The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  Therefore, word had sifted down from his personal gubernatorial lips to the State Attorney, thence to the Sheriff’s department, thence to Stuff Driscoll, and from Stuff to Woodberry Jones.

  The word was: keep a veiled eye on this Bellington Foundation clambake and make sure that everything is legitimate.

  Incidentally, there was never any question in the Governor’s mind concerning Lucille’s integrity, nor of the Foundation’s admirable purpose. But fraud had been perpetrated before, using trustful men or women of impeccable character and immaculate financial and social standing as a public mask. And sometimes the nature of the fraud had been dangerously, repellently, a cloak for far worse villainy than mere monetary gain.

  Woodberry Jones, Stuff believed, must have stumbled on some warning sign during his stakeout at the gazebo. Something, surely unknown to Miss Bellington, was rotten in the Foundation woodpile—rotten enough to have bred murder.

  Just what had Jones uncovered? What link existed between the one suggested by Jones’s dying message—Rev, the beginning of the words Revels Humane?—and the Foundation? It had been important enough for the killer to have made an instant, unplanned attack with whatever weapon was on hand: the cord, the something that had left its curious traces on the groove of strangulation. Possibly scrapings from the body’s fingernails, even now being tested in the lab, would determine its nature.

  It was a difficult problem. The murder of Jones must be solved, his killer determined and booked; the fraud that lay cancerously concealed within the Foundation must be identified, then sliced out by secret surgery; and this entire operation must be accomplished without any breath of deleterious publicity to the political career of His Excellency or to the good name of the hitherto unblemished Miss Bellington.

  It was quite a chore.

  Stuff set about the initial stage with tact and a heavy leaning on the oblique approach. His guarded interest lay in the moments bordering on noon, the approximated time when Jones had been killed, and he mentally filed all facts covering the poolside quartet as he angled them from Lucille.

  To wit: Madame Alcott’s departure in terry-cloth and picked-out dolphins to the house to dress; Lyle Dasher’s simultaneous exit in plum Jansen trunks toward the adjoining Griptread Tires estate also to dress, with both of them later closeted in conference over details of the TV interview; then the duct of Herschel Pompey and Lucille and their written exchange of chatter with the Swinburne touch.

  It was at this point that Stuff tactfully fished for an explanation of Services Unlimited’s connection with the Foundation, and was told that Griptread Tires had once employed them on a sales campaign with excellent results. He also extracted a more detailed précis on Madame Alcott and Herschel Pompey, including the latter’s child-saving act with its concurrent plunge into the coastal waters of Massachusetts.

  “At what section of the coast did this happen?” Stuff asked.

  “I understand it was near a town called Bushing,” Lucille said. “Somewhere near the northern border.”

  Then came the hairdo appointment curtain to the Swinburne duet with Herschel being left at poolside alone. Stuff had just deposited all this in his mental card index when Lyle suddenly lunged, yes, lunged into the room. He was breathing heavily and his copper-toned skin was partially drained of blood, leaving it a shallow cafe au lait, while sweat glints beaded his stolid brow.

  His voice was timbred with anxiety as he cried out, “Lucille, are you feeling all right?”

  It should be fairly obvious by now that Lucille was not a girl who panicked. In spite of her fiancé’s unusual resemblance to an upset alligator she said calmly, “I feel fine. What’s the matter with you?”

  “It’s my stomach. Came over me suddenly not ten minutes ago.”

  “Cramps? Indigestion?”

  “Worse. Much worse. I’m sure it was the stone crabs. They’ve poisoned me.”

  Stuff promptly took a hand. “Anybody else affected, Mr. Dasher?”

  “No. I’ve asked everyone who ate them. Who are you?”

  “This is Mr. Driscoll, dear,” Lucille said. “An investigator from the Sheriff’s bureau.”

  “Oh?” Stuff’s official status failed to register with Lyle—he was far too involved with colonic quakes. “I’ve just been poisoned,” he insisted in full voice. “Fish poisoning. Can be fatal.”

  “Take it easy, Mr. Dasher.”

  “Easy! My stomach’s killing me. I’m hot all over. My lips are even breaking out in pimples.”

