“Thank you, Mr. Stickney. That’s the sensible attitude. Now Miss Benson was shot, to judge by position and angle, from that doorway. The weapon was dropped on the spot. All four of you claim to have heard that shot from your respective locations and hurried toward it. It was Miss Swift who opened the door and discovered the body. Understandably enough, she fainted. Mrs. Jarvis looked after her while Mr. Stickney had presence of mind enough to phone the police. All of you watched each other, and no one entered this room until our arrival. Is all that correct?”
Little Mrs. Jarvis nodded. “My, Lieutenant, you put it all so neatly! You should have been a cataloguer like Miss Benson.”
“A cataloguer? But she was head of the branch, wasn’t she?”
“She had the soul of a cataloguer,” said Mrs. Jarvis darkly.
“Now this list that she was typing when she was killed.” MacDonald took the paper from the typewriter. “I want you each to look at that and tell me if the last item means anything to you.”
The end of her list read:
Davies: MISSION TO MOSCOW (2 cop)
Kernan: DEFENSE WILL NOT WIN THE WAR
FIC
Machines: ABOVE SUSP
QL 696. C9
The paper went from hand to hand. It evoked nothing but frowns and puzzled headshakings.
“All right.” MacDonald picked up the telephone pad from the desk. “Now can any of you tell me why a librarian should have jotted down the phone number of the F.B.I.?”
This question fetched a definite reaction from Stickney, a sort of wry exasperation; but it was Miss Swift who answered, and oddly enough with a laugh. “Dear Miss Benson…” she said. “Of course she’d have the F.B.I.’s number. Professional necessity.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow that.”
“Some librarians have been advancing the theory, you see, that a librarian can best help defense work by watching what people use which books. For instance, if somebody keeps borrowing every work you have on high explosives, you know he’s a dangerous saboteur planning to blow up the aqueduct and you turn him over to the G-men.”
“Seriously? It sounds like nonsense.”
“I don’t know, Lieutenant. Aside from card catalogs and bird-study, there was one thing Miss Benson loved. And that was America. She didn’t think it was nonsense.”
“I see… And none of you has anything further to add to this story?”
“I,” Mr. Utter announced, “have fifty themes to correct this evening and…”
Lieutenant MacDonald shrugged. “O.K. Go ahead. All of you. And remember you’re apt to be called back for further questioning at any moment.”
“And the library?” Miss Jarvis asked. “I suppose I’m ranking senior in charge now and I…”
“I spoke to the head of the Branches Department on the phone. She agrees with me that it’s best to keep the branch closed until our investigation is over. But I’ll ask you and Miss Swift to report as usual tomorrow; the head of Branches will be here then too, and we can confer further on any matters touching the library itself.”
“And tomorrow I was supposed to have a story hour. Well at least,” the children’s librarian sighed, “I shan’t have to learn a new story tonight.”
Alone, Lieutenant MacDonald turned back to the desk. He set the pad down by the telephone and dialed the number which had caught his attention. It took time to reach the proper authority and establish his credentials, but he finally secured the promise of a full file on all information which Miss Alice Benson had turned over to the F.B.I.
“Do you think that’s it?” a voice asked eagerly.
He turned. It was the junior librarian, the girl with the gray dress and the gold-brown hair. “Miss Swift!”
“I hated to sneak in on you, but I want to know. Miss Benson was an old dear and I … I found her and … Do you think that’s it? That she really did find out something for the F.B.I. and because she did…?”
“It seems likely,” he said slowly. “According to all the evidence, she was on the best of terms with her staff. She had no money to speak of, and she was old for a crime-of-passion set-up. Utter and Stickney apparently knew her only casually as regular patrons of this branch. What have we left for a motive, unless it’s this F.B.I. business?”
“We thought it was so funny. We used to rib her about being a G-woman. And now… Lieutenant, you’ve got to find out who killed her.” The girl’s lips set firmly and her eyes glowed.
MacDonald reached a decision. “Come on.”
“Come? Where to?”
“I’m going to drive you home. But first we’re going to stop off and see a man, and you’re going to help me give him all the facts of this screwball case.”
“Who? Your superior?”
