The Weird World of Wes Beattie

by John Norman Harris

  As they crossed the bay, they could see above them a huge gingerbread frame cottage in the moonlight.

  June shuddered. “I’m going back right now,” she said. “Sidney darling, get me out of this! I just saw Alfred Hitchcock’s shadow on the rocks.”

  When the engine stopped, the silence was ghastly. On their own level, all was inky blackness. Above them the moonlight played on mansarded roofs and gingerbread woodwork.

  “I know it,” June said. “That house is crawling with mastiffs, their vocal cords cut, and they leap out on one silently. There are deaf butlers in ancient evening clothes, carrying decanters on silver trays to elderly recluses. There are hatchet-faced housekeepers putting black widow spiders in the bed linen and trap doors that open in every corridor. I won’t go near it.”

  “All right, chicken,” Sidney said. “You stay in the car where it’s warm.”

  “What’s that? You’d leave me here, with Boris Karloff creeping through the woods from his grave? You swine! If you move one foot from me, I will utter one piercing shriek and go mad. It runs in my family. My brother…”

  “Shut up,” Sidney said. “Let’s go. Can you get us in there, Snake?”

  “Nothin’ to it,” Snake said. “But we gotta watch out for alarms and wiring systems.”

  “Alarms and wiring systems,” June said. “That’s all I need. When we trip the wire, mad gorillas are released in the grounds. I see one now.” Her fingers were firmly gripped in Sidney’s arm as they walked up the rocky path to the broad veranda.

  “Lord, what a place!” Sidney said quietly.

  “Part of Little Pittsburgh, all right,” June whispered.

  At the top level the rock had evidently been blasted off to make a lawn and garden, and it was possible to imagine the place in summers of long ago, with Chinese lanterns over the lawn and men in white ducks walking among the rose arbors with the dark-eyed beauties of Pittsburgh. But with the temperature at zero, it required a fair force of imagination.

  The windows were all stoutly shuttered and the doors were boarded over. Snake, an expert in choosing the path of least resistance, found a likely-looking window and went back to the car to get the proper implements for opening it.

  “Intrepid fellow!” June whispered. “I wish I’d never seen The Cat and the Canary.”

  Snake Rivers worked calmly, with truly professional skill, and in a few minutes had the shutters open and the sash raised. Sidney went in first, followed closely by June, who immediately seized his arm again, and Snake came in last.

  The house was completely furnished in the grand manner, but everything was old and dilapidated and covered in thick dust. They found the great entrance hall with its curved staircase and balcony, and turned their flashlights on ancient carpets and brocaded chairs. They went up the stairs and turned along a corridor with sixteen closed doors. June nearly stopped the circulation in Sidney’s arm.

  “They’re lurking behind those doors,” she said. “I know it. Butlers. Evening clothes. A mad lady, still in the wedding dress she wore the day her bridegroom was killed.”

  Heavy electric cables lay along the floor of the corridor and turned into a bedroom, where two modern-looking twin beds were set up in one corner, with a vanity table of modern design beside them. Elsewhere in the house the ghosts of Gadwell’s film industry were to be seen, but it quickly became obvious that the house had been unused for a long time.

  They found a basement, hewn out of solid rock, that had evidently once been a wine cellar, but in more recent times had been used as a film laboratory.

  “Look!” June said. “Movie makers! I told you Hitchcock had been here.”

  But the house was cold and deserted, and there were no indications of recent human activity.

  “Gadwell certainly hasn’t been spending the weekend here,” Sidney said.

  They emerged by the same window that they had entered, and Snake made everything fast.

  Back at the Citroën, Sidney cast about and found where the Cadillac had parked on the snow-covered beach.

  “Ah, here we are,” Sidney said. “He went that away.”

  The footprints led along a different path, right across the island to a two-story frame boathouse with a spring-locked door.

  Snake looked the place over and went round to the side, where he climbed a tree and let himself in by an upstairs window, returning via the stairs to admit the other two.

