The Ghosts' High Noon

by John Dickson Carr

  17

  JIM HAD A CLEAR connection. The voice of Colonel Harvey in faraway New York was small but strident, as though the man himself had been shrunk to lead-soldier size by magic and were imprisoned in the telephone.

  “You say,” he demanded, “Constance Lambert actually authorizes this? She’s willing to have me publish?”

  “More than willing; she’s anxious to have you publish.”

  “That’s a pity, because we can’t touch it. The woman’s an artist, Jim; she shouldn’t be allowed to cut her own throat. Still, I gather, she and Clay Blake have been carrying on?”

  “If you want to put it like that. But they’re going to get married.”

  “Which doesn’t in the least alter the principle of the thing, as John Q. Public will see it. If this story comes out with all details, she’ll never be able to play in America again. The League of Women Against Something-or-other will blacklist her at every theatre in Klaw and Erlanger’s chain.” Colonel Harvey reflected. “We’ll work craftily, Jim, and see how the papers play it when the story does break; there may be a follow-up for us. Meanwhile, there’s the personality piece. Shall I transfer this call to Ken Lefferts for rewrite?”

  “I prefer to write my own copy, thanks. And it’s ready.”

  “What have you done?”

  Jim glanced round the room.

  “What I always do, and must continue to do until somebody invents a portable typewriter I can take with me. Here at the St. Charles, as at every good hotel, there’s a public stenographer and notary public.”

  “Yes, of course. Well?”

  “At two-thirty, an hour ago, there was a dust-up at some place where they’ve got a baseball-pitching machine…”

  “You always did have the bull luck to be in the middle of things!”

  “It wasn’t as much fun as all that, Colonel. I broke away, having work on my mind. I paid the public stenographer for half an hour’s use of her typewriter, and turned out twenty-five hundred words demonstrating that Clay Blake’s an embryonic statesman who’ll be a shining light in the Sixty-third Congress. The story’s on the telephone table in front of me.”

  “Do you want somebody to take it down over the phone? I’m no believer in economy, but…!”

  “No, not that way either. I couldn’t help noticing a Western Union office on the side of the street opposite the hotel only a few doors away. I can send copy by wire at a very small fraction of what it would cost by phone; it’ll be in your hands by four-thirty at the latest. And now, if you’ve got no further instructions, I’ll get on with the job.”

  “No, no further instructions, except: keep your eyes peeled for a follow-up. Good luck, Jim!”

  The line went dead. With several typed sheets in his pocket, Jim descended to the lobby and made for the telegraph office across the way. Though still not sure where St. Charles Street became St. Charles Avenue, he pushed through the revolving door on that side and almost ran full tilt into Charley Emerson.

  Charley, that wiry little terrier of a man with the gray-black patches of hair on a fire-scarred head, seemed engrossed and enwrapped.

  “Hello, Jim. Couldn’t keep away after all, you see. Just had to say ha-ha among the trumpets!”

  “I didn’t really expect to see you, Charley. But I’m not dead with astonishment. What’s on your mind now?”

  “Can’t stop for more than a second or two; I’m after a story.”

  “I understood you weren’t allowed to touch the murder.”

  “I’m not. But there’s been other news in sight all the time. These anonymous phone calls to people at the Sentinel…”

  “You’re after that?”

  “Very much so. To hear Bart Perkins talk, and Harry Furnival, too—Harry’s the city editor—you’d think there had been a reign of terror. Nothing of the kind, Jim! There have been only three calls, including the one to Mary Rikert: never to anybody of importance, and the caller never carries out the threats he makes. Sounds like fright and intimidation just for the hell of it.

  “On the other hand, this character they call the phone-fiend has made a high score. One poor old man in the business office was accused of stealing petty cash; he went home and hanged himself. A middle-aged woman who helps with the society news lost her husband some months back. The phone-fiend said she’d poisoned her husband, and that evidence of it was going to the D. A. The lead I’ve got now…”

  “Speaking of leads, Charley: when they wouldn’t turn you loose on the murder, did you really threaten to go over to the opposition and take the story elsewhere?”

