“Against what?”
“He never had a chance to tell me. But I think this might supply part of the answer.” He held up a wicked-looking pistol. “This is what did the trick, Senator. It’s all right to handle it. No fingerprints were found on it.”
Scowling, Banner took it from him. “So that’s the Russian pop-pop.”
“Right,” said Cozzens. “A Tokarev, a standard Russian automatic. It’s a 7.62-mm. with a Browning-Colt breech-locking system and it uses Nagant gas-check cartridges.”
“This was the gun in the sealed envelope,” said Banner. “Are you sure it wasn’t some other gun you heard being fired?”
Cozzens slowly shook his head. “I’ve spent a lifetime with guns, Senator. I’ve got to know their ‘voices’ just the way you know people’s. When you hear an accent, you know what part of the world the speaker comes from. That’s the way I am with pistols and revolvers. So I’ll stake my reputation that the shots we heard had a Russian accent, meaning they were fired from a Tokarev automatic, slightly muffled. Besides that, ballistics bears me out. The bullets found in Gosling’s body were indisputably from that gun.”
Banner grunted. “And all the while the gun was sealed up tight in an envelope and you could see the secretary holding the envelope while the shots were fired?”
“That’s right,” answered Cozzens.
“How d’you explain it, Cap’n? What’s your theory?”
“Theory? I haven’t any. I can’t explain it. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.”
“Anything else you have to offer?” asked Banner.
“Nothing. That’s all.”
The stogie in Banner’s mouth was burning fiercely. He looked around the office where the murder had been committed. It was a completely equipped modern office. Nothing had been disturbed. He mumbled: “Gosling knew his life was in danger!”
Banner turned to McKitrick. “I’ll see Odell.”
Cozzens left while Banner was being introduced to the FBI agent, Odell.
“You heard Cozzens’ story about the shooting, Odell,” said Banner. “Have you anything to add to it?”
Odell shook his red-haired head. “No, it happened just that way, Senator.” His frank boyish face was grave.
“Why were you stationed here?”
“At a request from Mr Gosling. He asked for our security.”
“How long’ve you been hanging out here?”
“About a week, Senator.”
McKitrick interrupted to say: “Odell asked for this assignment.”
Banner studied the young man with the rusty hair. “What’s the reason, Red?”
Odell hesitated, growing crimson around the ears. “Well, Senator – a – Miss Wagner – Well, you’ll have to see her to appreciate her—”
Banner suddenly chuckled. He was thinking of his own misspent youth chasing the dolls.
Odell sobered. “She’s a hard girl to make friends with,” he admitted ruefully.
“It’s tough, Red,” grinned Banner. “Fetch in the li’l chickie and we’ll see if I can’t make better time with her than you did.”
Odell went out of the office and returned with Gertrude. She looked scared at Banner. Big men in authority seemed to have given her a sudden fright. Her shoulders were hunched up as if she were cold. Odell held her solicitously by the elbow.
“Hello, Gertie,” boomed Banner as familiarly as if he had helped to christen her. “Siddown.”
She dropped gratefully on the leather lounge as if relieved to get the strain off her shaky knees.
“Gertie, there’s no reason why you should think I’m gonna panic you. I’m your big Dutch uncle, remember?”
She smiled at him.
“Now, Gertie,” he resumed, “you live with your people, don’t you?”
“No,” she said hoarsely, then she cleared her throat. “No, Senator. I have no relatives in America. They’re all living in Germany.”
“Germany?” Banner made a quick pounce. “What part of Germany?”
“On a farm outside of Zerbst.”
Banner’s little frosty blue eyes looked shrewd. “That’s in East Germany, ain’t it, Gertie?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about ’em. And how you got out?”
It wasn’t too complicated a story. Gertrude had been born just after the end of World War Two. She grew up in a Communist dominated land, where everybody was schooled in the Russian language. She learned to speak English too – from an ex-Berlitz professor who ran a black market in verboten linguistics. Farm life had been stern, as she grew big enough to help her father and crippled mother with the chores, but Gertrude had become sturdy on plenty of fresh milk and vegetables, and she used to walk back from the haying fields with her rakehandle across her back and shoulders and her arms draped over it. It made her walk straight and developed strong chest muscles.
“Yass,” muttered Banner at this point. “Like those Balinese gals carrying loads on their heads.” He dwelt silently on Bali for a moment, then he said: “Go on. How’d you get outta East Germany?”
She had, she explained, visited East Berlin several times, helping to bring farm products to market. Each time she came an urge grew stronger in her to see all the things she had heard rumors about, the free and wealthy people of the West, the shops and cinemas along the Kurfurstendamm, and the opportunities for a better life. One day, at the Brandenburg Gate, the urge overcame her. She made a wild, reckless dash, eluding Soviet soldier guards, and made it, panting, falling into the arms of sympathetic West Berliners in the American Sector. She had thought that she would surely find somebody who could help to get her crippled mother and her father free too, but so far there was nobody who could perform that miracle.
Her good looks and quick learning ability eventually got her sponsored for a trip to the United States. Mr Gosling, of the New Zealand Legation, had proved kind to her and had got her the job.
