ALM06 Who Killed the Husband? Read online

  It turned out that Yohe had proceeded directly from the scene of the murder to his own small bachelor apartment in the Stieff Building near the Plaza. The elevator man testified that he had looked "very upset." After a few minutes he had gone out again with a different suit on and was swallowed up by the unknown. He kept no personal servant. A maid employed by the management of the building said significantly that Mr. Yohe seldom slept at home. The public loved it. Upon searching his rooms the police had found nothing that pertained to the case. He was a discreet young man; he left no scrap of writing from any of the many women with whom his name had been connected. There were thousands of photographs of the great, the near-great and the would-be-great, some of which had a great potential value. They were so unflattering that the subjects might have been willing to pay anything to keep them out of print. But it was never charged that Yohe had taken money for such a purpose. A few of the photographs found their way into the newspapers, affording the town a series of laughs. The Commissioner of Police then cracked down on the press and impounded the lot.

  These three days were full of little irritations for Lee Mappin. He was not allowed to forget the vulgar affair for long and his work suffered. Even the discreet, the correct Jermyn permitted himself to suggest that his master ought to take a hand in the case. At the office little Fanny Parran, usually so sensible, displayed a prejudice on behalf of the handsome young murderer as passionate and unreasonable as that of Eliza Young in the press. When the police finally identified the murder gun as Yohe's, Lee fetched a sigh of relief. Now, please God, they'll leave me alone! he thought.

  When he got to the office there was no sign of grief or disappointment in Fanny's pretty face, no change of any sort. When she brought in the mail she said with a beguiling air--Lee had never seen her looking sweeter:

  "Pop, why don't you talk to Inspector Loasby about the Gartrey case?"

  "What is there to talk about?" said Lee, keeping a careful hold on his rising temper. "I am not a bloodhound. It is no part of my job to track down fugitives from justice."

  "Of course not, Pop. That's not what I had in mind. Everybody in the world believes that Al Yohe is guilty. In the interests of justice you ought to examine the evidence that the police have against him and point out the flaws in it."

  "My dear girl, have you the face to pretend you still believe that man to be innocent?"

  "I'm not your dear girl when you talk to me like a stuffy schoolmaster," said Fanny with spirit. "And I am not pretending."

  "After the police have established that Gartrey was shot with Yohe's gun!"

  "How can you be so wrongheaded ?" cried Fanny. "That is the best proof of Al's innocence that has come out! Can you conceive of a man so stupid as to leave his gun at the scene of the killing? That gun was planted there!"

  "Maybe so," cried Lee waving his hands. "It's no business of mine. I'm sick of hearing the fellow's name! If he's innocent why does he choose to live like a hunted creature? Let him come back like a man and face the music, and if he needs help I'll help him!"

  "Now, Pop," said Fanny soothingly, "honestly, after taking everything into consideration, would you come back if you were in his place?"

  Lee disdained to answer.

  "If he came back there would be a hundred thousand yelling people around Police Headquarters. And what would the authorities do? Rush him to trial in order to quiet the mob; obtain a snap verdict--no jury would dare go against the mob--and rush him to execution. Would that be justice?"

  "I cannot fight for a man in hiding," said Lee. Fanny gave him a level look. "Well, I'm disappointed in you," she said, marching out.

  Lee was left to nurse an unreasonable feeling of soreness and frustration. Fanny was not to be drawn into any further discussion and he was forced to argue it out with himself. Very unsatisfactory. He was satisfied that his attitude was the correct one, but how could you convince a woman when she wouldn't listen?

  He spent a part of the afternoon in dictating to Judy. She was of an entirely different character from Fanny, more serene and placid, not so liable to fly off the handle, in a word more feminine, Lee told himself. Judy was of the tall and statuesque type with big brown eyes and hair like a raven's wing. Lee's eyes dwelt with pleasure on her graceful, bent head.

  "You are very beautiful," he said.

