Stewart Sterling

The Flaming Lady Murder

The red sedan took the corner on screeching rubber, rocketed into the dark canyon of the garment center with siren wailing and bloodshot eye blinking.

It was a one-way street; Chief Fire Marshal Ben Pedley came roaring into it the wrong way, but he kept the speedometer at seventy.

Bus drivers locked their brakes, closed their eyes and prayed. Truckmen cursed, backing huge trailers frantically. Taxies climbed the curb.

West of Broadway the block was jammed with gleaming red apparatus. Against the claret wine spilling from a dozen headlights, helmeted silhouettes converged on a towering loft building.

He slid the sedan in behind a combination pumper and hook-and-ladder, snatched smoke mask and hand torch, leaped to the sidewalk.

Forty stories above, a feather of smoke trailed from one of the topmost windows. Except where its underside was reddened by the glare reflected from the pavement, the smoke was light gray... and the Marshal swore in relief.

Any blaze in the high hazard district was bad. But those in this garment section were liable to be deadly as machine guns. Plastic, rayon, fabric fibres... they, all burned into poison fumes that could kill more people than flames ever did. But those gray plumes weren’t the danger signal... not yet.

As he plunged past hosemen wrestling with the hand plate to the standpipe connection, a puff of oily black mushroomed out against the luminous sky; it was shot through with darting tongues of orange. He ran.

Rubber-coated men raced to the lobby with doughnut rolls of hose, brass nozzles, Quinlan force bars, axes. A white helmeted man demanded of a frightened gaffer in a shabby uniform:

“Which car goes highest?”

The nightwatchman pointed.

“Run us up.” The Battalion Chief jerked open the car door, motioned the watchman to the lever.

Pedley piled in: “Who pulled the box, Mac?”

“Don’t know, Ben.” Battalion Chief MacKinnon glanced at his wristwatch. “Still alarm. Phoned in. Maison Elegant. Dress manufacturer. Forty-first.”

Pedley nodded grimly. “Stuff for fall wear. Be wool in it. Those damn fumes...” he thought of the coiling black, blossoming from that window.

“It’s got a five-minute start. We had to bust the door in before this clunk woke up.” MacKinnon glowered at the trembling watchman. “Stop at forty.”

The elevator door clanged open. Pedley lingered a moment after the firemen had raced for the stair well.

“How many people in the building, pop?”

“Should I know?” The watchman’s eyes bugged. “I’m only keeping a record of them who come in after six peeyem. And” he added, “them who’ check out. How many is in here, I couldn’t tell. Not many. You want me to wait here.”

“Crysake, no. Go down for more men.” Pedley sprinted for the stairs, went up three at a time. Beneath the beam of his flash, the corridor on the forty-first was hazy but not thick with smoke.

The hosemen were coupling up to the brass siamese connection. MacKinnon was far down the hall, giving doors the feel.

“Here,” he shouted, bracing his shoulder against a steel door, opening it cautiously an inch or so.

Pedley raced to help him.

Black smoke, wreathed with ugly cream-colored fumes, gushed out. MacKinnon tried to slam the door shut.

There was a blast like a field mortar. The door ripped off its hinges, hurled the Battalion Chief across the hall, slammed him against the wall. A solid wedge of flame whooshed up against the corridor ceiling, banked down again as Pedley dragged the Chief clear.

Water roared over his head. The two-inch line, going into action.

“Hot enough in there...” MacKinnon gasped, “—to buckle the girders.”

Pedley lifted his smoke mask long enough to growl: “Buckle anybody who was in there, all right. I want the person who phoned in that alarm.”

He plunged through the vortex belching from the dress company’s door, flattened himself against the fireproof wall that had so far contained the flames. The next door beyond the one that had blown open, had gilt lettering:

MAISON ELEGANT...

Modes for Misses & Junior Misses

J. V. Webster, Inc.

4162

He put his palm against the door. Hot, but not blistering.

He flattened his ear against it. No crackling or roaring within.

He tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He braced himself, anticipating an explosion of fresh air touching off smouldering material.

When he cracked the door, bile-colored smoke vomited out at him. The ugly yellow-green color was plain, even before his flashlight hit it. The lights were on, inside.

