“You’re a liar ! ” I told him.
His face flushed. He said, “Now listen, pint-size, pipe down. I hate to pick on a pipsqueak, but I’ve had enough dealings with you damn crooks. I ” I saw Bertha edging toward us. I swung the open palm of my left hand against his face.
I think he was more surprised than Bertha. For a moment he stood there, his jaw sagging, then he came in with a rush.
I expected to take a licking, but I remembered some of the things Louie Hazen had taught me in the last case I’d been on. Without even thinking what I was doing I automatically shifted to one side as Alfman lashed out with his right. His blow went over my shoulder.
It didn’t seem like a fight. It seemed like just another sparring match with Louie. I held my right elbow in close to by my side. As the momentum of his blow carried him toward me, I kicked my fist into his stomach with my body muscles back of it.
I felt the resistance of his taut muscles, felt them grow suddenly limp, knew he was slumping over as the solar plexus blow took effect. Once more, it was just the same as though Louie had been giving me instructions. I snapped up the right fist into a quick, jarring uppercut to catch him on the f’ jaw as he came forward.
His teeth rattled.
There was agonized surprise in his eyes, then they turned ,I glassy.
I was conscious of a ring of startled faces around me, I heard Dr. Gelderfield sputtering, “Don’t look, Colette. Don’t look. Let me take you away from here. You mustn’t have any excitement.” Mrs. Devarest said angrily, “Take your hands off that chair. Leave me alone.” Bertha Cool screamed at me, “Go in and finish him, you damn fool. What are you standing there looking at him for?” Alfman was weaving around on his feet. He looked at me with eyes that seemed like a couple of marbles, lashed out with his left at a point in the atmosphere a good two feet from where my chin was located. He started his right from the hip pocket in a terrific haymaker.
I stepped in on the swing and hit him in the body.
His knees buckled. He tried to throw a punch, and wobbled around off balance; then he came down hard on his face on the floor of the garage.
I stepped back out of the way. I was trembling with nervousness. I couldn’t have held a match to a cigarette to save my life. I saw the awe and respect in the faces of the people that were looking at me, saw the sheer amazement on Bertha Cool’s face.
I was more surprised than she was.
Bertha said, in a half whisper, “The little bastard did it!” And then, after a moment, “Pickle me for a peach.”
Chapter XIII
BERTHA COOL slid in beside me in the front seat of the agency car. “Now what the hell was the idea of all that?” she asked.
“Of what?”
“After you discovered that weight had been placed on the door, why didn’t you take it off?” I said, “It’s good evidence leaving it on there.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Evidence that someone tampered with the door.” East wind, roaring down from the mountain passes, hurtled against the car, swaying it on its springs. The long leaves of the palm trees turned so as to spill out the wind, seemed like grotesque umbrellas which had been twisted wrong side out in a storm. The dry heat evaporated perspiration almost before it formed, and the invisible particles of dust made the skin feel like parchment.
Bertha Cool said, “Look, you’ve got a perfect condition prevailing for a test, a desert wind blowing harder than I’ve seen it in a year. You may wait months before there’ll be another opportunity to test that door.” I nodded.
She said, “There’s a weight on the door. You can’t make a fair test with the weight there. Now why in hell didn’t you take it off and see what the door would do?”
“Because the door wouldn’t have done anything different.”
“How do you know?” I said, “Figure it out for yourself. There’s one point at which the door catches. It swings almost in balance on the hinges. The less weight there is on the back of the door, the lower that point will be.”
“Well?”
“With the weight on the back of the door, it was just about at the point where a man could drive under it.
Even then, when the wind hit the door, it blew up instead of down.”
“It wouldn’t if it hadn’t been for that weight.”
“Are you certain?”
“No, but that’s what I think.” I said, “It’s an interesting experiment.”
“Then you aren’t going to try it?”
“No.”
“Someone else will.”
“Let them.”
“Why aren’t you going to?”
“Because it isn’t evidence of anything. The rope was tangled up in a peculiar way. That rope is supposed to hang straight down from a lever which pulls the door down until you can reach a handle on it.”
“Well?” I said, “There’s a position at which that door hangs equally balanced. With the additional weight on there, the position extends to a point where the automobile can be driven under it, but at that precise point the wind won’t blow the door down and shut. It blows it up and open.” Bertha said, “What would it do without the weight on there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who does?”
“Probably no one.”
“Donald, you’re the most exasperating little devil in the world. Sometimes I could kill you with my bare hands. You have almost a hurricane of a desert wind, one of the hardest I can remember in a couple of years. Timkan is right. Most of them jump over this part of the valley. Only one out of every eight or ten hits hard here.”
“That’s right.”
“You may wait for months, perhaps for years, before you’d have another chance to test your theory.”
“Right.”
“Well, what the devil’s the idea?”
“It bothers you?”
“Of course it does.”
“Then,” I said, “it’ll probably bother a lot of other people —including the insurance company.” Bertha blinked her hard little eyes as she tried to digest the full import of that statement. “You mean you’re trying to worry the insurance company?”
