by Jerry eBooks
He was half-grateful now that he had been through such a long ordeal with the police and the law. It had taught him something about crime and clues, enabling him to observe things which, when he had been more naive and uninformed, he would surely have overlooked, just as Arlene had.
“But Jeff, why would the police accuse you?” she asked. “Why should you kill the man whose final testimony saved you?”
“Suppose, as the city believes, I did murder your father, Arlene. Suppose I had somehow got Jenson to change his testimony, but still knew he could put the finger of guilt on me. I couldn’t be tried again, but I could be lynched, or driven out of town, once the people had proof of my guilt. With that motive, it would be logical I might kill Jenson, and try, bunglingly, to make it look like suicide.” He gave a harsh, bitter laugh. “Convincing, isn’t it Arlene? Perhaps it even convinces you!”
“Oh Jeff, how can you think such a thing?”
Her dark eyes filled with tears, the girl suddenly flung herself into his arms. He drew her to him, held her tightly, gratefully, both of them for a moment forgetting the macabre surroundings, the ghastly hanging corpse.
“Jeff!” she sobbed. “I never believed you guilty! I was confused, bewildered, and I couldn’t bear to go to the trial, but all the time I was waiting for them to clear you! Darling, you must believe me!”
Some of the long-pent bitterness melted from Jeff Corey. He felt strong now, capable of fighting and beating this thing.
“If you’ll help me, Arlene, I can clear myself.”
“Of course. What are we going to do?”
He answered with one word. “Nothing.”
“What do you mean, Jeff?”
“We’re going to do nothing,” he said fiercely. “That’s the one thing the killer doesn’t expect! We’re going to leave this cottage exactly as if we had never been in it! We never discovered Jenson’s body, understand? Can we lock the door?”
She took a key hanging on a nail near the door, gave it to him.
“We’ve got to move fast and carefully,” he warned her.
He opened the door, slipped out. Darkness was enveloping the big estate now, and he was grateful for it. He didn’t think the killer would be lurking around the premises, but had to chance that He motioned Arlene to come out, then locked up the shaded cottage with its silent inhabitant.
EVEN as he started toward the mansion with the girl, his tensed ears heard a sound in the falling night. The sound of an approaching car. “Are you expecting someone, Arlene?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Car seems to be headed here. Come on—hurry!”
He took her arm and guided her swiftly to the mansion. She had left the big front door unlocked. They entered a spacious living room, and she switched on lights. Corey moved to one of the heavy-portiered windows. He lifted the curtain, peered out. Headlamps swung eerily over the estate gate, then cut through it.
“Someone’s coming all right,” he gritted. “Quick, Arlene! Pour out some wine or something. Light a cigarette. We must act as if we’re thoroughly and comfortably at home.”
He had peeled off his coat and hat, heard the girl moving swiftly. He saw the car stop, recognized it as Blanchard’s heavy limousine. Two men got out. They walked past Corey’s car, and Corey held his breath as the disappeared momentarily in the trees that also hid the cottage. They appeared again, coming toward the house, and Corey drooped the curtain.
“Now listen, Arlene. If anyone asks about the caretaker, he left your employ this afternoon. Understand? He locked up his cottage and left. You don’t know where he went.”
Before she could even answer, the doorbell pealed. There was no servant staying in the house at night to answer it, so Arlene went herself. Corey went to the coffee table where she had poured wine from a decanter, took a glass of it, and was sitting on a chaise-longue, relaxed, glass in hand, when Arlene ushered in Lawyer Blanchard and the other visitor, who proved to be the gray-haired realtor, John Hatcher.
Both men looked a little grim as they saw Corey getting up from the chaise-longue. Blanchard first spoke.
“We’ve just had a long talk with the D.A.,” he said. “We wanted him to come along with us, but he felt his position would make him seemed biased and unfriendly. It seems the town has been taking the verdict pretty hard. For my part, I wish to protect the good name of Miss Prentiss here. Mr. Corey’s coming here is naturally going to make more talk, add fuel to the fire.”
