Tracy’s grim smile deepened.
“But you didn’t notice the cat below your window, did you, Mrs. Shale? Had Pat’s body come hurtling to the ground in pursuit of a fleeing criminal, the startled cat would most certainly have scurried over the fence like a black streak. But when I looked out the window, the cat was lazily dozing down there, watching Pat’s hat. Ergo, only the hat had gone out the window—and Pat hadn’t left the room. The only place he could possibly be was in the closet.”
Jerry’s eyes watched the woman like a hawk.
“You see, you had to work entirely too fast, Mrs. Shale. When I called you up on the phone originally, you realized that the Edwin J. Shale story of mine was a fake. But my reference to the D-101 ticket scared you. Maybe you thought I was another detective from poor Davidson’s agency. You decided you’d have to look damned innocent in a hurry. So you invented a mysterious burglar, struck yourself on the temple, stretched out on the living-room floor—and waited for me to break in and find you.”
Leo Glennon’s haggard face lifted slowly from his clasped hands. He stared at his aunt with incredulous amazement. “And she deliberately tried to—to—”
“To pin it on you, Leo? Exactly. However, I had proof, before you blundered in, breathing so heavily, that the whole assault story was a cooked-up lie.”
Tracy nodded and smiled faintly at Mrs. Shale.
“In the first place, madam, a rolling-pin is a weapon no man would think of using as a club—but a woman would! In the second place the yarn you told me brought your burglar through the dinette window and the kitchen. I walked back, you will remember, and I discovered a curious fact. The dinette window way locked.”
Tracy turned to Leo. “Let’s have the truth about your presence in Davidson’s room this afternoon. You were there, weren’t you?”
“Yes. I—I was there.”
“You hired the room next door. Sneaked in with a skeleton key, held up the man you thought was Davidson, tied him up—and stole that fool D-101 ticket from him. Right?”
“Right,” Leo muttered dazedly.
“Why did you go to the hotel? How did you know Davidson was there with the theater ticket?”
Leo hesitated, wet his lips. He looked forlornly at his lovely sister.
“Ruth called me up and told me.”
Ruth Glennon’s head jerked up in startled wonder.
“Why, Leo! That’s not true. I never telephoned you. I knew nothing of Davidson’s being at the Cantwell.”
“I thought it was Ruth on the phone,” Leo mumbled. “She said she had just found out that Auntie and Davidson, between them, were planning to railroad me to jail on account of that—that jam about money I’m in. She begged me to get my gun, rush over to Room 729 in a hurry and get the theater ticket from the private detective. She said the evidence we were so worried about was concealed in the seat D-101.”
“And you went, of course.”
“Yes. I stole the ticket. I went to the theater.”
“And you found—what?”
Leo spread his trembling hands in a gesture of dulled wonder.
“I found nothing at all,” he admitted. “I searched every inch of that seat and the carpet under the seat. Wherever the stuff was, it was hidden too cleverly for me.”
Tracy smiled grimly at the handcuffed aunt.
“You found nothing, Leo, because there was nothing there. Your aunt seems to be a positive genius at the art of suggesting the invisible. Nobody struck her on the head tonight. Nobody startled her in her bedroom. There was nothing hidden in D-101 at the Parkhurst.”
“But—”
“The whole thing was a really devilish piece of cunningly built up psychology. The whole purpose of Mrs. Shale’s plot hinged on the murder of an innocent fall guy. Any victim would have done, but she picked a private detective as the goat in order to make her lying story sound all the more convincing. She hired Harry Davidson of the Whalen Agency—and she killed him!”
“You lie!” Mrs. Shale screamed.
“She killed him, Leo, for the sole purpose of sending you to the electric chair as his murderer.”
“You mean,” Ruth Glennon faltered, “that Auntie paid for all those theater tickets, and typed all those threatening notes—herself?”
“I do. Who would be a more plausible victim than the man she had ostensibly hired to protect her from: death? So she killed Davidson and persuaded Leo to go to the Cantwell with his own gun. Observe how neatly all the threads of the scheme tied together. It even implicated Ruth Glennon as a suspicious person, because Ruth actually works as a specialty dancer in Alabama Moon!”
The frowning Tracy walked across to the sofa.
