He nodded.
“When the stock went down you were going to get aboard and when it went up, you were going to get well in a big way. Right?”
He nodded again.
I looked up at the sheriff who was right beside me. “There’s no time for a stenographer. Are you getting this?”
“Every word of it. Hurry.”
I turned back to Jolley again. “You thought the stock was down as far as it would go and you climbed in up to the ears. You thought it was time to reverse the picture but in the meantime Harper was working at his mental adding machine and two and two was beginning to be four. He wanted to drive the stock down a few more points and your money was gone and you were going to be sold out of your gold mine. You thought getting Harper out of the way would simplify things for you and you put a slug in him and it only made things worse. Then in desperation you tried to do a salvage job by playing your hand with Janet a little too fast. How about it?”
He gave me another nod. He wasn’t doing so good. The sheriff said, “Hurry,” into my ear and I went on.
“You thought we were snapping at your heels and you didn’t know how long it would take us to figure out the airplane. To throw us off you had Miles tie you up while he was getting Janet and me out of the way for tonight’s operations. Then you knew Miles was too far into the thing for his own good so you gave him the old doublecross. He’s dead somewhere up in the hills, isn’t he?”
He gave another nod but it was apparent I wouldn’t get many more of them.
“You were going to come in by the French windows without anyone knowing and have one last go at reasoning with Harper. Then you overheard his scrap with Tim and the chance was just too good to lose so you let him have it right there. The only trouble was that Miss Katie was watching from behind the bushes and you caught a glimpse of her before she got away. You followed her and got her cornered before she could get to the telephone. One more thing. I was right about the poisoning, wasn’t I?”
The nod came but it was awfully slow.
“John McClure was your work too. I was supposed to be but I got a break. Right?”
Jolley stared up at us and there was something desperate about him. He waited a long terrible moment and then with his last effort said, “Right,” almost inaudibly and that was all for Hillman Jolley.
64
In the excitement no one had noticed the wound in my side. The bullet had hit me when my coat was open and the bleeding had not been very visible while I was kneeling by Hillman Jolley. When I got up there was a pool of it on the floor, and the right leg of my trousers was soaked. It ran down to my shoe and when I took a step I felt like I was standing in a bucket of mush. The pain was pretty bad, and I leaned against the table. The doctor stared at the floor where I had been, and then looked at me and said: “Good God Almighty! Let’s have a look. Why didn’t you say something?”
I didn’t feel any too good at all. I started going down like a slow-motion picture, but I hung on to the table for dear life and got down on the floor without a bump. I felt like the Thirteenth Chapter of First Corinthians where it talks about seeing things through a glass darkly instead of face to face. Janet said, “Oh, my dear,” in a small voice and sat down on the floor and took my head in her lap. If the doctor enjoyed tearing people’s clothes, he was certainly having a field day.
My eyelids were very very heavy, but I got them open and looked at nobody in particular and said: “Look out or I’ll bleed on you.”
“Go right ahead,” said the doctor. He seemed more cheerful about it than I would have been.
Things did not hurt nearly so badly now. I heard the doctor say: “Pretty deep, but just flesh as far as I can tell. Loss of blood is about all. Probably could use a transfusion.” He took me by the face somewhere and gave me a pinch and said: “Hey, wake up! You don’t by any chance know what kind of blood you have, do you?”
“Red,” I answered.
The doctor chuckled: “Sassy little mutt, isn’t he? All right, we’ll find out as soon as we get to the hospital.”
I wanted to go to sleep more than anything, but I had a thought and grabbed hold of it and pulled myself back out of the darkness long enough to say: “Let Tim out of jail. Tell Ruth to go to the bank and bring everything she finds in the box straight to me.”
Then I went sliding down on a long slick inclined plane and down into a dark hole that had no bottom. I felt as if my pants were coming off, and even in my dreams the embarrassment made me pop out in a cold sweat. The hole was black and chilly. That’s all I remember.
