“Charles Lamb,” Merlini mused. “Not a bad alias, either. Garelli’s report card gets a gold star for misdirection. Whenever he was introduced, people were immediately reminded of familiar essays, certainly a far enough cry from Tommy guns and racketeering. I deduce that he must have gone as far as high school.”
“And he’s got only one more stop to make,” Gavigan said.
“I can see that. I congratulate you, Inspector. This should make you Police Commissioner overnight. But when you get back on the subject, what about solving this case?”
“What about—what?”
“This case. The Skelton murders. Linda and Floyd. Remember?”
“We catch him red-handed,” Gavigan thundered, “and you’re not satisfied. What about Watrous?”
“Well, there is that, I’ll admit.” Merlini had settled back now as if preparing for a siege. His hand went toward his pocket and brought out his deck of cards. “But I might ask, what about Rappourt? And how in the name of Hermann, Kellar, and Thurston did Lamb work that lighter? More recently, what about the curious incident of the erratic gunnery score?”
“Well, what about it?”
I hoped that Merlini was going to be able to produce his rabbit because, otherwise, Gavigan was going to lay him out. I could see that with half an eye.
“Lamb,” Merlini said. “The ex-gangster, the man who packs two guns. He shoots from 35 feet and misses Rappourt by a good two feet. He shoots again and misses the window itself by something over 10 feet. He shoots a third time, from considerably more than 35 feet and drills Watrous as neatly as you please. Oh, it could happen—anything’s possible. But in the cellar where he was, how did he know we were questioning Rappourt? Coincidence? Why did he go from cellar to sun deck to knock out Grimm and take his gun? He had Muller’s gun. Was he so accustomed to two guns he couldn’t operate with only one? And how did he get onto the sun deck if Grimm was watching the stairs? And then, why’d he go climb a tree? Why not shoot from the sun deck itself? Also, if he went to all that trouble to obtain a second gun, why did he throw it away when it still contained four bullets? Watrous didn’t say he dropped it; he said ‘threw it.’ Why didn’t he shoot at Watrous when the latter yelled instead of waiting until later? Those were Muller’s and Grimm’s guns, weren’t they?”
“Yes, but—”
“And the one Watrous picked up was Grimm’s?”
“What makes you think that? And what difference—”
“Was it, Grimm?”
Grimm bent over the gun Gavigan had laid on the table. He nodded. “That’s mine.”
“Grimm’s gun, Inspector, not Muller’s. Remember that. It’s important. Ross, how many times did you fire that thing?”
“Once.”
“And we saw Watrous fire it twice. Two and one is three. There were two prior shots. That makes five. How many bullets are there left in that gun?”
Grimm broke it open. “One.”
“Which makes six. That’s how many there were when you had it last?”
Grimm nodded.
“Good. We progress. We know that both the shot through the window and the one that buried itself in the wall outside came from that gun. I’d estimate the interval between those shots at about three seconds. Agree?”
The Inspector nodded.
“And if you stand in Rappourt’s room,” Merlini continued, “with your eye level with the spot where the bullet hit the wall, and look back, out through the hole in the window pane, your line of sight hits that tree a good 15 feet above ground and some distance out from the trunk on one of the limbs. Now, how in the name of Isaac Newton did a fat man like Lamb manage to shinny down that tree and cross 20 feet of lawn in three seconds? Even had he jumped, I doubt if he could have made it. Anyway, Watrous distinctly said, ‘climbed down.’ ”
“Did he have to do that?” Gavigan asked. “What are you getting at?”
“Sure he had to do that. The gun doesn’t fire bullets in a curve! If he fired the second shot while still perched in the tree, then judging from the position of the bullet in the wall close up under the projecting sun deck, it had to go smack through the sun deck, and without leaving the slightest trace of its passage! I know: I’ve looked. There’s a trick or two like that. Conjurer pushes a glass rod through a borrowed handkerchief or shoots a girl through a plate of steel. Solid through solid, it’s called. But .38 caliber bullets through steel and concrete floors is a new one on me. It’s like ectoplasm: I don’t believe it.”
“It ricocheted—” Gavigan stated.
