The Penguin Pool Murder (The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries)

by Stuart Palmer

  He paused, as if angry that Miss Withers had tricked him into explaining himself instead of making her explain why she had come.

  But she held up her hand arbitrarily. “Look at the penguin,” she said.

  The little black bird was moving uneasily across the floor, its ordeal on the operating table evidently already forgotten. It nibbled at Fink’s finger.

  “Poor old Nox,” said Hemingway as the little bird squawked pipingly. From outside came an answer. “She wants to get back to Erebus. They’re great pals, those two. And they’ve been through trying times these last few days. What with Nox getting this thing stuck in her gullet, and near starving to death….”

  Miss Withers strode forward. “Wait a minute! Just what sort of thing is it that was stuck in the penguin’s gullet? That may be important!”

  Hemingway barred her way as she reached for the wastebasket. “Listen to me,” he protested. “I’ve stood for a whole lot from detectives, but I don’t have to stand it from you. Besides, I tell you it’s nothing … just a bit of cloth that must have fallen into the tank.”

  “Then it’s important. Because the penguins were in that tank during the murder, and later that afternoon. And another thing—that looked like more than a bit of cloth to me. Besides, if it’s nothing you shouldn’t mind my seeing it.”

  “I’m the Director of this Aquarium, and I say …” Hemingway motioned to Fink. “If these people won’t go, throw them out!”

  Costello looked at the fat guard, and grinned. “Go on, throw me out,” he invited. “I’m waiting.”

  Fink was waiting too. But Miss Withers acted. Before Hemingway could stop her she leaned over to the wastebasket in which the Director had dropped the wad of material taken from the penguin’s throat, and snatched up the clammy mess in her fingers.

  As the others watched, she laid it deftly on the very edge of the low table and picked at it with the tip of her black and red pencil. It was a toughly knotted mess, but slowly it loosened.

  A bit of cloth, indeed! It was a twisted ribbon of fine black silk, its ends tied in the remains of a bow knot to form a circle perhaps ten inches in diameter.

  Miss Withers looked up at Costello, and then they both turned toward Bertrand B. Hemingway.

  “Do you know what it was that you took from the penguin’s throat … and what you were about to throw away as of no consequence?” Her voice was deadly serious now. She tapped the silken band with her pencil to emphasize her remarks.

  “I have every reason to believe that this is the band from the hat worn by the murderer of Gerald Lester!” Hemingway stepped back, his face white.

  His eyes were focused on the damp rag as if he saw something written there. “The hat-band … of … the murderer?”

  “I told you we’d find out something if we came down here,” Miss Withers reminded Barry Costello, who was still eyeing Fink belligerently. “Nobody touch that, now. I’m going to send for Inspector Piper….”

  The telephone was on the desk at the farther end of the room, out from under the glaring light of the one big reflecting lamp. But it only took Miss Hildegarde Withers a few seconds to reach it, and speak the magic words “Spring 3100.”

  If only Inspector Piper was in his office! At any rate, the man at the phone in Headquarters could find him … she waited impatiently, while the three men behind her glared at each other. The air in the room was tense, electric….

  Then the Inspector’s familiar “Hello” came crisply over the wire. “Can you come to the Aquarium quickly?” she begged into the mouthpiece. “I’ve found some evidence on the Lester murder … evidence that will send someone to the electric chair….”

  Piper’s voice changed, became shriller, almost eager. “I’ll be there,” he promised. “But what did you find?”

  “I found …”

  There was the sound of a movement behind her, a movement among the three men who had been standing like statues … and then the big reflecting light went out, plunging the room into absolute darkness.

  Black, black night pressed against Miss Withers’ face, blackness that she could taste and touch.

  The telephone crashed to the floor, and there was the sound of a muffled oath behind her, followed by the scrape of a chair. Then Costello’s triumphant voice rang out.

  “No, you don’t, my fine Mister Director. I’ve got you!”

  Miss Withers whirled and then, her hand outstretched into the lowering darkness, she forced herself to move in the direction of the others.

