“Let’s take Painter first,” he said. “Painter is shrewd, selfish, unscrupulous, and self-centered, just the type for a stool pigeon—so much the type that this sort of reasoning almost began to operate with an inverse ratio. Would Murdock have chosen a man who seems unscrupulous as a stool pigeon? The answer to that is that the union membership did not look upon Painter as such a man. They considered him honest and trusted him, and his record in the union bears out that trust. So Painter’s personality sort of cancels out.
“Also, Painter has the best alibi—an actual witness who swears that he was at home when the first murder was committed. He has an alibi for the Murdock murder, too, but I found out a way to break that this afternoon. But there’s not a speck of evidence against Painter that would stand up in court.
“There’s no such evidence against Melius, either, although Melius is perhaps an even more obvious suspect than Painter. Melius, especially in the last day or two, has proved that he isn’t much better from the union’s point of view than Weller was. He wasn’t above calling thugs to try to control the union, with the obvious intention of turning it into a racket for his personal profit. When I heard about that strike it puzzled me. If Melius was the murderer and, therefore, the stool pigeon would he take the chance of demonstrating that he’s crooked? I still haven’t found a complete answer to that one.
“And, up to last night, Melius and Painter and Whitey, here, were running neck and neck in the Suspect Derby with Powers sort of bringing up the rear.”
“Nonsense,” said the doctor suddenly, “you can’t really mean you suspect this young man. I can’t believe you’d actually invite a guest to my house if you ..The doctor’s kindly face took on a disturbed expression as his words trailed off.
“Actually,” said Stern, “I can build up a very reasonable case against Whitey. It’s conceivable that he might have had a motive, and, as far as opportunity goes, his alibis, like those of several of the other suspects, are more apparent than real. The crap-game alibi never did amount to much. When men are shooting dice they are more interested in the dice than they are in each other and they wouldn’t pay much attention to a man leaving the circle for a while and coming back. That was demonstrated this afternoon when Captain Nicholson was questioning the players. Whitey or Sangster or Colletti or any of the others, for that matter, could have left the game for long enough to murder Riorden and returned without notice. I don’t say they did, but they could have. Whitey’s other alibi was a little tougher until I discovered today that the clock in the smashed car had been a half-hour fast. That means there was an extra half-hour between the time the car crashed and the time the state patrolman came along—plenty of time for Whitey to have gone to Murdock’s library and back. However, I’ll tell you this much. Since last night I know who the murderer is.”
“You know?” said both Whitey and the doctor together.
Stern nodded. “I’m mortally certain since last night. I suspected before, but a little question of timing threw me off. As I said earlier, practically all the suspects had alibis, and an alibi depends on timing. A man can’t be in two places at the same time, but if, either through accident or intention, the time is wrong, then the alibi goes out the window. The case of the dashboard clock is an instance.”
“You’re being very obvious,” said the doctor disgustedly. “Let’s get down to facts. If you know who the murderer is why haven’t you arrested him?”
“No proof,” said Stern. “At least no proof that’s conclusive.”
“But you could break him down.”
“Possibly,” said Stern, “but I think there’s a better way. If the plan I’ve got now doesn’t work we’ll probably have to bluff the murderer into confessing, the way they do in the mystery books.”
“How did you spot the murderer from what happened last night?” asked Whitey. His voice sounded a little worried, and there were unaccustomed lines of concern between his eyes. Stern looked at him, and they studied each other for a moment. Then Stern spoke:
“I know how the gas was turned off—and on,” he said.
“Of course,” said the doctor. “I solved that this morning when I read the papers. The meter in the basement.”
Stern was saved the necessity of replying by the entrance into the room of Maeve and Jackson.
“That will do,” said Maeve firmly. “There’ll be no more discussion of murder or anything else right now. Mrs. Cox says dinner is almost ready, and you men will have to go up and wash your dirty hands and faces before I’ll eat with you.”
