The Paul Cain Omnibus (18 page)

Hanan was still frowning self-consciously. He said: “Done,” took a checkbook and fountain pen out of his pocket.

Druse went on: “If I fail in either purpose, I shall, of course, return your check.”

Hanan bobbed his head, made out the check in a minute, illegible scrawl and handed it across the table. Druse paid for the drinks, jotted down Hanan’s telephone number and the address of Mrs Hanan’s apartment. They got up and went downstairs and out of the place; Druse told Hanan he would call him within an hour, got into a cab. Hanan watched the cab disappear in east-bound traffic, lighted a cigarette nervously and walked towards Madison Avenue.

Druse said: “Tell her I’ve come from Mister Hanan.”

The telephone operator spoke into the transmitter, turned to Druse. “You may go up—Apartment Three D.”

When, in answer to a drawled, “Come in,” he pushed open the door and went into the apartment, Catherine Hanan was standing near the center table, with one hand on the table to steady herself, the other in the pocket of her long blue robe. She was beautiful in the mature way that women who have lived too hard, too swiftly, are sometimes beautiful. She was very dark; her eyes were large, liquid, black and dominated her rather small, sharply sculptured face. Her mouth was large, deeply red, not particularly strong.

Druse bowed slightly, said: “How do you do.”

She smiled, and her eyes were heavy, nearly closed. “Swell—and you?” He came slowly into the room, put his hat on the table, asked: “May we sit down?”

“Sure.” She jerked her head towards a chair, stayed where she was.

Druse said: “You’re drunk.”

“Right.” He smiled, sighed gently. “A commendable condition. I regret exceedingly that my stomach does not permit it.” He glanced casually about the room. In the comparative darkness of a corner, near a heavily draped window, there was a man lying on his back on the floor. His arms were stretched out and back, and his legs were bent under him in a curious broken way, and there was blood on his face.

Druse raised his thick white eyebrows, spoke without looking at Mrs Hanan: “Is he drunk, too?”

She laughed shortly. “Uh-huh—in a different way.” She nodded towards a golf-stick on the floor near the man. “He had a little too much niblick.”

“Friend of yours?” She said: “I rather doubt it. He came in from the fire escape with a gun in his hand. I happened to see him before he saw me.”

“Where’s the gun?”

“I’ve got it.” She drew a small black automatic half out of the pocket of her robe.

Druse went over and knelt beside the man, picked up one of his hands. He said slowly: “This man is decidedly dead.”

Mrs Hanan stood, staring silently at the man on the floor for perhaps thirty seconds. Her face was white, blank. Then she walked unsteadily to a desk against one wall and picked up a whiskey bottle, poured a stiff drink. She said: “I know it.” Her voice was choked, almost a whisper. She drank the whiskey, turned and leaned against the desk, stared at Druse with wide unseeing eyes. “So what?”

“So pull yourself together, and forget about it—we’ve got more important things to think about for a little while.” Druse stood up. “How long ago? …” She shuddered. “About a half hour—I didn’t know what to do… .”

“Have you tried to reach Crandall? I mean before this happened—right after you came in tonight?”

“Yes—I couldn’t get him.”

Druse went to a chair and sat down. He said: “Mister Hanan has turned this case over to me. Won’t you sit down, and answer a few questions? …” She sank into a low chair near the desk. “Are you a detective?” Her voice was still very low, strained. Druse smiled. “I’m an attorney—a sort of extra legal attorney.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “If we can get your rubies back, and assure your safety, and”—he coughed slightly—“induce Mister Hanan to reimburse the insurance company, you will be entirely satisfied, will you not?”

She nodded, started to speak.

Druse interrupted her: “Are the rubies themselves—I mean intrinsically, as stones—awfully important to you? Or was this grandstand play of yours—this business of threatening Crandall—motivated by rather less tangible factors—such as self-respect, things like that?”

She smiled faintly, nodded. “God knows how I happen to have any self-respect left—I’ve been an awful ass—but I have. It was the idea of being made such a fool—after I’ve lost over a hundred thousand dollars to Crandall—that made me do it.”

Druse smiled. “The rubies themselves,” he said—“I mean the rubies as stones—entirely apart from any extraneous consideration such as self-respect—would more seriously concern Mister Hanan, would they not?”

