Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan Page 9

  “I’m having trouble enough casting Lizzie without trying to find a she-Peter Lorre,” Nincom said. “Mr Abend, does your vast experience on the Hungarian stage inspire you to any bright ideas?”

  “Brotherhood—that’s the keynote to strike. We can get some social significance in the picture. Lizzie is furious at her father for the way his captains treat the crews of the family whaling ships. She is a direct descendant of Barbara Frietchie, and Lizzie treasures the American flag that old Frietchie designed. She’s a hotheaded idealist, see? This builds up into a family quarrel, and Lizzie strikes a blow in anger. Not for herself, but for the exploited mariners….”

  “More sewage,” decided Mr Nincom. “Besides, it was Betsy Ross. Anyway, we’re selling entertainment, not waving flags. Leave that to Warner Brothers; they discovered patriotism.” He turned to Virgil Dobie who was busily making notes on a sheet of yellow paper. “Well?”

  “I haven’t been on the story quite as long as the rest of you,” Dobie began. “But here’s something that occurred to me on my layoff. Everybody loves a mystery. So why not leave it up in the air?—did Lizzie Borden bump off her family or didn’t she? At the end leave it to the audience. Is she guilty and fit for hanging or does she go free to marry her lawyer boy friend? The screen goes dark for five minutes while the house lights come on and everybody gives a standing vote. Then the operator flashes the one of the two endings that they’ve chosen….”

  “No! No! No! They’ve already got their hats on and are hell-bent out of the theater,” Mr Nincom objected. “It’s a novel idea, but—”

  “Novel?” Virgil Dobie laughed. “It’s the newest idea since they invented close-ups. I don’t see why—” He stopped suddenly and motioned toward the door. “Uncle Remus wants something.”

  Mr Nincom turned impatiently to face the white-jacketed darky who lurked in the doorway. “I told you we were not to be disturbed for any reason….”

  “’Scuse,” said Uncle Remus. “Gentleman to see you. I tole him nothin’ doin”. He come inside anyway.”

  “What? Well, tell him—”

  “I don’ tell the law nothin,” said Uncle Remus definitely. “He got a big gold badge and he’s mad.” The darky came closer. “It’s about that accident the other day.”

  “Tell him that it’s in the hands of the sheriff,” Mr Nincom exploded. “He can get everything he needs from Sheriff Truesdale.”

  “Sheriff brought him,” confided Uncle Remus. “This’s a really big law man. Sheriff calls him ‘Mr.’”

  Mr Nincom took this, blinked and then nodded. “I’ll try to see them in a moment,” he decided. He turned to his writing staff. “This has nothing to do with you, so let’s not waste any valuable time. We have a release date to meet, you know. So go to your rooms and tear up everything you’ve done on ‘Sequence D’ and start all over. Frankie, you and Douglas see what can be done with Ellis’ part. It’s got to be built up or Cooper will never accept it—”

  “I’m for Melvyn Douglas anyway,” Doug August said.

  “All right, all right. Virgil, bear down on the comedy situations, especially in the courtroom! … Lizzie’s uncle, old Vinnicum Morse—he ought to be worth building up. Maybe we can cast Guy Kibbee. Or Tom Mitchell. And the ladies of the church … no, you better make them the Woman’s Club to play safe. Anyway, they can be played broader—a sort of Greek chorus of harpies. Remember, all of you, this is a big picture. Murder is a big theme. Love is a big theme. We’ve got both of them….”

  He waved them away, nodded to the secretary who had been hammering away on the noiseless typewriter in the corner. “Take a rest, Caroline,” he said kindly. “And while you’re resting you can look up those references I gave you. Oh yes, and call up every place in Los Angeles where they might have ship models. Lizzie’s home should be full of ship models.”

  Alone at last, Mr Nincom sat down at his desk and pressed a button, filling the room with the recorded music of a martial band playing the “Finale” from William Tell. He conducted this with closed eyes and much flourishing of the little baton. Then, and not until then, the great man signaled that his uninvited guests might enter the Presence.

  It was immediately obvious that Uncle Remus had made an understatement when he said that the inspector had a big gold badge and was mad. Oscar Piper was madder than that.

