“Nope, but I found a lovely telegram to Solatia from Maxim Harvey, Doc,” Asey said. “That’s her rich client in San Francisco. It came yesterday around one o’clock.”
“No! What’d it say?”
“ ‘Make no purchacheth Alden thale. Planth changed. Letter followeth.’ ”
“What!”
“The telegraph girl, who’s replacin’ her brother in the service, is Miss Eunice Pitkin’s kid sister, doc, an’ she lisps. ‘Make no purchases Alden sale. Plans changed. Letter follows.’ ”
“I get it!” Cummings said. “I get it! Solatia’s been bragging that she could top anyone’s bid. Then she gets this wire. Hm. I wouldn’t have wanted to go to the auction, then, if I’d been in her boots! I’d have gone for a nice long walk by myself!”
“An’ Solatia got the wire,” Asey said. “It was put right into her hand. Miss Pitkin’s sister says she tried to phone it, but Solatia’s phone seemed to be out of order – Miss Pitkin herself havin’ cut the phone wire. So she planned to take it over to the auction an’ give it to Solatia in person, but then she saw Solatia walkin’ by, an’ went out an’ handed it to her. Uh-huh, doc, that’s what I think Solatia did, too. I think she took a nice long walk by herself. I think I would have. I don’t think I’d have enjoyed goin’ to the auction an’ not biddin’, not after all the squabbles an’ such. Huh.”
“Huh, what?” Cummings asked.
“I was thinkin’, if you wanted stuff at an auction that you couldn’t afford to buy, an’ if you was sore with a rival lady dealer you think is goin’ to get the stuff, an’ besides you hate her because she won’t give you tyres an’ gas, an’ if you was sore enough to flatten her tyres, an’ cut her phone wire – now, I wonder, doc!”
“Asey, d’you mean you think that telegram isn’t genuine? You think it’s a fake?”
“An’ if you had a sister who worked in the telegraphic office – of course,” Asey said, “Harmsworth has connections all over the country. So does Alden. I dare say the Madisons an’ Mrs. Turnover most probably could think of someone they know in San Francisco who’d send a telegram for ‘em. Most probably you an’ I could. Let’s look into it!”
When he came out of the telegraph office an hour later, Asey found the doctor holding an impromptu clinic from the seat of the roadster.
“There,” Cummings said, “that’s all! Rest of you’ll have to come to the office and get stuck with a bill – what’d you find out, Asey?”
“Maxim Harvey never sent that wire,” Asey started the car, “but it’s a genuine wire in that it got sent from San Francisco. Someone’s got a friend—”
Cummings had no opportunity to ask who the someone was until they drew up five minutes later, in front of the parsonage.
“Who—”
But Asey had jumped out and was making a beeline for the minister, hoeing in his garden.
“I wonder,” Cummings heard him say, “if you could tell me what kind of books was in the chest, the sea chest from John Alden’s that we found Miss Spry’s body in later?”
“Why, yes, Asey. I regretted Mr. Alden’s bidding that large sum, you know. I thought,” the minister said, “I might offer a few dollars—”
“They was hymn-books?”
“Yes. Old, but we could have used them. John Alden’s grandfather was a deacon, and I suppose those books must have come into his possession sometime, perhaps when the new church was built.”
“I understand,” Asey said, “that there’s been some agitation about the church’s havin’ a new coat of paint?”
“Why – why, yes. Er—”
“Have it painted,” Asey said, “an’ charge it to me. I’ll throw in all the new hymn-books you want, too. Thank you, sir. Come on, doc!”
“That poor man,” Cummings said, “will head the line in my office to-night, still suffering from slight shock! Where now, Asey?”
“I’m goin’ to drop you off back at your car—”
“Oh, no, you’re not!” Cummings said. “I refuse to move! I know you’ve got this thing, and I’m not going to miss the finale!”
“I’m goin’ to drop you off at your car,” Asey repeated, “an’ as you ply your rounds, you’re goin’ to spread the news for me to a few selected folks that I’ve found where John’s money is.”
“You don’t know where that money is, Asey Mayo!”
“The money that’s goin’ to be found is John’s,” Asey said, “an’ I know where it is, doc; it’s right here with me! I really want you to do some news spreadin’, please. An’ I don’t know how long I’ll be over at the Madisons’.”
