The Penguin Pool Murder (The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries)

by Stuart Palmer

  “Blood!” he said softly, whistling through his teeth. “Poor Rollins.”

  “But a man can’t disappear, chair and all, in thin air,” insisted Miss Withers. “He must be somewhere.”

  Piper motioned to a door at their backs, between the stair and the door to Hemingway’s office. “What’s that?”

  “The … the Men’s Room….” said Hemingway. “You can see the sign if you go up closer. I know our homemade lighting plant is weak, but we never open the place after six in the evening.”

  “Bother the sign,” Piper told him. He thrust open the door and found what he had expected to find. Rollins, with a gash in his forehead, sprawled in his chair. He was bound and gagged, and he was still out cold. But he was alive.

  “And you scolded him for imagining that he heard footsteps and noises,” Miss Withers remarked accusingly.

  “In the line of duty,” said Piper. “I see he’s gagged and tied with strips of denim, Hemingway. Ever see it before?”

  “It’s one of Olaavson’s old work jackets,” decided the Director. “It always hangs here in the doorway. I’ll get some water for the poor fellow.”

  Miss Withers and Piper looked at each other. Then they ran to the main entrance. The door was still closed, but opened easily from the interior. From the outside it was impossible of access.

  “Any other entrance?” Piper demanded of Fink and MacDonald, who poked their heads out of the cubby. They denied it.

  “And you two dumb oxes didn’t hear a sound or see anybody go by?” They shook their heads in unison.

  “We were playing pinochle,” Fink announced. “We always play pinochle here at night, till MacDonald goes home at midnight. Why?”

  Piper walked back to where Rollins was already coming to. “He won’t remember anything but a step behind him and then a blackout,” prophesied Piper.

  “I heard a noise in the Men’s Room,” was Rollins’ story. “I saw the door move, or thought I did. So I decided to investigate. I went over there and I went in. There was nobody there, and I was fumbling for the light switch when wham … somebody got me.”

  “It’s back to pounding a pavement for you after a dumb thing like that,” Piper told him. “You have a flash, haven’t you? Why didn’t you use it? Afraid you’d see something, huh?”

  He left his aide to the merciful ministrations of Hemingway and Miss Withers. “Unless the guy that slugged Rollins was Hemingway or one of the guards, then he stayed in this place since this afternoon, because there was no way for a man to get in since then.” Piper told himself. “I gave orders for them to turn everybody out … but I wonder if those dumb guards … hey, Fink!”

  The fat guard came on the run. “Yes, sir!”

  “When you turned out the crowd this afternoon, did you look in the Men’s Room? Couldn’t a man have hidden away in there?”

  “I always look there at closing time,” Fink declared. “Nobody hid there, unless he made himself mighty small. Yes, siree, that was the first place I looked.”

  “Then a man could have slipped back in there after you searched the place, and while you were shooing the mob out the other side?”

  Fink admitted that it was possible. Inspector Piper led the way into the Men’s Room, and found the light button.

  There were a few drops of blood where Rollins’ chair had stood. And behind the door, which swung inward, was a little cluster of cigarette butts and ash. Seven of them, Piper counted. Seven butts … all Camels … all smoked to the same length, and not one of them really wetted at the tip.

  “A man stood here for well over an hour, waiting,” said Piper. “A man who was so sure of himself that he dared to smoke … and a man who lured Rollins in here and slugged him without changing his position. See how easy it was? He must have had a weapon….”

  Piper’s fingers naturally fell to the doorknob, and he drew them sharply away. There was a glaze of something sticky on it. Blood … in a thin film. The knob unscrewed easily….

  “And a ready-made weapon,” said Piper. “Cupped in a man’s hand, or a woman’s either, this would knock a man down like a base-ball bat.” Carefully he wrapped the thing in his handkerchief…. “Though I’ve probably ruined any prints there might be on it, anyway,” as he told Miss Withers a moment later.

  “But aren’t you going to collect the cigarette butts, and study them?”

  Piper grinned. “Why should I? You’ve been reading too many fiction stories. The murderer leaves a rare cigarette, with his own monogram, on the scene of the crime. Bah! Those are the commonest brand of fags. What would they prove that I don’t know now? If the person who smoked them had only chewed on his butts, then I’d have teeth prints, but this smoker was polite and dainty.”

