Murders in, Volume 2 (25 page)

“We're going down the area again?”

“Certainly we are. We must see Mr. Richard Vauregard safely into his home.”

Harold also protested. “Let me stay here and wait for him.”

“Not you. Put the car and yourself to bed.”

Harold turned, and drove away in dudgeon. Schenck, no longer amused, walked back to the area in silence, while Gamadge entertained him with a short dissertation on the rise, decline, fall and reclamation of small private dwellings in the city of New York.

They had not long to wait on the area steps. Vauregard came back within half an hour of their arrival, but this time he seemed nervous and wary. He took refuge twice in the areas—luckily, he kept to the north side of the street—and stopped several times between the corner and the Morton house to listen for approaching footsteps. Nobody came; he reached his own basement safely, and took a running jump to the broad window sill. Schenck, fascinated, followed his perilous upward course; it led him by ladderlike projections to the right of the drawing-room window, and thence to the bulbous foliage above. He climbed like a man who knows every inch of the way, quickly when the going was good, carefully when he had to straddle across a section of flat wall. He gained the scroll-work below the open second-story window, got a precarious hold on the sill with one hand, and stretched up his other arm. His hand just touched the ledge.

A shocking yell, sharp, earsplitting and inhuman, made Schenck leap to his feet; the great animal head and wrinkled face that surged from the blackness of the open window were like nothing he had ever seen but the mask of a Tibetan devil dancer. The sight and sound flung Vauregard back and outwards; Schenck's cry was lost in an uproar of barking.

The front and basement doors flew open, and police poured out as Schenck dashed across the street. He heard Gamadge's voice loudly in his ear: “My God, the dog didn't know him.”

“M
ISS DAWSON SAYS
the puppy was never in the house before, and Vauregard never laid eyes on him.” Durfee, sitting beside a sphinx-legged table in the Morton drawing room, looked down at the amiably reclining chow whose ruff Gamadge was gently smoothing. “He's only a year old. She says Vauregard hadn't taken any interest in her dogs for over a year, and she was surprised when he went to see old Ching on Wednesday night.”

Gamadge said: “I had completely forgotten that Miss Dawson had this friend staying with her.”

“If we'd only known Vauregard was going to climb out tonight! We'd have let him go; glad to. We tried it on Duncannon, hoping he'd lead us to the Smith woman. All he did was what you two pests—” Durfee cast a baleful glance at Schenck, who sat modestly effacing himself in a corner—“saw him do. When that Garfield girl left, he went to sleep.”

“What became of him?” asked Gamadge.

“Payne came back, and escorted him over to the Waldorf again. Our man got back into the room first, and they found him asleep, and had some trouble waking him up. We can try again; but if Vauregard had only got out of the house without getting killed, and one of these dumbbells I had on the job had only seen him go, he might have led us to the Smith woman himself. What's the matter with you?” He glared at Schenck, who was shuffling his feet.

“Nothing.” Schenck cast an agonized glance at Gamadge, who said: “Schenck's civic loyalty is offended. He is afraid I won't tell you that Dick Vauregard was killed on his return trip.”

Durfee stared.

“And that we saw him come out, followed him, and watched him in again—or as far in as he got,” continued Gamadge amiably.

“You two happened by when he climbed out of this house?”

“Well—it wasn't exactly chance. I didn't know, of course, but I rather thought he would come out by the window.”

Durfee said nothing, for a moment. Then he inquired, after a confounded look in Schenck's direction: “Why did you rather think he'd get out by the window?”

“Well, after all, this was the night of the perfect alibi—for Richard Vauregard. If he could get out, he would be able to get away with anything; and he had errands to do.”

“Could you oblige me by saying why you thought of the window? We didn't, God knows why.”

“Well, I learned the other day that he grew up without a latchkey. I wondered at the time whether he had really waited until he was out of college for one, looked at the footholds on the front of this preposterous house, and decided he hadn't. I mean, I knew what I should have done in his fix.”

