Going Going Gone

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

  “So you dug up the tin again?”

  “Right in the middle of a mock war! This,” Sharp waved toward the clearing, “was the end! I gave up, here, when you came! Now, what’re you going to do with me?”

  “Oh, I believe you – don’t look so stunned! You couldn’t make up a story like that! An’ you couldn’t lose so much weight over night just from actin’,” Asey said. “You’ve dropped ten pounds since yesterday. Now, tell me things, quick. What was in the trunk you threw in with Mrs. Madison’s Hitchcock chairs?”

  “Old bound magazines. Harper’s, I think. Nobody’d buy either them or the old trunk separate, so I threw ‘em at her, and got a good thirty dollars out of her.”

  “Fine,” Asey said. “Now, that fish knife of John’s—”

  “My God!” Sharp said. “Was that knife – was that his? Asey, I been so worked up about the money, I never thought about that knife! I gave it away—”

  He stopped short.

  “Who to?”

  “Well, I gave it to Chris Bede,” Sharp said slowly. “He told me before the auction he’d top any bid on it, and I told him he could have it. He and Polly Madison were nice to John, you know. Polly drove him around a lot, and Bede went fishing and sailing with him.”

  “Did you give it into his hand,” Asey said, “or tell him to take it?”

  “Told him to help himself – I bet someone beat him to it, Asey, if it’s that knife that killed her! Chris is all right. Nice fellow.”

  “Uh-huh. Now, Sharp, this is the one I really care about. What kind of books were the books in the sea chest?”

  “What kind? Why, old books!”

  “What kind?” Asey repeated. “Old novels, or old bound magazines, or what?”

  “Why, I don’t know,” Sharp said. “Just old books – I had ‘em out, too. I looked around inside the chest to see if it might have a false bottom, or something, where John might’ve hidden his money. That’s why I was so surprised when Gardner bid so much for that chest. I knew there was only books in it! Just books.”

  “Think,” Asey said. “What kind?”

  “Old books,” Sharp said helplessly. “Like old school-books. Old books in dark cloth bindings. They must have been old school-books!”

  “How many?” Asey was thinking back to Polly Madison and the hampers of old school-books that had gone into the pond.

  “Oh, sixty-seventy. I don’t know, Asey. The chest was full.”

  “One more thing. Did you see Solatia at the auction?”

  “I keep thinking I did,” Sharp said, “and then I think I didn’t, that I only thought I did!”

  “Yes, or no?”

  “I guess no.”

  Asey thought for a moment. “Sharp, what’d keep you from goin’ to an auction? I don’t mean how could you be stopped by someone, but what’d have kept you, yourself, from goin’ yesterday, say?”

  “Gee, I don’t know! Only thing ever made me hesitate,” Sharp said, “was once when I tore my pants. But I pinned ‘em up with safety pins, and got a big laugh. That what you mean?”

  “Wa-el, I don’t knows it’d apply to the person I was thinkin’ of. Did you check your sales with John’s inventory?”

  “About half. That money,” Sharp said, “has taken up a lot of my time!”

  “Anythin’ missin’ as far’s you got?”

  Sharp shook his head. “Chris helped me keep sales, and he was pretty accurate. You think anything is missing, or got missed at the sale?”

  “Was Solatia,” Asey countered with another question, “known as a great walker, would you say?”

  “Sure, she was always tramping around. She was a great golfer, you know, too. Sometimes, she’d carry a golf club with her when she walked, and whack a ball along.”

  “Huh! Who’d you say John might’ve given money to, if he thought he was seriously ill?”

  “Maybe Solatia, maybe Chris, or the Madisons, maybe – oh,” Sharp said, “he had a lot of friends around town. You got an idea, Asey? You look funny.”

  “I feel funny. Sharp, do you trust me?”

  “You ask the damnedest things! Sure, I trust you.”

  “Lend me this tin, an’ the money?”

  “Sure,” Sharp said. “Take it. Why?”

  “I’m thinkin’ of promotin’ a treasure hunt,” Asey said, “an’ I like authentic props. Hang around your house. I may phone you an invitation later, after I’ve chatted with the minister.”

  “The minister?”