  “But why, why do you come to me?” Mr Nincom opened up when he learned the object of the call. “This Withers woman had just started to work in my unit. I know nothing of her except that she seemed to be well recommended. And if she had an accident on the way up here in a studio car it is no affair of mine. Let her heirs bring suit against the studio if they think they have a case. All I know is that the whole thing has inconvenienced me considerably and that—”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” interrupted the inspector. “None of these accidents have been accidents.” He chopped off his words as if it hurt him to speak.

  “Not an accident?” Mr Nincom blinked.

  “That’s what Inspector Piper seems to think,” interrupted the sheriff in a placatory tone. “I know how you feel, Mr Nincom, and how busy you are. But I have an idea that maybe if you could co-operate for a few minutes and maybe answer a couple of questions, why, it would all be straightened out.”

  Mr Nincom was obviously being very, very patient. “Please go on.”

  Piper said: “Was it your idea—bringing Miss Withers up here in the mountains?”

  “It was not. I often bring my writing staff. But not a technical adviser. I only sent for her because one of the studio executives felt that she was stirring up trouble and it would be a good idea to get her out of town for a few days.”

  “I see.” The inspector made a note or two. “Who knew that she was coming up here?”

  “Huh? Why, everybody. Anybody. It was no secret. They were trying to find her all over the studio that afternoon, and I suppose anybody there could have picked up the information.”

  “Thanks. And this studio car. Where was it kept?”

  Mr Nincom was boiling. “My time is worth one thousand dollars an hour—and you keep me here asking silly questions! How should I know where studio cars are kept? In the studio garage, I suppose.” He urged them both toward the door. “If there’s anything more, gentlemen, I hope you’ll go to Mr Lothian or Chief Sansom at the studio. There’s nothing more I can tell you, and I have a staff of writers waiting for me.”

  “Funny you’re in such a hurry to get back to them,” the inspector told him, “when you figure that it’s ten to one that you’re nursing a murderer among them.”

  Nincom froze. “What? What are you saying?”

  “A quadruple murderer.” The inspector stood on the balls of his feet like a marksman taking aim. “Emily Harris back in New York. That was one. Saul Stafford was two. The driver, Daniels, was three—and Miss Withers four. Four victims.”

  Mr Nincom looked puzzled and annoyed. “Aren’t you jumping to conclusions, Inspector?”

  “That’s what I been telling him,” the sheriff hastily put in. “Things like that don’t happen out here. In New York or those places maybe. But not here.” He unbuttoned the top button of his trousers and exhaled. “Other cars have gone off into Lost Lizard Canyon. Been several accidents along there.”

  Nincom nodded. “A dangerous spot in the road. I’ve noticed it.”

  “It might be possible to tamper with the mechanism of an automobile,” the inspector said, “so that later—perhaps hours later—it would go out of control.”

  Sheriff Truesdale shook his head. “Sounds kinda complicated to me. I’ll believe that when I see it. Now if you had some proof—”

  The inspector thought of the envelope in the breast pocket of his rumpled and torn coat and smiled a hard smile.

  “I still don’t see what I have to do with this,” Mr Thorwald L. Nincom announced. “I am naturally sorry to lose one of my employees but I’m afraid that your suspicions, Inspector, sound like some plot tha
t one of my writers might dream up. And, frankly, it’s a plot that I would reject instantly. Sheriff Truesdale, I’m surprised that you make yourself a party to—”

  “Now, wait a minute,” insisted the sheriff. “I may not agree with the inspector. But the law has to stick together.”

  “Thank you,” said the inspector stiffly. “Perhaps you’re not aware, Mr Nincom, that if I request it the sheriff here is in duty bound to arrest anyone I point out and hold, them in jail while I apply for extradition papers.”

  “Inspector Piper thinks that maybe one of your writers is the man he’s after,” the sheriff explained.

  “Sewage,” cut in Mr Nincom.

  “All the same, I have in my pocket a warrant for the arrest of Derek Laval, alias John Doe—” Piper stopped short. “Know him?” For a moment the movie producer had looked very startled.

