Cold Poison (18 page)

“I can imagine,” she said.

“We found Karas, by the way. Or the local police did. He was at the Los Angeles municipal airport, trying to cash a check for passage to Mexico City.”

“Really? And did you take him back to the hospital?”

Piper shook his head. “No, he didn’t appear to need hospitalization, though he looks peaked, naturally. We brought him back out here, and Sergeant Callan and some of the LA boys are quizzing him in his office.”

“Mercy me! I suppose they’ll have a confession any minute, with their rubber hoses and bright lights and things.” Miss Withers gave a disapproving sniff. “I’m surprised you people haven’t picked up the cute Russian trick of putting a pail over the prisoner’s head and banging on it until he loses his mind!”

“Oh, come off it. Third-degree stuff is out, these days. We’re bringing out the former desk clerk from Forest Lawn to identify him as the man who paid for the Wersbeck woman’s funeral and burial. That should cinch it. So what are you smiling at?”

“At the idea of Mr. Karas being Mr. P.R.F. if you must know,” the schoolteacher said, straightening her face. “All the same, I’m glad Karas is here in the studio, because in the next hour or two—”

“You’re still going ahead with that crazy idea?”

“I am, Oscar, if it’s the last thing I do.”

“This killer is too smart—”

“Exactly. Too smart for his or her own good. All through this case we’ve made the mistake of playing someone else’s game. Years ago when I was a little girl my father told me that when you get up before a concession at Coney Island or the circus or the county fair and a man wants you to bet your precious spending money on something, don’t do it. It’s his game, and he has a gimmick, and he’ll win.”

“Yes, but—”

“But me no
but’s
. Any killer, whoever he is, is ultra-vulnerable to suggestion; he can be forced into a situation where without knowing it he betrays himself—or thinks he has. I must have your cooperation, Oscar, and that of the local police, too, if you can wangle it. It’ll only take half an hour or so, and if it works—”

He stared at her strangely. “You actually think you
know
who it is?”

“I’m afraid I do, Oscar. Without a shred of any real proof, as yet. I’ll name no names now, but I’ll settle this thing this afternoon or—”

“Yes,” he interrupted wearily. “Or else you’ll go back to crocheting or painting china, which you have threatened before and never do.”

“
This
time I mean it. It is a mental challenge. Four o’clock, mind!”

“I’m going out for a cigar,” he muttered. Talley the poodle wagged his tail understandingly. “Okay, you can go, too,” conceded the Inspector. “But no more raw hamburgers!” He snapped the lead on Talley’s collar and went out the door, pausing to say, “Hildegarde, sometimes I think—”

“Sometimes, perhaps. But be back by four o’clock, and I think it would be well to have that nasty little pistol with you.” She relapsed into a medium dark-brown study. It was one thing to know—and another thing to prove it.

“Se non é vero, é ben trovato.”

(If it is not true, it is well invented.)

ITALIAN PROVERB

F
OR ALL THE UNDERSTANDABLE
doubts he may have had, Inspector Oscar Piper at four o’clock was in the main projection room of the studio; a vast slanting room it was, with rows of big leather chairs facing a big white screen. It was lighted at the moment from overhead—a light that shone into the faces of the studio people who were coming in to take their places, all dubious about the whole thing. They had been invited—or rather commanded—and so here they were. They took seats, mostly sitting well apart. Each carried a sheet of paper.

Rollo Bayles was there, still unshaven and distrait. Cassiday, with eyes like olives drowning in a stale Martini, smoking a cold pipe, hunched in the front row smiling his derisive smile and dreaming perhaps of happier days than this. Tip Brown, his face pinker than ever from the effects of the boilermakers he had had across the street, was chewing chlorophyll tablets and trying not to look at Janet Poole, who was as usual clinging possessively to Guy Fowler’s arm and looking radiant in a sort of frightened-fawn way.

Sitting in the back row was Mr. Karas, pale as two ghosts. He was momentarily free of supervision, though a man in a dark blue uniform and a badge hovered near the exit door. It had taken some fast talking on the part of the Inspector to arrange that, and if the thing petered out into a fiasco as he was afraid it would, his would be a considerable embarrassment.

