Paul Cain - Seven Slayers

Hanan’s thin mouth twitched slightly; he stared steadily at the flowers.

Druse sighed. “And so — we find Mister Hanan, last night, with several reasons for wishing your — shall we say, disappearance? We find him with the circumstance of being able to direct suspicion at Crandall, ready to his hand. His only serious problem lay in finding a third, responsible, party before whom to lay the whole thing — or enough of it to serve his purpose.”

Mrs. Hanan had turned to face Hanan. Her eyes were half closed and her smile was very hard, very strange.

Druse stood up slowly, went on: “He had the happy thought of calling me — or perhaps the suggestion. I was an ideal instrument, functioning as I do, midway between the law and the underworld. He made an appointment, and arranged for one of his men to call on you by way of the fire-escape, while we were discussing the matter. The logical implication was that I would come to you when I left him, find you murdered, and act immediately on the information he had given me about Crandall. My influence and testimony would have speedily convicted Crandall. Mister Hanan would have better than a divorce. He’d have the rubies, without any danger of his having switched them ever being discovered — and he’d have” — Druse grinned sourly — “the check he had given me as an advance. Failing in the two things I had contracted to do, I would of course return it to him.”

Hanan laughed suddenly; a terribly forced, high-pitched laugh.

“It is very funny,” Druse said. “It would all have worked very beautifully if you” — he moved his eyes to Mrs. Hanan — “hadn’t happened to see the man who came up the fire-escape to call on you, before he saw you. The man whose return Mister Hanan has been impatiently waiting. The man” — he dropped one eyelid in a swift wink — “who confessed to the whole thing a little less than an hour ago.”

Druse put his hand into his inside pocket and took out the black velvet jewel-case, snapped it open and put it on the table. “I found them in the safe at your place at Roslyn,” he said. “Your servants there objected very strenuously — so strenuously that I was forced to tie them up and lock them in the wine cellar. They must be awfully uncomfortable by now — I shall have to attend to that.”

He lowered his voice to a discreet drone. “And your lady was there, too. She, too, objected very strenuously, until I had had a long talk with her and convinced her of the error of her — shall we say, affection, for a gentleman of your instincts. She seemed very frightened at the idea of becoming involved in this case — I’m afraid she will be rather hard to find.”

Druse sighed, lowered his eyes slowly to the rubies, touched the largest of them delicately with one finger. “And so,” he said, “to end this vicious and regrettable business — I give you your rubies” — he lifted his hand and made a sweeping gesture towards Mrs. Hanan — “and your wife — and now I would like your check for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Hanan moved very swiftly. He tipped the edge of the table upward, lunged up and forward in the same movement; there was a sharp, shattering crash of chinaware and silver. The derringer roared, but the bullet thudded into the table. Hanan bent over suddenly — his eyes were dull, and his upper lip was drawn back over his teeth — then he straightened and whirled and ran out through the door to the living room.

Mrs. Hanan was standing against the big buffet; her hands were at her mouth, and her eyes were very wide. She made no sound.

Druse went after Hanan, stopped suddenly at the door. Hanan was crouched in the middle of the living room. The Filipino boy stood beyond him, framed against the darkness of the entrance-hall; a curved knife glittered in his hand and his thin yellow face was hard, menacing. Hanan ran out on the terrace and Druse went swiftly after him. By the dim light from the living room he saw Hanan dart to the left, encounter the wall there, zigzag crazily towards the darkness of the outer terrace, the edge.

Druse yelled: “Look out!” ran forward, Hanan was silhouetted a moment against the mauve glow of the sky; then with a hoarse, cracked scream he fell outward, down.

Druse stood a moment, staring blindly down. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, then turned and went into the living room and tossed the derringer down on the big center table. The Filipino boy was still standing in the doorway. Druse nodded at him and he turned and went through the dark entrance-hall into the kitchen. Druse went to the door to the dining room; Mrs. Hanan was still standing with her back to the buffet, her hands still at her mouth, her eyes wide, unseeing. He turned and went swiftly up the broad steps to the office, took up the telephone and dialed a number. When the connection had been made, he asked for MacCrae.

In a minute or so MacCrae answered; Druse said: “You’ll find a stiff in Mrs. Dale Hanan’s apartment on the corner of Sixty-third and Park, Mac. She killed him — self-defense. You might find his partner downstairs at my place — waiting for his boss to come out... Yeah, his boss was Hanan — he just went down — the other way... I’ll file charges of attempted murder against Hanan, and straighten it all out when you get over here... Yeah — hurry.”

He hung up and went down to the dining room. He tipped the table back on its legs and picked up the rubies, put them back into the case. He said: “I called up a friend of mine who works for Mahlon and Stiles. As you probably know, Mister Hanan has never made a will.” He smiled. “He so hated the thought of death that the idea of a will was extremely repugnant to him.”

He picked up her chair and she came slowly across and sank into it.

“As soon as the estate is settled,” he went on. “I shall expect your check for a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars, made out to the insurance company.”

She nodded abstractedly.

“I think these” — he indicated the jewel-case — “will be safer with me, until then.”

She nodded again.

He smiled. “I shall also look forward with a great deal of pleasure to receiving your check for twenty-five thousand — the balance on the figure I quoted for my services.”

She turned her head slowly, looked up at him. “A moralist,” she said — “morbid — and mercenary.”

“Mercenary as hell!” He bobbed his big head up and down violently.

She looked at the tiny watch at her wrist, said: “It isn’t morning yet, strictly speaking — but I’d rather have a drink than anything I can think of.”

Druse laughed. He went to the buffet and took out a squat bottle, glasses, poured two big drinks. He took one to her, raised the other and squinted through it at the light. “Here’s to crime.”

They drank.

The man in the dark-brown camel’s-hair coat turned east against the icy wind. Near First Avenue he cut diagonally across the deserted street towards an electric sign: Tony Maschio’s Day and Night Tonsorial Parlor.

A step or so beyond the sign, just outside the circle of warm yellow light from the shop, he stopped and put down the suitcase he was carrying, produced a cigarette and a lighter. He stood close to the building with his back to the wind, flicked the lighter several times without producing a flame, then turned back into the wind and went on towards First Avenue.

He forgot his suitcase. It sat in the darkness just under the corner of Tony’s plate-glass window and if anyone had been close enough to it they might have heard it ticking between screaming gusts of wind — merrily, or ominously, depending upon whether one took it for the ticking of a cheap alarm clock or the vastly more intricate and alarming tick of a time-bomb.