by Leslie Ford
Con.—Guess Blake will want to write up his own four-alarm burglary. The reporter’s initials were penciled at the bottom.
She read it again, and read the story as it had been written leaving the Blakes’s four-alarm burglary out. Then she looked over at Chief Carlson to ask him, and changed her mind. He was county police, anyway, and this was something that needed a little time to think about. She put the story back on her desk face down and took a cigarette out of the box in front of her. Carlson was just about to the end of the editorial now, and he’d be gone in a minute.
He put the proof sheets down on the desk. “So Mrs. Blake is in a mess with the slot machines, is she?” he asked soberly. “Why do you say that, Miss Maynard?”
Connie was too surprised to think of anything at all to say for an instant. “Oh,” she said. “Why, I—I supposed you knew it. Everybody in town seems to—except Gus. I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t have peeped, but I thought that was the reason you were giving Gus such a fish-eyed stare in there. Let’s just skip it, shall we? It would make it frightfully awkward for me.”
A bleak smile lighted Carlson’s heavy face a little. “You mean you think maybe, because Mrs. Blake’s lost say a couple of hundred—”
He stopped. “More than a couple of hundred, is it?”
“I must be horribly transparent, Chief.” Connie laughed. “But you’re right. It is rather more than that.”
“A lot of people are more transparent than they think, Miss Maynard,” Carlson said. “But say she was in the hole a couple of thousand, even, you won’t think I think Gus Blake went out there and slugged Doc Wernitz on that account, now, will you, Miss Maynard? Maybe I’m dumber ’n I think I am, but I’m not that dumb. There’s another thing maybe you could tell me. About this deal Gus has got with your father. About the paper, I mean.”
Connie looked at him a moment. She said, “Thanks for telling me something. I supposed they had some kind of— deal. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps you’d better ask my father. Or Gus. What’s that got to do with Mr. Wernitz getting murdered?”
Swede Carlson shook his head. “Nothin’, Miss Maynard. Nothin’ in particular. I just wondered, that’s all. I’m interested in a lot of things, right now. What Wernitz did with all the dough he made, for instance. Whether he left a will. What made him decide to get out of town. Who he talked to about it. Who’d profit by havin’ him dead. A lot of things like that, Miss Maynard.”
He took his hat off the corner of her desk. “I guess you’re pretty new on this murder business,” he said. “You were pretty upset, last night, it looked like to me.”
He’s watching me. I’m transparent. She kept her eyes wide and interested, not blank, fixed on his face.
“I’m very new to it. It did upset me.”
“That’s what I figured.” Swede Carlson nodded his understanding. “Well, I’ll tell you, Miss Maynard. I’ve been chief here in Smith County for fifteen years next April. I’ve seen a lot of people killed, one way and another. When men kill each other, it’s when they get juiced up and blood-mad. It’s quick, then—quick and easy for the cops, too. Or a little fella can get scared of a big fella and not see any other road out. Or jealousy. Sometimes one fella thinks another one’s hangin’ around his wife too much.”
He shrugged his heavy shoulders as if that was just one of those things nobody could ever do anything about.
“But by and large, Miss Maynard, when one fella sets out and does a neat premeditated killin’, it’s because the other fella could put him in jail for swindlin’ him out of somethin’—money, property, somethin’ the fella stole from him—and the funny thing, it’s not so much him keepin’ the money, or the property, of the fella he stole it from as it is him keepin’ his own reputation. You know, Miss Maynard, I figure most killin’s that are premeditated, like the one we’ve got here, come because people are just plain cowards.”
The bleak eyes rested steadily on her.
“If you’re rich you’re afraid to lose your money and your reputation. But if you had to take your choice, it’s always your reputation. That’s the most important, just the same as if you were poor. I guess reputation’s mighty important, no matter how you look at it.”