He went in. The smoke was so dense he had to feel his way, past chairs, a bench, a railing. He fumbled along the rail to the gate, tripped the catch.

More desks. A water cooler. A solid metal door, so hot it scorched his fingers. That would be the door to the factory part of the establishment. He left it strictly alone.

A typewriter desk. Files. A window.

He smashed it with the butt of his flashlight. Glass tinkled faintly. The smoke began to clear.

He turned, searching for the switchboard. Something caught him in the chest, solidly. A thick block of iron. The door of a safe.

Open.

Pedley moved around it, stepped on something that crunched beneath his shoe. He knelt, quickly.

On the floor, face down, unconscious — a girl of twenty or so. He got his arms underneath her, lifted her to his shoulder in the one-arm carry.

A metal box clattered to the floor as he lifted her. The cash-box, probably. She’d rescued it from the safe before the smoke got her... WOW!

He stumbled to his knees as flames seared the back of his neck. His smoke mask fell off, rolled away...

Flame? He twisted around. There couldn’t be any flame in here. That steel door...

Whoosh! An incandescent jet puffed fiercely at him through that broken window! From outside! From the burning room adjoining!

A night breeze had come up suddenly, was sucking the flame out of the blazing factory and whipping it in through the office window. Whoosh!

He crawled toward the door. Behind him, papers flared into momentary brightness. Varnished woodwork began to crackle.

He reached the corridor.

“Water!” he yelled. “Mac! Line here!” He coughed as the fumes strangled him.

But he made it to his feet, leaned against the wall with the girl’s weight a suddenly severe burden.

Hosemen clumped past, gripping the long nozzle, snaking the swollen canvas to the door.

“Need any help, Marshal?” The nozzleman peered owlishly through the eyepiece of his mask.

“I can... handle it.” Pedley didn’t know whether he could or not. There was a queer lightness in his head. His legs didn’t seem to respond as they ought to.

The girl was worse off than he was. She needed medical attention. He’d see she got it fast. But before she was whisked away by some zealous ambulance intern, he had a couple of questions to ask her.

The fire was more than five minutes old — more than ten probably. He stumbled slowly along the hall until he could see past the firemen who’d worked their lines into the door MacKinnon had opened.

The flames had been driven back. Cutting tables and sewing machine benches were still burning but the long rows of hanging dress-racks, the metal waste-containers and the piles of fabric on the goods shelves were hissing steam and smouldering char.

Some of the solid oak tables, with four-inch square legs and two-inch cutting tops, had been reduced to spindly cinders. That hadn’t happened in five minutes!

“Dobby...” the girl moaned.

He got his back against the wall, shifted his weight so he held her in both arms. “What?”

“Dobby... where are you?” Her voice was fuzzy, but she had her eyes open, staring wildly up at Pedley from a smoke-smudged face smeary with lipstick and mascara.

“Who’s Dobby?”

She groaned, winced, closed her eyes as if shutting out the memory of something horrible:

“Shipping clerk... Dobby Doblin... tried to find him...” she shuddered. Her head rolled from side to side in an agony of frustration.

MacKinnon loomed up through the smoke. Slung on his back was a charred something that dripped and steamed. Tatters of burnt cloth hung from blackened legs. The arms flopped disjointedly, like the arms of a dead man.

But Pedley wasn’t looking at the victim’s arms or legs. He squinted at the thin, white, sallow face.

“Where’d you find him, Mac?” He set the girl down, held her up with one hand.

“Floor, beside the door that goes out to the shipping room. This was the factory part. Where the girls worked.” The Chief pointed. “Poor guy got that far before the fumes hit him.”

“Might have been something hit him,” grunted Pedley, “but it wasn’t fumes!”

The girl sat on the running board of Ladder 6, leaning against the short-ladder rack.

“I’m... all right,” she coughed weakly.

The doctor in the soot-smudged raincoat held an uncorked bottle under her nose:

“You don’t know whether you are or not. If you inhaled any of those nitrous fumes, they’ll anesthetize your throat; you’ll think you’re okay; in an hour you’re a stretcher case. Breathe deep.”

