There Is Something About a Dame Page 12

  “That’s right,” I said. “No sense at all.” I jerked my elbow at Devlin to let him know not to interrupt. Morgan was in a talking mood and breaking his chain of thought would be dangerous and foolish. Devlin must have got my signal. He almost stopped breathing.

  Memo took a gulp of oxygen. He was a man in the middle of a nightmare filled with unfamiliar sights and places. He batted his eyes again, his chest swelled against the blankets and that low whimper of sound escaped from him again. But he knew me and that was something friendly and known, that he had to hang on to.

  His feeble hand clawed at my elbow.

  “—he didn’t have to take it like that—did he?—I tried to fool him, sure—but he didn’t have to beat me—-shoot me—blasted devil—never figured he go crazy like that-big man like him too—”

  Something was rattling around in my brain trying to give birth. I leaned closer to Memo, conscious that Devlin was leaning right in with me.

  “No, he shouldn’t have acted like that,” I argued softly to spur him on. “Especially a big, strong detective like him.”

  Devlin cursed. “What the hell you trying to pull—?” But it was a fierce, low whisper that Memo Morgan couldn’t possibly have heard. But Memo had heard my remarks.

  “—detective—what detective?—you’re a detective, Noon—not him—he’s big all right—the biggest—”

  “Memo,” I said, bringing my face closer than before, “who did this to you?”

  It was funny, really. Just like those old movies where the dying victim is about to put the finger on the murderer. Because before Memo Morgan could tell us who was the biggest would-be murderer of them all, the kitchen door fell inward with a tremendous bang and a scuffle of moving feet. I heard high heels and clumping brogans before I saw them. Devlin whirled but he was way ahead of himself. The hair-trigger .45 went off with a thunderous roar and fell out of his hand as he bumped into the wall by the bedroom door. I sprang away from Memo Morgan to see what the ruckus was about. Too late to do anything but watch Memo Morgan collapse against the dirty pillow behind his head in a dead faint.

  After that was pandemonium.

  Savannah Gage came hurtling into the room, falling over Devlin’s body as he frantically tried to recover his .45. They made a funny tangle of trenchcoat and red-plaid coat piling up on the floor. The Gage dame’s long, silk-stockinged legs entwined around Devlin’s trousered ones in a hopeless pretzel of confusion. I couldn’t do anything but watch.

  While Devlin and Savannah Gage were undoing themselves, Linda Gates came meekly into the bedroom. She looked silly with her hands held high above her head. I stopped watching and tried to look for a weapon. I swept up a chair and raised it for hurling but I was about two cues too late. I should have known who’d steal the scene anyway.

  Sir Stewart St. James posed jauntily in the doorway, Henry Higgins hat set at a rakish angle, lips curled for laughter, the Webley in his aristocratic fingers, pointed straight and unwaveringly at the whole pack of us like we were so many spear carriers. It figured. He’d been the director of the whole silly fiasco from the very beginning.

  “Kindly replace that chair on the floor, Edward,” he ordered without raising his wonderful voice an octave. “I do think we’ve come as close to curtain time as we dare. Now that we’re all here and in position, I think we may successfully conclude the greatest comedy since the days of the immortal bard. And what a comedy it was.” His voice did rise suddenly. “The chair, please, Edward. I don’t want to shoot you just yet.”

  “I’ll bet.” I put the chair down. “You’re crazy. You know that.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, his eyes glittering like gems. “But I’ve had the time of my life. As you Yankees like to say, I’ve had a ball.”

  “To be or not to be. That is the question … ”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Devlin’s bedroom in the quiet, residential district was a scene from hell. And the devil was Sir Stewart St. James. Towering with satanic majesty in that crummy bedroom where the wounded Memo Morgan dozed fitfully between heaven and limbo.

  There we were, all herded against the far wall. Savannah Gage had recovered herself and was glaring at Sir Stewart with all the hatred in the world. Linda Gates was just frightened and confused and trying to make herself smaller in one corner. Only Devlin was really himself. His half-raised hands were a show of contempt for the “limey” who had the drop on him. Me, I could only stare and wonder at the spectacle of a genius gone berserk. A conclusion I must have had all along the line without knowing it.

