The 24th Horse

by Hugh Pentecost

  “That’s a trick question of the kindergarten variety,” Pelham said. “Why don’t you warn me that anything I say will be used against me?”

  “I’m not the only one who suspects you of murder, Pelham. Your best friend was so worried he hotfooted it to your apartment just in order to see if your gun was there.”

  “Why should Guy do that?”

  “To protect you.”

  “From what, for God’s sake!”

  “Apparently he doesn’t want to see you burn for what he considers justifiable homicide. Protecting you is his best trick. He’s been paying blackmail for a long time to guard your secret.”

  “The man’s insane!” Pelham cried. “What secret?”

  “The secret of your wife’s disappearance. It got a little too hot when Gloria actually put it down on paper and gave it to Linda Marsh to keep. You couldn’t risk that, could you, Captain?”

  In spite of Joe, Pelham struggled to his feet. “Bradley, if you know what happened to my wife, out with it! All the rest of this gibberish of yours … it’s bluff, and you know it. But if you’ve facts about Dorothy, tell me what they are. I’ve a right to the truth!”

  “That’s what I’m supposed to be getting out of you, Pelham.”

  “All you want is an arrest,” Pelham charged. “Why don’t you investigate the facts? If you checked on my movements last night, you’d know I never left the Garden … that I couldn’t have because of the horses. Shea will back that up. Outside of half an hour at suppertime I was never away from the Garden basement.”

  “That would have been time enough.”

  “Am I the best fall guy you can find to satisfy the commissioner?”

  “You’re an awful good one,” said Bradley. He looked at Joe. “Take him away,” he said.

  “Arrest me!” Pelham shouted. “Lock me up! Turn loose your thugs on me! Maybe you could beat a confession out of me! Maybe …”

  “Take him away,” Bradley repeated sharply.

  Joe took Pelham’s arm and led him, still raging, to the door.

  “And, Joe” — Bradley was scowling at the lamp shade; reached out to straighten it—“turn the lot of ’em free. Tell ’em I don’t want them anymore.”

  “What’s wrong, Inspector?” Pelham sneered. “Didn’t the blitzkrieg work?”

  “I oughta bat your teeth in,” Joe growled,

  Bradley seemed to have forgotten them. He had swung his chair around and was staring out the window.

  ***

  Inspector Flynn of the Missing Persons Bureau greeted Bradley with enthusiasm. Flynn had once been an active member of the Homicide Division, but a knee shattered in a gun fight in the prohibition era had relegated him to desk work.

  “You’re the last guy in the world I expected to see this day, Luke,” he said.

  “Not snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night,” murmured Bradley.

  “I’ve just heard of the lollapalooza you’re mixed up in,” Flynn said.

  “And that’s what brings me here, Mickey. I want help.”

  “Name your poison.”

  “I want the records on the case of one Dorothy Pelham, who disappeared about five years ago.”

  “Did we find her?”

  “No. But I understand the case was officially dropped.”

  “Sit down and take a load off your feet,” Flynn invited. “I’ll dig up the files for you.”

  It took about fifteen minutes, and then Flynn limped back into his office with a brown cardboard folder. Bradley opened it. On top of the pile of reports was a studio photograph of Dorothy Pelham.

  “Nifty-lookin’ dish,” said Flynn.

  “I’d heard she was beautiful,” Bradley said. “She really was, and no kidding.”

  The record was complete if concise. The case had been reported in June of 1935 by Captain George Pelham, the missing woman’s husband. He had just returned from a motor trip through the New England States where he had been on business.

  Inspector Earl Williams was assigned to the case on the seventeenth.

  Inspector Williams’ first report was brief:

  Dorothy Pelham, the missing woman, has been married to George Pelham, ex-Captain of engineers in the A.E.F. for about four years. Pelham is connected with the Thoroughbred Race Horse Breeding Association of America as a sort of traveling secretary. He went out of town on the 11th, covering race tracks and farms in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Purpose, to make some sort of report to the association.