  “Get a light, somebody, quick,” shouted Costello again. “Miss Withers, are you there? Get a light, I’ve got the spalpeen!”

  Of course she had no match. “I’m here,” she called out. “What … what happened, for God’s sake? Where are you?”

  “Here … by the table, with the little rat of a Hemingway in my grip and tight,” said the Irishman. “I caught him trying for that hat-band when the lights went out. There’s matches in my pocket, Miss Withers …”

  “Not necessary at all,” came the quiet voice of Hemingway, and suddenly the light went on again, half blinding them all.

  Bertrand B. Hemingway knelt at the baseboard, with his fingers on the light plug which he had just shoved into its socket again.

  Ten feet away from him, beside the table, Barry Costello held the struggling form of Fink, the guard!

  Slowly the big Irishman released his prisoner, a look of honest amazement on his face. “I thought I had …” He rubbed his brow.

  “Sure, when that villain over there kicked against the light cord, I knew that something was up, and I grabbed … and caught this….”

  Hemingway’s face was a puzzle. “You know who kicked out that light cord, and you know it wasn’t me,” he said quickly.

  “And as God is my witness it wasn’t me,” cried Fink. “I only made a try to save that hat-band there, because of your saying that it was important, and I heard somebody make a snatch for it….”

  Miss Withers paused for a second. She could not, for the life of her, remember who had been nearest that plug as she went to the phone. Even at that, it might have been any of them, for the thick twisted light cord curled all across the office, from plug to the lamp above the table.

  Fink and Hemingway were defiant in their protests of innocence. They raised their voices … but Costello sat down quietly and relit his pipe.

  “This is serious, mighty serious,” Miss Withers announced. “It’s not for me to settle, it’s for the Inspector. Nobody move, please. This place will have to be searched, and everybody here. I suppose it will take some time for Inspector Piper to get here, but there’ll be the dickens to pay when he does. Because …” she pointed toward the table top beneath which the black penguin named Nox was whimpering … “because the hat-band is gone!”

  There was a little silence. This had come as no news to one of those here, at least. Miss Withers felt a positive wall of suspicion shut apart the four of them in that room.

  Hemingway moved slowly to a chair, and sat down wearily. His dignity had vanished, somehow. His little eyes dashed from the one person to another, warily, but he kept his silence.

  Fink, his neat gray uniform crumpled, was noisily protesting. “Arsk him what he was doing at the table,” he kept saying, his grimy finger leveled at Costello. “Arsk him that….”

  “There’ll be plenty of asking and answering to be done when the Inspector gets here,” Costello warned him. “In the meantime, shut up.”

  He moved suddenly toward the door. “I don’t suppose anyone could have come in from the main part of the building, and run off with the band? It’s hard to believe that he could have come in and gone so quiet….”

  His hand touched the knob of the door, and he swung it open. It creaked noisily.

  But Miss Withers was at his side. “I’m afraid you’d better come back inside this room and stay in the bright light,” she warned him. “The Inspector will hold you with these others until he finds that hat-band.”
/>
  “Of course! I hadn’t thought …” Costello laughed shortly, and obediently seated himself in a chair near the table. He extended his fingers to the black penguin, who cast an inquisitive eye upon him, and waddled out of the protecting shadow of the table.

  “Poor little Nox,” said Costello. “Poor little penguin! Did he have a tough time with the stuffy old thing that caught in his throat?”

  “Nox is not a he,” Hemingway told him stiffly. “Nox is a female penguin, named after the Roman goddess of night. And your sympathy is wasted, because the silly birds eat everything that comes their way, from newspapers to shoe laces. And usually they get by with it, having cast-iron stomachs. It was only because that hat-band made such a lump of itself that it caught in Nox’s gullet. She could take your finger off without a bit of trouble, and I hope she does….”

  Costello drew his hand back quickly. “Beg pardon, ma’m,” he said politely to the inquiring bird. “Stupid of me….” He smoked contentedly.

