Odor of Violets Page 5

  Shut in, he went to work with precision. Concealed from casual view behind the many suits in the spacious closet, a small safe stood on the floor. Cameron shoved the impeding clothes to one side and opened the safe door. He took out a small metal box and a tiny camel’s-hair brush.

  Back in the living room he placed the brass poker on a newspaper spread out on the table. He was humming tunelessly when he opened the metal box, dipped the tiny brush into the contents of light aluminum powder, and brushed the shining poker handle daintily.

  The dust adhered in a light unbroken film.

  Cameron took a lens from the table drawer and frowningly studied his work. “Damn waste of time!” he muttered, and went into the kitchen to mix himself a highball.

  He came back carrying a glass in one hand and a square of paper towel torn from a roll in the other. He took an appreciative drink, set the glass on the table, and using the paper towel wiped the handle of the poker clean.

  For the space of two cigarettes he sat in a chair sipping his drink and staring at the poker reflectively. When his highball was finished he picked up the poker again and took it back upstairs.

  The fire was almost out.

  Cameron replaced the weapon on the floor beside the dead man and began to search the room. He went over it skillfully and swiftly, making sure that he left no signs of disorder. Fifteen minutes satisfied him, and he transferred his search to the adjoining room.

  A table lamp glowed softly as he pushed the switch. It disclosed a bedroom furnished in simple masculine fashion with a double bed, a combination bookcase and desk, and two comfortable chairs.

  Without hesitation Cameron opened the desk. The front swung down to make a writing table. He reached inside and opened the right-hand drawer, pulling it out entirely. Groping inside the cavity, he located a niche large enough to receive the end of his finger. A slight tug swung out the center of the desk, disclosing a hidden drawer.

  The shallow compartment was empty. He closed it slowly, tried it once to make sure it was fastened, and replaced the desk drawer. Answering promptly, as though shutting the desk had released some controlling spring, the cuckoo clock struck half-past eleven.

  Cameron’s gray eyes turned toward the curtains separating the two rooms. He sucked in his lower lip and bit it lightly, then slid his right hand into his coat pocket and closed it about the butt of the Luger 7.65. Following close on the noisy strike of the cuckoo clock someone had knocked demandingly on the apartment door.

  He stood motionless, breathing easily, his thumb pressed against the safety catch of the gun. The knock sounded again, more insistent. Cameron’s eyes widened and his serious face was lightened by a perversely mischievous smile.

  Moving effortlessly, and with the quiet ease of muscles kept in perfect trim, he brushed the curtains aside, stepped into the living room, and bent over the still form on the floor. Quickly he seized the poker, and with a rolling motion pressed the shiny brass handle against the fingers of the body’s stiffening right hand. When that was done, he grasped the brass handle with his own right hand and for a split second brandished the weapon threateningly in the air.

  From the hall, a voice called “Mr. Gerente!” The summons was followed by another knock. Cameron replaced the poker beside the body, strode across the room, and opened the door.

  A dark, strikingly handsome man in a sleet-spattered tan mackintosh stood across the threshold. He gave a friendly grin which brought the whole of his rugged face to life, except his eyes. They gave Cameron an uneasy illusion that the newcomer was looking through him, concentrating on some indefinite spot on the opposite wall.

  “It’s beastly of me to disturb you again tonight.” The man stepped inside. “I’m overcautious, I guess—” He stopped just inside the door.

  “Come in, Captain Maclain.” Cameron fell back precipitately. Two German shepherd dogs had preceded Maclain from the hall. The one on the Captain’s left stared about the room with kindly inquisitiveness. Maclain’s left hand rested lightly upon a U-shaped brace attached to her harness. It was the dog to the Captain’s right which kept Cameron’s feet leadenly still.

  There was danger in the set of the white teeth, strength in the broad jaws and forechest, unflinching courage in the stance of the full, erect tail. Menacing almond eyes turned their unwavering gaze from Cameron to the corpse on the hearth. The heavy leather leash tightened around the Captain’s hand as the dog stepped forward with a threatening growl.

