by Jerry eBooks
I swung my head round and saw the roadster.
It was tearing up the driveway at the devil of a clip, and even if the guy behind the wheel had applied the brakes, he could never have stopped that crate on time.
It bore down on the big touring car, and I tensed my muscles against the crash. It came a second later. There was a grinding, ripping, smashing sound. The roadster’s radiator folded up like an accordion against the rear of the touring car, slamming us ahead a couple of yards right smack into a tree.
Again there was a grinding crash of tortured metal, and I found myself on the floor.
CHAPTER III
SUICIDE?
I GOT up and climbed out of the crashed car, my knees wobbly. Durell was bleeding from a gash on his cheek.
A slender, pinch-faced chap got out of the roadster and ran toward us, his face contorted as if he were carrying something too heavy for him. He rushed Durell, and even from ten feet away I could smell his breath. He was so loaded.
I recognized him from his pictures—Ralph Hedrick, Anton Squire’s nephew. He lived here with his uncle, and his record was almost as good as that of his cousin, Justine. Wild parties for both of them, but also chorus girl troubles for Ralph, gambling debts, and all the rest.
He was cursing, blaming Durell for the accident. Rage flamed in his face and in his red-rimmed eyes. It looked to me as if he was tackling the wrong guy.
He picked one up off the ground and swung it. Durell simply ducked. But Hedrick nailed the chauffeur with a surprise second swing. It took Durell squarely on the bony point of his jaw, and his mouth was suddenly a razor-thin gash.
Hedrick’s face suddenly twisted. I didn’t even see Durell hit him. All I saw was the chauffeur’s fist, buried clean up the wrist in Hedrick’s belly. Hedrick grunted and sank to his knees.
Durell swallowed and turned to me.
“You saw him start it, didn’t you, Mr. Petrie?” he asked tightly.
I grinned. “Sure. Don’t worry. I’ll see you don’t get canned for hitting the boss’ nephew.”
Feet crunched on the pebbles and two men appeared around the edge of the bushes. The noise of the accident must have brought them. And Justine’s father, himself, was one of them.
Anton Squire was a short, round man in his late fifties, with a pudgy face and a bald head.
The butler behind him was dressed like an admiral, and panting from exertion.
Anton Squire’s chins jiggled. “What happened?”
Durell straightened. “Mr. Hedrick ran into us, sir.”
Squire’s face turned red. He glanced at his nephew.
“Drinking again, eh?” he rasped. “I’ve had about enough of this.” He turned to the butler. “Did Ralph come home at all last night, Greve?”
Greve gulped. “I—I don’t think so, sir.”
I shall always have admiration for Ralph Hedrick. Durell had forty pounds on him, and was built like an All-American, yet the pinchfaced youth made an explosive noise deep in his throat, and hurled himself at the chauffeur, both fists flailing like a windmill in a hurricane.
I knew Durell couldn’t hit the nephew in front of his boss, so I skipped over, grabbed Hedrick around the waist from behind and tossed him into the fuchsia bushes. He floundered around there, all the starch out of him.
For a second I thought Anton Squire was going to have apoplexy. His complexion had suddenly gained an excess of purple and he pointed a shaking finger at Ralph Hedrick.
“Pack up, Ralph, and get out!” he ordered. “I’ve had enough of you.”
Hedrick was sobering up. “Glad to.”
“Don’t count on me for help!” Squire yelled. “Nor on my will. That will be changed. You’d better get a job.”
DURELL chuckled. If looks could kill, the one Hedrick gave him would have shipped him straight to a mortuary. Squire beckoned curtly to me. I followed him across the lawn and we entered his study through an open French-type window.
He squinted at me sharply. “Did you see my daughter?” he shot out at me.
I nodded.
“You’re sure?” he demanded.
I shrugged. “I’ve got two eyes and ears to hear with. I saw her and spoke to her.”
His brows jumped together in puzzlement. “I can’t understand it.” He kept shaking his head.
