by Jerry eBooks
“That’s right, Mr. Crockett. A aunt o’ her’n in Nashville left her a little money. I tried to get to hit but it seems like I cain’t tech hit.”
“That’s too bad,” Crockett said sympathetically. “Laws are a nuisance, aren’t they? What do you know about Mark Savage?”
Hazelton looked petulant. “I cain’t figger that man. He’s back in town. I used to think he was the critter that slewed Deppity Latch and thieved my money. Yet when I seen Savage the other day he was dressed in dirty ole overalls. ‘Course he coulda spent that thirty-two thousand in the meantime but—”
“Maybe he buried it. Maybe he came back to dig it up?”
“That don’t make no sense. Why would he wait twenty year?” The old man lowered his voice. “Mr. Crockett, my house was broken into last night. Yo’re a detective; who done it and why?”
Crockett ruminated. He indicated the clutter of antiques about the room. “What’s this stuff?”
“Them’s antiques. I settle estates and buy ’em from the heirs as a sideline, while the arn is hot, jest after the deceased has deceased. I say, ‘Folks I’ll give you fifty cents fer this ole worm-eaten table.’ Hit works ever’-time.”
Crockett strolled about the room. When he reached the rosewood secretary he put on a show of interest. “Very strange. An empty desk and yet—” He took his pencil from the pigeonhole, held it to his ear, shook it. “Where did this desk come from?”
“I bought her from the Tolbert family out on Red Fox Run. Why? Hey, what you doin’ with that pencil?”
Crockett took the eraser from its socket, emptied the glass diamond into his palm. The old man’s eyes protruded; he scuttled across the carpet, snipped it up in a quick grab.
“That explains your prowler,” Crockett said solemnly. “Some Tolbert hid a diamond in a pencil and it got passed along in the desk to you. One of the relatives was in last night looking for it. By the way, you’re turning it back to the heirs, of course?”
“Oh, shore. O’course!” Old Hazelton beamed. “Mr. Crockett, you and me is goin’ to get along jim dandy. Yessirreebob! I’ll see that the Tolberts gets hit back. Jest forgit all about hit and leave hit to me.”
Crockett picked up his hat. “And meet me at Martin Chaffin’s this afternoon at four. We’re having a reunion.”
“Anything you say, Mr. Crockett. Anything you say!”
He was wandering about town, looking for Marshal Pickering—when he realized he was being followed.
It was the gaunt hill woman that had spoken to him in the shadows by the bandstand the night before. She made no effort at concealment but tagged him a half block in the rear, persistently like a lonesome hound dog.
He took her for a jaunt, passed down Main Street, crossed the village square, turned into the alley by a feed-and-grain store and came out into a secluded hitching lot. He sat down on a weathered bench and waited. After a moment, she materialized in the alley-mouth and to his surprise approached him.
She was tall, a good head taller than he was, and in her baggy cotton dress she made a sepulchral figure as she advanced. She asked woodenly, “You got a pen?”
He nodded. She produced a sheet of cheap paper and a blank envelope from the folds of her apron. “I hain’t no scholar,” she remarked without embarrassment. “Will you write a letter for me?”
He flattened the paper on the bench seat, held his pen in readiness. She spoke slowly, “Dear Mark, the man that give you that money to leave town is spranglin’ around tryin’ to hang the whole bad business on you. Got yore letter this morning and in answer would like to say burn that affidavit, it won’t bring us nothing but grief. Don’t forgit you got a prison record, honey. Yore faithful wife, Vereena.” She took a big breath. “Thank you, sir. Now if you’ll jest back the envelope. The address is William Henery Jones, General Delivery, Chattanooga.”
He handed her the document. “We’ve met before, haven’t we? Why did you stop me last night and give me all that rigmarole?”
“I was tryin’ you out,” she said somberly. “On mirror and wheelbarrow!” When she said the words, her r’s were melodious, flutelike. “You spoke ’em like a Yankee and I knowed you was a stranger and would do. This letter is kinda personal and I couldn’t take the chance of having the folks around here writin’ hit for me.” She started across the hitching lot, stopped, said over her shoulder, “I’m surely beholden to you, sir.”
