by Jerry eBooks
He reached down and picked up the hand grenade. The lieutenant frowned.
“What’s the idea of that thing?” asked the police official.
“You’ll find the imitation pearls in this,” said Nelson, as he unfastened the top and shook out a bag containing the black pebbles. “Jacques had to have some place to hide them after he showed them to Thorne. So he placed them in the grenade, which he’d probably been using for a paperweight. He didn’t think they would be found there.” Nelson smiled. “If he had succeeded in framing me I sure would have had the Memphis Blues!”
A DRINK FOR AUNT LOUISA
Francis Fredricks
Arnold called the turn . . . Aunt Louisa’d have her soup first, then, as usual she’d make her tea. And—incidentally—make her nephew into a wealthy man, who would be very, very brave at her funeral . . .
Arnold Hewes stared down into the garden. His hollow-cheeked face was white; his thin nostrils quivered slightly, Arnold’s luminous, gray-green eyes glowed as they followed each movement of his Aunt Louisa.
The old lady was on her knees, spading, turning over soil along a row of budding iris. A tight, cold smile pulled one side of Arnold’s mouth. Drum-beats of thought pounded from the depths of his brain:
“Spade the soil well, Aunt Louisa, spade it well! In a few hours, spades will be turning up soil for your grave!”
Arnold’s long body went taut. He drew back into the shadows. Aunt Louisa had suddenly gotten up. She fluffed her apron and started towards the house. She was coming in for lunch. Arnold looked at his watch. It was nearly two o’clock. He looked at his hands. They were white and thin and steady.
Only a few minutes more and those hands would do their work. Quickly and neatly. As neat as—as this room, Arnold thought, looking around. It was the best room of the house. It had been his brother’s room. Always Walter had been given the best. The second best was for Arnold.
Arnold hated his aunt for it, ever since they, as orphans, had been adopted by her. She believed in the rights of the first-born. And so her will granted absolute control of the home to Walter, the properties and the securities. There was a cash settlement for Arnold. But there was a provision that if Walter died first, then absolute and final control of the estate would go to Arnold.
Well, Walter was dead now—dead at thirty in a soldier’s grave in Italy.
And he, Arnold, was alive and free. The army had found him psycho-neurotic.
A glance at his watch told him it was time. Silently, he went out of the room and along the still hallway. Vaguely, he heard the tick-tock of the hall clock, the groaning of the stairs at his descent. His mind prepared itself. He couldn’t fail. Margaret, the cook, was having her day off. There was no one who could substantiate or refute his story.
Aunt Louisa had been ill. Walter’s death had done little to improve her condition. Doctor Paine would testify that she’d been subject to fainting spells. The conclusion would be that Aunt Louisa had fainted suddenly while boiling water for her tea. The water had boiled over, extinguished the flame. Aunt Louisa was asphyxiated before she regained consciousness. An open and shut case of accidental death.
It was so simple . . .
Arnold’s long fingers turned the kitchen door knob. Aunt Louisa looked up from the table. She was in her late fifties, gray, with a gentle but firm set to her rather patrician features.
“Hello, Arnold. Going to have a little lunch with me?”
“No, Aunt Louisa,” he said. “I’m not hungry. I’ve got to run the car over to the garage and have the ignition system checked. The motor misses.”
“Oh, of course,” said Aunt Louisa. She gave Arnold a little smile when he poured the steaming soup into her plate. He noticed there wasn’t any teacup set out.
“No tea today, Aunt Louisa?”
“No, Arnold, I think I’ll have some milk.”
“Sure,” he said, turning toward the refrigerator. Then he checked himself. Pouring out milk meant that he’d have to clean it up again. After he killed her, he could not waste any time there. He turned away from Aunt Louisa, went to the sink behind her, turned on the water.
“You and Walter were so unlike,” Aunt Louisa commented, a sudden sorrowful look coming into her face. “Were he here, he’d put on coveralls, go out to the car and in no time at all have everything running fine. He was always tinkering and laughing. You’ve always been so quiet and thoughtful and brooding. At times I’ve never been quite able to understand you.”
Arnold withdrew from his pocket a cotton pad and a small bottle of chloroform. He uncapped the bottle and saturated the pad.
