The Whistling Legs

by Roman McDougald

  “At the moment,” said Cabot, “it’s too complicated for all of us.”

  She looked off again. “I’ve been waiting,” she said at last, “for them to ask me about that key.”

  “Key?”

  “My key, you know—the one you took when you found me in Deb’s room. You didn’t tell them about it, did you?”

  He said, “No. I’m a nice man.”

  He did not add that the reason he hadn’t mentioned it was because he had discovered that a skeleton key would fit the lock.

  Still, the point might be worth reconsidering.

  She said softly, “You are nice. You didn’t want to create unnecessary trouble for me.”

  He thought: Now I’ve played the devil. I’m nice. And I was already young, handsome, and human looking.

  She seemed to have drifted closer, so much closer that he felt crowded against the iron railing behind him. She said, “You realized that it wasn’t my key the murderer had used, but that Deb had let him in——”

  He said, “I’m sure that Deb didn’t let him in.”

  “But——“ He had an impression that the form so near him had turned rigid for a moment. “But how——”

  He said, “There’s a question in my mind as to how it was done.”

  She sighed. “I’m so tired of questions,” she breathed, “these eternal questions. Don’t you ever get tired, Cabot?”

  He hesitated for a long moment and then thought: My fingers are crossed, Lib. This, as Carlo would say, is in the interests of science. I won’t weaken. You can do it better, anyway.

  But Lib couldn’t. That was the hell of it. The good girls never could. You could kiss one of them like this and you’d get all sentimental and want to go out and slay a dragon or two and then come back and kiss her again. But when you kissed one like Mrs. Darryl Rand you didn’t want to go anywhere. You just wanted to stay there and be the dragon yourself.

  She gasped again, “Philip—I’m surprised!”

  He said, “No, you’re not. And neither am I.”

  She waited a moment and then pulled lightly at a lock of his hair. “Don’t spoil it now,” she said. “It was sudden and overwhelming, wasn’t it?”

  Her hands slowly unclasped themselves from his neck, crept across his shoulders, and rested casually, palms downward, against the lapels of his coat.

  He thought: If I were to turn her loose at this moment...

  But he didn’t. He kissed her again, so interminably that he could almost count the quickened beats of the heart pressed against his ribs, and the hands which had lain flat upon his coat abruptly clenched themselves upon the cloth and clung.

  He released her, and after a second the closed fingers flattened out again, easily, almost automatically, as her body very gradually moved away.

  His own hand was stealing backward to the railing. He grasped it behind him and waited, his eyes turning aside. He knew that it could be done now in a flash, in a mere stumble, with the appearance of accident.

  But she was waiting too long.

  Her fingers unexpectedly tightened again, drawing him toward her. “Come here!” she whispered huskily. “You’re nearly over that railing!”

  He glanced back. “So I was,” he said wonderingly and then looked back at her. “I almost fell for you, didn’t I?”

  But he thought: Maybe I spoiled the plan. Maybe I’m Casanova...

  When he went back down the stairs, he found Carlo hovering in the corridor, looking longingly at the study door.

  Carlo observed his approach speculatively. “I note, Cabot,” he remarked, “that you are quite interested in the third floor. I suppose you’ve deduced that the murderer ran up there after shooting Darryl?”

  Cabot said, “That’s sort of elementary, isn’t it?” He took out his cigarettes. “Up the stairs and down the fire-escape.”

  Carlo replied sagely, “The one postulate by no means follows from the other.”

  “No?” Cabot stuck a cigarette into his mouth. “Then the murderer is still up there. Then it’s Theresa.”

  Carlo threw up his hands. “You have an unfortunate tendency, Cabot,” he answered, “to reduce everything at once to human terms, to fling names about.” He shook his head. “It’s much better, I think, to keep it upon a level of strictly impersonal ratiocination. That’s why Courtney Rathbone always referred to the persons involved as X, Y, and Z.”

  Cabot said, “I’d bet Courtney would have this thing solved before breakfast.”

