The Museum Murder

by MacIntyre, John T. ;

  “You hadn’t heard of this,” said Duddington. “But Custis had. And he knew this reappearance of an old scar would torment you; and he spoke of it this afternoon as you sat with him in his office after I had gone. He called your attention to an announcement of the sale lying upon his desk and telling how a magnificent example of Murillo’s work, The Death of St. John the Divine, was to go under the hammer at Chicago in a week’s time.”

  “Yes, you are right; that is true,” said Haviz, his voice shaking. “Yes, he showed me the announcement, and all but choked with laughing as he sat looking at me.”

  Duddington drew deeply at his cigarette. But there was something more than the announcement, he said. While Custis and Haviz sat together in the private office another thing was mentioned. Custis had spoken of Sheerness. What? To be sure he had; and he’d laughed and chuckled, then, also. For he was about to play one more of his tricks upon that gentleman. Duddington nodded his head; he said he thought he could guess what the trick was to be. Custis meant to advise Sheerness to buy the fake Murillo.

  “He had already advised him!” said Haviz, his face wrinkled with pain. “And he grinned and gloated over my agony. It was a rare moment for him; he’d struck with one blow two people whom he disliked. That the thing I’d done in my youth, a foolish sin, had returned to torture me, greatly pleased him; but that he’d have a stronger authority over me in the future pleased him even more.”

  “And that,” said Duddington, “was what was in your mind as you walked the streets tonight. You saw all your future contacts with Custis shadowed by this new event. In the past your attitude with Custis in the matter of the fake paintings had been one of regret; you contended you were not much more than a boy when you did them, that you’d not quite realized the grave nature of what you were doing. But, now, if you submitted to the victimizing of Sheerness—and the only way you could prevent it would be by exposing yourself—the refuge afforded by your protests would be taken away; you’d be left without a word to say in defense of yourself.”

  “I tramped about the city this evening half mad,” said Haviz. “And then I began drinking. The more I drank, the more desperate I became. I swore time and again I’d not permit Sheerness to pay his money for the fraudulent canvas; and I declared before God I would not be forced into still another position in which I’d have to endure Custis’s spleen.”

  “And then you went to Sheerness?” said Duddington. “You told him the facts; you raged about Custis, and vowed you’d have his life? Yes,” with one hand lifted, “I know you were half mad. Also, old chap, I know you didn’t do it. And in ten minutes more the police will know it, too.”

  XXVIII

  WITHIN a very few minutes after his interview with Haviz, Duddington spoke to Inspector Lynch in the corridor. The inspector, with tight-drawn brows, listened to Haviz’s story.

  “Where did he go after he left Sheerness?” asked the inspector.

  “He began wandering the streets again, finally returning to the Skillet Club, where Andresona found him.”

  “Well, all right,” said Lynch, reluctantly. “The thing hangs together pretty well, and of course must receive consideration. But,” and his eyes glinted, “Gregory will have to do as good as that, or better, if you hope to keep the handcuffs off him. And, even then, I think they’ll only stay off for a while.”

  Duddington smiled.

  “The only chance you’ll have to decorate him with irons, Inspector, will be if he gets himself mixed up in another case. Because,” and the smile was a most comfortable one, “this one’s quite safe; as far as he’s concerned, it’s all tied up and tucked away.” And then as Lynch stood looking at him, he added: “Pass the word for your man Moore and one of the others,” said Duddington, “and then we’ll go into the office.”

  Moore and Andresona followed them into Custis’s office; once there, Duddington stepped about lightly, immensely pleased.

  “Sit down,” he said. “I’ve matters of interest to tell, and I’m going to tell them in a very few words; but you might as well be comfortable while I’m doing it.”

  They listened while he spoke of Alma and Mona. Of the talented sister and the plodding little worker; of how Alma’s power began to develop and how Mona’s ever-ceasing work fostered it. And then the time of overwork—and then the drug.

  “Dope!” said Moore, startled; he looked at Andresona. “That’s something.”

  “It’s a hook you can hang anything on,” replied the headquarters man. “Anything.”

  Then Mona’s illness. Her recovery; her visit to Sheerness. His proposal.

  Lynch was upon his feet.

  “You are sure of that? She told you?”

