by Unknown
“No can do,” McGavock said coldly. “I’m after a killer. Let’s hear about Bertram, the whole story.”
“You leave me no choice.” Jarrell gritted his huge jaw. “I’m afraid you’ve guessed the worst of it. A few weeks ago a citizen of our town, someone Lester Hodges had known all his life, came to him with an extraordinary business proposition. Who this person was, Lester refused to tell me. The rat was involved in that business deal.”
“Of course,” McGavock declared. “That’s been perfectly obvious from the start. You were keeping Hodges’ rat for him. No naturalist would confine such a large animal in such a small cage. It’s cruel. That was so Hodges could tie a string to its leg without the beast whipping around and fanging him.”
“Exactly.”
“What was this business deal?”
“This person employed Lester to search between the floors of an old, tumbledown health resort out in the pine country, Fern Springs. Hodges was half-mad—” Jarrell’s voice was patronizing, amiable. McGavock remembered Bennett’s statement: The two town nuts—Jarrell and Hodges. “Lester was half-mad,” the naturalist repeated. “He tackled the problem with a system of his own. He tied fishing line onto the rodent’s leg and used him some way in the search. I don’t know how on earth he induced the animal to act.”
“He was searching for obstructions under the floor,” McGavock explained. “He placed the rat in an opening by the baseboard. Floor joists run parallel—under every floor there’s a series of small tunnels. It was pretty clever. It saved him ripping up goodness knows how much floor space. It was the most plausible way to do it.
Malcom Jarrell frowned. “But how did he make the animal obey?”
“He scared him through with tiny firecrackers, a commodity obtainable at any Deep South country store. Hodges slipped his pet into the floor, popped off a firecracker—and judged by the length of slack in the line the progress his animal was making under the floor. Did the old man find what he was supposed to?”
“I don’t know. I should say he was slain before he was successful. He’d come over in the evening and talk to me in a vague sort of way. I got the impression that he and his employer were satisfied with the way the business was going. His employer was paying him a steady salary of four dollars a week—sending him banknotes wrapped in blank paper. Lester was quite excited over his good fortune.”
McGavock said: “You’re being candid with me? You’re telling me everything?”
Jarrell had his old poise back. “Oh, quite. You’ll have to excuse me now. You have work to do.” He resumed his scrutiny of the black ants. “And so have I.”
As soon as McGavock laid eyes on the local law he knew that he was in for a catch-as-catch-can tussle.
The sheriff of Linden County was the direct antithesis of the old-style rural sharpshooter that pinned his rusty badge to his gallus elastic and toted a .38-in-a-.44 frame at a holster on his hip as big as an English riding saddle. The young man that lolled on the corner of Hal Maldron’s desk was modest, friendly, self-effacing. He was dressed in well-cut blue-gray tweed. And his fingernails were a little over-manicured.
It was the fingernails that scared McGavock. This lad must have plenty on the ball. The hard-bitten mountain folk of Linden County wouldn’t have elected him if he was as sappy as he seemed. The coon-hunting hillmen selected their sheriff like they selected their hound dogs—for brains and guts and stamina. McGavock had the strange feeling that he was in the presence of a hotshot, deliver-the-goods career man.
The young man smiled. “Howdy. I’m Steve Robley—the current and temporary head of our local crime and punishment bureau. It’s mighty swell of you to look me up. I hope I’m not imposing?”
McGavock was stunned. “No,” he said carefully. “It’s a pleasure. Is Maldron, here, a deputy of yours?”
Hal Maldron lifted his fat lip, exposed his decayed teeth. “Yes,” he announced, “I am.”
“No,” the sheriff said, “you’re not. I’m sorry, Hal, but I’m going to have to revoke your authority for the duration of this brief but pleasant interview. We mustn’t intimidate our new friend with a belligerent show of force.” He got out a stubby briar pipe, loaded it, got it going. “I’ve gone over the hammer, Mr. McGavock. I can’t find any prints.”
McGavock remarked: “I left the hammer under the body. As a proof to you that I wasn’t down here to tamper with evidence.” It was a bluff, a case of life or death. He surged with relief when the sheriff nodded.
“The very conclusion that I myself came to. I must say it gave me a bit of surprise—I’d always been under the impression that private detectives were not so cooperative.”