Chief Carlson went over to the door. “Well, I guess I got to go. I better be thinkin’ about my own reputation. If I don’t get this business cleared up, I’ll be out on a rotten limb for fair. Ain’t often I get a chance to talk to a real intelligent lady.” He opened the door. “Tell Gus I’ll be back. I’d give him time to cool down a little first, if I was you.”
Constance Maynard sat motionless in her chair for several moments. Keeping her face rigid as it was she pulled open her desk drawer and reached for the mirror under the pile of papers in it. She held it up in front of her. Transparent. He’d said people were more transparent than they knew—but she’d known while he was still sitting there how transparent she’d become. The mirror only proved what her dry, slightly parted lips and the strained feeling along her eyelids had already told her. The rouge stood out in queer patches on her cheeks. She moistened her lips, blinked her eyes, and put the mirror in the drawer again.
He was talking about her father, of course. All the time he’d been pretending to talk about his experience with murder, he’d really been talking about John Maynard. She tried to think when it was she’d first become aware of it, but everything he’d said was so mixed up in her mind that she couldn’t think back over it and say when it was she knew that was what he was telling her. She got up and paced back and forth in the little room. Her father— Her father who’d told her at breakfast that it was best to keep her little nose out of things that were none of her business. She flung herself into the armchair again. But that was absurd. Her father had been at home. He was out in the pantry seeing about the liquor for the party when she got there at half past five. When was Wernitz killed? She caught the proof off the rack and ran her eye quickly down Gus’s story. Between five forty-five and seven. The service mechanic had phoned the police at twelve minutes to ten. According to the story, he had told them when they got out there and found him down in the basement with Wernitz’s body that he had come back from a call at 6:35 approximately, and found Wernitz dead, after he had tried to turn on the lights in the office and gone down to fix the fuse.
Five forty-five and seven. Connie put the proof sheet down. At five-thirty her father was in the service pantry. At a quarter to seven he was in the library, dressed for dinner, talking to her about Janey’s checks. It was impossible for him to have got out to Newton’s Corner, killed Wernitz and— She stopped and clenched her jaws, her cheeks flaming hot all of a sudden. How dared she even consider anything so stupid and revolting. It was like blasphemy even to think of it. Swede Carlson had better watch out who he was talking about.
She gave her head a violent shake and looked at her watch. As soon as she got through the stuff in front of her, she’d call her father up and ask him to meet her at the Sailing Club for lunch. Never. Never in all her life had she heard anything so foul and revolting, underhanded and positively rotten. She picked up the sheet with the police reports on it, and the note attached. The next thing, they’d be saying John Maynard had burgled the Blake house. She got up, went over to the door to Gus’s office, and wrenched it open.
“Smitty says do you want to write the—”’
She had got that much of it out before she saw Gus was not at his desk. A sheet of blank paper was sticking out of his typewriter—blank, but in too crooked for anybody to write on it. She glanced over at the corner by the washbasin. His hat and coat were gone.
“Where in the world—”
She turned quickly as the Gazette’s crime reporter, who also covered the financial district, consisting of the three banks on Courthouse Square, and the industrial district, which was the Rogers plant across Carson Creek, came in the door.
“What do I do about the Blakes’ burglar?” he inquired testily. “They’re going over to fingerprint
the joint. Do I cover it or does—”
“I don’t know. If he’d wanted it in, I guess he’d have said so. He didn’t, so I guess he doesn’t. Anyway, he’s gone. I don’t know where he is. Where’s his secretary? Ask her, don’t ask me.”
“She’s home sick with a cold in the head.”
“Then skip it,” Connie Maynard snapped. “He’s probably gone home himself if the police are there.”
“Keep your shirt on.” He started to close the door. “It’s okay with me. I don’t know what’s the matter with everybody this morning.”