  “Laval?” Mr Nincom nodded slowly. “Yes. I mean no. But somebody by that name sent me an obscene Christmas card last year. It was really—” He shuddered.

  Piper went on. “A warrant for arrest on the charge of murder in the borough of Manhattan, city and state of New York. He is a white male known to have resided in Greenwich Village for some time but left there about six years ago. Said to be a writer of free verse. Does that fit any member of your writing staff?”

  “It fits them all,” Nincom shot back.

  Sheriff Truesdale grunted appreciatively, but the inspector did not seem to think it funny. “Meaning what?”

  Mr Nincom balanced his toy baton on one forefinger and stared at the ceiling. “Meaning that there isn’t a writer in Hollywood who didn’t first try his fortune in New York. And ninety per cent of them wrote poetry in the late teens and early twenties. Poetry is a symptom of adolescence in the writer, like pimples and open jallopies and jitterbugging for other youths.”

  “Thanks,” said the inspector. “And that’s all the help you can give us?”

  Nincom shrugged. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Too bad,” Oscar Piper mused. “This means that the whole thing will have to be dragged out in the newspapers. I was hoping that we could manage with a minimum of publicity.”

  That shot hit home. “Wait a moment,” said Mr Nincom. “If—if it’s just a matter of eliminating my staff of writers I might be able to help you. Have you a picture of this Laval?”

  The inspector shook his head. “Unfortunately,” he admitted, “we are required by law to return photographs and fingerprints to a person when we release them. I didn’t handle the case personally, being out of town at the time, so I wouldn’t recognize Laval if he were as close to me as you are.”

  Nincom shrugged. “Then if you have no means of identifying your man …”

  “But we have. Part of the evidence impounded in the case was a drinking glass known to have been last used by Derek Laval. On it was the smudged print of a right thumb and a clear print of a right finger—which one nobody knows. The glass is broken now. We haven’t even the print, just the key number—7 B over 3, it was. That means that Laval—no matter what name he uses now—has a lateral pocket loop on one finger of his right hand. It’s a fairly unusual formation. So we can instantly eliminate everyone who hasn’t such a loop.”

  Nincom looked both irritated and dubious. He bent his baton nervously until it seemed about to snap. “But, really, Inspector, much as I would like to co-operate with you, I don’t see how you can expect to drag my entire staff off to some police station and force them to undergo fingerprinting.”

  “The inspector don’t mean that,” put in Sheriff Truesdale. “He ain’t asking for trouble.”

  “I’m not ducking it either. I have personal reasons for cracking this case, no matter whose pink toes get stepped on. There is one way that I think might work so that we could find out whether or not you have a murderer under your wing.” The inspector explained what was in his mind.

  “As easy as that, eh?” Nincom frowned.

  Piper said: “It could be.”

  “Of course, one doesn’t like to feel that there’s a homicidal maniac around,” Mr Nincom said slowly. “If this works—”

  “It can’t do any harm,” Piper said. “Actually, it’s a sort of guessing game—a game with a catch to it.”

  Nincom wasn’t listening. “It’s something like the scene I worked out to trap the killer in Harm’s Way, the picture I directed over at Elstree. That was the year they traded me for Hitchcock. Ah, those were the days!”

  “Well?” said the inspector. “Yes or no?”

  Thorwald L. Nincom didn’t answer. He was pacing up and down the room. “Lights here—and here!” he decided.

  “I send for the writers—they enter over there. You sit here, Inspector….” He nodded. “It’s a very interesting problem in stagecraft.”

  The writers of the Nincom unit were summoned to appear in the living room at once. Willy Abend was interrupted in the middle of what he hoped would be the lyrics for a new national anthem to replace the unsingable and incendiary strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It began: “Out of workers’ sweat came America….” He pushed this interesting if extracurricular activity aside and hurried downstairs.

  Doug August and Frankie Firsk were reading the third sequence aloud, August taking the lines of Lizzie Borden and Firsk those of her sweetheart lawyer, Ellis. He read in a falsetto voice: “How can you say that?”

  The other man took it up. “But I must, Ellis dear. You are to go away and forget me.”

