Nipped in the Bud by Stuart Palmer Read Free Book Online

couple of writers and some other riffraff. But it wasn’t very gay. Most of the people there made their living one way or another out of Tony Fagan. It was like dancing on deck after the ship has hit an iceberg, and it didn’t help any to have Tony’s ex-wife there, mooning over him and patting his shoulder. Ruth is one of the ‘this is our song’ girls, solid schmaltz and sentiment. Pretty soon I got tight and went home, or vice versa.”
    “Taking Miss Gordon with you, of course?”
    “N-no, Thallie wouldn’t leave. I guess she thought she had to stick around and play loyal, just in case Fagan got another sponsor sometime. She was a regular on the show, remember—and she didn’t realize yet just how badly Tony had loused up his prospects.”
    “So she stayed to the bitter end?”
    “How should I know?” said Wingfield cautiously. “Thallie said later that they all left around four. Except Ruth, of course, but she’d disappeared earlier and everybody took it for granted that she’d gone home. Actually, according to the newspapers she was only asleep in the spare bedroom, where the police found her next morning and gave her a rather bad time of it, I expect.” He fidgeted a little, looking at his watch again.
    “Just one thing more, young man. What is Mrs. Fagan’s present address?”
    “Her address? How should I know? I suppose she’s in the book. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m overdue at a rehearsal.”
    This vein of high-grade ore had petered out. She thanked him for his trouble, and departed. But young Wingfield couldn’t have been in too much of a hurry to get to his rehearsal, for when she stole a quick look back from the other end of the long hallway he was still standing there by the projection-room door, scratching his head. Miss Withers went out into the reception room, thought a moment, and then went back to the doorway and peeked again. Art Wingfield was just disappearing into a phone booth at the other end of the hall, a rather queer place to hold a rehearsal.
    “All of which has been fairly informative,” the schoolteacher observed to Talleyrand the poodle as they came out of WKC-TV again onto the avenue, after pausing by the phone booths in the lobby long enough to make sure that no Mrs. Ruth Fagan was listed in any of the Greater New York directories. “But we are still no forrader in finding out what happened to little Ina Kell, are we?”
    Talley answered only with a wide yawn, being a dog of regular habits—at least as far as eating and sleeping were concerned. He would, however, have enjoyed the long walk uptown, and was somewhat less pleased than his mistress to find that the inspector had gallantly left the official limousine waiting. Miss Withers sank gratefully into the cushions and murmured, “Home, James.”
    “The name is Patrolman Gerald Van Dusen, ma’am.”
    “Very well. The Barbizon Hotel for women, Gerald—I mean Officer.” But being Miss Withers, she changed her mind again. After all, it was only a little after ten o’clock. She rapped on the glass and asked to be taken to the Graymar Apartments, on East Fifty-fifth.
    By the time they arrived, Talley was curled up in a fuzzy brown ball and fast asleep. His mistress left him so, not knowing just what might be in store for her inside. There was a canopy outside the entrance of the somewhat forbiddingly plain building, but no doorman in sight. Inside was a marble lobby, but nobody at the desk. Miss Withers found the mailboxes, and on one of them a card reading “Joris, Miss Crystal—803,” and was about to resort to the old dodge of pressing a number of other bells in order to get in when suddenly an effervescent party of four came out, dressed to the teeth and swaying slightly. The schoolteacher had no difficulty whatever in getting the toe of her number-ten Walkover in the door before it quite closed.
    Junior Gault could have gained admittance this same way on that fatal morning, she realized. Taking