“Suppose you tell me about it,” I prodded. He looked up and his fat face was working.
“Late last night,” he said, after a moment, “Just after you called from Chicago to say you’d just seen Justine, a man rang me, said his name was Rogel, an assistant medical examiner, and that the police had brought a body into the morgue. He was under the impression it was my daughter. He wanted somebody to come down to try to identify her.”
“Did he say there was a close resemblance?”
Squire waved his hands. “He was afraid of making a fool of himself. He wouldn’t give me his reason.”
“Did you tell him that your daughter was alive and in Chicago? That you’d had a letter from her and that’s how you knew where she was? And that a man you’d sent there had just been talking to her?”
“I did, but he wanted somebody to come down to the morgue anyway.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go down to the morgue.”
“But you say you saw her—talked to her—in Chicago. How could she be alive in Chicago and dead in New York at the same time?”
“I don’t know. That’s what we ought to find out.”
Squire rang for Greve and told the butler to order Durell to bring the limousine around. It didn’t take us long to reach New York, or to draw up in front of the morgue.
The morgue attendant recognized me.
“Hello, Chris,” he said. “Who do you want to see this time?”
“How many girls were brought in last night?” I asked.
“Only one.” He eyed me peculiarly.
“Let’s take a look at her,” I said.
“I hope you know what you’re asking,” was his laconic comment.
Anton Squire was perspiring freely as we went to the slab room. They hadn’t performed the post-mortem yet, so the girl was not in the ice-box. The slab room was cold and smelled strong of formaldehyde. Seven or eight other figures were on the other tables under their white canvaslike covers.
The attendant led the way over to a table near the wall and pointed.
“She’s all yours.”
He gave a little shudder and turned his eyes away. Anton Squire gulped. His face was white and he kept licking at parched lips.
1 reached over, got the end of the sheet and pulled it down. I blame near passed out. Anton Squire made a low gurgling sound and slumped to the floor in a dead faint. One look had been enough—had, in fact, been too much.
Because this girl didn’t have any head.
THAT’S right. It had been severed neatly at the neck and all we saw was the stump leading to her trunk. I walked over to a corner to get control of myself. When I turned around the attendant was watching me with an I-told-you-so look.
“Somebody’s idea of a joke,” I snarled. “Help me get this guy into the fresh air.”
We lugged Squire out to the limousine and sat him down in the back. Durell flashed a bottle of Scotch from the dashboard compartment and forced it between Squire’s lips. The fat man very soon opened his eyes.
“Wh-what happened?” he chattered.
“I think somebody’s got a crazy sense of humor,” I said. “I’ll get to the bottom of this thing in a couple of minutes. Where do you want to go?”
Squire wanted to get down to his Wall Street office and I stood on the curb and watched the big black car roll away from Bellevue toward the southern tip of Manhattan.
I found a telephone booth and called Police Headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Reirdon. Reirdon and I got along swell, except when we were both working on the same case.
“Hello, Chris,” he greeted. “What’s up?”
“Can I get some information?”
I asked.
“Shoot.”
“Your boys brought a girl into the morgue last night,” I said. “Who is she?”
His voice got cagey. “How should I know? You can’t tell from her face. She hasn’t got any. All she was wearing was a slip and the label had been torn out. What’s it to you, Chris?”
I passed the question. “Where did they find her?”
“In Van Cortlandt Park. A couple of high school kids were driving around, looking for a place to park, when their headlights picked out the body in a clump of bushes.”
“Who was the M. E. on duty?” I asked then.
“New man—Abe Rogel. Just joined the M. E.’s staff last week.”
I said thanks and hung up before he could hit me with a barrage of questions. I flipped through the pages of a phone book and found that Rogel lived in the West Eighties. I flagged a cab uptown and pretty soon I was standing in the vestibule of a converted brownstone.
