by Jerry eBooks
“You’re impertinent,” the girl said, little angry flushes coming to her cheeks. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—you aren’t like that, Mr. Mossman. You must have a reason for asking. Yes, he did ask me to marry him. I told him to give me a day or two to make up my mind. I am sure I would have said what he wanted to hear. Mr. Mossman, Jonathan Wise asked me that question—through you.”
“I’ll admit it,” Mossman grinned.
“Why did he want to know? Then you really think he is coming back here?”
“I’m positive, Miss Correll. He’s a genius in his profession. I don’t believe he’s lost a bit of his cunning. He seems even sharper than ever to me.”
“Perhaps he has located Walter. Maybe he’s gone to—”
MOSSMAN turned his face away.
“Perhaps. Ah, those roses smell wonderful.” He picked up his hat and got ready to leave. “But don’t count on things too much. In a few days, maybe all this mystery will be an open book. We can only hope for the best.”
He saw Brant come out of the house. The man lurched against a white column of the porch, came down the steps a little uncertainly. Mossman guessed he had a sweet load aboard. He would be ugly.
Forty-eight hours later, just after Mossman had put his weekly newspaper to bed, Jonathan Wise walked into his office. The criminologist seemed thinner than ever and showed weariness, but his sunken eyes betrayed a flicker of triumph.
“I had luck,” Wise said. “In Boston and Portland. We start setting off the charges tonight, my friend. All out from now on. What luck at Hillside?”
“She told me she was just about ready to marry this Nixon,” Mossman said. “She’s going to get a terrible shock, Mr. Wise.”
“Quite. Well, after I’ve had my dinner, I’ll call you, Mossman,” Wise said. “I imagine you will find things interesting from now on. You’ll beat the big papers with this sheet of yours.
“You’d better arrange for an extra. Could get some nice gruesome pictures. The rusty septic tank cover! The bleeding scarecrow! It’s sensational, Mossman.”
It was a cloudy night. Mossman’s car had to crawl along the sinuous, sandy road for a heavy fog settled over the countryside and thinned the beams of the headlights. They drove into Shedd’s place and parked the car under the great dripping branches of a horse chestnut tree.
“They’re up,” Wise said with satisfaction. “You have your persuader handy, Ed? Possibly we will not need it, but an apparently mild-eyed animal will start to bite if it’s cornered. I think I can handle this without any rough stuff.”
Wise rapped his bony knuckles against the door.
Shedd let them in. His eyes became wary when he saw the editor. Jonathan Wise did not see Mrs. Shedd anywhere. He sat down and watched Shedd burn up matches trying to keep his pipe going.
“I did not expect to see you again, Mr. Wise,” Shedd said. “I heard you’d left the big hotel.” His eyes were fixed on Mossman.
“You have been visiting Marvin Brant, Shedd. Late at night. You have been blackmailing him.”
Shedd’s face twitched, and he forgot a burning match he held between his fingers.
“That’s a lie,” Shedd choked out. The fire stung his fingers. He dropped the match.
“No, it isn’t, Shedd. That tobacco you smoke is black and stringy. You’re a wet smoker, and you can never keep your pipe going. You burn matches. They are up there in Brant’s summer house. The dottle you knocked out of your pipe was black and stringy. There was the butt of an expensive cigar there, too.
“Where did you get that Talisman rose I saw on your table? There is only one place where you could get one that size and color. It’s a temptation not to pluck those things when you pass by Brant’s rose garden, Shedd.”
“All right,” Shedd said. “I’ve seen Brant a couple of times. None of your business, Wise!”
“Murder is my business, Shedd. Walter Nixon was slain up there on the hill. Maybe he was later than usual that night, and you met him on your way out from a little visit with Brant.
“You got scared because you wanted no one to know you had business with Brant. You killed him and hid his body.”
CHAPTER IV
Family Scarecrow
SHEDD’S pipe dropped to the floor, and stark surprise made him look foolish.
“No, Mr. Wise! They can’t blame that on me. I didn’t commit no murder,” Shedd said and stumbled toward a chair. He sat down and dropped his head in his hands.
