The Star Reporter Mystery

by Norvin Pallas LLC

  “But there are several small villages on the way to Half Moon Lodge,” Ted observed. “Even if Desmond did go north, maybe he stopped off at one of them.”

  “It could be, but I’m more and more convinced that a small hunting lodge is quite likely. In a small village a stranger stands out too much, but not in a lodge that has a number of guests. I’d say the odds favored good old Hank Hudson, and I’m willing to bet on it. Ted, as far as I’m concerned you’ve earned your salt on this trip already.”

  Inquiry told them that there was only one bus each day to Half Moon Lodge, and that it left at nine in the morning. Whether they liked it or not, they would have to stay over in Union City for the night, which meant a dull New Year’s Eve.

  “Think you’d care for a movie?” asked Ronald, without much enthusiasm. “I suppose they’ll be jam-packed, though.”

  “I believe there’s only one movie in town, and I’ve seen the picture already.”

  “Any good?”

  “Not good enough to fight through a crowd.”

  At that point a knock sounded on the door, and when Ronald opened it, he found an employee of the hotel standing there.

  “The party is just beginning downstairs. Would you care to join the other guests?”

  “Isn’t it a private party?” Ronald questioned.

  “Oh, no, guests of the hotel are entirely welcome. Won’t you come down?”

  “Glad to!” Ronald and Ted answered.

  As they got ready to go downstairs, Ted looked for his white shirt which was at the bottom of his suitcase where it was less likely to get mussed. It had been painstakingly folded and put away by his mother, and he took it out carefully. As he unbuttoned it down the front, he suddenly gave a gasp of disappointment.

  “What’s troubling you, son?” Ronald inquired.

  “Look—on my shirt. A big splotch of ink on the collar. I can’t wear this shirt tonight, that’s certain. I wonder how it happened?”

  CHAPTER 11

  Stubbed Toes

  “Don’t you have another shirt you can wear?” asked Ronald.

  “Oh, yes. I guess Mom put in two white shirts for me instead of just one. But I still can’t understand it, Ron. Mom’s such a careful packer.”

  “It’s from your fountain pen, isn’t it? It must have jogged loose on the train and then leaked out on your shirt.”

  “It’s from the fountain pen, all right,” Ted agreed slowly. “I was looking for it this morning, but decided I must have forgotten to put it out for Mom to pack.”

  “Well, it’s only a spot. Mom’ll have some way of getting it out. Now let’s hurry up and get downstairs.”

  “It isn’t just the spot, Ron. There was something else happened this morning. I brought along an envelope with newspaper stories for the paper I wanted you to look over. Margaret Lake wrote a story about the surprise Christmas party at the children’s home, and I’m almost positive that when I put them away that story was on top. But when I came to take them out of the envelope, it was stuck away in the middle.”

  Ronald was all attention. “What did you think happened?”

  “Well, of course, Mom packed my suitcase, and though I know she wouldn’t snoop, she just might have looked into the envelope to make sure it was something I really wanted to take along. But I don’t know—along with this spot on the shirt, it just doesn’t sound like Mom at all. I think someone went through my suitcase on the train!”

  “Did anyone have the opportunity?” Ronald questioned him closely.

  “Yes, there was a pretty good chance. Not on the bus—I had my suitcase on the rack overhead, just as I did on the train. But on the train I left my seat once. The porter had told me there was a magazine and refreshment stand up front, and I was getting kind of bored with so many stops and decided I might as well pick up a sports magazine.”

  “Could it have been the porter or one of the railroad employees?”

  “Not the porter. He was up front by the stand. There wasn’t any conductor on the train, or, if so, I didn’t see him. They took our tickets when we got on.”

  “How many passengers were there?”

  “There were just the three of us—this man who got on at Logansview when I did, and another man who was sound asleep the whole trip. The three cars ahead were all empty. I suppose they were intended for the early commuter traffic out of Union City.” He stopped for a moment. “What do you think, Ron?”

