Trial by Fury

by Craig Rice

  Malone sighed “If we knew what he was angry about, we might know who murdered him,” he said thoughtfully.

  The white-haired man looked at the papers in his hand. “Mr. Malone, you are in my confidence. About this will. Cora Belle is dead. She has no heirs, that I know of, who would benefit from this. It would not affect me, in any case, as I am not named in Gerald’s previous will, which left everything to his daughter. Filing this would not only mean a considerable loss to Florence, with no worthy person to benefit, but a very definite personal embarrassment. I don’t want to do anything illegal, but—” he paused. “Well, she herself wanted it out of the way.”

  Malone reached out a hand. “I have a stake in this affair too. My friend’s missing, possibly hiding from the police, possibly kidnaped, possibly dead. I’d be very happy to keep that will for you until I can verify the fact that you don’t benefit under the old will.”

  He’d expected to see opposition in Henry Peveley’s eyes. Instead there was a friendly gleam. “Why, of course.” He handed over the document as though it had been a calling card. “I sent the old will up to Florence; you can go up there and see or even just telephone her. Then you can meet me, and we’ll tear this up.”

  Malone shoved it into his inside pocket and said, “I’ll meet you in the Hermitage speak”—he’d almost said “tavern”—“at nine tonight.”

  “Fine,” Henry Peveley said. He moved toward the door. “But whatever you do, don’t let anybody see that will in the meantime.” He opened the door and said, “We’d better not leave together. And when you go to the Hermitage tonight, give three slow raps on the door and say you’re a friend of Henry’s.”

  Malone waited five minutes, then slipped out the back door and down the alley. It was a wonderful county, he reflected, where there weren’t enough police guards to handle both entrances of a house. He picked a reasonably quiet street and went back to the Enterprise office, where he found Tom Burrows proofreading a long column of “personals.” There was no news of Jake yet. The Citizens’ Committee was considering demanding that Sheriff Kling resign from office. The half-ruined Farmers’ Bank was locked to the public and Jerry Luckstone and a state bank examiner had been inside there since noon. Helene was still downstairs.

  The little lawyer went slowly down to the riverside shed, wishing he could tell Helene that there was news of Jake, and that it was good. At least he didn’t have to tell her any news that was bad. Not yet, anyway.

  Florence Peveley was evidently just preparing to leave.

  “An awful lot depends on the man, of course,” Helene was saying in an advice-to-the-young voice.

  Florence Peveley said, “Yes, but if—” saw Malone, blushed, and said, “Well, I’ve got to be running along.”

  “Don’t hurry on my account,” Malone said. He started unwrapping a cigar. “Say, Miss Peveley—all right then, Florence—I wish you’d tell me one thing, just to satisfy my curiosity. What kind of will did your father leave?”

  She stared at him. “He left every cockeyed cent to me. of course. What would you have expected Pa to do?”

  “What about his brother—your Uncle Henry?”

  “He didn’t leave him anything. Henry had his own dough.”

  “That’s fine,” Malone said, lighting the cigar.

  She stared at him an instant, then turned to Helene and said, “Thanks,” and went up the stairs, three steps at a time.

  There was a short silence. Then, “Where did you go?” and “What did she want?” were asked simultaneously.

  “Never mind what she wanted,” Helene said. “It had nothing to do with murder or with Jackson County or with anything of the sort, and none of your damn business, and I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”

  Malone puffed at his cigar and said, “I hope you told her that helpless stuff was no good any more. And does she have anyone in particular in mind?”

  A faint pink came into Helene’s cheek. “No one. Just general information in case she spots someone. Now answer my question.”

  Malone hesitated. “I’m breaking a confidence when I tell you this,” he said, looking at his cigar end, “but you and Jake and I are the only people in the world who ever will know.” He told her of the curious last will and testament of Gerald Peveley, ex-Senator.

