“See what I mean, Doc?” Ritter said.
“Your gravel is calcium carbide, which gives off acetylene gas when you add water,” said Dr. Coffee. “You're just too young, Max. You're a child of the electric age. When I was a boy, I had a carbide lamp on my bicycle.”
“I used to walk my paper route,” the detective said. “I didn't have a bicycle.
Neither did Stoneman when he was killed. The carbide mean anything, Doc?”
“Maybe.” Dr. Coffee lighted a cigarette and thoughtfully watched the match burn down. “Max, did it rain last Thursday night?”
“I wouldn't know,” Ritter answered.
“Dr. Mookerji, did it rain last Thursday night?”
The voluminous turban wagged back and forth. “Greatly fear am somewhat nincompoop regarding retention of meteorological data,” the Hindu said.
“He doesn't remember either,” Dr. Coffee interpreted. He turned to Doris Hudson, his chief technician. “Doris, call the weather bureau and ask if it rained in Northbank Thursday night. Also find out if it rained two weeks ago Sunday night. Then phone Washington and locate General Barrington of the Veterans Administration. Ask the General to wire me collect the case history of Captain Roger Gable of the 101st Airborne, with a detailed description of head wounds received at Bastogne.”
“Is that all?” asked Miss Hudson sweetly.
“After that, we get to work. Max, I've got a stack of slides to diagnose. I'll be tied up for about four hours, but I'd like to go out to Mrs. Gable's house with you late this afternoon. I think we may find out what makes Mrs. Gable's cry–baby cry.”
In mid–afternoon Louise Gable herself appeared in the laboratory. She was pale and haggard and she wore the same blue dress she was wearing when Dr. Coffee last saw her. She had obviously been without sleep. She was dry–eyed as she talked to Dan Coffee, but there were tears in her voice – the bitter, blind, hopeless tears of despair. She had been driving almost constantly since three–thirty in the morning, looking for the taxi that had picked up Roger at the airport and brought him to her home. She had hoped that the taxi driver could establish the exact time he had dropped Roger and that it would be later than the discovery of Jim Stoneman's body. She had finally found the driver, only to learn that he could not vouch for Roger's innocence. His watch had stopped. He did not know the exact time he had deposited Roger.
“Do you think Roger could have killed Jim, Doctor?” Louise asked. “Could that hole in his skull have affected his mind so that he really went mad after our fight at the airport – temporarily, I mean, just long enough to come back and kill Jim? Could it, Doctor?”
“I don't know,” Dan Coffee said, “yet.”
“Then I'll keep on looking. I must find someone who can say that Roger didn't come to my house until after Jim was dead. I must! I love him, Doctor. I've got to save him.”
“You've got to get some sleep, Mrs. Gable.”
“But I can't sleep. I can't possibly.”
“I'll give you something to help.” Dr. Coffee scribbled on a slip of paper. “Dr. Mookerji will go down the hall with you to the dispensary. They'll give you a bottle. When you get home, take one teaspoonful in a glass of water. You'll be asleep in no time. If you don't get a little rest, you'll come apart like a dandelion in a high wind. Promise you'll go home and sleep?”
“I'll try.” Louise closed her eyes wearily. “I'll stop by to see if Len Philips has done anything for Roger. Then I'll go home.”
At five that afternoon, driving to Louise's ancestral mansion in a police car, Max Ritter asked Dr. Coffee: “Think we'll find anything, Doc?”
“Yes. It rained on at least three nights that the baby cried.”
“Whatever that means. Anything else?”
“Yes. I've got the Army medical report on Roger Gable's head wound. A tiny shell fragment was removed from the left frontal lobe of his brain, just anterior to the Rolandic fissure.”
“You talk like the Swami,” Ritter said. “Has Gable's brain got anything to do with Stoneman's murder?”
“Definitely. Have you charged Roger Gable with murder yet?”
“No, but if we don't book him today, that patent attorney Philips is going to spring him on a writ of habeas corpus. Did you read in the afternoon papers about how we're trying to locate the locksmith who made a duplicate key to Mrs. Gable's front door?”
