I thought at first, as did Stephen, that this was all part of some prearranged plan. Then we saw the nasty-looking gun that Kent was pointing at Asey.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE LAST TRICK
NONE of us spoke. We couldn’t. June seemed frozen on his way to the door.
“What,” Asey lifted up the flaps of his vest and hooked his thumbs casually in the straps of his suspenders, “what are you aimin’ to begin?”
“You fool I Did you think that I’d planned all this—to have you smash it at the last minute? Do you think you’ve got me? My dear little Asey Mayo, you’d far better have drunk your glass of milk and let it go at that I This isn’t going to be the end. You’ve not got me! If any one of you moves, I’ll put an end to him. That goes for you, Prue, and Rena. Try to help your precious hayseed and you’ll get it as soon as the men.”
Asey stood with his back to the windows, facing the rest of us. Kent was directly in front of him, the rest of us behind John and to Asey’s right.
“What,” the latter asked again, “are you aimin’ to do? You can’t do much, you know. My fellers are outside.”
John laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear.
“Third time, Asey. I set the candle for you and you ducked out of that. Why? Because you and Prue together were more than I’d bargained for. You ducked out of that. The cat saved you from the milk. But there won’t be any more slipping out of trouble for you. Not with this gun. You call your men and I’ll get you—and some of the rest, too, before any one gets in.”
“You admit all this?” Asey’s voice was calm and composed.
“Of course I admit it.”
Asey sighed contentedly. “I’m glad you told me. I was goin’ to have a stiff job provin’ it to a jury. You won’t be able to git us all b’fore my men get here, an’ some of the s’vivors’ll be witnesses. Y’know,” he added speculatively, “if I’d of been you I’d of sat tight an’ sawed wood. You’d maybe of lied your way out.”
John’s face was black with rage. I expected him to shoot Asey down, but he was too infuriated to act. He had to talk.
“Maybe.” He started to back to the door. “Move over there, June. Your car is outside, Asey. So is mine. I’ve been having Tom put it in shape. Either will do me. And there’s nothing left that will catch me. I’ve attended to that. I’ve cut the telephone wires. I’ll take one of those cars and fix the other and be out of the country before you know what’s happened. Only you won’t be here to know. And I shouldn’t count on your men. When I helped William take that dog out, I told him you wanted all your men sent over to Rowena’s. They’ve all gone.”
Asey nodded. “You think of everything. I handed it to you once, an’ I hand it to you again. But now you’re so certain to git off, you do me one last favor, an’ tell me why you killed Stires. If I got to go to m’grave, I might’s well have one question answered.”
“You know why,” John said. “You found out about the money. You had it written on your face when you came into the room. I never intended to pay him back. I’d been planning to get rid of him—and besides, I’d got sick of his damned gibes about my hair.”
“An’,” Asey interrupted tantalizingly, “you was wrong about them gibes. He never thought he was teasin’ you. He didn’t care a rap about your hair. He just did it to stop your talk about his teeth. You know, false hair an’ false teeth funny——”
I saw John’s fingers curve around the trigger of his gun. I looked at Asey, still grinning. His right hand slid out from under his vest and in it was a long six-shooter. He fired twice across his hip. John’s gun tumbled out of his hand before he could shoot, and his hand fell limply to his side. I watched, half fascinated, as a spot appeared on the gray of his sleeve.
Asey moved forward as Denny and June and the doctor jumped from their seats to grab John.
“It was an awful nice plan,” Asey said. “Awful nice, but it didn’t work. Take him out, Doc. You’d better see if he’s got ’ny more guns on him an’ I know he’s got some sort of poison. He put it in my milk while we was separatin’ the cat an’ the dog. Take this whistle, an’ blow for my men, please.”
“Wait.” John spoke as he was leaving. “Asey, do you always carry a gun? I didn’t see that you had one, and I looked. If I’d known that you had a gun I’d have let you have it.”