  “Warmth,” June said. “That’s what we need.”

  The temperature in the boathouse was far from cozy, but after the near-zero weather outside it felt relatively comfortable. There was an oil space heater on the lower level, which came on at the flick of a switch.

  In the lower portion there were two modern outboard boats with Fiberglas hulls, and an old-fashioned mahogany launch pulled up on the dry floor, and at one side there was a long workbench. Upstairs was a comfortable apartment where somebody had recently had a meal of beans and bacon. There was also a glass, still smelling of rum.

  “Now why would Gadwell come all the way up here to eat beans and drink rum?” Sidney asked. “The business end of this place hasn’t been working for months.”

  June produced a thermos flask from the pocket of her coonskin coat, and they all had a drink of hot coffee, laced with brandy.

  “He evidently never went near the big house,” Sidney said. “He came straight here. I wonder what he was doing.”

  They searched the apartment without finding any clue and went downstairs again to the boathouse and workshop. It was admirably equipped with tools, which might have been used in servicing film equipment. While Sidney and Snake Rivers were looking at the bench, June suddenly stooped down to the floor.

  “What have you got, June?” Sidney asked, looking at the spot illuminated by her flashlight.

  “Something very, very strange,” she said. “Water.”

  There was a moment of silence as the three people examined a small puddle on the floor, and then the silence was broken by a sound which froze all three conspirators in their tracks.

  It was the hum of an engine, which suddenly became audible in the darkness outside.

  “Quick—flashlights out,” Sidney said.

  They stood in total darkness and silence. The engine continued its hum, softly, insistently, getting no nearer and no farther, and then Snake burst out laughing.

  “It’s the diesel that runs the electricity,” Snake shouted. “She switches on automatic. Turning on the heater done it.”

  They all laughed and resumed their study of the tiny pool of water.

  “Look,” June said. “This air isn’t warm, but it’s warm enough to thaw that.” She pointed to an artifact which was leaning against the end of the bench.

  “What is it?” Sidney asked.

  “It’s an ice drill,” she said. “Ever go ice fishing?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Of course! You drive out on the ice, drill a hole for your fishing line then climb back in the nice warm car and wait for the fish to bite.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “So our friend came up for a spot of ice fishing. See, he brought the drill back in here with ice on it, and the ice has melted.”

  “Well I’m blowed,” Sidney said. “Ice fishing. All alone.”

  He stood thinking for a minute, than walked to the door and went out. June and Snake Rivers stood looking at each other.

  “Come out here, and bring your flashlights,” Sidney called a few minutes later. “Maybe I’ve got something.”

  June and Snake found him on a path outside, stooped over and looking at a footprint. “Faint,” he said, “but we can follow it. Mr. Gadwell went this way on his fishing expedition. Look, it leads out to the lake.”

  Bending over as they walked, they followed the footprints out onto the snow-covered surface of the lake. The trail continued for about two hundred yards, where there was a trampled patch of snow. June went down on hands and knees and started brushing the surface.

  “Her
e you are,” she said. “This is Mr. Gadwell’s fishing hole. It’s frozen over again.”

  She stood up and stamped her foot, cracking the thin layer of ice which had formed over the hole.

  “No fishing hut, no car. He just stood out here and fished in the wide open spaces,” she said. “What a weird character!”

  “Like something Wes would dream up,” Sidney said. “June, what if he wasn’t fishing? What could he be doing? Getting rid of something? It would make a dandy place to dispose of evidence.”

  “Weird, utterly weird,” she said. “So now what do we do?”

  “Damn it, there’s nothing we can do, except mark the spot maybe,” Sidney said. “Another hour and it would be lost forever.”

  “What’s the point in marking it?” she said. “And how would you go about marking it anyway?”

  “If Gadwell wanted to lose something, we might as well mark the spot,” Sidney said. “Say, Snake, how about nipping back to the boathouse and getting an oar? If we stick an oar through the ice it will freeze right in solid in case we want to find the place.”

