Headed for a Hearse

by Jonathan Latimer

  The driver rolled his eyes.

  A sign on the cement landing opposite the Wrigley Building said: “Ride in a Speedboat, One Dollar.” There weren’t any speedboats around, though; only a slow eddy of scum-green water where the projecting pier shunted off the main current of the river. Bulking above their heads to the right was the Michigan Avenue bridge, windowed watch towers at both ends; and along the rail a man and a women watched the water with detached interest. Over a floating object, halfway to the other bank, two gulls circled.

  Crane’s handkerchief fluttered in the air. From the obscurity of the lower driveway, like a curved pen-stroke, sailed the wrench. It entered the water thirty feet from the bridge, threw silver spray into the air. Crane ran to a point opposite it, lined up the boiling circle with a post on the other bank, and called to Williams.

  “Doc, mark this so you’ll remember it, will you?”

  Williams said, “I can remember this all right.” He tilted his hat back from his eyes. “I think you’re nuts.”

  “Maybe I am.” Crane tied the handkerchief to an iron ring fastened in the cement. “And maybe I’m not. Anyway, you get your diver and send him down here, right along this line to the other bank.” He indicated an imaginary line between the handkerchief and the post on the other side.

  “You mean you’re going to spend five hundred dollars to get that wrench back?” Williams wailed.

  “Something like that.”

  Williams sank weakly against the base of the bridge. “You’ve done some daffy things since I been working with you, but this wins the grand prize.”

  “Well, you can make the award later. Right now you get the diver and his boat. Have him back here in an hour. I’m going to talk with Deputy Strom.”

  “Simmons has a record.” The deputy chewed on a cigar stub. “We found his picture and fingerprints in the Bureau of Identification.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Crane. “One out of every forty-nine persons in the United States have records.”

  “He was given six months for extortion. Tried to blackmail an old widow he was working for. She trapped him, then begged the judge to be lenient with him. I guess he’d been romancing her. He should have got a couple of years.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Nothing on him since then?”

  “No. He’s been with Westland ever since that.”

  Springs on the deputy’s swivel chair groaned as he put the cigar stub on the edge of his desk. There was a line of burns from other stubs on the brown surface.

  Crane asked, “Did he say why he didn’t tell you about Sprague coming up to the apartment?”

  “He says he was afraid he’d get mixed up in his death. He figures it would be tough for him with his record.”

  “He’s probably right. But why did he tell me?”

  “He wanted to help Westland if he could, but he didn’t want to get himself in a jam.”

  Crane stared out of the deputy’s window at the junk yards across the street. “He wants to help Westland, but he gets ten thousand dollars when Westland dies.”

  “The hell he does!”

  “Sure, didn’t you know? He’s left ten grand in Westland’s will.”

  Deputy Strom shoved the cigar back in his mouth. “Nobody bothers to tell me anything.” He pivoted savagely in the protesting chair. “All I knew was that Miss Martin was the chief beneficiary.”

  “Why should you have known?” Crane asked. “All you were interested in was to put the skids under Westland. Why should you look around for somebody who might have had a motive for putting Westland out of the way?”

  “I don’t know why I should be doing it now.”

  “You don’t want an innocent man to go to the chair, do you?”

  “Innocent hell!” said the deputy.

  Crane grinned at him. “What else did Simmons tell you?”

  “I suppose this will be right up your alley, but I might as well tell you.” Deputy Strom leaned back in the chair, swung his right foot onto the table. The heel was worn down on the outside. “Simmons let Sprague use the telephone while he was at the apartment.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He heard him call Woodbury and make an appointment to see him at ten o’clock that night.”

  “So!” Crane scratched his ear. “Did Sprague say why he wanted to see Woodbury?”

  “Simmons said he didn’t. He said he just made the appointment with him and then hung up.”

  Crane said, “Simmons seems to give out bits of information as though he was having teeth pulled—one at a time. How’d you get it out of him?”

  “We just employed a little—” the deputy made a depreciatory gesture with the cigar—“persuasion.”

  Crane thought for a moment. “Did you ask Woodbury about the call?”

