Murder on Wheels (25 page)

“Revenge for what?” The Inspector was becoming exasperated.

“The twins were everything that Hubert wasn’t, Oscar. They were big and handsome and strong and cheerful and uninhibited. They teased him and rallied him and probably despised him a little. Remember what the maid said about the twins forcing Hubert to take up boxing and football?

“It was the plan for the perfect murder, Oscar. But Hubert damned himself with one thing. I’ll point it out later.

“We were supposed to arrest Keeley—free him, and arrest Laurie. The marriage and the handwriting test stalled off the evil day for Laurie, and Hubert began to worry. Then the police announced that Buck Keeley had been exonerated, and Hubert worried some more. Dana had left Laurie when she discovered why Rose Keeley was after him, but Laurie was discovering some things for himself. It was all right as long as he thought Keeley had killed his brother, but when he learned that Keeley had an alibi, and remembered about Hubert’s phoning him about the murder when Hubert couldn’t have known it honestly, Laurie Stait went berserk. Hence the stolen gun and his search for shells. He intended to kill Hubert. But Hubert was waiting locked in his room, for he had prepared for this possibility, too.

“The wise man is always prepared for possible failure. But Hubert was faced by failure on every side. He had matched his cleverness against society, and was losing.

“Ahead of him was retribution … and the jeers of the multitude. Laurie was already suspecting him, and there was worse to follow. The Perfect Crime was a failure—almost!

“There was just one way, and Hubert Stait took it. Remember, he’s an introspective, abnormal type. He crouched behind the door of his room, and heard Laurie outside banging on it. He knew the jig was up—he had known ever since the notice appeared in the morning papers about Keeley’s alibi.

“There was just one way to make his deep-laid plan a success, and Hubert Stait took it!” Miss Withers paused, not only for effect, but also for breath. “Can’t you see?”

The Inspector rose to his feet. “It’s Greek to me,” he admitted. “You’ve made a great case of it, and you’re better than any lawyer Laurie Stait can get to save his neck. But so far you haven’t offered a word of definite proof. And you ask me to believe that a man committed suicide for spite. And what’s more, committed suicide by an impossible method.” The Inspector shook his head. “Show me how a man can sneak up behind his own chair and strangle himself, and I’ll release Laurie Stait.”

“He’s as good as released,” Miss Withers said slowly. “Lend me one of your men who’s about Hubert Stait’s height, will you? We’ll now make an attempt to run the film of Hubert’s exit from this world in reverse.”

The Inspector called down the stair. “Send Swarthout up here, Sergeant.”

The Inspector and Miss Withers stood once more before the room which had been Hubert Stait’s. Nothing had been touched, except the removal of the body itself, of course. A big copper leaned against the door post and chewed Juicy Fruit, noisily.

As soon as the young man entered the room, Miss Withers directed him to the murder chair, which still cast its bar of sinister shadow across the polished floor. The noose lay nearby, on the same table with Hubert’s glasses.

“Put that around your neck,” ordered Miss Withers.

Swarthout hesitated. “Hurry up, it won’t bite you!”

“It bit somebody else this afternoon,” the young man reminded her. But he gingerly dropped the noose over his own neck.

“Now stand behind the chair and tie the end of that rope around the lower leg, as it was before.”

Swarthout knelt down, and made the rope fast. Then he stood up for as far as the rope’s length would let him. His shoulders came just above the high back of the chair.

“I’ll have nightmares tonight,” he complained.

“Never mind nightmares. Let me see. I’ve got an idea how this thing could be worked. All right,” she nodded. “Take off the noose, but remember just how much leeway it gave you.”

Georgie Swarthout slipped the rope from his neck with a certain understandable alacrity.

“Now stand as you were before, when the rope was stretched tight between your neck and the leg of the chair,” instructed Miss Withers. “Now! Is it possible for you to rest your chin on the back of the chair there and then give a kick with your legs and a lift with your hands … over the back and down into a normal sitting position?”

Swarthout was of the opinion that he was not enough of an athlete. Then, in deference to the Inspector’s nod, he gave a tentative heave.

His body, pivoting against the chair back, made a complete circle in the air, feet whirling after him, and came down with a thud in the cushion of the chair, disheveled but sound. His heels dug into the floor as they struck.