  And then a police siren rose above the noises of the city, a screaming siren that rose to a shrill crescendo, and then died away somewhere just outside. There came the sound of heavy, running footsteps, and a banging on the main door of the Aquarium.

  Miss Withers flung open the door of the office, so that the way was illuminated. In a moment Inspector Piper, followed by a quartet of sturdy policemen, burst into the room.

  “Miss Withers! What happened! You dropped the phone, and I heard something happening, so I came down in a squad car.

  She told him what had happened. Oscar Piper did not waste a moment. He faced Hemingway, Costello, and Fink, and his voice was stern.

  “You realize that this business is deadly serious? Do you know that by tampering with this evidence, some person here has aided and abetted a murder, if not actually admitted his complicity?”

  He gave swift orders to his men. One stationed himself at either door, and the other two waited for what was to follow.

  “That hat-band is in this room,” said the Inspector. “I’ve every reason to believe that it is direct evidence against the murderer of Gerald Lester. I have authority to arrest every one of you and hold you over night, at least. But I don’t want to make the innocent suffer with the guilty. Will you all submit to a search?”

  Costello stepped forward, proudly. “I was just going to suggest it myself, Inspector. I realize that no man’s name is clear here until that is done. Will you start with me?”

  Piper nodded. “You bet we will. Miss Withers, will you step out of the room a moment? The officer at the door will wait for you, because I can’t show any favorites here. You may have the hat-band yourself.”

  “Yes, and so the penguin may have it under his wing, but I doubt it,” she said acidly. But she followed the officer out of the room.

  Then, as Barry Costello stood there, a faintly embarrassed smile on his face, the two uniformed officers went over his clothing and himself with a figurative fine tooth comb.

  He had never dreamed that a search could be so absolute. Every article was removed from his pockets and laid on the table beneath the light for the Inspector’s benefit.

  There were some silver change, a pocket-knife with a folding blade, a ring with three keys on it, and two pocket handkerchiefs of fine linen.

  There was a bank-book, which Piper opened and turned through rapidly, noting that the man had withdrawn two hundred dollars on his savings account that day, leaving only five dollars on deposit.

  There was a bill-fold containing five hundred and forty dollars in bills, two checks made out to “B. M. Costello, Treasurer,” one for one hundred and one for three hundred, a few engraved cards bearing the legend “Mr. Barry Costello, Attorney at Law, representing Be Kind to Animals Society …”

  Piper looked at the man inquisitively. “That’s my real life work,” Costello told him. “I love all animals, and I love to work for their happiness. Those checks represent contributions toward a little society that I’ve formed …”

  There was an address book, through which Piper necessarily skimmed, but in which the detective noticed that there were many names of prominent women, women of Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue circles. This fellow Costello had fine friends. Piper would have liked to make a few notes, but under the circumstances he could not. “Get your own phone numbers,” Costello suggested with a bit of a smile as the Inspector lingered over the little book. “Most of those people are bridge pupils of mine.”

  There was the back of an empty envelope, which had been sent through the mail to Mr. Barry Costello at the Four Arts Club, with scribbles on it. Piper noticed the figure “$5000” written out several times, and beneath it a column of lesser numbers which had been added together to make a grand total of $940, with a notation “Pictures yet to come, approx $500….”

  Costello saw Piper’s interest, and exploded. “I say, you can’t find the hat-band thing in that envelope, you know. And that’s all you’re supposed to be looking for, Inspector. I don’t mind telling you that those cryptic figures are simply a memo I made this afternoon of the money I’m raising for Gwen Lester’s defense.”

  The man was right in objecting, and Piper laid the envelope aside. He watched his men probe into the linings of Costello’s clothes, into his shoes, even open the man’s mouth and stare past his excellent set of teeth.

  After half an hour of intense effort, they were forced to announce that Barry Costello possessed no hat-band in any way, shape, form, nor manner except for the narrow one sewed onto his derby, which lay on the shelf near the door. Even this was probed and inspected.

