by Jerry eBooks
On the back wall of the office was an old lithograph of Custer’s Last Stand. Behind it was a large wall safe.
And in that wall safe were the missing furs.
“You got nothing on me!” McCasslan howled. “The furs are still on the premises. They ain’t been stolen, just put here by mistake—Hey! What you doing with them?”
Ryan grinned, a dancing reckless glint in his gray eyes as he grasped armfuls of fur.
And Ryan said, “I’m stealin’ ’em, pal. Stealin’ ’em!”
TWO hours later, Ryan called McCasslan on the phone.
“Listen, pal,” Ryan said. “Those stolen furs I took are in a trunk, down at the railroad station. They’ve been checked through to Chicago, on a ticket that has the name Loren McCasslan signed to it. Get the picture? It looks like you stole those furs and planned to lam to Chicago with them. That’s how us cops’ll figure it.”
At the other end of the wire was a long silence.
Wearily, then, came, “Okay, what’s your price?”
“You withdraw charges against me,” Ryan answered. “You arrange to pay young Mike and Tiny Carney the sum of $100 a month for ten years. A trust fund. Then I’ll return these furs to you, and you can explain to the law that the furs were not stolen at all, merely moved into another storage room by mistake. Is it a deal?”
And McCasslan, licked, said heavily, “It’s a deal.”
The boys at the precinct station kidded Ryan when he showed up for duty.
“Look who’s here! The big burgle-and-yegg man.”
“Nuts,” growled the desk sergeant. “Dennis Ryan couldn’t steal candy from a baby.”
“From a baby, no,” Ryan agreed, smiling; and added softly, “But for a baby—that’s something else again.”
SCARECROWS DON’T BLEED
Joe Archibald
Jonathan Wise Was Retired from Criminology—Until a Beautiful Girl Asked Him to Hint Her Missing Suitor!
CHAPTER I
Vanishing American
JONATHAN WISE turned abruptly when someone called his name. Shock and irritation were in his eyes when he looked at the middle-aged man who stood here staring at him, a little uncertainly. He as certain he had met the man somewhere before.
“Well?” he asked.
“I was sure it was you,” the man replied. I used to be on the Herald-Record in Boston. Ed Mossman is the name. How have you been, Mr. Wise?”
“Fairly well. Mossman? I remember you now. One of the best police reporters I ever knew. What are you doing down here?”
Jonathan Wise still betrayed his annoyance. He had come to the hotel at the Maine spa to get away from everyone he knew. He needed the mineral water for his arthritis, quiet and seclusion for his nerves. He was getting well past sixty, and that last book on criminology had taken a lot out of him. He was tall and gaunt and had the sombre face of a Church deacon. He wore tweed winter and summer, and it was always in need of a hot iron.
“I BOUGHT out a small paper here,” Mossman said. “I am a country editor, Mr. Wise, but have the old nose for news. Now you wouldn’t be here on account of a guy named Walter Nixon, would you?”
“Nixon? Nixon?” Wise sniffed. “I never heard of the man. Why did you ask me that, Mossman?”
“Why, the man’s name has been in the papers for the past three days,” Mossman said. “He’s disappeared, this young chap. Came down here about every week to see a girl, ward to the rich guy who has a big place not far from here, Marvin Brant.
“This Nixon was a nice guy, an architect. His boss wrote the Chief of Police here when he didn’t show up for work. Nixon started out, but never got here. We asked ’em down at the station if they saw him get off the train that day, but during the summer season so many get off—”
“Save your breath,” Jonathan Wise snapped. “I’m not interested in missing persons anymore, Mossman. I’m retired and intend to remain so. Glad to have seen you.” He walked away as if the small amount of mineral water he had already consumed had taken all the twinges out of his joints.
“Thanks,” Ed Mossman grinned wryly. “For a minute I thought I might—well, that’s that.”
Jonathan Wise walked out of the hotel, his old stick held under his armpit. He took long pulls at the pine-scented air from the distant wooded slopes. The sun was beginning to sink low in the western sky. It was the time of day when Wise liked to take his long brisk walk.
