by Rufus King
Contents
Copyright Information
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Copyright Information
Copyright © 1940 by Rufus King.
Copyright © renewed 1968 by Michael C. Young.
*
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidepress.com
Chapter One
THE UNKNOWN TROUBADOUR
A nut, if you care to believe it, was the first reason for Cotton Moon getting mixed up on New Year’s morning with the homicide in which Myron Jettwick, that prize real-estate operator and heel, starred as the corpse.
The second reason was money; the pay-off being old Miss Emma Jettwick’s check for thirty thousand dollars. Moon banked it after her brother’s murderer was well on his way toward what an Englishman, who came in on the homestretch of the case down in Tortuagas, called “the heated chair.”
Cotton Moon’s fees have always come high. They’ve got to, if he’s to stay in that state in which he has decided to keep himself. Also if he wants to go plowing about the seven seas on his boat Coquilla in search of rare nuts to add to his collection, and sometimes eat. You cannot push one hundred and fifty feet of expensive steel and a crew of eighteen men about in the water on charity. Moon informed me of that truism when he first employed me six years ago as his assistant. He claims that he hired me because he had never before found a bartender who could take dictation and type, as well as swing the more permanent of the stiffs out of a waterfront bar at closing time. He said that by doing so he was also removing a faint blemish from the bartender union’s escutcheon.
Whether that was an insult or not I’ve still got to find out.
The nut which started off the business on New Year’s morning was not a peanut or a chestnut which, according to Moon, are like having grits for breakfast instead of one of Walter’s omelets. Walter is Coquilla’s cook and was absorbed by Moon, among other things, in Madagascar. The nut was a sapucaia nut, and it hit Moon on the forehead as we were standing on Coquilla’s aft-deck and greeting the first morning of the year through a seven-o’clock murk and snow which were tenting New York City’s East River.
It looked to me like any plain Brazil nut when I picked it up, but Moon said no. It was a sapucaia, and was rare enough in the fruit shops of New York to be practically extinct. The same held true in its native Brazil where it was produced by a big tree called Lecthis ollaria or, if you had to, plain cannon-ball tree.
Its name came from the large urn-shaped capsules which the Brazilians called monkey-pots and which held the nuts. Its scarcity on the home lot was caused by the continual race between the monkeys and the Brazilians to get the nuts, with the monkeys winning hands down as they had the added advantage of tails.
It was a smooth-shelled nut, except for a few deep longitudinal wrinkles, and its color was a heavy amber brown. Moon told me to eat it, which I did, and found the flavor something like that of an almond, only sweeter.
Just about then a voice from the landing stage called up:
“I’m sorry, but I’m nervous and you were nothing but a blur. I didn’t mean to hit you. I was standing in the bows of the Trade Wind and letting of steam.”
Trade Wind was moored to the landing stage of Wharf House, just aft of Coquilla. She was a smart-looking tub, a two-hundred-footer, and we knew she belonged to Myron Jettwick, although we didn’t know right then that Myron Jettwick was dead. Wharf House itself was Jettwick’s last building development. It covered three city blocks of the East River waterfront, and Moon kept an apartment in it because it had a place to hitch up boats to.
We went to the starboard railing and looked down on the voice. It belonged to a decently built young fellow wrapped in a quilted wool dressing gown that reminded me of one I’d seen recently in a mid-town store tagged at one hundred and twenty-five dollars. This was on over heavy silk pajamas of a real violent yellow color, and there was nothing on his feet but those thin leather slippers which come in a case and are given to you by aunts at Christmas to be used in Pullmans.
The fact that several inches of wet snow covered the landing stage and that the temperature was below freezing didn’t seem to have occurred to him at all.
“Have you ever,” Moon asked him, “considered pneumonia?”
“Why not? Or is river water better?”
“Entirely a point of view. But it happens to be the year’s happiest morning. Why die?”
I suggested having Walter mix one of his pick-me-ups which are based on raw eggs stifled in Tabasco and brandy, but Moon signaled me to keep quiet and I knew, then, that the problem was more desperate than a plain hangover, if anything can be.
“I don’t want to die unless I have to,” young Desperate said, “but there’s a very good chance of the warden at Sing Sing issuing invitations for my going-out party, and it’s a method of departure that doesn’t appeal. Where are all the cops in this town anyhow?”
“They are attempting to survive the wake held last night on the old year. Why?”
“Because McRoss called the police about fifteen minutes ago, and nothing’s happened. McRoss is Jettwick’s secretary, or was. Jettwick’s dead. Somebody shot him last night and killed him. I’m his stepson and also his nephew, whichever you like. Me, I don’t like either.”
“Come aboard, Mr. Jettwick. This flirting with pulmonary pneumonia is absurd.”
Moon turned to me and said, “Spiced toddies if you please, Bert, in the main saloon. Ask Walter to make them with the Demerara rum.”
I rooted out Walter, who was in the galley drinking coffee, and gave him the order. It called for one half lump of sugar, one jigger of Demerara rum, a half bar-spoonful of allspice and the balance boiling water, to each. That was the way Moon liked them.
