The 2nd Golden Age of Mystery and Crime MEGAPACK ™: Ruth Chessman

by Ruth Chessman

  He flung the money down on the table, but before Beaton’s greedy hands could reach it, one of the two men covered the coins with a great hand.

  “This must wait,” he said sharply. “Hitty—Hitty, girl—” he called, and the young woman, holding her child in a shawl, came from an inner room. She was pale with more than sleeplessness, Walter thought. She was a fine-looking girl, though, his kind entirely, and even in this moment of surrender he begrudged Curtis his wife. Curtis—? He wondered at the landlord’s absence, and at the way the two strangers would not give Beaton his five pounds. He soon learned the why of it, for as Hitty stood there, his eyes on her caught a glimpse of something on the floor and he whirled back for a good look. “Dead—why, the man’s dead! What’s happened to Curtis?”

  “Strangled—and may he rot,” one said contemptuously. “A mean life he led our sister Hitty. When she called us this night and said he was murdered, but still we must take you in to be charged for the killing.”

  “So!” cried Beaton. “You cheat the gallows in the old country only to hang here. I knew you for a rogue the first I clapped eyes on you!”

  “These transportees are all of a cloth,” Hitty’s first brother said. “Murderers all. And not only that—robbery! Now tell us, Hitty, what money had you?”

  “Six pounds English, Jason,” she said quietly. Walter thought she would not long scold the fate that had made her a widow, from the looks of her. “Six pounds English, I have said, and a Spanish dollar, and some coins of the Bay Colony—all I do not remember but sure I am of three pine-tree shillings. I counted the money in the till before I left to see to the babe.”

  “Then he’ll have the rest on him!”

  The brothers searched Walter who submitted unprotestingly, saying, “But I did not kill him, Ma’am, nor yet rob him in the ordinary sense. I played a trick on him, yes, I grant that. But no more.”

  “The five pounds is his all,” Jason muttered. “What say you to that, Peter?”

  “I say that he has lost the rest. I say that he has robbed and killed our dear brother-in-law, and that instead of thanking him properly we must give him in charge.”

  Beaton broke in eagerly, “Then why do it? None know the truth but us, and we will not tell it.”

  “None know the truth but the murderer and I,” Walter said, “and since he will not tell it, I must.”

  “Look you!” Peter cried, half in admiration. “Again he denies his guilt!”

  “For I am not guilty,” said Walter. “But I know who is, and I will teach you how you may be as wise as I.”

  “Hark to the learned man,” Beaton said contemptuously. “Know you, he is but gallows bait.”

  Walter might not have heard him. “Curtis and I haggled over the price,” he said coolly. “Since I wished the bargain to seem real, we haggled, and when mine host still hesitated at five English pounds I tossed him the only coin I had, a farthing black with time. This turned the trick.”

  “Yes,” said Hitty, nodding. “It is like my poor husband.”

  “Which farthing is not in your till now, I believe?” Walter asked, and Peter retorted, “Did you not hear, man? The till’s empty!”

  “Oh, aye, and murderer is richer by all that was in the till, and my farthing with it. Thus all you need do is seek out the man who holds my farthing, and you have the murderer.”

  Hitty groaned her disappointment aloud. “One farthing is like its brother!”

  “But not this one—not this black old coin that crossed from England in my pocket. This was no common rose farthing, but an old Harrington farthing with the crowned harp. You do not get many such on this side of the water!”

  Beaton started to move towards the door and Walter cried, “Lay hold of him. Search him.”

  Hitty’s brothers were too quick and too big for Beaton, and emptied his pockets of all the money he had collected during the day’s trading, of all he may have had to begin with, of all—and one discolored old Harrington farthing.

  “Trying to enslave me, he was,” Beaton muttered. “Saying he’d bought and paid for me, and no money to show for it in my pocket. Trying to rob me, he was, and when I resisted, he resisted, and then—”

  “—then with your strong fingers you tried to choke the truth out of him,” Walter said, “only it was his life he gave up.”

