The Star Reporter Mystery

by Norvin Pallas LLC

  After hanging up, Ronald set about getting his suitcase packed. He had checked the station just before calling Ted and found that an early evening train would be the best for him. They would take the coach rather than the sleeper, though, for he didn’t want to put Mr. Knight to any unnecessary expense. Anyway, he wasn’t feeling particularly tired and felt he could get enough shut-eye sitting up in the coach.

  He wondered what Ted thought about his call. Probably trying to figure out what it was all about, he decided, for he knew that Ted possessed an unusual share of natural curiosity, along with a special aptitude for solving difficult puzzles. A case like this would be right up Ted’s alley, and Ronald was glad he would have someone he could talk the matter over with. Although the two brothers often addressed each other as “muttonhead,” they held a high respect for each other’s ability. Ted would be bringing a fresh mind to the problem, and perhaps he would be able to recognize some little clue that Ronald had overlooked. Ronald hoped so, for from his viewpoint the case seemed to be bogging down. If he didn’t find Barry Knight in Union City, where would he turn next?

  When Mr. Knight returned, he had quite a number of purchases. This was the man who just the day before had claimed to be penniless, but he had a glib explanation.

  “I stopped down at the railroad branch office, and my check was waiting for me there. They cashed it without any trouble. That ought to tide me over for a week or two.”

  While his story was possibly true, Ronald couldn’t help but wonder how a retired worker on a pension could afford fifty-cent cigars, of which Mr. Knight now appeared to have a lavish supply. At least Ronald was wrong about one thing: Mr. Knight was no sponger. He paid for his own meals on the train, leaving generous tips, and also paid his share of their rooming bill in advance, when they arrived at the hotel. Although everything about him seemed phony, Ronald thought, maybe he really was motivated by a sincere interest in finding his son. Anyway, money wasn’t his object, or at least not Ronald’s money.

  They had arrived in Union City in the middle of the morning. As Ronald had expected, Ted had gotten there before them and had their rooms reserved. The third member of the party was introduced simply as “Mr. Knight.” Ted looked a little puzzled, for he evidently had expected a younger man, but Ronald had no time to explain just then.

  “What would you say to an early dinner?” Ronald suggested. “Train meals never fill me up, and maybe we can beat the noonday Sunday crowd.”

  Ted was very eager to learn more about the mission that had brought them all to Union City and made some reference to it at the table. But Ronald promptly said:

  “Oh, let’s not talk business at the table. I’d like to forget it for a little while and give my attention to what the menu calls ‘home cooking.’”

  A shade of disappointment swept across Ted’s face, but he was used to Ronald and quick to sense that there were undercurrents here he wasn’t aware of. It appeared that for some reason Ronald didn’t feel free to talk in front of the third member of the party, and so it would have to wait till they were alone.

  When at last the brothers were alone in their room Ronald asked: “What did you think, Ted, when I said I was looking for a man I wasn’t sure existed?”

  “I know what I thought on the slow train trip here. I thought that Union City seemed to be a pretty difficult place to get to, but as long as a man didn’t exist, maybe it was just as good a place not to exist in as any other.”

  Ronald laughed. Then he went on to explain the situation as clearly as he could. Ted listened with careful attention, and asked a few questions, until he had a pretty fair understanding of the situation.

  “And so,” Ronald concluded, “it appears to me that this whole affair hinges on whether Walter Desmond is guilty or innocent. Since I don’t see how he could be innocent, I don’t know why there should be any problem at all.”

  Though Ted examined the case carefully for any possible loopholes, he had to agree with Ronald that if it wasn’t Desmond, it would have to be the proprietor Don. There was no other way to explain how the burglar alarm came to be set. But here Ted was stymied, unable to explain Ronald’s objections to such a theory.

  “Do you suppose maybe Don was trying to steal Desmond’s invention?” Ted speculated.