  “Sit down,” said Duddington. “Be at your ease. Let’s get on with it in an orderly way.”

  He told of the Diana—of its spurious character; of Sheerness’s plan; of Mona’s cutting the picture from the frame; of Billy Gregory seeing her from the stairway; of Mona concealing the rolled-up picture inside the silver figure! At this point Duddington was not able to control the police. They arose in vast excitement; they were in the storeroom in a moment; the statue was tipped over; a hole was knocked in the fresh plaster. The picture was found!

  “Now,” said Moore, wiping his face; “now you can tell me anything, and I’ll believe it.”

  Duddington smiled.

  “Hold on to the painting,” he said. “But let’s go into the office. We’ve got the worst part of it ahead of us, and I want quiet and attention.”

  Tipped back in a desk chair, Lynch lighted a cigar.

  “You’re coming to the murder,” he said. “Very well: but I hope it’s not the girl.”

  Andresona gestured. “It is not,” he said confidently. “He is her friend: and, see, he smiles.”

  Duddington mentioned that morning. Its heat. His missing soft collars. His talk with the laundry people over the telephone in the public room while the tall man listened. The “enclosure.” The tall man’s reappearance at the apartment, and his adventure with the package of collars.

  “Nice work!” said Moore. “A fine performance.”

  “A tall man!” Andresona frowned and pondered. “Thin. Long hair. I can’t place him.”

  “Awhile ago,” said Duddington, “I thought I’d like to look at the back yard. You,” to Moore, “offered me a key. But I said I had one of my own. But when I got to the door I found my key was missing.”

  He told of the linen suit; of lending the key; of putting it in the change pocket when it was returned to him; of how the suit was sent to the laundry, and how the tall man had called there demanding the key.

  “Hah!” said Lynch.

  “Beautiful!” said Andresona. “That is a smart man.”

  “When we get him, I’ll gamble I know him,” said Moore. “He’s too good to be an amateur.”

  Duddington continued his story to the end; and when he had finished Inspector Lynch looked at him with a wry smile.

  “I’ll try and be a sport,” he said, “but you’re putting a policeman in a pretty tough spot when you walk in on him and do the things he should have done. And right under my nose, too.”

  “Yes, but I was lucky,” said Duddington; “I couldn’t help a good deal of it, because the lines were laid down for me. But, don’t forget, Inspector, it’s not all done.” He put his hand on Lynch’s arm. “We know about the picture; but the killer is still at large. Tell Marsh to come in,” he said to Moore.

  Duddington paced the floor after the precinct detective had gone out, and he gestured and talked. Sometimes he paused in his pacing, his voice sinking very low; he indicated obscure things; he suggested points that might be made in the matter yet remaining to do; he named people. And then Marsh came in, followed by Moore.

  “Marsh,” said the inspector, “I understand Mr. Chalmers described a man to you a bit ago, and you said you knew him.”

  “I know a man who could very well be the one he had in mind, Inspector,” said Marsh. �
�Some years ago he was an auctioneer; he cried sales in the galleries, and for rug dealers, and people like that. A tall man, rather unkempt. I’ve heard he once served a term in a Connecticut prison for fraud.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Marsh said the man’s name was Grismer; and he also said he’d like, before going further in that matter, to speak of something else.

  “You’ve had me in here several times, Inspector, and I’ve been a good deal troubled in my mind because of the result of your questioning. As I told Mr. Chalmers a little while ago, I was forced to make certain reservations in my talks with you; I had to make them, because if I'd told all I know I’d have mentioned names of probably innocent people; and I didn’t want to do it.”

  “In talking with the police in a case like this one of tonight,” said Lynch, “it’s a good policy to tell everything and permit them to be the judges.”

  Marsh drew his coat about his frail body and smiled, wanly. It was quite plain he had not too much confidence in this plan. But he went on.

  “I suppose Mr. Chalmers has told you of the things I brought up in my talk with him. About what Custis hinted to me, of what I suspected, and why I kept watch on the back door each night during the last week or so.” And as Lynch nodded, he said: “Very well, then, I can go on, knowing you’ll understand me.”