“What d’you want with them?”
“I got to find somethin’,” Asey said.
“What?”
Jennie informed the doctor that it was golf clubs, when he put the question to her later in the afternoon, outside John Alden’s house.
“He come back home with the Madison girl’s golf clubs. I don’t know why,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell me. I don’t know what he’s up to! He’s got all that crowd in there!”
“Who?” Cummings asked.
“Oh, both the Madisons, and Chris Bede, and that fat Mrs. Turnover’s runnin’ around like a hen with her head cut off,” Jennie said. “And Al Dorking, and Hanson, and his cops, and Eunice Pitkin, and that bald Harmsworth, and Clinton Sharp and his brother, and that bandy-legged chauffeur of the Madisons’ – Charles. And Gardner Alden.”
“What’re they doing?”
“Well, Asey’s got these directions he says are for findin’ Jon Alden’s money,” Jennie said, “but they’re not! He made ‘em up himself, and I seen him sittin’ at the desk figgerin’ ‘em out. I tell you, I don’t know what he’s up to, but I’m not goin’ to spend a hot afternoon runnin’ around pretendin’ to dig up money he wrote the directions for findin’!”
“I knew he had some scheme up his sleeve,” Cummings said, “but I don’t get this!”
“They’re all pacin’ around so solemn!” Jennie said. “They don’t know it’s all a fraud! So many feet from the junction of this eave and that drain-pipe. So many,” she broke off to wave at Al Dorking, who had appeared at the front door, “so many inches from something else! It’s all nonsense – you suppose Asey sent Dorking for us? Maybe we’d better go in!”
They entered to the accompaniment of shouts, yells, and shrill screams.
“What’s the matter?” Cummings grabbed Charles as he ran through the hall.
“I don’t know, sir! We was out helping Mr. Mayo pace off distances, and then Mrs. Turnover yelled—”
“What for?”
“She yelled to her nephew. Al Dorking. Mr. Mayo’d just called out something, and then Mrs. Turnover yelled and told him to run through the shed and get away – and there was an awful crash—”
Cummings and Jennie raced for the back of the house.
They paused in the doorway of the shed.
Before them, with one leg through the floor, was Al Dorking. He could neither stand nor sit, and Cummings judged with professional accuracy that the fellow was in agony.
In his right hand, he held a cane.
“That’s John Alden’s cane!” Cummings said involuntarily.
“You knew he had one?” Asey was at his elbow. “You knew, doc, an’ you never told me? Oh, doc! Keep still, Dorking! Don’t wriggle, or you’ll go through more. We’ll get you out, an’ probably your leg ain’t broken, it just feels that way. First, give me that cane,” Asey tiptoed with caution across the shed floor and snatched the cane from Al’s hand, “an’ then let’s remove your gun. There! That’s why I done this so elaborate; I didn’t want you to let loose reckless with that gun!”
“Wasn’t I fine?” Mrs. Turnover was glowing with pride. “Wasn’t I fine when I yelled out for him to run through the shed because then you couldn’t catch him? Didn’t I yell that out beautifully?”
“That was first-rate,” Asey said, “an’ well timed, too. Just like I told you, three second
s after I yelled at him to stop. Yessir, you was fine!”
“I knew the floor out here was rotten,” Mrs. Turnover told Jennie. “I knew, because I started to go through, myself. I told Mr. Mayo about it. And he was so smart, he said that was the way we’d get him! He said he was just casually going to leave the other cane indoors, and we’d all go outdoors, and pretend to hunt John’s money, and then he rather thought someone would sneak in and try to steal the other cane, see?”
“No,” Cummings said, “I don’t see any of it – Asey, we’ve got to get him out. That board’s acting like a pincers. His circulation—”
“Because of the money in the other cane,” Mrs. Turnover continued. “And it all happened as Mr. Mayo thought it would! He’d left the cane so he could see if anyone touched it, and when Al took it, he yelled out what was Al doing, and to stop! And then I yelled out for Al to run through the shed because then he couldn’t be caught – I really did that beautifully! Al thought I was honestly trying to help him escape, and so he ran here, and went right through the floor, just as Mr. Mayo planned! Of course,” she added confidentially to Jennie, “I really set Mr. Mayo on his trail, you know. I told him about Al’s debts, and how he always wanted money. I told him his mother was always afraid he’d come to a bad end. You might really say I was the inspiration for all this!”
