Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (12 page)

“Thank you,” said the inspector stiffly. “Perhaps you’re not aware, Mr Nincom, that if I request it the sheriff here is in duty bound to arrest anyone I point out and hold, them in jail while I apply for extradition papers.”

“Inspector Piper thinks that maybe one of your writers is the man he’s after,” the sheriff explained.

“Sewage,” cut in Mr Nincom.

“All the same, I have in my pocket a warrant for the arrest of Derek Laval, alias John Doe—” Piper stopped short. “Know him?” For a moment the movie producer had looked very startled.

“Laval?” Mr Nincom nodded slowly. “Yes. I mean no. But somebody by that name sent me an obscene Christmas card last year. It was really—” He shuddered.

Piper went on. “A warrant for arrest on the charge of murder in the borough of Manhattan, city and state of New York. He is a white male known to have resided in Greenwich Village for some time but left there about six years ago. Said to be a writer of free verse. Does that fit any member of your writing staff?”

“It fits them all,” Nincom shot back.

Sheriff Truesdale grunted appreciatively, but the inspector did not seem to think it funny. “Meaning what?”

Mr Nincom balanced his toy baton on one forefinger and stared at the ceiling. “Meaning that there isn’t a writer in Hollywood who didn’t first try his fortune in New York. And ninety per cent of them wrote poetry in the late teens and early twenties. Poetry is a symptom of adolescence in the writer, like pimples and open jallopies and jitterbugging for other youths.”

“Thanks,” said the inspector. “And that’s all the help you can give us?”

Nincom shrugged. “I’m afraid so.”

“Too bad,” Oscar Piper mused. “This means that the whole thing will have to be dragged out in the newspapers. I was hoping that we could manage with a minimum of publicity.”

That shot hit home. “Wait a moment,” said Mr Nincom. “If—if it’s just a matter of eliminating my staff of writers I might be able to help you. Have you a picture of this Laval?”

The inspector shook his head. “Unfortunately,” he admitted, “we are required by law to return photographs and fingerprints to a person when we release them. I didn’t handle the case personally, being out of town at the time, so I wouldn’t recognize Laval if he were as close to me as you are.”

Nincom shrugged. “Then if you have no means of identifying your man …”

“But we have. Part of the evidence impounded in the case was a drinking glass known to have been last used by Derek Laval. On it was the smudged print of a right thumb and a clear print of a right finger—which one nobody knows. The glass is broken now. We haven’t even the print, just the key number—7 B over 3, it was. That means that Laval—no matter what name he uses now—has a
lateral pocket loop
on one finger of his right hand. It’s a fairly unusual formation. So we can instantly eliminate everyone who hasn’t such a loop.”

Nincom looked both irritated and dubious. He bent his baton nervously until it seemed about to snap. “But, really, Inspector, much as I would like to co-operate with you, I don’t see how you can expect to drag my entire staff off to some police station and force them to undergo fingerprinting.”

“The inspector don’t mean that,” put in Sheriff Truesdale. “He ain’t asking for trouble.”

“I’m not ducking it either. I have personal reasons for cracking this case, no matter whose pink toes get stepped on. There is one way that I think might work so that we could find out whether or not you have a murderer under your wing.” The inspector explained what was in his mind.

“As easy as that, eh?” Nincom frowned.

Piper said: “It could be.”

“Of course, one doesn’t like to feel that there’s a homicidal maniac around,” Mr Nincom said slowly. “If this works—”

“It can’t do any harm,” Piper said. “Actually, it’s a sort of guessing game—a game with a catch to it.”

Nincom wasn’t listening. “It’s something like the scene I worked out to trap the killer in
Harm’s Way,
the picture I directed over at Elstree. That was the year they traded me for Hitchcock. Ah, those were the days!”

“Well?” said the inspector. “Yes or no?”

Thorwald L. Nincom didn’t answer. He was pacing up and down the room. “Lights here—and here!” he decided.

“I send for the writers—they enter over there. You sit here, Inspector….” He nodded. “It’s a very interesting problem in stagecraft.”

The writers of the Nincom unit were summoned to appear in the living room at once. Willy Abend was interrupted in the middle of what he hoped would be the lyrics for a new national anthem to replace the unsingable and incendiary strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It began: “Out of workers’ sweat came America….” He pushed this interesting if extracurricular activity aside and hurried downstairs.