65
“…partly unconscious but mostly asleep, if you ask me. Take away the hole in his side and a double handful of bruises, contusions and lacerations and he’s sound as a nut. He’ll wake up when he gets hungry enough.” I kept my eyes closed. The smell was definitely a hospital smell. Except for a very sore place in my right side and a hollow feeling where steak and potatoes ought to be, I felt all right. The thought of steak and potatoes made me a little giddy. I heard a door close and took a little peep to see what was going on.
The room was full of flowers. Great big ones and little bitty ones with clouds of fern leaves or whatever you call them. Janet was in a rocking chair by the window smoking a cigarette. Ruth was in a straight chair with a book open on her knees but the book was upside down so I didn’t think she was bothering it much. The same curvy little nurse was pulling flowers out of vases and snipping off the bottom of the stems and putting them back in again. None of them were looking at me and I enjoyed watching them. My back was tired like you get when you’ve been in bed too long, but I didn’t know whether I ought to move without help or not. I wanted a steak the worst kind of way—very big and very thick, with mushrooms and gravy and probably hot rolls and shoestring potatoes and head lettuce with Roquefort cheese. After a while I said: “It’s either heaven or a harem, I don’t care which. Could I have a cigarette?”
There was a great flurry and bustle but I don’t remember all of the things that were said. Janet tried to get me a cigarette, but she shook all over and the package fell on the floor. I finally got one and Ruth lit it and the nurse blew out the match to keep it from burning off two or three fingers. Then the nurse’s stiff uniform swished and her rubber-soled shoes padded out into the hall and pretty soon the doctor came in like the first breath of spring.
“Well,” he said heartily, “you have been living the life of Riley.44 How goes it?”
“If you get these women out of here and help me get my pants on, I’ll feel a lot better. Then get a pencil and a piece of paper and start writing down about half of the things I want to eat and call a restaurant and let them in on the secret. Don’t tell me I can’t eat or I’ll have a relapse.”
“Anything you want. You ran a little fever for a while but you’ve got a constitution with twenty-two amendments and when your side has had a little more time to heal, we’ll let you out of here. Forget about the pants. You’ll be with us a little while longer and I don’t trust you.”
Janet was holding one of my hands in both of hers and she was as starry-eyed as a girl on her first date. “How do you feel?” she asked.
“Hungry.”
“Love me?”
“Right in front of all of these people?”
“I love you.”
I looked around the room and the rest of them were still there and I said: “When your fever goes down, you’ll get over it. What day of the week is it?”
“Don’t change the subject,” she said.
“Hell, woman, this is so sudden. Don’t rush me. I’ve got a girlish modesty about these things and besides they shouldn’t be discussed on an empty stomach.”
“You can have a bank account of your own with fifty or a hundred thousand dollars in it for weekends and trifles, just like you said.”
I looked at her and said: “You have a very
musical voice when you talk like that. You are also strangely attractive. You don’t look like you’ve slept for two or three days and after all, I count on living quite a while yet. Give me a kiss and then run along and get some rest.”
She patted my hand and said: “Swell. I’ll attend to the food myself.”
I think she was glad she had something to do. She got her pocketbook, found a pencil and piece of paper, wrote down all the things I said I wanted and probably added some ideas of her own. When she was gone I looked at Ruth. “Tim out of jail?”
“Yes, they let him out right away. The sheriff and the chief of police have been calling every few hours. They don’t quite understand it all even yet and the newspapers are after them and they don’t know what to say. They’re outside now.”
“OK, bring them in.”
The chief was a little embarrassed but his attitude had changed completely. He pulled up a chair and said, “Hi, Sport. How’s every little thing?”
The sheriff stood behind him and studied me carefully.
“There ain’t anything wrong with him. Let’s get down to business. The reporters are beginning to think we don’t know anything about this case and I don’t want them to find out how right they are.”
