The Nine Mile Walk

by Harry Kemelman

  Nicky, Professor Nicholas Welt, Snowdon Professor of English Language and Literature at the university, always treated me like an immature schoolboy, and for the life of me, I always felt like one when I was with him.

  He heard me out politely enough, his little blue eyes glittering suspiciously at my company. But he was reserved as he shook hands with each of my guests, in acknowledgment of introductions. When he had made the rounds, Johnston said with a sly look at the rest of us, “Your friend has been telling us of your clever hunch, Professor, which enabled him to break a case. Perhaps you can give us a hand on another problem. What do you make of that little note on the table?”

  I expected Nicky to take offense at the suggestion that he acted on hunches, and perhaps he did, for his thin lips were tightly compressed as though he had just bitten into a particularly sour lemon. But he said nothing and moved over to the table.

  “That’s a photostat,” Johnston explained. “The original came to us a couple of days ago. It’s not a practical joke. There actually was a kidnapping.”

  “It came to you with these fingerprints on it?”

  “Yes. We dusted them in order to have them show up in the photostat. It wasn’t too hard because those squares of paper are not newspaper but heavy, glossy-magazine stock.”

  “Indeed? Then that means that those prints are not on there by accident,” said Nicky.

  Johnston winked at the company and I felt sorry for Nicky.

  “You know, Nicky, criminals are apt—” I began, but Johnston shut me up with a gesture of his hand.

  “And why could it not have been an accident, Professor?” Johnston purred.

  Nicky gave him the annoyed look that he usually reserved for me.

  “The average newspaper,” he began, in his martyred voice, “has so many more story captions from which a message could be formed than a magazine has that it would seem that the magazine stock was selected purposely—obviously, because it does show fingerprints more clearly. These words are all from story headings because the writer wanted big type, but some of them have bits of the regular type showing. Inasmuch as the type faces are different, it would mean of course that several different magazines were used. I suppose that was necessary in order to get all the words needed for the message. It seems hardly likely that the criminal would go to the trouble of checking through several magazines where a single newspaper would have done just as well, if it were not that he wanted this particular type of paper. But there is additional evidence that this was not done in error, or through oversight. I am no expert, but it is plain that there are five different fingerprints here, and they run in a regular sequence. These,” he jabbed at the note with a lean forefinger, “are thumbprints, and each one is followed by four prints which represent the remaining fingers of the hand. Even to my untrained eye it appears plain that these prints are of one hand, and that the sequence from thumb to little finger was used over and over again until all the squares of paper had been used up.” He looked around at each of us with that amused expression that I have always found so difficult to bear, and then said, “No, no, there is no likelihood of those prints being the result of an accident. They are there for a good reason.”

  “And what would be the reason for a man to take every precaution to conceal his identity by using printed words and then signing it with the one signature that he could never deny?” asked Johnston.

  Nicky cocked a bushy white eyebrow at him. “Surely you can think of a reason,” he said.

  “Well, it might be intended as a blind to throw us off the track. It could be somebody else’s prints,” Johnston essayed. And then to bolster his own answer, he added, “It’s not hard to lift prints, you know.”

  “And would it throw you off?” asked Nicky. “All five prints in regular sequence repeated over and over again? If you were able to identify the prints and if you caught the man, would any jury doubt his statement that he had been framed? And how could the writer of the note be certain that the man whose fingerprints he had stolen, as it were, did not have an iron-clad alibi? And even if he did not, wouldn’t you be inclined to believe his protestations of innocence, at least to the point of inquiring who his enemies were, and thus be led perhaps to the real culprit?”

  Parker of Barnstable County, down the Cape, waved his hand excitedly and Nicky nodded to him.

  “Why couldn’t the kidnapper have done it for just the reason you said? I mean when he gets caught, he says, ‘I didn’t do it. Do you think I’d be crazy enough to put my prints on the ransom note?’ And so that lets him out, if you see what I mean …” Parker’s voice trailed off uncertainly.

  But Nicky nodded encouragingly at him. “You can see that it wouldn’t do,” he said gently, “for though you might suspect that the man was innocent, you would be duty-bound to investigate him and to try to make out a case against him. And how could he be sure that you would not find something, once attention was focused on him?”

  I tried. “Suppose the kidnapper had something on somebody and was able to force him to leave his prints on the note.”

  It was only what I expected when he shook his head. “This is kidnapping. Next to murder, it is the worst crime in the calendar. If the man were identified and picked up by the police, he could hardly be expected to take the blame for so serious a crime. But even if he did, it would not end there. He would have to show just how he committed the crime, where he kept the girl, what he did with the money. And of course he couldn’t. Besides, if he had been forced to put his prints on the note because of some hold that the real cuprit had on him, would not this in turn give him a hold on his tormenter?”

  “Unless he were dead,” Johnston interjected.