“I’ve tried it that way,” McGavock said. “It’s the hard way. Now I cooperate.” This boy really had a deadpan. He wondered if he was being maneuvered out on a limb. “Can I be of any service to you?”
“Yes,” the sheriff said slowly. “You certainly can be. I’m stumped. What’s it all about? Who’d want to murder harmless old Hodges?”
McGavock was impressed. “This is a long story. And a muddled one. I work for an agency in Memphis. For twenty years now we’ve been investigating a case for a brokerage firm in Cleveland. Back in nineteen-nine they had a guy abscond with seventy grand. He came down here to Fern Springs and vanished.”
He had them entranced. They were swallowing it, every word. There could be no doubt of it.
Maldron said helplessly: “Why didn’t you say so last night! I didn’t apprehend that you had such powerful backing. You people have been working on a case in this vicinity for twenty years? I can hardly believe it!”
“We’ve been working on the case—but not in this community. It was the slaying of Lester Hodges that gave us the break we’ve been looking for.”
Sheriff Robley was flustered. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Mr. McGavock. A certain party—” Maldron looked miserable. “A certain party summoned me last night by an imperative phone call. He said that you were retained by a cousin of Mr. Jarrell’s and that you came down here from Memphis for the sole purpose of obstructing justice. He said that he’d go into court and swear that you had consulted him last night about his client and had attempted to entice him into illegal conspiracy.”
“These sure-fire lawyers,” McGavock said pleasantly. “No wonder they win cases. They butter their bread on both sides. Who’s he representing—Jarrell or you? I may say at this time, that we in Memphis have had occasion to speculate a little about this Maldron. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise us to learn that somehow he’s directly involved. He knows something. He was at Fern Springs in that fatal August when Wainwright disappeared. He—”
Maldron glared. “And so were Bennett and Malcom and Bradley and half the town.”
McGavock shook a finger dramatically. “Then, sir,” he declaimed basso profundo, “then why, sir, did you write us that unusual note—the one about Wainwright’s bones, seek at Fern Springs and ye shall find?”
The lawyer fidgeted. “Nonsense. You’re out of your head.”
Steve Robley looked suddenly intent. “Go on, Mr. McGavock.”
“That’s all,” McGavock said. “Comes in this crank letter signed ‘Hal Maldron’ talking about a dead man’s bones—”
The sheriff said softly: “The letter was typewritten, of course?”
“Not as I remember it. Written in big letters, in ink, as I recall it.”
The young sheriff stepped to Maldron’s desk, inspected the surface of the much-used blotter. He rubbed his chin, looked at the ceiling for a moment, turned the blotter over. The inked imprints stood out in heavy black scrawls. The sheriff took a pocket mirror from his comb-case, held it above the inscription.
“ ‘The bones of Thompson J. Wainwright are at Fern Springs,’ ” he read. “ ‘Seek and ye shall find!’ Thank you, Mr. McGavock. You’ve been of great assistance. I’ll not keep you any longer.”
Alone, on the sun-splashed sidewalk, McGavock wiped a trembling hand acr
oss his forehead and said, “Whoo!” So the hammer was under the corpse all the time. He’d started his investigation by muffing the murder weapon. It had been a nerve-racking ten minutes. They had been waiting for him, all set to drive him out of town. He’d sidestepped it. For how long, he didn’t know—but for the time being, anyhow. And time was what he needed.
“Six hours,” McGavock decided. “Give me six hours more and I’ll blow this thing seven ways to Christmas!”
Gil Bennett was in his office at the cotton gin. A little room not much larger than a chicken coop, its walls were plastered with commercial calendars—wild ducks in topsy-turvy flight, prize bulls, and turgid maidens in air-brushed bathing suits. Bennett sat on a rocker with a spliced leg by a cluttered roll-top desk. Laid out before him were a wine glass, an egg, a bottle of pepper sauce and a salt cellar. “Glad to see you,” he said. “Hitch up and dismount.”
The only other article of furniture in the room was a battered church pew along the wall. McGavock stretched himself out full-length, propped himself up on the arm, and grinned. “Do you think you’ll live?” he asked.