MacDonald hesitated. “Yes,” he said at last. “My superior.”
He explained about Nick Noble as they drove. How Lieutenant Noble, a dozen years ago, had been the smartest problem-cracker in the department. How his captain had got into a sordid scandal and squeezed out, leaving the innocent Noble to take the rap. How his wife had needed a vital operation just then, and hadn’t got it. How the widowed and disgraced man had sunk until…
“Nobody knows where he lives or what he lives on. All we know is that we can find him at a little joint on North Main, drinking cheap sherry by the water glass. Sherry’s all that life has left him—that, and the ability to make the toughest problem come crystal clear. Somewhere in the back of that wino’s mind is a precision machine that sorts the screwiest facts into the one inevitable pattern. He’s the court of last appeal on a case that’s nuts, and God knows this one is. QL 696. C9… Screwball Division, L.A.P.D., the boys call him.”
The girl shuddered a little as they entered the Chula Negra Café. It was not a choice spot for the élite. Not that it was a dive, either. No juke, no B-girls; just a counter and booths for the whole-hearted eating and drinking of the Los Angeles Mexicans.
MacDonald remembered which booth was Nick Noble’s sanctum. The little man sat there, staring into a half-empty glass of sherry, as though he hadn’t moved since MacDonald last saw him after the case of the stopped timepieces. His skin was dead white and his features sharp and thin. His eyes were of a blue so pale that the irises were almost invisible.
“Hi!” said MacDonald. “Remember me?”
One thin blue-veined hand swatted at the sharp nose. The pale eyes rested on the couple. “MacDonald…” Nick Noble smiled faintly. “Glad. Sit down.” He glanced at Stella Swift. “Yours?”
MacDonald coughed. “No. Miss Swift, Mr. Noble. Miss Swift and I have a story to tell you.”
Nick Noble’s eyes gleamed dimly. “Trouble?”
“Trouble. Want to hear it?”
Nick Noble swatted at his nose again. “Fly,” he explained to the girl. “Stays there.” There was no fly. He drained his glass of sherry. “Give.”
MacDonald gave, much of the same précis that he had given to the group in the office. When he had finished, Nick Noble sat silent for so long that Stella Swift looked apprehensively at his glass. Then he stirred slightly, beckoned to a waitress, pointed to his empty glass, and said to the girl, “This woman. Benson. What was she like?”
“She was nice,” said Stella. “But of course she was a cataloguer.”
“Cataloguer?”
“You’re not a librarian. You wouldn’t understand what that means. But I gather that when people go to library school—I never did, I’m just a junior—most of them suffer through cataloguing, but a few turn out to be born cataloguers. Those are a race apart. They know a little of everything, all the systems of classification, Dewey, Library of Congress, down to the last number, and just how many spaces you indent each item on a typed card, and all about bibliography, and they shudder in their souls if the least little thing is wrong. They have eyes like eagles and memories like elephants.”
“With that equipment,” said MacDonald, “she might really have spotted something for the F.B.I.”<
br />
“Might,” said Nick Noble. Then to the girl, “Hobbies?”
“Miss Benson’s? Before the war she used to be a devoted birdwatcher, and of course being what she was she had a positively Kieranesque knowledge of birds. But lately she’s been all wrapped up in trying to spot saboteurs instead.”
“I’m pretty convinced,” MacDonald contributed, “that that’s our angle, screwy as it sounds. The F.B.I. lead may point out our man, and there’s still hope from the lab reports on prints and the paraffin test.”
“Tests,” Nick Noble snorted. “All you do is teach criminals what not to do.”
“But if those fail us, we’ve got a message from Miss Benson herself telling us who killed her. And that’s what I want you to figure out.” He handed over the paper from the typewriter. “It’s pretty clear what happened. She was typing, looked up, and saw her murderer with a gun. If she wrote down his name, he might see it and destroy the paper. So she left this cryptic indication. It can’t possibly be part of the list she was typing; Mrs. Jarvis and Miss Swift don’t recognize it as library routine. And the word above breaks off in the middle. Those letters and figures are her dying words. Can you read them?”
