American Gun Mystery (12 page)

“Well?”

“What was the—ah—lesser of the two attractions, so to speak?”

“Some Western trash—Sa-a-ay! Kit Horne was in that picture, El!”

“Indeed she was.” Ellery gazed intently at the bullet in his hand. “And do you remember the scene in that great cinema epic in which the beauteous heroine, galumphing down the hillside on—yes, it was
Rawhide,
by thunder the same horse! plucked her six-shooter from her holster and—”

“And shot the strands of the rope through, the rope the villain was hanging the hero with?” cried the Inspector excitedly.

“And did that very thing.”

The Inspector grew glum. “That must have been a movie trick. Easy enough to fake it. They do all sorts of things out there.”

“Perhaps. But you’ll recall that the camera snapped the scene from
behind
Miss Horne; she was distinctly visible all the time, as were the revolver in her hand and the rope she was shooting at. Nevertheless, I grant the possibility of a trick—”

“Darned decent of you. What of it, anyway?”

“I wonder, now. …Kit Horne was brought up—from childhood, mind—on a ranch in those great interstices—I beg your pardon, open spaces. Her guardian, the redoubtable Buck, was an expert marksman. Impossible to believe, under the circumstances, that Buck wouldn’t have schooled her in marksmanship as well as those other desperate accomplishments of hers. Hmm. …And that young Lochinvar of ours—Curly, who comes out of the West all shiny and curly and heroic. Did you notice the facility with which he popped little glass balls out of existence by means of his trusty cannon? Yes, yes! And as for his sire, the great impresario of horse spectacles—where did I hear that he’d been one of the most famous United States Marshals of the last century, fighting desperadoes and redskins in the Indian Territory?”

“What the dickens you driving at?” groaned the Inspector, and then his eyes grew very round. “By ginger, El! Come to think of it—the box where we sat, Mars’s box—must have been pretty well in the line of fire! Downward angle of thirty degrees, Sam makes it. …Cripes, yes! That would just about place it in the audience somewhere, rotten as I am in arithmetic. Shot through the left side into the heart as his horse rounded the turn—tightens it, son, tightens it!” He stopped suddenly, and grew very thoughtful.

Ellery surveyed his father through narrowed lids, juggling the little painted bullet carelessly. “What a beautiful crime this is,” he murmured. “What finesse, what daring, what superb coolness in the execution. …”

“What I can’t see, though,” muttered the Inspector, unheeding, as he began to chew a strand of his mustache, “is how anyone could have shot so close. We didn’t hear—”

“What is required? One death. What is utilized? One bullet. Short, precise, mechanical—very sweet, altogether. Eh?” Ellery smiled dryly as his father began to exhibit unmistakable signs of interest. “Ah, but there’s a complication. The target is a living, swaying figure on the back of a galloping horse. Never still for an instant. Ever think how difficult it must be to hit a fast-moving target? Nevertheless, our murderer disdains to fire more than once. His single shot does the trick very thoroughly. Very thoroughly indeed.” He rose and began to prowl up and down. “The fact remains,
Herr Inspektor,
and this is what my rambling remarks have been circuitously leading up to—the fact remains that whoever killed Buck Horne either was possessed of the luck of the devil, or else … was a quite extraordinary marksman!”

*
“The Roman Hat Mystery.”

**
“The French Powder Mystery.”

***
“The Dutch Shoe Mystery.”

J
ULIAN HUNTER, SUMMONED PEREMPTORILY
from the Mars box, appeared in the doorway before Sergeant Velie’s granite figure. The pouches beneath his eyes were more batrachian than ever; his pink cheeks were pinker and his expression more wooden, if that were possible, than before.

“Come in, Mr. Hunter,” said the Inspector shortly. “Take a chair.”

The pouches sank, and keen pupils glittered for an instant. “No, thank you,” said Hunter. “I’ll stand.”

“Suit yourself. How well did you know Horne?”

“Ah,” said Hunter. “The inquisition. My dear Inspector, aren’t you being a little absurd?”

“What—Say!”

The night-club owner waved a manicured hand. “It’s apparent that you consider me a potential suspect for the murder of that—uh—dashing old gentleman who came a cropper out there. It’s too silly, you know.”

“Rats. Come out of it, Hunter. That tack won’t get you anywhere,” said the Inspector sharply. “Now please answer my questions, and don’t waste our time—we’ve a big job on our hands and I can’t stand here arguing with you. Well, well?”