  “It sounds really kooky to me,” June said. “But your kookiest ideas seem to pay off.”

  Snake went back at a fast lope and returned with an oar, which was rammed through Gadwell’s fishing hole and left there, standing upright, like a flagstaff left by some polar explorer.

  Thereafter the party adjourned rapidly. A light wind had come up, clearing patches of ice on the lake and making it difficult to follow the tracks back to the landing stage. But June navigated with considerable skill, and less than an hour later they were wolfing ham and eggs in Harry’s All-Nite Restaurant near Sparrow Lake Road.

  It was nearly six o’clock on a cold March morning when they got back to Toronto.

  Ten

  SIDNEY WAS DREDGED FROM the depths of sleep early Sunday afternoon by the jangling of a telephone bell. He cursed and dragged himself up to answer it. It was Inspector Frank Young of the Metropolitan Police calling.

  “Oh, Sid, I just wanted you to know that you have a job,” the inspector said. “We have arrested your client, Mr. Herman Rivers, again. You know, Snake Rivers? I like to keep you gainfully employed.”

  “What has Snake been up to now?” Sidney said.

  “He says you will explain everything. And Sid— remember how you cross-examined me about certain burglar tools? Your client had them smuggled out of his house, and hid them in a loft. We were keeping that loft under surveillance. Well, last night the tools were spirited away, in one of those foreign cars. A Citroën, it sounds like. And Mr. Rivers couldn’t be found all night in any of his usual haunts. You see, there was a big job in the East End last night. Electronics warehouse. Big haul. Safe blown. We picked Snake up, arriving home at seven this morning. He’d better have a good alibi.”

  “He has,” Sidney said. “He was with me, and I can prove it.”

  “Sid,” the inspector said, “I wouldn’t like to see a guy like you land into any trouble.”

  “I won’t,” Sidney said. “My strength is as the strength of nine, because my heart is relatively pure. I—I will bring a witness of unimpeachable integrity who will clear him. Just give me a little time.”

  It had suddenly occurred to Sidney that the incriminating tools were still in the trunk of the Citroën and would have to be put away safely before June’s name could be mentioned.

  “Snake and I were eating ham and eggs at four-fifteen A.M., a hundred miles north of here, at Harry’s place on Highway 11,” Sidney said.

  Inspector Young remained dubious for some time, and it was late in the afternoon before Snake Rivers was set free.

  By that time, the burglar tools were carefully stowed away in the basement of Robert Duffy’s home, and June was able to come to headquarters and confirm the alibi.

  “Gee, it all worked out perfect,” Snake said. “The cops were watchin’ me so close they forgot about certain other characters. I heard they made a real good haul.”

  “Snake,” Sidney said, “I admonish you as your legal and spiritual adviser to sever all connections with those certain other characters. Twenty years is a long time.”

  “Oh, sure, I’m through, no kidding,” Snake said. “From now on, I want no part of nothin’ like that, except maybe in an advisory capacity. Just hang onto them tools till I tell you where to deliver them, will you?”

  But Sidney’s conscience was already black with guilt because he had acted as a red herring, and he arranged to purchase the tools outright for five hundred dollars. “Which your brother will pay,” he explained to June, “as part of the investigation costs. And probably well worth it.” He had intended to spend the afternoon with his client at the Psychiatric, but, by the time he had settled the burglar’s problems, he decided it was too late, and he spent a lonely evening at home writing notes on the various aspects of the case.

  In particular, he mused over the role played by Ralph Paget, and he racked his brains for some means, any means, to find out if there was any sort of link between the ultra-respectable Paget and the ultra-disrespectable Gadwell.

