Stewart Sterling - Where There’s Smoke

He took off his hat. “I think we’ve met before.”

“I don’t remember it.” She pulled the jacket a little closer together; it was one of those gestures designed to draw attention rather than distract it. “You don’t wait to be invited into a girl’s bedroom, do you?”

“Not when I’m on business.”

“You have no business—” the singer shook her head as if resentful — bronze hair fanned out over the pillows — “bothering me at a time like this.” Her tone didn’t carry out the suggestion of resentment; Pedley thought she was waiting to determine what sort of an impression she’d made.

The Wasson girl cried, “Don’t talk to him, Leila. He has no right to crash in like this!”

Pedley gave the room the once-over. “No idea how much latitude the Fire Investigation Bureau has when it’s looking into an arson case.” The bedroom was a decorator’s delight. Nice furniture. Period pieces. There was a glimpse of polar-bear rug showing through the open door of the bathroom. Somebody had taste—

Leila murmured, “Arson?”

“The blaze that killed your brother wasn’t any accident, Miss Lownes.”

“I don’t believe it.” She sat bolt upright. Her eyes were those of a child who has heard something too horrible to understand. If she was acting, he decided, she was one hell of a good actress. The eyes that stared at him in disbelief were really green, he noticed — not the hazel-green many red-haired girls have, but the delicate shade of fresh mint.

“The theater was torched especially to get your brother.”

Kim Wasson muttered, “Oh, God!”

Leila put one hand to her eyes, sank back helplessly on the pillows. It was very effective. Very little-girl helpless.

“You want to help identify the person who caused your brother’s death?”

She nodded, numbly. “What can I do?”

“Answer a few questions. In private, preferably.”

She took the hand away from her eyes. “I won’t have anything to say that Kim shouldn’t hear.”

“I might have.” He didn’t make it sound disagreeable.

“The gentleman wants you to leave, darling.” Leila forced a wan smile for the arranger. “Don’t go far away.”

“I’ll be within screaming distance.” Kim Wasson marched out, left the door open.

Leila shifted her pillow. The marshal made her uneasy; she resented the unfamiliar sensation. She was accustomed to men being disturbed by her, to having them more or less automatically at an emotional, or perhaps a glandular, disadvantage as soon as they got close to her. The reversal of positions was disturbing.

Everything about Pedley was slightly alarming. His muscular compactness, that burn-scar on his face, the high-cheekboned features, the tightly sensitive mouth. In the way he had come into the room — the way he moved about it, restlessly — there was an expression of intense and concentrated alertness.

His eyes searched hers with obvious suspicion. When she spoke, his head inclined almost imperceptibly as if to make certain he caught the slightest overtone in her voice. His whole attitude was a challenge.

“I don’t like to come at you like this, when you’re sunk, Miss Lownes. But no use beating about. You’re right up at the top of the suspect list.”

Leila pulled bits of white fur from the cuffs of her bed jacket. “Do you have to be nasty?”

“I’m trying to show you what you’re up against. The firebug had to have a motive for putting your brother out of the picture. You had one. Maybe even a good one.”

“You’re a liar.” There was no rancor in her tone.

“The bug was at the Brockhurst and in the dressing-room where the fuse was set. You were at both places.”

She put her knees up under the bedclothes; the movement disarranged the bed jacket again. “What’s that supposed to prove?”

“The fire was touched off right after you helped carry your brother upstairs. About the time you sent Gaydel downstairs so you’d be alone with Ned. I’ve known Grand Juries to vote true bills on less than that.”

She pushed the bronze helmet of hair back off her forehead. “I’d like to know what makes you think I’d want to murder my brother.”

“If this was just another murder, I wouldn’t run a temperature about it. First place, it’d be a matter for the police, not the Fire Department. Second place, I’ve known occasions when a good, clean murder might not have been such a bad thing.” He wandered past the doorway where he could see the Wasson girl; she was at the telephone, talking so softly he hadn’t even heard her put in the call.

“But this was arson, Miss Lownes. For my dough, an arsonist is ten degrees lower than a child murderer. And ten times as dangerous. Your murderer kills in hot blood. Unless he’s a paid chopper he generally stops at a single manslaughter. Almost always he knows his victim, confines his attack to that one individual. But incendiarists are madmen running wild in crowds, with machine guns. Don’t know who they may kill. Don’t care. I hate ’em all, seed and breed.”

“You don’t have to hate me, then.” She was solemn about it.

“It wouldn’t be easy.” He looked at her with frank admiration. “But being a glamour babe doesn’t make you innocent. There are certain points you’ll have to dear up before we cross you off the list.”

“Such as—?”

“Why’d you change your mind so fast about taking your brother away from the theater after Ross knocked him for a loop? First, you wanted him taken up to the dressing-room. You got Amery out of the way by asking him to phone Ned’s bodyguard. Then a few minutes later you sent Gaydel down to get your car, to take your brother to his hotel.”

“I was afraid Ned had been hurt seriously; at first I wasn’t sure it would be safe to have him moved. Then when I found out he was all right—”

“He wasn’t all right. He was full of poison booze that would have killed him in an hour or so, anyway. That was what kept him from getting out of the dressing-room when the fire began.” She hadn’t asked him how it started; that was queer, on the face of it.

“Where’d he get bad liquor?”

“You’re the one who’s supposed to be answering questions.” Why was she glancing at the bathroom door as if she expected to get a cue there?

“Ned drank anywhere they wouldn’t throw him out. Afraid I can’t help you on that.”

“Try this one, then. What’s in the leather case you asked Gaydel to get from your brother’s rooms?” She was ready for that one. Gaydel must have phoned her what to expect.

“Something of interest only to me.”

“It was of interest to your brother or he wouldn’t have had it in his rooms. It was of interest to the laddie who got there before Gaydel and tore the place inside out looking for it.” Was Pedley’s imagination doing nip-ups or had there been a change of light in that bathroom, just now?

“I don’t know anyone else who’d want it.”

“What’s in it more precious than rubies?”

She turned her head away. “Photographs.”

“Why’d your brother have ’em, if they were yours?”

“He had a peculiar streak in him. He seemed to enjoy embarrassing me.”

“Oh. That kind of photos.”

She looked at him quickly. “There’s nothing really wrong about them. Mostly snaps taken while we were on the road in the act. But there were a few Ned took while I was — sun-bathing.”

“Oh.”

“It wouldn’t be so good to have the wrong people get hold of them.”

“You haven’t any ideas on who does have the case, now?” It hadn’t been a shadow that Pedley’d glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. But something had been moving between the light and the bathroom mirror; it was still there.