Nick Noble’s pallid lips moved faintly. “Q L six nine six point C nine.” He leaned back in the booth and his eyes glazed over. “Names,” he said.
“Names?”
“Names of four.”
“Oh. Norbert Utter, the teacher; James Stickney, the nondescript; Mrs. Cora Jarvis, the children’s librarian; and Miss Stella Swift here.”
“So.” Nick Noble’s eyes came to life again. “Thanks, MacDonald. Nice problem. Give you proof tonight.”
Stella Swift gasped. “Does that mean that he…?”
MacDonald grinned. “You’re grandstanding for the lady, Mr. Noble. You can’t mean that you’ve solved that damned QL business like that?”
“Pencil,” Nick Noble said.
Wonderingly, Lieutenant MacDonald handed one over. Nick Noble took a paper napkin, scrawled two words, folded it, and handed it to Stella. “Not now,” he warned. “Keep it. Show to him later. Grand-standing…! Need more proof first. Get it soon. Let me know about test. F.B.I.”
MacDonald rose frowning. “I’ll let you know. But how you can…”
“Goodbye, Mr. Noble. It’s been so nice meeting you.”
But Nick Noble appeared not to hear Stella’s farewell. He was staring into his glass and not liking what he saw there.
Lieutenant MacDonald drew up before the girl’s rooming house. “I may need a lot of help on the technique of librarianship in this case,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you soon.”
“Thanks for the ride. And for taking me to that strange man. I’ll never forget how… It seems—I don’t know—uncanny, doesn’t it?” A little tremor ran through her lithe body.
“You know, you aren’t exactly what I’d expect a librarian to be. I’ve run into the wrong ones. I think of them as something with flat shirtwaists and glasses and a bun. Of course Mrs. Jarvis isn’t either, but you…”
“I do wear glasses when I work,” Stella confessed. “And you aren’t exactly what I’d expected a policeman to be, or I shouldn’t have kept them off all this time.” She touched her free flowing hair and punned, “And you should see me with a bun on.”
“That’s a date. We’ll start with dinner and—”
“Dinner!” she exclaimed. “Napkin!” She rummaged in her handbag. “I won’t tell you what he said, that isn’t fair, but just to check on—” She unfolded the paper napkin.
She did not say another word, despite all MacDonald’s urging. She waved goodbye in pantomime, and her eyes, as she watched him drive off, were wide with awe and terror.
Lieutenant MacDonald glared at the reports on the paraffin tests of his four suspects. All four negative. No sign that any one of them had recently used a firearm. Nick Noble was right; all you do is teach criminals what not to do. They learn about nitrite specks in the skin, so a handkerchief wrapped over the hand… The phone rang.
“Lafferty speaking. Los Angeles Field Office, F.B.I. You wanted the dope on this Alice Benson’s reports?”
“Please.”
“O.K. She did turn over to us a lot of stuff on a man who’d been reading nothing but codes and ciphers and sabotage methods and explosives and God knows what all. Sounded like a correspondence course for the complete Fifth Columnist. We check up on him, and he’s a poor devil of a pulp writer. Sure he wanted to know how to be a spy and a saboteur; but just so’s he could write about ’em. We gave him a thorough going over, he’s in the clear.”
“Name?”
“James Stickney.”
“I know him,” said MacDonald dryly. “And is that all?”
“We’ll send you the file, but that’s the gist of it. I gather the Benson woman had something else she wasn’t ready to spill, but if it’s as much help as that was… Keep an eye on that library though. There’s something going on.”
“How so?”
“Three times in the past two months we’ve trailed suspects into that Serafin Pelayo branch, and not bookworms either. They didn’t do anything there or contact anybody, but that’s pretty high for coincidence in one small branch. Keep an eye open. And if you hit on anything, maybe we can work together.”
“Thanks. I’ll let you know.” MacDonald hung up. So Stickney had been grilled by the F.B.I. on Miss Benson’s information. Revenge for the indignity? Damned petty motive. And still… The phone rang again.
“Lieutenant MacDonald? This is Mrs. Jarvis. Remember me?”
“Yes indeed. You’ve thought of something more about—?”
