Parachute Murder Read online

  There they remained until darkness fell. The fat man wished to pursue their interrupted literary discussion, but finding Blake unresponsive to his remarks upon Hamlet’s complete sanity, gave it up and devoted himself to a game of solitaire, his revolver on the table. The short man sat on guard in a chair tilted back against the door.

  Blake and Edith Vane sat hand in hand, occasionally conversing in low tones. As newly avowed lovers will, they talked of themselves and their ambitions, eager to know all they could about each other as if this was not to be their last meeting. They spoke of the events on the Silver Lark the night Morne was murdered. The mention of Arthur Layman’s name in passing recalled to Blake the fact that both Mrs. Delano and Mr. Brixton had received telegrams from him suggesting that Vanuzzi was probably back of her kidnapping. When he told her of the contents of the two messages a sort of joyful expectancy shone in her face.

  “He said he was flying back to New York to help search for you.”

  “Then perhaps he is here now!” she exclaimed in a breathless little whisper. “We may both yet escape! He knows. He will try to find us!” Her whole attitude was changed; her drooping spirit revived; hope shone in her face, in her eyes.

  Driven by an irresistible impulse, perhaps of jealousy of Arthur Layman, even in the hour which might prove to be their last, Blake, keeping his voice low, asked:

  “How long have you known Mr. Layman? Mrs. Delano said you had never seen him until you boarded the Silver Lark.”

  Her answer was slow in coming. She regarded him with troubled eyes. “He was a stranger to me until that night,” she said at length, averting her face.

  Blake thrust out of his mind as disloyal to his love for her the thought that she had hesitated too long before answering.

  “Then why is he coming? Did he fall in love with you at sight, as I did?”

  “Of course not! It’s just that he—he saw that Mr. Vanuzzi suspected I had discovered something on the Silver Lark—just as I told Mr. Brixton and Mr. Kemerson—that he thought he had destroyed. Let’s not talk about that. It brings all that horrible night back to me.”

  So they fell to talking about themselves again. Darkness and the hour of their removal to some fate they could but guess at, came on all too swiftly. It was soon after nine o’clock that the long-awaited signal on the door startled them with its abruptness. They had not heard footfalls. The fat man grabbed his revolver while his companion opened the door, standing back out of the way of bullets if their visitor should not be the person expected. A slender young man in a Tuxedo, wearing a light gray cap, appeared in the doorway.

  “The car is waiting. You know where,” he said in staccato tones. “If they make a suspicious move or cry out, slug ‘em. And make it snappy.” He then whispered to the fat man who nodded his head slowly.

  The slender youth led the way, followed by the fat man who linked his arm in Edith Vane’s. The stocky man came next at Blake’s side. He kept his right hand on the butt of his revolver in his coat pocket. They were led up to the roof, back across the buildings Blake and Miss Vane had been taken over during the afternoon, into the building in which the young woman had been imprisoned. Then they went down a back stairway to the first floor and out the front way. A man lingering in the hallway gave them a signal and closed in behind them. A few doors away a black limousine was waiting, its engine purring, in front of a store the lights of which were out.

  As they approached the car, a liveried chauffeur jumped out and opened the door, giving Blake and the girl a swift look.

  “Get back in there, ready to start!” ordered the fat man, sharply.

  The chauffeur touched his cap and got into the driver’s seat. The fat man got in first and dragged Miss Vane in after him. Then Blake was hustled in by the jab of a revolver muzzle in his back. He caught the driver’s eye looking back over his shoulder .at Miss Vane. He thought the chauffeur winked slowly, deliberately at the girl, and then turned his head! Blake looked quickly at Miss Vane; she was staring at the driver’s back with an expression of puzzled wonder which she strove to hide when she saw Blake looking at her. When he found her hand and squeezed it, she returned his pressure with a warmth and vigor that delighted, even while it puzzled, him.

  “Down Second Avenue,” commanded their jailer, after the stocky man and the slender youth had squeezed in beside Blake. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  The chauffeur headed East to Second Avenue and then turned South. A blue sedan was a few yards in front of them. At Fourteenth Street, the chauffeur, in avoiding a collision with the blue sedan which had stopped suddenly without signal, swerved and ran the limousine into a pillar of the Elevated.

