Murder on Wheels (8 page)

“But you don’t understand, Mrs. Stait. Your grandson has been
murdered!”

“Rats, rats, Fido, rats! Bloody murder, boys!” The parrot caught his gnarled claws around his perch and hung head downwards, swinging merrily. “Bloody murder abaft the mizz’mast! Belay him good, Skipper! Skrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

“Hush, Skipper!” The elderly bird cocked one eye and leered horribly at Miss Withers.

His mistress carefully lowered the wick of her lamp. “Murdered, hey? Well, he can’t say I didn’t warn him. I always said that boy would come to no good end. And it’s a happy day for the Stait family that he’s gone, that’s all I say. Always going out with low companions. Late hours and too many girls. Nothing like my younger grandson, Lew.”

“Younger? But aren’t they
twins?”
The Inspector’s jaw dropped.

Mrs. Stait glared at him. “Yes, younger. I’m old, but
I’m
not in my second childhood, young man. Did you think twins came into the world neck and neck, like racehorses on the home stretch? Laurie was born at midnight some twenty-four years ago, and Lew came at one o’clock. Like as two pins, they were, only Laurie was always yelling and Lew never did anything more than snivvle. Twins have only morals enough for one, and Lew got ’em all.”

“I just want to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Stait.” The Inspector coughed hesitatingly, and Miss Withers got out her notebook. “Have you any idea as to who had a reason to kill your grandson?”

“Why should I tell you if I did?” The heartless old lady was heading again for the door of her bedroom. “I’m not being paid to play Hawkshaw, mister policeman. That worthless grandson of mine deserved just what he got, besides. Now get out of here, and take your typewriter with you.”

Miss Withers realized, after a moment’s wonder, that she was the “typewriter” referred to.

“But Mrs. Stait, won’t you tell me what you mean when you say that Laurie deserved what happened to him?”

“Girls,”
said the old lady. “Too many girls. Always in trouble. Only the other day a man was here. I didn’t see him, but he was here. Said his sister was in trouble—told it to our family lawyer, who happened to be downstairs. Blamed Laurie. Unpleasant man with very bad accent, so Charles says. Charles Waverly—a distant branch of our family, and a fine barrister. He’s going to settle the case if it’s possible. Ask questions of him from now on. I don’t choose to be disturbed. I bid you a very good evening. Now get out of here.”

“Bloody murder,” yelled Skipper from his perch. “Below decks, ye bloody scum! Give ’em the cat-o-nine-tails, Skipper! Hell and damnation!”

“Nice bird, that,” said Inspector Piper. His hand was on the door-knob.

“He’s more of a gentleman than you are, for all his language,” said the old lady tartly. “Skipper is well along on his second century, and he’s learned a plenty in his day. He’s been around the world three times on a Baltimore clipper, that parrot has. And he’s lived here in this room for twenty years without breaking a lamp chimney, as you did the first minute you got inside. You could learn manners from him, mister policeman.”

“One thing more, madam. Do you know any girl named Dana ?”

“Dana? You mean Dana Waverly? Of course I know Dana. Fine girl. Going to marry Lew one of these days. It’s been arranged since before she was born. Engaged for the past two years. None of this silly modern stuff about her. She’d fight for her man with tooth and claw. But you leave Dana out of this mess of Laurie’s, d’you hear? Now get out of my rooms before I throw you out.”

Frail and trembling, the gaunt old lady raised the lamp as if to hurl it across the room. The parrot took up the cry.

“Shiver my timbers, but they’re a bunch of bloody sons-a-sluts! Yeeeeek, yeeeeek, buckets of blood, buckets of blood. Sling him from the stern at a rope’s end, Skipper. Hell fire!”

With that final greeting from the irate Skipper, who was jumping up and down on his perch and waving his featherless flippers, the door closed behind Miss Withers and the Inspector.

They looked at each other, wordlessly. Then they went down the stair. The phone was ringing in the lower hall, ringing with a persistent nagging note that was somehow like the screaming “Skrrrrrr” of the parrot upstairs.

“I’ll take it,” called out Piper as he saw the Sergeant moving down the hall.

The voice at the other end was a familiar one—that of the cop on special duty in his own office at Headquarters.

“Hello, Inspector? Just got something that’ll interest you. Yeah. The boys went over the Chrysler, but no prints except the stiff’s. Yeah. Nothing else that didn’t belong. Ignition key in the dashboard. No marks on the cushions. No sign of any place where the rope could have been tied, and then pulled loose.”

