The Shattered Raven (9 page)

“Well, fellows, we’re here for the night and I suppose we might as well get right down to cases. Before we get into a lengthy discussion of MWA and its goals and achievements over these past twenty-odd years, I know our listeners would want to know if there has been any progress in the hunt for Ross Craigthorn’s slayer. Barney—speaking as executive vice-president, do you have anything to offer on that subject?”

Barney cleared his throat a little too loudly, knowing that it must have boomed out the microphone. He shoved back in his chair a few inches and said, “Nothing really new. We’re doing a little personal investigative work and any results that we find will immediately be turned over to the police. I know that every one of us is shocked and saddened by Ross Craigthorn’s death, and I want to take this occasion to appeal to all of the listeners my voice might be reaching. If any of you, anywhere, have information about this terrible crime, knowledge of some enemy Ross Craigthorn might have had, something in his past life which might have caused his murder, I wish you’d communicate with me immediately.”

Skinny Simon joined in at this point. “That’s right, listeners. In fact, as you regulars to all-night land know, we have a teletype system right here in our control room. Any telegrams sent to us are transmitted directly to it, and we can have them on the air within thirty minutes of the time you send them. We cannot accept phone calls—but telegrams, yes! Anyone with information about the Craigthorn killing, please wire us at once! We’ll be here all night Now, just a pause for a brief commercial message, and we’ll be back with you.”

They cut away for sixty seconds and then started up again. The Craigthorn case was discussed briefly before shifting to other matters. Harry Fox could always be depended upon to fill them in with some amusing data, and he took his cue now, replying to Skinny’s leading question. “Harry, I understand that you know a good deal about the organisation, and about the early days of mystery writing.”

Harry nodded, then apparently realised that the listeners could not see his nod. “That’s right, Skinny.”

Max Winters chimed in at this point “I may be a minority voice, but I have the feeling that too much attention is paid to the glorious past of the detective story. I’m just interested in its glorious present, myself. I’m interested in the money that publishers pay, and the reviews my novels get. I think there are a great many like me in the field. We belong to MWA and we support its aims, but we don’t go pouring over dusty old volumes to trace the antecedents of the detective story. We’re just interested in here and now—today—and maybe tomorrow.”

Dick McMullen, the agent, was quick to support him. While he talked, he tapped a pencil against his cheek, a nervous habit that intrigued Barney. “You’re absolutely right there, Max. For all practical purposes, the detective novel started in the nineteen-twenties with Christie and Hammett and VanDine, and later with Stout and Queen and Gardner. Anything earlier, even Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, belongs, for all practical purposes, to another era.”

“Now I don’t know about that,” Barney interrupted. “It may belong to another era, but that’s an era we owe an awful lot to.”

Barney’s back was to the control room as he talked. Occasionally he managed to sneak a glance at Susan Veldt and the other girls. As the conversation droned on, interrupted by regularly-spaced commercials, he was not surprised to see Miss Sweeney and Betty Rafferty growing bored. By the time the programme had ended its second hour, the two of them got up, said a few words to Susan and departed.

At the next commercial break, he said to Skinny, “We lost a couple of the girls. They couldn’t take the rough hours.”

The host nodded. “That’s why I rarely have women on this show. I had a lady doctor once who fell asleep sitting in that very chair you’re in.”

They cut back with the programme and the talk droned on for another hour. Skinny took a break around three to whisper, “The food should be here at three-thirty. Then we all knock off for a half-hour’s eating.”

While the time passed faster than Barney had expected, he was still happy when the break came. Some sort of recorded segment was put on, and Susan came out to join them.

“Where’s the food? I’m starved!”

A crew of Chinese entered bearing white delicatessen containers of food. Barney had to admit it was good, even though he didn’t care for Chinese nourishment as a rule. There was much casual chatting and a relaxed air settled over the whole proceedings.

“No telegrams came in,” Skinny said. “That’s surprising. I thought we’d at least get a few cranks.”

“Telegrams cost money,” Susan reminded him. “I’ll bet you got a lot of cranks when you had a phone in here.”

“Did we ever! One after the other! I had no time for the programme. I was forever answering the telephone. We cut that out quick enough.”