“You haven’t?” He stood behind her.
“No, Arnold.”
“Then let me tell you,” Arnold said. His hand moved around her face, pressed the pad to her nose. Aunt Louisa’s spoon clattered to the table. Her arms raised in mute protest.
“I’ll tell you!” his voice hissed. “I hate you! You’ve disgusted me as long as I’ve known you. And now I’m going to be rid of you—for good!”
Aunt Louisa’s hands clawed Arnold’s wrists. A hysterical scream was muffled in her throat. Then her hands relaxed. Her arms fell limp to her sides.
For a minute more, Arnold held tight. When he released her, her head lolled back. He rinsed out the saturated pad and emptied the bottle down the drain. He opened the faucet full and the cold water flushed any trace of chloroform from the sink. Following that, Arnold washed and dried Aunt Louisa’s face to get rid of the fumes, faint as they were.
He worked hurriedly, setting out cup, saucer and tea bag. He filled the aluminum teapot with the running water, stepped over to the range and lit a burner. He watched the flames lick up. The teapot tilted. The flames hissed and died. Gas rushed through the open jets. Arnold pulled Aunt Louisa from the chair and sprawled her across the floor.
When he stood by the door for a last minute appraisement, his lips moved slightly. “Simple,” he said. “Quite simple.”
Arnold sat still and tense in the huge living room. A cold breeze moved the heavy blue drapes, touching his moist brow. He shivered. His hands clutched the arms of his chair.
“Come on,” he said silently. “Get hold of yourself. In a few minutes they’ll ask you routine questions. Then it’ll be all over. Keep up the shocked attitude and the rest is a cinch.”
There was the sound of a door opening, footsteps coming toward him.
“Will you come inside, Arnold? The police want to ask you a few questions. I’ve asked them to be brief. I know how you must feel.”
Arnold gave Doctor Paine a grateful nod. He followed the gray-haired physician to the kitchen, where the police were.
Four men sat at separated points in the kitchen. Two were in uniform, two in street apparel. Aunt Louisa sprawled where he had left her, her face calm in death.
Lieutenant Hallard, who seemed to be in charge, stood close to Aunt Louisa. His right hand was propped on the range near the teapot. He was a medium sized man with a sandy complexion and steady blue eyes. Next to the teapot was a pan of water simmering over a slow flame. Arnold’s eyes went to the pan of water, then to Lieutenant Hallard.
The detective’s voice was casual and easy. “There are a few facts we’ve got to be certain of, Mr. Hewes. You’re sure of the time you left for the garage?”
“Yes,” Arnold said softly. “It was two-fifteen.”
“And it is now three-fifteen.” Hallard looked at the clock. “Fifty-eight minutes later. You say you drove to the garage and taxied back, getting here at about 2:45. Exactly what did you do then?”
Arnold took a slow breath. Shock showed on his face. “When I found her on the floor, I tried to feel her pulse but there was none. I called Dr. Paine. He told me to call the police and that he’d come right away.” Arnold was silent for a moment. Suddenly a low moan came from his lips. “It’s all my fault!” His voice broke huskily. “If only I’d done what she asked—”
“What do you mean, Arnold?” Dr. Pain
e broke in quickly.
“Aunt Louisa asked me to have lunch with her. But I said no. I wanted to get the car to the garage. If only I had said yes I’d have been here when she collapsed. The water wouldn’t have boiled over!” Arnold’s hands covered his eyes as though blotting out a horrible sight.
A peculiar sound came to Arnold’s ears, putting an end to his burst of grief. Lieutenant Hallard looked at him as casually as ever. He was very still, except for his right hand. The fingers tapped slowly against the teapot.
“You say your aunt was having soup,” Hallard said. He picked up the soup pan. “Which is true enough. The soup is still slightly warm.”
Arnold nodded. What was the fool getting at, playing around with the soup pan? There was nothing in it but soup. Hallard’s hands began to finger the teapot.
Then Arnold understood. A chilling fear rooted him to the floor.
“And now, Mr. Hewes, this water, which hardly more than a half hour ago was boiling over, is cold—quite cold! Yet, the soup is slightly warm. It doesn’t seem to make sense, Mr. Hewes. I’m going to perform an experiment.”
