“How did she sound on the telephone? Like her usual self?”
“No. Her voice was strained and harsh. She’s really not right mentally. Her memory–”
“Did you tell all this to Bollman?”
“What?”
“About the telephone call and the music box and Josephine losing her memory.”
“Let me see. Yes—I guess I did.”
Bertha was excited now. “You got the music box right after she’d been hurt, is that right?”
“Yes—within a day or two.”
“And how did it come?”
“A messenger brought it to me.”
“And where did the messenger say he was from?”
“From the store that sold it, some antique dealer. I’ve forgotten the name. He said he’d received instructions to deliver it to me. He said he’d been holding it for a young lady who had paid a deposit on it and who had just recently completed–”
“You told this to Bollman? To whom else did you tell it?”
“To Thinwell, the man who drives me around and–”
“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha exclaimed, jumping to her feet.
“What’s the matter?” Kosling asked.
“Of all the numskulls, of all the thick-pated Dumb Doras!”
“Who?”
“Me.”
“I don’t get it,” Kosling said.
“Any label on that music box, any place that would indicate the dealer, anything that—”
“I wouldn’t know,” Kosling said. “I am familiar with its appearance only through the sense of touch. It’s strange, you asking who else I’d told about being afraid Josephine Dell had lost her memory because of that accident. I remember now Jerry Bollman asked me that same question.”
“You told him you’d talked with Thinwell?”
“Yes. I have a doctor friend and Thinwell suggested I take him and go to see Miss Dell personally and ask her questions without letting on that the man with me was a doctor—but first I should make absolutely certain that she was the one who had sent me that music box. Thinwell said that it just might have been someone else. But I don’t see how it could have been. No, I’d never told anyone else about–”
“There was no note with the music box?” Bertha asked.
“No. The note was with the flowers. The music box was just delivered like I said, without any note.” Bertha started excitedly for the door, caught herself, turned back, stretched, yawned deliberately, and said, “Well, after all, I guess you’ve gone over things until you’re tired. What do you say we turn in?”
“Wasn’t there something in what I just said, something that made you excited?”
“Oh, I thought there was for a while,” Bertha said, yawning again, “but I guess it’s all a false alarm. Don’t know what she paid for the music box, do you?”
“No, I don’t, but I think it was rather a large sum. It’s a very beautiful piece, and there’s painting on it. Some kind of landscape painting done in oils.”
“Ever had that painting described to you?”
“No, I’ve just felt it with my fingers.”
Bertha sucked in another prodigious yawn. “Well, I’m going to sleep. Do you like to sleep late in the morning?”
“Well, yes.”
“I don’t usually get up before nine or nine-thirty,” Bertha said. “That isn’t too late for you, is it?”
“The way I feel now, I could sleep the clock around.”
“Well, go ahead and get a good might’s sleep,” Bertha told him. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Bertha guided him through the door of the connecting bath, helped him off with the woman’s clothes, piloted him around the room until he had the general lay of things, left his cane by his bed where he could reach it, and then said, “Well, sleep tight. I’ll go grab some shut-eye.”
She walked through the connecting bathroom, closed the door, listened for a moment, then grabbed her hat and coat, moved cautiously across the room, tiptoed down the corridor to the elevator, and ten minutes later was tearing madly along the road to Los Angeles.
It wasn’t until she had passed Pomona that she suddenly realized she was doing exactly what Jerry Bollman had been doing some twenty-four hours previously—and probably for the same purpose. And now Jerry Bollman was stretched out on a slab.
Chapter XXVI
DIM-OUT REGULATIONS WERE in effect. At the crest of the hill Bertha snapped her lights over to dim parking and crawled along at a conservative fifteen miles an hour. She swung her car in close to the curb, shut off the motor, and listened. She could hear nothing save the little night noises which had not as yet been frightened into silence: the chirpings of crickets; the shrill chorus of frogs; and several other mysterious, unidentified noises of the night which are never heard near the more populous centres.
Bertha produced her pocket flashlight. By the aid of the weird, indistinct illumination, as intangible as pale moonlight, she found her way up the walk to the house.
The bungalow loomed suddenly before her, a dark silhouette. She followed the walk with the guide rail running along it, came to the porch, climbed the steps, and paused. The door was tightly closed. This would be the work of the officers. Bertha wondered whether it had been locked.
She tried the knob. The door was locked.
Bertha’s flashlight showed her, after some difficulty in getting it properly centred, that there was no key on the inside of the door. The police then must have put on a night latch or have closed and locked the door.
Bertha had a bunch of skeleton keys in her purse. She knew they constituted a dangerous possession, but they frequently came in very handy, and Bertha was not one to hesitate over something she wanted badly enough.
A skeleton key clicked in the lock. She tried three in succession. It was the fourth that unlatched the door.
Bertha Cool pushed the door open, then stood perfectly still, waiting to see if the dark interior of the house offered anything of menace.
She heard no sound. Her flashlight showed her nothing, although she mechanically depressed the beam over towards the left-hand corner in order to see if the sinister red stains were still on the carpet.
They were.
Bertha switched out the flashlight.
