by Craig Rice
“Helene, perhaps you’d better stay outside.”
“I’m in already. Don’t be a dope.”
“Dark as the bottom of a well in here.”
He fumbled for a match, found one, struck it, discovered a lantern on the table and lighted it. The flame flickered and grew brighter; in its glow they could see the body that lay on its face on the floor. It was the body of a tall, blond young man. A dark patch of dried blood stained the side of his head.
Jake rolled the body over and looked into the still, colorless face of Dick Dayton.
Chapter 22
Butch, hastily summoned, helped carry the injured man to the garage, laid him on the bed in his own room.
“Helene, do you know a doctor who can keep his mouth shut—and get here in a hurry?”
She nodded. “Doc Kendall. Phone him, Butch. Jake, do you think we ought to call the police?”
“Not at this stage of the game.”
“But if Dick should die—”
“He won’t die,” said Jake savagely.
“But how did he get out here?”
“On skis, probably,” Jake said, lighting a cigarette.
“Jake, please.”
“Hell, I don’t know what happened. Dick can tell us when he comes to. My guess is that this mysterious little dude lured Dick out here with the same offer he made to us.”
“But then why should he knock him out?”
“Maybe he didn’t like his face.”
“I’m beginning not to like yours, Jake Justus.”
“Well, probably Dick tried to pull a fast one. Must have. He didn’t draw any dough out of the bank before he disappeared, because we checked the bank first thing. He tried to pull a fast one, and the little guy bopped him.”
“Dick must have lain there for hours,” Helene said thoughtfully “If we hadn’t arrived just when we did—”
“Didn’t you know? I’m a marine.”
“Isn’t there anything we could be doing for him?”
“Not until your doctor gets here, and I hope he’s a good one.”
“He is. He pulled Butch through once when somebody shot him.”
“Intentionally?” Jake asked politely.
“Jake, do you think that man murdered Aunt Alex?”
“Possibly.”
“What do you think he meant when he said he was the motive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he really has anything to tell us?”
“I don’t know.”
She became tactfully silent.
At last the doctor arrived, a plump, bustling man with a friendly, anxious face.
“What have you gotten yourself into this time, Helene?”
She waved silently toward the still figure on the bed. The doctor looked and whistled.
“How did you do it?”
“I didn’t do it. We found him.”
The doctor gave a closer look.
“Good God, Helene. Do you know who this is?”
She nodded. “You’re damned right I do. That’s why I sent for you—you know how to keep your mouth shut. Jake, you tell him the works.”
Jake told the story as briefly as possible while the doctor worked over Dick. They finished at about the same time. Dr. Kendall nodded understandingly.
“You see,” said Helene, “you see why it has to be kept quiet.”
“And Dick,” said Jake, “is he—I mean—how is he?”
“He’ll be all right. Nasty crack on the bean. A few more hours without attention might have been bad.”
“How long before he’ll be able to tell us what happened?”
“Can’t say.”
Jake groaned.
“Maybe tomorrow, maybe next day, maybe longer. You’ll have to have patience. You also ought to have a nurse.”
“How about Butch?” Helene asked.
“He’ll do all right. He’s a good nurse.”
The doctor gave instructions to Butch, promised to look in the next morning, told them not to worry, and went away.
Jake turned to Helene. All of them, even the doctor, had been much too concerned with Dick Dayton to notice her. Her face was a chalky white, her pale blond hair was tangled about her shoulders. Her dress, stained with mud and snow, hung in shreds. There was, he saw for the first time, an ugly scratch on her forehead.
“You look like you’d had a fall, or something,” he said laconically.
He caught her just as she swayed and fell, and laid her gently on the couch of the little living room. Butch came with hot water, they bathed the cuts and bruises, poured brandy between her bluish lips. After what seemed a very long time she opened her eyes momentarily, murmured an incoherent something, smiled at Jake, tucked her hand under her cheek, and quietly went to sleep.
Jake put blankets over her, laid a hot-water bottle against her feet.
“Don’t worry,” he told Butch, “the chances are she won’t get anything worse than double pneumonia.”
He stood looking at her for a long time. Her face in sleep was the smooth, contented face of a tired child; her fragile, slim-fingered hand nestled under her chin, her long eyelashes curved against the cool pallor of her cheeks.
At last he kissed her, very gently, on the forehead, and turned quietly away.
But the night was not over.
He looked out the window. The mist was lifting, and suddenly, darkly silhouetted against the snow, he could see the figure of a man making his way from the Inglehart house to the summerhouse on the cliff. It was not the dapper little man.
Then who was it?
The figure looked faintly familiar. Glen? No. But still familiar.
He decided it was best to investigate, raced down the stairs, through the stone gate, and across the snow-covered lawn. The man saw him, stopped, turned, and ran back toward the Inglehart house, but not quickly enough. In a few strides Jake had caught up with him, grabbed him by the shoulders, swung him around.
Parkins!
The mild little man was white with terror.
“Oh Mr. Justus—let me go—”
“I will not,” said Jake Justus, shaking the frightened man like a rat. “I will not. I know where you were going. Who’s been staying in that summerhouse?”
