American Gun Mystery (27 page)

“Ah. And what happened then?”

“One o’ the waddies, he run up an’ took the whup away from me.”

“Why?”

“Musta been a mite pie-eyed,” mumbled Boone. “Never oughten to whup a hoss, Mister. An’ that was a danged fine animal—
Injun,
’twas. Buck Horne’s ole trick movie hoss. Miller, he—”

“Oh, Miller was the cowboy who took the quirt away from you?”

“Yeah, Benjy Miller. New hand—feller with the gosh-awful burn on ’is whiskers. He was ridin’
Injun
that night. Buck was up on Kit Horne’s
Rawhide.
Felt sorrier’n a cock-eyed cow in pasture with two crops o’ clover to nibble at an’ not a way o’ tellin’ which was the sweeter-lookin’. Mister,” mourned Boone, “I never done that before, whuppin’ a good hoss. …”

“Yes, yes,” said Ellery absently. “You were upset. Be kind to animals, and all that. Are the rodeo horses always kept in the stables in this building?”

“Hey? Naw. Stables here ’re fer the show. Keep the hosses in th’ buildin’ jest b’fore, durin’, an’ after the show fer shoein’, rabbin’ down, an’ so on,” said Boone. “After th’ shows we take ’em over to that big liv’ry stable on Tenth Avenoo for beddin’ down.”

“I see. By the way, where’s Miller? Have you seen him today?”

“He’s aroun’ some’eres. See’m on’y a couple hours ago. I—”

“Fine, old timer. Thanks a lot. Come along, dad,” and Ellery hastened off with the Inspector, leaving Dan’l Boone staring wordlessly after them.

A number of members of the troupe had seen and spoken to Miller that day, it turned out, but the man was not to be found. He had actually come into the
Colosseum
with a group of the others, but after a time had dropped out of sight.

The Queens repaired to Wild Bill Grant’s office above, and found the showman in scowling contemplation of his feet on the desk. He looked at them sourly when they came in.

“Well,” he growled, “what the hell’s eatin’ you now?”

“The hunger for a little information, Mr. Grant,” said Ellery affably. “Have you seen that man Miller in the last few minutes?”

Grant started, then sank back and sucked at a cigar. “Who?”

“Miller. Benjy Miller. Chap with the scarred face.”

“Oh,
him.
” Grant stretched his thick arms slowly. “Saw him aroun’ t’day,” he said with indifference. “Why?”

“Have you any idea where he is
now?”
asked Ellery.

Grant lost his air of indifference. He swung his feet to the floor, and frowned heavily. “What’s the big idea? Why all this sudden int’rest in my troupe, Mr. Queen?”

“Only in Miller, I assure you,” smiled Ellery. “Well, well, sir, where is he?”

Grant hesitated. His eyes shifted. “Don’t know,” he said finally.

Ellery glanced at his father, who began to show signs of interest. “Do you know,” murmured Ellery, settling back comfortably in a chair and crossing his legs, “I’ve been intending to ask you something for a long time now. But it slipped my mind until a few minutes ago. Mr. Grant, how well did Miller know Buck Horne?”

“Well? Well?” growled Grant. “How the tin-horn devil should
I
know? Never saw the critter b’fore in my whole life. Buck recommended him, an’ that’s all I c’n tellya.”

“How do you know Buck recommended him? On Miller’s say-so?”

Grant broke into a savage chuckle. “Hell, no. I’m no pilgrim, man. He give me a note from Buck, that’s how I know.”

The Inspector started. “A note from Horne!” he shrieked. “Why in the name of a merciful God didn’t you tell us that a month ago? Why, you said—”

“Tell you?” Grant bunched his chaparral brows. “Ya didn’t ask. I said he come from Buck, an’ I tole no lie. Didn’t ask for no note, did ya? I—”

“Well, well,” murmured Ellery hastily, “let’s not wrangle over it. Have you that note about anywhere, Mr. Grant?”

“In m’duds somewhere,” said Grant, beginning to poke about in his pockets. “I know I—Here ’tis! There, read that,” he growled, tossing a crumpled sheet of paper across his desk, an’ see if I put anythin’ over on you.”

They read the note. It was written in blotty ink on a piece of Hotel Barclay stationery, in a wide windy scrawl. It ran:

“Dear Bill:

“This is Benjy Miller, an old friend. Needs a job badly—had hard luck in the Southwest somewhere, I guess. Drifted into town and hunted me up. So give him a job, will you? He’s a smart hand with a rope, right enough, and a good rider.