“Wait, Smitty.” She came out of a red fog and started functioning again. “What is this four-alarm burglary? What happened?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Smitty said indifferently. “Just a guy in the house and Mrs. Blake scared him out. I just figured maybe there was an angle. The guy switched the lights out in the basement, like the Wernitz deal. But I guess Blake got that as easy as I did. I thought of telling Swede Carlson, but he was in there, so I guess Gus already told him. I’ve got to do the market report now. You can get winter kale for fifteen cents a bunch at Tony Modesto’s when you put your two bucks down on Crater’s Fancy— he’s a cinch for the three-o’clock at Bowie.”
THIRTEEN
CONNIE WAITED until the door shut, closing out the roar of the presses. Her teeth bit down over her full lower lip. So that was it; that was why Janey was downstairs at half past two in the morning. But why hadn’t Gus said anything about it to Carlson? Why was he keeping it out of the paper? She lighted another cigarette, went over to the soot-stained window, and looked down through the coarse screen grating at the garbage cans in the area that belonged to the lunchroom next door, without being conscious of them for the first time in six months. Unless— Was it possible Gus didn’t know anything about it? She shrugged the idea off at once. Janey would hardly miss the chance to be a heroine. Some things didn’t make sense. In fact, she thought suddenly, nothing made sense. She saw the garbage cans then and smelled the stale grease and dishwater seeping in around the windowpane, or imagined she did, and went back to her desk. If she got the paper out by herself today, she’d have a talking-point with her father. She sat down and got to work, laughing suddenly. The idea of getting him to give her the paper to save himself income tax must have been developing quietly in her subconscious mind all night. She remembered how it had occurred to her at the party while she was waiting for Gus to come. She’d settled for Gus, then. Today she rather thought she’d have them both.
She wheeled her typewriter around and set to work feeding out her own copy until she came across a precis Gus had written for a box on the front page. It was headed with a large question mark. Under it was: Who Murdered Doc Wernitz?
She read it intently.
The following are the known facts about Paul M. Wernitz.
He was 61 years old.
He was born in Czechoslovakia.
He came to the United States in 1909 at the age of 20.
He was naturalized in Tacoma, Washington, in 1919.
He went to Carson City, Nevada, in 1921 and worked there in a gambling-establishment, buying a controlling interest in it in 1926.
He came to Smith County in 1931, organized the Smith County Recreation Company Incorporated in 1936.
He bought the Chapman farm at Newton’s Corner in 1935.
He lived alone in the main farmhouse.
At the time of his murder last night, the former kitchen wing of the farmhouse was being occupied by Ralph (Buzz) Rodriguez, Wernitz’s assistant and service mechanic.
He employed five other assistants.
He kept the lights on in the house from sundown to sunup from a pathological fear of the dark.
He employed no household help.
He is reputed to be a wealthy man.
He was known, though not generally, to be closing his house and leaving Smith County.
Those are the known facts about Doc Wernitz. These are the known facts surrounding his murder as this paper got them from the Chief of the Smith County Constabulary, Henry L. (Swede) Carlson.
Doc Wernitz was expected to return to Newton’s Corner yesterday at 5:30 p.m.
At 5:15 p.m., Buzz Rodriguez turned the lights on in the main house, except for the old farmhouse parlor, which Wernitz used as his office and kept locked.
Buzz Rodriguez, George Jeffers, Franklin Thomas, and James Mason, service mechanics, were in the downstairs office of the kitchen wing at 5:00 p.m. waiting as usual to go on service calls.
Buzz Rodriguez’s story, as coherently as the police are able to make it out, is as follows:
He was not on duty until 8:00 p.m. but he was there at the house because a girl he expected to see had to work all day. Three calls for service came between 5:00 and 5:20. They were from widely separated parts of the county. A fourth call came at 5:24 from Heron Point. Buzz Rodriguez left a note under Wernitz’s door and took the call. He returned to the house at 6:20. The lights were not on in Wernitz’s office. He went in the house and saw the office door open. He tried the lights, found them out of order, and went down in the basement to replace the fuse. There he either fell or was struck on the head.
He is now in the General Hospital with severe concussion, under police guard until Chief Carlson can talk to him.
