Corpses at Indian Stone (16 page)

"Nobody around here has that sort of mazuma," Sarah replied. "And that gold and my platinum wouldn't just be 'carried off'--either. It weighed about--a ton, I should imagine."

Aggie thought a moment. "So it did! Hunh. Mean several trips. How was it--

packed? Or was it?"

"In sawdust--in starch boxes. The starch boxes were in wine cases-four to a case.

The whole thing was designed to weigh the same as a case of wine."

He sipped coffee. "I honestly think--at the moment--I'm Wes Wickman's principal suspect!"

"You!" Sarah leered. "And no wonder! Well, start talking!"

He told her. He told her sketchily, at first, and in detail, as Wes's "five minutes"

became ten and then twenty and at last, half an hour. They waited, when he had finished talking, with an impatience that blotted out fatigue and sleepiness.

Wes appeared, at last. He looked grim. His face was even more dirty. "There was nobody in that cellar. One window had been scrambled over. Look. I've hardly slept since Calder died. I was out last night on Bogarty leads. I went to bed this evening and I left word that I wasn't to be disturbed for anything. My lieut woke me when you called about Davis." He grinned shortly. "I'd have demoted him if he hadn't. Now, see here, Plum.

You found the doctor. You broke in where he was. You've rummaged all the way to that safe in the club cellar--yeah!--that's where I've just been. You're going to have the devil's own time explaining your actions--and I wish you'd begin now."

Wes drank cup after cup of coffee. He did not once interrupt. He showed amazement at the story about the cache. He gazed at Sarah. He muttered, when Aggie described the situation in which he had found Davis's body. But he did not talk.

After it was finished, he closed his eyes. "Aggie," he said at last, "I know darned well you're telling the truth. I'd have pushed along just about the same way you did.

Damn the torpedoes--or the cops-go ahead! Just the same, I suppose you--and Sarah--

realize that in the morning you're going to face a mob of reporters?"

"I've been thinking of it," Sarah said.

"They'll be all over the scene. Great story. A million in unlawful gold hidden away. Two peculiar deaths. A colorful, prospector missing. It'll crowd Hitler off the front pages. This place will be crammed with sightseers. Reporters will be trying to beat us--

the police--to an answer. What
is
the answer?"

"Somebody stole the gold," Sarah said.

Wes looked enraged and helpless. "If you'll just inform
who
--!"

"Hank, I imagine," she said. "It's hard to think of--but it
must
be! His knife killed Davis. He probably fixed the deadfall. He knew we had the gold--so he was the one who had the chance to learn where we kept it. Why don't you find him?"

"I've been trying to," said Wes. "Night and day." He turned to Aggie. "We've got a lot! He had with him a silver fox with a collar, when he drove east. Stopped at several places. I'm sure the knife that killed Davis is his."

"How?" Aggie asked.

"His initials on the car. Didn't you notice? Same script. He evidently liked script initials."

"Didn't see 'em," Aggie said.

"You were sitting right under them! Only thing is--how did he get out of that room--if he stabbed Davis?"

Aggie shrugged. "He couldn't have got out, man! Use your head! He may have visited Davis secretly in that darkroom. Good place-detached from the house. If Bogarty was in the woods waiting for a chance to see Davis-he got it tonight. Maybe he left his knife-and left some sort of news that made Davis use it on himself. Maybe he gave it to Davis to use on himself. You know. The way a disgraced army officer is given a gun."

Wes said, "Phooie!" He added, "Would you--kill a man with an initialed knife? Or leave one with your initials on it, for a man to kill himself with?"

"Perhaps, Davis wanted to kill himself and put the blame on Bogarty! Perhaps Davis was visited tonight by Bogarty and perhaps he stole Bogarty's knife--and used it on himself when Bogarty had gone. Perhaps--in the excitement of the moment--he forgot he had locked his door! Thought only of doing away with himself and leaving us a clue to Bogarty."

Wes gazed at. Sarah. "Good imagination, your nephew. I thought of that. At least-

-it makes sense. Nobody could be there to stab him. He still had the knife in his hand when you found him. Bogarty's knife. Maybe Davis knew he had to die--and used that way of pointing to Bogarty, so Bogarty wouldn't escape punishment either. What do you think, Sarah?"

The old woman answered, "Aggie, whose bin did that bottle come from? The one somebody put on the floor after you'd gone into the vault?"

"Lord! How should I know? I shut off my light and beat it!"

"I looked," Wes said. "Just now. It came from your bins, Sarah."