Abruptly she heard motion in the room. Her ice-cold thumb fumbled with the switch of the flashlight. She was conscious of something coming toward her; then bony fingers seemed to clutch her throat.
Bertha lashed out in front of her with a frenzied kick. She swung her left fist and groped with her right, trying to find the wrists of her assailant.
Her hands encountered nothing. Her kick merely threw her off balance. She knew she had given a half-scream.
It wasn’t until Bertha Cool had screamed that reason reinstated itself. The object at her throat abruptly left. She heard a fluttering sound, and caught the dim glimpse of a sinister shape flitting past her into the darkness.
“Freddie!” she muttered under her breath. “It’s that damn bat.”
She turned, the beam of her flashlight exploring the room while Bertha tried to, convince herself there were no more death traps planted in the house against the return of the blind man.
Bertha’s search of the place was necessarily impeded because of her desire to feel her way cautiously, to avoid running into some thread which, all but invisible in the dim light, would release a deadly bullet.
It was easy now to visualize what had happened the night before; Bollman, hurrying into the house, trying to get that music box and get out before anyone caught him—the lunge against the string that led to the trap gun. Bertha, too, felt impelled by that same haste, that fear of discovery, yet she dared not surrender to it.
The house was plainly but comfortably furnished. Evidently Kosling tried to keep five or six comfortable chairs for his cronies when they came to visit. These chairs, all cushioned and comfortable, were arranged in a half-circle around the living room. Against the wall under
a window was a book-case whose glass-enclosed shelves held no books, a table which was absolutely devoid of a magazine. On a stand over near the window—Bertha’s eyes fixed on that stand. She advanced toward it. Her eager hands pounced upon the music box. When she had first seen it, when the blind man had exhibited it to her on the street, her inspection had been only casual. Now she studied it with a concentration that was all but microscopic.
The light of her flash showed Bertha that it was made of smoothly polished hardwood. On the outside was an oil painting of a pastoral scene. On the opposite side was a pox-trait of a beautiful young woman, somewhat ample as far as curves were judged by present-day standards, but quite definitely the belle of a bygone era.
At one time the paint had been varnished over, but now there were places where paint and varnish had worn thin. However, the grain of the wood showed through a beautiful satin-like finish, and the excellent preservation of the box indicated that here was something that had been long treasured as a family heirloom, something which had had the best of care. Little wonder that it had become one of the prized possessions of the affluent blind beggar.
Bertha explored the outside of it carefully, holding her spotlight within a couple of inches of the surface. There was not so much as a mark or a label on it. Disappointed, Bertha raised the cover. Almost instantly the music box picked up the strains of Bluebells of Scotland and filled the room with its tinkling sweetness.
Just inside the cover Bertha found what she wanted. A small oval label had been pasted on the top. It said, “Britten G. Stellman, Rare Antiques.”
Bertha replaced the music box. The closing cover shut oil the strains of music. She turned, started for the door, then came back to wipe her fingerprints from the music box.
Her spotlight turned toward the door. Vague, dancing blotches of darkness drifted along the wall, looking as though dark figures were bunched there waiting to pounce on her. Bertha realized that it was the bat flying in frenzied circles around the room, casting shadows when it crossed the beam of her spotlight. Evidently the bat was hungry for human companionship, but sensed that Bertha was not the blind man.
Bertha tried to entice the bat outside so that she could close the door, but the bat apparently preferred to stay inside.
Bertha made little “cheeping” noises, finally said in exasperation, “Come on, Freddie, you old fool. Get out of here. I’m going to close and lock that door. You’ll die if I leave you inside.”
It might have been that the bat understood her, or perhaps the sound of the human voice sent him once more fluttering around her head.
“Get away,” Bertha said, brushing at him with her hand. “You make me nervous, and if you get on my neck again, I’ll —”
“Exactly what will you do, Mrs. Cool?” the voice of Sergeant Sellers asked. “You have me definitely interested now.” Bertha jumped as though she had been jabbed with a pin, turned around, and at first failed to locate the sergeant’s hiding place. Then she saw him standing by a vine-covered corner of the porch, his hands resting on the rail, his chin on the backs of his hands. Standing on the ground, he was some two feet lower than Bertha Cool, and Bertha, looking down at him, could sense the triumph on the man’s smiling countenance.
“All right,” Bertha snapped. “Go ahead and say it.”
“Burglary,” Sergeant Sellers observed, “is a very serious crime.”
“This isn’t burglary,” Bertha snapped.
“Indeed? Perhaps you’ve had a special Act passed by the Legislature, or the Supreme Court may have changed the law, but a breaking and entering such as you have just done–”
“It’s just a little trick of the law that you don’t happen to know,” Bertha said. “To make it burglary, you must break and enter for the purpose of committing grand or petit larceny or some felony.”
Sellers thought that over for a minute, then laughed and said, “By George, I believe you are right.”
“I know I’m right,” Bertha snapped. “I wasn’t associated with the best legal brain in the country for several years for nothing.”
“That brings up a very interesting question. Exactly what was your purpose in entering the house?”