“Mind telling me why you thought he was the one that wanted to get away with something?”

“Not at all; that's what I'm still here for. It was on account of the information you were kind enough to get for me today.”

“Those medicines?” Durfee looked incredulous.

“Oh, yes; they settled it. Closed the case.”

Durfee said: “That's good. Actually closed it? No theorizing?”

“What I should call first-rate circumstantial evidence.”

“I'd like to hear it; but what I want to hear now, is where Vauregard went tonight.”

“You tell us first whether we're pests or not.”

“No, you're not. Only we'd a little rather have your ideas, and dispense with all this amateur sleuthing. You let Vauregard get killed.”

“So we did. Would you have stopped him before he climbed into the house?”

“I never had a chance to decide. Where did he go?”

“Do you very much mind hearing the other evidence first? We're quiet and peaceful here, with nobody to disturb us; I can't tell you anything if we're all traveling around in cars, and you ought to hear this tonight.”

“You bet your life I'll hear it tonight.”

“What I mean is, there's no hurry about that trip of Vauregard's—there really isn't.”

Durfee looked at him, and then at Schenck, who said: “I don't know a thing.”

“He was my witness,” explained Gamadge. “Came along at great inconvenience to himself. We'll need him.”

Schenck shuffled his feet, but said nothing.

“If you mean you want him to stay, all right with me. Let's get going,” said Durfee.

“Let's. Old Mr. Vauregard got a dose of potassium cyanide—in solution—with his second cup of coffee. I wondered how a layman could get hold of such stuff “

“So did we.”

“Of course,” Gamadge went on, gazing innocently at Durfee, “Cameron Payne had once had the run of a chemical laboratory, and may have the run of it still. I suppose you knew he meant to be a metallurgical chemist?”

“I suppose we did.” Durfee returned his look blandly.

“But you didn't have the advantage of knowing that Miss Dawson's old chow was given euthanasia on Wednesday evening, and that the whole family, including Payne, was present. The whole family except Mrs. Morton. The vet, Wadley, performed a slight operation on my cat, this morning, which the unfortunate beast didn't in the least require, and informed me that the hypodermic used on Miss Dawson's dog contained a solution of potassium cyanide.”

Durfee jerked upright in his chair.

“The jar of cyanide,” continued Gamadge, “was left in an accessible spot on Wednesday evening. Wadley ascertained, at my request, that it had lost nine minims of its contents.”

“This vet—why didn't he come forward?”

“Because I promised him that I would tell you about it myself. We drew the logical inference, greatly to Wadley's discomfiture. Of course Wadley and I both realized that no visitor could count on finding a jar of cyanide ready to hand; but what Wadley didn't seem to realize at all was that if nobody expected to find it there, nobody would come provided with a container for it.

“But how difficult, how nearly impossible, to transfer this deadly and highly scented poison from one receptacle to another, secretly, at a moment's notice, and without spilling a drop! For the life of me, I couldn't imagine how it could have been done, except by means of a hypodermic syringe or a medicine dropper.

“I managed to dispose of the hypodermic syringe theory to my own satisfaction; nobody carries one about as a regular thing except a diabetic, let us say, who requires it for the self-administration of insulin, or a drug addict. I couldn't persuade myself that any of the principals in this affair was a drug addict—there were no signs of it; and if one of them had been suffering from an illness requiring self-administered hypodermics, you would have learned that fact yourself, or deduced it, from Schildmann, Lestrange, Schumacher or Thorwald.”

Durfee said nothing. His eyes wandered to Schenck, and back to Gamadge; he gently rubbed the back of his head, gently tugged at his collar, and shrugged his shoulders as if his coat were too tight for him; but he said nothing.

