The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope

by C. W. Grafton

  I hung up and called the railway station. Overton was on the main line from Louisville through the city and on down through Harpersville. It was about 100 miles from Louisville. There was one train that left Louisville about 10:00 in the morning and it would get you into Overton about 12:30. There was a train in the evening leaving Louisville at 10:10 and getting into Overton at 12:42. Yes, that was the train that arrived in Harpersville at 7:38 in the morning.35

  I don’t know whether it was what I expected or not. Taken at its face value, it looked as if Hillman Jolley might be on the square.

  35 The geography is this: Louisville to Overton to “the city” to Harpersville. Neither Harpersville nor Overton can be found on a map. Harpersville seems to be quite a distance from Louisville, a seven-hour train ride. Louisville is right on the northern edge of Kentucky, and a look at a map of Kentucky, searching for a “city” that is still central to the state (leaving enough distance for the more remote Harpersville to still be in Kentucky on a “line,” close to the eastern border of Kentucky) suggests either Lexington or Frankfort as “the city.” Frankfort, the state capital, would have the most lawyers, but Lexington is a little farther east and so most likely to be the closest “city” to Harpersville (where Ruth McClure would go to find a lawyer). Furthermore, if “the city” were Frankfort, one might expect some reference to government buildings.

  49

  I crossed the street and found Ruth waiting for me by the police car. It was ten o’clock. There was nothing much doing in County Court. Ruth produced her father’s will and it not only appointed her as executrix but waived bond and surety so we were through inside of fifteen minutes. I asked the clerk for a couple of extra attested copies of the letters of administration and we had these in another ten minutes. It was 10:25 when we crossed the street to the Farmers & Traders Bank. I said: “We’re doing this just because it’s easy. There won’t be any results. I think your father had a lockbox somewhere but I don’t think it was in his name and he couldn’t have gotten by with an assumed name in Harpersville. Just the same, it’s stupid to start beating the bushes until you have explored your own back yard.”

  I was right. The Farmers & Traders Bank had no safety deposit box in the name of John McClure. Everyone in the bank knew him like they knew everyone else in town and there could be no mistake about it. From there we went to the Citizens Bank & Trust Company and from there to the First National Bank of Harpersville, all with the same results.

  “Well, that’s that,” said Ruth. “It’s a big world, where do we go now?”

  “First we take the police car down to headquarters and turn in the keys. The chief would like nothing better than to haul me in for attempting to steal public property. Before we go there, we can stop by your house and pick up your car. Mine’s still parked on the Harper drive and I forgot all about it this morning. You pick me up at the police station and we’re heading for the city.”

  “Why there?”

  “Why not? Put yourself in your father’s place. He wouldn’t be going to some little town because there would be too much chance of him being recognized after awhile. Here’s a city only twenty-five miles away and big enough not to care about who comes in from the country. If he went any farther he wouldn’t be able to get to the box conveniently when he had to.”

  At 11:15 we parked the car in a downtown garage in the city. On the way up I had remembered that neither of us had eaten any breakfast so we found a restaurant and I insisted that we have a cocktail before eating even at that odd hour of the day. The meal was a long time coming and the cocktail felt fine. While we were sitting there, I called for the telephone directory and copied down the names and addresses of all of the banks. I knew the town like a book but I wasn’t taking any chances of overlooking something.

  “We’ll probably have to call on every one of them,” I said. “I’m damned if I know whether I would go to one of the biggest on the theory that its size and bustle would offer obscurity or whether I’d go to a smaller one on the theory that I’d be less likely to run into somebody from Harpersville and it might be embarrassing.”

  Ruth looked at the list and it was fairly long. She said: “We’d better hurry. Remember that the banks close at two o’clock and if the answer is here I don’t want to wait until tomorrow to find it.”

  We ate in a hurry and started the rounds. With the letters of administration to back us up we had no difficulty accounting for ourselves and at each place the procedure was the same. First was there a safety box in the name of John H. McClure? If not, did the vault employees recognize his picture under any other name. It was a maddening process because we were at the hours when some one or more of the vault staff were at lunch. We couldn’t wait them all out so I made a careful memorandum of the names of the people we didn’t see and we went on.

  It was eight minutes to two before we had any encouragement at all. The cashier of the Haymarket State Bank & Trust Company thought he could recognize the picture. In considerable excitement, we trailed him down to the vault where an old fellow with a droopy mustache who had been there for forty years adjusted his spectacles, studied the picture and said: “Yes, that’s John McCall. Comes in once every week or ten days. Been doing it for years.”

  I said: “His real name was McClure. Don’t ask me why. He died about two weeks ago and this is his daughter who is the executrix of his estate. I’m her attorney. Call Mead, Opdyke, Smallwood, Garrison & Henry and verify it if you want. The number is Main 8247.”

