Death of a Tall Man (27 page)

It gave the man time enough to reach the pocket. But the gun stuck in it. The man wrenched at the gun, got it free. He started to lift it and Dan jumped in on him and the gun went off. Dan got his hand on the wrist again, twisted sharply, raised his other hand and tried for the back of the neck with a knife blow. The man he was fighting twisted and Dan's hand slipped again. For an instant the man was free—and in that instant he turned toward the wall.

Dan jumped for him. Underbrush caught his feet and he half fell after the man, who reached the wall and kicked backward. One heel grazed Dan's chin and Dan put his hands up, quickly, to shield his face—and to clutch for the swinging feet. But the man, who was quicker and stronger than Dan had thought, went up the wall, flattening himself on the top of it. Dan jumped after him, his head came above the top of the wall and the beam of a flashlight caught him full in the eyes, blindingly.

During the moment in which he could not see, Dan grabbed instinctively for the top of the wall. His hands found cloth; found a leg.

“Let him go,” Bill Weigand said, from the other side of the wall. “I've got him. And get your head out of the way, for God's sake!”

Dan moved abruptly, dropping out of the line of fire. He moved sideways and came up again.

Bill Weigand laughed suddenly.

“He won't go anywhere,” he said. Bill laughed without humor. “He's stuck on a branch. In his coat. Aren't you, Mr. Smith?”

And then Pam North laughed, too. She sounded a little hysterical.

“How silly,” Pam said. “How completely silly. For such a smart murderer.”

And Nickerson Smith began to swear. There was a kind of ineffectual embarrassment in his profanity.

They got him off, with some wrestling, after they had got his gun. He did not make any effort to fight them; he seemed quite anxious to get the tree branch out of his coat and his feet under him. He was even helpful. When Mullins put handcuffs on him, Nickerson Smith looked at them with surprised resentment. Then he looked up at Weigand.

“That freak,” he said. His voice was suddenly very bitter. “That god-damned freak. Who'd figure anybody to be seven feet tall?”

He seemed, somehow, to regard the whole thing as a personal, uncalled-for stupidity on the part of Lieutenant William Weigand.

Then Dan Gordon and Debbie came through the gap in the wall farther up and walked down toward them. Weigand threw the light from his flash on them, and then discreetly lowered it. A good many things had happened to the girl's clothes. But nothing of importance seemed to have happened to the girl. Dan was holding her so close that he seemed almost to be carrying her. They were both, the others could see in the instant before Weigand lowered his flashlight, very scratched, very muddy and, above all, very wet. You would have thought the girl, at least, would be very cold.

But neither of them looked as if they minded being wet and cold. They looked as if they were very warm and contented. From the expression on their faces, they might have been sitting in front of a fire. Actually, Pam North thought, they are. In the only sense that makes much difference.

11

T
UESDAY
, 9:30
P.M. TO
10:45
P.M.

They came down to the fire one by one. Dan Gordon came first, and put logs on it and stirred it, so it leaped up brightly. Then Debbie came, in a pale blue slack suit, and walked into his arms. After a moment they sat down very close together on one of the sofas. He kept one arm around her. With the other hand he turned her face to him and gravely examined it. He told her she looked as if she had been playing with a cat. His voice was light, confident, and she smiled at him without answering.

Jerry North came next, in tweeds made for Dan Gordon and perceptibly long in the leg. He went over to the fire and stood in front of it and held out his hands. Then he turned and held out his back. Then, when Dan Gordon waved without comment, Jerry went to a portable bar and mixed himself a drink. He looked at the two on the sofa and they nodded, so he made more drinks. Then Pam came in, in a borrowed hostess coat—white with gold embroidery—and said, “me, too.” So Jerry mixed a fourth drink. He took the drinks to Debbie and Dan; he took his own drink and Pam's—and Pam herself—and moved all firmly to the other sofa. He sat down and sighed. He looked at Pam, whose hair was wet and improbably curly. She nodded and said, “All right. Except for the shoulder. I landed on it.” She paused, considering. “Again,” she said.

Larry Westcott came next, and he had not changed; his tweeds looked wet; he brought an odor of wet wool with him. He stopped at a little distance and looked at them and said, “They've taken him along?”

