Stewart Sterling - Where There’s Smoke

“Very bad indeed, sir. He should have stayed in bed today, instead of going in town.”

“Do him any real harm to come downstairs for ten minutes?”

“No. Probably not. But—”

“Tell Nesbitt to go ask him.”

“Well, really—”

“I’m investigating the fire that put your patient in his present condition. I’m here to tell you that unless I see him, there may be more serious results.”

“Nesbitt — would you mind?”

The butler departed.

Pedley tossed his hat on a camphorwood chest.

“How long have you been with Mister Amery, Doc?”

“Since he came home from the office this morning. Around eleven-thirty.”

“You’ve been here all the time?”

“Indeed I have. Why, sir?”

“Process of elimination, Doc. There’s been another fatality tied up to this Brockhurst Theater fire. Just wanted to make sure our friend Amery couldn’t have been connected with it.”

“Most certainly he couldn’t! I gave him some bromides and put him to sleep about one o’clock; he’s been in bed ever since.” Rae was indignant. “I resent your questioning me in such a manner, sir. Paul’s a friend of long standing, as well as a patient. He risked his life and definitely endangered his health in the attempt to rescue Miss Lownes. He—”

“—Just routine, Doc. Later on, some limber-tongued lawyer for the real firebug will ask us these things on the witness stand in an attempt to befoozle the jury. If we’ve checked up beforehand, we’re not so likely to be made to look like saps.” Pedley thought the doctor was on the level. The mark of the respected physician was stamped into Rae.

Amery came downstairs in a long, gray silk dressing-gown. “Did you get my message about the estate, Mister Pedley?”

“Thanks, yair. Did you hear the news about Kelsey?”

“No. What?”

“His body was found in the Seventy-second Street drive—”

“Body!” the lawyer exclaimed. “Body!”

“—near Central Park West.”

“Great God! Accident—”

“Suicide, according to the police. His jugular’d been slashed with a barber-style razor.”

Amery moved slowly to a low coffee table, shaking his bead. He picked up a crystal decanter. “I feel the need of a spot. Anybody join me?”

“I will,” said Pedley.

“None for me, thanks, Paul,” the doctor said.

“Thing that made me hightail out here to see you—” Pedley inhaled the fumes of the well-aged liquor with satisfaction — “was something they found in Kelsey’s pocket.”

Amery drank without ceremony, slouched down on an antique ottoman. “Not the gun that took a pot shot at me this morning?”

“No. A list. Of the safe deposit companies in Manhattan. Banks, trust companies — whole slew of ’em.”

“What’s the significance?” Rae wanted to know.

“Lot of the phone numbers on the list had been checked off. Kelsey’d presumably called them before he died. I haven’t anything to back it up, but it occurred to me the guy might have been trying to locate a vault where Ned Lownes stashed something valuable.”

“Ned used the Corn Exchange,” Amery said. “Madison and Forty-fifth. He had a drawer there.”

“How about taking a peek at its contents?”

“Any time you want.” The lawyer set his glass back on the table. “There wasn’t much in there besides the stock certificates I phoned you about, some copies of contracts with the record companies, and a savings book.”

“Oh. You went over and opened it today?”

“No. I sent Miss Bernard over with power of attorney to open it. Surely there can’t be any connection between that and Kelsey’s suicide.”

“When you come right down to it,” Pedley said, “I’m none too convinced he cut his own throat.”

Amery coughed, raspingly. “If it was murder—” he felt of his bandaged neck — “in Central Park, in broad daylight, somebody must have seen the murderer.”

“Not many people in the Park today. Too much snow. Roads were bad. Man might have been let out of a car close to the Seventy-second Street entrance and his throat slashed as he was getting out. Don’t say it happened that way. Could have — Well, thanks for the drink. Sorry to have routed you out for nothing.”

Amery went to the door with him. “Headquarters is going to assign a plain-clothes man to me in the morning.”

“See what it means to be a member of the bar?” Pedley smiled.

“They’d have done it, anyway. At least until they capture the man who fired that shot at me.”

“An old fire-horse’s opinion, for what it’s worth. The man who fired that shot is in the Tombs right now. His name is Astaro Lasti. He tried to murder me in a Turkish bath this noon, but it didn’t jell. He’s being held for tomorrow’s Grand Jury.”

Amery was agitated. “Why didn’t you let me know? It would have saved Mrs. Amery and me a tremendous amount of worry. Not to mention Nesbitt and the doctor. We’ve all been hearing queer things in the darkness, all evening.”

“Didn’t know for sure. Don’t know. Guy tried to implicate Kelsey. Outside of that, Staro didn’t really confess anything. I’d still keep a Colt stabled under my pillow.”

He drove back to town more slowly, weighing the possibilities. That key on Lownes’s Keytainer must be for some other vault than the one Miss Bernard had found access to so simply. Without the key, her power of attorney wouldn’t have done any good; a court order would have been necessary to get the safe deposit company to open it. The key in Pedley’s possession must fit a drawer in some other bank.

His first call on the Manhattan side of the river was at the Tombs, where he had an acrimonious conversation with the man who’d tried to drown him less than twelve hours ago.

Pedley made an offer — of a leniency recommendation to the trial judge. A sentence of from ninety-nine years to life held some slight hope; the chair was a bad alternate. The marshal couldn’t promise anything. But his word sometimes carried weight—

Staro went through successive stages of flat denial, blunt suspicion, wary hedging. In the end, he exercised his memory sufficiently to recall that his ex-employer had occasionally made trips to the Columbus Circle branch of the Merchants & Importers National.

Pedley’s second visit was to the bank at the Circle. It took a little longer than the first, on account of the difficulty of reaching the bank’s executives by telephone and verifying the fact that the Fire Marshal can issue what amounts to a summary court-order, on the spot, when and where needed.

Even then, the results weren’t what Pedley had expected. After the night man in the vault had been properly convinced, he checked his visitors’ sheet.

“You’re the second person who’s had access to this drawer today, Mister Pedley.”

The marshal cursed.

“Who was here before me?”

“Here’s her signature, sir. She had the key and written authority — everything in order.”

After Pedley read the signature, he didn’t bother to look in the locked drawer.

Leila Lownes wouldn’t have left anything worth finding.

Shaner emerged from behind the tapestry screen shielding the PBX operator in the Riveredge lobby. He made an umpire’s sweeping gesture of the flat palm. “She’s safe at home, coach.”

“She better be.” Pedley thumbed the UP button. “If you haven’t tended your sheep this time, you’re a dead Bo Peep.”

“This afternoon was one of those mishaps which’d never occur again in a thousand. No harm done, was there?”

“Oh, no. The babe merely went to a safe deposit during that half-hour she was out of your sight. I wouldn’t be surprised if she got away with the prize hunk of evidence I’ve been running myself ragged about.”