His hand turned up the gas under the pan of simmering water. “When this soup boils, I’m going to shut off the gas. If exactly fifty-eight minutes from then the soup is as cold as the water in the teapot, we’ll close the case as accidental death. If the water is still warm, then I’m holding you for murder!”
Arnold’s lips parted momentarily. With a shriek he whirled around, plunged toward the door, only to be spun back by a pair of blue-coated arms to face the gleaming tea pot. It squatted there still filled with water as cold as the moment he drew it from the faucet. As cold as death, itself.
ATTAR OF HOMICIDE
Donald C. Cameron
Unique Services Unlimited had promenaded mutts, taken maiden aunts on pub-crawls, and selected underpretties for bashful men’s sweethearts, but until the girl-sniffing job came along it had never mixed business with murder.
Nothing, in fact, was further from the mind of Barry MacLuke, proprietor and general manager, when he clopped into his ten-by-twelve office this day at 11 A.M., his raincoat flapping around his spare frame, his spirits as sodden as his felt hat from a gray April shower.
“Morning, beautiful,” said Barry to his secretary. “Why do we bother to come down here when there isn’t any business?”
Judy Grant gazed at him with a hint of triumph in her hazel eyes. She had the prettiest face Barry knew of, framed in ringlets of spun-copper, and a figure just as easy to look at.
She inquired sweetly, “How would you like to earn fifty dollars for picking a girl out of a crowd by her smell?”
Barry wrinkled a nose which was humped between the eyes and thin at the nostrils. “If she’s that kind of girl—”
“By her perfume,” Judy explained hastily. “She’ll be drenched with an exclusive brand.”
He pushed his hat to the back of his dark head and leaned his knuckles on the desk.
“Fifty dollars being fifty dollars, you may elucidate.”
It sounded simple enough. A man named Hollingsby had seen Barry’s four-line ad in the Times and had phoned from his Park Avenue home. Hollingsby was supposed to meet a girl, the daughter of a friend who had died, at Grand Central Station when the 12:35 train arrived from Chicago. But Hollingsby had been taken ill unexpectedly and could not leave his bed, notwithstanding which he was anxious that the girl be met by someone and escorted to his house.
Her name was Mathilda Jones and the catch was that Hollingsby had never seen her and hadn’t the faintest notion what she looked like. It happened, however, that he was a chemist whose hobby was distilling perfumes, and he had sent a distinctive sample which he called Esprit d’Eternite to the girl’s father. Knowing he would recognize the scent anywhere, Hollingsby had told Mathilda, when she called him long-distance, to apply it liberally and leave the rest to him.
“He offered to pay fifty dollars for a sensitive nose,” Judy finished. “I assured him you could scent Christmas Night from Channel Number Five at fifty paces. Do you feel equal to trying, or shall I call in someone?”
She nodded toward a card file containing names and telephone numbers of male and female operatives who would feed canaries, take care of babies, wheel invalids, and otherwise perform, for half the fee entailed, tasks which Barry considered beneath his dignity.
But sniffing out fifty dollars in a railroad station wasn’t beneath his dignity, not with business as it had been.
“I’m off,” he said. “I’ll rub noses with every wench in sight. I’ll round up that fee or bust.”
“You’re practically busted already,” she reminded him. “All we have is each other, and if you start rubbing noses with other girls, we won’t have that.”
“Jealous,” he said—and went forth unsuspectingly to rub noses with death.
Barry’s taxi stopped in front of an old brownstone mansion in the Fifties, and a tall, hatchet-faced man, who seemed desperately hurried, tried to get into the cab before Barry was completely out. The resultant collision took Barry’s breath, but not the other’s.
“Clumsy fool!” the man snarled. “What you need is a lesson in manners.” And he popped into the cab, calling out an address in the East Eighties.
Barry adjusted his hat and glared after the departing car for a moment, then went up the brownstone steps and rang the bell. A stout butler opened the door. The butler said, when Barry had stated his business, “Mr. Hollingsby is expecting you, sir.”
