Phantom lady (16 page)

"That him?" he muttered.

"It's him." agreed Lombard tersely.

Burgess bent over the figure, probed awhile. Then he straightened up again. "Broken neck." he said. "Killed instantly." He shot his light up the stair incline. Then he went up there, jittered it around on the floor. "Accident." he said. "Missed his footing up here on the top step, went all the way

down headfirst, and crashed head-on into that wall backing the turn. I can see the skid marks up here, over the lip of the top step."

Lombard climbed slowly up to where he was, blew out his breath in a disgusted snort. "Fine time for an accident! I no sooner contact him—" He stopped short, looked at the detective searchingly in the battery light rays. "You don't think it could have been anything else, do you?"

"Did anyone pass you or that other guy, while you were waiting down there at the door?"

"No one, in or out."

"Did you hear anything like a fall?"

"No, we would have come in and looked if we had. But at least twice while we were waiting for you, long trains went by on those overhead tracks, and you couldn't hear yourself think until they'd gone by. It might have been during one of those times."

Burgess nodded. "That's what probably kept others in the building from hearing it, too. Don't you see, there's too much coincidence in it for it to be anything but an accident. He could have hit his head against that same wall down there ten times over and still lived; just been stunned without breaking his neck. He just happened to be killed instantly, but it couldn't have been counted on."

"Well, where does the bulb come in? I think that's too much coincidence, isn't it? I know what I'm saying, that light was still in working order when I tore down those stairs to phone you. If it hadn't been, I would have had to pick my way down, and I didn't; I went pretty fast."

Burgess shot his light along the wall until he'd found it; it was on a bracket, sticking out from the side. "I don't get what you mean," he said, staring up at it. "If he was supposed to be blind, or at least went around most of the time with his eyes closed, which amounts to the same thing, how does the bulb enter into it one way or the other? How would darkness be any disadvantage to him? In fact he'd be more sure-footed in the dark, probably, than with the light left on,

because he wasn't used to using his eyes."

"Maybe that's just it," Lombard said. "Maybe he came out fast, trying to make his get-away before I got back, and in his hurry forgot to close his eyes, left them open. With them open, maybe he was no better off than you or me."

"Now you're getting yourself all tangled up. For his sight to be dazzled, the light would have had to be on. And your whole kick has been that it isn't. What would be the point, either way? How could anyone count on his missing a step, any more than they could count on his hitting in such a way that his neck snapped?"

"All right, it was a freak accident." Lombard flung his hand out disgustedly as he turned to go down. "All I say is, I don't like its timing. I no sooner catch up with him—"

"They will happen, you know, and they usually pick their own time for it, not yours."

Lombard went thumping frustratedly down the stairs, letting his whole weight down at each step. "Whatever you might have been able to drill out of him is gone for good now."

"Don't let it throw you down. You may be able to turn up somebody else."

"From him, it's gone for good. And it was practically there, waiting to be found out." He'd reached the landing where the body lay by now. He turned suddenly to look back. "What happened? What was that?"

Burgess pointed to the wall. "The bulb lit up again. Your vibration on the staircase jarred it on. Which explains what happened to it the first time: his fall broke the current. The wiring must be defective. That takes care of the light." He motioned him on. "You may as well clear out. I'll report it by myself. No sense of you getting all mixed up in it, if you want to keep working on the other thing."

Lombard's tread went dejectedly on down the rest of the way toward the street, all the lilt gone out of it. Burgess stayed behind up there, waiting beside the motionless form on the landing.

THE GIRL

It was on a slip of paper that Burgess had given her.

Cliff Milburn

house-musician, Casino Theater, last season.

current job, Regent Theater.

And then two telephone numbers. One a police precinct, up until a certain hour. The other his own home number, in case she needed him after he'd gone off duty.

He'd said to her, "I can't tell you how to go about it. You'll have to figure that out for yourself. Your own instinct will probably tell you what to do better than I can. Just don't be frightened, and keep your wits about you. You'll be all right."

