He was squat and round, with a froth of white hair and ears like the handles of a beer mug. He hung a smile between his ears and came over to us. I tensed my shoulders against a slap on the back. A good thing, too; I think he tried to knock me down.
“Name’s Callahan,” he said, with a bull-like friendliness. “Call me Jerry. Sheriff in these parts. Now, what’s the trouble?”
I introduced myself and the others, and waited for somebody else to tell him.
Riegleman said, “We seem to have had an accident here, and since it was fatal, we thought you should know. I had you notified. Here it is.”
Callahan looked at the corpse. “Shot, hey?” This piece of intuition brought a small silence. Callahan frowned in a helpless sort of fashion, then yelled at his deputy. “Lamar! Come here, will you?”
The deputy came out of the car like brown paint from a tube. He was slim, tall, and dark. He lounged over to us, was introduced, and took a look. He said nothing. He waited.
“Who’s going to tell it?” Callahan said pleasantly.
Riegleman told it. He pictured the scene that was to look like the real thing on the screen and, we hoped, bring from the critics such phrases as “realistic drama,” “a thriller,” and so on. Riegleman turned the story conference over to me, and I related how I had found the body.
Then we all stood silently for a moment.
Callahan broke the silence. “Looks open and shut. The guy got in the way of a slug. One of the shells wasn’t blank. Hey, Lamar?”
The deputy’s long, brown face showed no expression. His tight mouth cracked. “Caliber?” he asked. “What size shells in the carbines?”
We looked at Sammy. “Forty-fives,” he said.
James knelt beside the corpse and looked at the blackened hole in the temple. He looked for a long time. When he raised up, he was frowning. “Thirtyeight,” he said.
He sounded like me, in one of those Falcon roles. He didn’t have the polished manner, of course; he wasn’t supposed to be a light-hearted Briton. But he tossed in the surprise twist with the same casual aplomb.
“I don’t see how you can tell,” I objected, “just with a quick glance. There are too many factors. You can’t see the slug.”
The sheriff bristled. “If Lamar says it was a thirtyeight, it was a thirty-eight. He don’t make mistakes.”
I shrugged. “It could be. I’m no expert in these matters. But I still don’t see how he can tell.”
“Does it matter?” Riegleman asked.
Callahan looked bewildered. “I don’t know. Does it, Lamar?”
James said thoughtfully, “If all the carbines were forty-fives, somebody shot him with some other kind of a gun. Anybody carry thirty-eights?”
We all looked at Sammy again. He shook his fat face from side to side. “Nobody,” he said.
My mouth had a tendency to drop open, which I fought with clenched teeth. Sammy knew that somebody had carried .38’s. I had. The two Colt revolvers, with silver-inlaid handles, with which I had popped away, were .38 caliber Colts, on .45 frames.
And Sammy knew it, too. He beetled his brows at me in an expression of warning.
I said nothing.
Chapter Four
Lamar Jones narrowed his dark eyes. After a moment he said, “Better look at the guns. Where?”
Sammy waved at a cluster of trucks. “There.”
James looked at the corpse. “Blanket.”
“I’ll get one,” I said. I went to one of the wagons and started to pull out a Navajo pattern.
Underneath it was a gun.
The gun had a silver-inlaid handle and it was a .38 Colt on a .45 frame. It was one of the pair Sammy had issued to me.
And I fell right into an old familiar role. I did it automatically, without thinking. Once again I was the gifted amateur loggerheading the clumsy cops. With a graceful gesture which was to appear part of the one I’d already started, I let the Navajo blanket fall back over the gun and picked up another, darker blanket. As I carried it out of the wagon I took out my slim silver case and casually lighted a cigarette to think on.
Here I was again, back in the pattern. A nameless corpse, and the only clue to the killer was my gun, planted by a nameless hopeful who thought he could match wits with me. Only, this time the lines weren’t written for me. I had to make them up as I went along.