  “Forget you? Ha ha. How can I ever forget you? Lizzie, you’re the most adorable poison that ever got into a man’s blood.”

  “Not so good,” Doug August decided, back in his own voice. “That last line—”

  “Oughta be sweetest poison,” interrupted Uncle Remus from the doorway. “Lizzie, you’re the sweetest poison what ever got into a man’s veins.”

  They both looked at him and then at each other. “He’s right,” August decided. “It’s not so corny that way.”

  Frankie Firsk nodded. “If we use it we’ll have to give him screen credit.”

  Uncle Remus laughed. “I don’t want no credit. I only want you should come downstairs before Mr Nincom gets into a tantrum. He wants you to have a cocktail with that law man from New York.”

  The writers blinked.

  “Oh, frabjous day!” murmured Frankie Firsk. “We are to be plied with the cup that cheers….”

  “Something is up,” Doug August decided. “Hey, Uncle. What makes? I mean, what’s all the fuss about downstairs?”

  Uncle Remus’ face took on an expression of outraged propriety. “Beg pardon?”

  “What’s the matter, couldn’t you hear anything through the door?”

  Uncle Remus said: “I hear plenty. An’ I don’ talk. You better hurry on now.”

  They went on but they did not hurry. In fact, both Firsk and August went down the stairs as if they would rather not.

  The colored man went on, knocked on Melicent Manning’s door. That lady, deep in the diary which someday she hoped to publish under the title, Fifty Years a Glamour Girl, put it well out of sight and hung on another scarf and two bracelets. Then, equipped for anything, she went on downstairs.

  That was the list, except for Virgil Dobie who wasn’t in his room at all. Uncle Remus finally ran him to earth in Mr Nincom’s private study, talking over the open wire to the studio switchboard. Both study and telephone were supposed to be sacred.

  “Mr Nincom won’t like you to use that line,” the colored man interrupted. “That line is for business.”

  “… and I don’t want to hear when I get back that any office boy has been beating my time. Yes, tomorrow sometime, I think. His Nibs won’t make us work all day Sunday. So hold my mail there and keep Monday night open. ’By, now.”

  “Mr Nincom, he says …”

  “Okay, Uncle Eight-Ball. It was a business call. Just checking up with my secretary back at the studio.”

  Uncle Remus looked very doubtful. “You al
ways call your secretary ‘Miss Fancypants’?” He shrugged. “Anyway, you’re wanted in the living room. Everybody wanted in the living room.”

  Virgil Dobie raised his high Satanic eyebrows. “Trouble?”

  “Could be,” Uncle Remus admitted. “For somebody.”

  It didn’t start out like trouble. The kitchen boy brought a big tray of highballs which were passed around. The sheriff knocked his off in a gulp. Mr Nincom sipped at one, and Inspector Oscar Piper put his glass, untasted, on a near-by table.

  There was a certain stiffness in the gathering—no one could deny that. Melicent Manning, as the only lady present, tried to make conversation. “As an officer, Inspector, what is your feeling about the Lizzie Borden case? You’ve heard of it, I presume?”

  He nodded. “Juries are more sensible nowadays. Lizzie today would get what Ruth Snyder got—a quick sizzle in the hot squat.”

  “But a woman.

  “Women are usually pretty good at murder,” Piper said. That slowed up the conversation. Most of the glasses were by this time empty, and Mr Nincom gave a brief signal toward the doorway. At once Uncle Remus entered with a tray and started gathering them up. Nobody seemed to notice that he picked up each glass by the very top and set them on the tray in an orderly circle.

  It was Mr Nincom’s cue, and he rose to it. “You are probably wondering why I asked you all to come down here,” he began. “It is because the inspector here has made a suggestion. He has a slight request to make of you.” And Nincom nodded toward his guest.

  Oscar Piper stood up. “Thanks.” His chill gray eyes moved from one to the other. “It’s just this, folks. I have reason to believe that one of you may be the person I have a John Doe warrant for. The sheriff, Mr Nincom and I have agreed that in fairness to the rest of you we ought to do all the eliminating we can. So I want you to give me your fingerprints voluntarily.”

  The silence in the room was thick as mush.