  “Lyle, dear,” Lucille said with concern, “telephone Dr. Natwick.”

  “I already have. They said he’s gone up to Pompano Beach. Driving. Can’t reach him for at least an hour. I think I should swallow some mustard.”

  “Mr. Dasher,” Stuff said firmly, “you come with me.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’ll run you down to the Poison Control Center at Jackson Memorial. Dr. Camp will know better than anyone else what should be done.”

  “Do go, Lyle,” Lucille urged.

  “Of course I’ll go!”

  “Miss Bellington—”

  “Mr. Driscoll?”

  “If anyone else should become affected, please call me.” He wrote on a card the telephone number of the Seahorse Towers Motel. “If I’m no longer at Memorial, phone me here. If I’m not in, a message will reach me. At any time.”

  Stuff thought: one murder; one poison attempt. The evil force behind the Foundation’s villainy did not pull its punches. Would the next blow be delivered against this girl?

  “Call me,” he repeated, “at any time. Night or day. About anything, Miss Bellington. Anything.”

  * * * *

  An hour later at Memorial Dr. Julius Camp was ready with a preliminary report for Stuff. Lyle Dasher, having been lavishly pumped out and given tranquilizing medication, was installed in a private room under observation.

  “No,” Dr. Camp was saying to Stuff, “there is no doubt but that it was a poison of some character. But what? It’s something definitely offbeat. Until the lab tests come through my only guess is that it’s one of the alkaloidals.”

  “Not stone crabs?”

  “No, no botulism, not food poisoning, and still—”

  “Still what, Julius?”

  “Damn it, Stuff, I don’t know! Anyhow, he’s no longer in any danger. He’ll be weak as a kitten and pretty flat on his back for several days.”

  “Tell me this. Was it something he swallowed, rather than an injection? Or,” Stuff added thoughtfully, “perhaps a bite? A sting?”

  “No, it was something he either swallowed or chewed.”

  “Chewed? Like gum?”

  “Like anything you chew and then spit out. It had a slight pimple reaction on his lips.”

  “Any notion as to the time he chewed it?”

  “None. Not until it’s identified. But I doubt whether he got it at dinnertime. The lip reaction would be too swift. During lunch seems more probable. That is only a guess, mind you.”

  Stuff left the hospital and returned to the Seahorse Towers Motel where without much information digging he got in touch by telephone with a Mr. Lud Marbleton, owner and editor of Flash, the Bushing, Massachusetts, weekly paper. Mr. Marbleton was helpful. In a pleasant Boston-flavored voice he gave Stuff several interesting facts about young Mr. Muscles.

  Bushing was Herschel Pompey’s hometown.

  Herschel, his candor-blue eyes notwithstanding, had a criminal record. He had served seven months in the penitentiary for aggravated assault. Released last year, he had been a model citizen of Bushing, working with diligence in the Willberforce filling station.

  A younger sister named Estelle, whom Herschel had taken care of since their parents’ deaths, was understood to require an expensive operation in the near future. A more immediate note about the young lady was that she had left Bushing two days ago to join her brother down south.

  The child-saving episode had been no spray of malarkey on Madame Alco
tt’s part. That is, on the surface. It had indeed taken place about one week prior to Herschel’s arrival at Miss Bellington’s as a deaf-mute.

  But under the surface?

  Herschel had just “happened to be passing by” when the child had teetered on the brink. Immediately following the event the child and couple had driven off to some “destination unknown.” They had come from some “unknown point of origin.” Their name was simply “Smith.”

  Had, Stuff wondered, the performance been deliberately staged to offset any later checkup such as he then was making? Staged by a Mr. Galli who the following day had “happened to be driving through Bushing” and (Mr. Marbleton narrated on) had been philanthropically agitated by the local hero’s tragic reward of deaf-muteness and had offered Herschel, as solace, his current job with the B. Foundation?

  Of all the hogwash! If, Stuff decided, a man were to swallow that three-way stretch in the long arm of coincidence he should seriously consider having his head examined.

  Stuff’s next telephone call was to the State Attorney whom he oriented on the matter of Woodberry Jones, with the result that certain policies and strategies were agreed upon—all with a view toward safeguarding the Governor’s political good health and, also, Miss Bellington’s physical good health.

