I lit a cigarette and waited. The Mexican youth stopped by Burke’s chair and asked, “Señor Burke?”
Jerry stood up and said softly, “I’m Burke. Did you telephone me?”
“Sí, sí.” His eyes flickered over me suspiciously. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. He carried himself with an arrogance that seemed to be put on to conceal an inward weakness.
“This is a friend of mine,” Burke said brusquely, when he sensed the youth’s suspicion of my presence. “Sit down and tell us what you know.”
“Gracias.” He sat down opposite Burke. The waiter bustled up and he ordered tequila. None of us said anything until his drink was brought. When the waiter again departed, Burke leaned across the table and said quietly: “I’m waiting to hear what you’ve got to say about the Malvern murder.”
The youth’s gaze flickered uneasily and dropped to the table. His tongue flicked out and wet his lips. “I weel tal you,” he said sibilantly. Lifting his small glass of the fiery liquor, he tossed it off at one gulp.
Burke folded his arms on the table and leaned forward expectantly. Tensely I duplicated this gesture and gazed at the oily Mexican. Then, without appearing to move, Burke sat back and his hands were missing from the table, and he stared away to the right. He seemed to have forgotten the youth, when suddenly he said, “I’m waiting.” The Mexican fiddled with his glass with the dark fingers of his left hand. “I weel tal you,” he said again. His slight frame tensed as he leaned back in his chair. He spoke deliberately, as though each word were spoken with a distinct effort: “Ze man w’at shoot Señor Malvern ees—”
His words were silenced by a thunderous explosion. He sank back with a little gurgle on his lips and an expression of blank astonishment on his face.
I was standing up, and Burke was standing up. There was the acrid smell of gunpowder in my nostrils. Burke held an automatic in his right hand, and a little wisp of blue smoke curled upward from the muzzle. The Mexican youth toppled from his chair to the floor, dead.
Chapter Five
THERE’S A WHOLE LOT of difference between mowing a man down with typewriter keys and actually smelling gun smoke while you look down at a dead body. I was completely callous to vicarious killings, but the real thing knocked me into a heap.
I had craved action, though, and Burke measured out a big dose. My first feeling was one of pleasure to learn that he really had what it took when necessity arose. Of course, I didn’t understand just why he felt it necessary to kill the boy when he seemed to be on the point of telling us what we wanted to know, but I had a feeling Jerry Burke knew what it was all about.
There was hell to pay in the Mexican café before the echoes of the shot died away. Burke tossed his automatic onto the table and was very quiet about it. Sprawled on the floor, the boy’s right hand held a cocked pistol half-drawn from his waistband.
Burke had waited as long as he could before shooting first. After it was all over I understood why he had persisted in looking off to the right while we waited for the boy to talk. The table at which we sat was moved out from the wall in order to make the chair more accessible. Thus it projected into the aisle formed by the row of tables. The Mexican sat in the aisle seat and his entire body was reflected in a full-length mirror across the room. In the mirror, Burke had been watching the boy’s hand concealed from direct view by the rim of the table.
Naturally my ego took a jolt when I discovered that all this was going on right under my eyes while I sat there complacently unconscious of impending tragedy. But my esteem for Jerry Burke slid right up the pole and rang the bell when I considered the tension he had been under those few minutes without giving the slightest outward evidence to either me or his would-be killer.
That was practically all there was to it. The evidence to support justifiable homicide was incontrovertible. Mexican police came in and officiously arrested us both and hustled us off to jail, but they were very decent about it when Burke did a little explaining and they got on the wire to El Paso to check up.
The dead youth, identified as a marihuana smoker, had been in trouble plenty of times and was on the blacklist of the Juarez police. They were glad enough to get rid of him. Burke hung around and got the boy’s record, but that didn’t throw much light on the attempted killing. His specialties were wielding a stiletto and running dope across the Border. His name was Juan Marquinez, nineteen years of age. The Mexican officers politely expressed their regrets and promised to check up on every angle and let us know if any leads developed.
