“Homicide?” The eyebrows lifted mockingly.
“An elderly lady registered at the Hotel Orleans as Mrs. Minna Gordon.” Devereaux looked closely at Phillips, watched little colored veins sprout in either cheek. The reaction was consistently in kind; Phillips’ one evident emotion was that of a man bothered by an interloper.
“Shall I consult my lawyer?” The eyebrows lifted again.
“Perhaps,” Devereaux said coolly. “If you have a feeling of guilt about something.”
“I advise you not to badger me.”
Devereaux said, “I’m just doing a job.”
“What do you want of me?”
“A statement, of a kind.”
“I’m suspected of murdering an elderly lady?” Phillips inquired incredulously.
“I didn’t say that. If you’d just listen—”
“I’m listening.”
“The lady was struck down by a prowler. Strangled or frightened to death or both. Pending a medical report, I don’t know. The disorder in her room suggests that she didn’t come to her death normally.”
Phillips looked bored. “Please hurry it up.”
Devereaux continued evenly, “My search of her belongings told me little of how she lived or what she did. There were mainly mementos that told about her life long ago, when she was younger, a young woman.” The detective paused, his eyes sharply on Phillips. “I’m here for additional information about her.”
“But why did you come here?”
“Never mind. Just tell me what you know about her.”
“Nothing,” Phillips said. “I never heard of a Mrs. Minna Gordon.”
“Think again,” Devereaux said in open disbelief.
Phillips looked disdainful. Devereaux watched Phillips’ hands move nervously, saw the little colored veins sprout in his host’s cheeks.
Devereaux said, “You never heard of her as Minna Gordon, perhaps. But her birth name in a St. James Bible was Cora Jennings.”
Phillips reached his feet with the sudden force of a man bursting bonds. “You’ll have to go,” he said harshly.
Devereaux went to him and seized his arm. “The act isn’t going over. Cora Jennings was in contact with you.
Phillips pulled his arm free angrily.
“The record at the Hotel Orleans switchboard shows the deceased phoned you many times.” It was a lie, but told with compelling heat.
Phillips seemed to wilt for a minute, then the anger flamed again, burning away every other emotion that may have been in his face for Devereaux to read.
Sato came pattering up, and Phillips said harshly, “Show the gentleman out, Sato.” He turned his back to Devereaux.
The temptation to manhandle this dandified and dissolute sensualist was overwhelming, but Devereaux turned away. He had walked a few irresolute steps in Sato’s wake when he saw her.
Her face was pressed against the pane of a French window that opened on the terrace. Her look begged his strength, begged him to be sure in his method.
Devereaux made a furtive sign, reassuring her. He waited, hoping for a sign of her belief to show in her look; then, finding it, he walked rapidly in Sato’s wake.
The door closed firmly behind him.
CHAPTER FOUR
1.
An hour had elapsed, and Devereaux’s vigil yards away from the street door to Phillips’ penthouse seemed time down the drain. He shifted restlessly in the cramped front of the Buick.
A miscalculation, this watch, he thought ruefully. Phillips, stung into an action by his sudden visit, might merely have resorted to the telephone.
Now dusk was falling with mid-September suddenness, and sharp details were blurring in the gathering night. Lights were appearing, rapidly becoming more numerous. Devereaux sighed and turned the ignition key. The motor was throbbing when the detective jerked to sudden attention.
He saw only the rear of the man moving briskly to a cab a yard below the canopy. But though this silhouette seemed leaner than the corseted figure on the terrace, and though it might have been a hundred strangers other than his quarry, Devereaux knew it to be Phillips surely. The eccentric slant of the black Homburg and the flailing walking stick could be only Phillips.
Devereaux smiled his satisfaction and guided the Buick in the wake of the taxicab.
The taxicab chewed through the jam of nighttime Second Avenue like a contestant in an obstacle race. Devereaux, stalled behind a beer truck and close to defeat in the chase, watched the taxi turn left against heavy traffic in a feat of split-second timing. Then, luckily, in the farthermost range of his vision, he saw the taxi stop at the curb, saw Phillips alight.
The light changed, and Devereaux made his left turn, then maneuvered the Buick into the nearest available curb space.
On the curb, he looked over Phillips’ destination. It was the Attic Circus, a supper club with a special appeal to the sporting fraternity, owned by Lippy Latimer, bantamweight king of the twenties, now reduced to a restaurant, partial paralysis of the facial muscles, and weekend painting. The latter therapy, pursued with surprising doggedness by the ex-pugilist, had borne a one-man water-color show, winning not a few critical accolades. The nickname “Lippy” commemorated Latimer’s ring technique of synchronizing boxing with an endless stream of withering invective. Whether the jabbering or the jabbing wilted the opponent, nobody could ever say for sure. One of them, if not both, had won Latimer the bantamweight crown. In losing the title, Latimer lost much of his power of speech. The challenger, a redoubtable puncher who was hard of hearing, shut Latimer up with a crushing blow on the nerve center. From then on, the nickname “Lippy” was more ironic than characterizing.
Like a great many New Yorkers, Devereaux knew Lippy, and like many of the initiate, he also knew and savored Lippy’s cuisine.
Devereaux looked at his watch. Well past the dinner hour. Time for a songstress to materialize with the dishes of dessert. He looked at the sidewalk advertisement. The pouting mouth and nippled hills behind gauze were identified as “Sadye, Queen of the Double-Entendre.”
Devereaux started into the club doubtfully. Anonymity was impossible, here where everybody came to see everybody else, and to be seen. Anonymity was especially impossible for a gadabout detective who’d just completed a twenty-year midtown roving beat and whose face was a front-page commonplace.
In the vestibule, the checkroom girl smiled brilliantly. “Good evening, Mr. Devereaux.”
Devereaux kept his hat. The headwaiter’s prop smile seemed a shade