He took a different road this time, one that was narrow and sandy. It was a winding road with a slight downgrade, and Jonathan Wise followed it until the dusk deepened, and insect night life began to hum.
He paused for a rest before his return to the hotel, leaned against a board fence and filled his brier. Then he saw the house. It was off the old road about a hundred yards. Ancient elms almost hid it from view.
No sound came from the house. The criminologist judged that it had been abandoned. There was little paint on its sides, what he could see of them. Old houses fascinated him. He got through the boards of the fence and walked under the branches of old gnarled apple trees. He got a better view of the old house, saw that it was a big gabled structure with a porch running around the front and both ends. Wisteria vines in full bloom grew as high as the eaves.
He had started forward again when he heard the scream. It made his flesh crawl, for it was not altogether a scream of terror. There was laughter in it. It ended abruptly, almost as soon as it began. He turned away from the house and hurried toward the road. A voice made him turn his head.
“Were you looking for me, Mister?”
Wise saw a man of average height walking toward him. He was powerfully built, carried a bushel basket of apples like a bowl of eggs. His face was like those of other countrymen Wise had seen during his walks. A trifle weather-beaten it was in need of a razor.
“I thought the house was empty,” Jonathan Wise said. “Just about to look it over. Sorry if I’m trespassing.”
“You heard her, didn’t you?”
“You mean that sound?” Wise asked casually.
“She screamed. She gets spells like that,” the man said. “My name’s Albert Shedd.”
“Mine is Wise. I’m staying at the hotel for awhile. Those apples look good, my friend.”
“Have one,” Shedd said. He put the basket down and selected a big one for Jonathan Wise. For a moment the tall gaunt man did not see it when it was held out to him. He apologized, accepted the apple and took a big bite out of it.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be going along.”
Jonathan Wise made his way along the tortuous country road at a loss for an explanation of what he had just seen. Shedd had been wearing old cotton gloves, and the finger of one of them was ripped, laying bare a heavy gold ring set with a diamond that Wise guessed approached two karats.
Common sense said that a Maine farmer did not go about his work wearing expensive jewelry, yet Jonathan Wise remembered the case of a ragged old woman who had been found dead in an old hutch on the outskirts of a big city. They had found one hundred thousand dollars worth of negotiable bonds sewed inside her filthy clothes.
“Interesting,” Wise mumbled as he trudged along. “A man with a wife—shall we say demented? Wearing an expensive ring, a Maine farmer. Bless me, I’m getting curious again. I feel the fever coming on. A good hot bath will take it out of me.”
JONATHAN WISE had had his bath. He was sitting near the window of his room, bundled up in an old flannel robe, when the phone rang and jerked his bony head up.
“Bother,” he growled and walked stiffly to the writing desk. “Hello, hello. What in thunder—Mossman? I want you to understand I came here to be left alone, you hear me? What? You must see me and you’ve got a what?
“A lady with you?
“I don’t like ’em, you know that, Mossman! I don’t like ’em, to say nothing about letting one come to my room. Oh, very well. Come along.”
Mossman knocked, came in with a girl that took the old criminologis
t’s breath away. She was of medium height and stood straight as a reed in a white linen suit. Her eyes were brown, Wise thought, about the same color as her hair. She did not use much make-up, and he guessed that was why he did not feel antagonistic toward her. Her name was Margery, Mossman said—Margery Correll. She was Marvin Brant’s ward.
“Oh, trying to rope me in on something, are you, Mossman?” Jonathan Wise snapped. “Sit down, both of you. Stop staring at me. You’ve been crying, young woman.”
“Sorry,” the girl said and sat down on the very edge of a chair. She gave Mossman a beseeching glance, and Wise laughed.
“Not much to look at, am I?” he said. “But I don’t eat people. Well, what can I do for you?”
“Mr. Mossman told me about you,” Miss Correll said in a voice that was not very steady. “About you being one of the most famous criminologists in the country. I made him bring me here to see you, sir. Please, I need your help terribly.”
Jonathan Wise gave Mossman a withering glance.