  “I doubt it—under present conditions.” Carlo frowned. “Everywhere I go around this house one of these big, blundering Irishmen tells me to move on. As if it were a street corner——”

  Cabot broke in. “All cops are not big, blundering Irishmen anywhere on earth, Pugh, except in mystery novels. Of the three here, it so happens that not one wears the green. Kroll is of Dutch descent, and Fant and Fleming both English.”

  Carlo shook his head decisively. “Don’t let the names deceive you, Cabot,” he said. “I’d make a small wager that their mothers came straight from County Kilkenny.” Cabot went down to the drawing-room, where Boynton and Kroll were having a pre-dawn conference.

  Kroll was saying, “The question is why that girl finally decided to tell us about taking the note. It sounds plausible enough that she simply hadn’t wanted to go out on a limb until she was sure that the note figured in the murder. But——”

  Boynton said, “Yes—but. We must remember that she was unaware that Rand had already talked. At the very moment she became certain that the note was a part of the plot, Rand was about to make his statement, and she was faced with an acute danger. She saw that he might, after all, be able to identify her as the thief. She had to anticipate whatever he might say.”

  Cabot joined in. “I think that Jan, as shrewd as she is, would have weighed the probabilities a little more precisely. Apart from the fact that Rand could conceivably have guessed who took the note, there were at least two other persons who might just as conceivably have known. You will recall that Carlo had mentioned to her about hearing voices in the corridor soon after she had returned to her room. From this she would have had to conclude that one of those persons—Theresa—could have recognized her. Moreover, from the very fact that Carlo had mentioned it to her, she might have inferred that he knew who had passed his door. And assuming that the murderer was neither Carlo nor Theresa, there was a third person in this house who was aware that she had the note and who stole it from her.” Boynton nodded thoughtfully. “All in all, Jan Utley would ultimately have had to recognize the strong chance that she could be identified as the person who had originally stolen the note and who was therefore presumably the murderer. Her telling us about it at this point was an indication of intelligence rather than of innocence.”

  Kroll pulled at the lobe of his ear. “Especially,” he added, “as she was sending her sister at the same time to work on Rand. That seems suspicious to me.” He stopped. “All this looks like a first-class murder plot that started backfiring.”

  “Sooner or later,” remarked Boynton, “even the most careful and methodical murderer gets in a hurry, and that’s the beginning of the end. In this case the haste began, understandably enough, when the killer pressed that automatic to Rand’s chest and fired. He missed, and the whole structure of his plan immediately began to totter under him.”

  Kroll absentmindedly drew some papers toward him on the table and began to skim through them.

  “What’s new?” inquired Cabot. “Is that the autopsy report?”

  The Captain nodded. “It seems,” he muttered reflectively, “that Deb was killed with something like a hunting knife.”

  Cabot said, “A hunting knife?”

  “Yes.” Kroll paused. “Or a Commando knife. Or a jungle knife.”

  Cabot got up suddenly and walked across the room. He halted before the mirrored wall and stood there for a moment. “Hunting,” he repeated.

  Kroll studied his thoughtful face in the mir
ror. “I know what conclusions you’re coming to, Cabot,” he drawled. “I got there in time to welcome you.”

  Cabot revolved slowly to face him. “Who in this house, Kroll, is a hunter or a fisherman?”

  “We’re digging into that phase now—quietly. It seems to fit in, doesn’t it?” Kroll looked through his spectacles at the papers. “The veronal was in Rand’s whisky and in Deb’s malted milk. There was enough in the bottle of scotch to make even a small drink put Rand out cold. There wasn’t quite so much in the milk, but it wasn’t necessary, since the killer could be reasonably sure that Deb would drink all of it.”

  “As it happened, though,” said Cabot, “he didn’t drink all of it at once.”

  “No. He had sipped a little of it before you came in, just enough to make him drowsy. He drank the rest as you were leaving, and the stomach analysis shows that he was killed about fifteen minutes later.” Kroll stopped. “How long were you in Rand’s room?”

  “A trifle less than that, I’d say.”