Bennett’s voice was hollow. “I doubt it.” He broke the raw egg in the wine glass, dusted it with a sprinkle of salt and doused it liberally with pepper sauce. “A prairie oyster. Will you go along with me, sir?” McGavock shook his head. The businessman took it at a gulp. “You must break the yolk with your tongue as it goes down,” he said. “Ugh!”
McGavock remarked sententiously: “The wages of sin.” He laughed. “Get that wilted expression off your face. You’re afraid I’m going to continue our conversation of last evening. I’m not. You were a guest at the Fern Springs resort back in nineteen-nine when a guy named Wainwright drifted in with a satchel of hot money—and evaporated. Do you happen to remember the attendant circumstances?”
“Very well, indeed.” Bennett was grim.
“Swell. The place, I understand, is now owned by Mrs. Bennett, who inherited it. The episode occurred some years before Mrs. Bennett was born. Who did it belong to at the time?”
“To an invalid relative of hers down in Louisiana. She inherited it at his death. Mrs. Bennett, by the way, comes from New Orleans. She’s not actually a native of our country.”
“I see,” McGavock said. “If the resort had an absentee landlord, who ran the joint? Bradley?”
“Scarcely! Bradley was just a general utility man. Malcom Jarrell was the titled manager.”
“I see. One thing more. Have you any personal theory as to what happened? I mean, were you satisfied at the time by the way the thing was explained?”
Bennett’s answer was calm, detached. “There’s always been bad friendship between Malcom Jarrell and myself. Everybody in town knows it—you should understand it before I express an opinion on so grave a point. My answer is no. I wasn’t satisfied at the time and I’m less satisfied today. I think Wainwright was killed and his money was stolen.”
McGavock was silent.
“It’s this way,” Bennett amplified. “We live in a small community here. We know each other—and our families have known each other—for a good many years. We can guess the income of our neighbors to a plugged nickel. Malcom Jarrell has a most scanty income—yet he has prospered.”
McGavock retorted: “Isn’t the same true of Cal Bradley?”
“In a way, yes. But Cal’s case is a little different. He’s a low, cunning trickster. Men like Cal Bradley are destined to prosper despite all laws of order and decency.”
McGavock got to his feet, slapped his hat against his thigh. “I’d hate to go into court with that kind of a brief.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re holding back something, aren’t you?” He dropped his hat on the floor, picked it up and cocked it on the crown of his head. “Don’t let me shove you into anything.”
Bennett answered wryly: “I won’t. There’s more to this mess than shows on the surface. Whenever you—”
He was interrupted mid-sentence by a timid knock on the door and the entry of a stalwart young hillman. The caller was dressed in a plaid cotton shirt; a three-inch brass-studded belt held up his faded denim trousers. He confronted them with wooden composure. “Which one of y’all might happen to be Mr. Bennett, the man that owned that ol’ Fern Springs bat den?”
“Me,” Bennett said. “And I still own it. Or rather Mrs. Bennett does. Why?”
“I’m Asie Tenniman. I’m yore south neighbor back there in the pine country. I shore hate to tell you, suh, but ain’t nobuddy owns that building no more. It was farred down to ashes at daybreak this mornin’. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring the word no sooner. Hit’s eighteen miles by muleback an’—”
“Are you telling me,” Bennett asked, “that our resort has been burned?”
“And I don’t mean maybe. Some mighty mean folks live out there in the timber.” The hillman added carelessly: “My woman claims she heard a boiler let loose jest about the time we seen the red.”
“Shiners?”
The boy wouldn’t commit himself. “I couldn’t hardly say, suh. I’m jest a-telling y’all what I know. Good mornin’, gentlemen.”
And he was gone.
McGavock cut out: “Eighteen miles in and eighteen miles back—on a mule. And not a penny, not even a word of thanks.”
“You don’t understand these people,” Gil Bennett observed quietly. “If I’d offered him money he’d have thrown it in my face. It’s a favor and I’ll remember it. Maybe sometime I’ll have a chance to pay a doctor’s bill or something for him.… What do you make of it?”
The detective fanned the air. “It’s too much for me!”
