Murder for Two (5 page)

“I don't get it.”

“That makes us even,” Logan said. “Were you looking for Miss Taylor?”

“Why else would I come?”

“Maybe you had an appointment.”

“For ten-thirty.”

“Little late, aren't you?”

“A little. What about it?”

Logan thought it over, dark eyes veiled in their inspection of the other.

“What held you up?”

“I had dinner with friends. A late dinner. I couldn't get away until just now.” Lawson leaned forward, his fingers meshed across his paunch. “What is this, anyway?” he said unpleasantly. “Is Miss Taylor here or not? Because if she isn't, I'll shove off.”

“I think you better stay a while,” Logan said. “Miss Taylor was shot in the back of the head an hour or so ago. I guess you didn't know that.”

Casey, watching Lawson, saw something flicker behind the narrowed lashes but that was all. “No, I didn't,” he said, and sat back and unfolded his hands.

“With a small-caliber gun,” Logan said. “Probably a .25.”

On the divan, Helen MacKay sat up, causing Furness to release his hold on her arm. She cleared her throat.

“Yes, Miss MacKay,” Logan said.

“Did—did you find it? The gun, I mean?”

“Why, no. We didn't. Why?”

“I just thought—” Helen MacKay broke off and tried again. “She 'most always carried a gun.”

“Oh?”

“She was always getting threats of one kind or another. She had a little gun like that. A .25 automatic. And I wondered—”

“I see,” Logan said.

“She had another in her desk. A revolver, I guess you'd call it.”

Manahan's arrival checked that discussion. With him was a slender young man with a briefcase. Without being told, he went over in the corner and sat down, opening the case and taking out a notebook and a handful of pencils which he tucked in his breast pocket. Manahan eyed the whisky on the tray longingly and swallowed; then he moved back to the door and leaned against it.

Logan turned to Matt Lawson. “What was your appointment about?”

Lawson said he didn't know. “She said she wanted to see me.”

“Do you know a John Perry?”

Lawson hesitated, his glance sliding past Casey to the stenographer in the corner.

“Yes.”

“Seen him lately?”

“This afternoon.”

“Did you know that Miss Taylor had an appointment with John Perry at nine-thirty tonight?”

Matt Lawson took his time in answering this one, spoke deliberately: “No.”

“Any idea why she was seeing Perry?”

“No.”

“You could guess.”

Lawson gave him a thin, mirthless smile that touched only his mouth. “Certainly I could guess. But I'm not guessing now, Lieutenant. And not in front of a police stenographer.”

Logan regarded him with hard, deliberate eyes and turned to Helen MacKay. He said he wanted to go over her story once again. She folded her hands in her lap and told him she had had dinner with Furness. She had left the apartment shortly before six.

“But you were back here at nine,” Logan said.

“Yes,” Helen MacKay said. “After I'd left here, Rosalind phoned Stanley—I was on my way to his hotel when she called—and told him I was to come back. He said we had planned an evening and she said she couldn't help it. I'd have to come back. It would not take long and I could rejoin him later if I liked.”

“She sounded upset?”

“Yes,” Stanley Furness said, “she did.”

Logan stroked the back of his head and looked at Helen MacKay. “Was she alone when you arrived?”

This time the girl hesitated. “No. Miss King was here. Dinah King,” she said when Logan repeated the name. “She sings down at the Club 17.”

“O-h,” Logan said and nodded. “Do you know what they were talking about? Or why Miss King was here?”

Helen MacKay's glance slid to Gifford and she pulled it back, and then Casey remembered the one-sided telephone conversation he had heard that afternoon. Rosalind had said she wouldn't discuss her husband but Dinah King had come anyway.

“No,” Helen MacKay said.

“You don't have to lie for me, Helen,” Gifford said. He looked at Logan. “My wife and I haven't lived together for some time. I have my own apartment upstairs and Miss King and I had hoped to get married. I think she came here to ask my wife to divorce me.”

“Hadn't you already asked her? Your wife, I mean?”