“I certainly have. I think I’ve figured out what the QL thing means. At least I think I’ve figured how we can find out what it means. You see…” There was a heavy sound, a single harsh thud. Mrs. Jarvis groaned.
“Mrs. Jarvis! What’s the matter? Has anything—”
“Elsie…” MacDonald heard her say faintly. Then the line was dead.
“Concussion,” the police surgeon said. “She’ll live. Not much doubt of that. But she won’t talk for several days, and there’s no telling how much she’ll remember then.”
“Elsie,” said Lieutenant MacDonald. It sounded like an oath.
“We’ll let you know as soon as she can see you. O.K., boys. Get along.” Stella Swift trembled as the stretcher bearers moved off. “Poor Cora… When her husband comes home from Lockheed and finds… I was supposed to have dinner with them tonight and I come here and find you…”
Lieutenant MacDonald looked down grimly at the metal statue. “The poor devil’s track trophy, and they use it to brain his wife… And what the hell brings you here?” he demanded as the lean figure of Norbert Utter appeared in the doorway.
“I live across the street, Lieutenant,” the teacher explained. “When I saw the cars here and the ambulance, why naturally I… Don’t tell me there’s been another…?”
“Not quite. So you live across the street? Miss Swift, do you mind staying here to break the news to Mr. Jarvis? It’d come easier from you than from me. I want to step over to Mr. Utter’s for a word with him.”
Utter forced a smile. “Delighted to have you, Lieutenant.”
The teacher’s single apartment was comfortably undistinguished. His own books, MacDonald noticed, were chosen with unerring taste; the library volumes on a table seemed incongruous.
“Make yourself at home, Lieutenant, as I have no doubt you will. Now what is it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“First might I use your phone?”
“Certainly. I’ll get you a drink meanwhile. Brandy?”
MacDonald nodded as he dialed the Chula Negra. Utter left the room. A Mexican voice answered, and MacDonald sent its owner to fetch Nick Noble. As he waited, he idly picked up one of those incongruous library books. He picked it up carelessly and it fell open. A slip of paper, a bookmark perhaps, dropped from the fluttering pages. MacDonald noticed typed letter
s:
430945q57w7qo0oqd3…
“Noble here.”
“Good.” His attention snapped away from the paper. “Listen.” And he told the results of the tests and the information from the F.B.I. and ended with the attack on Mrs. Jarvis. Utter came to the door once, looked at MacDonald, at the book, and at the paper. “And so,” MacDonald concluded, “we’ve got a last message again. ‘Elsie…’”
“‘Elsie…’” Nick Noble’s voice repeated thoughtfully.
“Any questions?”
“No. Phone me tomorrow morning. Later tonight maybe. Tell you then.”
MacDonald hung up frowning. That paper… Suddenly he had it. The good old typewriter code, so easy to write and to decipher. For each letter use the key above it. He’d run onto such a cipher in a case recently; he should be able to work it in his head. He visualized a keyboard. The letters and figures shifted into
reportatusualplace…
Mr. Utter came back with a tray and two glasses of brandy. His lean face essayed a host’s smile. “Refreshments, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you.”
“And now we can—Or should you care for a cheese cracker?”
“Don’t bother.”
“No bother.” He left the room. Lieutenant MacDonald looked at the cipher, then at the glasses. Deftly he switched them. Then he heard the slightest sound outside the door, a sigh of expectation confirmed and faint footsteps moving off. MacDonald smiled and switched the glasses back again.
Mr. Utter returned with a bowl of cheese wafers and the decanter. “To the success of your investigations, Lieutenant.” They raised their glasses. Mr. Utter took a cautious sip, then coolly emptied his glass out the window. “You outsmarted me, Lieutenant,” he announced. “I had not expected you to be up to the double gambit. I underrated you and apologize.” He filled his own glass afresh from the decanter, and they drank. It was good brandy, unusually good for a teacher’s salary.
“So we’re dropping any pretense?” said MacDonald.
Mr. Utter shrugged. “You saw that paper. I was unpardonably careless. You are armed and I am not. Pretense would be foolish when you can so readily examine the rest of those books.”
Exeunt Murderers Page 3