Figure Away

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

“Asey, where have you been?” Lane demanded. “Hamilton and I got there, and couldn’t find you, and your car tires were slashed – we’ve been nearly crazy! Where have you been?”

  “We’ve left Konrad and two others at the hollow,” Hamilton said, “and Jeff Leach and Sara are going crazy about the girl, and Zeb Chase has organized a one man posse, and he’s ripping around, and Weston’s been after us – what a time! Where—”

  “You two,” Asey said, “have been together for the last hour or so?”

  “Together? Of course we have! We—”

  “Where’s your car, Lane? Your own car, chump! I can see this one here!”

  “At the Ailing station, up the street.”

  “Get in, Kay,” Asey said. “Drive over, will you, Lane?”

  “What is this?” Lane demanded. “Nothin’, except I’m bettin’ you it ain’t there.”

  “Bet away,” Lane said, “there she is.” He pointed to the sedan parked a little apart from a row of other cars.

  “What’s your mileage? How much gas in her?” Asey wanted to know as he jumped out and walked over to the brown sedan.

  “Thirty odd thousand, and the tank’s half or three-quarters full – what’s the idea, do you want to buy a good used car? I’ll trade even for your roadster,” Lane said, “and considering your tire bill – who slashed those tires, by the way?”

  “Same fellow that’s been driving your car,” Asey told him. “Say, do you always keep your key in the car, like this?”

  “Who steals cops’ cars?”

  “Does your tail light work?” Asey asked.

  “Always has. I guess so.” He switched on the lights. “Sure. See?”

  Asey looked in the front seat. Both side windows were open and the upholstery and floor and wheel were soaking wet.

  “Always leave your windows like this, too?”

  Lane frowned. “Say, I did wind’em up. And – Asey, look at the water gauge – say, it’s hot! Someone has been – say, let’s go find the boy. There’s usually a kid here at night.”

  They finally found the boy in the drug store, chatting with the night clerk.

  “You want gas?” he asked with a yawn. “I – what?”

  “Did anyone take my car tonight?”

  “One of your cops had it, didn’t he?” the boy looked at Lane and yawned again. “I don’t know. I been so busy today, I’m all in. Maybe it was Konrad with the other car. I haven’t sat down for a month, and the parking space’s been full all day, with people wandering around, in an’ out, in an’ out, in an’—”

  “Listen,” Asey said, “how long you been here?”

  “Oh, since twelve. I can see if anyone comes for gas, or they blow their horn,” the boy yawned again. “Or—”

  “Come on,” Asey said to Lane. “This isn’t goin’ to get us any place. The fact r’mains, we seen your car, Kay an’ I, an’ we got some reason to b’lieve your car was the one we been chasin’, if you could call it that.”

  Kay reminded him of the tail light.

  “You could twist that,” Asey said. “Brown sedan, bashed fender, radio—”

  “Brinley!” Lane said. “Brinley!”

  “What about him?”

  “Brinley’s got a brown sedan,” Lane said. “Bashed fender – Mrs. B. bashed it this afternoon against a phone pole! Fellow in a trailer crowded her off the road. And their tail light doesn’t work, because she was so upset after hitting the phone pole that she backed too far, and smashed the tail light to smithereens. I was there.”

  “Let’s,” Asey said, “call on Brinley.” Just as their car pulled up to the walk in front of the Brinleys’ house, a brown sedan with a bashed fender turned into the driveway.

  J. Arthur, rather sketchily clad, greeted the group with amazement.

  “Is anything new the matter?” he inquired anxiously. “The cups – the prize cups for tomorrow – if it’s those, we have them. Did Weston tell you? I’m so sorry he got worried – he knows now. You see, Bessie got anxious about them, with all this going on, so I brought them all home and put them under our bed to be safe from—”

  “Asey!” Kay’s shriek made Asey’s hair stand on end. “Look in this back seat! Look! Look!”

  Sprawled grotesquely across the back seat of Brinley’s sedan was the top-hatted, tail-coated dummy.

  “Oh, that?” Brinley laughed. “Isn’t that one of Mary Randall’s figures? I thought so. Look, there’s Bessie at the door – she’s worried about Amos. I must go in and—”

  “Rain or no rain,” Asey said, “dog or no dog, you stay right here an’ tell me about that figure!”