  "Thanks, Pop," she said calmly. She had heard it so often before. And went on all in the same breath: "Pop, why are you so prejudiced against poor Al Yohe?"

  It was like a dash of cold water on Lee. "You too!" he said in the same tone that Caesar must have used to Brutus.

  "Well, you are not usually so influenced by the newspapers," Judy went on. "How often have you told us that we should think for ourselves."

  "Fanny's been getting at you!" said Lee.

  "Of course we've talked the case over," said Judy; "how could we avoid it? But I don't take all my ideas from Fanny. I have a mind of my own, I hope."

  "Will you please tell me what sources of information you possess besides the newspapers?" asked Lee.

  His sarcasm never touched her. "None," she said in her calm and gentle manner. "I read the newspapers and form my own conclusions."

  "And what are they, may I ask?"

  "Why can't you talk about it reasonably, Pop? Why do you get sore whenever Al's name is mentioned? According to your own rule, that proves your case is weak."

  It did not make Lee feel any less sore to have his own words turned against him.

  Judy went on in her calm way: "It all sounds too cut and dried, Pop. Something important is omitted. They say that Mr. Gartrey came home unexpectedly and surprised them. They also say that the shot was not fired in the heat of passion but that Al was laying for him. They can't have it both ways, Pop. If he came home before he was expected, how could Al have been laying for him at the door?"

  Lee looked at her in surprise. "That's rather neatly argued," he said.

  Judy blushed with pleasure. "You think I'm beautiful but dumb," she said.

  "That's not so," insisted Lee, "or I couldn't afford to keep you here."

  Judy made haste to follow up her advantage. "That woman is certainly lying, Pop!"

  "Why, she's Al's only friend!" In spite of himself Lee was falling into the habit of referring thus familiarly to the celebrity.

  "If she's really his friend she's a fool," said Judy. "She's not going the right way about it to clear him. I often have to lie myself and I can tell when another woman is lying."

  "What is your idea of what really happened, my dear?" asked Lee quite mildly.

  Judy spread out her hands. "Ah, I haven't any," she said. "That's where we must depend on you, Pop. If you delved into the case you would find out the truth about it."

  Lee said judicially: "In the apartment at the time of the shooting were Mrs. Gartrey and Al Yohe; Hawkins, the butler; Eliza Young, the lady's maid, and four other maids. There is a second manservant but he was out on an errand. How could it have been any of these excepting Yohe? How could I even start an investigation without having an opportunity to hear Yohe's own story?"

  "That's so," said Judy rising. "It hadn't occurred to me." She went out thoughtfully. A moment later he saw her in deep confabulation with Fanny.

  A man from the World-Telegram came in to see him. He was followed by a Daily News reporter and a whole group of others, including redheaded Tom Cot-tar from the Herald Tribune. Tom had been sweet on Fanny Parran for a long time. Lee noted that her greeting today was somewhat cool. Tom was a prime favorite with Lee, and the others, knowing it, let Tom do the talking.

  "Mr. Mappin, we want an opinion from you on the Gartrey case."

  "Now, Tom," warned Lee, "you know that I have made it a rule not to discuss a crime before it comes to trial."

  "You don't need to express an opinion as to Al Yohe's guilt," said Tom. "That's established. Just discuss the case generally. Tell us what it suggests to you from a social point of view, or any such tripe."

  "Tripe?
" said Lee, running up his eyebrows.

  "You know what I mean," said Tom, grinning. "This case has reached such proportions that the public is demanding an expression of views from their favorite criminologist."

  "Poppycock!" said Lee. "The truth is, the public is ravenous for news about the case; you haven't any for them today and so you come to me for a filler."

  "Well, you have never let us down yet," said Tom cajolingly.

  "I'm going to now. I have nothing to say."

  "Now, Mr. Mappin..."

  "By Gad! if I'm pestered any further about this damned case I'll leave town!" cried Lee.

  "Pestered?" asked the Daily News man, scenting a story. "By whom?"

  "By all of you! Not another word!"

