by Jerry eBooks
The lawyer closed his eyes, opened them. “In those days there was no bank in Holden and when cotton was in bale and the buying season came around, Hazelton had the money sent over from Sycamore City, the county seat eleven miles away. A sheriff’s deputy brought it. He brought it in a black briefcase. This particular year he brought thirty-five thousand dollars.”
Crockett nodded. Chaffin continued, “Hazelton’s emporium was two stories high and a half block long. The office was on the ground floor, at the rear, by the alley. There were two rooms in the office, the main room with a safe as big as a piano, and the small enclosed entry room where complaints and charge accounts were handled. I was Hazelton’s attorney and was back in the sanctum the night it came off.”
The lawyer’s eyes veiled in memory. “Hazelton was home for supper. Outside it was dark. Back in the inner office, Burt Nicholls and I were talking politics. Nicholls is a schoolteacher and in those days he worked evenings at the store. Out in the anteroom Charlie Lamberton was behind the desk, waiting for the after-supper rush. Lamberton was a newcomer to town; he died a couple of years ago but his daughter is still around. Dorothea Lamberton and Burt Nicholls have been keeping company for a good many years. But that’s another story and not a very interesting one, in my opinion.”
Crockett said, “It’s dark. Hazelton is home to supper. What next?”
“Then it comes.” Mr. Chaffin spread his palms. “We hear a car stop in the alley. A minute later Lamberton walks in with the black briefcase. He locks the briefcase in the safe and lays a paper on the desk by Burt and me. It’s the receipt for the cash. Lamberton had signed it; automatically, I put my name to it and so did Nicholls.”
He pulled down the corners of his lips in a smile. “What happened after that is history. When Hazelton came in and checked, the money was missing. The real deputy, a man named Latch, was found along the road five miles out of town. The cash wasn’t on him and neither was the receipt, of course. Lamberton, a stranger in town, had transacted the deal in the shadows of the alley. The imposter hadn’t got out of the car, just handed the briefcase through the window. Lamberton couldn’t identify anybody!”
Crockett grimaced. “Whew! That certainly smells.”
“To put it mildly, sir, it does. Latch was slain and robbed yet someone took the briefcase on in to town—for a receipt! Don’t ask me why. I’ve often wondered that myself. And so did the sheriff, and so did Hazelton.”
Crockett got to his feet. “I want to get out of here—and I want to use a typewriter. Can you arrange it?”
“Certainly. There’s no reason to hold you.” They stepped out into the night. Mr. Chaffin drew up before town hall, unlocked the door. “You’ll find a typewriter within. Good evening, sir, and good luck.”
Crockett flicked on the wall switch; there was a machine on the clerk’s desk. He sat down, found a sheet of bond in a drawer, fed it into the roller. He took an envelope from his pocket. It said:
Crockett Detective Agency
GENTLEMEN:
Come to Holden and find out what Mark Savage is doing back in these parts and maybe you’ll discover who stole thirty-five thousand dollars from Tom Hazelton.
The page was unsigned. He slid it back in its envelope. Laboriously, using two fingers, he wrote:
Crockett Insurance Agency
DEAR LEW:
When you run over to Holden would you look up Mark Savage. His life insurance policy has lapsed. It isn’t a large one which is all the more reason that he might want to keep it valid.
Yours,
WIMBERTON B. PERCHERON,
Special Agent.
The signature he did with his pen, a beautiful job of scrolls and flourishes.
Main Street was deserted. The sign on the window said, THE BLUE TRUNK, Ladies’ Wear, Men’s Wear, Notions. A high school girl with four-inch heels and mascaraed eyelashes put down a comic book and came forward, movie style, as though she were carrying a housecat balanced on her head. She said, “Papa and Mamma are home to supper.”
“You’ll do fine.” Crockett smiled engagingly. “I’m trying to locate a friend. He’s about six and a half feet tall, has a long red beard, and goes scooting about in a wheelchair. His name is Mark Savage.”
Her eyes widened. “I ain’t never seen that man. My Redeemer! The only Mark Savage I know is a pore little feller in dime store spectacles that wears dirty overalls and cowhide brogans!”
“Know him well?”
“He come in a few days ago and bought a blue serge suit and a cardboard traveling bag. I never seen him before.”