  “Very good,” said Nicky. “Force a man to put his prints on the ransom note and then put a bullet through his head and drop his weighted body in the river. An excellent idea, except that the original objection holds. The police would not believe it. If the criminal were planning some such thing, he would have only one print, or better still, only a partial print, appear on the note—so that the possibility of accident might be more readily believed. No, you are quite right in assuming two people were involved, but it is a partnership, a voluntary partnership, wherein one partner affixes his prints knowingly and willingly. It would be the logical thing to do if one partner had cause to fear the good faith of the other. For example, if he were afraid that as soon as the enterprise was completed his partner might inform the police, he could make sure of his continued silence in this way.”

  I’m afraid we all felt a little disappointed. Nicky had taken so high a hand with us that we had come to believe that he really had the answer. This was a complete letdown. Why, there were any number of objections to this theory. Johnston voiced one.

  “Why would the partner be crazy enough to do it?”

  “Because he is safe,” Nicky shot back at him. “He is not a professional criminal. His fingerprints will not be found in any Bureau of Identification.”

  “Not good enough,” said Johnston. “We start hunting and we find something. Just the shadow of a clue. With those prints, that would clinch it. It would be too dangerous.”

  “Unless, of course, he had every reason to believe that the note would never reach the police,” Nicky suggested gently.

  “How could he be sure of that?” Johnston demanded truculently.

  “By having the letter addressed to his own home,” said Nicky.

  I don’t suppose any of us caught the full implication of Nicky’s suggestion.

  “Suppose,” Nicky went on, “a man with a rich father or brother or a doting aunt needs money badly. He’s gambled more than he could afford to lose, or he has been living too high. Or say, he just wants a large sum of money with no strings attached. If he tries to borrow it from his moneyed relative, he will be refused, or he will be expected to pay it back in a certain specified time. But suppose he can go to this same relative and say, ‘Dear Aunt Agatha, Gloria has been kidnapped and the k
idnappers demand fifty thousand dollars.’? Or suppose the note comes directly to Aunt Agatha who lives with him? Naturally, she would show him the note and in all probability arrange for him to act for her in the matter. Now, how would he go about arranging it? He would seek out some criminal perhaps and outline the plan, and offer him a large portion of the proceeds for sharing in the enterprise with him. Or perhaps the criminal suggests the idea to him in the first place. The criminal—I am not thinking of a petty thief in a sweater and a cap, but a promoter of crimes—what is the slang expression? a big shot—would want to make sure that after it was all over the respectable partner did not hand him over to the police. He would insist that the respectable partner implicate himself unmistakably. The fingerprint method suggests itself immediately.”

  “Why couldn’t he just have the respectable one write out and sign a statement of his participation in the crime?”

  “That would be a crazy thing to do,” Nicky retorted. “He would be subject to blackmail for the rest of his life.”

  “Well, isn’t he subject to blackmail this way, with his prints on the ransom note?” I asked.

  Nicky looked at me in exasperation. “You forget that he received the note. He probably sealed the envelope and dropped it in the mailbox himself. It is addressed to himself or to his father or his rich aunt. It arrives at his residence like any other piece of mail. The moment the money is paid off, he destroys it.”

  “Can’t he go to the police then and squeal on his confederate?”

  “And how is he going to show that a demand was made for money?” Nicky replied tartly.

  We all sat back, each running over in his own mind the composite picture that we could now construct from Johnston’s original story and Nicky’s deductive analysis of the ransom note.

  The more I thought of it, the more convinced I was that Nicky was right. The two brothers living together in a big house. Philip the elder, poor and sick, beholden to his rich successful brother for his very shelter. His strange friends—had it been one of these who had first suggested the plan? Perhaps he did not think he was as sick as his doctor brother insisted. With a large sum of money, Philip could be free and independent. But had Dr. John suspected his brother’s implication in the plot against him? Was that the reason Dr. John was now so uncooperative? But why had Philip called in the private detective? That flaw bothered me. Then I saw the whole picture. The doctor, an upright citizen who served on civic committees, had insisted on going to the police in spite of the threat in the note. Philip had been badly worried for a bit, but in the end he had persuaded John to call in a private detective instead. Later the doctor had become suspicious. Perhaps Philip had even confessed just before he died. And now the doctor was afraid to have the police investigate for fear they would uncover his brother’s part in the business.

  “There’s just one little point,” Nicky said, seeming to echo my thought aloud. “The partner who received the note was not likely to hand it over to the police. I am curious to know how it came into your hands.”

  “It doesn’t hurt your theory any, our having the note,” Johnston said, and proceeded to retell the story as he had originally given it to us. “My guess would be that the criminal partner is Blackie Venuti,” he ended.

  Nicky nodded. “Yes, I would say that was indicated. Gloria was last seen at his club. Venuti would have no fear of the trail leading back to him, since the whole business, in a sense, was faked. She might even have been held right there in the club all the time.”

  “We’ll sweat it out of Venuti,” said Johnston grimly. “Too bad we can’t do the same to the respectable partner.”

  “And why not?” asked Nicky.

  “Because as I told you, Philip Regan died yesterday.”

  “Or was murdered,” said Nicky. “It would have been easy enough. The man had a bad heart. A sharp blow to the pit of the stomach would probably do it. If there was a mark, it could readily be explained as resulting from his having fallen against something during his heart attack.”

  “What do you mean, Professor?”

