The Parachute Murder

by Lebbeus Mitchell

  The depressions had been made by the round bottom of a wooden leg. As there is but one peg-legged man in the neighborhood, suspicion was directed to Sidney Stoneman, a queer character who lives alone on the edge of Carlstown, and who has been in difficulties with the authorities on several occasions. He was not in his shack when Sheriff Cotter visited it, but a close watch is being kept and he will be arrested when he puts in an appearance.

  Coroner Jesse Schoolfield will hold an inquest at 1 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, after which the body, on telegraphic instructions from the actor’s widow, will be sent to Lima, Ohio, where Mr. Morne was born, for burial.

  With a lightened heart, Blake refilled and lighted his pipe, and walked back to his rooms, without glancing at the bulldog edition of the tabloid until he was again ensconced in his easy chair. Smeared across the front page was the headline: “MORNE DEATH PLANE TRAILED BY ANOTHER. STORY ON PAGE 4.” He turned to the dispatch which bore a Cleveland date line.

  Giulio Vanuzzi, New York night club owner and passenger on the airplane Silver Lark from which the actor Chadwick Morne either jumped or was thrown, in Cleveland on private business, stated to a representative of the Associated Press that a second airplane was in the wake of the Silver Lark through most of last night’s flight over Pennsylvania. He first noticed a following light about midnight when the Silver Lark made a slight turn in direction in gaining height to cross the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania.

  Several times after that, Mr. Vanuzzi states, he perceived the lights of the plane which he thought might belong to the Eastern Airway Company whose route is the same as that flown by the night mail plane. It was not more than 500 yards behind the Silver Lark some of the time, he estimated. He called it to the attention of Arthur Layman, of Bayside, L. I., a fellow passenger, and they speculated on its identity.

  Asked if he had seen the following plane after the absence of Chadwick Morne had been discovered, Mr. Vanuzzi said: “I never thought of it in the confusion that followed. I was naturally too overcome with horror at Morne’s disappearance from the Silver Lark to think of anything else.”

  He described the second plane as a single-motored monoplane of some dark color. Local airport officials say that no such plane landed here. Mr. Vanuzzi is returning to New York tomorrow by train.

  The story was followed by a brief dispatch from Chicago in which Arthur Layman was quoted as supporting Vanuzzi’s statement about the second airplane, with the additional information that he had looked for it after Morne’s disappearance was discovered and had failed to see it. He advanced a theory somewhat similar to Kemerson’s—that the actor could have been shot by someone in the pursuing airplane while he was descending in the parachute.

  “A resourceful enemy of the actor,” Layman was quoted as saying, “might have learned that Morne was to attempt another parachute leap and seized upon the opportunity for a revenge that would offer very few clues upon which the authorities could work.” Blake glanced cursorily at a rehash of the story of Morne’s death. At the bottom of the column was an item which stated that Mrs. Morne, returning to the Holcomb, a fashionable apartment hotel in Central Park West, had refused to be interviewed. When the reporter had finally got her on the telephone and asked point blank where she had been on the night of her husband’s death, she had hung up the receiver, nor could a connection with her apartment be obtained thereafter.

  “They might at least have let her alone until after Morne is buried,” Blake thought in disgust.

  As he thumbed the pages of the tabloid, his eyes were caught by every mention of an airplane. A headline, “MYSTERY PLANE LANDS IN HIGHWAY,” lured him on to read the item:

  Binghamton, N. Y., May 23: Robert Erskin, owner of the Serve-U gas station two miles south of this city, reported today that a mysterious airplane had landed on the paved road in front of his gas station early this morning. The pilot stated that his gas had given out. The plane was painted a dark blue, without any distinguishing markings. In response to Erskin’s direct question, the pilot said he had flown from Baltimore and was en route to Albany. Erskin glanced into the cockpit, but was jostled away by the aviator before he could see whether or not the plane carried a license. As soon as the gasoline tank had been filled, the pilot took to the air, using the deserted road for a runway, and disappeared in an easterly direction.”

