Murder on Wheels (23 page)

The boy’s eyes were hunted, but he did not speak.

“Bravo, Oscar,” came a voice from the hallway. “That’s a fine speech, all right. Masterly statement of the case. Only it’s all wrong.”

There stood Miss Withers. She was holding a key in her hand. “I saw something twinkling out in the street, and picked this up. I think if you try it you’ll find it’s the key to Hubert’s room …”

“Aha! So he threw it away to try and make it look as if the murderer had dropped it!” The Inspector was facing Lew, who now stood completely dressed except for his necktie. He seemed to hesitate in drawing the noose of silk around his throat.

“But it won’t work, Stait! You can’t get by with trying to make out that somebody besides you and Hubert was in this house this afternoon. Because I’ve had a man outside since you came in, and he swears that nobody passed in or out since then, either through the back or front. You were alone with Hubert Stait, and you’re going to pay for what you did to him.”

There was the sound of something bumping on the stair. Miss Withers drew back in instinctive dread of what was being carried down to the waiting ambulance from the Morgue.

“That means that the photographers and the print men have finished,” Piper announced. He stepped out into the hallway, and shook hands with an assistant medical examiner who was following the body downstairs. “Hello, doc. That was quick work. Anything new?”

Levin shook his head. “Pretty job of strangling,” he announced. “You seem to run to those, Inspector. This beats the one we had on Fifth Avenue last week.”

“You agree that it couldn’t have been suicide?”

“I don’t see any signs of it. He’s been dead about two hours. Must have croaked about two-thirty …”

“Five minutes after I talked to him on the phone,” said Piper. “Oh, it’s open and shut, all right. And this washes up the other murder, too.”

“Which is a relief for everybody concerned,” agreed the doctor. “Well, I’ll see you around. Now that you’ve nabbed the wily gent in the bedroom, I suppose we’ll have a rest from stranglings for a while. Good-night, Inspector—’night, Miss Withers.”

He passed on down the stair.

“Well,” announced the Inspector, happily, “I guess this washes up the Stait Murder. I don’t see how you can maintain that my little resume was wrong.”

“Don’t you?” Miss Withers was restless, with an undercurrent of excitement. “Well, I’ll agree that this settles the Stait murder, all right. But there’s something else …”

“That something else can wait,” the Inspector told her. “Well, I guess this case proves that the official methods can sometimes win out ahead of amateurs, huh?”

Miss Withers was thoughtful. “What are you going to do now, Oscar?”

“What am I going to do? I’m going to take this Stait kid down to the station and have him committed for the grand jury on the charge of strangling his twin brother Laurie and his cousin Hubert, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Miss Withers looked at her watch. “Oscar, will you wait about ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes? Why should I wait? I’ve kept him here an hour or two longer than was necessary because I wanted to stick around myself until everything was washed up. I’ve rushed things through so that I could get the body out of the house before the whole family gets back from the funeral of the other twin. The shock might kill the old lady if she’d come in and found the stiff here.”

“Wait a little longer, for your own sake,” pleaded Miss Withers. “I’ve planned a little surprise, and he’s on his way up here in a taxi now. But it takes quite a while to come in from Roosevelt Field. Oscar, this may make a tremendous difference, not only to your own career, but to the lives of innocent people. I can’t tell you any more, because you won’t believe me, but will you wait?”

“My dear lady, I can’t wait! Do you want me to miss getting this arrest in the morning papers?”

“There’ll be something in the morning papers that you won’t be caring for, if you make that arrest right now,” Miss Withers warned him. “I tell you—stop, maybe that’s what I’m waiting for now.”

There was the sound of the front door being opened, and of low voices in the lower hall. The Inspector leaned over the balustrade, and saw what he had feared.

The Stait family, or what was left of it, was there in the hall. A harrowing ten minutes ensued, after which Gran was led upstairs in a state of near-collapse, Aunt Abbie on one side and Charles Waverly on the other. There were sounds of wailing from the kitchen, where Mrs. Hoff and Gretchen were playing the part of old family retainers, and one lone figure stood in the lower hall, dry-eyed, stiff, and somehow pitiful.

It was Dana Waverly—now Dana Stait—and Miss Withers could not forbear going down to her.

