Parachute Murder Read online

  “That’s queer. I am certain I saw it here. See, something has been cut out. Her picture and the item about her suicide is gone. Her stage name was Dorothy Dineen. Does that recall anything to you?”

  “I read about it at the time. Her suicide threatened to embroil Morne in a scandal. It was hushed up somehow, yet she was known to have been Morne’s ‘girl’ for some time.”

  “Do you know her real name?”

  “No, but I believe it was said that she was a married woman.”

  “I see where I shall have to put in some hours at the public library going through old files of New York newspapers.”

  “Go to one of the newspapers and ask to see the envelope from its morgue on Dorothy Dineen. Or, if her file has been destroyed, that on Morne. Try one of the tabloids; if any of the papers printed her real name they’ll have done it.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that while you look up the item about the aviator who landed in a public highway. I shall remain here for a time, letting my imagination have free rein—and trying to reconstruct Morne’s life from the letters, clippings and memoranda among his personal effects.”

  Blake bade the actor good night and had his hand on the door-knob when he was called back.

  “You have not yet explained to me your absence from your room the night of Morne’s murder, nor why you tried to protect Mrs. Morne.”

  “She needs no protection,” began Blake, hotly. “You had some understanding with her as to the nature of her answers the night you brought her to my apartment. I saw you signal her more than once when I pressed her a little closely. Come, you know more about the circumstances leading up to Morne’s murder than you have confided to me.”

  “But I know absolutely nothing about the murder,” protested Blake.

  “I said about the circumstances leading up to it. Who was Mrs. Morne’s Paris correspondent—the person whose letters were of such moment that both Betterling and Kiyoshi broke into the premises to get them?”

  “I do not know, Mr. Kemerson.”

  “Come, be frank and remove all suspicion from Mrs. Morne and Betterling in the murder of Kiyoshi at least. They both visited the valet a few hours before he was shot. Betterling was overheard to threaten him.”

  “I can tell you nothing,” asserted Blake so positively that Kemerson sighed regretfully.

  “Nor what took you to the Pennsylvania station the night of the murder?”

  “Only that it had nothing to do with Morne.” Kemerson stood up suddenly, his eyes flashing. “Who was the child that Mrs. Morne wished to adopt, against Morne’s wishes?”

  Blake was taken by surprise; his eyes darkened, his face flushed. He hesitated, considering what answer to make.

  “I did not know there was any question of adopting a child.”

  Kemerson shrugged impatiently. “Are you still blinded by your old love for Mrs. Morne, or is it but a mistaken sense of chivalry?”

  “Miss Vane has promised to marry me,” was Blake’s only reply.

  “On that I can and do congratulate you heartily. She is a courageous and lovely young woman.”

  He dismissed Blake. When alone he sank back in a chair, the theatre record from which Miss Dineen’s portrait had been cut on his knees, reviewing such evidence as had come to light in the parachute murder case, trying to make it fit in with the murder of the Japanese valet. He then drifted into that half dreamy, wholly motionless, state in which the actor in him attempted to capture and imprison in his own personality, the nature and character of the man whose murder he was trying to solve.

  The next morning Blake called at Kemerson’s apartment at noon and gave him the clipping about the unknown aviator who had landed by a roadside garage for a supply of gasoline. The town was Binghamton. Kemerson pocketed the clipping and asked Blake if he could catch the first train to Binghamton.

  “Why, yes. You want me to interview Erskin, the owner of the gas station?”

  “I want you to induce him to come to New York so we can confront Brewster with him. Unless I am mightily mistaken he will identify Brewster as the pilot of the mystery plane.”

  “You have learned something new at the newspaper morgue then?”

  “Dorothy Dineen’s name in private life was Mrs. Isobel Brewster.”

  “Brewster’s wife!” cried Blake. “Why, then Brewster is the murderer!”

  “Perhaps. We are a long way from being able to prove that. That is where this Mr. Erskin may be of help to us. I am going to have another session with Lieutenant Brewster. I believe I can make him talk now.”

  CHAPTER XXIII — THE MISSING DETECTIVE

  BLAKE arrived back in New York with Robert Erskin late that evening to find the newspapers devoting streamers to the mysterious disappearance of Kirk Kemerson.

