The morning broke clear and cold. Sam would have welcomed fog or rain to make the task of spying more difficult. However, he followed his usual routine without haste and on finishing his breakfast tinned to Sing:
“You were a little slow in answering that call just as I came in last night, Sing. Were there any other messages for me?”
“I was asleep,” Sing said, his face falling into sullen lines at any hint of criticism. “There was only one call. A woman, a lady perhaps, she spoke well, wished to speak with you. She refused to leave a message.”
“Probably it was my niece——”
“It was not Mrs. Harris.”
“Well, if it’s anything important, the lady will call again. And, Sing, buy a tablet and pencil and keep them beside the phone in the pantry. I wish every call you receive to be recorded.”
“Sir, I never fail to give you your messages.”
“Not often, perhaps. You did not tell me yesterday that Mrs. Harris wanted to speak to me particularly.”
“If you are dissatisfied with me, sir——”
Sing began, hotly.
“When I am, I shall not hesitate to tell you,” Sam interrupted. “Meanwhile don’t forget that tablet and pencil.” He picked up his paper and looked at his watch. “Dinner at the usual time.”
At nine o’clock precisely he was in the lower hall.
A rather callow lad named John Scott was doorman in the daytime. The intense cold had driven him inside and Sam stopped to speak to him.
“A little brisk out doom this morning, John?”
“It’s bitter, C’missioner.” John was careful to give him his title. “I wisht the house would give us doormen swell big capes like a friend of mine has over at the Normandy. They look good and they’re grand to wrap up in on days like this. The wind is whistlin’ off the river somethin’ fierce.”
“I’ll make a note of it,” Sam promised. Then he caught sight of Miss Livingston coming rather feebly across the hall from the elevator. “I’m afraid I’ll freeze. This ulster is supposed to be the warmest thing I have, but it’s homespun and it feels like tissue-paper on a windy day like this.” He especially wanted John to remark that ulster and he turned up the collar ostentatiously, pulled his muffler higher, and began to put on a new pair of pigskin gloves, just as the lady reached him.
“Good morning, Mr. Mellon,” she said.
Her morning had been full of excitement, yet so far she had come off victorious. She longed to tell Sam what had happened, but this was not the time for that.
According to plan, he addressed her:
“John says it’s very cold. Ought you to be going out so soon when you’ve had a touch of the grippe?”
“I can’t afford to baby myself,” she returned petulantly. “There’s the Schuyler dinner-dance list to be made up, and several other things no one else can attend to—and I’ve left my notes upstairs. That shows I’m not well yet. I never forget anything.” She turned to go up again, tottering a little as if from weakness, and Sam stopped her.
“Sit down and take it easy. I’ll go fetch your notes. Surely your maid can get them for me.”
Miss Livingston sat down as if relieved by this offer of help.
“You’re very kind. Tell Eliza—Eliza’s my maid’s name—that she will find a small red-leather notebook in one of the files in the spare room. Remember, red. I don’t want the black one. It’s in the third or the fifth file from the right hand. I can’t be sure which. I think it’s the third, but she will have to look.”
Sam started toward the elevator, then called: “Oh, John!”
“Yes, sir?”
He beckoned to the lad and whispered to him:
“The old lady ought not to be going out. In just five minutes whistle for a taxi. I’ll persuade her to let me drop her at her office.”
“Her own car is here, sir.”
“I didn’t know she had a car. Well, have it at the door then in five minutes and I’ll help her into it so fast she won’t have time to feel chilled.” He stepped into the elevator and in less than a minute was in Harvey’s room, where he divested himself of coat, hat, muffler and gloves.
“Get into these quickly,” he said. “No, wait a minute. Those evening clothes might give you away. We’ll have to change trousers at least. Miss Livingston’s a real sport. She noticed that we were the same height and build and had hair the same color. Now with this muffler and with your collar pulled up, I don’t think there’s a chance in the world of anyone guessing that it isn’t Sam Mellon. Off you go!”
Eliza was in the foyer, holding out a red notebook.