I gave the blanket to James and he placed it over the corpse, asked Paul to remain on guard, and led the way across the sand toward the trucks. I fell in beside Sammy, and we lagged behind.
I didn’t tell Sammy about the gun. Oh, no. That was my secret, to be sprung as a surprise at the psychological moment when the murderer was sure he was in the clear. Then the cops would look chagrined, the killer would make a break for freedom, only to be cut down with a bullet in his thigh.
Then we would have a long scene where I modestly explained why I had suspected the guilty party from the beginning, and how twitch by twitch I had drawn the strings of the net about him.
All I needed to round it out was a suspect. I had Sammy, but his actions didn’t fall into any psychological pattern. So, instead of telling him what he was doing, telling him in a detailed deduction that would drop his jaw down to his knees, I said,
“Now, maybe you’ll tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Why did you do it, George?” he asked. “I wanted to wait to ask you before I said anything. Maybe you had a good reason. If it’s good enough, I’ll string along.”
“Do you mean,” I asked with a flash of understanding, “that you think I killed him? Why? And why did you say that everybody carried forty-fives?”
“Well, about your guns, George, sure, I know they’re thirty-eights, but something funny happened. I gave you a matched pair, very valuable. And what I got back was not a matched pair. One of ’em was a modern thirty-eight police special, Smith & Wesson side ejector. I wanted to ask you how come.” He hesitated. “And where’s the other gun? That pair cost dough. Belonged to Cody, or Jesse James, or somebody like that.”
“That’s idiotic,” I said. “The guns I used in the scene were the guns you gave me. When the scene was over, I shoved them back in my holsters. They stayed there until you took them up.”
“One of ’em didn’t.”
After all, I thought, I had only Sammy’s word for this. I decided to let him do the talking, and to stay close to him.
“What did you do with the guns, Sammy?”
“I put ’em in a safe place. I wanted to talk to you before I turned ’em in.”
“Then somebody is going to ask what happened to my guns.”
“We can handle that. There’s a pair of forty-fives in the arsenal. We can say you carried them.”
I stopped. He turned his fat face to me. “Sammy, I don’t want any part of this. You’re hiding evidence, and you’re making me an accessory. I have nothing to hide, so let’s turn in the guns.”
“Now, wait, George. Let me ask you something. Suppose that odd gun was used to kill the poor egg. Suppose you didn’t do it. Somebody did, and somebody switched guns on you. You’re in for trouble if you can’t find out who switched ’em.”
“You’re the obvious choice.”
“I know that,” he said earnestly, “but I didn’t do it. So here’s what I figured. Maybe you’d like to do some snooping before we mention this to the cops. Maybe you could find out who did it and turn him in.”
His suggestion had merit. If the odd gun should prove to be the murder weapon – for it was murder beyond any doubt now – and someone stumbled on the fact that I had carried it, the police might assume that I had fired it. And my own theory, that coincidence had no place in the shooting, could be turned neatly against me. I could wind up in the state gaschamber.
On the other hand, I knew that I hadn’t fired any but the two pistols originally issued to me. And, going back over the battle scene in my mind, I knew that I hadn’t even pointed a gun in the direction of the dead man.
This latter point I might be able to prove. So far as I knew, I had been under the eyes of one or more cameras during the entire scene. The rushes would show my every act. Though there was a possibility that I was out of camera range at one time or another, and I would have no alibi for that time.
This brought up the question of who had switched guns on me. When the scene had ended, a man came up to take my horse. He could have done it. Then I had joined a group of principals and executives discussing the scene.
I tried to remember who was in the group. There were Carla, Frank Lane, Wanda Waite, Riegleman, the script girl, the head cameraman, and the sound man. We had babbled and bubbled. The switch could have taken place then.
Assuming, of course, that somebody had switched guns on me. Sammy could have done it when he took them up. He had opportunity to ditch the extra gun in that wagon.
