The Whistling Legs

by Roman McDougald

  “Certainly!” said Boynton. “Right at the start. Now, as I understand it, you never actually talked with this man except during those few minutes on the telephone. But it’s evident that he must have told you something then to bring you here almost irresistibly—something startling, something convincing—or you’d never have come in the first place!” Cabot crushed out the cigarette with unusual thoroughness. “He told me that it was important,” he said. “I knew that Rand himself was important, so——”

  “Now, Phil,” Boynton said in an exaggeratedly patient tone, “let us consider the circumstances. You had closed your detective agency. You had been married only a couple of hours before. You had just gone to that apartment with your beautiful new wife. A man who is a total stranger to you calls up and informs you in very general terms that it is most important for you to go away to meet him for some mysterious conference.” Boynton paused dramatically, studying Cabot’s expressionless face. Kroll waited, the pencil poised over the notebook.

  “And so,” Boynton finished with resounding sarcasm, “you immediately leave your lovely bride and rush up here for the night, to confer with this stranger and, perhaps, to play a little congenial poker with him before bedtime!” Cabot said, “Well, surely it would have been worth doing, Jeff, for its sheer uniqueness—once in the history of the human race——”

  “Bridegrooms are never unique!” roared Boynton. “You’re telling me a cock and bull story, Phil!”

  The pause which followed grew into an uncomfortable silence. At length Cabot said quietly, “I prefer to see Rand before I go any further. There’s a chance that whatever professional confidences he may have given me will have no direct bearing upon this case.”

  Boynton surged to his feet, his jaw out-thrust aggressively and his hand raised. It occurred to Cabot that he looked exactly as he always did when he stood and thundered before a jury. This was attitude number four in the District Attorney’s bag of tricks.

  “Now, you listen to me, Phil,” he thundered.

  But at that moment a plain-clothes man hurried into the room, and in his wake panted the stenographer. Kroll jumped up and said, “What is it, Fant?”

  Cabot stole out under cover of the diversion and slipped into the library across the hall. His guess was right. The telephone was there on the desk, and it Was in working order.

  “Lib,” he said. “Sweetheart! Do you still love me?”

  She said rather faintly, “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. I don’t know whether I could love anybody at two o’clock in the morning. Maybe not even Robert Taylor.”

  “Lib——“ His gaze moved toward the doorway, beyond which sounded the tramp of feet. Kroll’s heavy-footed legions, prodded on by Boynton, were searching for the telephone. “Lib?”

  Her voice changed. “Well, Phil, is it——”

  He said, “Definitely. And worse than that. All hell has broken loose and I’m right in the middle of it, breathing sulphur fumes.”

  “Oh! You mean——?”

  “Yes.” His gaze turned uneasily toward the door again and then back across the room. It seemed to him suddenly that he had heard another sound besides those ponderous receding footsteps. It had sounded much fainter but also much closer, and he had a momentary feeling that it had come from directly above him. He raised his eyes instinctively, but they focused upon nothing more alarming than a large marble bust of Socrates perched atop the high bookshelves above and behind the desk.

  “Yes, Phil?”

  He raised the mouthpiece again and went on in a low voice. “I can’t tell you about it now, Lib, but I’m on a spot, and something tells me that it’s going to get as hot as blazes. I simply don’t see anything to do except to start things rolling again for a few days.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The lease on the office won’t be up until the end of the month, and you have the boys’ telephone numbers. Get in touch with Wendell and Velery tonight and have them down at the office early in the morning. I’ll come through with the necessary dope. Maybe you’d better make notes—Lib! Lib, are you there?”

  Her response seemed to come from a long way off. “Get Wendell. Get Velery. Have them at the office early. Make notes.” Her dazed voice faded off into a muffled gasp. “I knew it!” she exclaimed. “It was a dream! I’m waking up——”

  “I know how all this sounds, Lib,” he said contritely, “and it gives me a peculiar feeling to ask you——”

  “It gives you a peculiar feeling! Oh!”

  His gaze swerved up once more, and he wondered whether it was imagination or a trick of the light that the marble bust appeared to have altered its position ever so slightly. The great, graven beard seemed to be confronting him more directly.