“I’m getting to be an old man, Miss,” he said to the girl. I came here for rest. I’m going to rest now until I die. I’ve had enough of criminals and corpses. You want me to help locate your boy friend, that it? You realize my fees have been high, or didn’t Mossman tell you.”
“I can pay,” Margaret Correll said quickly. “I know my uncle will give me the money. He’s my legal guardian, you see. My parents left me comfortably situated.”
Wise tugged at the cords of his old robe.
“Don’t think I’d charge you much. I’m not as spry as I used to be, young lady. I’ll look around a bit if it will help you any. You loved this young man?”
“I’m not sure—I mean I wasn’t sure,” the girl said. “I might have fallen desperately in love with him in time.”
“Difficult choosing the right tense when you speak of a person who might be either alive or dead, isn’t it?” Jonathan Wise said. “Let me have some facts if you please.”
MOSSMAN drew a sigh of relief, lit a cigarette.
“She was sure he got off the train,” he said. “She—”
“I asked her,” Wise snapped. He looked up at the ceiling, his hands folded in his lap. The fever had its grip on him. He was thinking of a woman’s scream and a diamond ring and how different the Maine countryside looked at night.
“Walter generally arrived on the train that gets in at five-thirty on Friday. To get to our place, you take a bus. Then there is a walk of about three quarters of a mile to the big house itself. The bus driver claimed he wasn’t a passenger that night, so maybe he walked all the way. Altogether about four miles.”
“Just a good constitutional for a healthy young man,” Wise said. “I did almost that today. How long have you lived in Marvin Brant’s household?”
“Six years. My father was one of Uncle’s business associates. Dad left me quite a bit of money, but I cannot touch the bulk of the inheritance until I am twenty-two. I get an allowance.”
“You’ve been happy there?” Jonathan Wise asked. “And suppose you should want to get married before you are twenty-two?”
“Quite happy. And as for your second question, I am to get my inheritance the moment I marry a man who passes Uncle’s inspection,” the girl said. “I call him my uncle.”
“You have had suitors that did not pass judgment?”
“Two of them,” Margery smiled.
“And this Walter?”
“Apparently my uncle was satisfied with him,” Margery Correll said. “But I do not see where that should have any bearing on Walter’s—”
Jonathan Wise smiled.
“I have never known a case yet, young lady, when the smallest detail did not fit into the rest of the picture. I promise you I will look into the matter.”
“Thank you,” the girl said. “Please come up to Hillside and see us, Mr. Wise.”
“I should like to. Now, look here Mossman. No one is going to know I’m the least bit interested in this local mystery. Have you dared to publish that I am a guest at this hotel?”
“No, Mr. Wise.”
“Good. Call tomorrow evening and see me, will you Mossman?”
CHAPTER II
A Scarecrow Does Bleed
JONATHAN WISE walked the roads the next morning. He came to a big stone fence and a sign attached to it said, HILLSIDE, Marvin Brant. He walked up the road marked private that led him through a dense woods for about eight hundred yards. Coming out into the sunlight, Wise saw Brant’s acres, and he guessed that half of them had been given over to field corn.
Down in the village they had told him that Brant raised prize livestock. Wise was about to continue on when he heard the horse blow air through his nostrils. He turned and saw the sorrel at the edge of the woods some distance away. A powerfully built man, clad in riding habit, stood close to the horse, his hands cupped over the bowl of his pipe.
Jonathan Wise walked toward the man, positive that he was the master of Hillside. Then he stopped in his tracks, for the horse had swung its head around quickly, had knocked its rider off balance. The big man, his pipe knocked out of his mouth, cursed and swung a fist against the animal’s nose.
“Look here!” Wise shouted. “That was a nasty thing to do. Whoever you are—” He dropped back a step and clipped his words short for as quickly as he had struck his horse, the big man put his arm around the sorrel’s neck and spoke softly to it.
“Good afternoon,” the man said, becoming aware of another presence. “Sorry you saw me do this, sir. I lost my temper. You must be Jonathan Wise. My ward told me to expect a visit from you. Glad to know you.” He held out a big hand, and Jonathan Wise’s long narrow one was lost in it. “I’m Brant.”
