Blackmailer Read online

  “Good,” I said. “At least you won’t have to walk home.”

  Janis was a step or two behind me when we reached the sidewalk.

  There was a black Cadillac parked by the curb. The chauffeur was standing next to it. He saw us and began moving toward us.

  It must have been the uniform because it took me a second or two to recognize him.

  He recognized me an instant after I recognized him. But that instant was enough. He wasn’t ready when I hit him.

  I’m no fighter. The punch was wild, and from the floor. If he had been expecting it, he could have blocked it easily. But he hadn’t been expecting it.

  I’d aimed for his chin, but I caught him a little lower, in the side of his neck.

  He staggered and I caught him again, this time in the stomach. Then I kicked him in the shin as hard as I could. When he bent over I hit him on the back of the neck with the side of my hand, and brought my knee up into his face.

  I could see the doorman and a couple of waiters moving in. I didn’t stay around to find out what happened next.

  A second later I was moving fast up Park Avenue toward the hack stand. There was a cab with a driver inside reading a newspaper.

  “Uptown, baby,” I said, “and step on it.”

  I didn’t look back. Not even out of the back window after the cab started.

  I was suddenly aware that my right hand hurt. But I didn’t care. I felt wonderful. A kind of wild, crazy exultation.

  “Where did you want to go, Mister?”

  A few minutes before I had told Janis I was through with the whole thing. Now I was back in it again.

  I gave the driver Walter Heinemann’s address.

  A lot of things seemed to fit together. I didn’t know exactly how. But I was going to find out.

  And it had certainly been interesting to discover that the big thug who had helped wreck my apartment was also Max Shriber’s chauffeur.

  Chapter Nine

  The butler who opened the door conducted me up in the elevator to Walter’s sitting room. Walter was lunching from a tray. A modest little lunch: eggs Benedict and champagne. He looked up with a bland smile as I closed the door behind me.

  “Richard,” he said, “I hardly dared to hope that I would hear from you so quickly.”

  Slowly, carefully, making sure that it would not get stuck the way it had the night before, I reached into my pocket and withdrew Jean Dahl’s gun.

  I got it out and pointed it in the general direction of Walter’s abdomen.

  “Walter,” I said in a friendly conversational tone, “I’m going to shoot you in the belly.”

  “Richard!” he said coldly. “What is this? What did you say?”

  “Come on, Edison the Boy,” I said. “Turn on your recording machine. Play it back for yourself. I said, quote, ‘Walter, I’m going to shoot you in the belly.’ Unquote.”

  “Richard,” Walter said, “have you gone mad? Put away that gun.”

  “I’ve had enough of this, Walter,” I said. “I’m going to do something desperate. I already did something desperate. I just beat up one of the men who wrecked my apartment. And guess who he turned out to be? Your friend Max’s chauffeur. Isn’t that interesting?”

  Behind me, I heard the door quietly opening.

  “Oh, Jimmie,” Walter said. “Come in.”

  “Oh, Jimmie,” I said, without turning around, “beat it.”

  “Jimmie,” Walter said, “would you be kind enough to take away my luncheon tray? I’m finished. You may leave the champagne, however.”

  Jimmie began to make small, nervous sounds.

  “Oh, it’s quite all right,” Walter said. “Take the tray and go. Richard is a wild one, but perfectly harmless. Run along now, like a dear boy. I’ll ring you if I should need anything.”

  Jimmie picked up the tray and left.

  I heard the door close again.

  I brandished the revolver wildly under his nose. “I’m going to find out who killed Jean Dahl. And I’m going to find out why she was killed and I’m going to find out right now. Personally, I think your friend Maxie did it.”

  “I refuse even to discuss the matter with you until you put down that gun. As you obviously know nothing whatever about the use of firearms, you are quite likely, in your present hysterical condition, to pull the trigger accidentally.”

  He was, of course, absolutely right.

  I lowered the gun.

