“It couldn’t have been a quick-acting poison,” Malone said very slowly, “or the person who got it wouldn’t have lived long enough to leave the Casino. So, that person may still be alive now.”
“And could still be saved, if we found him in time,” Jake added.
“If we knew who it was,” Helene said.
“Maybe Helene was right,” Malone said. “Maybe the thing to do is call up everybody who might possibly have come in here tonight and give out a warning. It looks like the only thing to do.”
Jake said, “And thereby advertise the fact that we knew there had been a bottle of poisoned liquor in the midget’s dressing room the night of his disappearance—or murder, if his body turns up. We’re trying to keep out of trouble, not get into it.” He paused. “Still, we can’t let some perfectly innocent person die, just to keep out of trouble.”
“Oh, but Jake,” Helene said with a little gasp, “there’s forty or fifty people who might have come in here. And by the time we got to the right person on the list—”
“Besides,” Jake said gloomily, “we don’t have all their telephone numbers, either. Heaven only knows where Ramon Arriba’s boys hang out.”
Helene lit a cigarette very slowly and deliberately, and poured herself a drink of rye. “Well, we can eliminate Angela Doll. She left the Casino before the midget finished his last performance. And all of Al Omega’s band. They were on the bandstand all the time between when we were first here and when we came back. We can eliminate the girls in the chorus because I gave a party for them and none of them will touch Scotch. They all stick to rye or gin.”
“Good bright girls,” Jake said admiringly. “So do I.”
There was a momentary pause. Malone strolled over to the dressing table, picked up the bottle, and looked at it again.
“That’s a hell of a lot of liquor for just one person to drink in that short a time,” he observed thoughtfully, “unless he or she had the capacity of a tank car.”
Helene dropped her paper cup on the floor. “Of course!” she exclaimed. While the two men stared at her, open-mouthed, she jumped to her feet, pulled her wrap over her shoulders and began fastening it. “Ruth Rawlson!”
Jake had only started to say, “But look here—” when she put her hand over his mouth.
“Ruth was telling us about having a nice chat with Angela Doll, when we knew Angela had gone home. I thought she’d been chinning with the chorus girls, but now when I think about it, I know they’d all have gone home by that time. They don’t lose any time getting out of here after their last show. There’s only one other place where she could have been: here, all by herself, in the midget’s dressing room.”
Jake jerked his head away and said, “Not necessarily—” That was as far as he got.
“Listen to me!” Her eyes were like blue fire. “She was wandering around back here looking for someone who’d buy her a drink. She stuck her head in here and saw that the room was empty and that a bottle of Scotch was sitting on the dressing table.” Helene paused long enough to draw a quick breath and went on, “Malone just said whoever drank that much liquor in that short a time must have the capacity of a tank car. That’s a thumbnail description of Ruth. And you said yourself—when you put her in the taxi she was practically paralyzed. That wasn’t from the liquor—it was from what was in it!”
“She’s right,” Malone said.
Helene stamped her foot impatiently. “Come on, then. This isn’t any time to stand around talking about it.” She wheeled around and started for the door. “I know where she lives, and my car’s parked right outside. And Malone, stick that bottle of rye in your pocket. We might need it to bring her to.”
“If anything would bring her to,” Jake prophesied, “that will.”
Snow—a light, damp, April snow—was falling as they went outside. Malone shivered, growled something about the spring weather, and looked ominously at the streets. He’d ridden with Helene before when she was in a hurry.
It was nine blocks from the Casino to the dreary Walton Street rooming house where Ruth Rawlson lived. Jake and Malone preferred to forget how short a time it took for Helene to make the trip in the blue convertible.
She slid the car neatly up to the curb directly in front of the doorway and said, “Ruth’s light is on. That’s her place—the English basement.”
Jake grabbed her elbow as she started up the walk. “Wait a minute. Suppose you’re right about this, how are you going to explain it to her?”
Helene shook her arm free indignantly. “When somebody’s been poisoned, you pump the poison out first and explain things afterward.” As an afterthought she added, “If she asks any questions, I’ll tell her you put the poison there for me.”
At the steps Jake paused. “But if you aren’t right—if she didn’t get the poison—then how do we explain this three-o’clock-in-the-morning visit?”
Malone growled, “Tell her I couldn’t wait till tomorrow to see her again. Besides,” he added, “she may not be here.”
“I told the cab driver to see that she got here,” Jake said.
Helene peeked through the window into the basement room. “She’s here all right. I can just see one foot through the window, but I’d know those slippers anywhere.”
Jake rang the bell. Fifteen seconds later he rang it again. The third time, he simply pushed one finger against it and left it there. Malone went into the hallway, found the right door and pounded on it, long and loud.
There was no answer. After one final try of ringing and knocking, Helene took another look through the window. Ruth Rawlson hadn’t moved.
Chapter 5
“This is no time to rouse the landlady,” Jake said, “but obviously we’ve got to get in.” He looked reflectively at the window. “Lucky there’s no grating. I think I can pry it open, if you two will keep an eye peeled for people coming down the street.”
Malone gazed down the street through the veil of snow. Snow in spring, he thought. He remembered the snow ballet in one of those long-ago revues, with Ruth Rawlson as the snow queen, her red-gold hair rippling over her white arms. He’d been pushing a hack in those days to pay for the last months at night law school, but he’d managed to go to the theater twice a week during the show’s entire run. Fabulous Ruth Rawlson, who never wore any fur save white fur (he hadn’t known about press agents in those days, Malone reflected) nor any jewels save pearls. The little lawyer glanced through the dingy window at that dangling foot with its still unfastened slipper, and shuddered.
“Come, come, Malone,” Helene said sternly. “She couldn’t have been that beautiful.”
He glared at her. “If she’s dead,” he muttered, “it’s my fault. I should have had sense enough to put that bottle out of anyone’s reach.”
“It’s just as much Jake’s fault, and mine,” she told him.
Malone shook his head. “You aren’t expected to have that much sense.”
The sound of the window sliding open choked off whatever Helene had been about to say.
“Go on down into the hall,” Jake said. “I’ll slip in and unlock her door from the inside.” He disappeared through the window, closing it behind him. A moment later he opened the door for them.
It was a large, disordered, and dingy room, obviously improvised into a housekeeping apartment by the addition of a cupboard and a gas plate supposedly concealed behind a faded cretonne curtain. The walls had once been calcimined a muddy green, now they were a discolored, mottled gray. Most of the collection