False colors (22 page)

I swallowed, and the sound squeaked loudly in my dry throat. "Would you call it staying, or hiding?"

"I'm afraid I should call it hiding."

"It can't be Nick Accardi," I said hoarsely. "It can't. He wouldn't put her in a jam like that. It's not Nick, is it?"

"Yes, sir. It is."

I yanked out my watch. It had been an hour since McCann left me. If he had been headed for the Vernon house, he would have arrived fifty minutes ago. He had seemed very sure he knew Nick's hide-out. But if Nick had only been there overnight, McCann might be wrong. "Talk fast," I said. "Why did Nick come around last night?"

"He'd been shot, Mr. Meadows. In the left arm. It wasn't serious but it needed to be cleaned and bandaged. He was afraid to go to a doctor or hospital for fear they'd call the police. He only wanted to get it bandaged and to leave, but Miss Nancy wouldn't let him go."

"How did he get shot?"

"He was walking along a street in South Philadelphia. Someone shot at him from a car."

"Did he say anything about cops trailing him?"

"Not then, Mr. Meadows. But later last night, while Miss Nancy was away, he insisted on going out. He wanted to see somebody at the Rittenhouse Arms. When he came back he was out of breath, as if he'd been running. And he asked me to take a look down the street to see if anybody had followed him."

Things were getting clear. Sickeningly clear. Nick had gone to the Rittenhouse Arms to try to talk to Kay Raymond. Somebody on the staff spotted him and trailed him back to the Vernon house, and this morning tipped off McCann. No wonder McCann had been upset when I guessed he was on his way to grab Nick. I could have wrecked his plans with a quick phone call, if I had taken one more guess. It was too late now. All I

could do was go around and see if there were any pieces to pick up.

"Do the Vernons have a family lawyer?" I said. "And do you know him?"

"Yes, Mr. Meadows. I know him."

"Go see him right away. Tell him Nancy's been harboring an ex-convict the police are after. The cops may have arrested both of them within the last hour. Got it?"

He blinked a couple of times. "I wish I had told you sooner."

"I could have figured it out myself," I muttered. "But it would have taken headwork. All I've been doing with my head lately is making dents in pillows."

I got out of the shop and started for Delancey Place. It was one of those blue and gold May mornings. Rittenhouse Square was laced with sunlight, and a breeze was fingering the soft new leaves. The sun didn't seem to have any warmth in it, though. I kept shivering, and the air felt clammy on my face. What had happened was my fault. Last night Sheldon had tried to make me look bad. I let him get away with it, and then I gathered up my hurt feelings like spilled jewels and carried them home. I should have laughed at the guy and stayed in there scrapping. If I had gone back to the Vernon house with them I might have found out about Nick. William might have told me, or I might have caught a hint from the way Nancy acted. But no, I had to get my pride hurt, just as if I had something to be proud of.

A black and white police car was parked in Nancy's block on Delancey Place. For a moment I thought it was at her house, but it was actually quite a distance beyond, and a policeman was ringing a doorbell half a dozen houses past the Vernon house. I walked up the steps to the Vernon doorway and rang the bell. The sound drifted back to me from inside the house. No other sound followed it. I lifted the old brass knocker and banged it a few times. Still nothing. I tried the door latch. It clicked under my thumb and the door opened.

There was a million to one chance that nothing had happened yet. Nancy might have gone out for some reason. Nick wouldn't answer the door. If McCann came to the house with-

out a search warrant and nobody answered his ring, he couldn't take a chance on breaking in. So maybe he had gone for a search warrant I didn't think much of the idea but it was worth checking. I went in and closed the door behind me and walked as far as the drawing room. Then I stopped.

McCann wasn't going to crack the case after all. It had been a little too big for him. It was getting bigger all the time. McCann was lying on his back in the drawing room with his washed-out eyes staring up at the ceiling. On the front of his shirt die blood had had time to turn brown.

19.

