Inspector Queen’s Own Case (19 page)

“Now?” The old man sounded grim. “That could have happened a year ago.”

“Dick, you're off your trolley. Alton Humffrey? You have to be human to start chick-chasing. Even if Humffrey had the yen, he wouldn't put himself in such a position. He thinks too damn much of himself and his precious name.”

“Be consistent, Abe. One minute you're saying Humffrey might be having an affair with some woman to account for his absences, but when I suggest the woman was Connie Coy and he had the affair with her last year you start telling me he isn't the type. Sure he's the type. Under given circumstances, any man's the type. And especially the Humffreys of this world.”

“Humffrey …” He could almost see Abe Pearl shaking his head.

“I admit it's mostly hunch. But there isn't much else to go by, Abe. Up to now it's been one stymie after another. First the nephew, Frost, comes up with an airtight alibi for the baby's murder. Then the killer lifts the Humffrey folder from Finner's files and chokes off the obvious lead to the child's mother. When we finally get to the Coy woman by a roundabout route and she's about to come through with the baby's father's name, she stops a bullet between the eyes. I can't wait for the next stymie, Abe. I've got to take the initiative.”

“You're heading for big trouble,” Chief Pearl said in a mutter. “You can't go after a man like Humffrey with a popgun.”

“I don't intend to. I won't move in till I have some man-sized ammunition. And I think I know where I can get some.”

“Where?”

“I'll let you know when I get it. Give my love to Becky, will you?”

After he hung up, the old man sank into a chair, scowling.

A long time later he reached for the Manhattan classified directory and began hunting for an address under
Detective Service
.

The gray-skinned man got off the elevator and walked erratically up the hall reading page three of the
Daily News
. He seemed fascinated and slightly sick. He was a big man of about forty in a slim-drape lounge suit and a hat with a Tyrolean feather. The gray skin was drawn angularly over his face bones in flat planes and straight lines. He looked like a cartoon.

He stopped before a pebbled glass door and fumbled in his pants pocket for a keycase without taking his eyes from the newspaper. The door said:

G. W. DETECTIVE AGENCY

Civil – Criminal – Personal

DOMESTIC TROUBLES OUR SPECIALTY

Complete Photographic Service

WALK IN

He unlocked the door and stepped into the anteroom, still reading. The typewriter on the receptionist's desk was in a shroud. There was no window in the room.

His left hand groped near the door, located the light switch, snapped it on. Absorbed in his morning paper, he walked on through, into the inner office, over to the window. He pulled up the blind, sank into the chair behind the desk. As he continued to read he tilted back, nibbling his lip.

“Interesting story?”

The gray-faced man looked up quickly.

Richard Queen was seated in a chair behind the partition wall of the anteroom.

“I said that's an interesting story about that girl's murder last night,” he said. “From the way you're reading it, Weirhauser, you agree with me.”

The private detective put the newspaper down on his desk carefully.

“Am I supposed to know you, pop?” He had a rough, nasty voice. “Or is this a stickup?”

“Come, come, George, cut the clowning,” the old man said mildly. “I thought we could talk before your girl got here, and I didn't feel like waiting in the hall.” He rose, put his hat on the chair, and walked over to the desk. “I want some information from you. Who hired you to tail me?”

The investigator looked blank. “Am I supposed to be tailing you?”

“You were pulled off the job Sunday, whether temporarily or permanently I don't know.” The Inspector's tone was patient. “I asked you a question.”

“See that word
Private?”
Weirhauser said. “Get going.”

“You haven't changed a bit, Weirhauser. Still doing a takeoff on George Raft.” The Inspector laughed.

Weirhauser got up. “You going to get out, or do I have to heave you out?”

The old man stared at him. “Don't you realize what you've stepped into? Or are you even stupider than you act?”

The gray was taking on a brick color. Weirhauser set his knuckles on the desk. “Who the hell do you think you're talking to?”

Inspector Queen glanced at his watch. “I don't have any time to waste, Weirhauser. Let's have it.”

“You talk like you're somebody.” The man's tone was jeering, but there was an uncertain note in it.