  Helene scowled becomingly. “What was the idea? It couldn’t have been one of those things. Or maybe it was, but this was something else. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Not quite,” Malone said. “Try it again.”

  “I mean, even if he was quietly keeping company with Cora Belle, it wouldn’t quite account for his making this will. There had to be some other reason.”

  “I gathered that already,” Malone said. “But what was it?”

  “Well,” Helene said, “it seems like a pretty gaudy gesture to make out of pure friendship. She couldn’t have been blackmailing him, could she?”

  “She could,” Malone told her, “and she probably would have if the opportunity presented itself. But it seems like a silly way to blackmail anybody. Remember me in your will, or I’ll tell the world you did such-and-such. There’s a kind of sweet unreasonableness about it that doesn’t appeal to me.” He paused and added thoughtfully, “Besides, it wouldn’t work. You could make a will and give it to the blackmailer, and then quietly go away and make another, later one, and leave it in a good safe place and then go ahead and die. Blackmail isn’t very effective on a ghost.”

  Helene shrugged her shoulders. “All right. You tell me what it was.”

  “At a time when he was already pretty sore at his daughter,” Malone said, “as we already know—Cora Belle, according to her letter, did him an important service. My hunch is that she gave him some information that was highly valuable to him.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “I think I know that too,” Malone said. “And if I’m right—”

  He was interrupted by the sound of clattering footsteps down the rickety stairs. For a moment he held his breath. No, those weren’t Jake’s footsteps. A sudden cold perspiration broke out on his forehead.

  It was Jerry Luckstone, pale, tired, and harassed, but with a new light in his eyes.

  “Malone, will you come over to the bank with me? I think we know pretty much what’s what there, but I’d feel better if I had you along.”

  The lawyer rose stiffly to his feet. “This isn’t really my party, you know,” he pointed out. “I’m just a visiting spectator. But if you want me to come along—” He’d have nursed a broken heart for days if the district attorney hadn’t come for him.

  “I guess I can have an unofficial expert lend a hand,” Jerry Luckstone said.

  Helene had risen too. “You’re not invited,” Malone told her.

  “I didn’t expect to be. I’m going back to the hotel and take what passes for a bath in the General Andrew Jackson House, and get dressed up.” She pushed back a strand of hair. “I want to look my best when Jake comes back.”

  Malone and the district attorney exchanged a quick glance and said nothing.

  “And stop looking so anxious and protective,” she said firmly. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  As they passed through the Enterprise office, they found Dr. Spain giving the young editor a news item about a pair of twins just born at Jay Creek. He looked at the trio curiously.

  “Is this an arrest, Jerry, or are you just going out to lunch?”

  “He’s the worst old gossip in the county,” Tom Burrows said. “Never tell him a thing.”

  “Just curious,” Dr. Spain said.

  “Well, it’s not an arrest,” the district attorney told him. “I’m just taking advantage of Mr. Malone’s kindness to get some expert assistance.”

  “Good idea,” said the doctor. “No amateur ought to monkey with anything important. Like the time Luke McGowan tried to lay a new concrete floor in his sister’s basement.”

  “What happened to it?” Malone asked, fascinated.

&nbs
p; The doctor was feeling through all his pockets. “Oh, the floor turned out fine,” he said. He finally produced a tobacco tin. “But it took nine hours to get the concrete off Luke.” He started hunting for his pipe as he added, “He was damn near petrified.”

  They parted from Helene at the entrance to the Farmers’ Bank, she going on to the hotel. Malone looked around the little building curiously. The debris had been carefully swept away, and a hastily constructed wooden affair, resembling a picket fence, was serving as a teller’s cage. There were a number of broken spots on the plastered wall. Malone looked at them with an uncomfortable interest, wondering which one his head had made.

  Jerry Luckstone led the way back into the office, a room untouched by the explosion save for a cracked pane in the glass door. It was a small, very plain room, with two windows overlooking the river twelve feet below, furnished with an imitation-mahogany desk, a bookcase, and an assortment of uncomfortable chairs.

