American Gun Mystery (7 page)

She dropped to her knees in the dust with a choked cry, and touched the edge of the blanket. Curly Grant, his face dead, and Wild Bill Grant, stupefied, made instinctive movements to intercept her. She waved them back, scarcely looking at them; and they stopped in their tracks. Then she lifted the blanket the merest bit; something remarkably pale here and remarkably red there that had been a living face was starkly uncovered. The features, drawn, bluish, distorted in death, spattered with thick blood and dirt, looked sightlessly up at her, as it were in uncrushed but pitiful dignity. She dropped the blanket as if it were a malignant thing, and knelt there in silence.

Ellery dug his knuckles into the muscular ribs of Curly Grant. “Come alive, you fool,” he said softly. “Get her away from here.” Curly started, flushed, dropped to his knees beside her. …

Ellery turned to come face to face with his father. The Inspector was puffing like Boreas.

“What the—what’s happened to him?” he gasped.

Ellery said: “Murder.”

The old man’s eyes goggled. “Murder! But how the devil—”

They stared at each other for an instant, and then something cloudy suffused Ellery’s eyes. He began slowly to look about. A cigaret which he had from habit stuck between his lips drooped toward the sandy blooded tanbark. As he took it from between his lips and crushed it between his fingers, he panted: “Oh, God, what an idiot I am! Dad. …” He dropped the fragments into his pocket. “There’s no question about the murder part of this. He was drilled in the side; must have gone through the heart. I saw the wound myself as the doctor dropped the blanket over him. This is—”

The Inspector’s color returned to his gray cheeks; his bird-like eyes snapped; and he darted forward into the group.

The group parted, engulfed him.

Curly’s wide shoulders hid the bowed shining head of Kit Horne.

Wild Bill Grant stared and stared at the blanket as if he could not see enough of it.

Ellery squared his shoulders, drew a long breath, and started off at a lope toward the northwestern part of the arena.

A
S HE CHARGED ACROSS
the hard-packed dirt Ellery was able to assimilate in flashes something of the activity around him. Behind him stood a silent ring of men and women, aliens in a strange land, surrounding the dead man and the sobbing girl. In the frenzied tiers above people scurried about like demented ants; there were thin screams from women’s throats, and hoarse masculine voices, and the muffled thunder of shuffling feet. At the exits dotting the distant walls minute figures in blue with brass buttons catching vagrant spears of light, had sprung up—police summoned hastily from the recesses of the building to defend the bulwarks. They were pushing people back toward the seats, allowing no one to leave the amphitheatre; an excellent notion, to Ellery’s mind, and he smiled a little as he ran on.

He scrambled faster, and then came to a stop at the trestles of the high platform on which stood the small figures of Major Kirby—pale but unruffled, quietly directing his group of wild-eyed, crouching-over-camera men.

“Major!” cried Ellery, striving to make himself heard above the din.

Major Kirby peered over the edge of the platform. “Yes? Oh—yes, Mr. Queen?”

“Don’t leave that platform!”

The Major permitted himself to smile, briefly. “Don’t bother yourself about
that.
God, what a break! By the way, what the devil did happen over there? Did the old chap have a fainting spell?”

“The old chap,” said Ellery grimly, “had a bullet spell, that’s what he had. He was murdered, Major—through the heart.”

“Lord!”

Ellery stared gravely upward. “Come a little closer, Major.” The newsreel man stooped, his little black eyes snapping. “Were your cameras grinding through
everything?
”

Something sparkled in the black eyes. “Good Lord! Good Lord!” a slight flush tinted his slick cheeks. “What a miracle, Mr. Queen, what a miracle … yes, every second!”

Ellery said rapidly: “Pluperfect, Major, simply pluperfect. An exquisite gift from the god who watches over detectives. Now listen: keep grinding, get every shot you can—I want a complete photographic record of what happens from now on until I tell you to stop. Do you understand?”

“Oh, perfectly.” The Major paused, and then said: “But how long will I have—”

“You’re worried about the film?” Ellery smiled. “I don’t think you’ve need to, Major. Your company has a really exceptional opportunity to serve the police, and considering how motion picture companies throw their money around, I think the cost of the extra film is money well spent. Well spent.”

