Blackmailer Read online

  “That’s pretty good identifying, darling, only I wasn’t there.”

  “I didn’t think you were,” I said, “but I thought I might as well mention it.”

  Janis looked at me.

  “Darling?”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Did you mean it when you said you were still in love with me?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve changed some. But you haven’t.”

  “Nothing changes, really.”

  “I love you, Dick.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “I’m drunk,” Janis said. “You got me drunk for some nefarious purpose.”

  “Come on,” I said, paying the check.

  Janis’ face had relaxed. The tension had gone out of it. She held onto my arm until we were out in the street and had hailed an empty cab.

  I gave the driver my address.

  Then I kissed her.

  “Oh, darling,” Janis said.

  It was dark as the cab pulled up to my front door.

  But not too dark to see the police car parked in front of the house.

  “Keep going,” I said to the driver. “Don’t stop.”

  “What is it, darling?” Janis said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “A little confusion. I saw someone I didn’t want to see. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  The cab hit Madison Avenue and swung uptown.

  “Where to, mister?”

  “A good question,” I said. It seemed as if cab drivers had been asking me where to, mister, all day. And I never seemed to know.

  “What is it, darling?” Janis said.

  “A little trouble. Nothing serious. Can you think of some place we could tell this nice man to take us?”

  “Walter’s?” Janis said. “He’s got people for dinner. We could have the upstairs to ourselves.”

  I gave the driver Walter’s address.

  Then I kissed her again.

  The cab pulled up in front of Walter’s, when I remembered something else. “Keep going, driver,” I said. “Don’t stop.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” the driver said.

  “There was a little trouble when I left here, too,” I said to Janis. “If I remember correctly I threw a drink at Walter, socked Jimmie, and kicked the butler.”

  “You have had a busy day,” Janis said. “Did you hit him? Walter, I mean? You said you threw a drink at him. You didn’t say if you hit him.”

  “Right in the mouth.”

  “Wonderful. You’re wonderful. Kiss me again.”

  “It was nothing, really,” I said. “It was point-blank range. It would have been hard to miss. Much more skill involved if I’d tried to miss him, actually.”

  “Where can we go?” Janis said.

  “Just turn the corner,” I told the driver. “We’ll get out around the corner.”

  The cab pulled to a stop near the service entrance.

  “This is O.K.,” I said.

  I paid the driver and we stood on the sidewalk without moving until he turned the far corner onto Madison Avenue and disappeared.

  “Here we go,” I said.

  We walked casually up the alley to the service door. In front of the door I stopped, caught Janis’ arm and pulled her close to me. I tilted her head back and kissed her.

  When the kiss was over I said, “Say, what the hell is your name, anyway?”

  She laughed.

  “Come on,” she said. She caught my hand and together we picked our way through the darkened basement. The elevator was in use.

  I pushed the button and after a long time it appeared. We got in, and I pushed the button to the fourth floor.

  “Try to look inconspicuous,” I said. “Damn these open grillework elevators.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Janis said. She caught me and pulled my face down to hers.

  We held the clinch all the way to the fourth floor. Both our faces were hidden.

  On the second floor I heard a woman laugh and say, “Aren’t they cute?”

  But no one paid any attention.

  Not at Walter’s.

  We got out on the fourth floor. The corridor was empty. Still holding hands, we dashed down the corridor. From below we could hear the sounds of Walter’s guests.

  Inside Janis’ room, we locked the door.

  “The stronghold of the enemy,” I said. “Is there a drink in the place?”

  Janis went to the bar.

  “Champagne, brandy, or gin?” Janis said. “Take your choice.”

  I found two large snifter glasses and poured the brandy.

  I lifted the glass and drained it.

  It was beautiful brandy.

  Then I looked at Janis. She did not look well. The first swallow of brandy must have started the trouble.

  She drank the rest of the glass and then I could see there was going to be real trouble.

  “Oh-oh,” Janis said. Her face was pale. “Too many drinks on an empty stomach. Too many drinks.”

  “Sit down,” I said. “Take it easy.”

  “I don’t think so, darling.”

  Then she dashed for the bathroom.

  I followed her. “I’ll hold your head. I’m getting to be an expert at this,” I said.

  “Get out of here, darling,” she said desperately. “Please get out.”

  If people didn’t want expert advice and assistance it was all right with me. I left her alone.

  I sat down, poured myself another drink and waited. Then, from the bathroom, I could hear that everything was going to be all right.

  I sat down on the bed, took off my coat and rolled up my sleeves. Feeling very much at ease, I sat back on the bed and sipped the brandy.

  Then I jumped up as if I’d been shot.

  I got up off the bed and walked to the mirror over the vanity table. It looked perfectly innocent. Just like any other mirror.

  I wondered, however, if Walter were sitting on the other side of the wall watching me.

  I looked at the mirror and very clearly and very slowly, moving my lips so that they could be read even if the microphone was not on, I said a short phrase that used to be unprintable. I said it again.

  Then the bathroom door opened.

  Janis looked pale but she looked better. The crisis was obviously over.