“Well, maybe. You’d know more about that than I would. But isn’t a 45° angle an awful lot of bounce for a bullet? And would it still have enough speed left to bury itself in that wall? Ricocheted bullets usually spin, don’t they? Chances are it would have hit the wall sideways or backward.”
“But look where that leaves you,” Gavigan said. “If Lamb fired at Rappourt from the tree and someone else fired the second shot from below, you haven’t—”
From the door to the hall behind us, a quiet voice said, “Lamb didn’t fire that first shot at Rappourt. He was with me when we heard it.” Muller stood in the doorway, a white bandage around his head. Dr. Gail pushed in past him and went toward Lamb.
“Quinn’s told me what happened,” Muller went on. “But you’ve got it wrong. Lamb was with me in the basement. When we heard that first shot I dashed for the window and looked out. And Lamb conked me with a bottle. He took my gun and climbed out the window.” You could have dropped half a dozen pins slowly, one after the other, onto an Oriental rug and heard every one of them land. Merlini was the only person in the room who smiled.
Inspector Gavigan looked around at Arnold, Brooke, Sigrid Verrill, and Dr. Gail. “So someone else knocked Grimm out and did some shooting, too, did they?” He began with Gail. “Where were you during the gunfire?”
“In the library,” Gail said quickly. “You saw Miss Verrill and I go in before you went upstairs. We were together.”
“All the time?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Verrill?”
“Yes.” Her voice was small but steady.
“Brooke?”
That gentleman grinned for the first time in quite a while. “Ask Hunter,” he said.
Gavigan stepped to the window. “Hunter, come here.” And in a moment: “You hear those first five shots tonight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Brooke with you all the time?”
“That’s right.”
Gavigan turned slowly from the window. “Arnold?”
Arnold merely walked to the table and pressed a button. Then he waited. There were steps in the hall outside shortly, and Mrs. Henderson appeared in the door.
Arnold repeated the Inspector’s question. “Did you hear the first five shots tonight?”
She nodded.
“Where was I?”
“Why, with me in the kitchen. You ran out toward the front of the house. My husband and I followed you.”
“Mr. Henderson was there, too?” Gavigan asked.
“Yes.”
The Inspector turned back to Merlini. “Perhaps you’d like to carry the questioning on from there?” he suggested with more than a touch of sarcasm in his tone. “It’s impossible again! There’s no one else on the island. Leach’s been stationed on top the other house up there watching for that.”
Merlini shook his head. “No, Inspector. You’re doing very well.”
That was when the Inspector flew off the handle. And the way he did it made Department history. “That’s that,” he said with a thick finality. “This has gone far enough. Ira Brooke, you’re under arrest! Get him, Malloy!”
Ira had made a half movement as if to run for it, but Malloy and the handcuffs got there first. Brooke blinked and said protestingly, “But Detective Hunter—”
“Stow it!” Gavigan cut him off. “You’re in deep water so damned far it’d take a bathysphere to locate you. I’ve got a statement fr
om the man who sold you that vanishing motorboat. I’ve got another from a salesman at the Collector’s Coin and Stamp Co. He sold you six 1779 English guineas a week ago. Both men describe you exactly. Before I’m finished, I’ll have the name and address of the counterfeiter who turned out the queer ones. Want to tell me now?”
Brooke said nothing.
“Malloy found a dime-in-the-slot locker key in your room, in the soap. It fitted a locker in Grand Central. There was a Gladstone bag there containing Floyd’s clothes. You are George Sanders, Room 2213, Hotel McKinley. Half a dozen members of the night staff will identify you. You were seen leaving there with the Gladstone at 4:30 a. m. the morning Floyd died. You had moved his body down into Room 2113 via the fire escape. You wrote a letter on that typewriter downstairs, forged his name to it, and planted it on a train in Grand Central at 1:20 that afternoon. You covered all that with the motorboat no one knew you had, which you kept at the landing under the haunted house, and the pretense that you were working at the houseboat. Those blueprints and that model apparatus are phony props.”
Gavigan stopped just long enough to fill his lungs. “I can’t prove this yet, but I will. You stole those Hussar relics from a private museum on 98th Street. That was what Floyd was diving for. He was laying them down. Salting the East River! There’s also a charge of assault and battery. There are more damned cracked heads in this case than you can shake a stick at.”