Arlene answered him. She moved to Jeff, her slim hand taking his. Her eyes were clear and shining.
“You might as well know that I intend to marry Jeff as soon as possible,” she said.
The words brought a thrill to Corey, his blue eyes going almost happy for the first time. John Hatcher turned to him then.
“Look Jeff, I have your interests at heart, also. If you and this girl want to get married, more power to you! But why try to live in all this ugly gossip? Move out of the city—go to another. I promise I’ll use my influence to see that you get a good position.”
“And I’ll administer this estate for you,” Blanchard told Arlene. “You won’t have to worry about it.”
Corey’s voice was crisp. “Thanks, gentlemen, but you forget what I told you and Saxon. When I’ve cleared my name there will be no necessity for our moving out of town!”
Blanchard’s bushy brows went up. “You’d have to have pretty obvious proof to convince the suspicious townfolk, Corey. What progress have you made? Did you talk to the caretaker?”
The question was casual enough, but Corey watched Blanchard carefully as he answered it.
“No, I didn’t. Unfortunately, I learned that Jenson has left Miss Prentiss’ employ.”
Arlene nodded. “He didn’t give any reason, just closed up the cottage and left,” she said smoothly.
“That’s tough,” Hatcher put in. “It looks as if you’ll just be batting your head against a brick wall, Jeff.”
But both he and Blanchard still found Corey and Arlene adamant. The two men took their departure, but as Blanchard pulled a hat over his thin dark hair, he said:
“If you should change your mind, Miss Prentiss, please get in touch with me.”
From the window, Corey saw the two walk to Blanchard’s car. Again he held his breath as they passed the tree-screened caretaker’s cottage. Then they climbed in the car and drove off.
Had either of them known that Corey and Arlene had lied about Jenson, that the caretaker was actually in that cottage, a gruesome hanging corpse? Only the murderer knew that. Corey thought of suave, dark Floyd Saxon, the D.A. who had refused to come though he had also been a friend of Judge Prentiss’ and had felt involved. One thing was clear—the murderer, whoever he was, must be worried to know that the trap he had prepared had not yet sprung. Nor could the killer do much about it. The body had to be found and reported legitimately.
“Well, Jeff,” Arlene’s tense voice broke in on his thoughts. “What do we do next?”
Corey turned from the window. “We have to go back to the very beginning now, Arlene.”
There was desperation in his voice. He knew he would have to work fast, that he was virtually sitting on dynamite with that unreported murder on the estate.
“Arlene, I’d like to go into the library where your father—” He left the rest unsaid.
The girl’s face tightened a little, but she accompanied him through French doors and, as she found the wall-switch, the familiar, paneled room leaped into light. There was the same scroll-desk, with its now vacant leather-back chair. The electric clock was missing, still held as an exhibit by the police. On the carpet under the chair was an ugly dark stain—the once-red blood of the man who had been murdered in this room.
Corey was letting the familiar room revive his memories of that day when he had asked Jonathan Prentiss for Arlene’s hand. He resurrected the kindly Judge in his mind, imagined him sitting in that chair. He tried to think of anything Prentiss might have said
, any little hint of manner or speech that might have presaged some knowledge on Prentiss’ part of his coming doom. Certainly the ex-Judge had seemed cheerful.
Corey cudgeled his brain in fierce concentration. And then one little fact did seem to stand out. He remembered how Prentiss had let him into the house, first opening the door on a chain and peering out to see his visitor.
“Was your father always cautious about letting people into the house when he was alone, Arlene?” he asked.
“Well, being a Judge who had sent up many criminals—” she began, and stopped, her face coloring. “Oh Jeff, I didn’t mean that!”
“I know, darling,” he said assuringly.
So the Judge had been cautious. It indicated that his killer, whom he must have admitted, had been someone he knew, trusted.
“I know the D.A. and the police must have gone over all his papers and records,” Corey said. “But I’d like to go over them too, just in case they missed something.”
