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THE WHISTLING LEGS
By
ROMAN McDOUGALD
An Inner Sanctum Mystery
The Whistling Legs was originally published in 1945 by Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
Chapter One 5
Chapter Two 13
Chapter Three 21
Chapter Four 29
Chapter Five 36
Chapter Six 44
Chapter Seven 51
Chapter Eight 58
Chapter Nine 65
Chapter Ten 73
Chapter Eleven 81
Chapter Twelve 89
Chapter Thirteen 98
Chapter Fourteen 106
Chapter Fifteen 114
Chapter Sixteen 122
Chapter Seventeen 129
Chapter Eighteen 136
Chapter Nineteen 145
Chapter Twenty 154
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 163
Chapter One
The man was perfectly calm about it. If he was crazy, Philip Cabot thought, he was being crazy in a very casual way.
“My name is Rand,” he said. “Darryl Rand. You may have heard of me, Mr. Cabot. I manufacture an explosive called Magnamite.”
Cabot said, “Of course. Magnamite is big stuff. It’s a name. You’re a name. So what?”
He turned his head away from the mouthpiece of the telephone and smiled at the girl sitting beside him on the sofa. She was smiling, too, but with an odd indirectness, as though she were really smiling at the two unopened bottles of champagne on the table. The champagne, he reflected suddenly, was funny. He hadn’t thought of that before.
Rand’s voice sounded again in his ear. “I live in a house on Riverside Drive, Mr. Cabot. Before morning somebody will probably be murdered in that house, and the investigation will establish a reasonably strong suspicion that I committed the crime myself. This will be confirmed later, probably tomorrow night, when my body will be found beside a suicide note which will be to all appearances a confession of the murder.”
The voice was very clear and distinct. Mrs. Philip Cabot could hear it as well as her newly acquired husband did. She stopped smiling at the champagne.
Rand went on. “My wife—all the members of the household—will testify that I have been under great nervous strain lately due to overwork and the wartime responsibilities of my job. They will state further that I have been drinking and that I have acted at times in what seemed to them a peculiar manner. The natural conclusion will be that I suffered a nervous breakdown and ran amok. The police will not suspect for a moment that two very clever murders have occurred.”
Cabot said, “You underestimate the intelligence of the police, Mr. Rand. They will not accept the suicide note without having it checked against known specimens of your handwriting. Their experts will determine in approximately five minutes that you didn’t write the note. They will determine in something more than five minutes which one of your associates did write it. The two murders will not have been clever.”
There was a pause, and Cabot could hear the faint sound of a long indrawn breath before Rand spoke again.
“That’s all very true,” he replied, “except for one thing. I did write the note.”
Cabot said, “Oh—oh, I see. That simplifies it.” He was gazing sidewise at Lib’s tawny head, which had snuggled down against his shoulder, closer to the earpiece. He said, “Have you, by the way, had a nervous breakdown? If you have, Mr. Rand, that will make it all crystal clear.”
Rand’s voice betrayed neither resentment nor amusement. It was completely serious.
“No. All this can be explained. It’s purely a matter of circumstances. But the explanation would take time, more time than I can take on the telephone. I tell you, somebody is going to be killed within a few hours! Who that person is I can’t even guess, and, to be frank, it’s rather dreadfully irrelevant. I am the one they are after, and I am the one you must keep them from getting. Do you see, Mr. Cabot?”
Cabot said, “As in a glass darkly. But, for your information, I closed my detective agency yesterday. I married my secretary this afternoon. After ten days of married lire I shall leave New York in the uniform of a Captain of Artillery. This is one of the ten days, Mr. Rand. To be exact, it is one of the ten nights. Give my regards to Captain William Kroll——”
Rand cut in quickly, “I assumed that you would realize that I can’t go to the police. I have no charge to make. Nor am I calling on you because you happen to be the brother-in-law of Jefferson Boynton, the District Attorney. I want no connection either direct or indirect with the authorities of the state of New York.” He paused and then added, “But I was taking into consideration the fact that you’re an Army officer.”
Cabot replied very precisely, “Field Artillery. I’d suggest, Mr. Rand, that a long distance call to Washington would have surprising results. The War Department would not look with equanimity upon the prospect of your being murdered tomorrow night. The event could cause considerable inconvenience to the government of the United States.”
Rand did not answer immediately.
“Let us put it at the minimum,” he said presently. “Let’s say that my death would delay things—prolong things—two weeks. No more than that. But how many men can die in two weeks, Cabot?”
Cabot frowned. “The question is rhetorical,” he said. “It’s even eloquently rhetorical. But you’re shooting at a dead duck, Rand. What makes me a dead duck is that I’m sitting at this moment on a sofa very close to a brand-new Wife. She is beautiful, Rand. She is so beautiful that I Wouldn’t have sense enough tonight to track down a kid who had knocked off a robin.”
Lib turned her head slowly toward him, studying the line of his jaw. She studied it briefly, and then her gaze slanted away again. She looked back at the champagne soberly, as if in retrospect.
Rand was saying quietly but clearly, “I hope that Mrs. Cabot was sitting close enough to hear this.” He stopped. “Anyway, if you decide to help me, go at once to my home. As soon as possible—probably after midnight—I’ll explain all this.”
