Indianapolis Times, Volume 40, Number 263, Indianapolis, Marion County, 23 March 1929 — Page 10

PAGE 10

CHAPTER XLV < Continued) “Here, you! That's my arm you're jerking out of its socket! Come quiet now, Romero, or I’ll bash your pretty patent-leather head in!” Ramon Romero! Rita Dubois’ dancing partner at the Golden Slipper and—her husband! Dazed, Ruth Lester followed the trio into the elevator, the crowd having been roughly forced back by the uniformed policeman. . . . CHAPTER XLV I WHEN the elevator doors opened at the seventh floor, Ruth Lester ran ahead to open the door to Borden's suite, for Ramon Romero’s frantic efforts to escape were occupying the entire attention of both the policemen and the detective. Another of those shameful tableaux that follow in the wake of murder and of w’hich Ruth had seen enough in the last thirty hours to last her a lifetime, if she had ever craved morbid excitement, met her eyes. In a chair drawn up to the large “library” table in the center of Borden’s reception room, the exhausted body of a woman half sat, half lay. her head resting on the table, her arms outflung in a gesture of infinite weariness. And crouching over her. so that the breath of his menacing words stirred the dark, disheveled hair, was Detective Sergeant McMann. "Sure I'll let you rest, and I’ll let you eat and I’ll let you have a drink, when you come clean, Rita! You robbed Borden’s dead body! That's all I'm accusing you of! That's all! Come on now, Rita—get it over with!” Neither Rita Dubois nor the detective had heard Ruth’s almost noiseless opening of the doer, but when a moment later, Ramon Romero. dragged to the door by his captors, spat out a foreign oath, the girl’s body became electrified, was; out cf the chair too quickly for human eyes to take in each of her : cat-like movements. “Ramon! Oh. my God! Now they’ve got you!” The too-handsome, swarthy face of the prisoner became convulsed with hatred as his eyes took in the horror-stricken face of his wife, but McMann roughly interrupted the torrent of Spanish invectives by or* dering the detective to bring in his quarry. “Where did you find him, Casey?” fhc detective sergeant asked his subordinate, when the male dancer had been rudely forced down into a chair at the table across from his wife. “In the lobby downstairs,” Casey admitted. "Pound a gun on him. Here it is ... . And he made no bones of what he’d come for—was layin' for his w’ife to kill her for two-timin’ him with Borden.” n a a RUTH gratefully but silently slipped into a chair which the uniformed policeman had drawn to the table for her, and raised compassionate blue eyes to Rita’s devastated face. For a moment she thought the ; dancer w'as going to faint, but slowly a quivering hand found its customary place on a slim hip, and the supple body regained a pathetic tatter of its old nonchalant insolence. “Well"—Rita shrugged, and her voice was hard, bitter, weary, with a -terrible undercurrent of amusement—“the joke’s on little Rita, all right! Laying for me to kill me, were you —like you killed —” But she bit back the name that had almost slipped out. “You nretty dancing fool, you! Didn't you know I did it—for you!—because you had me so ga-ga about you—?” “Just a minute, Rita!” McMann clamped a hard hand on the girl’s shoulder. “If you’re ready to make a confession, it is my duty to place you under arrest, and to warn you that anything you say may be used against you—” “Oh, dry up!” the dancer retorted Wearily. “This is iust a little quarrel between husband and wife. Yeah! That pretty boy is my hus-

