Curtain for a Jester Read online

  Bill left the car and walked up to the glass-paneled door and pushed a doorbell button. There was no answering sound. He raised his hand to knock and lowered the fisted hand.

  There was a light inside—a thin, hard pencil of light, sharply white. It moved this way and that, questingly, in a room to the right of the entrance hall. It was a furtive light, stealing about the room.

  Bill Weigand raised his hand again and now knocked sharply on the door. The little light went out. There was no sound from inside.

  Bill Weigand knocked again, and waited. He stood close to the door, with an ear to the glass panel. Faintly, now, he heard movement in the house. The sound was surreptitious, as the light had been.

  Bill tried the door, and the knob turned. He tried to open the door quietly, but it stuck in the frame and, when pressure released it, it opened with a sharp, protesting sound. Then, in the dark house, Bill heard the footsteps of a hurrying man. Bill started toward the sound and ran into a chair and the chair toppled to bare floor. The crash of the chair on wood drowned out any other sound, if there was any other sound. Bill swore softly, and reached for a cigarette lighter. But he paused; there was no good reason for getting himself shot.

  He groped along the wall, and found a doorway leading to his right. He felt along the wall near the door jamb and, after exasperating delay, found what he was after. He pressed the tumbler of the light switch and, as light came on, swung to flatten himself against the wall. And then he felt somewhat foolish in a bare entrance hall, empty of adversary—empty of almost everything; furnished only by a small table, with a telephone on it.

  Then he heard the sounds again, and they came from the rear of the house.

  “Dewsnap?” Bill called, and waited and got no answer. But then he heard another door being opened, somewhere. “Hold it,” he called.

  The only answer was the sound of the door closing.

  Bill switched on lights ahead of him and went toward the sound—went through what was evidently a living room, through a small dining room, into a kitchen beyond. He took his revolver from its shoulder holster as he went.

  A kitchen door led out into the rear court. Bill opened the door, and the court was empty. But now, again, he heard footsteps.

  They were the steps of a man hurrying, but not quite running, and the man was hurrying on cement—along the driveway between the house and the one next to it, toward the street. Bill ran down a short flight of wooden stairs, and along the driveway.

  He reached the sidewalk and, as far as he could see in either direction, it was empty. Bill swore, realizing what had happened. The man, on reaching the sidewalk, had merely run to the next driveway—but to right? or to left?—and then down it to another rear court. And then, for all Bill knew, had gone over a fence.

  It would be possible to spend the rest of the night chasing this quarry up and down driveways, over fences. Probably, it would be a waste of the rest of the night. Bill put his revolver back in the holster and went into the house by the front door. On the chance, he turned out the lights and stood by the door and looked out of it through the glass panel.

  A car came along the street, slowly, eased into the curb in front of Bill’s Buick, hesitated there for a moment. A man came out from between houses, crossed the sidewalk and got into the car, which started up immediately.

  There was a street light there, and Bill saw the man’s face; he saw, and memorized the license number of the car—a not recent Ford sedan.

  So, he thought, John Baker was a jump ahead. He seemed quite a man to jump ahead.

  Bill turned from the door and regarded the telephone. It would be interesting to see what happened if he directed a pickup of the Ford sedan. After thought, he decided against it.

  “Is a puzzlement,” Pamela North said, quoting the king of Siam, without permission of the copyright owners. “There’s too much of everything.” She used fingers to note those things of which there was too much, one finger for each superfluity. “Mr. Monteath killing the first burglar,” Pam North said. “Mr. Behren, with an ‘H’ being killed in New Guinea, but Mr. Barron with two ‘R’s’ being at the party and being the other Mr. Behren. Mr. Frank finding Mr. Parsons’s topcoat, but I don’t believe for a minute there was blood on it.”

  “As Frank said,” Jerry told her. “No blood.”

  “Only so everybody’d think there was,” Pam said. “That’s clear if anything is. And all this business about his mother!”

  “I wasn’t taken with Frank either,” Jerry admitted. “Which isn’t evidence, any more than the cats. About Baker, I mean.”

