Hollow Needle

by George Harmon Coxe

  He took a moment to marshal his thoughts. He knew what he had to say, but he also knew he had to do a lot of guessing if he was going to make his hunch pay off. He was not sure just where to start, but as the silence grew and he found the others watching him, he took a breath and plunged ahead.

  “According to your story, Mr. Caldwell, you and Larkin were the ones who fixed, up that fake broadcast; the only ones who knew at that time that your father was dead.”

  “That’s right.”

  “No.” Murdock shook his head again. “You may have thought so, but I’m not so sure. If Captain Alger was right when he said your father was killed to prevent his signing the will—and I said ‘if’—then someone else had to know he was dead—the man who killed him and later shot Larkin.”

  He paused. There was no comment and he said, “I don’t know whether Alger is right or not, but I have an idea that someone else did know your father was dead.”

  He shifted his gaze to Harvey Blake’s dark face, and as he waited he saw the lines of the mouth tighten beneath the mustache; he thought he saw things happening in the lawyer’s eyes. He said, “I think Blake knew.”

  The lawyer’s laugh was abrupt and contemptuous. “You’re out of your mind.”

  Murdock said he did not think so. He went on to recall what had happened in the library the morning of the broadcast, and pointed out how Blake had reacted to John Caldwell’s first words.

  “If you had seen the way your mouth sagged and your eyes popped, if you could have heard yourself and the tone of voice you used, you wouldn’t argue. You knew Caldwell was dead and you expected someone to speak up at the last minute and announce that the speech would not be made. But when you heard that voice and recognized it—” He stopped to glance at Nick Taylor. “Ask Nick. He was there. He heard you. And you heard Caldwell’s voice, and you didn’t know that a recording of that speech had been made the day before.”

  Blake’s mouth was pale and the color had started to ooze from his face, but his voice remained defiant.

  “That’s pure conjecture, and you know it.”

  “Maybe,” Murdock said, “but this isn’t. The other night, after Mr. Caldwell had told us the truth about that broadcast in the drawing-room and I said Larkin was dead, everyone ran upstairs but you and me. You know where you went, don’t you? Into the office next to the library, Larkin’s office. To look for that report on your extracurricular activities. It was in Larkin’s desk along with the report Prentice wanted, and you had Larkin’s keys, and—”

  “So you’re the one. who—” Blake’s words came out in a rush that he seemed unable to stop in time. He broke off as suddenly as he began when he realized how he had betrayed himself, his mouth slackening, his whole body seeming somehow to sag though he did not move.

  Murdock turned to explain to Nick and Caldwell what had happened. He told them where he stood and how he had seen Blake hide the papers in one of the bookshelves.

  “That much,” he said, turning back to Blake, “is not conjecture.”

  Blake had been working on himself. He was beginning to get himself in hand. He’d had a shock, but he was no boy, and his years of training asserted themselves. He was no longer defiant, but neither was he apologetic.

  “I agree,” he said. “And I may as well admit that I wanted that report. If Donald has seen it”—he glanced at Caldwell—“he knows why. Mrs. Blake and I have been separated for some time. We eventually agreed to a divorce and a settlement but I very foolishly became infatuated with another woman in New York. I don’t know how John found out about it but he put Mike Quimby’s office to work on me. Naturally, with John dead, I wanted that report. If Mrs. Blake heard about it—”

  Murdock interrupted him. “I understand that part,” he said. “But I don’t believe you understand the point I’m trying to make. You had Larkin’s keys when you walked into that office, and I’m damn sure you didn’t get them when Larkin was alive. You had them when you came downstairs before that meeting in the drawing-room. You didn’t see Nick and me standing there. You would have gone to the library and office then if Nick hadn’t called to you.”

  He paused for breath, seeing the alarm growing in the lawyer’s shiny face, knowing that in this he was right.

