Table of Contents

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Also by Ron Goulart

Copyright Page

One

Groucho Marx got back into the detective business again on Halloween of 1939. This time he solved, with some help from me, two more Hollywood murders and also managed to break up a spy ring and almost start another radio show.

He was proud of what we were able to accomplish as detectives and counterspies. “I can modestly state that I taught the FBI a few new tricks,” Groucho told reporters afterwards. “Of course, J. Edgar Hoover may never have the need to saw a woman in half or pull a rabbit out of his hat.”

The case, although we didn’t know it at the time, actually commenced for us on the night of Monday, October thirtieth. That was when Groucho bumped into, among others, Death, Satan, Paulette Goddard, and three separate Napoleons.

I’m Frank Denby, by the way, and I’d been working again with Groucho on a proposed new radio show. Before I became a scriptwriter, I was a crime reporter with the Los Angeles Times. I’m married to Jane Danner, the best-looking cartoonist in America.

Even though Jane wasn’t feeling exactly great that night, we decided to go to a large costume party at the enormous Seascape Pavilion over in Santa Monica. My wife was dressed as her mother’s favorite author, Jane Austen, and I went as—feeling somewhat sheepish about it—the Shadow.

Jane and I had been doing very well, and I was experiencing something that came close to being happiness. Still I couldn’t help thinking that this Halloween gathering, with its images of skeletons, ghosts, and death, was all too appropriate just now. The Second World War had officially started and was in full swing in Europe. Hitler had invaded Poland early last month; both England and France had then declared war on Germany. Meantime, the Soviet Union had signed a nonagression pact with Germany that put the two countries more or less on the same side. America was, so far, remaining neutral. But just about everybody, except the most dedicated isolationists, expected that would change, maybe before Christmas.

What none of us was aware of that night was that most of the essential figures in our next murder case were attending that Halloween party. Among them were one of the murder victims, plus the murderer, the head of the Nazi spy ring, and our client.

Let me explain who was giving this particular lavish Hollywood party and why Jane had convinced me it would be a good idea for us to accept the invitation.

Our host was Warren Lockwood. He was one of the wealthiest men in Southern California and came darn close to being a Howard Hughes doppelganger. Enormously influential, eccentric, and notorious for his romancing of glamorous movie actresses, Lockwood owned the Warlock Pictures movie studio, as well as the Lockwood Aero aircraft factory and a controlling interest in the Amalgamated Radio Network.

The Hollywood Molly radio show I was writing, based on Jane’s hit newspaper comic strip, didn’t air on Lockwood’s radio network. But the new radio show I was working on with Groucho looked like it had a good chance of getting an Amalgamated slot. On top of which, my agent had been telling me I was probably going to get hired at Warlock Pictures to do a rewrite of the movie script for Ty-Gor and the Ivory Treasure.

Jane was reiterating the above reasons, and a couple more, as we waited in the line of automobiles in front of the gleaming pavilion for an attendant to park our car.

“To sum it up, Frank, kowtowing to Warren Lockwood right now couldn’t hurt,” she concluded. “Besides, Groucho’ll be there too.”

I glanced out at the fog that was drifting in across the dark Pacific Ocean. “It’s just that it might be too much of a strain for you.”

“I can stand spending a few hours around Groucho.”

“C’mon, I mean that in your condition, the physical stress and—”

“Hey, this isn’t the Olympics,” she pointed out. “And I’m only three-months pregnant, remember?”

The fans who were lined up outside the big bright-lit glass and wrought-iron building were scrutinizing the occupants of the slowly moving cars. “There’s Carole Lombard!” somebody shouted out in the night.

“Like hell it is!”

“Sure, that’s her dressed up like Joan of Arc.”

“Naw, Lombard’d never do anything that dumb.”

When the scarlet-coated parking guy came around to my side of our Ford sedan, I asked Jane, “You’re sure you’re up to going to this shindig?”

“Absolutely. I’m fine. So relax.” Smiling, she opened her own door and stepped out into the misty evening.

“Who’s she?” cried a roped-off fan.

“She’s nobody,” shouted another.

Joining my wife and taking her arm, I told them, “That’s all you know.”

During most of the first half hour or so, I devoted myself to fetching a glass of ginger ale for Jane, whom I’d left sitting in one of the many alcoves overlooking the Santa Monica beach and the misty night ocean.

The Seascape Pavilion was a huge dome-ceilinged place, a cross between the Crystal Palace and a zeppelin hangar. The vast dance floor was ebony hued bordered by walkways of turquoise tile. There was already a crowd of over three hundred colorfully costumed people, the great and near-great of Hollywood, filling the place.

On the bandstand at the left, Warren Sattler and His Kings of Swing were playing. He’d had a fairly successful cover record of “I’ll Never Smile Again” and the band was playing that as I worked my way through the luminaries of the movie colony plus a large assortment of the usual fringe people.

I was easing my way toward the nearest bar and also hoping to spot Groucho in the crowd. I thought I saw him once, but it turned out to be, I’m fairly sure, his brother Harpo in a Groucho outfit.

I encountered a few actors and actresses I knew. Chester Morris, decked out as Henry the Eighth, stepped on the edge of my Shadow cape. He apologized and added, “We ought to do another radio show, kid.” Somebody goosed me, and I turned to see Carole Lombard, who was indeed in a Joan of Arc costume. Richard Dix, who’d been one of my idols in my youth, was dressed as a Royal Canadian mountie and already unsteady on his feet. He gestured with the hand holding his bourbon and water, asking, “Have you ever seen such a gathering of assholes?” I answered, “Often, alas,” and pushed onward.

Looming up ahead of me in the costumed crowd was Larry Shell, a photographer who was still with the L.A. Times. He was wearing one of his usual rumpled gray suits and, as a concession to the occasion, a lopsided pirate hat. He raised his camera and snapped a picture of a redheaded starlet in a hula skirt.

Standing next to her, one thick hand on her arm, was Jack O‘Banyon. Actor and amateur fascist, O’Banyon had organized a group of sympathetic cronies a couple years back and dubbed it O’Banyon’s Silver Shirt Brigade. Dressing up in specially tailored uniforms, the gang practiced military drills and rode horses in mock cavalry exercises. Sort of storm troopers on horseback.

O’Banyon, a wide, thickset man about six-foot-one, was wearing a Silver Shirt Brigade uniform that night. It consisted, as might be expected, of a silver shirt, black jodhpurs and boots, and a crimson armband that displayed a Maltese cross in a white circle. Groucho and I had had a run-in with the guy while we were investigating the Sherlock Holmes murder case.

As I got closer, I heard the bulky actor saying to Shell, “Hey, pansy, didn’t you hear what I said? No pictures of me and my girl.”

“Hey, this is still a democracy, Jack, and I’m free to—”

“Give me the goddamn camera, Shell.” The actor let go of the hula girl to hold out a hand. Like several of the other guests, he’d had a head start on his boozing.

I pushed toward them. “Back off, O’Banyon, and forget about it,” I advised.

He scowled at me. “Oh, it’s the extra Marx Brother. The honorary Hebrew boy,” the thickset actor said with an uncordial smile. “Keep your nose out of my damn business, Denby.”

Shell grinned at me. “Hi, Frank,” he said, lowering his camera. “If you’re the Shadow, aren’t you supposed to be invisible?”

“It comes and it goes, Larry. How’ve you—”

“Hey, you two bastards,” cut in the Silver Shirt, “I want that frigging camera right now.”

“Fellows, this is a party, and everybody has to get along.” Ronald Reagan, dressed as a cowboy, had left the side of his fiancée, Jane Wyman, and stepped between O’Banyon and us.

Lowering his voice, O’Banyon leaned close to the Warner actor. “Listen, Ronnie, I don’t want any pictures of me and this particular dame printed anyplace. So I’ve got to have—”

“Larry and the Times won’t run any pictures that’ll bother you, Jack,” Reagan told him, glancing back over his shoulder at Shell. “Isn’t that so, Larry?”

“Hell, I was planning to crop the son of a bitch out of it anyhow,” the photographer said.

“Now he’s calling me names and—”

“Fellows, let’s have a truce,” advised Reagan, pushing up the brim of his tan Stetson with his thumb. “You and Miss Truett go one way, Jack, and Larry and his friend will go another. Okay?”

After mumbling for a few seconds, O’Banyon grabbed his date’s arm and moved away.

“Thanks, Ronnie,” said Shell. “That was very diplomatically handled.”

“I seem to have a gift for this sort of thing,” he admitted, smiling. “And I’m really not fond of these uniformed bullies.” He returned to Jane Wyman.

“Thank you, too, Frank. I think I could’ve handled O’Banyon, but I appreciate your support,” Shell said. “And how’s Jane?”

“Expecting.”

“Boy, that’s swell. Keep in mind, by the way when it comes to picking a name, ‘Larry’ is a lot snappier than ‘Groucho.’” He glanced around. “Lot of rival camera guys here tonight, so I better be mushing on. See you around, buddy.”

I continued my journey toward the bar.

Dashiell Hammett, whom I’d met once, seemed to be in civilian clothes. Maybe he’d come as his own Thin Man, but I couldn’t ask him. He was passed out at the bar, slumped on a stool with his gray head resting next to an abalone-shell ashtray.

The fellow standing next to me while I waited for Jane’s ginger ale and a Regal Pale beer for myself was dressed as some sort of Egyptian god. I was fairly certain he was Boris Karloff, but he might’ve been George Zucco. Because of the jackal-head mask, it was tough to tell.

Myrna Loy bumped into me as I was struggling my way back to Jane, and a little of the hard-won ginger ale went splashing out of the glass and onto my dark cloak. Groucho had introduced me to her at a party a couple years back, but it was obvious she had no recollection of that.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she apologized.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Who’re you supposed to be, by the way?”

“I’m not at all sure. I ordered Maid Marian, but they sent this by mistake. Any ideas?”

“Madame Curie?”

“Not with this plunging neckline, no. And you’re supposed to be?”

“The Shadow.”

She nodded, smiled, said, “How charming,” and moved on.

I noticed Dinah Flanders just after that, but had no premonition that I’d soon be entangled in her life. A strawberry blonde, she was a discovery of Warren Lockwood’s and, at the moment, the most popular and successful star that Warlock Pictures had.

Her latest movie, This Dame Is Dynamite, had been a box-office smash earlier in the year, and she was at work on a new one, tentatively titled She Sure Did. That night she was dressed, even though she wasn’t carrying a head on a platter, as Salome.

About five months ago, with considerable attention from all the newspapers, wire services, and movie-fan magazines, Dinah had married director Eric Olmstead. A Britisher, he’d come to the States in 1937, after directing a couple of very successful films in England. There was talk he might soon be working on a big-budget movie with his wife.

A lean, balding man in his early forties, he was dressed as Sinbad the Sailor. When I worked my way around the couple, they seemed to be having a quiet disagreement.

“You really ought to go home, Eric,” the actress was urging.

“No, I’m perfectly all right, darling. I assure you.”

“If you aren’t careful, kiddo, you’ll …”

I pushed forward into the crowd and didn’t overhear anything further. Up close the director had looked very pale.

“Glad you could make it, Frank, old man.”

Warren Lockwood was standing in my path, grinning. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his late thirties, handsome in a somewhat weather-beaten way. It was news to me that he knew me by sight, since we’d never met and the invitation had been sent out by his staff.

“Good evening, happy Halloween,” I said. “Very nice party. Cozy.”

He shrugged. “Too many assholes in attendance, but that’s the way it goes in Hollywood.”

“So I hear.”

“And I’m sure a lot of them have contagious diseases, but you have to risk that once in a while. I understand you’re doing a swell job with the Hollywood Molly radio show, Frank. Is the lovely Jane here with you?”

“I left her over yonder. I’m on my way to—”

“Give her my best. Very charming young lady, and such a terrific artist. I’m thinking of starting a newspaper syndicate of my own, and I may see if we can buy up her contract. I wanted to be a cartoonist myself, but I got sidetracked.”

“It usually doesn’t pay as much as you’re—”

“Oh, and talk to Bob Wiener at Warlock about rewriting that lousy Ty-Gor script. What we have now is a piece of crap. We can use some humor, and see what you can do about the damn elephants. Oh, and we—”

A very languid Julius Caesar had pushed up to us and taken hold of Lockwood’s arm. It was the director Jason Smollet, lean, in his fifties, not more than five-foot-five. He was accompanied by a very handsome, very suntanned blond young man who was apparently impersonating Puck. Earlier in the thirties Smollet had had great success with a string of lavish historical epics in the Cecil B. DeMille manner, among them Rendezvous in Vienna and My Lady Greensleeves. Lately, though, he’d slipped some and his most recent film, released nearly a year ago, was a Columbia B movie called Bride of Satan.

Making an excuse-me gesture in my direction, Lockwood shook free of the director’s grasp. “You’re looking well, Jason.”

Smollet laughed, very briefly. “I can assure you, Warren, that I am not feeling well,” he said. “Truth to tell, I’m feeling rather lousy.”

“Sorry to hear that. Maybe you should’ve stayed home and—”

“I’m feeling bad, Warren dear, not because of any illness,” Smollet told him, “but, rather, because you seem to have betrayed me.”

“He double-crossed you, for Christ sake,” said the handsome Puck.

“Hush, Rudy,” advised the angry director. “I’m perfectly capable of handling my own—”

“How, exactly, did I betray you, Jason?”

“You promised me, not three months since, that I’d direct the epic you were planning to do with Robert Taylor.”

“We’ve been having trouble with MGM about loaning Taylor out to us,” said Lockwood. “Soon as we iron out certain—”

“Oh, really, Warren dear? I’m not, you know, some pea-brained little starlet you’re trying to lay on your casting couch,” cut in Smollet. “I can’t be screwed with an obvious line of bull.” His voice, growing angrier, was also rising.

“We can take this up in a few days, Jason. Make an appointment to—”

“Such an obvious stall is beneath you, Warren dear. I was just talking to George Cukor over by the bar, and he tells me that Louis Mayer has already agreed to loan you Bob Taylor.”

“George is a fine director, but he tends to exaggerate.”

“He also, being a dear friend of mine,” continued the angered director, “informed me that you’re offering the picture to that pudding-faced Limey, Eric Olmstead.”

“Not at all true. And now I really have—”

“Just because you used to sleep with Dinah Flanders is no reason to give this project to that talentless husband of hers.”

Very quietly and evenly Lockwood said, “We’ll drop this for now, Jason.”

The handsome blond, Rudy, said, “There’s Olmstead over there near Patsy Kelly.”

“Splendid, Rudy. I’ll go thrash this out with Olmstead here and now.” Smollet turned away. “He’s a mediocre director, but a fairly honest man. He’ll tell me the truth.”

Lockwood warned, “I don’t want one of your tantrums at my party, Jason.”

Adjusting his laurel wreath, Smollet glanced over his narrow shoulder. “I won’t go beyond a snit, Warren dear,” he promised as he and Puck left us.

“I suppose I should’ve told him I have no intention of ever hiring him for a damn thing,” said Lockwood.

“Probably not the right occasion,” I said.

“Oh, and if you bump into Groucho, mention to him that I like that idea you boys have for a radio show. I think that’s going to work for us.” He grinned, patted me on the arm, and surged into the crowd. He was the tallest Napoleon I’d run into thus far.

As I drew closer to the vicinity of my wife, I had to ease around an actress I didn’t quite recognize and a slim young man she seemed to be pleading with. She was dressed as Martha Washington, and he was wearing white tie and tails, a top hat, and a black cape. Him I recognized as Will Blackburn, a very popular and successful Hollywood psychic just then, and I thought he was probably dressed as Mandrake the Magician. He had a Mandrake moustache, but also a goatee. Could be it was his own facial hair.

The actress was clutching both of Blackburn’s arms just above the elbows. “C’mon, Will darling, you can surely tell me that much. Shall I take the damned part or not?”

“This is my day off,” he said, smiling. “No predictions.”

“But I have to let my agent know by tomorrow afternoon.”

“I can fit you in for a reading at eleven A.M.,” the psychic offered. “That’s the best I can do.”

“Can’t you at least give a little hint as to …”

I moved beyond hearing range.

When I reached my wife at long last, I found Groucho sitting at her feet smoking a cigar.

“Good evening, Julius,” I said.

“Rollo,” he said, popping to his feet, “do you realize what a grave injustice has been done to me?”

I handed Jane the glass of ginger ale. “There was more when I left the bar.”

Taking the drink, she said, “Groucho’s been grieving because Lockwood didn’t ask him to bring his guitar and sing tonight.”

“My guitar wasn’t invited,” he confirmed, exhaling smoke. “And my horse was ignored as well.”

“You don’t have a horse,” I reminded him, moving closer to Jane and putting my free hand on her shoulder.

“They’re not getting off that easy. I know a snub when I see one,” Groucho said. “In fact, I know a shrub when I see one, which makes me just awfully popular in horticultural circles.”

I attempted to lure him onto a different topic. “What’s your costume meant to be?”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln, obviously.” Though he had applied the greasepaint moustache he used in his movies, there was no Lincolnesque beard in evidence. Instead of a stovepipe hat, he was wearing one of his old Captain Spaulding pith helmets. And over the shoulders of his tweedy autumnal sport coat, he had thrown a shawl.

“You don’t look much like Abe Lincoln.”

“Neither did Abe Lincoln.”

“He never, for instance, wore a pith helmet.”

“He never happened to wear one when there were photographers around, true,” admitted Groucho. “But he was often seen with a shawl very much like this one draped over his careworn shoulders.”

“I doubt Lincoln’s shawl had “Souvenir of Youngstown, Ohio” embroidered across—”

“As a chap who’s gotten himself tarted up to resemble a potential pallbearer for Orson Welles, you’re in no position to cast aspersions,” Groucho informed me. “We might allow you to cast a few nasturtiums later in the evening, however, so stick around.”

“I just encountered Lockwood and—”

“That poltroon. He invites Ted Timberlake, Warlock Pictures’ answer to Gene Autry, to yodel some ditties from his cow operas and plunk his guitar at tonight’s festivities. Yet he misses the golden opportunity of having the man who’s known far and wide as the Kosher Segovia to—”

“Timberlake happens to be a very hot singing cowboy right now, Groucho, and Warlock is promoting the guy,” I cut in to remind him. “And lots of people, as inexplicable as it may seem, like cowboy tunes more than they like Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“I wasn’t planning to render my popular medley of ditties from The Mikado,” he informed me. “I would’ve favored the throng with ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’ the hit tune from our new Marx Brothers movie. I understand it’s been climbing on the Hit Parade charts. At the same time I myself have been climbing a greased pole.”

“How’s At the Circus doing at the box office?” Jane asked. The film had opened nationwide about two weeks earlier.

“MGM won’t tell us, but the last time Chico drove by the studio, he noticed they’d hung black crepe on all the gates,” he answered. “And I hear that Louis B. Mayer is planning to replace their Leo the Lion mascot with Leo the Turkey.”

Jane suggested, after sipping her ginger ale, “Maybe Ted Timberlake will loan you his guitar after he’s finished performing, and you can—”

“Would you ask Rubinstein to play on a piano loaned to him by Frankie Carle?”

I remembered to sample my beer. “Despite the fact that Lockwood hasn’t availed himself of your musical services,” I said, “he sure seems favorably inclined toward us. I think we’ve got a hell of a good chance of selling our show to his Amalgamated Radio Network, Groucho.”

“And why not, might I ask, since Groucho Marx, Secret Agent is the most brilliant comedy show to come along since Kay Kayser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge?” He turned toward Jane. “Have you read your hubby’s script of our planned new show, my dear?”

“Twice.”

“And what is your humble opinion of same?”

“I honestly think it might even be a shade funnier than Kay Kayser.”

“Exactly. And it’s guaranteed not to give you dishpan hands.”

A Los Angeles advertising agency had approached Groucho with the notion of doing another radio show. Since we’d worked together on a couple of earlier ones, including Groucho Marx, Master Detective, he’d brought me in on the new project. Groucho would be playing J. Edgar Bedspread, undercover man, and so far we had Margaret Dumont lined up to play an over-the-hill spy named Mata Herring, and Hans Conreid was going to portray a foreign agent named Herman Boring. Everybody had been very enthusiastic about my sample script, and we were set to cut a demonstration acetate early in November.

Groucho noticed a tall, lanky fellow go walking by, spurs jingling. He was wearing a high-crown black Stetson and a fringed movie-cowboy outfit. “Can that be Timberlake, the noted musical sodbuster of whom we were recently speaking?” he inquired, eyes narrowing. “If I accidentally stepped on his strumming hand, do you think—”

“Relax, Groucho,” I said, recognizing the guy. “That’s only Les Michaelson, Timberlake’s stunt double.”

“No use incapacitating the fellow then.” Gesturing again at the costumed crowd, Groucho asked, “Would, do you think, a cinemactress of the stature of Paulette Goddard attend such a brawl as this in the guise of Little Bo Beep?”

“Is this a rhetorical question?”

Using his cigar as a pointer, he said, “That young miss over there looks very much like the lady in question. And in a moment of madness I do believe that I promised her a dance.” He bowed toward my seated wife. “If you’ll excuse me, Lady Jane.”

As he went loping in the direction of the potential Paulette, he bumped into a guest who was in the costume of the Grim Reaper. Black cloak and cowl, scythe, skull mask. I had no idea who it was under all that.

“Not ready yet, old boy,” Groucho told Death, and continued on his way toward Little Bo Beep.

Apparently it wasn’t Paulette Goddard, but she and Groucho danced anyway. The swing orchestra was playing “Three Little Fishes.”

A few moments later, just after a Satan had danced by with Mary Astor, Jane reached up and took hold of my hand. “This is sort of odd,” she said quietly.

I leaned closer. “Something wrong?”

“Well, I don’t know why I should be experiencing morning sickness at this time of the night … but, I’m sorry, I’m feeling kind of rotten all of a sudden, Frank.”

“Okay, we’ll get you home.”

“You can stay, and I’ll send for a cab to—”

“Nope, ma’am, where I come from an hombre always escorts the filly he brung back safe to her spread,” I assured her. “You sure this is nothing serious?”

Standing up, she smiled at me. “I’ll be fine, but just now I think I best head for home.”

“C’mon,” I said, putting an arm around her slim shoulders and guiding her toward a doorway.

As we stood out in the foggy night waiting for our car, Jane shivered. “That was all very spooky,” she said.

“As it should be. Halloween is noted for being a spooky occasion.”

“No, it’s something else.” She shook her head. “There was a grim feeling in the air.”

“You think maybe being pregnant is making you psychic?”

“It’s a possibility,” she answered as the attendant delivered our car. “All I know is, I have this feeling something unpleasant is going to happen in there.”

“Gosh, and we’re going to miss it,” I said, opening her door for her and then walking around to the driver’s seat.

It turned out Jane was pretty much right.

Two

The real spooky stuff didn’t commence, as Groucho later told me, until after the rising cowboy star Ted Timberlake had entertained at the sprawling Halloween party.

A tall, tanned man in his early thirties, Timberlake wore the same sort of richly embroidered and fringed shirt that both Gene Autry and Roy Rogers showed up for work in over at rival Republic Pictures. His leather boots and his high-crown Stetson were of a spotless white. Accompanied by a three-piece Western swing group and strumming his glittering spangled guitar, Timberlake performed the four songs from his latest Warlock Pictures oater, The Singin’ Owlhoot. Most of the party-goers were enthusiastic about him, applauding so forcefully that he was persuaded to do two encores.

“Imagine clapping for a chap whose guitar is out of tune,” Groucho observed to Paulette Goddard as they stood together in the crowd.

He’d managed to find the actual actress, who had come as Eve. “You have to admit, though, that Ted’s cute,” she said.

“I’m cute, too, but I also know how to tune a guitar.”

A blond actress in a Helen of Troy costume passed close by, smiling in Groucho’s direction and waving. “I loved you in Room Service,” she called.

“What an odd name for a motel,” he replied. “But thanks for reminding me.”

“The orchestra hasn’t returned to the bandstand,” mentioned Paulette.

“All too true,” he acknowledged.

“Therefore, we can’t be dancing at the moment, and there’s no need for you to have your hand on my backside, Groucho.”

“It’s that where it’s been? I was wondering why I hadn’t seen it lately.” He brought both hands up in front of him, scrutinized them, rubbed them together.

“Could you get me a martini from the bar?” she inquired.

“I’ll set off at once.” Bending deeply, he caught her right hand and kissed it. “Since this is autumn, my dear, shouldn’t some of those fig leaves in your costume have fallen by now?”

“Scoot,” she advised, smiling.

He pushed, moving in one of his bent-knee shuffles, into the surrounding crowd.

“We’re planning to see At the Circus tomorrow night,” a fat producer in a Phantom of the Opera outfit told him as he passed.

“Don’t,” warned Groucho. “There’ve been reports that most audiences who see it have been turning to stone.” He relit his cigar. “Although in your case that might be an improvement.”

As Groucho continued on his journey toward the bar, a thin, middle-aged man in a rumpled suit held up a flash camera. “Good evening, Groucho. Might I—”

“I say, old man, what an excellent costume. You look exactly like a seedy newspaper photographer.”

“I am a seedy newspaper photographer. I’d like to—”

“Well then, that’s a perfectly valid reason for your looking just like a seedy newspaper photographer.”

“I’m with the Bayside Argus, and you have a lot of fans in our—”

“So does Sally Rand, and look where it got her. I read only the other day that the poor girl is bankrupt.”

“I meant admirers, Groucho, and that’s why—”

“It’s a sad commentary on our society when a comely blonde goes broke while dancing naked in public,” said Groucho. “You’d think that fan dancers would sell like hotcakes, even though they’re nowhere near as nourishing for breakfast. Still, if you pour maple syrup liberally over them, you hardly notice the difference.”

“Might I snap some pictures of you, Groucho?”

Removing his pith helmet and slapping it over his heart, Groucho rose up on one foot in a cranelike position. “Snap away, my good man,” he invited.

After taking just two flashbulb shots, the rumpled photographer said, “Hey, there’s Alice Faye over there. I promised my editor I’d get some cheesecake shots of her. Thanks for your time, Groucho.” He went hurrying away into the costumed crowd.

Groucho put his other foot on the floor, replaced his hat on his head. “Upstaged by Alice Faye,” he sighed. “And to think I went out and spent money on a pedicure especially for tonight.”

As he continued on his way, he passed Will Blackburn and overheard the popular psychic saying to a young actress whom Groucho almost recognized, “I have a premonition that something dark and sinister is going to happen.”

“I thought you just told me you weren’t predicting tonight.”

“Not for any of my paying clients, no,” he answered. “But this is a strong feeling that came to me unbidden.”

“I unbid three clubs,” said Groucho as he passed on by.

In a clearing in the throng a few feet in front of him, Groucho noticed the hooded Grim Reaper was moving up close to Eric Olmstead.

Death leaned in close to the director and said something to him.

Groucho wasn’t near enough to hear anything of what was said.

Olmstead turned even paler. Grimacing, he brought both hands up to his chest. He took a few wobbling steps backward, fell to one knee.

The Grim Reaper turned, moved on.

Groucho reached the director first, just as he started to topple toward the ebony floor. “Steady now,” he cautioned, catching hold of the swaying man’s arm.

“I’ll be okay in a …” Olmstead’s head tilted suddenly, and his sky blue Sinbad turban fell free from his head, bouncing on the floor as he passed out.

Crouching, Groucho managed to ease the unconscious man into a supine position.

“Get the hell out of my way,” Dinah Flanders told the surrounding crowd as she came pushing her way through. “Somebody get a goddamn doctor. It’s his heart.”

She knelt beside her husband.

“Does he carry any medicine with him?” Groucho asked her.

“There should be a pillbox in his sash,” the feisty actress said, reaching out to search Olmstead.

“We’ll take over, Dinah.” Lockwood, his Napoleon hat tucked under his arm, came striding up.

With him was a plump man in a musketeer costume. “I’m a doctor,” he explained, setting his black medical bag down with him. “When Mr. Lockwood so kindly invited me to tonight’s party, I thought it would be a good idea if I brought along my—”

“Knock off the chin music and examine him, for crying out loud,” urged Dinah.

Genuflecting beside the stretched-out Olmstead, the doctor opened his black bag. After listening to the director’s chest with his stethoscope for a moment, he said, “I don’t think this was a heart attack.”

“He’s got a bad heart,” said the actress. “I told him the excitement of this damn—”

“Looks to me as though he simply fainted.” The doctor produced a vial of smelling salts, held them to the director’s nose.

“That guy in the skull mask must’ve scared him,” volunteered a starlet in a Betty Boop costume.

“What do you mean?” Lockwood asked her.

“This guy who was gotten up like Death came over to Olmstead and said something to him,” she explained. “Olmstead turned a heck of a lot paler than usual and then did a nosedive.”

“What did the bastard say to Eric?” asked his wife, scowling up at the starlet.

When she shook her head, her Betty Boop wig slipped to the left. “I don’t think anybody heard what the guy said, except him.” She pointed down at the director.

“It was something about a frog,” offered a lean young man who was dressed as Zorro.

Lockwood asked him, “A frog?”

“I’m pretty sure the guy in the skull mask mentioned something about a frog or a toad, Mr. Lockwood. That’s the only thing I caught.”

Glancing around, the tycoon asked, “Where is this man?”

The Betty Boop starlet said, “He took off like a turkey through the corn soon as Olmstead started to collapse.”

“Anybody know where he went?”

No one answered.

Olmstead’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m all right, Dinah,” he assured her in a weak voice. “Don’t look so darn forlorn, dear.”

“Oh, yeah? If you’re in such terrific shape, kiddo, why’d you pull a faint?”

“I don’t know. Probably the heat in here.”

Leaning toward him, Lockwood asked, “What did the man in the Grim Reaper costume say to you, Eric?”

Carefully, with the help of Groucho and the actress, Olmstead sat up. “Nothing much, Warren,” he said quietly. “He simply asked me if he could borrow a cigarette. Of course, I don’t smoke.”

And, of course, Olmstead was lying.

Three

With Groucho’s help, Dinah got her husband out to their limousine.

“Thanks for coming to my aid, Groucho,” said the weary director as he settled into the backseat.

“Think nothing of it, Olmstead old man,” said Groucho from the sidewalk. “If I don’t do at least one good deed every day, Captain Midnight’ll drum me out of the Secret Squadron.”

Sliding into the low black limo next to Olmstead, Dinah said, “You were swell, Groucho. Thanks a million.” She gently reached over to shut the door.

He stood watching their chauffeur drive them away along the foggy midnight street.

As he headed back into the pavilion, one of the watching movie fans pushed close to the police rope to inquire, “You wouldn’t be Groucho Marx, would you?”

“I wouldn’t be if I had any choice,” he replied, slouching back to the costume party.

During the misty ride to their Beverly Hills home Dinah tried, we later learned, to get her husband to tell her what actually had happened at the Seascape Pavilion.

“Okay, who was that guy?” she’d asked him.

Olmstead was leaning back on the seat, head turned away from her. “A fellow who wanted a cigarette,” he said, gazing out at the swirling night fog.

“Bullshit,” the actress said. “A guy trying to bum a smoke isn’t likely to trigger a heart attack.”

Smiling faintly, he reached over to pat her hand. “Honey, the doctor told you I didn’t have a heart attack.”

“Well, I’d like a second opinion,” she said. “From somebody who isn’t dressed up like Douglas Fairbanks, Senior.”

“Even though we haven’t formally announced it, Dinah, we’re separated now,” he reminded. “Have been for the past couple weeks. We went to this thing tonight so we wouldn’t have to explain to—”

“And one of the main reasons for the breakup, kiddo, is this habit of yours of keeping a stiff upper lip and not ever telling me what’s bothering you,” she said, angry.

“Nothing much is bothering me, truly, Dinah.”

“Oh, so? Then how come you’ve been so jumpy the last few weeks, and how come—”

“Look, honey, as soon as Lockwood closes the deal with MGM to borrow Bob Taylor and I get the directing assignment, we’ll announce our separation and bring in the lawyers,” he assured her. “Meantime, you don’t have to worry about me anymore. And when I’m officially your ex, you can forget me entirely.”

“Maybe we can’t keep the lid on it that long, Eric. I had a telephone call today from Hedda Hopper’s legman,” the actress said. “He must have gotten wind that I’m staying at the beach house in Malibu while you’re holed up at our Beverly Hills joint. He wanted to know if we’d split.”

Olmstead smiled again, faintly and briefly. “A great many Hollywood couples live apart. Nothing especially sinister in that.”

“Tell it to Hedda Hopper—and eventually Louella Parsons and Johnny Whistler.”

Sighing, the director leaned further back and shut his eyes. “Nothing happened this evening,” he told her. “And there’s no reason for you to worry.”

“I’d better stay with you tonight. In case you have another dizzy spell.”

He opened his eyes, shaking his head. “No, we’ll stick to the separation deal we worked out, Dinah,” he said. “Pearson is there, and since he’s the prefect valet, he can cope with any emergency. Not that I’m planning to swoon again anytime soon.”

“Damn it, Eric, I know something’s going on wrong,” she insisted. “Has been for weeks, but you clam up on me. I really, you know, am concerned about you.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “Look, Dinah, I’ll see if I can postpone a couple of my meetings tomorrow, and we’ll have lunch. There’s supposed to be a great new Italian place on Rodeo Drive that—”

“Screw Rodeo Drive,” she cut in. “Just tell me who the guy in the skull mask was.”

“I honestly don’t know,” he answered.

Dinah tried to telephone Eric at the mansion early the next morning.

She had awakened at a few minutes beyond seven—unusual for her when she wasn’t working at the studio.

Sitting straight up in bed, she had the impression she’d just finished having a nightmare. She couldn’t remember a damned thing about it, except that maybe some gink in a skull mask had been threatening her with an axe.

The drapes on her bedroom windows were shut tight. She could hear the surf brushing across the beach outside, hear gulls squawking and squabbling.

Picking up the white bedside telephone, she called Eric’s number.

After a moment the operator told her, “The line’s busy.”

“You sure, hon?”

“Yes, ma’am. Try again later.”

Hanging up, Dinah swung out of bed. She’d slept in one of the satin nightgowns they’d given her when she starred in The Devil’s Kid Sister last year.

After she showered and dressed, Dinah went into the kitchen. She never ate breakfast, but she usually needed a cup of coffee.

Except for the chauffeur, who slept out over the garage, and a cleaning lady who came in twice a week, she’d been roughing it here in Malibu since she’d unofficially separated from her husband. So she had to fix her own coffee.

While sipping her second cup, Dinah telephoned Eric again.

Again she was told the line was busy.

“You sure there’s not something wrong with the phone, hon?”

The operator assured her Eric’s telephone was working perfectly.

At nine, after a third unsuccessful attempt to reach her husband, Dinah decided to head for the Beverly Hills place to find out what was going on.

She drove herself, using the white Duesenberg convertible coupe she’d bought on her twenty-seventh birthday.

Four

The living room of the Tudor-style mansion was full of strangers.

Stopping on the threshold after having let herself in, Dinah said, “Who the hell are you bozos? And what in God’s name are you doing in my house?”

A large thickset man in a gray suit said, “You must be calm, Miss Flanders.”

“Calm, my ass,” the actress told him, hands on hips. “Just tell me why I come home and find five morons milling around on my Persian carpet and—”

“Take it easy, darling,” suggested Warren Lockwood. The millionaire had come downstairs and was striding toward her. “I’ll explain why we—”

“What’s going on here, Warren?” she wanted to know. “What’s wrong, and who are these ginks?”

“People from my Warlock studios, Dinah.” The tall man stopped beside her, putting an arm around her. “You’ve met Val Sharkey, one of my new troubleshooters.” He nodded toward the big thickset man.

“Have I? All your flunkies look alike to me,” she said, pulling free of him. “Where’s Eric? Where is he, Warren?”

Sighing, shaking his head, Lockwood said, “I hate to break it to you like this, Dinah, but Eric is dead.”

She took a slow breath in and out. “He had a heart attack, and nobody called me? For Christ sake, I’m still his wife, and—”

“He didn’t have a heart attack,” said the studio head quietly. “This is going to be tough to take, I know, but I don’t want to pull my punches with you. Eric killed himself.”

“Bullshit.” She scowled at him. “Eric would never do anything like that.”

Val Sharkey said, “He left a suicide note, Miss Flanders.”

“Oh, yeah? Let me see the damn thing.”

Lockwood put his hand on her arm. “We’re handling this now, Dinah. There’s no need for you to see the—”

“You’re handling this? You and a bunch of goons from the studio,” she said, angry. “And how come you all knew about this before I did? Where the hell’s his valet, Pearson?”

Pointing a thumb at the ceiling, Lockwood answered, “Upstairs in one of the spare bedrooms. Pearson was pretty shaken up when he found Eric.”

She jerked free of his grasp. “Did Pearson telephone you?”

“He did, yes.”

“Before he called me? Why would he—”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Lockwood told her. “Right now we have to work out what you’re going to tell the press.”

“I’ll tell them I’m damned pissed off. There isn’t anything in my goddamn contract with Warlock Pictures that gives you the right to come meddling in my life and—”

Sharkey said, “Miss Flanders, in his suicide note Olmstead says that he killed himself because you’d left him and he didn’t want to go on without you.”

“Like hell. Our splitting up was as much his idea as it was mine,” she said to the studio troubleshooter.

“His final words certainly don’t give that impression,” said the heavyset Sharkey.