Then I went into the main saloon.
Jettwick was shivering the way you do after staying in cold ocean water too long, and anyone could see that it wasn’t a physical chill, but that his nerves were all shot.
“This is my secretary, Bert Stanley,” Moon said, “Mr. Bruce Jettwick.”
We shook hands, and young Jettwick’s grip was good, even though the effect was something like squeezing a fillet of tough mullet fresh off the ice.
“Bert, you have heard Mr. Jettwick sing. He is professionally billed on the radio as the Unknown Troubadour, and has been featured during the past year on he Violet Vane Cosmetic Hour.”
“‘Has been’ is good.”
“Mr. Jettwick is afraid that being involved in a murder investigation will not help to advance his career. Obviously, he is right.”
“Can you catch the announcer?” Jettwick’s voice was good and bitter. “‘I give you now the Unknown Troubadour, whose identity has been exposed over a nationwide publicity hookup during his recent sojourn at the Tombs, while on trial for the murder of his uncle. He will sing as his first number The Prisoner’s Song, to remind you that when it comes to removing your prison pallor, Violet Vane face lotions will do the trick.’ Well, nuts.”
“Just so, Mr. Jettwick. Where did
you get them? I refer to the sapucaias, with one of which you hit me on the head.”
“Oh, those. A friend sends them up to me from Rio de Janeiro.”
“They should not be thrown carelessly about.”
“I said that I was sorry, Mr. Moon.”
“Not that: I mean because of their rarity.”
“In the spot that I’m in, I’ve no time to worry about the rarity of any nuts.”
Moon let some of his native Virginia gentleness get into his voice.
“It wasn’t you who, by any chance or accident, shot your uncle, was it, Mr. Jettwick?”
“No, unfortunately; but I’d have liked to. My trouble is that I only remembered half an hour ago about that damned silver mirror.”
Walter brought in the hot spiced rums, and Moon told young Jettwick to drink one of them and calm down, and under no circumstances ever to admit to a willingness to have committed a murder which has just been done. Jettwick had no idea, Moon said, how refreshing any district attorney found statements like that. They grabbed them up with the avidity of a woman at a sale of imported bags.
Moon was still in the process of handing out good, and so far free, advice when a deck steward brought in a nice-faced old lady all bundled up in sables.
She went right over to young Jettwick and sat down beside him on the settee. Her voice had a clear Western tone to it as she said:
“Bruce dear, the police are on board. You must come back.”
He introduced us.
“My aunt, Miss Jettwick, Mr. Stanley, and Mr. Cotton Moon.”
You could see Miss Jettwick’s bright nice eyes grow sharply interested.
“Mr. Moon? Didn’t you handle that mess for Amy Bettling down at Santa Monica last year?”
Moon said that he had. It had netted him twenty-one thousand dollars, and had kept Mrs. Roger Bettling’s redheaded daughter Eunice from a neat extortion. She had had a yen for trombone players, and probably still has. It had also helped to buy fuel oil for hustling Coquilla after some Aleurites triloba down in the South Seas. You called them candle nuts after you got to know them better, and Moon liked to make night lights out of their oil.
“I suppose my nephew has told you that my brother has been shot?”
“Yes. My sympathies, Miss Jettwick.”
“Thank you. What I would really like, Mr. Moon, would be your help.”
Moon never beats about the bush. He said:
“My minimum price for a murder investigation is thirty thousand dollars, above any expenses involved.” It was a sale.
Chapter Two
THE SILVER MIRROR
Moon wanted some plain facts, while a steward was going for our coats and a pair of galoshes for Bruce Jettwick.
I got my book and took notes, being conscious, as always, of the faintly surprised expression in Moon’s eyes. He says that I still put down pothooks with the rhythm of a shakerful of cocktails being iced.
“Miss Jettwick, we will start with the crime. I know that your brother has been shot; that is all.”
There was an absence of any grief about her brother’s violent death in that steady Western voice of hers; not markedly so, as it had been with Bruce, but the absence was there just the same.
“A sailor was clearing the snow from a small aft-deck that goes around my brother’s quarters on the Trade Wind. He noticed that the lights were on, and looked in through a porthole. He saw Myron, and saw that Myron had been killed, and shouted out.”
“What time was this?”
“I think about six-thirty.”
“Where was your brother’s body?”
“Myron was sitting up on the bed. I’ve seen—I mean, I went inside the bedroom after Mr. Talbot told me, and it was pretty ghastly.”
“Mr. Talbot?”
“He is one of the officers. I think the sailor started for the bridge and met Mr. Talbot running down because of the shout. They both went back to Myron’s quarters, and by that time most of us were out in the passageway of the cabin deck, and Mr. Talbot came and told us what had happened.”
“Did Mr. Talbot use a passkey, or was the door to your brother’s quarters unlocked?”
“It was unlocked. Captain Plummet had joined us by then, and he got in touch with the police. I dressed.”