  When no one spoke he said, “You took those keys from Larkin’s dead body. You either killed him, or you came up to this room after I had left it and while I was in the second-floor study watching Arthur Prentice sneak in and unlock the filing-cabinet. And now I have an idea I can find out which way it happened.”

  “How?” Nick’s voice was grimly interested. “You’re not kidding, are you, chum?”

  Murdock stepped to the closet where the killer had once waited, a handkerchief in his hand. Using it to cover his fingers, he reached up for the bulb in the ceiling which had lighted when the door opened, holding it by its sides as he gently unscrewed it. He brought it to the desk and put it down on the handkerchief. Then, opening his equipment case and bringing out the picture he had taken of the room during the paralyzing minute when he realized the murderer was hiding in that closet, he pointed out the one-inch opening in the door, clearly visible now as a streak of black.

  “The closet door has a patent switch on it, like the ones you find in refrigerators,” he said when he explained what had taken place. “Whoever shot Larkin was trapped. He had to take the gun with him or risk the possibility that I would look around and perhaps open the door, and this was a chance he couldn’t take. He took the gun with him and he wanted to see what would happen. He did not know who was coming in, but he had heard that door slam in the next room and he knew someone must have heard the shot and would investigate.”

  He said, “He wanted to watch through a crack in the door, but he could not leave that overhead closet light on. To do so would mean that he could be seen, so he reached up and unscrewed that bulb a turn. Don’t ask me why he turned it on again before he left. I don’t know what a murderer thinks about in a spot like that. Maybe he wanted to leave everything just as he had found it so no one would become suspicious of that bulb, but whatever the reason, he did screw it tight, because when I opened the door after I came back, the light went on. The trouble was, I didn’t have sense enough to realize what had happened, or maybe I was still too scared to think—”

  A soft knocking at the door interrupted him, and he turned as Caldwell admitted a servant in an alpaca jacket.

  “It’s the telephone, sir,” the man said. “For Mr. Murdock. You can take it in the hall, sir.”

  Murdock thanked him, excused himself, and followed the man to an alcove at the end of the corridor. He said yes into the telephone and the house operator said, “I have a Sergeant Wybeck on the wire, sir. Will you talk to him?”

  “Put him on, please,” Murdock said, and a moment later Wybeck’s voice came to him with some excitement.

  “You struck oil, son,” he said. “A thumbprint and the tip of a finger. The rest are smudged, and at the end like you said they’d be. So what do I do now?”

  Murdock felt a tremendous surge of relief well up inside him. He wanted to shout his congratulations at Wybeck, and had to discipline his thoughts and his voice. He said it might be a good idea to tell Captain Alger, and then come out here to check those prints.

  When he went back to Larkin’s room Nick was leaning against one wall, eyeing him intently. Blake hadn’t moved but his smile was fixed and scornful and his gaze again defiant. Caldwell stood before the bookcase next to the desk, fitting a cigarette into a holder and then reaching toward the box of safety matches which was wedged securely on a gadget in the center of an ash tray on the desk.

  Selecting a match, he scratched it against the striking-surface. When it did not light he scratched again, harder this time, so that as the match ignited, the metal tray skidded forcibly against the light bulb, knocking it to the floor and toppling after the bulb.

  There was a crash of shattering glass, a startled exclamation, then silence.

/>   Caldwell said, “Good Lord!” and looked embarrassed. “Now look what I’ve done!” he said, and then, cocking his head slightly to watch Murdock, he added, “Do you really think there were fingerprints on that bulb?”

  Murdock let his breath out. His mouth warped in a tight grin, and his dark eyes were narrowed and intent. A muscle moved along the angle of his jaw and was still.

  “No,” he said. “There were no prints on the bulb, Mr. Caldwell. That one was just a decoy.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The bulb that was there when you unscrewed it the other night was carefully removed by the state police sergeant who came in with me. The one you just broke was one he brought with him and screwed in the socket—because I wanted to tell you my story and then see what you would do about it.”

