Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

fully alibied by c or more customers. I had alibied Jack. Estelle-bui wasn’t

suicide. And Hazel.

If Estelle’s fingerprint meant what it seemed; Ha:

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was out-not time enough to commit a murder, arrange a corpse, wipe a handle, and

~get downstairs to my side before Jack started the show.

But in that case nobody could have done it-except a hypothetical sex maniac

who did not mind a spot of butchery in front of a window full of people. Nonsense!

Of course the fingerprint was not conclusive. Hazel could have pushed the

button with a coin or a bobby pin, without destroying an old print or making a new

one. I hated to admit it but she was not clear yet.

Again, if Estelle did not push the button, then it looked still more like an

insider; an outsider would not know where to find the button nor have any reason to

push it.

For that matter, why should Hazel push it? It had not given her an alibi-it

didn’t make sense.

Round and round and round till my head ached.

It was a long time later that I went over and tugged at the covers.”Hazel-”

“Yes, Eddie?”

“Who punched the buzzer in the eleven o’clock show?”

She considered. “That show is both of us. She did- she always took charge.”

“Mmmm… . What other girls have worked in the Mirror?”

“Why, none. Estelle and I opened the show.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ve got it. Let’s call Spade Jones.”

Spade assured me he would be only too happy to get out of a warm bed to play

games with me and would I like a job waking the bugler, too? But he agreed to come

to the Joy Club, with Joy in tow, and to fetch enough flat feet, fire arms, and

muscles to cope.

I was standing back of the bar in the Joy Club, with Hazel seated where she

had been when she screamed and a cop from the Homicide Squad in niy seat. Jack and

Spade were at the end of the bar, where Spade could see.

“We will now show how a man can be two places at

one time,” I announced. “I am now Mr. Jack Joy. I time is shortly before midnight.

Hazel has just left 1 dressing room and come downstairs. She stops off a moment at

the little girls room at the foot of 1 stairs, and thereby misses Jack, who is

headed those same stairs. He goes up and finds Estelle in 1 dressing room, peeled

and ready for her act-prol bly.”

I took a glance at Jack. His face was a taut mask, I he was a long way from

breaking. “There was an gument-what about, I don’t know, but it might h2 been over

the trumpet boy she had swapped shows meet. In any case, I am willing to bet that

she stops it by switching out the dressing room light to ch~ him out.”

First blood. He flinched at that-his mask crack “He didn’t stay out more

than a few moments,” I w~ on. “Probably he had a flashlight in his pocket-h probably

got one on him now-and that let him back into that terrible, dark room, and switch

on 1 light. Estelle was already on the stage, anointing h self with catsup, and

almost ready to push the buz2 She must have been about to do so, for she had star

the egg timer. He grabbed the prop dagger a stabbed her, stabbed her dead.”

I stopped. No blood from Jack this time. His m~ was on firmly. “He arranges

her in the pose-ten s onds for that; it was nothing but a sprawl-wipes handle and

ducks out. Ten seconds more to this sp Or make it twenty. He asks me if the buzzer I

sounded and I tell him No. He really had to know, Estelle might have punched it

before he got to he

“Hearing the answer he wanted, he bustles aroi~ a bit like this-” I monkeyed

with some glassware ~ picked up a bar spoon and pointed with it to the sta “Note

that the Mirror is lighted and empty-I’ve. the bypass on. Imagine it dark, with