Green Ace (6 page)

Miss Withers told him her name. “I’m just a friend of Inspector Piper’s. Sometimes he discusses his cases with me. That’s how I learned that they are beginning to think at Headquarters that they have the wrong man locked up for Midge’s murder.”

Sprott lighted his cigarette all over again, though it seemed to be burning well. “What? Who says so? That guy Rowan is guilty.”

“No, innocent. I have it on excellent authority. It’s out of this world.”

“Huh?”

“In more ways than one. As a matter of fact, all of this started because of a spirit message received through a medium or clairvoyant or whatever you want to call her—somebody named Marika, up on Ninety-sixth Street.”

“Are you kidding?” Sprott demanded.

“Not in the least. It’s too bad the woman didn’t stay in the trance long enough to get the name of the real murderer, but at least she has touched off a chain reaction that even has upset the official minds at Centre Street.”

He said, a little cautiously, “But what has all this got to do with me?”

“Nothing, of course!” said the schoolteacher warmly. “As I told my friend the Inspector, you’re a well-known artist. I’ve listened to all your broadcasts, and I have some of your records.
Slew-Foot Boogie
and
Her Tears Flowed Like Wine
are my special favorites. It’s ridiculous to suspect you. And I think it’s perfectly silly assigning detectives to shadow every step you take and—but I shouldn’t have let that out, should I?”

Sprott studied his cigarette as if it were some new invention, unique and puzzling. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

“Of course,” Miss Withers wickedly continued, “you did react and turn somewhat pale when I mentioned the girl’s name …”

“And why
wouldn’t
I?” cried Riff. “You went and mentioned it right in front of my wife, who happens to be standing over there by the piano waiting to run through her number.” He looked back over his shoulder. “We been married sixteen months, but she has the idea that I’m still carrying the torch for Midge Harrington. Just a mention of that name and Chloris hits the ceiling. She’ll—”

“Come, come, young man,” interrupted Miss Withers. “Don’t try to tell me that your wife is still jealous of a girl who’s been dead since more than a year ago?”

He nodded wearily. “Lady, she’d even be jealous of you! So please climb back on your broomstick and fly away home, will you?” Politely but firmly he edged her through the bar to the door, and she heard the lock click behind her as a signal that the interview was ended.

Miss Withers climbed back up to the street and then paused to smooth her ruffled feathers. She stood amid signs advertising “Riff Sprott and His Funetic Five, with Chloris Klee” and a color photograph, considerably larger than life, of a curvesome female bearing some resemblance to the girl by the piano. Chloris had her mouth open and seemed about to bite the microphone off its stand.

The schoolteacher turned her back on this overpowering exhibit and took a small notebook from her capacious handbag. She wrote: “
Riff Sprott, The Grotto Club. Big reaction, dubious explanation involving wife Chloris’ supposed jealousy. Admits he carried torch for Midge and that he loved her more than she did him. Find out when Chloris started singing with band.
”

Things, decided Miss Withers, were definitely looking up. She hoped fervently that it really
was
Riff Sprott, not only because he had a name befitting a strangler, but because of that crack about the broomstick. If he did have a guilty conscience, her hint that the police were shadowing him ought to give him something to worry about.

But this was no time for snap judgments, nor to let her intuition have its head. There were other candidates …

Nils Bruner was next on her list. Dancing-masters keep more regular hours than musicians, but are considerably more difficult to locate, due to an occupational tendency to pull up stakes and move to new and more fertile fields when the going gets tough. The studios in Flatbush were closed and had been for rent since last October. No forwarding address.

But Miss Withers had access to certain information not available to the ordinary amateur detective and sometimes not even to the police. During her twenty-odd years at P.S. 38, generations of grubby urchins had passed through her tutelage to graduate and eventually take their place in the world outside, and with as many as possible of them she kept in touch via Christmas cards. At moments like this she could call on a far-flung organization, just as Sherlock Holmes did on his Irregulars. Some of her boys and girls had risen to positions of importance and influence.

It was little Willie Prjbwski, one in difficulties with third-grade arithmetic but now a bald, bespectacled auditor with one of the public utility companies, who called her back that same evening with the desired information.