  “I’m pinnin’ my hopes on him,” Asey said. “Now, go get your car out of my way – an’ promise me somethin’, Sharp. Promise me you’ll never sell another lot of books that you don’t look at each an’ every title. This way’s too hard.”

  “But what difference do the titles of those books make?” Sharp demanded.

  “All the difference in the world – never mind movin’, after all. I’ll go the other way, I think,” Asey said. “Don’t look so confused. Next time you dig up this tin, you can keep it, but you’ll please not mention it till then!”

  He found Chris Bede sitting on the front steps of his house on Main Street.

  “Hi, Asey!” he said cheerfully, as he limped down the walk to the roadster. “I’ve been waiting for you – did you swipe the letters from me last night?”

  “No. Did you get the knife?” Asey returned.

  “I went for it, but it’d gone. I was too busy to tell Sharp – I thought it would probably turn up in some other lot.”

  “Why’d you tie me up? In fact,” Asey said, “what got into you last night?”

  Chris shook his head. “Mind if I sit in the roadster with you? I’m paying for my activities to-day, right through the ankle – well, Asey,” he sat down and lighted a cigarette, “it began with that cop. He started to wave a gun at me, and habit was too strong. I automatically got him. Then Gardner Alden appeared, and what could I do? I had to take him. And then you! I recognized you, but at that point, I certainly wasn’t going to untie you and say gee, I was sorry, I’d just come to steal some letters, and I hadn’t really got the knife that killed Solatia, it only seemed so!”

  “I see your point,” Asey said. “Tell me, what in time did you even bother tryin’ to get them letters back for? What come over you, an’ Polly Madison, an’ her mother-strewin’ books around, an’ hidin’ duck decoys, an’ all!”

  “Hasn’t anyone told—” Chris paused and drew a long breath. “No, I can see they haven’t! And it would look silly, I suppose, as if you didn’t know. It’s – er – about – the sea chest.”

  “What about it?”

  “I could wish,” Chris said, “that it wasn’t me who had to break this to you, even gently. Perhaps I’d better give you a brief resume of the terrain. The auction’s over. Everyone’s running around wildly with a lot of stuff. I’m running around with Mrs. Madison’s priceless china in one hand, and a rabbit hutch in the other, and two lobster pots on top of my head. Sharp’s been called to the phone across the street, at Whittaker’s, because Gardner Alden is using John’s phone for a long-distance call. People are asking me where is their blue vase. And – er—”

  “An’ what?”

  “Two of Sharp’s feeble-minded boys stop me and say where shall they put the sea chest that Mr. Alden paid so much for. After I tell them where I’d like to put them, I say, ‘Put it in the beachwagon!’ I mean, Sharp’s beachwagon. I point to it with my third hand. They go away. Someone else asks me where is their breadbox and did I see a little lost girl. Polly Madison asks me if I’ll drive the first load home while she and her mother stand guard over the rest. She says Charles will help me. Charles cannot be found. Someone wants to know if I’ve seen an andiron. You’re following all this closely, I hope?”

  “Sometimes, Asey said, “I get this dreamy feelin’ that I actually went to that auction! Go on.”

  “Polly says Charles is lost, but that her mother is guarding things and will doubtless locate Charles. Polly says she and I will
drive the first load home. We start off. We go about a mile. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Polly alone. I stop the car.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We are rudely brought back to earth by another beachwagon cutting across our bows. It’s Sharp’s beachwagon. It’s driven by Al Dorking. Al wants to know what we mean, driving off with his uncle’s chest. I say he must be after two other people. He gets out, I get out, and by God, there is his uncle’s chest in our beachwagon!” Chris paused. “You mean, nobody’s even hinted at this?”

  “It’s a new angle,” Asey said. “A very interestin’ angle, I might add.”

  “The Madisons and I,” Chris said, “felt it would fascinate the average cop. Well, Al and I put the chest into Sharp’s beachwagon. I apologize for Sharp’s feeble-minded hoys who made the error, and Polly and I drive on. Later, we bear what happened to Solatia. Polly remembers the books she threw in the pond. I remember the knife I didn’t get. Charles says if anyone accuses the Madam or Miss Polly or me, he’ll say he done it. Mrs. Madison says Polly and I have our life before us, Charles can’t make any more sacrifices for the Madisons, and she’ll say she did it. Polly and I say neither of ‘em’ll do any such thing. We will. We were pretty dramatic there, for a while.”

