“Stomach or no stomach, nobody can see around a corner,” Dorothy said judicially after a moment’s thought.
Mildred, who seemed anxious for her own company, was moving away. Suddenly I had an idea. “Listen,” I demanded, “tell us just one thing before you go. Was it—was it Uncle Alger that you saw last night downstairs?”
Surprised, she turned to face me. “What?”
“Was it Alger Ely who frightened you?”
Slowly she nodded. “Yes, it was,” said the little black-haired cousin. And then she ran headlong for her room.
I turned to Todd triumphantly. “Dr Watson scores!” I said.
He smiled. “You didn’t notice, did you, that when Mildred answered you she was looking at your necktie?”
“My necktie? What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing is wrong with the necktie,” Dorothy told me gently. “Todd means that something is wrong with the answer she gave. Meaning that whoever it was she saw downstairs, it wasn’t Uncle Alger!” And Dorothy walked slowly down the hall in the wake of her sister.
Todd stared after her. “There’s a girl!”
I told him that was just what I was thinking.
He wasn’t listening. “Just like a man,” he went on. “You can talk to her. And she has ideas, too. Just the sort of person to be shipwrecked on a desert island with.”
“What about Mildred?” I reminded him, a little nettled.
His expression softened, and he took a deep breath. “Mildred is—Mildred,” he said solemnly. “You don’t need to talk to her, and she doesn’t need to have ideas, and we don’t…”
“Need a desert island, either,” I finished for him. Down in the drawing room I could hear someone, presumably Mabel, playing inappropriate jazz on the pipe organ. Under cover of the booming chords I ventured a personal question. “You’ve made up your mind, then? About telling Mildred about your past, such as it is?”
He smiled. “Wrong, Alan. She’d forgive, but she won’t have the chance. When this is over and I can leave decently, I’ll fade out of the picture.” He shrugged. “And in the meantime, in spite of what the kid says, I think we’d better wash up this mystery. For our own protection. The first step is, obviously…”
“Telephone,” interrupted Oviedo, appearing suddenly at the foot of the stair. He aimed a brown finger at my chest. “For you, señor.”
I went back to the kitchen hall, spoke my name into the mouthpiece. “Well?” came an answering baritone. “This is Tom Bates speaking. You busy?”
I told the sheriff that my business could wait. “Then you may as well come down to my office pronto,” he invited.
“Found something?” I demanded eagerly.
“If I had I wouldn’t broadcast it over the phone,” he snapped. There was a new tone in the sheriff’s voice, and I knew that something was brewing.
Todd said he would be delighted to drive me, so we set off in the Auburn. We slid down the hill, raced along the uneven pavements of the ghost city of Cameron Heights. Todd chose a short cut, a dirt road that went along the brimming bank of the barranca, still swollen with rainwater pouring down from the farther hills. There Todd jammed the brakes and we slowed suddenly.
He pointed toward the yellow waters of the swollen stream.
“Water, water everywhere,” I said. “What of it?”
“Look again,” he said, and I saw a child’s boat, sail and all, whirling merrily along in the turgid waters.
“Weren’t you ever young?” I demanded. “That’s the greatest sport known to boys anywhere—sailing boats in the creeks and brooks and even in town gutters.”
“Look again,” said Todd. “That’s not a toy boat.”
The whirling craft which I had taken for some urchin’s flagship was closer now, and I could with difficulty make out the fact that it was only an empty sardine can with the top bent back so that it resembled a torn sail.
“Just the storm clearing away the refuse,” I observed. “Nothing there worth staring at!”
“Of course not,” Todd agreed, and started up with a jerk. Ten minutes later we were in the office of Sheriff Tom Bates of Santa Felice County. We found ourselves in a narrow box of a room upstairs over the local drugstore, facing the sheriff across a desk sadly bestrewn with old newspapers, accumulated correspondence stuck on a spindle, portraits of wanted criminals and enlarged photographs of fingerprints. A radio, tuned to the short waves of the Los Angeles police broadcasts, kept blaring almost without a rest, announcing in transparent code that a drunk was to be found at 760 North Gower Street in Hollywood, and that there was an ambulance follow-up at Wilshire and La Brea.
