Odor of Violets Read online

  The fear of blindness was lifted, and held him enthralled no more. He was no longer a burden on Spud and Rena. Schnucke’s warm body was ever close to his side. She was only a German shepherd dog skillfully trained, but she was life to Duncan Maclain, for her deep dark eyes had sight. Sight was all that he needed to be as good as a man could be.

  Schnucke stood up and rubbed her back gently against the Captain’s knee. The musical triple chime of an electric tocsin announced a visitor in the anteroom of the penthouse office. Maclain touched a button under his desk and clicked a latch which opened the office door.

  The visitor paused on the threshold. “Captain Maclain?”

  “I’m dreadfully sorry,” said Maclain. “You’ll find the light switch to your left just inside the door. I was reading with my fingers and for the moment I forgot it was dark in this room.”

  The man in the doorway laughed softly. “It is black.” The light switch clicked. “I’ll admit I expected to walk into a lighted office. The darkness rather startled me.”

  Maclain listened to the rich, cultured tones and said, “Take the chair in front of my desk, if you don’t mind.” When the man was seated, the Captain continued, “You keep yourself in good trim. Your step is light and quick for such a big man. You must weigh better than two hundred, and you’re taller than six foot two.”

  “I’ve been told you were blind, Captain. Frankly, I was skeptical that you could ever be of help in the city’s defense plans. You’re already proving my stupidity to me!”

  “Thanks,” said Maclain a trifle drily. “After many years I’m able to estimate the approximate height of strangers by the number of steps they take to my desk from the door. My blindness necessarily makes me a bit of a mountebank. I let you enter a darkened room to stop you at the door. It makes counting your footsteps easier.” He pushed forward a carved cigarette box. “Smoke? I understand you were to bring some Braille instructions to me.”

  “They’re here. The Naval Intelligence requests that you memorize and destroy them as soon as possible, Captain Maclain. There are five vital points in here where an organized crew might sabotage the light, power, water, and sewage of this city. You’re an ex-Army Intelligence officer. I don’t need to tell you those would be dangerous papers for certain people to see.”

  Maclain reached out one hand and papers rustled crisply. He spread the Braille embossed sheets flat on his desk and began to move his fingers over the lines, reading skillfully. He heard the scratch of a match. Tobacco smoke reached his nostrils. The room was silent until he turned the last of the sheets.

  “I think I have it,” he said. “The instructions are perfectly clear. In the improbable event that New York is plunged into darkness and communication cut off, I know exactly where I’m to go, what I’m to do, and the men I’m to contact.”

  “Good!” said the other. “Colonel Gray, the head of our defense plans, believes your ability to get around with your dog invaluable. Even under war conditions, a blind man could pass unquestioned where others might be suspected and stopped immediately. The vulnerable spots mentioned in there are in code. Before I leave would you care to name their locations for me as given you personally by Colonel Gray? I’d like to be sure you know.”

  The Captain leaned back in his chair and locked his hands behind his head. “Let’s say I know them and leave it there.” He smiled slowly. “Did part of your mission here tonight consist of testing me?”

  “You’re a cautious man, Captain,” the other said quickly. “It’s a trait we like to see!”

  The Captain felt along a row of buttons beside his desk and pressed one. From a loud-speaker concealed behind a panel in the wall a voice announced: “When you hear the signal the time will be exactly ten twenty-three.”

  “That’s a neat device, Captain. A hook-up with the time bureau, hey? Meridian 7-1212.”

  “A direct wire,” Maclain explained. “I have to hear what I can’t see.”

  “I regret I was late in arriving. I won’t detain you any longer.” Maclain heard the other rise. “The Army and Navy Intelligence both appreciate your co-operation. Colonel Gray suggested that I make myself known to you in case you might want further information after studying our instructions. I’m a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, Captain Maclain, but you may have heard of me in my profession. I was on the stage for years—”

  “Colonel Gray told me who you are,” said Maclain. “You underestimate your own fame. Anyone who ever attended a show has heard of Paul Gerente.”