“You know who I am.”

“I know who you were. The trouble with you has-beens is you don't know enough to lay down and roll over. You're not Inspector Queen any more, remember?”

“Hand me that phone.”

Weirhauser's color changed back to its normal gray. “What are you going to do?”

“Call Headquarters and show you whether I'm a has-been or not.”

“Wait.”

“Well?”

The investigator said, “You know I can't give out that kind of information, Inspector.” He was trying to sound rueful and put-upon. “Agency work is confidential——”

“You should have stuck to chasing dirty divorce evidence.” The old man looked amused. “How do you like being mixed up in a murder? You didn't bargain for that, did you?”

Weirhauser said quickly, “Who's mixed up in a murder? I took a tailing job. I was told to tail you and the woman and to report your movements to my client and I did and that's all.”

“You tailed me from hospital to hospital, you tailed me to an apartment house on 88th near West End, you found out I was asking for a girl named Connie Coy and that she was expected back from out of town shortly, and you reported that to your client Sunday evening. This morning, Tuesday, you open your paper and find that a girl named Connie Coy got back from Chicago last night and within the hour was shot to death through her window from a nearby roof. And you say you're not mixed up in it, Weirhauser? You walked in here this morning trying to remember your prayers.”

“Look, Inspector,” Weirhauser began.

“Suppose we go downtown and tell one of the brass that you, George Weirhauser, holding a license to conduct private investigations, fingered Connie Coy for a client you refuse to name? How long do you think you'd hold your license? In fact, how long do you think it would be before you began yelping for a bail bondsman?”

“Look,” Weirhauser said again, licking his lips. “You're way off base on this thing, Inspector. My client couldn't have had anything to do with this——”

“How do you know he couldn't?”

“Well, he's …”

“He's what? All right, maybe he didn't have anything to do with it. Do you know where he was all day yesterday, Weirhauser? Can you alibi him for the time of the girl's murder?”

The private detective shouted, “I didn't go near the guy yesterday! Didn't even talk to him on the phone. He told me Sunday night when I spoke to him that he'd changed his mind, the information I had for him wasn't what he was after at all, he was calling the whole thing off. That's all I know.”

The Inspector shook his head. “Try again, Weirhauser.”

“What d'ye mean? I tell you that's all I know!”

“You've left one thing out.”

“What's that?”

“The name of your client.”

Weirhauser got up and went to the window, fingering his lip. When he came back and sat down again his sharp eyes were sly.

“What side of the street you working in this deal … Inspector?”

“That,” the old man snapped, “is none of your business.”

“It just occurred to me.” The investigator grinned. “You might be in this up to your eyeballs yourself—you and this dame.”

“I am.”

“You are?” The man looked surprised.

“Sure,” the old man said. “I'm after your client, and I'm going to get him. And the less you know about it, Weirhauser, the longer you'll sleep in your own bed. I've thrown away enough time on you. Who is he?”

“Okay, okay, but give me a break, will you? Honest to God, if I'd known this was going to wind up in a homicide, I'd have spit on his retainer and run like hell.”

“Who is he?” the old man repeated. His eyes were glitttering.

“It's understood you'll keep me out of this?”

“Personally, I don't give a damn about you. As far as I'm concerned you're out of it right now. Who is he, Weirhauser?”

Weirhauser got up again and shut the door to the anteroom.

“Well, he's a rich muckamuck, lives on Park Avenue——” Even now the gray-faced man sounded grudging, as if he were being forced to sell a gilt-edged security far below its market value.

“His name!”

Weirhauser cursed. “Alton K. Humffrey.”

“Are you all right, Jessie?”

Jessie said, “I'm fine.”

They were in the tall-ceilinged foyer outside the Humffrey apartment on Park Avenue. The wall opposite the elevator was an austere greenish ivory, with plaster panel-work of cupids and wreaths. The elevator had just left them, noiselessly.

“Don't be afraid,” Richard Queen said. “This is the one place where he won't try anything. I wouldn't have asked you along if I thought there was any danger.”

