He pulled his hat from under the bed, put it on his head.
“I think I’ve got this case solved, and I want you to have things fixed so the Governor will give us a reprieve if we can produce some new evidence.”
Finklestein said, “I already talked to him once.”
“Never mind.” Crane looked at his watch. “Jesus! I better hurry. The plane leaves in forty minutes. You fix the Governor and find out all you can about the bonds—where they were stolen and so on.”
Bouncing off the bed, Finklestein said, “But do you know who killed Mrs. Westland?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow, when I come back from Peoria.”
Finklestein pursued Crane down the corridor, tugged at his coat sleeve. “Listen, just tell me how the murderer got out of that apartment and left it locked like it was.”
“Just a clever trick,” said Crane. “Really quite simple.”
“He must have had an extra key?”
Crane punched the button for the elevator. “There wasn’t any extra key.”
He stepped into an elevator. The gold-painted door blotted out Finklestein’s face.
CHAPTER XVI
Thursday Night
7:30 P. M.
William Crane paid the cab driver and handed his pigskin zipper bag to a redcap. “Peoria,” he said.
“You’ve got ten minutes,” said the man. “Gate 3.”
From the smart blue-clad ticket agent, Crane bought a one-way ticket to Peoria. He paid three cents for a Herald and Examiner and sat down in a moderne chair in the waiting room. A story by Delos Avery on the front page began:
When Robert Westland, socially prominent broker, sentenced to die for the murder of his wife last spring, goes to the electric chair shortly after midnight tomorrow, he will walk between a gangster and a fiend.
Neither of his companions are fellow clubmen.
Farther down the column it was reported that Attorney Charles Finklestein, acting for Westland, had attempted by telephone to secure a reprieve for his client, but had been unable to present the Governor any new evidence on the case. The rest of the story was a re-hash of the careers of Westland, Connors, and Varecha. Crane was reading this with interest when a fat lady in a purple dress leaned over him.
“Have you the time, young man?” she asked nervously.
“For what?”
She looked at him blankly. “I mean, what time is it?” She had a brown mole and a light mustache on her upper lip.
He examined his wrist watch. “Eight-fifty-three.”
“Yes, that’s the same time as the big clock up there.” The fat lady shook her head in a relieved manner. “I was so afraid it had stopped.” She lowered herself into a chair beside him. “This is my first airplane trip, and I wouldn’t want to miss the plane, would I?”
“No,” William Crane agreed.
“I’m really terribly thrilled about it.” The fat lady shivered like a dish of raspberry jello. “Just imagine poor little me way up alone in the clouds. Only I do wish I knew somebody who was going too; it would be so very comforting. You don’t happen to——”
“No, I don’t.” He rose hastily. “I’m just meeting a friend from the East. Never been up in a plane in my life. Wouldn’t go up. Terribly dangerous.” He retreated to the field.
The redcap hailed him. “Your plane is just pullin’ in.”
A very pretty brown-haired stewardess with a blue overseas’ cap smiled at him as he stepped from the portable staircase into the plane. He smiled back at her, then selected a seat at the rear of the cabin so the view from the window wouldn’t be obscured by the wing. Other passengers filed past him and took other seats, self-consciously trying to appear casual.
Two men in dungarees were fastening sacks of mail under the wing. Ahead, a big twin-motored Curtiss-Condor sleeper, bound for the Southwest, was trying its engines, sending a curtain of dust across the field. The faces of people waiting to meet the New York plane were white by the fence in front of the ticket office.
The co-pilot, an astonishingly young man with red cheeks, sauntered down the aisle, paused at the door. “How about it, sweetheart?”
“One more,” said the stewardess. “A Mrs. Petti-bone.” Her voice was sweet.
“We’re a minute late already.” The co-pilot was politely accusatory.
“Here she comes now,” said the girl.
There was a sound of puffing, of pushing, of hands clawing on metal. “Oh, dear!” exclaimed a voice behind William Crane; “I’m so out of breath I don’t have any strength left.”