  He returned on the 15th, evening. Dorothy Pelham was not at home. No evidence of an intended absence. Clothes, jewels, etc., intact. Only possible evidence she might have intended staying away was absence of toothbrush. Too slender. Might have thrown it away with intention of buying another while she was out.

  Employees in apartment building saw her go out afternoon of 12th. Said nothing about going away. Cheerful and pleasant as usual. These are the last-known persons to have seen Mrs. Pelham. Pelham reports phoning all friends, acquaintances of his wife. Blank.

  Then the second report, much briefer:

  Hospitals, public and private, morgues covered. Blank. Followed up all reported accidents to females since 11th. Blank. No reports of suicides at water front or on ferry runs.

  The third report:

  Talked with nearly fifty friends of Dorothy Pelham. Every one of them scoffs at notion of suicide or willful disappearance. Subject was gay, full of life, no evidence of family trouble. She and husband out in society a lot, but evidently very happy.

  The fourth report:

  Investigated possibility of homicide. No known motive for anyone. Checked husband’s alibi.

  Here Bradley’s eyes narrowed and he read closely.

  George Pelham at Boston, Greenfield, Narragansett, Providence, registered at hotels in each city. Impossible to get complete detailed alibi, but seems unlikely he is involved, He could have flown to New York and back again to any one of these points in the course of an evening, but no record of such a trip. Checked with regular commercial air lines. Blank. There are hundreds of private planes he could have chartered. Take months to check them all. Advise against expenses, since there is no real reason to suspect him.

  The fifth report.

  Gave Pelham the works. Thoroughly convinced he is innocent of any crime. Close to mental collapse, or I’m nuts.

  The rest was completely negative. Nothing turned up to give Inspector Williams the slightest lead. The case was dropped in December. The only other piece of information was a note to the effect that the Bonesteel Detective Agency, private, had been engaged by Pelham to carry on the search.

  “What are you looking for?” Flynn asked.

  “Evidence of murder,” said Bradley mournfully. “Nothing very hopeful here.”

  “Don’t look like it.”

  “Mickey, I’d like to talk to Inspector Williams. Can you get him down here today to see me?”

  Flynn shook his head. “That I can’t,” he said. “Williams is retired. Got a farm somewhere up in Westchester County, I hear.”

  “Can you get his address?”

  “Sure. Some of the boys will have it.”

  “The pension clerk will know,” Bradley suggested.

  ***

  The commissioner drew circles and curlicues on the yellow scratch-pad at his elbow.

  He looked worried.

  “I don’t like it, Bradley,” he said, “I don’t like it one damn bit!”

  Bradley was slumped in a red leather armchair by the commissioner’s desk. He had just struck a match, and he let the flame burn halfway down the stick before he applied it to his pipe.

  “Not a nice case,” he conceded.

  “It’ll be plastered all over the front pages tomorrow You were lucky to miss the bulk of the Sunday papers.”

  “We’ve been in the papers before, Commissioner,” Bradley shrugged.

  The commissioner’s expression was pensive. “You know I’ve always been an admirer of yours, Br
adley. Your record speaks for itself. I’d let you go farther with your own methods than any other man on the force.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Commissioner,”

  “But, damn it” — and the point of the commissioner’s pencil snapped — “the way you’re going about this seems goofy to me. You keep stressing the connection between these murders and the disappearance of Dorothy Pelham. But where’s the evidence to point to it, man?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” said Bradley.

  “My dear Inspector …”

  “Look here, sir. There are two kinds of coincidence, the kind you can explain and the kind you can’t. If I’m walking along Fifth Avenue at nine in the morning and I meet you on the corner of Forty-Third Street, and then the next morning the same thing happens, we call it coincidence. But we can explain it. You get into the Grand Central each morning at eight-fifty and you walk across town. So it isn’t strange, really, my bumping into you. That’s the garden variety of coincidence. But there’s another kind.”

  “Well?”

  “Suppose a young fellow takes a girl out driving in his car. They go up a steep, mountain road. The young fellow stops his car because he thinks he has a flat. He gets out to look. While he’s out of the car, the brake gives way, the car goes over an embankment, and the girl is killed.”

