“One slip. Francis and Gervase not in files.”
“I didn’t know about the files. But I was lucky that Lally was still on the outs with me and said ‘Mr. Patrick.’ If she’d said ‘Alan’—well, I’d have had a hard time convincing anybody that three people with the same first name had a family resemblance.”
“On outs? Las Vegas. You found out then?”
“A slip she made while she was drinking. And a man she met who talked too much. Then I began working on it… Don’t you see?” His voice was pleading. “This … this thing…” He held up his right hand. “The middle finger can pull a trigger. Lally knows that,” he added bitterly. “But the Board … And I’ve got to fight. Every man has to. This was one way …”
“Fugitive from justice,” Nick Noble said tonelessly. “Can he fight?”
“Somehow. Someplace. I was going to get across the border, head south. Mexico, Brazil … They’ve got armies, and maybe they’re not so particular. Or their merchant marine—”
“Fascist,” Nick Noble said.
Alan Patrick had stood pat when called a murderer, but now his face flushed. “What the hell—”
“Fascist thinks he’s too strong for democracy. Makes his own laws. The hell with justice; do what’s expedient. The hell with debts; cancel ’em by force. Us, we like justice. We pay debts. Our kind of strength.” Alan Patrick said slowly, “The Lieutenant won’t be back for an hour. You’ll tell him, of course, but that still gives me a head start.” Nick Noble said nothing.
Alan Patrick looked into the pale blue eyes set in the white face. Finally he called to the waitress. “I wonder,” he said, “how many tequila boilermakers a man can drink in an hour.”
Nick Noble smiled.
“Anyway,” Patrick said half defensively, “I killed Rumor, Inc.”
Nick Noble said, “A man’s work. But without gun. Kill every rumor you meet. Something everybody can do. Even me.”
The actor stared at him a long time and said at last, almost with awe, “What are you?”
Nick Noble brushed the invisible fly from his nose. “Thirsty,” he said, fondling the empty sherry glass.
(1945)
The Punt and the Pass
The knife had not tasted blood for four centuries. Its edge was still sharp, and Professor Cross was unconsciously cautious as he fingered it. “Yes, my dear,” he smiled down at Janice, “I have always been retiring, but now at last I am retiring.”
Janice’s pert face looked blank, and he added ruefully, “If I am retiring from the academic life, I suppose I must also abandon academic humor. It seems regrettably unlikely to draw laughs unless the audience feels that its grade may depend on its response.”
This time Janice did laugh. She said, “You’re still teaching this semester, and I’m still in Archeology 130A. You can blackmail me if you want to.”
Janice’s white skirt and green sweater seemed to have brought the bright outdoors here into the cool corridors of Frisby Hall. It was one of those perfect late autumn Saturdays in Southern California—the sort that football fans pray for, especially when it’s the day of the Big Game. Professor Cross nodded at Janice’s green-and-white pompom and said, “I almost wish I were going. But my old bones do not care for stadium seats.”
“Come on,” Janice urged. “Root for Tim. Give ’em the ancient Peruvian war-whoop.”
“No. Even my nephew cannot tempt me to suffer the undignified agonies of those seats. My studies have not included the talents of the Hindu fakirs. My studies …” he repeated, and looked almost regretful at the thought of retiring.
“But what,” Janice asked, “brings on this retiring so sudden-like?”
Professor Cross toyed with the knife, his fingers passing gently over the dark stains that might have been blood. “I have brought off my greatest coup,” he said with the unassuming pride of scholarly certainty. “I have proved beyond a question the authenticity of the Inca relics which my grandfather, Cap’n Obadiah, brought home from Peru. Their direct provenance remains in doubt, but there is not the slightest shadow of dubiety that they derive ultimately from the Temple of the Sun itself.”
Janice said, “My. Is that like coming into a fortune?”
“Why, I suppose it is. Certainly the Metropolitan’s offer is an unbelievably handsome one. But what most concerns me is the vindication of my own reputation—and Cap’n Obadiah’s. I can retire in contentment now.”