“That’s one of the things.” She thought that over for a while, and then said, “You’re a brainy little cuss. You’re going to make the insurance company compromise on that case. You’ve got them worried about that door. When you said you didn’t want it touched, but wanted it left exactly as it was so the police could look it over and try to get fingerprints off that weight, you really worried them.”
“That won’t hurt them any.” She said, “I see now what you’re driving at. They’ll think that in place of trying to sell the jury on the test, you’re going to advance your theory, claim that it’s self-evident it would have worked if it hadn’t been for the counterweight on the door, then show the counterweight, and dump the thing into the lap of the insurance company. The company can’t order up another east wind to prove you’re wrong.” I didn’t say anything.
“You’re playing some sort of a deep game,” she said irritably, “and when you do that, you make me mad. You never would take me into your confidence. Where the hell are you going now?” she interpolated as I pulled in to the kerb.
“I’m telephoning from this drugstore to get a taxicab to take you home.” She flared into a temper. “Damn your pint-sized soul.” I locked the ignition on the agency car, put the key in my pocket.
“What are you doing that for?”
“So you won’t get independent, drive the car away, and leave me afoot. A taxi should be here in a few minutes.” I went into the drugstore and telephoned for a cab. When I came back, Bertha was sitting behind the wheel, her jaw thrust out defiantly. “I won’t budge from this car,” she announced, “until you’ve told me what it’s all about.”
“If I tell you, will you co-operate?”
“Why, certainly.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s this way. Dr. Devarest had been given a package o
f jewels to deliver to his grandmother, but the big bad wolf thought he could pretend to be Dr. Devarest’s grandmother and so get the jewels. He ”
“Shut up ! ” I kept quiet.
Bertha sat rigidly erect, exuding indignation for a while, then she turned to say something; but the words died on her lips as her eyes grew suddenly solicitous. “What’s that on your cheek?” she asked.
“Where?” Her fingers touched it. It was sore.
Bertha said, “It’s a bruise. It’s where that chap hit you.”
“He didn’t hit me.”
“I think it was his arm or his shoulder. You certainly doubled him up. My God, Donald, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Imagine seeing you win a fight! And when you pick on someone, you certainly do pick out the big ones.”
“Louie always claimed the bigger they were, the slower they were, and the easier it was to put them out.”
“Well, you certainly put him out. Why the hell is it that a good fight appeals to a woman? I don’t mean the fight so much, but when she sees a man win the fight, she goes nuts over him.”
“Are you nuts over me?”
“You little bastard, I could slap your teeth down your throat. Shut up ! Of course, I’m not nuts over you. I never went nuts over any man. I’m talking about that Croy woman.”
“What about her?”
“You should have seen her eyes when she was looking at you, the expression on her face, everything about her.” A taxi swung around the corner. The headlights swung in close to the kerb. “Here’s your transportation,” I told Bertha.
“I’m not getting out until you tell me what it’s all about and what you’re going to do.”
“You want to go fishing tomorrow?” I asked.
She hesitated a moment, then said, “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Under our contract with Mrs. Devarest, we get a slice of forty thousand dollars if we can make the insurance company kick through.”
“Well, what about it?” I said, “Our chances of making it kick through are ten times better if I play a lone hand.”
“You play too many lone hands.” I said, “I don’t know whether it’s ever occurred to you, but if I violate a law, it’s my own responsibility. If I tell you I’m going to violate a law, and you expect to participate in the money I get as a result of that law violation, you’re a conspirator. You’re—” She was halfway out of the car. “I suppose that’s just a damn bluff,” she said, “but it’s going to work. Go ahead, lover, and get that wad of dough. Bertha’s going fishing.” She paused, halfway to the taxi, came back to say in a low voice, “Be careful, Donald. You don’t know where to stop. You get started on something and you forget there’s any limit on the betting.”
“You want results, don’t you?”
“I want you to stay out of prison long enough to make me some money—damn you.” The taxi driver held the door open. Bertha flounced in indignantly. I didn’t wait for the cab to pull away, but jabbed the key in the ignition lock and started the car back toward Dr. Devarest’s house. I parked it a block down the street, walked along the sidewalk, saw there were lights on in the house, but no one in the driveway. The light over the garage doors had been turned off, and the doors were all closed. There was a light in the windows of the chauffeur’s quarters over the garage, not anything particularly noticeable, just the diffused faint illumination such as would come through Venetian blinds.
I skirted the house, walking along the grassy part of the driveway to the garage, climbed the stairs, and tapped on the door.
Rufus Bayley opened the door a crack, saw who it was, and said, “Come on in.” I went in and the hot, dry wind came sweeping in after me. I forced the door closed, walked over, and sat down. I felt as though there were a layer of sand-paper between my skin and my clothes.
“Did you have an opportunity to go through the house okay?”
“Did I! Buddy, you’re a wonder. I went through the joint from soup to nuts. What I mean is, starting that fight was a swell idea. I even had a chance to go through the safe again.”