“Bede, Hanson,” Cummings said, “grab that board easy and see if you can lift it without its digging into him – watch out you don’t go through, too. I suppose, Asey, he was the biffer, too?”
“Uh-huh. When he told me he’d been in the Army,” Asey said, “he forgot to add he’d been a commando – grab him, Riley, as they lift.”
Cummings sighed as Dorking was lifted up. “Charles, go get my black bag from my car. Sometimes this gets so tiresome, Asey. You catch, I patch!”
An hour later, in Asey’s kitchen, Jennie said she still didn’t understand everything.
“I mean, I know he was crazy for money, and in debt, and had tried to find John’s – but why’d he kill Solatia Spry?”
“Dorking was sore because he couldn’t find the money,” Asey said, “an’ he was sore with Solatia because he thought she knew where it was, an’ wouldn’t tell him. An he was sorer with her because just as be thought he was beginnin’ to make some headway with Polly Madison, Solatia told Polly he was a heel, an’ Polly stopped seein’ even what little she had been seein’ of him. So he thought he’d get even with Solatia, an’ had a friend of his send her a fake telegram from her rich client, sayin’ not to buy him anythin’ at the Alden auction.”
“Did he admit that?” Cummings asked.
“Yes. He wouldn’t tell Hanson who sent the telegram for him – said the friend thought it was a joke, and didn’t know anythin’ about it. Anyway, he felt he’d paid her back plenty, an’ when he spotted her on the East Weesit road, after retrievin’ the chest – which was full of hymn-books up to that point – why, he stopped an’ asked what happened she hadn’t come to the auction?”
“But you told me Dorking didn’t have any time to kill her!” Cummings protested. “You said people were watching him every minute, from the time he got the chest till he got over here!”
“Gardner told Chris Bede he saw the Madisons’ beachwagon leavin’, an’ Al turnin’ Sharp’s beachwagon around to start back,” Asey said. “He seen Al turnin’, but it wasn’t the Madisons’ beachwagon departin’ in the distance. It was somebody else’s. Gardner thought so, because he asked Al later if that was the Madisons’ beachwagon he’d seen leavin’, an’ naturally Al said yes. It’d have been awful silly of him to say anythin’ else, at that point. Anyway, Al told Solatia it was too bad she stayed away from the auction, an’ I guess from the way he said it, Solatia had a sudden flash of suspicion. She asked if he sent that telegram, and he said he couldn’t imagine what she meant. She was sure she’d been tricked by him, then, an’ raised her cane to strike him. And Al grabbed the cane – an’ that’s why she got killed.”
“Why?” Jennie said.
“Because the cane come apart, an’ it was full of money,” Asey said. “John Alden’s hidden money. You see, John had given Solatia that cane before he died – but she never knew there was money hid inside it! Dorking admitted it was as much of a shock to her as it was to him. Only he acted. He grabbed the fish knife he’d swiped before the auction, an’ killed her. He wanted the money that bad. His debts, it turns out,” Asey added, “was considerable more than the picayune little sum he told me.”
“And then he took out the books, and put her in the chest – why in blazes did you make such a fuss about the titles of those books?” Cummings asked.
“Wa-el, first off,” Asey said, “I wondered how she got into the chest, an’ then I wondered who put her in, an’ then I wondered who took the books out before they put her in—”
“All I asked about were the titles,” Cummings said. “Not the mental processes of your sometimes unfathomable mind!”
“N’en I wondered what you’d do with the books,” Asey continued calmly, “an’ it occurred to me it made a powerful lot of difference what kind of books you had to dispose of. Novels would be hard. You couldn’t just leave sixty-odd novels by the side of the road, stickin’ out like a sore thumb. I thought it over, an’ I decided hymn-books would be the easiest kind of books I knew to get rid of.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d just leave ‘em in a church,” Asey said. “No fuss, no effort, no bother, no burnin’, no drownin’ – just take ‘em to the nearest church an’ stack ‘em neatly under a rear pew. That’s just what Dorking did, too. He marched twenty feet up the road to the little church on the East Weesit lane, an’ stacked ‘em under a rear pew – Hanson found ‘em, before I come home.”
“But that chest was locked at the sale!” Jennie said. “And think of the awful time you had gettin’ it open, an’ findin’ a key to fit!”