This was her own way of going about it, here in front of the glass. This was the only way she could figure out, sight unseen. The clean, tomboyish look was gone from her. The breezy sweep of the hair from an immaculate part over to the other side of her face, that was missing. In its place was a tortured surface of brassy rolls and undulations, drenched with some sort of fixative and then hardened into a metallic casque. Gone too was the youthful, free-swinging, graceful hang there had always been to her clothes. Instead she had managed to achieve a skin-tight effect that appalled her, even alone here in her own room. Excruciatingly short, so that when she sat down—well, she would be sure to catch his eye in a way that would do the most good. A big red poker chip on each cheek, as obvious as a pair of stop lights,

but whose effect was intended to be the opposite: go ahead. A string of beads that clacked around her throat. A handkerchief with too much lace on it, saturated in a virulent concoction that made her own nose crinkle in distaste as she hastily stuffed it into her bag. She had made herself heavy lidded with some blue stuff she had never used before.

Scott Henderson had been watching her throughout the proceeding, from a frame to one side of the glass, and she was ashamed. "You wouldn't know me, darling, would you?" she murmured contritely. "Don't look at me, darling, don't look at me."

And now one final ghastly item, to complete the catalogue of sleazy accessibility. She put up her leg and slipped a garter of violently pink satin complete with a rosette up it, left it at a point just below visibility. At least when seated.

She turned away fast. His Girl shouldn't look like that thing she had just seen in the glass, not His Girl. She went around putting lights out, outwardly calm, inwardly keyed up. Only someone that knew her well could have guessed it. He would have known it at a glance. He wasn't here to see it.

When she came to the last one of all, the one by the door, she said the little prayer she always said, each time she started out. Looking over at him there, in the frame, across the room.

"Maybe tonight, darling," she breathed softly, "maybe tonight."

She put out the light and closed the door, and he stayed behind there in the dark, under glass.

The marquee lights were on when she got out of the cab, but the sidewalk under them was fairly empty yet. She wanted to get in good and early, so she'd have time to work on him before the house lights went down. She only half knew what was playing, and when it was over and she came out again she knew she wouldn't know very much more than she had when she went in. Something called "Keep on Dancing."

She stopped at the box office. "I have a reservation for

tonight. First row orchestra, on the aisle. Mimi Gordon."

She'd had to wait days for it. Because this wasn't a matter of seeing the show, this was a matter of being seen. She took out the money and paid for it. "Now you're sure of what you told me over the phone? That's the side of the house the trap drummer is on, and not the other?"

'That's right, I checked on it for you before I put it aside." He gave her the leer she'd known he would. "You must think quite a lot of him. Lucky guy, I'd say."

"You don't understand; it's not him personally. I don't even know him from Adam. It's—how'll I explain? Everybody has some sort of a hobby. Well, mine happens to be the trap drums. Every time I go to a show I try to sit as close to them as I can get, I love to watch them being played, it does something to me. I'm an addict of the trap drums, they've fascinated me ever since I was a child. I know it sounds crazy but"—she spread her hands—"that's how it is."

"I didn't mean to be inquisitive," he apologized, crestfallen.

She went inside. The ticket taker at the door had just come on duty, the usher had just come up from the locker room downstairs, she was so early. Whatever the status of the balcony, where the unwritten rule of being fashionably late did not hold sway, she was definitely the first patron on the orchestra floor.

She sat there alone, a small gilt-headed figure lost in that vast sea of empty seats. Most of her gaudiness was carefully concealed, from three directions, by the coat she kept huddled about her. It was only from the front that she wanted it to have its full lethal effect.

Seats began to slap down behind her more and more frequently; there was that rustle and slight hum that always marks a theater slowly filling up. She had eyes for one thing and one thing only: that little half-submerged door down there under the rim of the stage. It was over on the opposite side from her. Light was peering through the

seams of it now, and she could hear voices behind it. They were gathering there, ready to come out to work.