But when the show resumed at four a.m., Barney made one more appeal for information. “If anyone knows anything at all about the terrible killing of Ross Craigthorn at the Biltmore on Friday night, I ask him to telegraph me here at the studio right now. It’s extremely important and certainly you’ll be well rewarded for your efforts.”

They went on with the programme, with Skinny managing to get in plugs for all their most recent books. The one dud of the show was proving to be Frank Jesset, who had contributed no more than three sentences during the course of the night Barney would not have been surprised to see him sneak out during one of the commercials, but he stuck to it, chain smoking cigarettes and trying not to look bored. At one point they tried to shift the conversation over to confession magazines, but even in that field he had nothing to offer.

It was twenty minutes to five when Susan suddenly signalled from the control room. Something was up. She tiptoed into the studio, thrusting a torn sheet of telegraph paper in front of Barney. The message was short and to the point.
May have information regarding Craigthorn killing. Contact me this address noon Monday.
It was signed
Irma Black
, and gave the address of a residential hotel on lower Fifth Avenue.

By the time the programme ended with a somewhat limping finish at five o’clock, Barney was ready to go to Irma Black’s address at once. The others crowded around, giving suggestions.

“She’s not there,” Max said. “If she was there, she’d have said to come now. She’s not going to be there till noon.”

“She’s probably sleeping,” Harry said. Barney bit his lip. “I don’t know. It could be nothing. I hate to go chasing down there at this hour if it is nothing. Let’s hold off till noon. Then I’ll tackle her alone.”

“Alone?” Susan Veldt asked. “You’re forgetting me, buddy. I’m tagging right along with you. This is still my story.”

“All right,” Barney agreed.

“Should I pick you up at your apartment?”

“I’ll meet you down there. Noon. On the dot.”

“What’s that number on Fifth Avenue again?”

Barney showed her and then stuffed the telegram into his pocket. The others were drifting out, and he rode down on the elevator with Dick McMullen and Skinny. “How’d you think it went?” Dick asked. “This is my first experience on one of these things.”

Skinny shrugged his shoulders. “After five nights a week, they’re all pretty much the same. I think it was a good show, though. Sometimes I like ’em with a little more pepper—a little more spice. Once in a while we have to settle for mystery writers.” He chuckled as he said it. Then the elevator door came open. The building watchman glanced sleepily at them and nodded. They went out into Seventh Avenue, strolling up toward Times Square. Dawn was just starting to break.

T
IRED AS SHE WAS,
Susan stayed awake long enough to type five single-spaced pages. Then she stapled them together and stuck them in her purse for delivery to Rowe in the morning. The morning? It was already morning. She looked out through bleary eyes at the dawn as it struck the Central Park trees, listening for some sign that the animals were awake. She turned in, setting her clock for ten, knowing that she’d have to stop by the office before she met Barney at Irma Black’s apartment The whole thing was probably a wild goose chase. Anyone demented enough to listen to those all-night shows surely wouldn’t draw the line at sending a nutty telegram.

When she awoke with the buzzing alarm clock in her ears, she knew that she must dress quickly. The clock was old and had gone off ten minutes late. Still, she made it to the
Manhattan
offices before eleven-thirty. Her luck did not hold all the way, though. Arthur Rowe was just going into a staff meeting—the regular Monday morning session to plan next week’s issue.

“I’ll leave the notes in your box,” she said.

“Good, good. We’ve got proofs on this week’s issue if you want to see it. My secretary has them.”

She glanced over them with interest, noting that he had managed to get in a stop-press notice of Craigthorn’s killing, with promise of a detailed series to follow. It made her feel that she hadn’t stayed up all night and typed for an hour in vain. She glanced through the morning mail and then caught a cab for lower Fifth Avenue.

When she arrived, she saw that Barney was already there, pacing the sidewalk and glancing at his watch. “You’re late,” he said, “but I suppose that’s not surprising.”

“I had to stop by the office.”

“I know. You explained your work habits to me. Come on. It’s after twelve.”

