Crime on My Hands

by George Sanders

  We went into his trailer office. “Now if this plot were running true to form,” I said, “the guns would be gone.”

  Sammy opened a drawer. He peered into it. He opened another. Very slowly, he turned to me. His eyes had a chill in them. His voice was steady and thoughtful.

  “It seems damned funny, George, that you’d know it.”

  Chapter Five

  Here it was again. Circumstances conspiring against the beleaguered hero. I can see now that I was not consciously playing the role of protagonist, but I had been cast in so many such epics that I dropped naturally into the part.

  ‘I’m omniscient, Sammy,” I said. “Here is something else that I know. We are up against someone who is shrewd and brilliant. He has courage. When something goes wrong, he improvises a solution. And something has gone wrong; thereby we may hang him by the tail.”

  Sammy remained cold. “Don’t be so flip. What are you talking about?”

  “Let us look at the murderer’s plan, Sammy. Let us probe it with analytical eyes. First, he wishes to kill someone, and he does not wish to die for it. So he selects me as the goat. He gets his man, plants the gun on me. But it isn’t found on me. That isn’t in the schedule. Now, he could see you take the gun, and he could follow you here. He then steps inside and takes the gun away.”

  “But why?” Sammy objected. “If I’d done it, I’d want nothing to do with that gun again.”

  “That is because you are only a conventional murderer, Sammy – potentially, that is. You follow the pattern: conk the victim, ditch the gat. But our murderer has some obscure and, you may be sure, sensational move in mind. Perhaps he has selected another goat. We have him on the run, Sammy. He has come out of anonymity. He has a name now.”

  “Do you know who it is already?” Sammy asked, with a touch of awe.

  “Not definitely,” I said. “I mean that we know something about him that we didn’t know before. Up to know, we knew only that he wanted to kill a man. He figured out beforehand how to go about it with a minimum of risk. He took the means and opportunity, then got rid of the evidence. But now we know that he has initiative. He will take chances when necessary. So that narrows our search. We can eliminate you and me, for example, from the list of suspects. I’m horribly lazy, and wouldn’t have done anything about an unexpected development beyond rearranging my story to fit the circumstances; and you’d have been afraid to depart from the plan painstakingly thought out.”

  Sammy’s eyes became steely again. “If I’d shot the guy, would I have said anything to you about the gun? How did I ever get on that list?”

  “I don’t mean that, Sammy. I mean that you are excluded on psychological grounds, as I am. We are now looking for someone who is capable of the action I have just described, who has initiative and courage.”

  Sammy said, “Yeah. Meantime, the cops want us!”

  “I had forgotten. We’d better toddle along. My experience in the drama is that unless you are guilty you should never keep the police waiting. When you are, of course, you keep them waiting until the final curtain.”

  They were shooting questions at a white-faced Carla when we arrived at the scene of the crime. I wondered why, then realized that my gun had been in her wagon, only a few feet from the corpse.

  The gun itself was between Lamar James’s feet, tied inside an open paper box with a couple of loops of string, so that it could be transported without disturbing fingerprints. My fingerprints. They must be all over the gun. And our story was that I had carried .45’s. I would deal with that when I was asked.

  “If you didn’t know the deceased,” Sheriff Callahan said doggedly, “how come you shot him?”

  “But I tell you I didn’t shoot him!” Carla said hysterically.

  “lt sure looks open and shut to me,” Callahan went on. “It’d be an easy shot, even for a woman, at that distance. And nobody was in that wagon with you.”

  “Are you disputing the lady’s word?” I asked.

  Sheriff Callahan whirled on me. Not whirled, exactly, it took some time to get his bulk into motion. Rather, he revolved.

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Then you’re no gentleman. She didn’t shoot him.”

  “How do you know?” Callahan snapped.

  That raised a question, all right. How did I know? I saw the answer clear, suddenly, and hoped that Sammy would follow my lead. I looked over the group before answering. All were looking at me: Paul, Sammy, Carla, Lamar James, Riegleman, the mousy script girl, the head cameraman, and a few others. McGuire, chief of the properties department, was not present, which was well.

