Gentleman Called Read online

  “Whisst, Jasper.”

  Tully glowered at him from under ominous brows. “What do you want?”

  “Would you like to talk to the Reverend Alfonzo Blake?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Now?”

  Tully unfolded his knotted shape like a ripened nut. “Where did you find him?”

  “Well, I’m half-ashamed and half-proud of myself. I searched records and galleries, and put out lines to this bureau and that, and then sat down on my backside like you to think. And while I was sitting, I noticed the telephone book. And that’s where I found him.”

  Alfonzo Blake was a man as long and lean as himself, Tully noted, and he came into the room a bit stooped and wary, with the attitude of having bumped his head on too many doorways. His cheeks were sunken, his black eyes bright as a fanatic’s. He had not had an easy time of it his fifty odd years on earth. The detective motioned him into the chair opposite him, across the desk.

  “I appreciate your coming in,” Tully started.

  “I should have appreciated not coming in here again ever,” Blake said in a voice the vibration of which was strong enough to tremble the pictures on the wall. “I have never offended society, but its representatives have grievously offended me.”

  “You should have been District Attorney with that voice,” Tully said, trying to lighten the weight of their visit.

  “Have I been summoned here for vocational guidance? It’s too late for that.”

  “How long is it since you saw Arabella Sperling?”

  Blake repeated the name and closed his eyes in thought. When he opened them it was obvious he had remembered her, and with sudden and great expectation. “She’s dead?”

  “She’s dead,” Tully said.

  The man strove for piety of mien, but he moistened his lips as though he could taste…what? Money, of course.

  “She was murdered,” Tully added, and in that instant watched something die in the man opposite him. He had expected an inheritance! The poor devil was turning green: he was now expecting much worse than nothing.

  “Oh, no,” Blake murmured folding his arms across his thin chest in self-fortification.

  “Now you understand why I want to talk to you.”

  The Reverend Blake nodded.

  “You knew she had money,” Tully said.

  “At the Mellody Club she made no secret of it,” Blake said.

  “That was advertising for trouble, wasn’t it?” Tully said.

  “She was advertising for a husband.”

  “And wasn’t there anyone willing to take her up on it?”

  “I suppose most every man in the place thought about it now and then.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you unmarried, Reverend?”

  “I am a celibate.”

  Tully nodded, admitting the distinction. “Was Mrs. Mellody called as a character witness for you in the Ellie True business?”

  “She was, and precious little character she left me,” he said bitterly. “If ever a witness was led by an attorney she was by your office. ‘Oh, a very honest man,’ said she, ‘in matters of money, that is. And a very sincere one about his religion.’ ‘Then you would trust him?’ said the District Attorney. ‘With my purse,’ said she. ‘Would you trust him with your daughter, Madam?’ Objection. Objection sustained. But Madam tumbled out a few voluntary words which the judge could strike till doomsday without having stricken: ‘I do not have a daughter, for which in this instant I thank God.’”

  “You must have been very glad to see Michael Regan turn up in court,” Tully said matter-of-factly.

  “I prayed him into court.”

  “It’s too bad you couldn’t have saved his life when you got out of court,” Tully drawled.

  “Believe me, I would have tried if I could have found him.”

  “Would you have recognized him if you saw him?”

  Blake’s eyes met the investigator’s and held. “Yes, sir.”

  “Why didn’t you try this millionaire fellow, this Adkins? He’d found him the first time.”

  “I never saw Adkins—before, during, or after my trial. He wrote me a congratulatory letter after it was over. He wished me a long and provident ministry.”

  “Did he endow it?”

  For the first time, Blake smiled. “Only with his blessing. I had thought at the time that if I were a criminal, he might have contributed something toward my rehabilitation. It was an ungrateful thought. But though my life is founded and grounded on the Good Book, I have always felt a certain sympathy for the prodigal’s brother.”

