Read Online Death Takes a Bow by Frances Lockridge - Free Book Online Page A

“Not nearly young enough !”
    â€œChildren !” Mrs. North said. For the first time in my life, Mrs. North thought, I sound like a mother. “Margie! Lizzie !”
    â€œBeth,” said the foremost of the children, and she let her sailor slip away to meet, it was evident, this new and greater emergency. “Beth , Aunt Pam.” There was a kind of wail in her voice. “Not Lizzie !” She blushed furiously, then, and looked back at her sailor in evident anguish. The sailor, however, merely looked uneasily at Pam North.

4
    Thursday, 9:25 P . M . to 10:20 P.M.
    Bill Weigand watched Pamela North drop to the auditorium floor and go off to meet her nieces. He turned back to the platform, counting off. There was the dead, Victor Leeds Sproul. There were the quick—Gerald North; Dr. Klingman, who still hovered over Dr. Dupont; Dr. Dupont himself, who at first glance seemed somewhere between the quick and the dead; the woman who, Weigand gathered, had introduced Mr. North so that he might in turn introduce Sproul, thus earnestly duplicating efforts; a very well finished off, rather saturnine man at the moment unidentified; two men without distinguishing characteristics who presumably were somehow connected with Today’s Topics Club; Sergeant Mullins and assorted policemen.
    It was a mixed bag, Weigand thought. There was no particular reason to think that the cat in it was a murderer, or even that there was a cat. But detectives must start somewhere. Weigand looked the catch over speculatively, wondered about Mr. North’s little dark man and where he was and who he was and if he had anything to do with anything, and let his glance fall on Dr. Klingman. But he already, through Dr. Francis, knew what Klingman could tell him as a physician and it was not clear that Klingman had any other capacity. Weigand looked at Dr. Dupont and decided he had to start somewhere, and that the tall old man might as well be the where.
    He took a step toward Dr. Dupont and the well finished, saturnine man intervened. He stepped forward briskly, a man who knew what he was about, and confronted Bill Weigand. Weigand stopped and looked at him.
    â€œY. Charles Burden,” the saturnine man said.
    â€œI don’t know,” Weigand said. “Why?”
    The saturnine man smiled faintly.
    â€œI’m used to that one,” he said. “Very used to it. I am Y. Charles Burden. The ‘Y’ stands for Young, which my misguided parents thought to be a suitable name for an offspring.”
    Mr. Burden stopped, leaving it up to Weigand if he wanted it.
    â€œVery interesting,” Weigand told him. “I am—”
    Mr. Burden did not think it necessary for Weigand to finish.
    â€œA detective,” Mr. Burden told him. “Heard about you. Read about you some place.” He looked Weigand’s spare figure and thin face over with interest. “Ever lecture?” he inquired. “Might go, you know. Secrets of the police; famous murders I have solved; how to catch saboteurs. Very interested in saboteurs, people are just now. Naturally.”
    â€œAnd I, just now, am interested in a murder,” Weigand told him. “This murder. Have you anything to do with it?” He considered Burden. “You’d be his lecture agent, probably,” he said. “Right?”
    â€œI was,” Burden said. “I certainly was. Booked him from coast to coast—and back. Can you picture what this means—cancellations, substitutions, program chairman frothing, re-routing all over the place?” As he spoke his tone grew accusing; he ended in a stare which seemed to hold Weigand responsible. Weigand merely looked at him, blandly. When Burden seemed to expect an answer, Weigand told him that it was unfortunate.
    â€œMurder usually is,” Weigand said. “Inconveniences a lot of people. Friends, relatives, business associates, the police. To say nothing of the corpse.