by Jerry eBooks
“Steve!” shouted the older Crane. He waved his son back. “Sheriff, Howland’s trying to blackmail us with that story. He can’t prove a word of it. That is, maybe he can prove the marriage part. But he certainly can’t prove there ever was such a will.”
Charley Howland made up his mind. “Maybe not,” he said. “Mr. Depew wrote the new will himself, and young Pemberton and I were the only witnesses. Maybe I can’t prove it, but I can certainly tell the district attorney an earful!” He strode toward Andrews. “Go ahead, arrest me, and see what happens.”
The sheriff growled. “You don’t have to tell me. You’re pinched.”
He grasped the secretary’s arm and hustled him into the hallway.
“I’m stationing a deputy here to watch the body until the coroner comes,” he called over his shoulder. “And I’m telling him nobody’s leaving this house until that murder’s cleared up!”
Bill Boone watched the sheriff and his prisoner depart. A smile grew on his lips as he turned to the others.
“I’ve got a little surprise for you folks,” he confided. “That will wasn’t destroyed, after all.”
“You’re insane!” Fred Crane said. “Why, I myself—” He stopped short.
Helen Crane’s blue eyes filled with tears. “It’s true!” she cried. “Mr. Howland wasn’t lying! Why, you’re all a pack of blood-sucking parasites!”
“You’re going to be a pack of hungry parasites,” predicted Bill Boone. “Forrest Depew’s intention of setting up a trust fund to educate the kids of the Navy men killed at Pearl Harbor is preserved in his own voice on a phonograph record. That’s a will which will hold water in any court of the land!”
CHAPTER IV
CATCH A THIEF
Deliberately, Bill Boone was playing for heavy stakes. And he was playing without a card in his hand. Or rather, he was playing with cards which weren’t worth a cent until he got called.
You’re crazy!” shouted Fred Crane. “I mean he was crazy! A lunatic’s will won’t hold water in court, no matter what it’s written on.”
“Absolutely,” chimed in Steve. “Playing mumblety-peg at his age! He was crazy as a coot!”
Boone grinned. “Would he be crazy as a coot if he sat up there and played solitaire to pass the time?”
“That’s different,” spluttered the youth. “If he preferred playing with a knife to playing with a deck of cards,” Bill Boone said, “I’d say that was his business.”
They stared at him. “Bosh!” cried the red-haired nurse. “It isn’t the same at all. Why, he actually believed those ball players were in the room with him!”
“He made believe,” corrected Boone. “Just as you pay fifty cents to sit in a theatre and make-believe a lot of shadows on a white cloth rare living, talking people. Don’t kid yourselves. It won’t be easy to convince an American jury that the man who made that phonograph record was insane!”
He paused, let it sink in. “Especially, as I’ll go into court and swear he seemed perfectly sane to me,” Boone added.
Once more, he fluttered the check in front of their faces.
“I’ll have to,” he murmured. “I couldn’t cash a lunatic’s check.”
A pin falling on the rug would have made a noise like an air-raid siren.
Helen Crane was first to absorb the idea. She stared at Boone.
“Why—why, you’re just a crook like everybody else!” she exclaimed contemptuously.
She brushed past Boone and fled from the room.
“I think I’ll retire myself,” Bill Boone said. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind letting me use Forrest Depew’s rooms? He won’t be needing them any more . . .”
Bill Boone stood at the wide windows and watched the shades of twilight creep up the flanks of the distant mountains. By the failing daylight he examined the check once more. A detail which had escaped his previous hasty inspection now disturbed him deeply.
The check was dated the twelfth—Monday.
“I ought to see some action pretty soon,” he thought.
If he didn’t, it could only be because Charley Howland was guilty. And the date of the check would go far to clear Howland. In fact, it would clear him. Since the check had already been written, there was no reason why Forrest Depew should have gone to the study to be murdered.
Bill Boone recognized that he had put himself far out on a limb, and that he was stuck there for keeps unless somebody tried to saw him off.