  “So you believe it was this man who got on at Logansview? It would have been pretty risky. The other passenger might have awakened, or you might have returned sooner than he expected.”

  “I don’t think he would have had to worry about the other passenger—he looked pretty far out of this world. And I don’t think he would have had to worry much about me, either. He was sitting on the aisle just a few seats behind me. He could have hauled down my suitcase and put it on the seat beside him, and looked through it while he kept an eye out for me. He could have seen me coming a long way off—I wasn’t hurrying any—and put the suitcase back without my seeing him.”

  “There’s nothing missing out of your case?”

  “I can’t be sure just what Mom packed, but I don’t think so—not anything valuable, anyway.”

  “It’s hard to figure, Ted. It’s quite possible your fountain pen became loose in the suitcase, and it’s also possible that Mom looked to see what was in the envelope and accidentally dropped your papers, and that’s how they became disarranged. But suppose this man did go through your case. He must have been just an ordinary sneak thief. I don’t see how it could have had anything to do with the case we’re investigating. We didn’t decide till yesterday that you were coming along, and it would have been hard for anyone to get on to you in that short time.”

  Because Ronald seemed to dismiss the matter as of little consequence, Ted found himself almost convinced. They were dressed by that time, and after a quick glance in the mirror, they went downstairs. The main reception room was gaily decorated, and a small orchestra was already playing.

  If they had expected everyone else in the room to be a stranger to them, they were mistaken in one respect, for they soon discovered that Mr. Knight had also come downstairs and joined the party. He was clean-shaven with his hair slicked back, and he was wearing the latest style of clip-on bow tie. Altogether he presented a remarkably different appearance from the bedraggled old man who had played upon Ronald’s sympathies.

  Long after midnight when they had gone to their room again, Ted emerged from the bathroom looking puzzled. “Just stubbed my toe over the suitcase Mr. Knight left in the bathroom.”

  “Occupational hazard,” said Ronald carelessly, for it wasn’t his toe.

  “Something queer just the same,” said Ted in a low voice. “When I bumped the suitcase one of the initials came off.”

  “So what? They’ve been on there so long, it’s a wonder they didn’t fall off before this.”

  “That’s just it, Ron. I don’t think so. If the initials were put on when the suitcase was new, you’d think the leather under the initials would look newer, wouldn’t you? But this doesn’t. You can’t even see where the initial went on, and the leather there looks just as battered as the rest of it. It looks to me as though those initials were just pasted on lately.”

  “Mm,” said Ronald, who was busy at the moment going through his own suitcase. “Say, something queer here. If I didn’t know better I’d say somebody’s been through my suitcase, too. You weren’t rummaging through here, were you, Ted?”

  “Sure not. Don’t you think I like the way my head fastens on?”

  “Well, it surely looks like somebody’s been through here, and not very carefully. I never leave my shaver cord tangled up this way, and it’s never occurred to me to put socks in my shirt pocket. What’s going on anyway, Ted? What have we got that other people want?”

  “I’m sure I haven’t got anything that would do that man on the train any good. But that man isn’t register
ed here at the hotel, so he can’t be the one who did this. Who do you think it was, anyway?”

  “Mr. Knight, maybe.”

  “But he was downstairs at the party most of the time.”

  “He went down after we did. He’d have had time. Or maybe it was some of the help here. Ted, you’ve got me thinking about that initial. I’m going to take a look.”

  He did, and returned to the room with a thoughtful look on his face. “You’re right, Ted, it does look as though those initials were just added lately. But why, why?”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, his forehead rested in his arms. Ted watched him for a moment, then said:

  “It doesn’t look very good, does it?”

  “I’ll say it doesn’t,” Ronald agreed with reluctance. “It looks like I’ve been taken in as the prize sap of the old year. Those initials are just one of the casual little details you absorb without thinking, just one of the small things that helped convince me this man was Barry Knight’s father. Now it looks like those initials were just glued on to make an impression on me. This time I’ve been so wrong it isn’t funny. I should have guessed, though. Both Burnett and Carole warned me about this man, but I thought I knew more than they did.”