  “Very likely. The killer wouldn’t have started anything until you went downstairs. That was his cue.” Kroll pulled off his glasses. “Any way you look at it, it was 10:30.” Boynton said, “When you came downstairs, Phil, you saw nobody except Theresa. Did you see her immediately?”

  “No. It was when I came back from the drawing-room.”

  “Then she could have used the stairs behind you or the fire-escape, which comes down by the dining-room.”

  “She not only could but would have,” commented Kroll. “She would have killed Deb as quickly as possible and then have taken pains to get down in record time to show herself—as if by accident—to Cabot.”

  Boynton’s brow was furrowed. “What I was thinking of, primarily,” he said, “is whether Theresa wouldn’t have been likely to recognize Jan when she saw her coming out of Rand’s bedroom with that note. If so, the fact that she kept silent about it both to Rand and to us is highly suspicious. Or would be,” he amended, “if she had had any reason whatever to kill either Deb or Rand.”

  Cabot got up, glancing at his watch, and Boynton said, “It’s nearly six o’clock. That’s too late to go to bed and too early to go anywhere else.”

  Cabot replied, “I’m going to give two persons a good sound motive for killing me.”

  He went into the library and put in a long distance call to Cleveland. Trotter was an old friend, and his sleepy reactions were only mildly indignant.

  “Didn’t know it was this important,” he mumbled. “I was going to wire you. Yes, there’s a Mrs. Martin Kirk listed in the directory. We didn’t check otherwise. Want her address?”

  “And telephone number.” Cabot wrote it down on the back of an envelope and then asked, “What about Theresa Church?”

  “I couldn’t get a line on any woman operative of that name in a private agency here. Are you sure that’s her name, Phil?”

  “No,” said Cabot. “It probably isn’t.”

  He promptly put in another Cleveland call for the number which Trotter had given him. While he was waiting for the call to go through he smoked two cigarettes mechanically, without enjoying either. As he crushed out the second, he realized that he had unexpectedly developed a certain degree of nervousness.

  He glared down at the telephone, wondering what subconscious train of thought had brought about that unaccountable feeling of tension.

  The voice at the other end of the wire was neither drowsy nor indignant. It was expressionless. It said, “Yes?”

  “I apologize, Mrs. Kirk, for calling you at such an ungodly hour. But I have just learned your address, and the matter is urgent. I’m afraid, in fact, that I have some very bad news for you.”

  He paused deliberately, waiting for her to answer. When she did, he marveled at the continued self-possession of her voice. There was no alarm whatever in it; there was only a faint intonation of curiosity.

  “You have bad news for me?” she inquired. “For Mrs. Martin Kirk?”

  “Yes,” said Cabot. “You are Mrs. Martin Kirk?”

  She said rather impatiently, “Of course. Go ahead, please.”

  “Your stepson, Mrs. Kirk, was brutally murdered here in New York night before last. His body is being held, unclaimed, and I thought you would be interested.”

  There was a short pause, as if she were thinking it over, before she answered calmly, “I am not the one to notify. He has an aunt or something, I believe, in Denver. As for myself, I have never even seen him. All that has to do with a part of Martin Kirk’s past which began and ended long before I met him.”

  “I see.” Cabot’s voice slowed. “But perhaps you could answer some questions about this young man, Mrs. Kirk——”

  She broke in quickly. “But I assure you that I can’t. I know nothing whatever about him, and this is really no concern of mine.”

  Cabot said very distinctly, “Isn’t it? I should have explained, Mrs. Kirk, that the murder occurred in the house where you now have a private detective conducting an investigation.”

  “What?” The word came in an incredulous gasp, and then there was a pause. “I beg your pardon? A private detective?” She waited a moment, but Cabot did not go on. “What leads you to believe that I employed him?”

  Cabot said casually, “Oh, come now, Mrs. Kirk. She has already made a complete statement about your employing her——”

  “She? The detective, you mean? For heaven’s sake!” She stopped again momentarily, and her voice became thoughtful. “What does this woman—this private detective—look like?”