  “SPECIAL INVESTIGATOR IN MORNE MURDER CASE MISSING.”

  “MORNE INVESTIGATOR REPORTED KILLED.”

  “KIRK KEMERSON, ACTOR-DETECTIVE, BELIEVED THIRD VICTIM IN MORNE CASE.”

  A pyramid under one scarehead stated that District Attorney Walton Brixton had received a telephone message in mid-afternoon that he would not again see his investigator in the parachute murder case.

  White and shaken, Blake repaired to a telephone booth and put in a call for Mr. Brixton at his home. His voice was incoherent at first in the stress of the emotion under which he labored, but at length made the District Attorney understand that he had brought back to the city a witness whom Kemerson had wished to interrogate—a witness by whom Kemerson expected to prove that Lieutenant Brewster had trailed the Silver Lark on the night of Morne’s murder.

  “Some years ago one of Morne’s leading women committed suicide,” he added. “You may remember the case. Her name was Dorothy Dineen—her stage name I mean. In real life she was Mrs. Isobel Brewster. Kemerson believed that she was the wife of Lieutenant Brewster. With that knowledge he intended to confront Brewster and force him to talk.”

  “Then I am afraid Kirk has shared Morne’s fate,” said Mr. Brixton. “Every resource at my command shall be thrown into the matter if that is the case. Bring this new witness up to my home at once.”

  Half an hour later Blake and Erskin were ushered into Mr. Brixton’s study, a medium-sized room containing a flat-top desk, a few filing cabinets and several book-cases filled with legal volumes. Mr. Brixton stood up at their entrance, and addressed Erskin at once.

  “I understand Mr. Kemerson, who was investigating the Morne murder, wished to question you about the pilot who landed his plane in front of your gas station.”

  “So Mr. Blake here tells me.”

  “What time of day did the aviator land?”

  “It was around five o’clock in the morning—the morning after Morne’s murder, so Mr. Blake tells me. I was just getting up when I heard a motor overhead. I felt sure the plane would hit the house—”

  “It landed in the highway, I understand,” interrupted the District Attorney, and stopped to read the clipping about the incident which Blake had cut from a tabloid. “Just a moment, Mr. Erskin,” and Brixton turned to the press agent. “What connection had Kemerson established between this unknown aviator and Lieutenant Brewster?”

  “Mr. Kemerson, with the discovery that Dorothy Dineen was a Mrs. Brewster in private life, became convinced that Brewster is the actual murderer of Morne. He had suspected as much for some time. His theory was that Brewster was the pilot of the plane that trailed the Silver Lark; that he learned from the Japanese valet that Morne intended to leap from the airplane and go into hiding, and kept close enough to circle about the falling parachute and make sure of killing Morne before his body touched the earth. He believed that Brewster, in his anxiety to get far away from the scene of the crime, did not dare stop to refill his gas tank but headed back East and landed only when his gas was nearly exhausted. And that that happened just outside of Binghamton. If he had landed at a flying field his identity would have in all probability been discovered at once.”

  “Kemerson must hav
e had good grounds for his belief,” said Mr. Brixton. “We will pursue his line of reasoning. Mr. Erskin, did this unknown pilot say where he had flown from?”

  “He said he had come from Baltimore and was on his way to Albany. He ordered gas and watched me fill his tank. I was curious, of course—I don’t sell gas to an aviator every day—and I edged up to the cockpit to take a squint at his license. He pushed me back without an ‘Excuse me’ or anything, jumped in and started the engine. The road was straight and level for half a mile or so, but it was lucky for him just the same that no autos—”

  “You would recognize the man if you were to see him again?” interrupted the District Attorney.

  “Dead to rights. A strapping big fellow, dark brown hair, kind of brownish-yellow eyes—”

  “Any distinguishing mark on his airplane?”

  “Not that I saw. It had been newly painted—blue.”

  “A bi-plane?”

  “No, sir, a single-seated monoplane. Room for the pilot and a passenger. I guess two passengers could have crowded into the rear seat.”