An official car drove us to the bridge about daylight and we got out and walked across to Burke’s car. He was in the depths of a brown study when we got in and drove back to El Paso. I didn’t interrupt him. I did some thinking myself, and resolved to be more alert and less gullible in the future. A thousand questions hung on the tip of my tongue, but I waited.
Burke stopped outside an all-night restaurant and suggested that we have breakfast. That suited me. I had felt empty in the mid-section ever since Burke’s gun went off in El Gato Pobre. We went in and sat at a marble-topped table and ordered. Jerry grinned at me over his first cup of coffee and I judged he was ready to answer questions.
“Do you think the boy had any real information on the Malvern murder?” I asked.
“I’m inclined to think not. Remember, the Free Press extra was on the streets at midnight. It played up the fact that I was taking personal charge. It seems likely that some master-mind calculated that was a sure dodge to get me out of bed and over to Juarez where I could be bumped off with neatness and dispatch.”
I nodded and gulped down some hot coffee. It eased the gnawing in my belly. “Did you suspect anything?”
Burke shrugged. “I keep my eyes open. I saw the boy was doped when he came toward us. Probably marihuana. The mirror was a handy way to check up.”
“You think he was hired?” I asked hastily. “By whom?”
Again that shrug of his shoulders. His smile was a little broader. “The field is wide open.”
“Someone,” I told him, “who knew your private telephone number.”
He nodded. “It isn’t really a hard and fast secret. That doesn’t narrow the field much.”
“Dope smugglers?” I was thinking about the youth’s connections.
“One guess is as good as another.” Burke attacked a stack of cakes and a plate of country sausage with a lot more gusto than seemed quite decent in one who had killed a man a few hours previously.
I was plenty hungry, too. I guess a man burns up a lot of nervous energy in the detecting business. I was beginning to think of my typewriter with a queer sort of nostalgia—beginning to feel that I’d just as soon take my killings second-hand, after all.
But Burke was all on the prod when we finished breakfast. He seemed to have forgotten what a bed was for. “We’ll go up to headquarters,” he said as we went out, “and see what they’ve got.”
They didn’t have much for us at headquarters. A report on the death bullet and the murderer’s calling card. Neither of them was any great help. The card was a complete blank. No fingerprints. The typing was thought to be several weeks old. It had been shown to the newspaper clerk who took the advertisement from the mail, and he said that so far as he could tell it might or might not have been done by the same typewriter.
The bullet was a little more informative. The ballistics expert reported that it had been fired from a .30 caliber rifle at close range. There were some velocity calculations leading to the belief that the death weapon was probably a U.S. Army Krag. The report went on to state that there were certain identifying marks on the bullet that might or might not be a definite clue if the death weapon was found and a bullet fired from it for comparison.
Burke sat at his desk and laid the two reports aside. He filled his pipe and lit it, then pushed a button on his desk. A uniformed man answered, and Burke asked to have Chief Jelcoe come in at once.
Jelcoe seemed more cheerful this morning. He nodde
d to me and congratulated Burke on his narrow escape in Juarez, saying he had just come in and heard the story.
Burke cut him short and asked if there was anything new on the Malvern case. The chief’s eyelids fluttered as he said his men were running down a number of tips. A neighbor had telephoned in the information that an automobile drove up to the Malvern residence about ten-thirty the night before and stayed for approximately half an hour. They were trying to locate the car.
Burke asked him to get in touch with Malvern’s lawyer and arrange to have him meet Burke at the Malvern house immediately. Chief Jelcoe’s eyelids did their little fluttering stunt at this, but he agreed without argument. He went out, and Burke and I went out. I was beginning to feel like Nip and Tuck must feel when I’m too busy to give them much attention. But, like them, I scrambled into the car with Jerry without waiting for any particular encouragement.
