Sid Wheeler, shot.
Outside the booth, the shaggy dog stood on its hind legs and pawed at the glass. Kidd stared at it. Sid Wheeler had bought a dog. Sid Wheeler had been shot with intent to kill. Sid had given the dog to actor Asbury. Asbury had been murdered. Asbury had given the dog to him, Peter Kidd. And less than half an hour ago, an attempt had been made on his life.
The dog of a murdered man.
Well, there wasn't any question now of telling the police. Sid might have started this as a hoax, but a wheel had come off somewhere, and suddenly.
He'd phone the police right here and now. He dropped the dime and then—on a sudden hunch—dialed his own office number instead of that of headquarters. When the blonde's voice answered, he started talking fast: "Peter Kidd, Miss Latham. I want you to close the office at once and go home. Right away, but be sure you're not followed before you go there. If anyone seems to be following you, go to the police. Stay on busy streets meanwhile. Watch out particularly for a tall, thin man who has a stain on the front of his coat. Got that?"
"Yes, but—but the police are here, Mr. Kidd. There's a Lieutenant West of Homicide here now, just came into the office asking for you. Do you still want me to—?"
Kidd sighed with relief. "No, it's all right then. Tell him to wait. I'm only a few blocks away and will come there at once."
He dropped another coin and called Bethesda Hospital. Sid Wheeler was in serious, but not critical, condition. He was still unconscious and wouldn't be able to have visitors for at least twenty-four hours.
He walked back to the Wheeler Building, slowly. The first faint glimmering of an idea was coming. But there were still a great many things that didn't make any sense at all.
"Lieutenant West, Mr. Kidd," said the blonde.
The big man nodded. "About a Robert Asbury, who was killed this morning. You knew him?"
"Not before this morning," Kidd told him. "He came here—ostensibly—to offer me a case. The circumstances were very peculiar."
"We found your name and the address of this office on a slip of paper in his pocket," said West. "It wasn't in his handwriting. Was it yours?"
"Probably it's Sidney Wheeler's handwriting, Lieuten-ant. Sid sent him here, I have cause to believe. And you know that an attempt was made to kill Wheeler this morning?"
"The devil! Had a report on that, but we hadn't con-nected it with the Asbury murder as yet." "And there was another murder attempt," said Kidd. "Upon me. That was why I phoned. Perhaps I'd better tell you the whole story from the beginning."
The lieutenant's eyes widened as he listened. From time to time he turned to look at the dog.
"And you say," he said, when Kidd had finished, "that you have the money in an envelope in your pocket? May I see it?"
Peter Kidd handed over the envelope. West glanced inside it and then put it in his pocket. "Better take this along," he said. "Give you a receipt if you want, but you've got a witness." He glanced at the
blonde.
"Give it to Wheeler," Kidd told him. "Unless—maybe you've got the same idea I have. You must have, or you wouldn't have wanted the money." "What idea's that?"
"The dog," said Peter Kidd, "might not have anything to do with all this at all. Today the dog was in the hands of three persons—Wheeler, Asbury, and myself. An at-tempt was made—successfully, I am glad to say, in only one case out of the three—to kill each of us. But the dog was merely the—ah—deus ex machina of a hoax that didn't come off, or else came off too well. There's something else involved—the money."
"How do you mean, Mr. Kidd?"
"That the money was the object of the crimes, not the dog. That money was in the hands of Wheeler, Asbury, and myself, just as was the dog. The killer's been trying to get that money back."
"Back? How do you mean, back? I don't get what you're driving at, Mr. Kidd."
"Not because it's a hundred dollars. Because it isn't."
"You mean counterfeit? We can check that easy enough, but what makes you think so?"
"The fact," said Peter Kidd, "that I can think of no other motive at all. No reasonable one, I mean. But postu-late, for the sake of argument, that the money is counter-feit. That would, or could, explain everything. Suppose one of Sid Wheeler's tenants is a counterfeiter."
West frowned. "All right, suppose it."
"Sid could have picked up the rent on his way to his office this morning. That's how he makes most of his collections. Say the rent is a hundred dollars. Might have been slightly more or less—but by mistake, sheer mistake, he gets paid in counterfeit money instead of genuine.