  When Custis failed to make any further mention of the profitable employment he had suggested in such a guarded way, and had repelled any recollection of it by Marsh, a suspicion grew up in the latter’s mind that he’d been superseded. Someone else had been called in to take the place he’d expected and to take the earnings of it. And then things happened that attracted his attention: meetings between Custis and another person; conferences; whisperings; these were the things that made Marsh sure the matter was still alive, though he was out of it. Then the tall man, Grismer, began to appear; and when he did, doors were usually closed; what his appearances meant and what he said were covered by silence.

  “Awhile ago,” said Marsh, “I told you I’d merely chanced into the museum this afternoon. That was not quite all the truth, for I’d come hoping to see or hear something. There were a number of people viewing the exhibition; I noted them all; I observed who were in the offices. When I went upstairs it was really to examine the Roman medals, as I said; but only in a secondary sense. My principal object, gentlemen, was to watch the movements of a person who had ascended the stairs only a little while before.”

  The detectives stirred in their chairs. Duddington fanned himself with his hat, an attentive look on his face.

  “I was very quiet,” said Marsh. “I moved about among the cases; but the person I’d seen had disappeared. He had so completely disappeared, I felt convinced he had hidden. I smiled to myself; I was satisfied the things I’d had in my mind were true. The bell had rung for all visitors to leave, and I was thinking of going downstairs; then I heard footsteps. I stood behind a pillar and listened. I saw Custis; he was near the head of the staircase, looking around him. He came into the room where I was; I kept behind the pillar, and so could only hear him. In a few minutes he went out; and finally I heard him go down the stairs. I waited awhile and then I, also, went down. It was then,” and Marsh nodded to the four absorbed men, “I saw him standing in the main gallery, chuckling to himself as though he greatly enjoyed something.”

  Lynch asked a quiet question. It was answered. Duddington spoke, and Marsh replied readily. Then Moore and Andresona addressed themselves to the man. His answers were pointed and brief. There was a silence: and then Lynch spoke to his expectant aides. He spoke rapidly and explicitly; they listened, nodding in answer; and when he had finished they left the office, taking Marsh with them. The inspector sat in silence, his watch in his hand; when five minutes had elapsed, he arose.

  “It’s been a hard night,” he said to Duddington. “But now we’ll finish it.”

  They went out into the corridor. There were a half-dozen uniformed policemen grouped near the stairway; and Moore, Andresona, and Curley stood at one side. Sheerness was there, as though ready to depart; so were Alma and Mona and Billy Gregory. Marsh stood talking with MacQuarrie. Haviz, his cold pipe in his hands, leaned against a wall. Lynch paused before them and looked from one to the other; and then he smiled and nodded to Sheerness.

  “We are through here, Mr. Sheerness. And, if you’d prefer going to headquarters in a cab, Curley will go with you.”

  The iron demeanor of Sheerness never changed; his cold eyes were contemptuous and disbelieving.

  “What am I to understand by that?” he said.

  “We’ve found the picture,” said Lynch. “We know who took it, and how and why it was taken. Of course, I doubt,” looking at the other man and meeting his look, sneer for sneer, “any serious action against you; trying to obtain a picture under these circumstances will be considered a kind of conspiracy, perhaps, and will be a rather light matter for your group of high-priced attorneys.”

  Lynch’s eyes again ran over the group, Haviz first, then Billy, then Marsh. Slade he looked at for a moment. Then his eyes fastened themselves upon MacQuarrie; his aides, Moore and Andresona, with several policemen, threw themselves upon the man; there was a rapid snapping of handcuffs, and the picture dealer white, gasping, and manacled, was shoved forward. With the face of a demon, Lynch confronted him.

  “MacQuarrie, why did you kill Custis?”

  “I didn’t!” cried the man. “I didn’t, so help me God!”

  “You lie! You never went out of the museum this afternoon; you hid on the second floor until everyone had gone away. Didn’t you? Didn’t you hide until everyone had gone away?”

  “No! No! I didn’t! I——”

  “Then you came downstairs. You saw Custis.” The powerful hand of the inspector gripped the flabby creature by the white, fat throat. “You saw Custis in the corridor.”

  “I didn’t,” the man writhed. “I didn’t. No one was there.”

  “You killed him. You drove the knife into his back.”

  “He said I was a thief,” wheezed MacQuarrie, suddenly giving way, “He said I stole the picture.”