The drive out to Kern Boulevard was vastly different from our wild ride at midnight. Burke loafed along, puffing at his pipe and deep in his own thoughts. The day was bright and sunny, and I had the queer feeling that all this was a great to-do about nothing. A man had been killed, but that seemed a long time ago.
This feeling was somewhat dispelled by our arrival at the Malvern house. A squad car stood in the drive, and a uniformed man lounged on the front porch. He snapped to attention as we came up the steps and told us another man was on duty guarding the study.
We went into the ghostly silence of the big house. No one was about except the guard. In the study, desk drawers and filing-cabinets had been forced open and their contents were strewn about in a disorderly manner. Burke studied the mass of papers with a queer smile on his face.
“Did Chief Jelcoe find anything important?” he asked without looking at the bluecoat in the doorway.
“I don’t know, sir. He spent the better part of an hour in here—after you left last night.”
Burke nodded absently. He thumbed through some of the papers and rubbed his chin. Then he ordered the cop to get Mr. and Mrs. Perkins and the maid into the living-room and tell the policeman at the door to keep them there until he came.
He paced back and forth in the study and smoked his pipe until the officer came back to report that the trio was gathered in the living-room. Burke said to him, “I’m going upstairs. Wander out to the front in about three minutes and ring the doorbell two or three times.” And to me, he said, “Come on.”
I went with him through the hall to the rear. There was a wide staircase in the front and a narrow one leading up from the hall outside the kitchen to a hallway and two small rooms at the rear of the second floor. The left-hand door stood open and we peered in. It was obviously the maid’s room, and she was obviously a very untidy young person.
Burke grunted and went to the other door. It opened without difficulty and we went into a sparsely furnished room as tidy as the other room had been messy. A double bed, two aged rocking-chairs, and a high old dresser were the only articles of furniture. Burke puttered around, looking into the clothes closet and pulling out dresser drawers. Everything was in immaculate order.
We killed at least five minutes without hearing anything and then went downstairs. The cop was again standing at the door of the study. In answer to Burke’s question, he said he had rung the bell several times. Burke appeared to be vaguely disappointed as we went to the living-room, where the three servants were gathered. There was a look of strained expectancy on the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Perkins. Lucy Travers greeted our appearance with a toothy smile.
“You two ladies can go out,” Burke said without preamble. “I want to ask you a few questions, Mr. Perkins.” He sat down at the table and lighted his pipe as Mrs. Perkins and the maid filed out silently. It seemed to me that Harvey Perkins had acquired a slightly furtive air since the preceding night.
“Did you, or Mrs. Perkins, see Mr. Malvern last before you went up to bed?”
“Why—I, sir. Amanda went up before I locked up.”
“Why,” Burke asked gently, “do you suppose Mr. Malvern told her to tell you to leave the front door unlocked instead of telling you direct?”
“Why—” Doubt flickered over the man’s lined face as he hesitated. “I suppose he just happened to think of it when she was about and I wasn’t.”
“He wasn’t in the habit of transmitting orders to you through your wife?” It was more a statement than a question.
Harvey Perkins straightened his gaunt frame a trifle at this imputation. “Of course not, sir. Except when it was convenient.”
“And it didn’t occur to you,” Burke asked softly, “that it was strange he should have given her this order when he knew he would see you as you locked up and could tell you directly?”
Perkins said, “No, sir. I can’t say that I thought of it.” But both of us knew he had thought of it.
Burke said to the policeman, “Take Perkins out and bring his wife in. Don’t let them talk together.”
Perkins’s face was unemotional as he went out.
“What’s up?” I asked Burke curiously.
“We’re going to find out,” he promised.
Amanda Perkins came in with a frightened look on her face. Burke soothingly asked her to sit down. He said abruptly, “You’ve had time to think things over since last night. Don’t you think the truth will be best?”
Mrs. Perkins squirmed in her chair and clasped her plump hands together tensely. “I—I don’t understand, sir.”