Suddenly it opened and they began filing up into the pit, each one's head and shoulders bent acutely to permit his passage. She didn't know which one was he, she wouldn't know until she saw him seat himself, because she'd never seen him. One by one they dropped into the various chairs, disposing themselves in a thin crescent around the stage apron, heads below the footlights.

She was seemingly absorbed in the program on her lap, head lowered, but she kept peering watchfully up from under her sooty lashes. This one, coming now? No, he'd stopped one chair too short. The one behind him? What a villainous face. She was almost relieved when he'd dropped off at the second chair down from her. Clarinet, or something. Well, then this one, it must be he—no, he'd turned and gone the other way, bass viol.

They'd stopped emerging now. Suddenly she was uneasy. The last one out had even closed the door behind him. There weren't any more of them coming through. They were all seated, they were all tuning up, settling themselves for work. Even the conductor was on hand. And the chair at the trap drums, the one directly before her, remained ominously vacant.

Maybe he'd been discharged. No, because then they'd get a substitute to take his place. Maybe he'd been taken ill, couldn't play tonight. Oh, just tonight this had to happen! Probably every night this week, until now, he'd been here. She mightn't be able to get this same particular seat again for weeks to come; the show was selling well and there was great demand. And she couldn't afford to wait that long. Time was so precious, was running so short, there was too little of it left.

She could overhear them discussing it among themselves, in disparaging undertones. She was close enough to catch nearly everything they said, to get in under the tuning-up discords that covered them from the rest of the house.

"D'jever see a guy like that? I think he's been on time once since the season started. Fining don't do any good."

The alto saxophone said, "He probably chased some blonde up an alley and forgot to come out again.'"

The man behind him chimed in facetiously, "A good drummer is hard to get."

"Not that hard."

She was staring at the credits on her program, without their focusing into type. She was rigid with suppressed anxiety. Ironical, that every man in the orchestra should be on hand but the single one, the only one, that could do her any good.

She thought, "This is the same sort of luck poor Scott was in the night he —"

The lull before the overture had fallen. They were all set now, light rods turned on over their scores. Suddenly, when she was no longer even watching it any more, it seemed so hopeless, the door giving into the pit had flickered open, closed again, so quickly it was like the winking of an intermittent light, and a figure scuttled deftly along the outside of the chairs to the vacant one before her. bent over both to increase its speed and to attract the conductor's attention as little as possible. Thus there was something rodentlike about him even at his first appearance within her ken, and he was to stay in character throughout.

The conductor gave him a sizzling look.

He wasn't abashed. She heard him pant in a breathless undertone to his neighbor, "Boy, have I got a honey for the second tomorrow! A sure thing."

"Sure, and the only sure thing about it is it won't come in," was the dry answer.

He hadn't seen her yet. He was too busy fiddling with his rack, adjusting his instrument. Her hand dropped to her side and her skirt crept up her thigh an unnoticeable fraction of an inch more.

He got through arranging his set-up. "How's the house tonight?" she heard him ask. He turned and looked out

through the pit railing for the first time since he'd come in.

She was ready for him. She was looking at him. She'd hit him. There must have been an elbow nudge beyond her radius of downcast vision. She heard the other man's slurred answer. "Yeah, I know, I seen it."

She'd hit him hard. She could feel his eyes on her. She could have made a graph of the wavy line they traveled. She took her time. Not too fast now, not right away. She thought, "Funny how we know these things, all of us, even when we've never tried them before." She concentrated on a line on her program as though she could never get enough of its mystic import. It was mostly dots, running from one side of the page over to the other. It helped to keep her eyes steady.

Victorine Dixie Lee

She counted the dots. Twenty-four of them, from character name over to performer name. There, that was about long enough. That had given it time to work. She let her lashes come up slowly and unveil her eyes.