  “Please do behave yourselves,” Sir Stewart begged. “Then may we discourse quietly like ladies and gentlemen.” He seemed to ignore Devlin’s hair-trigger .45 which was in the center of the room where the arms-and-legs tangle had kicked it.

  “How did you tail us here, limey?” Devlin’s face was mottled with anger as he glared at Linda Gates.

  Sir Stewart clucked disapprovingly. “Easy, my dear Devlin. Once it was obvious that you had deceived our Miss Gates, she did some fast cogitation on my behalf. I’m afraid a little vindictiveness was stirring her soul. She soon remembered your little hideaway in the fortuituous Bronx. Quite a rathole, I must say. Once here, it was our good fortune to stumble upon Miss Gage, creeping about like an Indian, peering through windows and keyholes. I thought it best to invite her in too. Say to make the devil circle complete.”

  I laughed out loud.

  “So, of course, there is no missing, lost, undiscovered William Shakespeare-Christopher Marlowe play, eh, old boy?”

  Sir Stewart stared at me. Sudden sobriety had taken over his jauntiness in nothing flat. His shoulders squared sadly.

  “Ah, there’s the rub. Three months ago I believed that with all the fervor of my youth. Three months ago I dreamed impossible dreams. I scaled the heights of Olympus. I was in a transport of discovery. But Mr. Morgan had planned it all so well with his confederate, Zwick. The London idea was a godsend of inspiration. Dropping the tale idly in my dressing room, completely caught me off-guard. I had to come to America to see Morgan myself. Yes, I believed, my dear Noon. And in the believing, I lost my mind—”

  “Mind?” Savannah Gage’s hiss shot like a snake from where she stood by the wall. “You hopeless egomaniac. The world should know how insane you really are. My father knew—”

  “Please, my dear,” Sir Stewart chided. “You’re stepping on my lines—”

  “I’d like to step on your face, you devil—” She turned to look at the rest of us. “Do you wonder why I think he’s insane? Look—here—let me show you the extent of his twisted, corrupted brain—”

  Before we could figure out what she was talking about, she had reached down and plucked her skirt up past her shapely knees, beyond her thighs. Linda Gates gasped. Even the silk stockings couldn’t hide the ugly tattoos that marked each white thigh. There was on Old English S on her right thigh, a corresponding St. J on the left. The skirt fell again and Savannah Gage had burst into tears.

  “The swine got me drunk one night in Cambridge and had his foul fun with me. Lord—how I hated him—hated men—” She stopped crying and drew herself up stiffly. “I would have given my soul to have captured a genuine Shakespeare from under his nose. For myself and my father—”

  Sir Stewart wasn’t embarrassed. He shrugged in his grand manner. “The follies and excesses of youth. But enough of old times—imagine my horror and disappointment, Mr. Noon, when I found Morgan in America and sat and listened to that wild and wonderful tale I told you. All the while I listened like a schoolboy as he wove the fabric. And then I realized, sitting in his little home, what a ghastly joke the whole thing was—”

  “The twenty-year wait was too much for your mind to support too, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course.” He looked like a spoiled child now but the gun remained like a rock in his hands. “Who could let Shakespeare lie so long? Even a Morgan with his fabulous memory couldn’t make me swallow that whole. I’m afraid I laughed in his
face even as my world of dreams crashed down about my head. Morgan had planned it well but even he couldn’t cover that one gaping hole in the yarn. I was quite beside myself, old man. I’m ashamed to admit I began beating him about the room. With my fists, my cane—anything I could get my hands on.”

  He was talking excitedly, realized it and slowed down. He took a deep breath and stared at the girls. They shrank from him. Linda Gates looked like she wanted to be in Las Vegas right now.

  Devlin sneered. “You almost hung your homework on me, limey. Morgan used my name when Noon found him bleeding in the Ritz lobby—”

  “That so?” Sir Stewart’s eloquent eyebrows arched expressively. “I fail to see how. At any rate, Mr. Morgan ran for a gun in his bureau drawer. We struggled over it. A .45, I believe. Unfortunately, he was hit. I fell back in a state of shock. As justifiably angry as I had every right to be, murder was not on my mind. But the damage was done.

