Death by Association Read online

  “More slummers,” Penny Shepard said.

  “We go to slum no more,” MacDonald told her. “But don’t let us discourage you.”

  “There’s no dancing tonight,” Penny said. “At the hotel, I mean. Out of respect, apparently. It’s put us on the town.”

  That did not, Mary thought, explain the Sibleys. But perhaps they were restless, too.

  Mary and MacDonald went back by cab to The Coral Isles, and said little on the way; he was abstracted and seemed, for minutes at a time, to forget her presence. She thought of the dim night club, and the strip tease girls, who weren’t beautiful, weren’t under twenty and weren’t going anywhere. She thought also of Captain Heimrich, his face colored by the pinkness of the shade through which light fell on it, and the blond girl (except that she probably wasn’t) in the long white dress.

  In the lighted hotel lobby—the light by no means pinkish—Mac’s face was drawn and tired, although at the last moment, just when they parted, a quick smile changed it, so that weariness was momentarily wiped away.

  “You’re a good girl,” he told her. “Some day I’ll do something for you. Tomorrow? I’ll think of something.”

  She had to work tomorrow; she had to work sometime; she was there to work. But she looked up at him and did not say that. She said, “Tomorrow, Mac.” He patted her shoulder again, as he had done earlier, and then went past the desk to the elevator, a very tall, thin man, moving carefully, moving wearily.

  Mary stopped at the desk and found mail waiting her. She sat in a corner of the almost deserted lounge and looked at the mail, none of which mattered. When she had finished, she still sat for a time, postponing the moment of rising, of walking down the lounge and up the stairs to her room. And then, Rachel Jones, crossing the lounge from the french doors to the porch, stopped suddenly, hesitated a moment, and walked toward Mary Wister. She was a small girl on high heels, a black dress leaving pretty shoulders bare, her mouth painted vividly on a pale face. She looked like a sophisticated toy, but she walked with purpose.

  “Miss Wister,” she said. “Can I talk to you?”

  She stood and looked down at Mary and waited.

  “Of course,” Mary said.

  “I have to talk to someone,” the girl said. “Before—” She decided not to finish that. With a quick movement she sat beside Mary.

  “It’s complicated,” she said. “Will you listen?”

  “Yes,” Mary said. The girl seemed oddly tense. It was as if she drew purpose tight between slim hands.

  “It’s about Wells,” Rachel Jones said, and turned so that, sitting on the edge of the sofa, she could look at Mary. “And—Bill Oslen. It’s something I can’t handle alone and can’t—” She stopped and shook her head. “It’s very complicated,” she said, again. “I want to tell you something, and then I want you to tell somebody—I think Captain Heimrich—but not that it came from me. Will you do that?”

  “I guess—” Mary began, but then she thought, and shook her head. “If it’s about Mr. Wells’s death, and something the police should know,” she said, “I can’t promise that. How could I? Why don’t you just go to the sheriff? Or Captain Heimrich, if you’d rather?”

  “There’re several reasons,” the girl said. “You won’t just take my word for it?”

  “No,” Mary said. “I can’t. I don’t ask you to tell me anything.”

  “You know Captain Heimrich,” the girl said. “He’ll listen to you. I want to stay out of it.”

  Mary shook her head. Rachel looked at her intently for a moment.

  “Well,” she said, and now spoke slowly, “will you do this? Will you listen to what I want to tell you and then pass it along, but not right away? Say I told you, if you have to, but give me—oh, until tomorrow? Say about noon? Then tell somebody—anybody you want to. By that time—” She stopped again. “You see,” she said, “I want to stay alive, like anybody else.”

  She said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world to say; as if, from one civilized young woman to another, in the lobby of a resort hotel, the risk that one might fail to stay alive was a risk so obvious that to acknowledge it was mere formality.

  “What do you mean?” Mary said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Just that,” Rachel Jones said. “Not to be killed, like Wells. They wouldn’t think twice about it, you know.”