  * * * *

  Dawn slid its pistachio streamers across the sky, the sun rose in splendor, and in the day’s brightening light Stuff again searched the vicinity of the gazebo for the peculiar weapon that had been used to garrote Jones. The palm trunks with their draperies of Mexican flame vine, the hibiscus, the general mesh of semitropical foliage defied him. The search was a bust.

  Lucille arose at eight.

  Lavender, her Bahamian maid, appeared with a breakfast tray, a copy of the Halcyon Sun, and a potpourri of pithy remarks uttered by Chef Friggoni on the blistering outrage of his stone crab entree having been linked by Mr. Dasher with his stomachache. “He,” Lavender concluded the recital, “resigns.”

  “I know,” Lucille agreed absently. “He always does. Ask him to do one of his cheese soufflés for lunch.”

  Lavender left.

  Lucille poured coffee, dipped into the rosy half of a chilled papaya, and took a look at the Halcyon Sun. On page 5, tucked beneath an old family-secret recipe for key lime pie that involved the daring use of a can and a half of condensed milk, a curt item covering Mr. Jones’s demise gave Lucille a sense of utter bewilderment—and a sudden chill. She tore the item out, bypassed a pair of patient boiled eggs and a rack of toast, left the house and headed for Griptread Tires.

  She found Lyle a limp invalid and suffering a bland-type breakfast in the patio. Their greetings as two young people who were betrothed and, hence, in love was a good bit under par—just an automatic exchange of chaste pecks.

  “Lyle,” she said with no preamble, “I’m worried sick. Read this.”

  Lyle shoved a repulsive bowl of predigested wheat to one side and read the item covering Woodberry Jones’s death, as it had been released to the press after a filtering process arranged by Stuff Driscoll and the State Attorney.

  Jones (Lyle read), a hitchhiker from the north, was believed by the police to have been accidentally killed when attempting to hold up an unidentified motorist who had stopped to give him a lift. It was believed that the motorist, realizing the man’s evil intention, had struck Jones a judo punch on the throat, knocking Jones backward as he attempted to force his way into the car, and had then sped on. “Well?” Lyle said. “What about it? Who’s Jones?”

  “Jones,” Lucille said, “is the face I saw yesterday morning in the bougainvillea and he’s the man those sirens were about last evening in the boxthorn.”

  Lyle’s brow creased in a manly frown, an eagle-like effect that was one of his best. “I still don’t understand why you should be upset?”

  “It’s because of Mr. Driscoll.”

  “That Sheriff’s man?”

  “Yes. He ordered me not to speak about it to anyone, especially not to reporters. Of course, you’re different. Mr. Driscoll was practically in a lather, and he said the fate of our Foundation may depend on my keeping silence.”

  “He must be off his rocker.”

  “No he isn’t, and he wasn’t stoned. This item is nothing but camouflage to cover the truth. That man was murdered. And you were deliberately poisoned. Lyle, dear, use your head. Can’t you see how serious this is?”

  “Yes, but I still don’t get it. Why?”

  “I don’t know why, but I’m sure it’s connected in some hidden fashion with the Foundation. Lyle, that murdered man, the attempt on your life, they’ve got to be taken seriously. Don’t you think we ought to give the project up? Or at least put it on ice until Mr. Driscoll finds out what the answer is?”

  Lyle momentarily discarded his limp invalidism and became his strong, dependable self, his whole bearing exuding what he fondly considered to be his Hoover look. “Look, dear,” he said, capturing one of Lucille’s hands protectively, “maybe there is something odd behind all of this, but we must be sensible, be adult about it. Give the project up? Shelve it, even? Think, dear! Surely you appreciate the amount of planning and money that already has gone into it?”

  Lyle tabulated the Foundation’s present status: the Auditorium booked and already sold out for the Revels Humane; the publicity already released not alone by Madame Alcott but by dignitaries even up to the Governor himself; the sponsors—civic organizations, service clubs, churches, etc.—already involved; the donations pledged…

  “How could we chuck all that,” Lyle asked reasonably, “just because some stranger lurked in your grounds and later tried to hold up a motorist? As for my being poisoned, even Dr. Camp at Memorial couldn’t determine just what the stuff was. I still lay the blame on a bad stone crab.”