  “Sure. He admitted he got it all right. Said he didn’t know what Sprague wanted.”

  “Didn’t he think it was funny Sprague didn’t keep the appointment?”

  “He said he did at the time, but when he learned Sprague had been killed in an automobile accident he didn’t think any more about it.”

  Crane walked over to the window. “Everything about this case seems logical enough if you want to believe everything.” He watched a Nash squad car pull up to the curb. “But if you don’t, it all sounds fishy.”

  “I don’t see anything wrong with Woodbury’s story.”

  “There isn’t anything wrong with it. It just seems funny he didn’t tell somebody about the appointment. If you’re supposed to meet somebody on the night he is mysteriously killed, you usually say something about it.”

  “There’s nothing mysterious about being run over by a hit-and-run driver.”

  “I guess not,” Crane said. He slid his hat off the deputy’s table.

  “Wait a second.” Strom rose laboriously. “What do you think Sprague wanted to see Woodbury for?”

  “What did Woodbury think?”

  “He thought it was on business.”

  Crane said, “So do I.”

  The diver’s name was Peter Finnegan. He had on a rubber suit and weighted shoes, and he looked at William Crane with blue eyes the color of a poilu’s uniform. “You want me to go down for a steel monkey wrench?” he asked. His lemon-colored hair was slick with Vitalis.

  They stood on the untidy deck of the Patricia G., a small tugboat which had once been painted red. A tar-smeared rope, looped over a post on the river landing below the Wrigley Building, kept them from drifting inland with the current. Smoke, transparent and almost colorless, ascended from the squat funnel.

  Crane said, “I want you to bring up whatever you find in the way of steel. A wrench, or anything else. Did Mr. Williams explain where you’re supposed to look?”

  “Yeah. Between this place and the handkerchief over there.” The diver leaned over the rail. “It won’t be so tough. It’s only about thirty feet deep, and luckily I got an electro-magnet that’ll find any steel within a hell of a distance. When do you want me to start?”

  “Right now, before it gets dark.”

  The diver shouted, “Charley.” A small grimy man with a cap peered out of the cabin, blinked in the sunlight. The diver said, “Tell Mac I’m goin’ down, then come up and handle the rope.”

  The grimy man hesitated. “Did you get the dough in advance?”

  “Think I’m a damn fool?” asked the diver.

  Patricia G. trembled as the air pump started below. The diver picked up his helmet. “Give me a lift with this, will you?”

  Charley came and took the helmet out of Crane’s hands. “I better do it,” he said. His skin had an unhealthy pallor under the grime.

  Doc Williams came forward from the stern, where he had been watching some sea gulls. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

  Crane said, “I hope so too.”

  The diver lowered himself on a rope ladder into the water, then let go his grasp. He sa
nk smoothly out of sight, pulling the air hose, the rope, and another line after him.

  Charley, paying out the rope, said, “The third one’s for the magnet.”

  In a few seconds the rope ceased to move. “He’s down,” said Charley. Bubbles broke the oily surface of the water, traced a path to the other bank. An inquiring gull coasted down to inspect them, discovered nothing to eat, and returned upstream to a sentry post by an open sewer main.

  “You’re lucky the river runs away from the lake, and not into it as it used to,” said Charley.

  “Why?” asked Crane.

  “A diver never’d be able to walk in the silt and mud the river would deposit if it emptied into the lake. As it is, the current running from the lake keeps the bed clean and firm.”

  “That is a break.”

  “Sure, an’ so is the slow current. There are plenty of rivers with currents so fast a diver couldn’t stand up in them.”

  Now halfway out, the bubbles suddenly halted. Presently they began to return.

  “He’s got hold of something,” said Charley.

  Preceded by a maelstrom of bubbles, the diver came part way up the rope ladder. Charley unscrewed the circular glass front of the helmet. The diver grinned boyishly. “Here’s your wrench.” He tossed it on the desk.

  Crane said, “Fine, I’m certainly glad to have it back. But—” he picked up the wrench, handed it to Williams—“I’d like you to look for something else. It should be right around where you found this.”

