“Why, Owl?”
“Malloy says It’s because there was no dust on his thumb.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No. I think he had found a rolled paper in a dusty place. He went to the desk, unrolled the paper and held it with his left hand, the fingers on the blotter, the thumb on the top of the paper. So put your feminine mind to work and tell me where a rolled paper could have been concealed in a place where dust must have been a quarter of an inch thick.”
“There’s only one place, Owl, that I can think of.”
“Where?”
“That picture moulding around the top of the wall. After all, this is a warehouse, and they don’t do too much housekeeping.”
Clane moved a chair over to the wall, put a box on top of the chair. While Cynthia steadied the chair, he climbed up to the box. The beam of his torch slid along the edge of the picture moulding.
“Dust enough, Cynthia,” he said, “but nothing here.”
“Let’s try the other wall.”
The second wall also yielded a blank, but midway along the third wall, Clane saw where the dust had been disturbed. There was something which could have been a rolled piece of paper reposing in the dust.
Clane marked the place, said excitedly “I mink we’ve got it, Cynthia! we’ll have to move the chair.”
Too excited now to bother about being cautious, they dragged the chair midway along the wall, and Clane climbed up on the chair, men on the box and possessed himself of two sheets of paper which were held in a tight roll with two small elastic bands.
Clane slipped off the elastic bands, unrolled the papers. They were covered with fine pen-and-ink writing. Clane held the torch. He and Cynthia put their heads together reading.
“It’s Farnsworth’s handwriting,” Cynthia said, “and the date … Owl! It’s the date he was murdered.” Clane nodded, gave himself to a perusal of the document.
To Whom It May Concern
I have lost the desire to live. There is no atonement I can make, save to confess. And after I have made that confession, I do not care to go on living. I was trustee for money for Cynthia Renton. I invested this money in gold-mining properties near Baguio in the Philippines, gold-mining properties which I had carefully investigated and which looked good to me. At that time all of my personal money was invested in a partnership enterprise for Oriental trade, a partnership consisting of George Gloster, Ricardo Taonon and Stacey Nevis as my associates. We all held an equal interest We had an opportunity to plunge heavily and we plunged and lost. In the meantime, the mining enterprise in which I had invested the trust moneys proved to be immensely rich. I had an opportunity to sell out at an enormous profit. It was then that Ricardo Taonon pointed out to me that no one knew the gold-mine had been an investment of trust funds since it had all been in my name. I had only to take some money from that to recoup the partnership business, and there would still be enough left to yield Cynthia a handsome profit and the money would only be in the nature of a loan to the partnership.
Ricardo Taonon made the thing sound so convincing that I felt certain taking 25,000 dollars of the profits on the gold-mine and investing it temporarily in me partnership business would give us just the added capital we needed to get over the hump and would enable us to turn what would otherwise have been a hundred-thousand-dollar loss into a half-million-dollar profit.
Either the man hypnotized me or I was crazy. I did as he suggested. That involved signing papers. I signed them—papers showing the whole gold-mine was a partnership investment. Then I asked Taonon for an accounting. It was men he told me I could draw out any sum of money I wished to reimburse Miss Renton for her trust funds but that the documents I had signed were to the effect I had acted for the partnership in the mining deal. I was trapped in my own duplicity. True, Cynthia would sustain no impairment of her trust funds, but she had lost enormous profits. I decided to try again I put five thousand in an oil deal for her. This oil proposition looked better than the mining deal ever had. I convinced myself Taonon’s treachery had all been for the best. And then the oil deal failed to be profitable. It gives every sign of simply dying on the vine. But Cynthia Renton is asking for an accounting. I am satisfied that Edward Harold, to whom she is engaged and who has just called me, is suspicious and intends to make a detailed investigation.