“How did you get the combination to the safe?” He grinned. “There’s been a lot of talk about it and about how the doctor had it written down in code in his book. You don’t think I’m going to let anything like that slip past, do you?”
“What did you find?”
“The sparklers.”
“Where?”
“In Jim Timley’s room just like you said, done up in a brown paper package.”
“Did you bring the package?”
“Don’t be silly. We’d have both had a one-way ticket to San Quentin if I’d done that. You can gamble he’ll take a look for that package the last thing before he goes to bed tonight. If he finds it missing, he’ll think back over what happened tonight, and know damn well there was only one time when anyone could have frisked the place. That was a swell idea of yours getting them all out front, but it works both ways. Everyone had an alibi except little old me. I don’t crave to—”
“So what did you do about the package?”
“I just did a swell job of it,” he said, flashing his teeth again. “I took the sparklers out. They were in books—slickest thing you ever saw. The inside of the pages had been cut out on the books, and the jewels put inside. Well, I just untied the package, took out the jewels, stuck ‘em in my pocket, then carefully wrapped the books up just the way they had been. I even tied the string in the same sort of a knot that had been on it when I first found it. It was a damn granny—a woman% knot.”
“What were the books? Do you remember?”
“Why, just books.”
“You don’t remember what the names of them were, who wrote them, what they were about?” He frowned. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“It might be a clue that would help.”
“Help what? Once you get the sparklers, what do you care about the clues?”
“It might give me a better picture of what happened.”
“Hell, you know what happened. This Nollie Starr and Jim Timley played it together. She lifted the swag, kept it out of the house while the police were frisking the joint, and then when the smoke blew over, Timley went down and got ‘em back. He either doesn’t trust her to keep them, or she refused to have the evidence on her—and you can’t blame her any for that.”
“Where are they?” He fished his hand down in his side pocket, carelessly pulled out a glittering assortment of gems, and dumped them on the table, groping around casually as though he had had a pocketful of beans, and wanted to make certain none of the beans escaped him. He found a couple of stragglers, put them on the table with the others, and said, “That’s all.” Light falling on the pile on the table was reflected in coruscations of scintillating brilliance; green, shimmery shafts from emeralds; hard, sparkling, offshoots of light from the facets of diamonds.
Bayley looked at the pile and said, wistfully, “Cripes, I wish I’d dared to give you a double-cross on that stuff. That really is something.”
“Is that all of it?” I asked.
“Uh huh.”
“Turn your pocket wrong side out.” He scowled at me and said, “Listen, buddy, when I tell you that’s all, I mean that’s all. I don’t double-cross my pals. You and I are in this thing together, old kid. See? I did a stretch once, but it cured me. I’m going straight. I ”
“Turn out your pockets then.”
“Say, who do you think you’re talking to?”
“You.”
“Well, think again.” I said, “You’re giving yourself away. If you’d pulled the lining of your pocket inside out, and then got mad, it would have impressed me. As it is, you’re just making things worse.”
“Oh, hell,” he said, and shot his hand down into his pocket, fumbled around for a moment, catching the lining of the coat, then jerked it inside out. “Now, are you satisfied?” he asked.
I moved over closer.
“Go ahead, buddy, take a look for you
rself,” he said, swinging around so I could see the lining of his pocket.
His left hand was held out away from his side, the fingers spread wide apart, the back toward me. I grabbed it, and jerked the fingers back so that the skin pulled tight across the palm.
Two big diamond rings fell to the floor.
“Pick them up and put them on the table,” I said.
His thick lips pushed together to blot out the grin. He said, “You can only crowd me so far, buddy.”
“Pick up the rings and put them on the table with the other junk.” He kept staring at me, hot rage in his eyes. “Look,” he said, “you’re pretty shifty. I saw the way you handled your mitts, but you can’t ”
“Put those rings on the table,” I told him, “and then sit down. We’ll talk things over.” He hesitated for a long two or three seconds; then bent over and picked up the rings. When he straightened, he was smiling once more, the genial smile of a good-natured giant.
“What the hell, buddy? I wasn’t really trying to hold out on you, just those two sparklers that I wanted to play with a little bit. They’re beauties. Sit down over there and give me the dope. What’s next?” I walked over to the table and put the jewellery into my coat pocket before I said anything. The way his eyes were watching me, I knew how a canary feels when the door of the cage pops open and the family cat crawls up on the table.
I inventoried the stuff as I put it in my pockets. “One diamond and emerald bracelet, one ruby pendant, one diamond brooch, four diamond solitaire rings, one emerald ring with a diamond on each side, one diamond necklace-you’re sure that’s all of it, Bayley?”
“Word of honour,” he said.
I sat down in the chair, settled back with the best imitation of careless ease I could give, and lit a cigarette.
He started to sit down by the window, then changed his mind and walked over so he was sitting between me and the door. The grin on his face was fixed now, just a frozen leer that he tried in vain to change into a smile. His eyes were watching my every move.
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