  The two brothers talked it over, and decided there was enough of a moon for them to ride to Philadelphia with Beaton in what was left of the night. “I will have a good plea for my life, never you fear,” Beaton said, making no objection to going with them. But as they came to the door, he screeched, “My money—my five pounds.”

  “No, you don’t!” Peter cried. “This money is our sister’s, a poor widow with a child to raise. Leave the money, and instead take back your man.”

  “No, wait!” Hitty commanded, and looked at Walter as she spoke. “I will need a strong man here if I am to go on with the inn. Let the man stay.”

  The brothers looked at one another, at their sister, then last at Walter, seeming to see him for the first time.

  “He’s a crafty one, I’ll wager,” Peter observed.

  “Lived by his wits, I doubt not,” Jason agreed.

  “Never lifted a finger to a job of work,” they told Hitty, who answered, “He will work for me.” She crossed the room, picked up the five pounds, and dropped them one by one into Beaton’s outspread hand.

  Beaton pocketed the money before he spoke. “Watch him close, Mistress Curtis,” he said spitefully. “He is most pleased the docks are so near.”

  “You will not run away, will you, man?” Hitty asked, and smiled suddenly at him. “You will serve me faithfully, will you not?”

  “Oh, aye, I will serve you well,” he promised, and in his eyes there was a message that spoke of more than bonded servitude.

  l

  IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE ?

  Originally published in Bestseller Mystery Magazine, Nov. 1959

  By eight o’clock the November night had been dark for hours, and at exactly eight the beat cop turned the corner at Hartwell Avenue and First. Simultaneously the man who called himself Corning slid his swanky convertible to a stop directly in front of the old Corning house. Somewhere inside lay anybody’s dream of a fortune in jewels.

  Phelan—the cop—stopped and watched as he got out. Corning carried his newly purchased doctor’s bag, and he had stolen a green cross to put near his license plate, so he looked like the real thing.

  “Somebody sick inside?” Phelan asked.

  Corning permitted himself a brief moment of triumph. Without saying a word he had put over the masquerade.

  Phelan’s question was natural. Old Mrs. Corning was a particular responsibility saddled onto whichever patrolman was on duty, because in spite of her money—and she had plenty—she wouldn’t spend a cent for a burglar alarm. For that matter, the rich widow wouldn’t spend a cent for servants either. Although a weak heart confined her to the house and very often to her bed, she managed with no help except for her thirty-second cousin who lived with her.

  “Is it the old lady?” the cop pressed him. “Or the cousin?”

  Corning laughed good-humoredly. He was tall and well-built, with dark eyes and black hair—a handsome man. “I hope not,” he said in his excellent voice. “I left my aunt and cousin feeling as well as usual this morning.” He handed Phelan one of the cards he’d had printed.

  “Dr. Corning,” Phelan read in the glow of the street light. “Didn’t know there was a doctor in the family.”

  Corning laughed again. The world loved an easy laugher, as he well knew. “Aunt’s kind enough to put me up, and it’ll only be for a while.” He lowered his voice confidingly. “I’m going to be married in six weeks.”

  All the world loves a lover!

  “Best wishes, Doctor,” Phelan said heartily. Corning thanked him and ran lightly up the high flight of outside steps.

  He could feel the cop’s eyes watching him. It was jus
t what he wanted. He opened the outer door and stepped self-assuredly into the old marbled vestibule. He flattened himself against one wall, in the shadows. To anyone outside it would look as if he had stepped through the unlocked outer door, then gone right on through the inner door, which of course would require a key.

  Corning stood motionless, wailing for the cop to continue his patrol around the corner and onto Second Street. This was the tricky part! If Corning’s careful research paid off, Phelan would be back in exactly forty-four minutes—and right on schedule, just as Phelan turned back onto Hartwell from First, the garage attendant came down Second on his motorbike to pick up the car.

  Phelan would assume Corning had gone into the house and telephoned the garage—anybody would. Actually Corning had put in his call at seven-thirty, just before he embarked on this adventure.

