“One,” Asey said, “but – oh, Sara, oh, my!”
He waited at the Leach house until after the rest had returned from town, and then he set out for Hell Hollow, where Hamilton was waiting for him.
“This place,” Hamilton said, “has my teeth chattering. Asey, I never saw anything like it. The way that mist comes out of the swamp, and those mud holes, and the noises – I never heard so many noises in all my life! Look, what sounds like this?”
He opened his mouth and produced something between a moan and a wail and a horse whinnying.
“It sounds like someone in a radio mystery,” Asey said, “at the end of a chapter. I think it was a raccoon, though. When’s your trooper due?”
“Twelve-thirty. He’s a new man, and I hope he can take it. If I had to park here alone until tomorrow morning, I’d go crazy. Honestly, look at those figures! One ofem fell down ten minutes ago, and do you know what I did? I fell flat on my stomach and drew my gun. Honestly, I’d rather spend the night in the morgue alone than sit here with those figures! Look at’em. Watch’em sway! And don’t,” he added, “tell me I’m nervous!”
“I’ll confess, Ham, I reached for my gun the first time I seen’em. Here’s your man cornin’. Tell him to put his car back of the house where it won’t be seen, an’ don’t tell him how you feel!”
“I won’t need to. He’ll feel the same way in fifteen minutes. What’s orders? Stick around and watch and listen?”
“Just about. Lane’ll relieve him. Tell him we’ll come back an’ visit with him later on. May hearten him.”
From the hollow they returned to Aunt Sara’s, where another trooper stood in the shadow of the garage.
“I rigged up that gadget on the foot bridge,” he said. “The fellow at the house and I did. Anyone who comes up from the swamp’ll get a blank cartridge going off under his feet. I can see the rest of the place, and I’ve got some other noise makers around. Sure, I’ll handle things.” The Brinleys and Weston both lived near the center of the town, and the troopers whom Lane had selected both assured Asey that they would look out for any emergency.
“I look after the fronts,” one said, “Biff takes the rears. We’ll see to everything.”
“That’s that,” Hamilton said to Asey as they got into the car. “What’s behind this, a crank? Sounds like one.”
“I thought that way at first,” Asey said, “but it’s too bright for a crank in some ways, an’ not bright enough in others. Besides, cranks like publicity. I been kind of waitin’ today to see if some hint of this crept out. But it ain’t. No one’s questioned Mary Randall’s goin’ to New York to see a sick cousin. No talk, no gossip. If there had been, I’d have said crank. Let’s drive around to Slade’s place, an’ see if he’s been there.” The door was still open. Asey went in and made for the ice box.
“If he’s dropped – aha!” he said. “Slade is alive an’ kickin’, an’ he’s had some milk an’ eaten up some odds an’ ends. Taken his money out, too. Now, let’s look into the clothes situation.”
The new white flannels and blue coat were still on the unmade bed.
“He’s not bein’ formal, anyway,” Asey said. “An’ here on the floor is the flannel shirt an’ dungarees he had on last night. These weren’t here this mornin’. Ham, I should of left someone here. Let’s look at the closet.”
He peered so long at Slade’s wardrobe that Hamilton became impatient.
“Taking inventory?”
“Nope. Ham, I’m awful dumb. He took a dark suit an’ a felt hat. An’ the lad who busted into Weston’s office tonight had on a dark suit an’ a felt hat. In this weather, with the whole populace in light clothes, an’ wearin’ straws an’ panamas, an’ yachtin’ caps, that’s just a little odd.”
“Think it was Slade? Say, Asey, what about fingerprints? Think of them at the hall?”
“I did, an’ so did he. He wasn’t much of a burglar, but the door an’ the top of Weston’s desk an’ everythin’ else he touched was wiped off nice’n neat. Ham, I’m droppin’ you off at the Town Hall, an’ you roust up someone to stay here. Take one of the two at the hall – they got a car there? Well, drive one up here, an’ you take his place.”
Hamilton protested. “And leave you careening around the countryside? I don’t like to, Asey. Everyone knows your car, and with this fellow loose—”
“Don’t worry about me. Tell you what, though. Get Lane, an’ have him park here in this shack tonight. Ne’n after you brought him here, come over to the hollow. I want to see if everythin’s all right there. Somehow I’m uneasy about that place.”