Doug August and Frankie Firsk were reading the third sequence aloud, August taking the lines of Lizzie Borden and Firsk those of her sweetheart lawyer, Ellis. He read in a falsetto voice: “How can you say that?”

The other man took it up. “But I must, Ellis dear. You are to go away and forget me.”

“Forget you? Ha ha. How can I ever forget you? Lizzie, you’re the most adorable poison that ever got into a man’s blood.”

“Not so good,” Doug August decided, back in his own voice. “That last line—”

“Oughta be
sweetest
poison,” interrupted Uncle Remus from the doorway. “Lizzie, you’re the sweetest poison what ever got into a man’s veins.”

They both looked at him and then at each other. “He’s right,” August decided. “It’s not so corny that way.”

Frankie Firsk nodded. “If we use it we’ll have to give him screen credit.”

Uncle Remus laughed. “I don’t want no credit. I only want you should come downstairs before Mr Nincom gets into a tantrum. He wants you to have a cocktail with that law man from New York.”

The writers blinked.

“Oh, frabjous day!” murmured Frankie Firsk. “We are to be plied with the cup that cheers….”

“Something is up,” Doug August decided. “Hey, Uncle. What makes? I mean, what’s all the fuss about downstairs?”

Uncle Remus’ face took on an expression of outraged propriety. “Beg pardon?”

“What’s the matter, couldn’t you hear anything through the door?”

Uncle Remus said: “I hear plenty. An’ I don’ talk. You better hurry on now.”

They went on but they did not hurry. In fact, both Firsk and August went down the stairs as if they would rather not.

The colored man went on, knocked on Melicent Manning’s door. That lady, deep in the diary which someday she hoped to publish under the title,
Fifty Years a Glamour Girl,
put it well out of sight and hung on another scarf and two bracelets. Then, equipped for anything, she went on downstairs.

That was the list, except for Virgil Dobie who wasn’t in his room at all. Uncle Remus finally ran him to earth in Mr Nincom’s private study, talking over the open wire to the studio switchboard. Both study and telephone were supposed to be sacred.

“Mr Nincom won’t like you to use that line,” the colored man interrupted. “That line is for business.”

“… and I don’t want to hear when I get back that any office boy has been beating my time. Yes, tomorrow sometime, I think. His Nibs won’t make us work all day Sunday. So hold my mail there and keep Monday night open. ’By, now.”

“Mr Nincom, he says …”

“Okay, Uncle Eight-Ball. It was a business call. Just checking up with my secretary back at the studio.”

Uncle Remus looked very doubtful. “You always call your secretary ‘Miss Fancypants’?” He shrugged. “Anyway, you’re wanted in the living room. Everybody wanted in the living room.”

Virgil Dobie raised his high Satanic eyebrows. “Trouble?”

“Could be,” Uncle Remus admitted. “For somebody.”

It didn’t start out like trouble. The kitchen boy brought a big tray of highballs which were passed around. The sheriff knocked his off in a gulp. Mr Nincom sipped at one, and Inspector Oscar Piper put his glass, untasted, on a near-by table.

There was a certain stiffness in the gathering—no one could deny that. Melicent Manning, as the only lady present, tried to make conversation. “As an officer, Inspector, what is your feeling about the Lizzie Borden case? You’ve heard of it, I presume?”

He nodded. “Juries are more sensible nowadays. Lizzie today would get what Ruth Snyder got—a quick sizzle in the hot squat.”

“But a
woman.

“Women are usually pretty good at murder,” Piper said. That slowed up the conversation. Most of the glasses were by this time empty, and Mr Nincom gave a brief signal toward the doorway. At once Uncle Remus entered with a tray and started gathering them up. Nobody seemed to notice that he picked up each glass by the very top and set them on the tray in an orderly circle.

It was Mr Nincom’s cue, and he rose to it. “You are probably wondering why I asked you all to come down here,” he began. “It is because the inspector here has made a suggestion. He has a slight request to make of you.” And Nincom nodded toward his guest.

Oscar Piper stood up. “Thanks.” His chill gray eyes moved from one to the other. “It’s just this, folks. I have reason to believe that one of you may be the person I have a John Doe warrant for. The sheriff, Mr Nincom and I have agreed that in fairness to the rest of you we ought to do all the eliminating we can. So I want you to give me your fingerprints voluntarily.”

The silence in the room was thick as mush.