  It should have been preposterous; the girl’s almost off-hand acceptance of a danger still undefined, emanating from a source not disclosed but taken for granted, should have been the more beyond credence because of the very casualness of its announcement. Mary looked at the vivid girl intently and Rachel waited. Only after almost a minute did she smile faintly.

  “You’re out of it, aren’t you?” she said. “Clear out of it. Or you think you are. You can’t bring yourself to believe me. Poor Wells. He fought so hard to wake up people like you. To make them see!”

  Now the matter-of-factness had disappeared. Now Rachel spoke with emphasis, and seemed to use words she had often used before, or often thought before.

  “I just want you to listen,” she said. “Tell somebody tomorrow. That isn’t much, is it? Is it?”

  Before it had been believable and, so, frightening. That, Mary thought, was because her mind was tired, and because of the girl’s matter-of-factness. Now it was melodrama, and melodrama was—was a cliché. An impressionable young woman, excited by her brushing contact with murder, imagined herself centered in a swirl of mystery, threatened by conspirators, no doubt masked, who “wouldn’t think twice” about the most final violence.

  “What do you mean by ‘they’?” Mary asked.

  “Will you listen to me?” Rachel asked again, her voice strained. “Do what I ask?”

  “I’ll listen,” Mary said. “Of course I’ll listen.” She hesitated. After all, tomorrow was only around the corner of a few hours’ sleep; until tomorrow whatever she was to be told would keep safely. She would not have to bother to keep it. And, it wouldn’t be important. “I won’t say anything until tomorrow,” she said. It wouldn’t matter, one way or the other.

  “Oslen killed Wells,” the girl said, after a further moment during which she scrutinized Mary’s face. “I don’t know how—I mean, precisely how he managed it. I know why. Because Wells was going to tell people about him. About what he’s doing.”

  “Oslen?” Mary said, although of course the girl was talking about William Oslen, concert pianist and—what else? Oh yes—crusader against communism, leader in the breaking up of subversive meetings. What had Heimrich said of that? “Ill advised, but understandable.” And—he had also said that Rachel Jones was, or appeared to be, on the other side.

  “People like you won’t let yourselves understand,” Rachel said. “Won’t let yourselves. Of course, Oslen. Who else?”

  “What could Mr. Wells have to tell anybody about Mr. Oslen?” Mary asked. She made it very clear, for her own benefit as much as for Rachel Jones’s. “Mr. Wells was a former communist,” she said. “That’s right? He changed his mind and has been doing everything he can to expose people who were communists, or are communists now, and are trying to hide it. Isn’t that true?”

  “Of course,” Rachel said. She was impatient. “That’s what I’m—”

  “Wait,” Mary said. “Captain Heimrich told us—told Dr. MacDonald and me—something about Mr. Oslen. He’s active in the American Legion somewhere. In New York somewhere? There was some kind of meeting—a communist meeting, or a meeting arranged by communists—and Mr. Oslen was one of the leaders in breaking it up. What could Mr. Wells have said about Mr. Oslen?”

  “That he was told to do that,” Rachel said. “That it was part of their plan. That he’s really working for them. They staged the whole thing—they wanted, it broken up. So it would go all over the world—the violent Americans, the ‘cannibals.’ To make all we say about freedom, about free speech, sound like lying. To people who don’t know any better. Don’t you see?”
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br />   “No,” Mary said.

  “The Grand Jury that investigated saw that much,” Rachel told her. “That the communists wanted violence. For propaganda. To take in the liberals—in this country, in England, everywhere. The liberals!” She made the word an epithet. “They announced the meeting. They challenged anybody to stop them. They baited the Legion people; dared them. They wanted an incident.” She shook her head. “You’re all asleep,” she said. “You don’t know what’s going on—what the danger is.”

  “Listen,” Mary said. “You’re excited. I know that things like that go on. I do remember the riot—and obviously they wanted it. What’s that got to do with Mr. Oslen. What was he told to do? Who told him?”

  “Did you think they’d leave it to chance?” Rachel asked. “They don’t leave anything. Suppose the people they wanted to get excited didn’t get excited? Suppose they just said, ‘Let them shoot their faces off. Nobody pays any attention to them.’ There’d be some who would argue that way, wouldn’t there? People who would see through the whole thing?”