“What is it?” She tried to push his hand away in alarm, “Chloroform?”

“Carbonate of ammonia. Do what I tell you.”

The departmental medico twisted his head as two rubber-clad figures clumped out of the lobby, laid the limp figure of Chief MacKinnon on the sidewalk. “Here, Ben...” he shoved the bottle at Pedley... “Make her suck in deep into her lungs.” As he moved swiftly to MacKinnon, another pair of firemen lugged out the nozzleman who had offered to help the Marshal.

“Back draft blew off everybody’s mask,” one of the rescuers muttered. “They’re keeling over like duckpins! More of ’em coming down directly!”

There was no change in Pedley’s expression as he squatted on the curb with the bottle in his fist. But the line of dark scar tissue, which ran from his right cheekbone to the angle of his jaw, whitened under the hardening of the muscles.

“What’s your name?”

“Hilda Webster.” She inhaled fearfully, expecting to be hurt.

“Bookkeeper?”

“Office manager. James Webster’s my uncle.”

“He the boss? Where is he?”

“He’s been in Florida for a month. Del Ray Beach.”

“You phoned in the alarm?” He watched the growing row of unconscious men stretched out on the sidewalk.

“Yes. I smelled smoke. I ran out into the factory... I couldn’t see anything, the smoke was so terrible... I called to Dobby, because I knew he was working out there...” her eyes brimmed with tears... “Maybe if I’d smelled the smoke sooner, they could have saved him.”

“He was dead before the fire started.”

Pedley put one hand around back of her neck as she tried to avoid the bottle under her nostrils.

“Before!” Hilda’s face puckered in misery.

“Yair. Those fumes were loaded with cyanic acid gas. Roomful of burning wool’s just the same as a lethal chamber. Whift of that stuff and your skin gets all blotchy purple. Lips look like old liver. He didn’t. So... he didn’t breathe any of it.”

“But how?” She shook her head terrified.

“Might have been natural cause. I’d guess not. Face wasn’t contorted. Would have been if he’d had a heart spasm. Autopsy’ll tell, anyhow.” Pedley saw her eyelids begin to sag, felt her lean heavily against his arm. “Who else was working up there tonight beside you two?”

“I don’t know,” Hilda clenched her teeth as if in pain. “I don’t think anybody was working. Except Dobby. And he knew it was strictly against the rules to smoke in the factory.”

“Yair.” He took the bottle away, motioned to a starched intern clambering out of a long, gray ambulance. “Fire wasn’t started by any cigarette. Went too fast for that. No draft to make it go. Windows all closed. But the place was going like a bonfire.”

“Burns?” the intern brought his stretcher.

“Smoke intoxication,” the Marshal stood up. “Tell your emergency staff I want her given the very best attention in the P. C. ward.”

“P. C.” The intern gawked at Hilda. “Will do.”

Pedley patted her shoulder. “Do what they tell you. Don’t try to get up until the doc says okay... or you’ll be sorry. I’ll be around to get statement, later.”

He stalked past the steadily increasing line of rubber-clad men stretched out on the sidewalk, found a second elevator in charge of a Rescue Squad Lieutenant. The ancient night watchman’s car was up at the fire level.

The Lieutenant ran him up. “You make it a bug job, Marshal?”

“Smells fishy.”

“Smells like naptha,” observed the Lieutenant.

“Yair?” Pedley’s eyes asked for details.

“They got a lot of bolts of cloth stacked up on shelves, one end of the place. Some of ’em got hollow cores... makes ’em lighter to handle, I suppose. An’ you know how naptha vapor seeps into hollow places just like a fluid.”

Pedley said he knew. “They were on the Inflammable’s Permit list. For five gallons. To clean garments.”

“Maybe the heat got to the can, expanded the stuff and blew it all over the joint.” The Lieutenant looked skeptical. “Or maybe somebody attached that naptha as a rider to an insurance policy.”

“Then somebody better take out life insurance,” Pedley was brusque, “because somebody’s liable to burn for this.”

A harassed Deputy Chief had the blaze under control when Pedley reached the forty-first.

The danger was still there, in those slowly coiling bile-colored fumes. But the flames were out. Only glowing embers remained as targets for wetting down.