  A humanity that, in the man of the cloth, which Tully liked. He got a good feeling about him in spite of himself, and he could understand the philanthropist’s being moved by him to the point of trying to prove his alibi for him. On the whole, he was glad not to have been himself on the case: he would not like to have had a part in bringing Alfonzo Blake to trial, and he was sufficiently humble to know that he might not then have had the perceptivity about the clergyman he now had.

  “I’m not much of a Bible man,” Tully said, “but I know what you mean.” He got up and straightened a picture that seemed to have been tilted by the other man’s big voice. “It’s a terrible thing to have to stand up in that dock and face the charge of murder. Especially when you can’t name someone who might prove your innocence.”

  “Your office has a graver responsibility in such cases,” Blake said, trying to pull himself out of the limelight.

  “We try hard not to make mistakes like that one,” Tully said, looking down at him. “But maybe somebody helped us—without you knowing it or us knowing it. If you didn’t kill the woman, somebody did, and that somebody liked it just fine, you being tried for it. The trouble with such mistakes, Mr. Blake, sometimes they never get righted. The murder of Ellie True hasn’t been solved yet.

  “Now nobody must have thought about that more than you, sir. You’re an honest man of God. I want an answer straight from you—who do you think murdered Ellie True?”

  “No one of my acquaintance, sir.”

  “That’s not a straight answer.”

  “I don’t know! That’s straight enough for law. It should be for you.”

  “Then let me put a bug in your ear, Reverend, and see if it tickles your memory. You weren’t the only lecher in Mrs. Mellody’s books. She didn’t like that pal of yours, Eddie Murdock, who somehow managed to have left town that night. There doesn’t come any alibi better than that. I want to know something from you, Mr. Blake—didn’t you wonder, too, if Eddie Murdock was really out of town?”

  “Maybe I did in my desperation, God help me, but I was ashamed of myself for it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of my own guilt! Of course, I ogled girls! I lusted after women, and I flayed myself for it, I persecuted my flesh like a medieval monk. And I often felt Murdock’s company was thrust upon me by the Lord God Almighty to try my soul…” Too much saliva had gathered in the man’s mouth and made an ugly rasping sound when he drew in his breath. The veins were standing out on his forehead. “And Murdock would sit, his lips soft and wet as liver, and he would say under his breath—oh, terrible sensual things about one and another of the women, and especially Ellie True.”

  “All right,” Tully said, “Take it easy.”

  He went himself to the files. Lips like liver. The picture of it turned his own stomach. He had a rare gift of speech, the Reverend Blake.

  Tully searched the records for any mention at all of Murdock. There was none except the notation authorizing the deletion of his name from the list of suspects. He had checked out of the Grover Hotel, having purchased his railway ticket for Sando, Ohio, through the hotel. According to a wire check with the sheriff there, Murdock was in Sando on the date Ellie True was murdered.

  What could you do with that, Tully wondered: as neat as a bald head. “Did the police question you about Murdock at all?”

 
; “They did not.”

  “And of course, you wouldn’t have volunteered your suspicions to them.”

  “Mr. Tully, you must understand: I had no suspicions of him or anyone else at that time. It was only after I was arrested, and while I was casting about desperately trying to discover what had happened to me, how I had come to be in such a predicament.”

  “And it occurred to you then that you might have been framed?”

  Blake sat forward in the chair, his long legs collapsed like a dog on its haunches. “As God is my witness, that never occurred to me until this very minute.”

  “Think about it,” Tully said.

  “Oh, I am.” Blake rolled his head about in an agony of recollection. The evangelist’s exhibitionism, Tully thought, watching him. “It was he who told me where she lived…and when she would be there, likely alone.”

  “And you couldn’t think of that to tell to the police when you were on trial for your life?”

  Blake shook his head. “Unless you knew Murdock, you wouldn’t know how subtle he had been with that insinuation. And don’t you see I was blinded by guilt. If Ellie True would have had me that night, I would have sinned!”

  Tully was on the verge of saying he wouldn’t have been the first man, but there was not much point to that. “Did you ever see or hear of Murdock since?”