“You’re all right now, Mrs. Pettibone,” said the co-pilot.
Mrs. Pettibone’s hips brushed Crane’s face as she passed him. He glanced up, saw with horror she was the fat lady of the waiting room. Hastily he raised the newspaper over his face, sank down in his seat. He could visualize the stricken look which would come into her eyes when she discovered the young man of the waiting room had lied to avoid her. He realized he was in for a bad hour and a quarter to Peoria.
It was all right while they were starting, the engine vibrating the plane and the passengers stiff and defensive under the deafening roar of a motor full out, but as soon as they lifted sweetly from the ground and Chicago unrolled under them like a sparkling rhinestone evening gown, Mrs. Pettibone started to examine her fellow passengers. Crane held the paper in front of his face and, because the woman’s chair was higher than his, slightly over his head.
Although this position became very tiresome after half an hour, he stuck grimly to his resolve not to hurt the fat lady’s feelings. His arms ached, his shoulders pained him, he read every item on the front page five times, but he continued to hold the paper over his head.
The stewardess halted beside him, a saucy smile on her tomato-red lips. “Care for some chewing gum?” She regarded the upheld paper with frank curiosity.
“I hate chewing gum.”
Lingering, the girl persisted, “Would you mind telling me why you’re holding that paper over your head?”
Crane said, “I expect to use it as a parachute when the plane falls.”
The plane moved steadily from one pale brass curtain rod of light to another along the illuminated airway, and finally they were in Peoria, and Crane hurried out of the cabin. His arms were very tired, but he was experiencing a comfortable sensation of having acted the part of a gentleman.
This sensation was a rare one indeed, and he enjoyed it as he waited for a taxi to swing around in front of him. He was just reaching for the door when someone tapped his arm. It was Mrs. Pettibone. She said:
“You naughty, naughty boy—playing hide-and-seek with me all the way to Peoria.”
William Crane shuddered violently, leaped into the cab.
The desk clerk at the Père Marquette examined the registration card, said, “I believe I have a telegram for you.”
The yellow envelope was addressed to William Crane. He slit it with his thumb, opened the folded sheet, read:
WESTLAND’S GUN NOT THE ONE THAT SHOT HIS WIFE.
DOC.
Crane said, “It’s for me, all right.” He followed the bell boy to the elevator and from it to a spacious corner room. He tossed the boy a quarter and, when the door had closed, opened the telephone directory. He found the Washington Arms Company in the yellow section of the book, called the number, but the hotel operator reported no one answered. Dubiously, he looked under Washington in the front of the book and was gratified to find a G. Washington whose office phone number corresponded with that of the arms company. The home number of G. Washington was answered by a woman.
She was Mrs. G. Washington, and she said her husband had gone out of town overnight, but would return by train at eleven o’clock the next morning. He would, she continued, probably go right to his office. She said her husband was the only one who had access to the records.
“It’s lucky he’s to be in town,” she added.
Crane said, “Yes, it is.”
He went
down to the hotel restaurant for dinner, and although Peoria is noted for its whiskey, he drank only milk. Soon afterward, in line with this reformation, he went to bed.
11 P. M.
Isadore Varecha was sleeping like a child, and this was almost as annoying as his former sobbing. Westland lay on his back, a handkerchief over his eyes, and listened tensely and angrily to the fiend’s gentle breathing. He wished he could fall asleep as simply and as easily. Instead, he stared into the whitely translucent cloth, feeling edgy and faint and nauseated, as he used to feel in college before a football game. This comparison of the sensations before a game and before being jolted to death in the electric chair was bathetic, and he smiled, but only because he was pretending to be brave and not because he wanted to smile. He would much rather have wept. He was really scared as hell.
Presently, when he could lie still no longer, he pulled the handkerchief from his face and sat up on the bed. As though somebody had pushed a stiff whiskbroom in them, his eyes smarted in the bright light. Rubbing them, he noticed a black shadow on the corridor wall opposite Connors’ cell. Curiosity brought him to the front of his own cell.
