“She’s safe enough,” said Fergus, “as long as you’re here.”
It was over in a minute. Tom’s dive for the launch was well aimed, but he failed to allow for the agility of Officer Koplinski, who suddenly stood where there had been a clear passageway. Nor did he allow, as would any Santa Eulalian criminal, for that officer’s celebrated one-two, second only in fame to his ability to draw to an inside straight.
When Tom sat up again, Officer Koplinski was clicking shut the handcuff, Officer Sanchez was replacing his automatic in its holster, and Chief Donovan was saying, in tones of rumbling admiration, “You play much poker, O’Breen?”
Chapter 15
“Gentlemen,” Tom Quincy appealed. “Officers.
You surely aren’t paying any attention to this wild accusation?”
“You tried to get away, didn’t you?” Chief Donovan lowered.
“I was panicky. What would you do, Chief, if anyone hurled such a denunciation at you.”
“Me? I’d sit tight and say nothing.”
“Maybe. Maybe you would. But I’m not made that way. It took me by surprise, and my first thought was to get the hell out. But I’m sure that once you hear the circumstances, you’ll realize how absurd these handcuffs are. The situation is simply this: We had on this island a poor devil who had been tricked into believing that he was mad. He cracked up under the strain, killed one man, and attacked three others, including me. Then he finished matters off by committing suicide, thereby depriving O’Breen of a fee. The shock of that loss and a practically sleepless night have made the poor lad scatterbrained.”
“Look, boys,” said Chief Donovan. “Let’s go on up to the house and get all this straight.”
“O. K.,” Fergus agreed. “But not at the house. I’d sooner have a strictly official audience for some of the things I’ve got to say. Chief Donovan, would you send one of your men up to keep people quiet?”
The heavy-set Chief frowned and looked questioningly at Officer Koplinski, who nodded. “It’s a deal, O’Breen. Sanchez, you take over up at the house.”
Officer Sanchez looked reproachfully at Fergus. “When this case breaks on us, I’d just filled a straight flush for the first time in a year. And now I got to walk out on the party without even hearing what it’s all about. I should ought of been a plumber like I wanted to.”
“Scram, Sanchez,” Chief Donovan growled. “Now, O’Breen. What goes?”
Fergus told his story succinctly: first a brief outline of the Martha Stanhope affair (for the Chief’s benefit, since Officer Koplinski seemed already familiar with it), then a sketch of the Valentino and Corcoran episodes, and lastly a relatively detailed account of the past night.
When he had finished, he turned to Tom. “Check?”
“Check,” said Tom confidently. “And mate in three to you, my fine fertile friend.”
Fergus did not smile.
“That’s as may be. But you endorse that as a correct account of the events on this island?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Now, gentlemen, we come to the pith of the matter, and that is the double slugging.”
“That would’ve bothered me from the start,” said Officer Koplinski.
“It did bother me. When I thought we were dealing with a maniac, I wasn’t even willing to grant the slugging of the guard. For all the sophistries you can sprinkle around the notion, I still don’t think a homicidal maniac would so carefully not kill one man in order to kill another. But when I realized that this murder was sane, the slugging of the guard seemed to make sense.”
Tom rubbed the back of his head and said, “Well?”
“Now sane or insane, there was no apparent reason for the murderer to slug Herndon, was there? There he was in his room, harming nobody and in nobody’s way. What seems to be the only possible reason?”
Fergus looked at Chief Donovan, but it was Officer Koplinski who answered. “Slugging himself to make himself look like a victim.”
“That’s what I thought too. But isn’t that just a little too obvious? You might make yourself look like a victim when a victim is plausible. But when there’s no reason on God’s green footstool why you should be a victim, the frame works the other way round. It actually calls attention to you instead of protecting you. And I began to think that maybe that’s just what it was meant to do.
“Then there was Herndon’s own evidence: He heard somebody at his door, found no one there, and looked out into the hall. In the hall he saw nothing. Now clearly something’s phony there. If the murderer slugged him, the murderer must have slugged the guard first, so that Herndon, looking out, would have had to see the guard’s body. Therefore, I thought, even before Tom oh so kindly pointed it out to me, that Herndon must be lying. But there was one other explanation. Herndon would see an empty hall if it was the guard who slugged him from behind.”
