The Penguin Pool Murder (The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries)

by Stuart Palmer

  Anyway, whatever fingerprints the murderer might have left were effectively wiped away before the fingerprint men had a chance to get them. Inspector Piper expected that this would show up, and he was not particularly disappointed, knowing the difficulty even in this late day of getting fingerprint evidence before a jury.

  Suddenly the telephone on his desk vibrated dully. Inspector Piper leaned toward it, and then thought better of the matter. He went to the door.

  “Taylor!”

  The big detective came slowly up the stair. “Yes, Inspector?”

  “Taylor, hop on that phone. If it’s the D.A. I’m out of town on a case. Get me?”

  “Hello, Inspector Piper’s office,” said Taylor into the mouthpiece. Then he looked up quickly.

  “It’s Warden Hyde of the Tombs,” Taylor told his superior officer. “Wants to talk to you. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Inspector Piper. “But stick around, I may need you.” He lifted the receiver and spoke crisply. “Yeah? What is it, Warden?”

  “Just wanted to tell you that we discovered a watch on that dummy pickpocket that you turned in to us Friday,” said the Warden. “It had slipped down into the lining of his pocket, or else he’d hidden it there. It’s a swell timepiece, a solid white-gold Gruen. Twenty-four jewel …”

  “That’s no news,” Piper told him. “Why Donovan, the cop on the beat down there, took four or five tickers away from the dip when some lady snagged him with her bumber-shoot. What if one did slip into the lining of his coat?”

  “You’re handling the case, and not me,” said the Warden stiffly. “But if I was trying to solve a murder case, and if some obliging friend of mine told me that he’d discovered the murdered man’s watch in a pickpocket’s coat … well …”

  “That would alter the case,” Piper admitted gravely. “Did you?”

  “I did,” said the Warden. “Initials, I mean monogram on the case. G-M-L … there they are. Gerald Maurice Lester. And besides, I took the initiative and sent it up to Mrs. Lester, who is also a guest of ours as you know, and she identified it willingly. I’m sending it down to the Property Clerk unless you want it. Do you?”

  “I do not,” said Piper. “But that opens up a new train of thought. Do you know, I wish we knew of some way to make that dummy speak. I suppose we could try pencil and paper, but it would be pretty hard to give a guy the third degree that way. All the same, there’s a chance that that dip knows more than we do about who killed Gerald Lester …”

  “That’s just what this lawyer fellow, Costello, was hinting at half an hour ago,” said the Warden. “He came, of course, officially to see his client—Gwen Lester. But he also spent half an hour in the men’s wing, talking to Seymour. I believe that he is going to handle the case for both of them. But what I started to say was … Costello is a real smart lawyer, and he says he believes that the pickpocket could tell us plenty if he wanted to.”

  Piper was thoughtful. “Say, Warden—when did Costello leave?”

  “Why, he hasn’t gone yet. He’s locked in the cell block, talking to Seymour, or else trying to get something out of the dummy, Chicago Lew or whatever his name is.”

  “Hold him there,” shouted the Inspector as he reached for his hat. “That Mick lawyer hasn’t got any business fooling around with material witnesses that way! Why, he might find out something ahead of us!”

  It was only ten minutes later when Piper hurried into the Warden’s office at the Tombs. He almost ran headlong into Barry Costello, who was just entering the office from the cell-block side. At a sign from Piper, the Warden withdrew.

  Costello extended his hand with a wide smile. “Well, if it isn’t the Inspector! I’ve got news for you, what I think is big news!”

  It was thus that he forestalled what Piper was about to say. “I’ve been having a chat with the pickpocket. That is, a one-sided chat. I was just beginning to get somewhere when the Warden here comes up and tells me that you object to my asking questions, even when I can’t get any answers.”

  “You know what your rights are, as a defense attorney,” the Inspector told him shortly. “I don’t know how you talked the Warden into letting you see the pickpocket anyhow.”

  “Because I’m Gwen Lester’s attorney,” said Costello coolly. “I’m fighting to save that wonderful young woman from the electric chair. She didn’t kill her husband, and yet the net of circumstantial evidence is tight around her. I don’t expect you to believe, Inspector, that I would give anything short of my life itself to save so lovely a girl from an unjust end!” His voice boomed eloquently.