  Corning still did not move. Inside the house, beyond the door, there was only a quiet stirring, about what you’d expect in an aged invalid’s household at bedtime. One low-powered yellow light burned, and it came from the kitchen, which was in a straight line with the hall. Corning could see right into the room, could watch the two scrawny old ladies as well as hear their querulous voices. It was better than a movie.

  “Eudora!” That was the old lady talking. “Eudora, there’s a window open somewhere!”

  “I’m sorry,” faltered Eudora faintly. “The cabbage smell—”

  “Drat the cabbage smell!” snapped Mrs. Corning. Eudora scuttled over to the window. “That’s right, bang it so hard it’ll break!” Mrs. Corning said. “Money means nothing to you. First we waste coal heating all outdoors, then you want to break a window. Eat like a pig and throw money away, that’s you.”

  “I’m sorry,” very pacifically. “Here, let me help you to your room.”

  The sounds drifted away. Anyone but Eudora might have been a threat to Corning, for there was always the chance she might chat with Phelan. But Corning had hired a back room in a boarding house on the corner of First Street and had kept a day and night watch on the Corning house for a whole month before starting out tonight. That’s how he knew the frightened little mouse of a Eudora never left the house, came only as far as the door to accept the mail and deliveries of groceries. The setup was a pushover for him.

  When Phelan was well away, Corning let himself out of the vestibule and ran rapidly down the steps. He turned down First Street and in two minutes was in the safety of the subway on his way back to the new room he had rented earlier in the day.

  The next night he repeated the performance, timing it a little later in the evening, and leaving a call at the garage for ten. He waited, cowering in the dark vestibule, while Phelan made three trips around the block. The garage attendant came for the car just as the cop turned the corner and could watch the uniformed attendant driving off with the car.

  Inside, the kitchen light went on suddenly. Corning smiled knowingly. That would be the old lady, helping herself to a snack while the underfed cousin slept. Mrs. Corning combined a lively greed with her cruel miserliness, and sneaked into the kitchen nightly about ten. Corning had observed these forays from his room, and had arranged his time schedule accordingly. He waited to leave until his auntie had had time to return to her room and get settled—mustn’t trouble the old girl with strange noises in the hall!

  The third night he varied the procedure a little. Instead of arriving in Phelan’s presence, Corning awaited the proper time, then seemed to be leaving. He came down the steps and stood on the curbstone, lighting a cigarette and puffing impatiently.

  “Going out, Doc?” Phelan asked.

  “As soon as my car gets here. These night calls!”

  “Tough,” Phelan sympathized.

  When the car came he drove off purposefully, as if he really were hurrying to a patient. The car would have to be abandoned, he mused regretfully, but what was a car against a haul of—how much? Half a million, maybe! After a week spent in his careful theatricals, he was sure that his goings and comings were a matter of course with Phelan. As he hid in the vestibule on his next visit, he passed the time amusingly, listening as Mrs. Corning entertained with a witty dissertation on Eudora’s extravagance with soap. When the ladies retired for the night he took a wax mold of the lock to the front door.

  A few nights later he unlocked the door cautiously with his new key. He was prepared to spend a great many nights in the house, because he had no idea where the safe was—if there was a safe. The only thing he was sure of was that the jewels were in the house—that hit the newspapers had handed him with their constant harping on the old lady’s distrust of banks. This first time he entered the house after Mrs. Corning had gone to bed, and before she got up for her snack. All he wanted was a quick reconnoiter to fix the layout of the house in his mind.

  For the next week he prowled about the house nightly, arriving at midnight and staying until dawn. He looked for the safe in the obvious places first—behind pictures, under rugs, in back of chairs. By the sixth night he felt so much at home he could go to any part of the house unerringly. (As a useless byproduct he could even tell by pitch which snore was the old lady’s and which the cousin’s.) But he had not found the jewels.

  He was not in the least discouraged because he had expected a tough search. You didn’t hide all those diamonds under a mattress! Still, he was beginning to run out of ideas, to feel bored and jaded. He considered this angle dispassionately. Possibly his imagination needed the stimulus of a change in routine.