She said: “Sure. He’s always been crazy about stones.”

Druse scratched the tip of his long nose pensively. His eyes were wide and vacant, his thick lips compressed to a long downward curved line. “You are sure you were followed when you left Crandall’s Wednesday?”

“As sure as one can be without actually knowing—it was more of a followed feeling than anything else. After the idea was planted I could have sworn I saw a dozen men, of course.”

He said: “Have you ever had that feeling before—I mean before you threatened Crandall?”

“No.”

“It may have been simply imagination, because you expected to be followed—there was reason for you to be followed?”

She nodded. “But it’s a cinch it wasn’t imagination this evening.”

Druse was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. He looked intently at her, said very seriously: “I’m going to get your rubies back, and I can assure you of your safety—and I think I can promise that the matter of reimbursement to the insurance company will be taken care of. I didn’t speak to Mister Hanan about that, but I’m sure he’ll see the justice of it.”

She smiled faintly.

Druse went on: “I promise you these things—and in return I want you to do exactly as I tell you until tomorrow morning.”

Her smile melted to a quick, rather drunken, laugh. “Do I have to poison any babies?” She stood up, poured a drink.

Druse said: “That’s one of the things I don’t want you to do.”

She picked up the glass, frowned at him with mock seriousness. “You’re a moralist,” she said. “That’s one of the things I
will
do.”

He shrugged slightly. “I shall have some very important, very delicate work for you a little later in the evening. I thought it might be best.”

She looked at him, half smiling, a little while, and then she laughed and put down the glass and went into the bathroom. He leaned back comfortably in the chair and stared at the ceiling; his hands were on the arms of the chair and he ran imaginary scales with his big blunt fingers.

She came back into the room in a little while, dressed, drawing on gloves. She gestured with her head towards the man on the floor, and for a moment her more or less alcoholic poise forsook her—she shuddered again—her face was white, twisted.

Druse stood up, said: “He’ll have to stay where he is for a little while.” He went to the heavily draped window, to the fire escape, moved the drape aside and locked the window. “How many doors are there to the apartment?”

“Two.” She was standing near the table. She took the black automatic from a pocket of her suit, took up a gray suede bag from the table and put the automatic into it.

He watched her without expression. “How many keys?”

“Two.” She smiled, took two keys out of the bag and held them up. “The only other key is the passkey—the manager’s.”

He said: “That’s fine,” went to the table and picked up his hat and put it on. They went out into the hall and closed and locked the door. “Is there a side entrance to the building?”

She nodded.

“Let’s go out that way.”

She led the way down the corridor, down three flights of stairs to a door leading to Sixty-third Street. They went out and walked over Sixty-third to Lexington and got into a cab; he told the driver to take them to the corner of Fortieth and Madison, leaned back and looked out the window. “How long have you and Mister Hanan been divorced?”

She was quick to answer: “Did he say we were divorced?”

“No.” Druse turned to her slowly, smiled slowly.

“Then what makes you think we are?”

“I don’t. I just wanted to be sure.”

“We are
not
.” She was very emphatic.

He waited, without speaking.

She glanced at him sidewise and saw that he expected her to go on. She laughed softly. “He wants a divorce. He asked me to divorce him several months ago.” She sighed, moved her hands nervously on her lap. “That’s another of the things I’m not very proud of—I wouldn’t do it. I don’t quite know why—we were never in love—we haven’t been married, really, for a long time—but I’ve waited, hoping we might be able to make something out of it… .”

Druse said quietly: “I think I understand—I’m sorry I had to ask you about that.”

She did not answer.

In a little while the cab stopped; they got out and Druse paid the driver and they cut diagonally across the street, entered an office building halfway down the block. Druse spoke familiarly to the Negro elevator boy; they got off at the forty-fifth floor and went up two flights of narrow stairs, through a heavy steel fire door to a narrow bridge and across it to a rambling two-story penthouse that covered all one side of the roof. Druse rang the bell and a thin-faced Filipino boy let them in.