The windows were glassless. The night breeze lashed fresh air in to dissipate the smoke.

Pedley paid no attention to smouldering tables or dripping sewing machines; he went to the long pipe racks stretching across the end of the factory.

The smell of naptha was strong, even above the reek of glowing cloth and steaming ashes. The floor beneath the dress racks was three inches deep in sooty water. Fragments of garments still hung steaming, from the racks.

Methodically, he plucked them off, slid them into marked envelopes.

SHIPPING ROOM

NO ADMITTANCE

A yard from the door, the floor was deeply charcoaled, its surface checked by hundreds of cross-hatchings, like alligator skin... except for one space about two feet by five, where the wood had barely been burned. Just about the space that would have been covered by the body of a man, he decided.

He went into the office, searched the safe. Then he found a black book on the ledge of the switchboard. He studied it while the watchman took him down to the lobby.

“Who’d you take up to the forty-first after six tonight, pop?”

“My memory I should trust! Ha!” The old man snorted. “A ledger I keep for such matters. You want to see?”

“Yair.”

On the Watchman’s Record, only two names had been checked in to the forty-first floor. They’d come in together; a Sam Brunberg and a Carlina Foss. The check-in was at 8:10 P.M. They’d left together twenty minutes later.

“Who’s this Brunberg?” asked Pedley.

“Who is he? Just the manager of Maison Elegant, that’s all he is. Sales manager. A fine man, too.” The watchman was wary.

“And the lady?”

“Miss Foss ain’t no lady. She’s one of the girls that works for him. A model, yeah,”

“They usually come back to the shop after dinner?”

“Mister,” the old man was emphatic, “It ain’t my business to keep an eye on people. I do my job an’ let them worry about theirs.”

“Yair, yair. But—”

“Now you put it right to me, I don’t know’s I can ever remember them two comin’ together before, at night.”

“Might be important, pop.”

The old man cleared his throat, hesitantly.

“Trouble, I wouldn’t be wanting to get anybody into. But with all them firemen getting hurt... and that feller who got himself burned to death, maybe I ought to be telling you.”

“What?”

“I’m hearing something Mister Brunberg says to this model friend of his. Coming down in the elevator, he says to her, ‘We better get the hell out of here before the blow-up, baby’.”

The doctor Grabbed Pedley as he hurried out to the street.

“You got a gutful yourself, Ben!”

“Nothing to hurt.”

“Hell you say. You sound like a zombie.” The physician plugged in sethoscopic earpieces. “Let me listen to your pipes.”

“I’m in a rush, doc!”

“You’ll be rushing somewhere, feet first, if—”

“Lot of good guys be heading for hospital cots before I will,” Pedley scowled at the firemen stretched on the sidewalk, at internes working on inhalators. “I have to find out who sent ’em there.” He climbed in his car.

He felt queer. Light-headed. The high-pitched humming inside his skull bothered him. His throat felt numb. Maybe he should have let doc examine him after all.

But he knew what the prescription would be: Take it easy. Flat on your back.

Too many men that way, now. Might be more, if the incendiarist who must have started this sky-high fire wasn’t nailed promptly.

He could phone the Bureau, ask for deputies. But the address next to Brunberg — in the little black book he’d taken from the switchboard — was only nine blocks away. He could get to it as quickly as he could put the call through...

This Brunberg might not know anything about Dobby’s death. Or about the spilled naptha which had spread what would have been a waste-basket fire into a blaze that could have gutted a dozen buildings except for the speed and skill of Mac and his men.

Brunberg might have a good explanation for his presence up on the forty-first floor, a few minutes before the fire broke out. But then why had the Webster girl pretended she didn’t know of Brunberg’s trip up there with this Carlina? Why that crack about the blow-up?

The apartment house of Forty-seventh was a converted walkup, with an automatic elevator, a brass plate with push buttons, a speaking tube hung on a hook.

Brunberg was 3A. He took the speaking tube off the hook, thumbed the button. No answer.

He jabbed the one marked Superintendent. It took half a dozen pushes before the electric latch buzzed, let him in. A door at the end of a short, dark hall opened. A fat woman in a yellow bathrobe clattered out in sleazy mules.

