SCORE ONE FOR MRS. BRAUNFELD
“Who is there?”
Captain North had had to rap twice before Mrs. Braunfeld would reply.
“It’s Captain North, Mrs. Braunfeld.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you a minute,” he replied and struggled to regain that calmness which had deserted him momentarily when the dagger came flickering out of the passage. Now of all times he must think clearly. The answer to many of his problems must lie inside Ruby’s skillfully marcelled head.
“Captain North?” Did Mrs. Braunfeld’s rich contralto voice sound somewhat strained? “I do not know you. What do you want?”
This, of course, was absurd. The Intelligence Captain was well aware that, within an hour of boarding the Kiangsi at Nanking, Ruby Braunfeld had very obviously catalogued and cross-indexed every unattached male on the ship. Apparently this Braunfeld woman was not too clever. Still, he checked himself on recalling the deep guile of Nadia Stefan (*See The Branded Spy Murders). Perhaps this crudity was a disarming sham.
Assuming his most rigidly formal and official manner he said, “At Captain Carstairs’ request I am conducting a preliminary inquiry into the death of Mr. Trenchard. May I come in? I promise to take only a few minutes of your time.”
Keeping a vigilant eye on that gloomy passage through which death had flown so swiftly at him, Captain North strained his ears. It seemed that Ruby Braunfeld was very busy inside, and he thought he heard the gentle clang of a porthole being cautiously shut just before she unlocked the door.
A faint aura of Nuit de Noel beat in his face as he first glimpsed those delicately chiseled features which furnished so much conversation along the Bund. Despite himself, North found himself rather impressed with the sheer femininity of the woman before him. Every line of her lovely body hinted at sex. She was very likely capable, North realized, of upsetting the equanimity of a mummy.
“You will forgive?” she inquired with the faint trace of an accent. “I was going to—to take some medicine. I am so terribly upset. Ah, that poor dear boy!”
“A very tragic business,” was all North could find to say as he stepped into the cabin which was further pervaded by the smell of scented cigarettes.
Distrust and apprehension playing in her large greenish eyes, Ruby Braunfeld paused facing the door.
“Please to sit down,” she murmured and trained the devastating battery of her eyes on the tall figure in gray. “You will not be unpleasant, no?”
“Not intentionally.”
Full red lips became curved in a slow smile. “I am sure you will not. You have such nice eyes—they try to be stern, but pouf! always they twinkle a little. Besides, always have I adored black hair that is gray above the temples. Yes, since I was a schoolgirl.”
“That gray,” he said in a clumsy effort to parry her adroit defense, “was put there by pretty women. Now I’m afraid it’s going to turn snow white.”
Apparently keyed-up nerves relaxed under this unexpected gallantry. As North had hoped, some of that caution vanished from Ruby Braunfeld’s manner.
“No,” she declared, “you really have nothing to fear from me.”
As they talked he noted her slender sweeping brows, her short, straight nose, and the square, sullen-looking mouth of a type which many men find irresistible.
There was, he instantly perceived, a distinct wariness in her greenish eyes, which were large and a little too heavy-lidded to be quite ideal.
For no good reason the idea occurred that her uneasiness might have no connection with what he might say or do and, as the interview progressed, he found the impression growing sharper.
“I—I heard you in Dick—Mr. Trenchard’s room. I hope you found a—what you call it? Clue?” She sank gracefully onto the edge of the bed with a swirl of draperies that exposed a startling length of silk-clad legs and the flash of a jeweled green garter.
“I’m afraid I haven’t, Mrs. Braunfeld,” he replied smoothly, though color surged into his lean cheeks. “It’s quite the most puzzling murder I’ve encountered in a long time.”
“How ver-ry fortunate that we have an Intelligence officer aboard,” she remarked and bent to take a long cigarette from a box that lay open on the night stand by the head of her bed.
“You will have one?” she asked.
“Thanks, no, Mrs. Braunfeld,” he said, while his gaze flickered over the floor of the cabin. “I’m really very sorry to bother you at such an hour, but there are some questions I must ask now.”
“Please be sure that I will help you to the limit of my ability,” she declared, nervously tapping the long cigarette on an almond-shaped thumb nail. “I am terribly crushed—ver-ry desolate over the death of that poor boy. He was so sweet—tout à fait charmant.”
Pulling out and lighting a cigarette of his own, North sent a swirl of smoke ceilingward as, very casually, he inquired, “Where did you first meet him?”
“At the Cathay bar in Shanghai—last month.” North took pains to appear perfunctory and uninterested as he went on. “And he went to Nanking just to be with you?”
“It is possible; he loved me very much,” she said, but no sooner had the words left her lips than sudden bitter lines came to dominate her expression.
“Forgive an unpleasant but necessary question—he had complete access to your room?”
“Why should I lie?” Ruby demanded, a touch of defiance in her tone. “All Shanghai knows it is my métier to please men. I—I am not like so many women—I give for what I take. I think I pleased poor Dickie.”
North regarded his cigarette with absurd interest before he said, “Why did you go to Nanking in times like these?”
“On a matter that concerns no one but myself, Monsieur le Capitaine.”
“Perhaps. Did Mr. Trenchard know the nature of this business?”
