“It sounds like it,” Sidney said.
“Now Mr. Beattie’s shares, I see, were sold on Tuesday, January tenth, at fourteen cents, and the proceeds deposited in his account on Friday, the day the check came through.”
“That was pretty unlucky,” Sidney said.
“Unlucky? Mr. Grant, you have suspicions. So have I. My predecessor was a great personality boy and a great spender. He was up to his ears in debt—always kiting checks before payday. All the symptoms. About a year ago he became prosperous. He wasn’t smart enough to conceal prosperity. He went to the Breakers at Palm Beach for a spring holiday. New clothes, new car. He said his wife had inherited money. He built himself up to a big promotion in the bank. He is now our chief liaison with the mining industry.
“I don’t quite see how this ties in with poor Wes Beattie’s troubles, but you are in a hurry, so I’m going to stick my neck out and tell you just how this little swindle was engineered. To me it’s clear as a bell. Wasn’t old Mr. Beattie paralyzed at this time?”
“Yes,” Sidney said.
“Well, on that fateful Friday, Herb Jackson hears at three o’clock that Minerva has taken off. He checks into the rumor, discovers that an announcement is coming over the weekend. Several drill holes have produced high-grade copper. Monday there will be a buying panic. So he phones some crooked broker friend…”
“Howard Gadwell?”
“You said it, sir, I didn’t. But I won’t deny the distinct possibility. He calls him and suggests back-dating the sale of Mr. Beattie’s Minerva to the previous Tuesday and bringing in a check right away to liquidate the account. We are open late hours on Friday. He bungs the check through, and the account is clear. So, at their leisure, Mr. Jackson and his pal sell Minerva close to the peak. They would clean up a couple of hundred thousand each, and you are looking at a mug who should have caught them. Ha! Look here!”
“What is it?” Sidney asked.
“I remember this deal,” Carter said. “I was joint custodian. I asked Jackson what authority we had for selling this stuff. I was new at the branch, and I had never met Mr. Beattie. Jackson said he had a letter of authority. He had it in his desk somewhere and would send it down to attach to the card in the security file. Read it.”
It was on the letterhead of the Superior Trust Company, and it said:
Dear Sir,
I am acting on power-of-attorney for Mr. Charles L. Beattie, who is unable to handle his affairs owing to a paralytic stroke. Mr. Beattie wishes to sell the 30,000 shares of Minerva Mines Limited, held by you as collateral, at market, the money to be credited to his current account, which he wishes to close out. We shall arrange payment of any outstanding debit balance, or if there is a credit balance, please remit for deposit in Mr. Beattie’s account with us.
Yours truly,
RALPH L. PAGET
“Then Paget was a party to the deal,” Sidney said. “But Wes said Jackson was very anxious that Paget shouldn’t be told about it.”
“He was? Maybe he was afraid that Wes would blurt the whole thing out at the dinner table. I suppose that when I goaded Jackson into demanding authority, he got Paget to write this letter to stick in the file. So there were three shares at something above a hundred thousand apiece. Well, Mr. Grant, I was deeply suspicious, and it was silly of me not to see that this account was the origin of Jackson’s sudden prosperity. I’ve stuck my neck out by talking to you, and now I’ll have to call our chief inspector at once. I hope you will use this information with some discretion?”
“I’m very grateful, and I’ll do all I can to protect you,” Sidney said. “Tell me one thing. Wes left here early one day, and was picked up for stealing a purse. Do you remember that?”
“I certainly do. Wes had been borrowing money from everybody and his brother, and the boys had lowered the boom on him. He came to me this day and said he wanted to leave early—he had some big deal on. I told him nix, he could just get back to his desk and think about work for a change. And then Herb Jackson came back—I was in this office, relieving him, that week—and gave me the old soft soap. You know, a kid is only young once, why did I want to be so tough? So I said that if he wanted to let Wes go early he could, but I was against it, and Wes dashed away.”
“You were relieving him? How come?” Sidney asked.