It grew darker. He blinked as he stared down into a victory garden that was part of the estate. There was a scarecrow standing near the rows of corn, and he had not remembered noticing it there before. It was dressed in an old suit and there was a white blotch that looked like a stuffed bag where the face should have been. An old hat was on top of the makeshift head.
Boone heard a door open, then close softly. He peered out into the hall. Helen Crane was heading for the stairs, her back toward him. She wore a red dress and a little red hat was perched on her blond head. But Boone was not interested in her clothes—what he saw was the businesslike automatic she held in her hand.
“Another county heard from,” he muttered.
He followed her downstairs and out of the house without being seen. She headed for the vegetable garden. Boone clung to the shadows as he followed. When she reached the scarecrow she stopped beside it.
Bill Boone edged closer, and frowned. The girl appeared to be talking to the scarecrow! She held out what looked like a packet of money.
Boone drew a flashlight from his pocket. The powerful beam gleamed on Helen Crane and the scarecrow. She cried out and fired wildly in Boone’s direction, but the bullet missed him by a couple of yards.
“Look out, Helen!” Boone shouted as he saw the scarecrow raise his right arm. There was a knife in the figure’s hand! “Look out!”
Boone raced forward, fumbling for his gun. His foot hit a rock and he went down. His head hit the ground so hard that he was completely out for a few moments. When he recovered, both Helen Crane and the scarecrow were gone.
He picked up his flashlight and went quietly back into the house. No one saw him as he returned to Forrest Depew’s suite. He just sat there a few minutes waiting. He was sure that the girl had escaped or there would be more excitement in the house. At least he hoped that she had.
He almost jumped with relief when at last there came a tap at the door.
“Yeah,” Boone said softly.
The attractive contoured figure of Miss Radnew—or Mrs. Steve Crane—slipped into the room.
“About that check,” she said, and smiled. “What about it?”
“I—I think I could arrange to cash it for you,” she murmured.
Boone laughed. “You great big beautiful doll, do you think I’m going to sell out for a measly five Cs?”
She glared at him, stepped back, and slammed the door shut.
One, Bill Boone told himself. He’d been called once. But the ante hadn’t been big enough.
He hadn’t long to wait now. There came another knock—Fred Crane, this time.
“Look here, Boone,” said the elder Crane. “I don’t believe that phonograph record could be construed as a legal will. Still, it may have a nuisance value. I’m prepared to make you an offer for it.”
“How much?”
“I’ll be generous,” Fred Crane declared. “A thousand dollars.”
Bill Boone didn’t have to pretend disappointment. His face fell of its own accord.
“Fifteen hundred,” the other amended. “I’m not even listening.”
“Two thousand.”
“Chicken-feed,” jeered Boone. “You—you’re crazy!” exclaimed Fred Crane. That seemed to be stock remark of his. He flung it and strode out of the room without bothering to close the door.
Almost immediately, a figure glided into the doorway that had been left conveniently open. Steve Crane had a gun in his hand.
“You filthy crook!” snarled Steve Crane. “You’re not going to rook us
like this! I want that recording, if I have to blow holes through you!”
“You don’t dare shoot with the deputy sheriff downstairs,” Boone said hastily.
“Don’t kid yourself. The guy’s over in the servant’s wing, eating his dinner. He heard a shot but couldn’t learn who fired it, so forgot it.” Steve Crane advanced behind the gun. “Where is it?”
“On the tray behind you,” Boone said, and swallowed.
“Keep ’em up—high!” warned the youth. He bore down on the tray, keeping the gun in his right hand while his left reached and fumbled among the bottles.
“I don’t see—” he began. “Under the cloth, dope,” Boone said. Steve Crane reached under the cloth, jerked out the miniature recording, and started backing out of the room.
“Keep ’em up!” he repeated nervously. He was watching Boone, forgetful of the tray.
Bill Boone nudged the tray with his foot. It started rolling on its silent, rubber-tired wheels. After moving two yards, it struck Steve Crane amidships. The force was not great, but the surprise of it exploded the youth’s keyed-up muscles into hysterical reaction. Steve Crane leaped sideward, squealing as if the tray had been a Mack truck.