  “That’s better,” Walter said. “Now then, if you are prepared to continue this discussion in a reasonable fashion, I will tell you this much. Your surmise, however wild, was shared by someone else. An hour or two before her untimely demise, Jean Dahl was under the impression that Max Shriber was planning to murder her.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “She told me,” Walter said simply.

  I exploded. I roared, “She told you! First you said you didn’t even know her. You told me you didn’t know who she was, and had never seen her before in your life. Damn it, Walter, if you don’t stop lying to me I’m going to kill you right now.”

  Walter giggled.

  Very deliberately he took a cigarette from the box, tapped it and finally lighted it. “Well,” he said finally. “Since we are going to be partners, Richard, I suppose we might as well know the worst about each other.”

  “Tell me the worst about you, Walter.” I stared at him coldly.

  Walter sighed. “If my sordid confessions are distasteful to you,” he said, “I ask you to remember that you brought them on yourself.”

  I did not say anything. I continued to stare.

  “As you may have suspected,” Walter said, “I neither maintain this lavish establishment nor give my extravagant parties solely out of a desire to bring pleasure and entertainment to my fellow man. I find that by running what might in another day have been called a salon, I am in a position to discover a great deal about what goes on in the world. In short, my guests supply me with inside information, and I in turn supply them with entertainment.

  “I provide my guests with food, drink, and stimulating, intellectual companionship. With certain guests, it is sometimes necessary that I provide other kinds of companionship. Therefore it is sometimes necessary to have on tap a number of professional companions. Let us say Jean Dahl was a professional companion. Of the one-hundred-dollars-a-night variety.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight.”

  “Now really, Richard, I don’t know how I can make it more plain. Jean Dahl was a call girl whom I frequently hired for the entertainment of one of my more special guests. As I was the source of a substantial portion of her income, she quite naturally regarded me as her benefactor. You may not believe this, but I thought of that girl as my daughter. Nevertheless, when she suggested that poor Max wanted to murder her, I could hardly credit such a thing. Poor Max wouldn’t harm a fly.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What made her think Max Shriber wanted to murder her? What motive could he have had?”

  Walter looked thoughtful. “Well, for one thing,” he said, “she was blackmailing him.”

  I walked slowly across the room to the bar and mixed myself a drink. “Jean Dahl was blackmailing Max Shriber?” I said. “How? With what?”

  “It is a long, rather unpleasant story,” Walter said. “It goes back to poor Charles Anstruther’s accident. As you know, the poor soul blew his brains out with a gun. He was absolutely stinking at the time, of course.”

  “So,” I said. “What does that have to do with Jean Dahl?”

  “The night of the accident,” Walter said, “Anstruther was not alone. He had a young lady in his hotel room. Jean Dahl.”

  My head was beginning to spin.

  “You must try to see the whole picture,” Walter said. “If you want to understand this you must take the broad view. As I have told you, a small corporation with myself at the head had just purchased outright all title to Anstruther’s new book. Anstr
uther had been given a check for one hundred thousand dollars as payment in full.”

  I was trying desperately to follow Walter’s story, but something jarred in my mind. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought you said you paid one hundred fifty thousand dollars. I thought you said the three of you each put up fifty thousand.”

  Walter looked annoyed for a moment. “Anstruther was, in effect, paid one hundred fifty thousand dollars. It happens that my fifty thousand dollars was paid not in cash but in services.”

  I laughed out loud.

  “You mean you were getting a free ride,” I said. “Let me guess. Your two partners thought you were putting up an equal share of cash.” I could suddenly see this part of it clearly. “Let me ask you something, Walter. Did Anstruther know you told Max and Janis the price was one hundred fifty thousand? Or did you tell him that the three of you together were putting up one hundred thousand?”

  “You have the mind of a certified public accountant,” Walter said in injured tones.