  “Why, it was in the road,” Brinley said. “At first I thought there’d been an accident. It did look like someone injured lying there. Then I saw what it was, so I picked it up and brought it back. I guess some boy stole it, and then dropped it off to fool someone.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Amos,” Brinley shook his head. “Poor Amos, our little—”

  “Black dog,” Asey said. “I know. What of him now?”

  “Why, Bessie had guests this afternoon, and one of them fed Amos a whole solid box of chocolate creams – of course we didn’t know it till now. Amos loves chocolate creams, but oh, how sick they make him! He was so sick, and Bessie was so worried, I thought I’d better take him to Dr. Graves, just on the outskirts of town, you know. Dr. Graves is wonderful with Amos, and he knows all about him, and Bessie couldn’t remember if it was two pills or four pills, so I went. Er – do you want to come in? I think my wife – it is rather wet, and she wants to know about Amos, she’s so upset over him—”

  With Mrs. Brinley in the hall were Madame Meaux and Weston.

  “What’re you doin’ here?” Asey asked the latter.

  “They phoned me from the Town Hall that the cups were gone, and I came over here to see Arthur,” Weston said. “I offered to go with Arthur, but he seemed to think—”

  “Protection,” Mrs. Brinley said. “I always think you feel so much safer, somehow, with a man around. And with everything that has happened, naturally I’m uneasy, and I know that Madame Meaux is, too, though she’s been just as brave as anything, so I made Arthur go alone with Amos, and Weston stayed with us. And it was more than twelve minutes, dear. It took you seventeen minutes, to the time you came in the drive. We timed you. You see,” she explained to Asey, “Arthur bet he could go to Dr. Graves’ and back in twelve minutes, and he said it wasn’t worth while for Weston to stay, but as I told him, things do come up, don’t they- why, just see, here you are, Mr. Mayo, with your policemen! Why, where are you going, Mr. Mayo! Always in such a horrid rush!”

  Lane, Hamilton and Kay followed Asey outdoors.

  “I still,” Lane was thoroughly bewildered, “I still would like to know what in hell you have been doing, and what about this figure, and your car and the slashed tires, and what about my car, and brown cars, and Brinley—”

  “J. Arthur,” Asey said, striding down the walk, “has managed to ease himself out of something else. That dog! I s’pose if it wasn’t a dog, it’d be a cat, or white mice, or a parrot or goldfish – maybe guppies. Seventeen minutes lets him out, with people to check on either end.”

  “Why was the figure dropped out, Asey?” Kay asked. “Honestly, do you suppose it was boys, or tourists, all the time? Do you? After all, remember Sammy and his girl friend up at the pond. They were plenty sore. I wouldn’t put it beyond them to slash your tires – Asey, where are you rushing to now?” Asey went to Brinley’s sedan and lifted the dummy out of the back seat and carried it over to the trooper’s car.

  “Come ’long,” he said, getting in behind the wheel.

  The other three managed to pile in a split second before he started off.

  She should have known, Kay told herself, as they careened off on the road to the hollow. She should have known that it would be like this if Asey happened to be in a good car while he was in a hurry.

  Hamilton, beside
her in back, was unperturbed. He ginned at her as they got out in front of the Randall house.

  “You’ll get used to him,” he said kindly. “I have. And when he takes to driving like that, he’s got somewhere—”

  “Take that figure in, Ham,” Asey said. “I’ll take the other.”

  He walked over to the other beaver hatted dummy, lugged it into the living room, and stood it beside the one he had taken from Brinley’s car.

  “Now, Lane,” he said, “which was the one that you said had dropsy, the one that toppled over all the time?”

  “That one,” Lane said, “with the scarf around his neck. The one you just brought in from the lawn. That was the one that dropped, but I fixed it.”

  “An’ this one from Brinley’s car, with the stock an’ fancy vest?”

  “That’s the one that’s just acquired dropsy,” Lane said, “just today. I was going to fix it tomorrow. What in the name – what are you doing?”

  Asey set to work disrobing the dummy he had just brought in from the lawn.

  “But it’s the other one,” Kay said. “It’s the other one he took, Asey! You’re working on the one that was here, the one he didn’t take, the—”

  “I know it.”