  “In the first place,” I said, “that is not the murder weapon. In the second place, it was loaded only with blanks. In the third place, she wouldn’t shoot a man in cold blood.”

  I had the spotlight now, and I faced them easily, a smile toying with my mouth. I made a ritual of lighting a cigarette. Lamar James, who had been quietly watching, moved forward.

  Sheriff Callahan held James back for a second, asked, “You’re George Sanders?”

  I bowed, slightly.

  “Saw you in a picture once,” he went on. “Something of Sunnybrook Farm, think it was. My wife said you got what was coming to you.”

  “Rebecca,” I corrected him. “Just that, with two e’s. Not of Sunnybrook Farm. Du Maurier, you know.”

  “Do what?” the sheriff asked.

  I smiled tolerantly.

  Callahan beetled his brows at me. He had decided that he didn’t like me. He made this evident. “What I’ve heard of you, you’re a kind of shady character. Where you from? You got a funny accent.”

  “If you mean where was I born – Russia.”

  “Oh,” he said. It was easy to see what he thought of Russia.

  Lamar James pushed him aside. “You’re getting nowhere, Jerry. How do you know that wasn’t the murder weapon, Mr. Sanders?”

  I smiled with a confidence I didn’t feel. I began to improvise, and directed my remarks at Callahan. He was the man in authority, and I wanted him to clear out, so that Sammy and I could go to work on the problem of the missing guns. If Lamar James stayed here and nosed around, he might turn up a few facts that would be embarrassing to me.

  “Suppose you shot the man, Sheriff?” I began.

  “I wasn’t even here,” he bristled.

  “Yes, I know. But suppose. The next act would be to hide the gun. Now where can you hide anything out there?” I waved at the valleys and dunes of sand, cosmic wrinkles in the Earth’s ancient skin.

  “You could hide a whole city in one of them dunes,” the sheriff said.

  “Could you, though?” I objected, wondering what I was really getting at. “With three hundred persons fluttering about, would you take such a chance in broad daylight? If you left the immediate vicinity, at least a few people would be likely to see you. No, you wouldn’t hide the gun out there, Sheriff. You’d put it where nobody could observe you, and where nobody could find it. And you’d create the opportunity by planting another gun where it could be found, to divert attention from your act. This gun that you have found is a false clue, a red herring, a plant, a decoy. That’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?”

  The sheriff simulated thoughtfulness. “Could be,” he admitted.

  “And you will find, when your ballistics expert examines the slug,” I said impressively, “that it was not fired from this gun. It came from an entirely different make. This gun is a Colt thirty-eight, and the bullet was fired from a Smith and Wesson special.”

  “Baloney!” Callahan said. “You can’t tell that by lookin’ at the hole.”

  “Why not? Our friend Mr. James, with the micrometer mind, can tell at a glance that the slug is not a forty-five, that’s a fairly incredible talent. Is it any more unbelievable that I should be able to name the make of gun?”

  Lamar James cut in. “I believe it. You could call the turn under one condition – that you fired the shot.”

  “But I have an
unbreakable alibi.”

  “Let’s hear it!” he snapped.

  “I was–” I began. I broke off as an embarrassing thought suddenly came into my mind. It was true that I was in camera range most of the time, but it was also true that I was carrying .38’s. That fact would not escape James, for in the close-ups anyone could see that the gun which he had in custody was one of the guns I had fired in the scene. This would not necessarily indicate that I had shot Flynne, but it would certainly impair my claim that I had carried .45’s.

  “Are you charging me with murder?” I demanded.

  “No,” Lamar James said. “Not yet.”

  Riegleman broke in. “You’d better not. George is the star, and we’ve got to finish this picture. Do you know,” he demanded of Sheriff Callahan, “how much it’s costing to stand around here and gnaw the rag? Do you know how many hundred dollars an hour it costs?”

  “Now, take it easy,” placated the sheriff. “We’re gonna let you go on as soon as we can.”

  Lamar James repeated, “Let’s hear your alibi.”

