Crime on My Hands

by George Sanders

  Chapter Two

  By referring to the shooting script, I can recreate the scene almost exactly. It was the sequence in the picture where the wagon train was attacked by white thugs in Indian costume. The wagons had filed past the cameras as the sun rose over giant sand dunes. I, as Hilary Weston on a cream-colored Arabian gelding, had carried on my flirtation with Betsy Collins, screen wife of huge Hank Collins, my wagon boss, under his eyes, which narrowed with sullen speculation.

  She, Carla Folsom, could wear her Mother Hubbard as if it were a black-net nightgown, and she was adequate in the part. Frank Lane, cast as her husband, could mutter in his beard with the best, and the morning had gone well. Riegleman was happy.

  “It has life,” he told me, as we sat under umbrellas while the technical crew set up for the battle scene.

  Carla gave me a dark-eyed look over the rim of her glass of Coca-Cola. “We played that scene,” she drawled, “like boy scouts rubbing sticks together, knowing that a flame would break out any moment.”

  An extra came over to our exclusive little group, a tall, slightly stooped man of middle years. He sort of pinned Riegleman with flashing black eyes. “Mr. Riegleman,” he said, “I have not yet been told why I am here.”

  Riegleman’s gloomy blue eyes scanned him as if he were a sand flea. “See Sammy,” he said, in his clipped voice. “He’ll explain it.” As the man hesitated, Riegleman said sharply, “Well? We’re busy here.”

  The man went back to the lounging group of bearded men and pioneer women.

  Riegleman turned his long face to me. “I want you to keep one point in mind, George. During this battle, you will not quite forget the romance which is brewing between you and Carla. Hilary Weston was that kind of a guy. Even in the most critical situation, he never forgot what he had on the fire. So you will direct Frank to his post of danger, not only because he is your best man, but also because you hope he’ll get an arrow through his heart and save you the trouble of killing him later. I don’t want you to forget that, even when the lead wagon is set afire.” Riegleman paused, caught his breath, and said, “You understand, George.”

  I nodded. “Something comparable to the situation in the Bible when David sent Bathsheba’s spouse into battle hoping he’d be killed.”

  “Now we’re stealing scenes from the Bible,” Curtis, the boss cameraman grunted.

  “Not a bad source,” Riegleman said coldly. He added, “Besides, it’s in the public domain.”

  Sammy came over, mopping sweat from his face.

  “We’re ready, chief. I hope to God,” Sammy said fervently, “we don’t have to do retakes on this. I’ve lost ten pounds already this morning.”

  Riegleman grinned at Sammy’s tubbiness. “If you lose fifty more, Sammy, I’ll make a matinee idol of you.”

  Sammy patted his paunch. “I wouldn’t play such a dirty trick on my best friend.”

  After a final check, we went into action. I rode back and forth before a camera, shouting orders, placing my men, forming the wagons into a circle. I gave Carla a long, calculating look, and sent Frank into the front line.

  The marauders poured over a sand dune on calico ponies, and the air was scrambled with shots and shouts. They shot several hundred feet of film, with pseudo-redskins galloping idiotically around the circle of wagons, the grim pioneers potting away, with me firing my two Colts at random, but with uncanny accuracy.

  Then, signal whistles broke through the din, and the battle was over. Cameras were moved, to record the retreat of the thwarted thugs, while we shot gay, blank charges into their dust cloud. I registered mild disappointment, in a close-up, that Frank was still among the living, flicked Carla another significant glance, and we knocked off for lunch.

  Prop men gathered up the guns. Sammy himself took mine, as they were museum pieces. Corpses, scattered inside and out of the wagon circle, got to their feet and ambled over to the commissary. I washed my hands under a pressure tap and started for my chair, where somebody would bring me some lunch.

  That was when I saw the body, sprawled realistically behind a wagon wheel, carbine beside it. Some overly-conscientious extra, I thought, who supposed that he had to play dead until he was carried off on a stretcher.

  “Chow!” I called to him. “Comb the sand out of your beard, fella, and come after it.”