She stopped talking, her brunette head with the Dutch bob bent low.
“Haaak!” Banner cleared his throat, making a sound like a sea lion. “Who’re you living with now?”
“Nobody. I have a small apartment to myself. I have become an American citizen.”
Banner sourly eyed the chewed wet end of the stogie in his hand. “Now about this envelope with the gun in it. When did it come to your desk?”
“Sometime near 11:00 o’clock in the morning, Senator.”
“Who brought it?”
“A man from the special messenger service.”
“Would you know him if you saw him again?”
“I think I would.”
“Was your boss, Mr Gosling, engaged at 11:00?”
“Yes, Mr Lockyear was in there.”
“What time did Cap’n Cozzens come into the reception room?”
“Around 11:15.”
“Did anyone tamper with that envelope once it reached your desk, Gertie?”
“No, sir. No one.”
“What time did Lockyear come outta the private office?”
“It was nearly 11:30.”
“When he came out,” said Banner carefully, “did he go straight out?”
“Yes – he stopped only to make an appointment for next Tuesday. I jotted it in my pad.”
“Then what’d you do?”
“I spoke to Mr Gosling on the interphone,” she said in a low hushed voice. “I told him that Captain Cozzens was waiting to see him next. He told me to withhold him for a minute and for me to come in with my notebook. I started to go in, then remembered the envelope. The sticker on it had said: Deliver to Mr Kermit Gosling at 11:30 a.m. sharp. I went back to my desk for it.”
“It was now just about 11:30, eh? When you went into the private office, what was Gosling doing?”
“He was sitting at his desk.”
“He was perfectly all right?”
“Yes, Senator.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
She opened
her mouth. She paused. “No, he didn’t actually say anything. He just smiled and motioned me toward the chair I usually take dictation in. I held up the envelope. I was just about to tell him about it when the gun went off.”
“And you saw Gosling being hit with the bullets?”
She nodded wretchedly. “He jerked back, then started to sag over. Then Captain Cozzens and Mr Odell rushed in.”
“Is that all?” rasped Banner.
She bowed her head again.
McKitrick, the FBI departmental head, stirred uneasily by the wall. “Now,” he said, “you see what’s got the wits of two organizations stymied!”
Banner was looking down at his stogie. It had gone out, but he wasn’t even thinking about it. He said: “I’ll tell you what I think about it.”
McKitrick looked at him hopefully. “What?”
“It couldn’t’ve happened! It’s too damned impossible!”
Ramshaw must have been about forty-five. A cigarette dangled limply out of his slack lips as he sat on the bench at the special messenger service. He wore a weather-faded blue uniform with shrunken breeches and dusty leather leggings.
Banner loomed over him, his enveloping black wraprascal increasing his already Gargantuan size. “You remember the envelope you delivered to the New Zealand Legation yesterday?”
“That’s easy, mister. I never handled one like that before. A 10-year-old kid came into our agency about 10:00 in the morning and said somebody told him to leave the envelope with us to be delivered immediately. We didn’t ask too many questions, seeing as the kid had more than ample money to pay for the delivery.”
“Did he say whether the someone was a man or a woman?”
“Nope.”
“Did anyone tamper with the envelope while it was here?”
“Nope. I was assigned to do the job, mister. I kept the envelope right in front of me till I delivered it to the Legation at 11:00. It had written on it, Deliver to Mr Kermit Gosling at 11:30a.m. sharp, so I wanted to be sure it got there in plenty of time.”
Banner glowered. “Didja know there was a gun in it?”
Ramshaw squirmed as if his shrunken breeches chafed him. “I – I thought there was. That’s what it felt like through the heavy paper.”
“Nobody stopped you on the way to the Legation? Tell me if someone even bumped into you.”
“Nope, nope. Clear sailing all the way, mister.”
Banner looked down at a pocket watch that must have been manufactured by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. He muttered: “I can still ketch Lockyear before lunch.”
He went out of the agency, leaving behind him a grinning messenger. “Say, mister! Thanks for the tip!”
Lockyear, in his office on Pittsylvania Avenue, played with his King Tut beard as Banner made himself known to him.
“It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of, Senator,” said Lockyear. “But I’m afraid I can be of very little help. Gosling was far from dead when I left him.”
“While you were in the office,” said Banner, “did you notice anything threatening?”
“Threatening? No, not a thing, Senator.”
“Perhaps you’d tell me what you were seeing Gosling about.”
“Of course I have no objection, Senator. I’m an exporter-importer. I’ve been seeing Gosling about clearing some shipments that have been going in and out of New Zealand. Governments are touchy these days about cargoes.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all, Senator.”
In a few minutes Banner was on his way back to the Idle Hour Club. As he entered the convivial surroundings and lumbered into the dining room, he found McKitrick waiting for him.
“The only thing about this case that’s plain,” said McKitrick abruptly, “is the motive. We know why Gosling was killed.”
“Do you?” Banner squeezed in behind a table and told a waiter he wanted some straight whiskey.
McKitrick said in a lower voice: “Gosling was collecting information on a spy who’s been selling all our secrets to the Russian Government. Gosling didn’t know exactly who it was, but he was getting dangerously close to that truth. Unfortunately the spy got to Gosling first. The Russian pistol is evidence of that.”