  CHAPTER IV

  OLIVE-SKINNED GIRLS with dark laughing eyes came into the Italian Café. They were accompanied by quick-moving, sober-faced boys dressed in store clothes of foreign lines. They ate pizza and drank beer or black coffee, eyed Norma Tredwill curiously, and went away.

  Babs’s galoshes had grown monstrously large. Norma kept glancing at them surreptitiously, wondering how many of the café’s customers had noticed them beside her on the floor. Since she had fled from Paul Gerente’s apartment more than an hour before, her normal power of reasoning had become dulled. She felt trapped in a situation demanding extreme acuteness, with nothing to help her but a nonfunctioning brain.

  Her body was lethargic, too. She had been sitting too long in a straight-backed booth, her spine rigid, her slender feet pressed tightly flat against the floor. Restlessly she shifted her position. Tiny living needles pricked at her legs and arms as circulation was resumed once more.

  “Madame does not like the pizza?”

  A heavy-set Italian was bent over the table. She looked at him uncomprehendingly. His long white apron hid his clothes. At each corner of his wide mouth the wispy end of a horseshoe-shaped mustache drooped dolefully. He wiped his eyes slowly with the corner of his apron as though Norma’s attitude grieved him.

  “Madame does not like the pizza?” he asked again, and pointed to the table in front of her. She understood then that he was referring to a large, untouched Italian tomato pie.

  The sight of it made her ill, but she forced herself to smile. “I thought I was hungry when I came in,” she said lamely. “I guess I was just cold from the storm.”

  “Si,” he said. “The storm she mak’ you cold. I get some coffee ver’ hot. She heat you up again.” He shuffled away before Norma could say no.

  Two couples a few booths away were laughing softly and chattering in the liquid syllables of their mother tongue. Norma drew back into the seclusion of her own small cubicle and lifted Babs’s galoshes from the floor. Tugging with a quick frenzy, she tried to pull one of them on over her thin overshoe. A single try convinced her that it was much too small. When she tried to remove it, it stuck halfway.

  The piece of expensive fur-trimmed footwear seemed malignantly stubborn. By exerting all her strength she finally managed to pull it free. When she looked up, the white-aproned proprietor was standing at the end of the table, coffee in hand, gazing unconcernedly at her silk-clad knee.

  Norma uncrossed her legs and smoothed her skirt down carefully. Apparently her blind flight from Paul’s had led her unwittingly to the worst place she could have found. Seeking a quiet spot where she might gather her wits into line, she had blundered into a small pizzeria where her clothes and actions were objects of curiosity to patrons and proprietor. Once let her picture appear in the papers as Paul’s ex-wife, and a dozen Italians would remember her visit to the local café.

  As she reflected on the events of the past two hours it was brought crushingly home to her that she was fleeing from something unknown; acting as though she or Babs had felled Paul Gerente with that horrible bloodstained poker. A false calmness took possession of her—the calmness of an actress who has been through many bad first nights. She nodded her thanks, and handed the proprietor a dollar from her purse as he set the coffee down.

  “Give me a piece of wrapping paper, please,” she said. “I bought these galoshes hurriedly and they’re too small. Tomorrow I’ll take them back to the store.”

  She wasn�
�t sure that he understood her, although he nodded solemn agreement. He took the dollar and shuffled stolidly away.

  Norma forced herself to drink the hot, bitter draft, although she detested coffee loaded with chicory. It revived her faculties. While she waited for the proprietor’s return, questions began to parade themselves dancingly before her. She reviewed them with a sharpened mental astuteness. The answers were vitally important. One by one they capered by her—problems and incidents she should have calmly considered before.

  Had Babs killed Paul Gerente?

  Another question flashed through her mind before she could formulate a sensible answer. Was Paul Gerente the man in the cherry-colored dressing gown she had seen lying on the floor? Brutally she forced herself to conjure back a picture of the room. The man was about Paul’s size and build. Why, in the name of heaven, had she run away like a panicky child? It would have taken but a moment for her to walk closer to the murdered man to see.