  When they saw that he meant it, they filed out. Lee detained Tom. "I want to speak to you about a personal matter."

  Tom looked at him inquiringly.

  "Who tipped you off to come to me today?" asked Lee.

  Tom shrugged innocently--too innocently. "The assignment came to me in the usual way."

  "Tom, there appears to be a kind of conspiracy afoot with the object of forcing me into this case. You and I must make a stand against it."

  Tom, after glancing uneasily over his shoulder, mutely put out a hand.

  Lee grasped it. "What's behind it, Tom?"

  "I'm with you, Pop," mumbled Tom, "but I can't say anything when she's just outside the door."

  Lee glanced at his watch. "I'll be leaving here in half an hour. Meet me in the Vanderbilt bar at five-ten."

  "Okay, Pop."

  Sitting at a little table in the Vanderbilt bar with Scotch and soda before them, Lee and Tom compared notes. Said Tom:

  "This guy is as guilty as hell, Lee. That was nothing in my life until Fanny felt that she had received a call to save him. Since then I have had no peace. She is threatening to ship me because I can't change the policy of the Herald Tribune toward the case. Damn him anyhow! By God! how I would like to flatten his Grecian nose with my fist! All handsome men are so-and-sos!" Tom had no pretensions to good looks, though there was a pleasing masculinity about his strongly marked features.

  "I sympathize with you," said Lee. "What started Fanny off at this tangent?"

  "Don't ask me. She is mysterious."

  "Is it possible she could have seen Al Yohe since the murder?"

  "No."

  "Before this happened, had you any reason to suppose that Fanny had fallen in love with him?"

  "She's not in love with him," said Tom coolly. "I would know how to deal with that. This is worse, Pop. God help a man when his girl embarks on a moral crusade! He is helpless!"

  "Well, we've got to stand out against this foolishness until it blows over," said Lee firmly. "To give in to it would only be to make ourselves ridiculous!" They shook hands on it again.

  Chapter 3

  Lee was engaged to dine this night with the Curt Wintergrenns. He had been looking forward to the occasion because Carol Wintergrenn had snapped up a French refugee chef who was a master of his profession. This was his first performance and he would certainly be on his mettle. Lee loved masterly cooking. However, when he reflected that the table talk would inevitably concentrate on the Gartrey case, his heart sank. He called up Mrs. Wintergrenn to beg off.

  She wouldn't hear of it. "Lee!" she screamed. "At the eleventh hour! The dinner of the season! I am depending on you to hold it together; to give the affair a cachet! How could I replace you now? My party will be ruined. I don't believe you've got a headache. Tell me the real reason you want to stay away."

  Answered Lee: "You're entitled to the truth, my darling. I am so fed up with this nasty Gartrey affair that it nauseates me. I know, people being what they are, nothing else will be talked about tonight, and I can't face it."

  "Is that all?" she said in a voice of relief. "Well, I haven't been giving dinners for ten years for nothing. You sit beside me and I shall keep the conversation in my own hands. I promise you you shan't be annoyed."

  So Lee agreed to be there.

  Unfortunately for Carol Wintergrenn's promise, there were two men at her table whose names had been connected with the Gartrey case, George Coler and Rulon Innes, and she found herself helpless. She would no sooner get the talk steered away from the all-absorbing topic than somebody would ask Coler or Innes a question. The whole table would wait in silence for the answer, and off they would go again. However, Lee did not mind it as much as he had expected; the limelight was beating on the two men in the know, and little Lee was allowed to savor the marvelous salmi de caneton in peace.

  Coler, who was Gartrey's principal lieutenant in business, was a handsome bachelor in the middle forties with a reputation for wit andsavoir-faire that caused him to be much in demand for dinners. Lee had never cared for him, simply because he had himself under such perfect control. Lee himself was not accustomed to wearing his heart on his sleeve, and he freely granted the necessity of keeping a guard on yourself in the great world, but such people did not interest him; for him in woman or man it was the native wood-note wild that charmed.