  “But Mr. Driscoll and his dramatics? About the Foundation and any bad publicity, I mean?”

  “I’ll have a talk with Driscoll,” Lyle said. “I’ll explain to him how you feel, and I’ll insist on some straight answers. Doesn’t that make more sense?”

  Lucille, in a state of partial hypnosis under Lyle’s eagle gaze, admitted that it did.

  * * * *

  3 P.M.

  Chimes.

  “Good afternoon, dear friends. This is Molly Newhouse and I have two very special guests today who…”

  The TV interview hit the airways with the zombie overtones usually inherent in such stilted horrors and the only note of importance to this fable occurred when the broadcast was over and Lucille and Herschel had returned home.

  They went to the terrace for a quarter hour of relaxation from the recent strain, the lights, the general nerve-wrack of the studio. A couple of cool tall ones supplied by Hopper put them in a mood where confidences shimmered in the jasmine-scented air. Romance again spread rosy fingers across Lucille’s frayed nerves.

  The warmth in her chest rose several decibels while Herschel confided, via note writing, about his sister Estelle’s precarious health, their status as orphans, and modest hints at his big-brother protectorship. He indicated just how much this present job meant to him, now that deaf-muteness had cut him off from former occupations.

  It was the look on Herschel’s face, the blue candor in his eyes, that clinched Lucille’s determination that the Foundation must go on no matter what—much more convincingly than had Lyle’s coldly factual rationalizations.

  Impulsively she wrote in the notebook an assurance that his sister would have her operation by the finest specialist, with an arrangement (worded so that Herschel could not take offense) that Bellington papayas would foot the bill. She did not wait for a reply, for any mutual embarrassment involving expressions of gratitude, but left Herschel on the terrace and ran into the house.

  It is agreeable to note that the fanfaron in Herschel was touched, deeply touched, by this warmhearted gesture of Lucille’s. Sadly, however, it must also be admitted that Herschel still remained 99 percent tough egg. He took a newspaper from a ta
boret beside the bamboo long chair and earmarked a report for the later note-trapping of Lucille, even though his heart was no longer one hundred percent in his job.

  The report concerned a General Mendoza Conti, a South American ex-dictator then lavishly in exile in Miami, who had just been served an extradition warrant by a United States marshal. General Conti (charged at home with embezzlement and murder) intended to carry the case on appeal up to the Supreme Court. Should he lose and be deported into the hands, with guns in them, of his compatriots he would be a dead duck.

  Philosophically, Herschel pondered the general’s plight—how punch drunk with power could a guy get? These curious musings were shortly interrupted by Madame Alcott who swept him into a Bellington car and off for an appointment with Halcyon’s portrait photographer, a bearded bruiser named Adford Jasper Burnes. The thought was a group of stills of Herschel, the best one of which would muscularly cheesecake a poster for the Revels Humane.

  * * * *

  The activities of Stuff Driscoll at this hour involved a call at Griptread Tires, pursuant on Lyle’s telephoned request. Stuff joined the convalescing invalid, again in a male Mimi condition, in the patio and gave Lyle a polished verbal runaround with no factual information as to the true background of the investigation. He left Lyle in a state of frustrated satisfaction—the word foggy would best describe it.

  Stuff’s next port of call was Dr. William Ainsworth, the county’s medical examiner. Here, too, a measure of smog prevailed. The tests were still going on to determine the nature of Lyle Dasher’s poisoning, the peculiar residue traces left in the groove of strangulation on Jones’s throat, and the fingernail scrapings where Jones’s hands had clawed the object used as a garrote.

  Dr. Ainsworth did admit, however, that one conclusion had been reached: whatever the nature of the cord used to garrote Jones, it had definitely been in contact with some variety of vegetation.

  “Like raffia or something used for tying up shrubs?” Stuff asked.

  “Could be. We’re calling in some outside help from the University of Miami—Dr. Larson of the Medical Research Unit. We’re also getting in touch with Mrs. Julia Morton of the Morton Collectanea.”