  “You don’t have to do it, sweetheart. Maybe I am crazy, as Kathie says——”

  “Oh, I’ll do it, Phil,” she said. “I’ll do it because Pm crazy. I admit it. The only difference between me and a raving lunatic at this moment is that I haven’t been committed yet. And maybe, in a sense, I have been committed. I’m married to you.”

  He said, “Darling, I adore you! I—great God!” He dropped the receiver and flung himself forward in a wild scramble to get away from the desk.

  The cynical face of Socrates was crashing down upon him.

  Chapter Seven

  Cabot tripped against the edge of the desk and went sprawling across the rug just as the heavy bust struck the back of the chair with a terrific impact. The chair skidded forward, teetered crazily for a moment, and went over with a bang. The deflected bust crashed into the bookshelves and fell thunderously amid a barrage of showering glass.

  From the top shelf, across whose edge the bust had toppled, a long, snarling white object launched itself straight down at the desk, knocked over the lamp, and streaked out of the room, bristling with terror and spitting fury.

  Cabot sprang up in time to glimpse King Cotton’s vanishing form as it flashed through the doorway. He looked up at the high shelf with the immediate realization that that was where the big cat had found refuge, wedged into the narrow space behind the concealing statue. He had been there, very probably, ever since the murder.

  After calling Lib back hastily to explain the crash and to reassure her, Cabot went out, thinking of a question he was going to ask about Cotton. The answer to it would possibly be the key to the whole puzzle.

  He went upstairs, where Kroll’s men were still hurrying about, and turned quietly into the short corridor.

  Dr. Odom was coming out of the bedroom into the study. He closed the door noiselessly behind him, but not before Cabot had heard from within the murmur of a voice.

  The doctor sat down and lit a cigarette. “It’s all right,” he said. “I got to him in time. The stomach pump got most of it.”

  Cabot said, “What was it?”

  “Veronal. A considerable dose. Taken in whisky.”

  “Would it have killed him if you hadn’t been here?” The physician blinked and put the cigarette into his mouth again. He said cautiously, “That really lapses over into speculation. I haven’t examined the man thoroughly. There may be some organic defect. But—“ he gave a little shrug—“just on the face of it, I doubt if it would have.”

  “But there was enough to put him out for the night?” Dr. Odom replied dryly, “Quite.”

  “Who was talking in there, by the way?”

  “Rand. He is coming out of it gradually. Right now he is on the borderline of consciousness.” The doctor crushed out his cigarette and remarked absently, “People say some queer things when they’re like that—a disconnected jumble of impressions from their subconscious minds.” He gazed speculatively across the study, where Cabot was moving toward the bedroom door.

  Rand was lying on the bed with his eyes closed. Cabot stood watching him in the strange, bright silence of that room, whose darkness had been haunted by his breathing. The sensitive mouth was moving wordlessly in some private and inexplicable communion, which
only presently, as if by accident, became a snatch of sound.

  “It’s over,” the man on the bed muttered. “It’s over and done with. He’s dead...”

  Cabot waited, and at last the irregularly moving lips seemed to catch on words again, briefly and tiredly.

  “He’s dead,” Rand murmured once more. “I killed him. I...” The hands twitched on the coverlet, and the mumble died away.

  Cabot went out and closed the door softly. The doctor was still sitting in the chair, watching him.

  “Somebody was killed here tonight, I believe,” he said meditatively. “Don’t let his talk give you any mistaken ideas. There’s not a chance in a thousand that there’s any connection.”

  Cabot said, “Make it a million. Rand had had his drink before the murder occurred.”

  As he walked back he found himself pondering that very fact, which seemed so at variance with even Rand’s expectation. Were it not for this, the whole thing would fall into a recognizable though amazing pattern. But granting that someone had the mysterious note which Rand had written, it was difficult to see how it could now be turned against him. By drugging him, the killer, unconsciously perhaps, had defeated his own purpose.