“Ease your feet,” invited Sheriff Bates, indicating two straight-backed chairs against the wall.
He ruffled papers on his desk, rolled one of his homemade cigarettes and forgot to light it. Then suddenly he cleared his throat, leaned back in his creaking swivel chair.
“I asked you to come down here,” he began, “because it appears that there’s more to this case than I thought at first. To come to the point, it is beginning to look like your uncle got himself murdered, after all—just like you thought.” He was looking at Todd.
If he expected exclamations and applause, Sheriff Bates was disappointed.
“I’ve known that for some time,” Todd said. “Go on. What made you change your mind?”
The sheriff smiled a slow smile. “Couple of things,” he confessed. “One of them is this telegram.” He handed the blue-and-white sheet over, and Todd and I read it together, half expecting another of the mysterious Gilbert messages. But it was nothing of the sort. The editor of a “true detective” magazine, back in New York City, congratulated Sheriff Bates on having within his territory what appeared to be the future murder of the month. If it turned out to be a murder, and a solution could be reached in time for the March issue, the editor would be grateful for an opportunity to pay Sheriff Bates two cents a word for a ten-thousand-word story entitled “How I Solved the Mystery of the Roasted Recluse,” to be signed “As told to Staff-writer Gilbert Brock by Sheriff Thomas Bates.”
“For two hundred dollars, I’m positive it was murder!” said the sheriff heavily.
I mildly protested. “But after all, Sheriff—”
“You don’t think that’s reason enough?” the sheriff grinned. “Well, then—I’ll have to explain about the rest of it.” He fumbled through a couple of the drawers of his desk, and then thought to look in his vest pocket. He produced an envelope, folded twice. “One of the things we found sifting the ashes,” he explained. “The coroner is a bit dubious about the rest of it, but there’s no doubt of this. It’s a bullet!”
He rolled out a small blackened slug on the desk.
“The bullet that killed Joel Cameron,” he repeated, obviously enjoying himself thoroughly.
“Have a look at it,” the sheriff invited. “You may live a long time and not see anything like it.” He rolled the thing across the desk top in our direction.
“It’s a silver bullet,” said Sheriff Tom Bates.
VIII
For haply it may be
That when thy feet return at evening
DEATH SHALL COME IN with thee….
—ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
“IT’S NOT THE SHAPE you’d expect a bullet to be,” Todd was saying.
The three of us stared down upon a blackened bit of metal which looked singularly unimportant. “What do you expect with that terrific heat?” the sheriff said testily. “Enough to fuse any piece of metal, I guess.”
The lump of silver was not completely fused, I could see that. It seemed to be vaguely in the shape of a flat spool, somewhat like two disks with an enormously thickened and flattened axle between them.
“Pure silver,” the sheriff went on to explain, as if repeating a lesson he had learned, “is plenty soft enough to take strange forms when it hits something hard like human bone.”
Todd frowned. “And this is pure silver?”
<
br /> Sheriff Bates nodded gravely. “So the coroner says, and he’s a good laboratory man. He says there’s no trace of an alloy, and that it’s just silver, 99 and forty-four one hundredths per cent pure.”
Todd nodded. “Then it couldn’t be the remains of a watch, or anything like that,” he remarked softly.
“Of course not,” cut in the sheriff. “It’s the bullet your uncle was murdered with, I tell you. Though why anybody would want to shoot a man with a silver bullet, I don’t know.”
“Excuse me, but I think I do,” I put in eagerly. “It is a primitive superstition, an integral part of folklore, that a warlock or a magician can only be killed by a silver bullet! When you go gunning for a werewolf, you must load your gun with a silver coin pounded into a bullet!”
Todd whistled approvingly, and the sheriff leaned closer. “Like Dracula, huh? Say, was your uncle mixed up in any such funny business? I mean, did he have any friends who might get the idea he would be one of these what-d’you-call-’ems?”