"No counterfeiter—it is obvious—would ever dare give out his own product in such a manner that it would di-rectly trace back to him. It's—uh—"
"Shoved," said West. "I know how they work."
"But as it happened, Sid wasn't banking the money. He needed a hundred to give to Asbury along with the dog. And—"
He broke off abruptly and his eyes got wider. "Lord," he said, "it's obvious!"
"What's obvious?" West growled.
"Everything. It all spells Henderson."
"Huh?"
"Henderson, the job printer on the floor below this. He's the only printer-engraver among
Wheeler's tenants, to begin with. And Asbury stopped in there this morning, on his way here. Asbury paid him for some cards out of a ten-dollar bill he got from Wheeler! Henderson saw the other tens in Asbury's wallet when he opened it, knew that Asbury had the money he'd given Wheeler for the rent.
"So he sent his torpedo—the tall thin man—to see Asbury, and the torpedo kills Asbury and then finds the money is gone—he's given it to me. So he goes and kills Sid Wheeler—or thinks he does—so the money can't be traced back to him from wherever Asbury spent it.
"And then—" Peter Kidd grinned wryly— "I put my-self on the spot by dropping into Henderson's office to get Asbury's address, and explaining to him what it's all about, letting him know I have the money and know As-bury got it from Wheeler. I even tell him where I'm going—to Asbury's. So the torpedo waits for me there. It fits like a gl— Wait, I've got something that proves even better. This—"
As he spoke he was bending over and opening the second drawer of his desk. His hand went into it and came out with a short-barreled Police Positive.
"You will please raise your hands," he said, hardly chang-ing his voice. "And, Miss Latham, you will please phone for the police."
"But how," demanded the blonde, when the police had left, "did you guess that he wasn't a real detective?"
"I didn't," said Peter Kidd, "until I was explaining things to him, and to myself at the same time. Then it occurred to me that the counterfeiting gang wouldn't simply drop the whole thing because they'd missed me once, and—well, as it happens, I was right. If he'd been a real detec-tive, I'd have been making a fool out of myself, of course, but if he wasn't, I'd have been making a corpse out of my-self, and that would be worse."
"And me, too," said the blonde. She shivered a little. "He'd have had to kill both of us!"
Peter Kidd nodded gravely. "I think the police will find that Henderson is just the printer for the gang and the tall thin fellow is just a minion. The man who came here, I'd judge, was the real entrepreneur."
"The what?"
"The manager of the business. From the Old French entreprendre, to undertake, which comes from the Latin inter plus pren—"
"You mean the bigshot," said the blonde. She was open-ing a brand-new ledger. "Our first case. Credit entry-one hundred dollars counterfeit. Debit—given to police-one hundred dollars counterfeit. And—oh, yes, one shaggy dog. Is that a debit or a credit entry?"
"Debit," said Peter Kidd.
The blonde wrote and then looked up. "How about the credit entry to balance it off? What'll I put in the credit column?"
Peter Kidd looked at the dog and grinned. He said, "Just write in 'Not so damn shaggy!' "
Life and Fire
Mr. Henry Smith rang the door
bell. Then he stood looking at his reflection in the glass pane of the front door. A green shade was drawn down behind the glass and the reflection was quite clear.
It showed him a little man with gold-rimmed spectacles of the pince-nez variety, wearing a conservatively cut suit of banker's gray.
Mr. Smith smiled genially at the reflection and the re-flection smiled back at him. He noticed that the necktie knot of the little man in the glass was a quarter of an inch askew; he straightened his own tie and the reflection in the glass did the same thing.
Mr. Smith rang the bell a second time. Then he decided he would count up to fifty and that if no one answered by then, it would mean that no one was home. He'd counted up to seventeen when he heard footsteps on the porch steps behind him, and turned his head.
A loudly checkered suit was coming up the steps of the porch. The man inside the suit, Mr. Smith
decided, must have walked around from beside or behind the house. For the house was out in the open, almost a mile from its nearest neighbor, and there was nowhere else that Check-ered Suit could have come from.