“I really believe you, Shedd,” Jonathan Wise said quietly. “Now, tell me what I want to know. Your wife had one of her spells the night I dropped that newspaper. She screamed and ran to you, and I never saw anyone more terrified. She had seen the picture of Marvin Brant. She knew him somewhere else, Shedd. Where?”
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Wise. It goes a long way back,” Shedd said. “When a man named Harry Slade and his girl and I planned one of the biggest hold-ups that ever took place. We got away with it. Eighty thousand dollars in one pay-roll.
“It was out in Oregon, Mr. Wise. Only thing was the police picked up a clue that led to me. While I was waiting trial, Slade got word to me. He promised if I’d keep quiet and take the rap, he’d see to it I got my share when I got out.”
“You couldn’t have been that gullible,” Jonathan Wise said dryly.
“He seemed to be a man to tie to then,” Shedd droned on. “It was the girl I was thinking of. She was a criminal in a way of speaking, yes. But you could trust her with your life. I was as sure as the sun sets every day that she would see that Slade kept his promise.
“If I’d squealed, the three of us would have been given ten years. They would have asked us to turn over the money in exchange for a few years off the sentence. Then we would have been back where we started. Anyway, I couldn’t stand thinking of the girl in prison. I figured I’d only do about six years. Then with forty thousand—”
“An old story,” Wise nodded.
HE watched Shedd closely as the man went to the closet to get a bottle. Shedd drank some liquor and then came back to the chair.
“Slade was ready to marry that girl,” Shedd said, his fingers curling and closing into big fists.
“But he didn’t,” Wise cut in.
“The dirty rat!” Shedd exclaimed. “Six months after I went to prison she came to see me. I knew by the look of her that something had happened. She told me she had been in the hospital, Mr. Wise. Slade had left her after giving her a beating. She tried to keep him from lighting out with that money. She was thinking of his promise to me. In the prison, she started screaming.”
“Marvin Brant was Harry Slade,” Wise said.
Shedd nodded and banged his fists against his knees.
“I was out in seven years. I married Helen because I’d always loved her. The cops kept trailing me to see if I’d lead them to that dough. After awhile I gave them the slip, changed my appearance a little. I kept looking for Slade. We’ve had a hard time of it, Mr. Wise.
“Then one day, in Boston, I was walking along Milk Street. I saw a man coming out of a big building and stop to buy a paper. The newsboy spoke to him friendly-like. I asked the kid afterward who he was. He told me his name.”
“You knew then,” Wise said. “By the little purple scar on his cheek.”
“Right,” Shedd said. “Yes, I blackmailed him. For Helen. That’s my only crime, gentlemen. I paid for the hold-up with seven years. I did not kill anyone.”
“I know it,” Jonathan Wise said, and Ed Mossman’s brain got into more of a fog. “I’ll try to help you, Shedd.”
“I’m glad it’s off my chest,” Shedd said. “I’m glad I talked to a man like you, Wise.”
Mossman jerked violently where he sat. From a room upstairs came a sudden fit of screaming.
“When did you make a demand on Brant last?” Jonathan Wise asked.
“A week ago. He’s trying to raise the money. I have given him just two more days.”
“It all starts to fit, Mossma
n,” Wise smiled icily. “How much did you ask for, Shedd?”
“Fifteen thousand this time. I got the twenty-five thousand already, Mr. Wise. I figured I earned it,” Shedd said.
“All right,” the criminologist said. “I want you to arrange a meeting with Marvin Brant in the summerhouse tomorrow night. One o’clock in the morning, I should say. We’ll finish this up there, Ed. I know some big men in Boston. I found out that Brant has been trying to get permission from his partners to sell a thousand shares of General Drug.
“Things have been going badly with him. His associates don’t like certain methods he has been employing lately. A genius with finance, Marvin Brant. A man who could have made an honest living anytime he wanted to. With the eighty thousand, he built himself up as a power in the Boston financial district.
“But the little quirk in his brain that tells him of the thrill of putting over a shady deal has its way with him. In Portland, I found a man who knew that Hillside was mortgaged up to the hilt. Brant tried to raise that mortgage two days ago. He’s in deep.”