“I’m staking him to a few dollars, but what he really needs is a job. Hasn’t got a horse, so let him use one of mine,
Injun,
my old Hollywood standby. I’m using Kit’s for luck. Thanks—

Buck.”

“That Horne’s fist, Grant?” demanded the Inspector suspiciously.

“Sure is.”

“You’d swear to it?”

“I’ll let
you
swear to it,” said Grant coldly; and, rising, he went to a filing cabinet and returned with a legal document. It proved to be a contract between Grant and Horne. At the bottom of the last sheet were the signatures of the parties. The Inspector compared the scrawled “Buck Horne” of the contract with the handwriting of the note.

He returned the contract without speaking.

“On the level?” asked Ellery.

The Inspector nodded.

“So you don’t know where Miller is now, eh, Mr. Grant?” said Ellery pleasantly.

Grant rose and kicked his chair.
“Hell’s fire!”
he shouted. “What d’ye think I am to my employees—a wet-nurse? How th’ hell should I know where he is?”

“Tut, tut,” murmured Ellery. “Such temper.” And he rose and strolled from the room. The Inspector remained for a moment to converse with Mr. Wild Bill Grant. Whatever it was he said, it must have given him satisfaction, for when he came Out he was actually—for the first time in days—grinning; and from the room Ellery could hear Mr. Wild Bill Grant engaged in kicking Tony Mars’s furniture.

They questioned the detectives on duty. Had any of them seen a cowboy with a badly burned face leaving the
Colosseum?
One man, it seemed, had. Two hours or so before, Miller had quit the building. The detective had not noticed which way he had gone.

The Queens departed post-haste for the Hotel Barclay, the troupe’s headquarters.

Miller was not there. No one could be found who had seen him enter the hotel that afternoon.

By this time the Inspector was alarmed, and Ellery too showed signs of uneasiness.

“It begins to look,” muttered the Inspector as they stood helplessly in the lobby, “as if—”

Ellery was whistling nervously to himself. “Yes, yes, I know. As if Miller’s slipped through our fingers. Strange, very strange. I’m afraid—Tell you what! What are you going to do now, dad?”

“I’m going back to h.q.,” said the Inspector grimly, “and start the ball rolling. I’ll find Miller and sweat him if it’s the last thing I do. Why the deuce should he take it on the lam if he’s just one of the boys?”

“Not so fast. Because a man drops out of sight for three hours isn’t justification for calling the hounds out. He may have dropped into a speakeasy, or a movie. Well, do what you think best, dad. I think I’ll stay here. …No, I’m going back to the
Colosseum.
”

At six o’clock, in the fading light, the Queens met again at the
Colosseum.

“Dad, what are you doing here?” exclaimed Ellery.

“Same thing you’re doing.”

“But I’m fiddling around. …Have any luck?”

“Well,” said the Inspector cautiously, “it looks as if we’ve struck something.”

“No!”

“Miller’s gone.”

“Definitely?”

“Looks that way right now. I’ve had the detail cover all his known hangouts since he hit the city—aren’t many. The whole troupe’s accounted for, except Miller. And none of ’em knows where he is. Last seen around two or three o’clock, leaving the building. Then he dropped out of sight.”

“Did he take anything with him?”

“Didn’t have much to take except the clothes on his back. It’s on the teletype now. Being watched for. We’ve spread the alarm. Oh, we’ll get him.”

Ellery opened his mouth, and closed it again without saying anything.

“I’ve been digging into Mr. Miller’s history a little,” said the Inspector. “And d’ye know what I found?”

“What?” asked Ellery, startled.

“Nothing, that’s what. A blind trail. Can’t find out a darned thing about the guy. He’s a mystery. Well, he won’t be much longer. I think we’re on the right track now.” He chuckled. “Miller! And Grant’s tied up in it somewhere, mark my words.”

“I’ve got all I can do to mark my own,” said Ellery. Then he grinned quizzically. “How about the downward direction of the bullets that killed your two dead men?”

The Inspector’s chuckle died, and again he looked unhappy. “Oh, that,” he said. “That sticks in my craw, I’ll admit. …” He threw his hands up in despair. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m going back to Centre Street.”

E
LLERY CONTINUED TO WANDER
about the
Colosseum.
In his wanderings, which were for the moment aimless—being devoted merely to the expenditure of animal energy while his brain was busy with a Brobdingnagian mental jigsaw—he chanced across the large metallic gentleman of few words who was Inspector Queen’s right hand. Sergeant Velie in his stubborn way was engaged in mining. He was attempting to dig nuggets of fact out of what was obviously a salted mine. The facts he unearthed were no facts at all, but fancies. If there were facts beneath the terrain, they were extraordinarily well hidden.