Janice put out a hand toward the knife. “Can I pretty-please see the toad-sticker?” Her fingers delicately coursed along the gold-bedecked handle and avoided the sharp stone blade. “Was this for …?”
Professor Cross nodded. “For sacrifices. Peculiarly interesting technique of throat-cutting,” he added matter-of-factly. “Oddly reminiscent of certain practices among the Ngutlumbi. I do not know a better specimen of the sacrificial blade in North America.”
“But should you go carrying it around like this?”
“The bulk of the collection is going to the Metropolitan, but I wish to present this to the University Museum in memory of my happy years here. In fact, I am on my way to the Curator’s office now. Should you care to share the elevator with me?”
Janice shook her head, and her long golden bob was a splash of the sunlight outside. “On a day like this I should creak up in that contraption? I want to climb stairs and stretch my legs. I feel so full of vim and vitamins I wish I was on the team; then Notre Pere would better look out! See you upstairs.”
Professor Cross smiled after her as he pressed the elevator button. A good girl. Hardly the star of Archeology 130A, but sweet and loyal and alive. She reminded him of Flora, and he hoped that his nephew Tim would have more sense and less caution than he had had fifty years ago.
The elevator was so long in coming that he wished he could climb stairs like Janice. When it finally arrived and he was fitting his key into the lock which restricted its use to faculty members, he heard a youthful shout of “Hoy! How’s about a lift!”
Professor Cross turned happily to his nephew. “You have just succeeded, Timothy, in perpetrating a most amusing and ingenious bilingual pun between the British and American languages, though I doubt if it was intentional. Nevertheless, it certainly earns a ‘lift’ for you—and,” he added as he noticed the other, “your friend.” His smile of greeting to “Gloomy” Dane was a mixture of the feelings appropriate to the second-best quarterback in the past ten years and the worst student in the entire history of Archeology 130A.
“Might as well save our wind for the game,” Tim said. “We’re on our way to the Dean’s office for the weekly lecture on Gloomy’s eligibility.”
“Yeah,” Gloomy said slowly. “And that reminds me, Professor—”
For a moment Professor Cross’s genial face was stern. “Please, Dane. Let’s not talk about that now. You know my position—and God helping me, I can no other.”
Tim held the elevator door open and Professor Cross entered, carrying the sacrificial knife.
Janice was hardly out of breath when she reached the fourth floor. Disgustingly good condition, her room-mate called it. She looked at the elevator door and grinned to herself. It would be fun to show up waiting for Professor Cross when he arrived in the “contraption.”
The apparatus was creaking, quite literally. It drew to a stop in front of her, but the door did not open. She waited. There were noises inside. Loud thumpings, and voices shouting. She tugged at the outer door, but it did not give. She felt funny. There was a dear old man in there and a knife with four-hundred-year-old blood on it and men were shouting. Illogically she pulled harder, then turned as she heard footsteps.
She didn’t recognize the man, but he looked like faculty. She mumbled something urgent and unintelligible about doors and noises and knives, and from the way he looked at her she was certain he must be from the Psych Department. When he heard the noises himself he was curious enough to unlock the door.
Janice never forgot what she saw: A littl
e box like a puppet-show stage, and the puppets suddenly frozen motionless as she unlocked the curtain. Downstage center Tim lying on his back and Gloomy kneeling on him with all his weight and his hand around Tim’s throat. And upstage …
Gloomy looked up as Janice screamed. He said tautly, “Got him. The damned fool. All of a sudden grabs the knife and …”
The Psych professor said, “We must get a doctor quickly. The poor man …”
Janice heard her voice, very little and far away, saying, “But he’s dead, can’t you see? He’s retired. He’s a retired sacrifice. And Tim … Tim …” Then everything went away for a while.
“… so all of a sudden he runs besmirk and kills the old guy. And the best damn quarterback we got, too.”
That was the way Officer Mulroon of the patrol car phoned it in on his two-way, and it sounded very simple to Lieutenant MacDonald. He ought to be able to clear it up in time to take the afternoon off and get to the game, though the game wouldn’t be the same thing without Tim Cross at quarter.