Druse led the way into a very big, high-ceilinged room that ran the length and almost the width of the house. It was beautifully and brightly furnished, opened on one side onto a wide terrace. They went through to the terrace; there were steamer chairs there and canvas swings and low round tables, a great many potted plants and small trees. The tiled floor was partially covered with strips of coco-matting. There was a very wide, vividly striped awning stretched across all one side. At the far side, where the light from the living room faded into darkness, the floor came to an abrupt end—there was no railing or parapet—the nearest building of the same height was several blocks away.

Mrs Hanan sat down and stared at the twinkling distant lights of Upper Manhattan. The roar of the city came up to them faintly, like surf very far away. She said: “It is very beautiful.”

“I am glad you find it so.” Druse went to the edge, glanced down. “I have never put a railing here,” he said, “because I am interested in Death. Whenever I’m depressed I look at my jumping-off place, only a few feet away, and am reminded that life is very sweet.” He stared at the edge, stroked the side of his jaw with his fingers. “Nothing to climb over, no windows to raise—just walk.”

She smiled wryly. “A moralist—and morbid. Did you bring me here to suggest a suicide pact?”

“I brought you here to sit still and be decorative.”

“And you?”

“I’m going hunting.” Druse went over and stood frowning down at her. “I’ll try not to be long. The boy will bring you anything you want—even good whiskey, if you can’t get along without it. The view will grow on you—you’ll find one of the finest collections of books on Satanism, demonology, witchcraft, in the world inside.” He gestured with his head and eyes. “Don’t telephone anyone—and, above all, stay here, even if I’m late.”

She nodded vaguely.

He went to the wide doors that led into the living room, turned, said: “One thing more—who are Mister Hanan’s attorneys?”

She looked at him curiously. “Mahlon and Stiles.”

He raised one hand in salute. “So long.”

She smiled, said: “So long—good hunting.”

He went into the living room and talked to the Filipino boy a minute, went out.

In the drugstore across the street from the entrance to the building, he went into a telephone booth, called the number Hanan had given him. When Hanan answered, he said: “I have very bad news. We were too late. When I reached Mrs Hanan’s apartment, she did not answer the phone—I bribed my way in and found her—found her dead… . I’m terribly sorry, old man—you’ve got to take it standing up… . Yes—strangled.”

Druse smiled grimly to himself. “No, I haven’t informed the police—I want things left as they are for the present—I’m going to see Crandall and I have a way of working it so he won’t have a single out. I’m going to pin it on him so that it will stay pinned—and I’m going to get the rubies back, too… . I know they don’t mean much to you now, but the least I can do is get them back—and see that Crandall is stuck so he can’t wriggle out of it.” He said the last very emphatically, was silent a little while, except for an occasionally interjected “Yes” or “No.”

Finally he asked: “Can you be in around three-thirty or four? … I’ll want to get in touch with you then… . Right, I know how you must feel—I’m terribly sorry… . Right. Goodbye.” He hung up and went out into Fortieth Street.

Jeffrey Crandall was a medium-sized man with a close-cropped mustache, wide-set greenish gray eyes. He was conservatively dressed, looked very much like a prosperous real estate man, or broker.

He said: “Long time no see.”

Druse nodded abstractedly. He was sitting in a deep red leather chair in Crandall’s very modern office, adjoining the large room in a midtown apartment building that was Crandall’s “Place” for the moment. He raised his head and looked attentively at the pictures on the walls, one after the other.

“Anything special?” Crandall lighted a short stub of green cigar.

Druse said: “Very special,” over his shoulder. He came to the last picture, a very ordinary Degas pastel, shook his head slightly, disapprovingly, and turned back to Crandall. He took a short-barrelled derringer out of his inside coat-pocket, held it on the arm of his chair, the muzzle focused steadily on Crandall’s chest.

Crandall’s eyes widened slowly; his mouth hung a little open. He put one hand up very slowly and took the stub of a cigar out of his mouth.

Druse repeated: “Very special.” His full lips were curved to a thin, cold smile.

Crandall stared at the gun. He spoke as if making a tremendous effort to frame his words casually, calmly: “What’s it all about?”

“It’s all about Mrs Hanan.” Druse tipped his hat to the back of his head. “It’s all about you gypping her out of her rubies—and her threatening to take it to the police—and you having her murdered at about a quarter after ten tonight, because you were afraid she’d go through with it.”