  Babs might have killed him, if the man was really Paul. Once he was passionately aroused, his methods with women were never tactful. Babs was nervous, high-strung, and strong. Frightened and desperate, the girl might easily have seized the nearest weapon and battled for escape from the apartment too successfully. It was a hideous thought, and Norma promptly put it away, yet she knew it was what she had dreaded from the instant she had picked up Babs’s galoshes in the hall.

  Eagerly she seized upon the stronger terror which had overcome her in Paul’s apartment, that weakening premonition that somebody else had been there. Why hadn’t she looked into Paul’s bedroom, or spoken, particularly when she knew that someone had answered the ring of Paul’s bell?

  She remembered the voice which called from the second floor, “Do you want Cameron?” Perhaps in her haste and excitement she had pushed the Camerons’ button in the foyer and never rung Paul’s bell at all. Babs might have blundered in onto a murdered Paul Gerente as Norma had done. But how? Norma struggled vainly for an answer. If Paul was murdered, surely a killer would not answer the door. There was another possibility which was sordidly depressing: Babs might have had a key.

  A throbbing started over her right eye, rhythmic and painful. She pressed it with her finger tips and told herself silently, “A key might explain how Babs got in, but it doesn’t explain who opened that door for me.”

  It was inconceivable that she had erroneously pressed the Camerons’ button; she even knew the location of Paul’s—the bottom one in the row.

  Or was it? Her remembrance of the lighted vestibule on West Twelfth Street became indistinct and cloudy. Perhaps Cameron’s button was the bottom one on the row. Perhaps in ten years the bells had been changed. She found herself battling a dragging urge to go back to the Twelfth Street house and see. It was mad, she knew, but somehow before she faced Babs again she had to have some inkling of the truth. A simpler course presented itself—one which apparently could do no harm and which might work, with a little subtlety.

  Norma left the table and walked to a phone booth in the corner. Leafing through the directory, she found an A. C. Cameron listed at the Twelfth Street address. Her heart was thumping uncomfortably when she dialed the number. A man’s voice answered pleasantly after a few rings.

  Somewhat reassured, Norma said hurriedly, “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Cameron, because you don’t know me, but I was wondering about the name plates on the bells downstairs. Apparently I rang your bell when I called on some friends a little while ago. If you remember, you called downstairs to me as I came into the hall.”

  Cameron gave a friendly laugh and said, “Who is this speaking?”

  Norma was silent a few seconds before she said, “Do you mind if I don’t say?”

  “No, not at all, but you’re worrying yourself needlessly. I was expecting a friend and had my apartment door open. I heard a bell ring upstairs and called down, thinking it might be for me.”

  “Oh!” said Norma faintly. “Then you didn’t push the buzzer and open the downstairs door?”

  “Yes,” said Cameron, “I did. And whoever you rang answered too. That’s why I called down to you. My friend was coming from a cocktail party. Occasionally he gets mixed up on bells. There’s no harm done, though.”

  “I’m sorry I troubled you.” Norma hung up. Cameron’s statement, “Whoever you rang answered too,” was running through her head liltingly. There was a train back to Hartford at eleven-fifty. She would take it and say nothing to anyone. Someone else had been in Paul’s room. She needed time to think things out. She could talk to Babs the following day.

  CHAPTER V

  ARNOLD C. CAMERON put the telephone back in its cradle and walked slowly halfway across the room. He stopped for a moment in front of a pier-glass mirror set in a closet door.

  From the depths of an easy chair in the corner an attractive brunette watched him from under languorous lids as he brushed imaginary dust from the shoulders of his well-tailored sharkskin suit and pushed back a lock of his graying hair.

  “It sounded like a woman.” The girl crossed slender legs and looked at her toe.