She had been shaking Stern’s hand and she now turned it over and examined it critically. She made a disapproving face at him and dropped the hand to cross the room and pat her uncle on the cheek. “That goes for you, too, Nunky.”
Maeve headed her guests toward the stairs, chattering incessantly, and Stern, watching her, saw that her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks flaming with color and that she was talking simply to cover the joyous emotion with which she was almost bursting. He looked covertly from the girl to Jackson and grinned at the big longshoreman’s self-satisfied, hangdog expression. His own face took on a fondly sentimental look that he would have dubbed idiotic had he seen it in a mirror. It looked as though he were saying to himself, “Bless you, my children, bless you.”
“Show the boys to their rooms, Nunky,” said Maeve brightly when she had gotten them arranged on the stairs somewhat like a file of wooden Indians or a set of clothing dummies in a shop-window. “I can’t come up. I have to help Mrs. Cox set the table. Joey can use the room at the end of the hall that he used to have week ends, and Mr. Gordon and Mr. Jackson (she faltered on Jackson’s name and giggled slightly) are in the room at the head of the stairs across from yours. Hurry now, all of you. Dinner’s nearly ready.”
2. Shots
Stern was reknotting his tie before the mirror in the little room at the end of the hall when he heard the shots. There were two close together, then a third, sounding distant and muffled, so that he could not tell the direction from which they came and stood quite still for a moment, gazing at the picture of arrested motion in the mirror before him. It was a backfire. It couldn’t be shots. Nothing could happen—not here—not so soon. He didn’t have the guts. He wouldn’t dare.
Then there was confusion in the hall, and Stern dived for the door and flung it open on a tableau that included Dr. Stevenson, in his shirt sleeves, standing in the open door of his room, looking alert and disturbed as a startled goat, and Whitey Gordon poised momentarily in the hall, a pistol in his hand.
“The dirty son of a bitch,” gasped Gordon, his excited words tumbling out all in one breath without punctuation. “He shot him—through the open window. I think I winged him—I’m going down to see. Take care of Jack, somebody, will ya?”
Ridiculously, it occurred to Stern that nobody had an open window through which to be shot.
“Wait,” he shouted, but Gordon was already halfway down the stairs, and the front door banged before Stern had taken more than a few steps.
Jackson lay on his face and very still, with one arm doubled under him and the other reaching out toward the open window from which the lace curtain drifted back lazily. Dr. Stevenson was kneeling beside him when Stern entered the room.
“Is he dead, Doc?”
“Get my bag,” snapped the little man. “In the closet in my room.” And, when Stern had found the bag and returned it, “Here, help me with this coat. The wound’s high under the shoulder blade—nasty, but not necessarily serious. Take his legs. We’ll get him on the bed.”
There was a flurry of feet on the stairs, and Stern turned and attempted to catch Blackie, but she eluded him and flung herself on the floor cradling Jackson’s head in her arms. “O God,” she moaned. “Not yet. Not so soon.”
The little doctor was magnificent. He caught Maeve under the chin and snapped up her head so that she was forced to look at him. The gesture had all the effects of a blow. “Blackie,” he snapped. “
Hot water and towels. Boil up a scalpel and probe. Scissors, sutures, bandage—we’re going after that bullet. Do you want him to lie here and bleed to death?”
Maeve blinked to clear her vision and gave him a long, questioning look. Then she said, “I’m sorry,” and struggled to her feet and out of the room. By the time they had Jackson on the bed she was back with water and towels, her face pale and vacuous, but her movements steady, quick, and competent. Stern, backing out of the room, had a final vision of her small white hands wielding scissors to cut away the blood-soaked shirt.
Once in the hall, he turned and went rapidly down the stairs and out the front door, pausing only long enough to speak a reassuring word to Mrs. Cox, already busy at the sterilizer in the little office off the entrance foyer. The sidewalk leading around the house was free of snow, but directly beneath the open window two trails marred the whiteness of the lawn. They converged to an ordinary wooden ladder set against an oak tree about ten feet out from the walk, then led off in parallel lines cutting diagonally across the lawn to the street. Stern hesitated only a moment, then plunged out across the lawn, slipping and sliding in the wet snow but managing to keep his trail well apart and distinct from the other two.