Jonathan Wise judged the man to be about six feet tall and built in proportion. Brant had the shoulders of a wrestler and a mammoth head. His face was burned by the sun. On his left cheek there was a small purple scar. His eyes were those of a short tempered man, dark and piercing.
“Let’s go up to the house, shall we?” Brant said. “I’ll lead the horse. Sorry to have hit you, old timer,” he said to the horse and laid his cheek against its muzzle. Jonathan Wise smelled whiskey. He never could tolerate the vile stuff. Tiny red veins on Brant’s face told him that the owner of Hillside used more than his share of it.
Brant pointed out a rose garden as they neared the big fieldstone house. Brant took tremendous pride in the garden, and during the summer months, a garden club came up to see his Talismans.
“Not another rose in the state like it, Wise,” Brant said. “By the way, Margery tells me you used to be quite a criminologist. You’ve heard all about the disappearance of this Walter Nixon, no doubt. Likable chap. The only one of my ward’s male acquaintances I could stomach on this place.”
“Odd,” Jonathan Wise said. “There must be a trace of him somewhere. The neighborhood was thoroughly searched?”
“Every square yard, Wise,” Brant said. “You’ll have a bit of lunch with us of course. Sorry I have to go to Boston this afternoon, but I’m sure you will find Margery delightful company, sir.”
“I have no doubt of it,” Jonathan Wise said and looked back over the way he had come. His eyes brightened strangely, and little creases appeared in his bony forehead.
MARGERY admitted the two men. She smiled graciously at Jonathan Wise. “Just in time,” she said. “We’re having cold cuts and potato salad and iced tea. I knew you would wrinkle up your big nose at that, Uncle,” she said. “Have a good ride?”
“Fine,” Brant said. “How about it, Wise? A highball before lunch?”
“Don’t touch the stuff, Brant. Iced tea will do me,” the elderly man hastened to reply.
Conversation came to the point when the three sat down at the table in the sun porch.
“Had an odd experience yesterday,” Jonathan Wise said. “Happened on an old rambling house with wisteria growing all over one side of it. Heard someone scream and then a man came up to me. Said his name was Shed
d.” As he spoke he watched the liquor in Brant’s glass.
“Really?” Margery asked. “I’ve never spoken to that man. They say his wife is a little queer at times. Some folks claim he isn’t entirely balanced. They came here about six months ago, and as far as we can make out, Shedd has no visible means of support. But they ask for no charity. Strange, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps. Retired, no doubt, like myself,” Wise said and jabbed at a bit of lettuce. “Shedd wears a very expensive diamond ring that could insure himself and his wife food and lodging for an entire year. You’ve met the man, Brant?”
“No. And I don’t care to meet him, Wise.”
“They say she does start screaming at times. I have never heard her, Mr. Wise,” the girl said. “It must have startled you, being unprepared for it.”
“Gave me a start,” Jonathan Wise admitted. He frowned a little when Brant went into the next room and made himself another highball.
“He does take too much,” Margery said. “Lately he’s been so worried about business, he forgets how many he should have in a day. But he’s a dear.”
“Bad stuff,” Wise said. “Makes bad nerves worse. I’ll take some more iced tea if you don’t mind.”
Brant excused himself a half hour later. He went upstairs to pack.
“We only have as much help as we can possibly get by with out here,” Margery explained. “A gate-keeper, four farm hands and a housekeeper. The laborers work by the day, have their own little places to go to at night. We like privacy when we’re not in the city.”
“I noticed the scarecrow was down when I passed by the edge of the cornfield,” Jonathan Wise said.
“Yes. I keep reminding uncle to have it set up, but he laughs at the idea that it will scare crows away. It was my idea. What is a cornfield without a scarecrow?”
“Quite right, young lady,” Wise smiled. “It seems such a bulky thing.”
“I think I put too many clothes on it in the first place,” Margery laughed. “Uncle is a big man you know. They were his old gardening clothes.”