  At the moment the room seemed fairly crowded. Ellen McGowan was there, and Phil Smith, Mr. Goudge, Ed Skindingsrude, and a man who was introduced to Malone as “Mr. Pepper from Madison, the bank examiner,” a razorfaced, unhealthy-looking citizen with gold-rimmed glasses.

  Phil Smith said, “Ed dropped into the office just as I was leaving and I thought I’d better bring him along. He was a bank director when most of this was going on.”

  Malone sat on the window sill and stared down into the shiny green water of the river. He didn’t want to watch any of the faces in the little room, and he was going to be glad when this was over. There was a cold, uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Mr. Pepper cleared his throat. “The situation still requires considerable study,” he began stiffly. “I should estimate it will take a week of careful checking to make the entire picture clear.”

  “Never mind that,” Ed Skindingsrude said. “Is there any money missing, and how much, and who got it?”

  “There appears,” Mr. Peppers said, “to be a shortage of approximately $76,000, evidently embezzled over a period of some years. I am of the tentative opinion—”

  No one paid any attention to his last words. Jerry Luckstone walked over to the desk and began fingering a handful of papers. “These notes—”

  “Undoubtedly forgeries,” the examiner said in a cold voice. “As I said, it will take about a week—”

  “No it won’t,” Ellen McGowan said suddenly. “I can give you all the details in half an hour.”

  Malone couldn’t avoid a quick glance at the spinster’s face. It had suddenly grown very old. He rose and stood looking out the window, his back to the room. This was the part he hadn’t wanted to see.

  Ellen McGowan’s voice was clear and perfectly calm. She might have been giving a treasurer’s report to the Federated Women’s Club as she told the story of her embezzlement of $76,000 over a period of six years. She gave facts and figures and dates, referred to forged notes made to to cover up shortages, and to duplicate ledger statements of scores of accounts. Malone paid little attention to the details. Any discussion of financial matters, beyond a simple business of debts versus cash on hand, bored him. The important point was the missing money, and the identity of the embezzler. No, there was one still more important point.

  When the woman had finished talking, Malone turned around. Everyone in the room was completely silent, every face as expressionless as a board.

  “You’ve left out something,” Malone said wearily. “What did you do with the money?”

  She looked at him, her gray eyes blank. “That doesn’t matter. It’s gone.”

  “It does matter,” Malone said. “You didn’t spend $76,000 in seven years.”

  The faces in the room were all looking at him now. He lit a cigar with slow deliberation and tossed the match into the river.

  “How much money was your father short in his accounts when he died?” Malone asked.

  Ellen McGowan’s face was white as chalk. “He had debts, but he hadn’t stolen any money. He expected to pay every penny of it back.”

  Malone made a quick examination of his memory. “It was from the school funds, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was a shade lower now. “But it wasn’t an embezzlement. In those days the treasurer took the district’s money and kept it in his own account, simply being obliged to the county for the amount. There’s a different arrangement now. But,” she caught her breath, “he was perfectly honest. It was just that when he died, he owed the county about twenty thousand dollars.”

  “How did you guess it?” Jerry Luckstone asked, looking at Malone with a kind of wonder.

  “I didn’t guess,” Malone said. “I’d heard that her father was something of a gambler, and that she adored him. When she admitted to this embezzlement, it looked like covering up for him.” He was looking at the end of his cigar, not at any of the faces in the room. “I knew it must be the school funds, because those records that were destroyed were the school-fund records.” He added, “The important thing is where the rest of the money—some fifty thousand dollars— went to. Or rather—who it went to.”

  “The important thing,” Ed Skindingsrude said, “is who murdered Senator Peveley.” He breathed heavily. “And planted a bomb in the bank and strangled poor Cora Belle.”

  “I don’t know!” Ellen McGowan’s voice suddenly had a high, shrill tone. “I don’t know anything about it. That hasn’t anything to do with it.”

