The Second Pulp Crime Read online

  This was pleasant but not of the first importance. It was more important, though less pleasant, to think about Graham Markley. Conceding the priority of importance, I began reluctantly to think about him, and after a few minutes of reluctant thinking, I lowered my feet and reached for a telephone directory. After locating his name and number, I dialed the number and waited through a couple of rings, and then a voice came on that made me feel with its first careful syllable as if I’d neglected recently to bathe and clean my fingernails.

  “Graham Markley’s residence,” the voice said.

  “This is Percival Hand,” I said. “I’m a private detective. I’d like to speak with Mr. Markley.” Ordinarily I use the abbreviated version of my name, just plain Percy, but I felt compelled by the voice to be as proper and impressive as possible. As it was, in the exorbitantly long pause that followed, I felt as if I had been unpardonably offensive.

  “If you will just hold the wire,” the voice said at last, “I shall see if Mr. Markley is at home.” Which meant, of course, that Mr. Markley was certainly at home, but that it remained to be seen if he would be so irresponsible as to talk with a private detective on the telephone, which was surely unlikely. I held the wire and waited. I inspected my nails and found them clean. I tried to smell myself and couldn’t. Another voice came on abruptly, and it was, as it developed, the voice of Graham Markley.

  “Graham Markley speaking. What can I do for you, Mr. Hand?”

  “I’d like to make an appointment to see you personally, if possible.”

  “About what?”

  I had already considered the relative advantages in this particular instance of candor and deception, and I had decided that there was probably little or nothing to choose between them. In cases where deception gains me nothing, I’m always prepared to be candid, and that’s what I was now.

  “About your wife. Your third wife, that is.”

  “I can’t imagine why my wife should be a point of discussion between you and me, Mr. Hand.”

  “I thought you might be able to give me some useful information.” There was a moment of waiting. The wire sang softly in the interim.

  “For what purpose?” he said. “Am I to understand that you’re investigating my wife’s disappearance?”

  “That’s right.”

  “At whose request?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say at the moment.”

  “Come, Mr. Hand. If you expect any cooperation from me, you’ll have to be less reticent.”

  “I haven’t received any cooperation from you yet, Mr. Markley.”

  “It was reasonably apparent to everyone, including the police and myself, why my wife went away. I confess that I can’t see any use in stirring up an unpleasant matter that I had hoped was forgotten. Do you know anything that would justify it?”

  Again I evaluated the advantages of candor and deception, and this time I chose deception. The advantages in its favor seemed so palpable, as a matter of fact, that the evaluation required no more than a second.

  “I’ve learned something,” I lied, “that I think will interest you.”

  “Perhaps you had better tell me what it is.”

  “Sorry. I’d rather not discuss it over the telephone.”

  “I can’t see you today. It’s impossible.”

  ‘Tomorrow will do. If you’ll set a time, I’ll be happy to call on you.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll come to your office.”

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

  “Thank you for your consideration. However, I prefer to see you in your office. How about two o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Good. I’ll be expecting you.”

  I told him where my office was, and we said good-by and hung up. Hocking back in my chair, I elevated my feet again and closed my eyes. Faith Salem was still lying in the sun. I watched her for a few moments and then opened my eyes and lit a cigarette and began thinking about Regis Lawler. I didn’t accomplish much by this, for I didn’t have much material for thought to start with. I had met him casually a few times quite a while ago, in this or that place we had both gone to, but most of what I knew about him was incidental to what I knew about his brother, who was older and generally more important and had more about him worth knowing.

  The brother’s name was Silas. After long and precarious apprentice years in a number of illegal operations, he had begun slowly to achieve a kind of acceptance, even respectability, that increased in ratio to the measure of his security. Now he was the owner of a fine restaurant. At least, it was a restaurant among other things, and it was that equally, if not primarily. When you went there, it was assumed that you had come for good food, and that’s what you got. You got it in rich and quiet surroundings to the music of a string quartet that sometimes played Beethoven as well as Fritz Kreisler and Johann Strauss. The chefs were the best that Lawler could hire, and the best that Lawler could hire were as good as any and better than most. On the correct principle that good food should tolerate no distractions, the service was performed by elderly colored waiters who were artists in the difficult technique of being solicitous without being obtrusive.

  If you wanted distractions, you went downstairs, below street level. This was known as the Apache Room, a little bit of the Left Bank transplanted, and it was phony and made no pretense of being anything else, and it was frankly for people who liked it that way. There were red-checked cloths on the tables, pretty girls with pretty legs who serviced the tables, a small orchestra with the peculiar quality that is supposed to be peculiarly Parisian, and murals all around the wails of girls in black stockings doing the can-can alternating with other murals of other girls being maltreated by Apaches and always showing quite a lot of one white thigh above a fancy garter in the deep slit of a tight skirt.

