify me by telephone that I’m no longer on the job officially—”
“Oh, Ben! He wouldn’t do that! I know he wouldn’t!”
“He might have to, Ollie. And in case he does, I wouldn’t want to put Barnus on the spot. So if you’d buzz him for me—”
“What do you want to know?”
“Ask him if he’s heard from Shaner. I couldn’t get Ed up at the Riveredge. Leila must have left her apartment. I’d like to know where the hell she’s gone!”
Ollie edged past a circle of card-playing Armenians into the malodorous phone booth. Presently she emerged.
“Last minute bulletin from the front. Relayed through our local correspondent, B. Molloy. Miss Lownes and Mister Gaydel left the Riveredge at approximately three-forty-five.”
Pedley looked at his watch. “More’n an hour ago.”
“They took Gaydel’s car to South Ferry. Parked near the dock used by the Statue of Liberty boat.”
“Sight-seeing? In this kind of weather? Must be the gypsy in them.” Pedley tapped his coffee cup. “If you can flag that waiter, ask him to put a head on this.” He went to the booth, used three nickels, and a moderate number of unprintables.
At the public relations man’s office in the Graybar Building, a receptionist remembered vaguely that Mister Ross had come in an hour or so ago; didn’t think he was in now, though; finally consented to investigate; went away from the phone and returned a nickel later to announce that Terry had left his office almost immediately. She thought he’d mentioned some lawyer — Emerson or Amesbury or something like that.
Another nickel produced from Miss Bernard the information that Amery had gone to meet Ross, that the duo were Staten Island bound via ferry.
The ferry! Right beside the Statue of Liberty dockage! “What’s so interesting over on Staten Island all of a sudden, Miss Bernard?”