  Even Nox, the little black lady penguin, came forward to peer up at the man who was being searched, as if she were aiding in the inquisition. She was growing more and more restless, but like the humans whom she so weirdly resembled, she was a prisoner in this stuffy office.

  “Well, Inspector, you’ll have to hand me a clean bill of health, I guess.”

  Piper nodded slowly. “No offense, Costello. But you walked into this mess, and you had to stand the search like everybody else who was here. Hemingway, you’re the next.”

  There was considerable protesting here, but Piper stood by his guns, and the effects of Bertrand B. Hemingway were laid bare.

  He was punched and prodded and worked over minutely, from the top of his baldish head to the soles of his feet, but he did not have the hat-band. He possessed a thin white-gold watch, five minutes before time, a bill-fold with eight dollars in it, a ring of some thirty keys, pocketful after pocketful of little pieces of paper marked with almost indistinguishable memoranda regarding fish and their habits, and a jack-knife with a complete set of tool blades.

  But the Director proved as barren of hat-bands as had Costello. The Inspector impatiently motioned him to join the Irish lawyer against the wall.

  “Well, Fink, it looks like you,” said the detective threateningly. The two policemen moved forward to take the guard by the arms, but he threw himself back.

  “You ain’t got any business searching me,” he protested. “I ain’t done anything. I never even touched the hat-band. But I won’t be searched.”

  “You won’t what?” queried the biggest cop, reaching for his night stick. But the Inspector came forward.

  “I know that I haven’t legal authority to search you,” he said. “But I can arrest you as an accessory after the fact, and if that’s the only way to find the hat-band, don’t think I won’t do it. That bit of evidence will show us the approximate head size of the man who killed Gerald Lester. It will send somebody up the river, most likely. Now what about it? Will you be searched before or after arrest?”

  Hemingway gave swift instructions to his employee. “Don’t be a fool, Fink. You can’t get out of it.”

  “You saw us go through it without whimpering, didn’t you?” Costello took the big black pipe from his mouth. “Maybe you’ve got something to hide? You might as well hand it over to the Inspector, because he’ll find it anyway….”

&nbs
p; Fink hesitated a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. “All right, you win,” he said. He fished in an inside pocket and brought out a grimy packet. “I know I’ll rot in jail for this,” he whined, “but I swear I …”

  Inspector Piper snatched the packet from his fingers, and tore out its contents. Instead of what he had expected to find, here was a tattered set of colored “French” postcards, of a weakly pornographic character. Costello guffawed.

  The detective gave Fink a glance of mingled pity and exasperation. He threw back the envelope of dirty postcards.

  “Do you think I care one hoot in hell about this junk? Do you think the Homicide Squad has nothing to do but chase smut? I’m looking for elephants, not mice. Search him, boys, and give him a tight frisk.”

  But nothing of even moderate interest was discovered in the search. Fink’s pockets ran to newspaper clippings of the Lester murder, bits of string, a square and marble-like hunk of eating tobacco, and some grimy one dollar bills.

  Nothing was ignored. Even the man’s shoes were given the eagle eye. Clothes linings, cuff of trousers … everywhere. Finally he allowed Fink to put on his clothes.

  And at last Piper was forced to the conclusion that the guard was as innocent of hat-bands as the other two. He rubbed his nose reflectively, and then sent for Miss Withers.

  She returned to the room in something of a huff at having been kept outside so long.

  “I suppose you think you’re going to search me, Inspector? Because …”

  Piper hid a grin. “Nothing was farther from my mind, dear lady. In the first place, it would be against the ethics of the department to suggest such a thing, and I should have to send for a police matron. Again, I haven’t the slightest suspicion that you would telephone me that you had found it, and then make away with it in the darkness.”

  He lit a cigar. “No, it’s not on you, and none of these three have it. The window is closed, and you tell me that it has remained so. There wasn’t time for anyone to get to the door, which squeaks terribly, and back before the lights went on. Therefore, the hat-band is still in this room.”