American Gun Mystery (8 page)

Ellery, a little pale, straightened up and looked around. He lit a cigaret with slightly trembling fingers.

“Good thorough job,” muttered the Inspector.

“I find it difficult,” murmured Ellery, “to be anything but religious at the present moment.”

“Hey? What’s that?”

“Oh, don’t mind me,” cried Ellery. “I’ve never become accustomed to these bloody exhibits. …Dad, do you believe in miracles?”

“What the devil you talkin’ about?” said the old man. He began to unbuckle from Horne’s body the trouser belt, which was clasped snugly about the waist at the first hole; and then he struggled to detach the heavy pistol belt.

Ellery pointed to the dead face. “Miracle the first. His face wasn’t touched, although those terrible hooves pounded all about him.”

“What of it?”

“Oh, God!” groaned Ellery. “What of it? the man says. Nothing of it. That’s exactly the point! If there was anything of it, it wouldn’t be a miracle, would it?”

The Inspector disdained to reply to such obvious nonsense.

“Miracle the second.” And Ellery blew smoke jerkily. “Look at his right hand.”

The old man obediently, if somewhat wearily, complied. The right arm seemed to be broken in two places; but the right hand was healthily brown, and there was not a scratch on it. Gripped in the tight clutch of the fingers was the long-barreled revolver they had seen Horne flourish only a few moments before.

“Well?”

“That’s not even a miracle; it’s downright act of Providence. He fell, he was probably dead before he struck the ground, forty-one horses stepped all over him—and, by heaven, his hand doesn’t drop the gun!”

The Inspector nursed his lower lip. He looked bewildered. “Well, but what
of
it? You don’t think there’s something—”

“No, no,” said Ellery impatiently. “There can’t be anything human about the causes of these phenomena. There’s a surfeit of eye-witnesses for
that.
No, that’s why I call these things miracles; they were accomplished by no human agency. Hence divine. Hence something to get a headache over. …Oh, hell, I’m going potty. Where’s his Stetson?”

He broke through the ring of men and looked around. Then he brightened and stepped briskly across the dirt to a spot some eight feet off, where a high broad-brimmed hat lay ignominiously in the dust. He stooped, picked it up, and returned to his father.

“That’s the hat, all right,” said the Inspector. “Knocked off his head when he fell and, I s’pose, kicked away by some horse.”

They examined it together. Its once noble crown was crushed in, like the head it had adorned; it was a black Stetson of smooth, marvelously soft felt with a very wide brim flaring at the edges. Around the crown there was a fine belt of braided black leather. Inside, in letters of gold, were stamped the initials
B H.

Ellery laid the Stetson gently beside the crushed body.

The Inspector was peering intently at the dead man’s two belts; Ellery watched him with some amusement. The pistol belt with its attached holsters was enormously long and heavy, since it was designed to go twice about the body of its wearer. Like the rest of Horne’s showy gear it was elaborately adorned with silver
conchas
and gold nails, and its cartridge holders gleamed. A silver monogram bore a scrolled
B H.
Although the belt was soft and pliable and quite obviously kept perfect by loving fingers, it was quite obviously also of great age.

“Had this a long time, the poor coot,” muttered the Inspector.

“I suppose,” sighed Ellery, “it’s like taking care of your precious books when you’re a bibliophile. Have you the remotest notion how many hours I’ve put in oiling the calf bindings of my Falconers?”

They examined the trouser belt. It was in a perfect state of preservation, though very old; so old that the vertical creases—there were two, one crossing the second, the other the third buckle hole—had from long use worn the leather thin; so old, indeed, that the belt might have girdled the waist of a Pony Express rider. And as in the case of the pistol belt, this belt too displayed Horne’s initials in silver.

“The man,” murmured Ellery as he relinquished the belt to his father, “was an antiquarian of the Occident, by the beards of the
Academie!
Why, that’s a museum piece!”

The Inspector, accustomed to his son’s flights of fancy, spoke softly to one of the detectives near by, and the man nodded and made off. The detective returned with Grant, who seemed to have pulled himself together. He carried himself with unnatural stiffness, as if braced to withstand another blow.

“Mr. Grant,” said the Inspector sharply, “I’m going to start this investigation the right way—details first; we’ll get to the big things later. This looks like a long job.”

Grant said hoarsely: “Anything ya say.”