But the situation was anything but simple by the time MacDonald arrived at Frisby Hall. Mulroon, on guard in front of the closed door of the elevator, gestured down the hall to the President’s office. “They’re all in there,” he said. “And Loot, maybe you think you’ve seen some screwy ones?”
“I have,” said MacDonald sincerely.
“Ha,” Mulroon ha-ed ominously. “You wait.”
It looked like a faculty tea in the spacious sunny office. MacDonald recognized most of the people present: the two star quarterbacks, the President himself, and beside him no less than J. Francis Donlevy, a man of equal power in the Donlevy Contracting Corporation, the Alumni Association, and the City Hall. There was another man who looked like a professor of the more modern breed, and a uniformed officer trying to seem inconspicuous. There was no sign that anybody was under arrest.
MacDonald addressed the President. “MacDonald of Homicide,” he said.
The President was all grace and aplomb. “Good morning, Lieutenant. Mr. Donlevy you doubtless know.”
J. Francis grunted around his cigar in a manner to indicate that these college-bred detectives were all very well but give him an old-line copper that knew what party he owed his job to.
“This gentleman, who discovered the … misfortune, is Professor Hammerstein of the Psychology Department. And these young men,” the President casually tossed his silver pompadour like a thoroughbred stallion, “are Tim Cross and Mortimer, or as we more frequently call him, ‘Gloomy’ Dane. Lieutenant MacDonald.”
MacDonald tried not to blink. It was the first time he had ever been formally introduced to a murderer. The two quarterbacks sat side by side, but their eyes looked anywhere in the room excepting at each other.
The President went on suavely, “We are faced, Lieutenant, with a most unusual situation. Our one undisputed fact is the regrettable death of Professor Cross. ‘’Tis true, ’tis pity, and pity ’tis, ’tis true.’ But as to the circumstances surrounding that death and the identity of his assailant—”
MacDonald broke in, “I understand from Mulroon on the phone that there wasn’t any question; I came here to arrest Tim Cross.”
Oddly, both Tim and Gloomy Dane smiled at that remark, though not at each other—curious smiles, mingling amusement with bitterness. The President dilated his nostrils in faint distaste as though MacDonald had used a four-letter word. “Perhaps,” he said, “the situation will be clearer to you if you hear from the young men themselves. Dane?”
Gloomy spoke as though he were doggedly reciting a crammed lesson. “We got in the elevator, me and Tim and the Prof. The Prof had a kind of dagger with him. All of a sudden as soon as the door closes and the car starts, Tim takes out his handkerchief, grabs the dagger with it, and sinks it into the old man. It all happens so quick I can’t stop him. Then I grab him and we roll around some and when Professor Hammerstein here opens the door I’ve got him and we send for the cops.”
MacDonald nodded. “That was Mulroon’s story.”
The President gestured to Tim. “Cross?”
Timothy too spoke wearily, as if he had told the story too often by now. “We got in the elevator, my uncle and Gloomy and I. My uncle had an Inca sacrificial knife. As soon as we’d started up, Gloomy suddenly took out his handkerchief, snatched the knife, and stabbed my uncle. It all happened in an instant; I couldn’t stop him. I grabbed at him and we started a free-for-all. His knee got me in the groin and when Professor Hammerstein opened up I was helpless. I was too dazed to talk until after Gloomy spilled his yam to your men.”
“You see, Lieutenant?” the President asked politely.
Lieutenant MacDonald looked from one of the youths to the other, and a sort of awed admiration began to dawn in his eyes. “Wait here,” he said curtly. He hurried back down the hall. The doctor was just coming out of the elevator. MacDonald talked with him a few minutes and then with Mulroon. He stepped into the elevator and closed the door behind him. He had never been in quite such close quarters with a corpse before. There was pity in his eyes as he looked on the old man, but cool efficiency in his movements as he examined the body and the car. He stooped, picked something off the floor, and marked with a chalk cross the spot where it had been. Then he returned to the President’s office.
He doubted if anyone had spoken in his absence. They all looked at him expectantly now. He started with, “The doctor says he was stabbed by a man about five foot ten and right handed. That covers both of you. He also says this man was standing on his right. Which of you was on the right?”
