The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (11 page)

"Grieb left heirs somewhere," Duncan said. "I don't know just who they are, but they'll be snooping around and making trouble, claiming half of the business. With Sam alive, I could have had a show-down in court and put a receiver in charge. Now that Sam's dead, I've got to go through a lot of red tape with administrators and stuff, and if there's any shortage, in place of my being able to show that Sam lifted the stuff, they'll claim I got away with it after Sam died. So I want you fellows to make a complete inventory of every single thing in that vault and in the coin safe."

The sergeant frowned. "You mean you think something's missing?"

"I know damn well something's missing."

"Making an inventory is out of our line," the sergeant pointed out. "It'll take more time than I can spare right now."

"Well then, how about sealing the vault up?"

"We'll want to look inside of it."

"The minute that vault's opened," Duncan said obstinately, "there's going to be an inventory made."

The sergeant hesitated a moment, then said, "All right, Duncan, we'll make an inventory. Perhaps, after all, we might find something that'll throw light on the motive for the murder."

"Before you open that vault," Manning ventured, "you'd better talk with these two people. They saw a woman throw a gun overboard."

The sergeant stiffened to attention. "Throw a gun overboard!" he exclaimed.

Manning nodded.

"Well, why the devil didn't you say so?"

"I tried to," Manning said, "but…"

"That'll do," the sergeant interrupted, and said to the young man who was staring with apprehensive eyes, "what's your name?"

The man swallowed twice and said, "Bert Custer."

"Where do you work?"

"In a service station at Seventy-ninth and Main."

"What were you doing out here?"

"I took my girl… I mean Marilyn Smith here, out to the ship."

"You were going to do some gambling?"

Custer lowered his eyes, grinned sheepishly and said, "No."

"Then what did you come out here for?"

"For dinner and the trip. You see, they serve a cheap dinner here, with a little floor show, because they want to get folks to come out to the ship. And the speed boats make a low fare for the same reason. I don't have an awful lot of money to spend and I like to get the most I can for my money. Marilyn and I… Well, we had some things we wanted to talk over, and so we came out here… Well, you know how it is. It doesn't cost much to come out in the speed boats, have dinner and then go out on deck and talk. I was showing her a good time without getting stuck for it. Of course, it was pretty cold out there because of the fog, but it had been hot all day and I thought it would be nice to sit out on deck and…"

"And do a little necking?" the sergeant interrupted, grinning.

Custer stiffened and said indignantly, "We were talking."

It was the girl who answered the question. "Sure we were necking," she said. "What'd you think we came out here for?"

"No offense," the sergeant said, laughing. "Now, you were out on deck?"

"Yes," Custer said.

"Where?"

"Amidships… Come to think of it we must have been right above this office."

"And what did you see?"

"A woman with a silver dress and white hair came out of the cabin where they have the gambling, and she acted awfully funny. Both Marilyn and I thought there was something wrong, the way she acted. She seemed to be trying to hide."

"Go on," the sergeant said.

"Well, she stood there for a minute and then another woman came out, and this woman in the silver dress ducked back in the shadows and then Marilyn grabbed my arm and whispered, 'Look!' and I looked just in time to see a gun that this woman in the silver dress had thrown overboard."

"What sort of a gun?" the sergeant asked.

"Well, it was an automatic, but I couldn't tell what make it was nor what caliber. It was a gun. That's about all I can tell."

"You know the difference between an automatic and a revolver?"

"Yes, sure. An automatic is more at right angles, and a revolver has sort of a curve. They're built different. I can't describe them exactly, but I know all about 'em. I sold guns once."

"And this woman in the silver dress threw it overboard?"

"Yes."

"Then what did she do?"

"She stuck around on the deck for quite a while until after the other woman had gone away. And then she walked back down the deck. She was about fifty, I should judge."

"About fifty-five," the girl interrupted. "She had a silver lame dress, as nearly as I could tell, silver slippers, and a string of pearls."

"Just a moment," Mason said; "it sounds strange to me that the woman would have thrown away the gun under those circumstances. As I understand it, you two saw the gun go over the side. Now, isn't it possible that it was thrown by the other woman who had just come out of the casino?"

"That'll do," the sergeant said. "You're not here to pull any cross-examination of witnesses, Mr. Mason. I'll ask the questions."

"But we owe it to all concerned to get this thing straight," Mason asserted.

The girl said, in a low voice, "I wasn't certain who threw the gun. I can't swear which one of the women did it."

"Sure the white-haired dame threw it," Custer said positively, "otherwise what did she want to duck back in the shadows for? She was hiding something, and…"

"But you didn't see the gun until after Miss Smith grabbed your arm and said, 'Look,'" Mason said. "You…"

The sergeant got to his feet and roared, "Now, that's enough! Don't you go trying to mix up these witnesses. I don't know what your interest in this thing is – not yet."

Mason bowed and said, "Of course, Sergeant, you're in charge. I thought you were investigating the facts and would like to have them clarified as you went along. I felt perhaps that such experience as I may have had might be of some assistance."

"Well," the sergeant told him, "I'm fully capable of handling this matter. I don't like the way you're trying to confuse the witnesses."

"I'm not trying to confuse the witnesses. I'm trying to establish the facts."

"Trying to establish them the way you want 'em established. How about this woman in the silver dress? What's your interest in her?"

"Why not ask her?" Mason suggested.

There was a moment of silence, during which the officers exchanged glances. The sergeant said to the man in the traffic officer's uniform, "Go and round up that woman in the silver dress, Jerry. Bring her in. She should be a cinch with the description we've got."

