I took a cab to Harry Bender’s store. Harry greeted me personally and led me behind the drug counter to his inner sanctum, his pharmaceutical catacomb. It was a familiar den. Harry and I had idled away many a Saturday afternoon playing two-handed pinochle among the drugs and packaged goods.

  I handed him the small bottle. I said: “You’re a druggist, chum. Here’s a little bottle for you to play with.”

  “You want me to swallow it?”

  “I want you to tell me what it is.”

  Harry uncorked the bottle and sniffed it, tentatively. He closed his eyes and smiled. He held it to the light, poured some of it into a small saucer and performed a quick professional breakdown.

  After a while, he said: “It’s arsenic, Steve. It’s murder.”

  I said: “I’m an idiot about poisons, Harry. I’m as unprofessional about poison as you are about pinochle. Tell me more. A gent takes some of this vicious vodka. What next?”

  “Nothing but trouble. Violent pain, almost immediately. Very horrible. Some victims vomit, others just pass out moaning and reaching for the infinite.”

  “How is it doled out?”

  Harry laughed. He took off his glasses so that he could enjoy his laughter. “How? You don’t throw arsenic at people. You dose them, Steve, you dose them. It’s a convenient poison. It’ll go well in any drink, in any food.”

  “Liquor?”

  “It works admirably in liquor.”

  “They can’t taste it?”

  “Not when it’s brewed this way. This stuff is absolutely tasteless and twice as colorless.”

  I showed him the small roll of film and he promised to have it developed for me quickly. I thanked him and folded a bill into his hand.

  It was one o’clock when I left Harry’s store and began my aimless stroll through the busy streets of the big town. At two o’clock, I found myself in a small restaurant, at a small table, munching a small sandwich and pondering the small wad of notes I had taken from Michael DePereyra’s wallet.

  Unfolded, the sheets were tiny pages from a loose-leaf notebook. The perforations were regular, the paper was ruled, and the information on the pages was written in an over-slanted hand:

  “G. to make final contact with B. soon.”

  “See G. after N. Y.”

  “Money from G.? ? ? ?”

  There was a telegram, signed by the same “G.” The yellow sheet was fresh, though folded to match the size of the note paper. The telegram had been received recently. The address on the yellow sheet had been ripped away, but the message was intact:

  HAVE YOU GOT FILM STOP TIME SHORT STOP BUTLER

  KNOWN STOP ISLAND SHOULD BE READY STOP HURRY

  G.

  I pondered the loose code and got nowhere with it. Who was Butler? And why should the island be ready? And what did all this mean to Mr. G.? There were too many things I didn’t know. I decided to begin my education.

  On the way to Sybil’s I played with the set-up, worrying it for angles. I gave up after a while. The whole affair was too confusing, too well screened. It was the missing foundation of basic cranial footwork that annoyed me.

  Sybil lived in the midtown area, in one of the newer and more modernistic cliff dwellings on the west side of the park, in the upper Seventies.

  A doorman disguised as Admiral Halsey opened the cab door for me, accepted a dollar bill from me, pushed the lobby door for me, pointed out the elevator to me and would have kissed me good-bye if I hadn’t asked him whether Mrs. Sybil Drake had arrived at home. He gave me his dollar smile and informed me that Mrs. Drake had arrived, indeed, only an hour or so ago and I could find her in apartment 816.

  Sybil met me at the door to her apartment. She was already in her bedroom clothes, a gossamer outfit as opaque as a sheet of cellophane. Her face lacked make-up and her eyes were tired and worried. She greeted me with a mixture of surprise and vexation.

  “So soon, detective?” she asked herself. “I didn’t figure you for the early afternoon type. I must have been too, too charming last night.”

  I walked in smiling. “You don’t know your own strength, honey.”

  She took my topcoat and fondled my hat. She stood there for a minute, trying my motive on for size, measuring my dirty mind and all the time smiling at me with what she thought was an imitation of Mona Lisa.