  Blake’s attention was next attracted by an account of the crashing of a mail plane, and the preparations for another attempt to fly the Atlantic. No mention was made of him and his publicity stunt for Morne, and he was grateful to the District Attorney for not having made that fact public. He dreaded the time when it should become known, as it must sooner or later.

  The following morning Blake interviewed Nora O’Connell, his landlady’s maid of all work while she was setting the breakfast table.

  “Nora, did you hear my alarm clock ring yesterday morning?”

  “Hear that tinkly little thing?” laughed Mrs. O’Connell. “Why, it can hardly be heard from the doorway of your rooms.”

  “It’s very important. I want to be able to prove, if it is necessary, that I slept in my own bed night before last.”

  “Sure and you did that, Mr. Blake. I can prove you slept there.”

  “That’s fine! It will help me out of a hole. Just how can you prove it?”

  “I can tell a bed you have slept in by the way you leave the covers. You don’t muss them up like most men.”

  “I’m afraid the District Attorney won’t accept that as a proof.”

  “The District Attorney, is it? I can tell him you did sleep there. I know your ways as well as I know my husband’s—your ways when you’re asleep, I mean—and what you do when you get up. The bedclothes are always put back over the footboard so the bed will air. And your pajamas hung over a chair by the window. And your razor always put away, instead of being left for me to do.”

  “That merely proves that I am methodical in my habits,” said Blake, keenly disappointed in Nora’s “proof”. “No one would accept it as evidence I had slept there.”

  “It would prove it to me, Mr. Blake. You’re the easiest man to clean up after I’ve ever known. I know you were in because your door was locked at seven when I went to call you to the ‘phone.”

  Blake was startled. “I never heard you call me!”

  “I didn’t have the heart to wake you, what witty your getting to bed so late——”

  “So late! You saw me come in?” There was apprehension in Blake’s voice.

  “No. I mean you get to bed so late every night that you need your sleep in the morning. It was only a reporter who wanted you anyway. I knocked on your door twice and when you didn’t answer I tried to open it to see if you had already gone, but it was locked, so I went back to the ‘phone and said——”

  “What did you tell him, Nora?” interrupted Blake, his heart jumping into his throat.

  “I did not tell him anything—just that you did not answer.”

  “That’s bad!” cried the press agent. “If you had only waked me I could prove that I was in New York! Now, I cannot, for you can’t swear that I was in-”

  “That I can, Mr. Blake,” and Nora placed her hands argumentatively on her ample hips. “I know your bed was slept in. I’d swear to that before the District Attorney himself and a jury in the court room, with my Bible oath on it.”

  “But the fact that you knocked on my door and got no answer—that it was locked—would prove the exact opposite to any jury. Who was the reporter that telephoned?”

  “I just can’t seem to remember his name.”

  “What paper did he say he was on?”

  “It was the...That’s funny, Mr. Blake. He said a reporter on some paper, but it’s gone clean out of my mind.”

  “Think hard, Nora! Was it the Times? The World? The Star? Or the Tribune?”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t the World. I’d remember it because it’s the paper my husband takes. I hope my not remembering won’t hurt you
in any way.”

  “I guess it won’t unless the District Attorney finds out about it.”

  “Are you in some trouble, Mr. Blake? Sure and no one could suspect a nice, quiet gentleman like you of anything against the law.”

  “There’s no charge against me yet. There won’t be if I can prove I slept in my own bed night before last. The crime was committed in Ohio.”

  “Ohio was it!” laughed Mrs. O’Connell. “And a crime! Lord love you, Mr. Blake, no one would suspect you of any kind of a crime.”

  “Only suspicion of murder—”

  “Murder!” cried the woman, aghast. “They suspect you! Just let me tell the District Attorney or anybody else what I think of them for suspecting you——”

  “No, Nora. Don’t say anything to anybody, about the telephone call, or finding my door locked.”

