“Frame-up!” Yaker shouted. “You’re all—”
Schneider commanded, “Shaddup, all ’f yuh!”
“Ask Miss Millett.” I held out a hand to her for confirmation. “She described the man who killed Herb Roffis. Big, tall, husky, florid face—”
“By God!” Yaker howled, “I see it all now! You’re all in it together to get me. I won’t stand—”
Schneider grabbed his elbows from behind, pinned him.
“The clincher,” I had to raise my voice over the scuffling, “was when he gave a key to a kind of glorified madam, so she could send a couple of her hot-pant cuties up to his room. He gave her the wrong key by mistake. The key to 21MM!”
“Not me!” Yaker shrieked. “I did not. I never even saw the woman. It was Keith!”
I said, “It took long enough for you to admit it.”
Keith Walch didn’t say anything, except with a stubby-nosed, nickel-plated 38.
It spoke louder than words.
Chapter thirty-four:
Cornered killer
It happened faster than “Hands Up!”
He stalked for the door. I was in his way. So were Schneider and Yaker. But I was nearest. I grabbed a straight-back chair, swung it legs-first.
He angled the snout of the gun at my eyes. I jabbed the chair at him. Chair’s a disconcerting weapon; if you don’t believe it, ask a circus lion.
He fired. Over my head. That’s why expert man-handlers never aim as high as the eyes. The lift of the barrel in the recoil always throws a shot high.
The chair’s upper leg caught him in the wishbone. It’s opposite, where you’d expect. He made a keening sound; half squeal, half screech. The gun went off again as he folded.
For a minute, we had a junior-model pandemonium. One blue busting in from the Grand Jury room. Hacklin and a dozen middle-aged men crowding behind him. Another cop rushing in from the hall with drawn revolver. Schneider trying to roar himself into command of the situation. Yaker having a paroxysm of hiccups. All the females, except Tildy, making their own special sort of noises appropriate to the occasion. I got Walch’s gun and wallet, gave the gun to the Grand Jury room cop.
When the commotion had subsided and the cuffs were on Walch, Schneider returned to hectoring me. “What’s the idea, Smart Stuff? Makin’ like this dummy was the murderer?” He thumbed a thumb at a still hiccuping Yaker.
“Everything I said was on the up and up about Walch. He managed it the way I said. He did have the strongest reasons for wanting Lanerd out of the way. He’d lose his principal piece of talent; Miss Millett wouldn’t have stayed in show biz long. Probably her reason for wanting to be married was so she could have children?” I asked it indirectly.
Nikky answered tartly, “Anything wrong with that?”
“Nothing at all,” I said. “I’m in favor of it. Mentioned it to show why Walch didn’t mind her having an affair, but was willing to murder to keep her from marrying. Even that wasn’t the main motive that powered him into murder.”
Hacklin’s turn. “What was?”
I glanced at Tildy.
“No.” She seized my arm, pleading.
Marge urged me to leave her alone.
Nikky joined in. “Isn’t it terrible enough?”
I opened Walch’s wallet. “I’d say not. We have to put Walch where he can’t do any more damage.” I took out the snapshot of the kid in the polar-bear suit. “Who’s this, Miss Millett?”
She shook her head, weeping.
“Her son.” I handed the snap to Hacklin. “Saw Tony down in Kentucky. Swell youngster. Even if he does look a little like his father, there.”
Walch was doubled over in pain, didn’t retort. Tildy stopped crying.
“How’d you find out?”
“When I was over at the Icequadrille rehearsal yesterday, I happened to see this picture. So I recognized the boy soon’s I saw him down in Lexington. He resembles you more than he does your sister, too. Seemed funny Walch’d have the boy’s photograph in his wallet — and yet none of the mother, who’s his main source of income. Thought it was queer, too, that Walch hadn’t been in your suite at the hotel more. Why he hadn’t gone to the Stack O’ Jack show with you. Agent getting ten percent of your salary ought to have been around to smooth things out for you.”
MacGregory grunted, “I’d wondered about that, myself. Even in spite of Nikky’s crack about his making Tildy nervous.”
“The principal thing” — I watched Hacklin and Schneider trying to find likenesses between Tony’s picture and the man in manacles; there weren’t too many; he really resembled Tildy more than Walch — “was the emphasis on Lexington. That farewell note Miss Millett sent to Lanerd — it said she couldn’t elope with him because of ‘the way things are.’ Since she’d been doing a lot of long-distancing to Lexington, and Lanerd told Hacklin she might be on her way there, I thought probably it might be the way things were, down in Kentucky, which caused her to change her mind about eloping.”
Nikky snapped, “So you had to hound her all the way to Kentucky, even when she wasn’t there!”
“Wouldn’t have had to, if I could’ve doped out the cryptic note someone, I presumed it was the murderer, sent her right after Roffis was found dead. The note was signed ‘Lx’ or Lexington. Miss Moore thought Lanerd had sent it. Actually Walch wrote it in Lanerd’s suite after murdering the guard.”
Hacklin stuck fists on hips. “You didn’t show us any note!”
“Always respect the confidence of the guest, golden rule of the business.” I appealed to Tildy. “‘Seven for a secret’ — what was that?”
She looked away. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“No. Well. ‘Never forget four’ was the one I made a blind guess at. When Fran Lane stayed with you at the Brulard Saturday night, she heard you mumbling in your sleep, ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth.’ Sounded to me like a toast, one sup of the cup for each. Only thing I could work out was ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for da-da, four for—’ only thing anyone would be likely to want to drink to, which rhymes with mirth—”
“Birth,” said Doctor Elm softly. “It’s an Olde English Pub motto; how does it go, now?
“Four was as much as I could wrangle,” I said. “Of course, I wasn’t sure about that. But if there’d been a birth which might have stood in Lanerd’s way, question was — whose child? And — had there been a wedding and a divorce? Or neither?”
Marge went to Tildy, put her arms around her. Nikky, too, came hotly to the skater’s defense. “There was a wedding. But that pig,” she stared hatred at the doubled-up agent, “told her he’d been divorced from his first wife and he hadn’t. So Tony — well—”
“Yair. And though Walch didn’t have any legal right to the boy, he could hold illegitimacy over Miss Millett whenever he felt like it, could publicly claim fatherhood, mess things up for everybody. Might even sue to take the boy away from her. Emotional blackmail.” It wasn’t necessary to make Tildy admit she’d covered up for Walch, by accusing Yaker, and Nikky’d done the same by throwing the blame on Lanerd, because Tildy couldn’t bear to have her boy grow up to realize his father was a killer. “The blackmail slant was one of the first things I thought about, only in a different way.”