Murder on Wheels (11 page)

“Yes, sir. That’s why I’m down here. I’ll begin at the beginning. I couldn’t sleep last night, after all that had happened. After you and your lady friend went away I lay in my bed, listening to that parrot of Gran’s chattering up on the floor above. The house seemed to be full of noises. My room as you know is on the front of the house, and I lay there in bed and waited for the first signs of daylight to show on the Jersey shore across the river. Then I heard somebody coming stealthily along the hall …”

“Heavy or light tread? Sound like a man or a woman?”

There was a little hesitation. “Honestly, I can’t say, Inspector. It was very light and cautious, just a
hush-hush
sound along the carpet. That was what made me suspicious. The sounds stopped just outside my door.”

“Which was locked?”

“Yes, sir. The locks in that house are all old-fashioned, however, and they can be opened with any skeleton key. So I’d pushed a chair against the knob on the inside. Well, I lay there for what must have been fifteen minutes, waiting for whatever it was to go on past. But it didn’t. I tried to keep myself from dozing off, and then something happened that will keep me from dozing off for a week. I swear that I hadn’t heard a key turn in the lock, nor a squeak from the chair back that was against the door. But as I lay there, staring into the darkness, I saw that the door was ajar, perhaps eight inches. My chair back didn’t fit tightly enough under the knob, I guess. Anyway, I could see a dim panel of light which must have come from the lamp at the head of the stairs.”

“But there was the Sergeant down in the lower hall! Why didn’t you call out to him?”

“You forget, Inspector. I didn’t know he was there. You sent me to my room, and you said nothing about leaving an operative on duty. I thought that I was the only man in the house, except for Lew.”

“Oh, yes, of course. So what did you do?”

“I sat on the edge of the bed and said, Who’s there?’ There wasn’t any answer. I thought I saw something in the air, like a bat flying, but then I lost it. And then I saw that the door had closed again. I got up and moved a bureau in front of it. Then I came back to bed and found the pillow pinned against the headboard of the bed with … this!”

There was a metallic rattle as something was laid on the Inspector’s desk. Miss Withers realized for the first time the disadvantages of her listening post. Television would have helped. Because she was curious to know what it was had pinned the pillow of Hubert Stait to the headboard of his bed.

“Very nice,” came the Inspector’s voice. “A nasty little toadsticker, this. Ever see it before you saw it sticking through your pillow?”

“I … I don’t like to say!”

“Come, come. You’ll have to answer. Where did you see it before?”

“It was part of the camping outfit that Laurie took west with him last summer. He was figuring on making an expedition into the Tetons alone with a frying pan and a book and a dog that he picked up out there, he wrote us. I don’t know whether he ever did or not.”

“Did he bring this knife back with him?”

“I think so … though I don’t remember seeing it after he returned.”

“Very well. Now Hubert, tell me one thing more. Have you any idea who it was who stood outside your door and tossed cold steel at you last night?”

“I … no, sir.”

“Not even a suspicion?”

“No, sir.”

“Man or woman?”

“I’m not sure … but I think it must have been a man. To throw that hard.”

“You say the only other man in the house, besides the Sergeant, was your cousin Lew?”

“Yes sir.”

“Do you think it was Lew who threw that knife at you?”

“Don’t make me answer that, Inspector. I don’t know. I just want to be protected, that’s all.”

“Against Lew Stait?”

“Well … yes.”

“Tell me, do you think your cousin Lew was responsible, then, for what happened to Laurie?”

“I don’t know, Inspector. He’d kill me if he knew … that I’m talking to you. They’ve always called Lew the good twin, and Laurie the bad one. It should have been the other way around. Laurie was open and free in what he did, but Lew was the sanctimonious one, always playing up to Gran and then getting into scrapes. Everybody but Gran and Aunt Abbie knew about Lew and the maid. But if she’d seen it with her own eyes Gran would have said it was Laurie. Laurie always has taken the blame for everything bad Lew did. If Lew comes in drunk, it’s Laurie. If Lew gets in a fight in a Harlem brothel, it’s Laurie. They always stood up for each other, you see. When they were in school they used to share the work, each studying what was easiest for him and then reciting for whichever name was called. You see, no teacher could tell them apart. Laurie used to write Lew’s English and history exams, while Lew did the math for both of them. Their writing was enough alike so nobody could be sure.”