Turning to Lockwood, she asked, “Listen, what do the cops say about this?”

Lockwood told her, “We haven’t called the police as yet, Dinah.”

Groucho didn’t find out about the suicide until around two o’clock that afternoon.

He was slouching along Sunset Boulevard, he later told me, on the way to his office when he heard the newsboy on the corner mention it.

The newsie was an overweight fellow in his middle thirties who always wore a long tan overcoat, even on warm, clear sunny days like this one. Since this was Halloween afternoon, he had added a bedraggled witch hat to his ensemble. “Extra, extra,” he was shouting in his raspy voice. “Bombshell’s spouse blows his brains out. Brit director does the dutch. Read all about it.”

Slowing, halting, Groucho glanced at the front page the vendor was waving. “Hold it still, my good man,” he requested.

“Fork over a nickel, pal. This isn’t the Christian Science Reading Room.”

The headline declared, “Famed Director a Suicide,” and the subhead added, “Eric Olmstead Found Dead.”

“Did this start last night?” muttered Groucho, searching in a pocket of his umber-colored sport coat for a nickel.

After buying himself a copy of the Los Angeles Times, he moved under the green-and-white awning of a cigar store and started to read the front-page story about the director’s death. Before he’d reached the second paragraph, someone coughed close beside him.

A skinny young man, clutching a fat autograph album, was eyeing him from a distance of about two feet. “You look sort of like Groucho Marx.”

“Why thank you, that’s very flattering.” Groucho folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm. “Usually people tell me that I’m a dead ringer for some gangly actor named Tyrone Power.”

After coughing again, the thin young man held out the autograph book. “I wonder if you’d mind signing my album.”

“And I wonder if I’ll ever get that Little Orphan Annie Ovaltine mug I sent for just months and months ago.” He accepted the book, found a blank page, and scribbled on it for several minutes. “Here, my lad. I’ve given you not only my highly valued signature but also a prescription that’ll clear up that hacking cough of yours. And now, farewell.”

He returned the book and hurried on to the building that housed his office. The structure had a sort of Southern-plantation look, but so did a lot of other buildings along the Sunset Strip. Groucho figured that was because too many local architects had been allowed to see Gone with the Wind.

He ascended the wooden stairway that led to the second floor. “Olmstead fainted, then went home and killed himself,” he said aloud. “What the heck could the Grim Reaper have told him to prompt all that?”

When he crossed the threshold of the reception room, his secretary inquired, “Are you and Frank planning to go back into the detective business?”

“What makes you ask such a question, my child?”

She answered, “Because a prospective client has been trying to get hold of you for the past hour.”

“Of course kids like oranges,” said Jane.

I said, “But candy bars are the traditional trick-or-treat—”

“This is Southern California. They have to like oranges.”

“Okay, but if they soap our windows and drop raw eggs in the mailbox, don’t blame me.”

“Well, I don’t intend to hand out chocolate bars to any kids who come around to trick-or-treat tonight.”

“How about candied apples? A combination of healthful fruit with some sugar and—”

“No, nope,” my wife told me firmly. “If all the children in the neighborhood end up riddled with cavities, I don’t want to share the blame.”

“Okay, I’ll go buy a sack of oranges.”

“You were figuring you’d get to gobble up any leftover Baby Ruths and Tootsie Rolls. That’s your real motive for—”

“I haven’t had a candy bar in months. Smell my breath if you doubt me.”

Jane pushed back from her drawing board. “Want to go someplace for lunch?”

I’d been leaning in the doorway of her studio, watching her work on a Hollywood Molly Sunday page. “Actually I’d better start rewriting the Groucho Marx, Secret Agent script.”

“Okay, I’ll fix us a—”

“I can whip up lunch. You rest and—”

“Hey, I’m feeling fine today. I’m sure as heck capable of opening a can of tuna.”

“I suppose so, but in recent taste tests my homemade tuna sandwiches were voted better than yours by a jury of my peers. Unfortunately, one member of the jury fell off the pier and—”

“Grouchoitis,” she observed, getting up and away from the board.

“You think so?” I started heading for our kitchen. “And I thought I was getting better.”

As she passed the living-room sofa, she hesitated. She sat down, sighing faintly. “Maybe you’d better fix lunch after all,” she said.

I hurried over to her. “You okay?”

“Nothing serious, Frank, just feeling a little tired.”

Dorgan, the bloodhound that Groucho had given us a couple of Christmases ago, came scooting over to the sofa. He squatted, gazing anxiously up at Jane.

She patted the dog’s head. “I’m okay, Dorgan,” she assured him.

“We really ought to think about getting you an assistant to help on the strip.” Sitting beside her, I took her hand.

“Not unless we can find somebody who draws as well as Milton Caniff and looks a good deal like Jimmy Stewart.”

“What a shame. I found a guy who draws like Jimmy Stewart and looks like Milton Caniff.”

“Won’t do.”

Our doorbell rang.

I went to the door, followed by Dorgan, and saw our friend Enery McBride on the porch, a newspaper under his arm.

“You folks busy?” the actor inquired.

“Just going to fix lunch. C’mon in.”

Enery grinned at Jane. “You’re looking especially radiant.”

“It’s the company I keep. How’re you?”

“I’m doing well enough with my movie acting to be able to quit working nights at the Bayside Diner.” He crouched, and the dog rolled over on his back. Enery rubbed Dorgan’s belly with his free hand, and the dog produced gratified noises.

“Great. When’re you going to quit?”

“Did already, this past weekend.”

I said, “I read in the trades that you signed to do three more Mr. Woo movies.”

Enery shrugged. “Yeah, we start shooting the new one, Mr. Woo in Panama, next Monday,” he said. “I’m hoping I’ll get nominated for an Oscar for Best Performance as a Chauffeur.”

“You’re going to stay for lunch,” said Jane.

“Sure, thanks.” He unfolded the newspaper and held it out. “Seen this?” he asked, pointing to the headline.

“Jesus, Olmstead killed himself,” I said. That news hadn’t been in our edition of the L.A. Times.

Jane stood up, frowning. “He was at that Halloween party last night, wasn’t he?”

I nodded. “Along with his devoted wife, Dinah Flanders.”

“Not that devoted,” said Enery. “According to the paper, they were separated, and she was living in their beach house in Malibu while Olmstead resided up in Beverly Hills.”

“Everybody’s sure it’s a suicide?” asked Jane.

“Apparently the police are,” answered Enery. “Plus which, the guy left a suicide note.” He handed over the paper, pointing to the copy of the note Olmstead had written.

Typed actually. There was a Photostat of the note next to a photo of the director. Typewritten on a sheet of Olmstead’s stationery, it said: “Dinah, I’ve tried, but I just can’t make it without you. I really don’t want to live now that you’re gone. Forgive me, my love. Eric.

“All typed,” I mentioned. “Even his name. And typed by somebody who was handy with a typewriter—no mistakes.”

“Maybe he was in too much of a hurry to take time to find his fountain pen,” suggested Enery.

I scanned the accompanying story. “So Dinah wasn’t there when it happened,” I said.

“He was alone, except for his valet. And that guy sleeps in servants’ quarters at the back of the mansion and didn’t hear anything.”

Jane said, “What was there to hear?”

“A gunshot when Olmstead killed himself.”

Jane shook her head slowly, frowning at me. “I told you something spooky was going to happen.”

Five

Perched on the edge of his secretary’s desk, left leg swinging idly, Groucho lit his cigar. “So Dinah Flanders wants to avail herself of my deductive abilities, eh?”

“And she mentioned she was willing to pay a substantial fee,” said Nan Sommerville.

“Alas, we never charge for our crime busting,” he said with a sigh. “It would go against the generous and altruistic Groucho Marx nature to—”

“Wait, let me find my diary,” she cut in. “This is a special occasion, and I want to make a note of it. The very first time I’ve ever heard anybody use the words generous and Groucho Marx in the same sentence.”

Groucho eyed her. “If you’ll consult your contract, Nanette, you’ll note that I’m the one who’s supposed to deliver the snide remarks around here.”

“Excuse it.” Nan was a cynical, muscular woman in her late thirties. She’d been a circus acrobat and then a stuntwoman at MGM. Although Groucho often claimed she’d doubled for Wallace Beery, Nan denied that. She was an expert typist and office manager, and her circus background made her an ideal person to cope with Groucho.

“Outside of the fact that she’s always had a schoolgirl crush on me, why does Dinah want to hire me?”

“She’s convinced Olmstead didn’t commit suicide.”

“The most obvious alternative, then, is murder.”

“Unless the poor sap shot himself by accident.”

“People don’t usually leave suicide notes before accidentally knocking themselves off, my dear.”

“Are you going to take the case?”

“It’s my civic duty,” he answered, exhaling smoke. “Call the grieving widow at her Beverly Hills mansion and inform her that—”

“She’s not staying there.”

“Why so?”

“Too many reporters and movie nuts lurking around the place,” Nan replied. “So she’s holed up at her beach joint in Malibu. Here’s the telephone number.”

“I already know the telephone number.” Groucho reached for the phone.

By the time Groucho arrived at the actress’s beachside house in Malibu, the fact that she was hiding out there was no longer a secret. Several reporters and photographers were loitering outside the solid, high, white wooden fence that shielded the place.

Parking his Cadillac down the road from the beach house, Groucho loped back through the late afternoon.

Dan Bockman of the L.A. Times spotted him first. He went hurrying to intercept him. “Groucho, what the heck are you doing here?”

“You’ve made a mistake, sir,” he said, dodging the oncoming reporter. “I’m actually Baby Leroy, and this is my Groucho Marx Halloween costume. Originally I was going to dress up like Frankenstein, then decided this was scarier.”

Norm Lenzer of the Herald-Examiner joined them. “Is it true you’ve been romancing Dinah?”

“Nay, my heart still belongs to Greta Garbo.” He worked his way to the high, solid wooden gate and rapped on it.

Gil Lumbard of the Hollywood Citizen-News, after instructing his photographer to take some shots of Groucho, asked, “You going to be playing detective again maybe?”

Facing the circling newsmen, Groucho said, “I’ll be holding a press conference shortly, at which time all your questions and more will be answered.”

He fished a fresh cigar from a pocket of his sunset-colored sport coat. “The only problem for you lads is that we’ll be holding it in Guatemala.”

A sliding panel in the white gate slid aside, and a gruff-faced, gruff-voiced man scowled out. “Yeah? I thought I told all you newshounds to scram?”

“My good man, do I look like a newshound?”

“You look more like an interior decorator. Get lost.”

“I have an appointment with Miss Flanders.”

“Oh, yeah? And who are you?”

“Groucho Marx.”

“Naw, Groucho Marx has got a moustache.”

Touching his upper lip and then looking downward, Groucho said, “Doggone, it’s slipped down to my crotch again. Just a sec, and I’ll show it to—”

“You halfwit, let him in,” came Dinah’s voice from behind the fence.

“This guy looks like a phony to me, ma’am.”

“He looks like that to most people. That’s one way to tell it’s Groucho. Open the damn gate for him.”

The guard said, “Okay, Marx, you can come in. But don’t any of you other bums try anything.”

Turning to bestow a quick curtsy on the reporters, Groucho eased in through the narrow opening that appeared in the fence.

“The whole thing stinks,” said Dinah as she paced the large black-and-white living room. “Everybody’s trying to hand me a line of crap.”

“Give me some details,” requested Groucho. He was sitting in a white-painted wicker armchair, watching the angry actress.

Dinah, wearing tan slacks and a navy blue pullover, walked over to the bar in the corner and poured herself a tumbler of bourbon. “You sure you don’t want a drink?”

“Not while I’m on duty.”

“I don’t know who I can trust anymore, for Christ sake.” She left the drink sitting on the bar top, wandered over to the high, wide-view window.

Twilight was settling in, and the ocean was darkening. A flock of gulls drifted down to land on the stretch of private beach downhill from the actress’s home.

“Details,” reminded Groucho.

“Shit, I’m not even sure I loved the guy.” She sat on the arm of a low black sofa, her slim back to the waning day. “We were only married for a few months.”

He asked, “And why weren’t you together when he died?”

“It was sort of a mutual thing, Groucho. We both realized that we just weren’t getting along anymore,” the actress answered. “So we decided to split, quietly and unofficially for now. If we really figured we were through for good, then we’d make it legal and tell the papers. It was as much Eric’s idea as it was mine.”

“There are several traditional reasons for people breaking up, Dinah.” He took a cigar out of a pocket. “One, so I hear, is the husband’s fooling around on the side, and another—”

“Nope, that wasn’t it at all. Eric never messed around with other women,” she assured him. “And, despite what you may’ve read in the goddamn gossip columns, I was totally loyal to the guy. I never—that’s my rule—fool around while I’m married to somebody.”

“Booze is another frequent—”

“No, Eric didn’t drink much at all, especially since he started having problems with his heart.”

“How serious was this heart problem?”

She shook her head, frowning. “I’m not sure, except that the past month or two he’d had a couple other of those fainting spells and his doctor told him he was suffering from some kind of heart condition and to take it easy.”

“Who was his doctor?”

Dinah said, “Somebody Warren Lockwood recommended. The guy has an office in Beverly Hills, just off Santa Monica Boulevard. His name’s Martin Farrell.”

“You ever talk to him about your husband’s illness?”

“Never even met the guy. All I know is what Eric told me after he consulted him.”

Groucho unwrapped his cigar. “Why’d you and Olmstead show up together at the party last night?”

“For one thing, we didn’t want people to start talking,” she answered. “And I was sort of worried about Eric’s health and wanted to keep an eye on him.”

Groucho unwrapped the cigar. “What was that business with the Grim Reaper all about?”

“I wish to hell I knew, Groucho.”

“You don’t know who that was in the Death outfit?”

“Wish I did,” she said forlornly. “When I asked Eric about it on the way back to the Beverly Hills place, he clammed up.” She recounted to him her conversation with Olmstead.

When she finished, Groucho asked, “You think he was covering up?”

“I think that bozo in the skull mask scared the hell out of Eric,” she said. “But I don’t know how or why.”

“You didn’t stay with him last night?”

“Eric claimed he’d be okay and that we ought to stick to our separation agreement. So I, reluctantly, came back here.”

“How long have you been living in Malibu?”

“About two weeks.”

“While you and Olmstead were still together, did any other odd stuff take place, Dinah? For instance, what caused his other fainting spells?”

“Once he passed out after talking to somebody on the phone,” she answered. “The other time, I found him out cold in his den,” she said. “Eric and I weren’t what you’d call a confiding couple. He never told me what was bothering him. But I got the feeling, the last weeks we were together, that he was …” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“He was what?”

“I really think he was in some kind of trouble, but he denied that.”

“You’ve got no idea exactly what kind of trouble?”

She shook her head forlornly. “That’s what I want you to find out for me,” she said. “You and that buddy of yours. What’s his name—Fred Quimby?”

“Frank Denby. A brilliant scriptwriter and a first-rate investigator on the side.” At least that’s what Groucho later claimed he’d told her.

“You’ve got to find out what the hell is going on and who killed my husband,” she continued. “It’s not that I was deeply in love with Eric, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit still for some kind of cover-up.”

“You think you might be in danger, too?”

“The thought has crossed my mind, yeah,” she said. “Everybody’s trying to write this off as a suicide, but that’s so much bullshit. Eric wasn’t the kind of man who’d kill himself.”

“Who are you alluding to, Dinah, when you say, ‘everybody’?”

She stood up. “Let me tell you about how I found out Eric was dead,” she said.

Six

The Sunset Talent Agency had once had offices on Sunset Boulevard. But ever since I’d been with them—nearly two years now—they’d had a suite high above Wilshire. The reception room was large and relatively stark, furnished mostly in chrome and black leather.

The actor Dean Jagger, without his hairpiece, was waiting in one of the chrome-and-leather chairs, leafing through a copy of Architectural Digest. And a fellow I’m fairly certain was the writer John O’Hara was slumped in another chair, apparently dozing.

The blond receptionist was someone I’d never seen before. She was slim and on the icy side, and her nail polish was the color of igloo walls. “Yes?” she inquired in a nearly convincing Eastern-girls’-college voice.

“Frank Denby to see Max Bickford.”

She consulted a silver-covered appointment book. “What it says here is Fred Dumphy. Could that be you?”

“In a pinch, sure.”

“Then he’s expecting you,” she said, nodding toward one of the several corridors that led off the vast oval reception room. In a lower and less formal voice, she added, “He’s in one of his despondent moods, so do try to cheer him up.”

“That’s all I need, a despondent agent,” I said, starting for his office.

After I knocked on his door, about twenty seconds after, my agent’s voice called out faintly, “Sure, come on in.”

Max Bickford was a medium-sized man in his middle thirties. He had crinkly black hair, deep-set and shadow-underlined eyes. At the moment he was standing in the center of his large office, wearing a pale blue dress shirt, a red knit tie, and polka-dot boxer shorts.

“What sort of transition are you in, Max?” I asked.

“I’m fairly certain I have a tennis date in an hour,” he answered. “So I’m changing. Have you, by any chance, seen a pair of tennis shorts hereabouts?”

“Might that be them amidst the array of clutter atop your desk? There under the tennis racket?”

“Right, exactly.” He extracted the shorts from beneath the racket, knocking several scripts and a stack of glossy head shots to the thick cream-colored carpeting. “Wiener’s out.”

“He’s what?” I shifted a cardboard box filled with fat file folders to the floor and occupied a chrome-and-black-leather chair.

“Bob Wiener’s no longer producing Ty-Gor and the Ivory Treasure,” my agent explained as he slipped into his tennis shorts. “But I’m setting up an appointment for you with Novsam.”

“Who is—”

“The new producer.” Max grabbed up the tennis racket and tried a few slashing strokes with it. “Oh, and the new title of the movie is Ty-Gor and the Lost City.”

“No more ivory treasure?”

“They decided the budget couldn’t afford all those elephants.” Putting the racket atop his desk, Max walked over to the single photo on his office wall.

It was a framed glossy of Onita Sands in the costume she wore when she starred in Jada of the Jungle. I knew the inscription read, “To my one and only true love, Maxie. XXXXX, Onita.”

“When I talked to Lockwood last night, as I mentioned on the phone, he told me they weren’t happy with the script they’ve got and wanted more laughs added to—”

“So you were at the Lockwood Halloween shindig?”

“Yeah, that’s where he brought up the Ty-Gor rewrite.”

Max said, “How’d Eric Olmstead look?”

“Pale,” I answered, “though not especially suicidal.”

“I didn’t make it to the party, mostly because I was waiting around the telephone to hear from Onita,” my agent said. “If you ask me, though, Olmstead was already on his way down and bumped himself off before he hit bottom.”

“Meaning what?”

Max said, “I heard someplace he was going to direct a Ted Timberlake horse opera. That’s not exactly a step up.”

“Getting back to Ty-Gor,” I said. “Is this Novsam going to want funny stuff, too?”

“Less humor is Novsam’s specialty—he’s a very serious guy.” My agent was still gazing at the photo of Onita in her jungle-girl outfit.

“Oh, so? I was thinking we could work in some laughs with Ty-Gor’s chimpanzee and maybe—”

“The chimp’s out, too,” said Max. “Novsam’s replacing him with a gorilla.”

“Why?”

“He thinks a gorilla has more dignity. And, also, a guy in a gorilla suit is a heck of a lot easier to work with than a real chimp. They’re always trying to take a nip out of you.”

“So maybe I’m not right for the job anymore.”

Sighing, my agent nodded at the picture. “She’s taken one again,” he said.

“One of your cars. Which one?”

“She borrowed the thirty-four Packard convertible roadster. Three days ago.”

“Did she drive it to Mexico again?”

“Palm Springs this time.”

“With that stuntman from Republic?”

He shook his head, turning his back to the framed photograph. “The private eye I have watching Onita tells me this is that guy who did the tango with Joan Crawford in The Much-Maligned Miss Matson.”

“As I recall, Max, Onita has a fondness for dancers. The time she disappeared with your Reo, she went off with that tap dancer who—”

“It’s my fault really.” He settled in behind his cluttered desk. “I promised her stardom long ago, and I simply haven’t delivered.”

“Max, she’s starred in four Republic serials in the last two-and-a-half years,” I reminded him. “And Variety says she’s set to star in The Masked Pilot Flies Again, wherein she plays the daughter of the original Masked Pilot and dons his flying togs to avenge—”

“Right, exactly. She’s starred in chapter plays and continues to star in ’em, but what Onita really yearns for is a big part in an A-budget flicker, Frank,” he said forlornly.

“Even if you’d gotten her the title role in Good-Bye, Mr. Chips, she’d still wander off now and then to shack up with—”

“Well, enough of my unhappy love life,” Max said, sighing yet again. “Let’s get back to the Ty-Gor situation. I’m working on getting you in to talk to Novsam, out at the Warlock studios in the Valley.” He eyed me. “You and Groucho Marx aren’t working on any murder cases right now that’ll interfere with your writing career, are you?”

“Not that I know of,” I assured him. “But if this guy wants a deadly serious picture, Max, maybe I’m not the writer for him.”

“Hooey,” said my agent. “I know you can be deadly serious if you just try.”

Evening had settled in when Groucho parked his car down the street from our house in Bayside. The streetlights were on, illuminating the scatters of costumed kids who were working the block.

He eased out of the Cadillac, started walking in the direction of our place.

A plump woman who was escorting a little boy in a baggy Superman costume produced a startled noise as he approached.

Pointing, she said, “I know you.”

“You shouldn’t admit anything like that in front of witnesses, madam.”

“You are one of the Three Stooges, aren’t you?”

“Ah, I do wish you hadn’t brought that up,” he said, sighing forlornly. “Actually, I happen to be the Fourth Stooge, and I’ve been out of work ever since they trimmed the act last winter. If you should happen to hear of any jobs for a freelance stooge, do let me know.”

“C’mon, Ma,” urged the little boy. “We got five more houses yet on this block.”

Bowing to them, Groucho continued on his way.

As he turned onto our path, he encountered two children, gotten up as Hansel and Gretel, who’d just called on us.

“Don’t trick-or-treat there, mister,” warned Hansel. “All you’ll get is an orange.”

“Usually I get lemons, so this’ll be an improvement, my lad.”

“Nertz,” observed Gretel.

Slouching some, Groucho aimed himself at our front door.

Groucho was standing with his back to our empty fireplace. “You’re certain you have no objection to Frank’s working with me on this, my dear?”

Jane glanced over at me. “It’s up to him.”

From my armchair I said, “You’re sure you’ll be okay if—”

“I am, all things considered, in pretty good shape,” she assured us. “It’s possible I’m in better shape than either one of you. Which isn’t saying much.”

“Have a care,” said Groucho. “I’ll have you know that the last time Charles Atlas saw me without my shirt on, he was overcome with envy. That is envy, isn’t it, where you double up and make retching noises?”

Jane smiled. “Go ahead and work on this case, Frank.”

I got up from my chair, crossed over, and sat near my wife on the sofa. “It does sound sort of interesting. Since we have our reputation as amateur detectives to uphold, I think I’d like to.”

“Splendid.” Groucho took out a cigar and unwrapped it.

“Why not,” suggested Jane, “fill Frank in on the details? Fact is, I’d like to hear them myself.”

Starting to pace, chewing on his unlit cigar, Groucho recounted what had happened at Warren Lockwood’s Halloween gala after we’d left. He then gave us an account of his interview with Dinah Flanders at her Malibu hideaway.

When he concluded, I asked, “Why is Lockwood so involved in this mess?”

“Something we’ll have to find out, Rollo.”

Jane said, “Lockwood’s got a reputation for trying to take over the lives of his actresses and running off anybody who looks like he’ll cause any trouble for their reputations. Did the same thing with his last blond bombshell, Elana Lore, back in nineteen-thirty-six.”

“True,” admitted Groucho. “Yet this business of being at the scene of the crime well before the minions of the law sounds like more than just overzealous paternalism.”

“The valet telephoned Lockwood and never got in touch with Dinah,” I said.

“According to her, Pearson alerted Lockwood moments after he discovered his boss was dead and done for.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Because I don’t imagine it’s that easy to contact somebody like Lockwood directly. Or even his ace troubleshooter, Sharkey.”

“Meaning that somebody fairly high up in one of the Lockwood organizations gave Pearson a number to call in an emergency.”

“Maybe you guys better find out some more about this Pearson,” said my wife. “Did Lockwood plant him in the household and, if so, why?”

“Could be Lockwood simply wanted to have somebody to watch over his most valuable actress,” I said. “But it might be more than that.”

Halting in his pacing and pointing at me with his dead cigar, Groucho said, “We also have to get a look at the police report. Frank?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I have a contact at the Beverly Hills Police Department,” I said. “I’ll check with him tomorrow, see what I can dig up.”

“Can you also run down this Pearson lad’s background? Find out if he’s truly a valet or merely a Lockwood spy.”

“I’ll do that, too, yeah.”

“Meantime, I’ll do some exploring into Eric Olmstead’s British background.” He returned to the vicinity of the fireplace. “My dear sibling, Zeppo, has quite a few contacts in Merry Old England, and I can call on him for assistance. That’s one of the advantages of having brothers. Now that I think of it, that’s just about the only advantage.”

Jane asked, “How about the Grim Reaper?”

“Right you are, toots,” said Groucho. “We must determine who he was and what in the heck he said to Olmstead to make him keel over.”

“The costume,” I said. “We ought to be able to find out where it was rented and who rented it.”

Groucho said, “It might have been borrowed from a studio wardrobe department.”

“I can call a friend of mine, Marlene, at Starlite Costumes in Hollywood,” offered Jane. “A place to start, anyway.”

“Ah, Lady Jane, are you volunteering to join us on this caper? I must warn you that it may be fraught with danger and—”

“Phooey. I can make a few phone calls.”

“She can telephone and draw at the same time,” I mentioned. “It has something to do with being double-jointed.”

“I once knew a snake charmer in Iola, Wisconsin, who could … but that’s neither here nor there. Although, it’s probably closer to there.”

“You mentioned that at least two people at the party last night may’ve heard some of what Death said to Olmstead,” I reminded him.

“Betty Boop and Zorro,” he said. “And what a team they’d make. I’ll see if I can track them down, with some help from the redoubtable Zeppo. I have a feeling I’ve seen that Boop lass before, and she’s quite probably a struggling actress. Back in my single days most of the actresses I encountered would wind up struggling before the night was … where was I?”

“Can you get into the Beverly Hills mansion to look around?” I asked.

“I could use my uncanny abilities as a cracksman to break into the joint and snoop,” Groucho said, tapping imaginary ashes off his dead cigar. “However, since our client tells me she’ll be moving back in tomorrow, I’ll save time and walk in through the front door.”

Jane asked, “Are you sure Dinah isn’t involved in her husband’s death? For instance, was she really in Malibu all last night?”

“We’ll have to find out,” he answered. “Though I always have hated mystery stories where the client turns out to be guilty.”

“This is real life,” reminded Jane. “So maybe you’d better take—”

“This is real life?” His eyebrows climbed. “Darn, I was hoping that this was only a dream and that I’d soon awaken to find I was the heir to the throne of England.”

I said, “Tomorrow we—”

“Then again, what would I do with the throne of England? It probably won’t match any of our other furniture, and it’ll be a pain to dust all the time.”

“Tomorrow we—”

“A barber chair would be much better to fall heir to. I always fall asleep in barber chairs, and if I had one around the house, it might help me cure my insomnia.”

“Tomorrow we—”

“And between movies and singing engagements and detective cases, I could do a little freelance barbering. A haircut here, a permanent there, a marcel in between—it adds up.”

“Tomorrow we—”

“The last time Marcel dropped in, however, he was no fun at all and just wanted to talk about things past for hours on end. You were saying, Rollo?”

“I forget.”

“He was going to suggest that you two get together tomorrow and compare notes on what you find out,” provided Jane.

“That’s it,” I said.

“An excellent suggestion. We’ll rendezvous at Moonbaum’s Delicatessen at five.” He started for the door. “Oh, I almost forgot. Where’s my free orange?”

Seven

At midmorning the next day Groucho was, as he later told me, striding along Sunset toward his office. There was a look of grim determination on his face, a merry twinkle in his eye, and the remnant of a cheese blintz on his manly chin.

As he neared his office building, a plump middle-aged woman stepped into his path. “You’re Groucho Marx!”

“Well, then that explains the dirty looks I’ve been getting all morning.”

From her imitation-leather purse she extracted a sheet of notepaper and a fountain pen. “Would you please sign this for me?”

Accepting the pen and paper, he replied, “I’ll have to read it first.”

“But it’s blank, Mr. Marx.”

“Ah, that’s why there’s so much white space between the lines.” After scrawling his autograph and returning the pen, he resumed walking.

Nan was behind her desk, typing. “Morning, chief,” she greeted, looking up.

“And the same to you, Nanette my pet.” He seated himself on the edge of her desk. “Any messages for me?’

“Mr. MacQuarrie telephoned again about the wristwatch,” she answered, consulting her notebook. “And the Widow Olmstead called to confirm the fact that you’re scheduled to drop in on her this afternoon at two-thirty.”

“I sense a lack of sympathy for the bereaved Dinah.”

“She’s a tough cookie,” said his secretary. “I wouldn’t be that surprised if it turned out she bumped off Olmstead herself. I don’t much like her movies either.”

He tapped the notebook. “Any other communications from the outside world?”

“That dame from Photoplay is anxious about your doing that photo spread. She says the publicity people at MGM promised her that you’d—”

“I wish MGM would quit trying to promote me as the next Clark Gable,” he said, pulling a fresh cigar from the pocket of his lime green sport coat. “It’s quite annoying for someone as innately modest as I, and, needless to say, it’s making the original Clark Gable uneasy and irritable.”

“Oh, and your brother Zeppo returned your call. He says he doesn’t mind talking to you in a cordial familial way. But if, as he suspects, you’re after him to do you another grueling, backbreaking favor, then you can …” She picked up the notebook, brought it closer to her eyes. “It was about doing something off a bridge, I think.”

Nodding, Groucho dropped from her desk to head toward the door of his private office. “I do look quite a lot like Gable, you have to admit.”

“Especially around the ears.”

Leaning in the doorway and lighting his cigar, Groucho said, “After I finish up on the phone, I may want to dictate a novel. I’m thinking of doing a surefire bestseller to be entitled How Green Was My Rudy Vallee.”

“Bob Hope,” Nan said.

“Beg pardon?”

“Used that gag on his radio show last Tuesday night.”

“Hope’s brilliant, but not that brilliant. You must be mistaken, my dear.”

“You’re right. Now that I think about it, Fibber McGee is the one who used the line.”

“I’ll be sulking in my tent,” he announced, stepping into his office and shutting the door.

Groucho blew smoke toward the ceiling and said into the telephone, “Well, of course, Zeppo, you’ve always been my favorite brother and … Chico told you what? Okay, you’ve always been my favorite brother after Chico and … Harpo told you he was? No, I’d say it was more a tie between you and Harpo. So that makes you two-A on my list of favorite brothers, and Harpo comes in at two-B. So you’re still pretty high on the … eh? Well, true, that only leaves Gummo below you fellows, but still … now then, let’s get down to … what do you mean ulterior motive? No, of course I enjoy having endless meaningless conversations with you, Zep old man. The thing is that right now Frank and I are involved in … certainly I’m aware that Frank isn’t my brother. If he was, everybody’d be calling him Franko, and they’d mistake him for the dictator of Spain and that’d cause him no end of … who’s being evasive? I was simply asking you to do me a tiny little favor, and you went and dragged in the Spanish Civil War and … no, nope, not a huge favor, brother mine. Just a small little … no, it won’t involve your busting your ass in any way. You won’t even have to get up off your secretary’s lap or … no, I’m not insinuating that you’re tomcatting around your office. I know you’re discreet enough to tomcat only in out-of-the-way locations and … well, sure, I’ll get to the point as soon as you cease boasting about your romantic … okay, Zep, here’s how you can help the cause of justice. Hum? Well yes, we are investigating a case and … no, I don’t think I’m Sherlock Holmes, although, if you remember my recent encounter with one of the Sherlock Holmeses of the silver screen, you’ll … all right, here’s what I want to know. You have a lot of connections in England and … yes, I’m aware that’ll involve long-distance charges, unless you’re a lot better at telepathy than you’ve been thus far in your life. What I want you to find out for me, Zeppo, is everything you can about the late Eric Olmstead. What he did, besides directing motion pictures, while dwelling in England, whom he hung out with, any scandals he was tangled up with and … well, yes, I am helping Dinah Flanders on this. Chiefly because the lass doesn’t believe Olmstead really bumped himself off … . Yeah, I realize I may annoy the police. But why should they be an exception to the rule? So, use your London show-business associates to dig up whatever you … no, as a matter of fact, that’s not all. If you can cease producing those sputtering noises, I’ll continue my discourse.”

Groucho paused to take a puff of his cigar.

“Were you at Warren Lockwood’s Halloween to-do two nights since? Good, because … yes, I did try to find you, Zep, but I approached several Napoleons, and none of them was … well, you should have told me you changed costumes in midstream and … Tarzan, eh? I bet you looked fetching, and I’m truly sorry I missed … no, the word fetching doesn’t mean I’m implying you must’ve looked like a pansy. I’ve heard you described as being awfully cute and sort of sweet, but never as being … okay, yes, here’s what else I want to know. There was a young lady at the shindig in a Betty Boop costume and … yes, the kid who was nearby when Olmstead took his nosedive. I have the notion she’s a blond starlet who maybe had a bit part in At the Races … . right, that’s her. What’s her name?”

He grabbed up a stub of a pencil and wrote on his desk calendar. “Kathy Mirabell? Any idea who her agent might be? Which goniff? Oh, Leo Fernstad … . No, I’m not planning to woo the lass. She may’ve seen or heard something that’ll help us locate the chap in the Grim Reaper suit. You wouldn’t happen to know who he was? I didn’t think so. Well, then, Zeppo, I’ll be … yes, certainly, I’m concerned with how you are. How are you? Fine, I’ll talk to you soon again, I trust.”

Hanging up, he took another puff of his cigar.

Eight

It was one of those gray, drizzly afternoons that occasionally befalls the usually sun-drenched Southern California. I parked my Ford between a Mercedes and a Rolls Royce on the lot next to the Pup Tent. A currently fashionable hot-dog bistro in Santa Monica, the place was crowded even at one in the afternoon.

As I entered the foyer, Virginia Bruce and Marian Marsh were leaving. I nodded at the two blond actresses. “Good afternoon, ladies,” I said.

I’d interviewed Virginia Bruce once when I was with the L.A. Times. “I’ve been meaning to congratulate you, Frank,” she said, smiling.

“For what exactly?”

“Being married to Jane Danner. She’s a terrific girl, and I love Hollywood Molly.”

“What a coincidence—she was telling me just this morning that I was a terrific guy.”

“Means you’re ideally matched.” Smiling again, she moved on.

A man in a dark double-breasted suit and wearing a high, white chef’s hat was standing beside the velvet rope that blocked my progress into the small dining area. “Full up for at least another hour, sir. I can put your name on the—”

“I’m meeting someone,” I said as I scanned the booths. “Yep, there he is in Booth Three.”

The owner of the Pup Tent lifted the rope out of my way. “Ah, yes, Detective Mulvane mentioned he was expecting someone. Somehow I expected …” He let the sentence trail off, giving a disappointed shrug.

I made my way through the cluster of small tables and slid into the booth. “Good thing I’m with you; otherwise, I’m pretty sure, they’d have tossed me out into the gutter.”

Mulvane was a tall, sad-faced man in his middle thirties. He was wearing a gold-colored polo shirt and an Irish tweed sport jacket. “You should exercise more, Frank,” he suggested, after studying me for a few seconds.

“True,” I agreed. “Is that your Mercedes out on the parking lot?”

“Nope, mine’s at the repair shop again with two expatriate Nazis tinkering with it,” he said. “They’re experts with tanks and bombers, but my two-twenty-S seems to mystify them. How’s Janey?”

“Just fine. She floored a former heavyweight boxer who addressed her as Janey at a Thrifty Drug Store only yesterday.”

“I know the lady prefers to be called Jane.” He shook his head. “But to me she’s a Janey.”

“Okay, so what can you give me about the Olmstead—”

“Hello, gents. How’re you guys today?” A very pretty red-haired waitress handed us our menus, which were shaped like dachshunds. “The specialty today is our Pineapple Doggie. Myself, I prefer the Old World Hund because you get a generous side order of sauerkraut along with—”

“How’s your acting career coming along, Nancy?”

“I’m up for a part in the new Ted Timberlake oat opera over at Warlock,” she answered, brightening. “I’ll be playing the Third Dance Hall Girl. Three lines to speak, and I also listen entranced while Timberlake sings to Mary Beth Hughes.”

“Congratulations, you’re moving up.”

“Still got a heck of a long way to go. What’ll you have?”

“The Plain Doggie.” Mulvane shut his menu and handed it back to her.

“And you, sir?”

“Just coffee, thanks,” I told her.

When she’d moved away from our vicinity, Mulvane asked, “You and Groucho Marx are intending to nose around into the Olmstead suicide, huh?”

“The Olmstead death,” I corrected. “We aren’t as yet convinced that it was really a suicide.”

Mulvane advised. “Forget this one, Frank.”

“Tell me why.”

“You’re a pretty good scriptwriter these days,” he said, leaning back in the booth. “You’re no longer a crusading reporter, and you sure as hell aren’t a detective. You don’t need any new trouble in your life.”