Mr. Smith lifted his hat, revealing a bald spot only medium in size but very shiny. "Good afternoon," he said. "My name is Smith. I—"
"Lift 'em," commanded Checkered Suit grimly. He had a hand jammed into his right coat pocket.
"Huh?" There was utter blankness in the little man's voice. "Lift what? I'm sorry, really, but I don't—"
"Don't stall," said Checkered Suit. "Put up your mitts and then march on into the house."
The little man with the gold pince-nez glasses smiled. he raised his hands shoulder-high, and gravely replaced his hat. Checkered Suit had removed his hand halfway from his coat pocket and the heavy automatic it contained looked—from Mr. Smith's point of view—like a small can-non.
"I'm sure there must be some mistake," said Mr. Smith brightly, smiling doubtfully this time. "I am not a burglar, nor am I—"
"Shut up," Checkered Suit said. "Lower one hand enough to turn the knob and go on in. It ain't locked. But move slow."
He followed Mr. Smith into the hallway.
A stocky man with unkempt black hair and a greasy face had been waiting just inside. He glowered at the little man and then spoke over the little man's shoulder to Checkered Suit. "What's the idea bringing this guy in here?" he wanted to know.
"I think it's the shamus we been watching out for, Boss. It says its name's Smith."
Greasy Face frowned, staring first at the little man with the pince-nez glasses and then at Checkered Suit.
"Hell," he said. "That ain't a dick. Lots of people named Smith. And would he use his right name?"
Mr. Smith cleared his throat. "You gentlemen," he said, with only the slightest emphasis on the second word, "seem to be laboring under some misapprehension. I am Henry Smith, agent for the Phalanx Life and Fire Insur-ance Company. I have just been transferred to this ter-ritory and am making a routine canvass.
"We sell both major types of insurance, gentlemen, life and fire. And for the owner of the home, we have a combination policy that is a genuine innovation. If you will permit me the use of my hands, so I can take my rate book from my pocket, I should be very pleased to show you what we have to offer."
Greasy Face's glance was again wavering between the insurance agent and Checkered Suit. He said "Nuts" quite disgustedly.
Then his gaze fixed on the man with the gun, and his voice got louder. "You half-witted ape," he said. "Ain't you got eyes? Does this guy look like—?"
Checkered Suit's voice was defensive. "How'd I know, Eddie?" he whined, and the insurance agent felt the pressure of the automatic against his back relax. "You told me we were on the lookout for this shamus Smith, and that he was a little guy. And he coulda disguised him-self, couldn't he? And if he did come, he wouldn't be wearing his badge in sight or anything."
Greasy Face grunted. "Okay, okay, you done it now. We'll have to wait until Joe gets back to be sure. Joe's seen the Smith we got tipped was coining up here."
The little man in the gold-rimmed glasses smiled more confidently now. "May I lower my arms?" he asked. "It's quite uncomfortable to hold them this way."
The stocky man nodded. He spoke to Checkered Suit, "Run him over, though, just to make sure."
Mr. Smith felt a hand reach around and tap his pockets lightly and expertly, first on one side of him and then on the other. He noticed wonderingly that the touch was so light he probably wouldn't have noticed it at all if the stocky man's remark had not led him to expect it.
"Okay," said Checkered Suit's voice behind him. "He's clean, Boss. Guess I did pull a boner."
The little man lowered his hands, and then took a black leather-bound notebook from the inside
pocket of his banker's-gray coat. It was a dog-eared rate book.
He thumbed over a few pages, and then looked up smiling. "I would deduce," he said, "that the occupation in which you gentlemen engage—whatever it may be—is a hazardous one. I fear our company would not be inter-ested in selling you the life insurance policies for that reason.
"But we sell both kinds of insurance, life and fire. Does one of you gentlemen own this house?"
Greasy Face looked at him incredulously. "Are you try-ing to kid us?" he asked.
Mr. Smith shook his head and the motion made his pince-nez glasses fall off and dangle on their black silk cord. He put them back on and adjusted them carefully before he spoke.
