by Jerry eBooks
Robert Case emerged from the book and listened quietly.
“Mr. Halliday was in a rage. He said he had had to go out on a special errand and had no choice but to wear the two left shoes. I told him how sorry I was and although he had made both pairs useless, I insisted on leaving the other right shoe and taking the muddy one back to the store.”
A deep sigh escaped Inspector Hall’s lips. “That’s the song I’ve been waiting to hear,” he said in deep satisfaction. “Well, Case, I guess that settles it.”
Case smiled pleasantly.
“Never mind, Mr. Wallace. Drop in anytime.” He went out swiftly, never looking back to where the slim shoe salesman stood shaking hands with a completely self-satisfied Inspector James Hall.
“NUTS!” Hall shouted. “That’s the trouble with you, Case. Every time I get a murder all sewed up, you go digging up the pavement and upsetting the apple cart.”
“Just the same,” Robert Case answered, “ninety per cent of the time you’re wrong.” Hall walked around the edge of the desk deliberately, fists clenched. He strode across the room to where the unprotected Case had seated himself carefully, deep in the protecting seat of Hall’s only comfortable chair. For a split second Hall wanted to lift the little detective by the scruff of the neck and toss him out the window. Then he remembered how many times Case had been right.
“Okay! What have you got on that pintsized mind of yours?”
Case stood up.
“Nothing,” he admitted. “It’s just that easy way out you took. The simple explanation usually turns out to be the wrong one. I want to take another look at Halliday’s apartment. There’s something . . .”
Hall’s fingers went unerringly to his smooth scalp. He shook his head.
“Let’s go,” he said. “The sooner you get this thing off your mind, the sooner I’ll get some rest. Why I ever let you in on the deal, I’ll never be able to figure out.”
Robert Case dropped his book gently on the desk top and looked up with mild surprise.
“You don’t?”
Hall chuckled.
“Come on, Sherlock,” he teased good naturedly, “give up the ghost. This settles the whole thing. Halliday went out with these two left shoes on because he had made a date with Helen Kane. He knew he’d have the perfect chance to kill her and get away with it. He came back to his room and was going to commit suicide when Wallace came up with his other shoe. That would explain his anger at being walked in on. After Wallace left, he took the gun and shot himself. Open and shut case.”
PERCY WALLACE was beaming.
“I-I hope I’ve been able to help you,” he said.
“Help us?” Hall was on his feet, pumping the shoe salesman’s hand. “All we’ve got to do is produce those other shoes and put your story on record. The whole thing is finished.”
Robert Case arose and crossed the room to Wallace’s side.
“What time did you leave Halliday’s room?” he asked.
Percy Wallace looked thoughtful for a moment.
“I reached the hotel at nine-fifteen. It must have taken about fifteen minutes to go up, leave the proper shoe and come down again. Yes! I’d say I left about nine-thirty or slightly later.”
Case nodded.
“It all adds up,” he admitted. “Well, Inspector, guess you won’t be needing me. Nice meeting you, Mr. Wallace. If you ever need a job . . .”
Percy Wallace shuddered and drew away.
“Oh! No thanks. The Regent people treat me very well. I’d never care to leave.”
Case smiled up at him in wide-eyed innocence.
“Because you needed my help, remember?”
THE clerk at the LaGrove Hotel did not welcome their return. The LaGrove couldn’t stand much publicity of the type the Kane killing had given it. They were ushered to the elevator and into Glenn Halliday’s room. Once inside, Case started a systematic search of the dead man’s belongings. The bed was as it had been left the night before. Halliday was fastidious and evidently had lived a comfortable life. Helen Kane’s picture was the usual portrait of a charming young girl, very much in love. Case took a quick look at it and turned away. The gleam in his eyes wasn’t pleasant.
The shoes had been removed for evidence. In Halliday’s closet Case found four more pairs hanging in a shoe bag, a half dozen neatly pressed suits, hats, and the usual attire of a man interested in life.
“Nothing here but clothes, a bed and a picture,” Hall grumbled from his post by the door.