I watched him for a few seconds. “When I telephoned you this morning, Win, and asked if you could give me a rundown of the paperwork on this case, you agreed to meet me here this afternoon,” I reminded him. “I was expecting something more than a warning.”

“That was this morning,” he said. “I wasn’t, you know, in on the investigation, and I sure wasn’t familiar with the situation. All I can really tell you, old buddy, is to forget all about this and—”

“Okay, Win, so who’s clamping down on this one?”

Resting both elbows on the green tabletop, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You’ve got more than the Beverly Hills police involved in this business, Frank.”

“Who else? Los Angeles? State police?”

He lowered his voice further. “Washington is interested.”

“Who are we talking about? Eleanor Roosevelt, the FBI, the—”

“A government agency, let’s say. And they are telling us what to do. So the smartest thing for you to do, Frank, is to stick with your writing and—”

“Do you think Olmstead killed himself?”

“My opinion doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it,” he told me.

“Who’s in charge of the investigation?”

“There’s no need for you to—”

“C’mon, Win. What the hell sort of cover-up is going on? You can’t even tell me who—”

“Okay, it’s Jake Fuller,” he said, very quietly.

“That son of a bitch,” I said, frowning. “He and I never got along when I was with the Times.”

“Actually, nobody gets along with Fuller,” said my friend. “One more reason for you two Hardy Boys to steer clear of this mess.”

I said, “Can you at least pass along some details of the alleged suicide? The papers didn’t say anything about the gun. What—”

“There was a thirty-two-caliber slug in his head.”

“What about the gun? Was it his?”

The police detective looked down at his hands, then beyond me. “I’ll tell you one more thing, and then we’ll change the subject,” he said. “We’ll talk about what we did on Halloween and perhaps how many papers Hollywood Molly has picked up since last we met.”

“Win, you’re not the kind of cop who—”

“One more thing. But if you say anything about this, I’ll deny it, and we’ll both be in a lot of trouble.”

I made a resigned noise. “Okay, so tell me.”

“They haven’t found the gun yet,” he said. “It wasn’t in the bedroom with the body.”

I sat up. “He was shot in the head, and there’s no gun in the room? Jesus, Win, how can you write it off as a suicide?”

“I can’t fool around with this business at all,” he said. “I told you the best thing you and Groucho can do is forget all about it. But maybe …”

“But maybe what?”

“I’m hoping you don’t,” he said.

Nine

Some of the reporters were the same ones who’d been gathered outside the Malibu house, but several more were new. About twenty of them were camped on the wide circular drive that led to and from Dinah Flanders’s Tudor-style Beverly Hills mansion.

Norm Lenzer of the Herald-Examiner was wearing a tan trench coat and a tan fedora. “You still deny you’re having a fling with Dinah?” he called as Groucho eased out of his parked Cadillac into the misty afternoon.

“Actually, Norman, I’ve become a professional gigolo, and this is the next stop on my route.” He went slouching along the white gravel drive, heading for the oaken brown door.

Gil Lumbard of the Hollywood Citizen-News said, “Looks as though you are back in the amateur detective business, Groucho.”

John Wilcox of the San Diego Union was standing under a black umbrella, sheltered from the drizzle. “Has Dinah asked you to help out?”

Groucho stopped on the welcome mat and turned to face the newsmen. “Miss Flanders has asked me, as an old and dear friend, to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of her husband.”

“The police have already done that,” Wilcox pointed out. “Or don’t you believe it was really a suicide, Groucho?”

“I’m keeping an open mind.” He turned and knocked on the door.

Lenzer asked, “Are the Marx Brothers going to make another movie?”

“As a matter of fact, we’ve just signed to do A Night in a Bordello,” he said over his shoulder. “And I’m happy to announce that Louis B. Mayer himself has consented to play the madam.”

The door inched open. “Come on in,” invited Dinah’s voice very quietly.

“When are you going to talk to us, honey?” called out one of the other reporters.

Groucho ducked inside, the actress slammed the door and bolted it. The hallway was shadowy, smelling of furniture polish and a pungent incense.

After Groucho had bowed and kissed Dinah’s hand, he noticed someone standing in the parlor on his right. “Howdy,” he said, straightening.

Ted Timberlake was wearing a black Western-style suit, fringed with black leather. His low-crown Stetson was black, too, as was his string tie. “I was just now telling Miss Dinah that I didn’t believe this was an appropriate time to have a clown in the house.”

“Good idea,” Groucho said to the cowboy star. “So I guess you’ll be moseying on, eh?”

“You know, Marx, I’ve never thought you, or your brothers, were especially funny.”

“Coming from a man who chose Smiley Burnette to provide the comic relief in his films, I take it as a compliment.”

Dinah said, “Ted, it turns out, was a longtime friend of Eric’s. He just dropped by to see if there was anything he could do to help.”

“Maybe the barn needs cleaning out,” suggested Groucho.

“I’ll be taking my leave, Miss Dinah.” Timberlake tipped his Stetson. “If you need something, just give us a ring. And Liza and I’ll be seeing you at the memorial service out at Warlock come next Tuesday night.” He stepped into the hallway.

“Thanks, Ted, but I think I’ll be okay.”

The cowboy actor frowned in Groucho’s direction. “Can I drop you anyplace, Marx?”

“Such as into the Pacific Ocean perhaps? No, thanks, pardner, I only just got here.”

“Go on out the back way, Ted,” advised the actress.

“Yep, I’m as anxious to avoid that newspaper crowd as you are.” He patted Dinah on the shoulder and started off, spurs jingling faintly, for the rear door of the mansion.

As the door closed, Groucho remarked, “I wasn’t aware that Timberlake was an old friend of the family.”

“He’s not exactly,” she said. “Fact is, this is the first time he’s ever been here.”

“Oh, so?”

“But apparently he and Eric saw a lot of each other at their country club.”

“How long was the guy here?”

“A half hour or so.” She caught hold of Groucho’s arm. “But come with me—I want you to see Eric’s den.”

He accompanied her along the shadowy hall. “By the way, what’s become of Pearson the valet?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” she answered.

At first Jane didn’t pay much attention to our bloodhound. She heard him roaming nervously around the living room, snuffling, giving out a whimpering sort of bark every now and then. “Hush up, Dorgan,” she called from her studio. “You were just outside.”

She was finishing up another Hollywood Molly Sunday page. Once a month she included a panel of paper-doll cutouts. This time she was using Molly’s starlet pal, Monica Mulholland, as the doll, and the costumes were all sarongs. Ever since Dorothy Lamour had turned up wearing one in The Jungle Princess and The Hurricane a couple of years before, the sarong had been a part of quite a few movie wardrobes.

“Speaking of wardrobe,” said Jane, putting down her crow-quill pen and reaching for the phone on the taboret.

Her friend Marlene Tobin at the Starlite Costumes warehouse in Hollywood answered on the third ring. “Starlite,” she said in her throaty, chain-smoker’s voice.

“Hi, Marlene. I’m helping Frank with—”

“You shouldn’t be helping that lug with anything, kid. Not in your condition. I sure hope it doesn’t involve any heavy lifting. When you went and married a writer, I warned you that they’re a lazy bunch and rarely lift a finger to do—”

“So far, dear, all I’ve lifted is this telephone. What I want—”

“Have you picked out one yet?”

“One what?”

“Name for the baby. It’s best to do it early; otherwise, you guys’ll be arguing all the way to the baptismal font and—”

“Donald if it’s a boy, Daisy if it’s a girl. That’s because we’re both such fans of the Donald Duck cartoons that we—”

“You’ve become even more of a wiseacre since you married that guy.”

“Probably so,” agreed Jane. “I’m trying to track down a costume, Marlene.”

“Something you have to draw in your comic strip?”

“Not exactly. We want to find out who wore it at Warren Lockwood’s big Halloween bash the other—”

“Frank’s at it again, huh?”

“At what?”

“He and that swaybacked comedian are pretending to be detectives.”

“This does have to do with a case, yes. Now if—”

“Geeze, everybody knows that Olmstead knocked himself off because that bimbo Flanders was sleeping around. I heard that when they were shooting Two-Fisted Lady over on Catalina, she—”

“How many Grim Reaper costumes do you folks have in stock, and did—”

“Just one.”

Out in the living room Dorgan started barking.

Putting her hand over the mouthpiece, she called, “Be quiet for a minute, okay?” To Marlene she said, “Can you tell me if it was rented on the thirtieth and to whom?”

“That’s easy, Jane. I don’t even have to look it up,” said her friend. “We did rent it for the Lockwood party, and the guy who took it was Andy Devine.”

“Andy Devine, the big fat character actor with the gravel voice?”

“That Andy Devine, yes,” said Marlene. “You don’t think he was the guy the papers said scared Olmstead at that party?”

“No, he couldn’t be the one.” Jane had gotten a brief look at somebody in a Death costume, and she was certain it couldn’t have been anyone built like Andy Devine wearing that outfit. “Who else around town has any costumes like that to rent?”

“This is important, huh?”

“We think so, Marlene.”

Her friend said, “I know people at the other big costume houses, kid. Let me check them for you.”

“That’d be swell, Marlene. I’d appreciate that.”

“Sure. You rest. Put your feet up and—”

“Tough to draw in that position.”

“Hey, what about the studios? Several of them have big costume departments.”

“That’s true. I’m planning to—”

“Nope, don’t wear yourself out. I can handle that, too.”

“Okay, but—”

“I have to go now, kid. They just came in for the suits of armor. Call you soon as I find out anything. Bye.”

As Jane hung up, Dorgan appeared in the doorway of the studio. He was making agitated noises in his chest, eyeing her.

“What’s up? You sound worried about something.” She got up from her drawing board.

Our dog ran, in his waddling way, through the living room to the front door. He was barking now.

At the door he lowered his head and commenced sniffing loudly.

“What’s wrong? Somebody out there?” Jane looked out through the peephole. The porch was empty.

Up on his hind legs, Dorgan started scratching at the door.

“Hey, Fido, I just repainted that thing. Down.”

Reluctantly, the bloodhound obeyed. He was wiggling anxiously, making whimpering noises, glancing up at Jane.

She moved to a window and looked out into the gray afternoon. “Nobody lurking around, fella.”

After a moment Dorgan subsided. He gave her one of his forlorn looks, crossed the living room, and lifted himself up onto the sofa. Arranging himself in a comfortable position, he shut his eyes.

“What was that all about?” Jane asked aloud, looking from the dog to the front door. “Leftover spooks from Halloween maybe?”

Ten

May Sankowitz was a redhead again, and her newest office at Hollywood Screen magazine was half again as large as the previous one. A small, slim woman approaching fifty, she was sitting at a stark Scandinavian sort of desk, legs resting across the opened middle drawer.

Back when we both worked on the Los Angeles Times, May handled the advice-to-the-lovelorn column under the name of Dora Dayton. She used to claim she’d given Nathanael West the idea for Miss Lonelyhearts , but she eventually gave that up when she realized that very few people had ever heard of him or his novel.

“Before you impose on my notorious good nature,” she said, swinging her legs off the drawer and sitting up straight, “let me tell you my good news.”

“You’re going to be starting a radio show.”

“You already knew.”

“We’re putting together a new Groucho show for Lockwood’s network, and I heard—”

“Johnny Whistler and Louella Parsons are supposedly waking up screaming,” May said. “I’ll be the only movieland gossip on the airwaves with a melodious voice. I don’t talk through my nose like Whistler or through my fanny like Louella.”

“When do you start?”

“Early next month. We’re calling it Inside Hollywood with May Sankowitz. How’s the title hit you?”

I settled into a stark Scandinavian chair on my side of the desk. “How about The Adventures of Superman? That’s a lot catchier and implies—”

“Nuts to you, buster,” she said. “Notice, Frank, that even now that I’m on the way to national stardom, I still have time for you. What are you working on, love? Another murder case?”

“Groucho and I think so.”

May snapped her fingers. “Ah ha, you must be poking your schnozzes into the Eric Olmstead suicide.”

“We are, yeah. What I’d like to—”

“If you must play detective, why don’t you join forces with someone more presentable than Groucho Marx?” she suggested. “Basil Rathbone’s a pain in the backside, but at least he’s dapper and his socks match. Or you might try Warren William. Sober the guy up, and he’s—”

“Thanks for the advice. Now here’s what I want to find out,” I cut in. “As I recall, you know a lot about the people who work as servants to the stars.”

“You bet.” She gestured at a row of old-fashioned non-Scandinavian filing cabinets along one wall of the big office. “I’ve got a whole drawer chock-full of stuff on butlers, valets, maids, chauffeurs. If you want inside dirt, there’s no better source.”

“What do you have on this guy James Pearson, who—”

“Olmstead’s valet,” May said. “That’s an interesting one.”

“How so?”

“Well, Pearson has no history,” she answered. “He was never a valet or any other sort of servant before he went to work for Olmstead. And that was exactly one month before Eric and Dinah tied the knot.”

“So what was the guy doing before that?”

“For one thing, he wasn’t James Pearson.”

“Who then?”

The gossip columnist shrugged. “I didn’t pursue it that far, Frank,” she admitted. “But one of my stringers did find out another interesting tidbit.”

“Yeah?”

“I hear this Pearson owns a place over on Santa Catalina Island. In an area where real estate is expensive.”

“So maybe he has another source of income, huh?”

“That’s for you to find out, dear.”

“And it’s possible that somebody planted him with Olmstead.”

“Somebody like Warren Lockwood? Could be, since he’s extremely protective of his stars, but at this point I’m not eager to go digging into the activities of my new boss,” she told me. “Maybe you should adopt a similar policy.”

“Maybe, but I probably won’t,” I said. “What about Dinah’s marriage to Olmstead? Why’d they decide to separate?”

“I hear the reason was the old familiar incompatibility.”

“Incompatible how?”

“In the sack, according to my sources. But that’s what they usually say.”

“Did you know they were living separately?”

May shook her head. “Not until after he was dead,” she replied. “I would’ve found out about it in another week or so probably, since you can’t keep something like that secret too long.”

“Any ideas about who’d want Olmstead dead?”

“Listen, the guy was a moody Limey with a bum ticker,” she said. “My guess is he really did bump himself off. These artsy types are doing that all the time, Frank.”

“Anything in his background that looks odd?”

“All that I have in my files on the guy is pretty tame,” she said. “He directed a few successful epics in England, got hired to come over here by Sam Goldwyn. Did The Loves of Christopher Columbus for him and then signed a contract with Lockwood’s Warlock outfit. Met the gorgeous Dinah, fell head over heels in love, married, and lived happily ever after until he put the gun to his coco.”

I asked, “What about this director Jason Smollet, would he—”

“Washed up in this town, finished,” May said. “He might even have to relinquish the title of Queen of Hollywood.”

“I noticed him at Lockwood’s Halloween party. He sounded pretty angry with Olmstead.”

She smiled, shaking her head. “Jason would never kill anybody,” she assured me. “But if he did, he’d scratch the guy’s eyes out, not shoot him.”

“Still, he had a good motive for wanting Olmstead dead.”

“Even now that Eric is dead, Lockwood’s never going to hire Jason to direct that Bob Taylor movie,” she said. “Jason might as well retire and devote himself full-time to pursuing his hobby, which is picking up sweet young men at Muscle Beach.”

“I guess I can cross him off our suspect list.”

She stood up. “I’ve got an editorial meeting right about now, sweetheart. Any gossip you can pass along about Groucho?”

“He’s going to star in Groucho Marx, Secret Agent, our new radio—”

“That I already know,” said May, coming out from behind her desk and striding toward the door. “But, hey, if this does turn out to be a murder, let me know.”

“When did this happen?” asked Groucho.

“Sometime between last night and this morning,” answered Dinah.

“And where were you at the time?”

“I left here about eight to drive back to Malibu to gather up some of my things. Decided to spend the night there and got back here to Beverly Hills a little after seven this morning.”

Slouching slightly, Groucho crossed the threshold.

Eric Olmstead’s study was a large room, paneled in redwood. A claw-foot mahogany desk sat in the center of the room. All of its drawers had been yanked out and their contents dumped on the Persian carpet. Letters, memos, scripts, pencils, pens, paper clips, and several packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes were scattered all around the desk.

Every book had been swept off the shelves, and they now lay in tumbled piles on the floor. On the back wall a painting that might have been a landscape by Turner had been swung aside, and the safe behind it stood open.

“Did you alert the police about this?”

“Hell no,” answered the actress. “I don’t have much faith in the cops. They’d only tell me I was imagining things or that I’d done this myself. So screw them.”

He made his way through the debris and over to the emptied safe. “Tell me what’s become of Pearson.”

“The bozo was here when I took off last night, Groucho. But he sure wasn’t here when I got home this morning.”

“When he returns, we can ask—”

“I doubt he’s going to return,” Dinah said from the doorway. “His room’s been cleaned out, suitcases and all. I’ll bet he’s scrammed for good.”

“Then we’ll have to find out where the lad scrammed to.” Groucho, hands behind his back, was peering into the gaping wall safe. “What did your husband keep in here?”

“Search me. Stuff he didn’t want anybody—including me—to see.”

“Money maybe?”

“Christ, Groucho, he could’ve had the Hope Diamond stashed in there for all I know.”

“You didn’t have the combination?”

“I didn’t.”

“How about Pearson?”

“Could be, but I just don’t know,” she said. “Eric never confided in me about things like that. Since he really didn’t like me to hang around his den, I rarely ever came in here.”

“Doesn’t look like the safe was forced, which means it was probably opened by someone who knew the combination.” Backing off, Groucho leaned his backside against the heavy desk. After taking out a fresh cigar, he gestured at the disrupted room with his free hand. “You have any idea what was being searched for?”

“Not the foggiest notion, no.”

Groucho crouched on the rug, scanning the sprawl of papers. “This looks to be mostly material pertaining to his movie work.”

She shrugged. “Well, Eric was very much wrapped up in that,” Dinah said, watching Groucho poke around among the scattered pages. “The last few weeks I was living here, Eric and I had very little to do with each other. We never sat around at dinner comparing our days. We didn’t chat about world events over coffee in the kitchen, speculating on what country Hitler would invade next, or anything like that.”

Straightening up, Groucho said, “I’d better look around the house now and see if somebody forced an entry.”

“I can save you the time, kiddo,” Dinah told him. “I already did that, right after I discovered this mess.”

“And?”

She shook her head. “There’s absolutely no sign of a break-in.”

“It does seem—although I hate to jump to a conclusion—that your vanishing valet may well have had a hand in this.”

“I never much liked the guy,” she said, “so I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

“If it was indeed Pearson, we still have to figure out why.”

Dinah asked, “Do you want to see where Eric was murdered?”

“Prior to that,” said Groucho, lighting his cigar, “I’d like to give Pearson’s quarters the once-over.”

“You think he’s mixed up in Eric’s death?

“I think that he’s not here and that nobody seems to know where he is. That arouses my curiosity.”

Dinah said, “Okay, Groucho. You’re the boss.”

The missing valet’s rooms were at the back of the house, on the second floor at the end of a long corridor. Using a key on her ring of house keys, the actress opened the door.

Pearson had a bedroom and bathroom. The rooms smelled strongly of pipe tobacco.

Groucho followed Dinah inside, glancing around. “What’s that door over there lead to?”

“The valet’s quarters have a private entrance,” she said. “You can come up a closed-in staircase from the parking area next to our garages.”

Walking over to the dark wood door, Groucho tried the knob. The door wasn’t locked and opened silently. “So Pearson could exit and enter without your knowing it?”

“Sure, especially after he was through for the day.”

After taking a few steps down the stairs, Groucho returned to the valet’s bedroom and shut the door. “Matter of fact, anybody could come in that way.”

“They’d have to get by Pearson.”

Groucho opened the closet near the bed. There was one suitcase sitting on the hardwood floor, but marks in the faint dust indicated two other bags had been there. One gray business suit hung from a hanger, while almost all the other wooden hangers were empty. But near the wall hung a flowered silk dress and a maroon-colored padded housecoat. “Pearson wasn’t planning to embark on a career as a female impersonator upon the stage, by any chance?”

“What the hell is that stuff doing in there?” asked Dinah, frowning into the closet.

“You’ve never seen them?”

“I’ve never been in this room since Pearson moved in, Groucho.”

At the heavy, claw-footed bureau, Groucho began opening drawers and looking inside each one. “He seems to have emptied most of the drawers,” he said, “except this one.” From a middle drawer he lifted out some black lace panties, a pair of silk stockings, and a lacey brassiere. “More feminine apparel.”

“That so-and-so must’ve had a broad who visited him,” concluded Dinah, picking up the lingerie and inspecting it. “Not very expensive undies.”

“Did Pearson have a steady lady friend?” Crouching, Groucho looked under the bed.

“Search me,” answered the actress. “I really don’t know a dammed thing about the guy’s private life. But it looks like he carried on an interesting one.”

Groucho pulled out a pair of frilly backless woman’s slippers, pink in color. “So you wouldn’t know the name of the lass who visited him?”

“Nope, got no idea,” she said. “If the bum ever comes back, I think maybe I’ll fire him.”

After returning the mules to their original spot, Groucho stood up, creaking slightly. “I’d venture to say that your valet has, as Harriet Beecher Stowe used to say, flown the coop,” he told Dinah. “He packed in a hurry, didn’t take everything. Left a few telltale items behind.”

“And what tale do they tell you?”

“That he’s somebody I want to find, along with his girlfriend.”

Nodding, Dinah said, “Now would you like to see the room where my husband was killed?”

“Lead on,” said Groucho.

Eleven

“Maybe they ran out of curiosity,” observed Groucho as he glanced around the large, beam-ceilinged bedroom.

There was no evidence that Olmstead’s bedroom had been searched.

“Or they did a hell of a good job of tidying up afterwards,” said Dinah, who’d only come a few steps into the room.

Groucho went over to the high wide built-in bookcase to the right of the bed. “Doesn’t look like any of these were disturbed,” he said.

“That’s Eric’s collection of cowboy novels,” the actress explained. “He was nutty about that Old West crap.”

The bright-jacketed books were by Zane Grey, Max Brand, Ernest Haycox, and sundry other chroniclers of Western adventure. “Gave him something to talk about with Ted Timberlake, the Off-key Caballero.” Groucho turned away from the rows of books, then looked again at one of the shelves. “This one’s out of place.” He poked at the spine of a thick, red-covered edition of Emerson’s Collegiate Dictionary.

“I don’t know why he kept that with his cowboy novels.”

“You and your husband had separate bedrooms, huh?” Hands behind his back, Groucho went slouching over to the four-poster bed.

“After the first couple of months we did. Eric had trouble sleeping and sat up reading—or so he claimed.”

“Another insomniac,” he muttered.

The wide bed was neatly made.

“They found him over there by the dresser,” said Dinah, who remained just four or five feet into her late husband’s room.

Circling the bed, Groucho crossed to the dark wood dresser. Crouching, he studied the Persian carpet. “No sign of anything.”

“There was a big throw rug, and the cops took it with them.”

Groucho stood. “You saw him?”

“Yeah, Warren let me take a look, after I bitched about it for nearly ten minutes.” She shook her head. “Eric was lying facedown on the throw rug. There wasn’t … wasn’t much … mess.”

“Where was the gun?”

After a few seconds she answered, “Jesus, I don’t remember, Groucho.”

“But you saw it?”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “I must’ve, but I can’t remember.”

“Wasn’t in his hand?”

“I don’t think so,” said the actress. “I got kind of wobbly after I saw Eric like that. Felt like I was maybe going to pass out, you know, and Warren put an arm around me and escorted me back downstairs.”

“Lockwood’s certainly been helpful through all this.” Groucho went over to the closet, opened the door.

“Hey, I’m worth millions to Warren, and he’s eager to—among other things—protect my reputation.”

“That’s why he got here before the police?”

“So he says. We still haven’t had a long heart-to-heart chat about what all he was up to.”

“You talked to the police when they got here?”

“Yeah, and I told them Eric would never have killed himself.”

“But they didn’t pay much attention to that.”

“Well, there was the suicide note,” she said, “and no sign that the house had been busted into. So they just patted me on the head and told me I was—as might be expected—hysterical. One of them also patted me on the fanny, as I recall.”

“What happened to that note?”

“Cops took that, too.”

Sitting at the bottom of the clothes closet was a box with the Starlite Costumes logo printed on its lid in blue and gold.

Squatting, Groucho opened the box. “His Sinbad costume,” he said, lifting up the turban.

“I guess I’d better return the damn thing.”

As Groucho started to set the turban aside, it unfurled some, and a slip of yellow memo paper fell free and fluttered down to land atop the Sinbad sash.

“By Jove,” said Groucho, picking up the slip of paper and studying it. “Any idea what this is, my dear?”

Slowly, somewhat reluctantly, she came over to look at the memo. “Never saw it before, and I’ve got no idea what it means.”

It consisted of a list of numbers, written in a neat calligraphic hand: 1506-II-5, 289-II-3, 1528-I-21, 84-II-9, 970-II-5, 1482-I-16, 786-I-18, 1514-II-28, 684-I-3, 1253-II-30, 538-I-1.

“Code messages are pretty melodramatic,” said Groucho. “But I have a hunch that’s exactly what this happens to be. May I take it?”

“Sure, go ahead,” said the actress. “But why in the hell would Eric have had a code message tucked into his turban?”

“Yet another thing we have to find out.” Groucho folded the slip neatly down the middle and slipped it, carefully, into the breast pocket of his sport coat.

After talking with May Sankowitz, I still had a couple hours before I was due to meet Groucho.

Driving along Santa Monica Boulevard, I noticed a movie theater that was showing At the Circus along with the latest Dr. Kildare and selected short subjects. Jane and I had seen Groucho’s movie the week before, but I decided it wouldn’t hurt me to look at it again. Hopefully the experience would inspire me to greater heights while I was working on our radio scripts.

Parking my Ford, I strolled to the theater and paid my two bits. Inside the middle-sized movie palace a very pretty blond usherette guided me along an aisle in the darkened theater, using her flashlight to point me to an empty seat.

I’d arrived midway through the newsreel, just in time to see German tanks rolling along the streets of Warsaw. This was the version of the weekly news that the Warlock studios produced, and our announcer friend Harry Whitechurch was providing the narration.

The next item showed dozens of sturdy Teutonic types marching neatly down a bright afternoon street in Pasadena. Four abreast, clad in paramilitary uniforms, marching in a slightly modified version of the goosestep.

There were about a hundred people sitting in the afternoon theater, and at least half of them booed or hissed.

“Members of the Sons of Germany staged a rally this week in the peaceful Southern California town of Pasadena,” narrated Whitechurch in his deep, rich voice. “They marched across town to the rally site, drawing a crowd that contained more hecklers than supporters. Oppressed peoples in invaded countries have seen a lot of marching Germans lately, but they have to watch in silence.”

The next sequence of the newsreel showed a dapper man in his forties, his hair and neatly trimmed beard a premature gray. “Werner Spearman, German consul in Los Angeles, says Hitler and Nazi Germany want nothing but peace and prosperity,” said Whitechurch as we saw Spearman walk up the steps of the consulate in L.A. The camera cut to a close-up of Spearman.

He looked directly into the lens, smiling thinly. “My country has only the greatest respect for the United States,” he assured us. “What is going on in Europe is all perfectly natural and is no concern of America’s. At this time it would not be wise for your president to involve you in our war.”

Spearman also drew boos and hisses, and some teenagers in the back rows yelled out, “Heil, Hitler!”

Then Dinah Flanders was walking along a stretch of private beach in Malibu, wearing white slacks and a white bathing-suit halter. Holding her hand and looking very pale in his Hawaiian-pattern shirt was Eric Olmstead. “Hollywood mourns the passing of the brilliant director Eric Olmstead, who died this week at his palatial home in Beverly Hills,” Harry Whitechurch told us. “His bride of just a few months, the lovely and popular Dinah Flanders, was devastated by her talented husband’s tragic passing. She vows, however, to continue her successful career and will next be seen in the Warlock production of She Means Trouble.”

Next came footage of Dinah and Olmstead driving up to the entrance gate in the high stucco walls of the Lockwood Aero plant. The actress was at the wheel of her convertible, and her husband, wearing dark glasses, was sitting beside her.

The gate swung open, and Lockwood, smiling cordially, came striding out to meet his star.

“In happier days,” said Whitechurch, “the lovely Dinah Flanders and her ill-fated husband were frequent visitors to the Lockwood Aero facility in the Southern California town of Hawthorne. On this bright sunny afternoon in June of this year, Warren Lockwood himself escorted the happy couple around the airplane factory. He showed them how Lockwood Aero is contributing to the growing military strength of America.”

An animated cartoon about a grumpy bear followed the newsreel, then a Pete Smith Special, and then the Dr. Kildare second feature. I learned about several new diseases, but I never had time to see the Marx Brothers again.

Legs slightly bent, hands deep in the pockets of his umber-colored slacks, unlit cigar clamped in his teeth, Groucho was making his way along Sunset toward Moonbaum’s Delicatessen. When he stopped at a corner to wait for the traffic light to change, a pretty blond bobby-soxer halted nearby.

Glancing over at him, she suddenly gasped. “Are you who I think you are?” she inquired.

“Depends on who you think I am. If you think I’m Cornelia Otis Skinner, you’re dead wrong,” he replied. “However, if you think I’m Oliver Wendell Holmes, you’re getting warm.”

The light changed, and they both started across the street. “What I meant to say is, you’re Groucho Marx, aren’t you?”

“That’s a terrible thing to accuse a man of, especially without a smidgen of proof.”

“Well, even without your moustache, you—”

“I used to raise smidgens when I was a boy. We tried racing them one season, but found that because of their tiny little feet, they couldn’t run very fast, and thus—”

“Would you sign something for me?”

They reached the opposite curb. “Certainly, my child. I’m especially good at signing mash notes and not half-bad at proclamations. Of course, those I have to nail on church doors, so you—”

“My autograph book.” The girl produced it out of her small red leatherette purse. “They’re really going to be excited when I get back to Altadena and tell them I actually met Groucho Marx.”

“More likely they’ll run you out of town on a rail and pin a red letter to your sweater.” He signed his name, added a few X’s, and returned the book and her fountain pen. “Since you’re such a sweet and wholesome moppet, I’ll waive my usual signing fee. And it’s lucky for you this isn’t a national holiday, because then I’d also wave the flag and that always attracts a crowd. And now, farewell.”

The bobby-soxer watched as he entered the delicatessen.

As Groucho passed a booth near the entrance, a plump woman in a flowered dress cried out, “Duck Soup!”

Frowning, he halted. “Madam, I fear you’ve made a serious mistake,” he told her. “I am not your waiter, and if you want a bowl of duck soup, you must—”

“No, you’re Groucho Marx and—”

“Several people have accused me of that today, and, frankly, I—”

“What I meant when I blurted out, ‘Duck Soup!’ was that—”

“Ah, yes, I see. You’re one of the gourmets who’s trying to pry the fabled Marx recipe for duck soup out of me,” he accused. “Well, let me tell you that wild horses couldn’t get that recipe. Which is fortunate for them in a way, since wild horses are not especially fond of dining on soup. I will, being in a benevolent mood, provide you with one of the secret ingredients. It’s duck.” He took a few steps, then stopped again. “Oh, and be sure to remove the feathers first; otherwise—”

“No, what I’m trying to tell you, Mr. Marx, is that Duck Soup! is my favorite Marx Brothers movie.”

“Oh, so? My favorite Marx Brothers movie is Son of the Sheik, chiefly because we’re not in it. Not even Zeppo.”

“How can it be your favorite Marx Brothers movie, if you’re not in it?”

“That was the last thing Rudy Valentino said before he passed away.” Bowing, Groucho resumed slouching his way to his favorite booth and sat down.

I wasn’t there yet. He settled back on his seat, picked up the freshly mimeographed menu.

A young man with a broken arm was just getting out of the booth across the aisle. Recognizing Groucho, he crossed timidly over. “Would you autograph my cast, sir?”

Looking up, Groucho said, “It depends on how many people are in your movie.”

“No, I—”

“I’ll autograph all the chorus girls first. Then, time allowing, I’ll scribble something on each of the ingenues, and—”

“What I’d like you to do is sign your name on this cast on my left arm,” he explained, pointing to it. “I broke it falling out of a tree.”

“I’d heard the Tarzan auditions over at MGM were getting tougher, but I didn’t realize how tough.”

“I’m not an actor.”

“Neither am I.” Finding his fountain pen, he scrawled his name on the plaster.

After the young man left, the gaunt waiter drifted over. “You alone?”

“Essentially we’re all of us alone, Mellman,” he answered. “My upcoming philosophical dissertation is based on that notion, borrowing from the basic writings of Descartes. And if you think I’m going to make some obvious remark about putting Descartes before the horse, you’re not far from wrong.”

Mellman sighed. “Have you thought about a vacation in some warm, dry climate?” he asked. “Your sense of humor seems to be atrophying. And, I might as well mention this, too, you’re nowhere near as acerbic as you used to be. I was listening to your recent conversation with the kid with the broken wing, and you came nowhere near the rudeness you’re capable of.”

“Apparently, my boy, you have me confused with Groucho Marx,” he said. “Actually I am Scattergood Marx, the kindly old—”

“Here comes your cohort,” announced the waiter.

I had just entered the restaurant and was approaching the booth.

Twelve

Groucho finished telling me what had happened during his visit to Dinah Flanders’s mansion, then picked up the second half of his pastrami sandwich and took a bite. Returning it to the plate, he said, “Before I show you the alleged code message, have you got any questions or observations or astute comments, Rollo?”

Resting both elbows on the tabletop, I said, “They only searched Olmstead’s den, the one room where Dinah hardly ever went.”

He nodded. “One possibility is that they knew that’s where he kept what they were looking for.”

“I’m also curious as to why they didn’t search the den the same night Olmstead was killed.”

“Possibly they were interrupted,” said Groucho, pausing to take another bite of his sandwich. “Or mayhap we’re dealing with two separate groups—the killers and the housebreakers.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, unconvinced. “There’s also the possibility that the vanished Pearson searched the den before taking off.”

“Despite the fact that butlers and valets are usually up to no good in mystery novels, it still seems to be that Pearson behaved in a very un-valetlike manner by deserting Dinah in her hour of need and skipping out.”

“He could simply have been scared.” I took a sip of my coffee. “And anyway the guy probably wasn’t a valet.”

“You found out something, Rollo?”

I recounted what I’d heard from May Sankowitz, finishing up by saying, “I’ll try to dig up an address for Pearson’s Santa Catalina hideaway. We may want to chat with him.”

“The lad telephoned Lockwood before alerting either Dinah or the police,” said Groucho. “Therefore, it’s possible he was planted in the household by Lockwood.”

“To protect Dinah, or to keep an eye on Olmstead?”

“We’ll have to ask Lockwood about that.”

“Might annoy him.”

“You keep forgetting, young fellow-me-lad, that I’ve been annoying people since I was no higher than Primo Carnera and it hasn’t affected my brilliant career in the cinema or on the airwaves. It has hardly even fouled up my drayage business.”

I sat back, spreading my hands wide. “Okay, but I’m always leery of messing with tycoons.”

“Myself, I’m more leery of typhoons,” he said. “Also baboons, monsoons, and Looney Tunes.”

“Okay, we’ll approach Lockwood.” I drank some more coffee.

“Macaroons,” added Groucho.

I asked, “Do you think Dinah was leveling with you? She really doesn’t have any idea why someone would want to kill her husband?”

“Let us rather say that at the moment I’m inclined to believe the lass,” he answered. “Now then, fill me in on what the Beverly Hills constabulary had to say about Olmstead’s death.”

“Not much.” I told him about my meeting with Detective Mulvane.

A deep frown appeared on Groucho’s forehead as I concluded. “This is going to be even trickier than I expected,” he said. “We’ve got Warren Lockwood covering up something, we’ve got Beverly Hills’ finest playing dumb.” He shook his head. “There’s no gun on the premises, yet they’re ruling it a suicide.”

“We’re going to have to learn who exactly put the lid on this. Mulvane implied that the FBI is probably involved.”

“And we’d best find the lass who was a part-time roommate in the alleged Pearson’s quarters,” filling me in on what he’d found in Pearson’s room.

“Dinah has no idea who she was?”

“None at all, Rollo.”

“We’ll add her to our list of people to find.”

Thoughtfully, Groucho finished his sandwich. After wiping his mouth with the paper napkin, he reached into the breast pocket of his coat. “Feast your eyes on this cryptic missive, Watso.”

He unfolded the yellow memo he’d found at the Beverly Hills mansion and pushed it across the table to me.

Picking it up, I studied its mix of Arabic numbers and Roman numerals. “Very distinctive calligraphy. We’d better show this to Jane, see what she can tell us about the author,” I said. “What it looks like is a book-based code.”

“Which is?”

“You and your correspondent agree on a certain book. You drop him a note saying something like ‘twenty-six, fifty-two,’” I explained. “He picks up his copy of the book, turns to page twenty-six in The Mayor of Casterbridge, and finds the fifty-second word on the page is scram. He puts the book back on the shelf, grabs up an already-packed bag, and scrams.”

“What about the Roman numerals in the middle of each number?”

“Probably a book with the type set in columns on the page. Column one, column two.”

“Well, then all we have to do is examine every blooming book in Olmstead’s library until we locate the tome in question,” Groucho said. “I have dibs on Riders of the Purple Sage and …” He stopped, sat up, narrowed one eye. “Aha, Emerson’s Collegiate Dictionary.”

