Murder on Wheels (26 page)

His arm was seized from behind. It turned out to be a hanger-on from the D. A.’s office.

“Mr. Roche wants you to phone him at once!”

“You can tell Tom Roche, for me, that he can jump in the East River.”

“But he wants to know what it’s all about. Who are you arresting, and for what? Some of them say the prisoner is one twin, and the rest of them say he’s the other, and the D. A. is going batty …”

“He hasn’t far to go, if you ask me,” the Inspector remarked.

“But Mr. Roche wants to know when you’re going to have the hearing before the magistrate. He wants to be on hand. He …”

The Inspector pressed closer to the bench. “Hello, Captain. Got my prisoner here safe and sound?”

“Sure have. And if I may say so, it’s great work! I’m glad you got here, though. The prisoner won’t talk, and there seems to be some question as to what his name is. Are you arresting Lew Stait for the murder of Laurie and Hubert Stait, or are you arresting Laurie Stait for the murder of Lew and Hubert Stait? I don’t know how to book him.” The Captain rubbed his nose.

“You don’t need to bother,” the Inspector informed him savagely. “There is only one charge against Laurie Stait, that I know about. And that isn’t exactly criminal. I’m withdrawing the charge of murder!”

The Inspector crooked his thumb. “Go on, get Stait out of the cell!” He turned to the crowd. “You newspaper boys can release a story saying that the Stait Murderer cheated the electric chair via suicide at two-thirty this afternoon. Now scram out of here, all of you. The only charge against the prisoner is the
ownership of a dog without a license!”

It took a good deal of strong-arm work to get Laurie Stait through the crowd. “We’ll run you home in a squad car,” Piper told him when the first shock of surprise was over. “It’ll keep the reporters off you, and it’s the least we can do under the circumstances.”

Laurie Stait was silent all the way home, although he drew into his lungs the over-chill and none-too-clean air of Manhattan as if he could never get enough of it. But there was still one dark cloud in his sky, and Miss Withers knew what it was.

“I guess you didn’t understand what I meant when I said that Rose Keeley was making you a present of the collie because she was sorry for her part in this business. I had a little talk with her yesterday, and she gave me this note to give you.”

Laurie took it as the squad car drew up before the entrance to the Stait house, and held the scribbled note in the light of the street lamp.

“Dear Mr. Stait: (it began) I’m sorry about it all. It wasn’t Buck’s fault, because I lied to him about who the man was. I was crazy to get away from the ranch and live in the east. But Miss Withers found out it was a put up job, and so I’m marrying Laramie White and going back where I belong. Yours respectfully, Rose Keeley.”

“Show that to Dana,” suggested Miss Withers gently. “I think it will make your reunion a happier one.”

Inspector Piper stared as his partner. “Will you tell me how you knew that?”

“Of course. Remember how at the Rodeo we heard Carrigan, the manager, wondering why Rose and Laramie had reversed their act, so that he shot at her instead of vice-versa? The act wasn’t as good that way, but Laramie wouldn’t trust her to shoot at him day in and day out … and I knew there must be a reason. He had got her in trouble, that’s why. When he didn’t do anything about it, the girl got the idea of framing this kid here, and she convinced her brother that the honor of the family had been stained and so forth. But when she fainted that day at Madison Square Garden, Laramie White leaped to catch her, and I had an idea that things could be fixed up with a hide firm talking-to, and they were.”

“You’re a wonder, Hildegarde,” admitted the Inspector.

But Laurie Stait had not waited to hear the details of how the plot of Rose Keeley had been exploded. He was running up the steps of the Stait mansion.

He thrust the note before the astonished eyes of the girl who was still staring into the fireplace, and then there was a long silence. It was broken, first by the roar of the auto outside which bore the Inspector and Miss Withers away, and then by the low growls of Rowdy, who had at last cornered the loathsome naked parrot in Aunt Abbie’s bedroom, and who proceeded to make short work of it, squawk and all, beneath the bed.

He confidently expected to be punished for the deed, but much to his relief the body of the thing was not discovered until, in company with his master and his new mistress, he was aboard a Bermuda-bound liner.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries

Phyllis La Fond.
A vivacious blonde who’s down on her luck and admits she’d do almost anything to make it in the movies.

Ralph O. Tate.
A Hollywood director who’s shooting a movie on Catalina.

Tony Morgan and George Weir.
Mr. Tate’s young assistants.

T. Girard Tompkins.
A distributor of Catalina pottery, made on the island.

Thorwald Narveson.
A Norwegian whaling ship captain.

Marvin and Kay Deving.
Newlyweds honeymooning in Catalina.

Lewis French and Chick Madden.
Pilots of the
Dragonfly,
a flying boat.

Miss Hildegarde Withers.
An angular, inquisitive schoolteacher with a talent for detecting.

Amos Britt.
The jovial chief of police on Catalina Island.

Ruggles.
His octogenarian assistant.

Dr. James Michael O’Rourke.
The island’s no-nonsense doctor.

Olive Smith.
His pretty, capable nurse.

Roswell T. Forrest.
There’s a $15,000 price tag on his head.

Barney Kelsey.
Forrest’s bodyguard.

Roscoe.
The hotel’s elderly bellhop.

Rogers.
The hotel handyman.

Dan Higgins.
A night watchman.

Mister Jones.
A black and white wirehaired terrier.

Harry L. Hellen.
A very determined process server.