  Costello’s eyes shone with a glint of sincerity, but Piper was tempted to write this, too, off as an example of the dramatic tendency of the lawyer’s Celtic blood.

  “I don’t particularly,” said Piper. “But what has the pickpocket got to do with saving Gwen Lester, anyway?”

  “That pickpocket knows something,” insisted Costello. “Perhaps he has lost his speech through fear, or through injury, or perhaps he’s really voiceless. Maybe it is shock which makes him unwilling or unable to communicate with us in the means left to him. But I have just made an attempt to gain his confidence. I have evidence that he can hear what is said to him, anyway. And I’ll stake my life on that man’s knowledge of the facts of Gerald Lester’s murder which will save Gwen Lester from the chair! He was behind the tanks when the murder was committed, and besides the murderer he was the only man, excepting that more than idiotic dolt of a Swedish scientist, that was there! Now do you admit that there is justification in my interviewing him? Can’t we work together to find out the truth on this tangle?”

  Piper gave the Irish lawyer a long stare, and then extended his hand. After all, there was something genuine in this blustering fellow.

  “The truth is what we’re after,” said the Inspector. “Remember that if Gwen Lester has clean hands, I don’t want to see her stand the rap any more than you do. If this dummy of a pickpocket has anything to say that will clear Gwen Lester, I want to hear it. But tell me, first. What actually were you able to get out of the fellow?”

  Costello drew back, holding up his hand. “Nothing tangible, and yet a whole lot. He’ll nod yes and no to my questions, sometimes. And I want to try him with a pencil and paper tomorrow. I’m winning his confidence, Inspector, where you hard-boiled coppers scare him into a blue funk. Let me have a day or two more, Inspector, and I’ll get something out of the fellow that will solve your whole murder mystery, I know. I’m guessing what it’ll be, but I don’t want to say until I can lay the whole business before you, in a form that can go into court. Okay?”

  “Sure it’s okay,” said Piper calmly. “You seem plenty interested in this business, for a lawyer … suppose you do free Gwen Lester, what then?”

  “Of course I’m interested. Anybody but a blind detective could see that I’m interested, and why. Suppose you were a young man of parts, heart-whole and fancy-free, whose best girl had given him the mitten a few weeks ago … just suppose. And then imagine that when you gather with a crowd at the cry of ‘murder’ you find yourself in a position to give first-aid to the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen in all your born days … and not only first-aid, either, but a chance to use the legal powers that you have never had a real chance to exercise, in her behalf? A white knight, riding out to save a maiden, Inspector. It wouldn’t appeal to you, I’m afraid. You wouldn’t understand. But if I save Gwen Lester—you ask—what then?”

  “Yeah,” said Piper, not unfriendly. “What then?”

  “I’ll kiss her hand,” said Costello dreamily. “And then I’ll ask her to marry me, if she’ll have me. And if she won’t, I’ll give her my blessing and get out of the way.” Suddenly he smiled wide. “But don’t you breathe a word of this, Inspector. We’ve sworn to be allies, you know …”

  “Sure,” said Piper. “I’ll never breathe a word of it. But I’m afraid you will. I’ve got to be getting busy, though….”

  “Righto!” Costell
o picked up his hat, which Piper idly noticed was a derby. Every man in this town was wearing a tin hat these days. But for that fact the Lester murder might be solved now. Anyway, this derby fitted the Irishman as if it had been built for him, so this wasn’t the missing hat.

  “Okay,” said the lawyer. “I’ll be on my way. There’s much to be done before the case goes to the grand jury, you know. Money to be raised, a lot of money. Gwen Lester hasn’t got a thing, you know, except her husband’s estate which she won’t touch until her name is cleared. Her father was about cleaned out in the crash, I find. But we’ll find some way out of it….”

  He paused at the door. “I don’t suppose you’ll object to my having a little chat with the pickpocket tomorrow when I come down to visit my client?”

  “I’ll leave word with the Warden that you’re okay,” Piper promised. Against his will he was beginning to approve of the big Irishman. The fellow was sincere about trying to save Gwen Lester, anyway. Witness his interest in the pickpocket….