  Pam said she knew what he meant. She said it was unnecessary, as he should know, to dot every “T.” She said that she still thought the cats were right, and where was she?

  She was in front of a living room fire, which was not needed, except that April is notoriously an uncertain month. She was in a housecoat. As she talked, she wriggled her feet out of slippers, wiggled her toes in the fire’s warmth. Jerry, in polo shirt and slacks, sat with a long drink almost untouched beside him and regarded his wife’s toes with relaxed pleasure. A fire, a lady of one’s own, a drink—Jerry did not particularly want the drink; it remained a symbol of comfort.

  “Well,” Pam said, “where? If my toes bother you, I’ll sit on them.”

  “Not in the least,” Jerry said. “Very nice. At Mr. Frank, verging on Mr. Baker. There was also, as I recall it, something about dotting ‘T’s’.”

  “All right,” Pam said, “‘I’s,’ then.”

  “Youse what?” Jerry asked her, with interest.

  “‘I’s’ dotted,” Pam said. “Please, Jerry. This is serious.” She leaned forward, toward him. “Jerry, I’m worried.”

  She did not look it, Jerry told her. She looked—

  “Now,” Pam said. “All at once. Worried about Martha Evitts. It’s all very well for us to sit here, with our own cats—where are they, by the way? I—”

  Jerry pointed to a chair. In the seat of the chair there was a coil of cats. Teeney opened blue eyes briefly, blinked, three times, and closed her eyes again.

  “—and that poor thing, not knowing which way to turn.”

  She had known, Jerry pointed out. She had turned to John Baker; gone with John Baker. She was all right.

  “Not if he isn’t,” Pam said. “And, he isn’t. You didn’t see him.”

  “Listen,” Jerry said, fighting for the relaxed comfort, for the lazy warmth of the little fire. “Listen—you told Bill that Baker was here, that the girl went with him. A minute ago you were all right, wiggling your toes. Now—”

  “We went off at so many angles,” Pam said. “When Bill was here. I’d almost forgotten, because of all these other things—Mr. Monteath and Mr. Barron, however you spell it, and Frank and—”

  “Yes,” Jerry said. “Well, you told Bill. Bill will have somebody keep an eye on Martha. We can sit here and twiddle our toes and—how about a nightcap?”

  “No,” Pam said, and her tone was abstracted. “And I don’t think it’s good for you to drink after dinner. Remember how you felt this morning.”

  “I feel fine now,” Jerry said, “and—” But he stopped, because he was not being listened to. Pam stood up suddenly. As if girding herself, she belted the housecoat more closely about her, which was becoming.

  “I’ve got to be sure she’s all right,” Pam said. “She came here for help and I—I didn’t do anything. And—”

  It was gone, Jerry realized. The fire no longer glowed softly, but crackled. Small toes no longer twinkled idly; they were about to be walked on.

  “Mercurial,” Jerry said, half to himself.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” he said.

  “Bill may have forgotten too,” Pam said. “I’m going to call her up.”

  It was contagious. This is ridiculous, Jerry told himself. At one moment we are—well, purring in front of a fire. At the next, with nothing changed—nothing we know of changed—things are urg
ent again. We arch our backs and bush our tails and—damn it, maybe Pam is right about Baker. Maybe she didn’t make it important enough to Bill.

  Pam had the Manhattan telephone book. It was on the floor and she was kneeling in front of it, turning pages.

  “R, S, T, U, V,” Pam North said. “E V—Evans—Evers—Evinson—Ewans—I’ve gone too far—Evis—Evitts. Martha Evitts.”

  She pivoted to sit on the floor, slim legs escaping the housecoat, extending in front of her. She spun the dial. She waited, hearing a telephone ring. It rang, and rang again and yet again.

  “Jerry!” Pam said. “She’s not—”

  “Sorry,” a female voice said—a young female voice said—“I was in the tub, of course. Hello?”

  “Martha?” Pam said. “Miss Evitts?”

  “Afraid she’s not here,” the voice said. “I live here with her—this is Paula.” She waited a moment. “Paula Thompson,” she said. “I’m sorry, Martha just left this minute.”