  “Stand, Dreist!” Maclain snapped out. The affability of his voice was gone. “This dog is extremely dangerous,” he continued in a flat warning tone. “I won’t be able to control him and he’ll tear you to pieces if you try to pull a gun. Move very cautiously, please, and seat yourself in a chair.”

  Cameron obeyed without answering. His forehead was damp and a muscle showed tight along the length of his jaw. When he was seated, he said, “Perhaps you don’t mind explaining your reasons for coming here, Captain Maclain.”

  “Not at all. Lie down, Schnucke!” the dog in the Seeing-Eye harness obeyed. The Captain tightened his hold on Dreist’s leash and walked toward the sound of Cameron’s voice. “Sit quietly, please, and keep your arms out from your sides.” An instant later he produced Cameron’s gun, and quickly stowed it away in his mackintosh.

  “You’re very efficient,” Cameron remarked sarcastically.

  “I’ve been told so,” said Maclain. “My chauffeur, Cappo, is waiting for me downstairs in my car. Either you’re not Paul Gerente, or your voice has changed since you were in my office an hour ago.”

  “How did you get in here without ringing?” Cameron carefully changed his position in the chair.

  “My chauffeur found the superintendent. If you’re not Paul Gerente, I think you’d better tell me who you are.”

  “I’ll tell you even more,” said Cameron. “Arnold Cameron’s my name. I was a good friend of Gerente’s. I live in the back apartment on the second floor.”

  “ ‘Was’ a good friend?” repeated Maclain.

  “That’s right,” said Cameron levelly. “He wasn’t in your office an hour ago, either. He’s very much dead behind you on the floor. Your dog was growling at his body when you came in the door.”

  “Schnucke!” Maclain called.

  The Seeing-Eye dog came up and placed herself at the Captain’s side. “Guard, Dreist!” he ordered the other dog, and dropped the leash from his hand. “If you don’t move,” he said coldly to Cameron, “Dreist won’t molest you.”

  “Then he won’t molest me,” said Cameron. “That’s okay by me.”

  Under Schnucke’s guidance the Captain stopped close by the body. Down on one knee, he ran his agile fingers over the features and lightly touched the clotted blood in the hair.

  “He’s been dead for some time,” he announced thoughtfully, rising from the floor.

  “Since seven forty-five,” said Cameron.

  “You place it with great exactness.” Maclain stood holding his chin between thumb and finger. “How do you know?”

  “I looked at the clock right after I hit him with the poker,” Cameron declared with a nervous laugh. “He came at me with it and I wrested it away. It was self-defense.”

  “I’ll have to phone the police.”

  “Go ahead,” said Cameron. “I can’t stop you with this dog slavering over me. I have a witness who can clear me.”

  “That’s probably lucky for you. Who is it?”

  “The girl we were quarreling over,” said Cameron. “Hilda Lestrade’s her name. She’s a good-looking baby, too!”

  CHAPTER VI

  1

  SOMEWHERE ALONG the coast of California twelve great bombing planes sat white and impressive, lined up in a geometrical row. Far down the flat cleared surface of the landing field a group of men in khaki stood watching. One of the men placed a pair of binoculars to his eyes, adjusted the focus, then stepped from the group and signaled. A flight commander leaned from one of the flying fortresses a
nd waved his hand.

  The dozen giant planes came to life with a roar. Moving with the slow stateliness of imaginative birds from the Arabian Nights, they wheeled across the field, seemed to pause even as they gathered speed, and suddenly left the ground for the air.

  There they were more at home. Traveling with the dizzy speed of a hurricane, they fell into the arrow formation of herons in flight. Looking down, the flight commander saw ten acres of parked automobiles blur white with upturned faces watching the bombers grow small against the sky.

  On the edge of the parked cars bordering the landing field a man and a girl sat in a sixteen-cylinder convertible Cadillac coupé. The top was down, although the afternoon was unseasonably cool. Perched on the back of the seat, the girl watched the vanishing planes through a pair of dark sun glasses.

  “What do they do now, Francis? You know all about such things.” The girl spoke with the delectable trill of an enthusiastic debutante.