“Brunberg,” he began, swallowed, started over. “Brunberg... 3A.” His voice was merely a whisper! Those damn fumes had paralyzed his vocal cords!

“What you want, mister!” The woman backed hastily into her room, half closed the door, spoke sharply from behind it.

“Fire Department,” Pedley whispered hoarsely. He held out his gold badge. “Keys to 3A... official business.”

“I don’t let nobody in my tenants’ apartments when they ain’t there, mister. You from the Fire Department, you get a warrant! Or call a policeman!”

Pedley jammed his foot in the door. “Brunberg’s place of business went up, half an hour ago. Dozen men hurt. One dead. Want to find out where Brunberg is. You’ve a phone. Get on it. Call the station. Ask ’em to send a wagon here. For you.”

The fat woman clapped a hand diagonally across her face so it covered her mouth and pulled the puffy flesh down under one eye. “Migaw! I didn’t know! Dead! Here!” She thrust keys at him. “Tag’s on it.”

He used the rickety elevator. At 3A he punched the door button. The buzzer sounded, but there was no action inside,

He opened the door, stepped in, felt for the wall-switch. In the dim light streaming in from the hall behind him, he glimpsed a swift blur of movement. He pulled back, throwing up an arm to protect his head...

The butt of a shotgun smashed him under the jaw, flush on his Adams apple. He staggered. The weapon swung back, clubbed him again.

He got his fingers on it, wrenched it away from the shadowy figure. He kicked. His shoe hit bone. He swung the shotgun, connected.

A chair crashed down on his head. It knocked him to his knees, but as he fell, he dived forward. His arms touched a shirt. He clawed at a belt, jerked. The man came to him, went down on top of him.

Pedley butted. He hooked a short left. He got up... and used his knee when he did. The man on the floor cried aloud in pain. Pedley clouted him once more with the stock of the shotgun. The man collapsed.

The Marshal stumbled to the door, found the light-switch, clicked it on.

A girl said, very tightly: “If you move one single muscle, I’ll pull the trigger.”

She was standing six feet away, flattened against the wall. She was not more than eighteen, slim, dark, with jet hair coiling down over the nape of an ivory neck, and dark eyes, squinting at the sudden light. A pretty face; too, in spite of the strain she was under.

The gun was a thirty-two hammerless, nickle-plated. Pedley’d heard them called “toys,” “popguns”. He had more respect for them than that. He froze.

The man on the floor rolled over, groaned, got an elbow underneath him, propped himself up. His face was a mask of blood from a cut on his temple. One eye was purple. His upper lip was swelling fast.

“Serve him right if you do put a bullet in him, baby. Dirty son nearly killed me.”

He rolled over, wobbled to his feet. Maybe forty but not fat. Stocky. Wide shoulders, under the blood-spattered sport shirt. His eyes were small and ugly.

“Drop that shotgun, you—”

Pedley did as requested.

The girl spoke through her teeth: “You better search him, Sam. He may have a gun on him.”

“Turn around,” Brunberg ordered. “Put your hands up on the wall.”

Pedley said: “Why don’t you call the cops?” Only he didn’t say it aloud. He tried to. But not even a whisper issued from his vocal chords!

Sweat broke out on his forehead. This was worse than being kayoed. Hands patted his hips, his armpits, his coat.

“Crummy hasn’t any pistol, Carlina!”

“Where’d you get the key to this apartment?” asked Carlina.

He took one hand away from the wall, slowly, pointed to his right pants pocket.

Brunberg snarled: “Why, you lousy—!” But one hand searched the pocket, came up with the badge.

“What in—!” Brunberg read the gold lettering: “Bureau of Fire Investigation... City of New York.”

Pedley nodded vigorously.

“He’s a dummy,” cried Carlina. “The Fire Department wouldn’t have an inspector who—”

Brunberg stepped close to the Marshal, sniffing.

“There’s smoke on his clothes!”

Pedley turned around, slowly, half expecting the shock of a bullet.

The girl held the gun out stiffly, with both hands. It was pointed at his navel.

The Marshal reached in his coat pocket, being careful to keep the movement of his hand slow. He brought out one of the envelopes, opened it.

