Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

“But what about Helen?” Harry asked.

Murphy dropped a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll just have to sweat it out. We can’t make a move until we definitely establish Thompson’s death was homicide. You heard the lieutenant.”

“Suppose you can’t prove it’s homicide?”

The sergeant grinned dryly. “Then I’ll ask you to give me a job reference over at Ajax. In the meantime, don’t bother me by calling up for progress reports before Monday. I’ll have enough on my mind until then.”

So Harry went back to Mrs. Weston’s rooming house to sweat it out. It was the longest period of sweating he ever did. From four o’clock Saturday afternoon, when he reached his room, until Monday morning he left the room only for meals, afraid Sergeant Murphy might phone while he was gone. But the sergeant did not phone.

Just before dusk Sunday evening the downstairs bell rang and Harry glanced out his window to see a squad car at the curb. A few minutes later a burly policeman went down the front steps with Mrs. Weston, helped the landlady into the car and drove away. As the car started off, Harry glimpsed Sergeant Murphy in the back seat.

Overpowering curiosity almost made him phone Headquarters to inquire what this meant, but he was deterred by the definite instructions of the sergeant. He spent a second sleepless night and phoned Murphy at home at exactly eight a.m. Monday.

“Aren’t you working today?” the sergeant asked.

“Working? You think I could calmly go to work without knowing whether Helen’s alive or dead?”

Sergeant Murphy said quietly, “It’s my guess she’s alive.”

Harry’s heart jumped. “You’ve found out where she is?”

“No. Let’s take one thing at a time. First, the autopsy on Dale Thompson showed poisoning by potassium cyanide, apparently administered in coffee. The guess is he got it at breakfast a couple of hours before eleven a.m., the time on his death certificate. We’ve got the doc who signed the certificate, but I think he’s in the clear. He’s seventy-eight years old, half blind, half deaf and semi-retired, which probably was why he was called. The medical examiner tells me unless he suspects poisoning or happens to catch a whiff of bitter almonds, any doctor might diagnose a cyanide death as a simple coronary. This guy was a cinch to. He was called to Thompson’s penthouse at eleven o’clock by Dorothy Wentworth, who told him she was Thompson’s secretary.”

Harry asked, “Did she kill him?”

“Unless she’s a wonderful actress, she didn’t even know it was murder. But that’s ahead of the story. Soon we got the autopsy report, we quietly pulled in Dorothy Wentworth, Mrs. and Mr. Kurt Arnold, the apartment manager, Mrs. Johansen and Mrs. Weston. We stuck them in separate cells, let them brood awhile, and then informed all but Dorothy Wentworth we were charging them with conspiracy to commit murder. We told the Wentworth woman we were holding her on suspicion of first degree homicide.”

The sergeant emitted a dry chuckle. “Wentworth broke first, and as soon as the others learned of her break, they all started squealing like rats. Dorothy Wentworth’s story is she was phoned by a man named Gerald Crane, apparently the same man to whom she sold the evidence that got her fired. He told her Thompson had unexpectedly died of a heart attack and he wanted her to put on an act for him. He told her she’d get two thousand dollars if she went to Thompson’s penthouse, pretended she was still his secretary and phoned a certain physician to come at once because her boss had just had a heart attack! He warned her someone would probably call trying to locate the real secretary, and the police might even come around asking about her. But he told her the investigating cop would be in on the deal, and all she had to do was deny ever hearing of the woman. She says she suspected the plot had something to do with stopping the item about the ledger, but she thought Crane was simply taking advantage of Thompson’s sudden death, and she didn’t suspect murder.”

Harry asked, “Who is this Gerald Crane?”

“A flunky of Big John Gault’s. The rest of the story we got from our other witnesses. Crane contacted the apartment manager first and fixed him with a thousand dollars plus decorating expenses to get in a crew of workmen and change your apartment around. The Kurt Arnolds were moved in by Crane a half hour before you got home from work. Their fee was only five hundred. Apparently Crane got stingier as he went along.

“From the apartment manager Crane learned the former addresses of you and your wife. He fixed Mrs. Weston with two hundred bucks, had your personal stuff moved from the apartment back to your old room, and had the lock from your apartment transferred to your room door.

“At your wife’s old rooming house apparently Crane ran into a snag. Seems Mrs. Swovboda was honest. We don’t know where she is, but she definitely didn’t sell out to Mrs. Johansen and move to Florida. Mrs. Johansen is an old-time bit actress, and she was moved into the rooming house by Crane about an hour before you arrived with Sergeant Joe Murphree. All she got was a mere hundred. She grew quite upset when she learned she was at the bottom of the salary scale.”

Harry asked, “Have you got this man Gerald Crane?”

“Not yet,” Sergeant Murphy said. “We’re a little handicapped because there are only eleven men on the Homicide Squad. If we put out a general call on him, we could draw on the whole police department, but there’s too many leaks in the department. Crane would know about it within minutes. We want Crane under wraps before anybody even knows we’re investigating the case.”

“I see,” Harry said dubiously. “But what about Helen? What’s the reason behind all this elaborate plot? And what makes you think she’s still alive?”

“It’s pure theory from here on,” the sergeant admitted. “But I think it’s sound reasoning. Obviously, as Thompson’s secretary, your wife knew about the ledger, too. I don’t think Gerald Crane or Big John Gault have their hands on the ledger yet. If they had, probably your wife would simply have been killed in a traffic accident or some such thing. Since she wasn’t, they must be holding her somewhere trying to pry out of her where the ledger is.”

Harry said slowly, “You mean torture?”

Murphy hesitated a moment. Then he said reluctantly, “Possibly. But that’s better than being dead.”

A wave of sickness ran over Harry. In a numb voice he said, “I still don’t understand why they went through this elaborate farce of changing the apartment and all.”

“You would if you thought about it,” Murphy told him. “If Dale Thompson’s secretary mysteriously disappeared the same day the columnist died, it would look suspicious as the devil. And with that item about the ledger appearing only the day before, the finger would point straight at Big John Gault. The only way they could hold her without raising such a furor that even the FBI might start nosing around to see if maybe she’d been kidnapped, was to make it appear she never existed. So when Thompson died, his secretary continued on public display in the person of Dorothy Wentworth.”

“I see,” Harry said slowly. “Is there any way I can help from here on out?”

“Yeah. Just sit quiet and stay out of our hair till we break this thing. And we will, don’t worry.”

Yes, Harry thought as he hung up. But in the meantime what kind of pain was Helen suffering?

After fifteen minutes of sitting on the bed and smoking cigarettes, he knew he could not possibly spend another day simply waiting in his room. He had to have some kind of action or go crazy.

The wild thought occurred to him of looking up Big John Gault’s address, calling on the man and beating out of him Helen’s whereabouts. But immediately he realized the man probably not only had bodyguards, but any such attempted act would blow wide open the secrecy Sergeant Murphy wanted to maintain. Reluctantly he decided the Homicide Squad was undoubtedly better equipped to deal with murderers than a half crazed husband would be.