But they were all here, even Mr. Cushak with his lips tight as if they had been zippered together, and Joyce Reed beside him, wearing—perhaps in mourning—a black dress which did nothing to conceal her obvious charms. All the ones who were left were here, the Inspector thought. And the presence of Larry Reed was all about them. Their lives and their jobs had been thrown out of kilter by these last few days. It was most interesting for the Inspector to watch their faces and wonder which—and if—and why—

Maybe Hildegarde did have something up her sleeve besides her arm; she sometimes had in the past. But he had no hunches, as she usually did—they all looked fairly guilty on the surface, from where he sat. They were all frightened, alert, jumpy as Mexican beans. Maybe, he thought, that was part of the idea.’

There was a rather long wait—or at least it seemed long to the Inspector and no doubt to everybody else in the place—and then Miss Hildegarde Withers made her entrance, towing a smallish, dumpy man in his fifties, whom she placed on the aisle midway of the projection room. He at once took out a small notebook and a large silver pencil, looking very official and dignified and important indeed.

“Three-fifths ham,” thought Oscar Piper. “What in hell is Hildegarde up to?”

Nobody knew, perhaps not even the schoolteacher herself. But she scurried back up the aisle for a brief conference with the studio projectionists, then back again to nudge Mr. Cushak into action.

“Now,” she said firmly.

He reluctantly arose and went forward to face the assemblage. “Fellow workers,” he began, “you all know why we are here. This is not my idea—but I mean it is an effort to put an end once and for all—I mean, our studio is in desperate straits, and the series of incidents which have threatened us all for the past few days are—I mean is—something that has got to be put an end to once and for all, if you know what I mean …” He trailed off.

“Yes,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers from the audience hoping to save him from being everlastingly lost amid his own platitudes. “About the pictures—?”

“Thank you,” he said. “You may or may not know that Miss Withers has been working here among us as a private investigator, though I’m afraid she hasn’t got very far—”

“Excuse me,” the schoolteacher interrupted. “But I know the name of the murderer, if you’re interested. We’re just trying to prove it, and eliminate all the rest of you. Do go on, Mr. Cushak.”

There was a heavy silence. “I think—” began Mr. Cushak, and then stopped. He nodded toward Miss Withers. “Perhaps
you
could explain this better than I.”

“Who couldn’t?” she murmured, and then stood up and faced them all. “Each one of you was asked to bring here your own individual sketch or tracing made from a regular studio model-sheet of Peter Penguin, in the same general position as the drawings on the off-color valentines which many of you have received.” The schoolteacher adopted her best classroom manner. “Will you initial them please on the back, and then pass them forward so that they can be compared with the original?”

From the row behind her Guy Fowler laughed, a bit derisively. “This is nothing but a silly farce,” he said. “I’ve read enough criminology to know that you can’t compare drawings or printing the way you can handwriting or fingerprints.”

“Perhaps you are in for a surprise, young man. Just do as you’re told—and may I have the attention of you all?” She raised her voice. “We are lucky to have with us this afternoon Professor Ainslee, one of the most distinguished experts in the field of graphology and questioned documents—” She nodded.

The dumpy little man whom she had brought into the room rose and bowed gracefully, then subsided again with his pencil and notebook.

“Professor Ainslee believes,” Miss Withers continued firmly, “that if the drawings of the penguin are magnified a hundred times and projected on the screen side by side with the original (just as I have seen the police do with fingerprints and photographs of bullets ) he can point out damning parallels in the strokes of the pencil or pen or crayon. He says that once a person has drawn or traced a certain picture or design he is practically always certain to trace it again in the same way—the lines overlay each other, the picture is begun with the penguin’s tail feathers or with the tip of his beak—so that the would-be artist betrays himself with every stroke. Isn’t that so, Professor Ainslee?”

“It is, absolutely,” said the dumpy little man, rising to his cue. “I have proved it beyond the shadow of a doubt, in a hundred separate instances which I am about to combine into a book to be published in the fall, and which I think will revolutionize—”

“Thank you, Professor Ainslee,” the schoolteacher cut him off firmly. She faced the group. “Now will you complete passing your papers to me, please?” Miss Withers started along the aisle, but the Inspector caught her arm as she passed him and whispered a puzzled query.

