Nightmare Town: Stories (50 page)

Mrs. Dolan was, I have said, a woman who impressed me as being capable, and that adjective seemed especially apt now: she behaved herself, I must say, in the manner of one who would be capable of anything. Fortunately, Detective Strong had followed her across the store; he was now in a position to seize her arms from behind, and thus incapacitate her, except vocally – a remaining freedom of which she availed herself to the utmost, indulging in a stream of vituperation which it is by no means necessary for me to repeat.

It was a few minutes past two o’clock when I returned to our offices.

“Well, what?” Papa ceased dictating his mail to Miss Queenan to challenge me. “I’ve been waiting for you to phone!”

“It was not necessary,” I said, not without some satisfaction. “The operation has been successfully concluded.”

“Cleaned up?”

“Yes, sir. The thieves, three men and a woman, are in the city prison, and the stolen property has been completely recovered. In the detective bureau we were able to identify two of the men, ‘Reader’ Keely, who seems to have been the principal, and a Harry McMeehan, who seems to be well-known to the police in the East. The other man and the woman, who gave their names as George Glenn and Mrs. Mary Dolan, will doubtless be identified later.”

Papa bit the end off a cigar and blew the end across the office.

“What do you think of our little sleuth, Florence?” he fairly beamed on her, for all the world as if I were a child of three who had done something precocious.

“Spiffy!” Miss Queenan replied. “I think we’ll do something with the lad yet.”

“Sit down, Robin, and tell us about it,” Papa invited. “The mail can wait.”

“The woman secured a position as manager of a small apartment house on Ellis Street,” I explained, though without sitting down. “She used that as reference to open an account with Barnable, buying a watch, for which she paid in small weekly instalments. Keely, whose teeth were no doubt drawn while he was serving his last sentence in Walla Walla, removed his false teeth, painted a scar on his cheek, put on an ill-fitting cap, and, threatening Barnable and his assistant with a pistol, took the unset stones and money that were in the safe.

“As he left the store he collided with Mrs. Dolan, dropping the plunder into a bag of spinach which, with other groceries, was in her shopping-bag. McMeehan, pretending to come to the woman’s assistance, handed Keely a hat and coat, and perhaps his false teeth and a handkerchief with which to wipe off the scar, and took Keely’s pistol.

“Keely, now scarless, and with his appearance altered by teeth and hat, hurried to a barber shop two doors away, while McMeehan, after firing a shot indoors to discourage curiosity on the part of Barnable, dropped the pistol beside the cap and pretended to chase the bandit up toward Powell Street. At Powell Street another accomplice was stationed to pretend he had seen the bandit drive away in an automobile. These three confederates attempted to mislead us further by adding fictitious details to Barnable’s description of the robber.”

“Neat!” Papa’s appreciation was, I need hardly point out, purely academic – a professional interest in the cunning the thieves had shown and not in any way an approval of their dishonest plan as a whole. “How’d you knock it off?”

“That man on the corner couldn’t have seen the scar unless the bandit had turned his head, which the man denied. McMeehan wore gloves to avoid leaving prints on the pistol when he fired it, and his hands are quite sunburned, as if he does not ordinarily wear gloves. Both men and the woman told stories that fitted together in every detail, which, as you know, would be little less than a miracle in the case of honest witnesses. But since I knew Glenn, the man on the corner, had prevaricated, it was obvious that if the others’ stories agreed with his, then they too were deviating from the truth.”

I thought it best not to mention to Papa that immediately prior to going to Barnable’s, and perhaps subconsciously during my investigation, my mind had been occupied with finding another couplet to replace the one the editor of
The Jongleur
had disliked; incongruity, therefore, being uppermost in my brain, Mrs. Dolan’s shopping-bag had seemed a quite plausible hiding place for the diamonds and money.

“Good shooting!” Papa was saying. “Pull it by yourself?”

“I cooperated with Detectives Hooley and Strong. I am sure the subterfuge was as obvious to them as to me.”