  Cabot walked back to the drawing-room and found Boynton still sitting at the table. The District Attorney’s strong features were flushed, perspiring, and darkly determined. He looked like a man who had been wrestling with an archangel.

  Mallie O’Dare sat there, cupping her ear in her right hand.

  Boynton gestured to the stenographer, who was taking a transcript. “Now, Mrs. O’Dare,” he said loudly and doggedly, “let us go on. You have told us that you know nothing of this young man or of what led to his arrival in this house. But since he got here—since—what have you observed?”

  The Irish woman’s mobile mouth flattened itself into a straight, prim line. “As for what I have observed in this house, sir,” she said, “I am like the three monkeys. I see no evil, I hear no evil——”

  “I’m darn sure you didn’t hear it,” muttered Boynton irritably and then shouted, “What did you see?”

  Her expressive lips compressed themselves still more. “Oh, nothing, sir,” she said elaborately. “Nothing you’d call legal. Only certain turnings of the head did I see, and certain flirtings of the eye, and certain expressions of the mouth. And poor Mr. Rand growing paler and more haunted looking day by day, like one bewitched.”

  “Are you suggesting that Mr. Rand became jealous?”

  “If he was not jealous, sir,” she declared solemnly, “he was even closer to the angels then than he is at this moment with his one foot in the grave!”

  Boynton thundered, “Let me reiterate that Mr. Rand is not dying!” He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “However, I want to get to the bottom of these repeated suggestions of yours that it is Mr. Rand who is the victim. Do you know of anyone who would have a real reason to kill him?”

  “Anyone!” Mallie O’Dare glanced toward the door and lowered her voice to a rich, palpitating stage whisper. “All of them, sir, would have reasons to put him in his shroud!”

  “All of them!” said Boynton in bewilderment: “Great heavens! Is this merely an impression, Mrs. O’Dare, or is it based upon something concrete? Do you know of any actual trouble between Mr. Rand and any of the persons in this house?”

  She peered in sudden trepidation at the door. “Don’t shout, sir,” she whispered protestingly. “I am not deaf, only a mite hard of hearing...But there was trouble, and only about two weeks ago. It was between Mr. Rand and Miss Jan Utley, and afterward he was as white as a man who had heard his death warrant, and I heard him say, ‘She is the devil’s own sister!’”

  “Meaning Miss Utley? And what was the quarrel about?”

  “I don’t rightly know. It was something about Mrs. Rand. You see, Miss Jan and Mr. Rand don’t like each other, and she is always putting ideas into Mrs. Rand’s head. And a terrible thing it is for an old maid sister to put ideas into a wife’s head. As I have always said:——”

  Boynton managed to break in. “One moment, Mrs. O’Dare. Apart from this domestic unpleasantness, do you know of anything else?” He paused. “For instance, Mr. Gregory Rand. Has there been any trouble there?”

  Mallie’s face darkened. “There wouldn’t be any there,” she said. “Mr. Darryl is his pocketbook, and who quarrels with his pocketbook? Almost a father to him he has been, instead of a second cousin—putting him through school, making him a doctor. And what does he get for it?” She paused expressively.

  Boynton asked, “Well, what?”

  “Not so much as a kind word!” she said emphatically. “All Mr. Greg’s kind words are for Mrs. Rand, and always does Mrs. Rand giggle with her eyes shining. Maybe it would be a happy ending for some people if it was just an ending for Mr. Rand. And some things can be learned in doctors’ books.”

  Boynton muttered, “This is too much! Does that woman have a harem?”

  “I would put nothing past Mr. Greg—nothing! He is a young man who cares for naught except to take girls to night clubs and to carve other people up like turkeys——”

  Boynton threw up his hands to check the flow of words, but Mallie O’Dare plunged on heedlessly.

  “And Mr. Carlo Pugh—there is one who would give a body the creeps! Sneaking around corners as silent as a ghost, with his head bent down and his eyes following little marks in the dust; or standing there, as many’s the time I have seen him do, peering down into cupboards or drawers through a big round glass, like a man who was spying upon a pixy or sticking his nose into a leprechaun’s business——”

  Boynton roared, “Wait, madam, wait! This is entirely irrelevant!” He kept his hand up like a traffic cop and looked helplessly at Kroll. He said, “Captain, we’re in a blind alley.”