  But he continued to rummage around in the pockets and the lining of the tail coat belonging to the figure he had just taken from the lawn.

  “There!” he said triumphantly at last. “There! Catch, Lane. Catch’em and hold onto’em. There’s your clews.” Lane and Hamilton stared blankly at the two shells Asey had brought out of the lining of the figure’s coat.

  Chapter 18

  Hamilton turned to Kay.

  “See what I mean?” he asked. “I knew he was after something.”

  “Asey,” Lane said, “how did you guess that?”

  “On Monday night,” Asey said, “I went to the fire at Slade’s shack. N’en I cut across lots to this place. Them dummies scared me to the point of drawin’ my gun. But get this, Lane. I saw only three figures. Two women, an’ a man. Next day I said somethin’ about it, an’ you told me that one man kept failin’ down. So I thought of course that the fourth figure’d been on the ground when I first saw ’em. But it’s been botherin’ me, all this time, just the samey. Because I was certain of there bein’ three then, an’ only three later when Zeb an’ I drove up. An’ I couldn’t remember one on the ground either time.”

  “But there really are four figures,” Kay said. “Two men and two women, what do you mean, only three—” Lane’s look silenced her.

  “Put it this way,” Asey said. “When I came here first on Monday night, there was three figures standin’ outside, but the fourth wasn’t on the ground. It was in the woods. An’ somebody was busy peelin’ off his coat an’ things, an’ puttin’ on the dummy’s clothes. Then – the land slopes there, remember. Then he rolls down easy an’ cautious, dressed in the. dummy’s clothes, with his shotgun. After a while he gets to his feet. To any car goin’ by, or anyone passin’, he’s just a dummy. An’ he can wait there for his chance to shoot Mary. An’ he’s also, Lane, in the proper place to fire accordin’ to your line.”

  Lane nodded slowly. “I begin to – that’s why I placed him over by the garden, where the figures wouldn’t have been in his way. I never thought about – go on.”

  “The fireworks begin,” Asey continued. “Mary Randall leans across the window to get a cigarette box. Fellow shoots twice at her head outlined on the shade, all under the cover of the fireworks noise. He don’t have to run. Because if anyone hears, or catches on, he’s the dummy on the ground again. But no one comes. Jane’s listening to the concerts on the short wave, with static galore, an’ the fireworks is boomin’. He waits till he feels he’s safe, an’ then cuts back to the woods to put on his own clothes. An’ then, I’d say, to his great annoyance an’ alarm, Zeb an’ I come back durin’ the process.”

  “But the shells,” Lane said. “How do you account for—”

  “Wait. He’s stuck’em in his pocket – he must have reloaded, an’ he knew better than to leave the shells. So he sticks’em in his – that is to say the figure’s – pocket. Then Zeb an’ I come. We rattle him. He changes in a flurry, puts the dummy’s clothes back on it, an’—”

  “But now wait,” Lane said. “There were four dummies there when I came with the doctor. I know that. The fourth was on the ground then.”

  “Sure it was. Zeb an’ I go in, see? Fellow gets on his things, dresses the dummy, puts the hat on – it’s held on with safety pins, see? Anyway, after dressin’ up the dummy, he rolls it down the slope an’ goes. The dummy lands back where it should. An’ I’m willin’ to wager that about halfway home, the feller remembers the shells in that pocket.”

  “Then why didn’t he come right back?” Hamilton asked. “I would have. Pronto.”

  “Maybe he did. But Lane’s here, and the doctor, and Weston, and Zeb and Jane and I. An’ mind you from that time on, there’s not a minute someone hasn’t been around this house. He hasn’t any chance to get to the dummy. See, he’s got to take the coat off, an’ hunt around in the linin’, because there’s a hole in the pocket. It’s easier for him to plant shells, an’ he does it, prob’ly while Prettyman is here. It’s a lot better to give us fake shells that’ll lead us to Jane an’ her gun she gave Slade, than to get caught findin’ the real shells, or have anyone catch on where they are.”

  “All he really needed to do,” Lane said, “was to pose as a tourist. The tourists nearly picked those figures apart the last two days.”