Bertha, doing some fast thinking, said triumphantly, had to let the bat out.”
“Ah, yes, the bat,” Sergeant Sellers said. “I’ll admit eluded you. You gave it a name, I believe. Freddie, wasp it?”
“That’s right.”
“Most interesting. That’s the tame bat?”
“Yes.”
“More and more interesting. And you came here to let out?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I knew. that it would die for lack of food and water someone didn’t let it out.”
Sergeant Sellers came walking around the corner of the porch to climb up the stairs and stand on a level with Bertha Cool. “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to be polite You might also remember that I’m asking these question not as a mere matter of idle curiosity, but in my official capacity.”
“I know,” Bertha said. “You’re putting on a lot of dog, but you’re boring in just the same. I always did distrust a polysyllabic cop.”
Sellers laughed.
Bertha said, “When they started putting college men on the force, they damn near ruined it.”
“Oh, come, Mrs. Cool. It isn’t as bad as that.”
“It’s worse.”
“Well, let’s not discuss the police force in the abstract the moment. I’m interested in bats—and one in particular, Freddie.”
“All right, what about Freddie? I’ve told you why I can out here.”
“You wanted to release Freddie. You knew he was in the building then?”
“I thought he might be.”
“What gave you that idea?”
“Kosling had it so the bat could get in and out. He always left the door open a few inches and blocked it with a rubber wedge so it wouldn’t blow either open or shut. I kept thinking that perhaps you men had been dumb enough to shut the door and leave the bat inside.”
“I’m quite certain we didn’t, Mrs. Cool. I think the bat came in from the outside.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“And gave you quite a start. You screamed and — “
“Well, it would give you a start, too, if something came out of the night and perched on your chest.”
“The bat did that?”
“Yes.”
“Very interesting. Do you know, Mrs. Cool, I think this is the first time I’ve ever had a case which involved a pet bat? I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a person making a pet out of a bat.”
“You’re young yet.”
“Thank you.”
“And how did you happen to be sitting out there waiting for me to come and let the bat loose?” Bertha asked.
He said, “That is indeed a coincidence. More and more I’ve been wondering whether we had the correct theory of what happened last night. I thought that it might—just barely might be possible that your friend, Jerry Bollman, pumped your blind client, received some very interesting information which made him feel there was something the blind man had that he wanted. In place of coming out here with Kosling, he left Kosling somewhere and came out here alone to get the thing he wanted. Obviously, he didn’t get it. If he did get it, he certainly didn’t carry it away with him; but the indications are he walked into that deadly trap gun and was killed as soon as he entered the place. A snare gun that was rigged up by a blind man for a blind victim. Most interesting. We’ve heard of the blind leading the blind, but this is a case where the blind kill the blind.”
“Go right ahead,” Bertha said. “Don’t mind me. I’ve got lots of time.”
“Then,” Sergeant Sellers went on, “it began to dawn on me that perhaps I had been just a bit credulous. When I was in your office this afternoon a collect telephone call came through.”
“Was there anything remarkable about that?” Bertha
Cool snapped. “Didn’t you ever have anyone call you collect or long distance?”
Sellers’ triumphant grin showed that she had led with her chin. “The remarkable thing, Mrs. Cool, was that you accepted the call after you found out who was calling—and then a very peculiar circumstance popped into my mind. After you hung up the telephone there was some more talk about Rodney Kosling. You didn’t say that you didn’t know where he was after you had hung up the telephone, but you did use a rather peculiar sentence construction. You said that you had answered all of my questions truthfully, according to the best information you had at the time.
“I’ll admit, Mrs. Cool, I didn’t think of it until after dinner; then it dawned on me as an interesting possibility. I didn’t want to lose face among my subordinates by staking any of them out here, in case it proved to be a poor hunch, and I didn’t want to trust the examination to anyone else, in case it proved to be a good one. But it was an interesting possibility. Suppose Bollman came out here for something. Suppose you went to meet Rodney Kosling. Suppose you found out what it was Bollman had come out here to get, and suppose you came out and picked up that particular article. That would be very, very interesting.”
Bertha said, “I didn’t take a thing from that house.”
“That, of course, is an assertion which will have to be checked,” Sellers said. “Much as I dislike to do so, Mrs. Cool, I’m going to have to ask you to get in my automobile and go to headquarters where a matron will search you. If it turns out you haven’t taken anything, then—well, then, of course, the situation will be radically different. If it should appear that you have taken something, then, of course, you’d be guilty of a crime, the crime of burglary. And, as a person apprehended in the act of committing a burglary, we’d have to hold you, Mrs. Cool. We’d have to hold you at least until we had a very fair, full, and frank statement of just what you’re trying to do.”
Bertha said, “You can’t do this to me. You can’t–”
“Indeed I can,” Sellers said, quite affably. “I’m doing it. If you haven’t taken anything out of the building, I suppose I can’t make a buglary charge stick, unless, as you so competently point out, I could prove that you entered the building for the purpose of committing a felony in the first place. Looks almost as though you had looked up the law before you made your visit.”
Bats Fly at Dusk Page 16
