The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  The shoes had been removed for evidence. In Halliday’s closet Case found four more pairs hanging in a shoe bag, a half dozen neatly pressed suits, hats, and the usual attire of a man interested in life.

  “Nothing here but clothes, a bed and a picture,” Hall grumbled from his post by the door.

  Case went on, searching the carpet, behind the dresser and finally with great reluctance he lowered his body and crawled about under the bed. At last, apparently satisfied, he returned to the door.

  “The great Robert Case admits he’s crazy, that the murderer wasn’t hiding under Halliday’s bed and that he’s ready to pay up or shut up,” Hall recited in a monotone.

  Case went through the opened door and down to the lobby without answering. Outside, he turned and forced Hall to halt with him.

  “Like to take a ride to the morgue?” he asked.

  Inspector Hall maintained his usual uneven temper and a string of oaths escaped his heavy lips. “What in the name of Saint Peter are we going to do at the morgue?”

  Case started for the car. “I’d like to take another look at Glenn Halliday,” he replied calmly. “If you don’t want to come…”

  Hall hesitated, and then climbed in. He sat back silently as Case shifted the gears and pulled away from the curb. For a time they rode in silence. Finally Hall could contain himself no longer. “Bob, for Heaven’s sake, let me in on it, will you? I’ll go crazy if you don’t stop this silence strike and talk.”

  Case no longer smiled. His eyes were on the road ahead, and it wasn’t the sun’s glare that made them slitted and stone cold. “Sorry, Jim,” he said. “I don’t know myself. It’s just a feeling I get about these things. That girl didn’t deserve to die. I just want to make sure we’ve got the right man.”

  With no more than the necessary delay they entered the cold death chamber of the city morgue. With the attendant, a dried up man of fifty, they went down the line of ice boxes set into the wall.

  Hesitating before one of them, the man compared tickets, loosened the handle and opened the door to the ice box. Cold, odorless air swept out into the room. The dull, hollow scraping of metal on wood, a white sheet drawn back and Case started quickly to examine the stiff body of Glenn Halliday. He worked swiftly. The job wasn’t a pleasant one for the mild little man. The head, neck, chest, the whole body was unmarked by any wound, except the bloodless hole in the side of the head. Hall stood by patiently until Case reached the up-turned feet.

  “I told you you’d find nothing here,” he growled suddenly. “Stop looking at his feet. The man doesn’t even have a corn, not that it makes a hell of a lot of difference.”

  Case turned away. He held his hands at his side as would a doctor who is anxious to reach hot water and soap.

  “That’s just what I was afraid of,” he said bitterly. “Not a mark on his body other than the wound in his head.”

  * * * *

  PERCY WALLACE, Regent Shoe House’s best salesman, expressed pleasant surprise as Inspector James Hall and Robert Case opened the plate glass doors and strolled in. Hall saw Wallace standing beside the cash register and approached him, smiling pleasantly.

  “Good afternoon.” Wallace held out his hand. “I don’t suppose I can sell you gentlemen any shoes?”

  The question was meant to be humorous, but from the expressions on his visitors’ faces, he knew it had fallen flat.

  “Mr. Case would like to talk with you,” Hall said. “Just a few details to be straightened out.”

  Percy Wallace smiled pleasantly at the little man he had seen behind the law book at Inspector Hall’s office.

  “I’m very glad to help all I can,” he said. “Shall we go into the back room? I’m not needed right now.”

  Case nodded shortly and the three men passed through a narrow aisle and into what seemed to serve as combination office and stock room. There were two chairs against the wall, evidently removed from the front of the store. Wallace motioned to them and Hall sat down. Case remained on his feet, walking up and down along the wall of shoe boxes. He seemed interested in them.

  Wallace remained standing, saw that Case didn’t intend to use the chair meant for him, and finally sank into it himself.

  Case whipped around suddenly, looked straight into Wallace’s weak eyes.

  “You knew Helen Kane, didn’t you?”

  Wallace squirmed uncomfortably. This wasn’t the question he had expected but with a quick gulp he managed to stammer an answer. “I knew Helen-er-Miss Kane several years ago,” he admitted. “That is, I knew of her.”