“Don’t forget this, sir,” she said, eager to help the plot along. “I just couldn’t bear it if you didn’t get away safe. Only I know you will.”
Sam was standing, his eyes on his watch.
“Time to be off, old man,” he said. Harvey wrung his hand silently and stepped into the elevator.
“I wisht I dared look out of the window to see what happens,” Eliza hinted.
“You mustn’t risk it,” Sam told her, and caught the woman staring at him as if fascinated.
“Them trousers, sir,” she faltered. “We forgot all about them. Of course Mr. Thorne had them on underneath—You see, his tailor basted strips with his name into all of his clothes and we remembered to rip them out before the police came this morning——”
“The police?” Sam interrupted, simply aghast.
“Yes, sir. Awful early. About eight o’clock. Miss Livingston made a fuss about letting them into the spare room. But, to get rid of ‘em, she let ‘em in at last. It was airing, with my nightgown and slippers and all on a chair, and her files and papers in plain sight on top o’ the desk. I never in all my life see anyone so disappointed as that lad with the blue eyes.
They went through the whole flat, poking into closets and under beds. When they found Mr. Thorne’s evening clothes, with the labels all ripped out, in the butler’s lavatory, they thought they had something for sure. But Miss Livingston was a treat.”
“How did she explain them?”
“The best she could. She said she had ‘em for the use of a butler when she gave dinner parties. She said she was particular what her attendants wore, and that’s no more than the truth. Then when they asked why the labels was all gone, she explained, very haughty, that she did not propose to risk some casual employee (those was her very words, sir) going off with clothing that had her nephew’s name in it.”
“Is Mr. Thorne her nephew?” Sam asked, rather stupidly, for the question agitating his mind was where they had parked Harvey while this search was going on.
“Bless you, no, sir! But Mr. Lucius Livingston is, and she called him out of bed last night to tell him he’d given her a set of dinner clothes that didn’t fit him and what tailor in London made ‘em. They were too new to be called old, you see.”
“She thought of everything——”
“Indeed she did, sir. She even changed his blotting-paper. She might have been going to the movies all her life. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“But,” Sam at last got out the question he was eager to have answered, “where was Mr. Thorne all this time?”
Eliza took a long breath and emitted an excited giggle. This was the climax of her tale.
“Miss Livingston told me that a long time ago there was a man who wrote books. Sort of detective stories, and he invented the very best way of hiding something, and that was not to hide it at all. So yesterday I got the loan of a pair of old overalls and an old coat from my brother, who’s a plumber but very obliging, and while the detectives was pokin’ ‘round into my room and every place that was no business of theirs, Mr. Thorne was working in the dining-room with all the curtains pinned up out of the road, polishing the windows, and the whole place smelling so strong of ammonia, that reelly no one could suspicion him.”
“Why in the world didn’t Miss Livingston tell me that she suspected that the police were going to search her apartment?”
“Oh, sir,” said Eliza, righteously, “Miss Livingston and me, we didn’t think it would be quite the thing for the Police Commissioner to be mixed up in making fools of the police. We didn’t think it would look well, sir.”
“Perhaps you were right, Eliza,” Sam said, suppressing his amusement. “And since I may possibly be treated to a similar visitation, I shall bring these trousers back to you, once I’ve changed.”
“Shall I go up and fetch you something else to wear, sir?”
“No,” said Sam. “The best thing for you to do is to make sure when Sing has gone out. Then I’ll run up and change, but not before.”
“Perhaps that’s just as well, sir.” Eliza paused, but went on, portentously: “Maybe I shouldn’t say it about another person in service, but I don’t like that Sing. He’s got such a funny taste in pictures. Not refined, if you see what I mean, sir. He went out last night long before the last picture was done, and it was perfectly lovely. It brought tears to my eyes. Two sweet little children-”
“Some other time, Eliza,” Sam interrupted. “It sounds like just the sort of picture I adore, only now I’ve work to do. Will you run back and let me know the minute Sing goes out?”
