Death Takes a Bow (8 page)

“We didn't know it then,” Burden said, “but what he had was his tongue in his cheek. Even then. Because he was making a pretty fair living writing for the pulps and the rest was—well, so much hog-wash. He just thought it was funny to pull our earnest young legs.” Burden smiled at a memory. “As probably it was,” he said. “As probably it was. We grow up. But Sproul grew up earlier than most of us.”

“He must have been around—what?” Weigand interrupted.

“That's right,” Burden said. “He wasn't so terribly young, was he. Thirty, probably, this way or that. I was about twenty-five.” He was reflective again. “But I must have been a lot younger,” he said. “Or not so bright. I was pretty serious about it. No tongue in cheek. However—we all grew up.” For a moment it seemed to Weigand that Y. Charles Burden was not altogether satisfied with his own growing up. The moment passed.

Burden had, it developed, been discussing Sproul's early practicality only a week or two before. After the contract for the lectures had been duly signed, and both Sproul and Burden could relax, Sproul had recalled the old days, laughed at what a credulous group they had made then, talked of his own less naive activities. He regarded it, Burden evidently had felt, as a big joke on everybody—as a kind of joke, somehow, on youth and youth's aspirations.

“He was a malicious sort of guy when he wanted to be,” Burden said, as if he were only then discovering the fact. “He made a lot of fun of a lot of people and some of them must have squirmed. Even then. From all accounts, he kept at it in Paris.”

In Paris, Sproul was a group center and everybody knew him. Again, “everybody” was a special group of Americans living in Paris, speaking French with some fluency and, usually, less exactitude, working on newspapers published there in English for the tourists, laughing at the tourists, studying art vaguely or working purposefully in American banks, enjoying the exchange advantage and the freedom.

“And,” Burden said, “enjoying Paris, enjoying France. Which meant enjoying a kind of civilization we didn't have here. It was a good way to live for most of them; I liked it myself.” He smiled at Weigand. “However,” he said, “I grew up. Got ambitious. And came back.”

Sproul was writing novels then, and having them published. But he lived considerably better than the novel sales would have suggested.

“Still the pulps,” Burden said. “It wasn't so much of a secret by then. Sproul was—brazen about it. Ostentatiously brazen, as if it were a vice. And arranging, somehow, to make everybody else appear a little ridiculous.”

He paused.

“That was the chief thing about Sproul, come to think of it,” he said slowly. “He managed to make almost everybody he met feel, in the end, a little ridiculous. Even me—in the old days, of course. It was—a knack he had. And enjoyed. Yes—enjoyed very much. He was a peculiar person, in some ways.”

Weigand said that Sproul sounded malicious. Burden nodded.

“More than most,” he agreed. “Although aren't we all?”

There seemed to be no great reason for answering. Weigand digested what he had learned, wondered about its value and regarded Burden absently. The detective's fingers drummed gently on the desk by which he sat. Finally he said “Thank you.”

He would, he said, want to look at any records Burden had touching on Sproul—contracts and the like. He would like to look over, or have looked over, any biographical material which might have been prepared in connection with publicizing Sproul's projected tour. But those things could be taken up in time, when they knew whether anything was really going to have to be taken up.

“At the moment this is all very speculative,” he told Burden. “The blueprint stage.” He smiled slightly at the lecture agent. “And we may never get around to build,” he added. “No materials. Perhaps Sproul just died. Perhaps he will turn out to have killed himself. It's all very open.”

Burden started to shake his head at the suggestion Sproul might have killed himself. Weigand watched him, saw him change his mind. It was impossible to tell why he had changed his mind; why, at first rejecting suicide automatically, he appeared to come to accept it as a possibility.

“You think he wouldn't?” Weigand asked. “Suicide, I mean.”

Burden hesitated. He spoke slowly.

“I don't know,” he said. “At first thought—no. But then it occurred to me—perhaps yes. I don't know why, you understand. It would be something I don't know about. But if he did decide he was finished—well, he might do it this way. Make as much trouble for everybody as he could; leave everything messed up. Figuring, maybe, that he'd have a chance to laugh. Somewhere else. When he got where he was going, if he went any place. He'd think it funny to leave me high and dry, and to make poor old Dupont ridiculous, and to leave North introducing a dead man. He was that kind of a guy.”