  They took the letters of administration and studied them and went off together and muttered. When they came back the cashier said: “Understand, Mr. Henry, we don’t doubt you or anything like that, but after all we need more than this. We’re satisfied Miss McClure is executrix of the estate of John H. McClure like it says here but we have to establish definitely that John H. McClure was John McCall before we could let you into the box. If we made a mistake, we would be wide open.”

  I drummed on the desk with my fingers. I couldn’t stand it to be so near and yet so far away.

  “Look,” I said to Ruth, “I hate to bring this up but it is the best way I can think of. Your father’s picture was in the Harpersville Gazette the day after his accident; I wonder if we could possibly locate a copy here in the City.”

  “Newspapers have exchange departments,” she suggested.

  I picked up the telephone and called the office of the Inquirer and asked if their exchange department would have back numbers of the Harpersville Gazette. A grumpy woman said they kept back numbers of the country weeklies for a while and then threw them away. She might have the Harpersville Gazette of two weeks ago and she might not. If we wanted to come and look for it, we were welcome but she had other things to do and couldn’t be bothered. I told Ruth where the Inquirer’s office was located and she said she would drive over and see what she could find. In the meantime I learned that the box was number 1087 and I could look through the bars and see it. Then I remembered that I didn’t have the key and that brought up a new problem.

  “Of course you have to have the key,” said the cashier with considerable condescension. “It takes two of them. We have a master key that fits the top key hole and the box-holder has the other. Unless they are both put in and turned at once, the box won’t open.”

  “Don’t people ever lose keys? I do. I lose about one a day. Other people are human. What do you do then?”

  “Naturally, Mr. Henry, we haven’t any duplicate box-holders’ keys. They are made one at a time. If we had a duplicate, we’d have a thousand law suits a year from people who would scream that we had browsed around in their boxes and filched all their valuables. If the key is lost, we have to bring in the locksmith and drill the box. There is a standard charge of three dollars which includes a new key.” I said: “Then call the locksmith. You’ll be satisfied with our story as soon as Miss McClure comes back with the newspaper article so you can se
e we’re telling the truth.”

  The cashier and the vault custodian withdrew and had another conference and looked at the clock. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come back tomorrow, Mr. Henry. Rules of the bank, you know. We don’t mind accommodating a box-holder after hours but it would be some time before we could get the locksmith and even then, of course, assuming your story is proven to be correct, as I am sure it will be, still you can’t open the box of a deceased person without a representative of the State Tax Department being present. That’s something we can’t help.”

  He was perfectly right and I mentally kicked myself. At the same time there was nothing I could have done about it since I had had no way to tell whether we would have any luck or not and I couldn’t have carried a locksmith and a State revenue man around in the car with me all day. I went to the telephone and called the office of the local representative of the State Tax Department but the man was out and probably would not be in the office again until tomorrow morning. They didn’t know where he could be reached.

  It was maddening. Even if I could reach him, there was that business of satisfying the bank and calling the man to drill the box and it was already 2:30, and if I got into the box there was no assurance I would find anything helpful. After all, suppose it did have a lot of stuff about money received from William Jasper Harper? I knew that already. I fumed around cursing my luck and at quarter to three a call came through from Ruth and she said the Inquirer did not have the right copy of the Harpersville Gazette. She’d have to get one in Harpersville. I hung up the receiver in despair, found my hat and was just starting out when the cashier asked if he could make arrangements for some time in the morning. I said he could. If he would have the locksmith and the tax man there at nine o’clock, Ruth and I would be back and we would have all the ammunition we needed. In the meantime, old droopy mustache had been talking with the uniformed guard and he was getting pretty excited. He came up and said: “The guard just reminded me. There was someone else here today asking about that box. Had the key and everything. Said John McCall was sick and it was urgent. I was out at the time. The guard referred him to Miss Crenshaw and Miss Crenshaw said he would have to have a power of attorney before we could let him get in. He was quite impatient and upset but finally he said all right he would get a power of attorney if he had to but Mr. McCall wouldn’t like it.”

  “Did you say he?” I asked. “It was a man?”

  “I didn’t see him myself but that’s what the guard said.”

  I talked to the guard and it was a man all right but the guard could no more describe him than I could describe the governor of Maine. He couldn’t remember whether he was tall or short or fat or thin or blond or brunet. I gave them my name and the number of my ex-office and the McClure number in Harpersville and told them if the man showed up again they were to call the police and get me on the phone as quickly as possible. I promised I would swear to a warrant and guaranteed to keep them out of trouble. I referred them again to the firm of Mead, Opdyke, Smallwood, Garrison & Henry because we were one of the best known offices in town. I didn’t see any reason to tell them I was no longer connected there.

  I went out and waited for Ruth and then I remembered that I had to find a typewriter somewhere and prepare a couple of simple wills and get the hell back to Harpersville.

  50

  Ruth was as upset as I was over our failure to get into the lockbox. Both of us had a growing conviction that somewhere in that box we would find a paper or a record of some sort that would at least take us a long way through the maze that surrounded us. We were both so disappointed that we hardly said a word while I drove around to the parking lot nearest my office building.