  “I’ll produce it when the time comes,” I said aloofly.

  He scowled, and Callahan scowled, but they let me get away with it.

  “I’ll remember that,” James said darkly. “About the gun that shot him. Where do you think it’s hidden?”

  “I think we’ll never find it,” I said. “The killer has had plenty of time to hide the gun. The sand is soft, and it would be easy to dig a hole without arousing suspicion. Look.”

  I squatted and gazed out across the sand as if I were turning an important thought in my mind. To help me think, I scooped sand aimlessly. Presently I had a hole large and deep enough to bury a small badger. I dipped into my pocket for an imaginary gun, flipped it into the hole, and with my other hand scooped the hole full again.

  “We could be standing on it here,” I pointed out.

  My point scored. “Then how,” Callahan wailed, “are we gonna find the murderer? We can’t rake over this whole area. We haven’t got that kind of money in my office.”

  “We don’t need the gun to find the murderer,” I said coldly. “We find him by psychological detection. I’ll tell you this much, the one we’re looking for is brilliant, courageous, and shrewd. He is certain that he has covered his tracks. He won’t run away. You might as well go check on that bullet. When you find that I’m correct, start looking for motives. That’s the first step.”

  Callahan said, “Is that right, Lamar?”

  “Yes,” James answered. “That’s right. Soon as the hearse gets here, we’ll take off.” He put his calm dark eyes on me. He ticked off fingers with, “One, that’s not the murder weapon. Two, it was filled with blanks. Three, she wouldn’t shoot a man in cold blood. That what you said?”

  “Righto.”

  “I’m gonna want to see you,” he said, “later.”

  “Come over to my trailer,” I invited. “It’s that big mahogany and chrome job down by the beach. I’ll be in all evening.”

  He turned away. I stood undecided for a moment, almost weak with relief. The first round was mine. A remembered curiosity twinged, and I went over to Carla. I drew her off to one side.

  “I’ll buy you a coke,” I said loudly, and led her toward the hot dog wagon.

  “Thanks, George,” she said in a low voice, “for rescuing me.”

  “The dogs were on your heels,” I admitted. “But why were you scared? You didn’t kill him.”

  She looked up at me. “How do you know?”

  Here was the same poser. How did I know? I looked deeply into her dark eyes, and the reason came to me. It was not knowledge that I had, it was only emotion. Her eyes softened, and I touched her cheek with my hand.

  I had known her casually for three or four years. We were friends. We had flirted some, light-hearted remarks tossed back and forth across a luncheon table at Romanoff’s or the Derby.

  Only that morning I’d been making love to her, madly, desperately. We had struck sparks from each other. I had caught her hand, and her eyes had smoldered. I’d kissed her, and her eyes had closed, dreamily. But that had been in a scene for Seven Dreams, and Riegleman had bawled for half a dozen retakes. Right now she was just a very nice kid that I liked and was a little worried about.

  The Falcon, in a scene like this, alone with a beautiful woman – despite the unromantic setting of the hot dog wagon – would have done one of two things. He would have taken her in his arms and kissed her, ardently. Or, he’d have looked at her coldly and said, “Why did you kill Severance Flynne?”

  I took a sip from my coke bottle. Then I said,

  “Carla, why were you so scared at the sheriff’s questions?”

  There was a long pause before she answered, and I had a feeling she was counting ten. Finally she said, looking at her straw, “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Don’t be a liar,” I said. “You were scared. Why?” This time she counted to a hundred. Then she slid her coke bottle across the counter, looked at me, and said, “Sanders, you’re a good guy, I like you. I’m in one hell of a jam here. Maybe you can tell me–” Suddenly her gorgeous mouth shut like a trap. Her eyes told me that someone was coming into hearing range.

  It was Sammy. “Hi, Carla,” he said. “Say, George, could you come and talk about the next scene? It needs a change, I think.”

  “Surely.” I excused myself to Carla, and went along. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Plenty,” he said grimly, as we reached his office. “Come in and meet Listless.”