  Nicky shrugged his shoulders. “You see two brothers. Dr. John dresses well and goes to night clubs and serves on civic committees, and all the rest of it. And Philip is sick and lounges around in bathrobe and slippers, unshaven, puttering around the garden. You immediately assume that Dr. John is the rich one, and Philip the poor one.” He looked around our little company and his eyes came to rest on Eccles of Norfolk County, a tall, lean, leathery man of sixty-five. Addressing him, he said, “If you had a million dollars, what would you do?”

  Eccles smiled. “I’d go fishing nearly every day.”

  Nicky nodded approvingly. “Precisely. I imagine that’s how Philip Regan felt. He had plenty of money and he could do as he liked. So he pampered himself. He dressed when he felt like it, and he didn’t shave when he didn’t want to. And he could afford to have his younger brother give up his medical practice and dance attendance on him. And John was so addicted to the fleshpots that for the sake of fine clothes and cars and plenty of spending money and social prominence, he was willing to serve as a male nurse to his elder brother. I don’t suppose Philip was an easy taskmaster. He was a sick man, for one thing. I fancy he indulged in will-shaking on occasion, threatening to cut off his younger brother without a penny. So Dr. John Regan gambled—in the hope of achieving a certain amount of independence—and lost.”

  “But we know that John is the one who has the money,” Johnston insisted. “He owns scads of real estate in Boston. And it’s all his. We looked him up. He is listed in the registry of deeds as owning real estate valued at more than two million dollars.”

  “No doubt,” Nicky conceded. “But I’ll wager that somewhere—in the house itself probably, in a good strong safe—Philip had a deed for every piece of property that Dr. John Regan had registry-title to. Our realty law is hopelessly out of date, and for any number of good reasons it is worthwhile to keep one’s holdings in a straw name. Dr. John was the straw man in Philip’s real-estate transactions. And as you know, Mr. Johnston, the prime requisite of a straw man is that he have no attachable assets of his own. Unless you can get Dr. John to confess, you may never find out exactly what happened, but you can make a pretty good guess. John had lost heavily at Venuti’s gambling tables and was deep in debt. Was Venuti pressing him for payment? Did Venuti suggest the scheme?” He shrugged his shoulders. “It makes no great difference. The note was prepared and Philip received it the next day. Since Gloria is John’s daughter, and only a niece to Philip, Philip could not go to the police over his brother’s objections, but he could insist on bringing in a private detective. Maybe Philip began to suspect something. Maybe he noticed the prints and on his own initiative compared them with those of his brother John—they could readily be found on the furniture around the house. I suppose he made the mistake of telling John that he knew the truth, and intended to notify the police.”

  “But why couldn’t it be the other way round, Nicky?” I demanded. “Why couldn’t Philip have been the poor one, the culprit? Why couldn’t things be as they appear—that John is the rich one and Philip the poor one? Why couldn’t John have wanted to go to the police and been dissuaded by Philip? Why couldn’t John’s present lack of cooperation with the police be the result of his having learned of his brother’s part in the kidnapping?”

  Nicky’s amused smile brought me to a halt.

  “Because,” he said, “it was Philip who dealt with the detective and gave him the note. If he had been the culprit, he would never have let the note out of his hands—at least, not without first erasing the prints.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Johnston voiced our collective opinion. “It sounds right and tight, Professor, but how can we prove it?”

  “You might have some difficulty with the murder,” said Nicky. “But the kidnapping plot should be easy. Philip’s lawyers would know the real owner of the real estate. The bank would have a record of the account from
which the fifty thousand dollars was withdrawn. Dr. John will have to explain his fingerprints on the note. Venuti will talk when he realizes that you know the whole story and that he might be tied in with a murder. From here on, ordinary police route should give the necessary legal proof.”

  He looked around questioningly when we all laughed—even Johnston.

  The Ten O’Clock Scholar

  I do not think it was a strong sense of justice that prompted Nicky Welt to come to my assistance on occasion, after I left the Law Faculty to become County Attorney. Rather, I think, it was a certain impatience of mind—like that of the skilled mechanic who chafes as he watches the bungling amateur and at last takes the wrench from his hand with a “Here, let me do it.”

  Nevertheless, I felt that he enjoyed these brief excursions from the narrow routine of lecturing and grading papers, and when he invited me to attend a doctoral examination, I felt that it was his way of thanking me and reciprocating.

  I was busy at the time and loath to accept, but it is hard for me to refuse Nicky. A three-hour doctor’s oral can be very dull if you are not yourself the candidate, or at least a member of the examining committee. So I temporized.

  “Who is the candidate, Nicky?” I asked. “One of your young men? Anyone I know?”

  “A Mr. Bennett—Claude Bennett,” he replied. “He has taken some courses with me, but he is not working in my field.”

  “Anything interesting about his dissertation?” I continued.

  Nicky shrugged his shoulders. “Since this is a preliminary examination according to the New Plan, we don’t know what the dissertation subject is. In the last half-hour of the examination the candidate will announce it and outline what he hopes to prove. I understand from other members of the committee, however, that Mr. Bennett’s interest is primarily in the eighteenth century, and that he is planning to do some work in the Byington Papers.”