But even as I spoke a doubt arose in my mind. There was, it seemed to me, a possibility, however slight, that the police detectives had not seen the solution as clearly as I had. At the time I had assumed that Sergeant Hooley was attempting to conceal his knowledge from me; but now, viewing the situation in retrospect, I suspected that what the sergeant had been concealing was his lack of knowledge.

However, that was not important. What was important was that, in the image of jewels among vegetables, I had found a figure of incongruity for my sonnet.

Excusing myself, I left Papa’s office for my own, where, with rhyming dictionary, thesaurus, and carbon copy on my desk again, I lost myself in the business of clothing my new simile with suitable words, thankful indeed that the sonnet had been written in the Shakespearean rather than the Italian form, so that a change in the rhyme of the last two lines would not necessitate similar alterations in other lines.

Time passed, and then I was leaning back in my chair, experiencing that unique satisfaction that Papa felt when he had apprehended some especially elusive criminal. I could not help smiling when I reread my new concluding couplet.

And shining there, no less inaptly shone

Than diamonds in a spinach garden sown.

That, I fancied, would satisfy the editor of
The Jongleur.

The man within stopped writing on a printed form. His eyes became brightly inquisitive behind tight rimless spectacles. His voice was eager. “Are you a newspaper reporter?”

“Why?” The dark man’s eyes were very blue. They looked idly at the other. “Does it make any difference?”

“Then you ain’t,” the ticket-agent said. He was disappointed. He looked at a clock on the wall. “Hell, I ought to’ve known that. You wouldn’t’ve had time to get here.” He picked up the pencil he had put down.

“Know where his place is?”

“Sure. Up there on the hill.” The ticket-agent waved his pencil vaguely westward. “All the taxi drivers know it, but if it’s Wynant you want to see you’re out of luck.”

“Why?”

The ticket-agent’s mien brightened. He put his forearms on the counter, hunching his shoulders, and said: “Because the fact is he went and murdered everybody on the place and jumped in the river not more than an hour ago.”

The dark man exclaimed, “No!” softly.

The ticket-agent smacked his lips. “Uh-huh – killed all three of them – the whole shooting match – chopped them up in pieces with an axe and then tied a weight around his own neck and jumped in the river.”

The dark man asked solemnly: “What’d he do that for?”

A telephone bell began to ring behind the ticket-agent. “You don’t know him or you wouldn’t have to ask,” he replied as he reached for the telephone. “Crazy as they make them and always was. The only wonder is he didn’t do it long before this.” He said, ‘Hello,’ into the telephone.

The dark man went through the waiting-room and downstairs to the street. The half a dozen automobiles parked near the station were apparently private cars. A large red and white sign in the next block said TAXI. The dark man walked under the sign into a small, grimy office where a bald fat man was reading a newspaper.

“Can I get a taxi?” the dark man asked.

“All out now, brother, but I’m expecting one of them back any minute. In a hurry?”

“A little bit.”

The bald man brought his chair down on all its legs and lowered his newspaper. “Where do you want to go?”

“Wynant’s.”

The bald man dropped his newspaper and stood up, saying heartily: “Well, I’ll run you up there myself.” He covered his baldness with a sweat-stained brown hat.

They left the office and – after the fat man had paused at the real-estate office next door to yell, “Take care of my phone if it rings, Toby” – got into a dark sedan, took the left turn at the first crossing, and rode uphill toward the west.

When they had ridden some three hundred yards the fat man said in a tone whose casualness was belied by the shine in his eyes: “That must be a hell of a mess up there and no fooling.”

The dark man was lighting a cigarette. “What happened?” he asked.

The fat man looked sharply sidewise at him. “Didn’t you hear?”

“Only what the ticket-agent told me just now” – the dark man leaned forward to return the lighter to its hole in the dashboard – “that Wynant had killed three people with an axe and then drowned himself.”

The fat man laughed scornfully. “Christ, you can’t beat Lew,” he said. “If you sprained your ankle he could get a broken back out of it. Wynant didn’t kill but two of them – the Hopkins woman got away because it was her that phoned – and he choked them to death and then shot himself. I bet you if you’d go back there right now Lew’d tell you there was a cool half a dozen of them killed and likely as not with dynamite.”