“Ain’t packed a gun,” Asey said reminiscently, “since I was in China durin’ the Boxer kick-up. Not till today. This is the same gun, a forty-five single-action Colt. You know, even a big gun stuck in the belt of your pants an’ held up by a s’spender-strap don’t ’tract any attention. It’s the only way a gun don’t show. You had yours in your hip pocket an’ I spotted it right off. Remember this trick,” he added with irony, “in case you ever get a chance. You was on my left, an’ you couldn’t see what I was doin’. I just stuck my thumb in my belt an’ eased it out.”
John looked at him and managed a grim smile. “Cat an’ a Cape Codder,” Asey observed, “is a hard comb’nation to beat. Walker, you look after his arm. That’s the trouble with civ’lization. Plug a man, an’ then you have to sew him up.”
The door closed behind them.
“Now,” Stephen said, “explain. What about the teeth and the scrap-book and the letter?”
“And how,” Hobart asked in relieved tones, “about dousing me?”
“What money?” Rowena demanded.
“What about the fight?” I asked. “And what’s his hair got to do with this?”
Asey smiled. “You knew that Kent wore a wig, Miss Prue.”
“A wig? But what of it?”
“Well, I was sort of chucklin’ to myself about them false teeth, then I thought of the false hair. Now, I used to cook on a boat an’ the cap’n of it had false teeth an’ the mate had false hair. The two of ’em first of all just kidded each other about it. Then they got so every time one or the other of ’em mentioned teeth or hair, they had a reg’lar knock-down-drag-out fight. Y’see, the first couple of times you joke about a thing like that, it’s funny. Then it’s an insult. Then it’s a fightin’ matter.”
“But I never knew he had false hair,” Denny said blankly.
“Well, I didn’t either. That is, I sort of s’spected it, but I wasn’t real sure. They ain’t many wigs about that’s as natural-lookin’ as Kent’s an’ that looks so real. But after that fight he had with June, when his hair was so dum dry an’ June’s was all wet an’ they’d both taken a dousin’, I begun t’wonder, kind of in earnest like. That’s why I had Phrone throw water over him, so’s I’d be sure. Kent ducked an’ beat it, but not before I knew. Then when he come down with his new wig all dry an’ said casual-like that Hobart got the worst of it, I was pos’tive. False hair, when it’s wet, is false hair pure V simple. June, ’member when you told me about that fight, you said you’d spoke about Mr. Hobart’s baldish spot? An’ he went for you? Y’see, he thought you’d found out about him, an’ was twittin’ him, an’ he got mad. N’en there was what Tom told me. He said Kent an’ Stires had been talkin’ an’ Stires said something about a mote an’ a beam. It was while they were talkin’ about gettin’ a chaperon. What mote an’ what beam? I asks myself. Somehow it sort of grew into the teeth an’ the hair. He evaded the question real graceful, an’ said they was talkin’ about the golden mean, but he’d already changed around what June had said. So I figgered he’d done it again.
“Y’see, Stires knew about Kent’s hair. Kent knew about Stires’s teeth. Stires was tired enough of bein’ kidded so’s he spent Tuesday night at his dentist’s gettin’ new teeth to come here with. Kent was sens’tive ’nough to lay into June. Together they must of had some swell times. But Stires didn’t talk about the hair, prob’ly, ’cept in self-defense when Kent started in on the teeth. See what I mean?”
“Still,” Stephen began, “that wasn’t——”
“Still that wasn’t reason enough for one feller to kill another. Yup, Mr. Crump. It wasn’t. Now tha
t will of Stires was awful simple. It didn’t say anything about cancellin’ loans, not even private loans. Now I’d found two checks in Stires’s check-book that’d been used. Both was to cash. One of ’em was to cash for five hundred, an’ we found out that that went to Stires’s dentist. The other was for two thousand. That kind of roused my cur’osity, p’ticularly as Kent asked us right off the bat if we’d found anything in Stires’s clothes or things that might be a clue.”
“I remember,” I said. “I told him we’d found two checks to cash, too.”