  “She’s all right?”

  “Why—sure. Why wouldn’t she be? Oh—you mean because this man she worked for got killed?”

  “Partly,” Pam said. “This is Mrs. Gerald North. I saw Miss Evitts this afternoon and—”

  “He was just a man she worked for,” Paula said. “For goodness’ sake, Mrs.—North, was it?”

  “Yes,” Pam said.

  “I’m sorry,” Paula said. “Look, I’m dripping all over the rug. I’ll tell Martha you called, if I’m here when she gets back. I’ve got sort of a late date and—”

  “Wait,” Pam said. “Please wait. She was in this evening?”

  “For a while. Then this man called her.”

  “Mr. Baker?”

  Paula Thompson sneezed.

  “If I catch another cold,” she said, direfully. “Maybe. But this was business. Now, before I catch—”

  “Please,” Pam said. “I know it’s dreadful. But—what kind of business?”

  “My teeth are starting to chatter,” Paula said. “This place she works. All I know is, this man called her up. She talked to him. She said, ‘Well, it ought to be. I put it there.’ And then, ‘All right. I suppose I’ll have to.’ Then she hung up and said she had to go down to the place she works and—a-chew!”

  “The man who called her,” Pam said. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Thompson. It can be important. Didn’t she say who it was?”

  “Just somebody from the office,” Paula said. “She didn’t say who. Oh damn it! There’s my date at the door and here I am—I’ve simply got to—”

  “Goodbye,” Pam said. “I—I hope you don’t really catch cold.”

  She put the receiver back. She looked at it.

  “She’s gone to that—place,” Pam said. “The Novelty something. Where she works. And—somebody called and told her to go there. I’m sure it was Mr. Baker. And—”

  Pam had pivoted again. She was on her knees again, flipping pages of the telephone book. “H-I-J-K-L-M,” Pam said. “I wish I didn’t always have to go through the whole alphabet to get N. J-K-L-M-N-O—Novelty—Novelty what?”

  “Emporium,” Jerry said.

  “Emporium,” Pam said, and whirled again, and dialed again. And again a telephone rang repeatedly. But this time, although Pam gave it time enough and more, the telephone was not answered.

  For the third number she called, at twenty minutes past nine that Thursday evening, Pam did not need to refer to the directory, and the telephone was answered promptly. But neither Captain Weigand nor Sergeant Mullins was in the office. They would be told that she had called.

  “Jerry,” Pam said. “Nobody knows but us. Nobody who would understand. Come on, Jerry!”

  Pam was on her feet, she went down the hall toward the bedroom, and the housecoat billowed behind her as she loosened it; it was slipping from her shoulders as she went through the door.

  “Oh God!” Jerry North said, and went for a jacket. It was not, he decided, an occasion which was going to call for a necktie. He wondered, uneasily, what it would call for.

  Bill Weigand is not a man to lose himself twice in the same terrain. He drove the long way out of Brooklyn without hesitation, as one familiar with the borough’s ramifications. Once you got the hang of things—

  As he drove, not much hurrying, stopping obediently for lights, Bill hoped he had the hang of things. The case had its ramifications, like the borough. But once you got the hang of them—once you knew enough to guess the shape—it all became reasonable enough. There might be side issues; certainly there were areas unexplored. And what might come next could only be guessed at. It would come within certain boundaries, the boundaries which outlined the shape of murder—and that other shape which concerned Saul Bessing.

  It had been difficult to fit together a topcoat, which might or might not have blood on it, and a dummy “defenestrated”—although not precisely that; apparently there had been no ejection through a window—and fingerprints in a safe. Where Maine fitted in had not been immediately apparent, and John Baker’s part had been only something to guess at. But now, Bill decided—going onto the approach of the Manhattan Bridge—it was simple enough.

  It was not as simple, unfortunately for him, as one person had thought it would be. Yet it was hard to see what, having once made up his mind as to what was most expedient, the person in question could have done, even had he known of the ramifications. (One had to postulate that, still only to be guessed at, there was a specific motive of great importance. The motive, presumably, still prevailed.)