  “Carole?” asked Ted.

  “Carole Curtis,” said Ronald. “You’ve heard me mention her.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Ted, grinning.

  “Of course it wasn’t the initials so much,” Ronald went on. “The real thing that convinced me was that I was so sure Carole and I were the only ones who knew anything about Barry Knight’s background in Imperial. Mr. Knight’s story fitted in with as much as we knew. I’m sorry about your sore toe, Ted, but it looks to me as if I’ve stubbed my toe over this a lot worse than you did, and I’m going to have to come up with something big to clear myself.”

  “Who do you think Mr. Knight really is?” Ted questioned.

  “He isn’t Barry Knight’s father. I’d be willing to wager almost anything on that right now.”

  He had been up and pacing around the room, but now he sat down on the bed again and motioned Ted beside him.

  “Let’s keep our voices down to make sure this so-called Mr. Knight doesn’t overhear. No, I don’t know who Mr. Knight is, and I really don’t think it matters very much. The important thing is, what is he after?”

  “He’s trying to find Barry Knight, isn’t he?”

  “Exactly. Since my main mission is to find Barry Knight, and he managed to get himself invited along, that must be what he wants, too. Now who besides myself is interested in finding Barry Knight? I can think of only one person—Freddie Uglancie. He invited me to help him, and I refused, so this must be his next step. I feel nearly positive that Mr. Knight was hired by Uglancie to help him find Barry Knight.”

  “They surely went to a lot of trouble, didn’t they?”

  “They sure did, and not only that, but they had to work fast. They must have known about that Imperial angle, and they must have had a pretty good idea I hadn’t found out very much down there. Therefore they were able to make up a convincing story. They did that, all right. Look how careful they were with the details. They supplied Mr. Knight with a railroad pass, and I’ll wager now that he never worked a day on the railroad in his life. Then there were the initials, and the story about his check, and this long, elaborate story about Barry Knight’s relations with his father.

  “Do you realize where all this leaves us? Probably not a word that Mr. Knight told us was true. We still don’t have a single thing about Barry Knight except a vague feeling that he was once connected in Imperial, and that there was a gasoline station robbery there. We still don’t know the real story about that letter the minister wrote for him. Barry Knight is as much a mystery as ever, and I’m beginning to believe my first hunch was right—Barry Knight is a person who doesn’t exist.”

  “I was puzzled about that,” said Ted seriously. “You hinted over the phone that we were looking for a man who didn’t exist, and then when I got here you introduced me to his father. If he didn’t exist, how could he have a father?”

  “I’m convinced Mr. Knight is here for only one purpose. He is reporting to Uglancie everything we do, everything that might give Uglancie any hint about where Barry Knight is. I believe Barry Knight was just about ready to blow the lid off Uglancie’s slot-machine racket—or at least Uglancie is afraid he is—and that Uglancie is determined to find him at all costs.”

  “And then what?” asked Ted carefully.

  “Yes, and then what? Oh, I’ve been a prize sucker in more ways than one. Maybe I’m doing Barry Knight a great disservice by trying to find him at all. At least I didn’t do him any good when I helped Uglancie’s men to pick up his trail.”

  “What about that man on the train?” Ted reminded him. “You think he’s another one of Uglancie’s men?”

  “Yes, Ted, you’ve about convinced me about your man on the train. I didn’t see how they could have picked you up so soon, but then I didn’t see how they got on to the Imperial business, either. It wouldn’t have been so hard in your case. Mr. Knight left my rooms just as soon as I told him about our trip, and he must have phoned Uglancie immediately, who put his own man on to you. He must have already had a man out in this area, and it wasn’t hard for him to pick you up. And of course it’s clear now what he wanted—any hint we might offer about where Barry Knight is hiding himself.”