  Kroll responded glumly. “The only point I can see in it is that Darryl Rand is the one who should have been knocked off instead of the kid.”

  Cabot said, “Allow me, Jeff.” He leaned toward Mallie and spoke very distinctly. “Mallie, I want to ask you about Cotton. Is there somebody in this house that he doesn’t like?”

  She looked startled. “Why—why, I don’t think he likes any of them too well, except Mr. Darryl Rand and me. I feed him, you see, and Mr. Rand has a way with dumb creatures. One time Mrs. Rand tried to tie a big blue ribbon around his neck, and Cotton spat at her and ran off. We found him later on top of the high bookcase in the library, hiding behind an ugly pagan idol——”

  “I know. But isn’t there someone whom Cotton particularly dislikes or distrusts?”

  “I—“ she hesitated—“I don’t know. Who can tell, sir, about a cat? They say so little. Never a chirp out of the old ones except at mealtimes, and the rest of the day they are stretched out taking their ease. And often have I envied Cotton, remembering what the doctor told me about my blood pressure, ‘Rest, Mrs. O’Dare, rest!”‘

  Boynton said wearily, “All right, Mrs. O’Dare—rest.” He was looking at Cabot as the stout woman waddled out. “What was that point about the cat, Phil?”

  Cabot said, “Cotton had a pretty bad scare. Cats are not psychic, and they don’t mind murder if it isn’t too noisy. My hunch is that Cotton suddenly got a whiff of somebody he distrusted, and it was the combination of the smell, the unexpected appearance, and the equivocal action that scared him.”

  Kroll nodded thoughtfully. “You have something there, Cabot,” he remarked. “Cats are observant and they are creatures of habit. If they see anything out of the ordinary, it arouses their curiosity; and if it’s very much out of the ordinary, it frightens ‘em.” He rubbed his jaw and said speculatively, “That cat must have seen something pretty darn queer.”

  Boynton reflected briefly and then made an impatient gesture. “We’re getting nowhere in a P-47,” he said. “We’re headed at a tremendous speed straight for the stratosphere. Let’s see if Mrs. Darryl Rand can bring us down to earth.” She came in slowly and looked at them wi
th a touch of prepossessing shyness. “I do hope you’re comfortable, gentlemen,” she said. “I’ve asked Mallie to make some coffee.” Boynton replied gallantly, “You are most kind. We are sorry to disturb you at this hour, but it occurred to me that you might have information too vital to permit delay.”

  She sat down and looked at him with her startled-fawn eyes. “Oh, but I haven’t, Mr. Boynton!” she said. “It simply seems like the longest nightmare I’ve ever had. I keep feeling the most ridiculous impulse to pinch myself, just once, good and hard.”

  Boynton said gravely, “That is superfluous. It’s quite real, I assure you.” He paused. “I felt certain that you could tell us something about the background of all this, about Deb——”

  “But there wasn’t any! Deb didn’t have a background, so far as we knew. That’s the point.” She leaned back in the chair. “There was simply this accident, and Darryl came along——”

  “Yes.” Boynton intervened smoothly. “But even your husband’s actions, Mrs. Rand, strike me as having been something of a mystery. Any decent man would, of course, have picked an injured fellow up and carried him to a hospital. But few would have felt impelled to go further. And Mr. Rand went so much further that it seems amazing.”

  She said, “Darryl is amazing. He does inexplicable things.”

  Boynton replied significantly, “But in this case, Mrs. Rand, the things he did would not have been inexplicable if he had suspected that the mystery of Deb was in some way connected with this house or with his own affairs.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t see how he could have believed that. Deb was a stranger to all of us. There was only the fact that he appeared to be coming this way when he was struck. That was what puzzled Darryl—it was what he wanted cleared up.”

  Boynton said deliberately, “Yet, when he made the first move to clear it up, when he summoned a detective to the house, he was immediately drugged to prevent his talking with Cabot, and Deb himself was promptly murdered! There was a connection.”