  “Yes,” Mary said. “Of course.”

  “So,” Rachel said, “they take care of that. They get somebody inside, under cover. Somebody who’ll stir the other side up. Say, ‘Come on. Let’s go get the bastards! We’ll show them whose country this is.’ That way, they get their—incident. Their propaganda incident. Oslen’s fine for that—good standing, public patriotism, all of it. Oh, they know the tricks,”

  Rachel was violent enough, now, although her voice remained low. She leaned forward, stabbed words at Mary.

  “Understand!” she said. “Wake up! This is a conspiracy we’re talking about—a criminal conspiracy. It’s not free speech—any of the nice, easy things. This is different. Can you see?”

  “You mean,” Mary said, “that Mr. Oslen was—is—an agent? An agent provacateur? Working for the communists inside the Legion? I suppose in other groups which are active against communism. Getting them to use violence—lawlessness? So that people—sane, middle-of-the-road people in other countries—will get to feeling, a plague on both their houses? Feel there’s not so much choice after all?”

  “Of course,” Rachel said. “What did you think I was saying?”

  She believes it utterly, Mary thought, looking at the vivid girl. That it is all organized this way, plotted this way, this devious. That a man like Oslen—

  “How do you know about this?” Mary said. “Say something like that could happen. I don’t know. Maybe it could. But you talk as if you know.”

  “Of course I know,” Rachel said. “I’m one of them—or they think I am. I’m a contact for Oslen. With the men who tell him what to do. He can’t be seen with them. Can’t go to meetings, of course. He has to be careful. I’m not known to be one of them. I’m not important. Nobody’s ever heard of me. Oslen can know me—I’m a music student he’s met somewhere. We’re both interested in music. If they ever find out about me, he’s still all right. All he knew about me, he can say, is that I’m a girl he met—a girl who wants to be a pianist. A protégée of his. If people don’t believe it’s that simple, they’ll believe it’s just as simple in another way. Man and pretty girl. That’s why they chose me.

  “But if you’re one of them—”

  “I said, ‘They think I am,’” the girl said. “I was, once, because—well, there was somebody I knew, I thought was wonderful. He made it all seem—well, not what it is. Not this vicious thing it really is.”

  “But you’ve stayed in,” Mary said. “That’s what you say.”

  “I can do something by staying in,” Rachel said. “There are things I can find out and tell people. People like Wells. People like—” But then she shook her head. “You’ll have to guess the rest of it,” she said.

  “Go on,” Mary said. “You say that Oslen killed Mr. Wells. Why? Because Mr. Wells had found out about him?”

  “Of course,” Rachel Jones said. “I told Wells. You see—what he’s doing, Oslen I mean, isn’t against any law. It ought to be, but it isn’t. So nobody can do anything—officially. But a man like Wells, who doesn’t—didn’t—have to be official could see that the right people found put. People in the Legion. In other groups. See that he got thrown out.”

  “You told Wells,” Mary said. “Then?”

  “Wells has—had—to be careful,” Rachel said. “He had to be sure, particularly with a man like Oslen, who isn’t in the government or anything. He asked Mr. Oslen to come down and talk about these—charges. I came along. Oslen was surprised. But I convinced him it was a party contact. Actually, I came to answer the lies I knew he’d tell Wells. Only—I guess Wells found out some other way that it was all true. So—Oslen killed him so he couldn’t talk.”

  She paused.

  “That’s the way it had to be,” she said.

  “Why don’t you tell this yourself?” Mary asked. “To the police. To Captain Heimrich.”

  The girl shook her head impatiently.

  “They’d find out,” she said. “Then I’d be no use any more. They might even—well, I said I want to stay alive. I want time to—”

  She stopped and shook her head again.

  “Never mind,” she said. “You tell Heimrich tomorrow. Tell him the whole thing, if you have to. By that time—” She shook her head again. Then, quickly, she stood up.