“Let’s see Leo’s gun for a minute, Pat. A .32, wasn’t it?”
He took the weapon, broke it, smiled. One chamber had been fired recently.
“You see what you were up against?” he told Leo gently. “Your beloved aunt killed Davidson with a bullet from your own gun. The slug in his body bears the individual rifling marks from your weapon and no other gun in the world could match those microscopic scratches. Then your aunt sneaks away, puts the gun back in your bureau or wherever you’re in the habit of keeping it. She leaves the house, calls you on the phone—and begs you in your sister’s voice to take that same gun and visit the scene of an unsuspected murder.”
The columnist’s voice was like the rasp of a file.
“And I’ll guarantee that, in addition to the fingerprints or other traces you left there, Leo, there is at least one damning bit of carefully chosen evidence hidden in Davidson’s room to connect you definitely with the killing. To make it easier to slide you right into the electric chair. … Do you care to tell us what you planted there, Mrs. Shale?”
She laughed jeeringly. “If you were to move one of the dead man’s hands, my inquisitive friend, you would find one of Leo’s cuff-links. I thought it might make an amusing clue.”
The woman spat at Jerry Tracy like a cat. The stolid Walsh nodded wisely at Jerry Tracy. “That makes it complete, all right. She admits it, and after all the things she cooked up on the lad, I’m thinkin’ he needed just that.”
“The only thing I’m not sure of,” Tracy admitted, “is the motive back of it all.”
Ruth Glennon smiled wanly. “Perhaps I can answer that. Both Leo and myself have thought for a long time that Auntie was worried about our inheritance. She was evasive and uncommunicative whenever we tried to pin her down about details. You see, when Father died, he left over $100,000 in trust for Leo and myself. He named Auntie, his sister, as executrix and administrator. We inherit the principal on our twenty-fifth birthdays—Leo’s is next February, mine is a year later. But if Leo and I should die before then, the whole amount would revert legally to the only surviving heir, who is—is—”
“Your dearly beloved aunt,” Jerry purred. “Tell me something Leo; why did you put up such a scrap with me, if you were innocent?”
“I was scared—and desperate,” Leo mumbled, his face suddenly sickish. “Ruth and I are really in an awful jam and—and I need $10,000 so badly that I—I guess I lost my head. Do I have to tell you about the mess we’re in?”
“It would help,” Jerry said somberly. “You’ve been framed so devilishly well by your aunt that it will be hard for me to convince the police of your absolute innocence:—unless I have all the facts.”
“I stole ten thousand dollars,” Leo muttered. “I falsified the books of the importing company where I work, to cover it until I could put it back. It was discovered—and I was given two weeks to make good, or go to jail.”
“A thief, eh?” Jerry stared at him. “Why?”
Leo’s pretty sister sprang to his side, her clear eyes ablaze with pride and love.
“He’s no thief,” she said steadily. “He took the money for me. If anyone is the thief, I am.” She put a tremulous arm about her brother’s slack shoulder.
“I needed that ten thousand dollars for my—my own selfish h
appiness. I’m engaged to a fine, decent man. Another man, of another kind, got hold of something very foolish that I had written and asked ten thousand dollars for not showing it to—to my fiancé. He’s a headstrong man and might have—misunderstood. I love him and couldn’t bear to lose him. Leo knew, and—borrowed that money for me. He couldn’t get it in time in any other way, and our aunt wouldn’t let either of us have it.”
“You know the name of the blackmailer, of course?”
“Yes.”
Tracy glanced at Walsh and Pat. “Don’t tell me now, sweet. We’ll straighten that out later,” His jaw hardened. “I’ll guarantee to get that money back in time for Leo to return it where it belongs.”
The agency man was still staring fixedly at Mrs. Shale.
“I still can’t figure,” Pat muttered, “why this strong-armed old witch banged me on the dome and stuck me in her closet. What was the idea, Jerry?”
“She probably guessed that I was beginning to nose too close to the real truth of this case. I think she lost her nerve when she found herself alone in her bedroom, wondering uneasily how much of her scheme I had tumbled to. So she invented a second fake burglar and put you out of the way. That left me all alone—and if I hadn’t wound up this thing quickly, I have a hunch that a ton of bricks would have crashed on my skull, too. … I had to let you stay in the closet because I wanted to keep Mrs. Shale off her guard to the last. I was afraid of her. As it turned out, even with Walsh here, she damned near cracked my skull with one of her hands locked in a cuff!”