“Not at all,” Crockett remarked graciously. “The pleasure is all mine. I hope everything comes out all right.”
Lawyer Chaffin’s green shingle bungalow was at the edge of town, set in a crotch between two red clay hills. Beyond, holly and scrub oak struggled up the ridge to a hazy sky. It was eight minutes to four as Crockett stepped through a break in the osage hedge and approached the house. Old Tom Hazelton, smoking a thin cigar, was seated with the lawyer on the veranda.
Mr. Chaffin arose, came down the steps to greet his guest. “It’s back here,” he said under his breath. Crockett followed him around the corner of the house.
An old pine door was set flush in the hillside, locked by a hasp and an expensive padlock. “It’s got me whipped,” Mr. Chaffin declared. “This is my tool shed. How did he get in?”
Crockett shrugged. “See that new staple in the hasp? He simply pried off the old staple and put in a new one. Open up. I’d like a look inside.”
Mr. Chaffin’s tool shed was a small, square cave, carved from the red clay and floored with scrap lumber. There were a few garden tools, a scythe, and an old barrel-topped trunk. The lawyer said, “It was over there, my shovel. Now it’s gone.”
Crockett lifted the trunk lid. It was full of mildewed clothes, old papers. Chaffin said, “When Lamberton died, he died in debt and his property was up for sale. I bought it at auction to give to his daughter. Miss Dorothea wouldn’t accept it. Too proud, I guess.”
Crockett said, “Let’s go back to the house.”
Burt Nicholls arrived and Marshal Pickering drove up in his tan coupe. Mr. Chaffin brought out extra chairs and the little group sat silently in the hot evening as dust rolled up from the road and settled among the magnolia boles. Already, in the uplands, night noises were beginning, the skirl of the tree frog, the cough of the bobcat.
Finally Crockett spoke. “Well, gentlemen, we can get this over with in a hurry. I know who our killer is. I know exactly how the thing was worked.”
Mr. Chaffin sank back in his chair, listened intently. Burt Nicholls smiled encouragement. Old Hazelton fiddled with his cigar.
“Let’s go back once more to the night of the robbery,” Crockett suggested. “Deputy Latch drives into the alley behind the store, turns over the briefcase to Lamberton and waits for his receipt—”
“That’s Lamberton’s story,” Hazelton broke in. “I’ve allus believed Lamberton’s deppity was Mark Savage. I’ve allus figgered they was together. Could be that Savage kilt Latch on the way into town, took his car and brought the briefcase to Lamberton for a signature on the receipt. Jest to ball us up, which hit did!”
“No. Lamberton’s story was true in every detail,” Crockett declared. “Here’s the way it was done, and a slick trick it was. Latch was an accomplice. The killer persuaded him to bring an empty briefcase in, convincing him that the receipt would absolve him, that suspicion would center around the safe in the office. Deputy Latch was killed on the way home. He was slain for security reasons, of course.”
There was a moment of tense silence. Marshal Pickering asked quietly, “Who done it, Lew?”
“Martin Chaffin did it,” Crockett said. “He’s your man.”
Chaffin shook his head scornfully. “What nonsense. I expected better than that from you—”
“We’ll study your bank deposits. At first you banked the money out of town and later brought it in. Holden had no bank at the time which made the subterfuge easy.”
Chaffin laughed. Mr. Nicholls asked, “Who brought you to Holden?”
“An anonymous letter
about Mark Savage. I suspect your fiancée wrote it.”
Pickering leaned forward. “What’s Savage got to do with this?”
“Plenty. He saw the murder of Latch at Fern Spring. A little later he got socked in jail. When he finally got free he came back to apply a little blackmail. Chaffin paid him off once—and then killed him.”
The lawyer said lugubriously. “Now I’ve killed Mark Savage, too!”
“You did indeed. And that’s where we’ve got you. You walked into Hazelton’s living room while Savage was spilling the works. You knocked him into the fireplace, breaking his dime store spectacles. Later when Miss Lamberton was visiting Hazelton, our elderly friend observed some shards of glass in the hearth and broke a water bottle to cover up.”
Tom Hazelton clamped shut his jaw. “That I deny.”