  ***

  But on Monday morning he had other things to think about. He located the film-studio island on June’s map and wrote to a lawyer in Gravenhurst to find out who owned it. He set June to work calling friends who had Muskoka cottages, in order to find what local gossip had to say about the place. He sent Miss Semple out to rent a tape machine so that he could play the recording lent to him by Dr. Milton Heber, and he called an acquaintance on the morality squad of the Ontario Provincial Police in order to get the low-down on the obscene film racket.

  The last inquiry turned up a piece of interesting information. The FBI in Washington had sent an emissary to Toronto some months before to try to locate a production center for obscene films, which, they claimed, were being made in Canada and exported to the United States. They had rounded up several distributors and captured a number of films, and they claimed they had effectively stopped the traffic, which was tied in with every other racket from dope pushing to the numbers game. But the Canadian authorities had been unable to give them any help at all. Even usually reliable underworld sources had never heard of such a racket in Canada, and check-ups of commercial studios had proved fruitless.

  It was after one o’clock when Sidney dragged himself away from his office for a bite of lunch, and the second editions of the evening papers were on the newsstands. Sidney glanced at the black top line as he passed the corner; then he stopped and read it carefully. Finally, with trembling fingers, he fished a quarter from his pocket and bought both evening papers and did not even bother to collect his five cents change.

  Under the big headlines the face of Sam Black, parking lot attendant at the Midtown Motel, was on display, three columns wide, and the headlines told about the finding of his body.

  Sidney ducked into a cafeteria to read all about it as he munched on a sandwich.

  ***

  At eight o’clock on Monday morning—according to the newspapers—one Steve Setti came on duty at a car park on King Street, near the business heart of the city, and noticed a car parked at the back of the lot which had been there all day Saturday. On Sunday, the lot had been unattended. Setti pointed the car out to his mate, who had been on since seven, and said that the car had certainly been there when he arrived.

  There were many bars in the area, and it was not unusual for a gentleman to decide to leave his car on the lot all night and take a cab home, but he usually came back for it in the morning.

  The windows and windshield of the car were heavily frosted over, and all the doors were locked. So Setti called the police, and in midmorning they came and towed the car to a garage. At about eleven the frost had melted from the windows, and a mechanic, chancing to glance in, saw a man’s face on the floor of the front seat. Police were called at once, and the car was opened. The man inside it was very dead indeed, and frozen completely stiff.

  He was taken at once to the morgue, whe
re he was identified as Sam Black from papers found on the body. He had been shot twice at close range, through the heart.

  Police learned, from neighbours, that Mrs. Black was away visiting a daughter by a previous marriage. Reporters had gained access to the Black bungalow through the good offices of a neighbor who had the key, and had lifted certain portraits and family groups, which were spread generously through the editions.

  Diagrams on the front pages of both papers showed the parking lot and the position of the car, and one paper was able to point out that the murder spot was in plain view of its city-room window.

  “Well, well, well,” Sidney said. “And that explains the ice fishing!”

  He gulped his sandwich and coffee, called Miss Semple and told her he would be delayed, and hurried down to King Street to have a look at the scene.

  On the south side of King Street there were two large parking lots, running back to a lane that paralleled the street. The lane went west, behind a row of shops and the Prince George Hotel, which stood on the corner. Black’s car had been parked at the rear of the most westerly lot, right beside the lane.

  Sidney looked along the row of shops between the parking lot and the hotel: Lichtman’s, who handled all the newspapers and magazines in the world; an old book store; Goldstein’s, where Sidney sometimes bought a fine Havana cigar when he was feeling rich; the Press Club, haunted by newsmen and their pals; a pipe store; and then the Embers Restaurant, which had its own entrance on King Street, but was really part of the Prince George Hotel.

  He stood on the north side of the street and looked, until he was frozen through, but before he crossed the road he thought he had the solution to the crime. Police were still searching the ground in the parking lot as he crossed over. He bumped into a newspaper friend on the south side, and gratefully accepted an invitation to have a drink at the Press Club, and he phoned June from the club to invite her to join him at four—after which hour ladies were admitted to the premises.