“Certainly,” Gifford said. “But she wouldn't see it that way.”

“You mean she wouldn't give you a divorce.”

Gifford didn't answer that one but shrugged and took some of his drink. Logan watched him a moment and went back to Helen MacKay.

“You must have heard some of that conversation,” he said.

“Miss King was just leaving.”

Logan was getting the run-around and he didn't like it. His neck took on a reddish tinge but he kept his voice down.

“All right. How did they part?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, were they friendly? Were they quarreling? Shouting at each other.” He paused, exasperated. “Or maybe they hugged and kissed each other.”

Helen MacKay's face was drawn and weary now but she was still beautiful and nothing much had happened to her spunk. Knowing Rosalind Taylor, Casey had a fair idea of what must have happened when Dinah King called, but when he saw Helen's chin come up he had a hunch she wouldn't be bullied—and he was right.

“I really couldn't say,” she replied, and Casey liked her for it.

Logan drew a breath and gave Manahan a disgusted glance. “All right,” he said finally. “Why did Miss Taylor want you to come back?”

“I'd made a mistake in copying an article and Rosalind was furious. She always was over anything like that; she simply insisted that I re-do it. It wasn't that she was going to mail it tonight or anything, it was just that she was impatient of anyone's mistakes, including her own. I think if I had been in New York she would have called me back just the same.”

“You finished copying before she left?”

“I had the last page in the machine. She stood there with her hat on reading over my shoulder.”

She went on with the story she had told before. Rosalind had left. Within two or three minutes the first man had come. She wasn't sure just how long before the second man had joined him but—

“Let's get back to the first man,” Logan said. “Describe him, please.”

A frown gathered at Helen MacKay's forehead and she caught her lower lip in her teeth before she replied.

“I'd say he was about average height—about like Russell—and slender, and dark, I think. At least his skin was swarthy.”

“He wore dark glasses.”

“Large ones. And his hat brim was down and he kept his chin in his coat collar when he could.”

“He knocked you down? Why was that?”

“He may not have intended to, but—I lost my head. He started to push me toward the office and I jerked away and told him to get out. I guess I must have shouted because he hit me hard with the back of the hand and I fell. I—I must have fainted. There's a sore spot on my head but there's no bump so I don't think I could have been really knocked out.”

“Then if you passed out how could you know how long it was before the second fellow came?”

“Because when I came to I was flat on my back in the hall—”

“Why do you think he carried you out there?”

Helen MacKay's eyes snapped at that and it was obvious that she suspected Logan of deliberately confusing her. She took her time. She leaned forward and she made her answer elaborately patient.

“I should imagine,” she said, “he took me there because the hall was dark. Apparently he wore dark glasses so I would be unable to identify him, or at least to make identification difficult, and I suppose he thought that putting me where I couldn't very well watch him or his partner—”

“Yes, I see,” Logan said and her elaborate patience brought a slight flush to his face. “And how is it you know how long you were unconscious?”

Helen MacKay went on in the same studied tone. Casey didn't blame her, considering what she had been through, but he knew how it was with Logan too. This was murder and it was Logan's business not only to take nothing for granted, but also to make sure of every single detail.

“I was back in the hall. The bathroom light was on and I had tape on my wrists and mouth and the dark man was about to tie my ankles with a wet towel when the buzzer sounded. I merely thought he should be able to do what he did with the tape fairly quickly.”

“All right. Then?”

“He went into the living-room. I thought I heard him open the door and I thought I heard him speak to someone. I didn't see anyone, though, and he came back and fixed my ankles and went away again. Shortly after that the buzzer sounded again and this time when he came back he had the other man with him. They went into the office and I'm sorry if I can't describe the second man, but I can't. I do know he had glasses like his partner. But I only had a glimpse or two and it was dark where I was, and lying on the floor that way—”

Casey heard the rest of it vaguely because now he was watching Matt Lawson and bringing into focus a thing that had been asking for admittance to his consciousness for some time. He hadn't forgotten that episode in Lawson's office nor the blond husky who had swung at Perry and who later had asked for the picture Casey had taken. Rosalind was prying into the Lawson-Perry case. The big blond was a stranger arid quite obviously a muscle man.

