Finch brushed away the questions which arose. “I’ve got the floor now, and I’m going to go on with my exposition—just the way you boys play, only this is for keeps. This wasn’t planned as a murder; this alibi was just in case any of the rest of you checked up on where Furness was. He’d solved the phonograph code and he wanted to be the first and only one to find Worth. He wouldn’t have taken the chance on an accomplice if he’d had murder in mind; but now that accomplice is in so deep that Furness figures he’ll keep quiet. The one mistake the professor made was in going armed. He was afraid of Worth—Worth had attacked him twice, and Professor Furness isn’t so hot with his fists. So he took along a gun, just in case.
“When he confronted Worth, either Worth did take a sock at him again or maybe started infuriating him with cracks about Miss O’Breen. The gun was there, so he used it. He must have been scared as hell to start with, but then he realized that his little trick with the secretary gave him, as he thought, the perfect alibi, and he decided to bluff it through. As to his fumbling with his solution just now, the same reason holds as Evans gave for Federhut—he didn’t want it to seem too good.”
“But how about our priceless clue, Lieutenant?” Harrison Ridgly objected. “How do dancing men mean Professor Furness?”
“A clue, Mr. Ridgly, is any unexplained fact, which usually hasn’t got a damned thing to do with anything. I’ve got plenty without the clue—and without knowing how Worth pulled his hoax, either. A broken alibi’s worth a hundred clues. But if you really want a nice storybook Sherlock Holmes ending, how’s about this:
“Worth couldn’t reach a pencil. He couldn’t write his murderer’s name. So to indicate it to us, he grabbed (and tore in the grabbing) a piece of paper. And what was on that sheet of paper? It was something he drew.”
“Darling,” Maureen was pleading, “say something. Tell the man—”
“What can I say? He’ll find out his mistake tomorrow. In the meantime—”
“In the meantime,” said Lieutenant Finch, “you’re coming along with me. Material witness, you understand; the other comes later when we’ve checked things. Watson, the handcuffs.”
There came an irreverent snort from Ridgly’s couch. “And my dear Watson, pray do not forget the needle.”
“Just a moment!” said Drew Furness with a certain sudden strength. “I need my hands for a minute.” He turned to Maureen and laid those hands on her shoulders. “Tomorrow, my dear,” he said gently, “when all this is settled, I want to say something to you.”
“Pretend you said it now,” Maureen murmured, “and pretend I said yes.”
They pretended.
“Break it up,” said Finch, not without a suggestion of sympathy under his gruffness. “It’s time we got going.”
In the silence the click of the handcuffs drowned out the crunch of a fresh Watsonian peppermint. Finch turned to the door with his prisoner. Then came another sound, sharp and decisive.
Knock! Knock!
“Who’s there!” Finch barked.
The door opened and Mrs. Hudson entered with a mountainous tray of sandwiches. “Who wants tea,” she asked, “and who wants coffee?”
Chapter 24
“I’ll leave you to your party,” Lieutenant Finch announced. “We’ve got to get going. Come on, Sergeant.”
But Sergeant Watson hesitated. “Lieutenant,” he said tentatively.
“Come on, Watson. I want to get some sleep tonight.”
“But wouldn’t you maybe sleep easier, Lieutenant, if you were sure you had the right man?”
Finch started incredulously at his subordinate. “Good Lord, Watson. Have you caught it too? Are you going to start delivering a deductive hypothesis?”
The Sergeant blinked. “No sir, Lieutenant. I don’t want to do that. Nothing like it. I just want to say who done it.”
“Horse feathers!” Finch snorted. “If I hadn’t known you for seventeen years, I’d start thinking you were Vernon Crews and this was some bright new rib. Come on.”
“All right,” said Watson reluctantly. “But when Mrs. Hudson up and knocked on the door and you said, ‘Who’s there?’ then all of a sudden like I knew the answer.”
“Come on,” Finch urged, with a little of his drunk-wheedling tone. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“But Lieutenant,” Ridgely protested. “That’s not fair to us. Certainly we want to hear what theory the Sergeant advances. Think of it: The Case Solved by Watson. A title of titles, my dear Finch; you couldn’t deprive us of the pleasure.”