"Of course," he said earnestly, "it is true that the manner of my reception here was a bit unusual. But that is no reason why—if this house belongs to one of you and is not insured against fire—I should not try to interest you in a policy. Your occupation, unless I should try to sell you life insurance, is none of my business and has nothing to do with insuring a house. Indeed, I understand that at one time our company had a large policy covering fire loss on a Florida mansion owned by a certain Mr. Capone who, a few years ago, was quite well known as—"
Greasy Face said, "It ain't our house."
Mr. Smith replaced his rate book in his pocket regret-fully. "I'm sorry, gentlemen," he said.
He was interrupted by a series of loud but dull thuds, coming from somewhere upstairs, as though someone was pounding frantically against a wall.
Checkered Suit stepped past Mr. Smith and started for the staircase. "Kessler's got a hand or a foot loose," he growled as he went past Greasy Face. "I'll go—"
He caught the glare in Greasy Face's eyes and was on the defensive again. "So what?" he asked. "We can't let this guy go anyway, can we? Sure, it was my fault, but now he knows we're watching for cops and that something's up. And if we can't let him go, what for should we be careful what we say?"
The little man's eyes had snapped open wide behind the spectacles. The name Kessler had struck a responsive chord, and for the first time the little man realized that he himself was in grave danger. The newspapers had been full of the kidnaping of millionaire Jerome Kessler, who was being held for ransom. Mr. Smith had noted the ac-counts particularly, because his company, he knew, had a large policy on Mr. Kessler's life.
But the lace of Mr. Smith was impassive as Greasy Face swung round to look at him. He stepped quite close to him to peer into his face, the gesture of a nearsighted man.
Mr. Smith smiled at him. "I hope you'll pardon me," he said mildly, "but I can tell that you are in need of glasses. I know, because I used to be quite nearsighted myself. Until I got these glasses, I couldn't tell a horse from an auto at twenty yards, although I could read quite well. I can recommend a good optometrist in Springfield who can—"
"Brother," said Greasy Face, "if you're putting on an act, don't overdo it. If you ain't—" He shook his head.
Mr. Smith smiled. He said deprecatingly, "You mustn't mind me. I know I'm talkative by nature, but one has to be to sell insurance. If one isn't that way by nature, he be-comes that way, if you get what I mean. So I hope you won't mind my—" "Shut up."
"Certainly. Do you mind if I sit d
own? I canvassed all the way out here from Springfield today, and I'm tired. Of course, I have a car, but—"
As he talked, he had seated himself in a chair at the side of the hall; now, before crossing his legs, he carefully adjusted a trouser leg so as not to spoil the crease.
Checkered Suit was coming down the stairs again. "He was kicking a wall," he said. "I tied up his foot again." He looked at Mr. Smith and then grinned at Greasy Face. "He sold you an insurance policy yet?"
The stocky man glowered back. "The next time you bring in—"
There were footsteps coming up the drive, and the stocky man whirled and put his eye to the crack between the shade of the door and the edge of its pane of glass. His right hand jerked a revolver from his hip pocket.
Then he relaxed and replaced the revolver. "It's Joe," he said over his shoulder to Checkered
Suit. He opened the door as the footsteps sounded on the porch.
A tall man with dark eyes set deep into a cadaverous face came in. Almost at once those eyes fell on the little insurance agent, and he looked startled. "Who the hell—?" Greasy Face closed the door and locked it. "It's an in-surance agent, Joe. Wanta buy a policy? Well, he won't sell you one, because you're in a hazardous occupation." Joe whistled. "Does he know—?"
"He knows too much." The stocky man jerked a thumb at the man in the checkered suit. "Bright Boy here even pops out with the name of the guy upstairs. But listen, Joe, his name's Smith—this guy here, I mean. Look at him close. Could he be this Smith of the Feds, that we had a tip was in Springfield?"
The cadaverous-faced man glanced again at the in-surance agent and grinned. "Not unless he shaved off twenty pounds weight and whittled his nose down an inch, it ain't."
"Thank you," said the little man gravely. He stood up. "And now that you have learned I am not who you thought I was, do you mind if I leave? I have a certain amount of this territory which I intend to cover by quitting time this evening."
The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders Page 3