The Inspector knelt to examine the floor beside them, and his square thumb explored two other, corresponding gouges that were there. He nodded, thoughtfully.

“There are easier ways to sit down,” Swarthout announced.

“The man who invented that method didn’t pick it for its ease,” Miss Withers told him. “Notice, Oscar, that the noose is about six inches above his neck, now? Suppose a man turned that somersault with the rope around his neck? He’d come down just like this, but with his weight six inches off the seat, and he’d strangle slowly but surely. The appearance of the thing would make it appear that somebody had strangled him in his chair. And that was what he wanted!”

“Somebody?”

“Laurie, of course. They were alone in the house. Hubert had failed in his previous attempts to implicate Laurie. The story about the knife and pillow, and so forth. He was resolved not to fail now. He crept out of his room, while Laurie was running a bath to quiet his nerves, and phoned you. Then, confident that you’d come post haste, he went back to his room, locked himself in and threw the key out of the window, and prepared the scene. The book was supposed to signify that he was reading when it happened. But he had to take off his glasses at the last minute, or they’d have been crushed against the top of the chair as he started the somersault.”

“Now I know you’re crazy,” the Inspector burst in. “Why, you can’t make me believe that a man intent on suicide would care about his glasses.”

“No? Men have hanged themselves before, but few men care for jagged splinters of glass forced into their eyes as they die. Besides—wait, Oscar. Suppose he didn’t commit suicide!”

“That’s what I’m telling you … Laurie killed him …”

“Nonsense. Laurie couldn’t have killed him. I’ll show you why in a moment.” Miss Withers removed her spectacles and polished them furiously, as if thus to see better into the workings of this dead man’s mind.

“Oscar, there’s a queer twist to this that just occurred to me! Did you tell Hubert, over the phone, where you were at the time?”

“Why, yes, I did …”

“Well, then! Hubert knew that you were at the funeral parlors, and that you’d come up here on the double-quick. He knew that you weren’t more than fifteen minutes away—and Oscar, he knew that it takes almost half an hour to strangle!”

“But I don’t see …”

“Wait! Even if the murderous attack supposedly made on him, by Laurie, who was the only other person in the house at the time, turned out to be unsuccessful, it would still damn Laurie, wouldn’t it? It would point out that Laurie had killed his twin, too, because the job would be done with the missing half of the murder rope! Don’t you see, Oscar? Hubert gambled with his life, but he hedged his bet!”

“You mean he expected us to get here in time to cut him down?” The Inspector whistled, silently. “Then he forgot to figure on my stopping to talk to the operative I had stationed outside!”

“You may go to the head of the class,” Miss Withers told him.

T
HE INSPECTOR MADE ONE
last weak effort to support his own broken lines of defense.

“Admitting all this,” he objected. “You say you’ve got definite proof of the innocence of Laurie Stait? If you have, I don’t see what it can be. Even if you prove Hubert’s death a suicide, or a pretense at suicide, that still doesn’t necessarily clear Laurie of suspicion in the death of his brother.”

“I’ll take your second point first,” Miss Withers explained. “The rope in my hands, the fragment of a lariat used to choke the life out of Hubert Stait, is part of the same rope that killed Lew Stait. What’s more, it’s got the genuine blue thread on the end, where the other had a faked version. Notice how the binding is smooth and even and expert here? And the thread is silk, not rayon. Where did Hubert get this rope? Where he’d had it hidden since he used the rest of it to kill Lew! If he could lay hands on it whenever he wanted to, even you won’t try to maintain that he was innocent of the murder of Lew.

“But never mind that. You ask me how I know Laurie had no complicity in the death of Hubert? I’ll tell you.”

Miss Withers tossed the noose across the room, and presented a firm palm to the Inspector. “Look at my hand, Oscar.”

He looked at her hand. “So what?”

“Oscar, did you ever take a bath and soak and soak for a long time?”

“Are you insinuating—”

“Not at all. But you take showers, don’t you? Cold ones? You’re just the bustling type who would. All right, but I used to take hot baths, before I learned that while it steadies your nerves it plays havoc with your energy.