“Hmmm. So Laurie, you say, was the scapegoat. And he stood for it?”

“Always. You see, they don’t think as two persons, entirely. I mean they didn’t. They always agreed, for instance, on what they were going to wear that day … always the same thing. Perhaps Laurie resented the burden of bearing Lew’s sins, but he never showed it.”

“Very good.” Miss Withers heard the sound of the Inspector’s chair being pushed back. ‘I’ll consider what you say, young man.”

“I tell you, my life—nobody’s life—is safe in that house unless you do something, Inspector.”

“I’ll do something, never fear.” The Inspector’s voice faded as he moved away from the concealed microphone. “Good morning.”

Then the knob of the inner office door turned noisily, giving Miss Withers a second or two in which she might slip off the headphones and close the drawer. She was fixing her hat when the Inspector ushered Hubert Stait through the office again and out toward the hall.

Then Piper came over to where she was sitting. “There’s a badly scared young man, or I’m no judge,” he said.

“Excited, anyway,” Miss Withers agreed. “I could tell that much by his voice. He’s a strange person, very. I got everything but the beginning, Oscar. What did he want you to do?”

“He asked permission to get away, out of town or at least out of the Stait house. And I told him again, as I did last night, that there wasn’t a chance. Because every member of that household and every friend and relative of the dead man is a suspect until we get a little farther with the case. He acted as if my decision was no surprise to him, and then he wanted me to station a plain-clothes man to guard him … you heard that. He’s a nervous, over-intellectual type, and he’s scared silly of his cousin. Under the circumstances I don’t blame him, though we haven’t got evidence enough to make an arrest.”

“May I see that knife?” Miss Withers drew back as the Inspector whipped from his pocket nine inches of gleaming steel, with a heavy handle of polished horn. It was a wicked-looking thing, more like a bayonet than a hunting knife.

“So that knife belonged to the dead man, eh?” Miss Withers hefted it. “Looks like the knives they throw in vaudeville.”

The Inspector nodded. “That’s what it is. Evidently Laurie Stait liked to practice tossing this little toy. Evidently his brother—or somebody—also had the habit. You see, it’s balanced to whirl end over end so that the thrower can gauge the number of revolutions to impinge the blade wherever he takes a fancy.”

“I see.” Miss Withers fingered the glittering thing casually. “Oscar, any objection to my keeping this knife overnight? Unless of course you want to photograph it for fingerprints.”

“There aren’t any,” she was told. “I dusted it with powder in my office, and there wasn’t a single print. Hubert picked it up with a handkerchief, being a sensible young man for all his Phi Beta Kappa key, and the thrower evidently handled it the same way. But why do you want it?”

“I just want it, that’s all.”

“Going to put it under your pillow and then dream the name of the person who threw it?” The Inspector permitted himself a mild smile.

“Something like that. You can have it tomorrow, Oscar. By the way, are you going to do what Hubert asked you to, and post a man in the Stait house?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it would be the wise thing. I’d hate to see what the papers would say if there was another member of that family bumped off. Wait a minute—”

The telephone on the Inspector’s desk was buzzing merrily, and he moved to answer it himself. Miss Withers followed him into the inner office. He shouted hello into the mouthpiece.

“Sergeant Taylor reporting sir, from the Stait house. It’s nine o’clock, and I’m leaving as per orders, sir.”

“All right, Sergeant. Anything happen in the night?”

“Not a thing, sir. I stayed there at the foot of the stairs, and nothing happened except the milkman’s arrival. A little while ago Mr. Hubert Stait went out, in a hurry.”

“Yes, I know about that. Oh, by the way, Sergeant. What time did Lew Stait get back from identifying his brother at the Morgue?”

“Get back? But … but Inspector, nobody came in the house at all, I tell you! I was right at the front door, and there’s no back stairs, so anybody coming in the back way would have had to pass by me to get upstairs. I didn’t see hide nor hair of Lew Stait. I thought he’d come in before you left, and that he was safe in his bed.”

“Good lord, man! Then Lew Stait has made his getaway!” The Inspector looked up at Miss Withers. “I meant to have somebody tail him, but I didn’t because I took it for granted that the boys who drove him down to the Morgue would bring him back home. And he just walked out and disappeared!”