He found Gordon at the corner half a block from the house, the gun still clutched in his hand, peering this way and that down the two streets and cursing aloud in a steady flow that did not once repeat itself. The two streets were deserted except for a distant car and an old lady with a market basket who stood on the curb, her terror of this bareheaded apparition that had dashed at her, gun in hand, beginning to be overcome by outrage at its vocabulary.
“He’s gone,” Gordon shouted into Stern’s face. “He got away.” He lapsed into another flurry of profanity.
“Shut up and listen to me. Did you see him? Do you know who it was?”
Gordon shook his head hopelessly. “I saw him on the ladder after he fired. He wore a black slicker but he jumped before I saw his face. He stumbled, and I thought I winged him, but when I got out of the house there was nothing but his footprints in the snow. I guess I’m not very good with one of these things.” He held up the gun and surveyed it disgustedly.
“All right,” said Stern. It was growing colder, and he chattered a little as he spoke. “Come on, we have to get back to the house and call the police. I should have done it sooner, but maybe there’s still time for a prowl car to pick him up.”
The old lady finally found her voice. “Police!” she screamed vehemently. “Well! Well, I should think so.”
Stern called both the township police and the sheriff’s office. He gave Gordon’s description of the raincoat but warned that it was almost certain to be discarded. The best that could be done was to post men at the ferries and vehicular tunnels and send out a general alarm to highway patrols and radio cars to pick up all suspicious persons. The township officials would be over immediately, and Sheriff Christy was also on his way, although the Stevenson residence was outside his jurisdiction.
The complications of a new set of officials in the case did not serve to brighten Stern’s outlook. He sighed and was about to put in a call to Nicholson when he received an imperative summons from the head of the stairs. Dr. Stevenson called down to say that Jackson had recovered consciousness and was demanding to speak to him immediately.
The alarm would go across the river automatically, and the call to Nicholson could wait. He left the phone and bounded up the stairs to seize the doctor’s arm.
“How is he?”
The old man smiled. “If he doesn’t break a blood vessel from indignation he’ll live. I never saw anyone so fighting mad in all my life.”
The flood of relief that Stern felt at the doctor’s answer left him weak. At least he would not have another death on his conscience.
“The wound isn’t serious then?”
“Not too serious. Fortunately, the bullet angled up along the bone and lodged in the fleshy part of the shoulder. Barring complications, he should be as fit as ever in three or four weeks.”
Jackson lay on his side while Maeve, her lips clamped tight but her tear-stained face no longer blank, applied the finishing touches to the bandaged shoulder and Gordon watched from the foot of the bed. The wounded man was quiet, but his eyes were hot and his out thrust jaw rigid.
When Stern came within his line of vision he said, “I gotta talk to you—right away—alone.”
Gordon protested. “He hadn’t ought to talk now, had he, Miss O’Callighan? He oughtta rest.”
Jackson did not look at him. “It’s all right, baby,” he told Maeve. “I have to talk to Stern. Now! Right away!”
Maeve rose from beside the bed. “I suppose you won’t be quiet otherwise,” she said with some of her old spirit. “I never saw such a stubborn man. Just for a minute, though, and don’t you dare move.”
When the door was closed and they were alone Jackson said, “What happened?”
Stern grinned. “You tell me.”
“I mean afterward. After I passed out.”
Stern told him. When he had finished Jackson nodded.
“I thought it was something like that. He’s too clever to live, the dirty, double-crossing rat. But this time his goose is cooked.”
“Did you see him? Do you know who it was?”
“Sure I saw him.” Jackson ground his teeth. “I knew before but I wouldn’t believe it. I couldn’t see how. I’d like to break his neck myself but now that I’m laid up I’ll have to turn him over to the cops before he kills somebody else.”
