The American Gun Mystery (Death At the Rodeo)
- Автор: Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Серия: Ellery Queen #6
- Год: 1933
- Язык: английский
- Год: Frederick A. Stokes Company
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «The American Gun Mystery (Death At the Rodeo)». Краткое содержание книги:
“Rats. Come out of it, Hunter. That tack won’t get you anywhere,” said the Inspector sharply. “Now please answer my questions, and don’t waste our time — we’ve a big job on our hands and I can’t stand here arguing with you. Well, well?”
Hunter shrugged. “Didn’t know him well at all.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. How long did you know him?”
“Precisely one week.”
“Hmm. You met him when he hit town on this rodeo business?”
“That’s it, Inspector.”
“Through whom?”
“Tony, Tony Mars?”
“Under what circumstances?”
“Tony brought him to one of my night-clubs—”
“Club Mara?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the only time you saw him? Before tonight, I mean?”
Hunter lighted a cigaret with steady fingers. “Mmm. Can’t say, really.” He blew smoke indolently. “It’s possible Horne visited the Club Mara after that. I can’t be sure.”
The Inspector stared at him. “You’re lying, of course.”
Thick red surged into the pink cheeks, very slowly. “What the devil do you mean?”
The old man clucked. “Tchk! I beg your pardon, Mr. Hunter. No offense meant. I was just speculatin’ out loud.” Ellery, in his corner, smiled skeptically. “Y’see, I know you’re in a deal with Tony — were in a deal, I should say, to finance Horne’s comeback to the screen. I thought you’d surely have had a couple of meetings—”
“Oh,” said Hunter, with a long quiet breath. “Yes, certainly. Very natural thought. No, I told the truth, Inspector. And it’s not true that I was ‘in a deal,’ as you say, to furnish financial support for Horne’s venture. Mars, Grant — they mentioned it to me. I was merely considering the proposal. A little out of my line, you see.”
The Inspector performed the sacred rite of inhaling a pinch of snuff. “You were waiting, I suppose, to see what sort of reception Horne would get in this rodeo appearance of his?”
“Yes, yes! That’s it exactly.”
“Well! Nothing incriminating there, eh, Mr. Hunter?” The Inspector smiled and returned the old brown snuffbox to his pocket.
The room was quite still. A little pulse in Hunter’s throat began to hammer suddenly, and the vein in his left temple. He said rather thickly: “If you’re really thinking... Why, Inspector, I was in the same box with you all evening! How could I possibly—?”
“Of courrrse,” said the Inspector soothingly. “Of course, Mr. Hunter. Don’t upset yourself. These little chin-chins — just a matter of form. Now you go back to the Mars box and wait.”
“Wait? I can’t— Can’t I—?”
The Inspector spread thin deprecating hands. “We’re servants of the law, you know, Mr. Hunter. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait.”
Hunter inhaled deeply. “Hmm. Yes. I see that,” he said, and turned to go, sucking on his cigaret.
“By the way,” drawled Ellery from his corner, “do you know Miss Horne well, Mr. Hunter — Kit Horne?”
“Oh, Miss Horne. No, can’t say I do. I’ve met her on one or two occasions — once in Hollywood, I think, through Mrs. Hunter — I should say Miss Gay, my wife... but that’s all.”
He waited, as if expecting another question. It did not come, so after a moment he bowed slightly and left the office.
The Queens regarded each other with cryptic smiles.
“Why the silk gloves, Inspector?” asked Ellery. “I’ve never known you to handle a witness so softly before!”
“Don’t know,” murmured the old man. “A hunch, I guess. That bird knows something, and before I’m through with him I’ll find out what.” He stuck his head out of the doorway. “Thomas! Get that actress — the gaga Gay woman!” He turned back, smiling broadly. “Yes, and by the way, why the question about Kit Horne, eh?”
“Don’t know, sire. Just a hunch, I guess.” And Ellery grinned back until the willow-scent-silk figure of Mara Gay made a bowery frame out of the prosaic doorway.
The lady swept in like an elongated shadow of Portia, sat down with the sublimely indifferent dignity of the Virgin Queen, and glared at the Inspector with Medusa’s venomousness. “Well,” she sniffed, tossing her coiffured head, “this is really too much! Really too ridiculously much!”
“What’s too much?” said the Inspector absently. “Oh, Miss Gay! Now, don’t take that tone, please. I want—”
“You want!” snarled the Orchid of Hollywood. “And please don’t ‘please’ me, Inspector What’s-Your-Name! I’ll take any tone I choose, understand that! Now” — she continued without pausing for breath as the Inspector chopped off a mildly astonished protest — “please explain what you mean by this vile, this outrageous treatment! Keeping me cooped up in that awful place for hours, not even letting me go to — go to the ladies’ room! No, don’t interrupt me. Do you realize that this is bad publicity for me? Not that I look down on publicity; it has its uses, but—”
“Sweet uses,” murmured Ellery, garbling his Shakespeare.
“What? It has its uses, but this — this is vile! Those reporters, they’ve been telephoning their papers ever since this happened. Tomorrow I’ll find myself plastered all over the country, mixed up in a — my God — a murder! My press agent will love it, but then he’s such a barbarian! I tell you unless you let me get out of here at once — at once, understand? — I’ll phone my attorney and — and—”
She paused, gulping.
“And fiddlesticks,” snapped the Inspector. “Now pay attention. What do you know about this blasted business?”
The stare that had withered motion picture magnates burned harmlessly against the hide of the Inspector, who was made of asbestos. So she took from her evening-bag a diamond-studded lipstick and pursed her lips very provocatively. “Nothing,” she murmured, “dear Inspector.” Ellery grinned, and the Inspector blushed with fury.
“Don’t give me that!” he barked. “When did you meet Buck Horne?”
“The horse-opera person? Let me see.” She considered. “Last week.”
“Not in Hollywood?”
“Inspector Queen! He left the screen ten years ago!”
“Oh. You were a babe in arms at that time, I s’pose,” said the Inspector sourly. “Well, where did you meet Horne?”
“At the Club Mara, my husband’s little place, you know.”
Her husband’s little place was a vast one-sixth the size of the Colosseum, with more marble and gilt in it than Broadway’s most awesome motion picture palace.
“Who else was present when you met him?”
“Julian — my husband; that Grant person, Curly’s father; and Tony Mars.”
“You know Miss Horne for a long time?”
“That horsy little squirt?” She sniffed contemptuously. “She’s been presented to me on the Coast.”
“Presented to you, hey?” muttered the Inspector. “She would be — to you. All right, Miss Gay, that’s all. I’m busy.”
She gasped in sheer horror at this frightful implication of lese majeste. “Why, you old—”
Sergeant Velie gripped her arm delicately between forefinger and thumb and urged her out of the chair and the room.