“It was far too interesting to interrupt,” returned Leonard. “I particularly enjoyed the way she scattered suspicion right and left on Rod and me and even on Mrs. Ingelow. That wasn’t malice—just selfishness. If only four people could have committed the murder and Wanda was one of the four, then the police must be made to think that one of the other three is guilty; even if two of them happen to be close friends of hers. So she hinted—with the most beguiling air of inadvertence—that her affair with Ingelow had made Mrs. Ingelow jealous; that Rod was in love with Wanda, and, therefore, jealous of Ingelow; and finally, that I was a dangerous character who had served a prison term for manslaughter.”
“You revenged yourself promptly,” said Basil. “That shot about the Ingelow will went home.”
“A shot in the dark. But I had to do something in self-defense.”
At Madison Avenue the two men parted. Leonard went on west toward the theater. Basil entered a hotel and found a telephone booth. He called Inspector Foyle at his office.
“Have you traced
“No dice,” returned the Inspector crisply. “One of the newspaper boys says
“Tell him to look under I—Ingelow, John.”
“Who’s that?”
“Engineer—young—wealthy—just back from a war job in Panama. Had an apartment in New York and a home near Philadelphia—Huntingdon Valley. His wife can identify the body. She might be at the New York apartment. She was backstage last night. I didn’t know who she was then, but I saw her leave the alcove and cross the stage to the wings just before the curtain rose.”
“Was
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
Foyle whistled under his breath. “Did anyone but you see her leaving the alcove?”
“Adeane and the other actors playing
“He’s going to drop in my office tomorrow about five o’clock. You’d better come, too. He says he’s on to something.”
THE CAPRI RESTAURANT is on West 44th Street. As Basil passed the Royalty Theatre its dark masonry, impressive in artificial glare, looked dingy and corrupt in the clean sunlight. Several idlers were staring at the dead electric bulbs that still proclaimed:
OPENING TONIGHT
WANDA MORLEY
Already the wind had torn a strip loose from one of the posters that displayed a sketch of Wanda. Like a pennant it flapped and rippled in the breeze. The box office was closed. There was no sign of life about the theater. A sturdy policeman paced the sidewalk and urged the idlers to move on.
Basil paused as he came to the alley. Like the playhouse, it was disenchanted by daylight. Now he saw that it was a blind alley blocked by the rear of another big theater building. Fire escapes at either end were linked by long balconies of wrought iron at each landing. Had the iron work been only a little lacier—more fanciful—it would have brought to mind back alleys of New Orleans.
Basil surveyed the fire escape of the Royalty at his right. Would he have had the nerve to climb it last night had he been able to see how high it went? All the ironwork was coated with a thick crust of black dust that at the slightest touch flaked off fine and powdery—“the dust of generations,” Pauline had said. Basil lifted his eyes. The tangled cluster of skyscrapers against the pure blue of the sky were as gray and bleak as bald mountain tops. He could see part of the Tilbury building from this point, but another skyscraper barred his view of the clock. He did not envy air-raid wardens their job of deciding which building was in which street if ever they had to enforce a real blackout.
Last night Basil had assumed that the alley could only be entered through 44th Street. Now he realized there were five other ways of entering or leaving it—the two fire escapes of the two theaters, their respective stage doors, and the kitchen door of the cocktail bar.
A slight noise drew Basil’s attention to the shack halfway down the alley. A man had just come out of it into the alley, and he was struggling to close the door against the wind.
Basil approached him. “Mr. Lazarus?”
“Yes?” The man looked at him sidewise. Like the mother of François Villon, he was “little and old and poor.” But his voice was surprisingly round and resonant—the voice of an actor.
“My name is Willing. I happened to read something in the papers about a burglar breaking into your workshop.”
“Yes?” Lazarus was cautiously noncommittal.