The only way I can really make atonement is by a full confession. Cynthia Renton is the real owner of all my interest in the Eastern Art Import and Trading Company. Moreover, she is entitled to all the assets of that company. She is also the real owner of the contents of the envelope which I am leaving in plain sight on the desk. There is nothing I can add to this statement. I only wish to God that I could subtract from it. I have loved Cynthia Renton. I have been entrusted with her confidence. I have failed her, and I have failed myself. The only thing I can say by way of justification is that Ricardo Taonon is unspeakably evil. The man has a hypnotic influence upon those with whom he comes in contact. Under his suave, persuasive influence I have done that which has robbed me of the desire to live. I am taking the easy way out. I only hope that Cynthia will forgive me.
On the other hand, however, I have received money from the partnership. Taonon is evil, but the other partners are blameless. I leave a fair sum in insurance and no immediate relatives. I therefore give, devise and bequeath all of my individual estate, share and share alike, to George Gloster, Stacey Nevis and Ricardo Taonon as co-partners transacting business under the firm name and style of Eastern Art Import and Trading Company.
HORACE FARNSWORTH
“He killed himself,” Cynthia said breathlessly.
“I felt certain that he did,” Clane told her. “Edward Harold told me what had happened. I think that was the first time he ever told anyone the true story of what had occurred. He found Farnsworth very dejected, hinting at some dark secret. He went back to get that image I had given you. He wanted to use it to cheer Farnsworth up. Harold said it had helped him and … well, you can see what happened. All that the picture needed to be a complete case of suicide was this letter on the desk and the presence of a gun. Someone slipped into the room, removed the gun, and took this letter and the envelope of papers. That made it look like murder.”
“You mean Ricardo Taonon had …”
“No, no,” Clane said impatiently. “Don’t you see? There’s only one person. Once you look at the evidence properly, it points to—What’s that?” he asked, stopping abruptly.
“What?”
“I thought I heard a noise, a …”
A switch clicked, lights blazed into brilliance—a blinding illumination which left them dazed and blinking. Their eyes, having accustomed themselves to the darkness and the faint illumination of the fountain-pen torch which Clane had been using, failed for a moment to adjust themselves to the sudden burst of light.
Inspector Malloy’s voice was booming and genial. “Well, well, well, Clane. You did it again. You really did! I told you that you were more value to us running around loose and playing bird dog. You flushed some real game this time. Cynthia Renton! We’ve certainly been looking for you. I rather expected Clane would come back here and start snooping around but to think that you … And what have we here, Mr Clane? What’s this paper you were talking about?”
Wordlessly Clane handed him the paper.
Inspector Malloy glanced at it, then gave it intense study.
“A plant?” he asked suspiciously.
Clane shook his head.
Malloy said “This could be serious, you know, Clane. This will be subjected to scrutiny by the best handwriting experts in the country.”
“Scrutinize it all you want,” Clane said. “You can see now what happened. It’s the only thing that could have happened. Gloster found something that startled him, something that made it imperative that he meet with the others immediately. He couldn’t reach Nevis at once because Nevis was in a poker game. But he called Taonon and told him to come to the warehouse at once.”
“Go on,” Malloy said.
“Gloster had to get something here in the warehouse,” Clane went on. “He drove here. Harold was hiding here. He jumped out of the window as Gloster came in. Gloster phoned Taonon. While he was waiting for Ricardo Taonon, something made him decide to look around. He found this note.
“The note speaks for itself. Farnsworth committed suicide. Let’s examine the evidence in the light of that hypothesis. Farnsworth was despondent, trapped. He took the easy way out.”
“Now let’s look at what happened after that—the only thing that could have happened. When the police arrived at Farnsworth’s house, that found a kettle of water on the electric stove, the water boiling rapidly. They found the oven hot, and Farnsworth’s wrist-watch, bearing evidence of having been wet, drying in the oven. When Harold returned to the house, the back door was unlocked.
“Figure it out. Sam Kenyon must have returned from his afternoon off. He let himself in through the back door. He put on a kettle of water, turned on the oven and then went in to see what Farnsworth wanted for supper. He found Farnsworth dead, this document on the desk, the gun lying where it had dropped from Farnsworth’s nerveless fingers.”