  “I wonder,” Asey said thoughtfully, “if there’s anythin’ more disarmin’ than nice, gay, pleasant people like you an’ the Madisons, Chris? When the Alden family talk about themselves an’ each other, it’s family snap-shots that accent everybody’s faults. You an’ the Madisons – an’ Charles – are just cabinet photographs.”

  “I know. Nice people are more suspicious and sinister than anybody else, aren’t they?” Chris said. “Having more imagination, they’re capable of more. More villainy, that is. I tried to work up some villainous deductions I could hang around Al Dorking’s neck, after figuring Solatia might have been killed after the auction. But they didn’t work. They backfired, in fact.”

  Asey wanted to know what he was talking about.

  “I hunted up Gardner Alden, yesterday evening,” Chris said. “Got him as he was going into the movies – odd pictures for him to see, too. Two-gun Blaney and some slapstick. He told me when he’d got through his long-distance call, after the auction, he found Sharp, who’d got through his call, and the two of them went for Sharp’s beachwagon, intending to drive it and the chest to your house. They found from one of the feeble-minded boys that Dorking had driven off in it, after us, and so they at once took another car and put out after Al – I gathered that Gardner doesn’t waste any affection on his nephew, and thought he’d been trying to steal the chest. Gardner and Sharp caught up with Al just two seconds after he’d left Polly and me, with the sea chest safe and sound in the, back of Sharp’s beachwagon. They fol—”

  “Whoa up!” Asey said. “How’d Gardner know that Al had left you just two seconds before?”

  “I asked him that, too. He knew,” Chris said, “because he and Sharp saw us as we drove off. And that fouled my dandy idea that Solatia had possibly been killed after the auction, not before, and that Al Dorking had done it. Because Gardner and Sharp followed Al all the way to your house. Closely. Gardner wasn’t convinced till he talked with Al at your place that Al was acting in his interests, and not with any fell idea of swiping the chest.”

  “So the other car in my yard,” Asey said, “was what Gardner an’ Sharp come in, not Al, an’ the other was Mrs. Turnover’s. Huh!”

  “Well, if you should find out definitely that Solatia was killed after the auction, Asey, don’t bother with Al. He hadn’t the time. Just come after Polly and me. We did.”

  “How much time did you have, exactly,” Asey inquired, “after you parked, an’ before Al come?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Asey, I honestly don’t! Long enough to have killed Solatia if she’d been handy – though I can’t imagine! what she’d have been doing on the East Weesit road if she hadn’t come to the auction! And long enough to have ripped the books out of the chest, and put her in, I suppose. But if you accuse us, you’ll have Charles and Mrs. Madison in your hair. And if you knew ‘em as well as I do, you’d shy from the situation.”

  “Why would you think that you an’ Polly might be accused?” Asey asked curiously. “I mean, I grant you the opportunity of killin’ her, in a broad sense, but why? You two ever have any quarrel with Solatia?”

  “Solatia,” Chris said with a frown, “had a habit of taking a very personal interest in Polly’s love life. And mine. Before I went into the Army, Polly and I weren’t speaking, all because of some gossip Solatia started. That sort of thing couldn’t have bothered us now, but it rankled for a long time, and it’s a good motive on paper. Kidding aside, Asey—”

  “Yes?”

  “If you do have to land on us, pick me, will you?” Chris said seriously. “After all, I was around that chest more than anyone. I used to sit on it and drink coca-colas when I got tired of moving rabbit hutches and lobster pots. And you can’t prove, I didn’t take that knife!”

  “True. Chris, what would have kept you from goin’ to the auction? I don’t mean like your havin’ to report to a doctor, but why wouldn’t you have wanted to go?”

  “Mostly the rather repulsive thought,” Chris said, “of seeing John’s things picked over by a lot of unpleasant people. Thai really would have kept me away, I think, if I hadn’t felt that Mrs. Madison was going to run into a lot of lusty competition, and ought to have some other male than Charles to keep a watchful eye over her, and see she didn’t get gypped.”

  “You think maybe that repulsive thought of people pickin’ over John’s things might’ve kept Solatia away?”

  “Never!” Chris said simply.

