The Juarez Knife

by Richard Deming

  “How do you know what I’m interested in?” growled Day.

  I ignored him. “Go ahead, Mrs. Garson.”

  CHAPTER X

  Exposed

  Hesitating, Mrs. Garson looked at her daughter and, getting no help there, started to speak in a barely audible voice.

  “I came down here to see Mr. Randall,” she said, “but just as I turned into the little corridor leading to his back door, Joan came out of his office. I didn’t want her to see me, so I hid in the men’s room across the hall. Mr. Caramand was in there, also.”

  Red flowed into her cheeks and her voice became even more muffled.

  “Joan turned the corner toward the elevator and Mr. Caramand went out through the fire door the opposite way. I stayed in the men’s room about five minutes more, then walked back to the elevators.”

  “Why did you want to see Randall?” Day said.

  “That has nothing to do with the murder,” I said quickly.

  “You’re bringing up a lot of stuff you claim has nothing to do with the murder,” he growled.

  “Wait till I finish before you pick it to pieces. After I found the body, I checked the men’s room, the fire well and the hall. No one was around. But when I got to the elevators, Mrs. Garson was just getting on one. She must have turned the corner almost at the same instant I came out of Randall’s back door. Put Caramand’s, Mrs. Garson’s, and my testimony together and you’ve got irrefutable evidence that nobody except Joan Garson went through that rear door either before or after the murder until I discovered the body.”

  “Yeah,” the Inspector said thoughtfully. “But that clinches the case even tighter.”

  “Keep your shirt on. The only other ways to the room are the windows and the door from the reception office. I’ve examined those windows twice and am certain nothing but a bird could get in that way. If Joan didn’t kill Randall, the murderer got in and out of his office by the front entrance.”

  “And walked right by you and Christopher,” the Inspector said sarcastically.

  “I told you this was a stage illusion,” I said. “If you’re ready, I’ll show you how it worked.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “First we’ll go over what seemed to happen,” I said. “Only we’ll leave the connecting doors open between the two offices, so that you can see what’s going on in both.”

  I opened the stained wood door behind Alvin’s desk, stepped across the short foyer and swung back the ground glass door to the inner office.

  “You stay where you are,” I directed Alvin. “I’ll play the part of Randall. You’re sitting where I was that day, Inspector, so pretend to be me.”

  “Heaven help me,” said Day.

  I motioned to Joan and we went into Randall’s office together, her police guard suspiciously following. I sat behind Randall’s desk and told Joan to take the extra chair.

  “All set?” I called.

  “Go ahead,” said Alvin.

  I pressed the button on Randall’s desk top and heard the buzzer sound from the other room.

  “Bring in the Garson file,” I said into the intercom.

  “Yes, sir,” Alvin’s voice came through.

  I could see him pretend to take something from his desk drawer. He came through the two open doors and stood in front of my desk. I noticed that his upper lip was beaded with fine drops of sweat.

  “Thanks,” I said, still playing Randall. “That’s all.”

  He turned and started back toward his own desk. As he passed through the second door I called:

  “Stop right there!”

  Alvin spun about and stared at me. I moved out into the reception room.

  “How did my voice sound over the intercom?” I asked Day.

  “All right. Why?”

  “Could you understand what I said?”

  “Certainly.”

  I slid aside the rear panel of the box on Alvin’s desk and loosened the single tube until its prongs were barely seated in their proper holes.

  “Say something into it now,” I called to Joan.

  Her voice, nearly incoherent, came over the intercom.

  “Hello. Can you hear me?”

  “Could you understand that?” I asked Day.

  “Not a word. It sounded like static.”

  “That’s how it was the other day. At this desk you could just understand it, but from where you’re seated now I couldn’t make out a word. If the murderer had left the tube loose, I would never have tumbled, but he made the mistake of tightening it again. I learned by accident the machine’s tone was normally clear.” I turned on Alvin. “It’s all over, blondie.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Come here,” I said to Day.