  Case didn’t relax his steady stare. “I think you knew her, not several years ago, but several weeks ago. In fact you knew her and were in love with her up to the time of her death.”

  Wallace tried to control himself. His hands on the arms of the chair were white and bloodless from the grip they had taken.

  “You—you’re wrong,” he said. “It’s true that Helen and I were friends. That’s all it amounts to. I never met Halliday.”

  Case was relentless. “What makes you mention Halliday?” Wallace sprang to his feet, his face pale.

  “I don’t know. That is—you’re trying to make it look as though I was mixed up in this case. I told you all I know. You can’t rightfully accuse me…”

  Robert Case was sure of himself now. He pushed his argument as a well-trained lawyer would fight for ground. “Wallace, you’ve got something on your mind. Something that’s going to haunt you straight to the electric chair. When I came down here I had a pretty good idea that you were the murderer. You’ve given enough away for me to prove it.”

  Wallace stood stiff and alert, eyes wide with terror.

  Jim Hall was at his side, puzzled but ready to back up Robert Case when the little man needed him.

  “Sit down, Wallace,” Case said suddenly. “Sit down and let’s see just how good a shoe salesman you really are.”

  His voice was silky, soothing as a snake charmer’s.

  Like a man in a dream, Wallace sank backward into the chair. He sat very still, his throat knotted and jumping.

  “Take off your right shoe.” Hypnotized, Wallace reached down, managed the knot and removed the shoe from his foot.

  “And the stocking.”

  Hall stood by, a completely bewildered man. He forgot to rub his scalp and his fingers jerked nervously at his side. Case was close to the shoe salesman now. He reached down suddenly and jerked up Wallace’s foot.

  “Look, Inspector,” he said. “The man who killed Helen Kane was wearing two left shoes. Wallace claims Halliday did it. What happens to a man’s foot if he wears an opposite shoe for an extended period of time?”

  The room was dead silent. Wallace’s breath was coming hard. Hall scratched his head and sudden understanding flashed into his eyes.

  “Good God, man, you’ve got it! Halliday’s feet were as smooth as glass.”

  Case nodded grimly, still keeping his hold on the shoe salesman’s foot.

  “And Wallace, who makes a business of perfect fitting, has a raw blister on his big toe and his whole foot is red and creased.”

  Wallace jerked away suddenly with all his weight.

  “You’re making a fool of me!” he screamed. “I had nothing to do with it. Nothing, you understand?”

  His voice was high pitched and hysterical. Before Inspector Hall could reach him, Wallace dodged to one side and tried to dash for the door. There was satisfaction in Robert Case’s eyes as he put out a quick right foot and caught Wallace. The shoe salesman went sprawling. Like lightning he was on his knees and trying to stand again. Case reached his side and with unholy delight planted a haymaker on his chin. Wallace’s head jerked suddenly to one side as though hit by a truck. His Adam’s apple bounced up and sank down again slowly and a groan of pain split his lips. He sank to the carpet with blood oozing from his mouth.

  “Nice going,” Hall said admiringly. “You may be a half pint, Bob, but what you can reach, you can kill.”

&nb
sp; Case rubbed his throbbing fist, flexing the fingers painfully.

  “I wonder if it was worth it,” he asked ruefully. “I won’t be able to hold a book for a month.”

  * * * *

  Percy Wallace was safely in his cell before Hall and Robert Case retired to the warmth of Hall’s office. The Inspector had been rubbing his classic dome for several hours now and was no closer to an explanation than before. With the door safely locked, he brought out a tall bottle of rosy, transparent liquid, and two glasses, and placed them on the desk before him.

  “Fifteen-year-old stuff,” he said lovingly and fingered the cork of the bottle. “Never get it out for anything but special occasions.”

  Case flopped wearily opposite him, crossed his legs and straightened the crease in his trousers.

  “This is special, isn’t it?” he admitted. “In a way, I’m sorry it’s over.”

  Hall grinned broadly.

  “You won’t get lonely,” he answered. “People get murdered every day.”