  “To all appearances he was dying—I was mortally afraid that he might someway be connected with me. So I raced through his pockets, completely stripping him of every bit of scrap and identification he had upon him. As your Captain Monks so astutely pointed out, it was unlike him to be so out-of-pocket, shall we say. When I left the house, I disposed of the whole pile of odds and ends in the nearest sewer. Very convenient, your Manhattan sewers.

  “Dazed, I watched him stagger from the room like a madman. It took me almost two minutes to recover my senses. By that time, I reached the street in time to follow him on his reeling trip down West-fourth Street. I was amazed when I saw him stumble into the side door of the Ritz. America—there he was, mortally wounded, and to the world at large he was an alcoholic, allowed to fumble along the street to the amusement of the pedestrians. I waited for him to come out again or to hear of word of his death. I couldn’t see how he would survive. I trembled in an agony of despair, realizing what a scandal would do to my career—”

  I nodded. “He ran right into my arms, keeled over and started mumbling about some devil ‘devilin’ him. It was easy enough to think he meant Devlin, later on. But it was just the odd parallel in the sound of the words. Sorry, Vince. But it is the sort of homework you’d go in for.” Before he could snap at me, I turned back to Sir Stewart. “You must have put that devil image in poor Memo’s mind. When you start spouting from the bard, you have a tendency to grow about a foot. So that’s when the whole crazy business started in your head? You went on with the show, as it were.”

  He was delighted that I understood and not at all tired about holding us all at gunpoint.

  “Of course. The ambulance set me off. I couldn’t have Morgan recovering to point the finger of guilt at me. Scandal I did not need. But Fate refused to play into my hands. The man had nine lives—still has—and when I saw you extract the bullet from the tire I had no recourse but the theatrics of coming up behind you, imitating a deadly killer, and retrieving the slug. So my gun could not be identified. By that time, the whole business began to tickle me. I was enjoying myself far more than I had in years. A real-life drama that still smacked of Shakespeare with all the blood and gore of Hamlet and Macbeth. I felt reborn after my disappointment about the manuscript.”

  “So you followed me home and kept up the deception in order to find if Morgan had mentioned your name. Just in time to hear me serenaded by a machine gun. But that couldn’t have been you. You wouldn’t have time and nobody just happens to be carrying a machine gun.” I turned slightly to look at Devlin. He gave me a sickening, so-what smile. “That was your homework, Vince. I’m surprised you went to so much trouble. What for? Was Gage going to see me and you were afraid you’d lose some easy dough?”

  Savannah Gage had stopped sniffling. Her red eyes, still beautiful, affirmed my notion. “Your reputation impressed me. I thought you could assist. Devlin disagreed. I didn’t think he’d employ such tactics to throw you off—”

  “Shut up,” Devlin growled. “Noon’s a big boy. He knows the score. Do you see him complaining?”

  “Children, children,” I mocked. “Let’s hear the rest of what the nice man has to say, shall we?”

  Sir Stewart chuckled, his old, jaunty air back in circulation. “My dear Noon. You are a tonic to me. It was a delight bringing you home with me, pouring you brandy and retelling that fantastic tale. You listened so well I half-believed it all over again. But no—Shakespeare or Marlowe—had been cruelly used as sport for a greedy little man who tried to capitalize on my hunger for the finest things in life. Still, it was a joy to weave the yarn once more—”

  “Tell me,” I said. “Did you intend to kill me in that alley when you came right back at me after pretending to drive off? Or was that sport, too? Like the phony phone call in your home when you hoaxed me into a dead call and another imitation of the Voice.”

  He shook his head.

  “I really can’t say, old boy, you just might possibly have been lying to me. So why not take the will for the deed? I merely skulled you with a pail cover. You will admit our little scuffle got out of hand. As for the phone call, I was still, as you say, being sportive.”

  It was getting cramped, standing around, with the hands up. The girls were getting restless, Memo Morgan was groaning in his delirium and Devlin was moving around impatiently where he stood.

  “I didn’t guess a thing about that phone call except the use of the expression—dead kipper,” I admitted. “I knew no Yankee would use such a phrase. I knew it was English but that’s all I knew. How did you work that seeing as how you never left the room?”