  As we walked down the hall I must confess that I felt pretty bad when I looked at the firm name on the door as I had done a thousand times before. I cannot say that I regretted my decision to leave the place or that I even thought of backing up, but I had had a lot of good times there and the prospect of moving out gave me a feeling of the deepest depression. Ruth sat in the outer office while I went in and riffled through the mail that had come in. Myrtle brought her book and in fifteen minutes I disposed of everything as briefly as possible, mostly with short memorandums asking some other member of the firm to take over. When I was through I sat back and Myrtle looked at me with such a long face that I knew she had heard of the breakup. I couldn’t trust myself to talk about it so I grinned with the muscles of my face and she managed to grin back with the sort of thing you might put on for the benefit of the surgeon just before he starts to cut your arm off.

  I told her that I had to do a couple of wills and they were so confidential I couldn’t even dictate them to myself so we went out in the main room and she got me out some legal size paper and maybe put in a surreptitious sniffle or two. Of course, she was beginning to have a cold or something and I made allowances.

  I am not much of a hand at the typewriter and I picked out two wills slowly and carefully, so as to avoid the typographical errors that habitually spot my work. Since this was my first job working strictly for myself, and since I was going to charge all the traffic would bear, I was careful to start with my best or “In-The-Name-Of-God-Amen” form. When I got through it was nearly four o’clock and my two wills were as alike as two peas in a pod, done in single space so that the signatures and everything would be on one sheet of paper in each case, and without a typographical error or even a smudgy fingerprint. I washed my hands and then folded each one carefully and put it in a separate envelope and stuck them in my pocket.

  As we went out I gave Myrtle a big wink so we didn’t talk about the situation any more and then out in the hall I said to Ruth: “I know it’s late but I think Mrs. Harper can wait a few more minutes. While you were at the Inquirer’s office, I thought of something. It’s a wild shot but as long as we’re here, I’m going to follow the hunch and see where it gets me.”

  “Anything I can help you do?”

  “I can probably do it myself in fifteen minutes but maybe with you along we can cut it down to ten. We’re going by the newspaper office and haul out some back numbers in August, 1909, and look for a fire. I figure there must have been a fire about that time either here or somewhere else and we might as well look here because we don’t know where else to look.”

  “Fire? What kind of a fire?”

  “Probably a residence. Maybe a boardinghouse or a hotel but I don’t think so. A fire in which a woman was badly burned. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you, do you know a Miss Phoebe Murdoch or a Mrs. somebody who used to be a Miss Phoebe Murdoch?”

  “You mean in Harpersville?”

  I nodded.

  “I never heard the name in Harpersville at all. I don’t even know how you would spell it. That doesn’t mean there isn’t someone there by that name—maybe working in the factory or something but I certainly never heard of it. What’s the connection?”

  “When we look for this fire, we’re going to look for the name of Murdoch. Could be the name Phoebe will appear in the story but she isn’t the one who was burned. If we’re on the right track and my hunch is any good, I think we’ll find that a Catherine Murdoch was burned practically to a cinder, either on August 7, 1909, or pretty close to that time and unless I miss my guess, it was Catherine Murdoch who was murdered in Harpersville last night.”

  I know Ruth wanted to ask three hundred and twenty-one questions but we were parking in front of the newspaper office by that time and she didn’t ask them.

  My hunch was right. It was quite a prominent story in the Inquirer on August 6, 1909. A gas heater had exploded in a residence on Murray Street, then evidently a nice enough residential section. The fire was reported by Phoebe Murdoch when she returned from a shopping trip. Her sister, Catherine Murdoch, school teacher, age twenty-eight, had been knocked unconscious by the explosion and was rescued with severe burns by the daring action of the fire department. At the city
hospital she was placed on the danger list. There were pictures and details running over to page seven but that was the substance of it.

  In the issue of August 7, 1909, there was a short item obscurely placed near the bottom of page two. Despite the gravity of Catherine Murdoch’s condition, upon the insistence of her sister Phoebe, she had been rushed on the night train to Louisville with a doctor and nurse in attendance, for special treatment.

  Just to be sure we did not miss anything, we pored over every issue of the Inquirer for the ensuing two weeks but there was nothing more about the case.

  51

  When we left the building I thought of something else and instead of taking the route to Harpersville I pulled around the block and stopped in front of the office of Killion, Wintersmith & Black. Brokers are not usually in their offices at that time of day because they go home as soon as possible after the market closes in New York but my friend, George Black, was in his cubbyhole and that was quite a break. He said: “Hi, Gil. What’s the good word?”

  “I wouldn’t want to be quoted on it.”

  “Take your weight off your feet. What’s on your mind?”

  “Information.”

  “What sort of information?”

  “Harper Products Company.”

  George took his feet off the desk and went for a file. Before he opened it he said: “Down to eighteen today. The news of the old man’s death doesn’t set so well with the market.”