The dark man took his cigarette from his mouth. “Then he wasn’t right about Wynant being crazy?”

“Yes,” the fat man said reluctantly, “but nobody could go wrong on that.”

“No?”

“Nope. Holy hell! Didn’t he used to come down to town in his pyjamas last summer? And then when people didn’t like it and got Ray to say something to him about it didn’t he get mad and stop coming in at all? Don’t he make as much fuss about people trespassing on his place as if he had a gold mine there? Didn’t I see him with my own eyes heave a rock at a car that had gone past him raising dust once?”

The dark man smiled meagrely. “I don’t know any of the answers,” he said. “I didn’t know him.”

Beside a painted warning against trespass they left their gravelled road for an uneven, narrow crooked one of dark earth running more steeply uphill to the right. Protruding undergrowth brushed the sedan’s sides and now and then an overhanging tree-branch its top. Their speed made their ride rougher than it need have been.

“This is his place,” the fat man said. He sat stiffly at the wheel fighting the road’s unevenness. His eyes were shiny, expectant.

The house they presently came to was a rambling structure of gray native stone and wood needing gray paint under low Dutch roofs. Five cars stood in the clearing in front of the house. The man who sat at the wheel of one of them, and the two men standing beside it, stopped talking and watched the sedan draw up.

“Here we are,” the fat man said and got out. His manner had suddenly become important. He put importance in the nod he gave the three men.

The dark man, leaving the other side of the sedan, went toward the house. The fat man hurried to walk beside him.

A man came out of the house before they reached it. He was a middle-aged giant in baggy, worn clothes. His hair was gray, his eyes small, and he chewed gum. He said, “Howdy, Fern,” to the fat man and, looking steadily at the dark man, stood in the path confronting them squarely.

Fern said, “Hello, Nick,” and then told the dark man: “This is Sheriff Petersen.” He narrowed one eye shrewdly and addressed the sheriff again: “He came up to see Wynant.”

Sheriff Nick Petersen stopped chewing. “What’s the name?” he asked.

The dark man said: “John Guild.”

The sheriff said: “So. Now what were you wanting to see Wynant about?”

The man who had said his name was John Guild smiled. “Does it make any difference now he’s dead?”

The sheriff asked, “What?” with considerable force.

“Now that he’s dead,” Guild repeated patiently. He put a fresh cigarette between his lips.

“How do you know he’s dead?” The sheriff emphasized “you.”

Guild looked with curious blue eyes at the giant. “They told me in the village,” he said carelessly. He moved his cigarette an inch to indicate the fat man. “He told me.”

The sheriff frowned sceptically, but when he spoke it was to utter a vague “Oh.” He chewed his gum. “Well, what was it you were wanting to see him about?”

Guild said: “Look here: is he dead or isn’t he?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Fine,” Guild said, his eyes lighting up. “Where is he?”

“I’d like to know,” the sheriff replied gloomily. “Now what is it you want with him?”

“I’m from his bank. I want to see him on business.” Guild’s eyes became drowsy. “It’s confidential business.”

“So?” Sheriff Petersen’s frown seemed to hold more discomfort than annoyance. “Well, none of his business is confidential from me any more. I got a right to know anything and everything that anybody knows about him.”

Guild’s eyes narrowed a little. He blew smoke out.

“I have,” the sheriff insisted in a tone of complaint. “Listen, Guild, you haven’t got any right to hide any of his business from me. He’s a murderer and I’m responsible for law and order in this county.”

Guild pursed his lips. “Who’d he kill?”

“This here Columbia Forrest,” Petersen said, jerking a thumb at the house, “shot her stone dead and lit out for God only knows where.”

“Didn’t kill anybody else?”

“My God,” the sheriff asked peevishly, “ain’t that enough?”

“Enough for me, but down in the village they’ve got it all very plural.” Guild stared thoughtfully at the sheriff. “Got away clean?”

