The Blonde Died Dancing (9 page)

The lights were on
up there in our living room. As I went through the vestibule, I played “shave-and-a-haircut” on our bell. When I got to our landing, Steve was standing in the doorway. There was a look of warning on his face. He took me in his arms and gave me the least satisfactory kiss of our career.

“Bolling,” he whispered. “Inside.”

He stepped back from me and said loudly, heartily, “How’s your cousin Marie?”

“Improving,” I said. “The swelling’s gone down.” We walked into our living room. Detective Lieutenant Bolling put a beer down on our coffee table, rose and greeted me. I was disappointed in the way he looked. He looked fine, not the least bit worried. Apparently this was a policeman without any pressing worries at all, including the capture of the Waltzer. “The swelling’s gone down?” he said to me.

“What? Oh, Cousin Marie. Yes, perceptibly. Thank you.”

“Steve says she has anemia. I didn’t know there was ever any swelling involved in anemia.”

“You’re quite right, there isn’t. Cousin Marie got in a fight with her doctor and he belted her one in the eye.”

“You’re kidding,” Bolling said.

“Yes, stop kidding, Connie,” Steve said. “Bolling was in the neighborhood and he just dropped in.”

“Lovely. Anytime you’re in the neighborhood, Mr. Bolling, just drop in.”

“Thanks.”

“Any news about the Waltzer?”

“He was seen tonight in a joint in the Village, the Feather Club.”

“No!” I said. “Really?”

“Yeah. We got a description of him from a Crescent pupil who was there, name of Kipp. Wendell Kipp. The bartender saw him, too, and a waiter and a couple of other people.”

“What was he doing, the Waltzer?”

“Annoying some blonde.”

“Any blonde,” I said, “who would frequent the Feather Club could hardly be annoyed.” I had to ask the question and I did, bravely. “What does the Waltzer look like?”

“Well, this Kipp didn’t give much of a description. He didn’t impress me as the type that ever noticed very accurately what a man looked like. Then he was still pretty upset by the slugging the Waltzer handed him. His description didn’t tally very well with the other people’s descriptions.”

“What,” I asked, “was his description?”

“He said he was a big man, powerfully built.”

Steve smiled, rather proudly, pleased.

“Almost ape-like,” Bolling said.

“Ape-like?” There was a trace of indignation in Steve’s voice which, fortunately, Bolling missed. “You can’t believe this Kipp. He’s probably sore about the Waltzer knocking him down.”

“Yeah. Well, Kipp said he had a low forehead and very long arms.”

Steve’s indignation was boiling into anger. I spoke quickly. “What did the other people say about him?”

“The bartender said he was an ordinary guy, dark, maybe six feet.”

Steve was somewhat mollified.

“A waitress said he was good looking.”

Steve was smiling again.

“Well, anyway,” Bolling said, “the description doesn’t help us much. But that doesn’t bother me. When we round up the last of Anita Farrell’s pupils, then I’ll be able to name the Waltzer…”

The telephone rang; Steve answered it. It was for Bolling.

The detective’s back was toward me arid his voice was muffled. It was too difficult to eavesdrop and I soon gave it up. But I did gather that the call was coming from Bolling’s partner, Hankins, at the Crescent School of Dancing. There was some problem about who should take over somebody else’s assignment.

When Bolling had got things straightened out, he turned back to us. “As I was saying, I’ll be able to name the Waltzer when we round up the last of Miss Farrell’s pupils.”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course you will, won’t you?”

“Only one guy we haven’t located yet. A Ralph Tolley.”

Silently, I asked Heaven to be kind to Ralph Tolley; he was one of nature’s noblemen.

Aloud I said, “But you’ll find him soon, I’m sure.”

“We’re getting close. And when we get hold of this Tolley, then we’ll know. We got every one of Anita Farrell’s lessons accounted for except seven o’clock Wednesday… the Waltzer’s time. Now, like I told you before, if this Tolley is the Waltzer he won’t say he was seven o’clock Wednesday. He’ll pick some other time… say, for instance, Steve’s time… three o’clock Saturday. Then if Tolley isn’t the Waltzer, Steve is.”

“Yes,” I said. “I understand the system.”