Hunter shrugged. “Didn’t know him well at all.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. How
long
did you know him?”

“Precisely one week.”

“Hmm. You met him when he hit town on this rodeo business?”

“That’s it, Inspector.”

“Through whom?”

“Tony, Tony Mars?”

“Under what circumstances?”

“Tony brought him to one of my night-clubs—”

“Club Mara?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the only time you saw him? Before tonight, I mean?”

Hunter lighted a cigaret with steady fingers. “Mmm. Can’t say, really.” He blew smoke indolently. “It’s possible Horne visited the
Club Mara
after that. I can’t be sure.”

The Inspector stared at him. “You’re lying, of course.”

Thick red surged into the pink cheeks, very slowly. “What the devil do you mean?”

The old man clucked.
“Tchk!
I beg your pardon, Mr. Hunter. No offense meant. I was just speculatin’ out loud.” Ellery, in his corner, smiled skeptically. “Y’see, I know you’re in a deal with Tony—were in a deal, I should say, to finance Horne’s comeback to the screen. I thought you’d surely have had a couple of meetings—”

“Oh,” said Hunter, with a long quiet breath. “Yes, certainly. Very natural thought. No, I told the truth, Inspector. And it’s not true that I was ‘in a deal,’ as you say, to furnish financial support for Horne’s venture. Mars, Grant—they mentioned it to me. I was merely considering the proposal. A little out of my line, you see.”

The Inspector performed the sacred rite of inhaling a pinch of snuff. “You were waiting, I suppose, to see what sort of reception Horne would get in this rodeo appearance of his?”

“Yes, yes! That’s it exactly.”

“Well! Nothing incriminating there, eh, Mr. Hunter?” The Inspector smiled and returned the old brown snuffbox to his pocket.

The room was quite still. A little pulse in Hunter’s throat began to hammer suddenly, and the vein in his left temple. He said rather thickly: “If you’re really thinking. …Why, Inspector, I was in the same box with you all evening! How could I possibly—?”

“Of courrrse,” said the Inspector soothingly. “Of course, Mr. Hunter. Don’t upset yourself. These little chin-chins—just a matter of form. Now you go back to the Mars box and wait.”

“Wait? I can’t—Can’t I—?”

The Inspector spread thin deprecating hands. “We’re servants of the law, you know, Mr. Hunter. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait.”

Hunter inhaled deeply. “Hmm. Yes. I see that,” he said, and turned to go, sucking on his cigaret.

“By the way,” drawled Ellery from his corner, “do you know Miss Horne well, Mr. Hunter—Kit Horne?”

“Oh, Miss Horne. No, can’t say I do. I’ve met her on one or two occasions—once in Hollywood, I think, through Mrs. Hunter—I should say Miss Gay, my wife … but that’s all.”

He waited, as if expecting another question. It did not come, so after a moment he bowed slightly and left the office.

The Queens regarded each other with cryptic smiles.

“Why the silk gloves, Inspector?” asked Ellery. “I’ve never known you to handle a witness so softly before!”

“Don’t know,” murmured the old man. “A hunch, I guess. That bird knows something, and before I’m through with him I’ll find out what.” He stuck his head out of the doorway. “Thomas! Get that actress—the gaga Gay woman!” He turned back, smiling broadly. “Yes, and by the way, why the question about Kit Horne, eh?”

“Don’t know, sire. Just a hunch, I guess.” And Ellery grinned back until the willow-scent-silk figure of Mara Gay made a bowery frame out of the prosaic doorway.

The lady swept in like an elongated shadow of Portia, sat down with the sublimely indifferent dignity of the Virgin Queen, and glared at the Inspector with Medusa’s venomousness. “Well,” she sniffed, tossing her coiffured head, “this is
really
too much!
Really
too ridiculously much!”

“What’s too much?” said the Inspector absently. “Oh, Miss Gay! Now, don’t take that tone, please. I want—”

“You
want!” snarled the Orchid of Hollywood. “And please don’t ‘please’ me, Inspector What’s-Your-Name! I’ll take any tone I choose,
understand
that! Now”—she continued without pausing for breath as the Inspector chopped off a mildly astonished protest—“please
explain
what you mean by this vile, this outrageous
treatment!
Keeping me cooped up in that
awful
place for
hours,
not even letting me go to—go to the
ladies’ room!
No, don’t interrupt me. Do you realize that this is bad
publicity
for me? Not that I look down on publicity; it has its uses, but—”

“Sweet uses,” murmured Ellery, garbling his Shakespeare.