  She said, “Make yourself at home while I put your duds away. I’ll get you a drink and we can talk the whole thing over.”

  She disappeared through a door on the right and I strolled into her living room. It was a fantasy in red and white, a striped pepperminty decor, probably dreamed up by some sugar-boy decorator. I placed myself in a chair that looked like a barber’s awning and took a cigarette from a blood-red box on a modern end table. At the far end of the room, a red-and-white-striped screen partially hid the window. It partially hid a small valise, too.

  Sybil faced me on the red couch. There was room for me on the red-and-white-striped cushions, so I joined her there.

  She made a small face. “Don’t you ever sleep? After last night I figured you were home in bed. But, no, here you are, as large as life and twice as anxious.”

  I said, “You don’t look sleepy, either—you look dead. What’s bothering you?”

  “Only you, detective.”

  I leaned toward her, but she didn’t welcome me. I said, “It’s your passionate furniture that’s murdering me, honey. I really only came up for a friendly visit.”

  “Close your eyes and talk, then,” she said.

  “Not yet, honey. There’s something missing.”

  “Can the double-talk, big boy. On you it sounds phony. What are you driving at?”

  “Dolly,” I said. “Get Dolly.”

  “Oh my God!” Sybil got up and put her hands on her hips and began to laugh. “You really are a detective, aren’t you?”

  “I told you I was. Where’s Dolly? Sleeping it off?”

  She came over to me and folded her hands across her big bosom and stared at me long and hard. I smiled up at her sweetly.

  She said, “For Christ’s sake, why don’t you leave the kid alone? All right, you’re smart. You’re a big, strong, smart eye and you guessed Dolly on the nose. The kid nearly fainted after that lousy cop got through with her. I practically had to carry her out of the station, she was so weak. She didn’t want to go home to an empty place with her pretty-puss husband dead in the morgue. So I brought her up here and gave her a little drink and put her to bed. She’s in there now. She just fell asleep a couple of minutes ago. And now you come barging in here making with the sex appeal and getting ready to play detective again.”

  I let her finish. Then I said, “You’d better get Dolly out here, sugar. This is serious.”

  “So it’s serious. Can’t you wait a few hours?”

  “It’s bigger than you think.”

  She sat down next to me, so close that I could smell the musk. She leaned on her hands and looked me in the eye again. “What is it with Dolly?”

  “Get her out here. I won’t hurt her.”

  “You’re beginning to make me feel like a damned fool for ever bringing her up here.” She stood up and shrugged. “Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe I’d better get her out of bed.”

  When she started for the door, I said, “No tricks, honey. I know where she lives. I can track her down easily. Maybe what I’ve got to say to her is nothing at all. Don’t tell her I’m here. Just wake her and walk her in to me.”

  Sybil opened a red door and walked out of the room. I closed my eyes. The red was beginning to bother my inner man. I remembered reading an article about the effect of color schemes on the libido. Green was soothing, and blue was restful, and red—? Red was Sybil. I heard her stirring in the room beyond. Dolly’s voice, high and querulous, added confusion to the muffled dialogue.

  Dolly DePereyra entered, looking like a caricature of herself. She was wearing pajamas, neatly tailored to her trim figure.

  She looked a dozen years older than she had last night. Her little eyes were sacked and she would have sprained all the muscles of her face if she had smiled.

  Sybil flitted across the room like a mother bird. She hastily filled a glass with scotch and soda and put it in Dolly’s hand. Dolly managed a few steps to the chair I had abandoned and sat down on the edge of it.

  Sybil said, “The kid is worn out. She’s been through hell.”

  I said, “I can see that. I didn’t come here to bother her. I think I can help her.”

  Dolly lifted the glass and made it to her mouth. She said, “I’m afraid I must have made a fool of myself in Sybil’s room last night.”

  “In Sybil’s room?”

  “I mean when I carried on about Michael.”

  “I understand,” I said, because I didn’t understand, “But tell me more.”