“The State cops,” Dan Gordon said. “Yes—they've taken him along. Not talking any more, they say.”

Westcott said “Oh,” vaguely. “I'll be getting along home, then,” he said. He started toward the hall door. “By the way,” he said, “Eve won't be down again. The kid's scared—the storm and everything. Eve said to tell you, Debbie.”

“All right,” Debbie said, without moving in Dan's arms.

Westcott went into the hall. There he spoke to someone. Then they heard a door close, and then Bill Weigand came in, with Mullins after him. They came across to the fire.

“Storm's over,” Bill said. “Moon's out.” He looked at them. “We ought to be getting along,” he said. But he showed no immediate intention of getting along.

“A drink first,” Debbie said, still without moving. “You and the sergeant?”

“O.K.,” Mullins said. “O.K., Miss Brooks.”

He went to the bar. He looked at Weigand, who nodded. He made drinks. He brought them back. Bill Weigand—in slacks and a sweater he had borrowed somewhere—stood in front of the fire. He drank and put his glass on the mantelpiece. He looked at Pam.

“All right, Pam,” he said. “Say it.”

“I told you so,” Pam said, sweetly. “All along I told you so.” She paused. “Only,” she said, “I couldn't fit it together, which was what counted.” She regarded Bill. “No help, I wasn't,” she said.

Bill Weigand drank again. He put the glass back. He said he hadn't been any too bright himself. His face was shadowed.

“Not bright enough to save the nurse,” he said. “Barely bright enough to help save you, Miss Brooks. I did all the things he expected me to do, right up to the end. Until the tall man died. Which he couldn't have counted on, since the card didn't show. Just a name—and a pair of eyes—the card was.” He paused, considering. He seemed disinclined to go on.

“We all did what he wanted us to do,” Pam said. “Including Debbie. Running out in the rain, that way.”

Bill nodded. He said, “Right.

“Including Debbie,” he said. “Whom he had to get when his luck started to run out.”

“Did he really see somebody out there?” Debbie said. “Before he went out? Or did he just pretend to?”

Nickerson Smith wasn't saying, Bill told her. He wasn't saying anything. So they had, still, to guess about a good deal of it. But, as a guess—“no, Smith didn't see anybody when he looked through the living-room window, out into the rain.

“He wanted you to think he saw Dan,” Bill said. “He wanted you to think Dan was running somewhere, out there in the rain—and that he was hurt. You said he talked about the man's staggering.”

“He said he seemed to be staggering,” Debbie said.

Bill nodded.

“Right,” he said. “Creating anxiety. Then he ran out, taking Westcott with him. Hoping we could blame Westcott for what was going to happen. Then he lost Westcott in the rain—and yelled and fired a shot. At nothing—at the air. To bring you.”

Debbie nodded. “It brought me,” she said. She looked up at Dan. “I didn't stop to think,” she said. “I just—I was just—afraid.”

“I know,” Dan said. “You were just afraid.”

His voice was very tender.

“So,” Bill said. “He got you out—where it could be anyone. Where, after we found you, we'd think it could be anyone. Westcott. Dan, even. Or—anybody. It might have worked.” He drank again. “The whole damn thing might have worked,” he said, a little angrily. “And it was all there in front of us—spread out. And we didn't put it together.”

“Finally you did,” Pam said. “In time.”

Not in time for Grace Spencer, Bill told her, and again his voice was bitter.

“How did he kill her?” Jerry said. “Why, for that matter?”

It was one of the things they would have to guess, Bill told him. He managed, in the darkness—after Debbie had turned out the lights to give Dan a chance to run. “And that was a damn fool thing to do,” Bill interpolated. Smith managed to, somehow, entice her out onto the terrace. Presumably she had come out to talk to him; presumably she had remembered something and was giving him a chance to explain. But what she remembered—

“We won't know,” Bill said. “Unless he decides to tell us. She remembered something that didn't fit. Presumably, when he was impersonating the doctor. Some gesture—some movement. Perhaps merely enough to make her doubt that it was really the doctor coming out. Perhaps not enough to make her realize that the man in the white coat was Smith. But—if we once suspected, he was in for it. He knew that. It had to be—perfect. Accepted as perfect. Otherwise—well, we'd all have thought what Pam thought.”