Crockett sauntered to the counter. A tray of cheap costume jewelry glinted in the harsh white light. Brooches, clips, pins. He selected a sunburst brooch of glass rubies and emeralds, centered with a showy imitation diamond. “How much?”
“Fifteen cents. You got a girlfriend?”
He paid her, opened his penknife, pried out the fake diamond. He dropped the brooch back in the tray, wrapped the phony stone in a cigarette paper and put it in his vest pocket. She was speechless. He leered at her, said intimately, “Maybe they got them mixed up at the factory! For fifteen cents what can I lose? Maybe I’ve bought me a fortune!”
She wet her lips nervously with her tongue, spoke as though she were addressing a child. “You better go now. Goodbye.”
The little white cottage was back in a clump of flowering syringas; a trumpet vine cascaded from a trellis across the porch, making a lush black canopy. Crockett ambled up the glazed brick walk, heard low friendly voices. He called, “Hello!
Anyone home?”
As he put his foot on the step, a soft rose light came on. Back in the boxlike cave of the porch a man and woman sat side by side on a wooden swing. A table lamp with a frilled pink shade was on a wicker taboret by the woman’s elbow.
The woman, in her late thirties, was plump and amiable looking and wore a short kittenish frock of mauve linen. The man was middle-aged; he had a pompous, horse-like face and was dressed in rumpled seersucker. They blinked as he came forward. He said effusively, “Mrs. Burt Nicholls, I presume?”
“I am Mr. Nicholls,” the man declared in a ponderous baritone. “This is Miss Dorothea Lamberton. This is her home. “Whom did you—?” Crockett produced the bogus insurance letter. Miss Lamberton glanced at it, handed it to Mr. Nicholls who returned it. “Who is this Mark Savage and where can I find him?”
“We were just talking about him,” Miss Lamberton said. “He dropped in to see me several days ago. Mr. Nicholls tells me he paid him a visit, too.”
Nicholls said aggressively, “As a matter of fact, we’re not clear as to what brings him back to town, he hasn’t been around for twenty years. He was a suspect in the Hazelton business. Are you familiar with that case?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”
Mr. Nicholls appeared torn between hostility for the uninvited guest and a fascination for his subject. “A deputy named Latch brought in a large sum of money; he was killed and robbed just this side of Fern Spring on a lonely stretch of road. Mark Savage, an itinerant from Alabama, had a vagabond camp at the spring. They tried to fasten the thing on him but there was no evidence. Savage left town as soon as they released him.”
“He was gone for twenty years—and then suddenly hove in again? What was he doing in the meantime?”
“From the way he talked the other day, I got the impression that he’d been in prison down in Alabama.” Mr. Nicholls looked prim, said significantly, “Just think, according to you, suh, he’s been keeping up insurance while he was in confinement!”
“Very thrifty of him,” Crockett answered vaguely. “If he’s making it an old home week, maybe he’s visited this Hazelton, too. Perhaps I’d better—”
“Tom Hazelton’s at the lodge tonight,” Miss Lamberton put in helpfully. “He won’t be home until nine-thirty.” She looked disturbed. “I don’t know what’s come over the old man lately. He’s suddenly taken to drinking!”
Crockett cluck
ed his lips sanctimoniously. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
She frowned. “The other evening he did the strangest thing! It gives me the creeps to think of it! I dropped in with a coffee cake and he led me into his living room and offered me a chair. Suddenly he picked up a cut glass water bottle from the mantel shelf and smashed it on the hearth! I looked alarmed and he said, ‘From now on, I’ll never drink another glass of water. I don’t want no pond scum in my stummick and I don’t intend to swaller no little lizard eggs neither!’ He looked wild. I got scared and left.”
“Nerves,” Mr. Nicholls declared. “Old Hazelton had always been high strung.” He got up, said austerely, “Shall we be going, suh?”
Crockett lowered himself on the porch swing beside Miss Lamberton. He said, “That’s a mighty pretty lavender dress, mam.”
Mr. Nicholls stiffened in anger. “Shall I take this man with me, Dorothea, or do you prefer that I leave him here?”
Miss Lamberton pretended maidenly confusion. Mr. Nicholls strode dramatically down the path. Crockett stood up. “Goodnight. Tomorrow he’ll propose. Do you want to bet?”
