Jake swung open the door. Helene stepped in ahead of him and switched on the light. Then she stood stock-still in the center of the floor, reaching for Jake’s arm.
“Well,” she said at last, “the marines evidently got here ahead of us.”
The fiddle case that held the body of Jay Otto, the Big Midget, was gone.
Chapter 4
Malone stared at the spot where the fiddle case had been, rapidly added up the events of the evening in his head, and privately resolved he would never take another drink, not as long as he lived.
For a moment Jake appeared to have been petrified. Then, without a word, he strode across the room to the closet where the bull fiddle had been stored and flung open the door. The bull fiddle was still there. He stared at it for an instant, then kicked the door shut again.
“It’s nonsense,” he said at last. “I don’t believe it.”
Malone leaned against the dressing table and stared bewilderedly around the room. There wasn’t a place where the fiddle case could have been concealed, not another closet nor cupboard, not so much as a curtain.
“How—” he began.
“The question isn’t ‘how’,” Jake told him. “It’s ‘what’. What the devil are we going to do now?”
“Search the rest of the place,” Helene suggested.
Jake snorted indignantly. “I suppose you want to go around asking everybody you meet if he’s seen a bass fiddle case with a dead midget in it.”
“No,” she said calmly, “but we can search the place from end to end for a pair of gloves I mislaid somewhere before the show.” And while he stared at her admiringly, she went on, “After all, it’s your night club, and you can search it if you want to.”
“So it is,” Jake said. “I keep forgetting that. Come on, then.”
Half an hour later they returned to the midget’s dressing room. By that time, save for Al Omega’s boys packing up their instruments and preparing to leave, the Casino was deserted. And the fiddle case was definitely nowhere in the building.
Malone unwrapped a cigar and stared at it for a moment before lighting it. “Well,” he said at last, “there’s nothing you can do about it. You didn’t move the body from the premises, and you don’t know who did. Maybe it’ll turn up again and maybe it won’t. In the meantime, go home to bed and stop worrying.”
“Pleasant dreams to you too,” Helene said acidly. “But just out of idle curiosity, I wonder who did take it away?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the murderer. Maybe some other person.”
“How did this unknown person—whether he was the murderer or not—know the body was in the fiddle case? After all, the case was locked.”
The little lawyer glared at her. “Obviously, he had X-ray eyes.” He ignored the face she made at him.
Jake drew a long breath. “Malone’s right. The best thing for us to do is go home to bed.” He scowled. “Tomorrow’s bound to be a bad day, whatever happens.”
Malone nodded. “Whether the body turns up or; not, there’s going to be excitement when the midget; is missing. Where did he live, anyway?”
“In our hotel,” Jake said. “Had a very fancy suite there, I’ve been told. I’ve never seen it myself.”
“Well,” Malone told him, “maybe you’ll be informed that he’s disappeared. Maybe you’ll be informed that he’s been found up an alley somewhere. Whatever happens, just remember you don’t know a thing about it.”
Jake said, “Don’t worry about that. Do you think; I’m a dope?”
“Yes,” Helene said suddenly. Her face had turned very white. “I think we’re all three of us dopes.”
The two men stared at her.
“That bottle,” she said, in a voice that threatened, to develop a quaver. “The bottle of Scotch. Malone thought it was poisoned. And being three dopes, we went off and left it here.”
Jake frowned. “Well damn it,” he said, “we could hardly have carried it out and set it on our table.”
“And besides,” Malone began. He paused and said, “Between hiding the midget’s body and your announcement about the stockings, the bottle just slipped our minds.”
“In the meantime,” Helene said, “someone’s come in and drunk half of it.”
Malone wheeled around, picked up the bottle, stared at it, and set it down again.
“Someone,” Helene said, “is going around with half a bottle of poisoned liquor in his insides.”
Jake felt for the chair, found it, and sat down hard.
“And,” she finished, “we don’t know who it is!”
For a good thirty seconds, the silence could have been cut with a knife.
“Look here,” Jake said weakly. “Malone could have been mistaken. That Scotch may not be poisoned at all.”
“Do you want to drink it and find out?” she asked.
“No,” he confessed.
Malone unscrewed the cap of the bottle and sniffed. “Smells all right. But there’s still some of that whitish stuff along the edge.” He pointed to the neck of the bottle. “When the liquor was poured out, it washed the powder off one side of the rim, but not the other.” He picked up the cap, held it to the light, and ran a finger inside it. The finger came away with its tip covered with white powder. He sniffed at it thoughtfully.
“Don’t taste it,” Jake said. “I’ll take your word for it. It’s poisoned.”
“I’ve got a friend who’s a chemist,” Malone said. “Tomorrow morning I can have him analyze this and find out what it is.”
“Damn it,” Jake said. “What’s the difference what kind of poison it is, I want to know who got it. Anybody could have wandered in here, seen the room empty and a bottle of expensive Scotch sitting on the dressing table, and helped himself.”
“It could have been the murderer,” Helene said.
“Not if the murderer put the poison in the bottle,” Jake pointed out scornfully.
“Then if the person who carried away the fiddle case wasn’t the murderer, it could have been the person who carried away the fiddle case,” Helene said.
“Your wonderful reasoning powers,” Jake said. “That’s what I really love you for.”
“Or,” she said, “it could have been one of the orchestra men, or one of the waiters, or one of the chorus girls, or—anybody.”
“For the love of Mike,” Malone said suddenly. “Jake, have you any liquor around this place that isn’t poisoned? Because if you have, I need it bad. After all, this is supposed to be a saloon.”
“Don’t call it a saloon,” Jake said, “and all the liquor is locked up for the night. That’s the last thing the head bartender does before he goes home.”
“A fine thing,” Helene said. “Own your own night club, and you can’t get a drink. Wait a minute.” She was out the door and down the hall before either man could stop her. In two minutes she was back again with three paper cups and a nearly full bottle of rye. “It’s Angela Doll’s,” she explained, “but she won’t mind.”
Malone poured three drinks, said gloomily, “I wonder if this is poisoned too,” and drank his. “We’ve