Todd and I stared at each other. “Our family isn’t long on brains, but I doubt if any one of us still believes in witches and goblins,” I answered. “Though Mabel once owned a ouija board.”
The sheriff’s face lighted up. “Didn’t I tell you? Why—it’s the Mexican and his wife, of course! They knew about the ladder, they knew that they could easily fake an alibi with their friends in Mextown, and besides, any jury would hang that fat woman on sight.”
“But, Sheriff…” I began.
Sheriff Bates was not listening. “I’ve got a good notion to bring ’em both down here to the back room and try some of those big-city methods, like the third degree and such. I’ll bet you ten cents…”
“Wait,” said Todd. “There’s more to it than that. Besides, where would the Mexican couple get hold of a bullet of silver?”
“Pound up a fifty-cent piece, of course!” cried the sheriff.
“Chemically pure silver, remember!” Todd came back. “All silver coins are nearly a quarter alloy you’ll discover if you look it up in the encyclopedia.”
He was right. I suddenly realized that this silver bullet was a real clue. The combination of primitive superstition coupled with the resources capable of producing chemically pure silver must be unusual enough to lead us somewhere.
Todd got up to go. “It’s something to think about, anyway. Much obliged, Sheriff.”
But Sheriff Bates held up his pudgy hand. “You ain’t heard nothing yet, young man. Sit down, both of you. It wasn’t me who wanted you down here, not especially. It was the coroner. Sam Eckersall is on his way over now to make his report, and he phoned to say he wanted some member of the family to be present.”
“But why?” I wanted to know.
“Sam usually has some bee in his bonnet,” explained the sheriff. “Up to now he’s been arguing that there ain’t really enough of the remains to prove that Joel Cameron is dead. But that fellow from ’Frisco, that banker, was in here, and he made a lot of suggestions about newfangled ways of proving such things. I reckon Sam Eckersall has tried some of those methods out of the book, and wants an audience to hear about ’em.”
Just at that moment there came a knock on the door and a blue-uniformed county officer ushered inside a bustling little figure which I instantly recognized as that of the coroner. He stared dubiously at us through his thick lenses, and refused to take a chair.
“Which one of you gentlemen represents the Cameron family?” he demanded.
We said that we both did. “Very well,” said Coroner Eckersall, “I’m afraid that I have bad news for you.”
Like most bearers of bad news, Coroner Eckersall seemed vaguely happy about it. He peered at us speculatively.
“No, we’re not in tears,” Todd Cameron told him bluntly. “You’re going to say that you’ve final proof that Uncle Joel is dead, but if you think that is such terribly bad news you don’t know this family.”
“Humph!” exploded the coroner. “I’m going to do nothing of the sort. When I said bad news I meant just that. You see, there’s no proof in the world that your uncle is dead!”
The sheriff let out a long and disappointed sigh. Then—“Look here, Sam, did you try all those up-to-date tests and things that Mr Cohen told us about?”
The coroner sat down on a corner of the desk. “I was going to, anyway,” he retorted. “I had all the books, only I hadn’t got around to looking things up yet.”
Todd tossed the silver bullet back to the sheriff. “Well, it was a good idea,” he said. “There goes your murder.”
“Wait!” cried the coroner. “If you’d listen a minute! I didn’t say there wasn’t a murder, did I? I did not! But I’ll begin at the beginning. First off, I took samples of the ashes from the garage. According to the book, Webster on Legal Medicine, there ought to be a mighty high per cent of calcium phosphate in ashes where a body has been burned.”
“A human body?” put in Todd.
“Any kind of a body, I guess,” the coroner came back. “Anyway, there was as high as two parts in a hundred. So that checks!” He stared at the sheriff in triumph.
“Go on, Sam,” ordered that official.
“So far,” continued Coroner Eckersall, “it could have been the body of anything, like I said. Or a side of beef…”
“Or a hound dog,” Todd Cameron suggested.
