Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

It swung open slightly with a creak of new brass hinges. We could see the dim cavern of the living room, the heavy shadows that were furniture.

Archer craned his neck inside to call Rose Tiffin’s name. But no words came out of him. Beside me, I sensed his body going rigid; I heard him sniff twice. Then he slammed the door open, and barged in the house.

It was very faint here in the living room, but as we crossed the dining room, the odor of gas began to envelop us. And by the time we reached the kitchen door, we were holding our breaths.

In that instant before Archer kicked the kitchen door open, I could hear faintly the hiss of gas jets. I knew every jet in the kitchen stove must be open, and I knew then and there what we were going to find.

We found it all right, a woman’s body on the tile of the kitchen floor, her head and shoulders in the oven of the stove, as if the stove were some horrible monster trying to swallow her...

Archer crossed the kitchen, slammed open windows. I dove for the stove, leaned across the indistinct huddled form, and began turning off the gas. We backed out of the room, propped the swinging kitchen door back with a dining room chair, and gave the breeze that came surging through the open windows a chance to clear the gas out.

Archer re-entered the kitchen, turned on a light. He set his teeth, eased the girl’s body out on the floor. We’d seen Rose Tiffin several times in our poking around the Starlight Club on the case for old Ludwig VanDyke: but we’d never seen her again. This was our last, long look at Rose, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. She was like a limp, wet rag there on the floor, her bleached hair splashed out around her face.

“We’d better call headquarters and get Brogardus,” I suggested.

Archer nodded. “At least we know now that Rose did spend the night in Marilyn Foster’s apartment. The killer didn’t know she was there, thinking Marilyn was completely alone. Maybe the argument between Marilyn and the killer woke Rose. She got up to creep out and take a look — and got an eyeful. She puts the bite on the killer, and he comes here, knocks her unconscious, and turns on the gas.

“All of which,” Archer finished grumpily, “leaves us with only one break in the case — a vanishing, three-pawed, Pekinese dog!”

Slightly over an hour later, David Archer and I came out of police headquarters. Lieutenant Tim Brogardus hadn’t liked our dropping another corpse in his lap at all, but he’d told us to be on our way, with the admonition that we’d better play ball with the department without throwing any curves.

We crossed the sidewalk to the sedan, and as I pulled the car away into traffic, I thought of the official findings, thus far, in the Rose Tiffin killing.

Rose had a police record of sorts. She’d been arrested three years ago in a raid on a club where she was working, her act in the club requiring such few clothes that decency statutes were considered violated. She’d been pulled in once after that on suspicion of blackmail.

For the past eight months, she had been featured as vocalist at the Starlight Club; the police had cracked down on the club two or three times, not because of Rose, but because of the heavy gambling for high stakes that went on in the rooms back of the club. None of the raids had been really successful; the legal talent that Lon Montague would haul in was too fast and slick, and pinning a rap for gambling on some of the oldest and most powerful families in the city was a lot different from pinning it on a couple young lads caught shooting craps in a back alley. And the oldest and best family names were the only ones Montague allowed in his back rooms. It hadn’t been that way very long. A year ago, Montague and his club were obscure, but he’d begun an overnight expansion, bringing in the best bands, redecorating the joint. Rumor had it that about a year ago, Montague had got heavy sugar behind him from somewhere.

Now we were headed for the Starlight and Montague’s den. I wondered what the chief had on his mind.

The exterior of the Starlight, that face it showed to the sidewalk, was dark blue crystal. Inside, it was quiet, sedate, the band dripping sugar; the drapes heavy and dark; waiters walking on cat feet; half the tables filled and a few couples dancing. Archer and I idled over to the bar. I ordered a rye which I needed: Archer rarely drank anything stronger than milk.

When the sleek-mustached bartender set my drink in front of me, the chief said, “Will you tell Mr. Montague, that Archer and Jordan are out front and would like to see him?”

I’d barely had time to scorch my tonsils with the drink when the bartender came back. He made a subtle sign to a waiter, who drifted over. “Pierre,” the bartender said, “will you show these gentlemen to Mr. Montague’s office?”

The waiter bowed, and we fell in behind him.

Lon Montague was standing behind his desk in his plush office waiting for us. The soft lighting of the room glinted on his high forehead, his thinning, sandy hair, his dark, alive eyes. “Sit down, gentlemen. A drink?”

We took the deep, light tan leather chairs Montague motioned at with his extended palm. Archer said we would forego the drinks.

Montague sat down behind his desk, his chin blunt and hard. “I just had a call from Lieutenant Brogardus. Another killing. The headquarters boys warned me to stick around the office; they’d be over later.”

“Quite a coincidence,” the chief said, “two girls working in the same club getting killed on two consecutive nights.”

Montague’s eyes shimmered. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

“You wouldn’t know whom Rose Tiffin tried to blackmail, either, I suppose?”

“No; was she blackmailing somebody?”

“The person who killed Marilyn Foster,” the chief said. “The whole thing fits like a glove. The Foster killing was slick; the Tiffin job was pretty smooth, too. I jumped to the first conclusion that he’d knocked Rose unconscious and gassed her, but it was better than that. The boys at headquarters couldn’t find a bruise on her that would indicate a blow hard enough to knock her unconscious. Now the boys are figuring that the killer must have given her some money, lulled her into the belief that he was going to pay off without too much trouble. The killer and Rose must have had a drink on it, with him managing to slip knockout drops in her slug. She keels over, and he sticks her head in the gas stove oven.”

Montague wiped his face with his handkerchief. “I’m glad to know the way it happened.”

“You wouldn’t suggest suicide?”

For a moment Archer’s eyes and Montague’s locked. Then Montague said quietly, “No, I know of no reason why Rose Tiffin would have gassed herself.”

Archer went off on a new tack. I wondered what in blazes he was eventually driving at. He said. “Luke and I had a visitor. A very nice little old lady. Marilyn Foster’s Aunt Minna.”

Montague didn’t speak for a few moments. A far-away look grew in his eyes, as if he were thinking of the past and the memories it held. “The way Marilyn always took care of the old dame,” he said, “made me think a lot of her. Brittle and tough as she was, Marilyn had her qualities.”

“You thought so much of her, you hated to see her intent on marrying Buddy VanDyke? You tried to talk her out of it?”

Montague’s eyes came back to the present with a cold, jarred look in them. “What,” he said softly, “if I did try to talk her out of it?”

The feeling in the room began to bring me toward the edge of my chair, made me conscious of the weight of the gun in my shoulder rig.

Archer splayed his palms on Montague’s desk, as if he would crawl over the desk right down Lon’s throat. The chief said, “You maybe thought so much of Marilyn Foster you’d have killed her to keep another man — Buddy VanDyke — from having her?”