The priest was standing there, his dark robe motionless, his ruddy face solemn, intently watching Connors, who was hunched over on the end of his disordered bed. Neither was speaking, and Westland received an impression they had been facing each other in silence this way for a long time. Connors seemed oblivious of the priest, his moody eyes staring past him, not looking at him, not looking away from him. The priest’s scrutiny was personal and, in a way, triumphant.
As Westland stared at them, the drifting air, damp and chill, crept across his face, numbed his wrists and ankles.
Finally the priest spoke softly. “Have you changed your mind, my son?” His voice had the timbre of a bass viol.
Connors said, “No.”
The priest’s garments made an angry frou-frou as he walked past Westland’s cell along the corridor. His red face was grim. Westland swung around to look at Connors.
No longer veiled, the gangster’s eyes were luminous with fear and regret.
Friday Morning
11:30 A. M.
When William Crane walked through the rain to the office entrance of the arms company’s bulky brick warehouse for a second time, the prim, spinsterish reception clerk attempted a smile.
“Mr. Washington is here now,” she said. “I’ll just call…”
In a minute she shoved away the suspended telephone mouthpiece, announced with a simper that Mr. Washington would see Mr. Crane.
Mr. Washington was a saturnine man with quince-colored skin. He had on a purple shirt and a green necktie. He shook Crane’s hand, leaning over his mahogany desk.
“Pretty bad day,” he observed mournfully.
“Terrible,” Crane said. “Awful.”
“Rain,” said Mr. Washington disgustedly.
Crane said, “Yeah, rain.” He brushed some drops from his top coat, added, “Seems to me the good old-fashioned winter snow is getting scarce. Nothing but rain nowadays.”
This seemed to be the right note. Mr. Washington’s expression became brighter. He extracted a pencil-thin cigar from his lips, held it daintily between his two fingers. “When I was a boy I used to walk through snow as high as my head to get to school.” He waved the cigar in the air. “Four miles it was, too. You don’t see snow like that now.”
After further conversation had exhausted the subject, Crane explained that he wanted to find out, if possible, who had purchased the Webley.
“So you’re from the Chicago police,” Mr. Washington observed. “I wondered what you wanted when I received that wire yesterday afternoon.”
“It’s in connection with the Westland case,” Crane said. He didn’t say anything about the Chicago police.
“The Westland case?”
“That rich broker who shot his wife.”
“Seems like I read something about it, but it wouldn’t be any wonder I didn’t. We don’t have much Chicago crime news in our papers down here.”
Crane said that new evidence had made the police believe Mrs. Westland had been killed with a Webley purchased from Mr. Washington’s company.
“Well, I’ll be durned!” said Mr. Washington, intrigued. He thumbed through a green file cabinet. “Here’s the sheet. P. T. Brown of St. Louis bought two Lugers, three Mausers, one Colt, and one Webley, all war models. Said he was a collector. The lot cost him one hundred and sixteen dollars.”
“P. T. Brown?” Crane chewed meditatively at a finger. “Do you know who handled the sale?”
“No trouble about that. Only got one salesman: Oscar Havermeyer. Like to talk to him?”
Crane nodded.
They went out past the spinsterly reception clerk, who did not look up at them, and down a damp corridor and into a large room filled with an amazing and sinister collection of weapons, ranging from silver-mounted derringers to an express rifle for elephant hunting. Along racks against the walls were rows of Springfield rifles; a Browning machine gun leered at them around a glass showcase full of automatic pistols. There were guns in every direction.
Mr. Washington said apologetically, “This is only the display room. We keep most of our weapons back in the warehouse.”
“You could start a revolution with the stuff you have right here,” Crane said. “A hell of a big revolution.”
“We have.” Mr. Washington lifted a dangerous-looking revolver out of the nearest glass case. “We even supplied the guns for both the revolutionists and the federalists in one Central American country. Business hasn’t been so good lately though.” He handed the revolver to Crane. “Wyatt Earp’s.”