  “What are we going to do now, Ron?” asked Ted, feeling his excitement mounting. Big things were happening, and he felt squarely in the middle of them. “You think we can give Mr. Knight the slip in the morning?”

  “No, Ted,” said Ronald slowly, “I don’t think I want to play it that way. He already knows what bus we’re taking and where we’re heading. He’s found out the most important things from us, so it’s too late to worry about that. He knows Barry Knight is probably hiding at Half Moon Lodge—for his own sake I hope he isn’t, though I’m very much afraid he is. But we have got one advantage. We know Mr. Knight is a phony, but they don’t know we know he’s a phony. That’s our trump card, and we’d better keep it hidden until we’re ready to take the trick.”

  CHAPTER 12

  North to Half Moon Lodge

  They were up in plenty of time to catch their bus. The sun came up brightly, and their high spirits lingered from the party, so that Ronald was willing to cast a more forgiving light on Mr. Knight.

  “He’s a scoundrel, all right, but he isn’t quite the sort of scoundrel I thought. In my opinion a father who neglects or abandons his children is just about the lowest form of animal life. But he probably never did that, no matter how much he tried to make me believe he did. And think what a good actor he had to be. Of course if he was going to pretend to be Barry Knight’s father, then he had to invent some story about how the two had been separated for so long. Otherwise, I would have had too many questions he wouldn’t have been able to answer. Just the same I had questions, and the answers rolled right off his tongue as smoothly as you please. It was a superb job of acting, and I hope he’s been well paid for it.”

  “You think that’s all he’s in it for—for money?”

  “Oh, I imagine so—that’s what most people are after. I don’t think he’s one of Uglancie’s men—he doesn’t seem quite the type to me. I imagine Uglancie hired him for this job, to try to find out what he could from us about the whereabouts of Barry Knight. That explains another thing, too. When he first came to me he acted as though he were broke, and now I believe that he really was broke. I think that this money he’s been throwing around was a down payment from Uglancie, after he’d managed to work his way into my confidence. He collected it when he was out supposedly getting his pension check cashed.”

  “Even so, Ron, Uglancie couldn’t be sure you’d really believe he was Mr. Knight.”

  “That’s true, and I think that perhaps Uglancie didn’t care too much. It was just a long shot that might come through or might not, and if it didn’t
, he’d try something else. First I refused to help him find Barry Knight; then he hired this man to pretend to be Barry’s father, and if that didn’t work, he would have gone on to a more drastic step.”

  “Such as what?” asked Ted, his eyes narrowing.

  “I imagine it would have involved having me followed, making sure of everywhere I went, every step I took. Of course it wasn’t necessary after they managed to get this fellow on the inside.”

  “Then you believe he searched your suitcase last night, too?”

  “Yes, Ted, I do.”

  “What do you think he expected to find?”

  “That’s just it, Ted. I don’t think he expected to find anything at all. He had plenty of time to search through my things before this, and he could have done it in a much more careful fashion. For these very reasons he may have thought I wouldn’t suspect him, but would perhaps blame it on some of the help here, who would certainly have passkeys.”

  “This doesn’t make much sense, Ron. What good did it do to have him search your suitcase?”

  “I imagine he did it under orders. You remember last night that we were talking a little bit loudly when you discovered that spot on your shirt. I imagine he overheard a good deal of what was said, and reported back to these people he’s working with. When they learned you were suspicious about that man on the train, they ordered him to do something to divert your suspicions. While they didn’t necessarily want us to grow suspicious of Mr. Knight, still the man on the train was of more importance to them. That’s why I think Mr. Knight is rapidly coming to the end of the road as far as his usefulness to Uglancie is concerned, and that’s the very reason why I think we have more to gain by keeping him with us. I hardly think they had any hope he could keep up the masquerade indefinitely.”

  Mr. Knight joined them just a short time before they were due to leave for the bus. They had all skipped breakfast, but no one minded, for they had eaten so well in the early morning hours.