Харлан Эллисон - Murder Plus - True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

Thanking the woman, the sheriff mapped three immediate moves: a check to learn positively whether the described couple had come from Chicago, a hunt for the mysterious “Harron” of the note, and an inquiry at the Felecita Club to establish the identification of the victim if possible.

He telephoned a complete report of the case to Captain John J. Halpin, in charge of Chicago detectives. Halpin promised complete and prompt cooperation to solve the crime.

Kuhn questioned the guards of the electric train which had reached Wayne at 8 o’clock. One remembered a couple answering to the description as having boarded the train at the Chicago terminal at Fifth Avenue. He said the woman had had a small suitcase and the man, no baggage. They had seemed on the best of terms, and had chatted and joked.

To Kuhn, this meant that the crime had not been the result of a chance encounter ending in a holdup!

Halpin’s first move was to send detectives to the downtown hotel on Michigan Avenue in search of Harron. They found that a man of that name had registered there but had left, saying he expected to return there in a few days.

Then the captain hurried with his men to the Felecita Club, a dance academy on Thirty-third Street near Cottage Grove Avenue.

The manager, Frank Oleson, said he knew Mildred Allison. His description of her was the same as that of the girl in the West Chicago morgue.

“Miss Allison was a beautiful girl and one of the best tango dancers in Chicago,” he said. “She has been at my club many times, and has been a great favorite since the popularity of the tango developed. I don’t know why anyone would want to harm her!”

Oleson went to West Chicago and definitely established the victim’s identity.

Kuhn and Halpin went to Chicago with Oleson and questioned him at length about every known detail of the girl’s life.

She had been married twice, he knew, and her first husband lived in Chicago. Her full name was Mildred Allison Rexroat, but she used only “Allison.” She was the mother of two young children by her first husband, Allison. Mildred had had many admirers at the dancing academy and some had been very attentive. But Oleson said he did not know of anyone who might have had a motive to kill her.

The officers showed him the fragments of the mystery note.

Oleson could offer no help on that.

“I want to talk to both the men who have been married to her,” Halpin said. “First, I want to search her living quarters. We may have to dig deeply into a woman’s life to find the point at which the killer entered it.”

Oleson directed the police to a home on Eggleston Avenue where the dancer had had a room.

There among a miscellany of clothing and toilet articles, Halpin found papers, letters and pictures. There were letters from both husbands, some in tender vein, others hinting of quarrels. Addresses were given: Allison, the first husband, lived on the South Side. Rexroat, the second, lived at Macomb, Illinois.

Halpin made telephone calls until he located both men, and received assurance that they would undergo questioning. He decided the best place for the conference would be in the morgue, with Mildred Allison Rexroat, a silent, lifeless witness.

Under the vigilant eyes of Halpin and Kuhn, the two men walked into the dimly lighted chamber of death and looked upon the face of the woman they had loved. State’s Attorney C. W. Hadley of DuPage County followed them in.

“I haven’t the slightest idea of who killed her or why she was killed,” Rexroat said quickly, as he turned away and faced Hadley.

Allison seemed deeply moved and continued to gaze at the still form.

“Mildred—” he said. “I loved her, and, I wanted to keep her. But she drifted away from me, found new companions. Then she divorced me.”

“Where were you on the night of September 26th?” Hadley asked.

“At home, on the South Side. I can prove that by a number of people. I was in the house and in the neighborhood all evening.”

Rexroat spoke.

“I was in my father’s farmhouse at Macomb.”

The officers made an immediate checkup of their alibis and found that both were true.

Everett Rexroat then told a story tinged with sadness and bitterness:

“I met Mildred at a dance club on the South Side and I fell in love at first sight. I couldn’t stay away from her. I went to see her every night. Within a few weeks I asked her to marry me. She didn’t believe I meant it at first, but I convinced her I loved her, and she consented.

“We were married and I brought my bride home to the farm at Macomb. We were happy as ever any married couple had been — at least, I was happy. Then Mildred began to grow tired of country life, and talked about the city and the bright lights. I told her I must stay on the farm, but she became more dissatisfied every day. One night when I came into the house after a hard day’s work I learned she had packed her bag and had gone away.

“That broke me up for a long time, but I knew it was useless to try to follow her and persuade her to come back. I never saw her again — until now!”

After establishing that Rexroat and his father and two neighbors had spent the evening of September 26th in the farm house, Halpin sent detectives to search Allison’s home. They found a trunk marked with Mildred’s name and containing her personal effects. Apparently it had been brought there very recently.

Halpin was interested in that peculiar circumstance and searched the trunk thoroughly. He found many letters, some in German, some voicing vague threats against the dancer. But the captain vainly sought a name and address that would give him a lead.

Other loose ends of the investigation had to be picked up. He sent a squad to the Michigan Avenue hotel in a new quest for the writer of the mysterious note found near the railroad tracks.

The detectives found Harron.

“Mildred Allison?” the man said. “I know nothing about her, except what I have read in newspapers.”

The pasted note was shown to him.

“I can explain that easily. I wrote that note to a friend of mine who lives at Wayne, alluding to an attempt of some swindlers to get me in on a scheme which, I am sure, would have defrauded both of us. It just happens that he tore the note up out there.”

The statement was verified quickly by the police. Another promising lead had failed, and the killer, still unnamed, remained at large.

While Captain Halpin went to the Eggleston Avenue house to locate and question the woman from whom Mildred Allison had rented her room, a strange physical clue was discovered.

A hair switch, of the type used in that day to give woman’s crowning glory a more abundant appearance, was found in the freight yards of the Burlington Railroad, south of downtown Chicago.

The switch was taken to Captain Halpin as he was questioning the victim’s landlady. “That is Mildred’s. I’m sure,” the woman said. “It is made of her hair! That is exactly the shade of hers.”

She stared at the grim reminder of the dead dancer.

“Mildred put that into her rattan suitcase when she left here that evening. She said she was going to Wheaton to arrange about forming a tango class there.” Wheaton was only a few miles away from Wayne, the scene of the crime.

“She had talked with a man, often, about the class,” the landlady continued. “I think she was to meet him that night. Did you find her diamond ring? She had a valuable one.”

“That was not either of her husbands?”

“No, he was a young fellow she met recently when dancing, probably at Felecita. I think it was Mr. Spencer.”

“Tell me all you know about this Spencer,” Halpin asked.

“I saw him one evening when he came to call for Mildred. I think he may have been the man who telephoned to her the afternoon before she started for Wheaton. The voice was like Mr. Spencer’s, a low drawl.”