The Inspector nodded in a curt way and knelt once more by the body. Lightly his fingers moved over the broken clay, and inside of three minutes he had collected a small heap of miscellaneous articles from the dead man’s clothes. There was a small wallet; it contained some thirty dollars in bills. The Inspector passed it to Grant.

“This Horne’s?”

Grant’s head jerked. “Yeah. Yeah. I—hell—I gave it to him for ’is last … birthday.”

“Yes, yes,” said the Inspector hastily, and retrieved the wallet, which had slipped from the rodeo owner’s fingers. A handkerchief; a single key with a wooden tag attached bearing the words “Hotel Barclay”; a packet of brown cigaret-papers and a little sack of cheap tobacco; a number of long matches; a checkbook. …

Grant nodded dumbly at all the exhibits. The Inspector examined the check-book thoughtfully. “What was the name of his New York bank?”

“Seaboard. Seaboard National. He opened an account only a week’r so ago,” muttered Grant.

“How d’ye know?” said the Inspector quickly.

“He asked me to rec’mend one when he got to Noo Yawk. I sent ’im over to m’own bank.”

The old man replaced the check-book; its blank checks bore, plainly enough, the name of the Seaboard National Bank & Trust Company. According to its last stub-entry there was a balance of something over five hundred dollars.

“Find anything here,” demanded the Inspector, “that oughtn’t to be here, Mr. Grant?”

Grant’s bloodshot eyes swept over the pile of small possessions. “No.”

“Anything missing?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Hmmm. How about his duds? These things what he always wears? Look all right to you?”

The stocky man’s hands clenched into fists. “Do I have to
look
at him again?” he shouted in a strangled voice. “Why the hell do ya torture me this way?”

The man’s grief seemed genuine enough. So the Inspector said in a gentle voice: “Pull yourself together, man. We’ve got to check over everything; there’s often a clue on the body. Don’t you want to help us find your friend’s murderer?”

“God, yes!”

Grant stepped forward and forced his eyes downward. And his eyes swept from the horizontal boots to the gruesome concavity of the poor mangled head. He was silent for a long time. Then he threw back his thick shoulders and said harshly: “All there; nothin’ missing. That’s his reg’lar movie outfit. Every shaver from here to ’Frisco knew this rig-out in the days he was makin’ pitchers.”

“Fine! All—”

“Interrogation,” said Ellery. “Mr. Grant, did I hear you say nothing is missing?”

Grant’s head screwed around with unnatural slowness; his eyes met Ellery’s boldly, but there was something puzzled and—yes, fearful—in their muddy depths. He drawled: “That’s what I said, Mr. Queen.”

“Well, sighed Ellery, as his father squinted at him with a sudden alertness, “I suppose it isn’t really your fault. You’re upset, and perhaps your faculty of observation isn’t functioning as well as it should. But the point is: there
is
something missing.”

Grant turned abruptly back to look the body over again. The Inspector seemed troubled. And Grant shook his head and shrugged with a weary bafflement.

“Well, well,” snapped the Inspector to his son, “what’s the mystery? What’s missing?”

But Ellery, with a glint in his eye, was already stooping over the body. Very carefully indeed he pried open the dead fingers of the corpse’s right hand, and stood up with Buck Horne’s revolver in his hand.

It was a beautiful weapon. To the Inspector, whose acquaintanceship with firearms was an intimate affair of a lifetime’s duration, the piece Ellery studied so attentively was a heavenly sample of the old-fashioned gunsmith’s art. He saw at once that it was not a modern arm. Not only the slightly antiquated design, but the softly rubbed-metal look of it, told of great age.

“Colt .45,” he muttered. “Single action. Look at that barrel!”

The barrel was eight inches long, a slim tube of death. It was delicately chased in a scroll design, as was the cylinder. Ellery hefted the weapon thoughtfully; it was very heavy.

Wild Bill Grant seemed to have some difficulty in speaking. He moistened his lips twice before he could find his voice. “Yeah, it’s a reg’lar cannon,” he rumbled. “But a beauty. Ole Buck—Buck was partic’lar about the hang of his guns.”

“The hang?” said Ellery with interrogative eyebrows.

“Liked ’em hefty an’ liked ’em true. The balance, I’m talkin’ about.”

“Oh, I see. Well, this relic must weigh well over two pounds. Lord, what a hole it must make!”

He broke open the weapon; there were cartridges in all the chambers except one.

“Blanks?” he asked his father.