So it was that next forenoon—Rowan now had but five days left—Miss Withers marched up two flights of stairs above a neighborhood drugstore in the rabbit warrens of the Grand Concourse region, and rapped sharply on a door bearing the legend: “New Elite School of Professional Tap, Spanish and Rhythm.”

No answer. She rapped again and then entered a tiny reception room, sparsely furnished and of no interest whatever. But from interior regions she could hear soft strains of music. She opened the inner door and peered in.

She saw part of a long, bare hall, with a practice bar under the windows and a full-length mirror opposite. A ponderous, elderly automatic phonograph was grinding out
The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi,
and in the center of the polished floor a tall, fair man was dancing. He danced all by himself, except for the two enormous fans of tinted ostrich feather, and he wore only an undershirt and a pair of Paris-green slacks.

“Whoops!” she gasped, and then “Excuse
me
!” But the solitary dancer was so engrossed that he did not turn his head. She suddenly realized that this was no pixie drag act. Apart from the soft, sinuous femininity of the gestures there was nothing effeminate about him at all. “
Pssst
!” she whispered.

The man turned, stared at her with china-blue eyes, and then said without breaking the rhythm, “All right, come on in if you want to join the class. There’s extra fans in the corner over there.”

Somebody giggled, and Miss Withers stepped inside far enough to see that there were three scantily clad young women, completely equipped with ostrich feathers, facing the teacher and trying to copy his technique.

The music suddenly ended, and he said, “Get it, girls? The whole thing is control. And lag on the beat. As you turn, make ’em think you won’t get the fans in place at the right time, only pick it up one, two—
three
! See?” He looked at his watch. “Okay, it’s eleven-thirty. Only work on this at home during the week, all of you. And Irma, quit dieting or nobody will care whether
you
shake a fan or not.”

The girls scampered noisily toward a dressing room, and Nils Bruner came over to Miss Withers, dropping the fans and mopping his forehead. “Yes, ma’am?”

“I want to take a dancing lesson,” she said. “But not fan-dancing.” As she spoke she could see herself in the full mirror on the opposite wall, and realized how silly her prepared opening must sound.

But Bruner did not smile. “Of course,” he said. “A private ballroom lesson. The waltz?”

He was so fair that he seemed almost an albino. No trace of the pomade, the long sideburns, that she had expected. Indeed, if this tall, strange young man ever had five o’clock shadow it must look like frost or perhaps mold on his decided chin.

“Yes, I think the waltz,” Miss Withers admitted.

He looked sad. “Shall I make an appointment for one day next week?”

“You couldn’t possibly make it today?” Next week would be too late, at least for Andy Rowan.

Bruner looked sadder still. “I am sorry. But honestly, I’m booked solid. In a few minutes I have a class in tap and soft-shoe—a roomful of screaming teen-agers.”

“Skip it,” the schoolteacher said abruptly. “Mr. Bruner, I’ll break down and confess that I really didn’t come here for a lesson, but on business. Do you remember a girl who studied with you a couple of years ago, named Midge Harrington?”

The pale lashes flicked only once, then he said quickly, “Of course! Such a
tragic
end! The girl had great talent if she’d only stuck to her dancing. Such personality, such beauty …”

“Do you happen to have a professional photograph of her around anywhere?”

This time the hesitation was noticeably longer. “I might have,” Bruner said. “Only it’s autographed, and it has certain sentimental associations. I suppose you want it for publication in some newspaper? Could you go as high as fifty dollars?”

Miss Withers said, “No, not a newspaper.” She thought she could go as high as twenty-five. After some haggling they settled, and she received a large studio portrait of a tall young woman in heavy make-up and ornate Spanish costume, clicking castanets and grinning like La Argentinita. “
To mio maestro Nils Bruner who taught me all I know, Midge
,” was scrawled at the bottom in a round, childish hand. Somehow that unformed, girlish writing touched the schoolteacher’s sympathies as not even the grim morgue photograph had been able to do.

Bruner cocked his head wisely. “You’ll want a story to go with the picture, I suppose?”

“Why, yes,” Miss Withers admitted. “Anything that will shed light on her character might help.”