  “O.K., Walter,” I said, “continue with the broad view. You were double crossing your partners and you were double crossing Anstruther. You told him you could only get one hundred thousand dollars for his book, and you told your partners they would have to pay one hundred fifty thousand. So Janis and Max between them put up one hundred thousand dollars-what they believed was their share-but what was really the whole price. So you were getting a third interest free. O.K. Go on. You gave Anstruther a check for one hundred thousand dollars. And he gave you the book?”

  “Not so fast, Richard. Anstruther was a neurotic man with an ugly suspicious side to his nature. He refused to deliver the book to us till the check had cleared and he had the cash.”

  “That was very wise of him,” I said.

  “And the afternoon the check cleared, Anstruther disappeared with the one hundred thousand dollars in his pocket. He was found by the police three days later with a bullet through his head. The one hundred thousand dollars had vanished and, worst of all, we discovered that we had been duped by this unscrupulous man. There was no new book.”

  I laughed. I laughed uproariously. I laughed till the tears ran down my face. “So he conned you,” I said. “So the three sharp crooks get taken. So he sold you the rights to nothing for one hundred thousand dollars and managed to spend it all before you found him. I think that’s wonderful.”

  “It is not nearly so amusing as you imagine,” Walter said.

  “So that’s why nobody can see the new book,” I said. “Because there isn’t any new book.”

  Walter smiled. “Now, now, Richard, don’t be naive. Do you seriously imagine that we would allow an investment like that to go up in smoke? You must try to grasp for a moment the basic laws of supply and demand. People everywhere are clamoring for a new novel by Charles Anstruther. Motion picture companies are bidding. Magazines are begging for the rights to serialize. We should be very poor businessmen indeed if we did not at least try to meet that demand.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I ask you to examine the situation. Had we been able to perform a miracle and produce a new Anstruther novel it would be worth, conservatively, including motion pictures, book clubs, magazines, reprints, foreign rights, et cetera, a million dollars. Perhaps a good deal more. Naturally, there was only one course open to us. We performed a miracle.”

  “You what?”

  “We produced a new Anstruther.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “What do you mean you produced a new Anstruther?” I said stupidly.

  “My dear boy,” Walter said, “it was not hard at all. Anstruther’s style was widely imitated. It is, when you come right down to it, a matter of using short sentences and having your characters speak tersely about death and the exotic scenery. Oh, it takes a definite talent. It requires a complete understanding of the master’s style and the invention of a story which will appeal to the movies. But then, as I told you before, Jimmie is a very talented boy.”

  “You mean to tell me that Jimmie wrote the new Anstruther?”

  “With my assistance,” Walter said smugly. “With my assistance. Of course he had at his disposal three of Anstruther’s unpublished short stories, which he cleverly interpolated into the text. We had Charles’ notebooks, and then, of course, there were his published works. He cribbed discreetly, here and there, from his earlier books. After all, it is not uncommon for an author to steal from himself. Particularly an author whose powers were generally conceded to be on the wane. And, I must not let false modesty creep in. Jimmie had the benefit of my editorial genius. My ear is flawless. I was able to detect and remove a number of details-words, observations-which might conceivably have given us away. In the end, we produced a perfectly acceptable minor work with a story eminently suitable for the films. If it were possible I do believe we could go on producing spurious Anstruthers for years to come. It is a craft. We could hand it on from father to son.”

  I was speechless.

  “But this is all quite beside the point,” Walter said. “You were asking about the unfortunate Miss Dahl. I did not find out that Miss Dahl had been a witness to Anstruther’s accident until last night. She appeared at my cocktail party and insisted on speaking to me privately.”

  Walter paused and sighed. It was a deep sigh, from the depths of his small heart.

  “If what Jean Dahl told me was true,” Walter said, “and I have every reason to believe it was, I can only conclude that mankind is sick unto death with greed and dishonesty. It proves that a man can trust no one. I am shocked to say that her story cast aspersions on the good faith of my two partners.”

  “Walter,” I said, “stop beating around the bush. What did she tell you?”

  Walter grinned.

  He reached to the panel beside him and pushed a button. There was a brief whirring sound from the loudspeaker.