Brunberg goggled, bent over, smelled.

“Dresses!” He seized the envelope.

Pedley nodded, pointed at him.

“Mine?” screamed Brunberg. “From the factory?”

The Marshal nodded again, His hand went back to his pocket, came out with a fountain pen.

On the envelope he wrote:

“Throat hurt. Liquor?”

Brunberg scuttled toward a cellarette. “How the hell would we know who you were! We thought you were a burglar.”

He brought a bottle. Cognac. He held out a glass.

Pedley shook his head, took the bottle, put it to his lips, tilted it.

The brandy stung like acid on raw flesh. It nearly strangled him. But the alcohol did jolt the nerves, thought Pedley doubted if the doc would have recommended the treatment.

“Shipping clerk,” he tried. It wasn’t much like his voice, that scratchy huskiness, but it was audible. “Your shipping clerk. Burned to death.”

“No!” Brunberg looked suddenly very worried. Carlina lowered the gun, let it dangle.

“Yes. Dozen firemen hurt.” Pedley drank again. “Fire was set. You were there tonight. About the time it was set.” His eyes went from one to the other questioningly.

Brunberg took out his handkerchief, mopped blood off his face. “That’s right. We were. But we didn’t start any bonfire in our building.”

“What’d you mean by telling Miss Foss you’d better get out before the blow-up, then?”

Brunberg’s mouth hung open foolishly, as if he couldn’t remember having said it. “Oh! That! I meant before hell began to pop around the office.”

“It popped, all right.” Pedley picked up the shotgun, but didn’t put down the bottle. He still felt shaky. He might need it again.

“Not that kind of hell,” the manager protested. “I was referring to what Mister Webster would say when he found out Carlina and I were married this morning.”

“Was he,” Pedley glanced at the girl, “fond of... uh... your bride?”

“Not especially.” Brunberg touched his black eye, tentatively. “But he’s fond of his niece, Hilda. And up to this morning I was engaged to marry her!”

“More to it than jealousy.” Pedley moved around the living-room, stopped in front of a Governor Winthrop secretary. “I’ve known guys to torch their sweetie’s house, after being given the bounce. Not a factory, though. Never heard of a shipping clerk being murdered because somebody was sore at somebody else!”

Carlina breathed: “Murder?”

“Yair. Before the blaze got going.” A pigskin attache case lay on the desk; Pedley fiddled with the clasp, got it open. “Killer clunked him, poured naptha on him, touched a match.”

“Why would anyone want to do a terrible thing like that!” Brunberg was horrified.

“Insurance, maybe.” The Marshal shuffled a batch of printed blanks, clipped together in the attache case. “You kept your stock covered, didn’t you?”

The manager held the handkerchief to his swollen lip. “Sure. Mister Webster’s thoroughly protected. But he won’t collect more’n eighty percent of what the merchandise is worth, even if it’s a total loss.”

“Total,” Pedley agreed. He picked out one of the filled-in forms

There were a score of items listed. “What’s this stuff worth, Brunberg?”

The manager looked sick. “Hard to say. Possibly twenty-twenty-five thousand... at wholesale. That was our winter line, those numbers. Pure wool gabardine, practically all of it. But who cares about the goods, with a man dead!”

“I do,” Pedley was blunt. “You say most of these dresses were all wool?”

“Few might have been a 60–40 mixture,” the manager hedged. “Most of it was guaranteed pure virgin wool.”

“Maybe you can kid the consumer.” Pedley slid the inventory sheet back in the attache case, closed it, picked it up. “You can’t pull that with a chemist. Those ashes,” he nodded toward the envelope Brunberg had laid on the arm of a chair, “will analyze ninety percent rayon. Maybe ninety-five percent. If you’re going to try to collect twenty-five thousand on the strength of the goods being pure wool, you’d better think twice.”

“I’m not collecting,” Brunberg retorted. “It don’t mean a thing in my life. Mister Webster owns the company, except for a couple shares Hilda holds. He’ll get the dough. Don’t be making out I’m putting anything over...”

“Nobody’s putting anything over,” Pedley eyed him bleakly. “Somebody might be planning to. I’d say Doblin got in the way of that plan. Got barbecued, for doing it.”