  She had brushed her hair, freshened her face, and was wearing a white terry-cloth shower robe.

  “I’m all right now,” she said, “but I think maybe I better lie down a minute.”

  I helped her and she sank weakly onto the bed.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. I lit us cigarettes and we smoked in silence for a moment or two. Then I reached down and took her hand.

  “Darling,” I said, “I love you. But I’ve got to know the truth. I have to know. Were you with Max that night at Anstruther’s?”

  She looked up at me and when she answered there was no question in my mind that she was telling the truth. “No,” she said, “I wasn’t there.”

  “Then you think Jean Dahl was lying when she said she heard you and Max?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Somebody knows,” I said fiercely. I caught her by the shoulder. “Somebody must know. Somebody’s lying. And I don’t think it was Jean Dahl. If you weren’t the girl with Max, who was?”

  I pulled her to a sitting position.

  Some of her color had come back.

  “It’s hot in here,” she said. She pulled the shower robe open. She was not wearing anything underneath. She was very beautiful. I held her by the shoulder. I was trying to think. There was something she had said before that I’d forgotten. Something I wanted very much to remember.

  It was something about nightclubs.

  “What about nightclubs?” I snapped.

  “What?”

  “What about nightclubs? You said something about nightclubs.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Darling, you’ve go
t to remember.” I shook her. “What was it? What was it you said?”

  Then I remembered what it was she had said.

  “You said imitators in nightclubs. They imitate Hepburn and Davis and you. You said your phony accent was easy to imitate.

  “What we’re trying to find out,” I continued, “is this: Who the two people at Anstruther’s were. Now maybe the reason we’re having so much trouble trying to figure out who the two people were is because there weren’t two people there at all.”

  I let go, and Janis sank back to the pillow.

  I began to pace back and forth across the room.

  “Look,” I said, “who set up this crooked deal in the first place? Who’s really got the most to gain in all of this?”

  I was beginning to shout a little now.

  “Look,” I said. “Walter cooked up this deal with Anstruther. Now, then, when Anstruther took off with the check, all three of you were out looking for him. Only the person who found him first was Walter. Not you and Max. Walter knew that Anstruther wasn’t alone in the apartment. Jean Dahl worked for Walter. It figures that Walter knew she was there. And he knew she was listening to everything that went on.

  “You say your voice is easy to imitate. Well, I’ve heard Walter imitate it. I’ve heard him do it. He does it perfectly. I’ve heard him do Max, too. There weren’t two people there. There was just one. It was Walter doing two of his famous imitations. Anstruther was so drunk that it wouldn’t have bothered him if Walter had thrown in imitations of Hepburn, Davis, and Lionel Barrymore. Walter was the two people Jean heard murdering Anstruther.

  “All right then, what was the motive? First of all, the motive was nearly one hundred thousand dollars in cash. Walter got that. Look, look! Add this up. Maybe Walter already knew there was no book. Maybe he knew that all the time. Maybe the whole thing was a swindle that he and Anstruther cooked up to take you and Max for a hundred thousand dollars. How about that? But then he thought to himself, Why just stop at the hundred thousand? We can hit the jackpot. We can have the book, too, and make a million. And so he suggested to Anstruther that he let Jimmie write a new book.

  “Now Anstruther was a bum. But he wasn’t that much of a bum. He wasn’t going to let somebody ghostwrite him a new book. So Walter had to face the fact that there wasn’t going to be any new book. The only way Walter could have a new million-dollar Anstruther book was over Anstruther’s dead body.

  “And that’s the way he got it. It wasn’t hard for him to make it look like an accident. And in case the accident thing ever fell through, he had a witness planted who would be able to swear that you and Max were there. He really had this thing worked out.

  “But then his hot witness turned out to be just as crooked as the rest of the people in this deal.

  “Unfortunately, she went to Max and tried to blackmail him. Now we come to the next question: Why did Max pay her two thousand dollars if he wasn’t even there?

  “He gave her the money to stall her and keep her quiet for the time being. He needed her quiet for a while because she had told him that his two partners were double-crossing him. She told him she heard him murdering Anstruther, and that you were with him.

  “What she was really telling him was that his two partners were at Anstruther’s the night Anstruther died. That information was certainly worth two thousand dollars. Only neither of them realized that the two of you weren’t there. Just Walter.

  “And now, see how the rest of it was so much easier for Walter than for anyone else.

  “Jean Dahl came to him last night and told him the story. This he very carefully put on a wire recorder. He could see now how potentially dangerous she was. So he saw a way to get rid of her and to hang the suspicion, if there was any trouble, onto his partner Max.

  “So he records her story. Then he feeds her a drink with an overdose of something in it. He figures she’ll go home and pass out and that will be the end. Only I happen to spot her. And I bring her up here. He follows us. He phones me from across the hall, doing his imitation of Max again. Then, when I leave the room to meet him he slugs me.

  “I come to and spot Jean on the elevator. Then, when the lights go out, he follows us downstairs. He’d just as soon have shot me and hung it on Max, except that you bopped him and I got away.

