Vincent Starrett: The Blue Door

The ease with which he discovered the address of Mademoiselle Stravinsky shocked him. The first man he asked seemed to know all about her. His informant was the leader of the restaurant orchestra, to whom the investigator had gone as soon as his friend’s back was turned.

“Sure,” said the orchestra leader, “I know her. Not personally, y’ understand; but I know who she is. She’s a cabaret dancer; everybody knows her. Used to be at the Whip-poor-Will, over in State Street, but I don’t know just where she works now. Anyway, she lives at the Sandblast. You know the big apartment building over near the lake? She’s got an apartment there.”

Honeywell, deeply grateful, wasted no further time. If she lived at the Sandblast, she wasn’t so far away at that minute; and there was no time like the present. He commandeered a taxicab and drove rapidly to the lake-front apartments.

What luck, he thought, if he should find Pemberton that very night! But that would be almost too easy. Furthermore, it would probably mean that nothing had happened to Pemberton. It didn’t take much of a detective, he reflected, to find a man who wasn’t lost. As reflecting credit upon Bartlett Honeywell, the case would be somewhat of a flop.

“Great Scott, what a bloodthirsty fellow I’m getting to be!” murmured the young man. “Here I’m almost hoping something has happened to him!”

At the Sandblast he ran his eye down the roster of names that appeared over the doorbells, and found a duplicate of the line of type on Norway’s card: Mademoiselle Marie Stravinsky . The additional words, Russian Dancer , had been scissored off to make the strip fit into its frame. He plunged his thumb into the minute button underneath. After a moment the release clicked like a telegraph instrument, and he adjusted his cravat and mounted the stairs.

Honeywell was not disappointed. Russian dancers, in anticipation, are lithe and beautiful. This one was both. She was not notably Russian, he reflected; she was, in point of fact, dark and Hebraic. However, she was radiantly young. How jolly it was to be an amateur detective, thought Honeywell, jiggling his cuffs into view.

Mademoiselle Stravinsky, however, was taken aback.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, then hesitated. “I thought you were someone else,” she said, after a moment.

“No, mademoiselle,” said Honeywell pleasantly. “May I introduce myself?” He did so. “The gentleman you were expecting is not Mr. Pemberton, by any chance?”

The dancer stared and frowned. “I do not understand you, sir,” she answered, clipping her words in foreign fashion. “Perhaps it is the wrong bell that you have rung?”

“That may be,” admitted the amateur. “You don’t know anyone named Pemberton, you mean?”

“I am sorry, but I do not know the gentleman you mention. You will pardon me if I close the door?”

She had begun to do so when Honeywell recovered his wits. “I beg your pardon,” he continued hurriedly. “The fact is, I was led to believe that he was a friend of yours. I’m sorry if I have made a mistake. You see, I found your card in his room.”

He made the last assertion boldly and untruthfully, and waited to see its effect.

“My card?” The pretty young woman was perplexed. “In the room of a Mr. Pemberton?”

The investigator conceded a point. “Well, in one of his rooms.”

“I must ask you to explain.”

“I should like to, mademoiselle. May I come in for a moment? I am quite respectable, I assure you.”

She flung open the door, and with a gesture invited him to enter. The apartment, he noted, was small and all but incapable of secreting anybody for long. After all, he decided, the truth was best. Certainly this charming creature was no criminal. He dropped into a big chair and told the story, suppressing only the fact that the card had been found in the ancient vehicle of the sleeping cabman.

“Why, it is wonderful!” she breathed when he had finished. “It is like a novel, is it not? And you—you are one of those clever detectives, Mr. Honeywell?”

“No,” asserted the clever detective, “that would be a bit thick, you know. I’m just a friend of Mr. Norway’s, trying to help him out.”

The dancer drew another breath of enchantment. “How sorry I am not to be able also to help,” she cried. “But you can see how impossible that is. I do not even know this Mr. Pemberton. As for my card, I can only suppose that it was given to him by someone else.”

“I understand,” said Honeywell. By George! She was stunning! “Well, thank you, anyway. And now I’ll run along.” He stood up and reached for his hat.

“Thank you,” said Mademoiselle Stravinsky. “Why, it is as good as a play, is it not? Except for your poor Mr. Pemberton. He, of course, is probably most unhappy. But may I not make a suggestion? Possibly he is ill. Possibly he was taken to a hospital. Have you called at the hospitals, Mr. Honeywell?”

Mr. Honeywell, feeling abysmally juvenile, admitted that he had not. “I never thought of it,” he confessed. “It was a good idea, my coming to you, if only to get a common-sense view of the case.”

On the steps, the amateur detective decided that he had been an ass. As for Mademoiselle Stravinsky, she was a beauty, and she had treated him very well indeed. Not many women would have bothered to listen to him.

He caught another taxi and headed for the apartment of Arthur Norway. There was a telephone there, anyway, and between them they could call up the different hospitals.

A disturbing thought began to gnaw at his mind. Surely that card meant something. Maybe the girl was telling the truth. Maybe she didn’t know Pemberton. But that didn’t prove that she had no connection with the place of the blue door. Had he been fooled? She had been very smooth, that good-looking girl. Had she been playing with him? But no, she had been very open and aboveboard; and he had mentioned the blue door. And yet… He leaned back in the taxicab.

Ho hum, thought Bartlett Honeywell, a bit wearily, this playing at detective wasn’t as easy as he had thought. In fiction, now, he would have had a confession in five minutes. It was odd how clever his creations were, when he himself was so bungling.

Norway greeted him with eagerness. “What luck?” asked that young man, even before the writer could remove his hat.

The amateur shrugged. “I’ve seen the Russian dancer,” he replied. “In fact, I’ve talked with her. She’s a knockout!”

“A knockout?”

“You know what I mean. She’s very good-looking. Anyway, she knows nothing. But she made a whacking good suggestion. She suggested that we call up the hospitals.”

“By Jove!” cried Norway. “Well, I suppose we could do that. You must have made quite a hit with the lady, Bart, to have her making suggestions. She didn’t pull the wool over your eyes, I suppose?” He chuckled.

Honeywell grinned provokingly. “She isn’t the woman who let you in at the blue door, anyway,” he retorted. “This one is a real beauty. Just the same,” he admitted, “I’ve been wondering, since I left her, whether she wasn’t almost too nice to me.”

“The woman at the speakeasy had red hair and a face like the wrath of God,” said Norway.

“This one has black hair and a face like a—like a—”

“I know,” nodded Norway. “Let it go at that, old man.”

He picked up a telephone directory with a red back and turned to the list of hospitals. After a moment he groaned. “Lord, what a lot of them!”

“This one wore a seal ring,” continued Honeywell casually. “You don’t remember a seal ring anywhere around that blue door, I suppose?”