  “It will take just a moment to change the spools,” he said. “I naturally have to unwind this present conversation. It will take only a moment.”

  “You mean you recorded what Jean Dahl said?”

  “Naturally,” Walter said. “Naturally.

  “Now,” Walter said, “I think we are ready. I was not able to turn the machine on until a moment or two after the conversation had started.”

  It was a very clear recording. Jean:…going to kill me. Max Shriber is going to kill me! Walter: My dear girl, you are either drunk or hysterical, or both. Why is Max going to kill you? Jean: Because I know he killed Anstruther. Walter: You are drunk. Definitely… Jean: Listen, baby, I’m in trouble. I was with Anstruther when they killed him. Walter: When they killed him? What are you talking about? Jean: I was with Anstruther that night. When the doorbell rang I picked up my stuff and went into the kitchen. While I was getting dressed in there I heard them talking. She came in first. There was an argument. Then he came in too. I’d recognize his voice anywhere. Max’s voice. She came first. And then in a few minutes Max came in and killed him. Walter: Who is she? Jean: You know damn wel… Walter: I assure you I have no idea what you are talking about. Jean: Whitney. Janis Whitney. I’d know her voice too. Whitney came into Anstruther’s room. Andy was very drunk. They argued about the book. Then Max came in and Max killed him. Walter: Max came in and killed him? Jean: In the middle of the argument the doorbell rang again and then Max came in and killed him. He shot him. He shot him with the rifle. Andy had been playing with the damn rifle all night. I couldn’t get it away from him. He was a crazy son of a bitch. Walter: You are absolutely sure Max killed him? Jean: I heard him. He said to give them the book or he would kill him. It was terrible. Andy was very drunk. He’d been swearing at Whitney. She kept asking him for the book and he kept telling her to go – herself. Walter: How picturesque. Jean: She wanted him to give her the money and he said he’d spent it all. He was very drunk and laughing and swearing. Then she found the money. He’d been throwing it around and laughing and tearing some of it up. He was crazy. He’d spent only
a few hundred dollars. Then the doorbell rang again, and Whitney let Max in and Max killed him. I ran out the back door. I shoved the rest of my clothes in my case and ran out the back way. Walter: You got away? They didn’t see you? Jean: No. I mean, yes. I know damn well they didn’t see me. Or he’d have killed me too. Walter: And you’re sure it was Max who killed him? Jean: Yes. Max threatened him with the gun. Then Whitney began to scream. She kept screaming, “Don’t do it, Max. Don’t do it! You can’t risk it.” But he did it. He killed him. And now he’s going to kill me. Walter: I don’t understand. What makes you think that at this late date Max knows you were there listening to them? What makes you think he knows? Jean: I must have been crazy. I needed money. I was crazy. I went to Max and told him I knew all about it. I told him if he didn’t pay me I’d go to the police. Walter: How long ago was this? Jean: Two months ago. He said he’d give me ten thousand dollars. He gave me a thousand and he said he’d give me the rest in ten days. He gave me another thousand. And he kept stalling. He only gave me two thousand altogether. I should have gone to the police. He’s here now, and he’s going to kill me.

  The sobbing voice record ended and we sat listening to the sound of the spool.

  Walter raised his eyebrows. “You can see why such a story shakes my faith in my two partners. And the mystery of what Anstruther managed to do with one hundred thousand dollars in so short a time is rather neatly solved. The police verdict was that Anstruther had killed himself accidentally while cleaning his gun under the influence of alcohol. I’m sure it was not difficult for them to create such an impression.”

  I felt sick and dizzy. “You really think Max killed Anstruther, and that Janis was a witness?”

  “Of course I do. What else am I to think?” Walter snapped.

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “let’s call the police. Let’s call the police right now.”

  “Now, now, Richard. You mustn’t allow yourself to become all unstrung.”

  “Unstrung!” Suddenly I heard myself shouting, “How can you sit there so calmly after hearing a thing like that?”