The three other service mechanics returned from their calls sometime after eight o’clock. Those calls were false alarms. The proprietors of the establishments denied they put such calls through. Four other calls were made after eight o’clock.
Buzz Rodriguez called the police at 10:02 p.m. and reported Wernitz’s murder.
The police say he sounded excited and incoherent.
They arrived at the house at 10:09 and found Buzz Rodriguez in the cellar with Wernitz’s body.
The fuse controlling the lights in Wernitz’s office had been unscrewed and was lying on the cellar floor.
The iron bar the murderer used to crush Wernitz’s skull was lying bloodstained beside him.
Buzz Rodriguez collapsed and was found injured, by Chief Carlson, at 12:42 while awaiting questioning under technical arrest.
Who killed Doc Wernitz? The Smithville Gazette will pay a reward of $1000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Doc Wernitz’s murderer.
Connie Maynard read it through, turned back to the first half, and read it through again. She sat looking down at it. Gus didn’t know anything about Doc Wernitz. He’d told her so on the way out to Newton’s Corner. Nobody knew anything about him. Her father had told her that. He hadn’t known Wernitz was a Czech, when he’d come to America, or anything about him at all. She was still wondering about it, slightly dazed, when her door opened. “Hi, Connie. How about some lunch?”
She looked up, startled. “Oh, hello, Dorsey. How are you? I’d love it. Is it lunch time?”
She looked at her watch, surprised, and then glanced through the door into Gus’s office. He still wasn’t back. She was still in a semi bewildered fog. How and where had Gus got so much dope about Wernitz—and when? That was even more amazing.
“I wish banking was that fascinating,” Dorsey Syms said, grinning at her. “Or maybe it’s the food at our house. I always know damned well when it’s pushing twelve.”
“I usually do, too.” Connie laughed. “But this really is fascinating. Look at it. Did you know this or any of it about Doc Wernitz?”
Dorsey propped himself on the edge of her desk and took the proof. “All I knew about him was he was a handsome customer at the Smithville Trust Company,” he said. “Carlson was in this morning. Boy, do I wish I had the dough that old buzzard Wernitz had.” He read the two columns of the box, and shook his head. “I didn’t know any of this, except the Newton’s Corner end of it. I always understood nobody knew where he came from. Or anything about him, till he got here.” He tossed the sheet back on the desk. “Lunch?”
“Oh—” Connie remembered abruptly. “I was going to call Dad and ask him to take me down to th
e Sailing Club.” Her yellow-green eyes smoldered as she thought of what Chief Carlson had really been saying to her.
Dorsey Syms grinned and shook his head. “He can’t afford it, Connie. Not today he can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
She controlled herself sharply. She hadn’t meant to sound alarmed, but she did.
“Hey, I didn’t mean it! All I meant was that he’s through being generous for the day.” He laughed and got Connie’s coat off the hanger behind the door. “I didn’t know he was that fond of our Janey.”
Connie pushed her chair back. “Will you tell me what you’re talking about?”
“It’s hush stuff, Con. Confidential as hell. He covered Janey’s overdraft for her this morning. Three hundred and twenty bucks’ worth of nice new overdraft. You should have seen Fergie. He almost had tears in his eyes, his secretary told me.”
He helped her on with her coat.
“I think it’s swell. I just wonder why he did it, is all.”
“Why shouldn’t he?” She took her compact out of her bag and powdered her nose. Why on earth had he done that? What had happened? What earthly reason—
“Well, don’t snap at me, Con,” Dorsey said equably. “It’s none of my business. All I was wondering was what Carlson’s going to think. Your father isn’t a noted philanthropist. Or didn’t you know that? Or am I wrong? Anyway, it’s a bank secret. I guess I shouldn’t have told you. For Pete’s sake, don’t tell him I told you. I’ve got trouble enough on my hands as it is.”
“Why? What trouble have you got?” Not that she cared. She had trouble of her own she’d rather worry about just now.