  “Oh yes you do,” Malone said. He spoke coldly and deliberately. “You know, and you’re the only person alive who does know.” He paused. “Except one. The murderer.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wild. He could see the last color draining from her face.

  “I know you do,” he went on in that same, clipped tone. “Because I remember a little of the explosion. I remember two things, your scream and the explosion itself. And you screamed before the bomb went off. Because you saw it and you knew what it was.”

  Everyone in the room seemed to be moving a little closer to the gray-haired spinster. She was swaying a little.

  But Malone never finished what he was going to add. This time the scream that he heard came from outside the bank. He wheeled around to the window. As he moved he saw Ellen McGowan fall across the imitation-mahogany desk, in a strange, distorted posture.

  It was all too quick for him to realize what was happening. There were a couple of people running frantically on the Third Street bridge. The scream had come from one of them. As he looked, something struck the water with a splash. There was a faint struggling in the water as the something was caught in the current and swept downstream toward him.

  He moved instinctively, scarcely realizing he had thrown off his coat and dived from the window of the Farmers’ Bank until he felt the cool water of the river on his body.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A distinguished alumnus of the old swimmin’ hole, Chicago River Chapter, South Branch, which in his childhood had been the bathtub of the city’s lower West Side shanty town, Malone still dived like a bullfrog, but he swam like a wharf rat.

  The current favored him. Swimming with it, he worked his way out to midstream just as the struggling girl was carried down. He managed to reach and grasp her, and for a moment paddled frantically, keeping them both afloat. Her long, wet hair swept across his face, blinding him, until he managed to shove it aside.

  Fighting there in the water, he was surprised that his mind was so clear. From the shore he could hear shouts and voices. Damn-fool thing to do, he was telling himself. Go to work and get drowned in a river, with the best years of your life ahead of you, just because you wanted to make a hero out of yourself.

  The girl had become limp as a wet potato sack. He held her with one arm, trying to work toward shore. A voice near him yelled something about a rope. He hoped they wouldn’t send for the fire department to bring a rope.

  Ahead of him was the curve in the river, just beyond the Enterprise building. He headed for it, u
sing the current to his best advantage, hampered by the dead weight of the girl, as well as by his clothing. Those on shore had seen the direction he had taken and were moving that way. Through a film of spray he saw Helene going down the edge of the river, running like a deer.

  Someone had found a rope. As the current swept by the curve Malone worked close to the shore just as Jerry Luck-stone grabbed the rope and threw it. His aim was faultless. Malone caught it with his free arm, clung to it, and was half propelled, half dragged across a mudbank and up onto the grass.

  For a moment he lay there on the grass, panting, his eyes closed. Then he sat up and wiped the mud from his face.

  “Did—any one of you God-damned so-and-sos—pick up my cigar—” he gasped indignantly.

  Helene shoved him back on the grass. “Wasn’t anybody in this crowd ever a Boy Scout?” she was demanding. “You’re supposed to kneel on his stomach.”

  “If anybody kneels on my stomach,” Malone managed to get out, “I’ll kill the bastard.”

  “Oh thank heaven,” Helene said. “You’re all right!”

  He lay there on the grass, gazing up at the treetops and the hot, blazing sky beyond. The sky had never looked quite so beautiful before. There were voices all around him, but he paid no attention to them. It was a wonderful world, a perfect world, and here he was in it, alive, and able to enjoy it. Nothing else mattered very much.

  Somebody said. “Here, this’ll revive him,” and held an old-fashioned flask to his lips. Malone automatically swallowed, strangled, gasped, exploded, “What are you trying to do, murder me?” and looked up into the apologetic face of Henry Peveley, who was hastily reconcealing the flask in his hip pocket.

  Malone struggled to his feet, pushing aside the hands reached out to help him. The combination of wet clothes and accumulated mud seemed to weigh a ton.

  “Who was she?” he demanded. He looked around. “And where is she?”