Puzzle of the Pepper Tree

by Stuart Palmer

  The three movie men sat down obediently at one end of a row of vacant chairs, but Miss Withers passed triumphantly on into the chief’s office. He looked up with an equal glint of triumph in his eye.

  “Will they all be here?” she asked.

  “Every mother’s son of ’em.” He laughed. “I had old Ruggles going near crazy for a while, but he ran ’em down,” Britt admitted. “He says he found Tompkins down to the pottery, trying to talk them into giving him an advance on his commissions. Ruggles says the fellow put it over, too, which shows he’s smoother than I figured he was. Ruggles also got hold of the movie fellers and the newlyweds by phone, and Cap Narveson was down on the pier. The others were around, handy.”

  “Good,” said Miss Withers. She found herself possessed of a pair of very cold feet. “I wonder if I’m wrong, after all?” she asked herself silently. Then she shook her head. She couldn’t be wrong. This was the only way to trap the killer. She peeked through the door.

  The guests were arriving thick and fast. It was five minutes to four, and already most of the chairs were filled. Narveson, freckled and complacent, puffed on his villainous corncob at one end of the row. Next to him sat Dr. O’Rourke and Nurse Smith, evidently reconciled for the moment. Beyond her were the two pilots, Lew French and Chick Madden, quite evidently far from reconciled.

  The second row was filling up. Miss Withers saw the newlyweds enter, hand in hand. T. Girard Tompkins propelled his paunch carefully through the aisles and sank gently onto a chair. Last of all was Hinch, manager of the airport, and the man who Miss Withers knew to be Roswell Forrest, still in company with Phyllis.

  The inspector showed his face in the doorway and came directly to the back room.

  “I think our friend Forrest planned to make a getaway,” he whispered. “He and the girl went down to the dock to see the lawyer off on the Avalon, and they looked mighty wistful. But they saw me and changed their minds.”

  “That’s odd,” came back Miss Withers. “Because not so long ago Forrest tried to make his getaway in a motorboat simply because he overheard me say that you were coming!”

  “Let’s go,” said Britt, getting up from his desk. Miss Withers noticed that his clothes hung loosely upon him, and she realized with something of a shock that the affair had taken toll of others besides herself.

  “All right, folks,” Britt was saying. “This is just a little formality. We’re doing it wholesale to save time, so you can all be sure of getting away first thing tomorrow. I’m going to ask questions, and this lady here”—he indicated Miss Withers with a nod—“is going to take down the answers. Then after they’re typed out, you can sign ’em and go.”

  There was a rustling in the group, and the chief continued: “I’ll take you in alphabetical order. A—there aren’t any A’s. First on the list is Deving. Mr. Deving, we’ll take you.”

  Marvin Deving smoothed back his hair and prepared himself.

  “Were you acquainted with Roswell T. Forrest?”

  “No.” Miss Withers drew a little circle on a pad of paper.

  “Were you acquainted with Patrick Mack?”

  Again the answer was in the negative.

  Chief Britt glanced at the little list of questions which Miss Withers had given him. He asked half a dozen of them, rapid-fire. They were routine, simply establishing the first notice Deving had taken of the dying man in the plane.

  “That will do,” said the chief. Then: “Wait a moment. I want some personal data. What’s your address?”

  “Long Beach Y.M.C.A. will reach me,” admitted the bridegroom. “We haven’t picked a house yet.”

  Then the chief asked a question which Miss Withers was interested in hearing answered. “When were you two married?”

  “At Justice Toole’s office in Long Beach, early Friday morning,” said Marvin Deving.

  The chief peered at the young man. “That the first time?”

  “Yes, sir, for both of us.”

  “Never gone through a ceremony before, eh?” The question was casual.

  Marvin Deving shook his head. “Not a legal ceremony,” he admitted. He hesitated for a moment and then plunged ahead. “We’ve had words said over us several times before. It’s part of our business.”

  There was a sudden hush in the room. For the first time, a few of the brighter minds in the crowd sensed that there was something impending here beyond the glib explanation of why the gathering had been ordered.

