Die, Little Goose: A Bret Hardin Mystery. David Alexander

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      There was a dim light burning now in the basement shop of the theatrical costumer. A man who wore a sports shirt and Bermuda shorts stood just inside the open doorway of the English basement. He was staring up curiously at the policeman at the door. He called to Bart, “Hey, mister! What happened in there tonight? I just saw them carry a body out.”

      On an impulse, Bart turned and descended the two steps to the shop. The man stood aside politely and motioned him inside. Bart walked through the door. The place was a confusion of colorful costumes of many periods of fashion. From the wall, huge carnival masks grimaced at Hardin.

      Hardin said, “There was a murder upstairs tonight. Didn’t you know that?”

      “My God, no! They didn’t kill old Mrs. Mattingly, did they?”

      “A crippled girl was killed. A former dancer named Daphne Temple.”

      “That’s awful,” the shop proprietor said. “I knew the poor girl slightly. Saw her dance many a time before her accident. She was wonderful. Who killed her? Do they know?”

      “They’re trying to blame it on an old actor who works for me now. Jim Lennox. I’m Bart Hardin of the Broadway Times, and old Jim has been acting as a kind of secretary for me.”

      The costumer said, “That’s absurd. I know old Jim well. He wouldn’t harm a fly. He comes down here often and we cut up touches about Broadway in the old days. Just the other night he put that big plumed hat over there on his head and gave me a scene from Cyrano. He’s still got what it takes. By the way, my name is Trenchard. Dick Trenchard.”

      “Glad to know you,” Bart said. “I hope that plume on the hat isn’t a goose feather. It might make the cops more suspicious. They found goose feathers around the girl’s body.”

      “Goose feather? Of course not. It’s an ostrich plume. They’re darned hard to come by nowadays.”

      “Has your shop been open all evening?” Bart asked. “I thought it was dark when I went by here a little while ago.”

      “It was,” Trenchard said. “I worked tonight on a consignment for a summer theatre up in Sharon, Connecticut, but I locked up a little before ten o’clock. Then I remembered something I’d forgotten to put on the invoice. So I came back just a few minutes ago, just when they were taking the body out.”

      “Did you look outside at all while you were working here earlier?” Bart asked.

      “I may have gone out for a breath of air a time or two. But I didn’t see anybody until I was leaving at a few minutes to ten, I guess it was. I saw someone go in then. It was just one of the roomers, though. That dumpy little Mexican magician. He was all dressed up in evening clothes.”

      “Did you see him come out again?”

      “No. I wasn’t here. I saw him as I was closing up the shop.”

      Bart started for the door. He did not suggest that Trenchard inform the police of Sandrean’s visit to the house.

      “So long,” Bart said over his shoulder as he left the shop.

      He found a cab and directed the driver to Marty Land’s private town house on East Sixtieth near Madison. It was after midnight now, but there was no trace of a breeze and the city was a great stone oven.

      Bart knew the Broadway Mouthpiece would be in town. He was defending the sensational case of a young socialite playboy who had got himself mixed up in the call-girl business. There was no assurance Land would be home, of course. Marty was a rounder and a night owl.

      Land’s house was a narrow, elegant, three-storied structure wedged in between two tall buildings. Marty’s man, properly attired despite the heat and the hour, answered the doorbell. Bart gave his name and was relieved to learn that the attorney was home.

      The servant ushered Bart into a high-ceilinged, air-conditioned living room. Knowing Land, Bart had expected the furnishings to be brashly contemporary. They weren’t. The room was tastefully decorated with deep-piled rugs and traditional English pieces polished to a gleaming luster. Over the onyx mantel one of Blakelock’s golden moons shimmered on dark water through a weeping-willow tree. Marty seemed to fancy dim and dolorous landscapes. He collected Blakelock and Innes, apparently. The crepuscular foliage of the paintings on the wall made this house in mid-Manhattan seem almost sylvan.

      Land entered in a few moments, wearing shantung pajamas and a raw-silk robe. Even in dishabille he managed to appear elegantly poised. His face was handsomely sun-tanned, there were flecks of gray at his temples and his mustache was impeccably waxed. He said, “What’s the matter, editor? One of your girl friends suing you for breach of promise at this time of night?”

      Bart told him the story. When he finished, he fished for the crumpled bills he had thrust in his pocket when he left the crap game. He tossed the misshapen wad on a table. “There’s about fifteen hundred there,” he said. “Will it do for a retainer?”

      “You’re mighty careless with your money, carrying it like that,” Marty commented. “Take it back. Bet it on a big horse when they open up at Saratoga. I don’t want it.”

      “You won’t take the case?”

      “I took it as soon as I heard Jim Lennox’s name,” Marty declared. “He’s one of the few men on Broadway I’ve ever admired. He’s got a kind of goodness it’s hard for guys like you and me to understand. So I’m going to pamper myself. I’m acting for him all the way, without fee. Oh, I’ll get it back. I’ll get it back the next time Selig sends one of his mobsters to me with a bum rap. I’ll double his retainer. I’m kind of sore at Selig, anyway. He thought my prices were too high and he hired himself another boy. One of the goons the other boy defended just got burned in the Sing Sing death house, so Selig is sending me his business again.”

      Bart said, “Thanks, Marty, but I’d rather pay. This much, anyway. I won it in the floater.”

      “You can’t pay,” Land said with finality. “When Marty wants to pamper himself and make like a little tin angel he can afford the gesture.”

      Bart said, “For God’s sake try to get the old man out of this as quickly as you can. He’s got a heart condition and in this heat a jail cell may kill him.”

      “A heart condition? That’s interesting. We’ll pull the covers off a doc I know right away and get old Lennox examined and we’ll have him sent to the city hospital instead of jail.”

      “A locked ward down at City will kill him just as fast as a cell in jail,” Bart said.

      “He won’t be in any ward,” Marty declared. “He’ll have a private room with a cop standing guard at the door. When you get yourself suspected of murder, you get special privileges.”

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