  She put down the glass and brought the handkerchief to her nose. It was a reflex gesture. She didn’t cry.

  “More? What do you mean?”

  I got up and went over to her. I said, “Look, Dolly French—I’m not going to bite your head off. I’m going to ask you a few questions. All I want is information.”

  “Information?” Her voice was more composed now and she raised her chin without too much strain. “About Michael?”

  I nodded. I returned to the couch and sat down and said: “Your husband was a young man, Dolly. He looked pretty healthy to me. He was healthy, wasn’t he?”

  Dolly squirmed a bit. Sybil went over to her and sat on the arm of her chair. She put her arm around Dolly’s shoulder. She said: “You might as well talk, honey.”

  Dolly stared at the far edge of the carpet. She spent considerable time going over the design. She raised her head, finally. “Michael was perfectly healthy. We were married for five years and he never went to a doctor in all that time.”

  “Fine,” I said. “No heart trouble? He was too young for heart trouble?”

  “He was twenty-seven years old,” she said. “You’re kidding about the heart trouble, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not kidding. I want to know.”

  She shook her head. “The answer is no. Michael was as strong as a bull.”

  “That simplifies things,” I said and began to pace. I chewed a knuckle until I reached the far end of the room, near the screen. I stood there, put my hands behind my back and registered heavy thought. The silence told me that they were watching me closely. I turned and walked slowly back to face Dolly. She was stiffly attentive now.

  I said, “I think Michael was murdered.”

  Either her surprise was genuine or she had learned much more than hip shaking in her theatrical career.

  “Murdered?” she whispered to herself. “That can’t be true. That can’t be true.”

  “Why not? He had no enemies?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No enemies. Not Michael.”

  “How can you be sure? Every man has enemies.”

  “Not Michael. I’m sure.”

  “He had many friends?”

  She shook her head again. She was using a small, well-oiled hinge at the base of her brain. She just sat there shaking her head and looking as white and cold and empty as a new icebox.

  She continued to whisper. “Michael had very few friends.”

  “You’re talking of men friends?”

  She nodded, very quickly and very nervously. “Of course.”

  “And the women? How about Michael’s women friends?”

  It was like touching the starting button of an electric motor. Dolly began to tremble again, violently. She buried her head in her hands and sobbed. She sat there making funny noises in her throat. Sybil patted her lightly on the back and glared at me.

  I said, “You told me he had women friends. No need to break yourself up over it, Dolly.”

  Sybil answered for her. “Dolly told me last night that Michael was on the make for a blonde. Your blonde girl friend!”

  “Interesting. Did he know her?”

  “Did he have to know her?”

  “A silly question, sugar,” I smiled at Sybil. “It might mean something if he knew Mary Wyndham.”

  “Nuts!” said Sybil. “He probably knew her the way you did. He was just on the make for her!”

  “An idea, but how can we be sure he didn’t actually know her better than I did?”

  Dolly was loosening up, following every line of our dialogue. “Maybe you’re right—maybe Michael did know her. She might have murdered him!”

  “Not Mary Wyndham,” I said.

  “Phoo!” said Sybil. “Now he’s an expert on Mary Wyndham! What do you know about this Wyndham wren, detective?”

  “I know what I like,” I laughed. “You’re just jealous, sugar.”

  “Me, jealous?” Sybil twittered. “I’m never jealous of that kind of blonde, Junior. Suspicious, yes.”

  “You’re whistling in the dark.”

  “I never whistled at a blonde in my life!”

  I said, “You don’t know, do you, Dolly? You can’t be sure that he never met this blonde before she got on the train?”

  “I never knew anything about Michael, really. Sure—I suspected him, he almost enjoyed having me suspect him. He took it for granted. I knew that he was playing around with other women. That’s why I hired you. I wanted to find out who the latest was. Once, only once, we had a fight about it. We had a big scene and I cried a lot and he called me names and walked out of the apartment. He could never stand tears. He would walk out of the place and stay away for as long as he liked because he knew that I’d want him back just as soon as he cared to return. Then he would be all right for a while until he was ready for another adventure.”