  He filled a tall glass and handed it to Case. The little man touched it to his lips and said soberly:

  “Yet, if I could drink a toast that could be reality, I’d say, ‘a toast to murderers. May they always murder their own kind.’ That’s what gets me, Jim. The innocent ones have to take it.”

  Hall was thoughtful.

  “How about it, Bob? Shoot the works, will you?”

  “The works?”

  “Yeah! How did you first find out that Wallace was involved in the crime?”

  Case drank deeply and placed the partly emptied glass on the edge of the desk.

  “I didn’t have a thing to do with it,” he admitted. “Wallace convicted himself.”

  Hall’s eyes were steady. “Go on.”

  Case smiled. “Remember I told you that if you left a murderer alone long enough, things would start happening? I wasn’t satisfied with the whole thing. When Wallace came here, he was finishing his plan for the perfect crime. He made it so perfect that he walked into his own net. Wallace was clever. He even figured out a new way to kill and he based it on a trade he was accustomed to. He knew that Glenn Halliday had a date with Helen Kane. He picked up Helen and convinced her with some wild story that she should take a drive with him. He probably pretended that he was sorry for the trouble he’d caused her.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Wallace loved Helen Kane. She turned him down for Halliday. Surely that’s an old story?”

  Hall nodded.

  “Go on,” he urged.

  Case leaned back in his chair.

  “Quite simple,” he said. “Wallace met the girl and took her out Highway 6. He was wearing two left shoes. He murdered the girl, made a lot of confusing tracks around her body and returned to town. He already had two right shoes in his car. He went to Halliday’s room, shot him in the head and made it look like a suicide. Then he planted a dirty left shoe and a clean right under the bed. Returning to the store, he turned in the shoes he had left and reported the transaction as he explained it to us.”

  For once, Hall forgot to bluster. “Case, I’ve got to hand it to you. All that on guess work, and because Halliday didn’t have any bruises on his feet.”

  “Not quite,” Case admitted. “To begin with, when we visited Halliday’s room the second time, he had a whole shoe bag of practically new shoes hanging in his closet. That’s the first definite clue I had. A man doesn’t rush around in the afternoon buying shoes, then go out to murder a girl wearing two lefts, when he has several perfect pairs in his closet.”

  Inspector Hall poured a second glass, stoppered the bottle and placed it gently away in his desk.

  “I guess we don’t have to worry about smart shoe salesmen as long as our men are just a little smarter,” he said softly.

  “When did you find out that Wallace had been in love with Helen Kane?”

  “When Wallace told me,” Case admitted. “After I figured out who killed Helen Kane and Glenn Halliday, it wasn’t so hard to figure out why. Our friend Percy Wallace is going to spend a lot of sleepless nights wondering just how his perfect crime went astray.”

  Case stood up, tossed down a last drop and passed the empty glass to the man behind the desk. “I’ve got to be running, Jim,” he said, and glanced hurriedly at his pocket watch.

  “Relax,” Hall urged. “We both need a rest.”

  Robert Case slipped quickly into his coat. “Sorry,” he said, “my feet have been killing me for the past week. I’m going out and pick up a new pair of shoes!”

  THE MYSTERY OF THE DOWNS, by John R. Watson and Arthur J. Rees

  CHAPTER I

  The storm had descended swiftly, sweeping in suddenly from the sea, driving across the downs to the hills at high speed, blotting out the faint rays of a crescent moon and hiding the country-side beneath a pall of blackness, which was forked at intervals by flashes of lightning.

  The darkness was so impenetrable, and the fury of the storm so fierce, that Harry Marsland pulled his hat well over his eyes and bent over his horse’s neck to shield his face from the driving rain, trusting to the animal’s sagacity and sure-footedness to take him safely down the cliff road in the darkness, where a slip might plunge them into the breakers which he could hear roaring at the foot of the cliffs.

  Hardly had Marsland done so when his horse swerved violently right across the road—fortunately to the side opposite the edge of the cliffs—slipped and almost fell, but recovered itself and then stood still, snorting and trembling with fear.