  Bill hoped that Mr. Bertram Dewsnap knew what he was about—what he was about when he left his house in Brooklyn and took off in whatever direction, for whatever purpose, he had found impelling. Bill had searched the house, after he had watched John Baker starting on his ride, and had found what he expected to find—nothing and nobody. Nobody on the first floor, nobody on the second or third. (And not much furniture on the upper floors, either. Mr. Dewsnap was not really settled in. It had probably not seemed worth the trouble, since in his trade one is very apt to be here today and gone tomorrow.) There had been nothing in the basement except an oil burner and two metal cans, one half full of the debris of (light) housekeeping; the other empty. In a closet in the basement, which Bill had opened with some interest, there had been nothing. A body would have fitted into it neatly enough; none did.

  Bill had called his office, got Mullins. He heard the essentials of Mullins’s interview with Mrs. Wilmot and Clyde Parsons. “He could of got in and killed Wilmot,” Mullins pointed out. “But if Mrs. Wilmot is telling the truth, there wouldn’t have been much time.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “We’ll talk to them tomorrow—if we need to by then. And—”

  He had been asked to hold it for a moment. Mullins had conferred with someone else, said, “Hm-m” to someone else, and returned. “Mrs. Wilmot and Parsons are off some place,” he said. “The man who was staked out went along. Hasn’t called in, yet.”

  Bill had thought of that for a moment. Then he had told Sergeant Mullins what he wanted done.

  So now there was no real reason for Bill to hurry. Yet, as he came down into Manhattan, and familiar streets, he began to push the Buick a little. He still did not use his siren, but he did not lag.

  Sylvester Frank had expected to have a night off, even if in jail. That, as he had understood it, had been the program. It appeared that the program had been changed. Released in the custody of his attorney—whom he had never seen before; not before suspected the existence of—Frank had been told where to go. He was now on his way there, presumably for further instructions. He had to assume, he supposed, that there had been a slip-up. Or, of course, that he had been picked for something else.

  Well, he couldn’t say “no.” He realized that. Anything in reason—like telling certain things and getting himself arrested—had got to be done. The trouble was, one could never tell what would be considered in reason. He hoped knives wouldn’t come into it again. All day he had been rem
embering; had been sharing, although without knowing it, Lady Macbeth’s surprise at the amount of blood one man has in him.

  Well, once you got yourself into things like this, you followed instructions and hoped for the best.

  Albert Barron, as he preferred nowadays to think of himself, sat in one end of a subway car, and read a newspaper, which he held well in front of his face. Each time the train stopped, Mr. Barron refolded his newspaper and, in the process, looked out from behind it. The girl remained at the other end of the car, and remained alone.

  The whole procedure struck him as rather absurd. The girl had no reason to suspect anything amiss; it would have been simpler not to complicate matters more than they already were complicated.

  If things went much further, Mr. Barron told himself, looking with a marked lack of interest at stock market quotations, he was getting out. There were other ways of making a living and, on the whole, safer ones. They had never laid hands on him in the old days.

  For a while longer he would play along, obey instructions, and see. But only for a time, and as long as the instructions were reasonable and didn’t require that he further risk his neck. That, he had risked enough already.

  The sergeant who had gone to the penthouse at about two-thirty that morning and conversed, through a closed door, with a man who was soon to be dead—he was, Weigand had been able to remember, named after some animal. It took Mullins time to identify the sergeant; there had been some effort to persuade him to accept a Sergeant Katz, but Katz had been nowhere near the penthouse. Mullins tried again.

  “Oh, you mean Fox,” the precinct lieutenant said. “Why didn’t you say so, man? He’s out in a prowl. Weigand wants him particularly?”

  “Yes,” Mullins said, “that’s what he says, lieutenant.”

  “Why? Fox never saw this dead man of yours.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know,” Mullins said. “The captain didn’t say. Just said—get hold of this sergeant and take him along with you.”

  “O.K.,” the lieutenant said. “Anything to oblige Homicide. Where you want him to meet you?”