  “What’s this got to do with … ”

  “Wait a minute, sir. Now suppose that same young fellow, four or five years later, takes another girl driving over a mountain road and stops because he thinks he has a flat. And suppose again, while he’s out of the car, the brake gives way, the car goes over an embankment, and the girl is killed.”

  “Well?”

  “Would you accept that as a tragic coincidence, Mr. Commissioner, or would you, like me, say ‘that’s too damned fishy to swallow?”

  “Well, that would be a bit thick, Bradley. But …”

  “I think it’s a bit thick, sir, that in this same group the same thing has happened twice, with only the variation of discovering the body the second time. If nothing else, the first crime — and I believe it was a crime — gave the murderer a pattern for the second. The shooting of Douglas Prayne was apparently an emergency measure. Until I’ve run it to earth and proved, I’m wrong, I’ll still be convinced that Dorothy Pelham’s disappearance is tied into this affair tight as a drum!”

  “Then why not make an arrest?” the commissioner demanded.

  “Who shall I arrest, sir?”

  “Pelham or Severied or both.”

  “On what evidence?”

  “It’s a moral certainty that Prayne was shot with Pelham’s gun.”

  Bradley smiled faintly. “Juries have a way of rejecting moral certainties, sir.”

  “But Pelham’s got no alibi!”

  “Neither has anyone else on my list. There’s just one person I’ll put in the clear beyond a shadow of doubt, Patricia Prayne.”

  “Not the Curtin boy?”

  “I’m pretty sure about him, Commissioner. But from the standpoint of alibis he’s in bad. He discovered both bodies, and we only have his word for it that he was just unlucky. As for the rest, if I could hook a motive onto any one of them, I could make a pinch.”

  The commissioner didn’t seem any happier. “Well, that brings me to the last point. Why in the name of God haven’t you sent out an alarm for Severied? He deliberately gave your man the slip last night. He’s obviously in hiding or he would have come forward. It’s practically certain he’s the one who slugged Sergeant Snyder. Why haven’t you got every cop on the force looking for him?”

  Bradley was silent, puffing methodically on his pipe. At last he said, “What will happen if I arrest him? I might charge him with assault. There was no crime in giving Monahan the slip. He wasn’t under arrest or orders to stay in his apartment. It’s suspicious, sure. But a half-hour alter I lock him up, his lawyer will have him out. I wouldn’t like that.”

  “Bradley, what in tarnation … ”

  “Mr. Commissioner, I’ve a number of hunches. One of them has to do with Severied. I don’t know where he is … true. But neither does the murderer.”

  “But it’s damn likely that Severied is the murderer!”

  “I don’t think so, sir. And as long as he chooses to stay hidden it suits me. Because” — and Bradley heaved a deep sigh — “I believe if the murderer gets the opportunity, Guy Severied will be his next victim!”

  Chapter 16

  The commissioner stared at Bradley. Then he spoke in a soothing voice.

  “That sounds like the end of a chapter in a detective story!” he said. “You don’t have to keep me in suspense, you know.”

  “I don’t want to, Commissioner. The case has taken on a kind of shape, sir, and I’ll give it to you as far as it goes. I think Gloria Prayne was indulging in blackmail. If you consider the letter, and the implications of her visit to Linda Marsh, you’ll see why. In the group are only two who have anything to be blackmailed out of … Severied and Miss Marsh. Since the letter was left with Miss Marsh to turn over to the police in case something went wrong, that makes it Severied.”

  “But that’s all the more reason why you should … ”

  “Let me finish, sir. Severied knew that letter was in Miss Marsh’s keeping. Drunk as he was, the moment he heard of the murder he made straight for Miss Marsh. He did his best to dissuade us from opening it.”

  “But …”

  “When you’re blackmailing, Commissioner, you have to make it evident to the victim that he can’t slide off the hook by silencing you. Therefore Gloria told Severied what she’d done. But … and here’s the big but, sir. When we refused to burn the letter, Severied gave up … resigned himself to our discovery of something unpleasant and damaging. See what that brings us to?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “If the secret bad been anything ruinous to him, personally, he would have gone a lot further in his efforts to stop us. If he were the murderer, he would have known there was nothing in the letter and he wouldn’t have made any fuss at all. So I conclude: (a) that he is not the murderer; (b) that he was paying blackmail not to protect himself, but someone else!”