  “Prob’ly would have, if he could have posed as one. But someone’s on guard here all the time. Anyone tryin’ to find anythin’ is suspect. If he could be sure of gettin’ the shells right off, that’d have been fine. But I had to grope for’em. That’s a stiff interlinin’. He knew he might have to grope, an’ that’d have given him away.”

  “What was he after the night I met up with him?” Kay asked.

  “Got to guess at that,” Asey told her. “He had a silencer. I shouldn’t wonder if he didn’t intend to silence the cop an’ take his shells then. Maybe he was just waitin’ for some chance when he could get to’em. But he runs into you, an’ into me. Perhaps he was on a peaceful foragin’ expedition, an’ had the gun just in case.”

  “Now, what about Eloise?”

  “Let’s settle this first. Tonight our friend comes right out in the open, apparently havin’ d’cided he ain’t gettin’ places with his skulkin’. Barges up in his car—”

  “My car,” Lane said.

  “Your car, that he’s previously borrowed from the fillin’ station. I should think that kid there might lose a lot of cars, if that’s the way he looks after’em. Anyway, fellow comes with his radio goin’ full blast, to make us think it’s a bunch of kids or parkers or tourists, or all three in one. R’verses his ord’nary methods. Grabs the figure that’s down, thinkin’ of course it’s the same one that was down the other night. Only Lane’s mended the one he wants, an’ this is the other. But not bein’ a fool, when he’s through his searching he dumps it out on the road for someone to find, so’s we’ll think that it was just kids havin’ fun.”

  “Wouldn’t he have done the same,” Kay said, “if he’d got the right figure?”

  “Sure. He’d have dumped that after he got the shells. But it come over me sudden about Lane fixin’em, an’ I just wondered if there wasn’t a chance the feller got fooled. If a pranky soul was after’em, they’d take the one nearest the road, not this that was farthest away. Wouldn’t have gone at my tires so careful, so’s not to be followed in case of a slip. There was a risk involved in stealin’ that figure, but it was important enough to him to take it. Well, Lane, there you are. That’s how Mary Randall was killed. There’s your shells.”

  “Isn’t there a chance that he might come back for the other figure?” Kay asked.

  “He might. Stick’em back, Hamilton, an’ have someone watch. But I don’t think he’ll be back. He ought to be di
sposin’ of his shotgun. If you hadn’t talked so about that figure failin’, Lane, I’d have passed this off as kids After all, we can’t prove your car was taken, even though we know it. Maybe Kay an’ I followed two other cars. Maybe Sammy slashed the tires. But – well, we found the shells. Now all you got to do is to find a gun that fits.”

  “That’s all.” Lane’s laugh was hollow. “That’s all. But one thing I know, those shells didn’t come from Jane’s gun. Altogether different mark. We’ll play with’em for prints. Why do you suppose, Asey, after stealing Jane’s – that is, Slade’s – gun, another was used?”

  “P’raps he preferred his own to a mail order one,” Asey said. “P’raps it was just his idea to plant all he could on Jane, in passin’.”

  “What I’d like to know,” Kay said, “how did he manage to get back so quickly, if he took Lane’s car?”

  “After he whizzed by us,” Asey said, “after the axle broke, he might have turned right around. Might have been the first car that passed by us. Can’t tell. Prob’ly he’d already thrown the figure out by then – Lane, I hear any number of cars outside.”

  Zeb Chase dashed in, followed by Jeff Leach and Weston and Brinley.

  “Are you all right, Kay?” Zeb demanded. “There’s something – your head’s bleeding! Look at your neck—”

  “That’s jelly from jelly doughnuts,” Asey said. “What’s got into all of you?”

  “Weston and I,” Brinley said, “want to know what’s going on. I got Phillips to stay with Bessie – oh. Dr. Graves phoned. He said Amos would be all right tomorrow, that is, if—”

  “I’ve been tearing around,” Zeb said, “trying to find some trace of you, and when I just went back to Aunt Sara’s, Jeff said he’d called Brinley, and Brinley said you’d been there – what’s happened?”

  “Kay an’ I,” Asey informed him, “are a little late on our historical tours. We covered most ofem, though. She needed some local color – ’course it was a mite dark an’ wet, but Billingsgate local color is bright enough to shine forth at night. Come on, Kay. Zeb’s takin’ us home with Jeff.”