“Of course, you have the privilege of refusing. That refusal can be taken only one way. So—”

Melicent Manning stood up with a clatter of bracelets. “Of all things! I’ve never in my life been so grossly insulted! If—”

Things were rapidly getting out of hand. “Wait a minute,” put in Sheriff Truesdale sensibly. “The inspector here is looking for a man. So you’re really not one of the suspects at all.” She sat down, somewhat mollified.

Willy Abend murmured something about “Cossacks.” “My fingerprints are my own affair,” he insisted. “The Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom and sanctity of the individual. One of the unalienable privileges—”

“Okay.” Piper cut him short. “Save the speech.” He looked toward Virgil Dobie. “Well?”

“I’m with Willy on that point,” Dobie said. “I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a dislike of giving out my fingerprints. I wouldn’t even let them put my print on my driver’s license when I had it renewed. But I’ll give you an autographed copy of the X ray of my arm the time I broke it.” The inspector failed to smile.

Frankie Firsk said, “I don’t see why I should be the only one. I mean, if everybody else did it I wouldn’t mind. But now—”

Douglas August was the only one left. “How about you?” Piper demanded.

August smiled sweetly. “It’s a waste of time,” he said.

“Why?” snapped Piper.

“Because you’ve already got our fingerprints. On those highball glasses. You see, Inspector, I’ve written Mr Moto and Bulldog Drummond into the same situation so many, many times that it’s old stuff.”

The silence in the room grew very brittle. “So that’s why Uncle Remus snatched the glasses!” exploded Virgil Dobie. “Not bad, Inspector. Not bad at all.”

Piper nodded. “I confess that I’d hoped that the man I want—and
only
the man I want—would refuse to have prints taken. But thank you all just the same.” He nodded at Mr Nincom.

“That will do,” said Nincom. “Back to your typewriters.”

Puzzled and uneasy, the little conclave of writers started out of the room. Sheriff Truesdale went to the kitchen door and said, “Okay, Uncle. Bring back the glasses.”

“Comin’!”

Through the doorway came Uncle Remus, proud and happy, holding the tray of empty glasses high on one palm. His ebony countenance was alight with excitement—and then he tripped over the sill and slid into the room amid a crash of glassware.

Then the startled laughter of the writers came back to mock the unhappy inspector, Frankie Firsk’s nervous giggle above the deep boom of Virgil Dobie. The door closed behind them.

“Tough luck,” said the sheriff. “Seems like this isn’t your day, Inspector.”

Piper was talking to himself, fervently and sulphurously. There wasn’t a piece of glass on the floor bigger than a dime. Uncle Remus picked himself up but, instead of the apologies one might have expected, he still wore a happy smile.

“Nice work!” congratulated Mr Nincom.

Piper whirled on him. “You told him to do that? Why—”

Nincom nodded. He crossed to the door, made sure that the writers were out of earshot on their way upstairs. Then he came back. “A little touch of my own,” he admitted. “There was no use letting any of them think you had their prints. So I had my man stage the spill with some fresh glasses.”

“Here’s the
real
ones,” offered Uncle Remus, reappearing with a duplicate tray. “They start right here at this end, just like everybody sat. Mr. Firsk and Mr Dobie …”

Inspector Oscar Piper took a deep breath, shook his head and sat down at the table. Mr Nincom and the sheriff watched with deep interest as he borrowed a small brush, a saucer and a candle from Uncle Remus.

“This might make a very good scene in a picture,” Nincom decided as he watched the inspector smoke up the saucer, whisk off soot enough to stain the fingerprints. But it was a slow and painstaking job, and Mr Nincom, used to having his results all worked out beforehand, soon began to fidget impatiently. “Well,” he demanded finally, “which one is it?”

“Don’t know yet,” murmured Piper.

Mr Nincom began to stalk up and down. “If I were casting this I think I’d pick Virgil Dobie for the killer. He’s the best type in the bunch,” he hinted hopefully.

“Murderers in real life look like just anybody else,” the inspector said. “Judd Gray was the most harmless-looking little guy you ever met. And Hauptmann—you’d pick him any day for an honest German carpenter.” He dabbed soot on another glass, held it up to the light.

“Really!” burst forth Mr Nincom a bit later. “After all, Inspector, I have given you every opportunity. It can’t possibly take this long. If for any reason you’re playing for time—”

“I’m only beginning,” Piper told him.

At that point Mr Thorwald L. Nincom obviously lost all interest in the game. “If you gentlemen will excuse me,” he said, “I usually take a siesta before dinner.”