“So far,” Petersen grumbled, “but we’re phoning descriptions of him and his car around.” He sighed, moved his big shoulders uncomfortably. “Well, come on now, let’s have it. What’s your business with him?” But when Guild would have replied the giant said: “Wait a minute. We might as well go in and get hold of Boyer and Ray and get it over with at one crack.”

Leaving the fat man, Guild and the sheriff went indoors, into a pleasantly furnished tan room in the front of the house, where they were soon joined by two more men. One of these was nearly as tall as the sheriff, a raw-boned blond man in his early thirties, hard of jaw and mouth, sombre of eye. One was younger, shorter, with boyishly rosy cheeks, quick dark eyes, and smoothed dark hair. When the sheriff introduced them to Guild he said the taller one was Ray Callaghan, a deputy sheriff, the other District Attorney Bruce Boyer. He told them John Guild was a fellow who wanted to see Wynant.

The youthful district attorney, standing close to Guild, smiled ingratiatingly and asked: “What business are you in, Mr. Guild?”

“I came up to see Wynant about his bank account,” the dark man replied slowly.

“What bank?”

“Seaman’s National of San Francisco.”

“I see. Now what did you want to see him about? I mean, what was there about his account that you had to come up here to see him about?”

“Call it an overdraft,” Guild said with deliberate evasiveness.

The district attorney’s eyes became anxious.

Guild made a small gesture with the brown hand holding his cigarette. “Look here, Boyer,” he said, “if you want me to go all the way with you you ought to go all the way with me.”

Boyer looked at Petersen. The sheriff met his gaze with noncommittal eyes. Boyer turned back to Guild. “We’re not hiding anything from you,” he said earnestly. “We’ve nothing to hide.”

Guild nodded. “Swell. What happened here?”

“Wynant caught the Forrest girl getting ready to leave him and he shot her and jumped in his car and drove away,” he said quickly. “That’s all there is to it.”

“Who’s the Forrest girl?”

“His secretary.”

Guild pursed his lips, asked: “Only that?”

The raw-boned deputy sheriff said, “None of that, now!” in a strained croaking voice. His pale eyes were bloodshot and glaring.

The sheriff growled, “Take it easy there, Ray,” avoiding his deputy’s eyes.

The district attorney glanced impatiently at the deputy sheriff. Guild stared gravely, attentively at him.

The deputy sheriff’s face flushed a little and he shifted his feet. He spoke to the dark man again, in the same croaking voice: “She’s dead and you might just as well talk decently about her.”

Guild moved his shoulders a little. “I didn’t know her,” he said coldly. “I’m trying to find out what happened.” He stared for a moment longer at the raw-boned man and then shifted his gaze to Boyer. “What was she leaving him for?”

“To get married. She told him when he caught her packing after she came back from town and – and they had a fight and when she wouldn’t change her mind he shot her.”

Guild’s blue eyes moved sidewise to focus on the raw-boned deputy sheriff’s face. “She was living with Wynant, wasn’t she?” he asked bluntly.

“You son of a bitch!” the deputy sheriff cried hoarsely and struck with his right fist at Guild’s face.

Guild avoided the fist by stepping back with no appearance of haste. He had begun to step back before the fist started toward his face. His eyes gravely watched the fist go past his face.

Big Petersen lurched against his deputy, wrapping his arms around him. “Cut it out, Ray,” he grumbled. “Why don’t you behave yourself? This is no time to be losing your head.”

The deputy sheriff did not struggle against him.

“What’s the matter with him?” Guild asked the district attorney. There was no resentment in his manner. “In love with her or something?”

Boyer nodded furtively, then frowned and shook his head in a warning gesture.

“That’s all right,” Guild said. “Where’d you get your information about what happened?”

“From the Hopkinses. They look after the place for Wynant. They were in the kitchen and heard the whole fight. They ran upstairs when they heard the shots and he stood them off with the gun and told them he’d come back and kill them if they told anybody before he’d an hour’s start, but they phoned Ray as soon as he’d gone.”

Guild tossed the stub of his cigarette into the fireplace and lit a fresh one.

Then he took a card from a brown case brought from an inner pocket and gave the card to Boyer.