The limping goose
Page 15
"No joke."
Hertha Colston got up and came over. She looked at the coins. "I never saw these, but Jess told me once about the bank he had as a boy." She looked at Carmichael. "You gave it to him?"
Carmichael nodded quietly. "He was very fond of the bank."
"Can I have these?" Hertha asked, a note of wistfulness in her voice. "It's—it might be a kind of remembrance."
"There're some things I want to say first," Johnny said, "then I don't care who takes these coins. Mr. Carmichael, Miss Colston, some of this is going to be rather painful."
"Go ahead, Fletcher," said Carmichael gruffly.
"You all know about Alice Cummings. She's—well, she's Alice Cummings. But Jess was infatuated with her. So much so that he gave her one of his boyhood treasures and confided in her. Up to a point. He told Alice Cummings that if anything happened to him, to give the limping goose bank to his father. It would tell him who had killed him."
"I don't understand that," Hertha said, puzzled. "It—it sounds as if he expected to be killed."
"He did."
"I stumbled into this thing," Johnny went on. "A bill collector came to my hotel and one thing led to another and he defied me to collect a long overdue bill. A bill against Alice Cummings. Nothing would have happened—that is I would not have gotten involved in this myself—if I hadn't taken a short cut to finding Alice Cummings. I might add that the bill she owed was for a sixty-nine-dollar fur coat she bought four years ago. She made just a few payments on it, then skipped without leaving an address. With interest, the amount still due was seventy-four dollars.
"I nailed her for that seventy-four dollars, but she only had fifty-seven dollars in her purse at the time. I held out for the other seventeen dollars and then the phone rang and Jess Carmichael was announced. Things hadn't been going too good lately with Cummings and Jess. She wanted to get me out in the worst way and without stopping to think she gave me the limping goose bank to make up the diffeernce of seventeen dollars." Johnny paused. "Cummings and Jess quarreled and she went out, leaving him in her apartment "
"That's what she says," Hertha put in spitefully.
"I think she told the truth. Somebody else came in—somebody who knew that Jess was there. That's the person who killed him." 114
"Fletcher," Carmichael asked soberly, "do you know who that person is?"
"Mr. Carmichael," Johnny said, "this morning when I was here talking to Mr. Sutton and you were in the other room listening, he said that you started out in life as a telegraph operator. Was that true?"
"Why, yes, I was the station agent and telegraph operator at a little town in Ohio."
"Can you still read the Morse code?"
"Once you learn that you never forget it. I might not be able to send a message any more, at least not very quickly, but I could still read one unless it was in International code."
"Just a moment, then."
Johnny stepped to the table and began sorting out the quarters, dimes and pennies. He lined them up, according to the date, beginning with the 1860 dime, continuing down to the last 1939 coin.
The others in the room watched him. When Johnny was nearly through, James Sutton suddenly laughed, "You're a character, Fletcher. You spring your childish games on us and we're hypnotized. We listen to you and we watch you." He chuckled. "Do you know, Uncle Jess, that our friend Fletcher here last night hired a limousine to take him out to your home and that he charged the hire to his room at the Barbizon-Wal-dorf Hotel here? . . . and he happens to be living at the Forty-Fifth Street Hotel."
"I've been to his room," said Carmichael.
Johnny straightened from arranging the coins. "Read it, Mr. Carmichael. Read it. It's the message your son wanted you to read."
"I taught Jess the Morse code when he was eight years old," said Carmichael. He looked at the rows of coins spread out on the table. "I don't understand, Fletcher."
"The pennies are the dots, the dimes the dashes and the quarters the spaces between words. Read it, Mr. Carmichael."
Carmichael gave a start. His eyes darted to the coins. " 'If Jess C. is killed,' " he read slowly. Then he gave a violent start.
"One of Fletcher's tricks," cried James Sutton hoarsely.
"Is it, Sutton?" Johnny demanded. "Does the message give his name, Mr. Carmichael?"
Carmichael continued dully, " 'Jim Sutton did it. He' "—he hesitated—"he killed L. Smithson!' "
"That's a he!" yelled Sutton. "Lester isn't dead. He—he phoned me today from Idaho."
"Did he?" Johnny shot at him.
"I talked to him," Sutton said wildly. "I—he wrote me a letter two—three years ago. He's alive, I tell you, he's alive."