  Accordingly his next visit was timed so that he arrived after the two women were safely abed, but before Mrs. Corning came down again to steal some of her own food. He would work for an hour, then go out to have his supper, and return again at midnight. Perhaps this way he could bring new zest to the search. But instead, no sooner had he set foot in the house on the first visit of this new schedule than he found he was famished.

  He was so much at home by now that he could go comfortably into the kitchen to see what the larder offered. But when he opened the refrigerator door he was really shaken. It was simply unbelievable! He made a quick check of the contents: A quart bottle of milk (half empty), a few slices of ham, three eggs, a paper quart container marked “Baked Beans”—and nothing else! So meager, so grimly meager—What if actually there were no jewels! But it was impossible. All that newspaper smoke and no fire? Impossible!

  Defiantly he made himself a ham sandwich. He had to be leaving soon or he and auntie would meet in the kitchen. He checked carefully to be sure he had left no evidence of his meal, but even when he was sure he lingered uneasily. Something was out of order in the kitchen. Something did not belong. The carton of beans in the refrigerator, a quart carton for two women! Plenty, when everything else bespoke famine!

  A little perspiration came out on his forehead, but he stood quietly, thinking. This was no time to panic. What had he to watch out for, now that he had found the jewels? Must he fear their disappearance would be discovered at once? Did the old lady inspect the container nightly? If so, it would be better to wait until after she had eaten before he took the jewels. It was to his advantage to do the job at once, because every minute extra now was important in his escape, but not important enough to take a foolish chance.

  In memory he went over the behavior of Mrs. Corning as she filched her own food in that secret snack, and his last anxiety dissolved. She did not look at the jewels each night—if she did he’d have known about them long ago.

  As soon as he reached this conclusion he opened the bean carton with gloved hands that trembled a little. The fabulous diamonds were there! He held a fortune in his hands!

  He poured the jewels into his doctor’s bag and returned the bean carton to its precise position in the refrigerator. Naturally he cut the telephone wires before he left.

  This time he had to wait in the vestibule. Mrs. Corning made her regular trip to the refrigerator, but that was not what held him up. Even after she left the kitchen he still waited. Phelan must have j
ust started along Second Street about the time Corning stepped into the vestibule, but he couldn’t be sure. He would have to wait until Phelan came along Hartwell and started around the corner again before he dared leave. He had not sent for his car, of course—he was abandoning it now—but how would it look to Phelan—a doctor with his bag and no car? No, impatient as he was, he’d have to see the back of Phelan turning onto Second Street before he could make his move into oblivion.

  From within the house came sounds of argument. He listened anxiously to the shrill voices for a moment, but he could relax, it was the same old thing all over again. Mrs. Corning had actually awakened Eudora to berate her for extravagance. Corning couldn’t help a grim smile. They’d have more to worry about as soon as Mrs. Corning opened her bean carton.

  And now at last he could forget them for good! Phelan was returning. He marched his sturdy cop’s feet along Hartwell, again turned the corner into Second, and finally Corning could sprint down the steps to safety. But before he reached bottom the door behind him opened and Eudora shrieked, “Help, police, help!”

  Phelan was back in the next breath—he hadn’t had time to go far. Corning, who for a split second thought of running for it, did not give way to panic. The situation was ticklish, but it was certainly not lost.

  “What’s wrong, sir?” Phelan asked, puffing from his run.

  Eudora cried hysterically, “She’s dying! And the phone’s out of order. Call a doctor. Oh, call a doctor!”

  “Doctor!” In the yellow street light he could see the way Phelan’s broad brow wrinkled. He turned to Corning. “What’s wrong with her nephew here?”

  Eudora peered at Corning, who turned abruptly and ran from her shrill piping. “Mrs. Corning’s nephews all live in Canada. I don’t know him. I never—” Phelan’s bullet, skillfully placed in the calf of his right leg, was enough to bring him to his knees, but not enough to keep him from being booked two hours later when the excitement was over and Mrs. Corning, nursing a heart attack, had been seen to.