Walsh grinned, wagged his head. “Some wimmen are sure hell on wheels when they—”
He flew backwards with a startled yelp and tripped over the bookcase.
Mrs. Shale, taking advantage of Walsh’s brief lapse of attention, had ripped away from his loose grasp and struck at his forehead with her trussed hands.
“Get her!” Tracy yelled. “Watch that window!”
He sprang forward. Pat bounced up from his sofa. Walsh caromed off the bookcase and dove headlong forward for the desperate murderess. He collided with Pat and missed her completely. Tracy got a hand on her clothing and lost her as the thin material of her dress ripped.
Before he could clutch at her again, Mrs. Shale was on her knees on the broad wooden sill of the opened window.
She uttered no sound. She dived headlong into darkness, arms stiffly out-flung like a swimmer. They heard her body strike the concrete pavement below.
“God!” Jerry muttered.
He saw Ruth Glennon swaying, her eyes closed in horror. He caught her as she fainted.
Pat’s back and shoulders blocked the open window. He was staring silently down at the courtyard below. When he turned, the gaze he gave Tracy was veiled, expressionless.
“Only about a twelve-foot drop,” Pat said. “She took no chances and dove. Landed on her head and—broke something.”
Pat shut up abruptly and lit a fumbling cigarette.
Tracy was nodding slowly. “Funny how the one thing that queered Mrs. Shale was pure accident. I mean, my discovery of Davidson’s body, merely because I thought there was something fishy about his search for the D-101 ticket. Poor devil, Davidson. … I wonder what lying tale she told him about the ticket?”
He shrugged.
“Okey, Walsh. You’d better phone Headquarters right away. … ”
He walked to the sofa where Ruth Glennon lay. Slowly he began chafing her cold hands. His eyes were very gentle.
FIVE SPOT
Jerry Tracy takes a long chance on a solo chase
JERRY TRACY WAS flooding the mouthpiece of his dictaphone with swift, nasal comments for his Daily Planet column when he heard the ponderous, elephantine tread of Butch’s size elevens.
“Hey, Jerry—yuh know what?”
Tracy halted the machine for an instant and snapped over his shoulder: “Get the hell out, Butch. I’m busy.”
“Listen, Jerry, I—I feel kinda sick.”
Tracy’s head jerked around at that and the hard grin bounced out of his eyes. “S’matter, Big Fellow?”
Butch’s platter face was pale; there were lines of pain at the corners of his thick lips. He was trying to grin unconcernedly and he wasn’t doing so well.
“Remember that accident yesterday? You know—about the flower-pot?”
“Yeah.”
“It wasn’t no accident.”
“What do you mean?”
Butch lifted his right arm away from his body and the columnist grunted as he saw the slash in the cloth and the wet smear of crimson. He kicked a chair forward, but Butch shook his oversize head with a tremulous grimace.
“It ain’t so bad, Boss. Really it ain’t. It—it just kinda hoits.”
Tracy scowled affectionately at him. “Sit down, dope, or I’ll knock you down.” Swiftly he unbuttoned the coat and the pink shirt, lifted the cloth gently away from the sticky wound. A knife had gone into Butch’s ribs about four inches below the right armpit. The lips of the cut were still oozing blood, but the wound, Tracy saw with a sigh of relief, was shallow; more a gouge than a stab.
The tension went out of his eyes and he patted Butch’s shoulder with an unsteady hand. He was fonder of Butch than he cared to admit to himself.
“Who gave it to you, Big Boy?”
“I dunno. I got it down in a doorway on Forty-ninth just a few minutes ago.” There was blind puzzlement in his eyes, rather than anger. “I’m tellin’ yuh, that flower-pot that just missed my dome yesterday was no accident, Jerry. It didn’t fall off no fire-escape or roof; someone dropped it.”
“Tell me about the knife.”
“Well, I’m walkin’ along Forty-ninth, past that row o’ crumby lookin’ actors’ boarding houses, when I see this blonde smilin’ at me from a doorway an’ tippin’ me the friendly come-on sign.”
“Dope!”