“So’m I,” Hamilton said. “All right, I’ll get Lane, and then follow you up. Asey, where are we getting in this mess?” Asey sighed.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. This seems to me the jerkiest thing. We know we’re on guard against somethin’, but we don’t know what. Everythin’s scattered around. Disconnected. We got a murder, an’ two blobs of deer ball. They’re worth nothin’ as clews. Nothin’ we can tell about’em, except that someone fired’em out of a shotgun. Just a shotgun, no special one. Just someone, no special someone. We can assume it’s a man. Deer ball is reasonably masculine. We can assume Mary Randall found out what he was up to. What she found an’ what he’s up to are both mysteries to me. Somethin’ to do with this infernal town. That’s all there is. What I’d give for somethin’ to stick my teeth into, an’ chaw on! This is just like pickin’ at chicken bones or lobster claws when what you want is a good hunk of porterhouse!”
He wondered as he sped along after leaving Hamilton, if it really could have been Slade who broke into the office. If it had been, what did he want? And if it was someone else, who was it? He felt sure that this intruder was not the person who had killed Mary Randall. That man didn’t do amateur, bungling jobs when it came to murder, so why should he be amateur and bungling when it came to burglary? And particularly in a building full of people, any one of whom might have happened in on him at any time.
This business of Slade dropping out of the picture was puzzling no matter how you looked at it. He might well be in hiding from Madame Meaux, but it didn’t seem much like Slade. Certainly he couldn’t be very conscience-stricken or very afraid of being caught, or he never would have returned to his house and so casually had a meal and changed his clothes.
“Huh!” Asey muttered. “Chicken bones! More like jack straws.”
He slowed down as he neared the hollow, for the mist from the swamp blanketed the road. First, he decided, he would drive out to Slade’s studio, any way, and then return and hang around with that trooper a while. Mentally he made a note to tell Lane to give the job to someone else the next night. One night’s vigil at Hell Hollow was enough for anyone.
As he passed by, he turned and glanced toward the house, and then he eased the big roadster to a quiet stop and snapped off the headlights.
A thin pencil of light was flicking around in the barn where Mary Randall kept her antiques.
And that was all wrong. The trooper had no keys to the shop, and his flashlight was a big powerful thing with a wide beam.
Asey got out of the car and quietly began to circle his way toward the barn.
At the foot of one of the tall pines he stumbled over something limp.
He knew even before he bent down just what he was going to find.
Chapter 7
Working feverishly in the darkness, Asey removed the twisted handkerchief gag from the trooper’s mouth, and with his pocketknife sawed through the heavy cord binding his wrists and ankles.
The trooper groaned and put one hand up to his head, gropingly, as though he weren’t quite sure what he expected to find there.
“Okay?” Asey said. “Not shot, or carved, or anythin’ like that?”
“Groggy. He got me from behind. Garrotted me—”
“Shh! Not so loud. He’s still there. Now listen to me. Stay here till you feel like movin’, an’ keep your eyes peeled. I’m goin’ to
look into things. Got your flashlight?”
“It’s somewhere around—”
“It don’t matter. Stay an’ rear guard for me. Got your gun?”
“He took it.” The trooper was bitter.
“Huh! Well, follow after me quick an’ quiet when you are able.”
He tiptoed around the barn and peeked in the window.
A man was sitting in front of the old Governor Winthrop desk which Asey had admired earlier in the day. Jane told him that Mary Randall had called it her “Office.”
“Somehow,” Jane had said, “it has within it a cash box, and letters, and orders, and Mary’s reminder lists, and auction lists, and customer files, and bills, and glue, and labels, and string, and stamps, and everything any business like hers needs in the line of stationery, and Lord knows what else besides. That only takes up the top part. We use the drawers for a number of varied purposes.”
The man, whose face was hidden in the shadow, was methodically going through each pigeon hole, flicking through the papers as though they were a pack of playing cards. With a bit of celluloid he opened the small locked compartment and went through its contents, and then he turned his attention to the small drawers under the pigeon holes, and the carved wooden pieces that lifted out.