The coroner nodded. “Then I tried the precipitin test. I didn’t have the serum, but they sent me some down from L.A. It’s a beautiful test, beautiful! You take this serum, made out of a rabbit that’s been injected with protein and what not, and it will react when combined with the same protein—in this case human blood. Understand? Serum won’t do anything when mixed with a protein it hasn’t met up with before, either. So it’s a swell test to take to court. You can put your bloodstain scrapings, bits of stained cloth—or even ashes!—into the test tube filled with rabbit serum, and if the samples are human blood, bingo! there’s a white precipitate! Like snow,” added the coroner.
“Well?” demanded Todd.
“There was!” pronounced the coroner. “I tried it three times. Beyond a doubt there was a human body destroyed in that fire!”
The sheriff began to brighten. “Murder, anyway—if not your uncle it was somebody else!”
But Coroner Eckersall wasn’t through. “On account of what that Mr Cohen told me about a lot of money depending on proving that it was Joel Cameron who died in that fire, I tried everything,” he went on. “But there wasn’t much besides the ashes. Just a fragment of what I figure is a human ulna, or armbone, and this part of a jaw.”
The coroner took a package from his pocket, unwrapped it and displayed a grisly memento. I drew back, but Todd seemed interested. “Couple of teeth left in it,” he observed.
The coroner nodded. “Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the body,” he told us. “It was on account of those teeth that I’ve been carrying this jawbone around with me. I been to every dentist in town trying to find if they’ve been doing any dental work for Joel Cameron. But none of them have. I thought maybe they could recognize a filling or two.”
Todd said he’d read about such things. “But,” continued the coroner, “I guess your uncle hasn’t had any dental work done for a long time. Or else,” he finished, “this isn’t his jawbone at all.”
There was a short silence. “Just how much insurance did your uncle carry?” demanded the sheriff.
“You can forget that theory,” Todd shot at him, “because there wasn’t any insurance! So Uncle Joel didn’t plant a body hoping it would be taken for his.”
“I just had the idea,” apologized Sheriff Bates.
Coroner Eckersall started for the door. “I just wanted you to know where we stand,” he said, looking at me. “I like to see young folks have money to spend, and I’d like you all to get what’s coming to you, but as things look now I can’t pronounce your uncle dead. You know he’s dead and I know he’s dead, but it won’t stand in court.” He
opened the door, looked back over his shoulder. “Sorry!” he said, and departed.
“If Joel Cameron don’t show up for seven years you can have the courts pronounce him legally dead,” counseled the sheriff. He was playing with the silver bullet, tossing it up and down in his palm. “Anyway, whether it was your uncle or not, somebody died in that garage fire. And it’s up to me to find out just who it was.”
“As well as How, When, and Why,” Todd told him. “Well, Sheriff, if that’s all, Alan and I’ll be pushing along.”
Sheriff Bates stood up, came toward the door. “As a special favor to me, I wish you two wouldn’t say anything to the rest of the family about this. I’m figuring on dropping in on them in a little while, to shoot some more questions.”
Todd faced him with a curious twinkle in his eye. “You weren’t thinking of asking me any questions, were you ?”
The sheriff frowned, and then his face cleared. “Oh, you saw this wire from San Diego, eh?” He ruffled papers on his desk.
Todd nodded. “I can’t help reading upside down.”
Sheriff Bates laughed. “Yes, I been checking up on you. All about your little ruckus with the border officers. That was just after midnight, which barely gave you time to get to your uncle’s place when you did, even if you drove to beat blazes. Besides, the firemen swore that there were no tracks of a car in the road going up to Prospice when they started up there. So I guess you didn’t kill anybody.” Sheriff Bates smiled ruefully. “Mr Alan Cameron here seems to be out of it, too. Wish I could say as much for the rest of them.”
Todd, who had started to follow me to the door, suddenly stopped short. “I’m in this mixup, if not as a suspect as a sleuth. I know what you think of amateurs, you cops. But if you were open-minded enough to try a little psychological scheme of mine…”
“Huh?”
“We could smoke out this killer,” Todd finished. His voice was eager and contagiously excited. “It’s beautifully simple. Just this—instead of dropping in unannounced on the family, warn them that you’re coming!”
Omit Flowers Page 11