“When we got here, just a little less than half an hour after Hubert’s phone call, we found Laurie steaming from the bath tub. He was dripping wet, you saw that. But did you notice his hands?”

“Why should I?”

“After about twenty minutes or more in sudsy hot water, your hands get all wrinkled and water-soaked as the blood leaves them. It happens when I wash dishes, Oscar. It doesn’t happen when you read in the tub, because the hands have to be immersed continuously for some time. Well, therefore I knew that since Laurie’s hands were all water-soaked, he couldn’t have just come downstairs from finishing off his cousin. And there wasn’t time for him to have strangled Hubert before he took the bath, Oscar.”

She paused, weary but triumphant.

“That’s the weirdest alibi I’ve ever run across,” agreed the Inspector slowly. “But I’ll admit it seems to hold water. You win a week’s salary.”

“It was something weirder than all of Hubert’s fantastic plotting,” Miss Withers insisted. “Now you’d better go let Laurie Stait out of jail.”

Miss Withers and the Inspector came slowly down the stairs of the Stait mansion. “Look there!” The Inspector caught his companion’s arm and pointed toward the open door of the living room. It was already evening, but Dana Waverly had not troubled to turn on the lights. She sat there, staring into the empty fireplace.

Close beside her, with his white muzzle resting on her knee, stood Rowdy, the collie. Except for him, she was alone. Her brother Charles had long since gone away, after expressing his wonder and disgust at her remaining in this house. Aunt Abbie and the two servants were up in the attic with old Mrs. Stait. The old lady had accepted the death of Hubert with much the same calmness as she had met the news about Laurie’s supposed death, but she was much perturbed over the wetness of the day in which she had had the temerity to go out of doors, and the consequent danger to what was left of her voice.

Dana sat alone, her profile white and marble-like in the gloom. “You tell her,” whispered the Inspector. “Go ahead, you’ve earned it, Hildegarde. Go on and tell her that her husband is free.”

But Miss Withers shook her head. “I’ll do nothing of the kind,” she said. “There’s only one person she’ll want to hear that news from, Oscar. It may be cruel to keep her suffering another half hour, but it will be all the more wonderful when her lover tells her. Come on, we’ve got to get down to the station house.”

They paused in the lower hall, but Dana did not look up. Rowdy, unsure as to whether these were friends or foes, waved the plume of his tail inquiringly, and then took his cue from his new-found mistress. If she had no greeting for these strangers, he would show them the supercilious stare of which only a pedigreed collie is capable. Rowdy pretended not to notice them at all, and he sniffed, audibly.

His demonstration of poise was spoiled, suddenly, by a raucous interruption. “Here, boy, here! Sic ’em! Rats, boys, rats!”

Impulsively plunging to obey the summons, Rowdy dashed by the two who waited in the hall, and bounded up the stairs.

Fast as his white paws moved, the centenarian parrot was faster. The obscene bird scrambled, by dint of using feet, flippers, and his enormous hooked bill, to the lofty eminence of a cabinet which stood on the second floor landing, whence he launched volley after volley of unprintable curses at the excited collie.

Rowdy, furious with himself for having been tricked again into obeying this strange object, made a few tentative leaps at the bird without achieving his righteous purpose, and then descended the stairs again, followed by screeches of derisive laughter coupled with expressions of disfavor which the collie pretended neither to hear nor understand.

He stalked past the Inspector and Miss Withers without taking any notice of them whatever, and returned to his place beside Dana, the stiff hairs along his backbone bristling. He watched them go without moving his muzzle from the knee of the girl. Rowdy knew that something was wrong, and he was ashamed of himself for having, even temporarily, deserted his post.

There was a great hullabaloo at the station house of the Twenty-fourth Precinct, on 100th Street. The Inspector, with Miss Withers close at his heels, forced his way into the crowded room. He was immediately set upon by reporters, court attaches, and idle bystanders.

“Is it true that Lew Stait has confessed to the murder?”

“Will you let us quote you as saying that you consider Laurie Stait as the cleverest murderer of modern times?”

“Inspector, will you pose for a picture?”

“Will you sign a story on the way you deduced the case?”

“Will you please take off your hat and let us flash you beside your prisoner?”

“Scram,” answered the Inspector succinctly, and shoved his way forward toward the desk.