“Hum?”

“Olmstead had a vast collection of cowboy fiction in his bedroom,” he answered. “But amongst all those sagebrush sagas was a copy of Emerson’s Collegiate Dictionary. I’m betting that may well be the book used for code messages.”

“Then let’s go take a look at his copy of—”

“No need.” Groucho stood up. “I have a copy of the selfsame dictionary across the street in my office. I consult it quite often when writing memorable letters to my wide circle of friends. And to my circle of wide friends, such as Kate Smith. We’ll go take a look at it.” He pointed at the code message. “Bring that along, Rollo, and while you’re at it, you might as well pick up the check.”

Nan rose to her feet as Groucho and I walked into the outer office. “We had some interesting visitors while you were out to lunch, boss,” she announced.

“Some of your wizard and warlock chums?” he asked.

An otherwise-rational person, Groucho’s secretary had a tendency to become romantically involved with professional magicians. She had just recently broken up with the Great Zatara.

Shaking her head, she said, “Not exactly, no. These gents work for the government.”

“What government, pray tell? If it’s Guatemala or Burma, I’m not going to let it worry my mind.”

“This government. To be exact, these gents were with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Groucho lowered himself onto the small polka-dot sofa near her desk. “Landsakes, whatever would a couple of G-Men want with little old me?”

Picking up her memo pad, she consulted it. “The guy who did all the talking is James Goodrich, and his silent partner was introduced to me only as Agent Lewis. They’re both with the Los Angeles office of the bureau,” she said. “Agent Goodrich would very much like you to telephone him at your earliest convenience. I told him you were hiding out somewhere in the Mojave Desert to avoid creditors and irate husbands, but he still wants you to call.”

Taking a fresh cigar from a pocket of his sport coat, Groucho asked, “You sure these galoots were legit FBI men and not merely a couple of stray bit players from a Republic Pictures serial?”

“They had all the proper identification, chief.”

“By the way, I believe I instructed you not to address me as ‘boss’ or ‘chief’ anymore and always to use a simple ‘Your Holiness.’”

“Slipped my mind.” Nan again consulted her memo pad. “Would you be interested in what they told me they wanted?”

“I’d be absolutely fascinated.”

“Seems, so Agent Goodrich claimed, that the local office of the FBI has gotten wind of the radio show you and Frank are working on. Furthermore, they hear you are going to play a character named J. Edgar Bedspread, Undercover Man,” Nan explained. “They’re concerned that J. Edgar Hoover, their esteemed and highly sensitive Director, will be upset to have his name held up to ridicule in such an unseemly manner. Agent Goodrich would like to persuade you to change the character’s name.”

“Let’s see … J. Edgar Blanket, J. Edgar Motel, J. Edgar Pajama, or possibly—”

“You seem to be implying, Nan,” I cut in, “that these FBI agents had another reason for dropping in.”

“Well, Agent Goodrich seemed quite interested in finding out if Groucho was playing detective again,” she answered. “And if so, what exactly was the case he was poking his snoot into?”

“It’s very interesting that the FBI is interested in what I’m interested in,” he observed. “Very interesting indeed.”

“It’s got to tie in with Olmstead’s death,” I suggested.

He stood up. “Let us go into my inner sanctum and decode the message,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

Thirteen

Pacing in a somewhat zigzag fashion, Groucho read the first notation to me. “Fifteen-zero-six … Roman numeral two … five.”

I was sitting behind his desk with his copy of Emerson’s Collegiate Dictionary resting on the tan-colored blotter. Opening the fat book toward the back, I flipped pages until I reached page 1506. “The fifth word in the second column is will.”

“That’s good,” observed Groucho. “Because where there’s a will there’s a way. Although in some cases where there’s a will there’s an oy vay.”

After I wrote ‘will’ on a sheet of paper, I said, “Next number.”

“Page two-eighty-nine, column two, word three.”

“The second word of the message is contact.”

“Ah, Philo, we’re actually getting a message here. One word might be a coincidence, but two words indicate we’ve picked the right book to use.”

“It does indeed.”

The next word was you, and then came at and party.

Groucho came over and sat on the edge of the desk. “Obviously alluding to the fabled Lockwood Halloween party of the other evening.”

In a little more than ten minutes, we had the entire thing deciphered.

It read,—“Will contact you at party. Want lock wood information soon. G.”

“Bingo,” said Groucho, picking up the sheet of paper and looking over what I’d written down.

When I leaned back in the swivel chair, it made a metallic keening noise. “I’m guessing,” I said, “that this G. doesn’t want information about Lockwood’s movie activities.”

“Nope—it’s much more likely that this was a request for some inside dope on what’s going on behind the guarded gates of the Lockwood Aero airplane factory.”

I suggested, “That could be why the FBI is interested in you.”

“All right. Despite what the isolationists keep saying, America’s getting closer and closer to getting pulled into World War Two.” Groucho dropped off the desk to resume pacing. “Lockwood is, so rumor has it, working on planes and accessories that’ll aid the war effort, if and when we join up.”

“Olmstead was close to Dinah, and Dinah is very close to Lockwood,” I said. “So there’s a strong possibility Olmstead could’ve used Dinah’s influence to get a look at what’s going on at the Lockwood Aero setup.”

“Nazi spies do you think, Rollo?”

“Sounds like, but where exactly did Olmstead fit in? Was Olmstead a German agent himself? Was he being blackmailed into providing information? And did Dinah actually know what was going on?”

“Tune in next week for the answers to these and other perplexing questions,” said Groucho. “And you can add, Who is G?”

“Grim Reaper?”

“Too hokey,” said Groucho. “It could stand for Greta Garbo, but I somehow doubt that. Might even stand for Gestapo.”

“Or Groucho.”

“No, I can say without fear of contradiction—or fear of concertinas, for that matter—that I am not now nor ever have been a spy,” he said, raising his right hand briefly. “I have been a Peeping Tom, but that was back in the days before I pawned my telescope.”

“What we have to find out is what exactly Olmstead was up to,” I said. “And what espionage agents might be interested in at Lockwood Aero.”

“We can simply ask Lockwood about the latter.”

“Before we talk directly to Lockwood, Groucho, let me check with a friend of mine who’s a senior editor at Aviation Week,” I offered. “He knows a lot that never gets into the newspapers.”

“Do that,” agreed Groucho. “I’ll be getting in touch with the estimable Zeppo to learn what he’s found out for us about Olmstead’s past. And I’ll track down Betty Boop and Zorro for more information on what the Grim Reaper was up to with Olmstead.”

“Jane’s trying to trace his costume.”

Groucho sighed. “My once-fabled wit is definitely slowing down,” he said. “It wasn’t too long ago that I’d have been able to come up with several pithy jests about the fact that a cartoonist was tracing something.”

Getting up from behind the desk, I made a go-ahead gesture with my right hand. “You’re welcome to try.”

“Let me sleep on the matter. Which isn’t going to be, I can assure you, as comfortable as sleeping on the mattress.”

“Can I borrow that original code message to have Jane look at the calligraphy?”

Groucho folded the yellow sheet in half and handed it to me. “Guard this with your life,” he said. “Or you might prefer to guard it with a couple of sturdy goons armed with baseball bats.”

Heading for the door, I said, “I’ll call you tomorrow, and we can set up another meeting.”

“Oh, and do try to work on those revisions for our Groucho Marx, Secret Agent script.”

“I’ll see if I can fit that in to my busy schedule as a counterspy,” I promised.

Jane and I were having dinner in the breakfast nook. I set aside my fork, saying, “Dorgan doesn’t bark over nothing.”

“Sure he does,” she told me. “He’s a very imaginative bloodhound. Has to do with the fact that he used to be a movie dog.”

“Nevertheless, he doesn’t bark for no reason, and I’ll wager Rin Tin Tin didn’t either.”

“Hey, I’m sorry I brought it up, Frank. Really all I was doing, dear, was making small talk about what happened around the house today.”

I asked, “You didn’t see anything? Nobody lurking outside?”

“No, nothing and nobody,” answered my wife. “Why are you getting so het up over this?”

“Yeah, well, it’s starting to look like Groucho and I may be digging into something that involves espionage and spies.”

Jane frowned. “You didn’t mention that earlier.”

“Just came to that conclusion late this afternoon.”

“Eat the rest of your pie and then tell me.”

I finished up my wedge of cherry pie. “You sure you ought to be baking pies in your condition?”

“Frank, I consulted with the pediatrician on this, and he assures me that cherry, apple, and peach pies won’t put any strain on me in my delicate state,” she told me. “However, I’m to avoid baking mince or lemon meringue.”

“Okay, okay. I guess I’m developing a mother hen complex,” I said.

She smiled across the table at me. “I’m perfectly fine, Frank,” she assured me.

I reached out, put my hand over hers. “Bake all the pies you want,” I said. “Except custard.”

She slid out of the breakfast-nook bench. “Now tell me all about the spies and saboteurs and how it ties in with what happened to Eric Olmstead,” she requested. “I’ll wash the dishes while—”

“I’ll do the dishes. You sit back down, Jane.”

“In China women work in the rice fields until the day they’re rushed off to the maternity ward.”

“You can harvest all the rice you want, but I’ll help with the damn dishes.” I got up, started gathering them.

While I washed and Jane dried, I filled her in on what Groucho and I had learned during the day and what conclusions we’d reached so far.

Later, when we were sitting on the living room sofa, I produced the code message. “Here’s the infamous calligraphy sample,” I said, handing it to Jane.

“The message in the turban.” Jane took the slip of yellow paper.

Dorgan came waddling over, settling into a comfortable position near my feet.

Jane said, “Looks to me like whoever wrote this learned to letter in Europe.”

“I noticed the sevens.”

“There are a lot of other touches,” she said. “I don’t think I’m letting your mention of spies influence my judgment, but I’d say this was done by someone who was educated in Germany or Austria.”

“Man or woman?”

“Probably a guy, but it could be a very forceful woman. He used a Speedball ‘C’ pen and Higgins India Ink.”

“Awful fancy and formal for a spy message.”

She shrugged. “That seems to be his style.”

“Think it’s someone who does lettering for a living?”

“Not sure—could simply be a fellow who’s got calligraphy as a hobby.” Leaning forward, Jane set the message on the coffee table. “This case of yours is starting to sound like it’s about a lot more than a faked suicide.”

“We can handle it.”

“You always say that,” she reminded. “Then you end up getting bopped on the head, shot at, kidnapped, and bopped on the head again.”

“True, but I’ve managed to survive.”

“So far.”

Taking her hand, I said, “Listen, if this is going to upset you too much, I can quit. I can tell Groucho to handle this one solo.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m not suggesting that you quit. Not just yet anyway,” Jane said. “I’m only telling you, Frank, to be damned careful from here on out.”

“I was planning to do that before you even brought it up,” I assured her.

Fourteen

I was in my office at home trying to revise a scene in our Groucho Marx, Secret Agent script when the pair of Federal Bureau of Investigation agents dropped by for a visit.

It was a few minutes past eight in the morning, and Jane was still in bed. Dorgan was slumbering, with considerable snoring effects, on his red, white, and blue oval throw rug over near one of my filing cabinets.

We weren’t happy with one of the scenes between Groucho and Margaret Dumont. In this instance “we” consisted of Groucho, our director, and, grudgingly, me.

I had the allegedly unsatisfactory pages of my script spread out atop my desk. As I read them over for the second time that morning, I scribbled more notes in the margins.

In this particular scene Dumont, as Mata Herring, the aging femme fatale, was trying to wheedle government secrets out of Groucho, who was portraying J. Edgar Bedspread, Undercover Man. We’d already established in a prior scene that Groucho’s job was so secret that even he didn’t know what it was.

MUSIC: Romantic string quartet waltz up, under, and out.

SOUND: Door opening, Mata and J. Edgar entering living room.

BEDSPREAD: Ah, Mata my sweet, here we are alone at last in my penthouse. What do you think of the place?

MATA: If it’s a penthouse, Mr. Bedspread, why is it in the basement?

BEDSPREAD: I have a fear of heights. But let’s not dwell on architectural details, my pet.

SOUND: Mata’s hand being kissed.

BEDSPREAD: I must tell you that you’re a fine figure of a woman. In fact, there’s so much of you that you’re a fine figure of two women.

MATA: You know, Mr. Bedspread, I should be miffed with you. You promised to write to me after we met in Panama last month.

BEDSPREAD: I did write, but I used invisible ink.

MATA: I never saw a letter from you.

BEDSPREAD: Well, to be on the safe side, I also used invisible paper.

MATA: Next time, send me a message by carrier pigeon.

BEDSPREAD: We’re all out of pigeons down at the office. But I can probably dig up a parrot or a cockatoo.

MATA: Very well, a cockatoo’ll do.

BEDSPREAD: How’s that again?

MATA: I said a cockatoo’ll do, a cockatoo’ll do.

BEDSPREAD: Quit crowing and let’s get down to business.

MATA: Now that we’re together again, tell me about the plans.

BEDSPREAD: Actually, I don’t have any plans for tonight. So if you’d care to take in a movie later on or maybe go bowling, why—

MATA: No, no, I mean the secret plans.

BEDSPREAD: Oh, the secret plans. If you want to worm those out of me, Mata, you’re going to have to put your arms around me … .

MATA: Yes?

BEDSPREAD: Then you’re going to have to smother me with kisses … .

MATA: Yes?

BEDSPREAD: And it wouldn’t hurt if you slipped me at least ten bucks.

Leaning back in my chair, I said aloud, “Is any of this funny at all? Maybe I ought to start all over with—”

Dorgan, wide-awake, started growling. He got up, went trotting into the living room.

I followed the dog. “What’s up, Dorgan?”

He was at the front door, making anxious snuffling noises.

“Another lurker, maybe?”

Someone knocked.

Checking the spy hole, I observed two men in gray hats and gray suits standing out there on our porch.

“Sit, Dorgan,” I suggested.

Reluctantly, with considerable grumbling in his chest, he sat.

I opened the door. “Yes?”

“Mr. Franklin Denby?” inquired the one on the left.

“I am. And you fellows are … ?”

“I’m Agent Jim Goodrich, and this is Agent Lewis. We’re with the Federal Bureau of—”

“How come he doesn’t get a first name?”

Lewis, a lean, blond-haired man in his early thirties, didn’t say anything.

Goodrich, also a lean, blond-haired man in his early thirties, said, “As I was saying, Mr. Denby, we’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, out of the Los Angeles office.” Both of them produced convincing-looking identifications.

“What exactly do you guys—”

“We’d like very much, if you don’t mind, to talk with you for a few minutes,” explained Agent Goodrich.

“Okay, fine. Come on in. You, too, Lewis.”

Dorgan made rumbling, unhappy sounds as the two FBI men crossed the threshold.

“Would you like to share the sofa?” I asked them.

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Denby, we’ll occupy separate armchairs,” said Agent Goodrich, sitting in one.

Lewis occupied another one.

“Is this about the radio show, fellows?” I sat on the sofa.

Dorgan, eyeing our visitors, crossed the room, hopped up on the sofa, and stretched out with his head resting on my lap.

“In part,” answered Goodrich.

“And the other part?”

“First off, let me remind you that the director of the bureau is the idol of millions of Americans,” said Goodrich. “Also the ideal of countless thousands of boys and young men who hope someday to—”

“I thought their ideal was Melvin Purvis.”

“Purvis is no longer with the bureau,” said Agent Goodrich. “Now then, Mr. Denby, I want you to know that the bureau, while not specifically ordering you to, will be very pleased if you don’t name the fictitious FBI director on your upcoming radio program J. Edgar Bedspread.”

“Look, Groucho doesn’t play a character who’s in any way associated with the FBI,” I assured them. “He’s a sort of freelance spy who—”

“It’s the ‘J. Edgar’ part that’s causing concern,” cut in the G-man. “There is, after all, only one J. Edgar in America, and if you ridicule him, it reflects on—”

“I imagine there are quite a few J. Edgars by now,” I said. “The thing is, Agent Goodrich, that we happen to think that J. Edgar Bedspread is a funny name. As I understand free speech, it’s the inalienable right of every citizen to name a radio character J. Edgar Bedspread if he so chooses. We fought through that cold winter at Valley Forge for the right to call characters J. Edgar Bedspread.”

“We won’t pursue the matter further at this time, Mr. Denby,” said Goodrich. “We merely paid this visit to leave a word to the wise.”

“Then you’re through here?”

“There is one other matter we …” He stopped, popping to his feet and removing his hat.

Agent Lewis did likewise.

Jane, dressed in slacks and a candy-stripe blouse, had come into the room. “Are we in trouble, Frank?”

“No, just a couple of G-men dropped over to talk about Groucho Marx, Secret Agent,” I answered, standing. “Allow me to present Agent Goodrich and Agent Lewis.”

“Good morning, gentlemen. You guys go to work early, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am, we do.” Goodrich sat down again, resting his hat on his right knee.

Agent Lewis sat down again, resting his hat on his knee.

“Either of you gents like a cup of coffee?” Jane asked them.

“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Goodrich.

“How about your partner?”

“He doesn’t either, ma’am.”

“How about you, Franklin?”

“I think I’ll pass,” I told my wife. “You feeling okay?”

“About as chipper as I can with my living room full of federal agents.”

Goodrich said, “This is a purely informal visit, Mrs. Denby.”

“I think I’ll make a pot of coffee anyway, Frank.” Jane smiled in my direction, then retreated into the kitchen.

“There is one other thing we’d like to discuss briefly with you, Mr. Denby,” resumed Agent Goodrich.

“More names in the show that you folks object to?”

He said, “You and Groucho Marx have let it be known, through the press, that you intend to carry on an amateur investigation into the circumstances of the late Eric Olmstead’s suicide.”

“Actually, what we’re looking into is Olmstead’s murder.”

“For various reasons, Mr. Denby, we’d prefer it if you and Mr. Marx—whom we’ve had a very difficult time in arranging a conversation with, by the way—would suspend your interference in the matter.”

“Or else?”

Agent Goodrich smiled for less than a second. “As I’ve mentioned, Mr. Denby, this is not an official visit,” he said. “The FBI isn’t attempting to coerce you in any way. We would, however, be gratified if you and Groucho Marx would bow out of this entire matter.”

I stood up. “Well, I’ll certainly pass on your feelings, and those of Mr. Hoover, on to Groucho,” I assured them, walking toward the door.

“Thank you for your time and consideration.” Agent Goodrich stood.

Agent Lewis stood.

“So the FBI is investigating Olmstead’s death?” I inquired as I opened the door to usher them out into the clear blue morning.

“We never discuss matters of that nature, Mr. Denby.” Goodrich put his hat back on and stepped out onto the porch.

Agent Lewis put his hat on and followed him out.

I shut the door, sighed.

Making whimpering noises, Dorgan wiggled off the sofa and came waddling over to me. Crouching, I rubbed his head. “Those the same guys you smelled the other day, buddy?”

From the kitchen doorway Jane asked, “What the heck did all that mean?”

I straightened up. “For one thing,” I answered, “it means that Groucho and I are right about this case involving spies and espionage.”

Abandoned by his loved ones, or so he later told me, Groucho was alone in the large yellow-and-white kitchen of his Beverly Hills home that morning. Wearing a venerable flannel robe, he was searching the refrigerator shelves for something edible he could convert into breakfast.

He’d narrowed it down to a half of a pastrami sandwich that rested on a bluish plate that had a portrait of Shirley Temple etched in white on the bottom and a bowl of something he suspected must be leftover oatmeal.

Groucho was sniffing at the possible oatmeal when the wall phone rang.

Returning the bowl to its shelf, he shut the icebox and grabbed up the receiver. “Reservation desk, Black Hole of Calcutta. How may we help you?”

“Is this Julius Marx, the Jew comedian?”

Groucho frowned. This wasn’t one of his comedian pals kidding around. “Look, my friend, if—”

“It would be a good idea if you forgot all about Eric Olmstead. He’s dead, and it would be a shame if you joined him.”

“Who in the hell are—”

The caller, very quietly, hung up.

Putting the phone back on the hook, Groucho sat down at the kitchen table. “That’s not the way to discourage me, folks,” he said quietly. “That just makes me mad.”

The phone rang again.

First taking a deep breath, he walked over to answer it. “Yes?”

It was his brother Zeppo to tell him what he’d found out about Olmstead’s years in England.

Fifteen

I parted my Ford on the quirky side street just off Scenario Lane up in Beverly Glen. The windows of the Studebaker sedan parked in the driveway of Leon Elfson’s place had been scrawled with soap, quite probably by a band of trick-or-treat kids who’d been offered oranges in lieu of chocolate bars. There was a small broken pumpkin lying on the top step of the redbrick porch of the shingled ranch-style house.

When I pressed the doorbell, chimes inside the house played what sounded to me like. “Off we go into the wild blue yonder.”

Nearly a minute passed before the redwood door was opened. “Oh, hi there, Frank,” said a slim platinum blonde in a crimson silk kimono.

I had no idea who she was. “I telephoned last night about dropping in on Leon this morning,” I said hopefully.

She opened the door wider. “Sure, he’s in his den whapping away at his typewriter.” The platinum blonde stepped back and invited me in.

I entered a shadowy living room that was richly scented with the smell of tobacco. Up over the mantel was a large oil painting of a strong-jawed young man in a flying suit and airplane helmet. He was standing on an early-morning airfield with a hangar and its billowing wind sock in the background. He was grinning and giving a lazy mock salute.

It was not a portrait of Leon.

The girl laughed quietly. “You don’t remember me, do you, Frank?”

I admitted, “Nope, but—”

“You’re letting the hair throw you.”

“It wasn’t always the color of expensive silverware, huh?”

“Think mousy brown.”

I shook my head, still stumped. “Maybe you could simply tell—”

“Oh, and I think I had a different nose back then.”

I studied her nose. “Well, this one isn’t especially familiar, but—”

“I’m Helen St. Clair.”

“Pleased to meet you, Helen. Is Leon—”

“Oh, wait a minute. When I knew you, I was Anna Lannin.”

“Oh, so?” I was still uncertain as to where I’d ever met her.

“Want ads,” she prompted.

“At the L.A. Times?”

“Righto, Frank. I worked in the Want Ads Department when you were an ace crime reporter, and all the gals thought you were just swell, and—”

“You were heavier then, a little.”

“I weighed one-sixty-five and hadn’t started on my movie career.”

“And your name was Annie Micklejohn.”

“That’s right, yeah. I forgot I changed it twice.”

“So how’s your career coming along, Annie?”

“Call me Helen. Not so hot.”

“Takes time to establish a—”

“All I get offered is parts in stag films so far. And I sure as heck didn’t get a nose job and lose forty pounds just so some fat guy in black socks can—”

“Frank, hey, you’re looking terrific. How’re you doing, pal?” Leon Elfson, a contributing editor to Aviation Week, came bouncing into the living room. He was a short, energetic man, built along the lines of Mickey Rooney. “I see you’ve met my fiancée. Annie and I are planning—”

“Helen, honey,” she corrected.

“Helen. Sorry.” He hurried over to me, shook hands. “Hey, I haven’t seen you since you got hitched up, Frank. That’s terrific. Your missus is a swell cartoonist, and we both love Hollywood Molly. It’s the favorite comic strip in this household.”

“Actually, Leon, I like King of the Royal Mounted better,” corrected Annie.

“Well, if it comes to that, I prefer Prince Valiant, but it’s not polite to tell a visitor that his wife’s comic strip is only fourth or fifth on your list of favorites, sweetheart. Now is it?” He bounced twice on his heels, grinning at his girlfriend.

The former Annie smiled apologetically at me. “It isn’t that I don’t read Hollywood Molly,” she said. “It’s only that I think that serious stuff like King of the Royal Mounted is more in keeping with the mood of a war-torn world. They had a story in there about spies who tried to invade Canada and—”

“How about a cup of coffee, Frank?”

“No, that’s okay, Leon. If we could just talk about what—”

“Can you fix me some coffee, Helen? I know it’s my turn, but Frank and I are going to be—”

“Okay, all right, I’ll do it this time, sweetheart. But I’m getting dangerously close to getting fed up,” the aspiring movie actress said, moving toward the doorway to the kitchen. “I mean, I’ve now fixed the coffee eleven more times than you have in the last week. Plus which, dear, I’ve prepared lunch five more times than you have. See, when we vowed to share and share alike on household chores, it was my clear understanding that—”

“It’s all the deadlines,” said Leon. Taking hold of my arm, he pointed at the painting of the handsome aviator. “My magazine publishers had me take over the writing of their Barney Barnes, Ace of the Airways pulp magazine over a year ago, Frank. So in addition to all the news stories I have to write for Aviation Week, I’ve got to bat out a sixtythousand-word novel every month about that goggled asshole up there, or—”

“Language,” reminded Annie before withdrawing.

“She keeps trying to reform me.” Leon escorted me into this den.

“A formidable task.”

About half of the built-in bookcases held model airplanes.

He pointed at a chair facing his desk, shut the door. “You sure you want to know about what’s really going on down at Lockwood Aero?”

“I do, and so does Groucho.” I sat down.

Settling in behind his desk, my friend said, “I know quite a bit that I’m not supposed to know, Frank. The thing is, if I pass it on to you, you could eventually get in trouble with the FBI.”

“I’m already in trouble with the FBI,” I assured him. “So tell me.”

On the other side of the apartment door, the radio was playing. Johnny Whistler’s midafternoon Hollywood gossip program was just coming on. “Good afternoon to you and you and especially to you,” he was saying in his high-pitched nasal voice. “I’m told that Dinah Flanders, Mr. and Mrs. Moviefan’s favorite blond bombshell, is still in deep mourning over the suicide of her hotshot director husband, the late Eric Olmstead. So much has her hubby’s death affected her that dear Dinah refuses to accept the fact that the British import was a suicide … .”

Groucho leaned closer to the pine door and knocked.

“ … addled by grief, she’s asked aging baggy-pants comedian Groucho Marx to look into the circumstances of Olmstead’s death. C‘mon, Dinah darlin’, the police have already made their minds up, and you sure don’t need a funnyman who’s slipping at the box office to muddy the waters. And don’t say I didn’t warn you. Now an Open Letter to Robert Taylor. Bob, we all—”

The radio was turned off.

Groucho knocked again on the door. “Remind me to take Whistler off my Christmas list,” he muttered. “Rumpled and saggy pants, but baggy never.”

The door opened, and a pretty blond girl of about twenty-two looked out. She was wearing white tennis shorts and a faded UCLA sweatshirt. Her eyes went wide suddenly, and she took a step backward. “My gosh, you’re Groucho Marx without your moustache.”

“Sometimes I’m even Groucho Marx with my moustache,” he admitted. “And you’re Kathy Mirabell, are you not?”

“Gee, yes,” the actress said, opening the door wider. “This is, you know, pretty darn exciting. What I mean is, when I was a kid back in Evanston, Illinois, I saw you and your brothers in Monkey Business, and we just couldn’t stop laughing.”

“Yes, a lot of unfortunate children in Evanston, Illinois, suffered a similar experience,” he said. “Fortunately a vaccine was developed that effectively stopped—”

“Why in the heck are you here, Mr. Marx? It can’t be because my half-wit agent sent you over to offer me a part in your next movie?”

“Alas, no, my dear, although now that I’ve seen you without your Boop accoutrements, I might well put in a good word for you with my agent brother, Zeppo,” he said. “But today I’m hoping you can give me some information about the Lockwood Halloween party Monday night.”

Kathy sighed. “You and the cops and the FBI.”

“Then I’m not the first to evince curiosity?”

“Heck no.” She backed further from the door. “Come on in, won’t you, Mr. Marx? I’ve got to admit, though, that you’re the most interesting one so far.”

“And certainly the most charming?”

She considered that for a moment. “Pretty much so,” she decided finally. “Although the guy from Warlock Pictures was pretty smooth.”

“Which guy from Warlock would that be?”

“He left his card.” The young actress walked over to the coffee table in the small, tidy living room, scooped up a business card. “Here.”

Groucho took it. “Val Sharkey,” he read, recognizing the name of Warren Lockwood’s chief studio troubleshooter. “What did he want to know?”

She sat on the small yellow-polka-dot sofa. “Same thing they all wanted to know—same thing I guess you want to know, Mr. Marx. Who was the person in the Grim Reaper outfit who scared the Bejesus out of Olmstead?”

“And what did you tell all and sundry?”

“Same thing I told people the night it happened, same darn thing I’m going to tell you,” she answered. “I have no idea who that was.”

“You said ‘person’ instead of ‘man.’ Could it have been a woman?”

Shaking her head, Kathy said, “Nope, because he had a deep voice, a guy’s voice.”

“Then you heard him speak?”

“No, but Randy did.”

“Randy would be?”

“He’s Randy Kincaid—well, his real name is Ira Glanzman, but Randy Kincaid is his movie name,” she said. “He’s sort of my steady boyfriend just now.”

“He was the fellow in the Zorro costume?”

“That was him, yes, Mr. Marx. I told Randy he was too skinny to be wearing those tight black pants and that he ought to pad the legs and the fanny, but he wouldn’t listen to—”

“Any notion where I can find Randy?”

Smiling, she pointed at the closed bedroom door. “You’re in luck—he spent the night.”

“Have the FBI and the police and Sharkey talked to Randy?”

“No, because he’s been away on location the past couple days,” she said. “He had a pretty good bit part in the new Three Mesquiteers movie over at Republic. He got to speak two lines, and then Bob Livingston threw him into a horse trough.”

“I’ll be watching for that,” said Groucho. “Might I talk to the lad?”

She stood up. “Sure, he’s a big fan of the Marx Brothers, and he’ll be real thrilled to meet you, Mr. Marx,” she assured him. “I guess I ought to warn you, though, that he likes Harpo better than you.”

“So do I,” said Groucho.

Sixteen

The police car, he later told me, stopped Groucho’s Cadillac about three blocks from our Bayside house.

He’d decided a few minutes earlier to turn on the radio, in hopes of tuning in on some enlightening or uplifting program such as Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. Instead, he came upon the Reverend Noah Hobson.

Organ music, of the sort you’d hear in an upper-class funeral parlor or at a very ornate society wedding, came pouring out of the dashboard speaker. A rich-voiced announcer said, “Once again, friends, it’s time to visit the Little Church by the Side of the Road … and the beloved radio preacher, Reverend Noah Hobson.”

“This mamzer has a regular radio show, and I don’t,” observed Groucho.

The music soared, then began slowly to fade. Reverend Hobson, whose voice was thin and reedy, said, “Bless all of you in my radio flock.” The last notes of the organ died. “Have you sent off that forceful telegram to President Roosevelt? Have you written that angry letter to President Roosevelt? If you haven’t, my dear friends, please, do so at once, because the fate of our entire great Christian nation hangs in the balance. Tell the president that you don’t want America to go to war. Tell him that if he aids Britain and France, he will antagonize Adolph Hitler and the brave people of Germany. He must not risk the future of our country simply to save the bloated financial interests of the European Jews. As we all know, my friends, that’s what this so-called Second World War is all about. The Jews, let me remind you, are also deeply entrenched right here in Los Angeles. They control our motion-picture industry, and they’d like very much to make you believe—”

Producing an angry sound, Groucho clicked off the car radio. “I’ve always been a champion of free speech,” he murmured, “but sometimes I wonder.”

By now the day was fading, the sky was graying, and a light rain had started to fall.

The dark sedan, with Beverly Hills Police Department markings on its door, pulled up beside him just as he was turning on his windshield wipers.

The lean plainclothes cop in the passenger seat motioned him to pull over.

Groucho obliged, easing his car into a parking space in front of a boarded-up bait shop.

The police car pulled up close behind him, and the tall, thin man in the blue double-breasted suit climbed out. He opened a plain black umbrella, held it over himself as he walked up to Groucho’s side of the Cadillac.

Groucho rolled down his window partway.

“I’m Sergeant Jake Fuller of the Beverly Hills Police, Mr. Marx.”

“A bit out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”

Fuller’s smile was on the bleak side. “We like to look after our Beverly Hills people,” he said.

“That’s very thoughtful of you, but I hate to see you getting rained on,” said Groucho. “Suppose I drop into headquarters some afternoon real soon and we can talk until we’re blue in the face. Which, in your case, probably won’t take all that long.”

“I’m afraid this really can’t wait, Mr. Marx,” said Sergeant Fuller, shifting his grip on the handle of his umbrella. “It’s come to our attention that you might be offending certain agencies of the United States government.”

“Ah, that must be because I’m not using the right dentifrice and my best friends are afraid to tell me,” said Groucho out into the rain.

“What we’d like to suggest, in your best interest, Mr. Marx, is that you lay the hell off the whole damn Eric Olmstead business. He’s dead and done for, so just back off.”

“Could you tell me, again in my best interest, exactly why, Sergeant?”

“Afraid I’m not at liberty to do that, Mr. Marx,” Fuller answered. “Let’s simply say that a lot of people, a lot of important people, would be happier if you gave up the idea of being a detective.”

Groucho said, “Alas, I have a stubborn streak. If it wasn’t raining so hard, I could take off my shirt and show it to you. The point is, I really hate to quit anything I start.”

Fuller leaned closer to the car window. “I’m sure, after you think about this for a spell, Mr. Marx, you’ll end up doing the right thing.” Turning on his heel, he went striding back to the police car.

“The whole dadburned world is starting to sound like Louis B. Mayer,” he observed, rolling up his window and starting his Cadillac. “Everybody wants me to quit.”

Jane had been dozing on the sofa, with Dorgan curled up at her feet. She sat up, smiling, as I let myself in from out of the rainy afternoon.

“Is it raining?” she asked, yawning and stretching.

“Or something very like.” I crossed our living room, bent and kissed her.

Our bloodhound stretched up, put his forepaws against my arm, and gave my cheek a slurpy lick.

“Ah, what a pleasure it is to come home to my humble crofter’s cottage after a long, weary day of crofting. It fair warms the cockleburs of my heart, with enough left over to heat up an average parlor.”

“Grouchoitis,” said Jane, smoothing her skirt.

“You think Groucho’s wife pipes up with ‘Frankitis’ every time he comes up with a witty remark?” I eased our bloodhound over a bit and sat down beside my wife.

Jane reached over to the end table to pick up a notebook. “I got some information from my friend Marlene at Starlite Costumes,” she announced. “Well, actually some information and a puzzle.”

“I do hope it’s not a crossword puzzle. I’m just terrible at … oof!”

She’d elbowed me in the ribs. “Just sit quietly and listen,” Jane advised. “Who’s that fat detective who never goes out and just sits around and solves things?”

“Nero Wolfe.”

“I think I do my best work that way, too.” She opened the notebook. “And I’m getting fatter every day.”

“You’re not planning to balloon up to three hundred pounds?”

“Some mornings I feel like I already have.”

“All of us fellers around the bunkhouse still call you Slim.” I kissed her again. “So what did you find out?”

“First, the information part,” she said, consulting her notes. “Ellison Costumes in Hollywood has two Grim Reaper outfits. But they only rented out one for the night of the thirtieth. That went to a Herman Brix. I’ve got his address.”

“He’s the B-movie actor who played Tarzan a couple years back,” I said. “I doubt he’s the one, but we can check it out.”

“Okay,” she said, tearing a page out of the book. “Here are the three other people who rented Grim Reaper costumes from various places for the night of October thirtieth.”

I studied the list, recognizing none of the names. “I’ll check on these tomorrow, too,” I said. “Now what about the puzzle?”

“Marlene also contacted her contacts at the various movie studios,” Jane said. “Three of the studio costume departments let people borrow Grim Reaper or Death costumes, but all of those went out on Halloween itself.”

“Interesting, but not puzzling.”

“Okay, here’s the puzzle. On the thirty-first somebody wanted to use the Grim Reaper outfit that they have at the Warlock Pictures Costume Department. It wasn’t there.”

I straightened up. “Somebody borrowed it on the thirtieth?”

“There’s no record of anybody taking it out or of how long it’s been missing. It’s just not there anymore,” she said. “I imagine that people, especially actors, swipe costumes and clothes now and then. Still, Frank, it’s probably more than a coincidence that that particular outfit disappeared.”

“If that’s our Grim Reaper, we’re going to have a tough time tracking it. Even with your burgeoning Nero Wolfe abilities.”

“If somebody on your suspect list works for Lockwood, that’ll narrow things down.”

“True, Jane, except that I must admit that Groucho and I don’t even have a suspect list so far,” I confessed. “Fact is, we’re not completely sure of all the things we have to suspect them of.”

Dorgan rose, gazing at the door. Quietly barking, wagging his tail, he hopped to the floor and trotted over to it.

“That’s not his agitated bark,” said Jane. “I’ll bet that’s Groucho.”

And it was.

Seventeen

Groucho set his coffee cup on the end table next to the armchair he was slouched in. “Okay, thus far you’ve been warned off by the minions of J. Edgar Hoover,” he said, summing up, “and I’ve been advised to forget the whole darn thing by the fashionable Beverly Hills police.”

“Don’t forget the anonymous fascist, or whatever he was, who threatened you on the telephone,” Jane reminded.

“Three warnings to date.” Groucho fished several sheets of folded yellow paper from a pocket of his desert-color sport coat. “Let us now compare notes, Rollo,” he suggested, unfolding the wad of papers. “Firstly, we shall discuss what information Zeppo turned up at—according to him—great personal expense from his business connections in London.”