“What? It has its uses, but this—this is
vile!
Those reporters, they’ve been telephoning their
papers
ever since this
happened.
Tomorrow I’ll find myself
plastered
all over the country, mixed up in a—my God—a
murder!
My press agent will
love
it, but then he’s such a
barbarian!
I tell you unless you let me get out of here at once—
at once,
understand?—I’ll phone my attorney and—and—”

She paused, gulping.

“And fiddlesticks,” snapped the Inspector. “Now pay attention. What do you know about this blasted business?”

The stare that had withered motion picture magnates burned harmlessly against the hide of the Inspector, who was made of asbestos. So she took from her evening-bag a diamond-studded lipstick and pursed her lips very provocatively. “Nothing,” she murmured, “
dear
Inspector.” Ellery grinned, and the Inspector blushed with fury.

“Don’t give me
that!
” he barked. “When did you meet Buck Horne?”

“The horse-opera person? Let me see.” She considered. “Last week.”

“Not in Hollywood?”

“Inspector Queen! He left the screen ten
years
ago!”

“Oh. You were a babe in arms at that time, I s’pose,” said the Inspector sourly. “Well, where
did
you meet Horne?”

“At the
Club Mara,
my husband’s little place, you know.”

Her husband’s little place was a vast one-sixth the size of the
Colosseum,
with more marble and gilt in it than Broadway’s most awesome motion picture palace.

“Who else was present when you met him?”

“Julian—my husband; that Grant person, Curly’s father; and Tony Mars.”

“You know Miss Horne for a long time?”

“That horsy little squirt?” She sniffed contemptuously. “She’s been
presented
to me on the Coast.”

“Presented to
you,
hey?” muttered the Inspector. “She would be—to you. All right, Miss Gay, that’s all. I’m busy.”

She gasped in sheer horror at this frightful implication of
lese majeste.
“Why, you old—”

Sergeant Velie gripped her arm delicately between forefinger and thumb and urged her out of the chair and the room.

Ellery sprang to his feet. “Are you quite finished with this mumbo-jumbo?”

“Hell, no. I want to see—”

“You,” said Ellery firmly, “want to see none other than Major Kirby, god of the newsreel cameras.”

“Kirby? But what the deuce for?”

“It seems to me that what we require more than anything else at the moment is someone on intimate terms with firearms—if you can imagine such a situation.”

The Inspector granted. “You want a firearms expert, so you pick a movie man, hey? That’s logic.”

“The Major, I’ve been told,” said Ellery, “is not only a crack pistoleer but is also something of an authority on something or other—I deduced firearms. That on the admittedly dubious word of Tony Mars—which you would recall if you’d thought about Kirby’s visit to the box before the fracas. Well, send for him, and we’ll find out soon enough how dependable Mars’s information is.”

Sergeant Velie was duly dispatched for the Major.

“But what do you want an expert for?” frowned the Inspector.

Ellery sighed. “Father, dear father, what’s the matter with your wits tonight? We’ve a bullet, haven’t we?”

The Inspector was distinctly annoyed. “Sometimes, my son. …Don’t you think I know enough about the mechanics of my own job to have an expert look over the bullet, and compare it with others? But what’s the rush? Why the dickens—”

“Look here—We’ve got to examine those forty-five shooting-irons immediately—not just some time, but at once, dad!”

“What forty-five guns?”

“Well, I suppose there are forty-five of them,” said Ellery impatiently. “I noticed that the group of riders following Horne seemed consistently to be wearing single holsters which means a revolver per rider. That’s forty. Then there are Ted Lyons’s three—the .25 automatic and the two .45’s from the rodeo armory which he appropriated. Forty-three. Wild Bill Grant’s and Horne’s own—forty-five. But why argue? Don’t you see, dad, we’ve got to
know?
”

The Inspector’s irritation vanished. “You’re right. And the sooner the better. …Well, Hesse?”

One of his squad, a solid Scandinavian, charged in, his little red eyes excited. “Chief, there’s a
riot
upstairs! The boys got all they can do to hold those people! They want to go home.”

“So do I,” growled the Inspector. “You pass the word around, Hesse, to the uniformed men to use their billies, by God, if they have to. Not a single soul goes out of this place until he’s searched to the bone.”