“Yup. An’ he blinked. An’ there was that other check. An’ then, you told me he had something to do with the Clarion. I read that paper, an’ I noticed that it begun to get pretty slimmish last summer, an’ then it sort of picked up. So first thing when I got to Boston, I hunted up a friend of mine that works on the paper; an’ he told me all about how it had got into a hole an’ then it had begun to pick up. In other words, Kent’d been out of money, an’ then he had begun to git it.”
“But John had plenty of money,” Blake began.
“You sort of took it for granted, Mr. Blake. Anyways, I got hold of your son an’ he an’ I mesm’rized people at Stires’s bank after gettin’ hold of Burnett an’ havin’ him pull wires. We found that from last July on, Stires’d been makin’ out big checks to cash an’ cashin’ ’em himself. ’Course, they might have been for his new house, but we found where he’d paid for them bills by check. Stires cashed them checks for cash all himself, an’ then the money sort of melted into thin air. Then we pried around a little more an’ found out that every time Stires drew out a big check to cash, Kent’s account got bigger by the same amount. We even tallied some of the numbers on big bills. An’ then the last bit was findin’ that two thousand dollars had gone into Kent’s ’count Tuesday mornin’. That sort of clinched the matter, b’cause Stires had cashed his own check for two thousand an’ d’posited it to Kent’s ’count. I s’pose that Kent’s been borrowin’ all along, never intendin’ to pay Stires back. He said as much. Mebbe Stires begun to ask for it an’ along last fall, Kent decided to get rid of Stires, ’cause that’s when he wrote that letter to Mary about the candles, usin’ a rubber stamp with William’s name.”
“How do you know he wrote it?”
“Well, it sounded like him, for one thing. N’en remember the picture in that scrap-book? Well, all the names on it had those funny e’s, all ’cept Kent. An’ in the guest-book, Mr. James an’ Mr. Blake still used ’em. All but Kent. Now, you think this thing over an’ you’ll see that all the way through, like plantin’ that arsenic, Kent never meant for any one, that is, any one in p’ticular, to be s’spected. He put in that e on purpose so’s to make it stick out like a sore thumb if any one ever found the letter. He didn’t even want William to be s’spected, see? But that was sort of spreadin’ it too thin. If he hadn’t done that, if he’d used just a reg’lar e, we’d just of said it was a plant, that letter, and that it’d fit any one. As ’twas, it fitted any one but Kent. He cut it a little mite too fine.”
“Why,” I demanded, “did he want to do away with me as well as you?”
“Both of us knew about them checks to cash, an’ you knew he was bald, even though it didn’t ’cur to you that it had anything to do with the affair.”
“How did Mary get those candles? Did he intend to kill her?” Rowena asked.
“Nope. That’s somethin’ I still don’t und’stand. I sort of think he only had six sent to him. Y’see, he prob’ly read about them candles in a book or heard about ’em. You can’t very well tell just how ac’rate things like poisoned candles is going to be. They ain’t like a knife or a gun or a rope. I sort of figger that he left six with her, so’s if anything went wrong, she’d be the one that had ’em, an’ so, I s’pose he’d have more if he needed ’em. But Mary ran out of ker’sene oil. An’ she prob’ly took out Kent’s candles by mistake, instead of her own. That’s about how I figger it.”
“But why didn’t Mary ever tell?”
“Mary didn’t git no chance to tell. Even if she’d heard Stires was killed, it wouldn’t mean anything to her. She didn’t know what was in them wicks. She may of known who William Boles was, but prob’ly in some letter that we’ll never see, he told her that it was somethin’ secret an’ not to talk about ’em. Must of, or she’d of said more to Lyddy Howes about ’em. She never knew what she was makin’. He picked a good maker, b’cause Mary was just off enough so’s she’d never suspect anything anyhow.”