“About Olmstead’s background?” I asked.

“Well, rather about Olmstead’s notable lack of background.” Groucho brought his notes up closer to his face. “He seems to be traceable no further back than nineteen-thirty-six when he directed a quota quickie for the Gifford Studios in Great Britain.”

“Didn’t the guy work his way up from rags to riches?”

“It’s possible,” said Groucho, “yet nobody has any idea of what he did or where he was before he materialized to direct She’s in the News in nineteen-thirty-six.”

“What’s his studio bio say?” asked Jane, who was sitting on the sofa with Dorgan beside her.

“The stuff Warlock hands out says Olmstead was born in Somerset, England, in the eighteen-nineties, attended Oxford, and entered the movie business in nineteen-thirty,” answered Groucho. “But like many a studio biography, most of it doesn’t seem to be true. And one of Zeppo’s sources of information happens to be a private-inquiry agent based in London.”

I was leaning in the kitchen doorway, ignoring the mug of coffee in my hand. “We had a similar situation back when we investigated the death of Felix Denker,” I said. “There the somebody with a faked background turned out to be a planted German agent.”

Groucho said, “And it seems as though Olmstead also had a faked background, Rollo.”

“But that doesn’t mean he was a Nazi spy,” Jane pointed out.

“If he was, however,” said Groucho, tapping his notes with his unlit cigar, “it would certainly tie in with other things I’ve found out.”

“If he was,” I added, “it would tie in with what I’ve found out.”

Nodding in my direction, Groucho said, “You first.”

Crossing the living room, I sat down on the sofa, with our bloodhound sprawled between me and my wife. “My friend Leon Elfson tells me that for the past several months a Professor William Cheshire of Cal Tech has been doing secret research for Lockwood Aero,” I said. “Cheshire’s developing a new airplane fuel that’s going to be very important to the defense effort, when and if we go to war.”

Groucho sat up. “Ah, once again it looks as though life is imitating art. And we’ve got spies trying to get hold of the plans.” He inserted his cigar between his teeth, lit it. “German agents would certainly be interested in the details of Cheshire’s fuel.”

“I know it sounds sort of like something out of Groucho Marx, Secret Agent,” I admitted. “But Elfson says that the Pentagon is very enthusiastic about what Cheshire’s working on and that all sorts of security measures are being taken to make sure nobody gets any information about his formula.”

Groucho left his chair and started pacing. “A chap who was married to Dinah Flanders would have access to Warren Lockwood and could probably even get into the Lockwood Aero setup, despite all sorts of security measures.”

Jane said, “You guys figure Olmstead was a German agent and that he married Dinah just because she was so cozy with Lockwood?”

“Sure sounds like a possibility,” I said.

“Keep in mind, my dear,” added Groucho, hands clasped behind his back, “that the Nazis may have a dozen agents working on finding out about the Cheshire formula. If Olmstead didn’t succeed, someone else might.”

Jane looked skeptical. “How’d they know for sure she’d go for him and marry the guy?”

“They didn’t,” I said, “but it was sure as hell worth a try.”

“Would Dinah Flanders be dumb enough to fall for something like that?”

“She’s probably not as discriminating at choosing mates as you are, my dear,” said Groucho.

I said, “You mentioned that you’d found out something else.”

“In tracking down Kathy Mirabell, alias Elizabeth Boop, to her lair, I was fortunate enough to locate her beau as well,” he said, pacing. “He’s a bit player named Randy Kincaid, and he was Zorro at the Halloween party.”

“The one who heard what the Grim Reaper said to Olmstead that caused him to keel over?”

“That very Zorro, yes,” answered Groucho.

“As I recall, you told me all he’d heard was some remark about a frog or a toad,” I said. “How does that—”

“The word he remembers hearing, Randy now recalls, sounded like toad,” Groucho explained.

“But it could’ve been tod,” said Jane. “The German word for death and dead.”

Groucho halted mid-carpet, nodding. “That same conclusion occurred to me, my dear,” he said, puffing on his cigar. “Now, it could be that the Grim Reaper merely came up to Olmstead and introduced himself in German—‘Hi, I’m Death. Pleased to meet you.’ But it’s more likely that he warned Olmstead that he’d soon be dead if he didn’t do something they wanted. And he apparently delivered his timely little warning in German. He could also be the one who sent Olmstead the code message about forking over the information pronto.”

“Maybe he hadn’t gotten them anything on the Cheshire formula,” I suggested, “and they wanted him to know that time was running out.”

“Suppose he wasn’t the only one they threatened with death?” said Jane.

I said, “Meaning?”

“Suppose he was told that Dinah would be killed if he didn’t deliver?” she suggested. “Granted that any of this stuff you fellows have been spinning is true.”

“I admit that this is all conjecture thus far,” said Groucho. “Still it sounds pretty plausible to me.”

“The FBI must’ve suspected Olmstead, which is why they’re involved in this.”

“And why,” said Jane, “they’ve advised everyone to back off and keep quiet.”

Groucho sat back down, blew out a swirl of cigar smoke. “Pretty soon now, my children, we’re going to have to start making some noise.”

Eighteen

By early Friday afternoon I’d determined that Herman Brix had worn his rented Grim Reaper costume to a Halloween party thrown by Basil Rathbone and his wife. The other three names that Jane’s friend had come up with had also put their Grim Reaper costumes to other uses, and none of them had been in Santa Monica at the Lockwood festivities on the fateful night of the thirtieth.

That left the costume missing from the Warlock Wardrobe Department to find out about.

My agent had set up a meeting for me with Vince Novsam that afternoon to talk about the rewriting job on the Ty-Gor script, and I figured I could also nose around in wardrobe while I was on the Warlock lot.

As I drove out to the valley, I switched from station to station on my car radio. A news commentator was criticizing John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers for staging a coal strike in such troubled times, while on another station the Incomparable Hildegarde was singing “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” The third station I sampled mentioned me.

It was one of Johnny Whistler’s frequent 15-minute Hollywood gossip shows. When I tuned in, Whistler was saying, “ … Though you’ve never heard of Frank Denby, I predict he’s destined to be a major motion-picture writer any edition now. If, and it’s a mighty big if, this talented young scripter sticks to his typewriter and leaves detective work to the professionals. Bumbling along with the aging Groucho Marx and sticking his snoot into what’s none of his business, young Master Denby is only riding for a fall. Think it over, Frankie. And now an Open Letter to Ann Sheridan. Dear Ann, you can have too much oomph, and if …”

I switched back to Hildegarde, turned the radio off a moment later.

“Major motion picture writer’s not bad,” I said to myself. “But I wonder who told Whistler to tell us to lay off.”

While I was en route to the Warlock studios, Groucho was paying a visit to Altadena Community College. He was calling on his friend Professor Ernst Hoffman, a fellow member of the Anti-Nazi League.

Altadena CC stretches across about fifteen acres, and, despite the fact that it’s located in a town that lies just above Pasadena, tries very hard to look like an Ivy League campus. Most of the buildings are redbrick, festooned with considerable ivy.

As usual there were several card tables set up just inside the arched wrought-iron entry gates. These were staffed by students distributing pamphlets and flyers for such organizations as the World Federalists, the Young People’s Socialist League, the Cinema Club, and Moral Re-Armament.

Stopping by this latter table, Groucho inquired, “Do you have any literature on Moral Dis-Armament?”

The plump blonde behind the rickety table said, “Scram, chump. I get fed up to here with the same old wheezes, especially when they come from middle-aged geezers who think … oh, my God!”

“What am I witnessing here? A religious conversion?”

“You’re Groucho Marx!” She stood up, pointing at him with one flapping hand.

“Well, yes,” he said. “Although I’ll deny it in court.”

“May I ask you something?”

“So long as it doesn’t have anything to do with long division. That’s always been my weak spot,” said Groucho. “Well, and I have another weak spot right about here.” He tapped at his lowest left rib. “It may only be gas, but—”

“No. I just saw At the Circus, and I wanted to ask you what Eve Arden was really like.” The plump young woman remained standing.

“Ah, I hate to disillusion you, my child, but Eve Arden is actually a huge, cleverly constructed ventriloquist dummy,” he explained. “If you look closely the next time you suffer through At the Circus, you’ll notice Edgar Bergen immediately behind her with his hand in her—”

“Groucho Marx!” Other students had noticed his advent by this time and were converging on the table.

A thin young man in a letter sweater asked, “Who’s your favorite comedian?”

“Lionel Barrymore,” Groucho answered promptly.

“He’s not a comedian.”

“No wonder he got so annoyed when I laughed all through his last movie.”

A pretty blond coed asked, “Did you ever have a real moustache?”

“I did, yes, but my parents thought we already had too many moustaches around the place, and they put mine in a gunnysack and drowned it,” he replied, fishing a cigar out of the pocket of his boldly checkered sport coat. “I was beside myself with grief. And if you’ve ever had Groucho Marx beside you, you’ll realize how unpleasant that can be.”

A young man in an ROTC uniform asked, “How come Zeppo isn’t in your movies anymore?”

Groucho’s eyebrows climbed. “He isn’t? No wonder there was so much dead air in At the Circus every time I said, ‘How are you, Zeppo?’” He lit his cigar. “There was also a lot of dead herring, but that’s another story. The title of which is How Green Was My Herring, and it will soon be available in better bookstores everywhere. Plus in a few not-so-hot bookstores right here in Altadena.”

A serious young woman asked, “Are you an isolationist?”

“On the contrary, miss, although many people keep trying to isolate me.”

The girl said, “I notice that you tend to exaggerate your lack of social approval, Mr. Marx.”

He shrugged his left shoulder, blew out smoke, and replied, “All I know, my dear, is that I was turned down for membership in the pariahs. And Devil’s Island rejected my application.”

There were about forty or fifty college kids surrounding him by now. From the back of the group, someone asked, “Do you think you’ll ever play in a serious movie?”

“I thought we already did that in Room Service.”

“Do you do your own singing, or is it dubbed?”

“In At the Circus Kenny Baker dubbed my songs, and since I felt it was only fair, I dubbed his.”

“Is it true you had a fling with Maureen O’Sullivan while you were doing A Day at the Races?”

“The real events have been distorted. What actually happened was that she flung me out of her dressing room one afternoon.”

“Do you read Hemingway?”

“No, only English and Yiddish.”

“What’s your favorite novel?”

“The Girl of the Limberlost,” he answered. “And its sequel, The Girl with the Limber … ah, but I must be going.”

The campanile had just sounded for one o’clock.

As Groucho made his way through the circling crowd, someone said, “I read in the newspaper that you’re investigating another murder. Is that true?”

“Everything you read in the newspaper is always true,” he said, starting uphill.

I was walking across the Warlock lot, following Lockwood Lane to the Producers’ Pavilion, when someone behind me called my name.

“Hey, Frank, wait up.”

I stopped and looked back. “Hi, Enery. How come you’re here?”

“Auditioning for a part in the new Ty-Gor picture,” said my actor friend, catching up with me.

“Now there’s a coincidence. I’m here to see about doing a rewrite on the script of Ty-Gor and the Lost City.”

Enery frowned. “I thought the title was Ty-Gor and the Ivory Treasure,” he said as we resumed walking. “But I guess we’re talking about the same impending movie.”

We halted at a corner while two covered wagons loaded with settlers’ provisions went rolling by, headed in the direction of Soundstage 5.

“Same movie, new title and plot.”

“My agent says there’s a big part for a cannibal chieftain. That’s one of my specialties.”

“I know, everybody in our Cannibal Fan Club ranks you pretty close to the top of—”

“You think maybe they’ll cut the cannibals out of the new version of this thing?”

“How can they have a Ty-Gor movie without cannibals?”

“You’re absolutely right,” said Enery. “If you get the rewrite job, see if you can pad my part. If I get the part.”

“I can even suggest they change the title again, to Ty-Gor Amongst the Cannibals.”

“This is where I turn off. Good luck.” Enery headed left on to the walkway that led over to the Executive Wing.

Little did I realize as I continued on alone how close I was coming to another bop on the skull.

Nineteen

“Yes, a new office and a new department,” Professor Ernst Hoffman was saying. “I’d been feeling increasingly uneasy being in the German Department. Now I’m called a professor of World Literature.” He was a small, neat man in his middle fifties, and he had a slight European accent.

“By the time Hitler gets through burning books, there’ll be a lot less world literature to teach,” said Groucho. Even though his friend had a new, larger office, it still offered only hard-bottomed straight-back chairs to sit on.

“My wife and I saw your new motion picture two evenings ago, Julius,” said Hoffman. “As you know, I don’t attend films often, but I felt I had to see how you were doing. Anna found it very amusing, specially your singing of the tune about the tattooed lady.”

“There are rumors that Bing Crosby has turned green. But nobody’s sure if it’s from envy or nausea,” said Groucho. “Your wife like At The Circus somewhat more than you did, Ernie?”

“Always I enjoy seeing you on the screen,” the small professor assured him. “Yet I more admire your serious side, the person I see at the Anti-Nazi gatherings and the fund-raising dinners for—”

“Nix, don’t go around telling people I have a serious side,” he warned. “It could ruin me in the movies.”

Sitting down in his desk chair, Hoffman said, “I read in the Los Angeles Times that you and your young writer friend are investigating the death of Eric Olmstead. My assumption is that you came to talk to me about that.”

“Yeah, because I’ve got a hunch we’re mixed up with German spies again,” he told the professor. “Since you’re an expert on what the Nazis are up to in Southern California, I figured I’d better drop in on you.”

“There was certainly a Nazi agent invovled in the murder of Felix Denker last year,” he said. “You did an admirable job cleaning up that mess, Julius.”

“With some help from you, Ernie,” he said. “As to the Olmstead murder, we—”

“So it’s true, as the newspapers report, that you and Frank Denby don’t think it was a suicide?”

“It wasn’t suicide, no,” Groucho assured him, and then he explained our reasons for not accepting the suicide notion.

When he finished, Professor Hoffman said, “You suspect that Eric Olmstead was engaged in espionage work and that when he failed somehow, he was killed?”

“That’s one possible scenario, yeah,” agreed Groucho. “It’s also possible that Olmstead decided he didn’t want to be a spy anymore and was planning to go have a heart-to-heart talk with the FBI. That would have given his bosses another splendid motive for doing him in.”

Standing, the professor moved over to one of the wooden filing cabinets along the wall. Hunching slightly, he tugged the middle drawer partially open. “I’ve been wondering about Eric Olmstead for some time now.”

“Suspecting the lad?”

“Wondering at least.” Extracting a manila folder, he shut the drawer and returned to his desk. “The Germans have a very thorough fifth column and espionage network in place in the United States,” he said, resting his right hand on the unopened folder. “They have agents who collect information, others who transmit it to Germany—they might send code messages, they might use short-wave radio. There are other agents who act as couriers and actually carry information to Germany.” He paused, drumming his fingers on the folder. “And, of course, there are Gestapo representatives here, as well as some very gifted saboteurs.”

“I’m guessing that Olmstead was in the information-collecting division of the setup.” Groucho reached into a coat pocket for a cigar, thought better of it, and brought out his empty hand.

“As things grew worse in Europe, as you know, a great deal of emigration began,” said the professor. “Among those who fled Germany, Austria, Poland, France, and other countries where it was no longer safe to be Jewish or an outspoken intellectual were quite a few creative people. Actors, directors, screenwriters, novelists, graphic artists. Many of them ended up settling here in Southern California.”

“And, as we found out in the Denker case, pretending to be a refugee intellectual can be a darn good cover for an espionage agent,” said Groucho, trying to shift to a more comfortable position on his hard wooden chair.

“Because of my extracurricular interests,” continued Hoffman, “I’m in touch with several people who make it their business to determine who some of these emigrant creative people are. I keep notes on quite a few of them. It’s spying in a way, yet I feel it’s justified.”

“You came across something on Olmstead?”

“Eric Olmstead falls into a somewhat different category,” said the professor. “He wasn’t a Jew, and he never claimed to be on the run for political reasons. He simply moved from England to Hollywood. However, we’ve found that in the past few years, Germany has used England as the first stopover in the shipping of agents to the United States.”

“What’ve you got on Olmstead?”

Hoffman opened the folder. It contained a few typewritten sheets and what looked to be two carbon copies. “We became especially interested in Olmstead after he married Dinah Flanders and it was learned that he and his new bride and Warren Lockwood had visited the Lockwood Aero plant down in Hawthorne. On at least three occasions.”

“Could Olmstead have found out anything important that way?”

“With the cooperation of someone already planted inside the facility, Olmstead would have been an excellent courier,” answered Professor Hoffman. “That is, he could’ve been passed copies of plans and notes. An employee would be searched each day before going home. But Olmstead, traveling in Lockwoood’s private limousine with Lockwood himself, could easily have smuggled something out. On each of three occasions, perhaps.”

“That was what the code message was about,” said Groucho. “They wanted Olmstead to hand over whatever it was he’d snuck out and to make it snappy.”

“For some reason the man apparently refused.” Professor Hoffman again looked at the typed report. “We traced back on Olmstead’s trail, Julius, and found that he has no background before nineteen-thirty-six or—”

“That’s what Zeppo turned up, though without much in the way of details.”

“It’s nice to see Zeppo working with you again,” said Hoffman, smiling. “There’s no evidence that Eric Olmstead existed much before nineteen-thirty-six. The information in the biography Warlock Pictures hands out is a complete fiction for his earlier years.”

“How’d he just walk into Gifford Studios in England and start directing a movie?” asked Groucho.

“The man who was running the studio at the time, calling himself Oskar McNeeley, hired him,” said Professor Hoffman. “We believe that McNeeley, who was killed last year in what was made to look like a hit-and-run accident near the Strand, was another plant. He’d been in England since the early thirties.”

Groucho leaned back as best he could in the straight-back chair. “If you know about the possibility that Olmstead was a hidden German agent, then the FBI must know, too.”

“No doubt,” answered Hoffman. “And, I imagine, Warren Lockwood was by this time also aware that Olmstead was not exactly what he claimed to be.”

“This lad James Pearson who was pretending to be a valet for Olmstead—do you have anything on him?”

“Nothing at all.”

“He was probably put in there by either Lockwood or the FBI to keep tabs on Olmstead,” said Groucho. “I’d really like to talk to him.”

“The true circumstances of Olmstead’s death haven’t come out because the FBI doesn’t want any of this made public just yet. Not until they find the person who murdered Olmstead and determine what if anything was smuggled out of Lockwood Aero.”

“Even if they solve the whole business, they may not throw a press conference afterwards.”

“And if you and Frank Denby find out ahead of everyone else?”

“Sometimes you can have too much security.” Groucho stretched up out of the chair, his bones making assorted crackling noises. “I think, Ernie, that when we come up with the solution, we want to make as much of it public as we can without screwing up national defense or the orange crop.”

Vince Novsam was a very large, wide man, very suntanned and in his late thirties. His office was done up in Early American style, and all the furniture had a fragile, spindly look. There were several framed samplers on the wall. The embroidered motto immediately behind his fragile, spindly desk read, “Early To Bed And Early To Rise Makes A Man Healthy, Wealthy And Wise.”

His pipe went out again, and he paused to relight it. Then he asked me, “How do you feel about cannibals?”

I was sitting in a low-seated, fragile, spindly rocker, looking up at the new Ty-Gor producer. “No Ty-Gor movie is truly complete without cannibals,” I said. “In fact, when I saw Ty-Gor and the Leopard Woman at a matinee a couple months back, the kids in the audience kept hollering, ‘Where the heck are the cannibals?’”

After a few reflective puffs on his pipe, Novsam said, “That’s my feeling exactly, Frank. Where Bob Wiener went wrong when he was in the producer’s seat on this series was in trying to make the Ty-Gor films too sophisticated.”

“Probably so,” I said, trying to be noncommittal while still giving the impression I agreed with him.

“How’s Orb sound to you?”

“Catchy. But for what?”

“The name for the lost city.”

“The Lost City of Orb,” I said, looking thoughtful. “Yep, that’s good.”

“Only good, Frank?”

“Now that I think more about it, it’s terrific.”

Novsam grinned. “Came up with that myself. You’ve got to have just the right name for a lost city. You can’t simply go calling it Oxnard or Pismo Beach. There’s no mystery or magic that way.”

“None at all, no.”

He puffed on his pipe. “What do you think of Lupe Velez?”

“A splendid person, if a mite temperamental.”

“I’m thinking of signing her to play the Queen of the Lost City of Orb.”

“Terrific,” I said, feeling more and more like a yes-man.

“She’ll look marvelous in a sarong.”

“They wear sarongs in the Lost City of Orb?”

“The dames do,” answered Novsam.

I decided not to say terrific again.

The wide, sun-browned producer picked up a blue-covered script from atop his desk. “Read this. Ignore the title because we’re not going to call it Ty-Gor and the Ivory Treasure any more. Although, if you think we absolutely need them, our projected budget will allow for maybe five six elephants.”

When I stood up to accept the script, my rocker made a creaky, twanging sound. It did that again when I resat. “My agent tells me you feel there’s too much humor in this draft.”

“A hell of a lot too much,” he said, relighting his pipe. “We can always use a little quiet slapstick, but what sells movies is action. My motto is, Screw the gags and give me some action.”

“That’d look terrific on a sampler,” I said.

He made a brief chuckling sort of noise. “I don’t mind a little good-natured kidding between coworkers,” he told me. “But I want these Ty-Gor movies I’m producing for Warlock to be serious. This guy’s the lord of the jungle, after all. He’s the King George of the jungle, and we don’t want to see him palling around with a chimpanzee.”

“I understand.” I patted the Ty-Gor script, which was resting across my lap.

“How many of our Ty-Gor films have you seen, Frank?”

“All of them,” I lied. In reality I’d seen three and walked out during the second reel of a fourth.

“Keep in mind that we’re not dealing with MGM’s Tarzan here,” Novsam explained. “Ty-Gor is an educated gentleman who just happens to wear a leopard-skin loincloth. He doesn’t go in for any of this ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ crapola.”

“I understand,” I said.

Novsam rose up. “Can you give me a revised script in four weeks, Frank?” he said, picking up a one-page memo and passing it across to me. “This gives you my thinking on how to revise this damn thing and make it work.”

“Four weeks will be plenty of time,” I lied.

“I’ll call your agent, Bickford, and we’ll work out the business details,” the producer said. “How’s Groucho, by the way?”

“He, too, has decided to become completely serious.” I stood, slipped the script under my arm.

Novsam chuckled again. “Give him my best. I was an assistant producer on Animal Crackers when I was with Paramount back east.”

“Are you having the costumes designed especially for the picture?” I inquired casually.

“Budget won’t allow for that. We’ll use what we have in Wardrobe.”

“Could I, long as I’m here, take a look at the sarongs and all? It’ll help me visualize the queen better.”

“Sure thing. Ask Glenda in the outer office, and she’ll write you a pass to get in there,” he said. “I like your thoroughness and dedication, Frank.”

“Thank you, Vince.” I left his Early American office.

I sneezed.

Irene Flannagan looked up from the ledger that was open on her rolltop desk. “You get used to the dust after a while,” she said. “The mildew takes a little longer. Walking around on these cement floors all day can cause bunions, but you won’t have to worry about that.”

The Warlock Wardrobe Department was housed in a big warehouse sort of building that had been partitioned into several large storage areas by putting up plywood walls. The whole place smelled of dust, dry cleaning, and old perspiration.

I sneezed once more.

Irene was a plump woman of about forty, wearing a pale blue smock over her flower-print dress. “Here it is in the record book, Frank,” she said. “The last time the missing Grim Reaper costume was legitimately checked out and back in was in May of this year.” She tapped at an entry on the page with a fingernail painted a glistening crimson. “They used it for three days in some piece of garbage called The Vanishing Corpse. In the scenes, you know, where this dumb bimbo takes off her clothes, puts on a satin nightgown, and decides to spend a night all alone in the haunted bedroom of the old mansion. Geeze, if I was going to spend the night in a haunted bedroom, I’d want some guy along with me.”

“Nothing since then?” I was standing with my left buttock leaning against the side of her desk.

“Not a blessed thing, honey.” Irene shut the ledger. Next to it on her desk sat a copy of the latest issue of the Hollywood Reporter. “I wish I could help you out more, Frank, because, like I told you when you came waltzing in here with that phony-baloney yarn about wanting to look at sarongs, I’m a great follower of the detective work that you and Groucho do.”

“I appreciate the help you—”

“I’ve followed your work ever since that first case, the business about the faked suicide of poor Peg McMorrow,” the plump woman told me. “And that Sherlock Holmes brouhaha last year was very enjoyable to read about in the newspapers and the trades. That case in the middle, where you kept them from frying Frances London, I found a little dull. Although Groucho is always a lot of fun to—”

“Would it be fairly easy for somebody to walk in here and swipe a costume?”

“Too damn easy, honey,” Irene told me. “Half of the time, like right now, I’m working in this big barn all by myself. Some days they’re dragging out costumes from one place and returning them to another, and just about anybody can pop in without my knowing it. Some of these bit-player dames like to borrow a fancy evening dress now and again. At night the goddamn watchman usually forgets to lock up after he makes his midnight check.”

“Then you’ve got no idea who might’ve taken that Grim Reaper outfit, or when?”

She shook her head. “You guys think whoever swiped it might be the one who spooked poor Eric Olmstead?”

“That’s one distinct possibility, yeah,” I admitted. “Can I go and take a look at the place where that particular costume was kept?”

“Sure, but you won’t find a damn thing of interest,” Irene assured me. “I already nosed around. Nothing to see except an empty hanger.” She pointed to her right. “You’ll find that in Row Three, Rack Two, in Partition C, Frank.”

“I’ll go take a look.”

“Come back and say so long before you leave, honey.” She smiled and picked up the Hollywood Reporter.

Partition C was several hundred yards away from the cubbyhole where Irene had her desk and her files. It was toward the back of the warehouse, and there was only one overhead light in use when I got there.

There were six long rows of metal racks lined up, each one with dozens of costumes dangling from hangers. Row C was given over to historical stuff mostly. I saw a lot of musketeer outfits and some costumes you’d probably wear if you were paying a visit to Henry the Eighth.

It was shadowy in among the rows, and dusty too.

Hanger Twenty-three was empty and had a hand-printed tag attached to it. “Death/Grim Reaper,” announced the tag. Glancing down at the floor, I saw a twist of something lying there. I bent and picked up what looked to be a six-inch length of leather twine, black in color.

I straightened up, the piece of leather string in my hand, and checked the nearby costumes. They were more English palace wear, and none of them seemed to use leather strings.

“Now’d be a good time to quit,” advised someone just behind me.

I flinched, then started to turn.

Before the blackjack hit the side of my head, I got a very brief look at somebody who was wearing a black executioner’s hood as part of his outfit.

Then I dropped to the cement floor and into unconsciousness.

Twenty

Humming “Lydia the Tattooed Lady,” Groucho went bounding up the stairs to his Sunset office.

Flinging open the door, he spread his arms wide and announced, “I heard you’re having fatted calf for dinner, so I decided to come home.”

Nan shut the large, black-covered scrapbook she’d been working on, stuck the lid back on the small tin of rubber cement. “There’ve been quite a few phone calls,” she said, picking up her notebook.

“Ever since I took that Dale Carnegie popularity course, the debutantes simply won’t leave me be,” he said as he perched on the edge of her desk. “In fact, the last time I ran into Carnegie, he gave me the glad eye.”

His husky secretary said, “Louella called.”

“Louella who?”

“Louella Parsons. She wants to interview you on her radio show.”

“Alas, for a brief, delicious moment I thought perhaps it might’ve been my long-lost childhood sweetheart, Louella Fortzenkopf. Of course, she’s only been long lost for three weeks, so I suppose there’s still a faint hope she—”

“George Burns telephoned to tell you a joke he just heard. In your absence, he told it to me, but I forget the punch line.”

“Just as well. Continue, my child.”

Nan consulted another page of notes. “The subscription agent for the Ladies’ Home Journal says your subscription has lapsed.”

“I was hoodwinked by those people. I originally subscribed over a year ago, and they still haven’t sent even one lady to my home,” he said, locating a cigar in his coat pocket. “The Women’s Home Companion has treated me just as shabbily, I might add. Although Popular Mechanics did send over a mechanic a few weeks ago, but he wasn’t very popular with us. Though he did build a very attractive rabbit hutch in the back—”

“Somebody claiming to be Aldous Huxley phoned to say how much he enjoyed your performance in At the Circus.”

“Nobody would claim to be Aldous Huxley unless he actually was Aldous Huxley. It’s not a handle you’d adopt by choice,” Groucho said, unwrapping the cigar. “And, let me tell you, it’s a lousy name to try to use when registering at a motel. I’ve never been able to get by with signing Mr. and Mrs. Aldous Huxley.”

“Agent Goodrich of the Federal Bureau of Investigation called again to say he was still interested in having a chat.”

“Next time the lad phones tell him he can have a chat for Christmas if he promises to be a good boy for the rest of the year. But, mind you, he’s going to have to clean up after it.”

“That’s about all the messages,” she said. “Now I have a request.”

“Very well, if you insist. What song would you like to hear, and to whom shall I dedicate it?”

“My request is that I can get off work by six o’clock today. I have a date.”

Groucho pressed his left had to his temple. “Wait, wait, I’m getting a psychic vibration,” he said. “Yes, a message from the beyond is coming in. Well, actually it’s coming from the corner of Twenty-third and Beyond. It informs me that you have a date with a new magician.”

“Wrong.”

“How can that be wrong?” His eyebrows elevated. “All you ever date is magicians. Therefore, if we apply the maxim of Occam’s Razor, it follows that you must be dating a magician. And as long as we’ve got the razor out, let’s take a little off the—”

“The Great Lando isn’t a magician.”

Groucho leaned closer. “Of course he is. With a name like that.”

“He’s a professional juggler.”

“Well, my dear, I’m pleased to see you’ve finally lifted yourself out of the rut,” he said. “And you’re certain he’s never been a magician?”

She looked away. “Well, when he was in high school he did a lot of card tricks.”

“Just as I suspected. Once a magician, always a magician.”

She tapped the open page of the notebook. “Here’s a message I overlooked,” she said. “Your barber telephoned.”

“That’s flattering. What, pray tell, did he want?”

“He saw your picture in the paper yesterday, and he says he’d appreciate it if you don’t tell anybody he’s your barber.”

“My picture in the newspaper? Why, landsakes, that’s exciting,” he said. “And to think that the gang at the Riding Academy predicted that I’d never amount to a hill of beans. Yet when the stock market closed yesterday, I was worth three hills of beans. Plus a rather handsome gherkin.”

Opening the scrapbook, Nan said, “The picture was in the Herald-Examiner yesterday. I clipped it out and was pasting it up when you came barging in.”

He tilted his head. “Ah, that’s a shot taken at the Halloween party Monday night,” he recognized. “I must say I look especially comely and … by Jove! Photographs.”

“How’s that, chief?”

“Frank and Jane were telling me about a friend of theirs from the L.A. Times who was taking a bushel of pictures at that affair,” he said, reaching for her phone. “Why didn’t I think of this earlier, Della?”

For a moment I thought I’d somehow become part of a Dr. Kildare movie. Except for some reason Enery McBride was playing the role of gruff but kindly old Dr. Gillespie.

“Easy now,” someone was saying.

Everything started coming more clearly back into focus, and I saw that a lean guy of about thirty, wearing a white medical jacket, was looking down at me. Standing just behind him was Enery, but not in doctor attire, I now noticed.

“I hate to use such a tired old line,” I murmured, “but where am I?”

“This is the Warlock First Aid Station,” answered the young guy. “I’m Dr. Cohen, and you’ve suffered a mild head injury. Much less serious than falling off a horse or having a baby spot fall on your noggin, I judge. There’s a moderate hematoma over the temple, but I don’t believe there’s been a serious concussion.”

“That’s gratifying.” When I tried to sit up on the white cot, I felt unsettlingly woozy.

“I’d like to run a few more tests now that you’re with us again, Mr. Denby.”

Enery eased closer, helped me settle into a more comfortable sitting position. “I found you sprawled among the costumes,” he explained, “and got you over here.”

“What the heck were you doing in—”

“I saw you going into the Costume Department while I was sitting up in Gorman’s office,” he said. “When I dropped in to see if you were still there, Irene remembered that you hadn’t come back from looking at the spot where the Grim Reaper outfit had been.”

“Did you get the part?”

“Afraid so, yeah.”

Dr. Cohen held up two fingers. “How many?”

I told him. He tried a few more tests, then had me go wide-eyed while he shined a tiny flashlight beam at me.

Nodding, he said, “Everything seems to be okay. I’ll give you some pills to take for your headache—you do have a headache, don’t you?”

“Now that you mention it, yes. A whopper.”

“Take one of the pills every three hours or so, and I’d advise you to rest up for the rest of today,” the doctor told me. “If the headache gets worse, if you become dizzy, if you start vomiting, or if you pass out, call your family doctor and have him get right over.”

“If I pass out, that’s going to be a little tough to do,” I said, “but I’ll sure give it a try.”

“Now can you tell us exactly what caused your injury, Mr. Denby?”

“Somebody bopped me on the head with what must have been a blackjack. Two or three times, I think.”

“Did you see your assailant?”

“For less than half a minute,” I answered, realizing that I was still sounding a little mush mouthed. “But he wore a mask.”

“What sort of mask?”

“A hood, like an executioner or a serial villain. Black hood with little eyehole slits.”

“The hood was on the floor near where I found you,” said Enery.

“Nobody saw the guy, coming or going?”

“Irene swears nobody passed by her cubbyhole while you were back there.”

Dr. Cohen crossed to a small glass-doored cabinet. “I’ll have to fill out a report and give a copy to our security staff,” he said, opening the cabinet to take out a large greenish bottle of bean-sized pills. “There may also be some forms for you to sign, Mr. Denby. If you’ll leave me your address, I’ll see that you get—”

“The string,” I said, remembering.

“How’s that?” The doctor eyed me as though he was reconsidering his diagnosis.

I glanced over at Enery. “Piece of leather cord it was, dark colored, about five or six inches long. I was holding it in my hand.”

“Didn’t see anything like that,” said my friend. “Important?”

“I don’t know, but if the guy who hit me took it, then I figure it must’ve been.”

“We can take a look on the way out.”

“Yeah, let’s.”

I gave the doctor our Bayside address, accepting the little bottle of pills he’d decanted from the big bottle. Then Enery and I went back to the costume storeroom.

Irene gave me a maternal, and cautious, hug and told me how sorry she was that I’d come to grief during her shift.

Enery and I couldn’t find the piece of leather cord, and the black hood he’d seen was gone as well.

As Groucho headed gracefully downstairs from his office, he encountered a large, wide man coming upstairs. “We’re closed for the day,” he said. “No more pony rides until tomorrow, sonny.”

“He wants to talk to you,” announced the heavyset man.

“He being who?” The intruder was blocking Groucho’s further descent.

“Warren Lockwood.”

“Tell him I’ll drop in on him the first thing in the—”

“He’s waiting downstairs right now, Groucho.”

“Well, I promised to go ice-skating with Sonja Henie right after work today,” he said. “But I suppose I can postpone it for a bit. Of course, there’s always the risk that the rink will melt before I—”

“This won’t take long, Groucho.” The big man in the double-breasted gray suit turned, commenced walking down toward the street.

There was a long black limousine parked at the curb. The large, wide man opened the rear door. “He’d like you to join him inside the car.”

“Every time I get taken for a ride by thugs, it starts just like this.” Groucho slid into the car. “Well, Warren, so nice of you to drop by.”

“I think we’d better have a talk, Groucho,” said Lockwood, who was sitting on the opposite of the wide rear seat.

The interior of the car had a hospital corridor smell to it.

“You sure you wouldn’t just as well like to come upstairs to my office?” asked Groucho.

The big man had shut the rear door, then gotten into the driver’s seat of the limo.

Lockwood said, “This will do nicely, if you don’t mind. Val, drive us out toward the beach.”

Val Sharkey started the car, pulled away from the curb, and started driving out Sunset in the direction of Santa Monica.

“I didn’t bring any swimming togs,” mentioned Groucho, “so that—”

“I’d like very much to have Groucho Marx, Secret Agent on my radio network,” said the tycoon.

Groucho thrust a hand into a pocket of his sport coat. “Do I sense a threat in that sentence, Warren?”

Lockwood smiled, for a few seconds. “I’m simply explaining to you that I feel much better working with talent that’s cooperative.”

“That doesn’t apply here. I lost all my talent in the Crash of nineteen-twenty-nine, so—”

“There have been far too many mentions in the newspapers the past few days that you and Frank Denby intend to intrude on Dinah Flanders’s privacy.”

“We have intruded,” corrected Groucho, unwrapping the cigar he pulled out of the pocket. “At Dinah’s invitation. She doesn’t believe her husband was a suicide, and neither do we. Therefore, I—”

“Don’t light that damn thing,” said Lockwood, plucking the stogie out of Groucho’s hand and tossing it on the seat between them. “Of course Eric didn’t kill himself. He was shot, probably by some of his Nazi cronies.”

“Then why the devil—”

“America is going to get into this war, Groucho,” he told him. “Maybe this year, maybe next year, but eventually.”

The day was ending, and lights were coming on all along Sunset Boulevard.

“Probably so,” agreed Groucho. “What does that have to do with covering up the fact that Dinah’s husband was murdered?” He retrieved the cigar, slipped it back in his coat pocket.