“I didn't see the papers. Having any luck?”
“War of nerves.” Ritter winked. “Just in case the strangler reads the papers. But maybe we can dig up the locksmith in time. It's an old French lock. Hey, here we are.”
The plainclothesman on guard at the front door said Mrs. Gable had not come home yet. He was sure; he had been there all day. Dr. Coffee led the way directly to the attic. He explained that he was looking for some sort of hose leading either from the roof or from the gutters under the eaves. After ten minutes of poking among dusty garden furniture, discarded walnut bedsteads, trunks, and cobwebs, Dr. Coffee found a piece of metal tubing that had been forced upward through the roofing. A long, thin rubber hose ran from the bottom of this to what seemed to be a pile of gardening tools.
“I'll be damned,” said Ritter. “A watering can with a tin horn stuck on the spout.”
“Damned ingenious!” Dan Coffee was examining the queer contraption. “Look, Max. This metal top seals the can hermetically when you fasten the bolts. There's an intake valve in this end here, where the rubber tube feeds in.”
“What's that white stuff inside?” Ritter asked.
“Slaked lime – the residue after carbide breaks down in water. And look at the valve in the spout, Max. It has a rubber band as a spring to keep it closed.”
“I don't get it, Doc. Is this thing supposed to blow the New Year's Eve horn?”
“Here's how it works. When it rains, water runs into the can from the tube connected to the roof. When the water hits the carbide, acetylene gas begins to form and closes the intake valve. When the gas pressure is high enough, it forces open the valve in the spout, and the gas rushes out through the little horn soldered to the end of the spout. When enough gas has escaped to reduce the pressure, the valve snaps shut, and the process begins again. Meanwhile the horn has given off a bleating wail that sounds like a squalling baby – from a distance. The baby cried only at night, Max, because it rains at night in Northbank in summer.”
“I better go down and phone the boss about this,” Ritter said.
“Take another look and see if Mrs. Gable is home yet,” Dan Coffee said. The pathologist was tinkering with the strange device when he heard Ritter call from the attic stairway: “She's not home, Doc.”
Dan Coffee brushed the dust from his knees and went to the stairs. “That's funny, Max,” he said. “She promised to go home to bed as soon as she talked to her lawyer. I wonder – ?”
A moment later he was at the phone, dialing Leonard Philips' number. The attorney's voice was vibrant with excitement as he said: “Coffee? Thank God you called! I've been trying to reach you everywhere. I finally called the police. She was asking for you before she lost consciousness. She – ”
“Who? What happened?”
“Louise Gable. She's committed suicide ... right here in my office!”
Max Ritter's siren screamed through traffic and traffic lights the entire five miles to Philips' office. Dr. Coffee perspired the whole way – about five miles to the gallon, according to Ritter. A police emergency ambulance stood in front of Philips' office building. The elevator crawled to the seventh floor. Leonard Philips, his pink face mottled with white, his eyes wide, his hands fluttering like big, awkward birds, led the pathologist and the detective into his law library. “I hope you're in time to save her,” Philips said. “I think she's still alive.” Louise Gable was stretched out on a leather divan, her eyes closed, her face livid. An ambulance steward was working on her. Dr. Coffee felt her pulse, lifted one eyelid, and shone a pencil flashlight into the pupil. He listened to her breathing. “I don'
t know what she took,” said the ambulance steward, showing an empty bottle. “There was just a skull and cross–bones on the label. But I've been – ”
“You're doing all right,” Dr. Coffee said. “Now get a stretcher up here and take the girl to Pasteur Hospital. I'll phone ahead.” Dr. Coffee called his hospital and was connected with the pathology laboratory. “Dr. Mookerji? You were with Mrs. Gable when she had my prescription filled at the dispensary, weren't you? ... You saw it made up? Exactly. And they put a poison label on the bottle? ... Listen, Doctor, Mrs. Gable has swallowed the whole thing. I'm sending her to the hospital and I want you to meet her when she reaches emergency. Tell Dr. Green what she's taken and tell him she took three grams and has probably absorbed plenty. He'll know what to do. I'm in Philips' office now, but I'll be over within half an hour.”