Case went on, searching the carpet, behind the dresser and finally with great reluctance he lowered his body and crawled about under the bed. At last, apparently satisfied, he returned to the door.
“The great Robert Case admits he’s crazy, that the murderer wasn’t hiding under Halliday’s bed and that he’s ready to pay up or shut up,” Hall recited in a monotone.
Case went through the opened door and down to the lobby without answering. Outside, he turned and forced Hall to halt with him.
“Like to take a ride to the morgue?” he asked.
Inspector Hall maintained his usual uneven temper and a string of oaths escaped his heavy lips.
“What in the name of Saint Peter are we going to do at the morgue?”
Case started for the car.
“I’d like to take another look at Glenn Halliday,” he replied calmly. “If you don’t want to come . . .”
Hall hesitated, and then climbed in. He sat back silently as Case shifted the gears and pulled away from the curb. For a time they rode in silence. Finally Hall could contain himself no longer.
“Bob, for Heaven’s sake, let me in on it, will you? I’ll go crazy if you don’t stop this silence strike and talk.”
Case no longer smiled. His eyes were on the road ahead, and it wasn’t the sun’s glare that made them slitted and stone cold.
“Sorry, Jim,” he said. “I don’t know myself. It’s just a feeling I get about these things. That girl didn’t deserve to die. I just want to make sure we’ve got the right man.” With no more than the necessary delay they entered the cold death chamber of the city morgue. With the attendant, a dried up man of fifty, they went down the line of ice boxes set into the wall.
Hesitating before one of them, the man compared tickets, loosened the handle and opened the door to the ice box. Cold, odorless air swept out into the room. The dull, hollow scraping of metal on wood, a white sheet drawn back and Case started quickly to examine the stiff body of Glenn Halliday. He worked swiftly. The job wasn’t a pleasant one for the mild little man. The head, neck, chest, the whole body was unmarked by any wound, except the bloodless hole in the side of the head. Hall stood by patiently until Case reached the up-turned feet.
“I told you you’d find nothing here,” he growled suddenly. “Stop looking at his feet. The man doesn’t even have a corn, not that it makes a hell of a lot of difference.”
Case turned away. He held his hands at his side as would a doctor who is anxious to reach hot water and soap.
“That’s just what I was afraid of,” he said bitterly. “Not a mark on his body other than the wound in his head.”
PERCY WALLACE, Regent Shoe House’s best salesman, expressed pleasant surprise as Inspector James Hall and Robert Case opened the plate glass doors and strolled in. Hall saw Wallace standing beside the cash register and approached him, smiling pleasantly.
“Good afternoon.” Wallace held out his hand. “I don’t suppose I can sell you gentlemen any shoes?”
The question was meant to be humorous, but from the expressions on his visitors’ faces, he knew it had fallen flat.
“Mr. Case would like to talk with you,” Hall said. “Just a few details to be straightened out.”
Percy Wallace smiled pleasantly at the little man he had seen behind the law book at Inspector Hall’s office.
“I’m very glad to help all I can,” he said. “Shall we go into the back room? I’m not needed right now.”
Case nodded shortl
y and the three men passed through a narrow aisle and into what seemed to serve as combination office and stock room. There were two chairs against the wall, evidently removed from the front of the store. Wallace motioned to them and Hall sat down. Case remained on his feet, walking up and down along the wall of shoe boxes. He seemed interested in them.
Wallace remained standing, saw that Case didn’t intend to use the chair meant for him, and finally sank into it himself.
Case whipped around suddenly, looked straight into Wallace’s weak eyes.
“You knew Helen Kane, didn’t you?”
Wallace squirmed uncomfortably. This wasn’t the question he had expected but with a quick gulp he managed to stammer an answer.
“I knew Helen-er-Miss Kane several years ago,” he admitted. “That is, I knew of her.”
Case didn’t relax his steady stare.
“I think you knew her, not several years ago, but several weeks ago. In fact you knew her and were in love with her up to the time of her death.”
Wallace tried to control himself. His hands on the arms of the chair were white and bloodless from the grip they had taken.