  “Mister,” the diver said plaintively, “would you mind tellin’ me what it is?”

  “It’s about the same size as the wrench.”

  The diver raised himself until his shoulders were level with the rail. He hooked his elbows over the wood. “So it’s a guessing game we’re playin’.” He winked at Charley’s dirty face. “Animal, mineral, or vegetable?”

  Crane said, “Listen. I’d like to tell you what I hope you find, but it’s better I didn’t. Go down and take another look, will you?”

  As the water was closing over the diver’s head, a policeman leaped from the concrete pier to the Patricia G. He said, “What’s goin’ on here?”

  Charley jerked his thumb at Crane. “Ask him.”

  Crane asked, “What’s the matter, officer?”

  “Matter? Look at that bridge.”

  All of them tilted their heads upward. The bridge was lined with spectators, rows deep, like the two-bit bleachers in a ball park.

  “In another minute they’ll be blocking traffic,” said the policeman.

  Crane made his voice authoritative. “I can’t help it. We’re from the War Department, and we have to get the depth of the river at this point. Washington wants it for some harbor figures.” He looked at Williams. “Bit of a rush job, eh, Major?”

  Williams managed to conceal most of his astonishment. “Why … quite right, Colonel.”

  Crane continued, “However, officer, we should be finished in a very few moments. If you’d just see nothing happens up on the bridge we’ll be…”

  “I’ll be pleased to, Colonel.” The policeman’s face was respectful. “I was in the army meself during the war.”

  “I’ll wager you served under General Foreman.”

  “Yes, sir. How’d you know?”

  “Just a guess. He’s a damn fine soldier.” Crane nodded his head and, lying, added, “Know the old boy well.”

  The policeman was hardly off the boat when the diver’s bubbles indicated he was coming back. Water streamed from his shoulders, gurgled into the river as he raised himself on the ladder. As soon as Charley had unscrewed the front of his helmet, he said, “I guess this is what you want.” He held out an automatic pistol. “It must’ve been down there quite a while.”

  Crane accepted the pistol. It had a silver plate on the side with the name “R. Westland” stamped upon it. “Just what I wanted,” he said.

  “Jumpin’ Jesus!” Doc Williams exclaimed. “How did you know it would be down there, of all places?”

  Major Lee tried the pistol’s trigger. “I think we can make it shoot.” He rubbed off some of the rust with his thumbnail. “But we haven’t any Webley bullets.”

  Williams said, “Can’t we buy some in a sporting goods store?”

  “I imagine we can if we look around.”

  “Try Woodbury,” Crane suggested. “I bet he’ll have some.”

  “He wouldn’t dare give them to us,” said Williams.

  “He wouldn’t dare not to.”

  “What you want, Mr. Crane,” asked Major Lee, holding the pistol in the palm of his hand, “is to find out if the bullets fired from this pistol correspond to the marks on the Webley bullets which killed Mrs. Westland, the records of which I have in my files?”

  “That’s the idea. I’d like to have a report as soon as possible.”

  “It won’t take long … if we can get some bullets.”

  “Williams will try Woodbury,” Crane said. He took the pistol from the ballistics expert. “Where could I buy a war-time Webley like this in America?”

  “Buy one?” The major scowled. “There are a number of firms which handle old and obsolete weapons, but most of them stock American equipment. They sell the stuff to South American countries for revolutions, and for their armies, too. But I can think of a few that might have some Webleys on hand.”

  “Could you give me their names?”

  The major said, “Certainly.” He spent some time checking names on a long list of armament firms, then handed it to Crane.

  “Thanks,” Crane said. “Would you mind letting Williams know what you find out about Westland’s pistol as soon as you can? He’ll keep in touch with you.”

  “I’ll be glad to.”

  Crane put the pistol on the major’s desk and followed Williams out to the street. They went over to the Drake Hotel and sent straight telegrams to the firms checked on Major Lee’s list. The telegrams read:

  HAS ANYONE BOUGHT A WAR MODEL WEBLEY AUTOMATIC FROM YOU WITHIN LAST YEAR? PLEASE ANSWER AT ONCE COLLECT. IMPORTANT.