“I suppose you think it’s strange, my being here,” Dana said dully. “But I couldn’t help coming, unless I told Gran everything, and I couldn’t do that. She doesn’t know that we’re separated, you see.” She put her hand on Miss Withers’ arm. “Do you think I ought to go to—him?”

Miss Withers spoke a name. The girl drew back. “But—then you know?”

The school-teacher nodded, and put her finger to her lips. “I think you ought to go to him,” she said softly. “I think you ought to stay with him.”

Dana shook her head. “You don’t understand everything,” she said. “Oh, I’d believe in him in spite of all
this
if it weren’t for one thing … the Unforgiveable!”

“There’s very few sins that the Lord won’t forgive under the right circumstances,” Miss Withers pointed out. “At least, so I was taught as a child. Besides, I’ve also heard that it’s better not to know anything than to know a lot of things that aren’t so.”

Dana looked at her, wonderingly. “I wish I knew what you mean,” she whispered.

“You will, before you’re an hour older,” Miss Withers promised. She heard a taxi-cab drawing up outside, and she knew who it was.

“You go up and see him,” she urged the girl. “He needs a friend right now worse than anything in the world. Maybe there’ll be two of you, soon.”

“I—I’ll do what you say,” promised Dana. And she ran toward the stair.

Ten minutes later Miss Withers came up the stair, a conspirator’s smile on her lips. She was risking everything on one throw of the dice.

She stopped in the doorway of the bedroom. The two detectives were staring out of the window, and Inspector Piper was jingling a ring of keys impatiently. A boy sat on the edge of the bed, and Dana knelt beside him, her arms pressing his head against her shoulder.

But he held himself rigid. “I know—I know you didn’t do it!” she was saying.

He shook his head, mechanically. The barrier between them was too high for her to pass. Dana moved away from him, and he looked up at the Inspector. “Come on, get it over with, will you?”

I’m afraid I’ll have to,” Piper said. “I’ve stalled around now for hours. Sorry, Hildegarde, but whatever you had up your sleeve will have to come later.” He faced the prisoner again.

“Lewis Maitland Stait, I hereby place you under arrest for the wilful and premeditated murder of your cousin, Hubert Stait, and of your brother, Laurie Stait …”

The Inspector’s neat little speech was rudely interrupted. “Oscar,” cut in Miss Withers. “Isn’t there something in the law which says that no man can be convicted of a murder unless the
corpus delicti
is proved?”

He turned on her, rapidly losing patience. “Good God, Hildegarde! At a time like this—yes, of course there’s such a law.”

“And the
corpus delicti
means the actual proof that a crime has been committed, not only a crime in general but in this case a murder against a specific person?”

“Yes, of course. Any fool knows that …”

“And if the police don’t know the identity of the corpse they have no murder case?”

“Of course not. But—”

“Well,” said Miss Withers triumphantly, “you’ll get yourself into hot water if you arrest Lew Stait for the murder of Laurie. You’re arresting the wrong suspect for the murder of the wrong corpse, Oscar. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t let me.”

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”

Miss Withers didn’t answer, but accusingly faced the boy on the bed. “That’s
Laurie
Stait over there,” she said. “Aren’t you Laurie?”

The prisoner looked up at her and shook his head dully. “I’ve nothing to say,” he told her.

“Nothing? Remember, I know everything, young man.” But he still kept his stolid silence.

Miss Withers drew the Inspector out into the hall.

“Explain yourself!” he objected. “I knew you had this crazy idea when you insisted that I send out the samples of handwriting to be tested. But remember what Mrs. Korn reported? That inscription in the old book and the note of Lew’s were both in the same hand!”

“I know. But there were other things, Oscar, which made me keep on the track. Listen to me now, before you make a dreadful mistake. Hasn’t it been clear to you that the living twin has been impersonating the dead one? They were
identical
twins, you know, and nobody could tell them apart but Dana.”

“Yes, but—why, the first night when we came up here we found the boy you say is Laurie monkeying around with the maid, which was supposed to be Lew’s idea of pleasure.”

“That’s true. But I’ve got a hunch he was already acting the part of his brother!”

“He couldn’t have known, unless he killed him,” said Piper.