According to the mail-box, Rogel occupied Apt.3-E. I pressed the superintendent’s bell and when the buzzer sounded, opened the door and hopped up to the third floor. I cracked my knuckles against 3-E.
Nobody answered. I tried the knob, found the door open. I didn’t like that, so I got out the Colt and pushed it in ahead of me.
The precaution was unnecessary. The man in there couldn’t do anybody any harm. Except maybe the guy who had put a slug between his eyes while he was in bed sleeping. That is, if they caught the guy. The blood had stopped coming and had coagulated into a flaky brown substance, which indicated that Rogel had been dead for some time.
I just stood there and used a lot of language.
I CASED the apartment, then went through Rogel’s clothes. In his coat I found a large printed form—the kind the medical examiner’s office sends to the district attorney after they’ve examined a corpse.
This one had nothin’ written in the blank spaces, but on the back were a few closely penciled notes. I read:
CALL SQUIRE HOME. FIND OUT WHERE GIRL IS. INCISION FROM APPENDECTOMY CHECKS TOO CLOSELY. MUST TALK TO DR. B.
I thought that over and came to a quick conclusion. Evidently Justine had recently had her appendix out. Apparently Rogel thought he recognized the scar, although why one scar from an appendicitis operation should be so different from any other was something that had me stumped.
That called for a check-up with Anton Squire. I picked up Rogel’s phone and had the operator get me Squire’s Wall Street office. The voice on the wire was not Squire’s and yet it sounded familiar. I asked for Squire. The voice wanted my name. I gave it.
“Petrie!” the voice exploded. “What have you got to do with this case?”
And then I recognized the voice. It was Lieutenant Reirdon. What in creation was he doing in Squire’s office?
“What case?” I asked. “What’s up?”
His voice was sarcastic. “Plenty. Anton Squire has just committed suicide.”
“What!” I yelped. “You’re kidding!”
“Sure,” he said. “That’s all I got to do. Only Squire isn’t kidding. He shot himself through the temple.”
“Well,” I said, “I got a guy here who’s shot, but he didn’t do it himself.”
There was an ominous silence, then Reirdon said very quietly:
“Okay, Petrie. Spill it.”
I cleared my throat. “Your assistant medical examiner, Abe Rogel, is dead—murdered. I just found him in his room.”
Reirdon swore at me, “I’ll be right with you,” he snapped. “You stay there, do you hear? If you move out of that apartment I’ll have your license—and your hide.”
“One thing more, Lieutenant,” I said softly. “It might be a good idea to bring the gun Squire committed suicide with up here. I got a hunch these two things were connected. You can check it with the slug that killed Rogel.”
I hung up and got out of Rogel’s apartment with dispatch. I wanted to have a nice quiet talk with somebody at Squire’s Westchester place, but not over the phone. I caught another cab and made the run all the way up there with my eyes glued to the meter, wondering who was going to pay my expenses now that Squire was dead.
The taxi dropped me off on the road and I ploughed through the hedges, looking the grounds over, thinking about this whole cockeyed case, figuring that if Justine Squire had caught a train back to New York, she certainly ought to be home by now.
Maybe I could take her by surprise. Ducking across the lawn, closer to the house, I stood behind an overhanging tree, casing the place slowly. The earth was soggy under my feet and I looked down and almost jumped clean up to the top branch.
I juggled my feet and shuddered. My shoes were covered with large black ants. Millions of them were engaged in feverish activity, building innumerable ant hills, swarming in and out.
I got away from there fast. If this was a sign of spring checking in, I’d be willing to keep winter.
NOBODY seemed to be stirring around the big gray house. I loped across the lawn, past the garage, came around the side of the house and found a window that was slightly open from the bottom.
I raised it quietly, got one foot over the sill, and my ear-drums almost caved. There was gun thunder, a whistle, the tinkle of shattered glass, and the window just above my head flew into fragments.
I yanked my leg off the sill, tumbled to the ground and scrambled crabwise behind a tree, dragging at my Colt as I squirmed. Down the lawn a small way, a clump of bushes rustled violently. I aimed at them, squeezed the trigger and the Colt bucked in my fist.