  The man behind the wheel of the car sat silent, using his hand to shield his eyes from the glare. His lack of attention displeased his companion. She drew her fur coat closer about her in a gesture which raised her silken skirt a few inches higher, and repeated her question. “What do they do now, Francis?”

  The man lowered his hand and turned toward her when she pressed against his shoulder with the round smoothness of her knee.

  “Why don’t you watch them, Tina darling?”

  “They’re getting so far away that I can’t see.”

  “They’ll come back again.” He pointed to the left. “That’s their target over there. They’re going to bomb that house on the top of the hill.” His eyes caught the warmth of flesh above the tops of her stockings. “You’re lovely, Tina,” he said, and turned away.

  From the west the bombers zoomed in like fleeting black spots out of the setting sun. A sigh went up from the crowd as the arrow formation broke and straightened into a single line. Silence followed, gripping the earth. The wings of the leader had turned at an angle. Tons of man-made metal were plummeting earthward. When it seemed that nothing could save it, the great mass flattened out and became an airship again, raining death from the sky.

  Noise beat in from the hills as one by one the twelve planes played their game of follow-the-leader. The ground erupted beneath them, shattering the day with the burst of high explosives, the rending of wood which had been a dwelling, the tossing of timbers on high. When the last of the bombs had found its mark the quiet was so great that the noise of whirring propellers seemed lost in the turbid air. Slowly the smoke on the hilltop drifted away, but the eyes of the people kept watching, searching for a house forever gone.

  “I’m glad those planes are ours,” said the man in the Cadillac coupé. “Every hit a direct one! I’d hate like the devil to have them flying over me in a war—unless they were on my side.”

  Beside him, the girl shivered slightly. “How do they do it, Francis—hit such a small mark every time from way up in the air?”

  “Bombing sights,” he told her, patronizingly proud of his knowledge. “They’re the best in the world—and going to be even better, I’m told. Gilbert Tredwill, the Hartford engineer who invented them, is working on a new one now. We have to watch our step with everybody else in the world at war.”

  “Don’t talk about it.” She took off her sun glasses and her dark eyes looked troubled. “I just can’t bear to think that if we get dragged in you’ll be one of the first to go.”

  He laughed and patted her ankle affectionately, “You’re sweet, Tina. Going to war is a chance that all of us take in the Flying Corps.” He raised himself half up in the seat, and for an instant buried his nose in the large bunch of violets pinned to her breast. “You know,” he continued seriously, “if I ever do have to go to war, whenever I smell violets I’ll think of you.”

  The twelve bombers were wheeling down to earth in the light of the setting sun. The whiteness of their wings suddenly turned scarlet with a strange unearthly glow.

  “Look, Francis.” Tina’s voice was husky. “Look at those planes. They’re covered with blood right now!”

  2

  Somewhere off the coast of New England seventeen men were bravely awaiting death on the bottom of the sea.

  “How long now, Skipper?” asked the second in command. His question reverberated from the metal shell which formed their prison, but his voice was calm and devoid of fear.

  A streak of light showed ghostlike through blackness as the commanding officer moved his luminous wrist watch and turned up the back of his hand.

  “It’s now quarter past four in the morning.” His laugh boomed out startlingly. “You asked me that same question, Lieutenant, exactly six minutes ago.”

  “Why not?” said the Lieutenant. “There isn’t anything else to do.”

  Voices began to fill the darkness with hollow raillery: —

  “Whatchu kickin’ about, Lieutenant? Submarine woik’s the nuts. Nuttin’ to do but set on our bottoms ‘n’ draw extra pay!”

  “Join the Navy and see the world! Jeses!”

  “Yeah. Me old lady got me in this because she said them airyplanes was fallin’ all th’ time. She’s sure got me down about as far as I can go.”

  “Pipe down, you guys! You’re using up the air!”

  “That’s a laugh. What air?”

  “You tell ’em, Sandy. It smells like the pitcher show back home on bank night when all them dames comes in from the factories.”

  “Don’t you never think o’ nuthin’ but dames? Jeses, Slim.”

