I stepped into the foyer and moved on past him into the living room. He shambled after me.
I said, “I suppose Brant came to see you before he did me.”
“Yes.”
“So you know what killed Georgie.”
He nodded tiredly.
“Abby still in bed?” I asked.
“I made her dress and go to a doctor when I learned it was arsenic. Don’t want him coming here, not with the cops snooping. Whatever he gives her for it, I’ll take too.”
“Better not,” I said. “Likely she’ll mix more arsenic with it.”
Oscar took off his eyeglasses. “Explain that, Johnny.”
“I don’t have to. You know as well as I do why she put arsenic in the chopped liver.”
He stood swinging his glasses and saying nothing. He was not the man I had known up until the time I had left the party last night, and it was not so much because he was ill. It was as if a fire had burned out in him.
“Boy, did she sucker you!” I said. “Me too, I admit. But it was mostly our own fault. We knew she didn’t fall for your line that you hadn’t killed Wally. We kidded ourselves she’d be willing to forgive and forget if we paid her off. We wanted to believe that because we wanted her. Both of us did. Well, you got her. Or the other way around – she got you. She got you to bring her to live here where she could get all of us together and feed us arsenic.”
“No,” he mumbled. He looked up. “She ate the liver too. She’s been sick all night and all day. She’s still in a bad way even though she managed to get out of bed and dressed.”
“Huh! She had to put on an act.”
“No, I can tell. And she wouldn’t poison me. Look what she’d give up – this nice home, plenty of money. Why? For a stupid revenge? No. And she’s fond of me. Loves me, I’m sure. Always affectionate. A wonderful girl. Never knew anybody like her. So beautiful and warm.”
He was babbling. He was sick with something worse than poison, or with a different kind of poison. It was the sickness of sex or love or whatever you cared to call it, and it had clouded that brain that always before had known all the answers.
“Try to think,” I said. “Somebody put arsenic in the chopped liver. Who but Abby would have reason?”
“Somebody else.” That old twisted smile, which was not really a smile at all, appeared on his thin lips. “You, for instance,” he said softly.
“Me?”
“You,” he repeated. “You hate my guts for having gotten Abby. You hate her for being mine instead of yours.”
I said, “Does it make sense that I’d want to kill Georgie and Tiny and Stella also?”
“There was a guy put a time bomb on an airplane and blew a lot of people to hell because he wanted to murder his wife who was on the plane. Last night was your first chance to get at Abby and me – and what did you care what happened to the others?”
“My God, you’re so crazy over her you’d rather believe anything but the truth.”
“The truth?” he said and kept smiling that mirthless smile. “The truth is you’re the only one didn’t eat the liver.” He put on his glasses. “Now get out before I kill you.”
“Are you sure she’ll let you live that long?”
“Get out!”
I left. There was no use arguing with a mind in that state, and with Oscar it could be mighty dangerous besides.
The usual wind was sweeping up Riverside Drive. I stood on the sidewalk and thought of going home to eat and then I thought of Tiny. What had happened to him since he had left Oscar’s apartment last night and had dragged himself to his lonely little room? At the least I ought to look in on him.
I walked over to Broadway and took the subway downtown. I climbed two flights of narrow, smelly stairs in a tenement and pushed in an unlocked door. There was just that one crummy room and the narrow bed against the wall and Tiny lying in it on his back with a knife sticking out of his throat.
I must have expected something like this, which was why I’d come. There had been four of us involved in the killing of Wally Garden. Now only two of us were left.
I touched him. He wasn’t long dead; rigor mortis had not yet begun to set in. She had left her apartment on the excuse that she was going to a doctor and had come here instead.
There was no sign of a struggle. Tiny wouldn’t have suspected anything. Lying here sick and alone, he’d been glad to see her – to see anybody who would minister to him, but especially the boss’s lovely lady. She had bent over him to ask how he felt, and he must have been smiling up at that clean fresh young face when she had pushed the knife into his throat, and then she had quickly stepped back to avoid the spurting blood.
That was a switchblade knife, probably Tiny’s own, the knife Oscar had borrowed from him to kill Wally Garden. Which would make it grim justice, if you cared for that kind of justice when you also were slated to be on the receiving end.
I got out of there.
When I was in the street, I saw Brant. He was making the rounds of Georgie’s pals and he was up to Tiny. It was twilight and I managed to step into a doorway before he could spot me. He turned into the tenement I had just left.
I went into a ginmill for the drink I needed and had many drinks. But I didn’t get drunk. When I left a couple of hours later, my head was clear and the fear was still jittering in the pit of my stomach.
I’d never been much afraid of anybody, not even of Oscar, but I was afraid of Abby.
It was her life or ours. I had to convince Oscar of that. Likely he would see the light now that Tiny had been murdered too, because who but Abby had motive? If he refused to strangle her, I would, and be glad to do it, squeezing that lilywhite throat until the clear blue eyes bulged and the sweet face contorted.
I got out of a hack on Riverside Drive. The wind was still there. I huddled against it a moment and then went up to the apartment.
Abby answered the door. She wore a sleazy housecoat hugging that slender body of hers. She looked limp and haggard and upset.
“Johnny,” she said, touching my arm, “I’m glad you’re here. The police took Oscar away.”
“That so?” I stepped into the apartment.
She closed the door and tagged after me. “They wouldn’t tell why they took him away. Was it because of Georgie?”
“No. I guess they’re going to ask him how Tiny got a knife in his throat.”
Abby clutched her bosom – the kind of gesture an actress would make, and she was acting. “It couldn’t have been Oscar. He wasn’t out of the house.”
“But you were, weren’t you?” I grinned at her. “You got only one of us with the arsenic, so you’re using other methods, other weapons. Have you anything special planned for my death?”
She backed away from me. “You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“You blame all four of us for Wally’s death. You’re out to make us pay for it.”
“Listen, Johnny!” She put out a hand to ward me off. “I didn’t care very much for Wally. When I married him, yes, but after a while he bored me. He was such a kid. He didn’t tell me a thing about the holdup. Not a word. All I found out about it was from the police, when they questioned me later. I heard your name and Oscar’s from that detective, Brant. So I tried to make some money on it. That’s all I was after – a little money.”
“You didn’t take the money. Instead you worked it so Oscar would bring you to live with him where you could get at all of us.”
“I like Oscar. Honest.”
“Don’t you mind sleeping with the man who killed your husband?”