The Penguin Pool Murder (The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries)

by Stuart Palmer

  Costello did not move, but he blinked his eyes, and jammed his pipe into the pocket of his dressing gown. Miss Withers plunged on. “This person saw Lester’s wife go to the Aquarium with another man, and his desire for revenge caused him to telephone the broker, taunting him with the facts. Then he lingered to enjoy his handiwork, and saw the fight between Lester and Seymour. He saw Seymour carry Lester back of the tanks, and leave him there. Then the murderer chanced upon my hatpin, snatched it up on an unholy impulse, and drove it into the left ear of his unconscious victim, replacing it and escaping all in a minute or two….”

  Costello was leaning forward. “You know, it sounds dashed convincing, Miss Withers. You’re a real sleuth. And the murderer?”

  She paused a moment. “Who could it be? Who was the man who had been sold out on the Stock Exchange market by Lester, his broker? Who was the man who had an opportunity to commit the crime after Gwen and Philip had mingled with the other visitors in the place and were working their way toward the main entrance, knowing that no matter what he did, they would be blamed for it?”

  “All right … quick, who was it? You mean …” The lawyer was burning with eagerness. Miss Withers realized that he must care a lot about Gwen Lester, after all.

  “The murderer, as I figure it, was … it was Bertrand B. Hemingway,” she said softly. There was a long silence. The lawyer exhaled a deep breath.

  “By the Lord Harry, I think you’ve got it!” Costello was striding back and forth across the room. “Why didn’t I think of it before? I was sure that Philip Seymour had done it, which would implicate Gwen somehow even though she weren’t actually an accomplice. But now …” He was bubbling with happiness….

  “Now all we have to do is to get together and prove it, not only to our satisfaction, but to Piper’s and the District Attorney’s,” he was reminded. “We’ll have to work together, and it isn’t going to be easy …”

  “You’re right it isn’t! But the man must have left some trail behind him! There must be something that the Inspector overlooked, some bit of evidence, some discrepancy … suppose we go down to the Aquarium, right now, and look around? There are a few things that I don’t get straight in my mind yet. One thing is how the body ended up in the pool when from the time it went in until the cops came you, and for that matter I myself, were right outside the tank, Miss Withers. I came running from the doorway, just like every other casual visitor, when you called out. And the body was still settling in the tank when I got there….”

  “I’ve got a theory about that,” said Miss Withers. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “I know it now,” Costello guessed. “You think the pickpocket did it.”

  “I do not,” said Miss Withers shortly. “Not even though I hear from the Inspector that they found Lester’s watch on the little man called Chicago Lew. I believe that there wasn’t a human being closer than I, outside the tank with little Isidore, when the body went into the tank!”

  Costello looked puzzled. “You’ll have to show me,” he said.

  “I will show you, if you’ll come down to the Aquarium with me.” Miss Withers rose from the brocaded chair.

  “That I will,” Costello said. “Though Lord knows I’m weary enough. I’ve spent the day trying to raise money for Gwen’s defense, you know. She won’t and can’t touch her husband’s estate, of course. Until she’s cleared she won’t have a dime, and investigations cost a great deal of money.” He motioned toward the farther wall, where two glaring white squares showed on the time-darkened plaster.

  “My two family portraits, Greatuncle Denis, Lord O’Doyle, and his wife Deirdre, went to the dealers this morning,” he confessed. “Lucky for Gwen Lester that they were in Tyk Eel’s best style. Believe me, they were a last resource, those pictures. But I had to have the money, and they promise me a check tomorrow….”

  Miss Withers was touched, in spite of herself. “You seem to care a great deal for Gwen Lester, considering the fact that you only met her a few days ago,” she pointed out. “Isn’t this a bit unusual?”

  “Is it?” Barry Costello rose to his feet. “I’m a romantic, certainly. And I’ve known a lot of women, but never one as beautiful and as troubled as Gwen Lester. I thought I got over falling for women a few weeks ago when a girl I was engaged to threw me over for a wealthier fellow, but when I saw Gwen Lester I knew … well, it was like that. I suppose it sounds odd to you?”