“The old frontier marshal?”
The revolver was a blue Colt .38 set in a .45 frame. Eleven notches slashed the sweat-darkened butt. There was no trigger. It balanced sweetly in Crane’s hand.
Mr. Washington said, “He didn’t mark up Mexicans.” He pointed out a slim rifle with a curved powder horn hanging from the barrel. “One of old Dan Boone’s bear rifles.” Then, mysteriously, he bent over and tenderly lifted a tarpaulin from a bizarre mechanism on the floor. “What do you think of this?”
The thing looked like a huge coffee grinder. There was a gaping funnel on top and on the side there was a large wheel with a wooden handle. A black barrel projected from one end.
“What is it?” Crane asked.
“If Abraham Lincoln hadn’t been such an obstinate cuss, this would have ended the Civil War in a month.” Mr. Washington caressed the funnel. “I wouldn’t sell it for ten thousand dollars. It’s the first practical machine gun.”
“A machine gun?”
“Sure. You turn the handle, and another fellow loads it, and it’ll fire one hundred shots a minute. It was invented during the Civil War, but old Abe, who was always meddling in military affairs, wouldn’t let the army use it. He called it the coffee mill.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t work.”
“Sure it would. Abe and the generals were hidebound just as they are now.” Mr. Washington gave the crank a tentative turn. “Would you like to see it work?”
“Gosh, I would,” Crane said; “but I’ve got to find out all I can about that Webley and then go back to Chicago.”
“Oh, sure.” Mr. Washington gently tucked the tarpaulin around the mechanism. “I’ll get Oscar.”
Oscar Havermeyer was blond, big, Germanic, and dumb, but he remembered the man who had bought the Webley and the other pistols.
“Would you be able to identify a photograph of him?” Crane asked.
“I believe so.”
Crane extracted four photographs from an envelope. “Is he one of these?”
Havermeyer examined the four prints, nodded his head. “Yes.” He started to hand Crane one of them. “It’s this——”
Crane said quickly, “Don’t tell me. Show them to Mr. Washington and see if he picks out the same man.”
Havermeyer presently announced Mr. Washington’
s choice was the same.
“Good,” said Crane. “Now, Oscar, did you notice anything strange about the sale? I mean, was this Brown more interested in the Webley than in the other pistols?”
“Well, he wanted to know if the Webley would shoot.”
“Ah-ha! What d’you tell him?”
Havermeyer blinked his tranquil eyes. “I didn’t tell him anything. I didn’t know myself. I got some bullets, and we went out to the range and shot it a couple of times. It worked fine.”
“Swell!” Crane said. “Can you show me the range?”
They walked through the back of the armory and into a sunken yard. At the far end, halfway up a twelve-foot earthbank, three white paper targets were suspended. The rain, soft on their cheeks, brought out the rich smell of the fine Illinois loam, made it black and glossy. To their right, the Illinois river bent in a half moon.
Crane asked, “What’s back of those targets?”
“Earth,” said Mr. Washington. “Earth and clay.”
“Do you remove the bullets after you shoot them into the bank?”
“We haven’t for a couple of years. We don’t do enough shooting to make it worth while.”
Crane scowled at the sky the color and texture of a gray squirrel coat. “Have other war-time Webleys been shot into the bank?”
“No. That’s the only one we had in the place. They’re pretty rare in America, although I guess you could get plenty of them in Canada.”
Crane strolled down the range, lifted one of the paper targets. The blue clay was pockmarked with hundreds of holes.
“I wonder if you could get the Webley’s bullets out of there?” he asked.
Mr. Washington said, “You’d have to tear about six feet of bank down to get at the lead, and even then I doubt if you could tell which bullets came from the Webley.”
Havermeyer’s soft blue eyes were wide. “I could tell them.”
Mr. Washington shook his head dubiously. “It’d take a man half a day to dig into the bank and screen out the lead.” He tilted his jaw upward. “Besides, it’s going to keep on raining all day.”
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