“There are several large aircraft companies in Southern California, including Hughes Aircraft and my Lockwood Aero,” said the tycoon. “So far we’re out in front of the others in devoting ourselves to defense contracts for the government.”

“For a handsome fee.”

“I’m not doing this simply out of patriotism, no,” he admitted. “But the point I want to get across to you and Frank Denby is that if you two continue poking into this, it’s possible that a lot of sensitive and secret information will become public.”

“Such as?”

“Some very important research data have been stolen from Lockwood Aero. We don’t know yet exactly who—”

“Olmstead was involved?”

“We suspect that certain top-secret material was passed to him while he and Dinah were at the plant. He may well have been the one who smuggled it out, yes.”

“Meaning the guy was a German spy?”

“We haven’t established that yet, but it’s very likely that if Eric Olmstead wasn’t a Nazi agent, he was working for people who were.”

“You don’t know who they are?”

Shaking his head, Lockwood said, “The FBI is working with us on finding out.”

“And if they do find out, I don’t suppose I’ll be reading about it in the L.A. Times.”

“No, the public will go on thinking that Eric killed himself,” answered the tycoon. “Unfortunate for Dinah, but necessary. We want to keep the lid clamped down tight on all this, for security reasons.”

At the stoplight two platinum blond starlets in very tight slacks crossed the street, momentarily distracting Groucho.

As the limousine started up again, he asked, “Who was Pearson?” “A fellow I hired to keep an eye on Eric, once I realized I couldn’t prevent Dinah from marrying the guy.”

“Did you suspect he was a German agent way back then?”

“No. I only knew that Eric didn’t seem right to me, and I wanted to make sure no harm came to Dinah,” explained Lockwood. “She represents a considerable investment in time and money.”

“When did you suspect he might be a spy?”

“Later.”

“So where is Pearson now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t send the chap into hiding?”

“I didn’t, no. I’d like very much to find out where he is.” He shifted on the seat, turning toward Groucho. “Now then, do we have an understanding about the—”

“Who wrote the suicide note? Your people or the murderer?”

“Sharkey typed it, and I dictated it.”

“The gun?”

“Wasn’t there.”

Nodding, Groucho said, “Did you search the place, open the safe?” “We did a very subtle search. We weren’t able to open the safe.”

“At your party the lad in the Grim Reaper outfit scared Olmstead into a fainting spell,” said Groucho. “Know who he was?”

“No, we don’t,” said Lockwood. “Let me mention, Groucho, that I’ll deny all I’ve told you on our little ride. It wouldn’t be wise for you to—”

“If we don’t quit our investigation, my new radio show isn’t going to have much of a chance with you, I take it.”

“None at all, actually,” Lockwood assured him. “So what do you say, Groucho?”

“Well, there’s always NBC.”

“Stop the car someplace where Mr. Marx can get a cab, Val,” instructed Lockwood.

Twenty-one

“But this is what people do for hangovers,” I complained as Jane adjusted the ice bag against the injured side of my head. “It’s a staple of funny-paper humor and two-reel comedies. Only people such as Jiggs and Charley Chase are ever seen wearing ice bags.”

“Hush,” suggested my wife.

I was lying on my side atop our double bed, wearing the embroidered bathrobe Jane’s aunt in Fresno had sent me for my last birthday. “Furthermore, if I expire, you’ve got to promise not to bury me in this particular robe. It would be embarrassing to lie in state with bunny rabbits decorating my—”

“’T’ain’t funny,” she told me. “You could really have been killed there at Warlock.”

“Nope. They only wanted to scare me and, possibly, swipe that length of cord.”

“Well, they’ve succeeded in scaring me.” Jane gently poked at the ice bag.

“You know, I’ll quit this case if it’s going to cause you to—”

“Don’t quit, just be more careful.” She sat on the edge of my bed and took hold of my hand. “Can I get you anything?”

“Well, there’s a starlet named Peggy Moran who’s kind of cute. Could you have her come over and—”

“There’s a time to be a wiseass and a time to be serious.”

“I know, I read about that in the Bible.”

Jane stood up. “And to think that I once had a chance to marry a completely serious man.”

“Seriously?”

She said, “Oh, and Groucho telephoned about an hour before Enery delivered you home.”

“New developments?”

“He told me he’ll be dropping by later,” my wife answered. “He wants to talk about Larry Shell and photographs.”

Dorgan, who’d been sitting at the bedside watching me with a forlorn look, attempted now to climb up on the bedspread with me.

“Shoo,” suggested Jane.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Let him hop aboard.”

“I don’t want him to make a habit of sitting on the bed.”

“Only when I’ve been conked on the coco.”

“That may be too often.” She helped our bloodhound settle in beside me.

“Photographs, huh?” I said thoughtfully, tapping my fingers on the ice bag. “Hey, sure, why didn’t I think of that?”

“Think of what?”

“Larry probably shot dozens of pictures of the Halloween party Monday night,” I explained. “It’s possible that in some of them—at least in the background—he photographed the Grim Reaper.”

“So you might see him talking to somebody besides Eric Olmstead.”

“Sure. Then we can track down those folks, find out if any of them know who the guy was.” I started to roll over, prior to sitting up. “I’ll call Larry and ask him what—”

“You stay put, Franklin. I’ll telephone him.”

Feeling a mite woozy, I settled back. “Okay. Ask him if we can drop over to his place tomorrow to take a look at the contact proofs,” I said. “I don’t imagine he turned everything over to the Times.”

“You sure you’ll be up to traveling by tomorrow?”

“I’ve been hit on the head several times since I embarked on my investigating career with Groucho,” I reminded her. “My head has now been toughened and conditioned by frequent blows. So I snap back even more readily. Next time I get conked, I probably won’t even notice it.”

She gave me a somewhat exasperated look. “I’ll go telephone him.”

While she was in the living room using the phone, I patted Dorgan on the head and told him, “We’ll try to find a way to use your bloodhound abilities on this case, old pal.”

The dog licked my nose.

Jane returned in about five minutes. “Certain problems have arisen,” she told me.

“Such as?”

“Larry, according to his wife, is down in Ensenada on an assignment for the L.A. Times. He’s photographing that big movie-star wedding—Hazel Dearing and Ralph McNear.”

“When’s the guy due home?”

“Late tomorrow.”

“We can contact him then, and—”

“Two FBI agents called at Larry’s studio this morning and confiscated his negatives, his contact sheets, and everything else pertaining to what he photographed at the Lockwood shindig.”

“So they thought of this before Groucho.”

“Apparently they did, yes.”

“There were a lot of other photographers there, so we can probably—”

“The FBI will have already thought of that, too, Frank.”

I made a sour face. “Darn, getting conked on the skull has dulled my wits,” I admitted. “Sure, you’re right, Jane, they must have.”

Dorgan sat up, hopped off the bed, and, tail wagging, went trotting into the living room.

Someone began pounding on our front door.

Then a voice shouted, “Hey, open up! Are you the folks who ordered the truckload of chocolate matzos?”

“Groucho,” said Jane.

“Groucho,” I agreed.

When I’d finished recounting to Groucho what had befallen me while I was poking around the Wardrobe Department out at Warlock, he said, “The fact that you got whapped on the noggin and warned indicates that we’ve got them worried.”

“All we have to do now is find out who them are.” I was sitting atop the bed, several pillows propping me up. The icebag I was holding in place with my hand.

“That would be helpful,” conceded Groucho. He’d pulled the straight-back chair that went with the vanity over near my bedside. “The fact that this latest conking incident occurred at the Warlock studios means that people associated with the movie end of Warren Lockwood’s business activities are tied in with what’s been going on.”

“At least one person,” I said. “I still wish I could figure out why anybody would’ve taken that piece of leather cord.”

“Some people collect string,” Groucho observed.

Jane was sitting on the edge of our bed on the other side of me. “I don’t like the idea of your getting slugged,” she said, “but up to that point things went pretty well out at Warlock. You haven’t told Groucho about the Ty-Gor deal.”

“This guy Novsam, the new Ty-Gor producer, offered me the job of rewriting the jungle-man script,” I told Groucho. “It’s not exactly Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but—”

“Alas, Rollo,” put in Groucho, a forlorn expression touching his face, “you’d best harken now to my account of my recent encounter with the aforementioned Warren Lockwood.”

“What’s it got to do with the Ty-Gor script?” I frowned, readjusting my icebag.

Groucho said, “There’s a distinct possibility, my boy, that you and I are on the brink of being blacklisted.”

“How can that be?” asked Jane.

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear,” he promised. Groucho then told us about his ride with Warren Lockwood and his henchman Val Sharkey. He wound up with, “Lockwood, short of donning his old ROTC uniform and whistling a medley of stirring John Philip Sousa marches, made it pretty clear that he considers it our patriotic duty not to meddle further in the Olmstead affair.”

“And if you keep on,” said Jane, angry, “he’s going to reject Groucho Marx, Secret Agent and also see to it that Frank doesn’t work for Warlock?”

“You have grasped, Lady Jane, the central point of his discourse,” Groucho said.

There was a loud thunk from out in the living room. Dorgan had abandoned his perch on the sofa to come trotting into the bedroom. He settled down near Groucho’s chair, looking up at me.

“Do you guys really believe,” said Jane to the two of us, “that your solving the murder is going to endanger the security of the United States?”

“The FBI tends to exaggerate stuff like this,” I said. “Finding out who murdered Olmstead doesn’t have to involve the leaking of any defense secrets.”

Thoughtfully, Groucho withdrew a cigar from a pocket of his sport coat. “There’s no doubt that we’re dealing with spies here,” he said. “But they may not be responsible for Olmstead’s death.”

“Meaning?” I said.

Leaning, Groucho used his free hand to pat our bloodhound on the head. “The stolen airplane secrets may only be part of what’s going on.”

“Then we stick with the case?”

“We do.” He nodded in Jane’s direction. “Unless the lady of the house would prefer that I continue alone, thereby cutting down on the chances of your being coldcocked yet again.”

“I get very annoyed with people who hurt my husband,” Jane told him. “So I’d like to see whoever slugged him get his comeuppance.”

“I was going to quote the immortal Mae West and say, ‘Comeuppance see me sometime,’” admitted Groucho. “But perhaps this isn’t the appropriate time for such a jape.”

“Or for such corn,” added Jane.

“I shall save the line for use in the next volume of my memoirs of the Boer War, to be entitled How Green Was My Corn,” he said, exhaling smoke. “Now then, back to business. I’d like very much for us to locate this missing valet chap, the elusive Pearson.”

“There’s a possibility he’s gone to ground someplace on Catalina,” I reminded. “Or so May Sankowitz thinks.”

“Can you get us a probable address?”

“Sure, I’ll check with one of my old L.A. Times informants, Tim O’Hearn, tomorrow.”

Jane said, “You ought to rest up tomorrow.”

“By midday tomorrow I should be okay enough to venture into the heart of Los Angeles and drop in on O’Hearn,” I assured her.

She gave a reluctant nod. “Okay, Frank, but be extra careful.”

“Pearson was actually there on the spot when Olmstead was killed,” said Groucho. “He may well know a bit more than he’s told. Therefore, I—”

The phone rang out in the living room.

Jane, gently, left the bed to answer it.

Rising up, Dorgan followed her.

“Are you completely certain,” asked Groucho, leaning closer and lowering his voice, “that you are well enough to be up and doing tomorrow?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“The call’s for you, Groucho,” said Jane from the doorway. “It’s Dinah Flanders. She says she telephoned your home and your son told her you were probably here.”

“So Arthur was home, eh? Gad, that’s the first time he’s been off a tennis court in a fortnight.” He stood up. “I was stationed at Fort Night when I was in the French Foreign Legion. Bit awkward that, since the fort’s in Poughkeepsie, New York, and the Foreign Legion’s off in the desert someplace.” He walked to the door. “I wonder what our client wants now.”

Twenty-two

The Mirabilis Hotel in downtown Los Angeles was at least ten years older than the century, and it smelled even more ancient. The high, wide lobby was thick with potted palms and the mixed scents of dust, decay, and old clothes. From the flawed front windows you could see across the street to the Sawdust Trail Saloon and Lulu’s All-Girl Barber Shop huddled beside it.

Decorating the faded peach-colored walls of the lobby were dozens of faded sepia photos, all framed in dark wood, of stars from the days before talkies. I recognized Eric von Stroheim, Billie Dove, Wally Reid, Clara Bow, Harry Langdon, Barbara la Marr, and Joe Bonomo among them.

The once-purple armchairs were sunburned a thin lavender, and most of them were occupied by weary-looking old men. In the venerable chair nearest the marble-topped registration desk sat a very thin man of about eighty with a guitar resting across his knees. The guitar had no strings.

The woman behind the desk was over sixty and weighed something like two hundred pounds. Her hair had been dyed a pinkish blond, and each plump cheek had a circle of maroon rouge on it. She was rolling a cigarette. She looked up as I approached, saying, “You sure as hell don’t want to register, hon.”

“I came to see Tim O’Hearn.”

Grunting, she turned to glance back at the mailboxes. “He’s in,” she told me. “Room number is three-three-eight. You a buddy of Timmy’s?”

“We went to Harvard together.”

When she chortled, her body went through some jolly Santa Claus quivers, and she wheezed some. “I bet you’re that reporter buddy of his.”

“I used to be a reporter.”

She looked me over for a few seconds. “What happened to your head?”

“I walked into a door—sideways.”

She said, “You’re probably too young to remember me.”

“Probably so. Movies?”

“I’ve seen better days,” she admitted, sighing. “Back when I was younger and slimmer and my hair was really this color, I did quite a few serials. My name was Hazel Knight—my show-business name—and I was billed as the Lady Daredevil of the Silver Screen. In nineteen-twenty-one my Hazards of Hazel was the top-grossing chapter play in the country.”

“Sure, I saw that when I was in high school,” I said, remembering. “You costarred with Fred Thomson.”

She smiled the same smile she must have smiled back then. “It’s nice to be remembered.”

“It is, yeah,” I agreed. “Well, I’ve got an appointment with O’Hearn.”

“Drop by anytime,” Hazel invited as I headed for the elevator.

There was a sign taped to the elevator cage, announcing that it was out of order. Jane wouldn’t have thought much of the eclectic hand lettering.

I trudged my way up to the third floor, trying to keep my inhaling at a minimum. The shadowy stairways were thick with an aromatic blend of dust, mildew, and overworked plumbing.

My arrival in the hallway leading to O’Hearn’s room caused a fat gray rat, who’d been lurking behind a potted plant, to go scurrying away, probably in search of a rat hole.

Locating 338, I knocked on the slightly warped door.

After a moment O’Hearn inquired, “Who is it?”

“Frank.”

Another moment passed. Then the door opened wide enough to allow the thin, pale informant to look out and scrutinize me. “How you been, Frank?” He had a bottle of Lucky Lager beer in his right hand. “I was just having breakfast. C’mon in.”

When O’Hearn backed up, I nudged the frail door open wide enough to allow me to cross the threshold. A little midday sunlight found its way through the swaybacked venetian blinds, and dust flickered and danced in the thin strips of brightness.

I started to lower myself down on the venerable sofa. “What have you found out about—”

“Don’t squat on that one, Frank,” warned O’Hearn, making a back-off motion with his free hand. “It’s kind of rickety.”

“Matches the décor.” I lifted a scatter of movie trade papers and much-annotated racing forms off a lopsided armchair and sat. Near my left foot I noticed a paper plate holding the mossy remains of an unfinished cheese sandwich. “What have you found out about James Pearson?”

Finishing the beer, O’Hearn tossed the brown bottle onto a jumble of dirty clothes near the window. “You’re not the only one interested in this guy,” he told me, lowering himself into the room’s other armchair.

“Who else?”

“G-men have been trying to find out where Pearson is holed up,” he answered, standing again. “Think I’d like another beer. How about you?”

“Not just yet, Tim. Who else is—”

“I keep the beer in the bathroom,” my information source explained as he walked in there. “Sink the bottles in the toilet tank, keeps them cool. I used to sit them out on the window sill, which is cooler this time of year, but the asshole up in four-three-eight would fish them up with a looped length of—”

“Who else?”

O’Hearn, with a fresh bottle of beer—Regal Pale this time—started searching through the sprawls of old newspapers and discarded clothes spread on the thinning rug. “I’m going to need an extra ten spot, Frank,” he told me, crouching.

“Why is that, Tim?”

“This is dangerous, a lot more dangerous than I thought it’d be when you telephoned me last night.” He located a bottle opener under a copy of a magazine called Black Silk Stockings. “Gestapo agents are hunting for the guy, too.”

“How do you know they’re Gestapo?”

“Maybe not, Frank—maybe they’re simply everyday German secret agents.” Beer fizzed over the lip of the bottle after he pried off the cap. “Some kind anyway—so I hear—of German heavies.”

“Know why they want him?”

“What about that extra ten bucks?”

“Five.”

“Jesus, the Depression’s supposed to be over, but you couldn’t tell by me.”

“All right, ten. Why?”

O’Hearn shook his head. “They’re eager to have a heart-to-heart talk with Pearson,” he answered. “Not sure why yet.”

“Can you find out?”

“You’re not kidding about that extra ten?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll find out.”

“Now, do you know where Pearson is hiding out?”

When O’Hearn grinned, I noticed he’d lost a front tooth since the last time I’d consulted him. “Sure, because I have lots of contacts who’ll talk to me but won’t talk to the feds or the Nazis,” he answered. “Pearson is lying low out on Catalina Island; Frank, but not in Avalon. About ten miles from Avalon Bay, going north, there’s a little inlet they call Doubloon Bay. Back in the nineteen-twenties when Fox made a movie called Spanish Gold there, they built a small Caribbean village. Still standing, been converted into cottages and such. That’s where you’ll find this Pearson guy.”

“Got an address?”

“He’s at number one-thirty-three on Galleon Lane,” he told me. “Oh, and by the way, he’s not actually Pearson.”

“So we suspected. Who is he?”

“Real name is Len Hickman,” said O’Hearn, pausing to drink about a third of his beer. “He runs a one-man private investigating office out of Santa Monica. A few months ago he was hired to go undercover and keep an eye—”

“Hired by Warren Lockwood maybe?”

“Lockwood, right, you got it, Frank. To keep an eye on Eric Olmstead,” said my informant. “They bribed the regular valet to take a new, better job down in Coronado.”

“Do you know why Lockwood did that?”

“After Dinah Flanders announced she was going to get hitched to Olmstead, Lockwood decided he’d like to have somebody inside the place to keep an eye on his box-office sensation.” O’Hearn finished his Regal Pale.

This was backing up what Lockwood himself had admitted to Groucho. “Did he suspect Olmstead of anything specific?”

“Such as what?”

“Anything.”

“Not that I’ve heard. I’ll keep digging.”

“What have you unearthed about Pearson’s girlfriend?”

“He had one.”

“So we assumed. What we’d like to know, as I mentioned on the phone, is who she is and where we can find her.”

“I’ll find out, Frank, but it may cost a little more.”

Standing, I produced twenty bucks out of my wallet and handed the bills over to O’Hearn.

After tossing the empty bottle in the direction of the other, O’Hearn unfolded up out of his chair. “Hey, I hear you and the missus are going to have a kid,” he said, folding the money up and sliding it into his shirt pocket. “Congratulations, Frank.”

“Thanks. You’re very well-informed.”

“That’s how I make my living,” he reminded.

I walked to the door. “I’ll get back to you, Tim.”

He opened the door for me. “Watch out for the Gestapo,” he advised as I stepped into the shadowy hall.

The offices of Paul Temmerson, attorney-at-law, were just off Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills near Roxbury Drive. Groucho Marx arrived there at a few minutes after one, so he later told me.

Most of the buildings on this block weren’t designed by architects inspired by Gone with the Wind but by those who had fallen under the spell of one of the movie versions of The Mark of Zorro. The lawoffice building was two stories high, built around a mosaic-tile courtyard and made of pale orange stucco. The slanting roofs were bright red curved tile.

Bounding gracefully up the redbrick outdoor staircase, Groucho passed potted cactus of various kinds in fat, colorful pots imported up from Mexico. A parrot cage of dark wrought iron hung on a dark wrought-iron hook beside the entryway to the offices of Temmerson, Carnahan, and Temmerson.

The green-and-yellow bird eyed Groucho, squawked, “Humbug,” and returned to pecking at a biscuit.

“Very seasonal,” observed Groucho, entering the beam-ceilinged reception room.

“May I help you, sir?” inquired the dark-haired young woman behind the heavy redwood desk.

“Yes, I’m dying to know why there are two Temmersons and only one Carnahan,” he said as he approached her desk. “Did you run out of Carnahans, or—”

“You must be Groucho Marx,” realized the receptionist.

“Yes, I must. It has to do with a curse put on me while I was still in the cradle.”

“Miss Flanders is already in with Mr. Paul Temmerson,” said the unsmiling young woman. “I’ll let them know you’ve arrived.” She flicked on the intercom. “Mr. Marx is here, sir.”

A deep, handsome voice flowed out of the speaker. “Show him in, Francesca.”

“The first door to the right of the desk, Mr. Marx.”

He bowed, went loping in the direction of the designated door. Halfway there, he halted, spun around, and came loping back to the brunette receptionist. Taking hold of her nearest hand, he kissed it resoundingly. “I shall wear your name engraved forever on my heart, Francesca,” he said. “Right next to the place where it says, ‘If found, please drop in the nearest mailbox.’”

He turned again, went into Paul Temmerson’s office.

Dinah, wearing white bell-bottom slacks, a blue blazer, and a very cute sailor hat, was sitting on the edge of one of the redwood-and-leather chairs facing Temmerson’s wide redwood desk. “I wanted you to hear about this from Paul directly, Groucho,” she said as he took another of the chairs.

The lawyer was a tan and handsome man of fifty. His graying hair was wavy, and his London-tailored suit was gray. “I advised Dinah not to bring any outsiders into this, Groucho, but she insisted … .” He paused to sigh. “And Dinah’s a very difficult women to disagree with.”

“Just tell him about what you told me on the telephone yesterday, Paul.”

“I was also Eric Olmstead’s lawyer,” the dapper attorney began. “A little over three weeks ago, he dropped in to give me some instructions on what he wanted done in the event of his death.” He opened a yellow legal tablet.

Grouch asked, “Olmstead was expecting to die?”

“Apparently so.”

“By his own hand?”

“C’mon, Groucho,” cut in Dinah, “you know damn well Eric didn’t—”

“Let’s get to his instructions,” suggested Groucho.

Temmerson consulted the penciled notes on the sheet of the tablet. “Eric wanted to be cremated, he wanted his ashes to be scattered over the Pacific Ocean,” he said. “He wanted me to provide Dinah with the combination to the safe in his den as soon as he was dead.”

“Did he say why?”

“Yes, Eric informed me that he had written … well, he referred to it as a sort of confession,” answered the attorney. “Eric said it would explain to Dinah why he’d been so depressed and anxious recently. The real reason he’d suggested that they separate. This statement was in an envelope addressed to Dinah that was locked in his safe. It was, as I mentioned, to be read only after his death.”

“Isn’t that terrific?” Dinah said to Groucho. “Eric explains everything, and then some son of a bitch cracks the safe and swipes the damned paper.”

Groucho asked the lawyer, “Olmstead didn’t tell you specifically what he was confessing to?”

“It was something he wasn’t proud of, but that’s all I know.”

“And he didn’t leave you an extra copy of this document?”

“To the best of my knowledge, Groucho, there was only one copy, and that was placed in his safe.”

“And that copy,” said Dinah, “went off with our safecracker.”

Temmerson said, “When I informed Dinah about this document, Groucho, she insisted that I tell you all I know about it. I hope it’s been of some help.”

“You’ve got to find that damn thing,” Dinah told Groucho.

“I’ll add it to my list,” he promised.

Twenty-three

Some twenty-five miles off the Southern California coast lies Santa Catalina Island. The island is something over twenty miles long and about eight miles across at its widest point. As you approach it across the water, Catalina looks, as one guidebook puts it, as if a section of the Coast Range had been transplanted to the open ocean.

Chewing-gum tycoon William Wrigley, Jr., bought the island back in 1919 and had long since converted it into a first-class tourist attraction. In addition to tourists and vacationers, a lot of movie colony people frequented Catalina.

Sunday morning Groucho and I set sail from San Pedro for Catalina to locate and question Olmstead’s missing valet, the guy who’d called himself James Pearson. If the information I’d picked up from Tim O’Hearn was reliable, we might find the erstwhile Pearson in the vicinity of Doubloon Bay up the coast of the island from the town of Avalon.

The November day was clear, warm, and blue, and the ferryboat was making good time across the fairly choppy ocean. The trip was supposed to take about an hour and a half. I was leaning with an elbow on the rail on the upper, open deck, trying to spot flying fish. All I’d noted thus far was an inflated rubber sea horse that some kid must have lost at one of the beaches. The thing was yellow with blue polka dots and looked lonely and disoriented as it drifted out to sea.

“Are you certain, Rollo,” asked Groucho, “that you’ve recovered sufficiently to embark upon an ocean voyage?” He was wearing a blue blazer dotted with gold buttons, grey slacks, and a pair of dark glasses.

“I’m somewhere between feeling splendid and feeling so-so. But I’m in better shape today than I was yesterday.” I still had a moderate headache. “I can make this trip okay.”

“Let us review, my dear Watso, the possible reasons why Pearson, alias Len Hickman, private eye, is attempting to elude all and sundry. Including Our Gal Sundry and—”

“One possible reason,” I contributed, “is that he’s the killer.”

“Perhaps,” said Groucho. “What’s his motive?”

“Could be he was hired by somebody to take care of Olmstead.”

“Hired by whom?”

I gazed out at the morning Pacific. “The Nazis maybe or Warren Lockwood or possibly somebody we don’t know a damn thing about as yet.”

Groucho rested both elbows on the ferryboat railing. “The Germans might have eliminated Olmstead because he’d failed in his mission or was balking at turning over the stuff swiped from Lockwood Aero,” he said. “They might also have gotten wind of the fact that he was planning to confess—to tell all and perhaps foul up their entire Southern California espionage setup.”

“There’s no way of telling what was in that confession Dinah’s lawyer told you about yesterday. But it was probably something the Gestapo didn’t want made public.”

“Now as to Lockwood,” said Groucho. “What would be his reason for having Dinah’s hubby bumped off?”

I said, “Well, Dinah’s worth millions of bucks to his movie company. If it got out that she was married to a Nazi spy, that could pretty well screw up her career. And her earning power.”

“True,” he acknowledged. “Among the other probable motives for Pearson taking a powder is the possibility that he saw the murder or at least knows who committed it.”

“And he’s afraid the killer will bump him off to keep his mouth shut.”

“Or the lad might be contemplating blackmailing the killer and prefers to do that from the privacy of a hideout.”

“I did some further checking on Len Hickman after O’Hearn gave me his real name,” I told Groucho. “He is not noted for his strong moral sense, meaning he wouldn’t be above a bit of blackmail.”

Groucho said, “I do hope we encounter this chap. There are several burning questions I’m eager to—”

“Groucho Marx!”

Groucho turned away from the railing and his view of the Pacific. A plump woman in a navy blue cloth coat had stopped a few feet away. “And the same to you, madam,” he said.

“You know, you’re the first famous movie star I’ve seen in person since I ran into Ann Sheridan,” she informed him. “She’s the one they call the Oomph Girl.”

“That whole notion was swiped from me. Yes, I was trying to persuade MGM to bill me as the Oomph Boy.”

The woman eyed him. “Well, you’re not exactly a boy any longer, Mr. Marx.”

“That’s precisely what Louis B. Mayer decided, dear lady,” said Groucho. “When he offered, however, to publicize me as Groucho Marx, the Oomph Old Coot, I demurred. In fact, we brought Cecil B. Demur himself in to—”

“Why are you on this boat?”

“My associate and I are hoping to find a new trade route to India,” he answered. “Not that there’s anything especially wrong with the old trade route to India, mind you. Still, schlepping over that same old trade route to India week after week can get so—”

“May I ask you a question, Mr. Marx, sir?” A young man in a USC sweater had joined the small group that was gathering in Groucho’s vicinity.

“You can ask up to twenty questions, but if you can’t guess whether I’m animal, vegetable, or mineral by that time, you’ll be flogged and tossed in the brig. Or maybe it’s brigged and tossed in the flog. I’m not up on these fancy new nautical terms or—”

“No, I just wanted to know how come—”

“On the other hand, we might have you walk the plank. If we can find our plank,” Groucho said. “The last time I saw it for certain was the day I loaned it to Bob Hope, who was planning to write a song entitled ‘Planks for the Memories,’ but … you had a question?”

“A few years ago there were four Marx Brothers. Now there are only three,” said the patient college boy. “Why is that?”

“Ah, very perceptive of you to have noticed.” Groucho extracted a cigar from a pocket of his blazer. “It all has to do with economy. In our next film there’ll be only two Marx Brothers, and by nineteen-forty-two the Marx Brothers film of that year will contain no Marx Brothers at all. MGM figures to save a small fortune this way.” He unwrapped his cigar and lit it, the sea wind causing the match flame to flicker and flutter. “The small fortune they’re intending to save is about three-footseven and often stands in for Mickey Rooney.”

“I wonder if you could refrain from smoking, Mr. Marx?” asked a slim young woman. “My mother is seasick on the bench yonder.”

He cupped his ear with his free hand. “Eh? How’s that again?”

“My mother is seasick on the bench yonder.”

“Ah, yes, ‘My Mother Is Seasick on the Bench Yonder’ is one of my favorite sentimental old ballads,” he told the young woman. “I have the Vernon Dahlhart recording on Okeh. Many’s the evening I play the record, and it brings tears to my eyes, and if I’m lucky, it also brings me my pipe and slippers.”

“There’s Avalon,” said someone.

The ferry was nearing Santa Catalina, and the small band of Groucho admirers scattered.

As the boat sailed into the harbor at Avalon, loudspeakers at the docking area commenced blaring forth with Benny Goodman’s recording of “Avalon.”

On our right rose the Casino, a vast circular white building. Two stories high, it was in the popular Southern California Moorish style. Despite its name, you couldn’t gamble at the place. There were a movie theater and a cocktail lounge. The entire second floor was given over to a ballroom, where you could dance to bands like Goodman’s.

The waters of the bay were calm and clear. The town of Avalon consisted mostly of the familiar stucco and red-tile buildings. There were also lots of palm trees. Rising up beyond Avalon, circling and nearly enclosing it, were high wooded hills thick with oaks, firs, and pines and especially with growths of the low, evergreen oaks they call chaparral.

Dozens of bright white seagulls circled high in the clear, warm late-morning sky. Inland, over the mountains, I spotted what looked like a soaring eagle.

“If they gambled at yon casino,” observed Groucho as we disembarked, “I’m sure Chico would become a channel swimmer.”

When we were walking along Crescent Avenue, the main street of the town, a plump middle-aged couple came rushing out of a souvenir shop.

“It’s Groucho Marx!” exclaimed the plump man, who was clutching a Kodak box camera.

“It is?” said Groucho. “I thought it was Columbus Day. But then my calendar has been running a couple weeks slow lately.”

“May I take a picture of you with my wife?” asked the man with the camera.

The plump woman, in flowered dress and cloth coat, was carrying a large straw shopping bag. “You’re the most famous movie star we’ve seen so far on our vacation.”

“If that’s the case, ma’am, you’d better ask your travel agent for a refund.” Groucho took a cigar from a pocket of his blazer. “As for you, sir, I’d be delighted to be photographed with your wife.”

“Thanks a lot, Mr. Marx. You’re our—”

“However, it’s blatantly clear that this fetching lady is certainly not your wife, but rather the notorious Little Egypt, renowned hoochiecoochie dancer.”

“Oh, Helen’s not Little Egypt,” her husband assured him.

Groucho squinted, taking a closer look at the woman. “No, she couldn’t be Little Egypt,” he conceded. “Although she might well be Middle-Sized Egypt or perhaps—”

“Just stand next to him, Helen, and I’ll snap the picture.”

When she came within range of Groucho, he put both arms around her, kissed her on the cheek, and then turned to her husband. “You may fire when ready.”

You can’t drive a private car on Catalina Island or rent one. But there was a sort of jitney service.

Ten minutes and three autograph requests later, we hired a car to drive us over to Doubloon Bay.

Twenty-four

The shooting didn’t start until after we got to the little village on Doubloon Bay.

We drove there on a narrow curving road that ran close to the sea. On our left rose high sloping hills, thick with trees and brush. There were several eagles circling above the hilltops.

After we’d traveled roughly half the distance from Avalon, about five miles, our driver had said, “You don’t seem very interested in my descriptions of the sights of Santa Catalina, señores.”

“You can dispense with the running travelogue, Roger,” suggested Groucho. “And, while you’re at it, get rid of that awful Cisco Kid accent.”

The driver, a lean dark man in his middle thirties, slowed the car and looked at us in the rearview mirror. “Hey, excuse me, Groucho,” he said, abandoning the thick Spanish accent he’d been using. “I didn’t recognize you without the moustache and wearing those dark cheaters.”

Groucho and I were sitting in the backseat of the Chevy roadster. “I never forget the back of a head,” he said. “You’re Roger Torres, and you used to be a pretty good bit player.”

“Fair was the best I ever got, Groucho,” Torres said, picking up speed again. “I was in A Night at the Opera with you guys at MGM. In some of the opera house scenes, I played an usher.”

“That’s much easier to play than a violin,” said Groucho. “Myself, I’m partial to playing the buffoon, but only when they’ve run out of tambourines. Once, when I was touring Florida, they ran out of tangerines and … but, tell me, my boy—why are you driving a jitney?”

“I wasn’t getting anywhere in the movies, so I decided to drop my career,” he answered. “Or rather, my career dropped me—and so did my agent.”

“How long have you been working on Catalina?” I asked.

“Close to six months. I look on this as a sort of outdoor acting job, as if I’m playing the part of a charming Latin type from a respected old California family. Tourists seem to go for it.”

Groucho asked, “Do you get to Doubloon Bay often?”

Torres answered, “I drive through the village pretty often when I’m giving visitors an island tour. Usually we don’t stop there long, if at all.”

“Do you know any of the folks who reside in the village?”

“Nope, though I hear some artists, writers, and guys who’re behind in their alimony payments live there.”

“This fellow we’re planning to visit at one-thirty-three Galleon Lane,” said Groucho, “is a chunky lad of about forty and has red hair.”

Torres, his eyes on the seaside road ahead, shook his head. “Nope, I’ve never seen anyone of that description hanging around the village.”

I asked, “Have you driven anybody else out here in the past few days?”

“Nope,” he answered. “But I’m not the only jitney driver. Why are you interested in this guy?”

“We’re starting a Redheaded League,” said Groucho, “and we want to offer him a charter membership.”

“I get you, Groucho. It’s none of my business,” said Torres. “Now that I think about it, I read in the paper the other day that you were doing some detective work again, looking into that Eric Olmstead mess.”

“Exactly, yes.”

“So this fellow with you must be your partner, Fred Hambly.”

“Frank Denby,” I corrected.

“Pleased to meet you, Frank.”

When the car rounded another bend, there was Doubloon Bay, a very small inlet surrounded by about thirty or forty stucco and red-tile buildings of varying sizes. There were also quite a few palm trees and a scatter of olive trees. The main street of this leftover movie village was cobbled and led down to a believable-looking stone wharf. Some of the smaller cottages were on the few narrow winding lanes that connected with the main street. On the land side were more high slanting hills, thick with trees and scrub.

Torres said, “Galleon is over there on the left, just across from that rundown fountain. It’s too narrow for my car, so I’ll park over here in the square, and you fellows can hoof it.”

The village did look like a place where pirates would’ve hung out in centuries past. I had a vague memory that I’d seen the movie it was built for, and I experienced the brief feeling that I was walking onto a set.

Torres remained in the Chevy while Groucho and I headed for Pearson’s probable hideaway.

The streets were fairly quiet, and we didn’t see anybody moving about. In one of the two-story houses, a dog was barking, and from the window of an imitation-Spanish Main tavern drifted the sound of a scratchy Artie Shaw record being played quietly on a Victrola.

We were about fifty feet from 133 Galleon Lane when we heard the first shot.

“Foul play?” said Groucho, slowing.

“Sounds like a revolver,” I said.

Two more shots followed.

Leaving Groucho, I went running for Pearson’s cottage.

“Careful, Frank,” Groucho called after me.

“I intend to be,” I assured him.

Very carefully I approached Pearson’s peach-colored stucco cottage, employing a determined but cautious jog.

No more shots came from inside, but I heard something fall heavily.

Slipping into the slender alley between the cottage and the one next to it, I worked my way around to the back of the former valet’s hideaway.

A small galvanized garbage can had fallen over near the back door, and several empty cans of Del Monte vegetables were scattered on the ground. The door hung open several inches.

Taking a deep breath and holding it, I moved closer to the door.

From inside came the sound of drawers being yanked open.

After pausing to breathe again, I eased up to the doorway.

There was a small untidy kitchen across the threshold, smelling strongly of unwashed dishes and a lot of smoked cigarettes. Apparently Pearson hadn’t transferred his valet training to his own household.

I pressed my palm against the door and, very slowly, pushed it a few more inches open.

Waiting several seconds, I squeezed into the kitchen. Now I could smell the recent gunfire, too.

The ransacking at the front part of the cottage had stopped.