In the hallway the big old clock made by William Ericke, Clockmakers Company of London, 1730, solemnly counted off my seconds the way it had counted McCann's a little while ago. Except for that, the house seemed to be very still. You couldn't tell, though. I set my jaw and groped under McCann's coat and then under his body. He had a revolver in a holster in his right rear pants pocket. I pulled it out. It was a short-barreled .38 Police Special. I broke it open. He was careful about weapons. Five of the chambers were loaded, but the one under the hammer was empty for extra safety. As a matter of fact McCann had been too careful. When somebody decided to shoot him, the .38 was in his pocket and only a pencil and his notebook were in his hands.

I turned the cylinder so I could squeeze off all five shots before hitting the empty chamber. Then I began a quick search of the house. Every time I opened a door I braced myself for something I wouldn't like. On the third floor I found the bedroom where Nick must have slept. A discarded bandage was in the wastebasket. By the looks of it, his wound hadn't been bleeding much. Nancy's bedroom was on the second floor. Shelves on one

wall held cups she had won in swimming and tennis and golf, and blue ribbons for horseback riding. Nothing was on one shelf but an old floppy doll. Stuck in the mirror was an eight-by-ten glossy photo, the kind newspapers use in making cuts. It showed Nancy and me looking at Accardi's paintings in Ritten-house Square.

I went through the rest of the house, and didn't find anything. The back door was open, though. There was a small high-walled garden in the rear, and a heavy wooden door in the wall at the far end. The door was ajar. I looked through it. Beyond was Cypress Street, not much more than an alley but just wide enough for a car. I studied the pavement leading from the back door to the door in the garden wall. Some fresh looking scrapes marked the pavement. They could have been made by the backs of heels being dragged along it. That was only a guess. Anyway, it would have been possible to drag or carry a couple of people out this way to a car waiting in Cypress Street, without being seen. The wall was high enough to block off the view from the backs of neighboring houses.

I returned to the house and went to the phone and hunted through my pockets. The blue-green silk was still in one of them. It made my skin cold to touch it. A couple more pieces of that silk might be used pretty soon. Finally I found the scrap of paper on which I had written Kay Raymond's phone number at Lassiter's. I dialed the number.

The operator came on and said, "What number did you call, please?"

I gave it to her.

"One moment, please," she said. In a few moments she reported, "I am sorry, but that number has been disconnected."

Her voice was calm and impersonal, and of course she had no way of knowing she had just told me Kay Raymond's time had run out. Kay had waited too long for proof that Lassiter was a murderer.

I tried to sort out my thoughts. It was hard to do, because they were blowing around in my head like dead leaves. The fact that Nancy and Nick hadn't been shot and left in the Vernon

house meant that they might still be alive. Kay might still be alive, too. Lassiter probably had some tricky plan for getting rid of them, and it might take time to put it into effect. So I could do one of two tilings. I could go to Lassiter's house and see how many answers I could buy with five bullets. However, Lassiter might have taken Nancy and Nick and Kay somewhere else. I would lose a lot of time if I guessed wrong on that.

The other thing I could do was call the police and try to sell them the idea that Lassiter and Joe Molo had murdered McCann and had kidnapped the others. But the cops might find that story hard to believe. They might want to figure it the easy way: Nick killed McCann, and ran off with Nancy. Knowing Nick and Nancy, I couldn't go for that. But the cops very probably would. And while I argued with them, it might get too late to do anything. So picking the police could be as wrong an answer as going alone to Lassiter's. I hefted McCann's revolver, and tried to stop my thoughts from blowing around.

The doorbell rang.

My thoughts were still whirling all over the place and I went to the door and opened it. I don't know what I expected. Maybe I thought Nancy would come skipping back from a shopping trip. It wasn't Nancy, though. It was a cop in uniform.

"Morning, sir," he said. "We've been checking all the houses in the street. A call came in about a shooting along here. Whoever called wasn't clear about the address and. . . and. . ."

His voice trailed off. His glance dropped from my face to my right hand. His face tightened and he jerked back and reached for his hip. I didn't have to look down. I could feel what was in my right hand. I had walked stupidly to the door carrying McCann's revolver.