  “Will you explain that?” said Britt. “We got to get things straight.”

  “I didn’t want to,” admitted Deving. He was flushing. “You see, Kay and I have been partners for several years. We enter marathon dances together.”

  Miss Withers looked up from her pretense of making notes to see Phyllis give her a look which flashed “I told you so.”

  Deving continued. “We’ve been pretty lucky in several,” he said. “Along towards the end of the marathon, it’s a publicity stunt for a couple to get married on the floor. We did it three or four times. You get a lot of gifts from the crowd, the local stores give clothes and furniture and so forth—but the marriages aren’t on the level, because there’s a minister but no license. We were too sick of each other by that time to really get hitched. So we’d split the gifts and let it go at that.”

  “But you really did get married finally?”

  “Yes, sir. You see, we’ve been out of work for a while. Marathons aren’t what they used to be, and other jobs are scarce, too. Suddenly we realized that we cared about each other, now that we’re through with the dance racket, and so we got married and came over here on our honeymoon. Which I wish we hadn’t.”

  Miss Withers took a deep breath. One of the few gaps in the puzzle had been filled in with a surprising ease.

  “That’ll do,” boomed Britt. “Mrs. Deving, you heard what your husband had to say. Any additions? If not, you can sign his deposition.”

  Kay Deving gratefully implied that she had no thought of changing a word of “Marvy’s” testimony.

  “Next is Lewis French,” called out the chief. That young man ceased an attempt to start a whispered conversation with the nurse and sat up straight. “Yes, sir!”

  James Michael O’Rourke shifted uneasily in his chair. He was totally uninterested in French’s answer to the barrage of meaningless questions. He bent his head toward the nurse’s.

  “Listen,” he argued. “Olive, you’re a good kid and you’re not a bad nurse. What you want to quit and marry either of those two scalawag flyers for I don’t see.”

  “I’m not going to marry either of them,” she whispered back. “I wouldn’t marry either of them if he was the last man on earth, after the way they got into a fight over me. I’d as soon marry you!”

  O’Rourke ran his finger around the inside of his collar.

  “Well, why don’t you?” he whispered back. “Marry me, I mean. It would solve your back salary anyway.”

  There was a short silence, and then Nurse Olive Smith leaned a little closer toward her employer. “I’ll marry you and make you pay in suffering,” she whispered. And so, as the subtitles would have it, two young souls plighted their troth in the shadow of a stuffed swordfish, while over their heads Lew French told his version of the death of his passenger, and then the man who hoped to be called Barney Kelsey answered questions cautiously.

  Slowly Chief Britt worked his way through the list. From La Fond he went to Madden, the other pilot, and from Madden to Morgan—which, surprisingly, was Tony’s last name. Miss Withers had never heard it mentioned, and the young man seemed unsure of it himself. Narveson followed shortly, and the old seaman’s Scandinavian brogue thickened splendidly for the occasion. O’Rourke himself was next and told of the theft of the body.

  “In your opinion could the body of Forrest”—the chief was still in the dark—“have been dragged through the window of your infirmary by a single person?”

  “It could not,” said the doctor.

  “Have y
ou got any idea of how it did disappear?”

  “Not unless the fact that the nurse’s key was stolen from the infirmary door on the day the body was brought in could have something to do with it,” said O’Rourke. “If you remember, Amos, you turned the key in the door to keep the public out. Well, I didn’t notice it at the time, as I had another key. But when the last of you left that night, the key was gone.”

  “Another piece in the puzzle,” said Miss Withers. Her plan was working perfectly—so far.

  Nurse Smith was passed over very lightly, and then Ralph O. Tate had a bad ten minutes in explaining about his two-way flask. “I knew something like that was the explanation when he handed out nickel cigars at the table and then lit a perfecto for himself,” Miss Withers whispered to the inspector. “That’s the way a movie director’s mind works.”

  Miss Withers was watching the portly figure of T. Girard Tompkins, without doubt the most nervous person in the room. He knew that his turn came next—and the investigation was taking a personal and a caustic trend which he had not counted upon. George Weir, the second of the two assistant directors, was on the contrary as cool, Miss Withers noticed, as a cucumber.