  Ten minutes later, with Rollins back on duty and weak and willing, Piper once more tackled the runway.

  “I’d give a lot to know why the person who slugged Rollins came back here to the tank, and what he wanted,” Inspector Piper observed to Miss Withers, who stuck with him.

  “I’d give more to know what it was that dropped this pool of water on the top step, and on through the door,” Miss Withers replied. “If only we’d been quicker to get down here …”

  “Maybe we’re lucky we didn’t,” Piper told her. “I’m a detective, not a strong-arm squad. I’ll mix with a crook if I have to, but I’d rather not mix with a killer.”

  He paused above the pool of the penguins. “I’d give a lot to know how that murder was committed, if it was a murder. Doc Bloom said there were no wounds on the body except for bruises on the chin and back of the head, neither one big enough to cause death. Let me see … Seymour would stand here to lay the body along the catwalk …”

  Piper knelt, while Miss Withers watched. “And the murderer, supposing that it wasn’t Seymour, would come up on him this way. Hello …”

  The Inspector’s gray Stetson had knocked against a low-hanging water pipe and dropped lightly into the water beneath, where the inquisitive penguins nibbled at it. He fished it out gingerly. “Damn. Beg your pardon, Miss Withers, but I love that hat. I’ve worn it for five years.”

  “Wait a minute, young man.” She looked at him intently. Then she turned, but Hemingway had given up and gone into his office. “Inspector, do you remember the hat that was floating in this same pool when Costello and that silly Donovan were trying to give artificial respiration to the corpse? What kind of a hat was it. Think!”

  Piper thought. “I didn’t see a hat there! But Donovan mentioned one—”

  Miss Withers nodded slowly. “I saw it! A gray fedora. And what kind of a hat was it that the Sproule person from Chicago was sure Lester wore when he came in? Remember his testimony? I have the notes right here….”

  Piper jumped to his feet, nearly losing his own hat again in the process. “Good God! A derby! I remember! Then the hat that was here in the tank when the body was discovered didn’t belong to Lester, as we thought! Unless Sproule is mistaken, it must be the hat of the murderer, then! And he came back tonight to fish for it in the penguin tank. Therefore the water … on the step!”

  “Maybe it wasn’t the murderer who lost it here,” Miss Withers reminded him. “And we don’t know that he got it if he did. Can you find out if they took away a hat with the body?”

  “I sure can and I will,” Piper told her. In a moment they were in Hemingway’s office. Piper paused for a moment beside the Director, who was waiting impatiently to go.

  “What kind of headgear do you wear, Director?”

  “A derby, winter and summer. There it is over on the wall … why?”

  “Never mind why,” said Piper. “And … oh, by the way. Do you happen to have a cigarette about you?”

  Hemingway proffered a package of Luckies, and the Inspector took one. “You don’t happen to smoke Camels, then?”

  Hemingway looked puzzled. “No, I don’t.” He saw Piper hunting for an ashtray and handed him one from the desk. It was a massive glass basin. The Inspector sta
red at it absent-mindedly, and then butted the Lucky there. “Well, Director, we won’t keep you any longer. I’ve got a few more questions, but they’ll wait until another day. Thanks for the help you’ve been able to give us.”

  The Director left them to take the uptown subway, and Inspector Piper hailed a taxi. “You’ve been a wonder,” he told the school-teacher as she settled beside him.

  “It’s the ambition of my life to play detective,” she confessed. “But you said you had another question to ask Hemingway, one that could wait. What was it?”

  “The first one was what happened to the trayful of Camel butts that I saw in that glass ashtray on his desk this afternoon,” said Inspector Piper.

  “It’s possible that the man empties his ashtrays,” Miss Withers reminded him.