He lowered his voice. “Of course you’ve looked it up, and you know that she was named in my wife’s divorce suit. For no real reason at all, I assure you, except that Virla wanted to hurt me professionally as much as possible. As a matter of fact, no dancing teacher should ever have a wife. Because in my profession once in a blue moon you run into real talent, a personality destined for stardom and bright lights. It is almost impossible to develop that talent, to help the rosebud open into full bloom, without appearing at least to have a personal interest. People misunderstand.”

“You weren’t in love with her, then?”

“
Not
for publication,” said Nils Bruner quickly. “But you experts understand how to write such things without—without making trouble, shall I say? Anyway, it’s the truth that I never saw Midge after the divorce, though I always knew that if she struck it rich she’d pay me for the private lessons I had to give her on credit. She never had any money, you know. No family or anything.”

“An orphan—or did she get born in a seashell, like the other Venus?”

“I think she had a mother,” he said slowly. “Supposed to have been a Floradora girl once, but you can’t prove it by me. Anyway, she boarded out the kid with some people in Brooklyn Heights, and after a while she quit sending money and Midge was on her own.”

Miss Withers agreed that this was all very sad, but the interview seemed to be getting off the track. “It’s too bad you didn’t marry the child,” she said. “Midge was very much in love with you, wasn’t she?”

The pale blue eyes clouded. “No,” he said, “she wasn’t. Something always got in the way. I always thought it must have been some man she couldn’t forget, somebody she met before she was my pupil.”

Reenter the ghost-lover motif. “I see,” said Miss Withers. “A grand passion before she was sixteen? Dear, dear.”

There was a slight interruption while the three pupils, now in street clothes and carrying little satchels, said their goodbyes and wended their way homeward. But the schoolteacher still lingered, vaguely dissatisfied.

“Anything else I can do to help?” said Nils Bruner. “A photograph of me, for instance? I don’t know what kind of feature your magazine plans, but if you can get in the name of the studio somewhere—”

“I’m not with a magazine either,” Miss Withers told him. “I wouldn’t put it past
Life
or
Look
or
Peep
to dig up the Midge Harrington case at this time, but I’m not a ghoul, I’m only a private investigator without portfolio. I supposed you’d heard that the police have the wrong man in prison and that they’re reopening the investigation into her murder?”

Bruner very softly said something in a foreign language, but she could translate his expression. She suddenly realized that she was alone with a powerful and very angry man, a man who had talked too much in the hope of chiseling a little extra publicity and now deeply regretted it. He seemed to be coming a little apart at the seams …

“Probably there’s nothing in it after all,” she said quickly. “The whole thing originated in a spirit message, you know. Some medium named Marika down on Ninety-sixth Street came up with word that Rowan is innocent, but
so far
she hasn’t named the real killer.”

“The police—they take the word of such a person?” he asked thickly.

“Only because there seems to be corroborative evidence. Thank you for your help, Mr. Bruner. And of course for the picture.” She beat a speedy retreat. Safe and sound in the street again, she took out her notebook and wrote: “
Nils Bruner, Crotona Building. No reaction, much too casual. Denies affair with Midge but admits she owed him money. Svengali angle? Where was Virla Bruner that night?
”

Somewhat weary with her labors, she popped into the drugstore for a cup of tea and a sandwich. She had to admit that Bruner seemed every whit as promising a suspect as had the trumpet-player.

The odds were even better, she realized half an hour later. Because from her perch at the soda fountain she could see the entrance to the stairway leading up to the dance studio, and no horde of teen-agers came swarming in for their class in tap and soft-shoe. It was twelve o’clock—and then twelve-thirty. Nobody went into the place at all except one precocious little miss in a tight sweater, with a basket of black curls and the map of Ireland on her face. She paused in the doorway to smear on fresh mouth then ran up the stairs three steps at a time.

“So!” said Miss Withers. She lurked around for another half-hour or so, but nobody came down the stairs.

“I might as well try to decide it the way my pupils would, with eeny, meeny, miny, mo,” she said to herself as she headed toward the bus. “But just to play fair I suppose I have to include George Zotos, the sole remaining nomination.”