“Well, what else?”

“The post office sent over a
leather
that they found in the outgoing mail about ten minutes ago, Inspector. One of the collectors got it in a late round this afternoon, stuck away in one of the letter boxes. He’s not sure which building, but it’s in the general district where the Stait guy was bumped. Yeah, that’s what pickpockets always do with a wallet. Lift the dough and then drop it through the slot so it won’t pin a rap on them later. Only this leather had twenty-five bucks still in it … and what’s more, it has a half a dozen swell engraved cards with the name Lewis Maitland Stait Yeah. That’s the brother of the stiff, ain’t it?”

Piper said, “Yes,” and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Anything else, Joe?”

“No, nothing else, Inspector—oh, wait a minute. Here comes a messenger from Van Donnen’s office with the rope you wanted him to look over.”

“Good! What’s the expert testimony in the rope? Read it quick.”

“Dr. Van Donnen says it’s not a rope at all, it’s a lariat or
reata.
Belongs out west somewhere. Signs of animal hair, probably shorthorn cattle. Tensile strength three hundred pounds or more. The binding of blue thread at the end is from Woolworth’s, though. Yeah, Woolworth’s. Well, he says he’s sure. And the knot isn’t a hangman’s noose at all, it’s just a running slip knot, spliced into place. That’s all.”

“That’s plenty, Joe. See you tomorrow morning.” The Inspector hung up.

He told Miss Withers the latest news. “Laurie Stait goes out west to a dude ranch this summer, and we find him with a lariat around his neck a few months later. You don’t suppose that we’ve got a tangible clew of this hodge-podge, do you? Putting two and two together …”

“The trouble with you, Oscar, is that you always put two and two together and make a baker’s dozen out of it,” Miss Withers told him.

The Inspector nodded. “Maybe. But when you put the dude ranch and the lariat together with the fact that there’s been a Rodeo at the Madison Square Garden all week …”

“And what is a Rodeo?” They were preparing to leave. Miss Withers yawned politely.

“Oh, a bunch of crazy hoodlums put on a Wild West show, with a lot of riding wild horses and bulldogging steers and rope tricks.”

“You don’t suppose,” said Miss Withers casually, “that there was a gentleman at the Rodeo who knew some rope tricks that weren’t part of the program?”

McTeague had gone home to nurse the lump on his forehead, and Sergeant Taylor was relaxed in a chair in the front hall, on special duty for the rest of the night. Miss Withers and the Inspector came down the front steps together, and paused for a moment to look between the houses at the full moon, which hung like a great white skull in the sky.

“The Police have the case well in hand and an arrest is expected hourly,” quoted the Inspector bitterly. From somewhere in the decaying mansion they had just left came the muffled sound of shrill derisive laughter. It might have been from the little maid Gretchen or the lewd centenarian parrot that Mrs. Stait called Skipper.

Miss Withers thought it a fitting end for the first day of this mad murder case.

T
HE INSPECTOR AROSE AN
hour earlier than was his custom next morning. It was entirely too early for Mrs. McFeeters, the amiable but light-fingered shop-lifter who “did” for him. She had reformed, in so far as shoplifting went, but she still snatched forty winks whenever she could. He made himself a quick cup of under-strong and over-hot coffee, slipped into his heaviest ulster, and let himself out into the knifelike air of the New York morning.

“And right here is where little Oscar pulls a fast one and gets hot on the trail—alone,” he said to himself happily. “I’ll show Hildegarde Withers!”

Instead of taking his usual course downtown toward his office, with its miniature Chamber of Horrors around the wall-cases, he headed straight west, across town. The Inspector was in a good humor. The crisp air, more like January than November, put the Stait murder case in a new light. Last night it had seemed, well,—involved to say the least. What with the cook and the naked parrot and that inhuman old lady in the attic. All that would be washed up in short order this morning, and Miss Withers would have demonstrated before her eyes the power of the organized police.

The first cigar of the day was always the best for Inspector Piper. It was, as a rule, the only one he ever managed to smoke through. He blew the smoke in twisting rings from his mouth as he strode up Fifty-seventh Street.