  “I see. Well,” Asey started the car, “you run along, an’ ride herd over the Madisons for me, please. Don’t let ‘em throw anythin’ else away anywhere. In strictest confidence, I’ll tell you that John’s money has been found—”

  “No! No! Who found it?”

  “Wa-el.” Asey said, “it ain’t literally been brought to light, but I know where it will be found.” Which was true enough, he thought. He intended to lay it away himself. “I’m goin’ to dig it up later. I’ll let you know when.”

  “Gee, I had a whack at trying to locate that, myself,” Chris said. “The Madisons don’t seem to mind my being poor, but I feel the difference in our surtax brackets very keenly, and I couldn’t help thinking what a difference some loose cash would make! Er – I gather you’re holding us in abeyance, Asey. Could I,” he hesitated as he got out of the car, “could I ask who’s next on your list?”

  “The minister,” Asey said. “So long!”

  But Dr. Cummings hailed him before he reached the end of Main Street.

  “What’s new, Asey? How’re you doing? Got anywhere?”

  “Wa-el, yes an’ no, as you might say,” Asey told him. “A few miscellaneous items has got unearthed.”

  “Like what?” Cummings got into the roadster and sat down. “Tell me!”

  “Wa-el, seems Miss Pitkin was tryin’ to steal letters she’d written Solatia in a ration board row, an’ Hanson caught her in the act. And Harmsworth stole letters from Chris Bede that Chris had stolen from Solatia’s last night – Chris was the rope-trick boy. Seems Chris longed for John Alden’s fish knife – in a nice, sentimental way, like Gardner’s pink shells – an’ Sharp says he gave the knife to Chris, but Chris says the knife was gone before he got it. Seems Harmsworth always solves book murders, an’ don’t like the way you can’t figger this. An’ it seems Quinton Sharp spent the night tryin’ to hide a tin nobody’d let him hide, an’ the tin was full of John Alden’s money, an’—”

  He paused as Cummings got out of the roadster, crossed the street to his own sedan, removed his car keys and his ubiquitous black bag, and got back into the roadster.

  “All right, let’s get Sharp!” he said.

  “Let’s not.” Asey explained the matter. “Then I found out that the sea chest hadn’t c
ome direct to my house – want to hear about that?”

  “All right, let’s get Dorking,” Cummings said when Asey concluded his recital.

  “Nope, doc, he didn’t have time, an’ besides, Gardner an’ Sharp followed him all the way.”

  “Why in the world didn’t Sharp, or Gardner, or anyone tell you about it?”

  “Wa-el, I didn’t ask ‘em,” Asey said, “an’ I don’t s’pose they felt it mattered. If you assumed she was killed at the start of the auction, so she wouldn’t get a chance to bid, then what happened to the chest later probably didn’t seem important.”

  “D’you mean to tell me that the moving of that sea chest has no bearing on this case.” Cummings demanded, “and that you have merely told me all about it in order to add to my state of confusion?”

  “Nope, it has some bearin’,” Asey said. “Polly an’ Chris was parked there on the East Weesit road, an’ I don’t think they know what might’ve gone on at the tail of that beachwagon—”

  “I suppose Solatia Spry walked out of the woods,” Cummings said with elaborate irony, “and was killed there behind the beach-wagon – oh, Asey, sometimes I think your mind is faltering! What would Solatia be doing there? Who, with the world before them, and specifically the East Weesit pine woods, would follow Solatia and kill her behind an inhabited beachwagon, remove a chest from inside it – no, Asey! No!”

  “Sounds crazy, don’t it?” Asey agreed. “Doc, why wouldn’t you have gone to the auction, if you were Solatia?”

  “I would have gone if I’d been her! Why,” Cummings said irritably, “do you ask idiotic questions like that of me? I don’t know why I wouldn’t have gone, if I’d been her! Why wouldn’t you do something that was your business that you set out to do?”

  “I s’pose,” Asey said, “if I was settin’ out on behalf of Porter Tanks, an’ I got a wire from Bill Porter – Doc!”

  Before Cummings had a chance to open his mouth, the roadster was parked in front of the station, and Asey was half-way into the telegraphic office.

  “And I suppose,” Cummings greeted him when he finally emerged, “that you’ve found a lovely telegram from Bill Porter to Solatia, saying not to make tanks – I mean, not to go to the auction?”