"He's dead," said Johnny bluntly. "You killed him twelve ars ago. Jess knew it then, but kept quiet. But he never isted you. He was afraid of you."
Carmichael faced his nephew, his eyes blazing like an enging angel's. "Did you kill my son?" Sutton backed away. "He was raised with a gold spoon in his mouth. He had everything and I—I was poor." "Poor!" burst out Sam Cragg. "How can a guy live in the rbizon-Waldorf and be poor?"
"I gave him an allowance," Carmichael said. He moved svard Sutton. "I gave you money and you—you killed my a..."
"I needed more money," Sutton wailed. "I—I've been wiped t. I speculated and I lost every dollar and went into debt" tton sank into,a chair and began to sob. Carmichael stood over him; his big body seemed to slump d he aged before Johnny's eyes. Hertha Colston moved up him quietly and put her arms about Carmichael's shoulders. Carmichael looked at her and smiled wanly. "They told me len he was a boy that he had a vicious streak in him. I—I sught he'd outgrown it. I would have made him my heir...." "He counted on that," Johnny said soberly. "He hired me t night to find Lester Smithson. He knew very well that I mldn't be able to do that, but he figured it was a good thing, throw suspicion in another direction. Blame Lester Smith-n. Lester had reason to kill Jess, he figured. If he could make u believe that Lester had come back and killed Jess he was right."
Lieutenant Madigan moved forward. He snapped a pair of ndcuffs on Sutton's wrists and said, "We'll get a statement from him down at Headquarters."
The phone rang suddenly, shrilly. Everyone in the room looked at it, but no one moved toward it. Johnny finally skipped across the room and picked it up. "Yes? Who?" He need. "Yes, he's here." He covered the mouthpiece. "Mr. Carmichael, it's Alice Cummings. She wants to talk to you." "I have nothing to say to her."
Johnny said into the phone, "Sorry, babe, Mr. Carmichael s nothing to say to you. . . . Yes, it's me, your old friend, hnny Fletcher . . ." He winced again. "You've cut your ice to ten thousand? For what... Oh, the pennies and dimes ?"
"Let me talk to her," Hertha said suddenly. "She wants to sell seven dollars' worth of change for ten 116
thousand," chuckled Johnny. He handed the phone to Hertha Colston.
Hertha told Alice Cummings what to do with the coins.
24
Johnny and Sam shook hands with the lawyer outside the courthouse in Peekskill. "A tremendous victory, gentlemen," the attorney said enthusiastically. "I told you I could do it."
"You call a five-hundred-dollar fine a victory?" asked Johnny cynically.
"For forgery, grand larceny, jail-breaking ..."
"Cut it out," shuddered Sam.
"A victory," the lawyer said firmly. "If it wasn't for the fact that the city prosecutor is my cousin and that I just happen to play golf with the judge, it would have been five years in the State penitentiary. Six months in the county jail, at the very least."
"All right," said Johnny. "Thanks. Thanks a million. You did a great job. The next time one of us gets arrested in Peeks-kill, we'll give you our business."
"You'll be in good hands. And now, I must say good-bye to you, gentlemen. One of my, ah, clients has been charged with stealing a, ah, a bus. Ridiculous, of course, but I must do my duty by him. Good-bye, gentlemen."
The attorney bustled away and Johnny and S
am walked toward the bus stop where they would get a bus that would take them back to Manhattan.
"I'm never going to come anywhere near Peekskill again," said Sam solemnly.
"It's a good thing Mr. Carmichael gave me that thousand dollars this morning. He didn't really have to give it to me, you know. It was for finding Lester Smithson. And I never found him."
"How could you find him when he was dead?"
Johnny suddenly snorted. "Imagine that lawyer—a thous-sand bucks! And cash he wanted, too. Before the trial."
"I'm sorry, Johnny. We're just about broke again, aren't we?"
"After we pay the bus fare we'll have about seventy cents left over." Johnny shook his head and sighed. "Well, that's too bad. I was going to mail thirty-six dollars to Mr. Peabody— along with the pawn ticket for his suit. But now, I guess, I'll just mail him the pawn ticket. That's better than nothing, isn't it?" "Yeah, but don't we owe some room rent again?" "Sure, but what's that? I'll think of something. I always do."