She turned her nice bachelor-button eyes on Bruce. “I missed you. A sailor said he had seen you come aboard here, so I came over too.”
“Anything else, Miss Jettwick?”
“No, not that I can think of right now.”
“And you, Mr. Jettwick? You spoke of a silver mirror bothering you. How?”
“Because I held it close to Myron’s nose to see if he were alive.”
“When? After the sailor had discovered the crime?”
“No, after I had discovered it myself, at three o’clock this morning.”
You had to like the way Miss Jettwick took this in her stride. It was a shock to her, but she didn’t go to pieces.
You could almost see her hack stiffening beneath the sable coat, and her voice didn’t miss a beat as she said: “Don’t worry, Bruce.”
“I didn’t think of the mirror until half an hour ago. Naturally my fingerprints must be all over it. Next time I’ll wear gloves.”
“Mr. Jettwick,” Moon said sharply, “I repeat that that sort of an attitude has its danger. I advise strongly that you stop it. Tell me exactly what happened.”
“The boat phone in my cabin rang a few minutes before three. A voice said. ‘This is Myron.’ He wanted me to come right back to his quarters. I finished a cigarette, which took a few minutes, and then went back. My uncle was sitting up in the bed, shot in the head.”
“Was the wound still bleeding?”
“No, but the blood hadn’t coagulated, if that’s what you mean.”
“I do. Be more exact, if you can, as to the time that elapsed between the phone call and your arrival in your uncle’s quarters.”
“Well, the cigarette was almost finished when the phone rang. I’d say maybe three minutes, or five at the most.”
“Now that you can look back on it, was the imitation of your uncle’s voice over the boat telephone convincing? Since the blood had stopped flowing, the voice was obviously an impersonation.”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t familiar with his voice. I’d never heard it over a telephone, and we’d only spoken a few words together last night. I hadn’t seen him until then since I was ten years old.”
“We will consider that later, Mr. Jettwick. Your movements of the moment, if you please. Open your uncle’s door and go on from there.”
“The door is at the end of the passageway, and opens into the living room.”
“Did you knock?”
“Yes, but there wasn’t any answer so I went right in.”
“Lights?”
“They were all on.”
“Was the furniture in order?”
“Yes, there weren’t any signs of a disturbance. I saw an open door and went over to it. It was the bedroom door, and he was on the bed.”
“Were the lights on in there too?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“Was he lying on top of the covers or beneath them?”
“He was under the covers, sort of sitting up and propped against the pillows. It knocked me out for a minute; I mean, just having heard his voice and then finding him dead like that.”
“Try and remember clearly every move you made.”
“I went over to him and tried to feel his pulse.”
“Was the wrist warm? Flexible?”
“Yes, it was warm, and very loose. Then I saw a mirror on the bureau and tried to see if his breath would cloud it. It didn’t.”
“Have you had much experience with the determination of death?”
“None. But you read about mirrors and such simple tests. My father, Myron’s brother, was run over and killed by a taxicab in Vienna when I was nine. That’s the only other time I’ve ever seen anyone dead.”
“What did you do with the silver mirror?”
“I put it back on the bureau. I felt sick.”
“Did you search your uncle’s quarters for his attacker?”
“No, I just felt sick, so I went back to my cabin and was.”
“Did you meet any one of the crew or of your party in the passageway?”
“No, no one.”
“We can presume that the murderer used a silencer, or else that the general racket of the New Year’s Eve celebration baffled the sound of the shot. Why didn’t you give the alarm at once?”
“I don’t know. I was just too sick, I guess.”
Moon’s voice lost its touch of Virginia softness and moved several states north.
“Mr. Jettwick, if I am to help you I cannot countenance evasions. You are not speaking to the police when you speak to me. I am being paid to help you, not to convict you, although I shall cheerfully do so should my investigation point to your guilt. You arc not a weakling, either physically or morally. That is apparent. I believe that you did not search for the murderer and you did not give the alarm because you thought you knew who had shot your uncle. Am I right?”
“No.”
Moon shrugged.
“I am sorry, Miss Jettwick, but I must withdraw from the case.”
“Bruce dear.” Emma Jettwick’s small hand looked like a white leaf on Bruce’s big one. “It’s Helen, isn’t it? You were thinking of Helen?”
Bruce kept on looking sullen and desperate, which is easy when you’ve got a brush of dark hair and strong, homely features. It’s only the blonds who get no place when they try it. But he didn’t take his hand away from under hers.
Finally he said:
“Yes, and I wouldn’t have blamed her. I had my gun along to do it myself. After I got sensible again I knew she never could have done it, because she never would have telephoned me to come back there and get involved. She’d have killed herself first.”
“Helen,” Miss Jettwick said, “is Bruce’s mother. Surely, Mr. Moon, you will reconsider?”
Moon jumped back across the Mason and Dixon line. “I will do so only, as I have stated before, if there are no further evasions.”
“I’ve got no more evasions,” Bruce said.