  He looked pleased with himself.

  “You recall I was walking away from you at the time to get your hat? I pressed a dummy phone in the hall that rings like a stage telephone. We use them all the time. Then I picked up the receiver and handed the phone to you. It was not the phone you called the hospital with. While your back was turned, I spoke into the dummy in the hall foyer. They are connected. It was really child’s play, you know.”

  “Neat, neat. Right under my nose.” I sighed. “Okay. You’ve had your fun with Shakespeare and Marlowe. You’ve had a ball. But now what? May I remind you that in spite of all the hop-skip-and-chumping of these last two days, nobody’s been killed? It’s not all so terrible. Memo Morgan got the worst of it. So your pride was hurt and you ran around like a looney kid playing Frankenstein or Dracula. Suit yourself. But it’s not too late to put an end to the whole mess. What can you lose? Morgan’s probably so ashamed of himself he’ll never put the rap on you. Zwick will probably never be found once he learns the game isn’t worth the candle as Sherlock would say. So why don’t we put the gun down, go home, and forget the whole thing. I don’t think even Shakespeare would object. He’s had another day in the sun after all these centuries. What do you say?”

  Devlin growled. “I’ll tell you what I say, boy scout. There’s a kidnap charge staring me in the face and I want out in a hurry. If there’s no money in this thing, who’s interested?”

  Linda Gates was all for that. “Yeah—let us go before the cops start coming. They’d never understand—”

  Savannah Gage threw her head back and laughed. “Sir Stewart St. James, knighted by the Queen. The world’s foremost thespian. My God, what an idiot you are. Let me see you undo this unholy mess—”

  Sir Stewart drew himself up proudly. He grew that extra inch again. The Webley in his hand raised. It centered on the four of us. The girls, Devlin and me. There was no attention paid to the couch. Memo Morgan was still dead to the world.

  “It’s not all that simple, my dear Edward. No scandal, you say? I don’t even dare it. Zwick, you see, will never be found. I made sure of his silence. No, I’m afraid our little melodrama must end here. In the Bronx, in this terribly dreadful little hole. Look at this place. Boxes, junk, refuse. Who would doubt that a fire could start in such a place? You see where my dreams have led me? Arson and a quintuple murder. Murder most foul. But necessary I’m afraid. Most necessary. Acting is all I have in life. I won’
t risk it for the questionable delicacy of Morgan’s will, Miss Gage’s vindictiveness or your live-and-let-live attitude. It will be quite like Henry the Fifth—do you know the line?” ‘And the nimble gunner with linstock now the devilish cannon touches, and down goes all before them.’ ”

  I stared at him unbelievingly.

  “You can’t shoot all five of us.”

  His classic head wagged.

  “Edward, that’s beneath you. Much simpler than that. Who could afford such noise? No, you will simply tie each other up. There is ample clothesline in the kitchen. As well as a sufficient supply of kerosene in some cans under the sink. I think that will cover the quotation with enough truth. Now, Mr. Devlin, you will be first to get some rope. Just walk past me where I can keep an eye on you. Do not, I beg you, cause me to precipitate things—”

  He was mad, now. An unholy gleam dominated his eyes. Devlin shrugged fearlessly and moved slowly past Sir Stewart into the kitchen. I measured our chances. If I rushed Sir Stewart, I sure as hell would stop one. But it might save the others. There was the gun on the floor in plain sight. Devlin’s hair-trigger special. If I only had my own gun—my own gun. Suddenly, a bolt came down from nowhere and ignited my brain. Where was my gun? I hadn’t had it on me when I came to in Devlin’s ratty office. Of course, he had it. In the shoulder harness probably. Which was why he was acting so cocky. He was just waiting for a chance to use it.

  Linda Gates looked at me, fear moving her mouth. “He wouldn’t kill us, would he, Noon? He’s just acting, isn’t he—?”

  “Sure, kid. Just a gag—” I looked at the .45 on the floor. I could hear Devlin banging around in the kitchen. I knew he’d take his chance now. He had to. While he had the rope and was free to move without being suspicious. But Sir Stewart had him covered all the way. It was about two yards to the floor and the gun. Sir Stewart’s eyes mocked me from his great face above the deadly Webley.