Parkins gulped. “Nobody, sir.”
“Tell me, or I’ll break every bone in your body.”
“The summerhouse, sir—the summerhouse, it hasn’t been used for years. There can’t be anyone staying there.”
“Yes there is, Parkins. I saw him there tonight.”
Parkins’ face was a mask, in spite of his fright. “I know nothing about it, sir, nothing whatever.”
“Listen, you blithering fool, don’t you want to help Miss Holly? Don’t you want to help get her out of trouble?”
“Oh, yes, sir. You know I do, sir.”
“Well, so do I. I’m trying to help her. That’s why I’ve got to know who is staying in the summerhouse.”
There was no answer.
“Tell me who it is, or so help me, I’ll go straight to the police. And they’ll find out who it is. I’ll do it, Parkins, I warn you.”
Parkins looked at him squarely. “That might be the best thing to do, Mr. Justus.”
Jake loosened his hold on the little man, who turned in a flash and scuttled back to the house like a terrified rabbit.
Well, evidently he’d get no information from Parkins that way. But the little man knew something. Malone would know a way to pry it out of him.
He walked slowly back to the garage.
It was even possible that Parkins was telling the truth. Not probable, though. Just how did he figure in the tangle? What kind of game was he playing?
How much did Mrs. Parkins know about it?
Who was the little dude in the summerhouse?
Back in the garage, Jake resumed his vigil at the window.
Whoever the little dude was, the chances were that he would return to the summerhouse. He would di
scover that it had been entered and that Dick had been taken away.
And then would he be frightened and bolt?
No, he would know who had taken Dick away, and that they would hardly go to the police with their information. In any case, there was nothing to do but wait for the next morning’s appointment.
It was about nine o’clock that he saw a faint flicker of light along the lake shore, a moment later, a light showed in the summerhouse. The stranger had returned. Jake watched a few minutes longer. Evidently the man had decided to stay.
He tried to phone John J. Malone, but the lawyer could not be located. Jake left a trail of messages for him, each telling him to come to the garage early in the morning. Then he tiptoed into the room where Butch sat watching the unconscious young man in the bed. There was no change in his condition.
Helene still slept, smiling faintly in her sleep.
Should he keep up his watch by the window? No, he decided, there was nothing to watch for now. Everyone had settled down for the night. The hell with the window. The hell with the guy in the summerhouse. The hell with everything. He was going to get some sleep.
He selected a couch, rolled himself up in a blanket, and was dead to the world in thirty seconds.
He had no way of knowing, but if he had watched by the window a few minutes later, he might have seen much, learned a great deal, even prevented a few things.
Certainly the Inglehart case would have been closed much sooner if he had kept on watching by the window.
But Jake slept.
Chapter 23
“Did you fall, or were you pushed?” asked Jake sympathetically.
Helene moaned faintly and turned her face to the wall. “My mother always told me there’d be days like this, but she didn’t tell me I’d live to see them.” She stretched and winced. “Who or what threw me, and where, and at what?”
“I did,” Jake said, “over a cliff.”
“Oh, I remember now.” She sat up and wrapped the blanket around her pale shoulders. “I seem to go to sleep in the damnedest places.”
“And at the damnedest times,” Jake reminded her.
“How’s the patient?”
“Dick? He’s just the same. Malone’s on his way out.”
“That man is always running in on me when I’ve just gotten out of bed.” She began fussing with her hair. “How do I look, anyway?”
“Terrible,” he lied.
She looked at her watch. “We meet the little dude at ten o’clock. Why does everything happen so early in the morning? And I’ve got to go to the bank first.”
“Why should you do the kicking-in?”
“This is no time to argue about who pays the street-car fare. I’ll get it back some day.”
He regarded her thoughtfully. “If I weren’t a broken-down press agent and you weren’t a beautiful blonde heiress, and I thought we’d be happy together, I’d probably propose to you, but I am and you are and we wouldn’t be, so I won’t.”
“Thanks.”
“But just the same, once we get this damn murder cleared up and people aren’t interrupting us all the time, and it looks as though we might have an evening to ourselves—”
Just then John J. Malone arrived.
Jake told him of the night’s adventures while Helene proudly exhibited her bruises.
Butch brought in a tray of breakfast.
“Why kick in with the cash?” Malone asked. “Let’s simply go down there and lay for him—”
Jake shook his head. “Won’t work. He’s a wary little bird. No, we’ll go down there cash in hand and get his story. Then we’ll nab him.”
“What do you think he has to tell?” Helene asked.
“If I knew that, I’d be selling it to you myself,” Jake said bitterly.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. Glen and Maybelle. Pa Parkins. Pa might feel that as Maybelle’s father he ought to do something matrimonial about the family honor. But he might also have felt that Aunt Alex would never let anything matrimonial take place. Do you follow me?”
“With some difficulty.”
“So Parkins and Maybelle dish this up. Maybelle does the imitating of Holly’s voice. Having known Holly all her life, she could do it and get away with it. Then she or Parkins does the actual murder.”