“There might be a way he could have found out. But there were countless things. The missing wallets, for instance. You know and I know that the one identification most men carry is the card or two in their billfolds. Well, I don’t know how the dead man lost his, but remember I saw this boy in here go down the hall of this house that night to the cellar stair with something in his hand, and then we smelled burning leather? Well, he destroyed his own billfold, in case he should be searched. He wanted it to appear that he himself was dead.”

“Why?”

“Because he was afraid, that’s why. Probably of Buck Keeley, who had been making threats. Remember, the boy who was supposed to be Lew told us about what his brother had stared at
when he was alone.
And then Dana’s marrying him when she did—it seemed more likely that she’d marry the man she loved that way than the man she was engaged to and hated. But of course, she wouldn’t wear Lew’s ring when she married Laurie!”

“Suppose it is true? I don’t see …”

“Wait. Don’t you see how it fits together? Lew, not Laurie, had a date for dinner with Dana that night, at which she intended to break the sad news to him. Lew, not Laurie, started off in the roadster to keep his date, driving down Fifth Avenue. It didn’t make sense, to me—the idea that Lew who had the date stayed home and Laurie who didn’t, took the car out and got himself strangled in the street.”

“It’s all a wild theory,” the Inspector objected. “Hildegarde, I’ve been very patient with you because I have the highest regard for your intelligence, but—”

“Then listen a little more. Can’t you see what a chance this was for Laurie, the so-called ‘bad’ twin, to step into his brother’s shoes, to be the babied one of the family, to have them aid him in marrying the girl he loved and who loved him? And at the same time he freed himself from whatever entanglements, real or fancied, he had with the Wyoming girl … and her brother.”

“It’s a wild guess, Hildegarde, as I said before. What difference does it make?”

“Suppose you arrest that boy in there as Lew Stait, and he is really Laurie. He’ll be released, and you know it, because he’ll prove his real identity. And you can’t send a man to the chair for killing himself.”

“But how can you prove what you’re saying? If you can, you’ve got an iron-bound case against our prisoner!”

“I thought I’d done it with the book I discovered,” Miss Withers admitted. “But the handwriting came out wrong. Laurie Stait was smart enough to realize that his handwriting might be tested, so he made sure that the only example of ‘Lew’s’ writing around the house would be done by himself. He burned that Toby Tyler book, then bought another from Harpers and inscribed it to himself.”

“But the ink was old and faded …”

“That’s where the coffee came in,” Miss Withers pointed out. “Remember how Mrs. Hoff took up two or three cups late at night? Dana and Laurie were experimenting to get just the right shade of faded brown. It’s a perfect imitation of aged ink. I should have wondered when I saw that line on the title page of the Toby Tyler book—‘Thirty-fourth Printing …’ but I didn’t. Laurie Stait picked up somewhere a worn copy of the book, probably figuring that somebody around the house might miss the old one if it wasn’t there … but he got a much more recent edition of the old classic.”

“You make a good lawyer,” the Inspector told her. “But in spite of all you say, that boy in there has got to go to jail. After all, you can’t prove whether he’s Lew or Laurie. I’ll arrest him as John Doe …”

“I can prove it,” Miss Withers promised. She opened the door of the bedroom again. Dana was walking up and down the floor, and the boy on the bed was waiting.

“Do you still claim to be Lewis Stait?” she asked him.

“Yes, I’m Lew Stait. Go ahead.”

“You’re not Laurie Stait? You didn’t go out to Keeley’s dude ranch last summer?”

He shook his head, angrily. “Do I have to stand all this? Why …”

Miss Withers went to the head of the stairs. “Mr. Swarthout, will you go out to the taxi and tell Isidore Marx that it’s time? He’s the little Jewish boy with the red hair—just say Miss Withers sent word that he could come in.” The door slammed, and she came back in the bedroom.

“I’ve got a surprise,” she said calmly.

It was even more of a surprise than she had bargained for. There was the sound of the front door opening and closing, and then silence for a moment.

“Arrest me and get this over with,” the boy begged. As he spoke there came a shrill whining sound from the lower hall, followed by the surprised exclamations of a little boy who called somebody a
schmutzick hund,
and the patter of feet on the stair.

A yellow whirlwind burst into the room, almost upsetting Miss Withers, who had been ill advised enough to stand in the doorway. It resolved itself into a big collie dog, still somewhat in the awkward age but already glorying in the fullness of a snowy white ruff and milky paws. A broken leash dangled from his collar.