  On the floor above the restaurant, up one flight of carpeted stairs, you could go to gamble if you chose. In a series of three large rooms muffled in drapes and carpets, you could play roulette or poker or blackjack or shoot dice, and sometimes you might even win at one or the other or all, but more often, of course, you lost and were expected to lose graciously. If you did not, as sometimes happened, you were escorted outside by a brace of hard-handed gentlemen in evening clothes, and you were thereafter persona non grata until you received absolution and clearance from Silas Lawler himself. The games were reputed to be honest, and, all things considered, they probably were.

  In the basement, you could dance and make moderate love and get drunk, if you wished, on expensive drinks. In the restaurant, you did not get drunk or dance or make love or look at naughty murals. In the game rooms, you gambled quietly with no limit except your own judgment and bank account, and you saved everything else for some other place and some other time. Patrons passed as they pleased from one level to another, but the atmosphere was never permitted to go with them. The basement never climbed the stairs, nor did the upper floors descend.

  Silas Lawler was, in brief, not a man to be taken lightly, or a man who would take lightly any transgression against himself or his interests. It was, I reflected, wholly incredible that he would be indifferent to the disappearance of a brother. Whatever the reason for the disappearance, whatever the technique of its execution, Silas Lawler knew it, or thought he knew it, and he might be prevailed upon to tell me in confidence, or he might not, but in any event it would be necessary for me to talk with him as soon as I could, which would probably be tomorrow. I would see Graham Markley at two, and later I would try to see Silas Lawler, and if nothing significant came of these two meetings I would go again to see Faith Salem, which would be a pleasure, and terminate our relationship, which would not.

  Having thought my way back to Faith Salem, I closed my eyes and tried to find her, but the sun had left the terrace, and so had she. Opening my eyes, I lowered my feet and stood up. I had determined an agenda of sorts, an
d now there seemed to be nothing of importance left to do on this particular day. Besides, it was getting rather late, and I was getting rather hungry, and so I went out and patronized a steak house and afterward spent one-third of the night doing things that were not important and not related to anything that had gone before. About ten o’clock I returned to the room and bath and hot plate that I euphemistically called home. I went to bed and slept well.

  CHAPTER 3.

  I woke up at seven in the morning, which is a nasty habit of mine that endures through indiscretions and hangovers and intermittent periods of irregular living. In the bathroom, I shaved and necessarily looked at my face in the mirror. I like you, Mr. Hand, Faith Salem had said. I like your looks. Well, it was an ambiguous expression. You could like the looks of a Collie dog or a pair of shoes or a Shoebill stork. It could mean that you were inspired by confidence or amusement or the urge to be a sister. Looking at my face, I was not deluded. I decided that I was probably somewhere between the dog and the stork. I finished shaving and dressed and went out for breakfast and arrived in due time at my office, where nothing happened all morning.

  Two o’clock came, but Graham Markley didn’t. At ten after, he did.

  I heard him enter the little cubbyhole in which my clients wait when there is another client ahead of them, which is something that should happen oftener than it does, and when I got to the door to meet him, he was standing there looking antiseptic among the germs. His expression included me with the others.

  “Mr. Hand?” he said.

  “That’s right. You’re Mr. Markley, I suppose?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to be late.”

  “Think nothing of it. In this office, ten minutes late is early. Come in, please.”

  He walked past me and sat down in the client’s chair beside the desk. Because I felt he would consider it an imposition, I didn’t offer to shake hands. I felt that he might even ignore or reject the offer, which would have made me indignant or even indiscreet. Resuming my place in the chair behind the desk, I made a quick inventory and acquired an impression. He sat rigidly, with his knees together and his hat on his knees. His straight black hair was receding but still had a majority present. His face was narrow, his nose was long, his lips were thin. Arrogance was implicit. He looked something like the guy who used to play Sherlock Holmes in the movies. Maybe he looked like Sherlock Holmes.

  “Precisely what do you want to tell me, Mr. Hand?” he said.

  “Well,” I said, “that isn’t quite my position. What I want is for you to tell me something.”

  “Indeed? I gathered from our conversation on the telephone yesterday that you were in possession of some new information regarding my wife.”

  “Did I infer that? It isn’t exactly true. What I meant to suggest was that the available information isn’t adequate. It leaves too much unexplained.”

  “Do you think so? The police apparently didn’t. As a matter of fact, it was quite clear to everyone what my wife had done. It was, as you may realize, an embarrassing affair for me, and there seemed to be no good purpose in giving it undue publicity or in pursuing it indefinitely.”

  “Do you still feel that way? That there is no purpose in pursuing it any further?”

  “Until yesterday I did. Now I’m not so sure. I don’t wish to interfere with whatever kind of life my wife is trying to establish for herself, nor do I wish to restore any kind of contact between her and me, but since our telephone conversation I’ve begun to feel that it would be better for several reasons if she could be located.”

  “Are you prepared to help?”

  “Conditionally.”

  “What conditions?”

  “Are you, for your part, prepared to tell me who initiated this investigation?”

  “What action would you consider taking if I were to tell you?”