“Neat,” said Officer Koplinski. “That’s a good point, Chief.”
Chief Donovan nodded and frowned.
“Pretty,” Tom observed. “In an abstract sort of way, I can admire this game. But what have you proved? That the double slugging can be interpreted in either of two ways. One way incriminates me, the other Herndon. I’m sitting here calm and cheerful, if handcuffed, and Herndon has committed suicide and left a confession.”
Chief Donovan frowned and scratched his head.
“A false confession,” said Fergus, “to another crime.”
“Which you explained perfectly, a half hour back, as covering this one.”
“All right. Leave this for a minute; it’s just one point Now let’s go back to the Ramirez episode.”
Chief Donovan looked relieved to find matters on a simpler plane. “How is old Hokay? Pulling through?”
“Your first job’s going to be getting him to a hospital. But Dr. Arnold thinks he’ll pull through all right. He’s our friend’s one serious failure.”
“Good. I kinda liked that old bastard. Go on, O’Breen.”
“What happened then? Somebody knocked out Hokay Ramirez, sent his launch careening off into nowhere, and left us all stranded on this island. People were scattered then; almost anybody could have done it. But the point is that whoever did it also pinched my suitcase. Not only were all my clothes in there, which accounts for my present disreputable attire, but so was all my professional equipment. Plus an automatic.”
Officer Koplinski disapproved. “You come on a case and you leave automatics around to be snatched?”
“I wasn’t supposed to be a detective, which is the point I’m building to. And despite the novelists, it’s pretty hard to carry a gun without a bulge in Southern California clothes. Somehow I thought I wouldn’t look quite the Compleat House Guest with a rod sticking out; so I left it in my suitcase, and it vanished.
“Now if A is planning a murder on a houseparty, and B, the lousy old spoilsport, has gone and invited a private detective as a guest, it’s obviously up to A to do something about it. Getting rid of the detective doesn’t fit into A’s picture; maybe it would start trouble before the proper time. But at least A can draw the dick’s claws and leave him stranded with nothing but his hands and his brains.
“Which is precisely what happened, and logical enough. But to do that, A had to know that I was a detective. Now ostensibly I was just a young man that Stella Paris had invited, along with Tom, to provide youth and gaiety on the party. Of all the people on this island, only three knew my profession: Miss Paris, Lucas Quincy, and Tom. Miss Paris could hardly have invited me only to draw my teeth upon arrival; and Quincy, quite apart from his being the intended victim, was with me when the boat and the suitcase were stolen. So what’s left?”
“A guess,” said Tom coolly. “Even if such logical speculations had any value as evidence, how can you conceivably prove that a dead man did not know a certain fact? There are dozens of ways in which Herndon might accidentally have heard about you and preferred to keep his knowledge to himself.”
“All
right. We now come to the Curious Episode of the Unsprung Trap. The murderer was getting cautious now; he was tying up loose ends. Living victims aren’t so good to have around. He began to worry about what Ramirez could tell if he recovered consciousness; so our friend stabbed him through what he fondly supposed was the heart. The attempt failed, but Herndon didn’t know that. If Herndon was the murderer, he’d have thought that Ramirez was dead and that Corcoran was the one remaining witness. Or why specify Herndon? Anyone would have thought that, if Corcoran’s attacker were the murderer. So I baited a trap, spread the news that Corcoran would be talking in the morning, and waited for the logical attempt to finish him off. And nothing happened. Nobody came near the place. The killer had no interest in Corcoran’s death. On the contrary, he had a very real interest in keeping Corcoran alive; anything that Corcoran might have seen was that much more evidence to clear him.”
“So because I kept vigil all night beside Corcoran while you dozed, and never lifted a finger to harm him, that proves I’m a murderer? Fergus, you’re outshining yourself.” He turned to Chief Donovan. “That’s simple enough to explain. After the second Ramirez attack, Herndon had his revulsion of feeling that finally led to his suicide. He wasn’t interested any longer in keeping it all dark. It didn’t matter whether Corcoran talked or not.”