“Sam!” Carlina pleaded. “Tell him! Tell him! First thing you know, they’ll be claiming it was you. There’s no need to protect anyone, now—”

Pedley said: “No possibility of getting away with it, either.”

The manager looked as if he was about to burst into tears. “All right. Okay. I‘ll give you the straight. Carlina and I went up to the factory tonight to check on some monkey business I just learned about, today, by accident.”

Little man, that makes a busy day, the Marshal said to himself. Getting married. Discovering some fidoodling in your firm’s business. Being mixed up in murder and arson. Aloud, he said:

“Less merchandise on hand than there was supposed to be? Shortage that might be covered up by a fire?”

“In a way. I found out one of our customers was selling our Elmart model, retails for $48.50, at around $39.98. His competition found out about it, got mad, asked me how he could sell so low. Come to check into it, that particular customer never bought any of the Elmart numbers. But he had ’em. On sale. I saw ’em.”

“Sam investigated,” Carlina cried, “and found the fella bought a lot of cheap stuff, to sell for around $22.50. But what was shipped out to him was fifteen dozen high price numbers.”

“So I figure,” Brunberg began to talk louder and faster, “I figure somebody in our organization is in cahoots with this retailer. And if with one, maybe with others. That’s what we went up for, tonight. To see if the dresses on the racks check with the inventory.”

Pedley moved toward the door.

“They don’t tally,” Carlina said. “The stuff on the racks is all cheap models. Not what’s supposed to be there at all.”

Pedley tucked the attache case under his arm. “Who’d you see there?”

“Dobby,” said Brunberg. “He was getting an order ready to go out in the morning. I put it to him. He looks surprised, gives me a lot of double-talk, claims he doesn’t know a thing about the switch. Says all he does is ship the goods we give him, an’ check with the duplicate invoices.”

“Who gives him his orders?” Pedley motioned them out to the elevator.

Carlina looked at her husband. He looked unhappy.

“I do,” he admitted. “I’m supposed to, anyway. But I never okayed any shipments of Elmart to that creep!”

Making it look as if the dead shipping clerk was a crook and a conniver, thought Pedley. Could be, of course. On the other hand:

“Doblin still working when you left?”

“Yes.” Carlina clung tightly to Brunberg’s arm as they descended to the street level. “He was pretty bitter at Sam. Talked about quitting his job. Threatened to go to Mister Webster. But he was still wrapping dresses and packing them in boxes when... when...” she faltered.

“Hilda came in and found us together,” Brunberg growled. “She threw a fit. Called Carlina six kinds of a witch. Told me I’d be looking for a new job soon’s her uncle came back from Florida. We got out of there in a hurry.”

“Didn’t go into the matter of the inventory.” Pedley made it a flat statement.

Carlina explained: “There was no use trying to talk to her. She was in such a rage because I got Sam.”

“It’s a fine way to start a honeymoon,” Brunberg glowered. “Arrested for... what are you charging us with, huh?”

Pedley slid back of the wheel. “I’m taking you in protective custody, time being...”

The policewoman sitting in the chair beside the screen in the Protective Custody Ward rose hastily, saluted:

“Poor kid’s been sicker’n a pup. But she’s better. Doc says she has to stay in bed.”

“Yair.” Pedley went behind the screen.

Hilda lay pallid on the narrow cot, her skin waxy, eyes staring at the ceiling. She rolled her head weakly to one side when she heard the Marshal.

“Had a tough night, didn’t you.” He sat on the foot of the cot.

“Pretty bad.” She smiled wanly. “The worst is thinking about Dobby.”

And the others, he said silently. The other good men, lying on other cots — fighting for air — lungs damaged for life, if they lived...

He said: “Why didn’t you tell me Brunberg and his wife had been up there tonight?”

Her lips quivered. She turned her face away. “I was so damn nasty to them, when I first learned they’d been married... I just didn’t want to make things worse by getting them mixed up in all that awful mess.”

“Yair. Did Doblin tell you why they came up to the factory?”

“No. I didn’t see him, after they left.”

Pedley raised his voice: “Bring Brunberg here.”