“Kenyon evidently is an opportunist. He saw a chance to get rich. He took the gun, the envelope, the document, and he went to Ricardo Taonon or to Stacy Nevis. He made his demands. Whatever that were, they were met. He was instructed to return to the house and call the police.”
“When he went back to the house he let himself in through the front door. He called the police, and then just before that arrived he went back to the kitchen. The water was boiling merrily away. The oven had been turned on and was now smoking hot—evidence that he had previously been to the house. Even if he had dumped out the water, he couldn’t have cooled off the oven. The police were driving up to the place even then. He thought fast. He rushed in, took Farnsworth’s wrist-watch, snapped off the back, put water in it, put it in the oven and then let the police in. Later on, when police looked around and found the boiling water and the wrist-watch, it looked as though Farnsworth had put the water on the stove, had got water in his watch in the process and had put the watch in the oven to dry. The police never did explain that kettle of boiling water and the wrist-watch. Because of the way Harold messed up his case, they didn’t have to. But when you put the whole thing together, There’s only one explanation.”
Malloy frowned as he studied the paper. “It sounds logical the way you outline it — and if this is genuine. But right now it looks like a plant to me. It smells fishy.”
“It’s genuine. It has to be. It can’t be a plant. Once Farnsworth had killed himself, once Kenyon had seen the body and this note … It’s so obvious There’s no use wasting time talking.”
“And so that let Harold take the rap?”
“At the time, they didn’t know anything about Harold, or about Harold’s visit. They were merely turning a suicide into a murder so as to save their own skins. It probably never occurred to them someone would be convicted of that murder.”
Malloy thought things over, pursing his lips as he fitted this new evidence into the picture.
“Everyone agrees Gloster was honest as the day is long,” Clane went on. “He was a grouch, but he was on the square. So he wasn’t in on it at all. Taonon simply told Gloster that Farnsworth had been working for the partnership in locating those Philippine investments. Gloster believed him. Then came Harold’s trial and conviction. Taonon and Nevis were in a quandary. To let Harold be executed for a murder he hadn’t committed was beyond the scope of their plans. They didn’t dare to speak up and tell the truth… . So they did the next best thing. They arranged for Harold to escape.”
“And what of this paper?” Malloy asked.
“They concealed it here. They didn’t dare destroy it because if the worst ever came to the worst, this was a will. They could plant it in some place where it could be found. If the cat got out of the bag and there was other evidence Farnsworth had left which would strip the partnership of the mining properties, then Farnsworth’s estate would be a consolation prize. So they concealed the paper here. After Gloster was killed, the paper was reconcealed in its original hiding-place.”
“Go on,” Malloy said.
“Gloster couldn’t get Nevis on the phone because Nevis was at a poker game,” Clane said. “But he got Taonon, and Taonon came down here.”
“And killed him?”
“No. He told him where Nevis could be reached, and then Taonon ducked out. He crawled in a hole and pulled the hole in after him. He would probably have tried to leave the country if the newspapers next day hadn’t carried the story of Gloster’s death. So Taonon hid out to wait and see what the next developments were, and he phoned his wife and told her to do the same thing. That’s the only consistent way of explaining what happened.”
“Then who the devil killed Gloster?” Malloy asked.
“Let’s reconstruct what must have happened,” Clane said. “Gloster got Taonon down here. Taonon told him to call Nevis. Then Taonon skipped out. That made Gloster mad. He called Nevis at the number Taonon had given him, and he called me later on.”
“I’m listening,” Malloy said. “So far this is your baby.”
Clane said “Nevis came down here and …”
“No, he didn’t,” Malloy interrupted. “He didn’t come down here. Gloster went to see him.”
Clane shook his head. “Nevis came down here.”