  The figure didn’t move, and I knew that he was dead. The body had a look of death about it. It isn’t exactly describable, but my sensation was definite. I walked over for close examination.

  I knelt over the body, thinking that some poor devil had suffered a heart attack. I tried to rouse him, even then not fully believing that my conviction was justified. I nudged him. He didn’t move, and the reason was there in plain sight: a small, blackened hole in his right temple.

  I thought of the many times I had knelt so, before cameras, and of my scripted reactions. Here was death. Analysis was necessary, and sufficient, to determine the cause of death and to map an unerring path to the killer. But I didn’t react in that fashion. I felt helpless. This keen and flashing glance did not seek out the tell-tale token dropped in haste. There was no clue, and if there had been, this incisive brain would not have weighed its significance.

  My thoughts were completely on the sad side. This man had hired out for fifteen dollars a day, so that he could pay his back rent, perhaps. It was a sad thing that he had met death here, accidentally.

  It had to be accidental homicide. The carbines which had been fired with such eff usion had been loaded with blank cartridges. Responsibility for this devolved finally on Sammy, but it was quite conceivable that, somehow, one of the cartridges had not been blank.

  That it had found its way so exactly to a vital spot in one of the actors, rather than having been shot harmlessly over the head of balked bandits, was a long coincidence, but possible. I’ve collected on some of the four-legged ones.

  I kept in mind, however, the possibility of murder, as I went for Riegleman. It would have been a good stage setting for murder, with the cavorting, the shooting, the hubbub of make-believe. Yes, an enemy could have drawn a bead on his victim and let him have it, with a good chance to escape later reckoning with the law.

  But if that was the way it had happened, it was possible that the murderer had been photographed in the act. A battery of cameras had recorded the scene from various angles. I filed that thought away for future reference, too.

  “I say,” I said to Riegleman, “come for a short stroll with me. We have a corpse to contend with.”

  He put down his paper plate and fell into step. “I was afraid of something like this,” he muttered. “Too much sun, I suppose, for some guy with a hangover.”

  “A bad combination, “ I agreed, steering him toward the fatal spot. “But it seldom shoots a man through the right temple.”

  Riegleman halted. “My God!” he said, in stunned tones. “You’re kidding.”

  ‘I’m sorry. I wish I were.”

  “But it’s impossible! All the guns were supposed to be loaded with blanks!”

  “Apparently somebody improved on the script.”

  “How in the hell,” he demanded, “will we ever find who fired the shot?”

  “Someone in that moil of beards probably fired it,” I suggested. “But I’m not sure that determining who will be necessary, provided that we can prove it was accidental.”

  “Prove it? Of course it was accidental. By the Gods,” he went on grimly, “if I can find out who was responsible for a loaded shell getting into a gun, I’ll have his hide.”

  “First of all,” I said, “we’ll have to get the local authorities out here. It’s a matter for the sheriff and the coroner.”

  “There goes my shooting schedule,” Riegleman groaned. “Well, let’s have a look at the poor guy.”

  Riegleman scowled down in accusation at the corpse. This was a monkey wrench in the machinery. This meant delay, which in turn meant loss of money, which in turn was painful to him.

  �
��Just a young fellow,” he said. “Too damned bad.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Never saw him before. Maybe Sammy knows him.” He took a whistle from his pocket, blew it, and beckoned to Sammy, who was carrying two plates from the commissary.

  Sammy gave the plates to a man near him. His gestures indicated that the plates were to be guarded to the death, if necessary. Then he approached us unhappily, sinking deep into the sand at each step. He said, “George, about your pistols–”, but fell quiet as the director waved a hand.

  Riegleman indicated the body. “Do you know him?”

  “Oh, God!” Sammy moaned. “He’s dead!”

  “Don’t go psychic on us,” Riegleman snapped. “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Paul will.”

  “Get him!”

  Sammy turned a white, round face upward at Riegleman. “Please, chief. I don’t feel so good. I’ve got to sit down somewhere.”

  “I’ll go,” I said. “Who is Paul?”