Making my way to the doorway to the hall, I chanced a look.

Spread out some ten feet along the shadowy corridor was a heavyset red-haired man. Lying on his back, he was dressed in a gray sweatshirt and a pair of Levis. He had stopped breathing, and there were two bloody holes in the front of the sweatshirt.

This had to be the missing Pearson.

I then noticed, at about the same moment he noticed me, a guy in a dark windbreaker and slacks. He wore—which struck me as possibly a shade too melodramatic—a black hood over his head, and he’d just stepped into the hall from the front room of the cottage.

He held a cream-colored envelope in his gloved right hand and a .32 revolver in his left.

As he pivoted to take a shot at me, I threw myself backwards into the kitchen.

The masked man shot once in my direction.

I was huddled on the linoleum by that time. The slug tore into the wall across the room, causing a colander to fall off its hook.

Next I heard him running toward the front door and yanking it open.

Roughly ten seconds later I heard what sounded like two people colliding. This was followed by muffled cursing, then the sound of running.

I waited another half minute or so before I ventured into the hall.

Although I hadn’t heard any more shots, I was worried that Groucho might have encountered the escaping killer and been injured.

“Frank, are you in there?” called Groucho, peering in through the open front doorway. “More important, are you still alive?”

“Right here.” I walked along the hall toward him, skirting the body. “I’m okay, but Pearson’s dead.”

“So I see.” I noticed he was holding the cream-colored envelope in his hand.

“Where’d you acquire that?”

“It simply goes to prove that every cloud has a silver lining, or at least a silver-plated lining,” he said. “As I was stealthily approaching this joint, using stalking pointers I’d learned from my old chum James Fennimore Cooper when we were growing up together in the Catskills, I was run into by a mean-minded masked maniac.”

“I heard the collision,” I told him. “You hurt?”

“I believe my toches was fractured in the fall, but outside of that I’m shipshape,” he assured me. “Of course, the ship I’m alluding to is the Titanic, but … at any rate, when I bumped into this fleeing felon, he dropped this envelope and its contents. You’ll notice the inscription on it.”

He held it out to me. “‘four my wife, Dinah,’” I read. “Then this is the one that Olmstead’s lawyer told you about.”

“Pearson must’ve swiped it,” said Groucho. “And the goniff with the hood came here to take possession.”

“Where’d he go, by the way?”

With his free hand Groucho pointed toward the hillside. “Up into the forest primeval, Rollo,” he said.

“When he realizes he’s lost that envelope, he’ll probably come back for it.”

“That’s why we have to depart the vicinity rapidly and hasten to notify the local law.”

“An excellent suggestion,” I said.

We started down the lane toward our jitney.

We got a police escort to the dock. And as our ferryboat set sail for home, the sun began to sink in the west and both the sky, and the ocean started to darken.

“When I left Hawaii after my vacation trip there, they gave me a pineapple,” mentioned Groucho, waving farewell to the Catalina sheriff and two of his associates. “All this island provided was a handshake.”

“Next time you stop by our place, I’ll give you another orange.” I turned my back on Avalon.

We’d been treated very well by the sheriff. Turned out he was a longtime fan of the Marx Brothers and that he’d seen each of their movies at least twice. “Cruel and unnatural punishment,” Groucho had observed when he heard that.

The sheriff had also followed the newspaper accounts of the previous murder cases Groucho and I had worked on. While not an enthusiastic admirer of amateur sleuths, he had to admit that we’d been, if nothing else, pretty lucky at solving mysteries.

He’d returned to Pearson’s cottage with us and with his investigating team, including the local general practitioner, who doubled as the coroner. Pearson had been shot at close range with a .32 revolver. Outside of a few books, a few clothes, and some spare cash, they didn’t find anything in the place. Pearson, alias Hickman, didn’t have a wallet on him or in the hideaway cottage.

None of the half-dozen people who resided in the little Doubloon Bay community had seen the killer arriving. Although a chubby painter down the lane had seen the hooded man go running for the hills after colliding with Groucho.

The sheriff was going to check with the small Catalina airport to get a list of passengers who’d been flown to the island from L.A. that day. It was also possible that the killer had come over, like us, on one of the ferryboats. It was equally possible that he lived somewhere on the island or that he’d come over days earlier. Then, too, the guy may’ve had his own motor launch and arrived in it.

Neither Groucho nor I mentioned the letter that Groucho had accidentally fallen heir to. We did tell the sheriff that we believed Pearson’s real name was Len Hickman, and that he was a private investigator who’d recently been employed by Warren Lockwood.

On the homeward-bound boat, Groucho and I settled at a small table in the upper-deck lounge. He took the letter out of the breast pocket of his blazer.

We’d both scanned it while Roger Torres was driving us back to Avalon from the scene of the shooting, but we hadn’t been able to discuss it openly until now.

Groucho tapped the two handwritten pages with his forefinger. “This document explains quite a lot,” he said. “Even though it doesn’t tell us who killed Olmstead.”

“It does give us a pretty good direction in which to look.”

“Perhaps,” said Groucho, gazing up at the ceiling.

“You still think that we’re dealing with more than spies and espionage?”

“I simply have a feeling that there’s more to this than Nazi agents falling out,” he said.

Twenty-five

Jane, wearing a white terry-cloth robe over her pale blue nightdress, was sitting on the sofa when I let myself into our living room at about ten o’clock that night. Dorgan, who’d apparently been dozing on the carpet near her slippered feet, sat up and commenced wagging his tail.

“Somebody took a potshot at you,” she accused.

I approached the sofa and simultaneously kissed her and patted our bloodhound on the head. “Whyever would you say that, my pet?”

“Maybe it’s because I’m fey and sense such things.”

“I sure hope you’re not Frank Fay, because I hear he’s an awful lush and tends to—”

“You telephone me from Catalina, casually mention that you and Groucho have walked into another murder and that you’ll be delayed a while,” she said.

“Exactly, but—”

“You walked in on the murderer, too, didn’t you?”

I sat beside her. “Well, he was just taking his leave when I got there, yes.”

“A man with a gun and—”

“Okay, you’re right, Jane—the guy did shoot at me. But that was only once, and the shot was wild. Didn’t, really, come anywhere near me,” I told her, trying to sound matter-of-fact about it. “He was much more interested in making a clean getaway than in potting me.”

“Lumps on the skull are bad enough, Frank, but now we’ve gotten to potential bullet wounds.”

“The guy missed me,” I reminded her. “By a mile.”

“What about Groucho? Did he get shot at as well?”

“Groucho was only knocked down on his backside,” I answered, reaching into the breast pocket of my jacket. “But because of that, we—”

“How come he didn’t get shot at?”

“Because while I was entering this guy Pearson’s cottage by the back door, Groucho was coming at it from the front,” I explained. “By the time he encountered Groucho, he was concentrating on heading for the hills.”

“You could’ve been killed.”

“I doubt it, but if you’re really upset, I can quit this whole—”

“No. We’ll compromise.” Jane put her hand over mine. “Finish up this darn case, but then don’t take on any new ones until our daughter is born. A deal?”

“Daughter? How do you know it’s going to be a—”

“It’ll be a girl, trust me.”

“Then we can’t name her after Groucho.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Groucho Denby would be kind of a cute name for a little girl,” said Jane. “What’s that you keep trying to take out of your coat pocket?”

“The missing so-called Olmstead confession.” I pulled the letter out of the envelope, handing it to her. “The guy who shot Pearson dropped it.”

She took hold of it by the edge. “What about fingerprints?”

“Killer was wearing gloves.”

Jane glanced at the first page. “If this is Olmstead’s handwriting, he was educated in Europe,” she said. “Not England.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Read the letter, and then we can talk about it.”

The letter said:

Dear Dinah

I really do love you. Keep that in mind as you read this.

If I manage to accomplish what I intend to do, without endangering you, you’ll never see this letter.

I’m very much afraid, however, that there isn’t enough time and that something will happen to me.

My real name is Ernst Krieger, and I was born not in England, but in Munich, Germany, in 1897. 1 studied English in college and came to speak it well. In 1931 I was recruited to act as an espionage agent. Eventually I was given a British identity and planted in the film industry. They instructed me to bide my time until I was needed. Finally I was sent to America, again told to live my life as if I were nothing more than a successful motion-picture director.

You must believe me that marrying you was not part of any plan. I really did fall in love with you, but, unfortunately, I never worked up the nerve to tell you who and what I really was. Soon after we were married, I was contacted by a representative of the Gestapo and told to stand by for an assignment. The man who got in touch with me is Werner Spearman, whose cover identity is that of the German consul in Los Angeles.

I was ordered to visit the Lockwood Aero factory, which would be easy for me as your husband. I would be contacted inside the plant and slipped certain papers that they wished to smuggle out. Initially I balked at this, but they told me that you’d be harmed if I didn’t do exactly as ordered. I was, after all, an agent of Nazi Germany, and my first loyalty was to the Fatherland.

I acted as a courier up to a point, dear. But instead of passing on the papers I was given, I burned them in the fireplace once we were home. When they asked me where the material was, I lied and said I’d never been contacted at the Lockwood plant.

But they soon found out that I was lying and began to pressure me to produce the stolen material. They threatened me and you. That was the point when, though it hurt me very much, I told you we had to separate. Again, I wasn’t honest enough to tell you what was really going on, Dinah.

What I have to do now, no matter what the consequences to me, is go to the FBI and tell them what I know. I’ve already warned Spearman that I’ll do that if he and his agents don’t stop threatening me.

I’m afraid that I may not succeed in this. If I don’t, then you’ll be reading this soon. I do love you, and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have tried to do what I’m planning.

Your loving husband

Eric

When she finished reading, Jane lowered the letter to her lap. “This pretty much confirms a lot of what you and Groucho have suspected,” she said. “Are you going to show it to Dinah Flanders?”

“The letter doesn’t tell us exactly who killed Olmstead,” I answered. “We’ll hold on to it for now.”

“And do what next?”

“Coming back on the boat, Groucho and I came up with a few notions,” I said.

Twenty-six

Monday morning was gray, with a light rain falling. I was sitting on the sofa, talking on the telephone. Open on the coffee table was my notebook with the list of things I had to take care of in connection with the Olmstead case. Make that the Olmstead-Pearson case.

“As I recall,” Win Mulvane of the Beverly Hills Police Department was saying, “I advised you to take a hike, get lost, and generally scram.”

“Being a disciple of Horatio Alger, I never give up, believing that with pluck and luck I can strive to—”

“What is it you want, Frank?”

I said, “James Pearson, also known as Len Hickman, was shot and killed over on Santa Catalina yesterday, and—”

“I know about that,” said my cop friend. “And also that you and Groucho Marx just happened to be passing by when it happened.”

“Can you compare the thirty-two-caliber slugs that killed Pearson with the thirty-two slug that killed Olmstead?”

Mulvane was quiet for several seconds. “You’re suggesting that they’re from the same gun?”

“I’m curious as to whether or not they are,” I answered.

“The lid’s been clamped down very tight on this, Frank.”

“So you mentioned when last we met. I thought, though, that you might be interested, since you—”

“I’ll see what I can find out,” Mulvane said. “Let me phone you.”

“If you don’t within a reasonable time, Win, I’ll—”

“Give my best to Janey.” The policeman hung up.

Standing, I wandered over to the open doorway of Jane’s studio. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Not really, no. If you want to interrupt me, you’ll have to come back later.” She was behind her drawing board, using a blue pencil to indicate where she wanted the engravers to lay a dot pattern on the daily Hollywood Molly she’d just finished. “How are you doing?”

“I was chatting with Win Mulvane about the thirty-two revolver that was used to shoot—”

“I meant with rewriting your radio script.”

I gave a minimal shrug. “If we keep working on this case, which will continue to annoy Warren Lockwood, which may well prompt him to decide not to pick up our show for his radio network, which will—”

“Sounds as complex as a Rube Goldberg invention,” Jane said. “When the midget dancer on the turntable drops the miniature bowling ball on the porcupine’s tail end, the quills will go shooting out and deflate the beach ball, which in turn will … and so on. You guys can always sell the show to NBC, to their Red Network or their Blue Network or just about any color you—”

“I guess walking in on Pearson’s murder yesterday has put me in a gloomy mood,” I admitted, “and brought on a bout of pessimism that—”

The extension telephone on Jane’s taboret rang. She answered, listened for a moment, and handed me the receiver. “For you.”

I took the phone. “Yeah?”

“Is that you, Frank?”

“To the best of my knowledge. And you are—”

“It’s me. I was using a disguised voice.”

“Hello, O’Hearn.”

“Listen, Frank, if I put you in touch with somebody you’re anxious to talk to, is that worth an extra ten bucks?”

“Depends on who it is and what he wants to talk about.”

“It’s a she,” corrected O’Hearn. “Somebody you asked me to track down for you. Turns out she doesn’t want to talk to the cops or the G-men, but she’s willing to—”

“This is Pearson’s girlfriend?”

My informant said, “You guessed it, Frank—this dame was Len Hickman’s sweetheart. She’s a little scared and lying low, but she wants to tell you and Groucho Marx about why he was posing as Olmstead’s valet and why he got bumped off.”

“Yep, that’s worth an extra ten,” I assured him. “Who is she, and where do I find her?”

“Her name is Linda Gilkinson,” he said. “You can call this number in Westwood.” He gave me a telephone number. “They’ll set up a meeting.”

“Thanks, Tim. I’ll get the dough to you by tomorrow sometime.” I handed the receiver back to Jane, and she hung it up. “That was—”

The telephone rang again.

“That was O’Hearn,” I finished.

Jane answered the call, told me, “It’s Larry Shell.”

I took the phone again. “Hi, Larry.”

“I understand you and Groucho are interested in the pictures I took the other night.”

“We were, but then we heard that the FBI—”

“When I unpacked my stuff after I got home from Ensenada last night, I discovered two rolls of film that I’d overlooked. So, if you’d like to see seventy or so shots of the Lockwood Halloween festivities, Frank, I can run off a few sheets of contact prints. Can you drop over late today?”

“We’d like to see them, yeah. You’ll be at your studio?”

“The place in Santa Monica,” the Times photographer said. “Anytime after four.”

“I’ll try to get there between four and five, with Groucho in tow,” I promised.

“I haven’t told anybody else about this yet,” added Shell.

After ending the call, I said to Jane, “Larry found some more pictures of the Halloween party.”

“Those might prove helpful.”

“We’re hoping so.”

“What did O’Hearn want?”

“To tell me a close lady friend of Pearson’s is willing to talk to me and Groucho.”

“That could be helpful, too,” said Jane. “But be extra careful, huh?”

The rain had continued throughout the day, increasing in intensity by early afternoon. The windshield wipers on Groucho’s Cadillac made whining noises every third swipe.

“Then you don’t agree that was an obscene gesture, Rollo?” he asked as we neared the shut-down King Neptune Playland at the Beach.

“I think the kid was just waving at you.”

“With a clenched fist?” He guided the car onto the deserted parking lot next to the closed-up amusement park. The Pacific Ocean was gray and choppy.

“He was smiling,” I reminded, referring to the teenager who’d passed us in his jalopy a few minutes earlier. “He’s probably a Marx Brothers fan.”

“They don’t grant drivers’ licenses to people like that.” Groucho parked the Cadillac near the wooden gate in the high wall that had been put up around Playland. “The state insists that you have to have an IQ at least equal to that of Louis B. Mayer before they let you operate a motor vehicle.”

The rain was thumping heavily on the roof of the car. “Okay, you’re probably right. The kid just saw you singing ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’ in At the Circus, and he was expressing his anger.”

“No, it’s more likely he mistook me for Chico and thinks I owe him money.” Turning, kneeling on the seat, he reached into the backseat for a furled umbrella. Stepping out into the early afternoon rain, he opened the small polka-dot umbrella. “Step under this with me. It’ll protect you from the elements.”

“It’s nowhere big enough.” I eased out of the car, pulling my hat further down on my head. “That’s more a parasol than an umbrella.”

“Look on the bright side,” he said as I joined him. “It could’ve been a parasite, and then there wouldn’t be room for even one of us under it.”

“True, but-”

“Or it might’ve been a paradox, in which case I wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to open it.”

“That’s also very—”

“Then again, it could’ve been a Perry Mason, and we’d have to go through a tedious courtroom scene before we—”

“What say we head for the gate?”

“Jolly good idea, old man. That is, if you’re quite through with your conundrums.” We started walking rapidly across the rain-swept asphalt. “And remember, Rollo, always wear a conundrum when visiting a house of ill repute, or you’ll contract some vile malady. If I were a low burlesque comic, I’d now sing a chorus of ‘A Pretty Girl Is like a Malady.’”

“Good thing you’re not.”

We’d been here at King Neptune Playland at the Beach when we were working on the Frances London case. Groucho had been part of a show that was staged in honor of our then sponsor’s birthday. The entire vast amusement park had been rented for the night. During that night a crooked cop had tried to shoot both Groucho and me, and some underworld types had tried to persuade me to retire from the amateur sleuth business.

Groucho reached up and knocked on the wooden gate. “You’re just about the only chap I know whom hoodlums took for a ride using a roller coaster.”

I have a mild middle-ear balance problem, and that enforced trip had left me feeling pretty close to rotten. “I’d prefer to let that incident remain in the past.”

After thirty or so rainy seconds, a chain rattled on the other side of the gate. Then it creaked open about three feet, and a large, barrelchested man of about fifty gazed out at us. He was wearing a yellow rain slicker and holding a large black umbrella. “Well, if it isn’t Groucho Marx,” he said, grinning.

“If it isn’t Groucho Marx, I’ve got an awful lot of monogrammed hankies I’m going to have to toss out,” said Groucho. “What in the dickens are you doing here, Miles?”

“I work as the off-season watchman, Groucho.” He opened the big gate wider, beckoning us to enter.

By then I’d recognized him as Miles Duncan, a muscle builder who’d played Ty-Gor in three or four silents back in the early 1920s. “You were a great Ty-Gor,” I told him.

“I sure as hell was,” the one-time actor agreed. “But I went out of fashion.” He flexed his left arm, and, even inside the raincoat sleeve, the arm showed as massive and muscular. “Nowadays, the guy they got playing the part is a beanpole—a pansy, if you ask me. What was he before he got into the movies? A guy who won a few medals for the 100-yard dash, for Pete’s sake.”

“We were told,” said Groucho, relatively dry under his small umbrella, “we’d be able to rendezvous with Linda Gilkinson here, Miles.”

“The poor kid, she’s plenty scared,” said the erstwhile Ty-Gor. “You’ll find her about a quarter mile down the main stem, holed up in Madam Ayesha’s Fortune-Telling Parlor. That’s a couple doors down from the Filmland Wax Museum. If you want, I can escort you to—”

“We know our way there,” I said.

“I’ll go back in my guardhouse then,” Duncan said. “I was just listening to Johnny Whistler on the radio. I like to keep up with the movie business even though I’m washed up.”

“It’s never too late to make a comeback,” said Groucho.

The actor grinned again, went trotting back to a nearby wooden shed.

As we began making our way along the main street of the amusement park, Groucho gestured at the large show tent we were approaching. “Within those canvas walls, Rollo, I danced a tango with Rita Hayworth.”

“I remember, yeah. That was just before she developed that unsightly limp.”

“I’ll have you know that our performance put the audience into a frenzy,” he said as we made our way along the rainy street. “In fact, there were so many of them that they didn’t all fit into the frenzy and some had to go into ecstasy. Those were somewhat disappointed, because they were expecting to go into Ecstasy, that gamy flicker that featured Hedy Lamarr wearing no noticeable costume of any kind.”

“As I recall, the majority of them went into fits.”

“Hardly any of the fits fit, however.” Groucho slowed as we passed the Filmland Wax Museum. That was where the crooked cop had tried to do us in. “Ah, look at how I’ve fallen in public esteem.” He stopped, scowling.

One of the large circus-lettering signs in front of the place invited:

SEE THE COMEDY HALL OF FAME!! LIFE-LIKE IMACES OF ALL THE GREATS!!

BOB HOPE

W.C. FIELDS

CHARLIE CHAPLIN

LAUREL & HARDY

CHARLEY CHASE

Joe Penner

Wheeler & Woolsey

Benny Rubin

The Marx Brothers

The Ritz Brothers

“At least you’re billed above the Ritz Brothers,” I pointed out.

“I admit that Benny Rubin is much more hilarious than I can ever hope to be,” he granted. “But most of these other parvenus can’t hold a candle to me. Which is just as well, since I might catch fire, and then where would we all be?”

“Suppose we continue on our—”

“If I had my choice, I’d like to be in a little grass shack in Hawaii,” said Groucho. “In fact, when I was in Hawaii I did shack up with … but you were saying?”

“We’re supposed to be calling on Linda Gilkinson.”

“Why didn’t you think of that earlier, Rollo?” he said. “Yes, old man, that’s an excellent suggestion.”

Twenty-seven

There were at least three cats in the shadowy parlor. A white one was sprawled across Linda’s Gilkinson’s lap, while a calico was prowling a bookcase shelf that contained a scatter of dusty crystal balls, a collection of yellowing scrimshaw, and a skull made of off-white plastic. The third cat was lurking behind the sofa that Groucho and I were sharing. It frequently scratched at the rug, making low, mournful noises.

“The cats belong to Dolores—I promised to look after them while she’s on vacation,” Linda was explaining. “That’s how come I have the key to this dump. Dolores bought the Madam Ayesha dodge from the previous Madam Ayesha summer before last.”

“Did the cats come with the franchise?” I asked.

“Only the white one.” She was a blonde, in her late twenties and on the border of being plump. Her dress was a flowered print, and she wore a pale blue ribbon in her hair.

Groucho produced a cigar from a pocket of his beige sport coat. “You were a close friend of Len Hickman.”

She nodded, sniffling twice. “I was pretty much his fiancée,” she replied. “Is it true that you two fellows found him?”

I said, “We did, yeah.”

She sighed, used the small embroidered handkerchief she had balled in her left hand to wipe at the tip of her nose. “I really don’t think I want to hear the details.”

“How long had you known him?” asked Groucho, lighting his cigar. “Ever since May, when he came out to Warlock Pictures to—”

“You work for Warlock?” I asked.

“Used to, as a script girl,” she said, absently petting the cat. “I quit a month ago, and I’m supposed to start working at 20th Century—Fox the second week in December. If I dare come out in the open by then.”

“We’d very much like to hear the reason for your being in hiding, my dear,” said Groucho. “But first, perhaps you can tell us a bit more about how you happened to meet Len Hickman, alias Pearson, and what he was doing at the studio.”

“He’d come out to talk to Warren Lockwood and Val Sharkey,” she explained, touching again at her nose with the handkerchief. “Afterwards, Len came over to the set of the Ted Timberlake picture I was working on to talk to one of his buddies who’s a grip.”

“You met and fell in love?”

“Pretty much so. At least he asked me out,” Linda said. “Usually I don’t much like redheaded guys. They’re too short-tempered and inclined to hoist a few too many. Len, it turned out, was different, and—”

“When you met him, Lockwood had just hired him to keep an eye on Eric Olmstead, hadn’t he?” asked Groucho.

She said, “Yes. He wanted Len to pose as a valet and take the place of the guy he’d just paid to give Olmstead notice. He provided Len with some fake identification, forged some letters of recommendation, and personally suggested him to Olmstead. It was Sharkey told Len he was going to be known as James Pearson.”

“According to what we’ve found out, Lockwood wanted somebody inside the house to keep an eye on Dinah Flanders once she and Olmstead got hitched,” said Groucho, taking a puff of his stogie.

“That was part of it, sure,” the blonde said. “I also think Lockwood was jealous of Olmstead, still had a crush on Dinah. And, too, he wanted to make sure Olmstead didn’t do anything to hurt her, since he considers Dinah Flanders his property.”

I asked, “How did Len report to Lockwood?”

“Always by telephone, because Lockwood didn’t want anything on paper,” Linda answered. “Every other day, between ten and midnight, Len had to telephone a number that Lockwood gave him and report to either Lockwood himself or Sharkey.”

After exhaling smoke, Groucho asked, “When did Hickman find out that Olmstead was a Nazi agent?”

When she straightened in her chair, the surprised white cat hopped to the floor. “You know about that, too, huh?”

“We do, but we’re always willing to learn more.”

“Len had been a private investigator for about ten years, and he’d done inside jobs like this before, where he posed as a valet or a chauffeur to get the goods on somebody for a client,” Linda said. “He knew how to snoop around and find out just about everything that was going on in a household, you know. So he tumbled to the fact that Olmstead was linked up with a fifth-column bunch headed up by that kraut bastard, the German consul Spearman. Len also found out that Olmstead was getting code messages and sending them out.”

I asked her, “What about the safe?”

She smiled briefly. “That was a cinch for somebody with Len’s background, a snap to crack,” she said. “So he’d check the contents every once in a while. That’s how he found out that Olmstead had been in on smuggling some plans out of Lockwood Aero.”

“Were the plans turned over to somebody?”

“Nope, Olmstead burned them rather than give them to any of Spearman’s Nazi gang,” she said. “See, what happened was, the way Len had it figured, Olmstead had really fallen for Dinah in a big way. The sap was going to try to quit the whole spy setup and just be Mr. Dinah Flanders from then on.” There was disdain in her quick laugh. “A lot of these guys who work in the movies too long start to believe that all that hokum that takes place on the screen has a chance of happening in real life. That’s mostly a lot of hooey, but Olmstead thought it was going to happen for him.”

“He was working under the supervision of the Gestapo,” said Groucho, shaking his head. “That’s not the kind of job you can quit simply by giving two weeks’ notice.”

“He sure found that out, didn’t he? They started threatening him, warning him if he didn’t do exactly what they wanted, he’d be up the creek,” she said. “Olmstead had a bad heart, and he passed out a couple times after they warned him.”

Groucho leaned forward, resting his cigar hand on his knee. “You visited Hickman at the mansion,” he said.

“Sure I did,” she admitted. “Sometimes I’d stay the night, if Dinah and Olmstead were off someplace. Fact is, I even stayed over some nights when they were home. Len had—”

“Hickman/Pearson had a private entrance to his quarters, meaning you could drop in and depart without anybody knowing about it,” said Groucho.

“Nothing wrong with that, is—”

“Those are your things in the closet and in the middle drawer of the bureau,” he continued, watching her.

“Spare undies, stockings, a robe, a couple of dresses, and a pair of mules, sure.”

Groucho tapped his cigar on the edge of the onyx ashtray that sat on the end table. “Were you there the night Olmstead was killed?”

Linda leaned back in the armchair. She took a slow breath in, exhaled even more slowly. “Len sent me home. I had my own Plymouth coupe parked down the hill.”

“Was that,” persisted Groucho, “before or after Olmstead was shot?”

She started to say something, hesitated, then flinched when the calico cat succeeded in slapping one of the small crystal balls off the shelf.

It hit the imitation Persian carpet, rolled against her foot. She picked it up, rubbed it along her sleeve. “Get off there, Muffin.”

The cat ignored her, began slapping at the fake skull.

“Before or after Olmstead was shot?” repeated Groucho.

She let the crystal ball drop from her hand, taking another slow breath in and out. “That’s why Len is dead.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It was muffled, but we heard the shot,” said Linda. “That was about four in the morning, and it woke us up. Len put on his robe and, very quietly, went to see what it was. You see, they hadn’t intended to kill Olmstead then and there. But there was a fight and … well, he got killed.”

“Len saw who did it?” asked Groucho.

After a few seconds the young woman answered, “Yes.”

“Who?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t, I swear, tell me,” she said. “What happened was he saw them leaving the mansion. But they didn’t see him.”

“What’d he do?”

“Len came back to his bedroom, told me to dress and get the hell out of there,” she said. “When I asked him what had happened, he only told me that Olmstead was dead. Then he …” She shook her head again. “This is where it all went wrong, Groucho. Len said he figured there were at least two ways he could make a lot of money out of this.”

“Blackmail,” I said quietly.

“That’s right, Frank,” she said. “I told him what he ought to think about was making sure nobody shot him, but he insisted this was the biggest break that had come his way so far. Jesus, he sounded like one of those dopes in a James M. Cain novel, you know.”

“He was,” suggested Groucho, “going to blackmail the killers and the Nazi agents?”

She said, “Yes, that’s why he took a letter of Olmstead’s out of the safe. He’d come across that a couple weeks before. See, Olmstead had a feeling his days were numbered, and he—”

“We know about the letter,” Groucho told her.

“What’d he do after you left, do you know?” I asked her.

The calico cat whapped the skull clean off the shelf, and this time Linda jumped to her feet. “That’s enough of that, Muffin,” she said, lifting the chubby cat off the shelf and dropping her on the floor.

“What did Len do next?” said Groucho.

“He cracked the safe, took whatever was in it that he thought would do him some good,” she said. “Then he went back to bed, and at about seven the next morning, he called Warren Lockwood at that private number, pretended he’d just discovered Olmstead’s body. Lockwood, Sharkey, and some other of the studio cover-up boys got there about an hour later.”

“And Lockwood decided they didn’t want too much bad publicity, so they’d forget the Nazi spy angle and write this off as a suicide,” said Groucho.

“That’s it, sure, Groucho,” she said. “Sharkey gave Len an extra five hundred bucks to keep his mouth shut and not mention that there was no gun. Lockwood brought in the FBI before he called the cops. By the time the local law got there, they were simply told what they were to do.” She shrugged. “You know, nobody argues with J. Edgar Hoover’s boys.”

“And the FBI didn’t want any news about the spy ring leaked out until they had more proof,” added Groucho.

“When’s the last time you heard from Hickman?” I asked her.

“That next day,” she said, sniffling again. “He stuck around until Dinah moved back in to the mansion, then very quietly folded his tent and took off. If he’d talked to me first, I would’ve tried to convince him that what he was planning was a mistake. He called me from a phone booth in San Pedro someplace, filled me in on some of what he planned to do, and said he was going to stay out of sight for a while.”

“Meaning he was going to the Catalina hideaway,” I said.

“I knew he had a place someplace on the island, but I didn’t know where,” said Linda. “I was never there. We were close, you know, but he sure as hell wasn’t the confiding type.”

Groucho snuffed out his cigar. “Who do you think he was blackmailing about the murder of Olmstead?”

“I’m not certain,” she said. “But I can make a guess.”

“Do,” Groucho invited.

Twenty-eight

The little neighborhood movie theater across the street from Larry Shell’s studio was running a Marx Brothers double bill. On the narrow marquee it announced, “Comedy Festival! The Marx Brothers in MONKEY BUSINESS and HORSE FEATHERS.”

As he parked his Cadillac on the rainy afternoon street, Groucho observed, “That’s their idea of a festival? Sitting around in a Santa Monica flea pit watching a bunch of superannuated street urchins cavorting?”

“If people are looking for excitement, they don’t come to Santa Monica anyway,” I pointed out, opening my door and disembarking.

Stepping out into the rain, Groucho unfurled his small polka-dot umbrella. “And why would any rational human being sit through not one but two Marx Brothers movies?”

“It’s raining out,” I suggested, following him along the wet sidewalk to Larry’s studio.

“True, but I’d rather get drenched to the skin than endure endless hours of such piffle.”

“One man’s piffle is another man’s comedy.”

Groucho said, “Did I ever tell you that Eugene O’Neill was miffed about Monkey Business? That was because he’d been intending to use the title for a play of his and had to settle for Strange Interlude.”

The white lettering on the glass door of Larry’s photographic studio read simply, “L. Shell, Photographer.” The buff-colored window shade was pulled all the way down, and the door was locked. I knocked on the door.

“Then when O’Neill penned Ah, Wilderness, he was hoping to entitle it Ah, Duck Soup, but once again we beat him to the punch,” added Groucho while we waited in the doorway. “It was, as I recall, a fruit punch laced with bathtub gin. The tub itself was later used by Admiral Byrd when he circumnavigated the globe. That was because you couldn’t become a member of his congregation unless you’d been circumnavigated first.”

The door was unlocked and opened. “Hi, Frank,” greeted Larry. “Hi, Mr. Marx.”

“Don’t be so formal, my boy,” said Groucho. “You can call me just plain Haile Selassie.”

The outer office was small, and the narrow redwood desk had stacks of glossy photos spread out atop it. There were a few framed news photos on the off-white walls.

Larry closed the door, locked it again. “I made contact proofs of everything that was on those other two rolls of film I shot at Lockwood’s Halloween party the other night,” he told us. “I imagine you fellas want to see everything.”

“Such is our avowed wish,” answered Groucho, closing up his umbrella and leaning it against the eagle-topped hat rack.

I asked the photographer, “Did you spot anything of interest?”

“I didn’t go over all of them that closely,” he replied. “But I did notice a few interesting shots. C’mon.” He headed for the door to his work area.

The day was fading, the rain was hitting hard at the wide slanting skylight. Larry crossed over to a switch, turned on a couple of wall lamps.

Groucho and I were leaning over a worktable. Spread out on top of it were six sheets of photographic proofs, each with a dozen small photos. We’d just started studying them, and Groucho was holding a magnifying glass Larry’d provided.

We stood at the left-hand side of the long table, still studying the first sheet of contact prints.

“Alas, I see that Paulette Goddard wasn’t entirely faithful to me during the course of the evening,” observed Groucho, pointing to the third shot in the top row with the handle of the magnifying glass.

“Nor you to her.” I tapped the second picture in the third row, which showed him dancing with Bette Davis, who was in a Queen Elizabeth costume.

“I was merely called upon to stand in for Errol Flynn in that instance,” he explained. “I don’t know exactly what Errol had been standing in, but he had to go change his boots before continuing to—”

“Here’s an interesting tableau,” I said, pointing to a shot two over from the Groucho-Davis one.

“Chap in what appears to be an Attila the Hun getup talking to that chump who’s Ted Timberlake’s stunt double,” said Groucho, scanning the photo proof through the magnifying glass. “And so?”

“That guy decked out as Attila,” I said, “is Werner Spearman, the German consul in L.A. I saw him in a newsreel the other afternoon, warning the United States not to mess around in Europe.”

“Spearman is also a local representative of the Gestapo.” Groucho frowned.

“He and Les Michaelson seem to be having a cordial conversation,” I pointed out.

Groucho picked up the contact sheet, held it toward me. “Notice Michaelson’s cowpoke costume,” he suggested. “It’s dripping with leather fringe, in the movie-cowboy mode.”

“Black fringe,” I said. “If a piece of that fell off his shirt, it’d look a lot like a length of dark leather cord.”

“Much like the elusive piece of string you viewed before getting bonked on the skonce out at the Warlock studios.”

Larry told us, “This Michaelson had a couple more conversations with that Nazi during the party. I didn’t snap any other pictures of them, though.”

“Michaelson obviously would have access to the Warlock Wardrobe Department,” said Groucho, “and to the Grim Reaper costume.”

“Look at this sheet of proofs.” He poked at a picture in the bottom row. “There’s Michaelson having a little talk with the Grim Reaper himself.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of the Grim Reaper removing his skull mask so he can have a smoke?” asked Groucho.

“No such luck, no,” answered Larry. “I always snap a hell of a lot of shots at parties like this, but I didn’t get many of our pal Death. It’s my impression he didn’t hang around after Olmstead passed out.”

“The fact that Les Michaelson had seemingly cordial conversations with an agent of the Gestapo and the guy who spooked Olmstead,” I pointed out, “doesn’t prove he was in cahoots with them.”

“All too true, Mr. D.A.,” agreed Groucho. “Yet it does inspire one to some interesting speculations.”

“Here’s something else to speculate on,” I said, noticing a picture on the fourth proof sheet. “Olmstead and Lockwood having what sure looks like an argument.”

Larry said, “This batch of pics was taken early in the evening, before Olmstead took his nosedive.”

In the small picture the two men were glaring at each other. Lockwood was clutching his Napoleon hat in one hand and pointing angrily at the director with his other.

“Appears our playboy tycoon is warning Olmstead about something,” observed Groucho. “Telling him to quit being a Nazi spy, mayhap? Telling him to do right by our Nell or else?”

Larry asked, “Are you guys saying that Olmstead was a Nazi agent?”

“We are, yeah,” I answered. “And Lockwood knew it, too.”

“Speaking of Lockwood,” said Larry, picking up the sixth sheet of contact prints, “take a gander at the last two shots in the bottom row. Inside the pavilion I had to use a flash, but later in the evening I was fooling with some infrared film. I tried some shots out in the area where the cars were parked. You can get some interesting stuff that way sometimes, especially when nobody spots you.”

There were two prints showing Warren Lockwood and his troubleshooter Val Sharkey. In the first, Lockwood was reaching into the open passenger side of a Jaguar. In the second, he was handing Sharkey what looked an awful lot like a revolver.

“If that’s the thirty-two,” said Groucho, “it would confirm the fact that the Nazis didn’t execute Olmstead.”

“There’s one hell of a big story here, maybe,” said the photographer. “What are you going to do about it?”

“At the moment, we can’t prove anything,” reminded Groucho. “If you tell any of your reporter cronies on the L.A. Times right now, it’ll probably never see print. For one thing, the FBI doesn’t want any news about Olmstead’s spy work leaked out just yet, as I’m sure they’ve warned your editors.”

“But you’re going to try to get proof?” asked the photographer.

“We are,” promised Groucho.

Twenty-nine

Groucho seated himself, cross-legged, on the rug near our dozing bloodhound. He looked up at Jane, who was on the sofa studying the contact prints we’d borrowed from Larry Shell. “You’re absolutely certain it’s going to be a girl?” he asked.