His gray eyes were steady on mine. “Well, what do you say, George?”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. If Sammy had switched the guns – and therefore was a murderer – what could he gain by denying that I had carried a pair of .38’s? It seemed to me that his best play was to admit that I had carried them, and let the law have its way. Maybe he really was trying to help me.
“All right, I’ll go along with you, Sammy.”
“Then we’d better get over to the truck.”
The guns had been packed away in cases. It didn’t take long to go through them. There were no .38’s.
As I watched, I wondered why anyone should have tried to involve me in the killing. I hadn’t been in the company long enough to make enemies. Of course, the major reason might not concern me personally: I was the only one in the cast with side arms. What better place to hide a murder weapon than in my holster, assuming that Lamar James was correct and the killing had been done with a .38? Yes. That was probably it.
James turned to Riegleman. “You the boss here?”
Riegleman twisted a little smile at him. “Yes, as long as Mr. Wallingford isn’t around. He’s the producer.”
“He’s not here?”
“Not yet. I expect him.”
James said, “Send ’em down one at a time. Got to find out who the guy is.”
Riegleman flicked a hand at Sammy. “Get at it.”
Sammy gave me a mournful look and waddled away. So we couldn’t go further into this thing at present. I didn’t like it, but I could do nothing but keep an eye on the wagon where the gun was hidden. I took a chair under a beach umbrella and watched.
Peggy Whittier, the colorless little script girl, smiled at me brightly from a nearby chair where she worked on her notebook. Corpses couldn’t disturb her; she had an exacting job recording all pertinent details of the scene. If it should need to be shot over, she would know how it should look.
I was more worried than I cared to admit to myself. I had been faced with worse situations than this many times. As The Saint, or The Falcon, I had had circumstantial evidence point an evil and convincing finger at me. I had always escaped and turned the tables on the dastardly villains who wished to eliminate me. Only, some ingenious fellow had always written the script for me.
This actuality was disturbing. At one time or another, if I could believe Sammy, the fatal gun had been in my possession. I could just see myself convincing call-me-Jerry Callahan that I was ignorant of the fact. That sterling idea-a-year man would pop me into the clink and swallow the key.
As I watched the cast go one by one down by the wagons and look at the corpse, I made up my mind to take Sammy at his word. It was not a sensible decision, and I was aware of it at the time, but I made it. Sammy had something naive in his make-up. Not that it justified my believing him; but it caused me to.
I was about as objective as a mother who takes a smoking gun from her favorite son and swears that he never fired it. And I didn’t feel paternal toward Sammy; I felt a little sorry for him. He had been a dancer, once. He had done all right. When he danced in his hey-day, it was feathers in the breeze. Then he had begun to gain weight, his arches commenced to scream.
He had entered Hollywood through a side door as a writer. Not that he could write; but that didn’t matter, then or now. He was later given an under-financed quickie to direct, but the producer fled with the funds, and Sammy knocked around for some time in thinning soles. Finally he landed with Riegleman, being a sort of office boy called assistant director.
Somewhere along the line he could easily have accepted a feud. He could have waited until today, and killed his man. Perfectly possible, but I didn’t believe it; Sammy was no killer.
This reflection was secondary to my keeping an eye on the actors as they reviewed the corpse. As one returned, another went down to Callahan and James. Presently, one stayed a little longer than the others. He was a slim man in a white Stetson. He talked with the officers, James wrote in a notebook, and he came back. Sammy intercepted him.
I started for him, but he drifted away, and Sammy met me.
“The body’s got a name now,” Sammy said. “Severance Flynne.”
The name meant nothing to me. I said, “Excuse me, Sammy, I want to see that fellow who identified him.”
“He can’t help you, George. He never saw the guy before.”
“How,” I asked, “did he identify him, then?”
Sammy grinned up at me. “He was doing Wanda Waite a favor. She didn’t want to make the identification, so she asked this lad. She told him who the dead guy was, and no more.”
“Let’s go see Wanda, then,” I said grimly.