"It ought to have fingerprints, then. I put down my Hochheimer years ago. It would be exceedingly dusty."

"It was," Wes said. "And there were marks. Gloves. Or a handkerchief."

"Smart," Sarah said.

"Smart!" Wes rose and walked to the fire. He kicked a log. "I should say so!"

"Hank was smart," she said reflectively. "He had an extraordinarily good mind.

Clear and fast. Wonderful at whist. Chess too. I can't imagine him killing people--or making them kill themselves. If he did, Jim Calder has been a worse rascal than I ever guessed--and George Davis has been more than a clever surgeon and a stuffed shirt. Hank might-punish them. He had a strong sense of justice. His own sense of it."

"You're talking about a man," the trooper answered, ''you knew more than thirty years ago. He could have changed in that time!"

She smiled ruefully. "He
would
have. Look at me!" The trooper studied the professor. "How did Danielle act tonight?"

Aggie described the girl's behavior. He tried to avoid the matter of having slapped her. But Wes picked that up, with a grin. "So you what?"

"Well, I slapped her. Shook her."

Wes chuckled. "Golly! It's a wonder
you're
alive! She needed it. Bet she hasn't been slapped since her mother died. I feel sorry for her now--though. Her father a suicide.

Alone."

Aggie stared at the fire. His aunt gazed at him. Wes yawned, stretched, and shook his tremendous frame. "I deliberately poured it on you," he said to Aggie, "up at the club.

You see--when I tore up--after old John's message--everybody was yammering about how odd it was that you found out everything first. I mean--Indian Stones was waking up and learning all about this rumpus."

"Rumpus!" said Sarah.

Aggie chuckled. "Rumpus? At least! I thought you were
really
getting doubtful of me."

The trooper rose. "Only in one way. I don't believe you'd necessarily tell me all you know if you thought you could make something of it without my help. And that's not cricket. After all, I'm the cop. When two of the nation's big shots are killed peculiarly in your district, your superiors want action. If you're holding out so much as a crumb--!"

Aggie thought. "You noticed the Davis phone wires were yanked down?"

"Of course. Danielle showed me."

"I don't suppose it would interest you to know I spotted a small veal bone on the furnace-room floor? Like the one in Bogarty's car."

"Gnawed?"

"Couldn't tell. I was hurrying." Aggie's brown eyes were mocking. "I was nervous in that cellar, for some reason."

"I'll check. But I doubt if it means a thing. The club garbage goes down into the cellar in cans and out through the furnace room by a door that opens on the rear drive.

That door was locked tight tonight. The bone probably dropped from a can. You know how sloppy people are with loads like that."

"That's right. I didn't know about the garbage."

"I'm going back to the Davises," Wes said. "I'll leave word, after this, for you to be put through to me whenever you want me. And thanks again. Incidentally we'll make a try for Davis's shoes--tomorrow."

Aggie conveyed the trooper to the door. Then he turned back to his aunt. "You must be bushed."

She shook her head. "On the contrary. Now that my conscience is clear, I think I've passed the mumps crisis also. I feel full of fight."

"I don't," he said. "I feel as if I'd never been asleep in my life! It seems weeks--

even back to this afternoon."

The phone rang. Aggie went to it. "Hello? . . . No. Miss Plum is ill and can't talk. .

. . She can't see anybody--she's in quarantine . . . . This is her nephew, Agamemnon Telemachus Plum. . . . A-G-A-Lord! Look it up in Who's Who! . . . No, I won't see anybody this morning as soon as they can get up by plane! . . . I will this afternoon, and I don't care if it will be too late for the evening editions. . . . If you send a man, he will find I've thrown a guard around the house with orders to shoot! . . . Listen! I'm going to bed.

B-E-D. . . . Look up that in the dictionary! . . . Statement? . . . Well . . . Yes." He considered. "You can say that, in my opinion, James Calder died accidentally and George Davis by his own hand, after peculations that involved the missing million in gold." He was silent, for a moment, grinning. "You haven't heard about the gold, yet? Well--send your reporter to see Byron Waite. He'll be
happy
to supply the details, I'm sure!"

Aggie hung up. "That was Metropolitan News and Photo, in New York. They got a tip from a local reporter at State Police Headquarters. I hope--I
earnestly
hope--their man will rout out old Waite just as he is dropping off--say about nine or ten this morning!"

"Yours is a blithe, sweet spirit, Agamemnon! Why did you tell them that rubbish about accident and suicide and the libel about George stealing the gold?"