  “I don’t think so. He didn’t seem to know just what the invention was about, or to be terribly interested. On top of that there wouldn’t be a great deal of point in stealing the invention—simply having a model of it wouldn’t mean much. I believe Desmond already had a patent applied for at that time. In addition, my impression is that the invention doesn’t amount to beans unless Desmond keeps working right along on it, trying to improve it.”

  “Then if it wasn’t the invention,” Ted decided, “Don must have had a grudge against Desmond, if Don really did steal his own money.”

  “Well, maybe, Ted, but I haven’t found anything to indicate that there was a grudge. Don seemed willing to forgive and forget the whole thing when I talked to him. But even if there was a secret grudge, maybe of long standing and over something we don’t know anything about, we still have to figure out how Don could have stolen the money.”

  “Maybe he stole it just the way he said. Desmond forgot to set the alarm, and Don came back to check up on him—maybe he made a practice of coming back every night. He found the alarm wasn’t set, robbed the register, and then set the alarm when he left.”

  “But if that’s so,” Ronald argued, “why did he go to so much trouble to tell me about it? And if this was a longstanding grudge and Don was determined to get even, would he have been so patient? How could he be sure that Desmond would ever forget to set the alarm? It would take a lot of patience to wait around, maybe months or years, for that to happen, and Don didn’t strike me as a particularly patient man. As I explained, setting the alarm was a complicated matter. If it were simply a matter of turning a single key or throwing a bolt, the action could become so automatic that a person might forget to do it, or afterward forget whether he had done it or not. I don’t think the same thing would apply so readily to a series of involved actions like this. No, I feel pretty sure that if Don was trying to get even with Desmond, he would have found a more direct, more immediate way.”

  “Ron,” said Ted excitedly as a sudden thought struck him, “maybe Don wouldn’t have to wait for Desmond to forget to set the alarm. He could have planned it all for that night. Isn’t it possible for a person to think he has done something when he really hasn’t?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you said that Don liked to fool around with these alarms as a hobby. Then wouldn’t he know how to disconnect the alarm somewhere inside, so that Desmond would think he had set the alarm when he really hadn’t?”

  “Say!” Ronald exclaimed, his eyes lighting up momentarily. “It does explain a reasonable way that Desmond could be innocent—provided Don is guilty—and that’s the thing that has always stumped me up to now.”

  Ted was studying his brother’s face closely. “But you still don’t like it?”

  “No, Ted, frankly I don’t think we’re getting anywhere at all,” said Ronald with a sigh. “Your theory is the kind of thing I might think of myself if I were sitting alone in my room. But I’ve met Don, and I’ve learned quite a bit about Desmond, and from that point of view it doesn’t make very much sense. There’s one thing that in my opinion knocks your whole theory out the window. Desmond must have known that his only chance of being acquitted was to pin the blame on Don. And yet at his trial he was very careful not to make the slightest accusation against Don, or to let his attorney suggest such a thing for him. Surely Desmond must have known better than we do what was going on. He didn’t think Don did it, and that ought to be good enough for us. No, Desmond must have been guilty. The alarm was set, there was no picture—”

  “A picture?” asked Ted.

  “Oh, yes, something I didn’t mention before. In the newspaper account of the robbery there is
one little sentence in which Don is quoted as saying, ‘I didn’t get a picture of the robber.’ That sounded screwy to me, and I thought, either he meant it as sarcasm or else the paper accidentally dropped out a paragraph of explanation. Then just today I realized what it must mean. I’ll bet that Don has a secret camera attached to his cash register that will take a picture of anyone who goes into it after hours, or maybe anyone who doesn’t press the keys in just the right way. Clever, I guess, but just one more thing to prove Desmond’s guilt, and one more reason to wonder why Barry Knight should have been so worried about a guilty man’s going to jail.”

  “That guy Don must be kind of queer,” Ted commented.