“In the theoretical meanwhile?”
“You’ll be there,” Rand put in promptly, “to investigate the mystery about the identity of Deb. Get it—Deb? He is a young man who was run over recently near my house, and the shock of the accident caused a temporary loss of memory. He can’t recall who he is. But Deb’s case, of course, is not the real one; I am using it merely as an excuse to bring a detective into the house. I can’t tell you any more about it until I see you——“ Rand broke oft rather abruptly and added in a low voice, “Until then—goodby.” Cabot said quickly, “Wait!—oh, the devil!” He put the telephone back on its cradle and turned to the silent girl. “Did you hear that, Lib? All of it?”
She nodded. “Every word,” she said. “And he knew it. He was talking to me.”
He was looking through the directory. “Rand is not a
nut,” he said. “If he was a nut, he wouldn’t be the head of Magnamite.”
She said slowly, “It was convincing. Horribly convincing.” She got up restlessly and went to the desk across the room. She took a cigarette out of the silver box and put it into her mouth without lighting it.
Cabot found his number and dialed quickly. He said, “May I speak to Mr. Darryl Rand?”
A cool, fluent voice said, “I’m sorry—he has left. I’m Gail Rand, Mr. Cabot. May I take the message?”
It was as though Rand had just been talking to him in her presence and immediately afterward had gone out.
Cabot said, “You can guess my identity, I presume, because you were expecting me to call?”
She corrected him lightly. “I was expecting you to come. Surely you are coming, Mr. Cabot?”
“That all depends.”
“Upon what Darryl has been telling you?” She paused. “If there is any part of it you don’t understand, perhaps I can clear it up for you.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure that I understood any of it very clearly. The connection was bad. Suppose you run over the whole thing—briefly.”
“The whole thing? Oh!” She floundered for a moment. “That would take a long time, wouldn’t it? I mean, if you could just tell me what you’re puzzled about——”
He said, “Perhaps it would be simpler for me to come up there, Mrs. Rand. Good-by.”
He looked at Lib, still standing across the room. She was lighting the cigarette at last, very carefully and deliberately, with the bronze lighter on the desk.
He said, “Lib, come here.”
She turned and walked slowly toward the sofa, smiling a little through the smoke.
He said, “Lib, do you understand?”
She stopped two feet away and gazed down at him. “I’ll look it up in Bartlett,” she said presently. “It’s something about loving honor more——”
“To the devil with honor. I’m thinking about some kids who might not go on living unless——He kept on staring up at her until the smile flickered once more on her face. She moved toward the side of the sofa away from him.
“Grab your hat, Phil. You’re getting that dazed look again.” She put the cigarette back into her mouth. “I don’t want to be your weakness at inconvenient moments.”
He reached out suddenly and caught her moving away. She landed in his arms with acrobatic precision, the cigarette falling from her lips the moment before he kissed her.
He said, “Darling, maybe, after all, we need the practice.”
Lib did not open her eyes. “You do it all right, Phil,” she murmured. “You do it very nicely——”
“I didn’t mean kissing. I meant being away from each other, like tonight, like all the nights before the war will be over. Maybe we need practice saying goodby.”
He kissed her again, for a long time, but it didn’t feel like goodby. She said, “That’s not it,” and opened her eyes. She sniffed faintly, and a dreamy sort of alarm began to creep into her face. “Phil,” she said. “Phil, I think we’re on fire.”
He replied dreamily, “Yes, it’s wonderful.”
She stirred in his arms, speaking in a slightly stronger voice. “We’re on fire, I tell you! Literally.”
He released her, and they scrambled up, a small column of smoke billowing out between them. He shook the cigarette from the folds of his coat and beat at the smoldering tweed. Lib was staring in consternation at the charred lapel as he went on smacking at the persistent sparks. Then all at once the hole in the coat and that undefeatable wisp of smoke began to seem very funny to both of them, even funnier than the champagne. They started laughing at it and kept on laughing until Lib collapsed helplessly into a chair and said:
“Go on and change your clothes and get out of here, you goof. Oh, for Heaven’s sake! It’s still smoking!”
He put on another suit and dashed back into the living room, wrestling with his tie. “Before I forget it,” he said, “if Jeff and Kathie come by, don’t tell them where I am. About Rand, that is.”
She glanced up from across the room but did not offer to help him with the tie. She looked for a moment almost like his secretary again. She said, “What shall I tell them, by the way?”
“Tell them anything. You know——“ He got the knot tied and took a preliminary step toward her but thought better of it. “Tell them I’ve gone down to the drugstore for some aspirin. They’ll understand. I mean—oh, hell!” He suddenly turned with a hopeless little gesture and walked out of the room.
Downstairs, he caught a taxi and asked the driver to step on it. The driver said, “O.K., pal, but she’ll wait.”
“Will she?” said Cabot. “I wonder.”
A thin woman with forlorn and lovely eyes let him into the Rand home. She was wearing a maid’s uniform. She said, “Do you want to see Mr. Rand—privately?”