  “He’s the casting director.”

  Paul looked as if he had just run three blocks to catch a Brooklyn bus in July. “My God,” he said. “What does that slave driver want now? I’m busier’n a tick at a horse show. Oh, well!” He came out of his trailer-office. “What gives?” he asked me.

  “One of the extras got himself killed. We thought you might be able to identify him.”

  “So that’s why we had one lunch left over? I thought at first Sammy maybe only took one. I’ve been checking the cast to see if we’re paying somebody who’s not here.”

  “Did you find anyone missing?”

  “Yeah. Guy named Herman Smith. Didn’t get his lunch. Showed up for work, turned in his slip okay. So I guess he’s it. What’d he do, get a horse hoof in his face?”

  “He got a bullet in his head.”

  “Yeah? Thought they shot only blanks.”

  “That was my impression, too.”

  We walked over to Riegleman. He stood some distance away from the body. Sammy was under a wagon near him.

  “Well, we know who he is,” I told Riegleman.

  “Yes, Mr. Riegleman,” Paul said eagerly.

  “The chef informed me that we had an extra lunch, and I checked to see if somebody had turned in his work slip and then taken a powder. I watch that sort of thing very closely.”

  Riegleman nodded shortly. “Will you take a look, Paul? I have sent for the police.”

  Paul looked down at the bearded face. He frowned. He looked up at Riegleman, then back at the corpse. “I’ll be a son of a gun,” he said. “That ain’t Herman. I never saw this guy before.”

  Chapter Three

  Have you ever seen a group of youngsters rough housing each other? Remember how, if one falls unconscious from an accidental blow, they all stand aimlessly for a few moments staring blankly at the unlucky victim?

  We did just that. We looked down at the nameless corpse as if we hadn’t seen it before. With a name, it would have been one of us, and our emotions would have been personalized. Nameless, it was a stranger in our midst, and we eyed it curiously, as Kentucky mountaineers were reputed to examine a well-dressed stranger. Was he just a visitor, or was he a revenuer? Riegleman showed resentment rather than any other emotion. His razor-thin mouth was a tight, angry line, and his hard blue eyes seemed to send out sparks of indignation. This was understandable, knowing Riegleman. A corpse – worst of all, a nameless corpse – was threatening his already tight shooting schedule.

  Paul pushed a thin white hand through black hair and frowned at the unknown. His thoughts were fairly obvious. A “ringer” had slipped in on him, and Riegleman would want to know how it had been done. Paul’s thoughts were concerned with his job.

  Sammy just gaped. If Sammy had thoughts at the moment, they slumbered.

  I tried to analyze my own feelings. When Paul had said that one Herman Smith was missing, I had immediately begun to wonder why anyone should want to kill him. For I held to the possibility of murder. If it should prove to be accident, the matter was done. But if it were murder, there was need for thought and investigation, all necessarily based on his identity.

  And here we had a stranger. A dead end for thought. You cannot find a motive for the murder of a completely anonymous person. You must know his habits, associates, and enough of his background to determine why his death was desirable to one or more persons. It would be possible for a murderer to kill with impunity as long as the corpse remained anonymous.

  I became aware that Riegleman, Paul, and Sammy were looking at me. I gave them what has come to be known as my quizzical expression and said nothing, loudly.

  “This is in your field, George, old boy,” Riegleman said.

  I tapped a cigarette against my thumbnail, looked as disinterested as I could under the circumstances, and said, “Oh?”

  “It’s a mystery,” Paul said. “That’s your dish.”

  I didn’t like the way he said it. He was too eager to place a burden on me, too eager to overlook his particular responsibility.

  “I was under the impression,” I said casually, “that the casting director was expected to be familiar with the extras.”

  Paul flushed as Riegleman’s gaze swung to him. “It’s the beards,” he said apologetically to Riegleman. “You can’t expect anybody to tell ’em apart. This guy’s supposed to be Herman Smith, according to my records. Everybody else was checked off at lunch. If he’s somebody else, can I help it?”