A bluecoat came around the corner of the screen, hanging on to Brunberg’s elbow.

“Sam!” Hilda struggled to sit up. “Why have they got you, Sam! I never told them—”

Brunberg said loudly: “There’s nothing to tell!”

“No... no, of course not!” Hilda burst into sobbing. “I didn’t mean to give anything away, Sam.... you have to believe that... I did hate you... for double-crossing me. But I don’t want to hurt you... I wouldn’t have said a thing—”

The manager insisted: “There’s not a damn thing—”

“Yair,” Pedley cut him short. “Sure. That inventory racket you were in, together.”

Hilda crouched back against her pillow, aghast.

Brunberg shivered, eyes round with fear.

“Had to be at least two of you in it,” the Marshal went on. “One on the outside to make the deal with the retailer. One on the inside to fix the books. You could have cleaned up on the old man that way for a long time, shipping out expensive garments, billing the customer for cheap ones, collecting the difference and splitting it. Only Miss Foss broke up the lovely friendship.”

Brunberg waggled his head vehemently. “I knew there was something screwy about the shipments, but I didn’t have any part—”

Hilda craned her neck forward like a hissing swan: “You scabby liar! I suspected what you were up to, fooling around with those invoices every night, after the office closed. But I kept quiet, hoping that after we were married, I could straighten it out... or keep my uncle from doing anything to you!”

Brunberg snarled: “That’s going to be the line, hah! So I’ll do some talking. I knew there was something screwy about counts, but since we were engaged—”

Pedley smiled grimly. “When thieves fall out.”

Hilda went on as if she and Sam Brunberg were alone in the ward:

“You knew I was wise to you, Sam. When you tricked me by latching up with that empty-headed window-dummy, you were afraid I’d spill the beans. So you rushed right around to give your version to Dobby, hoping he’d tell my uncle. Instead, he accused you of switching the invoices, so you killed him!”

The manager squirmed away from the policeman, stuck his face close to hers, his eyes venomous: “No...! you don’t. You’re not going to pin that on me. You murdered Dobby because you thought if he was dead, everybody’d blame him for the missing garments!”

Pedley showed his teeth, without smiling. “Two to one against you, Miss Webster. Brunberg has his wife to back up his story of what happened in the, factory tonight. You haven’t anyone.”

“Of course, Carlina’d lie about it,” she screamed.

“You could try to put it on him, in court. But you’ve two strikes against you. You lied about running out in the factory after the fire started. You didn’t. There wasn’t any dark smoke in the office when I crashed in there. Just light gray... wood and rayon scraps, plastic buttons... but none of the fumes that would have been there if the garments had been burning and the office door had been opened.”

“I told you the truth!” she was hysterical.

“No. What happened was, after you bopped Doblin, you touched a match to the naptha, waited until you made sure it was going — ran to the office and slammed the door. Then you waited a few minutes before phoning in the alarm, because you didn’t want the blaze put out before all those cheap dresses had been burned.”

She tensed like a cat about to spring.

Pedley got off the cot. “You overdid it. By the time you’d phoned in the alarm and opened the safe, the nitrous fumes got to you. Knocked you out.”

She sprang, fingers claw-like, toward Brunberg.

He recoiled, bumping into the policeman. The officer tried to get in between them.

She fought like a wildcat. Her hand flashed to the bluecoat’s holster.

The gun came out. She poked it at Brunberg’s chest, pulled the trigger. It didn’t fire the first time, but before Pedley could knock the barrel up, she’d fired again.

Brunberg grunted. “No! Ah!” A small, red worm crawled out of his sport shirt just above the V of his vest, inched down beneath the vest.

Pedley got the gun. The policeman pinioned Hilda’s arms.

She lay huddled there, sobbing:

“It was Sam’s fault. He got me into it, in the first place.”

Pedley looked down at her. “You didn’t try to kill your fiance... until after we caught you. It was Doblin. Remember?”

“I knew Dobby would tell my uncle. He said he was going to. When I saw he was going to be dangerous... I...”

“You might have a thing there,” Pedley said wearily. “Putting a dangerous person out of the way. Not a bad idea.”

Content

Stewart Sterling
The Flaming Lady Murder