It wouldn’t have taken a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the house was a chemist’s. As Barry followed the servant upstairs, his nostrils were assailed by a medley of odors reminiscent of his high-school days, when Chemistry II was experimenting with sulphides.
He was ushered into a paneled chamber where an old man lay in a vast four-poster bed. Only the gaunt face was visible above the blankets, and the eyes were closed.
“Mr. Hollingsby,” said the butler, “here is the man from the Unique Services place. Mr.—er—MacLuke, sir.”
The eyelids of the old man fluttered up. Barry looked into faded brown eyes that focused slowly, with an effort.
“Eh, Calvert? Oh, yes, to be sure.” The eyes found Barry. “MacLuke, eh? I understand you’re familiar with perfumes.”
“More or less,” Barry said uncomfortably. “A fascinating subject. I should have made it my life’s work. Instead I spent thirty years improving motor fuels—extracting the essence from coal and petroleum to run machines—and only lately I’ve found the time to amuse myself . . . What time is it?”
It was 11: 55 by Barry’s wrist watch.
“Good heavens! The train is due in forty minutes! Where is that phial, Calvert?”
“Here, sir.” The butler lifted a tiny bottle from a telephone table beside the bed.
“My masterpiece.” Hollingsby smiled proudly. “Smell it, MacLuke. I call it Esprit d’Eternite.”
Barry removed the glass stopper and sniffed. A delicate fragrance that was nevertheless penetrating made him think of flowers and sunlight and droning bees. He had thought that perfume was perfume, varying according to whether it came from Saks Fifth Avenue or Woolworth’s, and whether it were labeled “rose” or “lily-of-the-valley,” but all at once he knew better.
“I’ve never smelled anything like it.”
“You never will, young man, except when you meet Mathilda Jones. All I know about her is that she’s twenty and will be wearing this scent.”
“I’ll remember it,” Barry said confidently. “Of course you will. Everyone who can smell at all remembers scents better than anything else. This one, light as it is, will stand out among a thousand others.” He hesitated. “But I must caution you.”
“Yes?”
“Be careful. Don’t speak Miss Jones’s name aloud. Bring her here in a cab.”
“You make it sound dangerous.”
“Her father—a fine man and a great scientist—was murdered,” said Hollingsby, “becau
se of what she will have with her.”
Barry felt an electric tingle all along his backbone.
“I shall send my nephew, Raymond Gaston, with you,” the old man went on. “He won’t be of much help in finding Miss Jones, because he is totally lacking in a sense of smell, but his presence may be a safeguard. Call him, Calvert.”
“He left, sir, very hurriedly,” replied the butler, “in the same cab that brought this gentleman.”
“Damn!” Hollingsby grumbled. “I asked him not to leave. Something’s queer around here, Calvert. Gaston’s behavior—my sudden illness—”
“Yes, sir.”
“However, I daresay Mr. MacLuke can get along.”
Larry said, “I’ll manage.”
He sat tensely during the short ride to Grand Central. Unique Services Unlimited had its strange experiences from time to time, but most of the extraordinary jobs tended to border on the ridiculous. Now for the first time there was a spice of danger added to the adventure, and Barry found it pleasant.
A rare perfume—a mysterious something of incalculable value in the keeping of a girl whose father had been murdered—a hint of peril . . .
In the vaulted concourse of the terminal, Barry stood by the gate through which the passengers from Chicago would stream. Other people were waiting and he glanced at them idly. Two tall young men eyed him and spoke to a plump, distinguished-looking man with white hair, a white mustache, and tinted spectacles. A wiry dark man—a Spaniard, Barry guessed—watched the gate with slitted black eyes; the collar of his raincoat was turned high and his hatbrim was pulled low, but Barry could see a twisted knife-scar across his cheek.
Through the gate trotted redcaps burdened with hand luggage, and behind them came the arriving travelers. Barry edged nearer to the gate, sniffing like a hound and feeling a little silly about it. It was surprising how many aromas he could distinguish, though. A fat woman passed, ten feet away, and he caught a whiff of lavender, heavy as incense. A statuesque blonde who flung herself into the arms of a runty little fellow reeked of gardenia. He could even identify the shaving lotions some of the men had used.