“I CAME ACROSS a letter,” said Tussard, “that Mr. Levison found after going through——”
“I know the letter.”
“What do you think of it?”
“Obscure.”
“I went right over to see Suttro.”
“Exactly. And?”
“He said he didn’t send it.”
“Ah!”
“He couldn’t tell me what it was about, or why anybody wanted that meeting, because he didn’t write it. He said he hadn’t any idea of taking his name out of the running, if the Directing Board felt like considering him.”
“Could he throw suspicion on anybody else?”
“He couldn’t figure out what it was all about. He didn’t know why anybody would write it. He said he didn’t have anything to tell Christien or the Executive Committee of the Theatre, and if he did, he would have called them up on the ‘phone to tell them. He thought he was being asked to sit in on the meeting to give advice on something, probably. He said Christien called him up Tuesday morning, but he wasn’t in. His secretary took the message, just saying he was expected at the meeting at eleven that night. Later on he got a written notice to verify it. He really didn’t think much about it. And that’s all he knows.”
“Fairly credible, Tussard.”
“I think so. He would have signed his name, wouldn’t he, if he’d written it himself? And he’d have typed it a lot better, wouldn’t he? He’s an author, he types every day of his life, he’d make a darn good stenographer in fact. He showed me when we were taking samples of the machines in his office.”
“What did you make of the machines?”
“None of them match that letter. I stopped in at a typewriter store. The letter must have been done on a portable called the Duplex, and that company’s been out of business twelve years. If you ask me, the letter’s a lousy fake.”
“Perhaps it is. But why?”
“I don’t know. It’s too damn bad that Christien’s so sick. I’d like to ask him a few questions, believe me.” “So you shall, Tussard. I think it will make time pass more quickly for you, if you look forward to the treat. Do you suppose Christien wrote the letter to himself, perhaps?”
“I just wondered, Mr. Bennett, if he ever got that letter.”
“Oh?”
“The secretary, Miss Bannerman, opens his mail and weeds out all the ads and stuff. She doesn’t read every letter. She opens maybe as many as fifty, and weeds out the ads and junk. She doesn’t remember any letter from Suttro on Tuesday, but she says there may have been one, though. In other words, she doesn’t know. There’s nothing to say that Christien called his meeting because of that letter, is there?”
“No.”
“Why couldn’t somebody have slipped the letter in his desk today, then?”
“But why?”
“To cover up the real reason for the meeting, and to start a fuss with Suttro.”
“Inference: Mr. Levison contrived the letter and its discovery.”
“I didn’t say that, Mr. Bennett.”
“However, you thought it, my dear Tussard. We’ll have tea. Do you take tea? Of course. Tea, Hope.”
2.
Geoffrey Bennett swept his quilted gown about him and lashed it fast at the middle. There had been swift and steady sartorial progress, from the Roman Senator in the Bath, through Bennett’s bedroom and the business of trousers, shoes and such, to the final march upon the sitting room and tea. Stripped of the quilted gown and fitted into his tails, Bennett would be ready now for dinner.
“Sit down, Tussard,” said Bennett. “The corpse has been giving you trouble, eh?”
“That reminds me, I got to do something. Telephone?”
“On the table.”
Tussard talked into it briefly, in monotone. He sighed, put it down, went back to his place on a green sofa.
“I got to let them know where I am,” he said, and picked up a petit four, which he popped negligently into his mouth. “Um.” (He swallowed it whole, presumably.) “The dead guy went to Boston a year ago. Conductor on the train remembered him. We sent out a description, you know.”
“Not very interesting, Boston a year ago,” said Bennett. “Laundry, that sort of thing? Even a recluse must have his linen washed, I should think.”
“That’ll come. Probably the washerwoman hasn’t read the papers yet.”
“Go on. Have some tea?”
“I will have a cup, if you don’t mind. Excuse me. That’ll be me.”
The telephone was ringing. Bennett winced and poured, while Tussard mumbled into distance.
“Lutz, the watchman,” he said when he sat down again, “never showed up. He’s in uniform, you know, and he ought to have been spotted by now.”
“Too bad.”
“Hasn’t been home. Lives with his daughter and his son-in-law. Son-in-law, he’s on the Force. Never went out, only with the young people to a movie once in a while. Didn’t drink. Didn’t have any friends. Put his money in a savings account. Seems like a nice, clean, straight old man.”
Tussard drank his tea down scalding hot, and refused more. “No, that’s all. Just one cup of tea, I can stand it once in a while. As far as the Chelsac Theatre goes, Mr. Bennett, we searched that place inch by inch today. I can promise you, we’d have found a pin or a button or a match-box if it was lost. Even if Lutz was dead and stuck in a corner or a closet somewhere, we’d have found him. We had a man from the architects’ school go with us.”
“Have some toast?”
“Spoil my supper if I do.”
“During your search, Tussard, you looked for the stolen announcement, I presume?”
“You don’t have to bring that up against me, Mr. Bennett. That’s gone for good. We all make mistakes, I guess.”
“How very true. Is Mr. Christien still guilty?”
Tussard took a piece of toast, spoiled supper or no spoiled supper. When he had swallowed it, he said with faintly perceptible overtones of apology in his voice, “Well, you can’t forget facts, can you, Mr. Bennett? I got nothing against Christien. But I’d be crazy if I just said goodbye, glad to’ve met you, and let him go. I ask you. Wouldn’t I?”