  “I guess you might say that,” Ronald agreed. “He admitted to being a screwball. Well, I suppose burglar alarms can be an interesting hobby if you happen to be interested in them, and I suppose there really is a good deal of justification for it in Don’s case. Filling stations do seem to get robbed more often than any other type of business enterprise. Even a bar will usually have a number of customers sitting in it constantly. But a filling station operator can be all alone for a while even on a busy night. And the way most stations are lighted up, it’s often easy to tell when the proprietor is alone.”

  He went on, “Don is a factor in this case, and we have to try to see how he fits into the whole picture. I’ll put it to you this way: in view of all the trouble in this case, do you really think it is just a small-time robbery, a gas-station proprietor who keeps a barrel of walnut shells in his attic, a guilty man punished, and all this happening so many years ago that it’s practically forgotten? Or do you think we’re concerned with an important invention, a prominent crime reporter, and a statewide slot-machine racket under Freddie Uglancie?”

  “You make it sound pretty important,” Ted admitted. “But did you ever think that maybe Don is one of Uglancie’s men?”

  “Hm, no, I didn’t. But I’d be inclined to doubt it. He’s a garrulous type—would have told me everything about his business, I think, if I’d hung around longer. Talkative people usually don’t have very much to hide, or else they don’t do a very good job of it.”

  The problem of what to do next had to be met. Ronald felt that the first thing was to try to get a glimpse at the hotel register for the day Knight could reasonably have been expected to arrive in town.

  “Will the clerk show it to you?” questioned Ted.

  “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Anyway, there’s nothing lost by trying.”

  CHAPTER 10

  A Spot of Ink

  It turned out that the clerk now presiding at the desk was an affable person. When Ronald explained he was trying to learn whether a friend of his had been there on that particular day, the clerk willingly opened the register and shoved it toward him. Ronald saw at once that Knight’s name wasn’t listed, but he scanned the list just the same to see if any of the persons could be Knight under a different name.

  The three married couples could be disregarded, as well as a single girl. That left only two names, and Ronald noticed at once that both men had taken rooms on the main floor, larger display rooms where salesmen could show their samples.

  He remarked about the room numbers and commented, “You must get quite a few salesmen in your trade here.”

  “Oh, yes, quite a number,” the clerk agreed. He wasn’t very busy just then, and seemed glad to talk.

  “What kind of men are they sending out on the road these days?” Ronald inquired. “Ambitious younger men, or steadier older men?”

  “We get quite a few of both, but I think there is a trend toward older men. These two men I remember especially. One was a heavy-set fellow with a booming laugh you could hear a block away. The other was an older man, with arthritis in his arm, so that he could hardly carry his sample cases. I felt pretty sorry for him.”

  So neither of these men could have been Barry Knight. After continuing the light conversation for a minute or two longer, Ronald turned away, feeling disappointed. Knight hadn’t come to the hotel, so where else could he have gone? Private homes sometimes had rooms for rent, and if he was going to rent a room, wouldn’t he have looked for it in an ad in the local newspaper? Ronald managed to get a copy of the weekly newspaper covering that period and found several rooms listed.

  He went up to his room, and after stationing Ted on guard to make sure Mr. Knight didn’t come back while he was phoning, he put through the first call. He found the first room had been rented, and the woman explained it had been rented even before the ad had appeared, and she was sorry he had been put to any trouble. At the second number the woman said her room was still vacant, and she seemed pleased to find someone interested. Ronald was very sorry she was going to be disappointed. The third phone rang a long time before a man’s angry voice answered. In reply to Ronald’s inquiry he said they had changed their minds about renting their room, and he hung up sharply. Well, Sunday afternoon was an inconvenient time to call, but Ronald felt that the matter was so important he had to do it.

  It had turned out to be a poor hunch at best, and though he hadn’t had much confidence in it, he felt obliged to check it out. Surely Knight wouldn’t have rented a private room when he was probably uncertain how long he was going to be there. When Ted suggested that Knight might have stayed with a close friend or relative, another objection held.