“I am,” replied my wife, resting the proof sheets on her lap. “So that definitely rules out naming our baby Groucho or Julius.”

“How about Julia?” he suggested. “A sort of feminine version of Julius. Now, I’ve been accused of being a feminine version of Julius, but those—”

The telephone rang.

I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“They match,” announced Win Mulvane.

“The thirty-two-caliber slugs?”

“That’s what I’m talking about, Frank,” said my policeman friend. “The gun that killed Eric Olmstead also killed Len Hickman, alias James Pearson.”

“I thought that might be—”

“Do you have any idea where that particular thirty-two revolver might be at the moment?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Some of my colleagues at the Beverly Hills Police Department have been thinking that we can only go along with the FBI so far in keeping a lid on this mess,” said the cop. “If this thing is turning into a string of killings, then we—”

“Our sentiments exactly,” I told Mulvane. “As soon as I find out more, Win, I’ll let you know.”

“That’ll be nice.” He hung up.

Groucho, creaking slightly, rose up to his feet. “What gives?”

“My cop chum Mulvane says the same gun killed both Olmstead and Pearson/Hickman.”

“Golly,” said Groucho.

“Might that be this gun here?” inquired Jane, pointing to the small photo of Lockwood handing a .32 revolver to Sharkey.

I answered, “The odds are it is, yeah.”

“We ought to look around hither and yon,” said Groucho, “and see if we can unearth this weapon.”

“We can start at Val Sharkey’s place,” I said. “He’s got a cottage up in Cautela Canyon.”

“First we’ll have to determine if the lad’s at home or—”

“Sharkey is at the premier of Way of a Buccaneer,” said Jane.

“Did the pixies inform you of that?” asked Groucho.

“No, it was Johnny Whistler’s show,” she answered. “Warlock’s premiering their movie at Grauman’s Chinese tonight, and Whistler mentioned that in addition to the stars, Warner Baxter and Evelyn Venable, Warren Lockwood, and Val Sharkey would be attending the gala event.”

“Evelyn Venable,” said Groucho slowly. “Evelyn Venable. I dearly love to recite that name.”

“We know,” I mentioned.

“When she grows older, I can refer to her as the venerable Evelyn Venable, and if she becomes bulletproof, I’ll be able to call her the invulnerable venerable Evelyn Venable.”

“What say,” I suggested, “we look around Sharkey’s joint while he’s at the gala festivities?”

“A splendid suggestion, Rollo. We’ll telephone first to make certain there’s nobody home.”

“Why don’t you take Dorgan along?” asked Jane.

Groucho withdrew a fresh cigar from his jacket pocket. “Why, my dear?”

“He can sniff out the gun.”

“Only if he’s got a whiff of it earlier.”

“I imagine if you let him smell a little gunpowder and tell him to find something that smells like that, he ought to be able to nose out a hidden revolver.” She got up off the sofa.

“Possibly, but it’ll be difficult procuring gunpowder at this hour of the night. I doubt if even the all-night Thrifty Drug Store on La Cienega carries—”

“I had a handful of thirty-eight-caliber shells that I borrowed from Win Mulvane when I was drawing that gangster sequence in Hollywood Molly a couple months back,” she said. “That might work. If you open one and—”

“Sounds feasible,” decided Groucho. “And even if it doesn’t work, having Dorgan along will provide me with the sort of intellectual companionship that’s often lacking when I’m in the company of your esteemed husband. Or when I’m traveling with steamed clams, for that matter.”

“I’ll fetch them,” she said.

Dorgan was on his feet, wagging his tail.

In the backseat of my Ford, Dorgan was sprawled and snoring.

Groucho, hunched in the passenger seat, said, “Sherlock Holmes had a better class of dogs to work with. I’ll wager the Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t snore.”

“Mostly he devoured people out on the moor.” The rain was still heavy, and I was concentrating on the twisty canyon road. The windshield wipers were slapping away at the rain-swept glass.

“I’ve been thinking, Rollo,” he said, taking a cigar out of the pocket of his jacket. “They’ll be holding that memorial service for Eric Olmstead tomorrow evening out at the Warlock studios.”

“You figure that might be an apt place to announce our solution to this case?”

“Admittedly it isn’t in perfect taste to accuse somebody of murder at a wake,” he conceded.

“Emily Post is strangely silent on that point of etiquette.”

“The last time I ran into Emily Post, she was rolling sailors in a clip joint down in Tijuana,” said Groucho. “Since then I’ve ceased to use her as a social arbiter.”

“What we have so far,” I reminded, “is a theory and not enough proof.”

“If we locate the murder weapon,” he said, “we’ll have a pretty good case. Then if Dinah’ll allow me to make a presentation at her late husband’s memorial service, I think I can parlay that into an impressive denouncement.”

“Then we’d best find that gun,” I said.

There was a party, a loud one, going on in the house that sat about three hundred yards down the hill from Val Sharkey’s Tudor-style cottage. I parked uphill from his place, sheltered by a stand of pepper trees. There were a half-dozen cars further down the hill, parked on either side of the quirking road.

Light was spilling out of the windows of the neighboring house, a large modern redwood-and-glass construction. Up through the night rain, as I eased open the door on my side of the car, came the sounds of laughter and loud conversation. Somebody was attempting to play the piano—a ragged version of “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie.”

“Not the ideal location,” observed Groucho, stepping out into the rain, “for a bit of polite housebreaking.”

“The noise of the party will probably cover any noise we make.” Opening the back door, I attached Dorgan’s leash to his collar. “Okay, we’re going to do some hunting.”

The bloodhound gave me an affectionate, and alert, look. From my coat pocket I took the envelope that held the powder we’d extracted from the .38 shell. I spilled some out into the palm of my hand.

“Take a whiff, Dorgan, and find me something similar,” I instructed. He did considerable sniffing at my hand. Then he hopped free of the car.

Holding onto his leash, I went trotting along in his snuffling wake.

Groucho followed.

The bloodhound led me down the short white gravel driveway to the right of Val Sharkey’s dark cottage. He ignored the cottage entirely, aiming instead for the detached shingled garage.

As we approached the side door, someone off in the shadows asked, “What in the hell are you doing here?”

Thirty

“And, faith and begonias, who might you be, me bucko?” asked Groucho, shining his flashlight beam on the pale young man who was standing under the overhang of the slanting garage roof.

The guy was in his early twenties, had several splotches of lipstick in the vicinity of his mouth. Huddled behind him was a blond woman about ten years his senior and the obvious source of the lipstick. She was clutching the handle of a rolled-up black umbrella.

“Here now, you pack of spalpeens,” continued Groucho in a very dubious Irish accent, “I’ll have you know that we’re officers of the Greater Los Angeles Private Security Patrol.”

“That’s right,” I said, picking up the cue. “Mr. Sharkey, whose property you’re trespassing on, has been complaining about attempted burglaries, and he recently hired our organization to—”

“Hey, take it easy,” said the blonde in a slightly slurred voice. “We’re guests of Bernie Zuber next door. We just came out for a breath of fresh air.”

“That’s right, some fresh air,” said the young man, who was swaying on his feet.

“I suggest that you hotfoot it back to the party,” advised Groucho, in a somewhat different bad Irish accent. “We won’t report you this time, but should you—”

“Thanks, Officer.” The young man slipped an arm around the blonde’s waist. “Let’s get back, Angie.”

“What part of Ireland are you from?” she asked Groucho as she opened the umbrella and they started off downhill.

“Sure and I’m from County Cohen,” he called, clicking off the flash.

Dorgan trotted over to the side door of the garage, commenced scratching at it with his forepaws.

“We’d best speed up our nosing around,” I suggested.

Groucho turned the doorknob. “Locked, Rollo.”

“Hold Dorgan’s leash for a minute.” I handed him the looped end, reaching into my trouser pocket for the ring of skeleton keys I’d acquired back during my crime-reporter days. “That was a lousy Irish accent, by the way.”

“Nonsense, I picked that up from Sean O’Casey himself,” he told me. “I also picked up a bad case of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever from the old boy. Ah, and well I remember that morning that the Fitzpatrick Brothers and I first sighted the Spotted Rockies in the distance and ordered our porters to bring up the Technicolor cameras and—”

“Bingo,” I said quietly.

The third key I’d tried on the lock succeeded.

Carefully I nudged the door open.

Eagerly, the bloodhound went rushing inside.

The concrete-floored garage was empty of cars, smelled strongly of spilled oil and mildew.

Groucho followed us into the place, turning on the flashlight again. “Speaking of oil, did I ever tell you about the occasion when old John D. Rockefeller gave me a dime?”

“Nope.”

“That’s a pity, because it’s a touching yarn and you’d have enjoyed it immensely.”

Dorgan led me deeper into the shadowy garage.

There was a heavy wooden workbench, complete with vise, built into the rear wall. Beneath it were shelves that held an array of cigar boxes and coffee tins.

The dog halted close to a shelf on which rested three Orem Bros. Coffee cans with adhesive tape labels that read, “Nuts & Bolts.” Making agitated whimpering noises now, he reached out to poke at one of the cans with a paw.

“This one?” I reached for it.

After I’d lifted the coffee can off the shelf and before I could open it, Dorgan jabbed his paw into the dark space behind where the can had been standing. Squatting, I reached into the darkness.

There was a small black strongbox tucked back against the wooden wall. After I’d extracted it and placed it on the garage floor, Dorgan began sniffing enthusiastically at it.

The box was locked, but it opened easily when I used the pick attached to my ring of keys.

There was something in the box wrapped in a scrap of white terry-cloth toweling. Gingerly, I unwrapped it.

Groucho shined the flash over my shoulder. “Eureka, as Balboa remarked when he fell into the Pacific Ocean for the first time.”

What was wrapped in the towel was a .32 Smith and Wesson revolver.

The rain had stopped a few minutes shy of midnight. When I glanced out a window in our kitchen, I saw a few stars showing in the night sky.

Very quietly I had taken a quart of Golden State Vanilla Ice Cream out of the icebox. Plopping two scoops into Dorgan’s turquoise food dish, I said, again quietly, “This is your reward for a job well done, old man.”

As soon as I set the dish on the linoleum near the sink, the bloodhound came trotting over to commence lapping up the ice cream.

Patting him on his knobby head, I added, “If you guys had a bloodhound union, I’d have to pay you a heck of a lot more for finding what may well be the murder gun for us.”

The dog, ignoring me, continued to eat.

“I’m the one who’s supposed to crave ice cream at odd hours.” Jane was leaning in the kitchen doorway, wearing a yellow terry-cloth robe over a pair of candy-stripe pajamas.

I said, “I thought I’d succeeded in sneaking home without waking you. Sorry.”

“You didn’t wake me,” she said, smiling. “I simply sensed that you were back and got up.”

“More mystic stuff. Want some ice cream?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

I returned to the icebox. “With pickles on the side?”

“Actually, a banana would be more suitable.” Jane crossed to the cut-glass fruit bowl, a wedding gift from an aunt up in Berkeley, and selected a ripe banana. “Dish out the ice cream while I slice this. You guys found the murder weapon?”

“Dorgan sniffed out a thirty-two-caliber revolver in Val Sharkey’s garage.”

The bloodhound licked up the last spot of vanilla ice cream, trotted over to watch Jane.

“What are you going to do with the gun, Frank?”

“Run some tests, find out who it’s registered to.”

“You and Groucho aren’t equipped to run tests like that,” she pointed out.

I put a scoop of ice cream into a blue bowl. “No, but the Beverly Hills cops are.”

“They’re cooperating now?”

I set the bowl on the kitchen table. “Not Jake Fuller, no. But Win Mulvane is going to run the ballistics tests and trace the ownership of the Smith & Wesson,” I said. “I phoned him from Groucho’s place when I dropped Groucho off.”

“This sure doesn’t sound like standard police procedure.” Jane added the slices of banana to the ice cream. “Find the chocolate sauce, huh?”

I found it on a shelf in the icebox. “Mulvane’s sort of caught up in the spirit of the chase,” I told her. “He’s going to help us out on the sly. So are a couple of his colleagues who’re pretty annoyed about the FBI muzzling them on the Olmstead case.”

“Okay,” Jane said as I handed her the opened tin of chocolate syrup, “let’s say this is the gun that killed both Olmstead and his valet. Let’s further stipulate that the gun is registered to Val Sharkey or Warren Lockwood. Is that enough to enable you guys to hang the murders on them?”

“Groucho and I discussed that driving home,” I said. “He thinks he can stage a performance at the Olmstead wake tomorrow night out at the Warlock studios. A show that’ll prompt both the killer and the spies to step forward and give themselves up.” I decided to fix a banana split for myself. “Do we happen to have any walnuts?”

“In the canister marked ‘Walnuts,’” she said, sitting at the kitchen table. “Seems to me there’s a strong possibility that both you and Groucho could get hurt.”

“A possibility, sure, but I’m not sure how strong,” I said. “Oh, we have a couple of simple forgery jobs for you to do. If you can fit them in sometime tomorrow morning.”

“A fake Olmstead confession, perhaps?”

“That’s one of them, yeah. The other—”

Dorgan barked. The doorbell rang.

“That’ll be Mulvane.” I abandoned slicing the banana.

Thirty-one

The memorial service for Eric Olmstead was held in Soundstage 3 on the Warlock lot. About three hundred folding chairs had been set up in one section of the huge hangarlike building. In front of the rows of brown wooden chairs, a simple, nondenominational, and roofless little chapel had been set up. There was a pulpit, complete with microphone, and the flats had very believable stained-glass windows painted on them. On each side of this chapel set were floral arrangements made up of convincing paper flowers. Off to the right was a harmonium, where a plump curly-haired blond man in a double-breasted blue suit was playing mournful hymns.

At about fifteen minutes before seven that Tuesday night, I arrived at the soundstage. I had one of the two documents that Jane had prepared that morning in the weathered old briefcase I was carrying. The other forgery we’d already put to another use.

Since the service wasn’t due to begin until seven-thirty, there were very few people occupying the folding chairs. I was pleased, though, to see that Les Michaelson, the cowboy stuntman and double, was already there and glancing somewhat anxiously around.

Before I even reached the rear of the chapel set, where I was supposed to meet Groucho, I heard Dinah Flanders’s voice.

“Take a hike for yourself, Ted,” she was saying.

“I’m simply telling you, hon, that it’s not in very good taste to allow a low buffoon like Groucho Marx to take part in a serious—”

“Hit the trail,” the actress advised Ted Timberlake.

As I eased behind the flats, I saw the cowboy actor, guitar in hand, scowling at Dinah.

“Be much better if you let me sing a couple of cowboy laments, such as ‘The Dying Cowboy’ and—”

“Scram,” she explained. “You’ve been scratched from the lineup, kiddo. Ride off into the sunset or, better yet, take a flying—”

“Trouble?” I inquired.

“Wellsir, here comes Groucho’s stooge,” said Timberlake, coming close to sneering at me.

“At least his guitar’s in tune,” I said. “Evening, Dinah.”

“Hi, Frank. Did Groucho come with you?

“Nope, he’s going to meet me here.”

The actress, putting her hands on her hips, told me, “I’m already getting all kinds of crap because I’m letting Groucho run the doings here tonight, Frank.”

The singing cowboy said, “It’s in bad taste to have a clown handle—”

“Why don’t you,” I suggested, “go out and join the mourners?”

“Look, pardner, I don’t take orders from any—”

“Ted, please, go away,” cut in Dinah. “We really don’t need you tonight.”

“Big mistake.” Timberlake took his leave.

“What a jerk,” observed Dinah. “You sure Groucho’ll be here?”

“Sure, but he’s not noted for promptness.”

Sighing, she placed a hand on my arm. “You think this little show Groucho has planned will work?” she asked. “I’m going to feel pretty sappy if it flops, you know. Louella Parsons is supposed to show tonight, and Hedda Hopper’s legman and some dame named May Something and a lot of other press people who—”

“May Sankowitz. She’s a friend of mine,” I said. “And don’t worry, Groucho usually brings these off.”

She said, “You fellows know who killed my husband.”

Nodding, I answered, “We’re pretty sure, yeah.”

“So tell me already.”

“Groucho would prefer to wait until the—”

“Jesus, Frank, he’s not here right now. It’s just you and me, and what the hell will it hurt if you—”

“Would you like me to tie you to the mast, Rollo, so you won’t give in to temptation?” Groucho, wearing a dark suit, had arrived. He was carrying a fat briefcase, and behind him was his secretary Nan, lugging a heavy slide projector and a rolled-up movie screen.

“Where shall I set these up, bwana?” Nan asked. “Howdy, Frank.”

“Keep them hidden for the nonce, Nanette,” said Groucho. “You might also keep them hidden for the nuns, since they shock easily and—”

“You sure this is going to work, Groucho?” asked the nervous Dinah.

“It’s never failed,” he assured her. “Of course, the major reason why it’s never failed is that we’ve never done this particular one before.” He turned to me. “You brought the document?”

“Right here.” I took an envelope out of my briefcase, passed it to Groucho.

Dinah said, “Hey, that looks like Eric’s handwriting on the front of that.”

“Yes, doesn’t it?” said Groucho.

Dinah Flanders didn’t make it all the way through her announcement. At a few minutes past seven-thirty, she’d stationed herself at the prop pulpit, the plump blond guy at the harmonium had segued into silence, and, except for a few stray coughs, the two hundred and some mourners had grown quiet.

I was sitting on the aisle in the third row, my briefcase resting in my lap. Larry Shell, armed with a camera, was in the next seat.

“First off,” began Dinah, “I want to thank you all for showing up tonight for this service to honor my husband’s memory.” She paused for a few seconds, leaning closer to the microphone. “And then I want to apologize for departing from the program that the people here at Warlock have arranged. I especially want to apologize to Miss Jeanette MacDonald, who was borrowed from MGM to sing ‘Goin’ Home’ later in the evening.”

There was some murmuring from the gathered group, some shifting on the wooden folding chairs.

“But what I want to deal with tonight is how Eric really died and why,” Dinah continued. “So before we get to the phony eulogies and the crocodile tears, I’ve asked Groucho Marx, just about my best friend right now, to come out here and—”

“Just a moment, dear.” Warren Lockwood, who was seated in the second row, stood up. “We’re gathered here tonight to pay our respects to the memory of one of our own. This is hardly the time or place to drag out vague rumors about—”

“Eric was my husband, Warren. And I can do whatever I damn please at his wake.”

Val Sharkey, who was in the chair next to his boss, popped to his feet. “Dinah, we know you’ve been under an awful lot of pressure,” he said. “But, please, don’t spoil this evening by dragging out a cheap clown and letting him go into his antics.”

“Oh, Groucho’s not going to crack jokes or sing any songs from Gilbert and Sullivan,” the actress assured him. “He’s going to explain what really happened to Eric and why. My husband didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”

Just about everybody there reacted audibly to that announcement, with gasps, murmurs, exclamations of surprise.

“Dinah, darling, I realize that you’re distraught,” said Lockwood, “yet this really isn’t the place to—”

“It’s the perfect place, since just about everybody involved in my husband’s death is sitting out there. We saw to that.”

Sharkey was making his way along the row of seats, aiming for the aisle.

Lockwood said, “I’m afraid, Dinah, we’re going to have to remove you forcibly from the—”

“Leave the kid alone,” called out Dan Bockman of the L.A. Times. “A lot of us would like to hear what Groucho has to say.” He was in the front row, surrounded by several fellow reporters and some news photographers.

By this time Sharkey was approaching the pulpit, intent on reaching Dinah.

Two of Win Mulvane’s plainclothes colleagues interrupted the husky troubleshooter. They persuaded him, chiefly by taking hold of his arms and escorting him back to his seat, to leave Dinah alone.

“Go on, Dinah,” urged Gil Lumbard of the Hollywood Citizen-News.

Dinah was frowning in Lockwood’s direction. “Suppose you park it, Warren.”

The tycoon’s exasperated sigh was quite loud. But he sat.

“Ladies and gentleman,” said Dinah, “here’s my friend Groucho Marx.”

Groucho stepped out from behind the chapel flats, his bulging briefcase tucked under his arm.

For some reason this inspired the plump guy to play a chorus of “Hooray for Captain Spaulding.”

Thirty-two

Groucho, one elbow leaning on the pulpit, gestured at the projection screen that Nan had set up in front of one of the stained-glass windows. “Soon, dear friends, we’ll be showing you some interesting pictorial exhibits pertaining to this case,” he promised. “But first I’ll tell you about the events leading up to the murders of Eric Olmstead and the man who was calling himself James Pearson. It seems that—”

“This is extremely unwise, Groucho,” interrupted Lockwood.

“As is a great deal of what I do. Therefore—”

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the interest of national security, has requested that no mention of—”

“There’s no need to fret, Warren,” Groucho assured him. “I finally had a heartfelt conversation with Agent Goodrich of the FBI, and I have the permission of none other than J. Edgar Bedspread … that is, J. Edgar Hoover, to proceed, albeit with my usual tact and circumspection, and to allude to the truth. I might add that Agent Goodrich and his loquacious cohort, Agent Lewis, are now harboring the notion that in certain key areas they’ve been hoodwinked. We’ll come to that shortly.”

“Don’t let ’em sidetrack you, Groucho,” urged Bockman of the Times loudly. “Get on with your story.”

Bowing in the reporter’s direction, Groucho continued, “Dinah Flanders, a few days ago, asked me and my associate, the formidable Frank Denby, to look into the circumstances surrounding Eric Olmstead’s death. Tonight, with Dinah’s permission, we’ll present our findings.”

Dinah, who’d taken a seat in the first row, withdrew a lacy handkerchief from her black purse and dabbed at her eyes.

Groucho went on, “Like many folks in Hollywood, Eric Olmstead had changed his name. Like many another Hollywood denizen, he hadn’t been exactly truthful about his background. He was, in fact, really named Ernst Krieger, and he was born not in Merry Old England but in Munich, Germany.”

There were quite a few murmurs and audible inhalations from many of the gathered movie people.

“Eric Olmstead,” continued Groucho, “was a German agent, planted first in England and later transplanted to America and Southern California. After he married Dinah Flanders, Eric was instructed by the local representatives of the Gestapo to spy on Lockwood Aero and help them obtain—”

“This can’t continue,” insisted Lockwood, again on his feet. “You’re damn close to revealing classified information that may be vital to the defense of our country.”

“Initially you convinced the FBI of that, and they in turn convinced the police,” Groucho told him. “Do sit down, Warren. Ever since my vaudeville days I get very uneasy whenever somebody in the audience stands up and glares in my direction.”

Turning and surveying the crowd, Lockwood spotted Agent Goodrich of the FBI. “Jim,” he called out, “I can’t believe you’re allowing this travesty to continue.”

“Mr. Marx and I have already discussed the matter at some length,” said the federal agent from his chair in the fourth row. “I’m satisfied that he’s not in a position to betray any vital secrets, Warren.”

Again Lockwood sat down.

“What actually happened was two different and separate crimes,” Groucho resumed. “We have espionage, involving the local agents of the Nazi government. And then we have two murders that the German spies had nothing to do with. The fact that Eric Olmstead was a Nazi agent did, however, as we’ll see, precipitate the killings.”

Standing for a moment, Larry snapped a photo of Groucho. A couple of other newspaper photographers also began taking pictures of him.

Groucho nodded in the direction of the screen. “Let’s have the first slide, Nan.”

Most of the overhead soundstage lights dimmed. Nan, who’d planted the projector on a stand to the right of the fake chapel, clicked on the machine.

A blowup of one of the shots Larry took at the Halloween party blossomed on the screen. It showed Werner Spearman standing alone, decked out in his Attila the Hun costume and holding a schooner of dark ale in both hands.

Quite a few people in the audience recognized the German consul, and considerable hissing came out of the shadows.

“I note that many of you recognize Herr Spearman,” continued Groucho. “By day the German consul in Los Angeles and by night Attila the Hun and, so it is rumored, a high-ranking agent of the Gestapo.”

More hissing, quite a bit of booing.

“Next one, Nanette.”

The second slide was one showing the code message Groucho’d found at Dinah’s Beverly Hills mansion.

“This is a coded missive warning Eric Olmstead that he’d better quit holding out on the secrets that he’d smuggled out of Lockwood Aero,” explained Groucho. “It urged him to hand over the information at the Halloween party. Next.”

Another code message, looking to be in the same style of lettering, now showed up on the screen.

“This screed invites another Nazi agent to be damned sure he attends the festivities here tonight, even though he wasn’t invited,” continued Groucho. “We weren’t absolutely certain, when we faked this one, that it would work. But it did, indicating that the chap who received it is familiar with the code the local Nazis are using. Next, please.”

This photo showed Les Michaelson, in his fringed cowboy outfit, talking to Spearman.

From a back row of seats came the sound of a chair falling over.

“You’ll recognize that stalwart stunt double Les Michaelson being chummy, in an unguarded moment, with our Nazi German Consul. Later in the evening … next one, Nan … we see him being equally cozy with the mysterious Grim Reaper who went on to threaten Eric Olmstead and cause him to pass out.”

Now from the rear of the darkened soundstage came the sound of scuffling.

“Alas, nothing much can be done about Herr Spearman at the moment,” said Groucho. “But that may change after some FBI men finish questioning Les Michaelson.”

Quite a few people in the audience were turning in their chairs, trying to get a look at the team of Goodrich’s fellow agents who were in the act of escorting Michaelson out of the place.

“Folks, pay attention,” urged Groucho, tapping his forefinger against the mike a few times. “We have a lot more ground to—”

“Who was the Grim Reaper?” Bockman wanted to know.

Groucho’s sigh was amplified by the microphone. “Unfortunately, Daniel, we haven’t yet been able to find out,” he admitted. “But we’re pretty certain that, when Olmstead told him he wasn’t going to continue spying and wasn’t going to turn over any Lockwood secrets, our Grim Reaper warned him that it might mean death for both him and Dinah Flanders.”

“Oh, Jesus,” murmured Dinah.

“The costume Death wore was swiped from the Warlock Costume Department, most likely by Les Michaelson, who left some of his fringe behind when he was making off with it,” added Groucho. “Eventually he’ll probably tell us who was behind the skull mask.”

Norm Lenzer of the Herald-Examiner said, “You claim that Olmstead refused to cooperate with his Nazi bosses, Groucho. But just how do you know that for sure?”

“An insightful question, Norman, which is unusual for you. Next slide, my dear.”

This was a blowup of the authentic first five paragraphs of Olmstead’s confession.

“Olmstead left this in his safe for Dinah,” explained Groucho. “But it was stolen by the man some of you knew as James Pearson, who was posing as the valet. Let me emphasize that, unlike the spurious document many of you may’ve encountered in your local newspapers, this is not a suicide note. In fact, Olmstead never wrote a suicide note, mainly because he didn’t commit suicide but was murdered.”

This produced further murmurings from the crowd.

“You’ll notice in this letter—which, by the way, has been authenticated by two independent handwriting experts—that, after saying that he loves his wife, Olmstead goes on to tell her his real name and explain that he’s actually a Nazi agent planted in America to await an assignment. Notice also that the man acting as his chief Gestapo contact in Los Angeles was the aforementioned Werner Spearman, famous for dressing up as Attila the Hun at the drop of a helmet.”

Pausing, Groucho hefted his bulky briefcase up off the soundstage floor and plumped it down on the pulpit. From inside it, after some poking around and probing with his right hand, he extracted the envelope I’d passed to him earlier. Holding that up, Groucho said, “This is the entire document, which my associate Frank Denby and I unearthed on Santa Catalina Island. It was being used by Pearson for a dual purpose—not only to try to blackmail the Nazis but to squeeze some dough out of the killer. Oh, and Pearson wasn’t actually Pearson.” Groucho explained that Len Hickman, a not especially honest or upright private eye, had been posing as Olmstead’s servant in order to keep an eye on him and his bride.

“Did the Nazis plant the guy with Olmstead?” asked Bockman.

“No, my boy,” answered Groucho. “Let me read to you from Olmstead’s final statement, and the situation will become clear to one and all.”

The document he now slid free of the envelope wasn’t exactly the one we’d fallen heir to on Catalina. It was instead a revised and amended confession that Groucho and I had cooked up. Jane had then written it out in a very convincing imitation of the dead director’s handwriting.

Unfolding the letter, Groucho held it up before setting it on the pulpit. “Olmstead confessed that he was ordered to visit the Lockwood Aero plant and act as a courier to smuggle out copies of stolen papers,” Groucho went on. “Instead, deciding to quit the Nazis, he burned the material he’d been slipped by a German agent inside the Lockwood establishment. His bosses didn’t know he’d done that and kept pressing him to turn over the goods.”

Dinah, who’d been crying quietly, wiped at her eyes with the lacy handkerchief. “The poor son of a bitch,” she muttered.

Groucho continued, “Olmstead had made up his mind to go to the FBI, tell them everything. He intended to do this on the day after Warren Lockwood’s Halloween party. As we’ve seen, he was threatened by a representative of the Gestapo at that shindig.”

“He told them to go to blazes, so they followed him home and knocked him off,” suggested Bockman.

“That makes a nice scenario, certainly something suitable for decoying the FBI,” conceded Groucho, “but not exactly the truth. Let me read you a little more from this letter, which we now know was written the night he was killed.”

Now we were into bluff, using the faked addition to the letter.

Groucho cleared his throat. “‘I’m afraid, my darling, that I have more to worry about than my Gestapo friends,’ wrote Olmstead on the last night of his life,” he said. “He goes on, ‘At the Lockwood party, before I was warned by Spearman’s representative, I was threatened by someone else. They’d found out about my double life, but didn’t want me to confess to the FBI. It turns out that Pearson is an informer, working for them. They fear that the scandal would have a terrible effect on your reputation, Dinah. The public won’t take kindly to the news that Warlock’s most popular box-office star is married to a Nazi spy. They might even suspect, God forbid, that you, too, were a traitor to America. I was warned that I would be prevented from doing anything that might endanger the career of an actress worth millions to her studio. I was still trying to get over the shock of that threat when Spearman’s agent told me that they’d hurt both you and me if I didn’t do what I was told. Before I fainted, darling, I told him exactly what I’d told Warren Lockwood—that I intended to go to the FBI the first thing tomorrow morning and—”

“This is pure fiction,” shouted Lockwood, once again on his feet. “I never had any such conversation with Eric.”

“Next slide, Nan.”

On the screen was the photo of Lockwood and Olmstead arguing.

“That proves not a damned thing,” said the angry tycoon. “Eric and I had a slight disagreement on the film he was going to be directing for us.”

Reaching into the brief case, Groucho produced the .32 Smith & Wesson revolver. “Eric Olmstead was shot with this gun,” he announced. “So was the man calling himself James Pearson. He’d actually seen the killer leaving Olmstead’s home. Dedicated more to making money than to justice, Pearson planned to get a substantial chunk of blackmail money for his silence. This letter, which he stole from Olmstead’s safe, he figured he could sell either to the Nazis or to the killer. As it turned out, his silence came a lot cheaper than he’d anticipated. It only cost the price of a couple of bullets.”

Lumbard asked, “Do you know who that gun belongs to, Groucho?”

“It’s registered to Warren Lockwood.”

A lot more gasping and muttering from the crowd.

“You asshole,” said Lockwood. “I’ll have every damned attorney on my payroll sue you for libel.”

“This would actually be slander,” corrected Groucho, “if it weren’t true. But the Beverly Hills Police have established that this gun fired the shots that killed both Eric Olmstead and James Pearson. They’ve determined that it’s your gun, Warren.”

“I know not a damn thing about anybody’s death,” he said. “The idea that I’d have anyone killed to protect the reputation of an actress is ridiculous.”

“Nevertheless, your gun killed two men.”

Lockwood said, “Then the gun was stolen from me and used by someone else.”

“Next two slides, Nan.”

What the two hundred and some members of the audience saw, in succession, were the two photos Larry’d taken in the parking area. First they saw Lockwood reaching into his car, next they saw him handing a revolver to Val Sharkey.

“Looks to me,” said Groucho, “pretty much as though you sent Sharkey to warn Olmstead again to keep his mouth shut. When he refused, your boy shot him.”

“What Val Sharkey did with that gun after I loaned it to him has nothing to do with me,” said Lockwood loudly.

“Wait a minute, you arrogant bastard,” said Sharkey, jumping to his feet. “If you think I’m going to take all the blame for—”

“Mr. Lockwood,” said Win Mulvane, coming out from behind the chapel flats, “we’d like to talk to you and Mr. Sharkey. If you’ll accompany us to—”

“Groucho,” said Lockwood as two plainclothes cops approached him, “it’ll be a cold day in Hell before you ever get a radio show on my network.”

“Looks like,” said Groucho, “you’ll be able to check the weather conditions there before I can.”

Thirty-three

The following Friday afternoon Groucho was strolling along Sunset, a newspaper tucked under his arm. It was a warm November afternoon, and he was wearing a sedate plaid sport coat, umber-colored slacks, and a new gray fedora.

Billy Barty came walking toward him. The actor said, “Where’d you get that lid, Groucho? Didn’t they have one that fit?”

Groucho said, “Pick on somebody your own size, Billy,” and continued on his way.

At the next corner a tourist bus, about to embark on a tour of the stars’ homes in Beverly Hills, was loading up. The driver, standing near the open door and supervising the loading of the passengers, was the first to spot Groucho. “And here, folks, at no extra cost, is Groucho Marx, movie comedian and erstwhile amateur detective.”

“You have me confused with Erstwhile Caldwell, my good man,” said Groucho, halting. “Though now that I get a better look at you, I withdraw the ‘good man’ phrase.”

A plump woman who was standing in the boarding line asked him, “What’s your next movie role going to be?”

“I’ll be playing the title role in The House of Seven Gables,” he replied. “And possibly in the Yiddish version, The House of Seven Bagels.”

A middle-aged man asked, “Are the Marx Brothers going to make another movie?”

“No, we’re going into the poultry business, due to our wide past experience with turkeys.”

A teenage boy inquired, “How come you’ve never won an Oscar, Mr. Marx?”

“As a mater of fact, I won Oscar Levant once in a poker game, but they made me throw him back.”

A pretty blonde asked him, “Are you ever planning to retire?”

“I retire every evening at about eleven,” he informed her. “If you’d care to drop by tonight, I’ll leave the bedroom window open. And now I must be going.”

“He’s certainly witty,” someone remarked as Groucho hurried on.

“I didn’t notice,” said somebody else.

As he entered Moonbaum’s Delicatessen and headed for his usual booth, a woman seated near the door exclaimed, “Duck Soup!”

“I’m sorry, madam,” said Groucho in passing, “but we already did that bit a few days since.”

Jane and I were already in the booth when Groucho came slouching in. He caught up my wife’s hand, kissing it resoundingly. “You’re looking radiant, Lady Jane,” he informed her. “Rollo, on the other hand, is looking redundant.” He returned her hand, slid in opposite us.

“Why did that woman yell, ‘Duck Soup!’?” asked Jane.

“It’s easier to yell than The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Unfolding the newspaper, he spread it out on his side of the table. “Have you folks seen the latest news?”

“The item about Werner Spearman, the German consul, returning to Berlin? Yeah, we read that,” I replied. “I imagine the authorities used the real-version of Olmstead’s confession to persuade him to depart.”

“They’ll only replace him with another Gestapo lout,” he said. “Still, it’s a small victory.”

“I just heard from Win Mulvane that the FBI has determined that Les Michaelson is in the country without the proper papers,” I said. “If they don’t try him as a spy, he’ll be deported.”

“Another small victory for our side.” Groucho folded up his L.A. Times and picked up the menu. “Meantime, the grand jury has indicted Warren Lockwood and Val Sharkey on two counts of murder.”

“And Lockwood, as he promised,” said Jane, “has seen to it that his network won’t touch Groucho Marx, Secret Agent.”

“Zeppo has a notion we can sell it to NBC,” Groucho told us. “Did Lockwood also sabotage you with Warlock Pictures, my boy?”

I grinned. “As a mater of fact, there’s been a shakeup at Warlock, wrought by the money people in the East, who actually—”

“Money people often frown on having murderers at the helm,” observed Groucho. “Though not always.”

“For the moment, Vince Novsam is in charge of all production at Warlock,” I said. “He wants me to go ahead on the Ty-Gor rewrite.”

“And he’s asked Frank,” added Jane, putting her hand on mine, “to come up with an idea for a murder mystery, to cash in on the publicity you two have been getting because of this case.”

“Well, then, as Spinoza so aptly put it, everything is hunky-dory.”

Mellman the waiter appeared next to the booth. “Your chums have already ordered, Groucho,” he said. “What’ll you have?”

“I’m leaning toward the Blue Plate Special,” said Groucho. “But I’m wondering if that comes in a choice of colors.”

Also by Ron Goulart

Groucho Marx and the Broadway Murders

Elementary, My Dear Groucho

Groucho Marx, Private Eye

Groucho Marx, Master Detective

GROUCHO MARX, SECRET AGENT. Copyright © 2002 by Groucho Marx Productions Inc. and Ron Goulart. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

www.minotaurbooks.com

eISBN 9781429924375

First eBook Edition : May 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goulart, Ron.

Groucho Marx, secret agent: a mystery featuring Groucho Marx / Ron Goulart.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-28005-X

1. Marx, Groucho, 1891-1977—Fiction. 2. Comedians—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3557.085 G775 2002

813’.4—dc21

2001058596

First Edition: July 2002