“Oh, Herb was our great mining guy, and he was spending the week at the mining convention in the Royal York Hotel.”
“Good-bye,” Sidney said. “You’ve been wonderful.”
And he raced all the way to City Hall, arriving just in time for the opening of court.
Sixteen
AS SIDNEY ENTERED the courtroom, Massingham approached him and drew him to one side. He looked puzzled and distressed.
“Grant,” he said, “we’ve arrested Gadwell. He got restive last night. He sneaked away from his apartment and holed up in a cheap hotel—under a false name. Then he sneaked away from there at midnight and went to Malton. He had booked a flight to Idlewild. He was carrying a large amount of cash. We’re holding him on the false name bit, but we can’t hold him long. Tying him down on the obscene film business may be—difficult. Uh—if you can give us any help, I might alter my views slightly on your own—er—activities.”
“I will certainly give you all the help I can,” Sidney said. “But not because I’m frightened of any action you’ve got in mind. Where is he?”
“Police headquarters.”
“All right. Arrange to stick him in a line-up. I’ll send a witness to identify him. Just clear the decks for me. Once my witness has identified him, you can hold him and never let him go.”
“Good man,” Massingham said, a trifle huffily.
Sidney sat down beside Miss Semple.
“Grab your book and write, Georgie dear,” he said. “You’re going to be busy. When you leave here, get a subpoena for one Herbert Jackson, superintendent at the head office of the Modern Bank. Then arrange with St. John’s Convalescent in Willowdale for Miss Florence Churcher to be got up and rushed to police headquarters, where she is to try to see if she knows anybody in a line-up. If she does, get her down here. When you’ve lined up the Churcher bit, go to the bank and serve that subpoena. Let Jackson think we want him as a character witness if he’s very curious. I’d like to serve him as late as possible, but I don’t want him to slip away. The ideal thing would be if we could serve him just when he’s finishing lunch and bring him straight here without any warning.”
“Is that all?” Miss Semple said.
“No ma’am,” he said. “Before you go to the bank, phone Dr. Milton Heber, who should be cooperative. Ask him to take a cab straight to the apartment of Dr. E. Neil Whitney in Moore Park and look around. Ask him to note any similarities between that apartment and one that was described to him by Wes, then to get down here to court as fast as he can. And call Sergeant What’s-his-name, the fingerprint bloke, he’s an old pal of ours. Ask him if he’d mind going to the same apartment and see if he can find a print of Wes Beattie’s on one of the l.p. records. Wes said he thumbed through the records.”
“Anything else?”
“Oh yes. Damn it, so many things today. Subpoena Dr. and Mrs. Whitney. On second thought, don’t try to serve Jackson yourself—get servers on the job. Serve Heber too. Go, girl, go!”
Miss Semple arose with great dignity, just as Massingham finished telling the judge that the prosecution case rested.
Sidney stood up and called Tex Wicklow to the witness box.
After he had been sworn, Sidney showed him the photograph of his missing wife, already marked as an exhibit, and asked him if he recognized her.
“Yes sir, that is my wife, Janice Swann Wicklow,” the geologist said.
“Did you ever know her as Irene Leduc, of Sudbury?”
“No sir.”
“Were you aware that she went under that name?”
“No sir.”
“Mr. Wicklow, we have heard evidence that the woman represented b
y that photograph, giving the name Irene Leduc, went into court and gave evidence against the accused, Wes Beattie, in another matter, last May 12. Can you tell us where you were at that time and what you were doing.”
“I was in St. Michael’s Hospital, in a coma, as a result of being struck by a taxi on Front Street.”
“And where were you and your wife staying at the time of this accident?”
“We were staying at a suite in the Royal York Hotel. We were attending a mining convention.”
“Can you tell us what you were doing when you were struck by this taxi?”
Wicklow grinned. “I was trying, unsuccessfully, to dodge,” he said. “But apart from that, my wife and I were returning to the hotel after having dinner at the Rathskeller.”
“Oh. Now had you and your wife been dining tête-à-tête, or were you with a party?”