As Dr. Coffee hung up, he looked into the anxious face of Leonard Philips. “Tell me exactly what happened, Philips,” Dr. Coffee said. It seemed that Louise had come to the attorney's office shortly before Dr. Coffee phoned. Philips told her that he had abandoned his plan to ask for a writ of habeas corpus, because the police were convinced that Roger had killed Stoneman and were going to book him for murder. After talking to Roger in his cell, Philips, too, was reluctantly convinced that Roger was guilty. Then Louise broke down and cried and said that she was afraid all along that Roger had strangled Stoneman in a fit of jealousy. She was frantic with remorse – said it was all her fault for telling Roger she had jilted him for Stoneman, and that life was not worth living now, because she really loved Roger.
“She was in a frightful state of nerves,” Philips said. “I offered to send her to the drugstore for some bromides to calm her, but she said she had a sedative and asked for a glass of water. When I brought the water, she took a bottle from her handbag, emptied it into the glass and swallowed it all. When I saw the poison label on the bottle, I tried to get one of the doctors in this building, but they'd all gone home. I tried to reach you, but – ”
“How long was this before I phoned?” Dr. Coffee asked.
“About five minutes.”
“Max.” Dr. Coffee motioned to Lieutenant of Detectives Ritter. “I want you to arrest Leonard Philips for the murder of James Stoneman and the attempted murder of Louise Gable.”
“Don't be ridiculous, Doctor.”
Philips smiled indulgently. “Roger Gable killed Stoneman. The police are charging him with murder. ...”
“Roger Gable is physically incapable of having strangled Stoneman,” Dr. Coffee interrupted. “Stoneman was strangled by someone's right hand. Roger hasn't enough strength in the fingers of his right hand to strangle a day–old kitten. He has a scar in his left brain, in the motor area which controls the right hand. The muscles of his fingers are partially paralyzed. The medical records of the United States Army will back me up on this, Philips.”
“And does the Army also accuse me because a mentally–deranged woman poisoned herself in my office, Dr. Coffee?”
“Louise Gable is no more deranged than you are, Philips, despite everything you've done to drive her crazy,” Dr. Coffee said. “This afternoon Lieutenant Ritter and I discovered your ingenious crying machine in Mrs. Gable's attic which you intended to make her believe she was losing her mind. Did you really want her committed to an institution, Philips? Or were you just trying to prevent her marriage to someone who might pry into the finances of her father's estate? Max, you'd better subpoena the accounts of the Barzac estate and have them audited for shortages. They – Hello, Dr. Mookerji. Please sit down until I've finished.”
The Hindu resident, who stood panting in the doorway, waddled to the nearest chair.
“Stoneman followed you into Louise's house last night, didn't he, Philips?” Dr. Coffee continued. “He discovered your crying machine. So Stoneman had to be killed. He died with the evidence clasped in his fist – a handful of carbide. And you were still in the house, Philips, when Mrs. Gable returned with Dr. Mookerji and me. You got out in such a hurry, just before Roger Gable arrived, that you left the front door open.
“But you still had to accomplish your original purpose – to get Louise Gable out of the picture. So when Louise told you she was going to take a sleeping mixture this afternoon, and you saw the skull and cross–bones on the bottle, you gallantly offered to mix it with water for her. You lied to me about the time. It wasn't five minutes before I arrived, but closer to two hours. I gave her the mixture, Philips, and I know that narcosis doesn't begin for about half an hour. When I saw her, she had been in a deep coma for at least an hour – without medical attention, because you wanted her to die. But she won't die. There were exactly three grams of barbiturate in the mixture – not quite enough to cause death. She'll be pretty sick for a while, but she's going to recover – to confirm the details of what I've just told you.”
“Ridiculous!” Philips sprang up. He stood very erect, trembling with indignation. “Pure conjecture. You haven't a shred of proof.”