  “I see. It’s smart reasoning, Bradley. No doubt of it.”

  Bradley continued, “There is one person whom Severied has been in the habit of helping and protecting for a long time. Pelham! I think — and now it’s guesswork, sir — that when he heard about Gloria he jumped to the instant conclusion that it was Pelham who’d killed her. And I think this morning, when he heard about Prayne, he was still playing with that notion. That’s why he, too, went to Pelham’s apartment to see if the gun was there.”

  “But you think he took the gun, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t. I think he found it missing … just as we should have if we’d beaten him to the search.”

  “And you think he’s prepared to protect Pelham, even against a murder charge?”

  “I’m still guessing, Commissioner, but I don’t think he’s sure yet. I think the reason he’s hiding is that he doesn’t want to be forced to talk until he is sure. He’s been willing to pay blackmail for a long time.”

  “But what secret is he keeping, Bradley? If he knows that Pelham murdered his wife, and he’s covering for him, then he’s an accessory.”

  “Perhaps murder isn’t his secret. If I knew, this case would be on ice. But I feel this, sir. Severied has facts that we haven’t. He’s doing a bit of detective work of his own. I think if he finds that Pelham is guilty of murder he’ll turn him in. I think if he finds Pelham is innocent he’ll keep dodging until we hit on the truth and he can come into the clear without having to divulge his secret.”

  “You think then, that … ”

  “I think the story behind the blackmailing is the crux of the whole case, Commissioner. Severied knows it, and the murderer knows it. Right now Severied, in possession of that information, is much more dangerous to the murderer than we are. That’s why I say he is
logically the next victim. If we arrest him, bring him back into focus so that the murderer can get on his trail, we may have a third crime on our hands. As I see it, my job is to get hold of that secret if I can. Once I have it too, Severied’s danger becomes instantly minimized. The murderer will have to worry about me then. And if he makes a move against me ... ” Bradley’s smile was grim. “I would like that, Commissioner, very much.”

  The commissioner nodded. “But this secret. It’s so intangible! Where do you begin?”

  Bradley knocked out his pipe. He sounded tired. “I’ve got a one-track mind, Commissioner. When I know more about Dorothy Pelham, I think I’ll be on the way.”

  The commissioner drummed on the edge of his desk with his fingers. Then he made a decision. “Okay, you stubborn red-headed cluck! Handle it your own way. And good luck.”

  “Thank you, sir, I’m going to need it.”

  ***

  Mr. Jerry Bonesteel, private investigator, sat on a high stool in Al Muller’s Restaurant and Bar adjoining Madison Square Garden. Muller’s is a hangout for everyone who has business at the Garden — fight managers and their charges, hockey players, rodeo performers, circus people; and during Horse Show week you’ll see a good many dinner coats and top hats. Al Muller himself, short, stocky, shirt-sleeved host, who looks as if in his youth he might have been a wrestler or a gymnast, knows everyone, remembers everyone. In the late afternoon Muller’s bar magically becomes decorated with slabs of rye bread and platters of cold meat. It is the nearest thing to the old-fashioned free lunch you can find in New York.

  Mr. Jerry Bonesteel, nattily dressed in a double-breasted serge, a stiff-bosomed shirt with a large diamond stud, a crisp bow tie, and a carefully brushed derby hat, was availing himself of Herr Muller’s largesse when Bradley’s hand dropped on his shoulder. He turned on his stool.

  “Why, you old son of a bitch!” he cried. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

  “Around,” said Bradley, occupying the next stool.

  “Say, it’s great to see you. It’s great to see a guy in a nice clean business who doesn’t have to chisel expense accounts to make a living.”

  “Business tough?”

  “Terrible. About the only way you can get by is hiding under beds for evidence in divorce cases. It stinks. What are you doing here?”