  “You damned idiot!” spluttered the fat man. “What the devil have you done now? A hell of a chauffeur you are!”

  “Just a minute, Cap,” said the driver, getting out. “I don’t believe much damage has been done.”

  Two stocky men got out of the blue sedan and approached the chauffeur who volubly upbraided them for having stopped so suddenly without giving him a signal.

  “Sorry,” said one of the men, “but you’ve got to keep your eyes peeled in New York traffic. Done any damage?”

  “Can’t tell yet.” The chauffeur examined the mechanism of the car. “The gas feed’s broken,” he announced, straightening up, and turned to the fat man. “I’m afraid you’ll have to get a taxi. This car will have to be towed to a garage.”

  A third man got out of the blue sedan. It was Kirk Kemerson! Blake’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and he made a sudden movement as though to spring out of the limousine. A hand closed with such force about his wrist that he with difficulty suppressed a groan at the pain.

  “Keep quiet if you know what’s good for you and the girl,” whispered the man at his left.

  The traffic policeman on duty approached to learn the cause of the trouble just as the fat man hailed a passing taxi.

  “‘What’s happened here?” asked the officer. “Oh, it’s you, Harry! And Bill. Something up?”

  Blake suddenly found three revolvers pointed into the limousine, held in the hands of Kemerson and the two stocky individuals.

  “Only a kidnapping,” one of the men threw back over his shoulder at the policeman.

  The occupants of the limousine surrendered without a struggle. They were outwitted and outnumbered.

  “Climb out!” commanded the detective. “I’m going to treat you to a free ride to the police station.”

  The fat man uttered a deep sigh and clambered out of the car.

  “Well, if it ain’t our old friend ‘Chinky’ Dodson,” said the detective. “Where you been keeping yourself, Chinky?”

  “Oh, here and there. I’m sorry I can’t say I am glad to see you again, Detective Stephens.”

  “I’ll say you’re not! Been reading any good books lately?”

  “A book you ought to read, Stephens—Lecky’s ‘History of European Morals.’ It would broaden your mind wonderfully.”

  “You’ve broadened it quite a bit yourself, Chinky. Who’s your friend?” The detective nodded carelessly at the slender youth his fellow detective was helping, none too gently, out of the limousine.

  “I know him,” replied the second detective. “‘Speed’ Wells. And he’s going to speed right back up the river for this job. Out less than two months.”

  Blake turned to help Miss Vane out of the car only to find the chauffeur ahead of him. He remembered the wink at Miss Vane and examined the chauffeur narrowly. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, erect man, with a mustache that now showed its falseness.

  Kemerson led Miss Vane to a taxi that had pulled up by the sidewalk. “Here, Blake. Take Miss Vane to Mrs. Delano’s. A night’s rest and she’ll be herself again.”

  “I’m all right now, Mr. Kemerson,” said the girl, and shivered. “It was the sudden relief after so...so much...She could not go on.

  “Of course you are unstrung after such an experience,” said the chauffeur, in a ve
ry much concerned voice. Blake again glanced curiously at the man. Kemerson saw the look and introduced them.

  “Oh, Mr. Layman, this is Stephen Blake who has been helping me in the Morne case. Quite evidently he located Miss Vane even though he did not succeed in rescuing her.”

  “Mr. Blake found the apartment where I was held a prisoner,” explained Miss Vane, quickly, with a glance at Layman which puzzled Blake by its warmth.

  Layman extended his hand and gave the press agent a firm, hearty grip which Blake vaguely resented. Layman was half a head the taller.

  “You did fine work in locating Miss Vane,” said Layman.

  “And was held a prisoner with her!” responded Blake, bitterly. “How did you find out where we were, Mr. Kemerson?”