The Major looked reflective, then touched the end of his little mustache, nodded, rose, and spoke brusquely to his men. One camera kept focused on the group surrounding the body. Another swept its eye, like a mechanical Cyclops, in a steady circle of the audience-tiers. A third picked up details in other parts of the arena. The technicians in the sound booth were working madly.

Ellery fingered his bow-tie, flicked a speck of dust off his alabaster bosom, and sped back across the arena.

Inspector Queen, that admirable executive, was surrounded by the grim halo of Work. He was the only person in New York who might be called, without intent to malign, an Ultracrepidarian critic. It was of the very nature of his job to find fault with small and insignificant details. He was the scientist of trifles, a passionate devotee of minutiae. And yet his old nose was never so closely pressed to the ground that he could not keep in perspective the broadest view of the terrain. …The present task was worthy of his mettle. A murder had been committed in an auditorium peopled with twenty thousand souls. Two hundred hundred persons, any one of whom might be the murderer of Buck Horne! His bird-like gray little head was cocked fiercely forward, his fingers dipped unceasingly into his old brown snuff-box, his mouth rattled very good orders indeed, and all the while his bright little eyes were wandering about the auditorium as if disembodied, keeping in sight every intricate movement of the forces he had disposed. It was fortunate, perhaps, that while he awaited reinforcements from Headquarters—members of his own squad—he nevertheless had a large army of officers to place strategically about the spacious premises. The ushers and special officers of the
Colosseum
had been pressed into service, and those of the police who had been within the building at the time of the murder. All exits were grimly guarded. It was already established from relayed reports that not even a pigmy had slipped through the cordon. It was his calm intention not to permit one of the twenty thousand persons in the building to escape until the most searching investigation had been made.

Detectives from the nearby precincts had already responded to the alarm; they ringed the arena, keeping it clear as a base of operations. Hundreds of staring heads popped over the box-tier rail. The group of horsemen and horsewomen had been segregated, sent in a group to the other side of the arena; they were dismounted, and their horses, serene now, were pawing the earth and snorting quite peacefully. Their coats shone with the heat of their bodies after the short but strenuous gallop. The two special officers who had been stationed at each of the two main gates in the arena—at east and west—were on duty still, backed up by detectives. All the arena exits were fast closed, and guarded. No one was permitted either to enter or leave the arena.

As Ellery ran up, he saw his father sternly eying a diminutive cowboy with bleared eyes and convex little legs.

“Grant tells me you generally take charge of the horses,” snapped the Inspector. “What’s your name?”

The little cowboy licked his dry lips. “Dan’l—Hank Boone. I don’t savvy this shootin’ a-tall, Inspector. Honest, I—”

“Do you or don’t you take charge of the horses?”

“Yess’r, reckon I do!”

The Inspector measured him. “Were you one of that crazy yelling bunch riding behind Horne tonight?”

“Nos’ree!” cried Boone.

“Where were you when Horne fell off his horse?”

“Down yonder, behin’ that west chute gate,” mumbled Boone. “When I see ole Buck passin’ in his chips, I got ole Baldy—special at the gate—to pass me through.”

“Anybody else come through with you?”

“Nos’r. Baldy, he an’ me—”

“All right, Boone.” The Inspector jerked his head at a detective. “Take this man across the arena and let him get those horses together. We don’t want a stampede here.”

Boone grinned rather feebly, and trotted off toward the horses in company with a detective. There was a temporary row of watering-troughs set up in the dirt across the arena, and he became busy leading the horses to water. The cowboys and cowgirls near by watched him stonily.

Ellery stood quite still. This part of the job was his father’s.

He looked around. Kit Horne was a statue with dusty knees, as pale as the dying moon, staring without expression at the crumpled heap covered by the gaudy Indian blanket on the tanbark. To each side stood protection—poor protection, one would say, for Curly Grant was grotesquely like a man whose ears have been suddenly pierced and who finds himself in a frenzied soundless world; and his father, stocky marble, might be in the grip of a paralysis which had attacked him without warning and frozen him in an attitude of dazed pain where he stood. And both men, also, looked at the gaudy blanket.

Ellery, a not insensitive soul, looked at the blanket, too—anywhere but at those staring feminine eyeballs.