  Riegleman didn’t answer, and Paul flushed again. He flashed me a venomous glance and turned away.

  Sammy made his single contribution to the investigation. “Hey,” he called from under his wagon refuge, “how about a social security card?”

  “Of course,” Riegleman snapped, and knelt by the body.

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “Mustn’t touch. Clues, you know.”

  Not that there were any clues. At least, I couldn’t see any. How different this was from my screen plays. As The Saint, or The Falcon, I had been confronted many times with situations more baffling than this, and always I had penetrated brilliantly to the heart of the matter, seen a clue, reconstructed the situation and acted unerringly. But here was a nameless bearded corpse sprawled inside the circle of wagons on baking sand. There were no dropped collar buttons, no cartridges of an odd caliber, no telltale footprint with a worn heel, no glove lost in haste.

  It seemed as if somebody had simply thrown away an old corpse he no longer needed.

  I began to wish that we could throw it away too. If there was one object that we didn’t need, it was a corpse. Especially one with a beard, with no name, and with a spurious work slip.

  I could almost hear wheels of thought spinning in Riegleman’s long skull as he glared down at the body. Seven Dreams was on a tight budget. He had planned to shoot these outdoor scenes in two or three days. An investigation into the death of this man would throw the shooting schedule off.

  An investigation was under way even at that moment. The rest of the company, with an almost clairvoyant curiosity, was moving toward us in a close­packed, muttering group. I walked to meet them.

  “Don’t come any closer!”

  They stopped. I told them that a man was dead, and that they should stay away until called. “One of you may be able to identify him, but the police should look over the scene before we track it up. Please go back and make yourselves comfortable.”

  They did, and I returned to Riegleman’s side. “I hope you don’t mind my taking charge that way,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Sammy!” he snapped.

  Sammy gave him a sidewise look from under the wagon.

  “Sammy, you had charge of the ammunition in those carbines. Every cartridge was supposed to be blank. What have you to say?”

  “What can I say?” Sammy replied. “Evidently at least one wasn’t blank. Is that my fault? Am I supposed to examine thousands of cartridges, one at a time?”

  Riegleman seemed to drop that line
of thought. “It seems strange,” he muttered, “that the shot should have gone so exactly to a vital spot. There’s an almost geometrical precision in that wound. Dead in the center of his temple.”

  “It’s just a freak accident,” Paul said. “Like cyclones.”

  Riegleman gave him a puzzled frown. “Cyclones?”

  “Sure,” Paul went on. “I remember one that blew a farmhouse all to hell and gone, but picked up a basket of eggs and set it down a mile away without breaking an egg.”

  “What are you talking about?” Riegleman demanded.

  ‘I’m simply saying that the impossible can and does happen all the time,” Paul said. “If one shell was loaded in all those carbines, it’s not hard to believe that it smacked this poor guy dead center. It’s no harder to believe than that egg story.”

  Riegleman thought this over. “Yes,” he said finally. “I believe it is better that way. The accident theory will let us stay on schedule. Shall we agree on that?”

  He gave the three of us a questioning glance.

  Sammy’s fat face became flaccid with relief; an accident story would relieve him of responsibility. Paul’s dark, thoughtful face indicated furious thought. He was examining the idea from all angles.

  I said, “The mysterious stranger.”

  Riegleman frowned. “So?”

  “Suppose,” I amplified, “that we accept the possibility of somebody getting smack in the way of a slug. It strains credibility, but suppose we accept it. Then I submit that we cannot accept that the person shot should be the only one in three hundred persons who is unknown.”

  “You’re making it murder!” Paul exclaimed.

  ‘I’m not making it anything. I’m analyzing. Someone else has already made it murder – maybe. We have to consider it.”

  They considered it. They didn’t like it. But whatever they were going to say about it was cut off by a low moan that drifted nearer across the sand dunes. A siren heralded the approach of lawful authority.

  This was Gerald Callahan, sheriff, and his deputy, Lamar James. The big sedan which carried them swirled up to us in a cloud of dust, a rear door popped open and a man rolled out like a barrel of beer.