“Was the second guy big?” he asked abruptly.

Logan looked at him with some annoyance and Helen MacKay broke off her account and hesitated thoughtfully.

“Yes,” she said finally. “He was bigger than the first man, but I don't know if he was really big. I don't think he was as big as you are, though—no, I don't think he was.”

Logan got the rest of the story and then looked at Stanley Furness. “Where were you around nine-thirty, Mr. Furness?”

For a moment Furness looked startled and then his lean, tanned face got grave. “I'm not sure,” he said. “We had dinner and I put Helen in a cab about ten of nine. I knew I had to kill some time and it was a nice evening, so I just walked around and smoked awhile. I guess I got back to the hotel about nine-thirty or a little after—”

“You're sure of the time?”

“Well—no. I know I went to the desk at ten of ten and inquired. Then I decided I'd come out here and pick her up, so I left word—in case I missed her—that she was to wait for me.”

Logan glanced at the stenographer, saw he was busy, and continued to Gifford.

“I was upstairs in my apartment,” the man said, explaining as he had before how he had happened to walk in just after Helen had been released by Casey.

Logan nodded and thanked him. He thanked the others. “I guess that's all for now,” he said. “We'll want to go over the apartment later, especially the office. I'll leave a man here tonight and—by the way, Mr. Gifford, did your wife leave a will?”

Gifford said yes, as far as he knew. When pressed he admitted that he was named executor in that will drawn two years ago. If there had been any change he did not know about it. Logan said he'd like to check up in the morning, and if Gifford
was
executor he'd like him to be on hand when they looked over the apartment and office for possible clues.

“I'll get in touch with you,” he said. “Meanwhile I want everything left just as it is.”

Lawson got up and went out, followed by Helen and Furness. Karen Harding came up to Casey, sounding disappointed. “Do we have to go now?”

Casey said they did, but he was wrong. Gifford wanted to take something to read and went over to the table and selected two or three magazines. When he went out Logan said, “Stick around, Flash. Let's talk about Perry and this guy, Byrkman. Where does he live?”

“I don't know,” Casey said, and when Logan looked skeptical he added, “I don't know a thing about him.”

“Rosalind Taylor must have told you something.”

“She said his name used to be Byrnes and he was Lawson's secretary. She said she'd been checking up on him.”

Logan thought it over, watching Karen Harding. “Do you know anything more than that?”

The girl said she didn't, and Logan took the handbag Manahan had brought from the death car and opened it. Meanwhile the sergeant had wandered over to the tray and now he took a glass and poured out two inches of Scotch, found a piece of ice, and added water.

“Hmm,” he said presently, smacking his lips. “This is all right. How about you?” he said to Logan.

Logan said something under his breath and continued his inspection of the handbag. When he had laid out everything he found there, Casey saw that there was a billfold, a coin purse, handkerchief, license and registration, keys, lipstick, a vanity, a cigarette case, and several folders of paper matches.

Manahan came up with a folded handkerchief. “This is what we got from her pockets,” he said and sipped his drink, the ice tinkling cheerily in his glass.

Logan looked at it, finding it but inches from his face. “All right,” he said. “If you're going to gulp it right in my ear you might as well make one for me. Make one for Casey too, and Miss Harding if she wants one.”

Logan unfolded the handkerchief, at the same time telling Bert, the stenographer, to itemize the contents of the handbag. There were just three things in the handkerchief: a flattened pack of cigarettes, nearly empty, a book of matches, and a crumpled piece of colored paper, which when straightened out became a fragment of a bank check.

Manahan came up with drinks for Casey and Logan. He stood there sipping and looking until Logan told him to go in the office and see if he couldn't find an address book. “If you can,” he said, “maybe Byrkman's address is in it.”