“Aw, George,” Sammy objected. “It’s kind of obvious why Wanda wouldn’t want to identify him. He was a good-looking cuss.” He paused. “You know Wanda.”
“All I know is she’s a hard-working actress and a nice person to have around.”
“Well, she made her name as the missionary’s wife in China Will Wait. She’s been playing parts like that ever since; the earnest, honest, kindly, courageous girl.”
“And so?”
Sammy frowned. “You can see what it would do to her screen career if her public knew she’d identified a murder victim. Think of the inferences. Hollywood’s just full of artists who draw nothing but inferences.”
“If she knew Flynne,” I said, “she might know who’d want to murder him. Maybe she’d like to have us drop in for tea.”
Sammy looked at me gloomily and finally said a reluctant “All right.”
Wanda was in her trailer dressing room. When she let us in, I had the impression that she had been sitting before her mirror, just looking. I didn’t blame her.
The effect was disturbing. Because suddenly she seemed like someone else. To me, Wanda had been a good actress and a good kid, not caring who saw her with her hair in curling pins, and trading cracks with the best of them. But this Wanda was a composite of all the sirens from Lilith to Theda Bara.
Beautiful, too, with her satin-blonde hair and her scarlet mouth. She could have raised a pulse in the Rushmore memorial.
Her costume added to the effect. She still wore the Mother Hubbard affair, but it was tailored, and she put a strain on the seams of her bodice.
She opened a catalog of implications with, “Can I do something for you?” She sounded like a onewoman wolf pack.
I decided to play along. I said, “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“I think you would,” she said huskily.
It was then I put a finger on the really disturbing factor: she was like an actor unsure of his lines who wanted terribly to make good. Her timing was just barely off ; she was overacting to the faintest degree. Why? What was eating this girl who was a saint in the eye of a camera? I filed the question for future reference.
I said, “Tell me about Severance Flynne.”
Her eyes cooled a little, became a little more like blue marbles than star sapphires. She said nothing for a few moments. Then, “I don’t know anything about him.”
“But you knew him?”
“Barely
,” she said. “Met him on the train yesterday. We talked.”
“What about?”
“Him. What else? He came out here from Nebraska. He played enough extra roles to keep him not more than a month behind in his rent. He got into this rat race because of a hangover. Herman Smith was hired, but he went on a bender the night before he was to leave. He woke up with a skull full of rivet guns, and asked Severance to take his place. Severance had a beard, and that was all that was necessary. So–”
“Somebody killed him,” I said.
“What would you want me to do?” she asked. “Rush down and say I knew him? I’m trying to build up a reputation as an actress. I’ve got to keep my skirts clean.” She added, “In public.”
I ignored the distracting invitation. I said, “I see. Did he mention knowing anyone in this company?”
“He said he didn’t know anybody. He knew you, of course, by reputation. Who doesn’t?”
I got to my feet. “Thanks for the help.”
“It’s nothing, sir,” she said. “Come back – any time.”
She almost out-leered me – I, who had made a fortune pushing leers at lassies and lenses – but as I turned away I caught a brief shadow in her eyes. She was worried. I filed away that fact, too. My mental cabinet was getting quite cluttered up. Nothing seemed to fit into the proper cubby holes. A little spring cleaning seemed indicated.
Out in that furious sun once more, I said to Sammy, “I don’t like to play this way. Let’s turn in the guns and tell the sheriff the truth. After all, I have nothing to fear, and the information may help that deputy. He seems shrewd.”
“I guess maybe you’re right, George. I hope you don’t get caught in the middle. Come on. They’re in my office.”
As we wound through the trucks, a messenger caught up with us. He flashed white teeth out of a nest of freckles. “The cops want to see you guys,” he said. “They found the gun hidden in a wagon.”
“We’ll be right along,” I said. He went away, and I looked at Sammy. “We’re a little late, but all we have to do is tell the truth.”
“I hope so,” Sammy muttered. “Here we are.”
Crime on My Hands Page 3