“Yes, sir, I will.” Eliza started out hut could not resist saying over her shoulder: “It’s moving to the Lexington and’ll be there the rest of the week, Mr. Mellon. It’s called ‘The Love of His Youth.’”
“The Love of His Youth!” Poor, poor Connie. Sam was plunged in an unprofitable revery when Eliza returned.
“He’s gone, sir. I called him on the telephone and asked him to send me a Camembert when he did his shopping, to save me having to go out in the cold, me suffering with a troublesome tooth, and he stopped at the door for the money. I saw him go down.”
“Good girl,” Sam said approvingly, and took his departure.
He chose another suit and dressed hurriedly, but just as he was about to leave, wondering how he was to explain this second apparition to John, the doorman, his telephone rang. Impatient at being delayed, he thought of ignoring the call, but the imperious demand of the ringing overcame his resistance.
It was Louise’s voice that came to him, pleasantly conversational, evidently ready for a long chat.
“Hurry with anything of importance you have to say, Lou. I’ve a lot to do and am in the devil of a rush.”
“O.K.,” said Louise, “Aimée says——”
“In French,” Sam hinted. His French was far from fluent, but he had bethought him suddenly of the possible tapping of his line. Louise, a little startled, rose to the occasion:
“In French, of course. Ette m’a dit que l’emeraude carrée de madame est perdue.”
“O.K.,” said Sam. “I mean, trés bien,” and hung up.
Thereupon, wasting no more time, he took the tell-tale trousers to Eliza, who at once began an intensive search for tailor’s labels.
Connie’s square emerald gone? What did that mean? The police would have returned everything on the body, yet that ring was the one ornament Connie never appeared without. The rest of her jewelry might be changed to harmonize with her clothes. That square emerald, supported in its platinum setting by two smaller triangular diamonds, she always wore. It must have been taken from her dead hand.
“I like it,” was her usual response when twitted with the fact that it accorded ill with her dress. Alone with him and in a more expansive mood, she had said: “To me, it’s a sign of victory. Incidentally, it’s one of the few things I possess that cost me nothing—absolutely nothing—not even a qualm of conscience.”
He wondered what lay behind her light words. He found now that, in thinking of Connie, it was not her sparkling prettiness, the challenge of her gay glances, her provocative humors that he remembered but rather the puzzle of her bitterness, so well hidden from the world that must only be permitted to think her happy, poised on the crest of the wave of success. Poor beautiful Connie. At least she had died without being disillusioned. Hugh Oliver, to her, was still a captive, and her most persistent ambition was on the way to fulfillment. Only, since she had cared for Alix enough to leave her that treasured ring in her will, how had she brought herself to deprive her friend of the play so necessary to her professional future? For even if Connie herself had made a success in “This Business of Being a Woman,” he had no faith that she would have stuck to the profession. One success with plenty of hurrah and adulation, that would have been fun; while the steady grind of theatrical production with its wearing work and its inevitable ups and downs, would soon have turned Connie’s thoughts to seeking a pleasanter channel for her energies. True, she had been on the stage earlier in her life and had seemed to enjoy it; but she was young then, the parts, not taxing, and she was in need of the money she earned. How she would have met Oliver’s denial of her claim that they were engaged to be married he could not conceive. It was a situation so brutal in its cruelty that he could only be thankful she was spared all knowledge of it.
And what had become of Hugh Oliver? He was sure that reporters as well as police must be looking for him to ascertain what, if anything, he could suggest to furnish a lead to work on.
That he was in any way concerned in the murder Sam did not believe. If the man had meant to put an end to Connie’s life, there would have been no need for the perfidy of his announcement.
The Commissioner stepped out of the elevator in the lower hall just as one of the other cars brought down a chattering load of young girls. This was the best of luck. He hung back to let them precede him, sure that they would engage John’s attention to the exclusion of a mere man, and that he could slip out behind them while the doorman was putting them in taxis.
And as he had planned, so it happened. John had no eyes for him, and he had reached the corner before he felt a touch on his shoulder.
McCurdy. Of course it would be McCurdy.