He turned to the phone again. “Hello, Sergeant? I suppose you’re anxious to get some shut-eye, so you can go home … wait a minute …”

Miss Withers whispered a suggestion and the Inspector nodded. “Oh, before you go off duty, Sergeant, I want you to do something for me. Go upstairs to the front room on the third floor and have a look at the pillows. That’s all … and phone me back here at Headquarters.”

He put down the phone. “Damn the luck! So Lew Stait has slipped out of our fingers, huh? Right when we were beginning to get something on him. Well, he won’t get far. We’ll have him dragged back, if he took a train or a boat or even went by air. Even if he’s out of our jurisdiction there’s no trouble getting extradition for murder …”

“It’s not so easy to manage it in all cases,” Miss Withers put forward dryly. “Didn’t Hubert say something about all men of the Stait family being marked for death ? How is the extradition from the next world, Oscar?”

“You mean—you think he’s been killed?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “If it could happen to one twin it could happen to the other. They always shared share and share alike, you know.”

Inspector Piper nodded, heavily. “But that screws everything up. If Lew Stait wasn’t in that house last night, and I’m pretty sure that Taylor is telling the truth when he says Lew wasn’t, then who opened the door of Hubert’s room and tossed the cutlery at him? He didn’t like to say so, but he was sure it was Lew.”

Miss Withers nodded. “Have you considered this, Oscar? Hubert is a nervous, over-intellectual type. Suppose he got it into his head that Lew was after him, not knowing that Lew was out of the house all night, and then imagined the whole thing?”

“Imagined the knife, too?”

“He might have picked that up somewhere, to make his delusion seem real. Or perhaps he is just frightened half to death and trying to get something which will impel you to protect him with a detective in the house. A sort of hysteria, perhaps.”

“For that matter, somebody might have thrown that knife besides Lew,” Piper pointed out. “The old lady, or that tough Dutch cook …” He slapped his knee. “That’s it. The cook was used to knives, in the kitchen.”

“She peeled potatoes with them, certainly. But did you ever see a cook peel a potato by
throwing
knives at it?” Miss Withers shook her head. “Oscar Piper, there’s something here we don’t see.”

“There’s damn little that we do see,” said the Inspector, trying vainly to relight his dead cigar. “But the first thing I’m going to do is to send out the alarm for Lew Stait. Can’t you see the newspaper headlines if the other twin has been bumped off?” He reached for the telephone, but even as he lifted the receiver it burst into a shrill ringing.

“Hello, Taylor?”

It was. “Listen, Inspector, I went up and had a look at those pillows the way you asked me.”

“Go on, what did you find?”

“Well, the one on the left had a slit, like a razor cut, about three quarters of an inch long, in both back and front of the linen slip and the pillow itself. And there was a nick in the headboard of the bed, too.”

The Inspector nodded. “Good, Taylor. Now you can get home. What’s that?”

He listened for a moment, and his mouth dropped open with astonishment. “You say it happened when you were upstairs? Well, I’ll be …”

“What is it, for heaven’s sake ?” Miss Withers leaned towards him, across the desk. “Tell me, Oscar! Is Lew Stait dead?”

He put down the phone slowly, and looked up at her. “Not exactly, Hildegarde.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“He’s married,” said the Inspector. “Right at this moment he’s standing in the front hall of the Stait house, according to the Sergeant, and making the announcement to the family. The girl is with him—they just got back from Greenwich, Connecticut. The girl is—

“Dana Waverly, of course,” interrupted Miss Withers. “Oscar, isn’t there a statute in this state which prevents a wife from taking the witness stand against her husband?”

Inspector Piper nodded his head, and his pugnacious lower lip thrust itself forward.

T
HE INSPECTOR REACHED FOR
his hat and overcoat. “Where are you rushing to?” Miss Withers wanted to know. “Going up to Riverside Drive to give the young couple your blessing?”

“I am not.” He stopped beside the file case to take down a bound copy of the latest Manhattan telephone book. “Let’s see … U—V—W … here we are. Waverly, B. O.—perfumer … Waverly, Dr. Bruce … Waverly, Charles M.—attorney, 555 Enterprise Trust Building—LAckawanna 4-4333 … hmmm … here we are. Waverly, Miss Dana E., 23 Minetta Lane—SPring something or other …”