It would, Weigand commented, be carrying things rather to an extreme. And Sproul, unless he was very optimistic, might be doubtful whether he would get to enjoy the joke.

“I don't mean that he would kill himself just for that,” Burden clarified. “The chance of troubling people would be—well, call it an additional inducement. Assuming he had a major inducement.”

“Right,” Weigand said. His tone ended it. Burden got up and started toward the door leading to the stage. Then Mullins opened the same door and got ready to speak, but Weigand thought of one more question.

“By the way,” he said, “did Sproul know a little dark man?”

Burden looked at him and said “What?”

“A little dark man,” Weigand repeated. “Was there one somewhere in Sproul's life, that you know of?”

Burden said he didn't get it. There might have been a dozen little dark men in Sproul's life.

“How little?” he said. “How dark? A Negro midget?”

Weigand grinned and shook his head. Not quite that little, or that dark, presumably.

“I really don't know,” he admitted. “I didn't see him, myself. But there seems to be a little dark man in the wood pile somewhere. Peering out, as nearly as I can gather. Mr. North saw him.”

Burden said “oh” and shook his head. He continued to look at Weigand doubtfully. He said that he didn't connect Sproul with any little dark man in particular.

“Although obviously—” he began.

Weigand nodded and said “right.” Probably, he added, it didn't come to anything. Sergeant Mullins moved aside to let Burden pass out to the stage.

“They're taking it away,” Mullins said. “O.K., Loot?”

“Why not?” Weigand said. “We don't want it, do we?”

“I don't,” Mullins said, flatly. “Not any part of it. It looks screwy to me, Loot.”

“Does it, Mullins?” Bill Weigand said politely.

Mullins said “yeh.” He looked at the lieutenant darkly. “The Norths are in again,” he advised his superior darkly. “It's bound to be screwy.”

Weigand nodded, abstractedly, admitting there was something in what Mullins said. Still abstractedly, he took from his pocket the notes Sproul had prepared against that evening's lecture. He nodded at them, glad he had them. They would tell him more about Sproul; they were bound to.

“And every man is the clue to his own murder,” he remarked. Mullins stared at him.

“Huh?” Mullins said. “I don't get it, Loot.”

Weigand told him not to bother. He laid the notes beside him on the desk, nodded to Mullins and told him to let them take the body. Then he said, “No, wait a minute,” because he decided he would like to look at this guy Sproul again. He followed Mullins to the stage, went past the waiting men from the New York County morgue, and looked down at Sproul.

He was a florid corpse, was Mr. Sproul, and his hair bristled in an incongruously lively fashion. Weigand stared at the body and the body stared back; probably it was pure imagination to think that the body grinned in a kind of malicious triumph. That was just something which had already begun to happen to the face. Weigand shook his head at the corpse and said it could be taken away. The white-uniformed men from the morgue put it in the basket, neither roughly nor gently. They did not chuck it in; on the other hand they were evidently conscious that it was in no danger of breaking.

Somebody had pulled aside heavy velvet curtains which backed the shallow stage. Double doors opening into a corridor were revealed, and they stood open for the convenience of the men from the morgue. Abstractedly, Weigand watched the removal of the body. Less abstractedly, turning, he looked out into the auditorium. There was a little knot of people there, made up mostly of detectives. But there were strangers; those would be, presumably, people who had known Sproul and volunteered themselves as friends, in accordance with instructions. Weigand motioned to have them brought up and thought of something. He stepped quickly across the stage to the door leading to the speakers' room and pushed it open.

Then he stopped, because the room was dark. And he had left lights on. He went on, ducking quickly in case somebody was swinging. He crouched for a moment, listening, and heard only his own breath. Still in a half crouch, the furniture of the room charted in his mind, he moved to the desk, reached quickly and switched on the light. He moved to the side abruptly as he did so and nothing happened.