“Poor Margery,” Mossman said, then suddenly snapped his fingers, looked at Jonathan Wise with a question in his eyes.
“You’ve guessed it,” Wise said. “She’s the key to it all. And Brant’s quick, violent temper.” He turned to Shedd. “Be there and do not fail me, understand?”
Shedd’s eyes gleamed. A wicked grin bisected his rugged face. “Ten thousand men could not keep me away. I’ll have him meet me there.”
JONATHAN WISE and Mossman took their leave and neither spoke until they were halfway to the resort hotel.
“There is still no motive for the killing as far as I’m concerned,” Mossman said.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Wise said. “I’ll prove that to you tomorrow night, Ed. Think of that woman back there. Slade gave her a terrific beating and left her the way she is. Why did Dr. Jekyll have to concoct that strange potion of his, Mossman, when he could have gone out and purchased a bottle of whiskey?”
“I seldom have an answer ready for you, Jonathan Wise,” Mossman said. “I never did have. I’m beginning to see things more clearly though.”
“Here we are, Ed,” Wise said. “I’ll let you know when we’re to leave. Bless me, they’ll think I’m a rake at this hotel very soon. Just look at the time.”
They crouched in the rose garden near the summer house.
“So much beauty here,” Wise whispered. “Incongruous that death and ugliness can be so near.” It was a half hour after midnight, and down in the village a clock struck mournfully. Jonathan Wise clutched at Mossman’s sleeve. “Be still. I hear someone coming. Down a little more.”
It was Shedd. They knew because of the direction from which he came. He was walking slowly, and his face, a dim white blotch in the darkness, was turned their way. He went into the summerhouse twenty feet away from where they were hidden, sat down and pulled at a soggy pipe.
Shedd waited for nearly fifteen minutes, then got up and looked toward the big house. In a few minutes, the giant figure of Marvin Brant loomed up and Wise heard the big man talking desperately.
“You got to give me a couple more days, Shedd. A man can’t raise that kind of money nowadays overnight.”
“I’m tired waitin’, Slade. I waited years for this,” Shedd said. “I have no pity for you. I hate you more than a man should hate. Don’t come nearer, and keep your hands where I can see them. I still have the gun, and I’m aching to use it.
“Wouldn’t do you any good to kill me, anyway. There’s a letter all sealed and addressed to the proper authorities in capable hands. She isn’t demented much of the time, you know. I’ll give you until tomorrow night, Slade.”
“Blast you!” Brant said, his voice banging against the ears of those hiding in the roses. “I’ll kill you yet.”
“Like you killed Nixon?” Shedd laughed hollowly.
Wise and Mossman heard Brant’s quick intake of breath.
“What do you mean, Shedd?”
“Just that. It had to be you.”
“You’re crazy, Shedd.”
“You’re finished, Slade. You made yourself a big man with that eighty thousand the three of us got that time. Did you think I’d never catch up with you? You didn’t realize how much we hated you. We’d have looked for you forever. You made yourself too big, that was the trouble. That was a mistake.”
“Look, Shedd. When I pay you the rest of that money, will you promise to go away? It will be enough for you and Hel—your wife to live comfortably for the rest of your life. The slate will be clean then.”
“You forget the interest on that money, Slade. For fifteen years, it would be a nice sum. I’ll want that too.”
IT happened quickly, before Shedd could get at his gun. Jonathan Wise and Mossman were running through the roses, trampling them, just as Brant got his hands on his enemy’s throat.
“All right, Brant,” Jonathan Wise yelled in his high-pitched voice. “Another murder won’t help. Let that man go!”
Marvin Brant took his hands away from Shedd’s throat and staggered backward. His big body pivoted clumsily like a wounded bear and his eyes were wide and staring. Mossman had his pistol in his hand.
“Wise!How did you—”
“I arranged it, Brant, or whatever your name is,” Wise said. “You see, I know where the body of Walter Nixon is. In that old septic tank, Brant. Where you put him.”
Brant’s voice betrayed him. It was edged and shaken with fear.
“You can’t prove I did it!”