  Suddenly the Inspector got an idea. Suppose … suppose that Costello were going to extreme lengths in his attempt to save Gwen? Suppose he were engaged in planting evidence, in suggesting things to the pickpocket, perhaps even bribing him?

  Swiftly he strode to the door, and called for the Warden. Five minutes later they both hurried past the cell where Philip Seymour lay staring at the ceiling, and stopped before the iron box at the end of the long corridor where Chicago Lew muttered and mumbled.

  “You can go free,” suggested the Warden in a voice that concealed his eagerness. “You can go free if you’re willing to write out for us what you know. If you keep on this way you’ll stay here the rest of your life. Will you come clean?”

  The man stared at them with lifeless, dull eyes, and then shook his head slightly.

  “Playing deaf as well as dumb, huh?” Piper was impatient. “Well, if you’re spilling stuff to the lawyer you can spill it to us, see? Or else we’ll fix it so that you go up the river for the rest of your days. Picking sisal isn’t such a pleasant lifetime, you know. You’ve been up there a couple of times, so come clean.”

  The guard unlocked the iron door for them, and in a moment they were inside the dimly-lit cell. The pickpocket cowered away from them as if he feared attack. Piper felt like using a nightstick on the fellow, and resisted the temptation with difficulty.

  “Will you come clean?”

  The fellow mouthed meaningless sounds, pitiful sounds.

  “Do you understand us? Can you hear what we say? Look, man, we promise you your freedom if you help us. Will you talk … I mean, will you write, or even nod yes or no?”

  There was a pause, and then Chicago Lew buried his face in his arms, shaking with either sobs or delirious laughter, the Inspector was not sure which.

  “Costello is nuts if he thinks this looney can bring out any evidence to save Gwen Lester,” Piper decided as he moved toward the door.

  “It’s a clear case for Mattewan,” agreed the Warden, and the turnkey clanged the door noisily. Their footsteps died away down the corridor.

  Behind them, in the dim little cell at the end of the passage, Chicago Lew heaved a sigh of relief, and drew the acrid smoke of a cigarette into his lungs.

  14

  Follow the Swallow

  “THAT’S HOW IT STANDS,” said Inspector Piper to his guest. Miss Withers sat somewhat primly on the edge of her chair, and tried to keep her eyes from falling on the gruesome exhibits which lined the walls of his office. “My dear lady, the case is complete against Gwen Lester and Philip Seymour. I’ve turned over all the evidence to the District Attorney, from Gwen’s first exclamation at the sight of the corpse to the attempts of each of the defendants to bargain for a suspended sentence by pinning the rap on the other.”

  “But do you believe that?”

  “Of course I believe that! The case is ripe for the grand jury already. I know that to the mind of the layman, there are a thousand possibilities, a thousand ingenious twists that present themselves as to the possibility of these people’s being innocent. But I’ve had enough experience to know that things have a way of happening just as they’ve always happened, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”

  “And how about the hundredth?” Miss Withers was very serious.

  “Nonsense.” Oscar Piper fumbled with the papers on his desk. “I’ve done everything that can be done in this investigation. The fact that you have a private opinion, a hunch, that Gwen and Philip are too nice a pair to commit a murder has no weight. My dear lady, you’re a romantic. You’ve been reading too many magazine stories where a loving couple are reunited in the last chapter. In this story, there’s going to be no reunited couple, no tinkle of wedding chimes.”

  “I’m romantic, huh?” Miss Hildegarde Withers was on her feet. “You men! Anything that you don’t have plain common sense enough to understand in a woman, you have to call names! You have eyes, why don’t you look beyond your nose?”

  With her anger, the air of stern aloofness fell away from Miss Withers, and her blue eyes flashed. “And you’re a detective! A fine detective you are! I could be a better sleuth with my eyes bandaged and both arms tied behind me. My children in third grade at Jefferson School would make better detectives than you! You’re not digging for the truth, you’re just trying to find evidence enough to send somebody to the chair. You don’t care who!

  “Now I warn you, Oscar Piper, I warn you fair and square. I’ve got my dander up, and I’m going to show you a few things. You’ve got the law and all its facilities, but I’m going ahead on my own and find out who did kill Gerald Lester! So there!”