“You forget,” Jake said, “Parkins wouldn’t have a chance to get back to the house and do the murder, because Glen was with him all the time.”
“Maybe Glen was in it too.”
“Then why go through all this monkeyshining to lure him away? And do you think he really wanted to marry Maybelle?”
“He might not have anything to say about it if Parkins really had his dander up.”
“I don’t see Parkins in a coonskin cap with a gun under his arm.”
“All right, Glen wasn’t in the plot. Parkins was mad at Aunt Alex for picking on Maybelle, and he did it all by himself.”
“But how did Parkins get back to the house and do the murder?”
“This is the point where it gets a little too involved for me,” she said.
“And,” said Jake, “it doesn’t explain where Holly was all the time. Or why this guy in the summerhouse says he’s the motive.”
“That,” said Helene crisply, “is the part I was leaving for you to figure out.”
“Have a few more ideas,” Malone said, “and maybe we’ll hit on a good one.”
“Holly!” said a cracked and terrible voice behind him. “What have you done with her?”
Dick Dayton was standing in the doorway, hanging on to the door for support, his face a ghastly gray under its bandage.
“For Christ’s sake,” Jake said, “get back in that bed.”
“Holly!”
“She’s safe. We’ve got her hidden.” He tried to lead Dick back to the bedroom. “Lie down. You’ve got a concussion.”
“I hope it’s contagious,” Dick said angrily, “and I hope you get it.” He pushed Jake aside, staggered in to the couch, and sat down heavily. “What’s happened? I seem to have been away for a while.”
“What happened to you?”
“I guess I did a fool thing,” Dick said. “There was this phone call. I tried to get in touch with you, Jake, but I couldn’t. I knew I had to do something about it. The phone call, I mean. You couldn’t just not do anything about something like that. Anyway the end of the Michigan Avenue Bridge ought to be the safest place in the world. So why shouldn’t I have gone there? I guess,” he said, scowling, “I guess I’m not much good at telling things.”
“Maybe you could play it on a clarinet,” Jake said disgustedly.
Malone decided to help. “Pick up the story at the bridge, Dayton. Did this man meet you there?”
Dick nodded.
“What did he look like?”
Dick gave them a fair description of the man of the summerhouse. “He told me that he’d been in—in that room the night of the murder. He told me that he knew who had done it and why. But that he didn’t want to be seen talking to me.”
“And he wanted you to go out to the summerhouse with him?” Malone prompted.
“No, he wanted me to meet him there later. He said he had all the proof. He wanted me to get a thousand dollars and meet him there.”
“He sticks to the same price,” Helene murmured.
“But you didn’t take the money?” Jake asked.
“No. It—well, I guess it was a mistake. I thought maybe I could—well, he was a little guy. I was going to turn him over to you.”
“But he got you first?”
A puzzled look came into Dick’s eyes. “No. He didn’t. That’s the funny thing.”
“What did happen?” Jake asked desperately.
“Well, the summerhouse wasn’t locked. I went in and sat down and waited for him. Then I saw this guy coming down the path. He came in the door on the lake side of the house, and then came into the room where I was waiting. I saw him come through the door.” He pause
d. “This is the part I don’t understand.”
“For the love of God,” Jake began.
“He stopped in the doorway a minute. And he looked startled. I remember that terribly well, how startled he looked. Because that’s the last thing I remember. Because just then something struck my head and that’s all I remember.”
For a while it seemed as though something had struck all of them and left them speechless.
“You mean,” said Malone after he had found his voice, “you mean this man in the summerhouse wasn’t the one who knocked you cold?”
“How could he be when I was looking at him at the time?”
“The answer seems to be that he wasn’t,” Jake said after a pause.
“But then,” said Helene, “who did?”
No one had any suggestions.
“I want to go see Holly,” Dick said.
Jake shook his head. “You’re staying in bed for a while.”
“I’m perfectly all right. And I haven’t seen Holly since—not for days and days.”
This time Malone shook his head. “In broad daylight, with every cop in Chicago looking for you? Do you want to get Holly put back in jail? I didn’t think you did. Then don’t go leading them right to her door.”
“Patience is a wonderful thing,” Helene added. She looked at her watch. “Jesus!” she remarked. “Back in half an hour.”
“What do you think of her idea about the Parkinses?” Jake asked Malone after she had gone.
The little lawyer shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s impossible the way she figured it. But they’re mixed up in it somehow.” He paused to struggle with a shoelace. “I wish I knew what she’s keeping back.”
“You mean Helene?”
“I don’t mean Greta Garbo,” Malone said. “Helene is keeping secrets from me. So is Glen Inglehart. I suspect they’re the same secrets.”
“Well,” Jake said thoughtfully, “I could ask her.”
Malone looked at him with disgust. “Hell, that girl could make you believe Hoover was still president.”
“Give me that girl,” said Jake piously, “and I’d run for president myself.” He frowned. “Malone, you don’t think she murdered the old dame?”
“I don’t know. I only know that in a case like this I’m interested in the people who are lying to me. Because there’s usually a reason for it. She’s lying to me, and Glen is, and both the Parkinses. Why?”