“Who?”
Jackson shook his head slowly. “Not you. The cops and plenty of ‘em.”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Too dangerous. He’s still got a gun. He thinks he fooled us. He’ll wait.”
“Listen,” said Stern. “I know what you’re thinking, you crazy fool. You mean you’re going to tell the cops——”
“That’s just what I mean.”
“But you’re wrong—dead wrong.”
“The hell I am. I don’t know all the angles but I know what I see.”
Stern wasted no more time in argument. He saw that Jackson was stubborn, and that left only one thing to be done. Much as he disliked it, his hand was called, and there would have to be an immediate showdown.
“Okay,” he told the man on the bed. “Do me just one favor, will you?”
“What?”
“Hold your fire until we get everybody in the case rounded up. Then you can accuse whomever you want.”
The dying wail of a siren sounded in the street outside, and both men paused to listen.
“That’s the cops,” said Jackson. “Boy, that’s the first time I was ever glad to hear that noise.” He looked up at Stern. “How soon?”
“A couple of hours.”
“All right. I guess the son of a bitch will keep that long.”
“My condolences to both of you,” he said gently. “I think he’ll live to beat you.”
Maeve put her hand on his arm and looked up into his face. “How did you know?”
“Even a bum detective like me couldn’t miss. Besides, I eavesdropped.”
Her eyes met his, and her hand tightened on his sleeve. A message of sympathy and understanding passed silently between them. Then she dropped his arm and went quietly into the room and closed the door.
Stern went down the stairs to find a pompous chief of police talking to Dr. Stevenson and Whitey Gordon. He joined the group, introduced himself, and added his story to those of the others, then drew the doctor aside.
“You wouldn’t want your patient to suffer a relapse, would you, Doc?”
“If he does I’m sunk,” chuckled the old man. “My niece just tells me she has special designs on the young man.”
Stern nodded. “Well, then, your patient is very sick. He can’t be disturbed and under no circumstances can he be moved.”
The doctor digested this diagnosis for a moment. Then his white goatee bobbed up a
nd down as gravely as though it were a medical opinion advanced by a high-priced consultant. “I understand,” he said.
“Good. Then wouldn’t it be advisable for you to be in close attendance for the next couple of hours?”
Dr. Stevenson sensed developments he was loath to miss. “Won’t I be needed down here?” he demurred. “The police ..His eagerness was so transparent that Stern grinned.
“I’ll take care of the police, Doctor. You get up and look after your patient.”
When the little old man had gone somewhat reluctantly up the stairs Stern turned his attention to the township officer whose name was Holcomb.
“Chief,” he said when he succeeded in gaining the official ear, “if you have a man you can spare I’d post him outside the wounded man’s door.”
“What for?” snapped the other. “You don’t think there’s any chance of another attack, do you?”
“Not exactly.” Stern’s tone was suggestively vague. “If you’ll step outside with me, Chief, I’ll show you——”
The township man was an old-time conspirator. He followed Stern out onto the porch and closed the door carefully behind him. “What’s up, Counselor?”
“The man upstairs is a vital witness in two murder cases. That’s why he was shot. And he just told me confidentially that he knows who shot him. Now if we cooperate I think we’ve got a chance of cleaning up this case and a couple of others as well. And one of the others is the Murdock killing.”
“The Murdock killing? Hell, they got the guy who did that.
McArthur was in my office just this afternoon, and he says——”
“How would you like to prove McArthur’s wrong?”
The official’s eyes gleamed. “That’d be something,” he admitted.
“You mean you think the fellow who did this shooting——?”
Stern interrupted hurriedly. “I don’t think; I know. And if you’ll help I’ll prove it. All we have to do is get all the suspects in those other cases out here——”
“Wait a minute. What the hell do we have to do that for? Why not just nail the guy this guy says shot him and go to work on him.”
Death on the Waterfront Page 27