Watson gave Ridgly a black scowl. “I ain’t kidding,” he said.
“Go on, Herman,” Jackson urged. “No harm done.”
“No? We’d make a laughingstock of the police department, that’s all the harm we’d do.”
This seemed to decide the Sergeant. He turned facing the room and blocked the doorway with his bulky body. Drew Furness, chained to Watson’s left wrist, found himself abruptly jerked about by the maneuver, so that he too directly faced the group’s curious stares.
“Sorry, Professor,” said the Sergeant. “You’ll get unlocked pretty soon.”
“Watson,” Finch snapped, “this is insubordination. I’ll break you for this.”
“OK, sir,” Watson replied submissively. “But I just want to tell you what I thought. You see when Mrs. Hudson knocked on that door—”
“Don’t be a fool, Watson. Come on. How can knocking on a door tell you who killed Worth?”
“When she knocked on that door,” the Sergeant went right on, “she just knocked twice, like this: knock! knock! And you said, ‘Who’s there?’ just like in the game.”
“Game!” Finch snorted.
“So I was still worrying about that clue. I know what you think about clues, Lieutenant, but a guy does have to explain them, don’t he, or else there’s no telling what the defense’ll do, and it seemed to me a good lawyer, like Max Farrington say, mightn’t like your explanation so much. So I was thinking about Amy Gray, and Mrs. Hudson went knock! knock! and you said, who’s there, and I said Amy, and then like I was playing the game, I said Amy who? and right like a flash I knew who killed him. It was just like watching the ball shoot into the ten-thousand hole and all of a sudden the lights go on.”
“For heaven’s sake, Sergeant.” Jonadab Evans exclaimed, “do come clean, as the Lieutenant might say. Are you trying to beat us at our own suspense tricks?” The Sergeant looked surprised. “You still don’t get it? Look, you know that game. Sure you do. You say, knock! knock! and this other guy says, who’s there? and you say Goldy, and he says Goldy who? and you say Goldy’s where you you find it. It’s a gag, see?”
“The whole damned thing’s a gag if you ask me,” said Finch. “Just what the hell, Sergeant, are you blethering about?”
“Amy who?” said Watson. “Amy Gray. See? It’s just like in the game. It’s a gag. Amy Gray doesn’t mean a name. It’s a word. Like a pun, sort of. Amy Gray means what you said. That French word.”
“French word!” Finch was near exploding.
But the others saw. “Amy Gray!” Furness gasped. “Why, of course—émigré! It couldn’t mean anything else.”
“But why on earth?” demanded Jonadab Evans, seemingly a little puzzled at hearing his own accusation repeated. “If he really is Herr Doktor Otto Federhut—”
“He’s a Nazzy,” said Sergeant Watson simply.
“Sergeant,” Harrison Ridgly laughed, “this is too beautiful to spoil, but you’re simply crazy. Herr Federhut was thrown out of Austria and his whole professional career shot to hell merely because he refused to be what you call a Nazzy.”
“Sure. I know. They do that. A friend of mine, he was working on a detail investigating the Bund. That’s a trick of theirs. They throw a guy out and then he comes over to this country, and on account of he’s an amy-gray he gets to know all the people who’re working over here against the Nazzies. So he sends reports back home and they get to work on their relatives
and that stops them. Sure, that’s what he was up to. Remember how anxious he was all the time for Weinberg to introduce him to the Germans in the anti-Nazzy movement here?”
“But my dear Watson,” Ridgly smilingly protested, “what about the scene at the Rathskeller? Surely he and the headwaiter should have fallen on each other’s necks and burst into the Horst Wessel Lied.”
“An act,” the Sergeant said patiently. “He’d spotted the Lieutenant and the others. It was a swell chance to wipe out any doubts they might have after Furness’ adventure with the spies.”
“And you explain his refusal to give a solution incriminating someone else in the same way that Evans did?”
“No. I don’t think so. I just think maybe he has a conscience.”
Finch was beginning to look interested. “What have you got to say to all this, Mr. Federhut?”