Asey could imagine his snort of annoyance as the fellow slammed them back in place and picked up the celluloid again, to open the first full-sized drawer underneath. His long slim fingers prodded under the old linen that filled the drawer, and then he impatiently pushed it shut. The remaining drawers were investigated, and then the man went back once more to the pigeon holes.
Clearly he knew just exactly what he was after. It wasn’t money. He passed up the cash box with only the briefest examination. He didn’t want letters, or auction lists, or orders, or stamps, or glue.
Asey could hear the trooper coming toward him, and apparently the man in side heard him too, for he turned off his tiny flash. Mercifully the trooper had sense enough to stand still, and in a few moments, reassured that he was alone and unobserved, the man snapped his light on again and went back to his investigation of the pigeon holes.
The trooper pressed his own large electric torch into Asey’s hands.
“Go around back, quiet,” Asey breathed the words, “an’ then make a noise there. I’ll fix him.”
This time the man started to walk toward the sound before putting his light out. The instant he did that, Asey entered by the door and snapped on the trooper’s torch.
“Reach,” he said. “Reach, an’ stand still.”
To make it emphatic, Asey squeezed the trigger of the forty-five, unintentionally presenting a black eye to an unframed Currier and Ives lady tacked on a cross beam of the loft.
The trooper came dashing back.
“Take your gun,” Asey said. “It’s on top of the desk. That’s right. Continue to reach, feller, an’ turn around.”
It was not Mike Slade, or anyone he had ever seen before.
“Know him?” Asey asked the trooper. “No,” the trooper’s voice was choked and hoarse, “but you can bet I will before I get through with him, the—”
“Delve in the gent’s pockets,” Asey said, “an’ see if he happens to have any callin’ cards with him.”
To Asey’s surprise and to the trooper’s utter amazement, the first object to come from the man’s breast pocket was a tooled leather case of calling cards.
“Ah,” Asey said interestedly. “A socialite. What’s the name?”
The trooper held the card up to the light. “It says – oh, but it’s a fake. That can’t be right! It says, ‘Tertius Prettyman.’ ”
Tertius Prettyman. Asey thought back. That was Eloise Randall’s boy friend. Old man Prettyman’s son, at the point.
“Well, well, how do you do, Mr. Prettyman?” Asey said cordially. “My name is Mayo, an’ this gentleman you was so abrupt with is – what’s your name? Konrad? This is Konrad, Mr. Prettyman. Konrad, take some of Mrs. Randall’s mailin’ cord an’ tie up Mr. Prettyman, will you? There’s a nice yard stick over there, an’ if you was to put it under Mr. Prettyman’s knees, Konrad, an’ then lash his wrists an’ – ah. You know. That’s fine.”
While Konrad trussed up Mr. Prettyman, Asey turned on two lamps and drew the curtains.
“Cosier, I always think,” he said pleasantly as he strolled around the barn. “Now you know, Mary Randall has some fine stuff here. That’s a good piece of early Israel Trask, that pewter. Too good to be kicking around here. And she’s got good chests, too.” He paused for a moment in front of one and surveyed the sewing basket on it. “You much of a hand for old chests, Mr. Prettyman? I got a corker home. Not a family piece. I found it in the dump, an’ brought it home, an’ they tell me it’s seventeenth century – Prettyman, just exactly what is your basic an’ underlyin’ motive, anyway?”
“Just exactly what do you mean?” If his cool calm voice was any indication, Asey thought, this fellow was going to prove difficult, more difficult than he had first imagined. It was not the voice of anyone easily moved or easily bluffed. In fact, the fellow was definitely amused.
“What did you come after, Tertius?”
“Really, that’s none of your business, don’t you agree?”
Asey pulled out the forty-five and twirled it by the trigger guard.
“Wa-el,” he drawled, “it d’pends largely on your point of view,” he looked down at Prettyman, “an’ – when did you write that policy?”
“Put that thing away,” Tertius said. “It might go off again. What did you say? When did I what?”
“You know,” Asey said, “you look awfully like a trussed chicken down there on the floor. In fact, you look plain silly. I asked you when, more or less, you wrote that policy for Mrs. Randall?”