THE NEW Saint-Sinner ByJlnneJiustin iy m. sDnuxnc

“I wonder what Nils wants with me,” Crystal pretended surprise. She spoke into the mouthpiece: ‘‘This is Crystal. Nils. Did you, want to Speak to me?” She listened, a smile breaking over hei face. ‘‘Oh. that’s dear of you, Nils! I didn't know whether you really meant it last night or not. Thanks awfully! .. . Oh. Nils! You are a darling! I’ll telephone Tony as soon as I hang up. Oh, that will be all right! "Os course you mustift stop your work to drive in for us. Tony will drive us both out. and if for any reason she can’t go, I’m sure Faith will be glad to drive me . . . Thanks again, Nils. I’m so glad you and Rhoda want us . . . Good-by!” She hung up the receiver and faced her audience of two with shining eyes and flushed cheeks. “Nils wants Tony and me to come out to the farm for as long as w r e can stay, to keep Rhoda company. Isn’t it thoughtful of him? You won’t mind if I go. Faith?” Faith’s “Os course not. darling!” was cut across by Cherry’s gasps of inarticulate rage. But not even Cherry dared countermand an invitation issued by her husband. As Crystal turned back to the phone to call Tony Tarver, she heard Cherry’s gasps turn into sobs, then the staccato clatter of her running heels down the hall Waiting for the connection, Crystal turned toward Faith and a smile of complete understanding passed between them. Impulsively, Faith stopped and kissed the girl at the telephone. "Now 111 go help Cherry pack and get Hope ready for the joumfy ...... V'hi'P'TP'*. * Hnn'p of

. band all right! Now laugh that off!” McMann did not obey. "So your husband killed Borden because you were going away with him, and now' he wants to finish his job by killing you. That right?” “Killed Borden?” Rita repeated scornfully, then broke into laughter which seemed to be born of-genu-ine amusement. I “Do you want to know where this | dancing sheik of mine was on Saturday afternoon from 1 o'clock till 4. when Willette Wilbur and I picked him up? . . . “Well—And if you don't laugh now, it’s because your face got froze into the scow'! the last hard freeze w r e had—Ramon was in Madame R senstein’s beauty parlor—‘Temfile of Esthetic Beauty, she calls it—shooting the family bankroll—” "For three hours?” McMann w r as heavily sarcastic. “Sure!” Rita retorted scornfully. “How long do you think it takes to get a haircut, a shampoo with hot oil treatment, a facial, a manicure, a pedicure, and an eyebrow Mucking? Did you think God made him to look like that?” and she pointed a j mocking finger at her husband. "Check this right now, Birdwell!" | McMann flung the order to the still | bored and apparently somnolent de- ; tective seated at Benny Smith’s desk. “Telephone number’s Circle 0430,” Rital answered. “/ little blond homewTecker, name of Nanette. took care of him. She always does,” she added viciously. “Oh, you’ll find he w r as there all riMit, Big Boy,” she turned insolently McMann again. "i. that I telephoned him a little *r half-past two. I called from v lobby of this building to tell hin that it was all right—l’d got the . shYor him.” “TIUT you didn't, tell him you’d O robbed your dead lover’s body to get it, did you?” McMann prounced. “No! Because it wasn’t true!” Rita flashed, her black eyes blazing. “Say, I’m getting sick of you harping on that line! If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times that Harry Borden gave me the other half of the SSOO bill, of his own free will and accord, and that he was alive w'hen I left him!” McMann shrugged, and abandoned that line for anew one. of more immediate interest. “So the money w'as for Romero, w r as it? What did he need SSOO for? To pay his beauty parlor bills?” Before Rita could reply, Birdwell interrupted to say he had Madame Rosenstein on the wire. The detective sergeant after identifying himself, put his questions with a brutal conciseness and rapidly that must have been a severe shock to the high priestess of “The Temple of Esthetic Beauty,” but when he hung up there w'as no need for him to admit to the room at large that Romero’s alibi had been corroborated. “Now, Rita —no use for me to try to talk to that Spanislf-jabbering husband of yours—Romero may not have killed Borden, but he’d killed someone and needed money for a getaway! Out with it, and save time. You know damned well I’ll get the goods on him anyw'ay ” “Then why should I do your work for you?" Rita retored insolently. “I think I can help you. chief,” Detective Casey volunteered. "This is a bird one of them foreign countries —in South America somewhere, the Argentine, I guess it was—told us to keep an eye peeled for. Killed his sweetie down there, for making eyes at another Hot Tamale. We got his picture on file at headquarters. Guess one of the boys from his old home town blew’ in and piped him at the Golden Slipper and shook him down for blackmail to the tune of half a grand.” As if each of Casey's hard-boiled sentences was a bullet w’hich had found its mark in her exhausted body. Rita sagged lower and lower. until she w’as again in the position in which Ruth, opening the door, had found her —half sitting, half lying in her chair, her head