Fergus stared at him with admiration. “You stick to your guns, don’t you?”
“I stick to the truth. How about it, Chief? Do the cuffs come off now?”
“Just a minute,” Fergus interposed. “One more point. Herndon’s quote suicide unquote. Now that was a pretty job. Dr. Arnold gave his official O. K. to the wound, and an examination of my automatic will probably show fingerprints in just the right places. But all the same it’s here that our friend made his most serious mistake: On the table was a very expensive, very beautiful, very new pipe—still warm.”
Chief Donovan scowled. “I don’t get it. Seems to me if I was going to commit suicide, I’d like as not light a cigar while I was thinking it over. And that reminds me …” He fished out a cigar, bit off the end, and spat.
“Sure,” said Officer Koplinski. “A cigar, sure. But …”
Fergus turned to him quickly. “You get it?”
“You said a new pipe?”
“Exactly. Now smoking before suicide—sure, that’s plausible enough. Think of all the dopes that light One Last Cigarette in a gas-filled room and blow themselves to shreds. And a cigarette- or cigar-smoker would smoke whatever came to hand. But a pipe-smoker, with a whole collection of his old favorites about him, would never pick a new pipe for his Last Smoke on Earth. Nobody with suicide on his mind could possibly start to break in a pipe. It would be like commencing a mystery novel in the death house at a quarter to midnight.
“James Herndon left the livingroom to ponder over his confession and try to decide how much he could tell me. He went upstairs, took this beautiful straight-grain briar from its case, and began to break it in. That was a positive act, a sort of distraction from his worries. He smoked it carefully down to the bottom; there was only gray ash left in it. And a matter of minutes later, he was dead.
“That was no suicide.”
Officer Koplinski grinned at Fergus. “Your friend Jackson underrates you,” he said.
“What’s the matter with you both?” Tom was scornful. “Are you letting those green Irish eyes hypnotize you? The psychology of pipe-smoking, for God’s sakel Since when do they convict on that?” But his tone was noticeably less cocky.
Chief Donovan scratched his head. His voice lacked conviction as he said, “It looks O. K., but still …”
Fergus interrupted. “Look, it sounds complicated but it’s as simple as hell. Cut out the phony stuff—all the squirming red herrings that have been giving us the razzle dazzle. Forget what happened twenty-five years ago. Think of what’s happened here. Sure, Hokay was conked, Corcoran was knifed—but they’re still alive, aren’t they?”
Fergus had asked the question but he had no intention of giving anyone a chance to answer it. He went on talking.
“I’m saying again: what have we got? Just this. Lucas Quincy was murdered. That was the main idea. And who had the best reason in the world to murder him—before Lucas could get to the altar with the fair Alys—before Lucas had a wife instead of a nephew to leave his money to?”
Officer Koplinski nodded. “Then the Herndon murder was just a cover up, close the case and no questions asked and Herndon takes the rap.”
Chief Donovan grunted, but there was no longer a shade of doubt in his voice. “Checks,” he said. “But a little material evidence wouldn’t do no harm in court, O’Breen.”
“All right,” said Fergus slowly. “Sure, he thought of everything. He got the angle right and he framed the print. But I wonder about the nitrate specks.”
“Nitrate?” Tom frowned.
“Little specks on the hand. A sort of invisible backfire from shooting off a firearm. You can’t see them, Tom, but they’re on your hand right now. And they’re not on Jim Herndon’s.”
Suddenly Tom whirled. His handcuffed fist was on the grip of Koplinski’s automatic when that officer’s right whipped up and met his jaw. There was a sharp crack of bone, and the tall athlete fell back on the ground, pulling the steel-linked policeman on top of him.
“The dumb bastard!” Chief Donovan scowled. “Did he think he could shoot his way out while he was handcuffed to Koppo?”
“Not so dumb,” Fergus grinned. “All he wanted to do was pull the trigger, even if the gun was still in the holster. We’d have no charge against him on that unless maybe resisting an officer; and he’d have destroyed the one concrete piece of evidence against him.”
“Sonofabitch!” said Chief Donovan, in approximately one syllable.