“You’re innocent, but you’re afraid of Chaffin. That’s why you have those homemade prowler snares all over your house.” Crockett’s lean face went bleak. “The trouble with you, Chaffin, is that you think you’re a heap smarter than you are. You think outsiders, like me, are pretty dumb. I suspected you from the beginning, when you sat there in the jail and told me your version of the incident. Lamberton and Nicholls belonged in Hazelton’s office that night, you were the extra quantity.”
Crockett sighed. “Since my arrival last night you’ve had me on a merry-go-round. And all your red herrings were premised on the supposition that an outlander like me wouldn’t understand the mechanics of a village like Holden. You were in Hazelton’s ledger for a pistol so you added a box of shells to Burt Nicholls’ account to confuse the issue. You send some woman—I bet she’s your housekeeper acting on blind orders—around to dictate a letter implying that Savage is alive in Chattanooga.” He glanced at the marshal. “She’s tall, wears a faded cotton dress, has gray hair—?”
“Aunt Betty, the town bum,” Pickering said promptly. “She’ll do anything for a bottle of popskull whiskey.”
“You were getting alarmed,” Crockett went on. “You gave me a silly story of a stolen shovel to bring me out and show me Savage’s grave. That was to convince you in your own mind that you were absolutely safe.”
Marshal Pickering asked calmly, “Where is Mark Savage buried?”
“Back of the house, under the floor of the cyclone cellar. Chaffin calls it his tool shed—to explain the lock on the door—but I’ve seen hundreds of those cellars in these hills and he didn’t deceive me for a moment. Cyclone cellars don’t have locks. He put that on after he buried the body.”
“But why,” asked Nicholls, “why should he kill Savage at Mr. Hazelton’s and then cart the corpse all the way home?”
“My guess is that he was afraid of the moon,” Crocket said. “He’s superstitious. It’s the wrong sign and he was afraid that if he buried the corpse out in the hills the moon would draw it to the surface of the earth. He was waiting for the moon to get in the black. Am I right, Chaffin?”
Chaffin said desperately, “I was a victim of circumstances. I can explain everything—”
Marshal Pickering snapped on the handcuffs. “Nice work, Lew. But you made one mistake. That business about the moon hain’t no superstition. I’ve seen fence posts drawed up till—” Nicholls and Hazelton nodded.
. . . After it was all over, Crockett walked back to town with the schoolteacher. For a while, neither spoke. At last Crockett said, “There’s one thing more I’d like to get fixed up. I’m thinking about you and Miss Dorothea. Why put it off any longer?
Why not make up your mind and marry the girl.” The schoolteacher came to a sudden stop, rocked back on his heels. “You, too! I’ve never told this to a soul, but she’s the one that puts it off. Every night I propose and every night she diverts me. Why does the cruel world always assume that it’s always the male who—?” His face was a mask of self-pity in the gathering dusk. “A-a-ah! Such torment!”
“Excuse me,” Crockett said hastily. “I didn’t realize what I was getting into.”
DON’T MEDDLE WITH MURDER
C. S. Montanye
The sports-reporter sleuth keeps up with his reading—and smashes into fast action when he spots a clue to crime between the lines!
CHAPTER I
Cop’s Call
The two cauliflowers were going at it tongs and hammer. The smaller, a lippy kid with orange-colored hair, was taking a pasting. Which annoyed my host no end. Barney Koppel, fight promoter, stationery store owner and ex-paper hanger, had gone to the trouble of inviting me down to Ziggy’s gym to observe what he called “the flashiest lightweight discovery in the last sixty years—now under my exclusive management” in action.
That was the lad with the orangeade locks. Something had slipped in the workout. A look across at Ziggy’s blackavised countenance, and a big wink from the gymnasium owner’s left lid, told me where the wires were crossed. Ziggy, knowing Koppel wanted to cut a hunk of publicity in the Orbit—the sheet for which I composed numerous sporting sonnets—had arranged to rib Barney for my benefit. The work horse, instead of taking the terrific slapping around Koppel had no doubt ordered, was tearing into “the greatest lightweight discovery in sixty years” like a Kansas tornado.