mirth running through the words. "You think it, will work?” Crystal begged .. . “Oh, hello! I want to speak to Tony, please! . . . No, Annabelle. I’m not a reporter! This is Crystal Hathaway.” When Faith entered Cherry’s open closet door as if she had been caught in a crime. “Well? Came to laugh at me, did you? I believe you cooked up this ridiculous scheme yourself. Faith Lane Hathaway!” “What scheme?” Faith asked cooly, reasonably. “I had no more idea that Nils was going to call Crystal than you had, Cherry. “Surely Nils has a right to invite a couple of girls out for a house party to keep his sister—and himself from becoming too lonely. A farm in November—” “Shut up!” Cherry shrilled, batting furiously at the tears which were spilling down her apricottinted cheeks. The wild disorder of her copper-and-gold curls gave mute evidence at them with frenzied fingers. “A started whimper from the bed made her whirl from her sister to her awakening child. | Melodramatically, Cherry dropped to her knees beside the bed and gathered the astonished child to her breast. “Poor baby! Poor little fatherless darling! What’s going to become of us. Hope, my poor baby?” “Want Nils!” Hope pronounced distinctly, her tiny bare feet kicking against her mother’s breast. “Wanna go home: Want Nils!” "Then we’ll go home, darling!” Cherry cried. “Thought they’d have It all their own way, did they? Imagine Nils falling for a silly little dumbbell like Crystal Hathaway!” IT n-

on the table, her arms outflung in utter defeat. And across the table, slowly, uncertain of its welcome, came Ramon Romero’s beautifully manicured hand. At that familiar touch Rita raised her head and gazed at her husband with incredulous hope. “You're not mad at me any more, Ramon?” she asked, in a wistful voice. “You wouldn’t really have killed Rita, would you, Baby? Honest—there wasn’t any other way to get the money but to string Borden along. I didn’t ever mean to come across w r ith him —I w'as going to give him the slip as sooj? as I got my hands on the cash. Honest to God I was, honey ” n n n ACROSS the table Ramon Romero leaned as far as his manacles would permit, and lifted his wife’s hands to his lips. “I go with you now!” he said arrogantly to Detective Casey. “You’re mighty right you will! ’ McMann agreed grimly. “Take this dancing sheik down tc headquarters and book him on a charge of carrying firearms till w r e know more about his comic opera past,” he added to the detective and the patrolman. “May I go w’ith him?” Rita begged, springing to her feet as her husband was being led to the door. "Sure! ... If you’ll come across with a confession that you robbed Borden’s dead body” McMann retorted. grinning cruelly. “Maybe they'll give you a cell right next to •Baby’s’—” “Oh, my Gaw'd, can’t you lay off that?” Rita cried with w'eary scorn, as she wilted into her chair again. “Please, Mr. McMann,” Ruth r’-'-ed suggest, in the painful silence that fell upon the group remaining after Ramon Romero had been taken aw'ay. “it’s ’way after four, and the cleaning women are on duiy now’. You’re going to have Letty Miller in for further question - ing, aren’t you?” “Letty Miller?” McMann gave her an harassed, puzzled look. “Don’t you remember? —she’s the w'oman W'ho cleans Jack’s offices, and the one who admitted Mr. Borden Friday night with her passkey,” Ruth explained meekly. “Oh, yes!” the detective agreed wearily. “You hac some fantastic theory about the scrubwoman’s having left Hayw'ard’s door unlocked Saturday afternoon, so that any one might have walked in and used his phone and his gun. “Won’t do any harm to ask her, I suppose. And I might as W'ell check Martha Manning's story about having been here Friday night. If the scrubwoman says she was still working in this corridor and didn’t see or hear anything of the Manning woman. . . . Get her for me, won't you, Birdwell? I’ll stay out here and answer the phone if it rings.” The detective sergeant had to make good that promise less than a minute after the door had closed upon his departing subordinate. He strode to Benny’s desk, lifted the receiver and grow’led into the mouthpiece: “Hello! McMann speaking. . . . Who? Oh, Carlson! . . . What? Lost her! Well, I'll be— What the hell do you. think I had you shadowing her for? . . , How’s that? . . .” Ruth, listening intently to the one-sided conversation, saw a thundercloud settle on the detective sergeant’s face. After a long pause, in which Carlson w’as evidently talking fast to put himself right w’ith his chief, McMann growled disgustedly: “Well, find her! D’you hear? And don’tcome back till you do!” b n a HE hung up the receiver and relayed the new’s to Ruth Lester, his. voice harsh with disgust and anger: “That was Carlson—the blankety-blank fool of a detective I detailed to keep an eye on the Manning woman. “And now r he calls up to whine a long alibi as to how he ‘lost’ her. Says he followed her to the door of the ladies’ rest room of a department store at a quarter to four, and she gave him the slip somehow, though there’s only one door. “He got suspicious w’hen she’d been in there twenty minutes, and sent the maid in charge to look for her. Not a trace of the woman, though he’d had every female in the rest room paraded before him— Well, Birdwell?” he snapped, as his assistant opened the door.