I*slammed the door in the cop's face. Now I didn't have to decide about going to the police. They'd be coming for me. And they wouldn't listen to my wild yarn, either. For a while it would look like a perfect case: a murdered detective, and a murderer caught with a revolver in his hand. Outside the cop yelled to his partner to run and cover the back. I stuck the revolver in my pocket and raced through the house and across the

garden and into the narrow back street. To the right it was a hundred feet to Eighteenth. To the left it was three-quarters of a block to Nineteenth. The cop would take the shortest way around. I turned left and ran down the long stretch of alley.

Behind me a whistle stabbed the air. I let out a last notch of speed. The cross street leaped toward me. For two seconds I was a good target but cops don't like to shoot toward busy streets. I made the corner and swung right. I was headed north on Nineteenth Street. It's a one-way street for southbound traffic, and a trolley was coming toward me. I cut across in front of it and doubled back, running alongside the trolley so it hid me from the cop in the alley. That ought to fool the guy. The trolley rattled past Delancey Place and made its stop at the corner of Pine. I caught it there and climbed aboard.

"People like you running in front of trolleys," the motorman said, "are asking to get killed."

I was too breathless to answer him, but he was really right. I went back in the car and paid my fare. Three blocks south I got off, with everybody taking a good look at the idiot who risked his life to ride three blocks.

Now I had a spare moment for thinking. Going to the police was no good. Trying to get into Lassiter's didn't look hopeful either. In a few minutes the section would be boiling with cops, and they would be hunting for me. There was one chance left: Sheldon Thorp. Nancy had probably told him nearly all the story last night. He could make the cops listen. He could walk right into Lassiter's place. And Sheldon liked danger. He ought to find the idea of collecting a murderer new and exciting.

Sheldon lived on the Main Line in the big estate section of Bryn Mawr. I was afraid to telephone to make sure he was there, because even five minutes delay might let the cops block off the whole area. I walked to the parking lot at Seventeenth and Pine where I keep my jalopy. The attendant had to move cars to let me get out, and the radio in his booth kept blaring out a news program the whole time. It was too soon for bulletins

about the murder, but I couldn't help flinching every time the announcer started on another bit of local news.

I got in the car and drove to the Parkway and out through Fairmount Park and over to Montgomery Pike. Along the way I left a lot of scorched rubber on the paving, but it still took twenty-five minutes to reach a driveway that looked like the one I wanted. It had been years since I dropped in to see Sheldon at home. I sent the jalopy skidding up the winding drive. My first glimpse of the house gave me a bad moment because it didn't look familiar. But as I curved around in front I saw the familiar low Colonial lines. What had thrown me off was that Sheldon had added a wing.

I jammed on the brakes and jumped out and ran to the door and leaned on the bell. It shrilled and shrilled inside the house. When nobody came I pounded the door. There had to be somebody home. Where were the servants? Where—

A voice inside yelled, "What's the idea?" The door jerked open. It was Sheldon. He stared at me and said, "You don't have to knock the house down. What's the matter?"

"It's Nancy," I gasped. "She's in trouble. You've got to help. She—" I had to stop for breath.

"Take it easy, Pete."

"We haven't much time. We—"

"Settle down or you won't make sense. I know you when you get excited. Sorry you had to wait. I was all set to go on a trip a week ago and gave the servants a vacation. So there wasn't anyone else to answer the door. Come on in and sit down and cool off."

He led the way into a trophy room off the hall. It was filled with things he had shot in Africa. Sheldon hadn't mounted his animal heads flat on the wall the way hunters usually do. He had them fixed to look alive and dangerous—peering around corners, crouched to spring, snarling. It was done with indirect lighting and shadows that made you think the whole animal was there, instead of perhaps just a head and one paw. Sheldon dropped into a leather chair. To his right the black nose and one mad eye of a Cape buffalo glared at me from around a cor-

ner. In the shadows behind him, light rippled like a soft blue flame along the barrels of rifles and shotguns.

"All right," he said. "Let's have it."

"I don't want to waste time repeating anything you already know," I said. "How much did Nancy tell you last night about Nick Accardi and the painting and Lassiter, after you took her home?"

"Pretty much everything, Pete. Oh, she tried to hold out on me on one thing. She wasn't going to tell me she was hiding Nick upstairs."