There was no one else in the room. But there had been. A glance at the desk proved that. The sheaf of notes which Weigand had laid abstractedly on the desk when he went for a last look at Sproul was not any longer on the desk. There was no use looking for them elsewhere in the room—on the floor for example—but Weigand looked swiftly, making remarks to himself about himself.

The notes were gone. Gone with somebody who wanted them as badly as Weigand did, perhaps for a more specific reason. Gone with somebody who was, it had to be admitted, more efficient at getting what he wanted. For the present.

Weigand spoke bitterly, and aloud, and yanked open the corridor door of the speakers' room. Not that there would be anybody on the other side, holding out the notes politely.

“Oh,” the girl said. “Inspector!”

Weigand stared at her. She had been just coming in, apparently. Or had she been just going out, and heard him and thought fast. She was a slender, pliant girl with dark brown hair. And her face was drawn and unhappy.

Weigand was feeling abrupt. He sounded abrupt.

“Well,” he said, “what do you want?”

The girl said she thought he had wanted her; wanted everybody who had known Victor Leeds Sproul. “Lee,” she said. “Poor Lee. I was going to marry him.”

“Were you in here before?” Weigand said. “Just now?”

“Not just now,” the girl said. “Before Lee went—went out to make his speech. Then I went around to the auditorium to listen.” She looked at Weigand. “To listen,” she repeated. “To listen to Lee.”

She looked as if she were about to cry.

“I'm sorry,” Weigand said. “You're—?”

“Loretta Shaw,” she said.

“I'm sorry, Miss Shaw,” Weigand said. “But why didn't you wait with the others?”

She started to say “What others?” and said, instead, “Oh—Jean and the others. I don't know. They started to come for—for Lee and I couldn't just sit there. And then I remembered the corridor and this room and came this way. Wasn't it all right?”

“Did you see anybody outside?” Weigand said. “A—a little dark man or anybody?”

He was surprised that he spoke of the little dark man. But it seemed as if somebody might have repeated a trick.

The girl shook her head and said, “Nobody.” She looked puzzled. “Mr. Jung?” she said.

“I don't know,” Weigand said. “Did you see somebody called Jung?”

The girl shook her head again.

“I thought that was who you meant,” she said. “He's a little dark man. Bandelman Jung.”

Weigand said, “Who?” She repeated the name and spelled it. Weigand shook his head this time.

“Come in,” he said. “Who is Bandelman Jung?” He listened doubtfully to his own voice. “It doesn't sound like a name,” he said. “Who is he?”

He was, the girl said, coming in, a friend of Sproul's. She had merely happened to think of him, thinking it must be he Weigand meant.

“Bandelman Jung,” Weigand repeated. “A little, dark man. Right? But you didn't see him just now?”

“I didn't see anybody,” Loretta Shaw said. “Should I have?”

Weigand shrugged and said he didn't know. He said, vaguely, that he had been looking for somebody, but that it did not matter. He had Miss Shaw sit beside the desk and sat looking at her, as if he were seeing her for the first time. The lecture notes would have to wait.

She was going to marry Lee Sproul very soon, Loretta Shaw said. In a few weeks. As soon as he “made arrangements.”

“What arrangements?” Weigand wanted to know. He watched her carefully. She hesitated and started to answer and apparently decided against it.

“Oh,” she said, “things. You know—things.”

Weigand didn't believe her and made a guess.

“I understood Sproul was already married,” he said. He said it flatly. The girl looked at him and her eyes widened.

“No,” she said. “Why, no.”

Weigand let her have it that way. He asked other questions. She had met Sproul in Paris several years before; she had seen a lot of him then; she had returned to New York and then gone on to the West Coast. Recently she had returned, seen more of Sproul and decided to marry him. Her voice broke a little at the last.

“If you'd rather wait,” Weigand offered. She shook her head and Weigand said “Right.”

“Anyway,” he said, “I'll have more to ask you later, if there is any need. This is merely preliminary. We won't bother too much with background for the moment. But you did see Sproul earlier this evening?”