  DEPUTY CHIEF OF DETECTIVES ERNEST STROM,

  CHICAGO, ILL.

  Crane paid the astonished girl sixty-one dollars and forty-three cents for eighty-two telegrams, said, “We better get to Strom before the collect answers start coming in.”

  8:15 P. M.

  Finklestein marched into the hotel room as Crane was pushing a pair of green balloon-silk pajamas into his zipper bag. The attorney’s lips were compressed tightly, his cheeks were flushed over his jaw bone.

  “I went over our client’s accounts,” he announced.

  Crane lifted his comb and one of his two silver-backed military hairbrushes from the dresser. “Well?”

  “He’s got enough hot bonds in his possession to float a government loan.”

  Crane hesitated over the bag. “Stolen bonds?”

  “Stolen and counterfeit. It looks as though he’s been in every mail robbery for the last ten years.”

  “Gosh! How much worth?”

  “So far the accountants have been able to check on nearly six hundred thousand dollars’ worth, but we aren’t through yet.”

  Crane rubbed the back of his hand with the hairbrush. “That’s more money than Westland’s got.” The bristles hurt his skin. “How’d he get it in his account?”

  “It’s not all in his account. Most of the bonds have been stuck among the securities of Westland’s personal clients, the stuff they let the firm hold to cover their trading account.” Finklestein mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief. “It looks as though Westland had been buying the hot bonds from gangsters, substituting them for good bonds in accounts and then selling the good bonds on the market.”

  “How’d you find out about it?”

  “One of the auditors happened to notice some bonds he knew were supposed to have been retired. He checked on them and found they had been stolen in the big Rondout mail robbery. The reason they hadn’t been cashed by Westland is th
at they were listed as being stolen. So then we got hold of a list of stolen bonds from the Federal Building and checked up every bond in every account.”

  “You think, then, that he was buying the bonds from some gangster at about a dime on the dollar and pushing them into his clients’ accounts?”

  “It couldn’t be anything else, unless he actually stole the bonds himself.”

  Crane said, “Well, it’s goddam funny.” He dropped the brush in his bag. “You better ask him about them in the morning.”

  “You don’t think he’d tell us, do you?”

  “Why not? He doesn’t have to worry much about being arrested for stealing the bonds, does he?”

  “Then you don’t think he knows what’s been done to the accounts?”

  “I don’t know. I expect he would have told us about it before this if he had. Either that, or he’s guilty of his wife’s murder.” Crane pulled the zipper on the bag. “Maybe he just floats hot bonds between murders.”

  Finklestein eyed the bag. “Where’re you going?”

  “I’m going to Peoria.”

  “This is a swell time to be going to Peoria, on the night before Westland——”

  “Don’t get excited; it’s on business.” Crane fished a telegram from his inside coat pocket, gave it to the attorney. It read:

  WEBLEY AUTOMATIC, WAR MODEL, SOLD LAST APRIL TO A P. T. BROWN OF ST. LOUIS, MO.

  WASHINGTON ARMS COMPANY

  PEORIA, ILL.

  Crane explained, “That’s in answer to about a million telegrams I sent out to armament firms all over the country.”

  “Why’d you do that? I thought it was Westland’s pistol which killed his wife.”

  “We’ll know about that pretty soon.” Crane grinned at the angry bewilderment in Finklestein’s pale eyes. “You see, I found Westland’s pistol this afternoon.”

  “Found it!” Finklestein theatrically pressed a hand to his forehead. “This is getting too much for me. Where did you find it?”

  “In the Chicago River.”

  “In the river!” Finklestein’s knees folded, he sank down on the bed. “How did you find it there?”

  Crane lifted his bag. “This is beginning to sound like a vaudeville act.” He picked his camel’s-hair coat off the floor. “I’ve got to catch a plane, and I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Major Lee is going to make a ballistics test of the gun as soon as Williams finds him some bullets, and then he’s going to wire me at the Père Marquette Hotel in Peoria when he finds out whether it did the job or not.”