“What I have to say?” Federhut rose in all his whitemaned juristic dignity and walked to the door, where he stood calmly confronting the burly Sergeant. “This have I to say, my dear Watson. I was at the Office of the Association for the Placement of Refugees in the Professions. Your own police have with Herr Arbuthnot spoken. He knew me in Wien; there is of impersonation no question. I was there.”
“Sure,” said Sergeant Watson. “You were there. Later on.”
“And before that,” Federhut continued, “I was on the omnibus to Pasadena and then in a taxi to the Association.”
“Look,” the Sergeant objected. “Dr. Bottomley saw you get on the bus, sure. But that don’t mean you went to Pasadena. You got off a couple of blocks later and took a taxi to Second and Main. You left Hollywood at 11:32. That’d get you downtown about 11:50. What happened there wouldn’t take more than ten minutes. That still leaves you thirty-five minutes to get to Pasadena, with another taxi.”
Federhut laughed. “It is komisch that twice in one eveing I the judge must the defendant be, but it is fortunate that my prosecutors are so stupid. Why should I wish to kill Herr Worth?”
“You didn’t. Not at first. It’s like the Lieutenant said about the professor. You just wanted to steal a march on the others. That’s what you were doing at the phone—reading numbers to a music store and asking them what those records were. So you give Bottomley the slip and sneak down to the Hotel Elite to see what goes on. But when you find Worth, he’s drunk and he gets to boasting and you see he really know’s what you’re up to and he can prove it. So you kill him. You see, sir,” he turned to Finch, “that’s what we kept forgetting. We’ve found out that what Worth planted about Bottomley and Evans and Furness was all true, so hadn’t it ought to seem that the rest was true, too?”
“As a Holmesian,” said Federhut, “I am delighted by this Watson solution. As a jurist, I am unimpressed. It is conjecture, and else nothing. If you were in court, my dear Watson, how would you attempt of this the proof?”
“That’s a cinch. I’d round up both those taxi drivers and put them on the stand. They’d fix you right on the scene of the crime.”
“That is true,” Federhut reflected judiciously. “Their testimony would be of great weight, is it not so? And therefore, my dear Watson, I am going to have to ask you to move out of that doorway while I leave the house, or I shall be regretfully forced to fire into you as one might through a lock.”
He turned just enough to let them see the gun in his hand. “I had no fear, gentlemen, of your collective cleverness. So hard did you strain that I knew the simple truth was safe from discovery. But our cherished Sergeant has altered my plans. He has unfortunately destroyed the work for which I came here; let that be to him some consolation if he is wise enough to move from that door and live.”
No one spoke, not even Harrison Ridgly. The twist had come so suddenly, so quietly, that speech was meaningless.
“Let it also be to him a consolation that he has guessed shrewdly. It is even as he said. I found that Worth was of certain documents in possession. These I removed, and with them some few others. I am generous, you see. There was an affidavit—I do not know how obtained—proving that Mr. Evans was not the true John O’Dab; and there were other statements which might to Herr Ridgly have been of interest. I like you gentlemen, and was glad to serve you. But of what I was most glad was that I had served the Third Reich and our Leader.” He said this simply, without fanaticism.
“You speak in this country too much of the wickedness of the Nazis. You make of them ogres and monsters. We are human, meine Herren, and what you will not understand—we wish you well. It is your fight, too, that we are fighting. Your fight against the Jews and the international moneylenders who suck you dry. We do not want war and hatred, though the Chamberlains and the Roosevelts and the other warmongers—the petty tyrants like Smigly-Rydz and Beck—may yet drive us to it. But if war comes, remember that it is for you too that we are fighting; and that when we are through we shall help you to create a new America, a free America purged at long last of its oppressors and defilers.”
“I’ll be damned,” Ridgly murmured. “He believes it.”
“Of course.” Federhut was surprised. “Because I have killed such a low thing as Stephen Worth, do you think me a villain? I killed him because he would have ruined my mission here. That mission is now, alas, fully ruined. You all know of it, and I could not kill you all. You are my friends. Besides, it would be very foolish. I must escape now.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Finch grunted. “You can’t get far.”