  “I made some bluff at it, not being one of God’s saints. There’s four of ’em: the Picayune and the Times Democrat in the morning; the Item and the States in the evening. They’d all be glad to grab old Charley as a free-lance. But I didn’t mean one damn word I said, to tell you the truth. Loyalties die hard, Jim, and Alec Laird’s been too decent for me to bite the hand that used to feed me.

  “You’ll excuse me if I chase along now, won’t you? The woman who lost her husband is at home this afternoon; I can get a streetcar down there at the corner. And I’ve got a hot tip. She thinks the phone-fiend is a woman!”

  “Lord, Charley! Any evidence of that?”

  “She thinks there’s evidence, at least. It may not be murder, but it’s some story if I can trace the phone-fiend and it does happen to be a woman! Making baseless accusations just to terrify is as bad as murder, don’t you think? Now all the best, Jim, and cheer-ho!”

  Away he went towards the car-stop, weaving in and out among other pedestrians. Jim crossed the road, where twenty more strides took him to the great plate-glass window bearing the name of the Western Union Telegraph Company in white-enamelled letters.

  It was a slack time of day. Both the girl behind the counter and the alert young telegraph operator who joined their conversation were deeply fascinated with Jim’s proposal to send his story by wire. When he had explained certain terms which would be intelligible to any copy-desk if not to the average telegrapher, and paid the fee required, his typed sheets were borne away. The telegrapher bent absorbedly over a well-lighted desk in a corner behind the counter. The chatter and click of the key began to pulse against a quiet hum of afternoon traffic.

  Jim wheeled round from the counter towards the big plate-glass window. Not for the first time that day he had a feeling of being watched and spied on. But once again, it seemed, he must have been mistaken.

  Crossing the street towards the telegraph office came nobody more secret or furtive than Lieutenant Trowbridge, attended by the Sergeant Peters who had been on duty the night before. While Sergeant Peters held open the door, his superior officer strode in and greeted Jim affably.

  “Well, well, Franz Josef, and how’s the Emperor of Austria this afternoon?”

  He indicated some chairs at the near end of a two-sided flat-topped desk close to the window. Impelling Jim into one of the chairs, he bent forward and lowered his voice.

  “Not very cooperative, are you? You ducked out of Major Magruder’s latest business venture ’fore I had a chance to say anything about the two crooks somebody set on you.”

  Jim waved his hand towards the chattering telegraph key.

  “That’s the reason I ducked out,” he replied in the same low tone. “Cheap hoodlums, Clay called them, as no doubt they were? The major, I take it, had nothing to do with what they were up to?”

  “Not a thing! They got in through the back way, from an alley. They were laying for you.”

  “You caught ’em, did you?”

  “I caught one of ’em, who’s in the hospital. If you got a pitcher’s fast one square in the belly from not much more’n thirty feet away, you’d be in the hospital, too. The other one dodged me, but I can trace him easy enough.

  “You should ’a’ stayed, Franz Josef! I had quite a talk with Mr. Clay Blake before he had to leave for a political do. He’s quite a sane and sensible gentleman, when you get right down to it.”


  “Listen, Lieutenant. You were under no pledge of secrecy, of course. When you talked to Clay, though, I hope you didn’t betray what you learned at the general’s. You didn’t tell him ‘Yvonne Brissard’ is Constance Lambert, or that Jill Matthews is her sister?”

  “No, no, I didn’t let on! I’m not a gentleman and never claimed to be, but I do have one or two gentlemanly instincts kicking around. That’s her private affair; let her handle it. But I’ve got some news for you!”

  “Yes?”

  “Since we met the last time, I’ve seen both the men I had tracing Mr. Shepley’s movements yesterday afternoon and evening. Whatever our information’s been so far, he didn’t go on any drinkin’ tour of Bourbon Street. He went to his club, where they get drunk in peace and quiet. The club’s on Louisiana Avenue in the Garden District.