That crack was delivered so unconsciously Gavigan didn’t get it himself. I was so interested in what he was saying, I didn’t catch it, either, until several hours later. Gavigan’s next statement was even more engrossing.
“You knocked out Ross Harte on 43rd Street last night—”
“Great Scott,” I thought, “was it only last night?”
Gavigan’s parade of offenses continued. “Ross had that suitcase of phony guineas you let get away from you in Grand Central. Your counterfeiter friend called you at dinner time last night and told you that the queer was ready and where the hell were you? He’d gone to the Hotel McKinley and almost walked right in on a room full of cops. You piled over there and got them. He couldn’t wait to get rid of them. The narrow escape he’d just had threw a scare into him. Am I making the details up all right as I go along? You met him in Grand Central; and then you ran smack into Detective Lester Haenigson, who was on station duty. He started across the waiting-room to pass the time of day with you—to put it delicately. With that case full of brass hanging on the end of your arm, you couldn’t get away fast enough. And you couldn’t drop it, and cut and run. That would have put the fat in the fire. But you used your head. You always have. It’s your stock in trade, isn’t it? Ira Brooke, submarine expert. That’s a new one, that is. Malloy, get me a glass of water.”
Merlini said, “There’s Scotch and soda right behind you. Have a couple—have all of it, but go on. That’s a lovely place to end an installment!”
“You and your card tricks!” Gavigan cracked. “You wouldn’t be puzzled, would you? Or baffled or anything like that?” Gavigan smiled, beginning to enjoy himself.
“No. Not any more,” Merlini said. “Brooke switched his suitcase for Harte’s, of course. And whether he or Detective Whats-his-name was the more surprised when they opened it, I would hate to guess. I don’t know why I didn’t remember to put in a couple of rabbits when I packed—or one of my new Little Wonder Talking Skulls.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Gavigan admitted. “He ducked around the corner by the newsstand, thinking like hell. And he saw Harte’s suitcase in front of the phone booth. He switched them just in time, took the next corner on two wheels, and then let Haenigson, who was running by now, catch up with him. He gave Les a gander at the suitcase, an earful of his customary smooth patter, and Haenigson didn’t have a halfway decent excuse to pull him in. Brooke got back to his own suitcase just in time to see Ross heading for a locker with it. He took a chance there, but it was cut and go. If he’d dropped the suitcase, it would have been connected with him. If he failed to get it back and the lug who found it turned it in—well, the contents of the suitcase Haenigson had seen would be evidence connecting him; but he’d be on his way by then. As it happened, he managed to get it back.”
“But what—” It was Gail this time. “What made the detective so interested in Ira—on sight?”
“Uh-huh,” Merlini muttered. “I said there was something queer about his name. Ira Brooke. Altogether too imitative—too similar to Simon Lake—who is a real submarine inventor. More aliases. Well, Inspector?”
“Yes. Haenigson knew him. And the remaining contents of his Gladstone cinched it. When Brooke cached Floyd’s clothes, he also removed from his room a notebook which contained a sucker list and a time schedule of appointments indicating that he has been working a racing swindle. May I introduce Glass Eye George, so damn smart he’s never seen a stir from inside—until starting now. Salting the East River is his very latest. Whose idea was that, Glass Eye?”
Brooke shrugged uninterestedly, “You know better than to expect answers to questions like that.” Brooke’s voice had suddenly become a good ten years younger! I began to suspect the legitimacy of the iron-gray hair.
Gail said, “This is too much, Inspector. Do you mean to tell us the technical information he rattled off about diving and submarine invention was all false?”
“Oh, no. It was straight enough. Know anything about conmen?”
“No. That’s one subject I’m not an authority on.”
“A good con-man won’t consider a touch under $10,000 simply because most good con-games require considerable outlay in props and confederates. What they actually do is stage a carefully rehearsed play, using a lot of Merlini’s brand of misdirection. He’s really a con-man himself, only you buy a ticket to see his swindle, and with the con-man you pay a steeper rate and you pay as you leave. By the way, Burt, is he the carnival acrobat who turned cat burglar?”