The Inspector was saying: “Here, you—precinct man?—take, a couple of the boys and collect every goldarned gun in the joint. Yes, every
one!
Rustle some cards or something and tag every weapon with its owner’s name. Or bearer’s name, if he doesn’t own it. And don’t just
ask
for ’em; I want every man-jack and woman on this floor
searched.
These people are accustomed to going heeled, remember.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And,” added the Inspector thoughtfully, turning his bright little eyes on the silent trio staring at the covered body, “you might start with these folks here. The old feller, the curly-headed lad—yes, and the lady too.”

Struck by a sudden thought, Ellery turned sharply and searched for someone. The man was not in this group about the body. The man with the single arm who had handled his horse so masterfully. …He caught sight of the one-armed rider far across the arena, sitting stolidly on the floor and flipping a Bowie knife up and down, up and down. …He turned back in time to
see
Wild Bill Grant raise his arms stiffly and submit to a search, his eyes still dead with pain. The holster he wore strapped about his thick waist was already empty; a detective was tagging the gun. Curly awakened suddenly, colored, and opened his mouth in anger. Then he shrugged and handed over his slim revolver. Neither Grant nor his son, it soon appeared, had a second weapon in his clothes. Then Kit Horne—

Ellery said: “No.”

The old man cocked an inquisitive eye at him. Ellery jerked his thumb slightly toward the girl and shook his head. The Inspector stared, then shrugged.

“Uh—you, don’t bother Miss Horne now. We’ll attend to her later.”

The two detectives nodded and marched off across the arena. Kit Horne did not move; she had not heard a word, but continued to study the zigzag design of the blanket in an expressionless absorption that was horrible.

The Inspector sighed and rubbed his hands together briskly. “Grant!” he said. The old showman turned his head with precision. “You and your son—get Miss Horne off to the side there, will you? This isn’t going to be pleasant.”

Grant drew a deep sobbing breath, his eyes fiery red, and touched Kit’s pale bare arm. “Kit,” he muttered. “Kit.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“Kit. Come off here a minute, Kit.”

She looked down again at the blanket.

Grant nudged his son. Curly rubbed his eyes for an instant, wearily, and then they lifted the girl bodily and swung her around. Terror gleamed there, the impulse to cry out; it drained swiftly away and she went limp. They half-carried her across the arena.

The Inspector sighed. “Takes it hard, doesn’t she? Well, El, let’s get to work. I want a long look-see at that body.”

He motioned to several detectives, and they came forward to form a solid wall of official flesh around the corpse. Ellery stood within the ring, and Inspector. Queen. The Inspector braced his spare little shoulders, took a last stimulative pinch of snuff, and then squatted on the tanbark. He removed the blanket with steady fingers.

There was something ironic in that dusty, bloody, once gorgeous costume. The dead man was dressed in black, a shiny romantic black. But the gloss of romance had been destroyed by Horne’s descent to mortal earth, and it was now the rusty black of death. On his twisted, queerly dispersed legs were high-heeled boots of black leather which came well up to his knees, adorned with fancy stitching. Silvery spurs protruded from the boot-heels of the quiet feet. His tucked-in trousers were of black corduroy. Although his bandana was black, his shirt was of pure white sateen—a startling contrast. The shirt-sleeves were drawn in above the elbows and gripped tightly by black garters, while on his wrists he wore a pair of exquisitely fashioned black leather cuffs, embroidered in white stitching and studded with small silver ornaments, the much-coveted
conchas
of the cowboy-on-parade. Around his waist there was a snug-fitting black trouser belt; and swathing his torso and hips an ornate pistol belt, quite wide and looped for the insertion of cartridges. There were two holsters of beautiful black leather, one resting on the thigh below each hip. And both were empty.

These were the routine items to be duly noted. The Queens looked at each other, and then returned their attention to the body in a search for more interesting details.

Horne’s outfit, so resplendent and brave, had been torn and dirtied by the steel-shod hooves of the horses. Rents in the white shirt revealed gashed hoof-wounds on the skin beneath. Neat, small, clean as a marker, there was a bullethole in the left side, a trench which obviously had ploughed trough the heart. It had bled remarkably little, that wound; the satin edges of the hole were merely stuck to the skin beneath by pasty gore. The graunt old face was taut in death; the white head seemed curiously sunken on one side, behind the ear; and they noted with a sudden repulsion that some horse’s wildly flying hoof had kicked the entire side of the man’s head in. But the features were quite unmarked, except for dust and splatters of blood. The body lay in an impossible position—impossible, that is to say, for a living creature; it was evident that bones had been broken by the crushing weight of the trampling beasts.