  Mr. Brixton arranged for Erskin to remain over in New York until the next day, telephoned to Inspector Connell to have Brewster located and brought to his office. Then he excused himself and took Blake into an adjoining room and questioned him on Kemerson’s second visit to the Morne apartment. He appeared to attach especial significance to the cutting out of the report of Dorothy Dineen’s suicide from the actor’s book of clippings. He made an appointment for Blake to bring Erskin to his office at half past ten the following morning. He asked Blake to go to the tabloid and look through its morgue, finding out everything it contained about Dorothy Dineen. He told Blake that the police of all boroughs and of neighboring towns were searching for Kemerson. Although he had been convinced that Vanuzzi was the murderer of Morne, he was ready to lend an ear to any new theory of Kemerson’s, especially one that held some promise of solving his own disappearance. He suggested, however, that Brewster might have been the pilot of the trailing plane and carried a passenger who shot Morne.

  Blake left Erskin at a Times Square hotel and went to the office of the tabloid. The dramatic editor was still on duty and gladly got for the press agent the envelopes on Miss Dineen and on Morne. Miss Dineen, he learned, had been an entertainer in France while her husband, Marshall Brewster, was serving in the United States air force. The coroner’s jury had returned a verdict of suicide as a result of disappointment at not having made good as Morne’s leading woman. The motive of jealousy of the actor, hinted at in one of the clippings, was not mentioned in the verdict.

  Among the clippings on Morne was one from a French newspaper which stated that the popular American actor, Chadwick Morne, soon to return to New York, had discovered a future star in Miss Dorothy Dineen, then appearing as a “Y” entertainer, whom he had met on shipboard crossing the Atlantic. Blake was convinced that Morne had had an affair with Brewster’s wife in France, had really given her a chance at a stage career, had quickly tired of her, and years later been murdered by her husband. Why the aviator should have waited so long for vengeance he did not attempt to explain.

  If Kemerson had gone to Brewster and confronted him with all the knowledge he had gained from the morgue then there was little doubt but that the actor-detective had been kidnapped or done to death. If Brewster had murdered Morne, and then Kiyoshi merely because the latter had agreed to go before the District Attorney and tell what he knew, then there was little hope that Kemerson was still alive. It was with a sad heart that Blake made his way to his rooms at Mrs. Handsaker’s to get his mail, which he had not had since taking up quarters at the Maxwell Hotel. He did not wish his visit there known and let himself in very quietly. Not even a hall light was burning. As he opened the door of his suite he was assailed by the smell of cigar smoke. Someone was in the room, or had just left! He stood motionless, his heart beating faster.

  In the dim light from a street lamp, filtering through the branches of a tree, he began to perceive the faint outline of objects. He became conscious, as he listened, of a sound, strange and yet familiar. It was his alarm clock ticking away! And it would have run down at least two days ago! The feeling that he was not alone gained the force of a conviction.

  Cautiously he felt for the switch and pressed the button. The light over his reading table flashed on. Nobody was in the room, yet the print of a body was in the cushions of his easy chair. His eye was then caught by a sheet of white paper under the lamp. One corner was folded over. With a sense of suspense, he picked up the sheet. Scrawled across the top was his name. Underneath it was this warning:

  You are meddling too much in what does not concern you. If you value your life, keep out of the parachute murder case or you will meet the fate that befell the Jap valet and that is in store for your actor friend.

  There was no signature. Blake felt a sudden chill creeping along his spine. He realized that this was no idle threat, yet his immediate reaction was not fear for himself but for Kemerson. The actor evidently was alive when the warning had been written—and probably the writer of the note had but just now been in his room! An unreasoning hope that Kemerson was alive sprang up in his heart. His fingers turned down the folded corner of the sheet of paper in his hand and two words under the flap jumped up at his eyes: “Take heed,” followed by the initials, “K. K.”

  His heart seemed suddenly a thing of lead in his breast. He had now no doubt but that Kemerson had met the fate of Morne and Kiyoshi. The murderer had let his captive see the message, and, to make it more impressive, Kemerson had added his own warning.

  If Kemerson were dead, Blake determined that his murderer should be brought to justice even if he were to lose his own life in the effort. He felt that he now had the same information to work on that the actor had gained through his investigation, and he would carry on along that line.