“Step by step,” Pam said, after a pause. “What did he do? What can you prove?”

Bill said he thought they could prove enough. As much as they needed to. Because, once they got around the alibi, he was always the likely one.

“As he no doubt realized,” Bill said. “He had motive. The only good motive. He was around. Only—he
couldn't
do it. He thought we wouldn't break that down. He didn't care how much we suspected him as long as we couldn't break that down. But—step by step—”

First, he had—they were just breaking it down to details—stolen a large part of the fund for which he and Dr. Gordon were trustees. “We say he stole it,” Bill said. “Perhaps he merely wasted it.” But he was the one who had diverted the money from Dan, not Dr. Gordon. Gordon was the one who had left things to his cotrustee, not Smith. But—as the time came to pay the money over to Dan, Gordon asked for an accounting. Purely routine, probably. But Smith couldn't stand even a routine accounting. Possibly he had underestimated Gordon; possibly he had thought he would never have to explain. Perhaps he had always been ready to kill Gordon if it became necessary.

Then—he decided it had become necessary. Killing Gordon would serve two purposes. It would stop the investigation into the fund. It would give Smith a dead man to blame the loss on. But his motives were as obvious as they were compelling. He would have to move carefully. He did.

“Somehow, he got hold of one of the referral cards in Gordon's office,” Bill said. “Oakes's card, by what turned out, for him, to be bad luck. I suppose Oakes had been in before and the card hadn't been returned. Probably it was on Miss Spencer's desk.”

Bill looked at Debbie, who nodded.

“Yesterday morning,” Debbie said. “It was the morning group he was in, not the afternoon. I remember him, of course. Anybody would.”

Weigand nodded.

“Because he was so tall,” Weigand said. “So odd. If he had been, as the chances were he would be, just an ordinary man you wouldn't have remembered, I imagine. As Smith, of course, assumed you wouldn't. Neither you nor Miss Spencer. He would have been just a name—hardly that.”

“A number,” Debbie said. “More a number than a name. A man in one of the rooms. No. 2, in his case.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “That's what Smith counted on. He slipped in after the doctor went to the hospital, while you were at your desk and Miss Spencer was—where was she?”

“In the storeroom, most of the time,” Debbie said.

“Skipped in and got one of the morning cards,” Bill said. “They were done with and filed; they wouldn't be checked for days; with the doctor dead they would probably never be checked.”

Pam North thought of something.

“Why one of the morning cards?” she said. “Why not—oh, a card from last week. Because then there wouldn't be even a slight chance of somebody remembering.”

Bill Weigand shook his head.

“Because he knew we would talk to the men,” he said. “He could assume we would be rather careless about it, because they didn't have anything to do with the murder; couldn't have, as long as we thought Dr. Gordon was alive after he had finished with them and gone out. But—he could be pretty sure somebody would be going around, just as a matter of routine, to ask Oakes and the rest if they had been at the office yesterday and if they had noticed anything out of the way. So it had to be somebody who
was
there yesterday.”

“He took the chance,” Jerry pointed out, “that your man would be specific—would say ‘Were you at the doctor's office yesterday afternoon.'”

Bill nodded. He said that all murderers had to take some chances. He smiled suddenly and turned to Pam.

“What did you say to them?” he asked suddenly. “Yesterday? Yesterday afternoon?”

“Yesterday,” Pam said. “I—I knew it was in the afternoon. We all did.” She paused. “Thought we did,” she added.

Bill said, “Right.” He said Smith could count on that; had counted on it; would have been, a hundred times to one, safe in counting on it. So—Smith stole the card. He put on dark glasses, slicked his hair down.

“Why?” Pam said.

“Because Dr. Gordon did,” Bill told her. “Because—Smith usually looked like a brush, Pam. Remember? And, of course, also to look less like himself. It worked both ways.”

Pam nodded.

With dark glasses, with hair slicked down, in an unnoticeable dark suit, Smith had shown up at the office with the other compensation cases. The nurse and Debbie barely knew him by sight; there was hardly a chance they would recognize him behind the dark glasses, and they had not. He had come early, no doubt hoping to be the first. That would have made it a little easier. Actually, he was the second; Fritz Weber was even more prompt.