  “There wouldn’t be any point in going into that, would there, if you haven’t employed her?”

  “No. Certainly not. But——“ She paused once more. “I can’t help feeling just a little curious about her appearance.”

  Cabot said, “She is an enormously fat woman who has a pronounced limp, a slight cast in her left eye, and a peculiar habit of constantly dunking pretzels into her beer.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was seven-thirty before he could get to the apartment. He rushed in, half expecting to find Lib already gone, but she was still there. She was putting on her hat. He kissed her, and the hat fell off.

  She said, “Phil Cabot, have you been kissing another girl?”

  He stared at her, thunderstruck. “My god!” he exclaimed. “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, the tempo has changed since yesterday. There’s a different vibration.” She looked back at his disconcerted face for a moment and then her voice changed. “Phil, you look awful. You’re half dead from lack of sleep. Sit down there and relax while I get you some breakfast——”

  “Now, wait a minute—confound it!” he interrupted. “Do you think I want you to spend all your time cooking my breakfast? Come here.”

  She came over and perched on the arm of the chair while he leaned back with a sigh. He said, “Lib, this is absolutely the last day. I’m going to break this case in the next twelve hours or let somebody else do it.” He broke off, studying her profile. “Talking about different vibrations,” he said, “what’s happened to you? Maybe you don’t know it, but there’s a sort of far-off look on your face. And it’s not the right kind of far-off look. Couldn’t you sleep last night?”

  “Well, yes, but——“ She paused. “Well, I woke up early this morning and I lay there a long time, thinking——”

  He asked anxiously, “Thinking? About what?”

  “A lot of things. All the things, maybe, that people with any sense think about when they get married. About you. And me. And the future. And whether or not we’ve made a mistake——”

  “A mistake?” He seized her hand and held it tightly. “Listen, Lib! All the girls who have ever been married have had those same goofy ideas. It’s a kind of measles of matrimony that you have to go through in order to develop immunity.”

  She was shaking her head. “I don’t agree with you, Phil. Our case is rather unusual. And perhaps it would be a good idea if every marria
ge had a breathing spell, so to speak, like this—a time in between in which people could think things over dispassionately and be sensible.”

  “Sensible? We’re not supposed to be sensible. We’re in love, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, but——“ She was looking across the room, avoiding his gaze. “What is love? Is it the same thing to you that it is to me? I doubt it. Maybe love isn’t just one feeling. Maybe it’s a lot of different feelings, and they have a way of adding up to one thing today and to something else tomorrow.” She stopped. “And, after all, this was one of those war marriages.”

  “Well, there is a war going on, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You know it isn’t. What I mean is that you got sentimental, as most men do when they’re about to go into the unknown. Everything was all set, the agency was closed, you even had your train reservations. Then at the last minute you noticed me—and without ever before having intended to—“ she gave a little shrug— “you married me—well, as a sort of afterthought.”

  His fingers tightened over her hand. He said, “I married you as a forever-afterthought.”

  “Oh, I know, but—you see, I understand you, Phil. I understand you as you are at this moment and as you’ll be a year from today. And I know that it will crack up eventually. When you come back——”

  “Lib, what are you getting at? Or are you getting anywhere?”

  She was still looking across the room. “The point is,” she said, “that it’s not yet too late—for anything. We could get it annulled—now. Couldn’t we? I mean——“ She stopped in growing confusion.

  He was staring at her incredulously. “Annulled?” he exclaimed. “Now? I’ll be damned if we do! We’ll wait until later and get divorced.”

  She glanced around at him then with her startled eyes and began to laugh a little. But the laughter didn’t get quite as far as her eyes. She said, “You’re such a harum-scarum, Phil Cabot. And this only illustrates what I mean——”

  He said, “This illustrates what I mean,” and pulled her head down toward his mouth. But just then the telephone began ringing on the table three feet away and continued to ring persistently and stridently. He held her tightly and said viciously, “Let it ring! Let it ring its bolts loose-”