“I’ll draw you a picture, Brant. First I will start with a scarecrow that bled. You hid Nixon under those clothes the afternoon you killed him. You lost your temper, that hair-trigger temper of yours that led you to smash a horse in the face. You were drinking too much for even a man of your size.
“You were desperate, Brant, and had trouble piled on you as Ossa was piled on Pelion. You met Nixon on his way here and knew that the man had asked Margery Correll to marry him. You knew she was about ready to accept him.”
“Of course,” Brant forced out. “That proves nothing.” He touched a match to a cigar, and Mossman noticed that the red tip of the smoke did not stand steady.
“There were two other suitors, Brant. You were pretty nasty to them, chased one of them off. When this Nixon came along, you thought you’d better change your tactics before someone, especially your ward, got suspicious. You were pleasant to him up to a certain point—up to the time he was ready to marry Margery.
“That meant that you would not have the stewardship of her money anymore, that you would have to make an accounting. You couldn’t stand that, Brant, because you had taken twenty-five thousand of it to pay Shedd.”
JONATHAN Wise waited for Brant to say something, but the big man just stood there, the red tip of his cigar dying out. The breathing of the four men rasped at the stillness that had gripped Hillside.
“You met Walter Nixon down there by the stone fence and refused to let him marry your niece. You were most likely loaded with whiskey, and your temper was hanging by a thin thread. Nixon told you off, the thread snapped and you struck him. Maybe more than once and he hit his head against the stone wall when he fell.
“Before you could get him out of there, you heard someone coming, so you quickly dragged him to the scarecrow and piled the old clothes over him. A dog happened by, saw the body and began howling. Hours later, when it was dark and everybody was asleep, you went out and finished the job.
“Yes, Brant, if Margery had married Nixon, you would have been charged with embezzlement. They would have taken your fingerprints and maybe somewhere they are already on file. Did I miss it by much?”
Shedd laughed and Jonathan snapped at him.
“Cut it, will you! We don’t want her to hear. There’s a big footprint near the scarecrow, Brant. But I don’t believe that evidence will be necessary, will it? Henry Slade, I charge you with the murder of Walter Nixon.”
“Thi
s is worth losing the rest of the money for, Slade,” Shedd said. “You know when Helen hears of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if her brain becomes entirely normal. The slate is clean, Slade. I’ll be near the scaffold where they hang you.”
“The penalty in this state,” Jonathan Wise said, “is life imprisonment, Shedd.”
“That’s better. It’ll give him time to think, and his brain will rot away,” Shedd snapped. “I’ll be thinking of him every day. You see I know all about prison life, Slade.”
“I guess we had better be going, Mr. Brant,” Jonathan Wise said. “We will take you to Rumford and turn you over to the sheriff there. You had better not say anything further.
“Save it for the lawyer who will have the difficult task of defending a murderer and embezzler with a criminal record. Let’s be on our way. Shedd, you are going with us.”
“Let’s be on our way,” Brant said, his shoulders sagging and his big bulk seemingly shrinking in his expensive clothes.
“Sorry, but you’ll have to come along too, Shedd,” Jonathan Wise said. “If you will turn back the money that really belonged to Margery Correll, I’ll see that you get a—let’s call it a break. Your testimony against Brant—pardon me—Slade, should help you, anyway. Be a big day around here tomorrow. Coroner here, and the police and newspaper men of three states. You’ll be a sensation, Mossman.”
“There’ll be headlines everywhere,” the editor smiled grimly. ‘Jonathan Wise Does It Again.’ ”
“There’s your punch line, Ed,” Wise said as the four men trudged past the heap of old clothes at the edge of the cornfield. “The bleeding scarecrow. Weird things, scarecrows.”
“You’ll let Margery know,” Brant said to Wise. “I’d rather you took care of that. Don’t let her come to see me.”
Albert Shedd laughed scornfully, suddenly stopped in his tracks and turned his head to the wind. Jonathan Wise felt a chill. He wondered if Shedd could hear a woman scream.
THROUGH THE WALL
G.T. Fleming-Roberts
Harmless substances may merge, become virulent poison. This story of the chemistry of murder will startle you.