“You got most of the story from Jolley,” I said. “There isn’t much to tell. He got himself hired as the accountant for Harper Products Company in ’38. He was ambitious and greedy and he couldn’t keep his shirt on. He wanted to get rich quick. The company had staggered through the depression but had been a little slow on the pickup and the stock was still selling at a pretty low figure. Business was good and the earnings for ’38 were going to bring the price up sure. He was a smooth-talking buzzard and smart as a whip and he was able to convince old Harper that the accounting system was all wrong and by the time he got through, a good year looked pretty bad. That was fine. The stock dropped a few notches. Jolley saw to it that the right sort of talk got around where it would do the most good and the stock fell a little more. He persuaded Harper that the thing to do was to take the cash on hand and pay off as much of the indebtedness as possible so that the cash position was always weak and it looked as if the banks were cracking down. He stepped up the depreciation rate and that cut the profits even more.”
“How was he going to make money that way?” asked the sheriff.
“He wasn’t. He was going to use his scheme to get the price down and buy up all the stock he could get. He knew the government wouldn’t swallow his cost and depreciation figures so when the income tax people got around to bearing down on the tax returns, he was going to back up and let them figure the profits their own way. As soon as the news got out everybody would know the corporation was something of a gold mine, whereupon the stock would go up to what it ought to be and he would be wading in four leaf clovers. By that time he wouldn’t care whether he was an accountant or not and the whole thing had been handled so adroitly that he didn’t think they could pin anything on him except ignorance and maybe not even that.”
“But something went wrong?”
“Everything went wrong at the wrong time. The stock was down as far as he thought it would go so he took every nickel he had and bought on margin. The income tax people performed on schedule but instead of giving up, old Harper set his teeth and wanted to scrap about it. Scrapping with the government takes time and the first part of it isn’t public, so there was Jolley with his tongue hanging out and the brokers getting nervous and no more credit. Every time the stock went off a point he nearly had a hemorrhage. He got desperate and thought with Harper out of the way he could persuade the Board of Directors to give up, pay off and open the doors to fairyland. He was so desperate he lost all his shrewdness and couldn’t see that Harper’s death would knock the bottom out of the stock and bring his house of cards about his ears. When the stock went down five points the day after Harper’s death, he was fit to be tied. He had built up a pretty good case with Janet and he probably could have done all right if he had taken his time, but the brokers were breathing down his neck and he took a chance and proposed that they get married immediately. Everything looked fine and he thought he had gotten away with it, but she wouldn’t marry him right away. My guess is he thought he had Janet eating out of his hand and he tried to get her to sign a note with him. That would have taken the pressure off for a while. Maybe he even asked for a big chunk of cash. Anyway she blew up and he backed off as fast as he could, still with the idea that she would get over it and marry him. Am I boring you?”
“Hell, no,” said the chief. “My tongue’s hanging out. I have been fighting reporters for two days telling them there were some angles and details we were cleaning up. They’re waiting out there now.”
“Well,” I said, “there isn’t much more to tell. He sneaked off and took a trip to the city and tried to get by with his creditors on the story that he was going to marry a skirt full of greenbacks but after all, the money wasn’t hers yet and it looked as if Mrs. Harper might go right on living. My guess is the prospects were a little too remote for the moneylending fraternity. Of course, Janet had some money of her own, but she had evidently heard her father or Jolley placing orders for the stock and she had climbed out on the limb herself so she was pretty well committed as far as her cash would go. Having gone as far as he had, Jolley couldn’t stop. He hired Miles to get me and Janet out of the way and had himself tied up for good measure, thinking everybody would be fooled by a move like that. Miles wasn’t supposed to tie him very tight and didn’t. Miles is no Einstein and all he could think about was that he had climbed aboard the gravy train. He couldn’t even see that he had stuck his head in a noose. After he had served his purpose he was far too dangerous to bother with, so Jolley let him have it and dashed home to take care of the poisoning job, although ostensibly to get help. That was the weakest part of his whole plan and maybe it wouldn’t have been so weak if he hadn’t been obliged to think it up on such short notice. He was pretty clever at that. He came in with his arm in a sling and we were supposed to accept his story that he exchanged some shots with Miles but lost him in the dark and thought the best thing to do was to grab the car and come after the law. I don’t think it would have worked at best, but he didn’t have a chance when I happened to stumble over Miles’s gun and there wasn’t a shot fired out of it. I’ll take a guess that you found Miles with three neat holes in him from such close range that there were powder burns. Miles knew that Jolley was supposed to get loose and he met him down by the car as innocent as a little lamb.”