Wild Bill Grant’s troupe of performers sat about with solemn countenances, nodding submissively at every word.

“Trained seals!” mumbled Velie at last, without changing expression. “Got no minds of your own. Can’t you talk without having to get the okay from your boss? Where’s this rat Miller, you bunch of bow-legged, four-flushin’ blowhards from the West?”

Their eyes began to flash.

Ellery, intrigued, paused to watch the performance.

There was a premonitory sigh, like the faint grumbling of a volcano in the’ labor-pains of eruption. Sergeant Velie smiled coldly and continued to address them.

He derided their lingo. He questioned the legitimacy of their birth, and the chastity of their mothers by inference. He sneered at their morals. He laughed outright at their horses. He called them “stinking sheep-herders,” than which there was no more awful accusation. He assailed their code of honor. He even introduced a faint note of doubt concerning their manhood, in the case of the males, and their femininity in the case of the women.

In the pandemonium that ensued, Ellery discovered—among other things—that Sergeant Velie was in his turn a particularly evil-smelling type of coyote, that he was plumb full of rattlesnake juice, that he was the double-distilled son of a pediculous half-breed and a female goat, that he was a poisoner of water-holes, that his heart was full of cactus thorns and his mouth as dry as alkali, that he was slicker than cowlick and lower than a snake’s belly, and finally that he deserved no less protean fate than to be “staked out”—a peculiarly Western form of amusement in which the salient features were the removal of the victim’s eyelids, the pegging of one’s wrists and legs to the ground, and the deposit of one’s residuary carcass, face to the glaring sun, upon an enormous anthill.

Ellery listened with a delighted smile.

He also learned, among the more blasphemous accusations that rattled about the Sergeant’s unmoved head, that they had not known Benjy Miller well, that he had been an “onfriendly cuss,” that they cared nothing for Benjy Miller, and that Sergeant Velie and Benjy Miller might, singly or
en double,
go to hell.

Ellery sighed and moved on up the corridor.

He prowled about quietly until, with the aid of judicious inquiries, he found the vanished Miller’s dressing room. It was like all the others, a mere hole in the wall equipped with a table, mirror, chair, and wardrobe. He sat down in the chair, placed his cigaret case conveniently on the table, lighted a pill, and devoted himself to thought.

Six cigarets later he muttered: “I begin to see. Yes. …Would be consistent with a special psychology in the case of. …” He sucked his lip. “But those searches. …”

He sprang to his feet, crushed the cigaret out on the floor, and went to the door. He looked about. Ten feet away a tall cowboy was stumping along, talking to himself in an angry undertone.

“Hi, there!” cried Ellery.

The cowboy slued his head about and squinted sourly. It was the gentleman known as Downs.

“Huh?”

“I say, old man,” said Ellery, “did that fellow Miller occupy this dressing room by himself?”

Downs drawled: “Hell, no. Who’d ya think he is—Wild Bill hisself? Dan’l Boone divvied this room with ’im.”

Ellery blinked. “Ah, Boone. That little chap seems to be a child of destiny. Would you mind getting him for me, like a good fellow?”

“Run yer own errands,” suggested Downs, and stamped off.

“Surly brute,” muttered Ellery, and went off in search of Boone. He found the little man communing with himself in an otherwise empty room, seated dolorously on the floor, short legs doubled under him in an Indian-chief attitude, and rocking slowly back and forth with the unconscious rhythm of a graybeard before the Wailing Wall. In his hand there were the fragments of what seemed to have been a stone arrowhead.

“Allus said,” he was groaning to himself aloud, “that damn palomino scrounchin’ on my Injun arrowhead started this jamboree. …Hey?” He looked up, a dazed little owl.

Ellery darted in, yanked little Boone to his feet, and hurried him back along the corridor to the room he had been thinking in.

“Whut—whut—” spluttered Boone.

Ellery plumped him in the lone chair and leveled a long forefinger at his shrinking figure. “Miller was your roommate, wasn’t he?”

“Huh? Shore, shore, Mr. Queen!”

“You saw him today, didn’t you, Boone?”

“Huh? Shore. Didn’t I tell ya—” Boone’s eyes were round as mescal buttons, and he opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish.

Ellery smacked his lips with satisfaction. “Did Miller go into this room today?”

“Shore, Mr. Queen!”