Patrick Mack.
A self-described businessman from Bayonne, New Jersey.

Inspector Oscar Piper.
A New York City police detective and longtime friend of Hildy’s.

T
HAT MORNING SAW THE
mighty Pacific, in the guise of a chill and luminous fog, sweep in upon the arid valley of Los Angeles. It drifted up the slope of cactus-clad hills, obscuring alike the clean, serrated ridge of the northern mountains and the nearer gaunt skeletons of the oil derricks, and left only a greasy black ribbon of highway down which a Ford roadster flung itself headlong into the mist.

The lone driver shivered as the fog seeped through his light sport jacket. His plumply handsome face, over-soft from frequent massage, was gray with cold.

He glanced at a white-gold strap watch on his wrist and saw that it indicated fourteen minutes before ten. That left him plenty of time, unless somewhere he had taken the wrong turning.

No—he was all right. He jammed on the brakes as the mists ahead of him lifted a little to disclose the outlines of a mammoth excursion steamer, bearing at masthead and stack a blue flag with a large white “W” in its center.

The man in the cocoa-colored sport outfit knew this apparition almost at once for what it was—a tall billboard standing dead ahead at a V in the road. Above the exceedingly lifelike painting of the white excursion steamer stood forth a legend in scarlet—“Catalina Terminal—one-quarter mile—turn right,” and beneath it was the assurance, “In All the World No Trip Like This!”

With a screech of tires on wet pavement the little roadster swung to the right and was immediately swallowed up in the mist.

Ten minutes later the man in brown scrambled out of his car to stand a little foolishly upon a barren and deserted wharf. For the second time that morning he was seeing the outlines of a gay white excursion steamer through a curtain of fog.

On masthead and stack were the familiar blue flags with the big white “W”—but this time a wisp of steam followed by a tantalizing farewell blast from her siren assured him that here was no billboard, but the pleasure steamer
Avalon
herself, departing without him.

For some reason never explained satisfactorily by science, there is nothing more thoroughly ludicrous than the sight of a man missing a train or a boat, except, perhaps, a man losing his hat.

As if determined to afford his audience—limited as it was to idlers and a few longshoremen—the highest possible gratification, the man in the brown sport outfit whipped off his modish straw and deposited it before him on the dock, where he proceeded to leap upon it with both heels. His lips moved, as if in silent prayer.

A young man in blue coveralls detached himself from a sheltered spot in the lee of a cluster of piles and approached briskly.

“Park your car, mister? All day for fifty cents.”

The stranger removed his tan suede shoes from the wreckage of his hat, rammed both fists into the pockets of his razor-edged trousers of pinstriped creamy flannel, and finally found words.

He wanted to know what kind of a so-and-so steamship company this was to send out its so-and-so ships ahead of schedule. With unnecessary unction he displayed his watch, which still hovered a little before the hour of ten.

The man in the blue coveralls grinned widely. Then he raised his eyes to the big clock which was visible over the open doors of the garage end of the terminal. Here the time was represented as fourteen minutes past the hour.

“You’re not the only one to miss this boat,” he confided. “Lots of them get on the wrong boulevard coming down from L.A. or else set their watches by those screwy time signals that come over the radio.”

“I haven’t needed to set this watch since—in the last month,” insisted the man in brown. He pronounced it “wartch.”

He went on, his voice rising. “I’d like you to tell me why I should pay you to park my car
now!”
he demanded. “I ain’t going anywhere.”

“You can still hop on the
Dragonfly,”
he was told. A greasy thumb was extended toward the wharf at the right, where for the first time since his arrival the man in brown noticed a thick-winged flying boat rocking lazily at the foot of a slip.

“They always hold back a few minutes so as to pick up them as miss the boat,” went on the garage helper. “It’s only three-fifty fare—and you’ll be on the island two hours before the
Avalon.”

The man in brown looked down at the varnished newness of the red-and-gilt Douglass amphibian without visible enthusiasm. He shook his head. “You don’t get me on one of those box kites again,” he decided. “I’ll wait for the next boat—when is it?”

“Same as always, ten o’clock.” The man in the blue coveralls reached tentatively toward the handle of the car door.

“What? No boat till tonight?”

“Ten tomorrow morning,” he was laconically corrected. “Plane’s your only chance. Here’s your parking ticket.”

The Ford rolled smoothly in through the gaping doors of the Terminal Garage, while he who had driven it here pocketed his parking slip mechanically. Down beside the waiting cabin plane a young man in a white uniform surveyed him speculatively and swung a pair of goggles. Out in the harbor the mist was beginning to give way before the sea wind and the sun. There the man in brown saw the steamer, three decks loaded with pleasure-bent humanity, as she derisively swung toward him her high fat buttocks.

Be it marked down upon the Everlasting Record that at this crucial moment the belated traveler was seen to hesitate. Whether it was the sound of merry laughter mingled with dance music which drifted back from the departing
S.S. Avalon
or the crisp “All aboard!” from the pilot in the white uniform which impelled him to take the leap, no one will ever be able to say with authority. At any rate, the man in brown quietly and fervently kicked the remains of his straw hat off the dock and then hurried down the steep-slanting gangplank onto the slip.

Here he paused before a miniature ticket office and information booth, manned at the moment by a white-clad duplicate of the first pilot. This young man was somewhat officiously making entries in a ledger. His name, as attested by an “on duty” card beside him, was Lewis French, and the silver wings on his lapel had not yet dulled.