“But Dorking had the key,” Asey said. “That’s one little fact he kept from me. See, he thought he’d inveigled his uncle into buyin’ the chest, an’ he wanted to be around to laugh when Gardner opened it. So he kept the key. He had it with him. An’—”
“Did he?” Cummings interrupted. “I mean, did he inveigle Gardner into thinking there was money hidden in the chest, or was that pink shell yarn genuine?”
“Genuine. But Dorking didn’t know Gardner’d been sufferin’ a streak of sentiment. Dorking thought he’d played a fine joke on him.”
“Hm,” Cummings said. “If he wanted to give his uncle a start when the chest was finally opened, he certainly succeeded! Rather clever, wasn’t he? He was alibied before the auction by the minister, and after it by what was apparently the Madisons’ beachwagon just leaving him. And I suppose the chance of those hymn-books being found very soon was reasonably remote.”
“I don’t think,” Asey said, “I’d ever have considered huntin’ John Alden’s books in the East Weesit church, myself. No more than I’d hunt decoys in a fillin’ station—”
“How’d you know about the canes, anyway?” Jennie demanded.
“Oh, I looked in Solatia’s beachwagon and seen a pair of pumps in the seat – not old pumps you’d be takin’ to a cobbler’s, but new pumps yon might have put on to go to an auction with. I remembered when we found her, she had on stout walkin’ shoes. An’ Harmsworth said somethin’ about her stridin’ around with a stick, an’ then I noticed a lot of canes in her hall, in a Canton stand. An’ then I run through an inventory of John’s things, an’ come on an item that’d been crossed out. It was a pair of silver-headed canes. Seemed like John had had the canes when the inventory was made, an’ then he’d got rid of ‘em, an’ crossed ‘em off the list. He’d done it himself, because he’d initialled the crossin’ out. I wondered if he’d give the canes away, an’ thought of Solatia as likely person to give ‘em to. An’ then,” Asey said, “it occurred to me that everyone had thought of every conceivable place an’ possession of his that might contain money
, but nobody’d thought of canes!”
“Well; who would think of ‘em!” Jennie demanded.
“I would,” Asey said. “Sooner than secret drawers, or the backs of pictures. Anyway, I wondered about ‘em, an’ I wondered what could’ve become of Solatia Spry’s cane, if she usually carried one when she walked. An’ it all begun to fit together. I figgered she’d been carryin’ one, it was one John gave her, an then because it was all conjecturin’, I decided to locate the other cane, if I could, an’ waggle it around as bait. An’ Al Dorking bit, as I guessed he would. That’s why he was at Solatia’s last night, you know, doc. Tryin’ to find if she had the second cane.”
“I know you said he was the biffer – but look, we saw him coming out of the movies!”
“Uh-huh, he did what I thought Gardner’d done, he went in an’ come out – he’d seen the pictures before, an’ could discuss ‘em fluently, as he did. Dorking knew,” Asey said, “that there was two canes, an’ havin’ got the contents of one, he wanted the contents of the other. That’s why he snuggled up to Mrs. Turnover with directions about that chimney box that he knew wouldn’t pan out, because he’d already looked there. He wanted to get into his aunt’s good graces, an’ get her confidence – he suspected maybe she might have the other cane, see? An’ when I dropped in on ‘em, Dorking realized he’d done a mighty bright thing.”
“Why so?” Jennie asked.
“He had the protective colourin’ of a fat lady who was funny,” Asey said. “It threw him into a completely different light. He was the fat lady’s nephew. An’ what your fat aunt accuses you of it’s funny. That’s all there is to it, an’ I’m hungry enough to eat a horse, Jennie.”
“But what about the other cane?” Jennie said. “Where’d you get that?”
“John gave it to Polly Madison, like I suspected,” Asey said. “But lackin’ a cane rack or an umbrella stand, she’d stuck it into her golf bag an’ forgot about it. She never dreamed there was money in it. Dorking probably looked around at the Madisons’, too,” he added, “but Polly said it’d slipped her mind. She never spoke of it, an’ he didn’t spot it among the golf clubs, which was probably just as well for Polly – stay an’ have some clam chowder with us, doc. Clams ain’t rationed, an’ Jennie’ll probably let you have all you want. She – Jennie, are those hot biscuits?”
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