Stewart Sterling - Where There’s Smoke

“Want me to guess?”

“Your health, boss.”

“My what?”

“It comes up that he’ll ask you to take an immediate physical — some sucker having suggested you aren’t precisely in the pink at the moment.”

“See what you mean.” After 30 hours without sleep, a couple of burns and an underwater catch-as-catch-can, hyped up on coffee and Benzedrine, he’d be in great shape to take a physical!

“There’ll be a doc at the meeting, so the little bird says, and after the business with the stethoscope and so forth, the aforementioned party will suggest a temporary retirement — on full pay. Don’t sound like such a bad idea, to me.”

“It sounds putrid, Barnabus. But there’s more than one way to skin a kitty.”

“Which way do we take?”

“The now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t routine.”

“Elucidize.”

“I’ll be unable to keep the engagement. Press of business. For the good of the department.”

“Roger.”

“If anyone wants to know where I’ll be, ask him to contact Captain Dublin at headquarters.”

He hung up, touched the brim of his hat to Dublin, said, “Be seeing you on the roller coaster, sometime,” walked out.

For some hours he hadn’t given a thought to food; now, suddenly, he was ravenously hungry. He drove to Dinty’s, found the corner table vacant, ordered an outsize sirloin.

While he waited for the chef to broil it, Pedley made inquiries about Hal Kelsey. The orchestra leader’s hotel said Mister Kelsey wasn’t in, they expected he’d be at the studio. At the International Broadcasting Company, somebody in the production department said the marshal could talk to the control room in Studio 8H.

That didn’t help; the anonymous voice from the control room was obviously disturbed, but Kelsey wasn’t there, they didn’t know when he’d get there or if he w ould.

It struck Pedley as peculiar; after he’d mused over the steak and French fries it began to appear significant. He went up to the skyscraper city where the IBC broadcast originated.

He came into Studio 8H through a door marked Do Not Enter When Red Light Is On. The red light wasn’t on, but beside it a frosted panel proclaimed Rehearsal.

The auditorium was empty, except for two actors playing gin rummy in the front row, and a scattering of visitors in the rear. The stage was a clutter of activity.

Against the huge gold backcurtain with its black sequin message — Winn’s, the Coffee of Connoisseurs — a score of shirt-sleeved musicians picked at violin strings, blew experimental scales on woodwinds, tuned up guitars and bass viols, rustled score sheets on their racks. The sweatered individual on the podium, consulting with a trombonist, wasn’t Hal Kelsey.

At one side of the stage, an angular brunette addressed a microphone with a full-throated ah-ah-ah-ah to the tune of do, mi, sol, do, casting an anxious eye toward the control room.

Four young men in tuxedos put their heads together, nodding and emitting sounds like hodel-e-yo, hodel-oh. At the center microphone Wes Toleman enunciated inaudibly with one eye on the sweep second hand of the control-room clock.

The talk-back emitted a sepulchral, “Quiet, people.” It was Chuck Gaydel’s voice. “We’ll take it straight through for time. Thirty seconds.”

Through the rectangle of plate glass at the side of the stage, Gaydel’s expression was tautly apprehensive, Pedley thought. Maybe that was just rehearsal tension.

The studio bedlam died away. The sweatered man turned half around so he could see the producer. Gaydel’s hand went up. The baton rapped twice, was raised aloft. The second hand of the clock circled to vertical.

Gaydel flipped a finger at the leader. The baton swung down. The orchestra hit the opening bars of the signature. Wes Toleman lifted his script, poised for his cue.

Ollie came through a door beside the stage, searched the studio as if looking for someone. She saw Pedley; her gaze met the marshal’s blankly; she tiptoed a few steps, craned her neck at the stage, fluttered a hand at Toleman — and smiled entrancingly.

After a moment, she tiptoed back to the door, went out. Pedley waited until Toleman had announced, “Patsy Ludlow, the singing star of ‘Rainbow Every Morning’” — and Patsy began her throaty blues:

Then he made his way inconspicuously to the door through which the tall girl had disappeared.

She was waiting for him; held out her hands.

“I thought it was about time you were showing up, darling.”

“How’s my favorite undieworld character?”

“Doing as well as might be expected of an alleged grass widow with a susceptible nature. I just phoned your office. Barney said you were officially off the reservation.”

“The commissioner wishes to relieve me from active duty.”

“He does?”

Olive’s eyes opened very wide.

“Doesn’t think I’m fitten to be up and about my chores.”

“I hadn’t heard a word about it, Ben. Honest. City Hall must be acting up.”

“The broadcasting boys are afraid I’ll make a wreck out of a million dollar baby. So-o-o, I’m a zombi, time being. Dead on my feet but still capable of giving folks the jeebies.”

She patted his arm reassuringly. “Let’s go up to my royal box — I’ve found something, but I’ll be an old woman in a shoe if I know what it is.”

On the way, he told her about Kim.

“I read about it, Ben.” Her warm, friendly eyes were disconsolate. “There was a paragraph about the rescue. I thought that might have been you.”

“No.” He followed her through a long hall, up a flight of stairs. “I should have saved her before the fire. I let her get away from me. Killer followed her down to the Village — or made her go down to her place with him.”

They went into the client’s booth. There were big easy-chairs, a cigar stand, a loudspeaker. They looked down on the stage through a duplicate of the control-room window.

“Sponsor’s pew, isn’t it, Ollie? How’d you rate this?” he asked.

She threw back her coat, crossed nice legs. “Sit at the side there, darling. With the lights off in here, they won’t see you.” She let him light a cigarette for her. “I’m supposed to be the niece of the vice-president in charge of coffee-bean bags or something. Wesley’s so anxious to please anyone connected with the Winn account that I didn’t have to go into details.”

“You always were a fast worker.”

“Toleman’s so easy. We’re going places this evening. To dance, he says. I think his attentions are somewhat less honorable.”

“That wasn’t your great discovery, I hope?”

“Oh, no. Did you notice an air of consternation among the control-room biggies down there?”

“Gaydel’s tense as a fiddlestring. Anything more than show-strain?”

“Kelsey’s done a vanishing act. No one’s seen hide nor seek of him since he left his hotel after breakfast this morning.”

“Um.” Pedley listened to the Wasson arrangement of “Make Believe.”

“Any ideas as to where he might be?”

“Not exactly. But half an hour ago, just before the rehearsal started, my lustful cavalier confided that he doesn’t think Kelsey’s going to show up at all.”

“What’s his angle?”

“Wesley has his doubts whether our orchestra leader will ever be seen around these parts again.”