  “But he didn’t get drunk either. He had maybe two or three drinks. He sat down by himself without speaking to anybody, or shot some pool all alone, too. About five o’clock he made a phone call, and sat down to think again. Half or three quarters of an hour later, at five-thirty or a quarter to six, he got up and went out. His car was in the street; he drove away. And that’s where we lose him.”

  “Lose him completely?”

  “Right bang into the blue! So far, at least, we can’t find out where he went or what he was doing between, say, a quarter to six, when he left the club, and a few minutes past ten last night, when he went hell-roaring out to Miss Lambert’s place in that red Raceabout. We just don’t know.”

  “If it comes to that, Lieutenant, we don’t know your movements either.”

  “What have my movements got to do with it?”

  “Probably nothing, except that you’ve chosen to keep them mysterious. You turned up not long after the shot was fired and the car went smash. But we’ve heard no mention of what you were doing there.”

  Lieutenant Trowbridge had ceased to bristle.

  “Nothing mysterious about it; never was! You know, Franz Josef, people still tend to think of cars as a rich man’s plaything. And that’s not so.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Not any longer. Henry Ford’s selling his car at one hell of a lick. Are you following me?”

  “Closely.”

  “At City Hall,” explained the lieutenant, eyeing his companion hypnotically, “there’s an Assistant D.A. named Kestevan. It’s true he’s got a little money of his own; he wouldn’t be in the poorhouse even if he hadn’t studied law. But he’s no Croesus or J. P. Morgan. Well, Mr. Kestevan bought a Ford tourer, four doors and all; goes everywhere in it, not just to the country. He’s a friendly sort; he’s given me a lift more’n once.

  “All right! Last night, a few minutes before nine, there was a phone call to my office. Some anonymous caller wanted to speak to the most experienced detective on the Force.”

  “Don’t tell me, Lieutenant, you’ve had a message from the Voice?”

  Lieutenant Trowbridge was making excited gestures, his strawberry-rash coming up.

  “I didn’t get it personally, no. But I didn’t laugh, later, when I heard about the goddamn Voice.

  “At that time, as an ordinary thing, there wouldn’t ’a’ been anybody at the office. There wasn’t anybody, in fact, except the charwoman cleaning up. She answered the phone. If an experienced detective would go out to the Villa de Jarnac as soon as possible after ten o’clock, the caller said, he’d find ‘something damnable.’ Those were the words: something damnable. And there was something about it that scared the britches off the charwoman. I looked in a little later, just as she finished cleaning, and she told me.

  “Well, what was I going to do? Unless you get a lift, there’s no way out to that place except by cab. My boss would never pass expense money if I took a cab on the strength of an anonymous tip.

  “But it solved itself. I was leaving the office, near enough to half-past nine, when I met Mr. Kestevan, who’d been working late on a case. That was when I remembered he’s got a place out near the mouth of Bayou St. John. He said he was going home, and asked if he could drop me some place. There you are; that’s the whole story, and I hope it’s cleared up.”

  “Yes, thanks; it’s cleared up. Any more news, Lieutenant?”

  “A little; not much, but a little. I haven’t seen you to talk to, have I, since I put the squeeze on Flossie Yates? I haven’t broken her yet, I admit, though she ought to cooperate before long. But what excited me, what really got me going, was a remark Mr. Clay Blake made during our talk.”

  For the first time the lieutenant seemed to become fully aware of Sergeant Peters.

  “Peters,” he said, “the maestro and I want to have a little private confab about this thing. Run along to City Hall, will you? I’ll look in on you before I knock off for the day.”

  The stolid Peters nodded without comment. He opened the glass door, closed it behind him, and moved off over the pavement to cross the street.

  Zack Trowbridge pounced again.

  “Though you weren’t just sure who’s been doing the dirty work, Mr. Blake said, you had a pretty good idea HOW it was done! Oh, Lordy God and everything! Is that true?”

  Jim still held the fountain-pen with which he had made a last-moment correction in his copy before handing it over. Though he had put the cap on the pen, he had not returned it to his pocket. He turned towards the counter and the chattering telegraph key beyond.

  “Yes, it’s true. The coat was clean, Lieutenant! I particularly noted that the coat was clean.”

  “What coat was clean? What are you talking about?”