Barney, plucking out his few remaining hairs, one by one, broke away from my side and jumped up into the gym ring. He took a left and a right before he got between the brawlers. He pushed his groggy find onto a stool and waved both arms in frenzied agitation.
“I’ve been robbed! You done that, Ziggy!
You tried to make a monkey out of my boy in front of Mr. Castle! I should die like a dog in the street if I ever come back here again!”
The black-faced Ziggy, two hundred and forty pounds even, shook like a bowl of jello, all six flavors. Barney pushed his leather-swinger into a bathrobe and conducted him to a dressing room, leaving the air blue behind him.
“What a character!” Ziggy wiped mirth tears from his eyes and looked at me. “He’s got a punk who can’t punch harder than an Erie conductor and right away he wants a page spread in your paper, Johnny. Can I stand by and watch him get away with it?”
A pair of new future greats climbed into the ring for some exercise. I looked at my watch. Three-fifteen and a fraction. Time to get back to the Orbit’s office and see if there were any telephone calls or mail.
Also, I remembered suddenly, the Number One gal in my life was meeting me at five at Billy Austin’s place. And Miss Libby Hart liked being kept waiting the same as a chorine likes kitchen work.
I started toward the door when Barney Koppel came out and grabbed my arm.
“Look, Mr. Castle! You seen what happened. Jobbed—by that fat no-good. A laughing-stock! The boy’s really sensational in his own bracket. They ring a light heavy in on him. It’s like wrestling with a kid—uneven, what I mean. Wait’ll I break him at the Kris Kringle A. C. Tuesday night a week.”
I nodded him off and was heading for an exit when I stopped.
A man came in. Just an ordinary, large-footed specimen of the breed, but familiar to me from the top of his dusty felt down to his well-polished, square-toed shoes.
Detective Larry Hartley of Homicide!
There was plenty of mayhem on tap at Ziggy’s resort, but it wasn’t like Hartley to check on it. Captain Fred Mullin’s best man was usually reserved for special assignments. Hartley didn’t see me as he pounded in. I made a show of lighting a cigarette and watched.
On the other side of the gym, Hartley gave Ziggy the office. He pulled a chair out and sat down beside the dark-complexioned load of blubber. I could see Ziggy shake his head and nod as Detective Hartley went into conversation. A couple of minutes passed and the squirrels of curiosity began to scamper around in the back of my mind.
Which was bad. A sports writer for a dignified Manhattan daily had no business mixing with what didn’t concern him. Several times that had happened in the past—with results that narrowly kept me from being measured for a pair of wings. Meddling with murder and cracking into crime,
while bringing me some local fame as an amateur sleuth, had neither improved my blood pressure count nor softened my arteries any.
And, more to the point, Libby had laid down her own law in a few select words. They ran something like this:
“Either you stop doubling for a Centre Street character or you get your ring back. I don’t mean the one that goes on the Bell System, either.”
I thought of that as I stood there, watching Hartley mumble in the gym owner’s private ear.
It was none of my business; no brass off my watch. Still, I had a hunch that something important was being broiled. Hartley never made visits unless they added up. All my reportorial instincts surged to the fore.
“Here we go again!” an inner voice chortled. “Hang onto your Stetson!”
The parley didn’t last long. With a grunt Hartley got up and went out. I was downstairs and was around the corner when he laid his Number Twelves on the sidewalk. Further down the street was a regulation police prowl car. A cop and another man were in it. Hartley made it three and the official heap buzzed off.
As it passed the corner my suspicions were confirmed. In the front seat I gandered another familiar face. It belonged to the head of Homicide—a cold, shrewd-eyed pan with all the animation of a marble quarry and a mouth made to order for sneers and leers.
Captain Fred Mullin, in person!
I went back to Ziggy’s in a rush. If Mullin had sent Hartley to the gym, and thought enough of it to ride uptown with him, nothing less than Grade A murder must be on the book.
But Ziggy, when I asked him if he’d seen my cigarette case around, shook his head and grinned.
“You should ask Hartley things like that, Johnny. He was here a minute ago. What’s the answer—mebbe you want to find out what he was quizzing me about. I seen you standing over there watching.”