“I'm not afraid.” Jessie smiled faintly. “I'm numb.”

“Would you rather sit this out?”

“I'm fine,” Jessie said again.

“We've got to move in on him, Jessie. See just how tough a nut he's going to be. So far he's had it all his own way. You see that, don't you?”

“I suppose the trouble is I don't really believe it.” Jessie set her lips to keep them from quivering. “I want to look at his face—really look at it. Murder must leave a mark of some kind.”

The Inspector blotted the perspiration from his neck and pressed the apartment bell. He had given their names to the flunkey in the lobby with a confidence Jessie could only admire. There had been no unpleasantness. Mr. Humffrey had said on the house phone yes, he would see them. In a few minutes. He would call down when they might be sent up.

It was Friday evening, the second of September, a sizzling forerunner of the Labor Day weekend. The city had been emptying all day, leaving a sort of tautness in the vacuum.

Like me, Jessie thought.

It had been a curious three days since Richard Queen came back from George Weirhauser's office. He had summoned his aging assistants that evening to a council of war. It was surely the strangest conference, Jessie thought, in the unlikeliest place … a gathering of old men on a bench in a secluded spot in Central Park. The handsome ex-lieutenant of Homicide, Johnny Kripps, had been there; the scar-faced Hugh Giffin; ex-Sergeant Al Murphy of the 16th, chunky, brick-skinned, with all his red hair, the youngest of the group; big Wes Polonsky, of the shaking hands; and Polonsky's old partner, Pete Angelo, a slim tough dark man whose face was a crisscross of wrinkles, like a detail map of his seventy years.

They had listened in happy silence as Richard Queen spoke, lonely men being handed straws and grasping them thankfully. And when they had walked off into the night, one by one, each with his assignment, Jessie had remarked, “I feel sorry for him in a way.”

“For whom, Jessie?”

“Alton Humffrey.”

“Don't waste your sympathy,” the old man had muttered. “We've got a long way to go.”

“Good evening,” the millionaire said.

He had opened the door himself. He stood there sharp and shoulderless in a satin-faced smoking jacket, at disciplined ease, the chill Brahmin with nothing on his wedge of face but remoteness—like a high Army officer in mufti or a Back Bay man of distinction—framed in a rectangle of rich wines and hunt-club greens and leather browns; and Jessie thought, No, it isn't possible.

“You're looking well, Miss Sherwood.”

“Thank you.”

“I'm not sure I can say the same about you, Mr. Queen. Won't you come in? Sorry the servants aren't here to greet you. Unfortunately, I gave them the evening off.”

“Within the last fifteen minutes?” Richard Queen said.

Alton Humffrey shook his head, smiling. “You're an extremely suspicious man.”

“Yes,” the old man said grimly, “I suppose you could say that.”

The apartment was like a strange land, all mysterious woods and coruscating chandeliers, antiques, crystal, oil paintings, old tapestries, glowing rugs—rooms twice as large as any Jessie had ever set foot in, with no cushion crushed, no rug scuffed, no receptacle with a crumb of ashes. The study was like the drawing room, indigestibly rich, with monumental furnishings and impossibly tall walls of books that looked as if they were going to topple over.

“Please sit down, Miss Sherwood,” Humffrey said. “May I give you some sherry?”

“No, thanks.” The thought was nauseating. “How is Mrs. Humffrey?”

“Not too well, I'm sorry to say. Mr. Queen, whisky?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Won't you have a seat?”

“No.”

“Forbidding,” the millionaire said with a slight smile. “Sounds like an inspector of police.”

Richard Queen did not change expression. “May I begin?”

“By all means.” Humffrey seated himself in the baronial oak chair behind his desk, a massive handcarved piece. “Oh, one thing.” His bulbous eyes turned on Jessie, and she saw now that they were cushioned by welts she had not noticed on Nair Island. “I take it, Miss Sherwood, from your being here tonight with Mr. Queen, that you're still pursuing your delusion about poor Michael's death?”

“I still believe he was murdered, yes.” Jessie's voice sounded too loud to her ears.