  She slammed the door of the Inspector’s office so hard that the pistols rattled on their shelves.

  He sat at his desk, tapping his teeth lightly with a pencil. After a moment he spoke softly to the photograph of the Commissioner which hung on the wall beside the window.

  “Whee! What a woman!” Then he tapped his teeth again, more thoughtfully. “And now I wonder if she could be right, even one tenth of one per cent?”

  Miss Withers paused for a moment as she came out into the busy street, and then suddenly hailed a taxicab. She was not used to taxicabs, and her salary did not warrant such expenditure, but she had taken a large bite, and she was going to chew it or bust. And all she had at her disposal was energy.

  Halfway home she rapped on the glass and changed the directions which she had given to the driver. “The Four Arts Club, on East Eightieth Street,” she ordered. Then she leaned back in the cab.

  The cab at last roared down a quiet street in which here and there still lingered a pair of box trees and a hedge or two, relics of the days when these sober brownstones had been private houses. Now they exhibited, most of them, signs in the front windows bearing the word “Vacancy.”

  There was nothing about the house at the end of the street to justify the word “club” except an unpolished brass plate above the door. The storm door stood ajar, and Miss Withers entered to survey a line of push-buttons opposite names. “Hennesy, De Pauw”—There it was … “Captain Barry Costello….”

  She pressed the button with her thumb, and lifted the telephone receiver which hung from a hook above the buttons, but without a word from above the door suddenly burst into clacking activity, and she caught the knob. Up three flights, and then she signaled upon a door in the rear by a painted bit of metal knocker in the shape of an up-side-down parrot tapping on a tree.

  The door opened. Barry Costello held the knob. He was wearing a purple silk dressing gown, and smoking a black pipe which Miss Withers eyed distastefully. A fat spaniel peered between his legs.

  The handsome face broke into a smile of genuine surprise. “Miss Withers! Come in, come in! I was just wishing that I could talk with you, and wondering if I dared to telephone you. And like a bolt from the blue …”

  He showed her into soft tapestry chair at the farther end of a room whose walls were lined with books, many of them heavy legal
tomes, Miss Withers noticed. The curtains were drawn as if to shut out the gray November day, and the air of the room was heavy with tobacco smoke and the odor of dog.

  There was a large desk near the door, with a vast heap of correspondence, papers, and pamphlets pushed up in the center of it. Here was where Barry Costello had been working when Miss Withers arrived. He seated himself on the edge of the desk, and offered cigarettes, which were refused none too graciously.

  “Excuse my being dressed this way,” said Costello, “but I was plowing through some of my law books in an endeavor to brush up. If I’m going to handle Gwen Lester’s case I’ve got to be a whale of a good lawyer, you know. Innocent or guilty, she needs the very best that a man can do, and it’s an honor that I’m to be the man….”

  “That’s why I came up here to see you,” explained Miss Withers. She eyed the fat spaniel distrustfully as it approached her, sniffed at her low oxfords, and then moved pompously off toward a corner. The dog was gray with age, and it wheezed unpleasantly.

  “Good old Rags,” said Costello. “He’s pretty old now, but I can’t make up my mind to have him put away. I’m that way about animals….”

  “I was saying that I came up here because I have my own theory of the Lester murder,” said Miss Withers crisply. “I believe that Gwen Lester is innocent of that murder, if not morally, at least actually. I don’t believe that she was mixed up with the business in any way, and I doubt very much if Philip Seymour was, either.”

  “And where do I come in?” Costello wanted to know. He lit his black pipe carefully.

  “You can save Gwen Lester, if you really want to,” said Miss Withers. “It’s too much for me to do alone. But listen to my theory….”

  She paused for breath, and wished that the windows could be opened. Costello, reading her thoughts, explained “Rags can’t stand the air, the poor old fellow has rheumatism….” But the lawyer was watching her intently, hanging on her words.

  “Anyway,” she began, “here is how I think Lester was killed. First of all, the motive. I believe that a man killed Gerald Lester, a man actuated by desire for revenge! A man who had a motive, a man who had been wronged, or thought he had been wronged, by Lester in business.”