“Oh, we got the Waltzer all right. Practically, I mean. Well, I better get moving.”

And Bolling was gone.

When I started to tell Steve about mf trip to Kew Gardens, he interrupted me.

“Connie, didn’t you hear Bolling on the phone?”

“Not all of it.”

“He sent the cop on duty down at Anita’s apartment to follow a lead they got on Ralph Tolley.”

“Oh, Steve!”

“Yes, but don’t waste time worrying about that. Don’t you see what we can do now?”

“Of course!” I said. “The coast is clear.”

We wasted no time; we set out immediately for Greenwich Village. With luck we might learn at last what it was about Anita Farrell’s apartment that was so interesting to certain people connected with the Crescent School of Dancing. Not only to Jack Walston and Dot-tie Harris. There was also the man with the bedroom eyes, Wendell Kipp.

In the glimmer of the four lamps that lighted Rhine-beck Place, we could see that the short street was deserted. Cautiously, we moved into number 11 and up its first flight of stairs. Anita’s apartment was still temporarily without any police surveillance. Now our only problem was to get behind the locked doors of Apartment 2-B. Steve undertook to solve that single-handed.

“You stay here,” he whispered. “I’ll try to climb in through a window in the back. I’ll open a door for you from the inside.”

“That would be nice of you,” I whispered back.

But almost the moment he was gone I changed my mind about his chivalry. It wasn’t at all nice being alone in a gloomy corridor outside the apartment of a murdered young woman. I hoped none of her neighbors would find me lurking here. I tiptoed quietly to the door of the front apartment. I listened for voices and was delighted to hear none. Nevertheless, I stayed on tiptoes as I returned to the back of the hall. I was growing more nervous every minute of what already seemed hours.

I wondered what could be taking Steve so long. Even if he had had to go all the way around the block to get through a building into the backyard of number 11, he should have got here by now.

There seemed to be two doors into Anita’s apartment. The one in the end of the hall appeared to be the main one; it had a dainty brass knocker on it. The door in the side wall had the modest air of a service entrance. It most likely opened into the kitchen. I listened at it first, then I moved past it to the other one and put my ear to the panel beside the brass knocker. Again I listened for the sound of a window pane being broken, the window being raised, footsteps inside… some sign that Steve and I would soon be reunited. But either the door was too thick or Steve was in trouble. I was beginning to wonder how much longer I should wait for him.

Then I heard a sound, but it hadn’t come from behind Anita’s door.

It had come from behind me.

I started to turn toward it, and there was a sudden rush of motion. I flung back my right hand. It hit something… and something hit me, a walloping blow on the side of my head…

Before I knew anything else, I knew that Steve was with me. I could hear his voice. At first it was far away, very far away, then it came closer and closer. That made me feel some better. When I opened my eyes and saw Steve’s face near mine, felt his arms around me, the dimness of my view toward life in Greenwich Village’s Rhinebeck Place began to lessen.

“I think I can stand up,” I said.

“Take your time.”

“I can manage…”

With Steve’s help, I got to my feet. My surroundings began to register on me. We were in a living room. On the table a lamp was burning…

“Steve!” I said, “the light! Someone will see…”

“It’s all right. There’s only a skylight in this room. The window I came through is in the bedroom. Connie, what made you pass out?”

“Pass out? You think I fainted?”

“Well…”

“Steve, somebody knocked me out!” I felt my head; a lump was in its ascendency. “I got sandbagged!”

“Who…”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him, I just felt him. He came up behind me in the hall.”

“He was waiting there in the hall?”

“No, there was no one there…”

“Wait.”

Steve went through a door. I followed him just far enough to see that he was going into a small kitchen. In a moment he was back.

He said, “There’s a service door in there. Someone could have got through it out into the hall. He must have heard me climbing the fence or breaking in the window.”

“Yes, he must have been in here. Jack Walston? Wendell Kipp?”

“You think it was a man who hit you?”

“I don’t know. When I heard the sound I swung out my arm… backwards… like this…” I showed Steve how I had swung out my arm. “And then…”

I stopped, staring at my right hand. On my glove was a smear of vivid orange lipstick. I looked at Steve.