“What nonsense, Barrister!” exclaimed Dr. Mookerji, wagging his pink turban from –side to side. “Evidence abounds in great profusion. Item: Humble self witnessed Barrister's secret departure from Gable house prior to arrival of Captain Gable. Item: Microscopic examination of carbide in hand of late deceased Mr. Stoneman revealed crinkled threads from seersucker cloth composing jacket of Barrister Philips.”
“You ...” Philips gulped. “You have this evidence, Mookerji?”
“Am so stating,” said the Hindu.
Philips dropped limply into his chair. He ran his big hands over his white hair. Then he laughed grimly. “I'm the one who must have been crazy,” he said, “to kill a man for two hundred thousand dollars. With Louise out of the way for six months more, I could have made it up.”
Max Ritter reached into his hip pocket for his handcuffs.
Roger Gable came to Pasteur Hospital as soon as he was released. Doctors Coffee and Mookerji accompanied him to Louise's bedside.
“Dr. Mookerji,” Dan Coffee was saying as they entered the room, “if you really saw Philips leave the house last night, and if you really found seersucker threads under the microscope, why the devil didn't you tell me or Lieutenant Ritter this afternoon?”
The Hindu lowered his eyes. “Greatly fear am prevaricating fibber,” he said. “Witnessed said evidence only with mind's eye. However, was of opinion that Barrister's confession was imperative and that all is fair in love and warfare against murderers. Moreover, since am enacting role of Hindu cupid – ”
A white smile suddenly divided the Hindu resident's plump brown face as he saw Louise open her eyes. Roger Gable stooped to gather the girl into his arms.
The Hindu took Dr. Coffee's elbow and turned him around to face the door. “Please give opinion, Doctor Sahib,” he said, “whether am making unlicensed medical prognosis by uttering hopeful prediction that house of Gable is destined to become house of Seven Gables?”
Lilian Jackson Braun
Lilian Jackson Braun's immensely popular novels featuring newspaperman Jim Qwilleran and his cats, Koko and Yum Yum, offer the most unusual of detecting partnerships. In the first book in the series (The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, 1966) Qwilleran appears as a somewhat seedy, down–on–his–luck former big–city crime reporter exiled to a small–town midwestern newspaper after an ugly divorce and a spell of hard drinking. His lively curiosity is still intact, however, and he is soon uncovering crimes, aided by his two likable Siamese cats, that his fellow townspeople would just as soon have allowed to remain covered. Given this scenario, many writers would sentimentalize Koko and Yum Yum to the point of cloying cuteness, but not Braun. Instead, she depicts them as intelligent animals (and possibly superior to many of the humans they encounter) who go about their catly business, thus providing their owner with insights that he uses to interpret human behavior. Braun wrote two other books about this unlikely detecting trio in the 1960's: The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern (1967) and The Cat Who Turned On and Off (1968).
After a hiatus of eighteen years, Qwilleran, Koko, and Yum Yum returned in the 1986 title The Cat Who Saw Red, and since then there have been yearly installments of their adventures. Braun has a gift for small–town milieu, and the fictional locale of PickaxCity in MooseCounty is so well depicted that most readers would be able to find their way around if transported there. Similarly, the ongoing series characters – Alexander and Penelope Goodwinter, the town attorneys; Polly Duncan, the librarian and Qwilleran's romantic interest; Melinda Goodwinter, the town doctor are well delineated in all their eccentricities. The backdrops for the stories are typical of small–town life: the local theater club (The Cat Who Sniffed Glue, 1988); the farm museum (The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts, 1990); and even a vendetta against the town's handymen (The Cat Who Went Underground, 1989).
Braun has also written more than a dozen short stories, collected in The Cat Who Had Fourteen Tales (1988). In the early story that follows, she departs from her usual detecting trio and presents a duo: Phut Phat, an elegant Siamese, whose “eight seal–brown points (there had been nine before that trip to the hospital) were as sleek as panne velvet” and the one of his two owners who is perceptive enough to understand his mental messages. It is interesting to note that the owners have no names as far as Phut Phat is concerned, and are merely ranked One and Two – testimony to Braun's in–depth understanding of cats, since One is the individual who feeds him.
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