“But listen, Jerry—I think right away that she knows me, see? Because she hollers: ‘Hey, Butch!’ ”
“What did she look like?”
“The hardest faced blonde I ever seen in me life,” Butch said slowly. “One of them bony, thin pans—middle-aged an’ lots of makeup. Small red lips and the narrowest eyes I ever seen on a dame. So I walks in the doorway an’ she’s half cryin’ an’ tells me she’s an old friend of yours, an’ she’s in a nasty jam. She says she’s Dolly Crane.”
“Never heard of her,” Tracy said quietly. “Did she give you the knife cut?”
“No. The guy done that. He comes hoppin’ out from behind the stairs, an’ the dame grabs me arms and holds me. But I seen the flash of the knife an’ pulls away, and the point just digs me open like you see. While I’m uncorkin’ a right swing, the blonde lets me have something hard on the back of the skull, an’ the two of them scram up the stairs after givin’ me pockets the quick once-over, leavin’ me staggerin’ around like a drunk on ice-skates.”
“You didn’t try to go after them, huh?”
Butch scowled. “I sure did. Chased ’em up to the roof an’ lost ’em there. There was about four roof doors open along the line an’ I made a bum guess. No sign of them upstairs or down on the street.”
“What did the guy look like?”
“Tell you the truth, Boss, I don’t know,” Butch said shakily. He sat down suddenly and Tracy poured out a quick Bourbon for him.
“Flower-pot yesterday and knife today,” the Daily Planet’s columnist said in a softly meditative tone.
“Ain’t it the damnedest thing? No sense to it.”
“There’s sense to anything that happens outside of an insane asylum,” Tracy snapped. “Have you done anything in the last couple of days than might make someone sore at you?”
“Nope.” He said it slowly; and Tracy, eying him narrowly, saw that he was embarrassed, holding back.
“Don’t try to kid me, Butch. You didn’t make a pass at the blonde did you?”
“Whew! I should say not. She ain’t the kind you make passes at.” He grinned weakly and said, in a
diffident manner: “It might be about the five bucks.”
“What five bucks?”
“Well, it was a sort of a dirty trick. I didn’t really mean to gyp the guy—but you know how you do things sometimes. This sandwich-man stops me on Broadway yesterday mornin’ an’ shows me a five spot. He tells me a sporty lookin’ guy walked up to him and handed him the fin—just like that. The bum with the sign thinks it’s a rib an he asts me if the thing was any good.”
“Well?”
Butch grinned and looked penitent. “There wasn’t a damn’ thing wrong with it, except the mustache on Lincoln—so I told him it was just a phoney and gave him a buck for it as a souvenir.”
“Wait a minute! A dropped flowerpot, a knife thrust—and now, a mustache on Lincoln!”
“Let’s see that fin,” he snapped, his eyes eager.
“I ain’t got it. I spent it this mornin’.”
“Where?”
“At Higson’s Tavern. I went in an’ busted it to buy a couple o’ beers. Jeeze, I didn’t think that—”
“Come on! Grab your hat!” Tracy tugged at his arm, and Butch winced and turned white. “I forgot—I’m sorry,” the columnist said contritely. “Think you can make it to Higson’s before we stop at a doctor’s?”
“Aw, sure. I’m okey.”
Butch stuck on his derby with his left hand and swaggered towards the door. Tracy wasn’t too worried about him; he knew that the big fellow had a stomach as weak as a kitten’s. The sight of the blood had upset him more than the gash in his ribs.
They grabbed a cab and burned up the avenue to Higson’s Tavern. Billy Higson was curious but obliging. He opened the cash register and handed a thick sheaf of fives to the Daily Planet’s columnist. Tracy pulled out one, showed it to Butch, and Butch muttered: “Check.”
Nothing counterfeit about it, Tracy decided swiftly. An ordinary silver certificate, crinkled and rumpled from long wear, with Lincoln’s head engraved in the usual oval. The only queer thing about it was the mustache drawn with indelible pencil on Lincoln’s upper lip. It was a scrolled affair, like the curled mustache affected by top-hatted movie villains of the Desperate Desmond type. Looking closely at it, Tracy saw that the scrolled effect came from a blurred series of numbers separated by dashes. 15—10—6—15.
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 39