  At that moment Miss Withers loved the man. “No, it doesn’t sound so odd to me,” she said softly. “It sounds just like something out of a story. It sounds like romance!” For a moment her tone softened.

  Costello smiled. “I believe in loving at first sight,” he said. “I believe in living with a gesture, living like something out of a story. That’s how I’m made. But you … why are you so interested in saving Gwen Lester from the chair?”

  Miss Withers was sober again. “You wouldn’t understand, I’m afraid. It’s nothing as simple as love, though perhaps I know more about young love than you think. I was not always a school-teacher, you know. I had an unfortunate … well, never mind. Since you’ve asked me, Mr. Barry Costello, and since we’ve agreed to go ahead on this together, I’ll tell you why I’m interested in solving this case.

  “It’s not because I’m getting such a big thrill out of playing detective, though you may imagine it’s the most exciting thing that ever happened to me in all my born days. It’s not just human sympathy for a nice girl and a nice young man who are caught in the net of the law. It’s more than that. It’s the fact that I was born and brought up to an old-fashioned ideal of justice … blindfolded, uncompromising justice.

  “I believe there is something holier about the truth, about justice and right, than there is in cleanliness and even some godliness, young man. Justice is bigger than human hates and loves and sympathies, not only legal justice, but abstract justice. The kind of justice that lets the letter of the law go sometimes to follow the spirit instead!” Miss Withers was aflame. “I want to solve this murder because I’m a good citizen, the kind of citizen who in another generation rode as a Vigilante. Understand?”

  “Lady, lady, what a perfectly marvelous witness you’re going to make on the stand when this case comes to court!” said Barry Costello. “Positively, you make shivers run down my spine, ma’m. I’m sure tickled that you’re not on my trail.”

  “I’d turn you, or Gwen Lester, or myself over to the police in a second if I thought you or she or myself had done the job,” Miss Withers told him. “Now let’s waste no more time, but be off for the Aquarium. I only hope we can get in after we get there….”

  “Don’t you worry, we’ll get in all right.” Costello glanced apologetically at his apparel. “Will you be excusing me a moment while I change? Just a moment….”

  He strode toward the door of the bedroom. “There’s an afternoon paper there on the table, with all the latest guesses of the newspaper boys on the Lester case,” he told his guest. “You may be interested….”

  But Miss Withers did not pause to inspect the newspaper. She knew it would be full of the unusual thin-drawn rehash of the case, which was already beginning to shrink in public interest for lack of new developments. Well, maybe she could rectify that.

  She moved idly toward the long bookcase that lined one wall, letting her eyes run along the volumes. The law books did not interest her … “Quincy on Torts … Blackstone … Laws of the State of New York….”

  But many years of forcing the young idea how to shoot, particularly to shoot forward into literacy, had taught her to evaluate her fellow men through their tastes in books.

  She noted volume after volume of Sabatini, Rex Beach, Conan Doyle (the adventure and historical novels, not the detective works) and Walter Scott. Here was a man who turned to light fiction for his recreation … a man of action. She knew that many lawyers have similar tastes, although the reading was not what she would have prescribed.

  At the end of the shelf was a
familiar looking volume, its gilt lettering worn away from use. She drew it forth idly … it was “Butterworth on Moths and Butterflies”, a required text book in practically every biology class since her own girlhood.

  Costello came out, neatly dressed in topcoat and hat above morning clothes, and saw her replace the volume.

  “I see you have a hobby,” Miss Withers remarked as she moved toward the door.

  “I used to have a hobby, rather,” said Costello. “It’s been years since I had the urge to collect the little winged creatures of the night. But I used to have the place filled with cork cases, and I tell you I had some fine specimens. But my ideas have changed since my student days. Every boy goes through the stage of collecting, whether it’s bird’s eggs or butterflies or postage stamps.”