  Arnold Cameron studied her reflection in the mirror before him and smiled. He was a man in his late thirties and was always reminding people who met him of someone they knew.

  “It was,” he said.

  “Who?”

  He left his place at the mirror and stood for a few seconds looking down at the girl before he settled himself in another chair.

  “You’re the jealous type, Hilda, my dear.” He took a cigarette from a jar on the table beside him and rolled it between his palms. Small yellow specks of tobacco fell to the floor.

  The girl swished the remains of a highball around in the bottom of her glass and finished it. “Do I know her?”

  “No,” said Cameron. “Neither do I. I’m trying to figure out what the hell she telephoned me for.”

  “When you get mysterious,” said Hilda, “you’re an awful bore.”

  She held the glass out toward him. “Make another one, will you, darling? I’m dry.”

  “You’re saturated,” said Cameron, “and I think you’d better go.”

  Hilda’s soft, full lips curled in a smile. “Afraid of me?”

  “Yes.” He got up quickly, bent over her, and kissed her on the mouth. When he straightened up again, his strong hands slipped under her elbows and lifted her to her feet.

  “Do I really have to go?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I have some work to do.”

  “Something to do with the call?”

  He opened the mirrored door and took her heavy plaid ulster from the closet, holding it out before him to help her put it on. She thrust her arms angrily into the sleeves, snatched her small stylish hat from the shelf of the closet, and arranged it on her head with trembling fingers.

  “This is the last time you’ll ever put me out of here!”

  “I’m sorry, Hilda, really.” His gray eyes were expressionless. “After all, I’ve only done it once before.”

  “Twice is too much. I’m afraid I like men who aren’t always subject to the interruption of mysterious phone calls.” She stopped with her hand on the door. “I went down to your office the other day.”

  “You did?” he inquired politely. “It’s too bad I missed you.”

  “You’d have missed anybody who came,” said Hilda. “The door was locked and there wasn’t anyone there at all.”

  She set her chin firmly and faced him challengingly. “Just what do you import, Arnold? I’d like to know.”

  “Eggs,” he said soberly. “From Australia. The business has been badly affected by the war.”

  He kissed her again before she could answer and adroitly eased her out through the door. He watched her down the single flight of stairs and called, “I hope you’ll change your mind and come back again. I’m really fond of you, and sorry if I’ve been a bore.”

  He was answered by the slam of the front door.

  Back again in the apartment, he picked
up the phone and dialed a number. “Jack,” he said when the answer came, “is it true that there’s no way of tracing a dial call?”

  “None,” a voice replied from the other end. “It’s a washout when the call’s once through. What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing particularly,” Cameron replied a bit testily. “I’m tired of having my evenings spoiled, that’s all.”

  He hung up and went back to look at himself in the mirror again, brushing more imaginary dust from his shoulder. After staring at himself irresolutely for a few seconds, he turned with the quick decisiveness of a man who has made up his mind, crossed the room swiftly, and took a heavy Luger automatic pistol from the table drawer. He half opened the breech with an expert hand and glanced at the loading.

  The gun was sagging in his side coat pocket when he stepped out into the hall, closed the apartment door behind him, and went down into the vestibule to ring Paul Gerente’s bell.

  He waited for a short interval, staring out at the driving sleet and snow, but no answer came. He let himself back in with a latchkey and climbed the five flights of stairs to the top floor, where he knocked lightly on Paul Gerente’s door.

  Not a sound came from inside. Cameron took a leather-bound key container from his pocket and selected a key. It fitted the lock perfectly. With the assured confidence of a man entering his own home, he stepped in. The door clicked shut behind him.

  The lights were on, and in the fireplace embers burned low. Seconds ticked away on the busy pendulum of the cuckoo clock before he knelt beside the dead man in the cherry-colored dressing gown. A shadow which might have been pity touched his face, and faded into a mirthless smile.

  He picked the blood-marked poker up, holding it in the center with a folded handkerchief. A couple of minutes later he was back downstairs in his apartment on the second floor.