I straightened and raced over to the bushes. I broke through and scurried a look in all directions. But I drew a blank. There was not the faintest sign of another human being. There were however, plenty of places one could have hidden.
Fifty feet away were some hothouses and beyond them a clump of trees closely huddled together. Whoever had shot at me could even have circled around the hothouses and beat it past the garage out to the road or back to the other side of the house. I cursed the scenic designer who had to slapped foliage, trees, bushes, and hedges all over the place.
I found Greve, the butler, pale and shaken, examining the broken window pane. The bullet had gone through the window and clipped the chain from which a big glass chandelier had been suspended. That, too, had crashed to the floor.
“Has Miss Squire come home yet?” I asked.
“Not yet, sir.” Greve washed his hands in the air. “What a horrible home-coming it will be for her. The police phoned a short while ago. They said Mr. Squire committed suicide! I can’t believe it, sir! He had everything to live for.”
I got hold of the butler’s lapel and shook him till he quieted down.
“Now get this straight,” I commanded. “Has Miss Squire been operated on recently?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” he said. “She got out of the hospital a month ago. Appendicitis.”
“What hospital?”
“Sisters of Mercy, I believe, sir.”
“You know the doctor who operated?”
“Why, yes. The famous surgeon, Dr. Brinkley.”
I let him go and went into the late Mr. Squire’s study. I called the Sisters of Mercy Hospital and asked for Dr. Brinkley. They made me wait a couple of minutes and finally I got him.
CHAPTER IV
DURELL’S BOMBSHELL
FROM Dr. Brinkley I elicited considerable information. Yes, he told me, in his deep, measured voice, he had operated on Miss Justine Squire. Young Dr. Rogel had assisted.
Complications, he told me, had set in, requiring an enlargement of the incision. Yes, it was a peculiar wound and he might recognize it. Of course, Rogel certainly would, since he had stitched it and attended to the dressings.
I hung up, decided to have another look around the grounds. I spent ten minutes in the hothouses and all I got I was a good sweat worked up and a view of some rare tropical plants. I came out and stared at the garage. Suddenly I stiffened. A man was sneaking around the side of the garage, his b
ack toward me, and crouching low, headed along the hedges toward the house.
I went along that lawn after him, silently, like a greyhound, hanging onto his tail like a Spitfire after a Junkers bomber, taking the last few feet in a flying tackle. I caught him just above the knees and we both went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
I grabbed his chin, twisted it, and grunted. It was Ralph Hedrick, Squire’s nephew.
I didn’t let him up till I’d fanned him thoroughly. Then I jerked him to his feet.
“Where’s the gun?” I growled.
He shrugged away, his mouth tucked in tightly.
“What gun?” he demanded. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“C’mon,” I snarled. “You just took a shot at me. Where’s the roscoe?”
“You’re nuts,” snapped Hedrick.
I looked at him, into him, and through him. But that pinch-face of his was no more expressive of emotion than the ugly stone front of the Squire castle. Oh, yes, there was plenty of hate there, but that was all.
“Didn’t your uncle order you off the estate?” I said.
“I came back for some stuff I left,” he said surlily.
“What?”
“None of your blasted business.”
I hit him. Not hard; hard enough only to lift him off his feet and set him back against the grass on his back. My chest was burning, I was so sore. I could play as rough as anybody around this dump. I didn’t like anybody pumping lead at me when my back was turned. So I planted my toe against his throat and pinned him to the ground, exerting just enough pressure to turn his face red.
“What did you come back here for?” I said and meant it.
He made a hoarse sound and shook his head.
I choked off some more wind and repeated the question. His eyes started bulging and I could see he was ready to talk. I picked up my foot and he muttered one word:
“Money.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s a good reason. Where is it?”
“In my uncle’s desk. I saw him lock it there yesterday.”