She said it as though she knew something.
He said, “What did he tell you?”
It was like drawing a pistol. She shrank back at once, looking terrified for a second before she began to look confused. “Nothing, sir. Nothing. I just thought...
A door opened near them, and he turned away from the maid as he thought, she does know something!
A tall, slim young woman was standing in the doorway, gazing at him in a sort of expectant awe. She did not turn her eyes from him for an instant, but spoke preoccupiedly to the maid. “Please put the hat away, Theresa. Don’t just stand there holding it.” She began smiling then, very faintly, at Cabot, but she still seemed to him rather solemn and quite beautiful.
She said, “I am wholly unprepared for you, Mr. Cabot. You do not look like your voice. Come in.” She kept staring at him as he walked into the fantastically glittering room behind her. “You do not look at all like your voice,” she repeated wonderingly. “You’re young. You’re handsome.
You’re human looking. You’re——“ She gave a charmingly despairing little shrug. “I could go on all night.”
“Please don’t,” said Cabot, “but this thing is mutual, Mrs. Rand. If we had television with telephones, I’d have been here sooner.”
He glanced around him and saw that the Thousand Nights effect was due to the lighting and the mirrored walls even more than to the luxurious furnishings of the room. Every object there, caught luminously in that ingenious arrangement of lights and mirrors, was repeated over and over again in all its contours and from a hundred panoramic angles until it seemed through the silent emphasis of repetition to take on complete unreality. Hollywood, he thought, making a dream come true.
But Hollywood, certainly, would not have had that other girl sitting there.
He decided at once that she was the plainest girl he had ever seen. She was not ugly; she was merely plain, but with a reverberating accent upon plainness. She was clad in a severely simple suit which made him think immediately of the better boarding schools, and she wore a pair of incredibly sensible Oxfords. Her hair looked as though it had been brushed, quite vigorously, with military brushes, and her thoughtful eyes were covered by extraordinarily large horn-rimmed glasses.
“Jan,” said Gail Rand, “may I present—strange as it may seem—Mr. Philip Cabot?” She turned. “My sister, Jan Utley.”
The girl in the chair spoke in an extremely precise voice. “Don’t bother not to look startled, Mr. Cabot,” she said. “Nearly everybody looks startled.”
Cabot said, “Well, frankly, Miss Utley, on the face of it——”
“On the two faces of it,” she said, “I know exactly what you mean.” She took a cigarette from the tray beside her. “Through a fortunately rare process of biogenetic maldistribution, Mr. Cabot, Gail was born with all the beauty of the family and I with all the brains. It’s rather inconvenient at times.” She waved the cigarette toward the chair next to her. “Sit down, won’t you? I want to talk with you.”
Cabot lit her cigarette with his pocket lighter. “Really, Miss Utley? About what?”
>
“Accidents. And amnesia. And mysterious strangers.” She was looking at him appraisingly. “Or would that be pertinent?”
He nodded casually. “Of course. Deb, after all, is the reason I’m here. But I’m afraid that I must talk with him first; also with Darryl Rand.” He turned back to the tall, lovely one. “Has he returned yet, Mrs. Rand?”
She hesitated a second. “Yes. But you see, Mr. Cabot, he went upstairs to lie down for a few minutes before dinner and he must have fallen asleep. So we ate without disturbing him, since he needs rest more than food.”
Jan Utley said dryly, “Darryl’s rest is a defense project. He is Essential, you know.”
“We could awaken him, of course, but——“ Mrs. Rand made a little gesture. “Perhaps you’d prefer to see Deb first.”
Jan said, “I believe I hear Darryl now.”
Her ears must have been unusually good, for Cabot himself could catch no sound in the few seconds before the door opened.
A short, stout little man with a tiny mustache came into the room. He came in quietly and smiled at them with an engaging friendliness.
Jan said, “Oh, it’s you.”
Mrs. Rand turned. “Mr. Cabot, this is Carlo Pugh.” She smiled at him. “My brother-in-law once removed, as it were.”
Carlo Pugh was beaming. “You’re a detective, Mr. Cabot?” he said. “I see. You’re a detective. That’s marvelous.”
Cabot said, “Is it?”
Jan Utley stirred in her chair. “Carlo thinks it’s marvelous,” she remarked, “because he is America’s Number One Mystery Novel Fan, and you’re probably the only real detective he ever saw. Around you at this moment, Mr. Cabot, throng the shades of Sherlock Holmes, Philo Vance, Nero Wolfe, and Courtney Rathbone.”
Cabot said, “Courtney Rathbone?”
Pugh smiled apologetically. “My own creation,” he explained. “For—oh, yes—I took a flyer at writing one myself. You must, you know, to be a life member. But it wasn’t published.” He sat down. “The very strength of the novel, Mr. Cabot, proved to be its undoing. The method of the murder, you see, was so extraordinarily ingenious that it took Courtney Rathbone twenty-five thousand words to explain it. All the publishers seemed to be appalled.” There was calculated mischief in Jan Utley’s eyes. “How does Mr. Cabot compare in your estimation, Carlo, with the heroic tradition of the great detective?”
The Whistling Legs Page 1