“Asey,” Stephen said, “you’re a trump. I take my hat off to you. Piecing that together——”
“No piecin’ attall. I was just holdin’ on to my queen. Miss Prue’ll explain about that. You see, Kent’s last card was that he was bankin’ on us runnin’ astray, or gettin’ too plumb confused, like over those e’s, to see him. His money business was all set. Wasn’t much chance of any one findin’ out that. Not unless somethin’ else started people off. Kent killed Stires for his money. Prob’ly on Tuesday mornin’ he told Kent that that two thousand was the last an’ he expected t’be paid back pronto that an’ all the rest. But this crazy hair situation probably was the spark that set the whole dum thing off. He had planned an’ planned the murder, but his silly old vanity had to git his dander up before he got in motion. Now, if we hadn’t found out about the spark, as you might say, it’d of been all right. He knew Miss Prue an’ Miss Rena an’ Phrone knew about his hair an’ that he was bald. He didn’t know but what he was right in thinkin’ that June knew—an’ June might well of told me, for all he knew. He must have been sure when I had Phrone throw the water over him that I knew about the hair, an’ what would I be wantin’ to know about that for if I hadn’t c’nected it with the teeth? He must of known Stires carried extra teeth with him, an’ that I’d notice ’em an’ ask about ’em. He must of known that I’d find out, one way or another, about how sens’tive Stires was about his teeth. The servants I could of told me about how they got peeved after joking at each other’s append’ges, as you might say. Even if he hadn’t guessed I knew, he still wa’n’t takin’ any chances. He cut the wires an’ got his car brought ’round anyway, but I’m bankin’ that a guilty conscience made him s’spect I knew as much as anythin’. He was hopin’ I’d go astray, an’ I dum near did.”
“Well, you’re a trump all the same,” Denny said.
“We’ve been too stunned to be appreciative——”
“Yes—yes.” Asey said hastily. “Yes—yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“Goin’? Goin’ home. Home an’ git on the clothes I b’long in. I’m goin’ to see that Benny Rogers ain’t starved my hens to death, an’ then I’m goin’ to fry me a few flounders. I kind of hate to say it, but I’ve had ind’gestion ever since I begun to eat here. Rich food. Then,” he added as the doctor came into the room, “then after supper I’m goin’ up to the movies.”
The doctor looked at me and grinned.
“It’s Greeter Garbo,” Asey continued calmly, “an’ I ain’t seen her this winter. ’By.” And with a cheerful wave of his hand, he started off.
“Wait,” Denny said. “Wait. Prue, twenty-seven years ago, I asked you to marry me. I——”
“Denny!” I protested, very much aware of the amused looks. “Please——”
“No, I won’t wait. I’ve asked her to marry me every year for the last twenty-seven years. I’ve suggested it daily for the last four days. Now——”
“Denny,” I said firmly, “please——”
“No. Now I’m asking you for the last time. You haven’t got your niece to look after. You haven’t got any one to look after. Will you, or won’t you?”
“Oh, dear——”
“Yes or no.”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh. “Yes. I’ve always meant to, sooner or later, but really, Denny, you might as well have hired a hall.”
Crump chuckled. “I hope,” he said, “that Denny won’t mislay the steamer tickets.”
“In a Prince Albert?” Asey demanded. “ ’Cause if——”
“No. You can wear your corduroys, if you want. Will you? Yes? Then I can lose the tickets with a clear conscience. Asey’ll find ’em.”
And, of course, Asey did.
THE END
It promised to be a cozy weekend house party on the Cape, but none of the guests had foreseen such a snowfall, none was prepared to be completely cut off, without heat, light or telephone. And certainly none had expected to find the host, Albert Stires, dead in his bedroom.
Fortunately, Asey Mayo happens to be on the scene. At first, Stires seems to be the victim of arsenic, and suddenly there are too many suspects with far too easy access to the poison. But then Asey discovers a most ingenious murder weapon, virtually unknown in the twentieth century, which destroys its evidence as it works on its victim. Just as it nearly succeeds in working upon Asey himself!
PHOEBE ATWOOD TAYLOR (1909-1976) lived most of her life in Boston and Cape Cod. In addition to the Asey Mayo series, she wrote a number of Leonidas Witherall mysteries as Alice Tilton, and Murder at the New York World’s Fair as Freeman Dana.
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