  Miss Withers knew that well enough, having been confronted with problems of such nature in her classes now and then … particularly did she remember the time when little Abraham brought his collection of white mice to school one afternoon.

  “I sometimes wonder,” Costello said as they got into a cab, “if our friend Hemingway hasn’t got the collector’s mania in a big way? They say that every man’s life work comes as a result of something that happens in boyhood. Maybe Hemingway is just a boy collector of fishes grown into a Director with a paunch?”

  “Maybe,” Miss Withers agreed. She was thinking.

  It was well after closing time when the taxi finished its long trek through the downtown thoroughfares and paused at the entrance to Battery Park. That was as close as the driver could come to the ancient pill-box of a building that had been constructed as a fortress, first used as a concert hall and freak show, and at last turned into the greatest home of caged fish in the world.

  Miss Hildegarde Withers was surprised to notice in herself a certain shrinking, a feeling of dread, as she followed the lawyer toward the grim stone pile that loomed gray in the reflected light of the city behind them. There it stood, the last outpost of Manhattan, its old stones stained with the wash of the Harbor. Somehow, she felt that the Aquarium did not belong in hearty, blustering, sky-scraping New York. Nor did that twisted deed, that dark murderous thrust of a long steel needle, belong in this age of progress, waste, and energy. It was not the way for a man to die.

  As they approached the old building, Costello motioned toward a light that glowed from the one high window of Hemingway’s office, to the left of the entrance. “He’s in, the old fox,” said Costello. “And now the question is, will he let us in?”

  “I have my doubts,” Miss Withers admitted. No light showed beneath the heavy door, but as Costello raised his fist to knock, she touched his arm. She pressed experimentally against the door, and turned the knob. It opened inward, noiselessly.

  After a pause of a second, they stepped into the thick darkness. Not even the high ceiling lights were on, as Miss Withers remembered them from the other night. Costello closed the door behind them with a little click, and Miss Withers knew that she was afraid.

  This was no ordinary building, and she was in no ordinary company. Perhaps a murderer was within these walls, moving through the darkness toward her….

  She touched Costello’s sturdy arm, and was reassured. They moved forward, slowly. As their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, Miss Withers could make out a faint phosphorescent glow from the rows of tanks. Her hypersensitive ears caught a continuous sound of soft, hidden movement all around them. Life was here, even in the lingering presence of death. But it was cold life, chill-blooded life, life that moved swiftly through a forbidden element and builded itself constantly by feeding on other life, by the bringing of death. Miss Withers knew that she hated fish, hated their filmy eyes and their sleek, snakelike bodies.

  The blackness was so thick that for a moment Miss Withers felt that it was a solid element, the depths of great waters perhaps. She shuddered to realize that if this were so, if the thousands of fish which moved about her were free to come toward her, they would come with gaping mouths, with serried lines of teeth more fierce than ever a tiger wore, to tear at her flesh. Big and small they would come, the mammoth jew-fish, the little sand-sharks, the terrible morays … to hunt Man as they would have hunted each other, for food.

  Suddenly Costello’s hand stopped her. They had been moving forward toward a ray of light that showed from beneath the door marked “Bertrand B. Hemingway, Director.” …

  “I thought I heard something,” he confessed. His voice was a shade less steady than it had been at the door.

  The sound came again, but louder now, horribly louder. It began as a whisper, a choking whisper, rising into a hoarse shriek. It chilled the blood, even to the last quavering note that died gasping away. Miss Withers knew with a sudden intuition that this was no human voice.

  “Holy Mary! Defend us….” The words were torn from the throat of the man who stood beside her, gripping her arm with fingers of steel. Miss Withers guessed that the young Celt, with all his inheritance of belief in the supernatural, was expecting to see the pallid face of Gerald Lester floating lividly through the darkness.

  “Nonsense,” she said sharply as much to herself as to Costello. “Listen.”