  Listless was a little blonde girl who sat in a huddle of misery in front of Sammy’s desk. “She’s in the wardrobe department,” Sammy said. “Miss Nelson, Mr. Sanders.”

  I bowed. She said, “Hello,” in a timid, frightened voice. She looked at Sammy.

  That look said several things. It said that she had a head full of doughnut holes and a heart full of devotion to Sammy.

  “Here,” Sammy said, “is your person who is shrewd, brilliant, full of initiative and courage. You tell him, Listless.”

  She looked up at me, her great blue eyes glistening with imminent tears. “I was just trying to help,” she snuffled.

  ‘I’m sure you were,” I said softly.

  “I walked up here with Sammy,” she went on. “and he looked at that gun and said it was sure funny because he gave you another one and what did you do with it because it was worth a fortune. He said that strange gun didn’t belong here and he wasn’t going to trade a museum piece for modern junk. So then when I heard there’d been a murder and thought about what Sammy said about the gun and all I thought I’d help him. So I took both guns out of his desk and threw ’em away so the cops wouldn’t find ’em on him. And now Sammy’s mad at me.”

  She began to cry, gently, as if she didn’t want to disturb anybody. Sammy and I just looked at each other.

  Chapter Six

  Shrewd, brilliant, cunning, courageous. I’d had it all figured out. For some obscure reason, the murderer had taken the guns. We could expect something sensational in the way of developments. Oh, yes.

  Listless continued to cry softly. Her problem was more serious to her than ours – Sammy was mad at her.

  “I didn’t go to do anything wrong,” she said.

  I put my hand on her head. “Where did you throw the guns, darling?”

  She pointed a shaking finger. “Out there, on the other side of that big pile of sand.”

  “I wonder if anybody saw you.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “It was when everybody started down to the wagon to see what was going on. When I got back, they were still there. I didn’t see anybody around here.”

  “Will you run along now, and let me and Sammy do some talking?”

  She got up, dabbing at tears. She looked at Sammy.

  “Are you still mad at me, Sammy?”

  “Oh, hell,” Sammy said wearily, “what’s the use to be sore. I know you were trying to help. Listen, kid, don’t do a t
hing on your own before you’ve asked me, will you? And don’t say anything to anybody about this, huh?”

  “I won’t, Sammy. Honest.”

  “And don’t wander around alone,” I said. “Stay with people. We – well, I must confess that I haven’t the foggiest notion of what we’re up against, and until we find out, it may not be safe to boggle about.”

  Listless went out, and we sat silently for a while.

  “George,” Sammy said tentatively.

  I gave him a three-quarter view of my face. I didn’t actually look at him. “I know what you’re going to say, Sammy. You’re going to ask me to solve this crime in a hurry. You’re going to point out that I have had a great deal of experience in the role of detective. You’re going to mention my inventiveness. You’re going to suggest that I pull a surprise out of my hat, something that will bewilder the murderer and force him into an unwary move. You’re going to say that I am really like the character I have portrayed, clever, shrewd, fearless.”

  “Well, George, I wasn’t. I was just going to say that you’ve been kind of dopey on this so far, and maybe we just ought to tell that deputy sheriff what we know and let him work on it.”

  “Oh.”

  Poor Sammy. Dealer in the obvious. Now is forever, was the way he felt. He couldn’t see that bad breaks over which I had no control had put me in a rather bad light. I was correct in theory, and I knew it. Was it my fault that Listless, in an orgy of adulation, had intervened? The murderer would have taken the guns if he’d known where they were. My deductions fitted the known facts. Could I be blamed if those facts had unsuspected ramifications?

  “You had it all figured out,” Sammy amplified. “But you had it figured out wrong. Maybe we ought to stop messing around.”

  “You don’t know, Sammy. You don’t know how hick policemen jump at conclusions. If we told them how we’d lied about the guns, they’d toss us both in jail, as accessories if nothing worse. We have withheld facts, and that action has aided the murderer. My private opinion is that they’d waste no more time on me. They’d charge me with murder, and give me the privilege of disproving it.”