“It was a woman,” I said. “I hit her in the face.”

“Dottie Harris?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. She’s so short. I have the feeling it was someone taller.”

“Someone else,” Steve said slowly.
“Dottie Harris, Jack Walston, Wendell Kipp.
And now… still another person. What is it that’s so damned fascinating about this apartment?”

We looked around. The living room took up most of the apartment. It was a large, rather narrow room. The long side wall that held the door to the corridor was lined with waist-high book shelves, decorated with a series of camera studies of New York City. The opposite end was broken by doors into two bedrooms, one into the kitchen. Between the two bedroom doors was a long, lush modern couch, flanked by modern end tables.

Still examining the room, I sat on the edge of the couch; I needed a little more rest. The end wall to my right was centered by a combination desk and table. To its right was an easy chair, beside it a telephone on a low circular table. The wall at the other end was filled mostly with the giant-sized cabinet of a radio-phonograph. On each side of it was a straight-backed, matching chair. All in all, it was a very pleasant place for a bachelor girl to live.

I looked at Steve and found him staring at the end table at the right of the couch. I stared at it, too. There was a crystal ash tray on it, a cigarette box, a lighter, and that was all… nothing really to stare at. I looked back at Steve. Now his attention was focused on the couch’s other end table. It held a lamp, a squat cylinder of pottery with a square wooden base. There was an ash tray, too, and an aluminum dish filled with books of matches.

“Connie,” Steve said, “wouldn’t you think there’d be a lamp on that table, too?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I guess so. It needs a lamp.” Steve closed in on the table, bent over it.

“Look,” he said, “there was a lamp on it.”

I looked and I saw the clear, shining circle on the table top; the rest of the table’s surface was covered with a film of dust.

“That’s right. There was a lamp.”

He touched the clean circle, then examined his fingers.

“No dust there at all. The lamp’s been taken away lately. Maybe even by the person who knocked you out.”

“But why? Why would anyone want to steal a lamp?”

“Maybe,” Steve said, “she didn’t want the lamp. Maybe she wanted something that was inside it. And if she heard me, she wouldn’t have had time to get whatever it is out of the lamp. So she took the whole thing. Ripped out the cord and ran.”

Steve moved to the other table.

“Would you say it’s a good bet that the lamps were a pair?”

“Possibly. You can see that the bases were the same size.”

Steve removed the shade. It was the kind of lamp where the cord is attached to the bulb socket. He picked it up, tried to unscrew the wooden base from the pottery urn. He succeeded. He lifted the urn off its base.

In the center of the base was a brass spindle. On the spindle were one… two, three reels, about the size of home movie film. Steve slipped one of the reels off the spindle, unwound about a foot of it.

I asked, “Is it a movie film?”

“No.”

“What is it then?”

“Recording tape.”

“Recording tape… could that be what everybody was looking for?”

“It must have been. And there probably was more of it in that other lamp. We didn’t give whoever was in here time enough to get at this one.”

“Steve, I’m dying to know what’s on that tape.”

“I can hardly wait myself.”

“There must be a recorder someplace in the apartment. Let’s look around…”

“No, I’ll pick one up at the office and we can hear it at home. I wouldn’t say it was very safe around here, Connie.”

I felt the lump on my head.

“You’re right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

While Steve set up
the machine, I went into the kitchen and got something to eat. I had forgotten what a good idea food and drink was. Then I poured a beer for Steve, more milk for me. I was stepping back into the living room just as Steve said he was ready.

He flipped a switch.

There was music, soft, sweet music; it was playing a gentle accompaniment of a husky, vibrant, but very female voice.

Steve said, “That’s Anita…”

Anita:
…take it easy, Kippy, darling, don’t be impetuous…

I said, “Kippy! That’s Wendell Kipp.”

Kippy:
…beautiful, the most beautiful…

Anita:
Kippy, your hands aren’t being good little hands… not at all…

Kippy:
Anita…

Anita:
No, let’s have another drink…

Kippy:
That would be a waste of time…

Anita:
Your hands, Kip! Stop it now. You’re like a high school kid on Saturday night…

Kippy:
I’m high school! What about you? What are you saving yourself for… the Junior Prom?