  He patted and spoke to the horse, wondering what had frightened it. He had seen or heard nothing, but the darkness of the night and the roar of the gale would have prevented him, even if his face had not been almost buried in his horse’s neck. However, the rain, beating with sharp persistence on his face and through his clothes, reminded him that he was some miles from shelter on a lonely country road, with only a vague idea of his whereabouts. So, with a few more soothing words, he urged his horse onward again. The animal responded willingly enough, but as soon as it moved Marsland discovered to his dismay that it was lame in the off hind leg. The rider was quick to realize that it must have sprained itself in swerving.

  He slipped out of his saddle and endeavoured to feel the extent of the horse’s injury, but the animal had not entirely recovered from its fright, and snorted as his master touched it. Marsland desisted, and gently pulled at the bridle.

  The horse struggled onwards a few paces, but it was badly lamed, and could not be ridden. It thrust a timid muzzle against its master’s breast, as though seeking refuge from its fears and the fury of the storm. Marsland patted its head caressingly, and, facing the unpleasant fact that he was on an unknown lonely road with a lame horse in the worst storm he had ever seen, drew the bridle over his arm and started to walk forward.

  He found it difficult to make progress in the teeth of the gale, but he realized that it would be useless to retrace his steps with the wind at his back, for only the bleak bare downs he had ridden over that afternoon lay behind, and the only house he had seen was a shepherd’s cottage on the hill-side where he had stopped to inquire his way before the storm came on. There was nothing to be done but face the gale and go forward, following the cliff road which skirted the downs, or to seek shelter for himself and his horse at the way-side house until the fury of the storm had abated. Prudence and consideration for his horse dictated the latter course, but in the blackness of the night—which hung before him like a cloud—he was unable to discern a twinkle of light denoting human habitation.

  The storm seemed to gather fresh force, rushing in from the sea with such fury that Marsland was compelled to stand still and seek shelter beside his horse. As he stood thus, waiting for it to abate, a vivid flash of lightning ran across the western sky, revealing lividly the storm clouds flying through the heavens, the mountainous yellow-crested sea, and the desolate, rain-beaten downs; but it revealed, also, a farm-house standing in the valley below, a little way back from
the road which wound down towards it from where Marsland stood.

  The lightning died away, the scene it had illumined disappeared, and a clap of thunder followed. Marsland heaved a sigh of relief. He judged that the house was less than a half a mile down the hill, a large, gaunt, three-storied stone building, with steeply sloping roof, standing back from the road, with a barn beside it. Doubtless it was the home of a sheep-farmer of the downs, who would at any rate afford shelter to himself and his horse till the violence of the storm had passed.

  The horse responded to an encouraging appeal as though it fully understood, and Marsland doggedly resumed his battle with the storm. The road slanted away slightly from the cliff when horse and rider had covered another hundred yards, and wound through a long cutting on the hill which afforded some protection from the gale, enabling them to make quicker progress. But still Marsland could not see a yard in front of him. Even if his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, the heavy rain, beating almost horizontally on his face, would have prevented him seeing anything.

  He had matches in his pocket, but it was useless to attempt to strike them in such a wind, and he reproached himself for having come away without his electric torch. Slowly and cautiously he made his way down the road, feeling his footsteps as he went, the tired horse following obediently. The cutting seemed a long one, but at length a sudden blast of wind, roaring in from the sea, told him that he had emerged into the open again. He counted off another hundred paces, then paused anxiously.

  “The house ought to be somewhere on the left down there,” he muttered, staring blindly into the dark.

  He wondered in an irritated fashion why there were no lights showing from the farm-house, which he felt must be very close to where he stood. But he recollected that farmers kept early hours, and he realized that the occupants of the house might well be excused for going to bed on such a night even earlier than usual.

  As though in answer to an unspoken wish, a flash of lightning played over the sky. It was faint and fitful, but it was sufficient to reveal the farm standing a little way ahead, about a hundred yards back from the road. He saw clearly the hedge which divided its meadows from the road, and noted that a gate leading into a wagon drive on the side of the meadow nearest him had been flung open by the force of the gale, and was swinging loosely on its hinges.