  Chief Britt, most of the boom gone from his voice, was just beginning upon the nervous Mr. Tompkins when Miss Withers saw a dusky brown face in the doorway. It was Roscoe, and his wide smile showed all too clearly that he had been successful.

  Taking a deep breath, she rose to her feet. “Excuse me for one moment,” she said, “but there’s something in the previous testimony that I didn’t get. Before we pass on, I should like to go back a little—” Every person in the room stiffened and looked wary. What sort of a game was this, anyway?

  Miss Withers’s glance swept the line and fell upon the young-old face of the man who she knew to be Roswell T. Forrest.

  “Mr. Kelsey,” she said softly, “perhaps I missed the question, and perhaps the chief forgot to ask it. But would you mind telling us, just for the record, why you had a blister on your hand on Saturday morning last?”

  Forrest’s face went gray as his hair, and he did not answer. Perhaps he prayed for a momentary respite. At any rate, one arrived.

  In spite of the protests of Deputy Ruggles, who seemed to have lost his authority with his badge, the ancient and sepian Roscoe was noisily forcing his way into the group. Miss Withers frowned at him, but it was too late.

  “Miss Withuhs tell me to bring her dis,” he announced in a loud and militant voice. He carried a pillowcase in his outstretched hand, and without further ceremony he advanced and dropped it in that lady’s lap.

  “Don’t go, Roscoe,” she said. “I may need you.” The bellhop sat down at the edge of the group, in the semidarkness.

  “You needn’t answer the question, Mr.—er—Kelsey,” Miss Withers told him. “I know the answer.”

  Several of the group stood up, and there was a buzz of consternation. “The Angora is sure as hell out of the sack now,” murmured the inspector. He was intensely relishing the whole affair, although his small part in it irked him considerably.

  “Don’t anybody try to leave!” shouted Chief Britt, who had mounted his chair. “Ruggles, get to the door.”

  Miss Withers went placidly on. “I have a little exhibit here in this pillowslip,” she said. “In a moment I’m going to show it to you all.”

  There was a general craning of necks, and curiosity conquered alarm, as Miss Withers counted upon its doing. Only Roswell T. Forrest showed no interest in her great disclosure. He stared at the floor as if he hoped it would open to swallow him, and did not count too heavily upon it. Phyllis’s hand clutched his arm, but he did not turn.

  “I’ll try to make it short,” Miss Withers said, “so that most of you can breathe more easily. You have guessed by now that this is more than a taking of depositions. You have been brought here under false pretenses, because it was the only way in the world to get at the truth of two bloodthirsty murders.

  “I said murders,” Miss Withers repeated. “There is someone in this group who isn’t quite what he pretends to be. Someone who killed a man in the Dragonfly last Friday morning. Someone who, impossible as it may seem, killed another man in the hotel last night—without leaving a fingerprint on the murder weapon or bearing a mark of powder upon his own hand. Powder burns, I understand, go right through gloves. They go through cloth or leather. It only just occurred to me that they might not go through another substance which is found in every drugstore.”

  The inspector, who had not the slightest idea in the world of what the woman was driving at, saw the fixed stare in Roswell Forrest’s eyes and prepared for trouble. He hadn’t carried a gun since he had laid aside his uniform, but he wished for one now.

  With a purposely dramatic gesture, Hildegarde Withers threw open the pillowslip and disclosed a small bottle with a familiar iodine label. She uncorked it, and the smell was not that of iodine.

  “Collodion, ladies and gentlemen,” she announced. “Common collodion, when spread over human fingers, wipes out all chance of leaving fingerprints. When extended to the rest of the hand, this quickly drying film is a sure protection against such things as powder burns. The only difficulty is in removing it afterward, but every druggist supplies the wood alcohol which instantly dissolves it. The person who shot Patrick Mack last night availed himself of this trick—”

  There was a sudden commotion at the other end of the room, to which Miss Withers paid no heed. She turned to the waiting bellhop.