  7

  The Passenger in the Empty Taxi

  MISS WITHERS WAS EARLY astir that next morning. It was earlier when she reached yawningly toward her tin alarm clock than was her wont to rise, even on a weekday. And this was Saturday, with no wide-mouthed fledglings waiting to be crammed with knowledge. Besides, Miss Withers had spent half the night at her clattery little portable typewriter, deciphering her shorthand notes of the previous day, in spite of the sleepy and bewildered protests of the two ladies who shared an apartment with her. Sleep or no sleep, Miss Hildegarde Withers was determined that the notes of the inquiry must be ready for Piper’s call.

  But she did not expect the call to come at seven o’clock in the morning. It was some seconds before she realized that her sleep was being shattered by the telephone bell, and not by the usual alarm. She lifted the receiver, and at the crisp voice which greeted her she came awake as if under a chill shower bath.

  “Miss Withers?” It was Piper, and the Inspector’s voice tingled with eagerness. “I’ve got something to discuss with you. Can you have breakfast with me? Fine. Pick you up in fifteen minutes.”

  Miss Withers realized that she must have said yes, for he hung up at once with a cheerful good-bye. She was dressed in her decent best and downstairs within the fifteen minutes, her notes in her hand.

  “Never mind them now,” the Inspector told her. They were perched on stools at the nearest drug store counter, honey buns and coffee before them. He paused a moment. “I found out about the hat!”

  “Well, was I right?”

  He bent his head. “You were right. Donovan, by the way, bears out your story. He saw a dark gray or black fedora in the pool when they were taking the body out. But the men from the Coroner’s office who took the body away are dead certain there was no hat around, and none was taken to Headquarters along with the rest of the property. Therefore, if Sproule, the Chicago men’s wear buyer, is telling the truth, and there’s no reason to suppose otherwise, then the hat that was floating in the penguin pool belonged to the murderer! He knocked it off when he was bending over the corpse, just as I knocked mine off when going through the motions.”

  “That doesn’t make sense to me,” said Miss Withers. “He wouldn’t leave it there to convict him, would he? He’d take it, and besides, he’d have to wear a hat if he was to mix with the crowd and get out without attracting attention.”

  “My dear lady,” said Piper heavily. “A hat that falls into the water is apt to be damp. The murderer, if it was the murderer, couldn’t risk having a dripping hat brim. That would be enough to mark him. He had no time to waste, because he didn’t know when somebody would be coming by. So, being a smart person, he took the hat from the dead man in place of his own!”

  Miss Withers put down her coffee cup. “Then the murderer wore a derby away from the Aquarium! Provided he didn’t get away before the hue and cry started, then he was there at the inquiry. All we have to do is to remember which men wore derbies….”

  “I remember, all right,” Piper told her. “It’s going to be a big help.” Take Seymour first. He’s the murderer, I’m still pretty sure. He wore a derby.”

  “Well?”

  “All right, Seymour wore a derby. Hemingway showed us his derby, hanging on the hall-tree in his office. Sproule himself wore one. Costello, the big hearts and flowers man, carried a tin hat, as did two of those Wall Street clerks. I’ll bet you ten to one that even Olaavson went out of there wearing a derby. So what? Tin hats are as common in New York in the autumn as sneezes in the spring.”

  “But one of those men wore a derby that wasn’t his,” Miss Withers insisted. “It probably didn’t fit!”

  “Tell me which one and we’re in the bag,” Piper announced. “But you can be sure he’s got one of his own now, one that does fit. No, we’re right back where we started. Except that we’ve got some idea why some person or persons unknown came back to the Aquarium last night while we were on the upper level. All the same, I’d like to know where was that felt hat from the time you saw it in the pool until somebody came searching for it with a flashlight.”

  “Maybe the thing sunk,” Miss Withers suggested. “The pool is kept fairly dimly lighted, and there are a lot of rocks and so forth in the bottom. A hat might be able to lie there unseen. Anybody that saw it would mistake it for another stone, perhaps. You should have drained the tank, Inspector.”

  “I know it. It will be done this morning, but the horse is stolen. Well, we’ve definitely established one thing, anyway.”

  “What one thing is that?” Miss Withers wanted to know. They left the drug store.

  “That the murder was committed by a man … if it was murder. Remember, we don’t know yet how Lester was bumped off. They may find it was heart failure, caused by the blow on the chin that Seymour admits he gave him. But I doubt it. This smells too much like murder, somehow. Anyway, it was a man’s hat.”