  “Only Jean Dahl didn’t get away.

  “You probably only stunned him for a second. He took off after Jean and he got her in the hall by the door. He knew the lights were going on any second so he ducked put of sight. As soon as you and I had gone he dragged the body to the foot of the stairs and waited for someone to find her. The someone who found her was Max. And I wouldn’t give you odds for your friend Max’s life either. We’re going to find him with a bullet through him pretty soon. He’s too dangerous.”

  Janis Whitney didn’t answer. She was sleeping.

  I took the automatic out of my coat pocket, flipped off the safety catch and went out of the room, closing the door gently behind me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I hesitated in front of Walter’s door. I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. I swung it open and let myself in. I closed the door behind me.

  Holding the gun in front of me, I called out, “Walter! Hey, Walter! Are you in there?”

  Then I heard the voice.

  “Hopalong Cassidy,” he said. “With the firearms. Somebody could get hurt.”

  I whirled around.

  He was sitting in the chair I’d sat in earlier in the day. His face was a pasty gray color. His eyes were vicious and cold. His feet were propped up on the small coffee table, and in his hand he held a large, dangerous-looking revolver.

  “Roy Rogers,” he said. “Drop the gun. Right there. On the floor. By my feet.”

  Walter’s imitation of Max Shriber’s voice had been good. But it did not compare with the real thing.

  Max Shriber’s revolver was pointed directly at my chest.

  “Drop the gun,” he said.

  I dropped it. It made no sound at all when it hit the thick carpet.

  Suddenly, Max Shriber groaned. Then he slumped forward until his head was resting on his propped-up knees. He groaned again and his whole body heaved convulsively.

  I watched him in fascinated horror. It did not even occur to me to reach down and pick up the gun I had dropped.

  When he pulled his head up again, his face was grayer than it had been and it was soaked with sweat.

  “You don’t look so good,” I said.

  “Dr. Mayo,” he said, in his heavy rasping voice. “A brilliant diagnosis. Frankly, I think I have contracted a case of bullet wound. There’s so much of it going around this time of year.”

  He pulled back his coat on the left side. His shirt, high on the shoulder, was bloodstained and plastered to his skin. There was a darker spot in the middle of the dark stain.

  “Who shot you?” I said. “Who did it?”

  “A good question,” Max Shriber said. “By coincidence this is the very question I am here to discuss with my good friend Walter.”

  “Listen,” I said. “How come you’re not in the hospital?”

  “I was,” he said. “But I left.”

  “I gather they found you, all right,” I said. “The maid was screaming loud enough. She thought you were dead. So did I.”

  “I kill hard,” Max Shriber said. “A couple inches one way or the other and I could be. You were in my apartment?”

  “That’s right. I came up to see you. I wanted to tell you I don’t like being beaten up by your gangster chauffeur. I had a few other things I wanted to tell you too.”

  Max Shriber groaned and then before either of us could speak again the telephone on Walter’s desk began to ring. It rang twice.

  “Pick it up,” he said. “It’s only polite. You could take a message.”

  I walked to the desk and picked up the receiver.

  “Elsa Maxwell,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. “Party giver. Where are you?”<
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  It was the voice. It was Max Shriber’s voice, perfectly reproduced.

  “This isn’t Walter,” I said. “This is Dick Sherman.”

  Across the room, Max Shriber’s lips formed the question: Who is it?

  I moved my lips in silent reply: Max Shriber.

  “Walter isn’t here,” I said. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “He called me,” said the voice on the phone. “He said he had to see me. I told him to come over here to the Carlyle. That was an hour ago. He’s still not here.”

  Max Shriber leaned painfully forward and pushed a button on Walter’s instrument panel.

  The picture on the wall began to slide noiselessly on its ball bearings.

  Then I saw her.

  She looked very ugly sitting naked on the bed talking into the telephone. The cords on her neck stood out as she strained for the guttural, snarling sounds.

  If you’d only seen her in musicals, you’d have no idea what an actress she was. You’d have to see her in a few of the scenes from “Lure of the City.”

  Or you’d have to have seen her through the mirror talking into the telephone.

  I’m still not sure how she made the sound.

  She distorted her whole face to do it, I know that. She was a great actress. She even managed to look a little like Max Shriber as she imitated his voice.

  “Wait a minute,” the voice on the phone said.

  I had my eyes on her face. The cords in her neck stood out even farther on the word “minute.” And her lower jaw shot forward.

  Max touched the right button and then we could hear her voice from the next room. I could hear it twice. Once on the phone and once on the loudspeaker. It had an eerie, echo-like effect.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “There’s someone at the door now. This must be Walter. Yeah, it is. I hear him. O.K., Mr. Sherman, I’ll see you around.”

  In the next room Janis Whitney replaced the telephone receiver.

  I leaned over and touched the button. The picture slid back into place.

  “I don’t understand,” I said softly.

  “The clincher,” Max Shriber said. “That was supposed to be the clincher. That was supposed to adjust the rope around his neck. The size thirteen and a half noose.”