  “Never.”

  “What was his business, do you know?”

  “I should have supposed a salesman of some sort. I met him at the Friendship Club. He was better spoken than most men I’ve known. And I do remember he had certain little exercises he could do with his hands—‘magician language,’ he called it once. He might very well have been an entertainer, come to think of it. And he was certainly wise to the ways of the world.”

  “Let’s have a description of him,” Tully said, remembering the already described lips.

  “About fifty, a little plump, but the kind of man one would expect to be a good dancer. He looked to have taken the best of care of himself. Sandy hair, which, to tell the truth, I often wondered about: it might possibly have been a transformation…”

  Tully grinned as he wrote the word. He hadn’t heard it since the dear dead days almost beyond recall when he read Andy Gump.

  “…And the most unusual thing about him, I suppose, was his walk, as though all his weight went on his heels. A walk is hard to disguise, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is,” Tully said, his old heart pumping. “Some men have walked to the electric chair.”

  Tully could not get the Reverend Blake out of his office fast enough after that. As soon as he was gone, the investigator checked with the Grover Hotel. It was small, but clean, and not at all the sort of place to arrange transportation for its residents. It was, in fact, a residential hotel with a long waiting list, and Edward T. Murdock had been expected to live there for at least some months when he got in. Instead he stayed but two weeks although he paid a month’s rent. No one remembered having arranged his transportation, but if it had been an emergency, say a death in the family, likely the desk clerk would have done it as a courtesy.

  Most of this came from the manager’s deduction. No one remembered him. The records showed only the dates of his occupancy.

  Tully called Mrs. Mellody. “How long did that fellow Murdock belong to your club?”

  “Off-hand I should say six or seven months.”

  “That long,” Tully murmured. “Did he give you reference?”

  “I should certainly think so,” she said. “Do you want me to look it up?”

  “Do, please, ma’am,” Tully said, “and call me back at this number.” While he waited, he checked the Guild of Variety Artists for Edward T. Murdock. No record. He called the Society of Magicians. The Society did have a member by that name. He was known as Murdock the Mighty, and his home address was Box 17, Sando, Ohio.

  “Where the hell is Sando, Ohio?” Tully cried out as soon as he got off the phone.

  By then the office secretary, Miss Ryan, had come in to help him, making notes as he gave them. She volunteered to call the Automobile Club. Sando was twenty miles southeast of Columbus.

  “So that’s where he landed,” Tully said, in sudden good humor.

  “Where who landed?” Miss Ryan murmured.

  “Americus Vespucci.”

  “Who?”

  “‘Who’s on first,’” Tully said.

  Miss Ryan shook her head and took her notes to the typewriter. Tully’s humor wasn’t the variety of Irish to which she had been raised.

  The switchboard girl came to the door. “A Mrs. Mellody is on number three, Mr. Tully.”

  “Thank you, darling,” said Tully and took the phone.

  “Eddie Murdock gave as reference the president of the Society of Magicians,” she said. “I certainly should have remembered that. The reason I accepted him in the first place was my hope that he might entertain us a bit.”

  Free, Tully thought. “And did he?”

  “No. Not ever.”

  “What address did he give you when he applied for admission?”

  “Membership, not admission, Mr. Tully. Why, the address on his application is the Grover Hotel.”

  “And the date?”

  Mrs. Mellody gave it. Eddie Murdock had used that address six months before he moved into the hotel, probably from the day he got on their waiting list. Curious and confusing. Tully thanked the woman and hung up.

  He swung around on his swivel chair. “Miss Ryan, where’s the Big Man? I want his authorization for a flying trip to—where am I going? Sando, Ohio.”

  He took his supper at the airport, and finding himself with almost a half hour before flight time, he walked about and thought of some of the things he should have done and hadn’t. His eyes fell on the push-button flight insurance machine. He put in his coin and took out twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth. Making out the application, he put down Mrs. Annie Norris as beneficiary. He then went to a phone booth and called her.