The telephone rang. “Excuse me,” said Tussard. He listened. The message that trickled into his ear made him snicker, and burst into little puffs of sarcastic laughter. Tussard laughed almost never, it seemed; and gaiety did striking violence to his face. It was sober when he put the instrument down, but it remained slightly sarcastic.
“You got a detective this morning,” said Tussard, stating the simple fact.
“Yes. Not a very good one, I thought.”
“He passed out about half past one this afternoon in a saloon up on Eighth Avenue. Couple of newspaper boys put him in a Turkish Bath to sleep it off. He’s just waking up. He’s trying to get some dope on the case from one of my men, so he can tell you about it.”
“Ah!”
“I’m sorry you didn’t feel like coming to me before you got tangled up with a mug like that. He’s stringing you along, sir.”
Bennett raised his eyebrows above the far rim of his tea cup.
“I’m on my way,” said Tussard. “I got a lot to do these days. It’s none of my business, if you want to keep him. He’ll soak you all the trade’ll stand, and he’ll sell you out if he gets the chance, and he won’t tell you anything worth knowing, and he’ll be tight for a week now he’s got a job. He doesn’t get many. But it’s your own affair, sir.”
“Ah?”
“You might ask him about the tailor. There’s two Plenderbys in the business. We got the wrong one first. We got a lead to a man in Pelham, a man with a wooden leg. Alive and kiting. Mapes doesn’t know that’s all washed out, and he’ll sell you second-hand gossip he picked up from the reporter.”
“And the real Plenderby?”
“The real one made the clothes, but he doesn’t know any name or address. Our cripple used to come at nights for fittings, and he hasn’t got any new clothes for three years. He used to come in a taxi, and sometimes he had another man with him, but I’m not expecting much out of that line. Too far back.”
Bennett had risen from his place on the sofa, and he stood looking out the window at the warm, hazy afternoon.
“So long, sir. See you when you come back from Washington.”
Tussard opened the door. Bennett did not turn. Tussard paused, repeated his adieu.
“Oh, and Tussard!” The giant back remained motionless and uncommunicative, and smoke from Bennett’s pipe tumbled above his head. Tussard waited.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m much obliged to you, Tussard. Much. That’s all.”
Tussard departed.
3.
The dismissal of Mapes was quick, clean and surgical, like the removal of a diseased appendix. The only pity was, the operation failed.
The private detective blew in on a gust of self-assurance scented with whisky and sweetish peppermint. His reddish little eyes were wary. He seemed to be saying, “Here’s an earful for you! Smart! You’re sure to think I’m smart! But not one to show off! Oh, you get your money’s worth with Mapes!” And from beneath this assertiveness, he seemed to be watching like a small, vindictive and treacherous animal.
He sat down on Bennett’s sofa, and, bringing out some folded sheets of paper, shuffled them impressively. Bennett stood at the window, inscrutable, and folded and unfolded his long white fingers in the sash of his dressing gown.
“I’m going to have all this typed out for you so you can read it,” said Mapes in a hearty voice. “Get it to you tomorrow. I’m just giving it to you verbal now. A verbal report. So you don’t have to wait. How’s that? All right?” Bennett nodded.
“Well, I went to the morgue first and got after the dead man’s clothes, and the suit and shirt were made by a tailor. Plenderby. Now at first this Plenderby didn’t want to tell me anything, but after a while he admitted he did make clothes for a cripple. I said, ‘How about it, do you want to get mixed up in a murder?’ and I argued that way, see? till he came across with the name and address. L. C. Stimsbury, Stone Well Road, Pelham. Now this took me all morning, and I knew you wanted me to go up and see about Lutz the watchman, so I didn’t go out to Pelham. Saved that for tomorrow.”
“Very proper,” said Bennett. “You did say, didn’t you, that you visited this Plenderby yourself?”
“Yes, I went to see him myself. That’s right.”
“This morning?”
“That’s right, this morning.”
“At what time?”
Mapes looked baffled, then admitted he thought it might have been a little after ten.
“Alone?”
“Sure, I work alone.”
“Plenderby would remember you, no doubt?”
“Now you see, Mr. Bennett,” explained Mapes in haste, pain and consternation, “if I told you I sent up a guy who assists me sometimes, my assistant I call him—only what the hell does it matter who went to see Plenderby? I told you what he said. I don’t see what you’re driving at. Anyhow, Plenderby wouldn’t remember me, because, you see, I had—”
Bennett murmured, “You lie abominably. You may remember, if you cudgel your wits, that I told you to be discreet. I particularly wished neither the police, nor the newspapers, to know what you were doing.”
“I don’t see what you’re driving at, Mr. Bennett, because—”
“How much?”
“But this is a hell of a way to treat—”
“One hundred dollars. Here. Go away.”
Mapes picked up the hundred-dollar note that Bennett had placed on the tea table. He reddened, then, and threw it contemptuously into the cold toast. He picked it up again and put it angrily in his pocket. He complained and explained, grumbled and implored, and mistakenly allowed an increasing note of threat to creep into his voice.
“If this ain’t a hell of a way to do business,” he cried to the crystal chandelier.
“Yes. Go away.”
“All right. It’s all right with me. Only you can’t get away with this, ask anybody if you can. You—”
“I’m not really too old,” said Bennett gently, “to pitch you with infinite pleasure down the nearest stair.”
“All right. Goodbye, Mr. Bennett. When you get in a jam and you wish you had protection, just you remember this. I ain’t kidding, either. Well, I wish you luck, Mr. Bennett.”
The back of the Mapes neck burned with vengeful determination. He slammed the door loudly after himself. Bennett sighed.