  He paused, held by a hot, bright look in Caldwell’s eyes which he had never seen before.

  “I had an idea you were the one,” he said, “and what the sergeant just told me over the telephone bears me out. There was a thumbprint on the original bulb, Mr. Caldwell, and the tip of a finger.”

  “And are you trying to say they are mine?”

  “I am saying it. A man who unscrews a light bulb puts his fingers on the sides if he can reach it. I could just about reach that closet light by stretching. A shorter man could still unscrew it by standing on tiptoe and by putting pressure on the bottom of the bulb with his thumb and finger tips. You’re the shortest man here, Mr. Caldwell; the shortest man in the house outside the servants, and the sergeant tells me the prints he got are on the very end of the bulb.”

  For a long moment then there was a dead silence. No one moved, no one spoke. Then Nick Taylor swore under his breath. “Wait a minute!” he said thickly.

  “Keep out of it, Nick!” Murdock said.

  “But a guy wouldn’t kill his own father.”

  “Plenty of them have,” Murdock said, still watching Caldwell. “But I can come back to that. Right now I’m thinking about what the police call opportunity. I guess nobody’ll give me much of an argument when I say Mr. Caldwell had plenty of chance to kill his father and Larkin. But how about Ross Neely?”

  He turned on Nick as he spoke. “Mr. Caldwell said he had dinner and a meeting at the Copley last night. I understand part of your job was riding with the chauffeur when any of the family went along. Did you come up from the country yesterday afternoon with Mr. Caldwell? You were in my office before six.”

  The answer was in Nick’s pale-blue eyes, in the twisted, half-credulous expression on his face. He knew what Murdock meant, and he may even have been a little ahead of him at this point.

  “Yeah,” he said, making the word sound twice its normal length.

  “When?”

  “I dropped him at the Copley a little after five. Maybe ten minutes after.”

  “You see?” Murdock shrugged. “Ten minutes more for a taxi ride to Neely’s place, with twenty-five more minutes to spare before Prentice walked in.”

  He waited again to make a quick inspection of the others. Nick and Harvey Blake were watching Caldwell, an odd fascination in their eyes that seemed somehow akin to horror. Caldwell continued to watch Murdock, but he did not stand still. He moistened his lips and leaned back against the bookcase, saying nothing. Murdock turned again to Nick.

  “You say sons don’t kill their fathers and I say the records are full of such cases. Of fathers killing sons, and daughters their fathers. Men have killed their best friends, and women the men they loved. There isn’t any formula for murder, and we don’t always understand the motives in others, but it happens every day. You didn’t love your father, Mr. Caldwell,” he said, his glance moving back. “You hated him.”

  Caldwell spoke then. His voice went up a tone as he replied, and Murdock remembered how the same thing had happened once before when he had come back to confront Caldwell and Larkin with proof of their deception. And then his mind went farther back and he was walking up the stairs from the library the night he had stayed there. He remembered the voices he had heard behind the closed door, and one of them had been high-pitched and angry, like a woman’s, or a man touched with hysteria.

  “Did I?” Caldwell said.

  “You must have hated him to kill him the way you did. Otherwise it would have been a simple matter to put poison in the Thermos of milk that was left outside his door each night. That bothered Alger; it bothered me. But the answer is simple once you understand it. For you that method wouldn’t quite do, would it, Mr. Caldwell? The result would be the same except for one thing. With poison, your father would die without knowing why, or who did it, and that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? You wanted a chance to tell him what you thought of him before he died. You wanted him to be sure he knew you were responsible, and you figured out a way to do it.”

  Murdock hesitated, the tension creeping along his thighs now as the pressure began to build up in the room. He could feel it moving in on him as he watched Caldwell’s stiff gray face and waited for some reaction.

  “I’m not sure why you hated him,” he said, “but I do know that under the new will you took the most drastic cut; I know that your father kicked you upstairs to some honorary position in the company and made your nephew George, who is half your age, the president of Caldwell Diesels. But you know your reasons, Mr. Caldwell, just as you knew about the hypodermic and the adrenalin that Larkin used, and what adrenalin would do to a man in your father’s condition.”

