“We’ll take that up in an advanced course,” Jake snapped. “Right now, we’ve got to get him out of here.”
For a moment there was silence. Helene crushed out her half-smoked cigarette in the saucer on the dressing table. Malone took out a cigar, started to unwrap it, then put it back in his pocket. Jake stared miserably at the opposite wall.
“I don’t mean to dispose of the body, or anything like that,” Jake said at last. “The fact that an entertainer from the Casino has been murdered mightn’t do any harm. Maybe the reverse. But I can’t afford to take the chance. Just so he isn’t found here, on the premises. If his body should be discovered up an alley somewhere—” His voice trailed off on a questioning note.
“But—” Malone paused, scowling. “I hate to bring up such a subject as justice at this point, but you’d be making it tough for the police if you moved the body from here. It might make the difference between their finding—or not finding—the murderer.”
Jake said, “Frankly, from all that I’ve heard about? Jay Otto, I don’t think I care whether his murderer gets caught or not. There’s more than one kind of justice in the world.”
“Besides,” Helene said slyly, “we’d know the truth.”
“If you’re hinting I find out who murdered him,” Malone said in an indignant voice, “you can go jump off a kite.”
Helene sniffed. “You mean ‘go fly a lake’, don’t you?”
He pretended he hadn’t heard her. “I don’t even want to know who murdered him,” he said in a suppressed roar. “The last time I mixed up in anything like that I was blown up by a bomb, nearly drowned in a river, trapped in a burning insane asylum, and all I got out of it was a lousy thousand bucks.” He paused and looked thoughtfully at the late Jay Otto. “I’ll probably be sorry for this, but have it your way. How shall we carry him out of here?”
Helene frowned. “The corridor at the top of the stairs leads to a rear entrance. But until closing time there’s always people coming and going in it.”
“Then we can’t take him out until closing time,” Malone said. “And we can’t just stay here keeping curious people out, or later somebody’ll be bound to remember we were missing for an unaccountably long time. Is there a lock on the door?”
Jake shook his head. “Only the bolt on the inside.”
“Well then,” Malone began. He stopped suddenly, staring at Helene. “What’s the matter with you?”
Her eyes flickered with excitement. “Look!”
Malone looked in the direction she pointed. In the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, was a bull fiddle case. Jake looked.
“Yes,” he said breathlessly, “yes, it would fit.”
Malone blinked. “What in the name of all that’s impossible did he want with a bull fiddle?” he demanded.
“It wasn’t his,” Jake explained. “One of Al Omega’s boys was fired yesterday at rehearsal. He owed the midget money, and had to leave this for security.” He crossed the room at a bound, reached for the fiddle case and suddenly paused. “Hell, that’s no good. There wouldn’t be room inside it for the midget and the fiddle too.”
“No,” Helene agreed, “but there’s a closet here where we can store the fiddle.”
Jake nodded slowly, and swung the big, unwieldy case down to the floor.
“This is all very fine,” Malone said, “and a lot of good clean fun, I’ve no doubt. But if you think you can walk through a crowded corridor carrying that”—he pointed to the case—“without being conspicuous—”
Jake sat back on his heels and looked up at Helene. “Malone’s right.” He frowned, and looked back at the case. “But this thing locks. The key is probably in the corpse’s pocket. We can lock the case and lean it back against the wall, exactly the way it was, and then when the joint is empty, come back and get it.”
“Now you’re talking.” Helene said enthusiastically.
Malone suppressed a sigh. He had an uncomfortable feeling that no good would come of this. But he knew better than to argue with Jake and Helene.
“Give me a hand,” Jake said. “We’ll take him down and then go through his pockets.” He reached up; toward the hook. “Hell, I can’t reach it.” He looked around for a chair. There was none.
“For the love of Mike,” Malone growled. “Didn’t the little guy ever sit down?”
“Not in here,” Jake said. “He had to stand up to the dressing table, and he couldn’t bear it for anybody else to be sitting down when he was standing up. Hence, no chairs. But wait a minute.” He went out into the hall, closing the door quietly after him.
Helene waited a moment before she said, “Jake’s right about this? About moving the body out of here, I mean?” Her eyes were wide and dark and anxious.
“Of course he is,” Malone reassured her, hoping his voice sounded more convincing than hers.
Jake returned with a chair nicked from the next-door dressing room, and set it down beside the dangling body. “We’ll get this over with in a hurry,” he said between his teeth, “and then—” He climbed up on the chair and unhitched the peculiar rope from the hook by which it had been suspended.
“It looks like a big doll,” Helene said. She glanced quickly at the tiny body on the dressing room floor, and turned away.
Jake looked up at her from his task of searching for the key. His jaw was set in a grim line. “I know just how you feel, but we’ve got to do this.”
Malone spotted a quart bottle of Scotch, nearly full, on the dressing table, and reached for a glass. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d needed a drink more acutely. He unscrewed the cap, started to tilt the bottle, stopped himself suddenly in the middle of the motion and stared at the top of the bottle.
“If you’ve found a jinn in the bottle,” Jake said, “I don’t want to hear about it.” He heard a faint giggle from Helene and added hastily, “And this is no time for bad puns.”
Malone ignored him. He was holding the bottle directly under the electric light and staring at it intently.
“Maybe it doesn’t mean a thing,” he said at last, “but there’s a little line of white powder on the rim.” He screwed the cap back on the bottle, set it on the dresser again, and stood looking at it suspiciously.
Helene gasped. “He may have been poisoned first, and then—” She paused.
After a moment Jake said, “I thought it was funny; he didn’t put up a struggle. Even a midget might make a fuss if somebody was trying to hang him. Thank God, here’s that key.”
He unlocked the case, lifted out a big, shining bull fiddle, stowed it in the closet, and closed the door.
“But why?” Helene demanded. “Why not just poison him and let it go at that? Why go to all the bother of hanging him afterwards?”
“Never mind why,” Malone growled. “This is no time to ask foolish questions. Let’s get this over and get out of here.”
Jake had unfastened the noose, and tossed the. shimmering strand aside on the floor. Helene picked it up half curiously, and began examining and unwinding it.
“There must be a dozen stockings here,” she reported, “just twisted and knotted together. Why on earth use stockings, when it’s so easy to find a rope?”
Jake had closed the fiddle case and was preparing to lock it. Now he paused and opened it again.
“Give