“But this test,” Fergus went on. “We’ve got to make it damned quick before something else crops up to spoil it. How’re you fixed for a laboratory here, Chief?”
“Laboratory? Hell, O’Breen, all we get here is drunks and speeders. Don’t you know how to do it?“
“I’ve used it, but always with a lab man. I know you coat the hand with paraffin and apply Lunge’s reagent to the cast. But what the hell Lunge’s reagent is or where you get it—God damn. This is practically symbolic. Our civilization is so almighty scientific that we rely absolutely on the scientist. Without him, we’re as helpless as a Cromagnon. Here we’ve got a murderer, and he can laugh at us.”
Officer Koplinski spoke up from his comfortable position on the unconscious prisoner. “Lunge’s reagent? That’s half a gram of diphenyalimine in a hundred cc. of sulphuric acid at sixty-two degrees Baumé. Mix that with twenty cc. distilled water. Works swell, too.”
Chief Donovan’s eyes bugged. “Koppo … !” he sounded hurt.
“Aw nuts, Chief,” said Officer Koplinski unassumingly. “I just like to horse around with stuff.”
ii
“So the real credit belongs to Koppo,” Fergus said to Dr. Arnold. “Without that choice bit of practical knowledge, I’d have been helpless.”
“If there’d been a man like Koplinski on the Santa Eulalia force in 1915,” Arnold mused, “this might all never have happened.”
The two were sitting in Flannery’s, with rich-collared glasses of draught beer in front of them. The case was rounded off now. Tom Quincy was under arrest; his protestations of innocence were more faltering now that Lunge’s reagent had revealed the nitrate specks. Corcoran and Ramirez were in the local hospital; and Dr. Arnold had stayed over to supervise their treatment. The rest of the depleted anniversary party had given their depositions, been released under bond as material witnesses, and headed back to Los Angeles.
“That test was so all-important,” Fergus went on. “I had to keep stalling for time, praying that Tom would never guess what I knew or how I could prove it. If he’d had any suspicion of that, he’d have found some way of firing off a gun before plenty of witnesses and destroying my one solid piece of material
evidence. I was the only man on the island anywhere near his strength; I wanted good comforting police support before he caught on.”
“Tom … That shocked me, O’Breen. I think it shocked me more than the truth about Lucas, more even than Alys and Valentino. Tom seemed so … But there was motive enough. It’s curious to think that it was Lucas’ painstakingly amassed fortune which finally killed him—drat, and his own murderous plot.”
“A nice piece of petard-hoisting,” Fergus nodded. “Tom had to get that money before Lucas married. Before he heard about the cat, before he got this brilliant idea of using the 1915 throat-slitting to cover up on his crime, he told me he was having money troubles since all of Lucas’ cash was going to Alys. Later on, he denied the whole conversation. That should have been a partial tip-off, but it wasn’t till the pipe that I woke up.”
“One question, Mr. O’Breen. I can see that Tom, as a student of psychology, would doubtless know about the throat-slitter; but how, on the slugging, did he pick poor Jim to frame? He can’t have known about the false confession then, though it fitted so wonderfully into his plans.”
“I figure that this way: He picked Herndon first for the double slugging just to confuse the trail. Brainard slept with his wife. You were too alert to frame well. Herndon made the perfect victim there. Then he’d deciphered the Eliot clue that Lucas Quincy gave me. He’d guessed that something was hidden in that book. While Herndon was unconscious, before the murder, he took a look. From then on, he felt on sure ground.
“That’s not quite all guesswork, either. When I asked Herndon about Quincy’s cryptic Eliot reference, he started to say, ‘Then you were the one who—’ Somebody had been at his Eliot volume, moved it so that he knew it had been touched; but he realized it couldn’t have been me because if I’d read that confession why was I wasting time on foolish questions?”
“You’re a highly capable young man, O’Breen. You’ve done a good job.”
Fergus scowled. “Have I? I started out on this case because I was in a black mood, and I’m winding up in an even blacker. What have I done? I’ve cleared up a twenty-five-year-old murder and I’ve brought a fresh murderer to justice, if you’ll forgive the cliché.”
The Case of the Seven Sneezes Page 24