  “As far as we know, Ted, Knight came here on the trail of Walter Desmond. Wouldn’t it be a very odd chance that the trail just happened to lead him to a small town where he had a friend or relative to stay with? No, Knight isn’t here at the hotel, and he didn’t answer one of the ads in the paper for a private room, and he probably didn’t have any acquaintances here. That leads me to doubt very seriously that Knight is in Union City at all.”

  “What about Walter Desmond?” asked Ted. “Do you think he’s here?”

  “Well, it is just possible that Desmond came to Union City to stay with friends. But since Knight was looking for Desmond, if Knight isn’t here I don’t think Desmond is either. About the only possibility I can see is that Desmond is living in a private home, and that Knight found him and moved in, too. But that doesn’t sound very probable, since from the looks of things Desmond was anxious to keep away from Knight as much as from anyone else. The way it appears to me, Desmond merely came to Union City because it was the easiest way to get to another place. Knight came here in search of Desmond, quickly found something, and immediately left town. The question is, where did they go from here?”

  “I don’t think they could have gone farther west,” Ted pointed out. “If Desmond was going on west, why stop in Union City at all? He could simply have stayed on the train.”

  “By the same token it isn’t likely he went east, either,” Ronald went on. “In that case he would have gotten off the train before it reached Union City.”

  “Unless he wanted to double back on his tracks to throw off pursuit,” suggested Ted.

  “Well, that’s possible. However, we don’t know that Desmond had any idea he was being pursued. We don’t know just when Desmond went through Union City, but I imagine it was at least a month ago, and that it took Knight several weeks after that to pick up the trail to Union City. Anyway, if Desmond was afraid of being found and was trying to throw off pursuit, he may have gone anywhere, and our chances of finding him aren’t very bright. No, we’ll just have to assume that he went through Union City because it was the best way to get where he wanted to go, and try to figure out logically where he went from here.”

  “I don’t think he could have gone south, either,” Ted decided. “Turreyville is a railroad junction, with a branch running off southward, so if Desmond wanted to go south he would have got off the train at Turreyville.”

  “By a process of elimination we have come to the conclusion that Desmond must have gone north.” Ronald’s forehead furrowed. “I haven’t looked at a map. Just what lies north of here anyway? Do you know anything about it?”

  “
It’s sort of open country, I guess, leading off up into the hills. Didn’t you notice that big poster down in the lobby? It says: ‘HANK HUDSON’S HALF MOON LODGE. HUNTING. WINTER SPORTS.’ And the small print says it’s north of here, and there’s a regular bus going to it. The clerk told me a little about it, said they were trying to develop a new winter resort up there. Does this help us any?”

  “I think it does, Ted,” said Ronald, his excitement growing. “A hunting lodge sounds good to me. We really don’t know anything about Desmond’s business except that he was working on an invention, and a quiet, isolated place might be just what he was looking for.”

  “We could be wrong about it,” said Ted cautiously.

  “Yes, we could be,” Ronald admitted. “Sometimes all logic points one way, but there’s a little loophole, and the loophole turns out to be right. Let’s see if we can’t think of something to support our theory.” He thought it over seriously. “Say, I might have something. When I went through Knight’s clothes closet, I noticed that one of the things missing was Knight’s loud, flashy hunting jacket. He hardly ever wore it, but I’ve seen it once or twice. It wasn’t very suitable for the city, or even a town, but it would be just the thing for country or sports. Maybe Knight wasn’t as much in the dark as we are. Maybe he knew all the time where he was going, and that’s why he passed in and out of Union City so quickly. Does this all sound like wishful thinking?”

  “Just a little,” Ted advised him.

  The desk clerk was obliging once more, and not only answered all their questions about Half Moon Lodge, but supplied them with a map. They studied it for several minutes.

  “Certainly the closest way for Desmond to get to Half Moon Lodge was through Union City,” Ronald pointed out, “so that fits in with our theory so far.”