  He shifted his weight to ease the growing sense of strain across his back, and said, “You came in the middle of the night, or early morning. You knew adrenalin would leave no outward trace, that death would be accepted as a natural one. You were going to make your injection, and when you did and your father woke up, you could tell him what you wanted to tell him before he passed into shock, being sure that he knew he was dying and that nothing could save him.”

  Off to one side someone exhaled noisily, and Murdock, moving nothing but his lips, said, “That’s how it was, isn’t it, Mr. Caldwell? You thought you could hold his arm with one hand while you made your injection with the other. I guess most men could have done that, because I understand adrenalin can be quickly emptied from a hypodermic. Only you weren’t very skillful with that needle. You’re a small man and you have a slight build, and you weren’t quite strong enough to hold him an extra second after he woke up. He twisted away, and the needle broke off close to the fitting. It was too late for your father then. You had your chance to speak your piece, and even then you would have pulled it off if it hadn’t been for—”

  Murdock never finished the sentence.

  Intent upon his words, he had been watching Caldwell extract the stub of the cigarette from the holder; he saw him tap the holder idly against the bookcase.

  Then, before he or anyone else in the room realized what was happening, he saw Caldwell drop the holder and flip two books from their places, and, in the same continuous movement, reach into the opening and pull out a snub-nosed revolver. It was pointed right at Murdock’s stomach before the books struck the floor.

  22

  THE SILENCE THAT HIT THE ROOM in that next moment or two was almost physical in its impact. Murdock caught his breath and stiffened, every muscle rigid, held by the shiny mask of Caldwell’s thin-nosed face. He saw the fingers of one hand twitch but the gun was steady, and in those few seconds he felt no sense of immediate fear, but only surprise and then chagrin that he should let a thing like this happen.

  There was, he realized now, no safer place than the bookcase for the gun. The police had searched the room after the murder of Larkin, and Caldwell had cleverly selected it as a hiding-place because he knew that it would not be searched again. Now, not knowing what came next but convinced that he must keep talking, Murdock was about to continue when Nick spoke up.

  “I guess that proves it,” he said, a note of awe in his voice. “That’s the gun, and only you could know where it was hidden. I guess you took it to town with yo
u yesterday. A shot for Larkin and two—so they tell me—for Neely. That ought to leave about three more slugs.”

  “It leaves enough,” Caldwell said.

  “Put it down, Donald!” Harvey Blake spoke across the silence. “That’s not the way,” he said in a voice that sounded oddly assured. He cleared his throat, and when he continued he no longer addressed Caldwell.

  “You were right about me, Murdock. I did know John was dead. I went into his room that morning to ask him to reconsider certain provisions of the will. It was early—around seven o’clock—and when I discovered he was dead I kept still because I didn’t know he had signed the will the night before.”

  Murdock stared at him, amazed that Blake should digress like this and speak so confidently until he saw something flicker in the man’s eyes and realized that he was talking for a purpose; he was giving information, but he was also hoping to take the pressure off Caldwell and give him a chance to weigh the odds and reconsider his actions before it was too late.

  “I knew about that report on me then,” he said. “But with John dead there was no point in worrying too much about it, because under the old will—which I thought was still in existence—my firm would have continued to handle all Caldwell affairs. It meant a great deal more money to me, and even if my wife had found out about the report and wanted a larger settlement, I could have afforded it. I didn’t know John had been murdered then, but when I discovered the will had been signed—”

  He broke off and said, “Of course you were also right about Larkin. I walked in here to ask him to keep that report quiet—it must have been when you were in the study—and he was dead, and I remembered the keys. It was a frightful thing to do, but—” He sighed, gestured emptily, and then, pretending that he just remembered the matter at hand, he turned back to Caldwell and continued persuasively.