“You do not know our power, Herr Leutnant. I can get very far indeed. Otto Federhut shall forever vanish. But I shall continue his work somewhere. It does not matter where. For myself, I should willingly pay for my crime. In my young days as a judge, I should have despised a man who sought his death to escape. But I know now that there are higher obligations than a man to his life owes, or even to his death. I must go on. And therefore must I again ask you, Sergeant, to move from that door or to be shot.”
“I’m staying here,” said Sergeant Watson stolidly.
“Put up that gun, Federhut,” Finch warned, “or I’ll drill you.”
“By the time you had your gun drawn, Herr Leutnant, your Sergeant would be dead. Do you too care so little for human life?”
For an instant Federhut had turned his head to answer Finch. In that instant everything happened. Furness and Ridgly moved at once, as though some extrasensory preception had coordinated their actions. Furness gave a sudden twist to his right arm which flung the handcuffed Sergeant flat to the floor. At the same time the professor’s free left arm grasped the Austrian.
It was an heroic gesture; but though it saved the Sergeant, it would have been fatal for his prisoner had not Ridgly also acted. A desperate lunge from the couch hurled him at Federhut’s right hand, which held the automatic. Both his hands seized that wrist and held it motionless.
But they could not hold the trigger finger. Even as Furness dragged the jurist to the floor and Finch, service revolver drawn, stood over him, that finger tightened its grip, the automatic spewed forth its full load, and fresh blood spread over the bandages of Harrison Ridgly III.
Federhut seemed to look with horror on his own murdering hand. “I had not meant that,” he gasped. “It has nothing accomplished. Herr Leutnant!” he cried. “Why do you not shoot?”
“I think,” Finch reflected aloud, “that I’d sooner see you stand trial. It’ll help purge America.”
Chapter 25
The living room of 221B was again almost deserted. Finch and Watson had done their duty; Otto Federhut was by now on his way to the county jail. An ambulance had come and gone; Sirrah would have to find a new editor. Only Jackson, Furness, and Maureen lingered in that event-crammed room.
“Time you were off to bed, Maureen,” said the Lieutenant. “Finch is a good guy; he’ll try to keep this quiet as long as he can. But the reporters will be around here soon.”
“Please,” said Maureen. “I’m still sort of dizzy and all jangly inside. And tomorrow I have to face F. X.
and the press and I really don’t know yet what’s happened. Won’t you sit down a minute and let me ask questions?”
“I don’t know if I can answer them all myself,” Jackson grinned. “But I’m game for a try.”
“I still can’t believe that nice old man was a spy and a murderer. He didn’t leave us much doubt, though, did he? But what I really don’t understand is Mr. Ridgly. Federhut can’t have shot him—he was at the Rathskeller when it happened. All three of us saw him there. Does that mean that it was Dr. Bottomley, the way Ridgly said? And why did Ridgly jump at Federhut that way? He must have known it was certain death. And I know we ought to speak well of—of the dead, but he didn’t seem to me like a man who would sacrifice his life for Sergeant Watson’s.”
“Whoa,” Jackson protested. “That’s enough for a start.”
“Sorry, Andy. I’m still all tangled. But why—?”
“I think it makes sense. Remember what the Sergeant said. We’d learned that three of Worth’s planted scandals were true. Isn’t it probable that the others were, too? All right; therefore Federhut was a spy, and Ridgly had killed his sister. It isn’t a pretty thought, but it makes everything else come out logically. Evans’ old Russian woman was a fraud, but her story was close enough to the truth to make Ridgly worry. He had killed his sister out of jealousy, and found that life wasn’t worth much without her. All his bitterness and drunkenness stemmed from that. Now it looked as though the truth would come out. So he tried to commit suicide; only it pleased his sardonic gag sense to make that suicide look like Worth’s murder. Fortunately for him, that Thor Bridge plant made it possible. He cut his lip, painted RACHE on the wall, and shot himself with the automatic attached to a weight hanging out the window. He probably held the gun with the black mourning band so as to fool the parafin test. Then, by the damnedest chance, he lived and had to go through with it by pretending it had been attempted murder. When he went for Federhut, he wasn’t sacrificing his life for justice; he was grabbing the opportunity to finish off the suicide that had gone wrong.”
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars Page 26