“That’s right,” said the sheriff, “couldn’t have been shot from over eighteen inches or two feet away. It had us wondering. Looked awfully funny.”
The chief broke in. “Who was it saw him fiddling with the milk?”
“Nobody. I made that up. I suppose the sheriff has also told you I made up the milk bottle. Probably Miss Knight went out and got the milk, used it all up fixing Mrs. Harper’s medicine, emptied the bottle, washed it and put it out, as a good nurse would do. Jolley thought he was backed into the corner and lost his head. I’m glad his aim wasn’t any better. He saw a gun sticking in my belt and thought he would have a better chance to talk himself out of shooting me since the chief was inclined to think I was the boy in the woodpile45 anyway. But he was afraid of the milk bottle more than anything and wasted a shot on it. That gave me just enough time to move and throw him off. I hated to shoot the guy but I wanted to live.”
“Never mind about that. We already had the Coroner’s inquest and the jury cleared you without leaving their seats.”
I said: “That’s all there is to it. Any more questions?”
“No, that’ll cover it for now. We’ll get you to write us out a statement for the file when you get out of the hospital.”
When they were gone Ruth went to the dresser, took out a package and brought it to me.
“I had a little trouble but I finally convinced them my fa
ther and John McCall were one and the same. The sheriff was awfully nosey, but I told him that it was a private affair. I looked at all the stuff myself and couldn’t find a thing out of the ordinary so I finally let the sheriff look just to keep him satisfied. I don’t know what you and Mr. Jolley were looking for but whatever it was, you were wrong.”
I put my hand on the package but made no move to open it. I just looked at Ruth. Pretty soon tears came into her eyes and she said: “Yes, I know. I don’t know how to thank you. Somehow you’ve got it all explained and I have a feeling you deliberately left out the real story. I would like to think you did it for me and Tim. Anyway we appreciate it. Tim and I are going to be married, you know. This certainly makes it a lot easier and after all, we’ll be sort of kin to you. You may not know it but about half the blood in your veins used to be in Tim. When he found out his blood classification was the same as yours, he told them to take all they needed even if it was all he had.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank yourself. You’re a swell kid and it was obvious from the first that you were head over heels in love with Tim. He’s not a bad guy himself. And then there was Janet too. After all, it’s something none of you are responsible for. Old man Harper knew it was going to cost several million dollars in extra inheritance taxes to handle it the way he did, but he went through it without a squawk and kept the thing covered up for half a lifetime. I couldn’t see anything to be gained by dragging it all out into the open now when justice could be done another way. I guess they’ve opened Mrs. Harper’s will, haven’t they?”
“Yes, they opened that almost immediately to see if it would have any bearing on the case. I won’t pretend I understand but there it was, dividing the estate between Janet and Tim and doing it so beautifully with a lot of talk about love, affection and gratitude for John McClure as the oldest and most trusted employee and all that sort of thing that it seems to have gotten by. Mr. Harper always was fond of Father and Tim and showed it and no one in town seems inclined to look for a seamy side. I guess the story has been covered up so long that most people have even forgotten Tim was adopted. I definitely don’t understand about the wills. I remember you prepared two of them but Miss Knight says only one was executed.”
The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope Page 23