Steps sounded in the outer corridor. The door opened, Perkins entered and said to the sergeant, "I'm all finished out there, Sergeant. Anything else I can do?"

"Yes. We're going to open the vault. Duncan wants you to take inventory."

"Can't we postpone that?"

"No, I want to take a look through the vault. It'll have to be opened, and we should have a complete inventory. We can take a quick look first to make certain that robbery wasn't the motive, and then start taking a detailed inventory. I also want to go through the desk and…"

"I'd like to have the vault and coin safe opened right now," Duncan interrupted. "You see, Sergeant, in addition to the cash used in operating the business, there's nine thousand five hundred that was to have been paid in on some notes early this evening. Sammy may have received this money and put it in the coin safe. It's important that I know…"

"So," Mason interrupted, "you sold them for a two-thousand-dollar bonus, did you?"

Duncan said, "You keep out of this."

"And stay out!" the sergeant snapped.

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

"It makes a lot of difference," Duncan pleaded, "and I think I'm entitled to know."

The sergeant said, "Okay, Duncan. We'll open the vault and the coin safe. I'll have the boys list everything."

"Particularly the stuff in the coin safe," Duncan said.

"Everything," the sergeant snapped. "Come on, Perkins, you come along with Duncan and me. And you come too, Walter. The rest of you stay here. Now, remember, men, I don't want you touching things in the inner office. And particularly, don't go near the desk. I want that glass top for evidence."

Duncan spun the dials of the vault door, opened it and switched on an electric light. The men vanished inside the vault. From the interior came the low hum of voices.

Mason moved casually to Marilyn Smith's side and said, "How about the woman who came to the rail? Could you describe her?"

"Not very well. She had on a dark suit of some kind. It didn't show up in the dark at all; but this woman with the white hair certainly acted suspicious. Bert and I talked about it even before this other woman showed up. But the minute this other woman came out, you could see from the way she acted – the white-haired woman, I mean – that she was afraid, and…"

Bert Custer crowded protectingly forward and said, "I don't want Marilyn to make any statements until the officers are here. This man's a lawyer, Marilyn, and…"

"Bosh and nonsense!" she said. "All this business about lawyers, and getting rattled, and all that stuff makes me sick. We know what we saw, and we'll tell what we saw just the way we saw it. When you come right down to it, Bert, you know as well as I do the reason I thought the white-haired woman threw the gun was because of the way she'd been acting. If you were under oath, you'd have to swear that the first time you saw the gun it was in the air."

"I saw the white-headed woman make some sort of a throwing motion. She did something with her hand, as though she was tossing something," Custer insisted doggedly.

"Bert, you never saw any such thing! You weren't even looking at her. You were looking at me. You had your arms wrapped around me, and you were…" She broke off with a giggle.

"Well," Custer said sullenly, "I could see her out of the corner of my eye, couldn't I?"

Marilyn Smith smiled at Perry Mason and said, "I saw the gun first. I saw it after it had been thrown over the rail. I grabbed Bert's arm, and said, 'Look, Bert.' That was the first he saw of it. You see, there was light streaming out of a porthole and the gun fell across the path of light."

"You were standing almost amidships and on this side of the ship?" Mason asked.

"Yes."

"Then it's possible you saw the gun as it fell across the path of light which was thrown from this porthole, isn't it?"

"Well… perhaps. This probably is the porthole. There's a bright light here, and the illumination sort of fans out into a cone. You could see the path of light in the fog."

"What sort of gun was it?" Mason asked. "Could you see?"

Custer beat her to the answer. "It was an automatic. I guess I should know. I worked in a hardware store and I've sold lots of guns. It was a blued-steel automatic with a wooden handle. Just judging from the size of it, I'd say it was a.38, but you can't tell. Some companies make a pretty heavy.32. And then there's one.45 that's not so much different in size from a.38. You know, just looking at it for a second or two that way, it's hard to tell."

"So," Mason said gravely, "you think it was a.38, if it wasn't a.45 or a.32. Is that right?"

"Yes."

"But it may have been a.45?"

"It might have been."

"Or it might have been a.32?"

"Yes."

"Don't they make a.22 caliber automatic with a heavy frame and a long barrel?"

"Well, yes, they do."

"Could it have been a.22?"

Custer frowned thoughtfully. Marilyn Smith laughed and said, "Just because you sold guns, Bert, you try to know too much about them. You couldn't tell what caliber that gun was. Why, we just saw it for a fraction of a second, as it went down through that shaft of light that was coming from the porthole."

Mason said, "Thank you, Miss Smith."

He stepped to the door of the inner office, and the plainclothesman said, "Don't go in there."

"I'm just looking through the door," Mason said.

The body had been removed. The glass top which had been on the desk was standing on edge, propped against the wall. Powder had been dusted on it to bring out hundreds of latent fingerprints, and near the center of the glass was the print of a whole hand, where apparently someone had leaned over on the glass. The imprint seemed to have been made by a woman's hand.

Mason casually moved over toward Arthur Manning. "Is this going to make quite a change for you?" he asked.

The uniformed special watchman nodded and said gloomily, "I'll say it is."

"Won't you get along okay with Duncan?"

"Well, you know how it is," Manning said. "They were both of them fighting. Duncan gave me my job, but Grieb handled most of the inside business and all the cash, and I naturally saw more of Sam Grieb than I did of Duncan. Grieb gave me orders and I tried to please him. So, the first thing I knew, I was in the position of sort of taking sides with Grieb. Not that I did, at all, but I know Duncan felt that way about me. Now that he's in charge, he'll let me out. He didn't like what I told the officers about the chairs."