“My Lord,” Massingham said, “this seems to be pretty irrelevant.”
“It’s extremely relevant, actually, my Lord,” Sidney said.
“We were at a dinner party, and our host was Mr. Howard Gadwell,” Wicklow said, before the judge could make up his mind about Massingham’s objection.
“Ah! Mr. Howard Gadwell!” Sidney said, registering the name as thoroughly as possible. “Now, sir, can you tell us the present whereabouts of your wife?”
“No sir, I haven’t seen her since last September.”
“Have you made efforts to locate her?”
“Yes sir, and so have you. The Bureau of Missing Persons, the R.C.M.P. and the Association of Credit Bureaus are all looking for her, but there’s no trace of her.”
“Thank you. Your witness.”
But Massingham had no questions, and Sidney called the man from the car rental agency, who testified that a woman giving the name of Mrs. Irene Leduc had rented a black Dodge, and the number of the driver’s license she had shown was such-and-such. Then he called a policeman, who said he had arrested Wes Beattie at the Midtown Motel and had checked the driver’s license number of the woman witness, Mrs. Leduc. It agreed with the number quoted by the car rental man. He also identified Mrs. Leduc from the photograph.
Next came a man from the motor vehicles department, who said that the license bearing the serial number in question had been issued to Mrs. Irene Ledley. The address of Mrs. Ledley was 28 Bayview Circle. The official gave it as his expert opinion that an amateur could have altered the address to 428 Baylie Circle well enough to deceive an unsuspecting person.
Mrs. Ledley then gave evidence. She said that she had never altered her license, that she had never rented a car and that she believed her license had been stolen while she was visiting a mining convention at the Royal York Hotel. The date of the theft, she thought, was one day prior to the arrest of the accused on a charge of theft.
“I trust this is leading us somewhere, Mr. Grant?” the judge said.
“My Lord, Mr. Paget gave evidence that the deceased was trying to trace Mrs. Leduc at the time of his death,” Sidney said. “We now see that Mrs. Leduc was, in fact, Mrs. Wicklow, who gave evidence against the accused under a false name. Mr. Paget said that the accused claimed he was the victim of a frame-up, and he also said that the deceased was investigating that frame-up.”
“Very well, carry on,” the judge said.
Massingham turned and stared at Sidney, like a man who was beginning to see the light, but through a glass, darkly.
Sidney turned and saw Dr. Milton Heber entering the court. Since Massingham had no questions to ask Mrs. Ledley, Sidney promptly called Heber to the witness box. Heber was sworn, and qualified himself as a practicing psychiatrist.
“Now, Dr. Heber,” Sidney said, “I believe that you were present in this court during earlier proceedings, and you heard certain statements made by the accused which were placed in evidence.”
“I was and I did,” Dr. Heber said.
“I refer in particular to a statement by the accused in which he said that, on the night of the murder, he was lured to an apartment by a woman.”
“Yes sir.”
“Now then, did you conduct certain examinations into the mental state of the accused after his arrest, and did you, in the course of those examinations, ask him to describe in detail the apartment to which he claimed he had been lured?”
“Yes sir.”
“And he said that he had no idea where that apartment was?”
“That is correct.”
“Since that time, have you seen an apartment similar to the one he described to you in detail?”
“Yes sir. I have just returned from visiting an apartment which corresponds in every detail with the description given by the accused.” He gave the address of Dr. Whitney’s apartment and the name of the tenant.
Sidney then questioned him in detail about the description—about pictures, books and furniture. “And was each of these details in agreement with the description given by the accused?” he asked.
“Yes sir—except that the accused described one painting as a Modigliani, but in fact it was painted by Grant Macdonald. I mean that there was a painting in the apartment which was by Grant Macdonald, and the accused described a similar painting but said it was by Modigliani.”
“Now, sir, what is your opinion with regard to the apartment described by the accused, in relation to the apartment of Dr. Whitney?”
“I believe that the accused was describing Dr. Whitney’s apartment from firsthand knowledge,” Dr. Heber said.