  “None. The truth is, I’m certain that I know. I merely want to verify it.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Miss Salem? I thought so. Well, it’s understandable. Under the circumstances of our relationship, she’s naturally concerned. She urged me once previously to try again to locate my wife, but I wasn’t inclined to reopen what was, as I said, an unpleasant and embarrassing affair. Apparently I underestimated the strength of her feeling.”

  “You don’t resent her action, then?”

  “Certainly not. I’m particularly anxious to settle any uneasiness she may feel. I’m even willing to assume the payment of your fee.”

  “That’s between you and her, of course. Will you tell me why you think your wife disappeared?”

  “As to why she disappeared, I can only speculate. As to why she left, which is something else, I’m certain. She was having an affair with a man named Regis Lawler. They went away together. The relationship between my wife and me had deteriorated by that time to such an extent that I really didn’t care. I considered it a satisfactory solution to our problem.”

  “Satisfactory? You said painful and embarrassing.”

  “Painful and embarrassing because it was humiliating. Any husband whose wife runs away with another man looks rather ridiculous. I mean that I had no sense of loss.”

  “I see. Did she give you any idea that she was leaving before she went?”

  “None. We didn’t see each other often the last few months we lived together. When we did see each other, we found very little to say.”

  “You said you could only speculate as to why she disappeared instead of leaving openly. I’d like to hear your speculation.”

  “You would need to have known her before you could understand. She was, to put it kindly, rather unstable. Less kindly, she was neurotic. She may have been almost psychotic at times. I don’t know. I don’t understand the subtle distinctions between these things. Anyhow, she had had a bad time when our child died. At first, after the initial shock, she became withdrawn and depressed, totally uninterested in living. Later there was a reaction. A kind of hysterical appetite for activity and experiences. It was then that she met Regis Lawler. It’s my opinion that she disappeared because she wanted to cut herself off completely from the life that had included our marriage and the death of our child. It’s difficult to believe, I know.”

  “I wouldn’t say so. Not so difficult. I’ve already considered that motivation, as a matter of fact. It seems to fit in with the little I know about her. There’s another point, however, chat bothers me. Was Regis Lawler the kind of man to fall in with such a scheme?

  “I can’t answer that. If he was devoted to her, it’s fair to assume that he would do as she wished, especially if she convinced him that it was something she desperately needed.”

  “Possibly. I didn’t know Lawler well enough to have an idea. Miss Salem said that Mrs. Markley’s family had quite a lot of money. Did Mrs. Markley herself have any?”

  “No. Her mother and father were both dead when we married. If they had money at one time, which I believe was so, it had been dissipated. The estate, I understand, did little more than pay the claims against it.”

  “Then your wife had no personal financial matters to settle before she left?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Was Regis Lawler a wealthy man?”

  “I have no idea. His brother apparently is.”

  “Well, you can see what I’m getting at. It would not be a simple matter for a man of wealth to disappear. It would certainly entail the liquidation of assets—securities, property, things like that. He’d have to convert his wealth to negotiable paper that he could carry with him. If he wanted to assure his not being traced through them, he’d have to convert to cash. Do you know if Regis Lawler did any such thing?”

  “No. But the police surely made such an obvious investigation. Since it was not an issue, it follows that Lawler did do something of the sort, that he had no holdings to convert.”


  “Right. If Lawler had left much behind, the police wouldn’t have quit investigating. They’d have smelled more than a love affair. As you say, he either converted or had nothing to convert. At any rate, he must have had considerable cash in hand. Running away with a woman, I mean, wouldn’t be any two-dollar tour. Unless he had a job arranged somewhere, an assured income, he must have been, putting it mildly, damn well heeled.”

  “Oh, I think it’s safe to assume that he had at least enough cash to last a while. I can’t imagine that. Regis Lawler was a pauper.”

  His tone implied that no one but a simpleton, specifically me, would waste time speculating about it. I was beginning to think he was right. That was okay, though. I had been convinced from the beginning that I was wasting my time on the whole case. That was okay too, since I was doing it for a fee.

  “How long ago was it that Mrs. Markley left?” I said.

  “Two years ago next month.”

  “Did she take anything with her? Any clothes, for example? I know from talking with her maid that she took nothing when she left home that night, but I’m thinking she might have taken or sent luggage ahead to be picked up later. She’d have done something like that, I imagine, if she was being secretive.”

  “No doubt. On the other hand, if you accept the theory that she intended to make a complete break, she might not have wanted to keep any of her old possessions, not even her clothes. I don’t find this incredible in her case. Anyhow, I honestly don’t know if she took anything. She had closets full of clothes, of course. If anything was missing, I wouldn’t know.”

  “How about the maid?”

  “She thought that nothing was missing, but she wasn’t positive.” He looked at his wrist watch and stood up abruptly, his knees still together as they had been all the time he was sitting, and he had, looking down at me, a kind of stiff, military bearing and collateral arrogance. “I’m sorry to end this interview, Mr. Hand, but I have another appointment. You’ll have to excuse me.”

  “Certainly,” I said. “I was running out of questions, anyhow. Thanks very much for coming in.”