  Miss Withers looked at him. “You don’t suppose that it was meant to be?”

  “Meant to be what?”

  “Meant to be a man’s hat, and meant to be found in the tank? So that a woman wouldn’t be suspected?”

  Piper shook his head. “It doesn’t fit. And why should the woman come back for it, if it was a plant? No, that’s too complicated. Real crimes are simple, if you can only get the right slant on them.”

  “But suppose the woman didn’t come back? Suppose the man to whom the hat belonged came after it, for fear it would pin the murder on him?”

  Piper nodded slowly. “Possible,” he told her. “A red-herring across the trail, what? You know, you have the makings of a sleuth, my dear lady. You’ve been more help to me since yesterday noon than the whole Homicide Squad. I wish I …”

  “Well,” interrupted Miss Withers. “I suppose that just the same you’ll take these notes, thank me very kindly, and tell me to go back to my school children, won’t you?”

  Piper hailed a taxi. “But my dear Miss Withers, a detective would look funny dragging around a woman with him. Things aren’t done that way. Besides, you do have your school, you know.”

  “I can get a substitute for a few weeks,” suggested Miss Withers eagerly. “I’m having the time of my life. And I tell you for your own good that some person like me, who doesn’t look at all like a detective, could find out more in ten minutes from most people than any three of your operatives. And besides, after the way you were fooled by that man Seymour’s fake confession yesterday, you need a nurse!”

  “All right, all right.” A taxi whirled up beside them and Piper started to get in. “Miss Withers, you’ve been a big help and all that, and you’ve given me some good slants on the situation. But these things are done in a certain way, you see? Well, good-bye….” He turned to the driver. “Fleming Trust Building, 138 Wall Street … and drive down the west-side waterfront, it’s quicker….”

  Miss Withers shrugged her shoulders and watched the taxi go down the street toward the Hudson River … she saw another, a rusty Checker taxi, nose out half a block behind … and she put two and two together.

  Then she ran for the subway entrance. She took a downtown Seventh Avenue express, changed to a local at Fourteenth, and got off a
t Canal. Then she walked leisurely toward the river for two blocks and took her stand near the corner.

  In ten minutes along came a certain taxi. She hailed it, and the driver first shook his head and pointed to his clicking meter, then slowed to a stop as Piper rapped on the glass. He opened the door. “Miss Withers, what in the hell?”

  “Shut up and listen,” she told him as she determinedly climbed into the taxi.

  The driver shifted gears and the taxi sped on. Miss Withers glanced out of the rear window, and then leaned back comfortably.

  “I suppose it didn’t occur to you that it must have been down these same streets that Gwen Lester came yesterday morning, a few hours later than this?”

  Piper shook his head impatiently. “But …”

  “Never mind. The Lesters’ apartment is only a block south of mine, though it’s over on the Park and I’m near Broadway. Anyway, Gwen Lester rode down these streets yesterday to meet Seymour. You mentioned yesterday the possibility that someone might have shadowed her in another taxi?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Well, somebody is shadowing you today in a rusty Checker taxi! If you look around carefully you’ll see them about a block behind. I thought you might like to know, so I took a subway and got here ahead of you. I heard your directions to the driver….”

  “Yes, yes.” Piper was silent. “But who got into the taxi you saw follow me? Man or woman? Recognize him?”

  She shook her head. “I just saw the taxi move out from the curb and follow,” she said. “I watched as it slowed down in the middle of a block, so as not to come up too close behind you when you stopped for traffic. That’s how I knew.”

  Piper was looking back. “The Checker, you say? But who’d want to shadow me? Anyhow, thanks. I’ll show you a little trick we use in cases of this kind, just as soon as we reach a line of stop-lights again.” Piper caught the handle of the door and turned it.

  “Driver,” he said sharply. “I want you to beat the next red light just as it goes on.” He showed his badge. “Then pull up about half way down the block.” He was tensed to spring, and Miss Withers waited as the cab rolled on several blocks more, and then suddenly sprang past the stop-light and swirled to the curb. In a second Piper was out and running back through the crowd of office-bound humanity.