  It was Jimmie who answered.

  “I suppose I should hang up,” Tully said. “You know, ‘if a man answers…’ Could I speak to Mrs. Norris, Jimmie? I’m calling from the airport.”

  “I’m sorry, Jasp. She’s not here. Any message?”

  Tully grunted his disappointment. “Tell her I just put her down as beneficiary on my life insurance.”

  “That should cheer her up,” Jimmie said.

  “Downcast these days, is she?” Tully said, feeling good about that at least.

  “You don’t come around as often as you used to,” said Jimmie.

  “There’s answer to that one, too,” Tully said, “but you never can tell these days where your telephone conversation is going to turn up. Okay, my lad. I’m off to see a magician about a man. I’ll be back in a day or two.”

  “I’ll give her your love.”

  “Do, and a smack where she’ll forget-me-not.”

  21

  MRS. NORRIS STARTED HER assignment for Jimmie by a scouting expedition. She joined the morning crowd of shoppers pushing into Mark Stewart’s. She was shocked by their number. In the old days Mark Stewart’s had the air of a cathedral. It was no better now than an air terminus…which reminded her that she would like to have been home the night before to hear what Mr. Tully had to say for himself.

  She saw the perfume counter and studied the girls behind it. Between the hair-dos and the face-dos, they had managed to trim themselves to the looks of youth. But they’d have to be careful, especially of their smiles cracking open the makeup. And a cautious smile was no smile at all. Like a kiss at a charity ball. Which one was Daisy Thayer, she wondered.

  Daisy. The only creature she had ever known by the name was a spotted cow. And, she thought now, she’d as soon have her acquaintance. She turned to the umbrella counter. There was but one clerk on duty there, and she was a cloudy day.

  The counter opposite was gloves. That was the place for her, Mrs. Norris decided. The little stools gave it an air
of permanency. Mrs. Norris took up her position on one of them.

  “I want someone to wait on me who has been with Stewart’s a while,” she said, in her best Victorian manner. “I am an old customer, and I know what I want.”

  “I’ll get Mrs. Shaw for you,” the young woman said. “She’s been here for ages.”

  Mrs. Norris gave her a neat smile, and settled herself more firmly on the stool. She began to remove long buttoned kid gloves which she had had to get out of the trunk that morning. She had determined to go out of the house a lady, no matter how the day might send her back into it.

  Mrs. Shaw came up, managing a chill smile. Nothing bode so ill of a customer to a seasoned clerk than her assurance that she knew what she wanted.

  Mrs. Norris said: “How d’you do,” and described the gloves she was looking for.

  They were easily found and fitted, much to the clerk’s pleasure, and easily paid for, to Mrs. Norris’, since Mr. James would do it. Having attended that pair, and finding out on the way that Mrs. Shaw was a widow who had reared three children while working in Stewart’s, Mrs. Norris asked for something to wear in the evening. “My son takes me out now and then,” she said, and put a brave face on what she hoped was not the biggest lie she had ever told.

  “What does he do?” Mrs. Shaw asked and volunteered in the same breath: “I have a boy living home, too. He’s an actor.”

  Mrs. Norris threw her hands in the air. “Now isn’t that remarkable! My Jamie’s an actor, too.”

  “What’s his name?” Mrs. Shaw said. “Should I know him?”

  “Well, you should,” Mrs. Norris said hesitantly, an attitude, it turned out, easily understood by the mother of an actor.

  “I know,” Mrs. Shaw said soothingly. “He’s at liberty, isn’t he? Arnold has been very lucky. Arnold Shaw’s his name.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Mrs. Norris said, and she had just then if not before. “Is he playing in something now?”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s opening in a play tonight, Raggle Toggle Tom. You may have seen about it in the papers. It’s off-Broadway, and I say, that’s better than on. You know where you are for more than the one night. It’s a nice play and he has a lovely part in it. He’s a very good actor.”