  And then it all came out, in a rush, gasping, frantic, pleading. MacQuarrie had gone into the thing with Custis to steal the painting; they were to enrich themselves by means of the reward. But he’d found Custis meant to squeeze him; to keep most of the money wrung from the trustees for the return of the picture. At first MacQuarrie was inclined to give the whole matter up; he was not the kind of person to submit to such treatment. And then, suddenly, came the matter of Duddington’s key. Yes, he’d been in Custis’s outer office the day Duddington loaned the key to Slade to open the rear door. He’d seen it returned; he’d noted, just by chance, that Duddington, being engaged in conversation, did not trouble to put the key back upon his key ring, and that he slipped it into the little “change” pocket of his coat.

  The thing came back to him afterward as he sat in his own rooms; it came suddenly, and a complete vision of what might happen came with it. It had been a very sultry day. Duddington Pell Chalmers was a person who perspired a great deal under such conditions; the linen suit he wore could not be used again until it had been laundered. MacQuarrie reasoned Duddington would not think of the key, and that it would go to the laundry in the pocket of the linen coat. Once with it in his possession, MacQuarrie felt he’d have the whip hand of Custis; he’d take the picture on his own account and bleed the curator white. It was at this point he called in Grismer, who was a clever man in such matters; and Grismer had gone to the laundry, demanded the key, but failed to get it. After this, Grismer lurked about the apartment house where Duddington lived, in the hope of getting possession of the laundry bundle as it was delivered. He missed this, somehow; for he was still waiting for it when he overheard Duddington’s telephone conversation with the laundry office. He realized instantly the nature of the “enclosure” referred to and set out for the laundry. But Duddington reached the place first. Still p
ersisting, Grismer forced his way into Duddington’s rooms after Turvy had gone out, thinking to find the bundle of collars; he was leaving, defeated once more, when he saw the young man coming down the hall with the parcel in his hand.

  Then, with the key in his possession, MacQuarrie visited Custis and gave him a last chance to treat him “fairly”; indeed, he was with him in the museum’s private office discussing the matter when Duddington and Haviz arrived to keep their appointment. But Custis still insisted upon the greater part of the reward, and MacQuarrie left him. The man then hid away on the second floor until the front doors were closed for the night.

  When, at last, he started downstairs he saw Mona Rogers in the corridor, white and ill-looking, and apparently dazed. She had the dagger in her hand. She seemed about to fall; and Custis who had been speaking to her, supported her. She dropped the weapon and drew away from him. And then she went down the corridor and out of the building. Custis went into the office. Waiting awhile, MacQuarrie descended the stairs. The door to the main gallery was partly open; he went in, cautiously, drew aside the curtain covering the Hals painting, and found it gone. He was still standing, overwhelmed, holding back the curtain, when he heard a sound behind him. It was Custis. The cripple called MacQuarrie vile names; he tried to strike him. MacQuarrie, protesting he had not put a hand upon the picture, tried to avoid him, but stumbled in the corridor and fell; he saw the dagger and picked it up. And then, as Custis tried to strike him again, he flung him away and in a fury of fear stabbed him in the back. After that he’d unlocked the rear door and closed it after him; the same key unlocked the gate, and so he made away!

  “Awhile ago,” said Lynch to Duddington, “you asked what the chances were of two separate crimes having been committed here tonight. And Moore replied it was about a million to one—against. Well, sometimes the long shot wins; and this, apparently, is another example of it.”

  “I’d never have believed it,” said Duddington. “As a matter of fact, the case I was trying to make out at the beginning was based on the complete opposite. A coincidence is always interesting,” he said smilingly, “and these two rather widely separated attempts to steal the same picture in about the same hour seem rather startling. But, as a matter of fact, the real coincidence, as I see it, was farther back; the attempts upon the picture were precipitated by the refusal, today, by the museum, of the statue Sheerness presented to it, and by MacQuarrie gaining possession of the key to the museum’s rear door. In both cases the operatives were compelled to act at once; if Sheerness had not so acted, the Diana would have been boxed up and returned to him tomorrow, and his chance would have been lost; in MacQuarrie’s case he was forced to immediate action by the fear that Custis might carry out the theft as he’d originally planned, and so, as it were, leave him holding the bag.”