She didn’t answer. He couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying.
A loafer in front of the drugstore directed him to Tom Hazelton’s. His wristwatch said seven minutes to nine; if he worked quickly and ran into no difficulty, he should have plenty of time. He was just crossing the village square when the woman spoke to him. She stepped out from behind the dilapidated bandstand and said, “Howdy.”
The light from the distant shop fronts made a golden pollen-like nimbus about the grassless commons. She was a hill woman, big-boned, in a faded cotton dress. Her hair was gray and twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. She raised a lank arm, pointed to an object a few yards away. “Whut’s that yonder, friend?”
Crockett peered. She was gesturing toward an old wheelbarrow. He said, “It looks like a wheelbarrow. Why?”
She nodded. “That’s right. Now tell me how do you shave?”
“Did you say, how do I shave?”
“Yessir, please.”
“Well, I take a little hot water and make a lather. With my razor in my right hand I stand at a mirror and—”
She nodded her head gravely. “I’m much obliged. I gotta think this over. Likely I’ll see you in the morning.” She melted into the shadows and was gone.
A circlet of cold sweat broke out across Crockett’s forehead. He said soft to himself, “Good old Holden. Never a dull moment!”
Mr. Tom Hazelton’s home was hidden from the street by a line of funereal cedars. The brick house was dark but for a glimmer of phantom starlight on the windows. Crockett yanked the bell pull and listened. There was no response.
He flipped on his flash. A toothpick had been thrust between the door and the jamb. The lock was an old mortise affair; his third skeleton key threw the bolt. He entered, closed the door behind him. He took two steps and his ankle broke a black thread tied between the newelpost and the hall tree. Massive doors led into the living room and their knobs had been dusted slyly with flour.
Ex-grocer Hazelton was a man who liked his privacy—and he had his own homespun methods of checking on prowlers.
The living room was high-ceilinged, with a bay window and a carved marble fireplace. The rug was turkey red and the wallpaper was patterned in pheasants and grapes. Everywhere were antiques, chairs, loveseats, glassware. He’d come in search of a desk and to his amazement, he counted seven. One by one, beginning with a delicate rosewood secretary, he went through them. All seven were empty.
It was in the window seat, within the embrasure of the bay, that he found the ledgers. They were neatly stacked, the complete file of Hazelton’s business accounts from nineteen-nine to thirty-six.
In the volume labeled 1924 he came across two interesting entries. Under the account of Martin Chaffin, he read:
July 7
1 lb whippoorwill peas
1 lb salt pork
1 S&W revolver, cal. 32-20
1 gal sorghum
And on precisely the same date, under the account of Burt Nicholls, was written:
July 7
2 cans sardines
½ lb crackers
1 box fifty cartridges, cal. .32-.20
Crockett returned to the rosewood secretary. He took a pencil stub from his vest, removed its eraser. He got out the glass diamond that he’d bought at the Blue Trunk, crammed it into the little tin cylinder at the end of the pencil, and restored the eraser. He placed the pencil in a pigeonhole—and left the house.
The Holden Hotel was at the shabby end of the business block. Spring sunlight was pounding through the grimy window in coruscating copper when he awoke. Mr. Martin Chaffin was waiting for him in the lobby. The lawyer was in excellent humor; his black felt hat was on the back of his head and there was a merry twinkle in his squinting, triangular eyes. He asked, “How’s the bankroll this morning? Is it worth ten dollars to know that your life is in jeopardy?”
“No.” Crockett shook his head. “That’s nothing new.” He slipped a bill into the lawyer’s lax fingers. “—But I’d like to hear the sordid details.”
“Someone is digging a grave for you.” Chaffin inspected him with pleasure. “That, at least, is the interpretation I put on it. Someone broke into my tool shed last night and stole my long-handled shovel. Someone, in spite of our secrecy last evening, learned that we’ve been talking and plans are being made for your disposal.”
“Why my disposal? Why not yours?”
Mr. Chaffin smiled wryly. “You’re the one, sir, who is stirring up the mare’s nest. I know these people. I just thought you might like to hear.” His lank face creased in an expression of annoyance. “My tool shed has a superfine lock. I wonder how he got in?”