“You—you’re wrong,” he said. “It’s true that Helen and I were friends. That’s all it amounts to. I never met Halliday.”
Case was relentless.
“What makes you mention Halliday?” Wallace sprang to his feet, his face pale.
“I don’t know. That is—you’re trying to make it look as though I was mixed up in this case. I told you all I know. You can’t rightfully accuse me . . .”
Robert Case was sure of himself now.
He pushed his argument as a well-trained lawyer would fight for ground.
“Wallace, you’ve got something on your mind. Something that’s going to haunt you straight to the electric chair. When I came down here I had a pretty good idea that you were the murderer. You’ve given enough away for me to prove it.”
Wallace stood stiff and alert, eyes wide with terror.
Jim Hall was at his side, puzzled but ready to back up Robert Case when the little man needed him.
“Sit down, Wallace,” Case said suddenly. “Sit down and let’s see just how good a shoe salesman you really are.”
His voice was silky, soothing as a snake charmer’s.
LIKE a man in a dream, Wallace sank backward into the chair. He sat very still, his throat knotted and jumping.
“Take off your right shoe.” Hypnotized, Wallace reached down, managed the knot and removed the shoe from his foot.
“And the stocking.”
Hall stood by, a completely bewildered man. He forgot to rub his scalp and his fingers jerked nervously at his side. Case was close to the shoe salesman now. He reached down suddenly and jerked up Wallace’s foot.
“Look, Inspector,” he said. “The man who killed Helen Kane was wearing two left shoes.
Wallace claims Halliday did it. What happens to a man’s foot if he wears an opposite shoe for an extended period of time?”
The room was dead silent. Wallace’s breath was coming hard. Hall scratched his head and sudden understanding flashed into his eyes.
“Good God, man, you’ve got it! Halliday’s feet were as smooth as glass.”
Case nodded grimly, still keeping his hold on the shoe salesman’s foot.
“And Wallace, who makes a business of perfect fitting, has a raw blister on his big toe and his whole foot is red and creased.”
Wallace jerked away suddenly with all his weight.
“You’re making a fool of me!” he screamed. “I had nothing to do with it. Nothing, you understand?”
His voice was high pitched and hysterical. Before Inspector Hall could reach him, Wallace dodged to one side and tried to dash for the door. There was satisfaction in Robert Case’s eyes as he put out a quick right foot and caught Wallace. The shoe salesman went sprawling. Like lightning he was on his knees and trying to stand again. Case reached his side and with unholy delight planted a haymaker on his chin. Wallace’s head jerked suddenly to one side as though hit by a truck. His Adam’s apple bounced up and sank down again slowly and a groan of pain split his lips. He sank to the carpet with blood oozing from his mouth.
“Nice going,” Hall said admiringly. “You may be a half pint, Bob, but what you can reach, you can kill.”
Case rubbed his throbbing fist, flexing the fingers painfully.
“I wonder if it was worth it,” he asked ruefully. “I won’t be able to hold a book for a month.”
PERCY WALLACE was safely in his cell before Hall and Robert Case retired to the warmth of Hall’s office. The Inspector had been rubbing his classic dome for several hours now and as no closer to an explanation than before. With the door safely locked, he brought out a tall bottle of rosy, transparent liquid, and two glasses, and placed them on the desk before him.
“Fifteen-year-old stuff,” he said lovingly and fingered the cork of the bottle. “Never get it out for anything but special occasions.”
Case flopped wearily opposite him, crossed his legs and straightened the crease in his trousers.
“This is special, isn’t it?” he admitted. “In a way, I’m sorry it’s over.”
Hall grinned broadly.
“You won’t get lonely,” he answered. “People get murdered everyday.”
He filled a tall glass and handed it to Case. The little man touched it to his lips and said soberly:
“Yet, if I could drink a toast that could be reality, I’d say, ‘a toast to murderers. May they always murder their own kind.’ That’s what gets me, Jim. The innocent ones have to take it.”
Hall was thoughtful.