“We pass,” said Gamadge, “to the question of a medicine dropper. Why does one carry a medicine dropper about with one? Again, for the self-administration of a remedy of some kind; but a man would certainly never do it, unless he required treatment in the course of the day while he was away from home. Vauregard, of all the men concerned, was in an office; Vauregard had caught cold on Saturday, as I learned from Miss Dawson this morning, and Lestrange had prescribed ephedrine; five drops in each nostril, three times daily. None of the others had had any medicines prescribed that required a dropper; not within the week, anyhow; and we had no interest in secret medicinal supplies of any sort, because the theft of the cyanide was, as I said, unpremeditated. The thief used what he happened to be carrying with him.”

Durfee interrupted, half rising from his chair. “That ephedrine of Vauregard's—”

“It's a new, nearly full bottle, and it doesn't smell of cyanide. Calm yourself.”

Durfee sank back. “Thorwald said he'd had a repeat, but I thought nothing of it.”

“Why should you think anything of it? You hadn't my information. There's another interesting little point in connection with the ephedrine; I have had plenty of experience with medicine droppers of that size. If you use extreme care, you can draw up ten minims at a time; if you hurry, you only draw up nine. Wadley having lost nine minims—”

“It's evidence, all right!”

“And it's evidence which accounts for the fact that the poisoner couldn't leave the container behind him in Traders Row.”

“So you concentrated on Vauregard—”

“Oh, I had been concentrating on him from the first. It was pretty obvious to me that Miss Smith must have a heart interest in the business, or some close connection with the principals which assured her that her interests would be taken care of. But would she have the kind of confidence she required in a woman, or a married man, or an engaged man? I thought not, so I focussed my attention on the unattached man in the circle.”

Durfee again leapt to his feet, and Schenck cowered in his chair. “Vauregard went to see the Smith woman tonight, and you said I wouldn't be interested! I think you're crazy, after all! What's the address?”

“What's the hurry? He just went to see her; there's no reason why she should run away—she's installed in a nice little walk-up, just along the street here; or I suppose she is. Name of Jansen.”

“Of all the—come along in the car, and show me the place.”

Durfee dashed out of the room. Schenck caught Gamadge's elbow as they followed, and hissed in his ear:

“You're giving me nervous prostration.”

“Why, for goodness' sake?”

“You're holding out on this cop. If I get in wrong with the boys, I'm sunk. Why don't you tell him the rest of it?”

“What did I leave out?”

“You know what you left out. You left out about that thing Vauregard took away from Payne. You never said a word about Payne.”

“Why should I?”

“Why should you? I thought Vauregard would kill the guy under our noses. I was on tenterhooks.”

“He wouldn't kill him till he had the gadget off him, whatever it was; and then that pedestrian came along. You heard him, didn't you?”

“Yes. And I was never so relieved in my life. Vauregard meant business. That thing may be important evidence. It looked to me—”

Gamadge interrupted him. “Did you see what it was?”

“No.”

“Well, then! If it was on the body, the police have it; if he got rid of it, what can we do?”

This specious argument by no means satisfied Schenck, who favored Gamadge with a gimlet look. That individual tore away from him, however, and ran down the front steps. Schenck joined him in the back of the police car, where Durfee, fuming, awaited them; a uniformed man got in beside the driver, Gamadge supplied an address, and they rolled away.

The superintendent of the walk-up, a young Spaniard who carried his baby like a parcel under his arm, came up out of the basement and said it was a high-class house.

“Who's this Jansen, top rear?” asked Durfee.

“Nice lady. She came on a sublet, last April.”

“Know anything about her references?”

“I don't know nothing about their references. Yes, I do; she's a friend of the agent's.”

“Who's the agent?”

“Some relation of the landlord.”

“Who's the landlord?” Durfee's patience was admirable.

“This is all Vauregard property, this whole row.”

“I bet he sneaked her in—didn't even pay rent for her.” Durfee threw this to Gamadge over his shoulder.

“I suppose Vauregard was the old gentleman's agent for these houses.”

The superintendent and the superintendent's baby gazed at them mournfully, through sloe eyes. Gamadge asked: “Has she been away?”

“Since the third of May; only got back Thursday evening. First I knew about it, she rung down and sent me out for oranges and had me start the milk. And the paper.”