The woman named Irma Black answered their second ring. Her features surprised Susan, almost as much as her apparent age. She was no sexy young wanton trying to lure Barney Hamet anywhere. She looked to be fifty or more, though a hard life could have added lines to an already sagging face and dumpy frame. Her flowered dress hung on her like a sack, and she seemed to be wearing no make-up.

She led them into the small furnished apartment. “I was listening to the radio. I missed the beginning, but I caught the part where you asked for help, Mr. Hamet Who’s this you’ve brought with you?”

“Miss Veldt. She’s assisting me.”

“No police. This isn’t a police thing, is it?”

“No police,” Barney assured her. “The police come later, after we get something. Do you have anything to give us?”

“You mentioned money on the programme.”

“I don’t think I specifically mentioned money. I might have said that any information would be rewarded.”

“Well, isn’t it the same thing? Isn’t a reward money?”

“Did you know Ross Craigthorn?”

“Of course I knew him!”

“Tell me about it.”

“Not until I see the colour of your money.”

Barney was growing impatient “Look, either you know something or you don’t. I’m not going to pay money for nothing. What sort of information do you have?”

“I knew Ross Craigthorn in his youth. Out in the midwest in a little town called June.”

“June?”

“That’s right. Like the month. June, Nebraska.”

“That’s where you’re from?”

“That’s where we’re all from. Ross Craigthorn, and me, and the other one.”

“What other one?” Barney asked.

“Ha! That would be telling, wouldn’t it? Ross was a wild boy in his youth. He and the other one—they did bad things. They did a bad thing to me.”

“What sort of a bad thing? You can speak up clearer than that. We’re all adults here.”

But Irma shook her head. “Took me a long time to track him down. Even after seeing him on television I wasn’t sure it was the same person. His name was a little different in those days—not much, though. The
Craig
was still there, and that made me think it was him. I knew he’d come to New York after it happened.”

“What happened?”

“I’m telling it! It’s my story! I’ve lived with it—and I’m telling it!” Her hands fluttered with excitement.

“All right. Tell it, then.”

Susan was making unobtrusive shorthand notes, and she hoped this wouldn’t scare the old woman.

“They both came to New York, or at least Ross did. I don’t know for sure where the other one went Ross told me he was successful, though. Both of them successful. Money. I came here to get money from them,”

“Would you call it blackmail?”

“No. Just getting what’s due me after all these years. For what they did to me.”

“Tell us about it,” Barney urged again. It was hot in the apartment, hot for April, and Susan wished that the woman would open a window. She wondered how Barney could stand the heat.

“Money,” the woman said again. “I don’t tell nothing till I see some money.”

Barney sighed and started pacing the floor. “How much?”

“I was going to get a hundred thousand dollars from Ross Craigthorn.”

“A hundred … Why that’s ridiculous! He never would have given you that much.”

She smiled her knowing smile. “Ross Craigthorn was a rich man. A hundred thousand would have been nothing to him. He probably makes that in a week.”

“You’ve been reading the wrong fan magazines, I’m afraid,” Barney told her. “A hundred thousand dollars would probably be six months’ income to Craigthorn—after taxes. Whatever your hold over him, I don’t think he would have paid that much to keep his past a secret.”

She stared uncertainly, biting her lower lip. To Susan, she looked like nothing so much as an old hag, a witch, from some half-forgotten childhood fairy tale.

“Besides,” Barney reminded her; “Ross Craigthorn is dead. If there ever was a hundred thousand, it’s not there anymore. Let’s talk sensibly.”

“Fifty thousand?” she asked, uncertainly. “I came all the way to New York from June.”

“No fifty thousand.”

Susan could almost imagine him calculating the amount of money in the MWA treasury. From what she knew of the organisation, it couldn’t be much. Maybe a few thousand dollars, at best.

“I could maybe give you five hundred,” Barney said.

“Don’t even talk to me. Go away. I’ll find the other one and get the hundred thousand out of him. Ross said he was famous too. I’ll find him.”

“Famous doesn’t mean rich. Take the five hundred and be happy you’ve got it.”

“Go back and talk to your friends. You can do better than that,” she said. “A lot better than five hundred dollars after I came halfway across the country.”