By the time he reached Eighth Avenue, and turned down toward the looming gray atrocity which is called Madison Square Garden because it is not anything like a garden and is several miles from Madison Square, the Inspector was able to pass the newsboys’ ramparts of morning papers without wincing at “
STRANGLER
STILL AT LARGE—POLICE POWERLESS
” … or “
NOOSE KILLER SLAYS PLAYBOY
” …

He strode gaily in at the main entrance of the Garden, past the arcade with its windows full of snappy suits and snappier wrist-watches. Except for a couple of cats who evidently were still set on making a night of it, and a cleaning man with a mop who was presumably posing for slow-motion pictures, there was no sign of life in the open-roofed lobby.

The box office kiosk, of course, was locked. It would be at this ungodly hour of seven-thirty. The cleaning man, poking dully at endless little islands of dried chewing gum, answered his enquiries with a jerk of the thumb toward the inner doors.

Inspector Piper had his hand against the panel when the door swung violently toward him and Miss Withers stepped out, her umbrella under her arm and a belligerent look on her face … a look which changed to pained surprise.

“Oscar! Excuse me! Did I hurt you?”

The Inspector wasn’t hurt. He murmured something. Then he took out his flavorless cigar, glared at it, and hurled it in the direction of the nearest cat, who dodged without taking her attention from what she hoped would develop into an interesting relic of bologna skin. The morsel turned out to be cellophane, but that is neither here nor there.

“You needn’t look so unglad to see me,” Miss Withers told the Inspector. “Anyway, I’ve saved you fifteen minutes traipsing around inside there. I had plenty of trouble finding out what we want to know, but I finally got hold of a sort of janitor. And he told me what I ought to have known in the first place … that the cowboys don’t come around here except for rehearsal or when the Rodeo is actually on in the afternoon and evening. The horses and cattle are stabled in a warehouse three blocks away on Eleventh Avenue, and the riders are at the Hotel Senator.”

“The Senator? Why, that’s on Forty-fourth Street over near Fifth Avenue …”

“Exactly. And it’s a couple of stone’s throws from where Laurie Stait met with an accident last night. I thought of that, too. In case you’re interested, the manager of the outfit is a Mr. Carrigan. And here is a program of the show, which I picked out of the janitors’ trash basket.”

The Inspector took the gaudy sheet, printed in red and black on a luminous yellow paper. “Well, here we are. All about Carrigan’s Annual Rodeo—a thousand thrills of daring and skill, according to the blurb. Wild-west at its best—a poetical fellow, this Carrigan, if he writes his own advertising. Riding, roping, bull-dogging—throwing and tying contests, broncho busting, chariot races, fancy sharpshooting …”

“Have they got Eliza Crossing the Ice, too?” inquired Miss Withers.

“Probably, though they don’t mention any bloodhounds.” Suddenly the Inspector pressed a stubby forefinger against a note halfway down the sheet. “Will you get a load of this!”

“If you mean look at it, I shall be glad to do so,” reprimanded Miss Withers. “Let me see … ‘Third Event—Fancy Shooting—Mr. Laramie White assisted by Miss Rose Keeley … Fourth Event—Roping Three-horse Team in Full Gallop—(Horses for this Event by Lazy Y ranch)—Mr. Buck Keeley. Fifth Event—Roping Contest with Wild Yearling Steer—Entries, Mr. Laramie White, Mr. Sam Gowdy, Mr. Buck Keeley …’ Is that what you mean?”

Inspector Piper was triumphant. “That’s it. Ever hear that last name before?”

Miss Withers was thoughtful. “No, not that I remember. I don’t follow the sporting pages to any considerable extent.”

The Inspector was in good humor again. “Naturally you wouldn’t catch this, being a woman. That shows the power of the trained detective mind, Hildegarde. You’ve been lucky, and clever, too. I won’t argue against that. But this isn’t any chess game of wits with a would-be mastermind criminal. And in this case it’s the little things that a trained mind remembers that will bring the murderer to justice.”

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

They had gravitated toward a little Coffee Potte in the arcade of the Garden entrance. “Sit down and have a poached egg with me and I’ll point out the detail you missed,” said the Inspector.

“On the force (he began) we learn very early the importance of remembering names. We do it by hooking them up with other names, see? Suppose a fellow’s name is Moses, I ask myself if he doesn’t play pool, see? Remember Moses in the pool of bulrushes? And then if I want to remember his name months later I think of pool and then of Moses. Simple, isn’t it?”

Miss Withers was visibly unimpressed. “That’s no deep police secret,” she informed him. “That little trick is known as ‘association of ideas’ and it dates back to William James and probably before. But go on, why should I remember the name Jack Keeley or whatever it was?”