“The Miller woman will be here in a minute, sir. I found her in—” “All right!” McMann interrupted impatiently, as he flung himself into a chair opposite Ruth and beside Rita Dubois, at the big table in the center of the outer office. “I’ve got to think,” he muttered, and proceeded to do so, in frowning silence. Ruth, whose chair faced the open door between the outer office and Borden’s private office, so that she had an oblique view of the allimportant airshaft window beneath which she had discovered Harry Borden’s body cold in death and through which McMann obstinately believed that Jack Hayward had shot the promoter, sat silent, too, but with a tiny smile tugging | at the corners of her lovely mouth. As the silence continued unbroken, she saw the black pigeon alight upon the sill of the open window, then, made bold by the absence of human beings in the private office and the utter silence of those in the outer room, the bird which Ruth, in a bitter moment, had christened “Nemesis,” fluttered to the floor. The girl shivered involuntarily as she saw the black pigeon pecking at bread crumbs spilled upon the very spot where Harry’ Borden's life blood had left its dark stain. She was glad when the door opened and the slight sound startled the black pigeon into flight, upward and out of the open window. But the next moment her own blood turned to ice in her veins. For from just behind Ruth's chair came a shrill Banshee wail of sheer terror, rising, rising, breaking at last on a note of supreme horror, as a fainting body fell heavily to the floor. (To Be Continued) The search nears its end. A thrilline climax in the next ehap*".

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES .

OUR BOARDING HOUSE

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BOUTS AND HER BUDDIES

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THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE

The power of the Church was great in the days cf Pope Innocent 111. Innocent forced King Philip Augustus of France to quit a life of sin. King Leon of Spain was treated in like manner. England was placed under an interdict and King John’s crown threatened had he not made submission. S’** , s. *. *■*. TV— -S So*c.*t fj M. ■ Tk. -* *r—’-S - !)/

By Ahern

i, One of Innocent’s, greatest deeds was appointment of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury.

OUT OUR WAY

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SKETCHES BY BESSEY. SYNOPSIS BY BRAUCHEB

Langton was to play a great part in worU history. Though Innocent himself bade Langton dist, the archbishop played a large part in uniting the larons to demand from the king the Magna Charta, r Creat Charter, the first great document of democracy. 3 . a .i copr-f’w- Th * &•* (To Be Cpitinued)^

ivi Williams

- 15 v M'U’tliJ

By Blosser

B,v Crane

By Small

By Cowan