Arlene opened a wall-safe, and also took papers from the desk.
“I’m afraid you’ll find precious little, Jeff,” she said despairingly. “Dad had developed a habit of destroying records as fast as he made them—which seemed strange, since his memory was not wonderful.”
The papers proved to be only bills, canceled checks which had gone to the local stores, and some carbon copies of letters relating to the ex-Judge’s latest project, the War Memorial Fund. The letters gave his full plan for the organization of the campaign, and among the names of the public figures who were individually to collect funds and turn them over to Prentiss, were the names of Saxon, Blanchard, and Hatcher.
Corey asked Arlene if any of those three had had any quarrel, no matter how small, with the Judge. To her knowledge, none had.
Finding nothing else in the library except the grim memory of that tragedy, Corey and the girl went back into the living room. Arlene insisted that they have a snack to eat. It was far past dinner time. She fetched some cold cuts from the kitchen and, though neither had appetite, they forced themselves to take the nourishment.
“I’m still up against a stone wall,” Corey told her. “Arlene, you’ve got to help me! I want you to talk about your dad now—tell me everything you can about him, no matter how small. I never did get to know him well.”
Arlene did her best. As she spoke, with the grief of remembered loss in her tone, a clearer picture of Jonathan Prentiss shaped itself to Corey. The Judge had been an astute man, a thorough man who had been a stickler for details, and on whom it would have been hard indeed to pull a fast one. Though rich, he had—before he had acquired that habit of tearing up his records—always accounted for every penny in any financial dealing.
The more the picture grew, the more Corey became convinced that a man like Judge Prentiss should have had some inkling of a murderer’s intent, if that murderer was someone he knew.
Arlene began talking about the Judge’s hobbies. In his younger days, he had been an outdoor man, loving fishing and other sports. He had also been a home-movie enthusiast, who developed his own 16 mm. films. Confined indoors, he had turned this latter hobby into still another one. He had begun photographing old criminal records and other interesting material, creating for himself a home-made microfilm library.
IT WAS then that Corey abruptly stopped the girl’s recital. “Did the police look at his microfilms, Arlene?”
“No, they didn’t attach any importance to them.”
Corey’s brain raced. A man who had lately destroyed records, yet who did not have a good memory—
“It may be another blind alley, but I’d like to look at those films!” he told Arlene.
In the cellar of the mansion was a well-equipped laboratory and dark-room. The microfilm collection was all in neat tin boxes, stacked and dated. As the night deepened, Corey worked feverishly, taking out the most recent film and putting it in the special, magnifying machine where the photographed print or writing could be examined.
Luck, if it could be called that, proved to be with him. For on a reel that was otherwise black, he suddenly found a photographed paper that made his heart leap. It was written in a bold hand, and read:
In event anything happens to me, I want to make this record, trusting that it will be found in time. It has come to my knowledge that a dastardly crime has been perpetrated against the city. Someone has been appropriating funds collected for the War Memorial Fund, and the money runs into a large figure. I am going to check to find the guilty man, and call him to account.
Jonathan Prentiss
When Arlene had tensely identified the writing as her father’s, Corey said:
“There’s the motive! One of the men collecting funds must have been juggling his books! But who?” He ran a harassed hand through his red hair. “Your father evidently had suspicions, but so had the guilty man—who killed the Judge before the thing could come out!”
For there was no further record. Corey’s hunch that the astute Judge would have had some inkling of tragedy had been borne out, but it still was not enough.
“Only one more road still open to us, Arlene!” Corey gritted. “We’ve got to go back to Chris Jenson’s cottage, see if we can find any thread of a clue there.”
He had to ask her to go with him because she would know the cottage better than he did. As they emerged from the mansion the night was deep and the sky full of stars. Again they moved furtively. They reached the tree-screened cottage, and Corey inserted the key. Within he found a light-switch and, since the shades had looked heavy to him, he dared to snap it on.
Light flooded the raftered room, illumined the hanging corpse that now was growing stiff with the first signs of rigor mortis. White-faced, Arlene helped Corey rummage around the place.