The Inspector extracted one of the bullets and examined it. Then he removed the others. “Yep.”

Ellery carefully returned them to their chambers and snapped the cylinder back into place.

“This revolver was Horne’s, I suppose,” he asked Grant, “and not your property? I mean, it isn’t one of the rodeo weapons?”

“Buck’s,” growled Grant. “Prime fav’rite with him. Had it—an’ the pistol belt—fer twenty-odd years.”

“Hmmm,” said Ellery absently; he was absorbed in a study of the barrel. That the gun had been used a great deal was evident; it barrel was rubbed smooth at the tip, as was the peak of the sight. He transferred his attention to the butt. It was the most curious feature of the weapon. Both sides were inlaid with ivory—single pieces which had been carved in a steer’s-head design, the center of which in each case was an oval, elaborately monogrammed
H.
The ivory inlays were worn and yellow with age, except for a narrow portion on the right sight of the butt; as Ellery held the revolver in his left hand, this patch of lighter ivory came between the tips of his curled fingers and the heel of his hand. He stared long and hard at it. Then he twirled the revolver thoughtfully and handed the gun to his father.

“You might include this piece of artillery with the other suspected weapons, dad,” he said. “Just as a matter of precaution. You can never tell what these ballistic johnnies will dig up.”

The Inspector grunted, took the revolver, gazed at it gloomily for a moment, and then turned it over to a detective with a nod. It was at this moment that there was movement at the eastern gate, and the detectives now on guard opened the big doors to admit a number of men.

Heading the little procession was a gigantic individual in plainclothes, with a face that seemed composed of overlapping plates of steel, and a thunderous step that outraged the tanbark. This Goliath was Sergeant Velie, Inspector Queen’s favorite assistant; a man of few words and mighty, if mentally uninspired, deeds.

He bestowed a professional glance at the corpse, eyed the vast amphitheatre above his head with its thousands of buzzing, weary occupants, and rubbed his mastadonic jaw.

“Hot stuff, Chief.” His voice was the voice of a bull-fiddle. “Exits?”

“Ah, Thomas,” said the Inspector with a relieved smile. “Another one of these rush-hour murders. Relieve the police at the exits and station our own men. Send the officers back to their regular posts or duties.”

“Nobody out?”

“Not a living soul ’til I give the word.”

Sergeant Velie barged awesomely away.

“Hagstrom. Flint. Ritter. Johnson, Piggott. Stand by.”

Five men of his own squad, who had accompanied Velie, nodded. There was professional joy in their eyes as they saw the magnitude of the task before them.

“Where’s that rodeo doctor?” said the Inspector crisply.

The shabby rugged old man with the earnest eyes stepped forward. “I’m the rodeo medic,” he said slowly. “Hancock is my name.”

“Good! Come here, Doc.”

The physician moved nearer the body.

“Now tell me all you know about this business.”

“All I know?” Dr. Hancock seemed slightly alarmed.

“I mean—you examined him a few seconds after he fell, didn’t you? What’s the verdict?”

Dr. Hancock stared soberly at the crumpled figure on the floor. “There’s not much to tell. When I ran over here, he was already dead. …Dead! Only today I examined him and found him in perfectly good condition.”

“Died instantly?”

“I should say so.”

“Dead before he hit the ground, hey?”

“Why—yes, I believe so.”

“Then he didn’t feel those horses steppin’ all over him,” said the Inspector, groping for his snuff-box. “That’s a consolation! How many bullet wounds?”

Dr. Hancock blinked. “You must remember that mine was a cursory examination. …One wound. Directly through the heart in a leftward direction.”

“Hmm. You familiar with gunshot wounds?”

“Ought to be,” said the rodeo doctor grimly. “I’m an old Western myself.”

“Well, what’s the calibre of the bullet in his pumper, Doc?”

Dr. Hancock did not reply for a moment. He looked directly into the Inspector’s eyes. “Now, that’s a curious thing, sir. Very curious. I haven’t probed—I know you’ll want your Medical Examiner’s physician to do that—but I’d swear from the size of the hole that he was shot with a .22 or .25 calibre!”

“A .22—” began Wild Bill Grant harshly, and stopped.

The Inspector’s bright little eyes swept from physician to showman. “Well,” he said suspiciously. “And what’s so remarkable about that?”

“The .22 and .25, Inspector,” replied Dr. Hancock with a little quiver of his lips, “are
not
Western weapons. Surely you know that?”