“I’ll be out this afternoon to look at it. By the way, did you ever buy a Smith and Wesson thirty-two twenty?”
“Never bought one, no. I owned one for a while, though. I got it in settlement of a case. Two brothers back on Scaleybark Ridge got into a fight over a girl and—”
“Thanks,” Crockett said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Mr. Chaffin arose and bowed. His thoughtful eyes were alight with speculation.
Burt Nicholls was bending over the iron pipe at the watering trough, taking a drink of water. Crockett had the impression that the schoolteacher had assumed the posture as an excuse to speak to him. As the detective approached him, Nicholls straightened, said with a burst of unexpected cordiality, “What a beautiful spring morning! I wish I were a barefoot tike with fishing rod on my shoulder—By the way, I’ve been wondering. That insurance letter you showed us last night—you know, the one about Mark Savage. It was written on plain bond paper, there was no letterhead.” He winked. “It was spurious, wasn’t it. You’re an investigator of some sort, aren’t you?”
“Now I’ll ask you a question,” Crockett said crisply. “What kind of a gun was used when Deputy Latch was slain?”
“Ballistics said it was a .32-.20.”
“Okay. Did you buy a box of shells for a gun of that caliber in the summer before the robbery?”
Nicholls seemed astounded. “I’ve never fired a gun in my life!”
“It’s there in the ledger. One box of .32-.20 cartridges to Burt Nicholls on August 7, 1924.”
For a long moment, the schoolteacher meditated. “Lamberton kept the books. He must have made an error. He would never have done such a thing deliberately. He was as honest as the day is long. I suppose you’ve heard how he made restitution?”
Crockett remained silent.
“When Hazelton discovered the money was missing,” Nicholls explained, “he went up in the air. Suddenly he remembered that Chaffin and I and Lamberton had all signed the receipt. He tried to foist off the indebtedness on us, tried to make us split the loss three ways and make it good. Chaffin and I hooted at the suggestion, neither of us had any actual authority to sign a receipt and to this day I can’t tell
you why we did. It was Hazelton’s responsibility pure and simple. Lamberton, however, felt that the blame was his and tried to relieve his obligation. He scraped together every cent he had, mortgaged his home and so on.”
“Did he pay it off?”
“About four thousand dollars, as I understand.” Crockett said blandly, “Lawyer Chaffin wants us to come out to his house this afternoon about four. Can you make it?”
Nicholls looked bewildered. “If you say so, yes.”
Old Tom Hazelton was puttering around in the sunlight. He was so emaciated that the skin lay like a gray film over his skull and cheekbones but his frail shoulders were as straight as a youth’s. He was examining a pile of locust fence posts stacked in a corner of the yard. Crockett said cheerily, “Getting ready to put in a fence?”
“Yep,” the oldster said, “when the moon changes.”
Crockett smiled faintly. Hazelton said quickly, “And you don’t need to snicker. Hit’s you is iggerant, not me. I’m a-waitin’ fer the moon to git in the black. Put in a fence post, or plant a potato, by the wrong sign an’ you’ll be durn sorry. The moon, hit’s like a magnet. I’ve seen fence posts and sich sucked half out’n the ground when they was did in the light of the moon . . . What you want here anyway? I don’t know you.”
“I’m Lew Crockett, a detective. I’ve come to Holden to find that thirty-five thousand dollars you mislaid twenty years ago. I want you to agree to pay me twenty percent for its recovery.”
Hazelton gazed at the sky. “I’ll offer three percent.” Crockett laughed; the oldster said, “Come into the house and we’ll horse trade.”
In Mr. Hazelton’s high-ceilinged living room, surrounded by his antique furniture, Crockett hedged. “I haven’t exactly found it yet, you know. But prospects don’t look too bad. Let’s review the case. Why on earth did Lamberton ask Chaffin and Nicholls to sign that receipt?”
“I couldn’t rightly say, Mr. Crockett; I was out to supper. Lamberton’s story to me was that Chaffin and Nicholls jest picked ‘er up and signed her fer a smart alecky prank.”
“They tell me that Lamberton was conscious-stricken over his blunder and ran himself bankrupt paying off his debt to you. Yet his daughter, Miss Dorothea, appears fairly well off.”