A large roll-top secretary where Chris Jenson kept most of his accounts was the main object of their search. There was nothing in it but commonplace items—a letter from some relative, bills, receipts. And a book which proved to be an itemized catalogue of all the flowers Chris Jenson had planted and cared for on the estate.
As Corey opened the book, several little placards, each on a small wooden stake, fell out. He looked at them, read the titles printed by hand on them:
Red Roses Tea Roses Yellow Tulips Red Tulips
Arlene saw Corey looking them over. “Poor Chris,” she said. “He always kept such strict records of the flowers he planted. He put those markers in each bed, even insisted on leaving them there when the flowers bloomed. Dad said he made the place seem almost like a botanical garden and . . .
What is it Jeff?”
She broke off, for Corey was standing very straight now, his eyes gleaming.
“I think I’ve got the answer!” Corey said. “I think I know who the killer is now! But don’t ask me to explain yet. We’ve got to work fast!” He took her arm, leading her to the door. “I’m going to make the killer go through a little torture so I can trap him, as he tried to trap me!” he said fiercely . . .
Close to midnight, Corey and Arlene walked into a brightly lit office where three men greeted them with grim inquiry. The office was that of District Attorney Floyd Saxon, who sat at his desk, his dark eyes suspicious. Also present, having been summoned from their homes, were Arthur Blanchard and John Hatcher. Arlene, phoning from the mansion, had told Blanchard to arrange this night meeting. Then she and Corey had come here in Corey’s coupe.
“Well, Miss Prentiss”—Blanchard’s bushy dark brows were working—“I hope you have a good reason for your strange request for this meeting.”
“I have,” said Arlene, as she and Jeff had planned she would say. “You gentlemen, as friends of my father, will be interested to know that I am closing up the estate in the morning, taking a few things from the mansion and the caretaker’s cottage, and moving out. In fact, I shall sleep at the home of a friend in the city tonight.”
Blanchard started to smile, but it was the D.A. Saxon who spoke.
“That’s sensible, Miss Prentiss.
You’ve decided not to face all this publicity and gossip.”
“Let me finish,” Arlene said. “I’m moving out and marrying Jeff. We’re going on a short honeymoon, then we’re settling in a house we’ve picked out in this city.”
“That’s right,” Jeff corroborated, as the three men stared askance at the couple who had roused them to deliver this news. “Because by tomorrow I shall show you who killed ex-Judge Prentiss, and why! I only want a little more time to check on the evidence I’ve gathered.”
“Evidence?” John Hatcher demanded. “You mean you really found something the police overlooked? Where, Jeff?”
“My evidence,” said Jeff Corey with deliberate emphasis, “will come from a dead man.”
All three men looked startled and confused. One of them, Corey was certain, knew which “dead man” he was referring to, knew now that he had discovered the body of Chris Jenson. The others, unaware of that murder, could only assume he meant ex-Judge Prentiss, and of course the murderer would have to pretend to assume the same thing.
“You mean,” Saxon’s voice was skeptical, “you found something in Prentiss’ effects which we overlooked?”
“Yes, but I am thinking of something else,” Corey said, just to make things clear to the one man in that room with whom he was playing his grim game. “Unfortunately, owing to my own delicate position, I wouldn’t be believed if I just told you what I knew. You will have to see the evidence to believe it, and if you all come to the Prentiss estate tomorrow, you will see it.”
It was on that dramatic statement that the meeting broke up. All left the office except the District Attorney, who remained behind to close up. Blanchard and Hatcher went out to their respective cars. But Corey and Arlene only went as far as the entrance corridor of the building.
“I must hurry, Arlene, to spring the trap!” Corey whispered. “You understand just what you are to do?”
“Yes, Jeff. You’ll be careful, won’t you?” As she spoke she was opening her purse. She thrust a compact revolver into Corey’s surprised hand. “It was Dad’s,” she explained. “I—I thought you might need it.”