  “I told Mrs. Handsaker this morning when she asked me if I’d heard your alarm clock.”

  “Then detectives will question her,” said Blake, running his fingers through his hair. “And they’ll get it out of her some way. Well, there goes my only chance of proving I was in my own room the night Morne was murdered.”

  “Not Chadwick Morne, the actor?” cried Nora, now thoroughly startled. “Not the parachute murder——”

  “Because I quarreled with Morne once years ago, the police have me under surveillance.”

  “I saw him once in The Wife’s Turn,” said Nora. “He was grand in that play. And now he’s dead—murdered. And you are suspected! It’s just like a story——”

  “Too much like one,” groaned Blake, gloomily. “And they want to cast me for the villain. Well, they’ll have to prove I was at the scene of the crime before they can make a charge against me that will hold. I’m sorry you told Mrs. Handsaker——”

  “Here she comes now,” said Nora, in a low voice, “to see if the table is set. Ask her to say nothing about me calling you when the reporter ‘phoned. I’m sure she’d just forget about it if you asked her to.”

  After some hesitation, Blake did make the suggested request of his landlady. She readily consented, for she had no doubt but that Blake had slept in his bed as usual the night in question. He did not explain his reasons to her, beyond that fact that he might need to prove he hadn’t been out of the city, believing that he had already talked too much to Nora O’Connell. But he felt sure that Nora could hold her tongue. He was uneasy about Mrs. Handsaker if she were subjected to a grueling examination.

  CHAPTER V — A NOSE FOR NEWS

  AWAITING him at the office, Blake found a note from Kirk Kemerson.

  Dear Blake:

  The D.A. has asked me to look into the parachute murder, from the theatrical end. That means you, principally. Come and have lunch with me in my apartment. I can recommend Georgina’s sugar-cured ham baked with sliced potatoes in milk. And she makes better coffee than most hotel chefs. We can talk undisturbed. ‘Phone me at eleven whether to expect you.

  Yours,

  K. K.

  Blake was relieved that the actor was taking up the mystery of Morne’s death in earnest. He could tell things to Kemerson without fear of having his statements twisted into evidence against himself. He next addressed himself to the morning newspapers. The columns of space devoted to the parachute murder contained mostly a rehash of what the late evening papers had printed. The only thing new was an account of the arrest of Sidney Stoneman, the peg-legged man whose tracks had been found about the spot where Morne’s body had descended to earth. Stoneman was held merely on suspicion; no trace of a weapon had been found, and neighbors testified that the one-legged man had never had a revolver.

  The sheriff, continued the item, had instituted a search among hardware and second hand dealers of Carlstown and surrounding villages in an effort to learn if Stoneman might recently have bought a revolver. The man’s explanation of his presence at the scene of the crime so early in the morning was that he had gone out rabbit hunting and had all but stumbled over the body. He had not reported it because he had been frightened.

  Before Blake had finished reading the papers, Miss Burton entered, closing the door carefully after her.

  “There’s a reporter here to see you—David Jordan of the Star.”

  “Well, at least they’ve put one of their crack reporters on the Morne case. I’ve seen his name signed to stories of some of New York’s biggest murder trials. They say he’s really the man who solved the Dowell case. Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Some information for his paper about Chadwick Morne, he said.”

  “I’ll have to see him. If I ring, you come in and say that Mr. Siddarth wants me to go to his office at once. Show him in, please.”

  Jordan was a heavy, slow-motioned man of about thirty, smooth-faced, with small gray eyes that held a sleepy look until he opened them wide for a straight glance full into the eyes of the person he happened to be talking to, when they lighted up with a keen, satiric twinkle.

  “How are you, Blake. I’m David Jordan of the Star. The city editor has assigned me to the Morne case. I’ve come to you because you probably know as much about him as anyone in New York.”