  “Dugan recovered consciousness—he was shot through the left arm and knocked over the head—and ‘phoned to Mr. Brixton. We knew you and Miss Vane must be somewhere in the block, but we called off the house-to-house search, fearing the abductors might do away with you both before trying to make a getaway. The block was guarded, however. Then Mr. Layman arrived. He believed, as we did, that Vanuzzi was responsible for the kidnapping of Miss Vane. He knew Vanuzzi’s chauffeur, whom he resembles slightly, and proposed that we take the chauffeur into custody and let him impersonate the man. I think I did a pretty good make-up job on Mr. Layman—at any rate he was able to pass himself off as Vanuzzi’s chauffeur successfully. We figured out that Vanuzzi’s agents would try to remove Miss Vane, and probably yourself, at night, and that Vanuzzi’s chauffeur would be employed for that purpose, as a taxicab driver might prove too curious, and report anything unusual to the police. The scheme worked. I congratulate you, Mr. Layman, on its success. Miss Vane has been rescued and my young friend here—well, I haven’t much doubt but that his life has been saved.”

  “I am glad that, with your aid, the affair turned out so happily,” replied Layman modestly.

  Miss Vane turned impulsively to her fellow passenger on the Silver Lark.

  “Then it’s you I must thank for my—for our—escape from that dreadful man. I don’t know how to express my—our—gratitude.”

  “He flew here from Chicago as soon as he read of your kidnapping to offer his aid in the search for you,” said Kemerson.

  “I am more than repaid by the fact that you have escaped,” said Layman, looking so long into the girl’s frank and admiring eyes, that Blake almost regretted their rescue. He had wanted to play the hero before Miss Vane, and had succeeded in being the dupe, leaving the hero’s role to Mr. Layman who, he had to acknowledge, played it modestly. Miss Vane clung to their rescuer’s hand so long that he became embarrassed and removed it. “It was Mr. Kemerson who put my plan into execution and carried it out successfully,” Layman added.

  “We mustn’t keep Miss Vane here any longer,” said Kemerson. “She needs a long rest, and Mrs. Delano is worried sick. Take her home, Blake, and meet me at twelve o’clock at Mrs. Morne’s apartment.”

  “Why aren’t you at the theatre?” asked Blake.

  “I’ve persuaded Mr. Belltower to give the role to my understudy for the final two weeks of the season—and won that young man’s overwhelming gratitude, as there’s a chance he may land the part in the road company in the fall. My interest in the role has evaporated entirely since Mr. Brixton turned the Morne case over to me.”

  He hailed a passing taxi, climbed in, and was driven northward.

  CHAPTER XXII — A NEW MOTIVE

  THE policeman on guard at the entrance of Mrs. Morne’s apartment told Blake that Kemerson was waiting for him in the library. Seated in an easy chair facing the door was the figure of a man hunched down and peering straight ahead.

  Blake stopped with a sort of gasp. “I...Why...You almost had me fooled!”

  “A pretty good make-up, you think?” asked Kemerson, a hint of jocosity in his voice.

  “And how! You had me almost believing for a moment that Morne was not dead, or that his ghost was haunting the apartment. What’s the idea of the masquerade?”

  “Just a little hobby of mine. I told you something about it on another occasion. I like to study the nature, the mind and character of a role that I play on the stage. Merely dressing in the clothes suitable for a certain character part is not enough. That frees the mind to a certain extent from one’s own personality, but does not fix the character of the man to be impersonated. If I know what he likes and dislikes, what he fears, what his hobbies are, whether he likes baseball or prefers a game of cribbage or whist, whether he goes fishing or to church on Sunday, whether he reads Shakespeare or the modern equivalent of Nick Carter—in fact, any bit of knowledge that the author gives me to work upon—helps to fix the man’s character so that, when my mind is freed of myself, I can feel and think, after a fashion at any rate, as the character feels and thinks. I was just trying to carry my professional methods into real life—trying to get inside the skin of Chadwick Morne when he was alive. Trickery if you will, but this make-up, these clothes (which Morne really wore) help me to understand him.”

  “But does that reveal any clues as to the identity of his murderer?”

  “No, it does not give me the finger-print of the murderer, or a cigarette case with his initials, inadvertently dropped at the scene of the crime for his later confusion. I am seeking for mental, not material, clues.”