  Again came the sound, though it was choked off suddenly. It seemed to come from the office. This time it was even less human in its timbre. From behind them in the big room somewhere there came an answer, a series of querulous, protesting squawks.

  “The penguins!” gasped Costello. “Believe me, it gave me a start for a minute….”

  The office door swung open, and a blaze of light struck them in the face. “Who’s that?”

  The gray-clad form of Fink appeared, open-mouthed with wonder. “How in the devil did you get in here?” he gasped as he recognized Miss Withers. “Did I leave that door on the latch again? Anyway, you can’t come in here….”

  “We can so come in,” Costello declared, shouldering his way forward. Then the voice of Hemingway came from within the long room.

  “Fink! Get back here and hold this light. Never mind who’s there….”

  Miss Withers and Barry Costello pushed forward through the doorway as Fink stepped aside. The office was a glare of light, light that half-blinded the two who had come in through the darkness. It was a moment before Miss Withers could take in the picture.

  Hemingway bent over a table, while Fink the guard held a reflecting lamp at one side. On the table, its feet bound tight, lay a fat black penguin, its bill opened wide, and its long smooth belly shaken with gasps.

  The Director of the New York Aquarium paid no more attention to them than if they had been a thousand miles away. Gently but with unshaking fingers he inserted a long and curiously shaped instrument of gleaming nickel into the maw of the rebellious bird.

  “Steady, Nox old girl, steady there. I knew it’s tough, but we’ll have it put in a jiffy. Hold fast….”

  His voice seemed to quiet the bird somewhat, and he bent its head back so that the shining instrument slipped down, almost out of sight.

  Costello lunged forward. “Stop! What are you doing, you torturing fiend? Leave off crucifying that little bird, will you?”

  Hemingway looked quickly, and his face was a mask of disgust. “Go away, you fool,” he said swiftly. “I’m trying to save the penguin’s life….”

  And slowly, with infinite care, he lifted the gleaming nickel instrument from the gaping maw of the bird. Inch by inch … now it was almost out….

  There was a last resentful squawk from the penguin as it could draw the air into its throat again, and then the little bird was almost quiet under Hemingway’s hand.

  Miss Withers was staring at the shapeless black object which was caught firmly between the two jaws of the long tweezers.

  15

  The Dumb Man Speaks

  SLOWLY MISS WITHERS MOVED forward again, with Costello close behind her. The Director of the Aquarium was shaking his head.

  “And a narrow squeak for you it was, Nox, old girl,” he said to the bew
ildered penguin. Gently he loosed the bonds that held the short, webbed feet, and put the bird down on the floor. It stood uncertainly for a moment, staring at the newcomers.

  Hemingway looked up defiantly. “I don’t know how you people got in here, nor what you’re snooping around for, but you’ve just seen one of the most delicate operations ever performed on an aquarium specimen. That bird would have died before morning if I hadn’t taken the probe and the tweezers to remove the seat of the trouble. And you—” he whirled on Costello—“you tried to interfere, you meddling …”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” interposed Miss Withers swiftly. But Costello bowed with a winning smile on his face.

  “The Director is perfectly right,” he said softly. “I had no business to meddle. But you see, I have always had what I realize is an exaggerated love for animals, and I thought for a moment that you were being cruel. I understand now, and I apologize.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why you’re here,” Hemingway cut in swiftly. “Isn’t it enough that my aquarium has to be turned into a mad-house of photographers and coroners and detectives and policemen without hounding me out at all hours of the night?”

  “It’s only seven o’clock,” Miss Withers reminded him. “And you haven’t explained why you’re shut in this one office with the rest of the Aquarium lights out, working over the penguin….”

  “I had to put the other lights out so that there’d be current enough to light this room brilliantly,” said Hemingway swiftly. “We have an old-fashioned dynamo in this building, because it’s cheaper than city light. And it doesn’t work so well. That’s why I’ve been trying to argue my Board of Trustees into authorizing the installation of city light. But they maintain that we don’t need it because the Aquarium is supposed to be closed at five in the evening….”