He saw Ruby’s eyes become expressionless when she said, “I told him nothing of it. I was ver-ry surprised when I met him in Nanking—and of course delighted.”
“Did he say where he had been?”
“No. Only that he had had business near Taihung.” Ruby uncrossed her legs and heaved a little sigh. “So many questions, mon capitaine. Are they all necessary?”
His smile conveyed a convincing apology. “I’m afraid so. A few more and I’ll leave you.”
“Well?”
“You and Trenchard had no quarrel?”
“How absurd! If you imagine it was that Mr. Chang’s attentions—” She checked herself.
“Ah,” North said smoothly, “I was coming to him. Who and what is he?”
It seemed to North that the woman before him was at a loss for a reply. Presently she said, “I do not know him well, nor do I understand him. Presents he continues to send me, though I have told him his interest is—is—well, useless. I was ver-ry surprised when he reached Nanking on the same train as Dickie.”
This remark North labeled with a bright red tag and stored in the archives of his memory. So Trenchard and Chang—not friends, by any means—had come to Nanking on the same train. Well, well!
Somewhat encouraged, he resumed his catechism. “Where in your cabin did you leave that shawl you sent Mr. Trenchard to get?”
The green eyes became very wide and frightened. “What a curious question! How did you know I sent him for it?”
“I was standing in the bar door,” North explained. “I heard you ask him to fetch it. Besides, it was in his hand when he was murdered.”
“Oh, I see.” Ruby Braunfeld lit a fresh cigarette with fingers that trembled a little. “The shawl? Oh, I think I must have left it lying at the foot of the bed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Why—why, yes. I am sure I did. It was on the footboard of my bed. Is it so important?”
“Oh, no,” lied North and exulted inwardly. So someone had known that Trenchard would be sent below. In his mind’s eye North pictured the killer waiting, panther-like, in the dark, until this woman could send her lover down to his doom.
The case was taking on grimmer aspects. A coldblooded person, this pale-haired courtesan.
“It is true, Mrs. Braunfeld,” he inquired quietly, “that you and General Steel knew each other before?”
Her head flashed up, and Ruby Braunfeld’s delicate features became an expressionless mask.
“Yes. Though I cannot imagine where you learned of that silly affair. But, mon capitaine, that is vieux jeu—three years old. It was in the Philippines. I stood him six months, and then his childish devotion made me sick. I left him—comme ça” She snapped her fingers softly.
“You quarreled?”
“Yes. He was too much the animal—no finesse. Every time a man looked at me Samuel wanted to fight, and several times he did. He was fou d’amour! They are so easy to man-age, those big violent men.” She leaned a little toward her vis-à-vis and leveled a calculating look at him. “It is the quiet, alert men like you, Monsieur le Capitaine, who are hard to understand.”
An ash from her long blue cigarette fell to the cabin’s gray carpet.
“I imagine that le pauvre Sam still thinks he loves me.” She heaved a little sigh. “Perhaps I shall take him back. His arms were so strong they used to frighten me. And not many men can frighten me.”
North did not state that he could well believe it, but said instead, “You have been very patient with me. Please believe that I am sorry it was necessary to bother you.” Then he added, not untruthfully, “I hope we meet again some time, under pleasanter circumstances.”
With a relieved sigh, Ruby Braunfeld extended a small white hand and got to her feet.
“Au revoir, mon capitaine. Will you be in Shanghai for long?”
“I hardly think so.”
“What a shame,” she murmured. “I had hoped that perhaps you would come to see me. You intrigue me.”
There was a real allure to the way her eyes peered up from beneath those heavy lids.
“I would like to hear of your adventures,” she continued. “Much I have heard of you since that affair in Oahu. It was magnificent—Dieu, how I admire brains! You will come if you find time, no? You might not be too bored.”
“If I stay on, I shall certainly make time, Madame,” he assured her with the captivating smile which in the past had smoothed many an otherwise stormy path.
“Qui sait?” Ruby Braunfeld cried. “You would not regret it. Mine is a rather nice little place in the French Concession and far enough out on the Rue Eugene Bard to be quiet—and private.”
He left her standing there as he had found her, by the foot of her bed, with the light on the washstand creating a revealing silhouette through the filmy negligee.
He strode down the right-hand passageway towards his own cabin with ideas rushing about in his brain like cats with fur afire.
“Before we go any further,” he told himself, “we’d better do a little thinking.”
But he had hardly locked his cabin door when a loud and arrogant knock made its panels rattle.
“Who’s there?”
“Don’t worry, Cap,” a deep voice said. “It’s me, Sam Steel. Wanted to gab a bit before corking off.”
“All right, just a minute.” Being an essentially foresighted man North slipped off his shoulder holster and thrust the .32 into the waistband of his trousers before he opened the door.
Seen in the half light, General Sam Steel’s wiry bulk looked even larger than normal, and his wide shoulders almost filled the door as he paused there.
“Well, Steel, what’s troubling you? Conscience, or all that liquor you packed away?”
Steel’s teeth gleamed in a hard grin. “Both pretty damn unlikely—as you ought to know, Cap. No, it’s somethin’ else.”
“Well, come on in,” North invited. “If you stay out there you might get the same dose as Trenchard.”