“This is murder,” Burke said inexorably. “You didn’t mean any harm, of course. But now that it is murder, you’d better make a clean breast of it.”
She shrank back in her chair and mumbled, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re implicating your husband, too,” Burke shot at her. “I don’t think you realized what was going to happen, did you?” He flung the last two words at her like bullets.
She shrank back in her chair and two tears squeezed out of her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. “Oh, no!” she gasped. “I didn’t know. She’d come before and—nothing happened. I couldn’t see the harm in it.”
“Of course not,” Burke said gently. “I suppose Mr. Malvern had refused to see her, so you arranged to have the front door left open without telling Harvey it was your idea?”
“Y-Yes, sir. Oh, but I know that couldn’t have had anything to do with Mr. Malvern getting shot.”
“Then it can’t do any harm to tell us the whole truth. Who was the visitor for whom you left the door open last night?”
“I—I—I mustn’t tell you, sir. I promised.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks and she wrung her hands together abjectly.
“This is murder,” Burke said sternly.
Something bucked the plump little woman up suddenly. She sat up and gulped back her sobs. “And fair enough, too. I’m not sorry. God in heaven knows he was deserving of it. If she did have anything to do with it, I don’t care. Wild horses wouldn’t drag her name from me.”
She meant it. Repeated questioning brought us no nearer the truth. Amanda Perkins was a woman of strong will when she set her mind to a certain course.
Mr. Perkins, too, was unshakable. It was evident that he knew or suspected that his wife had arranged to let a visitor enter without Malvern’s permission—but no further information was forthcoming from the stubborn couple.
Burke gave it up after an hour. He ordered them both removed to jail and held as material witnesses. Just as we were on the point of leaving, Chief Jelcoe called to inform Burke that Malvern’s attorney was out of the city and would not return for several days. Burke hung up the receiver and I caught a fleeting glimpse of the furrow deepening between his eyes.
He suggested that we drive to my place for lunch.
Chapter Six
NIP AND TUCK accused me of willful neglect with their mournful eyes, but their stocky bodies trembled eagerly, and two tails thumped a cheery welcome. Burke took them out in the yard for a run while I rummaged for food.
He nodded, frowning. “Jelcoe sounded almost smug over the phone. He may have picked up a lead from the papers in the study and is trying to put a fast one over before I get onto it.”
“He can’t hold out information on you, can he?” I asked hotly.
Burke shrugged his shoulders. “Not if I demand it from him. But I’ll go about the case in my own way.” He took another sandwich and I poured out two mugs of coffee strong enough to float an egg.
“You’ve got a theory,” I charged.
He nodded absently. “Don’t get excited about a theory. We usually explode a dozen before we crack a case like this.”
“But you do think that Mr. and Mrs. Perkins and the visitor have something to do with it?”
“Possibly. I don’t like to be held out on. We know the visitor was a she—that Malvern didn’t expect her, and didn’t want to see her—that she had been to see him before—that Mrs. Perkins, at least, is in sympathy with her and arranged to let her in to Malvern. How does it stack up?”
“It doesn’t stack—to me.” I gulped some hot coffee and reverted to the first topic of conversation: “I suppose the son will inherit everything. As far as I know, he’s Malvern’s only heir.”
“The fellow we saw drive up last night—he’s the next angle. Tell me everything you know about Malvern’s son.”
“It isn’t much.” I chewed on a sandwich and thought back. “An only child. I guess he was sort of pampered when he was a boy. As far as I know, he lived with his father until he went to war. There was quite a mess in the papers soon after he came back. He married a girl—I don’t recall the exact facts. Seems to me she was a servant at the house and there was at least the implication that he had got her into trouble and had to marry her. It’s been a long time ago. As I recall it, he did the handsome thing and insisted on sticking to his marriage in the face of Malvern’s displeasure. There was an unholy row and he left home. That’s as much of the story as the newspapers played up.”
Mum's the Word for Murder Page 4