  “Glad to help you all I can,” replied Blake, shaking hands. He pulled a chair up to the end of his desk, keeping his own face away from the light. “What do you want to know?”

  “I have most of the details of his life. I thought in a talk with you some of the human interest stuff that sells papers to women readers might crop up. It promises to be a swell murder case. We haven’t had one with more angles of public interest since the Mabel Dullwith murder.”

  “The Dowell case made rather exciting reading,” said Blake. “I understand it was you who solved that mystery.”

  “Oh, I just stumbled onto a fact or two that the detectives overlooked. They put the pieces together, and found the murderer. Do you think Morne killed himself?”

  “Decidedly not. Morne was not the type. He’d made a big hit in The Wife’s Turn. Another success like that and he would have been made.”

  “In your opinion, then, Morne was murdered?”

  “I can’t make any other explanation seem reasonable.”

  “Did he have any enemies?”

  “Not that I know of, but my relations with him were purely professional.”

  “Then why do you feel so certain he was murdered?”

  “He had everything to live for. He was too much in love with life to make way with himself.”

  “Yet if he was murdered he must have had some enemy who would go to any length for vengeance. Unless, of course, he was killed while resisting robbery. Did he have much money with him?”

  “Probably. He always carried several hundred dollars.”

  “Was he accustomed to wearing much jewelry?”

  “He had a blue diamond ring and a ruby stickpin of which he was very fond. He bought the ring after his hit in The Wife’s Turn and has worn it ever since.”

  “Know how much it cost?”

  “He always said he paid twelve hundred for it. It was quite large and appeared to be a perfect stone. The stickpin was worth probably two or three hundred dollars.”

  “None of the reports of his death have mentioned either the ring or the pin. He might have been murdered for them.”

  “If they are missing, it is quite probable. He wore both when he was in my office two days ago. He might have left them at home.”

  “Mrs. Morne has refused to be interviewed—so far. But I’ve discovered some things that will make her talk.” The reporter’s mouth closed in a hard, straight line.

  “About her husband?” questioned Blake.

  “About herself.”

  Blake waited, but Jordan did not add anything to that bare statement which seemed, from its very terseness, to hold a threat. Blake was uneasy but did not dare put a more direct question to the reporter. The latter looked up full into the press agent’s eyes as he asked:

  “Did Mrs. Morne intend to divorce her husband?”

>   “I’ve heard nothing to that effect.”

  “She has put up with a lot from him. How much is she interested in James Betterling?”

  Blake glanced at his own hands, resting on the desk; they had doubled up into fists at the question, and he became aware that the reporter had taken note of that fact. He spread them out, and closed them again as he looked Jordan straight in the eyes.

  “Is she interested in Mr. Betterling? She’s been seen with him a great deal—at the theatres, motoring, at the beaches.”

  “That’s natural enough. Betterling is Mr. Siddarth’s business manager and a friend of the actor and his wife. He has been seen a good deal with both of them. He has escorted her around when Morne was busy at the theatre, probably at Morne’s request.”

  “Was she at home last night?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you ask me?”

  “It is my business to ask questions. Sometimes they are answered. Even when they’re not, that’s sometimes an answer.”

  “I suppose it is,” said Blake, after a pause during which he speculated on the reporter’s purpose in making that statement. “An answer refused gives you a chance to speculate on what the reply would have been had it been made. A chance to use your imagination.”

  “And why it was not answered,” Jordan added, with a swift, keen glance full into Blake’s eyes. “It’s reported that Morne was interested financially in the Happy Hours night club. Know anything about that?”

  “I know nothing of his activities out of the theatre.”

  “Vanuzzi has been quite talkative about what happened on the Silver Lark, like a man having something to hide. No reason to suppose the Italian might have bumped Morne off?”

  “They seemed friendly enough the few times I was at the night club with Morne. Still, he might have been part owner. The District Attorney mentioned such a report.”