  “Roscoe, tell the chief where you found this bottle.”

  Everything had gone wrong. The explosion which she was so fervently praying for still held fire. Perhaps this last desperate move would serve.

  Roscoe rose to his feet. “Yas’m. I found it just where you told me—up in the bathroom of Mistah and …”

  “Can it!” came a clear soprano. “Anybody who makes a move gets this!”

  The attention of the group swung from the schoolteacher to the slim figure of redhaired Kay Deving, who crouched against the wall, her teeth exposed in a catlike snarl. In her hand was a snub-nosed automatic which Miss Withers had seen before. Her young husband lay sprawled in a dead faint on the floor.

  “Don’t try to stop me!” she warned. “I’ve got all the guts that Marvy never had.” She was swiftly making for the door to the rear office, with its wide-open windows. “You’ll never get me alive!” She swung the gun toward Miss Withers. “And before I go, I’ll—”

  Nurse Smith giggled hideously. It was that sound, more than anything else, which made the scattered members of that little group realize that instead of melodrama this was real. There stood a girl, young, beautiful still, and in her hot brown eyes flamed the tawny lights that mark the killer.

  Ralph O. Tate threw himself flat upon the floor, wisely and ignominiously. Miss Withers quivered like a leaf, but stood erect, paralyzed. Phyllis La Fond said, “Don’t—oh, don’t—”

  But it was Inspector Oscar Piper who justified his last-minute importance in this history by going into action with the smoothness of a trip hammer.

  He had already noticed that the only weapon within sight was that which bulged at Chief Britt’s hip. That was out of reach, and also, police fashion, was probably chained to his holster to prevent its being used by the wrong person at the wrong time. Britt was too paralyzed to think of using it.

  Piper stood up and took a step toward the blazing girl. “Put that gun down,” he said softly.

  She whirled on him. “Why you—”

  “Put it down,” he repeated. “You can’t shoot. You can’t do anything. You’re through.”

  He was walking steadily toward her. His pleasant gray eyes, without a shade of the Svengali in them, were steady.

  “Put it down,” he said. The red-flecked eyes blinked twice. “I’m coming after you—and you can’t shoot,” he told her, as easily as if he had made a remark about the weather.

  Then suddenly it happened. He made a lunge forward and caught Kay
Deving’s tense young body in the embrace of a lover combined with that of a football tackler. Her body went as limp as if every bone had turned to water.

  Oscar Piper turned and faced the rest of them. “Many a cop is alive today because of that little trick,” he observed. “Britt, have you got any handcuffs?”

  CHAPTER XXI

  PANDEMONIUM REIGNED IN THE curio shop and then miraculously abdicated. Chief Amos Britt, still bewildered, swore in O’Rourke and the two movie assistants as deputies and departed with the two profane and writhing prisoners under heavy guard. Inspector Piper, flushing to the roots of his hair at the shower of awed congratulations, slipped hastily after them.

  Miss Withers wanted to cry for several reasons. Then she found Phyllis La Fond’s arms around her neck.

  “You old darling,” cried that ecstatic young lady. “I was never so scared in all my life!”

  The communion between the two was instantly reestablished. “And I thought you were after—Him.” She turned to look at Forrest, who was waiting restlessly near the chair which had held his rigid body for the past hour.

  “So it’s like that, is it?” Miss Withers asked. The others were going, some rapidly, led by movie director Tate, and some with backward, friendly looks, typified in Tompkins and the captain. But finally the three of them stood alone in the rear of the curio store. It was almost dark outside, and so restful were the shadows that Miss Withers felt that she could never bear sunlight again.

  “It’s like that,” said Phyllis. “As soon as his wife’s divorce decree is final we’re going to get married. I decided to take the advice you gave me one night, remember?”

  Miss Withers remembered. She remembered many things, including the little man in the derby who lurked about the steamer pier with a summons in his pocket.

  “I wish you two all the luck in the world,” she said. “Mr. and Mrs. Forrest.” At the name, the two stiffened. “You know?” Phyllis was breathless.