“Didn’t recognize him at first, but if he takes off those glasses—”
“You did an acrobatic act with a Colonel Barnes carnival in 1915, Brooke?”
“Of course not, Inspector.”
“That means you did. Cat burglary was too crude, and the pay was too low, I suppose. That when you started working your glass-eye gag?”
“How did he swindle the suckers with a glass eye, Inspector?” Gail asked. “He doesn’t have one, does he?”
“He made con-game history with that one. Used to hit the smaller towns, put up at the best hotel, wearing the best clothes and passing out Corona-Coronas. Big-shot-business-man act. Got people to talking about him a bit, then he’d begin. Stop in at a store, men’s haberdashery, for instance; make a big splash, order $10 shirts, $5 ties, maybe $50 worth to be sent to his hotel C.O.D. Then just as he started to leave Mr. Van Morgan would clap his hand to his eye and begin searching the floor. ‘I dropped my glass eye’ he yells, and the store owner and all his assistants promptly get down on hands and knees to help hunt. George gets more upset by the minute, big business deal on next morning; can’t possibly show up this way; the glass eye was specially made; couldn’t possibly get another in time that would match his good eye. Means thousands of dollars to him, if his deal falls through, etc. Why he’d pay $500 to get it back! And, of course, no glass eye can be found because he never dropped one. Finally he leaves, nearly prostrate with worry. Storekeeper keeps on hunting. Half hour later a stranger comes in, says, ‘Well, now, look at this,’ reaches down and picks up a glass eye from under the counter. Storekeeper makes a grab for it. Stranger gets suspicious. ‘Why, I’d bet the owner of this would pay a good deal to get it back.’ You know what happens then. When the stranger walks out, finally, the storekeeper has the glass eye and the stranger has a couple of hundred bucks, the amount depending on how well Glass Eye put over his wealthy-business-man part. The stranger goes down the street and stops in at store number two and picks up another glass eye. He’s got a pocketful. Next morning at the hotel half a dozen c
lerks are sitting in the hotel lobby, each with a glass eye carefully wrapped in cotton wool and all waiting for Mr. Van Morgan to show and pay out $500. Mr. Van Morgan and assistant are, of course, in the next town down the line doing another engagement of the same act.” Gavigan stopped and gulped another glass of the water Malloy had obtained.
Merlini watched him speculatively. “But. Inspector,” he said slowly. “How are you going to crack Brooke’s alibi for the shooting and the fire? Your own man had him under observation.”
“Maybe you can do it?”
“I’d hate to try.”
“Then don’t. Why do you keep harping on that fire?”
“For the simple reason that our murderer was the one who pulled that string.”
“Okay.” Gavigan scowled. “Sit down and watch the rest of the act. Arnold Skelton; you’re under arrest!”
Arnold nodded wearily.
“So you still think—All right. Gail, would you get my lawyer on the phone, please.”
“You stay where you are. Doctor. Malloy—”
“Skip the handcuffs, Inspector. That won’t be necessary.”
I heard Malloy mutter, “Afraid we’ll have to. We’re fresh out.”
Merlini started to get up again. But Gavigan growled, “Sit down, you make me nervous. I don’t know how Arnold set the fire. I’m arresting him for moving a body, before the medical examiner saw it, with intent to deceive. I can make an accessory-after-the-fact charge stick without half trying.”
Gavigan wasn’t through yet. He turned to Madame Rappourt. “And you’re under arrest, too, you and your brother. Charge: Conspiracy to defraud, accessory before and after the fact in the matter of moving Floyd’s body, and forging. If I think of anything else, you’ll hear about it. Malloy, take them into headquarters and put them on ice.”
Captain Malloy went into action with a will.
Lamb, his head swathed in bandages, went out between Brady and Quinn. Rappourt, Mr. X., Brooke, and Arnold followed, with Malloy, Grimm, and Muller riding herd.
When they had gone, Merlini said quietly, “Inspector. What about Ross? He was carrying a gun last night without a permit. The Sullivan law, you know.”
Footprints on the Ceiling Page 23