  “Mebbe you ketch yerself a mermaid, eh, Slim?”

  “That’s a laugh. Get himself a piece of fishtail!”

  “Pipe down, you guys! You’re using up the air!”

  Silence, and blackness, and breathing, and carbon monoxide creeping up on men about to die.

  “Jeses. All you hear about in the Navy is how good them bastards in the Coast Guard is at rescues. They must be tryin’ to gnaw their way through!”

  The Lieutenant whispering: —

  “—At the Gardners’ party at New London, Skipper. You must remember her.”

  “There were twenty girls there.”

  “She wore that white swim suit with the red trim and took a double somersault from the high board. Susan Rowland.”

  “I remember that dive all right. She had a brother there, didn’t she? Surly cuss that played contract so well.”

  “That’s the one. Well—”

  A plaintive voice saying: —

  “What’s the matter with Denny and that mouth organ? God knows it’s the only time I’ve ever wanted to hear him play.”

  “He’s playin’ a harp, Cupie, in the other half of this can.”

  “Jeses. I’ve seen pitchers of guys like us using torpedo tubes.”

  “Pipe down, you! You’re using up the air. We’ve been into all that crap about tubes before. The Coast Guard’ll come through.”

  “And so will the Marines.”

  “You tell ’em, Sandy. We will find the streets all guarded by United States Marines.”

  “What streets?”

  “Heaven’s scenes, the song says.”

  “The song stinks. We ain’t goin’ to heaven no-how. We’re goin’ to hell in a hand basket.”

  “A sea casket!”

  “Pipe down, you guys! You’re using up the air!”

  The Lieutenant whispering: —

  “—And the last time I saw her was the night before we went away. She’s sweet, Skipper. God! There’s something about a girl like that that makes a man feel good all through.”

  “She’s beautiful, all right, Mac, but I think she’s older than you.”

  “It’s the way she wears her hair. Funny thing, I had a letter from her just before we put out yesterday—”

  “Yesterday, Mac?”

  “Waiting for me at the base.”

  “I’ll say it’s funny. How did she know where to send it? Neither of us knew where we were going
to be.”

  “She must have guessed, Skipper. Here, smell it. It reminds me of her hair.”

  Heavy note paper crackling in the darkness. Carbon monoxide creeping up on seventeen doomed men. The scent of violets faint in the fetid air.

  3

  Inspector Larry Davis of the New York Homicide Squad chewed reflectively on a toothpick. Supporting himself on his elbows, with his back against the side of Paul Gerente’s grand piano, he kept moving his head in tiny jerks, watching the progress of Schnucke and her master about the living room.

  Sunk down in a large easy chair, Sergeant Aloysius Archer was nervously trying to outstare Dreist. He had heard somewhere that dogs would turn away if you looked at them hard enough. It wasn’t working out with Dreist. The Captain’s police dog glared back at him unwaveringly from a point of vantage on the floor.

  Under Schnucke’s guidance, Maclain turned at right angles at the end of a divan and skirted it slowly. In passing, he brushed the cushions lightly with his hand. He turned again at the other end and stopped close beside the spot where Gerente’s body had lain on the floor.

  In the chair, Sergeant Archer started a yawn, felt that Dreist’s glance was unfriendly, and choked off his yawn halfway.

  “Look, Captain,” he began pleadingly. “The guy’s confessed, hasn’t he? We’ve got his prints on a poker. We’re rounding up a gal, who saw the whole thing. This egg Cameron’s already on his way to headquarters. Let’s go home. Be a pal and call this leg chewer off of me.”

  “What’s your hurry, Sergeant?” A slight snip sounded as Inspector Davis broke the toothpick between his fingers. “We’ve watched him pace off every foot of this two-room-and-bath apartment for an hour and handle everything from bed to bottles, until the edges are worn off. I want to find out what the hell he’s looking for!”

  Maclain released Schnucke’s brace and clasped his hands behind him. “So you’ve reached the stage of snapping toothpicks, eh, Inspector? It’s been quite a while since I heard that noise. It’s nice to meet you boys again.”