“How about it, Bob? Shoot the works, will you?”
“The works?”
“Yeah! How did you first find out that Wallace was involved in the crime?”
Case drank deeply and placed the partly emptied glass on the edge of the desk.
“I didn’t have a thing to do with it,” he admitted. “Wallace convicted himself.”
Hall’s eyes were steady.
“Go on.”
Case smiled.
“Remember I told you that if you left a murderer alone long enough, things would start happening? I wasn’t satisfied with the whole thing. When Wallace came here, he was finishing his plan for the perfect crime. He made it so perfect that he walked into his own net. Wallace was clever. He even figured out a new way to kill and he based it on a trade he was accustomed to. He knew that Glenn Halliday had a date with Helen Kane. He picked up Helen and convinced her with some wild story that she should take a drive with him. He probably pretended that he was sorry for the trouble he’d caused her.”
“Trouble?”
“Wallace loved Helen Kane. She turned him down for Halliday. Surely that’s an old story?”
Hall nodded.
“Go on,” he urged.
Case leaned back in his chair.
“Quite simple,” he said. “Wallace met the girl and took her out Highway 6. He was wearing two left shoes. He murdered the girl, made a lot of confusing tracks around her body and returned to town. He already had two right shoes in his car. He went to Halliday’s room, shot him in the head and made it look like a suicide. Then he planted a dirty left shoe and a clean right under the bed. Returning to the store, he turned in the shoes he had left and reported the transaction as he explained it to us.”
For once, Hall forgot to bluster. “Case, I’ve got to hand it to you. All that on guess work, and because Halliday didn’t have any bruises on his feet.”
“Not quite,” Case admitted. “To begin with, when we visited Halliday’s room the second time, he had a whole shoe bag of practically new shoes hanging in his closet. That’s the first definite clue I had. A man doesn’t rush around in the afternoon buying shoes, then go out to murder a girl wearing two lefts, when he has several perfect pairs in his closet.”
INSPECTOR HALL poured a second glass, stoppered the bottle and placed it gently away in his d
esk.
“I guess we don’t have to worry about smart shoe salesmen as long as our men are just a little smarter,” he said softly.
“When did you find out that Wallace had been in love with Helen Kane?”
“When Wallace told me,” Case admitted. “After I figured out who killed Helen Kane and Glenn Halliday, it wasn’t so hard to figure out why. Our friend Percy Wallace is going to spend a lot of sleepless nights wondering just how his perfect crime went astray.”
Case stood up, tossed down a last drop and passed the empty glass to the man behind the desk.
“I’ve got to be running, Jim,” he said, and glanced hurriedly at his pocket watch.
“Relax,” Hall urged. “We both need a rest.”
Robert Case slipped quickly into his coat.
“Sorry,” he said, “my feet have been killing me for the past week. I’m going out and pick up a new pair of shoes!
A KNIFE IN THE CHEST
Dale Clark
CHAPTER I
BIG HOUSE
Bill Boone swung his roadster off Highway Eighty, threading it between the stone gate-posts. A driveway wound away across the velvety greensward and disappeared into clumps of Monterey cypress. The hand-manicured appearance of the extensive grounds brought an appreciative flicker into Boone’s eyes.
“Class,” he murmured. “Do-re-me. Maybe I’ve got priority on a windfall here.”
A hipped Dutch Colonial roof was framed in a setting of cypress and pine. Bill Boone drove the necessary two hundred yards to brake in front of the two-story, box-shouldered house. He estimated its ensemble of green shutters, twin chimneys, grassy lawn, and tennis court.
“Twenty grand if it cost a dime,” he summed it all up.
He unlatched the roadster door and swung out one traffic-cramped leg. Before the other leg could follow, a voice called imperiously from the tennis court.
“Hey, you!” The voice sounded angry. “Private property. Keep moving.”
A black-haired, black-goggled youth in white pants stood there. The smoked glasses, coupled with the sun visor tugged low on his forehead, gave his features a peculiarly robotish look. He waggled a tennis racquet at the end of a muscular arm.