“Hildegarde, how much of this, if any, is on the level?” he demanded. “In my work I’ve come to know or know about most of the famous graphologists, and I’ve never heard of this guy Ainslee.”

“There is much that you haven’t heard of, Oscar. Sit tight, and keep your fingers crossed.” She started on, then paused. “Or better still, go get me a cup of coffee from the vending machine in the hall; I’m a little faint with tension and excitement.” She smiled at him, and went on down the aisle.

He muttered something about “Judas Priest in a revolving door—” but rose to obey, discouraging the poodle. It was Hildegarde’s show, and he would go along with the gag; he had to.

The schoolteacher was going blithely down the aisle, collecting the various sheets of drawing paper. As she came to Guy Fowler, the young man hastened to affix his initials on the back with the ball-point pen he had borrowed from Janet, returned it to her, and then held out their two drawings with a quizzical smile and a lifted eyebrow. “I am one to go along with a gag,” he said.

“How nice of you, since you have no choice,” the schoolteacher reminded him. “That policeman at the door isn’t there just for fun, you know.”

“I know,” he said. “Tell me, Miss Withers, is this clambake of yours going to take very long? We were hoping to make it to Las Vegas tonight.”

“Wedding bells to ring out?” She shrugged. “There’s not much I can do about it, but I’m doing what I can. I’m really as much in a hurry as you are, though for different reasons.” And she went on, not without a certain sympathy.

Mr. Cushak handed her a drawing only faintly recognizable as the bird, with an apologetic shrug. Perhaps, the schoolteacher suddenly thought, it would be possible for the guilty person to have drawn as
badly
as he could—as much unlike the original as possible. But, of course, that in itself would be an indication….

And there was still that last shot in her locker, her own pet gimmick on which she pinned her last desperate hopes. She went on down the aisle, feeling somehow as if she were collecting examination papers—as in a way she was.

Tip Brown had characteristically drawn his dead Bird with the beautiful dexterity of the practiced cartoonist; he had drawn it lying there with one eye closed in a rakish wink, obviously only playing possum. Rollo Bayles had painted his with a fine water-color brush and with a faint suggestion of a scenic background. Joyce Reed had produced a meticulous copy, done in faint, uncertain lines. Surprisingly enough, Cassiday’s offering was an artistic triumph, in full color; he must have picked up a bit of art during his years around the studio, she decided. And even Mr. Karas, worn and wan and far from his usual self, had prepared a drawing of sorts. “It is not very good,” he apologized. “My hand shakes today, and besides I am a musician, I am not a cartoonist.”

“It will be good enough for our purposes,” she told him. She started away and then turned back, lowering her voice. “Would you mind telling me why you left the hospital without being discharged and why you tried to leave the country—just for the record?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Somebody was trying to kill me. And I don’t trust your hospitals; I don’t like Hollywood or your United States. I wanted to get away. Is there any law that says I can’t?”

“There is a law against murder,” Miss Withers told him bluntly. “In case you haven’t heard. And there is a law which says that material witnesses can be locked up and held for weeks or months, in case they show signs of wanting to disappear. If you are held, I will, however, be glad to send you cheery post cards.” Karas subsided unhappily, and she went on.

With all the drawings finally in hand, she hastily numbered them in the lower right-hand corner, making a record on a slip of paper for her own fell purposes. She then took the batch of drawings to the projectionist, who said, “Yes, lady,” in a weary voice before she had half finished giving him his instructions.

“Well, do it,” she said. “I imagine you have a personal interest in seeing that the studio doesn’t close down tonight?”

“Yes, lady,” he came back. “I gotta family.” He said it almost sadly.

“Well, then. I’d like some cooperation.” And she told him.

He nodded. “But it’ll take a little time.”

“Very well, but hurry. I don’t know how long I can keep them here.” She left the projection booth and came back into the auditorium. Her cup of coffee rested on the arm of her seat, and there it remained, untouched. They all sat there, like an audience waiting for an opening curtain at a play that is mysteriously delayed. Nobody spoke, nobody moved. It was the atmosphere for which Miss Withers had hoped; it was a place of worry and tension.