Boone’s clenched fists were flailing as he pounced. The fists cracked together, one on each side of corpulent Steve Crane’s jowls.
Steve Crane couldn’t take it. Boone scooped up the gun and hauled the amateur gunman to his feet.
“That was just because you had it coming,” Boone said happily. “It wasn’t the right record, anyway. Now, get going!”
Steve Crane scuttled away.
Bill Boone’s momentary pleasure vanished.
“Still no ante,” he thought. “I’ve got a hundred and two grand in the pot, and—”
A blow crashed against his skull, from behind. Nobody could have sneaked up on him that swiftly. The object had been hurled across the room.
Bill Boone took a dive. He was hurt, but not hurt that bad. He managed to cradle Steve Crane’s gun under him as he fell.
Through half-closed eyes he watched a pair of white pants scissoring rapidly from the bedroom door. Jeremiah Pemberton must have come up through the elevator shaft.
He bent over Boone, tore open Boone’s coat, and yanked frantically at the detective’s shirt. Then he gasped at the sight of Bill Boone’s bare torso.
Boone sat up, pointing Steve Crane’s gun. “Surprise,” he said pleasantly.
The tennis player drew back a step. “I’ve got one, too,” he announced, thrusting a revolver toward Boone, “and it’s loaded. Yours isn’t.”
He sounded pretty confident about it.
“I unloaded Steve’s gat myself,” he added. “I was afraid the fool would kill you, and they’d find the bonds on your corpse.”
Boone stared into Jeremiah Pemberton’s eyes.
“What’s your proposition?” he asked. “Be smart,” said the youth calmly. “They’re no good to you. You’d never get away with it if I tipped off the sheriff. And they’d be no good to me, either, if you squealed—now that you’re wise. I had Helen sold on the idea that I was doing some good detective work disguised as a scarecrow. She was willing to pay me. The thing for you and me to do is split, fifty-fifty.”
Bill Boone climbed to his feet. At his feet was the towel-wrapped brick the tennis player had served from the bedroom doorway.
“You tried to ace me twice already,” Boone said. “How do I know you won’t put a bullet in my back when you find out where those bonds are?”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
“That’s what you think,” Boone said. He pretended to steady himself on wabbling legs as he wavered toward the window. “But look, fella. I’ve got that mike of Steve’s plugged in, recording every word of this.”
Jeremiah Pemberton’s eyes veered past the detective toward the windowsill. And in that moment Bill Boone’s erstwhile wabbling legs became coiled, steely springs.
Pemberton’s finger squeezed convulsively at the trigger as Bill Boone charged. Flame rocketed in Boone’s direction. It was close enough to have singed his beard, if he had worn a beard. But Boone’s fist flew in front of him, knocking the gun aside one split-second before his brains would have been splattered.
It was a one-two punch, with the second half of it exploding into the tennis player’s face.
Jeremiah Pemberton toppled backward. The gun roared again before he hit the floor, but it didn’t mean a thing. It was just reflex action, akin to the wing-flapping of a decapitated chicken.
Only a few minutes later Sheriff Andrews stood in the library and stared at the disheveled, bruise-lipped gardener’s son.
“Him?” Andrews said. “How in all creation could he get into the vault to steal those bonds?”
“He didn’t,” supplied Boone. “Forrest Depew did that.”
“You’re crazy,” the sheriff said. He was getting it, too. He flushed. “I mean, maybe you’re right, but why would Mr. Depew steal something that already belonged to him?”
Boone jerked his thumb toward the Cranes and the red-haired nurse.
“All of them except Helen were in a conspiracy to have the old man declared legally insane,” he said. “On Monday, as Howland admitted, he and Depew checked the contents of the safe. Depew found out then that his new will was missing. He knew that Howland must have stolen it, because only Howland knew the vault combination. Therefore Depew himself stole the bonds. He knew that Howland would be blamed for the theft. He surmised that Howland would squeal on the others rather than go to jail. And he was absolutely right—that’s just what did happen.”
The sheriff grunted. “Depew told you all that?”