“Clane, You’re crazy. There are half a dozen witnesses to …”
“To what?” Clane interrupted.
“The telephone conversation when Nevis and Gloster agreed to meet—to the meeting itself.”
“How many witnesses saw Nevis and Gloster engaged in conversation?” Clane asked.
“Well, of course, you can’t expect…”
“Nevis lied,” Clane said. “Gloster never went to see Nevis at all. Nevis came down here to see him.”
“Any evidence to prove that?” Malloy asked.
“Gloster”s car.”
“What about the car?”
“Did you notice anything peculiar about the car when you saw it?” Clane asked.
“In what way?”
“The windscreen, for instance?”
“No.”
“Notice where particles of fog moisture had condensed on the windscreen?”
“Yes. There was nothing unusual about that. It was foggy. Naturally the moisture would have condensed on the windscreen.”
“And some of the moisture had run in little rivulets down the bonnet,”
“Yes.”
“But did you notice any fan-shaped streaks on the windscreen which would have been there if the windscreen-wipers had been at work, or any splash stains where drops of water running down from the windscreen had been blown back by wind caused by the motion of the car? You did not. The reason you didn’t see those things is that that weren’t there. The reason they weren’t there is that the fog settled some time after ten and before eleven, and Gloster’s car wasn’t moved after the fog settled. The mute evidence of that car proves Nevis is a liar.”
Malloy scratched his head. “Well, now, Mr Clane, you’ve contributed something there. Damned if you haven’t.”
“So,” Clane went on, “we are in a position to reconstruct what happened. As soon as Stacey Nevis arrived, Gloster must have realized his danger and started for the telephone. Perhaps to call the police. Nevis shot him.”
“They both were in on the murder?” Malloy asked.
“Nevis killed him,” Clane said. “If Taonon had known he was dead, he would never have gone into hiding. While Gloster was telephoning to Nevis, Taonon saw his opportunity to wash his hands of the whole mess and get out. He left it entirely up to Nevis.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because of the way Taonon skipped out, then phoned his wife to skip out.”
“Nevis is a man of action, not a man of words. Glos
ter told him enough over the telephone so that Nevis knew what had happened. He made up his mind right then to commit murder. He put his finger on the receiver hook to cut the connection, then raised his voice so everyone at the poker-table could hear him, and said he couldn’t get away from the poker game, that if Gloster wanted to come up and honk the horn, he’d go down and talk with him briefly. He was gone approximately twenty minutes. He had ample time in the twenty minutes while he was out of the poker game to drive down to the warehouse, kill Gloster, turn around and come back. I have an idea that if you check back on that poker party, you’ll find that no one actually heard the honking of the horn except Nevis, that Nevis made it a point to tell everyone he had to be dealt out for a hand or two while he went down to talk with his partner on a business matter. He told them he would only be away five or ten minutes. Actually he was away for twenty minutes. But because he had been careful to implant the belief in their minds that he was sitting down in a motor-car talking, everyone thought That’s where he was. When you stop to analyse it, Nevis has no alibi at all. And furthermore, the mute evidence of Gloster’s car shows that Nevis was lying. It has to be that way.”
“I began to think that it might be something like that,” Malloy admitted, “after I heard Harold’s story.”
“You heard Harold’s story?”
Malloy grinned. “Sure. What the hell did you think we put you two in the same cell for? We wouldn’t have put you in with a convicted murderer unless we’d wanted to hear his story. We thought he might talk to you.”
“And you had the room wired?”
“Sure,” Malloy said. “Us professionals can’t do this brilliant deductive reasoning that you amateurs do, so we have to rely on a little practical stuff now and then. Well, that’s the way it goes. Anyhow, you certainly did a job on that motor-car. Guess that’s something we overlooked… . But you must learn not to go around breaking into buildings, Mr Clane, and doing all those unconventional things. When you have any information in the future, you’d better go to the police and tell them frankly what you have.”
The Case of the Backward Mule Page 21