  A woman asked: "Mr. Coler, honestly, how is dear Agnes bearing up under the strain?" The affected solicitude did not conceal the purr of satisfaction in her voice. Older and plainer women naturally were delighted to see Agnes Gartrey catching it.

  "Magnificently!" said Coler smoothly. "Like all your sex, when faced by something really big, she has risen out of herself."

  "Is she in love with Al Yohe?"

  "Honestly," said Coler, spreading out his hands, "I don't know. I am the watchdog of her business affairs, not her heart."

  "Of course she is!" cried another woman. "Look how she stands up for him!"

  "That proves nothing. She has to stand up for him in order to clear her own skirts."

  "Strange as it may seem, I think she was attached to her hard-boiled old husband," said Coler. "At least, they got along pretty well together, considering."

  "Impossible!" exclaimed all the women together.

  "A man thirty years older!"

  "If she is in love with Yohe," Coler went on, "so much the worse for her. Even in the unlikely event of his clearing himself, they could never come together now."

  Young Rulon Innes, feeling that he had been left out of the conversation long enough, now delivered his opinion authoritatively: "None of you are being fair to Agnes. Nobody understands her. She has the heart of a child!"

  Hearing this, the women kept their lips decorous, but their eyes were frankly derisive. Lee, glancing around the table, enjoyed the comedy. Innes was a handsome young man in a somewhat luscious style. He was so filled with the consciousness of his beauty that he appeared to be about to choke on it. Lee wondered how a woman could fall for him, yet many had; perhaps it was because he, after Al Yohe, was the fashion.

  "Is she in love with Al Yohe?" persisted the first woman.

  "Nothing to it," said Innes languidly, regarding his finger nails. "Al's methods with women were those of a truck driver. No finesse." He paused to point the contrast between Al and himself. Some of the women bit their lips. "Agnes would never fall for that sort of thing," he went on. "She is too fastidious...Does it not occur to any of you that she may be telling the simple truth?"

  Carol Wintergrenn was provoked. "The truth is never simple," she said, "and nobody nowadays ever tells it...For heaven's sake, let us talk about something else."

  They paid no attention to her. Everybody at the table had a contribution to make to the Gartrey case and sat bouncing in impatience to get a word in. There was Miss Delphine Harley, the actress, perennially lovely and smiling. She said:

  "I must take exception to truck driver. Poor Al's manners were free but never coarse. He despised the sultry innuendo that passes for love-making in the night clubs. Al never 'made love.' He captivated women by making them laugh. His apparent sexlessness was a challenge to us. His naturalness, his honesty were as refreshing as a breeze off the sea."

  Th
is produced a little babel of assent and dissent around the table. Miss Harley popped a forkful of the salmi into her mouth and murmured: "Delicious!" Rulon Innes laughed a thought too loudly and was heard to say:

  "Al Yohe sexless! That's good!"

  "Women will know what I mean," said Delphine quietly. "Don't think that I am belittling sex," she went on with her delightful, wicked smile. "Sex is grand! But I must say we women get a little tired of seeing it paraded like a drum major."

  There were murmurs of assent from other women. "Perhaps," said Delphine, delicately balancing her fork, "perhaps Al Yohe's pretense of sexlessness was the finest kind of finesse."

  Lee went through the motions of clapping his hands. He loved wit in a woman. Delphine Harley was doing something that Fanny and Judy had not been able to accomplish, forcing him a little to reconsider his ideas about the legendary Al.

  There was a Senator at the table, who protested throatily: "But, my dear Miss Harley, a murderer!"

  "Oh, that's something else again," said Delphine with a shrug.

  "Surely you can't have any doubt as to his guilt?"

  "I have no opinion at all," said Delphine sweetly. "I leave that to my betters."

  "Well, I'll tell you what I think," put in the woman who had started the discussion. "It has not been suggested in the newspapers, but I believe that Agnes Gartrey herself is keeping him under cover."

  This was received around the table with the silence of astonishment.