“No. I was a puppet in his plot, like the others. He got me out here to provide an excuse for discovering that the bonds were missing. Of course, he couldn’t guess he would be murdered. He’d expected to be alive, running the whole show. He made just one mistake.”
Bill Boone pointed at Jeremiah Pemberton. “A man in a wheel-chair couldn’t go far to hide those bonds. Mr. Depew went to the basement—and Pemberton was down there cleaning up that Monday. He saw Depew hide the bonds—and he figured he’d be a hundred and two thousand ahead if anything happened to the old man.
“So he saw to it that something did happen. He came to the house today after the tennis game. Hiding in the elevator or in the bedroom, he heard enough about the Amalgamated Gas portfolio to know he had to act quick. The nurse left Depew in the bedroom alone, and Pemberton stepped in. He used the knife, and used the blankets to keep bloodstains off himself. There are bloodspots in the elevator to prove the body was brought downstairs that way. He planted the check in the study to cast suspicion on Howland. Finally, he went down to the basement to get the phonograph record. It’d be a blackmail opportunity for him.
“That’s all,” Bill Boone said, “except that I took the bonds, and I figured when somebody tried to get them away from me—why, I’d have the guilty guy. And that Pemberton sold Helen on the idea of playing detective, to spy on me. Made her think I was the crook.”
“What about those bonds?” Andrews asked.
“Come on.”
Bill Boone led the way to the elevator. Kneeling down, he pried up the elevator’s rubber floor matting.
“Here,” he said.
Helen Crane was beside him. “Why, you’re not a crook, after all!” she exclaimed. “And why—why, you did save me from being murdered by Penn!”
Boone allowed himself a grin. “You know the old saw about taking a thief to catch a thief,” he soliloquized. “Maybe it isn’t always so—but I’ve found it works a lot easier that way!”
CLOSE TO A CORPSE
Donald Bayne Hobart
Detective Sergeant Dan Kenny Moves Swiftly to Spike a Killer’s Alibi!
Detective Sergeant Dan Kenny seated himself on a bench with a sigh. Even after twenty years in the New York Police Department he still hated the city morgue. The bleak place with its rows of cadavers in compartment
s that could be pulled out of the wall reminded him of some sort of weird filing cabinet.
Kenny stared bleakly at the elderly morgue attendant. Old John Lake with his pasty white face and gray hair was getting to look more and more like the dead that were in his care. His manner was always like that of a well educated and overly unctuous undertaker.
“That is the last of the poor unfortunates who have been brought to this haven within the last forty-eight hours, Sergeant,” Lake said. “I’m afraid the body you are seeking is not here.”
“It wasn’t important.” There was something about Lake that always made Kenny inclined to feel tough and vitriolic. “Just a cheap gangster that’s turned up missing so I’m checking the hospitals and the morgue. Routine stuff. The lug probably just skipped out of town.”
John Lake nodded and then frowned as the phone rang in his office. Kenny glanced at his wrist-watch. It was a quarter past three, early morning. He rose up from the bench and followed Lake into the office as the morgue attendant went to answer the phone.
“City Morgue,” Lake said as he picked up the receiver. He listened a moment and his eyes widened. “Just a moment, please repeat that.”
Lake quickly handed the phone to Kenny and the sergeant placed the receiver to his ear.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Let’s have it again.”
“This is Harvey Wilson, of Wilson and Hart, attorneys,” came a muffled masculine voice over the wire. “I’m at my office on the tenth floor of the Chapman building. I’m going to commit suicide, so you’d better send the morgue wagon here for my body.”
“Hey, wait!” shouted Kenny excitedly. “Don’t do anything foolish. You just wait there until I get to your office and we’ll talk this thing over. Go slow, will you, old man?”
From the other end of the line there the sound of a shot and then a thud and a clatter. The sergeant lowered the phone and looked at the morgue attendant.
“Did he do it?” asked Lake. “Sounded like it.” Kenny put down the phone and hung up the receiver. “Call the homicide squad, Lake,” he snapped. “I’m going to the Chapman Building and see what happened to that poor devil.”