  “A charming arrangement,” I said. “And you never knew any of these outside amours?”

  She shook her head, numbly. “I tried to follow him once. I went after him and actually followed him in a cab. But I couldn’t follow through because I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere with him.” She twisted her handkerchief into a small knot. “You see, I loved Michael.”

  “So it could have been the blonde,” said Sybil.

  “It could have been,” said Dolly. “I never saw any of them. It might just as well have been that blonde!”

  “You were worried about the blonde?”

  She nodded again. “I was worried about any good-looking woman he ever talked to.”

  “Tell me what happened last night in your compartment.”

  “Nothing happened. I was asleep. Michael had gone out and I was asleep.”

  “You left before he returned?”

  “I left when I found myself crying too hard. I had done it once before, a few months ago, and that time I fainted after a while. I didn’t want him to find me in a faint, so I left the room.”

  “How long after he was gone did you leave?”

  “I don’t know. I began to cry soon after he left. You can’t keep track of time when you’re upset like that. I decided I’d better get out and go to Sybil until I got over it.”

  “Was that the only reason?”

  She had stood up to get another drink. My question impeded her progress to the bottle. She stood there staring at me. Her face seemed paler now, almost a dead white.

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

  “Look,” I said, slowly. “I mean what I mean. I figure you might have had another reason for getting out of that compartment. You might have had ideas, for instance. Maybe you were figuring on slapping your husband with the suitcase. Maybe you were afraid of what you might do to him if you were there when he returned.”

  She backed slowly into the chair.

  I decided to put it to her before the next paroxysm of woe had a head start.

  I said, “You were figuring on poisoning him?”

  Her hand went to her throat in a reflex of surprise. She didn’t answer.

  Sybil got up and faced me, arms akimbo. “For God’s sake, Steve, what kind of stuff are you trying to pull? How in the world do you figure an angle like Dolly wanting to poison him?”

  I said, “I’m not bright enough to invent it, Sybil.” I reached into my pocket and brought out the little drugstore bottle. I walked across to Dolly and held it under her nose. She drew away from it as though it were a bottle of poison, which it was. She shrank into the chair and curled her legs under her and started to moan and cry in a higher crescendo.

  “This,” I said, “is a bottle of arsenic. Arsenic is a deadly poison, a pharmaceutical concoction used, occasionally, for murder! I found it in Dolly’s luggage. I figured Dolly would rather have me hold it than the police. I also figured that if an autopsy showed that her husband was poisoned, this little bottle would do Dolly a lot of good at the bottom of the East River.”

  Dolly came to her senses, quickly. “He’s right, Sybil—it is arsenic, but I swear I didn’t use it! I had bought it to use, yes. I had decided that the very next time he left me for another woman I’d kill him. But I never used it!”

  Sybil sank to the couch. “Well, I’ll be damned!”

  I joined her. I pulled out my handkerchief and dabbed at my brow. I said, “Play it again, Dolly—slower.”

  “I didn’t!” Dolly moaned. “You’ve got to believe me! I loved him too much, I tell you. Sure, I hated him when he left me. He was always leaving me like that. He was always making a play for other women. But I didn’t kill him! I couldn’t kill Michael!”

  I stared at the little bottle. I turned it over and over in my hand, feeling it, weighing it, rubbing it with my thumb. It was the usual pharmacy bottle, of light amber glass, narrow and ungrooved. I studied the liquid. I opened the cap and smelled it. I closed the cap and held it to the light. The bottle was filled almost full. It occurred to me, suddenly, that Dolly might be telling me the truth, and the truth left me cold, irritated me.

  I said, “I believe you. That makes everything just dandy. I came up here on the hook, frankly. I figured you all wrong, Dolly. But I’ve changed my mind.”

 

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