  “You tell them,” she said. “I can always say you made it up. But they’ll look into it all the same. Maybe I can—”

  She stopped again. Then, after a moment, she said, “Good night,” and turned and went down the lounge on high heels, the sophisticated toy again, not looking back. Mary watched her go and tried to decide what she believed of what she had been told. It was hard to believe. And yet— Again the picture was in her mind, each line sharp, each color clear—the green of leaves, the white of a dinner jacket—and the red. As if he were there before her, Mary saw Bronson Wells on his back in a narrow tunnel, open eyes staring up and seeing nothing they stared at. Mary Wister shivered and then stood up. Once you believed in murder, you could believe, you had to believe, in anything. She had been wrong to promise the girl.

  But she had. She carried that promise with her, heavy in her mind, across the lounge and upstairs to her room on the second floor. Moonlight poured through the open window, but she closed the Venetian blinds against it and turned on a lamp. She lighted a cigarette and sat in the easier of the chairs, making no move to undress and go to bed. She had promised; she shouldn’t have. If what Rachel said was true—Of course it isn’t true, Mary told herself. It’s all too—too utterly farfetched. There isn’t a conspiracy like that. The girl is hysterical. There’s something wrong with her. She hates Oslen; she’s made all this up so that— But Bronson Wells lay in a green tunnel between a wall and the thick hedge, and there was blood on his white dinner jacket and his eyes— That was real. She could not get away from that. With the rawness of that melodrama accepted, then—then what could she refuse to accept?

  She sat there for an hour or more, and cigarettes filled the ash tray. Most of them were almost as long when she discarded them as when they had been lighted—long, broken tubes of white, twisting in the tray. Finally, she made up her mind. She could not palliate what she planned to do. She planned to break a promise; a promise reluctantly given, to be sure, but a promise nevertheless. She would have to tell Heimrich what she had been told; she could not take the responsibility of not telling him. Probably he would do nothing until morning; she could tell him of the girl’s fears and let him make what he could of them, act as he thought best.

  She reached for the telephone and then stopped. She could, at least, avoid talking to him openly, calling him through the hotel switchboard. It would be better to go to his room. If only she knew which room— But then a picture formed again in her mind. This time it was of words written clearly, in a firm hand, on the top sheet of a pad. “Orange juice. Scrambled eggs. Toast. Coffee.” Of a signature: “M. L. Heimrich.” Finally, of a room number: “209.
” It was all there in her mind, to be read again as, hardly knowing she did so, she had read it that morning and so filed a photograph which now could be taken out and studied.

  She turned out the lamp and went to the door. A man and a woman were coming along the corridor, talking, and she waited until they passed. Then she went out, making no noise, and closed the door behind her. She looked at the number on the door—202. She went along the corridor, which was lighted dimly, but adequately. At the far end, a red exit light burned. There were room doors only on her right. She passed 204 and 206 before she realized that she was going wrong. There were only even numbers this way.

  She turned back, walked past her own room and then, very quickly, through the more brightly lighted stair hall and into the corridor beyond. Here the room doors were on her left; here the first was numbered 201. She was right, now. She went down the corridor, still quickly but almost silently on the carpeted floor. 203,205—

  There were transoms over the doors, and through the transom of 209 light showed. She stopped in front of the door and looked up and down the corridor, listened for any sound. She saw no one, heard nothing. She knocked on the door, quickly, lightly. There was no response. But the door, which had not been latched, began to open inward. She knocked again, and the door swung a little more, away from the light touch of her knuckles.

  “Captain Heimrich,” she said then, speaking softly, speaking almost in a whisper. “Captain Heimrich!”

  She heard a faint sound then, and thought it was that of breath exhaled in pain. She spoke Heimrich’s name again and, when this time no sound answered her, she pushed open the door.

  Heimrich was sitting in a chair facing the door. His eyes were closed; he seemed to be breathing heavily, with difficulty. And there was blood on the front of his linen jacket.

  “Captain!” she said and her voice, still low, was urgent. She was in the room, then. The door was open behind her.

  Then Heimrich opened his blue eyes. They were as clear as always, as alive.