Tertius smiled, but plainly the answer was beneath his dignity.
Asey looked at him thoughtfully. Someone had said – probably it was Zeb Chase, that Tertius was around fifty. You had to look twice to believe it, for he was slight and wiry. His hands and eyes gave him away, and to a certain extent, his face.
Asey studied the face. In general it was weak, weak in a blurred way, as though the mould had been used too many times. But there was nothing pliable about it. Mr. Prettyman, he guessed, was the sort of person who would probably pursue the wrong course, but he would pursue it with vigor to the end.
Old man Prettyman – Asey tried to remember about the family. He knew something about them, if he could only drag the details from his mind. Old Prettyman had made a fortune from some patent medicine. Everyman’s Elixir, that was it. And he’d lost the for tune in some scheme like getting gold from seaweed, or silk purses from sows’ ears, or something. Asey wished he had paid more attention to gossip, and to Billingsgate gossip in particular. Anyway, this Tertius had inherited a lot from his mother, and still more from his father’s people. But Zeb Chase had said that he sold insurance, which meant that his inheritances had probably long since disappeared. He looked like the sort whose inheritances would disappear.
“Want him to talk?” Konrad inquired with a certain grimness.
“Don’t bother, he’ll get to it,” Asey said.
“What’s about a policy?” Konrad asked. “Whose policy? What policy? Where?”
“The policy our pal Tertius was hunting,” Asey said. “Only he went hunting like a man, an’ Mary Randall’s a woman. She didn’t bother to put it in her desk, or anywheres else special. She just stuck it in her sewin’ basket, over on top of that oak chest there. You see, Konrad, Tertius sold her a nice life insurance policy, only it was a fake.”
“It was a splendid policy,” Tertius corrected him pleasantly. “A sterling policy. Mayo, you wrong me.”
“Then why were you after it?”
“Say, I’ll make him talk!” Konrad unstrapped his belt and prepared to remove his coat. “I’ll show this—”
“Wait. Tertius, tonight you’ve busted into town property, you’ve assaulted a cop, stole hi
s gun, an’ you’ve c’mitted armed robbery. You – what’s that? You didn’t rob anything? Oh, don’t be finicky with details. We’ll fix that. You see, Tertius, d’spite your poise an’ nonchalance, you’re hardly in the driver’s seat. Far from it. Now, will you talk? If you don’t feel like it now, Konrad an’ I can take you to the barracks, an’ I’ll almost guarantee you’ll talk there. Much easier to break down right now. Konrad, bring that policy over to me, will you?”
Tertius smiled. “Don’t bother reading it, Mayo. I’ll tell you something that’ll make you wonder if you are in the driver’s seat as much as you seem to think. The beneficiary is your little friend Jane Warren.”
“So,” Asey said, “so it is.”
“Your little friend Jane. Oh, aren’t you and Zeb Chase going to be sorry you happened in here tonight! Twenty-five thousand, double it for death by violence. Who’s in the driver’s seat, Mayo? Fifty thousand dollars does make such a nice motive, doesn’t it? Roll it over on your tongue. Jane gets fifty thousand if Mary Randall dies by violence.”
Asey smiled back at him, but the smile was somewhat forced.
“Saturday,” Tertius went on, almost dreamily. “She gets the policy Saturday, because I bring it over then.”
It flashed through Asey’s mind that the shotgun had first gone into action Saturday night.
“On Monday,” Tertius said, “she’s killed. Life is a strange uncertain thing at best, isn’t it? One never knows, does one? Here, as the saying so cheerily goes, today. Gone tomorrow. By the way, Mayo, yours is a perilous occupation. How are you fixed in case of accidents and whatnot?”
“Tertius,” Asey said, “I begin to see. Eloise didn’t take you home last night, did she? She dropped you here, an’ you was goin’ to walk back, but you got curious about the cars parked outside, an’ so you looked into the matter. Guessed what was up, an’ d’cided to make sure, so you go to Weston’s desk where you know he keeps that ledger. Not findin’ any ledger, you smirked like anythin’ an’ come here for the policy. Shall I guess why?”
Figure Away Page 8