  I took him into the short foyer between the two offices.

  “When Alvin started back to his desk after delivering the file, he stopped here between the two doors, invisible both from the inner office and to me in the outer. All ground glass doors have a beveled edge of clear glass. It distorts, but Alvin could see through it well enough to tell when Joan left and Randall was alone. Then he went back in, probably got behind Randall with the excuse that he wanted a law book from the window ledge, got a headlock with one arm and reached across for the knife lying on the desk with the other.”

  “You’re crazy!” Alvin said. “I talked to Mr. Randall over the interoffice system after I came out of here!”

  I opened the closet door and found out that the six-volt dry cell was still standing there on the shelf.

  “Right after I discovered the body I examined this closet,” I said. “No battery was here. But when I returned after talking to the elevator operators, this was standing on the shelf. Alvin took it from his desk drawer and placed it here while I was in the hall.”

  Carrying the battery into the reception room, I seated myself at Alvin’s desk and opened the top drawer about six inches. I placed the cell in the drawer.

  “You’ll notice,” I said to Day, “that this buzzer is fixed on the under side of the desk immediately over the battery.”

  I raised the dry cell so that its poles touched the corresponding terminals of the buzzer. A loud whir sounded.

  “Pretty smart,” said the Inspector.

  Reaching under the desk, I felt along the wire leading to the intercom box until my fingers encountered fresh tape. I jerked it loose, baring about an inch of naked wire.

  “Got a penny?”

  Day felt in his pockets and produced a copper coin. I pressed the intercom lever, reached under the desk with my other hand and rubbed the coin sharply against the exposed wire. The speaker emitted a shrill, static noise as though someone excited were shouting incoherencies into it.

  “There’s Randall’s voice as I last heard it,” I said.

  “I think I’ll go home, if no one minds,” Mathilda Zell said…

  * * * *

  Over cocktail glasses Fausta and Joan measured each other with polite animosity.

  “You are so beautiful,” said Fausta. “It is no wonder my Manville free you from jail for nothing.”

  Joan raised her eyebrows.

  “Your Manville?”

  We sat at a corner table of El Patio’s ballroom. I signaled the waiter for another round.

  “It wasn’t exactly for nothing,” I said. “I got another client to pay expenses.”

  “I still can’t understand why Alvin picked me as catspaw,” Joan said.

  “It was partly accident,” I told her. “He’d had the murder machinery set up for a long time, but had to wait for the ideal situation to arise. There had to be a client in Randall’s office to take the blame, and another waiting to see Randall. If Randall had seen me first and had you wait, I would have been the sucker. But even though it was chance, he
liked the idea of pinning his crime on you because he resented your once having jilted him. Also, your visit gave him the best opportunity he could expect. Probably he intended to get into the inner office while Randall talked to a client, on the excuse of wanting a law book from the window ledge. But Randall actually calling him in made his story sound much better. Then your mother’s checks furnished the police with a motive to pin it on you.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “His confession explained the motive. Remember telling me about the time Alvin accused you of making a drunkard and gambler of him? His senior year in college he went in debt the same way your mother did, only not as much. He started work for Randall so that he could pay off the debt by salary deduction. Randall loved to get financial holds on people.

  “Eventually Alvin paid the whole amount and decided to change jobs. But Randall got another hold over him. Alvin’s fiancée so hated gambling that she would have dropped him immediately if she had known he ever gambled. Randall threatened to expose Alvin’s college spree unless he agreed to stay in his employ. Alvin couldn’t see losing a rich heiress as a wife, but he’d reached the end of his rope working for Randall. He solved his problem by murder.”

  Joan shivered. “And once I thought I loved him.” She gazed pensively out at the dance floor. Then, with a toss of her head, she shook her mood. “Will you dance with me?”

  “His leg is not yet taught to dance,” Fausta said. “Only to kick.”