  “The problem, you see, may be in finding material proof. There’s the bullet-hole, of course, though that’s a mere detail.”

  “What bullet-hole, Franz Josef? The only bullet-hole I’ve heard about is the one in Mr. Shepley’s head. I’ve got the autopsy report now; and I’ve got the bullet, too, after they took it out with a forceps. It’s a .38 slug, but what does that prove? Will you turn around and look at me, for God’s sake?”

  Jim, standing at the counter and seeming to study it, did turn. But he did not look directly at Lieutenant Trowbridge; he looked out through the big plate-glass window.

  “Sergeant Peters,” he said in a startled voice, “Sergeant Peters has only just crossed the street! He’s over there and headed west, but he’s only just crossed!”

  “Sure he’s only just crossed! Peters has no wings, any more’n the rest of us. How far away did you expect him to get, in a matter o’ ten or twelve seconds?”

  “The same distance as—” Jim stopped suddenly, feeling as though he had been walloped over the head. The fountain-pen dropped from his fingers and clinked on the floor. He stood motionless, rigid, with vivid images rushing back to him.

  “What a turnip I’ve been! What a thundering dunce! The whole business was played out in front of me, yet I never saw the meaning until this minute! Once that key turns and the door opens, every fact is in its proper place as well as easy to interpret. Yes, Lieutenant, I was lucky enough to hit on the ‘how.’ I now see who, with more than a suggestion of why! And I am going to tell you about it.”

  The telegraph operator and the girl attendant paid them no attention. The telegrapher was transmitting the last page of Jim’s copy; the girl bent above him, reading over his shoulder.

  With a great parade of secrecy Jim led Lieutenant Trowbridge to one of the chairs at the desk near the window. The lieutenant sat down; Jim sat down opposite.

  “Lieutenant,” he said in a low voice, “this scene here is all wrong. It oughtn’t to be a telegraph office at four o’clock in the afternoon. It ought to be a certain sitting-room in Baker Street. Gaslight instead of electricity. A bright fire burning; fog outside. The acid-stained chemical table, the cigars in the coal-scuttle, the tobacco in the toe of the Persian slipper…”

  Zack Trowbridge caught the mood with enthusiasm.

  “And the hansom down at the door!” he supplied. “The visitor who comes upstairs and kee
ls over in a faint on the hearthrug! And Watson revives him with brandy; he’s a heller for brandy, Watson is! You don’t have to tell me; I know. Nobody’s keener on those stories than I am; almost as keen as I am on The Count of Monte Carlo. Well?”

  “However, since we can’t have that, and must be content with our telegraph office as a background for revelations…”

  “I’m hopin’ for revelations,” said the other. “I’m damn well expectin’ revelations, and I mean to get ’em! But, before you start to reveal, one question. Who knew you were having lunch with Clay Blake today, and when, and where, so that the mixup could occur? I knew it; the two ladies knew it; who else knew?”

  “Only one person, so far as I remember, and that fact needs interpretation, too. Now listen, please, and we’ll see what we can make of it.”

  Jim began to talk.

  St. Charles Line streetcars clanged past east and west. Lieutenant Trowbridge’s expression, at first thunderstruck, ran a gamut from disbelief through wonder to fascinated interest, and, finally, conviction. The telegraph instrument had long since ceased to click when he sat up straight and snapped his fingers.

  “You’ve hit it, Franz Josef! When you first started, mind, I wondered if you might have lost some of your marbles. But it makes sense, and it’s the only thing that does make sense out of all the foolishness! Some very peculiar characters have been known to hang around in that quarter, though nobody thought anything about it in view of the profession involved. But there’s a side of it that bothers me. More than one person, eh, has been mixed up in the murder?”

  “No, Lieutenant. As I’ve tried to indicate, there is only one guilty party. The culprit had help, it’s true, but was not helped by any person who had the remotest idea it was murder, or that any crime had been committed at all. We’ve been hoaxed, and beautifully hoaxed, by a smooth-looking, murderous-minded operator who’s hoaxed everybody else, too. It’s time to end that hoaxing.”