He got the answer he had feared, a duet response of “He was.” He grinned grimly. It sounded to his ears like a farce, but his nose still retained the warm scent of death in the close confines of the car. He went on, “I found this on the floor.” He held up the handkerchief. “Whose is it?”
Oddly, this wasn’t a duet. Gloomy Dane said, “His.” Tim Cross said, “I don’t know.”
“The initial,” MacDonald said flatly, “is a C.”
“Oh.” Tim looked blank. “I guess when we were rolling around … Because I remember he put his handkerchief back in his pocket after …”
“I remember he dropped it after,” Gloomy said positively. “If you want to see mine …” He pulled his handkerchief out of his hip pocket. There was no blood on it. There was none on the one MacDonald held either. The knife had sealed the wound. MacDonald looked at the two squares of cloth. The one place where the two stories varied …
“So on physical evidence either story could be true,” he announced. “Now how about motive? Or am I supposed to believe one of you went crazy?”
Gloomy glanced uneasily at the President. “I guess you’ll hear about it anyhow,” he said. “Prof Cross was gonna flunk me out of Arky. Most of the profs, they’re right guys and they can see how it is when we’re heading straight for the Rose Bowl” (Professor Hammerstein snorted loudly) “but Cross he was funny that way. We used to kind of have words like about it.”
The President laughed gracefully. “Mr. Dane exaggerates of course, Lieutenant. I’m sure no one on the faculty would put athletic considerations before scholastic honesty …”
J. Francis Donlevy spoke for the first time. “If Cross was trying to get Dane off the team, he got what was coming to him.”
“Mr. Cross?” said MacDonald.
“He was my uncle …” Tim began.
“I’ve known less motive,” MacDonald observed dryly.
“You don’t understand. I mean he’s always been swell to me, and … But here’s another thing I guess you’re bound to hear anyway: Uncle Steve just came into quite a bit of money and he’s been talking about putting it into a fund for some museum.”
“And he didn’t and you’re the heir?”
Tim nodded dumbly.
The President passed a well-kept hand over his snowy mane. “You can see, Lieutenant, the difficulties which the situation—”
“I can see two things,�
� MacDonald said sharply. “One: I’ve met the smartest killer I’ve heard of yet. Two: I’ve always underrated the usefulness of police persuasion. Come on, boys; you’re under arrest. And we’ll talk this over at headquarters.”
“But Lieutenant,” the President protested. “You can’t arrest them both. Only one of them—”
“One’s a murderer and the other’s a material witness. They can fight about the billing later. Meanwhile—”
“Just a minute, young feller.” That rasp was J. Francis Donlevy’s. “Let’s talk turkey. I’ve got more cash on that game this afternoon than you’ll see in twenty years on the force, and you want to arrest both our quarterbacks.”
“Yes,” said MacDonald straightforwardly, trying to hold back the anger he felt accumulating inside him.
“No,” said J. Francis, just as straightforwardly. “These boys are playing this afternoon. You arrest ’em and I’ll have ’em out on a writ of habeas corpus before you can lay a finger on ’em. And I’ll have your badge tomorrow.”
MacDonald turned to the uniformed copper. “Bracelets, Hutch,” he said.
J. Francis Donlevy grunted. “Honest copper, huh? Seems to me I’ve heard you’re a friend of Nick Noble’s. Ever learn anything from him?”
MacDonald paused. He saw Nick Noble—the honest copper caught up in politics, framed for another man’s crimes, booted off the force, sinking down to Skid Row …
The door opened and a girl came in. MacDonald drank her in as though she were a mirage come true. Her simple freshness was a draft of well water after the stuffy polish of the President, the frank corruption of J. Francis—and the devilish ingenuity of one of two men.
She said, “They were nice to me over at the Clinic. They say I’m all right now. Are you the detective?”
MacDonald said, “Yes.”
“I’m Janice Peters. I … found him, and Gloomy said that Tim … But now they tell me Tim says Gloomy and it’s all mixed up and … Oh dear, he was such a sweet old man!”
Exeunt Murderers Page 9