McKitrick stopped talking long enough to allow the waiter to place Banner’s whiskey before him.
“Yass?” Banner fired up another big stogie.
McKitrick continued: “I’ve been thinking about Gertrude Wagner. She admits she’s from East Germany. Her sympathies might easily lie with the Commies. We have only her word that she’d broken with them. What’s more to the point, Banner, she was in the room with Gosling when he was killed. The only person in the room with him. And she was holding the gun that killed him!”
“So?” muttered Banner. “Mebbe you can explain away the sealed envelope.” When McKitrick didn’t answer, Banner shrugged. “How was she able to shoot the gun through the envelope without making any holes in it?”
McKitrick sighed. “Times are getting brutal for us investigators when all a murderer has to do is send his victim a gun by mail and it does the killing for him.”
The wind coming across the Potomac River that afternoon had the icy sting of early winter on its breath.
Gertrude Wagner, wrapped up in a cloth coat, walking on the park path, stopped suddenly. She stared nervously around her. A man in an oystercolored balmacaan, who had been following her, veered around a turn in the path. When he saw her looking straight at him he hesitated for a fraction of a second, then he kept on coming, his pace more deliberate. Under the slant brim of his hat Gertrude could see the bright red hair. The wide shoulders were familiar.
She stood there until Odell came up to her. He grinned sheepishly. “Hello, Gertie. Mind if I walk the rest of the way with you?”
She drew back a pace as if she was afraid he might contaminate her. Her face looked pale and scared. “You’ve been following me,” she accused him.
Odell was sober. “To tell the truth, Gertie—”
“Why do you have to hound me? Can’t you leave me alone?”
“I’m not hounding you,” he said, disheartening to know that she had interpreted his actions that way.
“You are, Mr Odell. I haven’t been able to make a move since you came to the Legation without having your eyes on me. You people are watching me all the time, waiting to pounce on me for the least slip I make. I thought America was a free country, but the police watch you here as much as they do over there . . . You think I killed Mr Gosling!”
“Did it ever occur to you,” he said through clenched teeth, “that I might have other reasons for wanting to be near you?”
“What?” she said, hardly believing her ears. “What did you say?”
“You’re not hard to take, Gertie,” he said.
“Take?” she said in confusion. “Oh but—”
“You never gave me much encouragement. You always seemed to have so much on your mind, Gertie.”
“If that’s really true, Mr Odell, I’m sorry I – if I offended you just now.”
“If it’s really true! You don’t think I’m telling you the truth?”
“I can’t be sure of anything any more.”
“I was in that office to protect Mr Gosling – and you.” He looked at her steadily. “You believe me, Gertie.”
She looked back at him for a long moment, and he thought her eyes were watering.
She lowered her gaze. “Yes, Mr Odell, I do. I do believe you.”
“Well, then,” smiled Odell, “I hope you’re not doing anything tonight, as I want—”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry. Not tonight. I have an appointment I can’t break. Shall we make it some other time?”
“Sure, Gertie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” She smiled. “So long then.” She had her right hand in her coat pocket. She took it out and held it toward him. He grasped her palm. And then he felt that she had something in her hand – a slip of paper. W
hen she drew her hand away she left it in his palm. He felt, with a rush of intuition, that everything was wrong. He pretended not to notice what she’d left in his hand. As she turned on her high heels to walk swiftly away from him, he thrust his own hand into his pocket.
He watched her go out of sight along the path, then he walked out of the park in the opposite direction. He was curious about what she was trying to convey to him. He went into the first street corner phone booth he came to and took the slip of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.
The wrinkles of perplexity increased on his forehead.
The paper was blank except for two circles, a small one inside a much larger one, drawn on it in pencil.
Gertrude, the cold night wind whipping the coat about her knees, went up the legation steps. All the windows were dark. X Street was dark. Fumbling in her handbag, she took out a key, unlocked the front door, and slipped into the vestibule. It was all cold marble, like a mausoleum. She left the front door unlocked behind her as she went in, as if she was expecting someone else to follow her.
She flicked on a cigarette lighter to light her way up the plush carpeted stairway to the third floor. This was the floor on which the murder had been committed. She went into the office, tiptoeing past her desk in the reception room, going into the private office.
She looked at Gosling’s empty chair behind the desk. Gosling’s bloodied ghost still seemed to occupy it. And she shuddered.
She remembered a line from one of the newspapers . . . A nameless horror has stalked through the Legation . . .
The watch on her wrist ticked away loudly. She was painfully conscious of time. Everything had depended on time.
She did not know anyone was in the room with her until she heard the door between the offices click softly closed.
She turned around with a violent start. The cigarette lighter flicked out when she released her thumb. A shadow moved against the closed door.
“Is that you?” she gasped.
A powerful flashlight blinded her.
“Yes,” answered a voice. “Have you done all that was expected of you?”
She nodded miserably.
“Fine.” She heard a heartless chuckle.
And that was all she heard, for it is doubtful if she heard the two quick coughs before the lead slugs tore into her breast.
The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries Page 5
