“I telegraphed her this afternoon. I’m here for a week. Where is she?”
“I don’t know where she is, Madame Velasquez.”
“Mr. Endicott, one more lie like that and I’ll call the police.”
“That’s all right, Madame Velasquez. You see, I am the police.”
The bugles, the jewels, the curls became still with shocking abruptness, as a brake that without warning binds tightly.
“You belong to the police?”
“Yes, Madame Velasquez—Lieutenant Valcour.”
He showed his badge.
“Then you ain’t Mr. Endicott?”
“No, Madame Velasquez.”
“Then he—she—they’ve gone and done it, Lieutenant—they have run away.” Madame Velasquez began to simper.
“I’m sorry, Madame Velasquez, but they haven’t run away. Mr. Endicott, you see, was attacked this evening. If he doesn’t live, whoever did it will be charged with murder.”
There was a complete absence of expression in Madame Velasquez’s tone. “And you think Marge done it,” she said.
“Not necessarily so at all. Your daughter may very well have met somebody else at the Colonial—some other party of friends—and have joined it when Mr. Endicott failed to show up. The Colonial is closed by now, but perhaps she went on to some night club. I shouldn’t worry.”
“Why should she go on to some night club when she knew her ma was waiting for her here?”
Madame Velasquez’s thin hands, the fingers of which were loaded with cheap rings, played nervously with any substance they chanced to touch.
“Something’s happened to her, Lieutenant,” she went on. “I always told her as how it would. Marge—I told her a hundred times if I ever told her once—there’s a limit to the number of suckers you can play at one and the same time.”
“You think that some man who was jealous perhaps attacked Endicott first and then got after her?”
“Man? Men, Lieutenant, men. That brat kept the opposite of a harem, if you know what I mean.”
“She isn’t your daughter, really, is she, Madame Velasquez?”
“She was Alvarez’s only child by his first wife—some Spanish female hussy from Seville. What made you guess?”
“The way you talked about her. But do keep right on, Madame Velasquez. What a remarkable pendant—it’s a rarity to see so perfect a ruby—may I?”
Madame Velasquez simpered audibly while Lieutenant Valcour leaned forward and stared earnestly at the bit of paste.
“My late husband, Lieutenant, used to say that nothing was too good for pretty Miramar. That’s my name, Lieutenant—Miramar.”
“Few people are so happily named, Madame Velasquez. Tell me—let me rely upon your woman’s intuition—just what did Marge expect from Endicott?”
Madame Velasquez leaned forward confidentially. An atmosphere as of frenzied heliotropes clung thickly about her.
“Every last damn nickel she could get,” she said.
Lieutenant Valcour assumed his most winning smile. “Scarcely an affaire du cœur, Madame Velasquez.” If he had had a moustache, he would have twirled it. “I suppose her early marriage embittered her, rather hardened her against men?”
“Well, if it did I ain’t noticed it none.”
“Perhaps Endicott came under the heading of business rather than pleasure?”
“Well, yes, and then no.”
“A happy combination?”
“Just a combination. Not so damn happy.”
“A little bickering now and then?”
“A lot.”
“Indeed? Marge was on the stage, wasn’t she?”
“If you can call it the stage nowadays, Lieutenant.”
“In the chorus, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“And Harry Myles saw her and carried her off.”
Madame Velasquez’s laugh was an art; unfortunately not a lost one. “The millionaire marriage,” she gasped. “My dear”—her hand found a resting place on one of Lieutenant Valcour’s knees—“he didn’t have a cent.”
“She felt disappointed, I suppose?”
“Disappointed!” Madame Velasquez fairly screamed the word at him, like an angry parrot. Her manner changed and became darkly mysterious. “I know my little know,” she said. “You can believe me, Lieutenant, little Miramar’s not the boob some parties I could mention, but won’t, think she is.” Her voice grew harsh with the gritty quality of a file. “I’ll learn her to leave me in the ditch like this.”
“Then you think Marge purposely isn’t here to greet you?”
It was a sweet little bunch of filth, taken all in all, thought Lieutenant Valcour. It was perfectly plain: Madame Velasquez either held definite knowledge that Marge had killed Harry Myles, or else had convinced Marge that she knew. And then Madame Velasquez had simply bled Marge of all the money she could get.
“Is Marge frightened easily, Madame Velasquez?”
“About some things.”
The reddish, dusty-looking curls nodded vigorously. Lieutenant Valcour looked at his watch. It was one-thirty. He stood up.
“Thank you for receiving me, Madame Velasquez. If I leave you a telephone number would you care to call me up when Marge comes in? Or will you be in bed?”
“Leave your number, Lieutenant.” The seamy enamelled face became more nutlike than ever. “I got a thing or two to talk over with that female Brigham Young.” She raised a beringed hand and held it unescapably close to Lieutenant Valcour’s lips.
He brushed them gently against a hardened coat of whiting, smiled his pleasantest, and left, assisted doorward by what might at one time have been called a sigh.
He paused for a moment in the small foyer, after putting on his hat and coat, and pencilled the Endicotts’ telephone number on one of his cards. He started back to give it to Madame Velasquez.
She wasn’t in the room where he had left her, and the room’s other door stood ajar. He crossed to it softly and looked in. Madame Velasquez—yes, he convinced himself, it was Madame Velasquez—was sitting before a dresser. Her wig was off, and her heavily enamelled face peered into a mirror beneath thin knots of corn-gray hair. As the lonely, weak old voice rose and fell, Lieutenant Valcour caught a word or two of what Madame Velasquez was saying:
“He didn’t know—if I went and told her once, I told her a thousand times—he didn’t know.” There followed a short, dreadful noise that passed as laughter. “But I know—Miramar knows, darling—you little lousy …”
Lieutenant Valcour retreated softly. He left the card lying on a table. He went outside and closed the door. He rang for the elevator and shut his eyes while waiting for it to come up. There were times when they