"Because," he answered, "I have a strong suspicion my statement will be regarded, eventually, as a singularly prophetic estimate of the conclusions to which everybody will come. By that I mean, unless Wes or you or I run into something new, we've come to the end of the trail. Bogarty--or whoever murdered James Calder and caused George Davis to die--is so many jumps ahead that we won't catch up. Maybe ever.

I predict a period of public fanfare--and a gradual dying out of excitement."

' That's an alarming idea," she said, "and I hope you're wrong."

Aggie yawned and started toward the stairs. "There's somebody in this vicinity so clever, and so intuitive, that the less I think about it the better I'll sleep!" He called down, a moment later, "Incidentally, Sarah, have Windle get me about three dozen steel traps, will you? I was serious about that. Fox traps. And good night!"

CHAPTER 13

On a day in the early part of July, a dazzling day, of the sort that makes people who cannot swim wish they had been braver, and people who can, hasten to the nearest lake, river or pool, Agamemnon Telemachus Plum, A.B., B.S., M.A., Litt.D., Ph.D.--and Phi Beta Kappa, as a matter of course--sat on the edge of Lower Lake at Indian Stones with his feet in the water up to the ankles. Two weeks in the mountains had made changes in the eminent paleontologist. The most readily discernible change was superficial: his skin was now as brown as a filbert, instead of the academy white which it had been. His beard was neater and shorter.

Another change was in his social station. That is to say, as he sat on the tepid margin of the pond, people spoke to him amiably and in such a way as to suggest esteem.

A child, aged about six, threw itself on his shoulders and shouted, "Dive in with me, Aggie!"

Aggie laughed and said, "Soon. As soon as I go overboard."

Another youngster--some years older--approached with diffidence and spoke after summoning up a modicum of boldness: "Will you make me one of those Nairobi fish spears like you make Fred? He got a pickerel with it, yesterday!"

Aggie laughed again. "I will, Johnnie, if you'll mend your grammar. A spear 'like the one you made for Fred'--or, 'as you did for Fred.'" Johnnie was pleased. "It's a duzie!"

he said with fervor. "Whammo! Fred don't miss--hardly ever!"

"'Doesn't,' " Aggie repeated with pain on his face.

The boy ran off yelling, "Hey! Socksie! I get one, too!"

Mrs. Drayman, who was sitting near by in a deck chair, clucked over her knitting.

"It gets worse and worse," she said. "Children these days don't pay the slightest heed to their grammar. When I was young--"

Aggie watched Johnnie skid off the dock into the water. "I dunno," he meditated.

"I can't recall that I had mastered the rhetorical irregularities at twelve. And I do know that at his age I was unable to hook up a radio. Or to send in code. He may never be a purist. But he ought to be a good engineer."

"I hope so!" She busied herself with her work in a way that suggested she had a problem in her mind rather than in the stitches. "I--I understand Sarah has asked Beth to keep house for you?"

Two weeks ago, Aggie would have blushed and stammered. Two weeks ago, the fact that a young woman had been invited to move in with himself and his aunt would have caused him to depart from Indian Stones. Now, his embarrassment was only moderate. "Why--yes. Company. Someone to run the place for us. Sarah's better--but convalescing slowly. And after all, Beth's at loose ends."

"Hunh!" said Mrs. Drayman.

Meaning, Aggie thought, that Mrs. D. is onto the fact that Sarah will go to any lengths to arrange things between Beth and me. Mrs. D.--and the rest of Indian Stones.

He let the insinuating syllable hang in the air for a while. He had almost packed up when Sarah suggested it. But not quite. He was uncertain why he had stayed. Perhaps out of scientific curiosity--to see how a young and very handsome woman behaved, from a proximate viewpoint. Or perhaps because he had grown somewhat more blasé, owing to the fact that he had recently been interviewed by reporters, policemen, detectives, coroners, and the like--the fact that the papers had been full of his name and his statements--and the fact that Indian Stones had changed its opinion of him. He was no longer regarded as a bearded, bookish anachronism.

He was thought of, rather, as something of a fireball. The sort of man who would ingeniously and calmly break in on a dead body in the middle of night, using an automobile jack. The sort of fellow who would barge into a secret cellar all alone and without a weapon, when there lurked in it a dangerous thief. A man in whom a captain of the State Police had implicit trust. A man, moreover--according to the testimony of numerous wide-eyed kids--who could tell the greatest stories on earth about Indians and Eskimos and African natives--every one of them true.