Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

The sergeant’s first remark after they climbed into the car struck him as odd, too. Glancing at his watch, Murphree announced it was nearly seven and time to eat.

“Eat?” Harry repeated. “Before we find Helen?”

The bull-necked detective said tolerantly, “Look, kid, according to your story, it’s two hours since you walked into your apartment and found everything different. Whatever it is happened to your wife, another half hour isn’t going to change things. But another half hour without food would change me. I work from four till midnight, and my suppertime is seven to seven-thirty.”

Murphree drove to a moderately expensive restaurant a few blocks from Headquarters where he ordered a complete meal. Though Harry had tasted nothing since noon, he was unable to eat. He ordered a cup of coffee.

In an agony of suspense Harry spent the next half hour watching the big detective leisurely consume his meal. The minute the man finally sipped the last of his coffee and lit a cigarette, Harry grabbed the check and raced for the cashier.

It did not occur to Harry until after they were back in the car that probably there was some regulation forbidding policemen to accept favors from complainants. However, the sergeant made no offer to repay Harry for his dinner, and since Helen was too much on Harry’s mind for him to bother over the expenditure of two and a half dollars, he dismissed the thought.

The red-headed woman and her dark-skinned husband still occupied apartment 134 when Harry and the sergeant arrived at 102 Carlton. After Murphree identified himself as a member of the Detective Bureau, he and Harry were grudgingly invited in.

The sergeant’s questioning revealed the couple were Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Arnold, that the redhead was a professional model and the man a bit actor in the theater. They claimed to have occupied the apartment for the past four months and to have slept there every night during that period except for one weekend they were out of town…and that weekend was nearly a month before Harry and his bride moved in.

“What’s this all about anyway?” the dark-skinned man asked.

“Nolan here is missing a wife,” the detective said vaguely. “Mind if we look around?”

Kurt Arnold and his wife obviously did mind, but they reluctantly gave permission. Puzzled, they followed Harry and the sergeant from room to room as they investigated the whole apartment.

There were only three rooms and a bath to investigate, and except for their layout Harry recognized nothing familiar in any of them. Even the wallpaper was different in every room. It was not until they had again returned to the front room that Harry suddenly recalled an item which might prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that this was the same apartment he had occupied for a week.

“The bathroom window,” he said abruptly. “A triangle about an inch across is missing from the left upper corner. You have to raise the shade all the way to see it.”

With all three of them behind him, he shade cord and allowed it to fly all the way strode back to the bathroom, pulled the up.

The upper window pane was intact.

Sergeant Joe Murphree made no comment as he and Harry Nolan left the apartment. He simply led the way downstairs and rang the manager’s bell.

The apartment manager Harry had never met, as Helen had been the one to locate the apartment and she had also delivered the first month’s rent. It therefore did not upset Harry to have the man look at him without recognition, but when he denied all knowledge of any tenants named Mr. and Mrs. Harry Nolan and verified the Arnold’s story of having occupied apartment 134 for the past four months, a feeling of hopelessness, settled over him.

Sergeant Murphree’s expression indicated he rapidly was losing his objective attitude.

Using the manager’s phone, the sergeant checked Mercy Hospital and learned news columnist Dale Thompson had indeed died of a coronary attack at eleven that morning. He then drove Harry over to the Newbold Arms, where the bachelor columnist had lived alone in a seven-room penthouse which comprised both his home and his office. Though it was by now after eight in the evening, they found the woman Harry had talked to over the phone still there.

Dorothy Wentworth was a tall, efficient-looking brunette. In answer to the detective’s question she explained she did not live in the penthouse and ordinarily would not have been there after five, but because Thompson’s nearest relatives lived in California, there was no one else to take the numerous calls which were coming in as the result of his unexpected death. Dale Thompson had been mildly famous, and already she had received calls from the governor, the mayor, two congressmen and fifteen or twenty other notables who phoned to express condolences. During the ten minutes they spent at the penthouse, two more long distance calls came from friends who had heard the news over the radio.

Dorothy Wentworth could shed no light whatever on the mystery of Helen’s disappearance. She said she had been Dale Thompson’s secretary for more than a year, had never missed a day’s work, and was positive no woman aside from herself had done any secretarial work for the columnist during that period.

On the way down in the elevator Sergeant Murphree said, “Let’s see that paper you mentioned with Thompson’s telephone number on it.”

Digging into his wallet, Harry handed over the paper on which Helen had written the number. After studying it a moment, the detective thrust it into his own wallet.

He asked, “Can you say for certain your wife ever worked for this guy? You ever visit her here during office hours, or call the unlisted number before today?”

Miserably Harry shook his head. “But why would she pretend to have a job she didn’t have? What would be the point?” The elevator emitted them at the ground floor. When they got off, the detective paused for a moment and regarded Harry dubiously.

“Your wife talk much about her work with Thompson?”

“Not about her work,” Harry said. “About him some. She said he was a nice guy to work for. But he made it clear to her before she got the job that he wouldn’t stand for any leaks whatever from his office. He said that until after it was published, she wasn’t to discuss anything at all scheduled to appear in his column, even with me. So she never talked about the stuff she had to type up.”

Murphree said ruminatively, “Maybe that was to cover up that she wasn’t really forking for him at all.”

“That’s just silly,” Harry protested, but in the face of Miss Wentworth’s evidence, he was conscious that his voice lacked conviction.

For the first time it occurred to him Helen might have deliberately disappeared, and the thought upset him nearly as much as when he had faced the possibility that she might be dead.

“Where’s this rooming house where she stayed before you got married?” Murphree asked.

The rooming house was at Second and Clark. Harry experienced a sinking feeling when the woman who came to the door was not Mrs. Swovboda, who had been landlady when Helen moved out.

He inquired tentatively, “Is Mrs. Swovboda in?”

The woman, a plump, matronly person of middle age, said. “Mrs. Swovboda moved to Florida a week ago, after I bought her out.”

Sergeant Murphree showed his badge. “You run this place now, lady?”

“Yes, sir, Mrs. Johansen is the name, Sergeant.”

“You got a register of former guests?”

“Yes, sir. Come in please, and I’ll get it.” She showed them into the same plain but comfortably furnished living room where Harry had sat nearly a month ago when he was arranging a room for Helen. From the top drawer of an old-fashioned desk she took the black loose-leafed notebook in which Harry had entered Helen’s name, and in which behind the entry Mrs. Swovboda had written the date and $10.00 paid .