  “Mental clues? I see. The science of deduction.”

  “No, no. I am not a scientist, nor much of a logician. My powers of deduction, as far as crime is concerned, are untrained. I have used deduction to a certain extent in studying a stage role. I try to use such common sense as I possess; to think, feel and act as the murder victim did; make such inferences as I can—and look to the police for the clues that will give force to my deductions and inferences, or prove their worthlessness.”

  “And what has your impersonation of Chadwick Morne tonight led you to deduce or infer?” asked Blake, putting more than a hint of sarcasm into his voice.

  “Almost as little as you would suppose, I am afraid. Yet I believe that Morne was killed by someone that he had reason to fear. And he did not fear Vanuzzi. He was contemptuously patronizing to the Italian. Remember, he visited the Happy Hours night club the very night after Vida Latterby told him that Vanuzzi had threatened Morne’s life as well as her own. I believe Miss Latterby can be believed on that point; it fits in with Morne’s character as we knew it. Nor did he fear James Betterling; he twitted him about his love for Mrs. Morne. And he certainly was in no terror of his Japanese valet, or he would have discharged him. He did fear one man—a big strapping fellow whom Miss Latterby has identified as Lieutenant Brewster. He got Kiyoshi the job as Morne’s valet, inducing him to use an assumed name.”

  “But how could Brewster have murdered Morne? He was not aboard the Silver Lark. He could not know at what spot Morne would leap from the airplane, nor where the parachute would land. Not even Morne knew that. I think you are off on a false scent, Mr. Kemerson; I really do.”

  “You believe that Vanuzzi fired the shot?”

  “There is nothing else to believe. Else why should he have kidnapped Miss Vane?”

  “And that Vanuzzi, in prison, procured the murder of Kiyoshi?”

  “The Jap knew too much. He had tipped Vanuzzi off that Morne was flying on the Silver Lark. He had doubtless given orders for Kiyoshi to be put on the spot before we captured him—as soon as Kiyoshi told him we had traced him and he had promised to go before the District Attorney. With Miss Vane and Kiyoshi out of the way, he had little fear of a conviction.”

  “All quite plausible, Blake; possible even, but if Brewster proves to be Howard Easter, the man who borrowed the key to the vacant building from which the Japanese was shot, does not that make him also suspect in the Morne case? The real estate agent’s description of Howard Easter also fits Brewster.”

  “That would undoubtedly bring him in among the suspects,” Blake agreed.

  “And the Silver Lark was trai
led by another airplane until about the time of Morne’s parachute leap. If Brewster knew Morne was going to leap from the Silver Lark, what was to prevent him from trailing it, circling about Morne as he descended in the parachute and firing the shot that killed him?”

  “I suppose it might be possible for a crack shot,” admitted Blake with some reluctance.

  “He might have fired a dozen shots, with only one taking effect. He could then have flown back to New York or some other place far away from the scene of the crime.”

  “Wait a moment!” cried Blake, excitedly. “I read something in the papers the next day about an aviator who landed in a public road by a garage to get a supply of gas. It was in one of the tabloids. The man refused all information about himself to the garage man—wouldn’t let him get close enough to the cockpit to see his license——”

  “Where was this?” asked Kemerson, sharing Blake’s excitement. “If it were Brewster and we could get an identification from the garage owner!”

  “It was somewhere in New York State I think.”

  “Look up the item first thing in the morning and read it to me over the ‘phone. I have been going through Morne’s papers, old letters and scrap-books—Mrs. Morne let me have his keys—but I’ve found nothing that brings Brewster into the case. I am convinced he knew Morne and had some reason for hating him. Perhaps they met in France when Morne went over as a ‘Y’ entertainer. It may have been a question of a woman between them. There were many women in Morne’s life, as I have had ample proof this evening. There was one beautiful young woman who committed suicide. She had been Morne’s leading lady. There’s a portrait of her in his scrap-book.”

  Kemerson took down the second volume of Morne’s program record, and turned quickly through the leaves.