  He pocketed the few pieces of mail on the table, quenched the light and stole out of the building. He had not gone a dozen feet up the street when a slouching figure drew out of the dense shadow of a stoop.

  “Beg pardon, Guv’nor, can you let me have a dime for a cup o’ coffee?”

  Blake drew back, startled, his nerves on edge. He had never before been accosted by a beggar on this street.

  “Sorry but I never give money to men on the street. If you are hungry I’ll take you to a restaurant and buy you something to eat.”

  To his astonishment, the panhandler began to abuse him volubly, pawing at him with his hands as though they itched to encircle the press agent’s throat.

  “Get away from me or I’ll hand you over to the police!” said Blake.

  The slouching figure drew up straight—as tall as Blake himself—and emitted a laugh of derision.

  “You’re heading for danger,” came a swift whisper. “Go back the other way. Quick! Watch your step!”

  Blake stood stock still, his bones turning to water. He stared at the uncouth figure which had resumed its slouching attitude.

  “Who are you?” he whispered. “What is the danger?”

  Instead of replying, the man fell to cursing him roundly, pushing him backward, alternately begging and cursing. Blake saw two figures lurking in the shadow of a tree farther up the street, watching his altercation with the panhandler, and remembrance of the warning note he had found in his room with the two words from Kemerson, flooded his mind. Hastily he took a coin from his pocket and flung it to the beggar. It fell clinking on the sidewalk, and the man pounced upon it.

  “A quarter! Thank you, Guv’nor! I’ll drink your health in—in a cup o’ coffee!” and he laughed loudly. Then he fell again into that fierce whisper. “Stay not upon the order of your going, but go at once!” The beggar accompanied his words with a gesture as of slitting a man’s throat.

  Horrified, Blake turned and walked hastily down the street. At the corner he hopped into a taxi, and gave hurried directions. It was not until he had reached his hotel that the fact that the beggar had used a quo
tation from Shakespeare came to him. A panhandler quoting Shakespeare! A great hope was born in him on the instant; the hope that Kemerson had eluded his captors; that the beggar was Kemerson himself! Perhaps the warning words, “Take heed. K. K.,” had been added to the letter in his, Blake’s, own room after the actor had gained entrance to it. Among the envelopes he had stuffed into his pockets at Mrs. Handsaker’s he found the one in which the warning note had been enclosed. He felt certain then that Kemerson had visited his room that very night, found the letter, opened it, added the two words, and lingered outside to warn him. Yet why should Kemerson have expected him to drop in at Mrs. Handsaker’s for his mail this night?

  Blake called for Erskin at the hour appointed and went with him to the office of the District Attorney.

  Blake was admitted at once while Erskin was requested to wait in the outer office. Mr. Brixton was annoyed; neither the detectives from his own office nor the men assigned by Inspector Connell to bring Lieutenant Brewster in had been able to find him.

  Blake did not give the District Attorney time to finish his observation on the inefficiency of the detective department, but thrust the warning letter into his hands, and sketched for him rapidly the events that had followed his finding of the note. Mr. Brixton agreed that the “Take heed. K. K.” was in Kemerson’s handwriting, and while he did not share Blake’s belief that the beggar was Kemerson, appeared convinced that the actor was alive. The information that Blake had gathered on Dorothy Dineen and Chadwick Morne added so much verisimilitude to Kemerson’s theory of Brewster as the murderer that Mr. Brixton ordered his entire staff of detectives to engage in the hunt for the missing stunt pilot, and assigned Blake the task of keeping Robert Erskin in New York until Brewster was found.

  Detectives and police failed to bring Brewster in during the day, and Blake spent most of the afternoon entertaining the gas station proprietor. When he had left his guest at his hotel, he started out on a little sleuthing expedition of his own. He paid a visit to Chester Garman, agent for the vacant house from which Kiyoshi had been shot, and obtained from him a sufficiently minute description of Howard Easter to be convinced that Easter and Brewster were the same. Garman was certain that he would recognize Easter and agreed to hold himself on call for a visit to the District Attorney’s office to identify the borrower of the key.