Massingham, who was looking more and more baffled, tried to make something about the error in identification of the painting, but only succeeded in eliciting the fact that Dr. Heber, too, had mistaken it for a Modigliani.
Sidney next called Mrs. Whitney, who said that she had met the accused, but to her knowledge he had never visited her apartment during her tenancy of it. She stated that, at the time of the murder, the apartment had been sublet to a Mr. Aubrey Beauclair, whom she had never met, and she told about handing over the keys to her bank manager, Mr. Herbert Jackson, with instructions to give them to Mr. Beauclair.
As Mrs. Whitney left the witness box, Miss Semple returned to the court and made her way to the counsel table. Sidney walked to her side and whispered, “How goes it?”
“I’ve never been in such a rat race,” she said. “Subpoenas, phone calls—but the sergeant found a fingerprint, and Miss Churcher made an identification. We brought her down in an ambulance. They’re helping her up the stairs now. And I absolutely demanded that the police bring the man along under guard. I felt sure you’d want him.”
“You were so right,” Sidney said.
Howard Gadwell was just entering the court, accompanied by a husky detective. He looked pale and frightened.
“We have reached the hour of the noon adjournment,” the judge began, but Sidney interrupted him.
“My Lord,” he said, “I have one more witness this morning. I am recalling Miss Churcher as a defense witness, and in view of her condition, I would like to have her heard now.”
“Will this take very long?” the judge asked.
“No, my Lord.”
At that moment Miss Churcher, assisted by a nurse, entered the court and was conducted straight to the witness box. Being already sworn, she was able to answer questions at once.
“Miss Churcher,” Sidney said, “you told us that a telephone repairman came to the deceased’s apartment shortly before the murder, and you thought you would recognize him again if you saw him. Have you seen him since that time?”
“Yes sir,” she said. “I saw him this morning. He was in a line-up of men, and the policeman asked if I recognized anybody, and I said yes, the fourth man was the telephone repairman who came to the apartment. I knew him at once.”
“Will Mr. Howard Gadwell stand up?” Sidney said.
Gadwell, at the rear, stood up, as did the detective beside him, and it was obvious that the two men were handcuffed together.
“Do you see the man in court, Miss Churcher?”
Sidney asked.
“Yes sir,” she said. “It’s that rather sallow man with the mustache, standing up there.”
“This is the man who came to the apartment and told you he was a repairman? A telephone company repairman?” Sidney said.
“Oh, yes sir, I’m quite sure of it,” she said.
Massingham had no questions, and court adjourned, amid a feverish buzzing of conversation. Sidney went out quickly with Miss Semple and returned to his neglected office, where they had sandwiches and coffee sent up.
“It’s all so confusing,” Miss Semple said. “All of a sudden everything has changed. I got Sergeant Reid and had him go to the apartment with Dr. Heber. He took Wes’s blown-up prints with him, and he says he has a perfect latent print of Wes’s which he found on a new Stravinsky recording. Will that help?”
“It will get Wes right off the hook,” Sidney said. “Lucky I was able to duck out before Massingham caught me. How about Jackson?”
“Well, I discovered that the bank is having a big all-day meeting of senior officers, and Mr. Jackson is in it,” she said. “They will all have lunch in the directors’ dining room, and they will be coming out at two.”
“How did you find that out?”
“I have my sources, Mr. Grant! I called Gertrude Jessup, who is a member of my bridge club, and she is also secretary to the general manager of the bank. She has arranged with the head steward in this dining room to let her know when Mr. Jackson is leaving, and she will then alert the elevator starter, who will show our process server how to intercept Mr. Jackson on his way back to the committee room. Is he a key figure in the case?”
“He is the key figure,” Sidney said. “And here comes another one.”
June Beattie was just entering the outer office, with her uncle, Ralph Paget, in tow.
“Hi!” she said. “Say, that’s a smart idea having sandwiches sent up. Gargoyle darling, can you get any for Uncle Ralph and me? I’m fam.”
The Weird World of Wes Beattie Page 19