CHAPTER FOUR
SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND
here was a telegram waiting for him on his return to the hotel. A pimple-faced kid with a muff of uncut hair skipped it across the register with an insolent flourish. He was wearing an oversize alpaca coat and black-ribboned nose glasses. “And who are you, my scrofulous adolescent?” McGavock inquired.
“I’m swing man to this joint. Mr. Bradley, he’s takened him a day off. He’s got a misery.”
“Mr. Bradley’s ill? You don’t seem overcome with grief.”
“Not me. It ain’t no shingles off my smokehouse.” He paused. “That’s shore a nutty telegram in that there envelope. I chanct to hold ’er up to the light. I can’t make no sense out’n—”
“You got a fine start, son.” McGavock was warm in his encouragement. “Just keep on candling private correspondence and you’ve got a big future before you.”
Behind the locked door of his room, McGavock slit the envelope, extracted the yellow flimsy. The message was signed Atherton Browne. It read:
EIGHT FOUR ONE COMMA TWO TWELVE FIVE COMMA ONE THREE ONE COMMA TWENTY ONE FOUR COMMA SIX ONE SEVEN COMMA ELEVEN NINE THREE YOU’RE NOT ON A VACATION.
McGavock glowered. He went to his Gladstone and got out his copy of Dr. Trimble’s Hygiene for Babies, the Browne Agency keybook. Page eight, line four, word one gave him what. Page two, line twelve, word five was if. Laboriously, the detective leafed back and forth, broke down the code.
The deciphered message read: What if anything are you accomplishing—you’re not on a vacation.
McGavock purpled. He grabbed the book till the veins stood out on his wrist. He drew back his arm to dash the volume against the wall, froze, grinned. He uncapped his fountain pen, settled down and filled out an answer.
It took him twenty minutes to get it the way he wanted it. The final draft said: Page one seventeen, paragraph three, in toto.
Paragraph three on page one hundred seventeen of Dr. Trimble’s Hygiene for Babies said: Keep your nasal passages clean!
He left the wire with the kid at the desk with the injunction that he get it off immediately—and headed for the Bartonville garage. He wanted to rent a car and take a look at what was left of Fern Springs.
Sheriff Steve Robley was lounging beneath the shady marquee of the Magnolia Drugstore. He uncrossed his ankles, picked a short cigarette stub
out of an ivory holder, put the holder in a little velvet-lined case. “Luther McGavock!” He saluted the detective. “The Man of Forty Faces.”
McGavock came to a halt, squinted. “What’s the rib, Sheriff?”
Robley gave him a quick, friendly grin. “You’ve really got this town on its ear. They’ve been comparing notes on you. I’ve had a dozen warnings about you. To Cal Bradley you’re representing a mythical celery king named Boggs. Malcom Jarrell thinks he’s your client. You tell Maldron and myself that you’re representing some brokers in Cleveland. The clerk at Jones’ hardware store tells me that you bought a compass from him and that you are not McGavock at all but a man named, singularly, Lester Hodges.” The sheriff’s lips quirked in a boyish smile but the skin about his eyes was tight. “Furthermore and furthermore. That ‘seek the bones’ message on Hal Maldron’s desk blotter is just a little too good to be true. It makes me uneasy. I’ve put a call through to your agency in Memphis to check it but can’t seem to get any satisfactory response. They must have the letter on file—if such a letter exists.”
“Of course they have,” McGavock declared. “That letter’s going to clear up this case.”
“That’s my car yonder by the watering trough.” The sheriff pointed lazily to a low, tan job bright with metalwork. “I was just pondering a trip out to the old resort. I’d like a little company. Think I could shanghai you into going along?”
McGavock frowned. “Don’t pressure me. I got a schedule that’s swamping me.” He considered. “O.K.,” he agreed. “If we can get back before suppertime.”
The drive deep into the hills was rough and tiresome. Just out of town they struck the sloping red clay road and started their winding climb. Through a gap in the foliage, they could glimpse the village. It lay in the dank liquid-green of the bottoms, its buildings like tiny matchboxes. Main Street seemed one long, rambling shed. McGavock made out the red-painted cotton compress, court square and—in the distance—the rickety wooden trestle curving above the cut with its long, spindly supports. The trestle by Hodges’ shanty where his attacker had opened on him with shotgun slugs … Great oaks closed about them and the picture was gone.