Murder on Wheels (10 page)

“We’ll take care of Rose,” he said roughly. “Haven’t you done harm enough already? Take your hands off her!”

“Young man, I …”

But Inspector Piper nodded to her. “Come on, Hildegarde.” The girl who had fainted so unexpectedly was already murmuring something, and showing signs of life. “She’s all right. Let’s get out of here.”

She followed him up the ramp. “But what’s the hurry? We might have found something out.”

“We did find something out,” he told her. “Plenty. And those fellows will see that she doesn’t say anything else, now. We’ll take another try when her precious brother is here, unless we pick him up first. I’ve got to get back to my office, there’s plenty to settle.”

“There is,” agreed Miss Withers grimly, as she climbed into a taxi-cab. “And the first thing is this, Oscar Piper. We were discussing a little matter in the restaurant when we heard that shooting.”

He was thoughtful. “Yes, Hildegarde, we’ll settle that. So you really want to quit the case, huh?”

“You know that isn’t true,” she contradicted him swiftly. “But I’m not going to butt in where I’m not wanted, unless it’s for a person’s own good.”

“You know how much I value your help.”

“All right, then. But why didn’t you tell me about the letter you found in the Stait house?”

The Inspector was very uncomfortable. “Why … I was going to tell you about that. A little later.”

“You were? Oscar Piper, you wanted to demonstrate your masculine superiority, that’s all. You thought I was getting too sure of myself after my luck in the last case we did together, and so you handed yourself a handicap. You held back some evidence so that I wouldn’t beat you too badly!”

“But Hildegarde …”

“Yes, and you got up early this morning to try and beat me to a few facts over here, didn’t you?”

“But Hildegarde, you did the same thing.”

“Never mind. Oscar Piper, it’s all or nothing. Maybe you don’t like to have the other officers see you tagging around with a woman all the time. All right, we’ll work separately. And we’ll see which one of us gets to the truth of this mess first. I’ll bet you—I’ll bet you a week’s salary, mine against yours, that I find out who killed Laurie Stait before you do. You can have all the power of the police department, and I’ll work alone, and I’ll show you what your masculine superiority is worth!”

Miss Withers was raging, and the Inspector had bitten through his cigar. “All right, you’re on with that bet,” he said. “And what’s more, I’ll give you a better break than that. I’ll tell you every concrete fact I establish and give you the advantage of everything that the police have or can get on the case. And you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t wish to. That makes it even, and we’ll just prove once and for all how far an amateur can get against a trained operative.”

“Fair enough.” They shook hands. “And now, what about that letter?” Piper told her.

Miss Withers was silent while the taxi coursed southward a couple of blocks. “So this girl Dana was engaged to Lew and in love with Laurie? Lew stayed in New York and Laurie went out to a ranch, and then he came back and got himself murdered! I’m trying to fit it all together.”

“Not much fitting to do,” grunted the Inspector. “Brothers have killed brothers before over a girl.”

Miss Withers shook her head. “It doesn’t fit. Besides, Lew Stait had an alibi. He was at home when the thing happened.”

The Inspector laughed bitterly. “In the first place, we don’t know what happened. A body in the street with a rope around its neck. But that’s nothing. How did it get out of the car and into the street? Who threw the noose? Why didn’t anybody see it? Besides, what is Lew’s alibi worth? The maid was upstairs, and she couldn’t swear that he didn’t go out when she was taking the old mummy her tea in the attic rooms, or when she was checking the laundry. Besides, by the looks of the situation when we came, little Gretchen is sweet on Mister Lew anyway. So why shouldn’t she lie to protect him?”

“But there’s another reason why it isn’t as simple as that,” Miss Withers thought aloud. “This business in the Garden …”

“You mean the girl’s fainting when I told her Laurie Stait was dead?”

Miss Withers shook her head again. “I do not. I mean the girl’s fainting when she heard that Laurie Stait had died from being strangled with a lariat! There’s a difference, you remember. She took your first sentence calmly enough. It was the second that knocked her over.”

“You mean, you think she was involved with Laurie last summer when he was out at the dude ranch, and that she had something to do with the fact that he was murdered?”

“I don’t know. One thing just occurred to me. Is there any way of finding out if the rodeo had a parade last night on Fifth Avenue, or if they were moving horses through the streets?”

“That’s easy. I happen to know that no permit for a parade was granted them, and that none would be. Besides, the thing is impossible at the rush hour. No, there was no parade.”

“So Laurie Stait was not murdered by a lasso in the hands of a cowboy. Well, I just wanted to know. I’ve seen movies of that sort of thing.”

“Well, this isn’t a movie, nor was the end of that rope held by any man on horseback. It would have been seen; besides, because a cowboy on horseback would have attracted as much attention as a knight in armor on that Avenue. No, it was a simpler method.”

“Out of a window?” Miss Withers polished her glasses. “Somebody might have made a successful cast from a second story window and snagged him. It would have to be an expert with a rope to have that accurate an aim.”

“Well, doesn’t it strike you as fairly obvious that the town is full, right now, of the smartest experts in fancy roping that all the wild west can offer?”

They rode on in silence. “How’s this,” offered the Inspector. “Laurie Stait was a handsome chap. Suppose that he went out west because he knew his brother’s girl had fallen for him, and he wanted to play fair. Then this Rose Keeley also gets hipped over him, and they fix it up to get married. Only her brother Buck doesn’t like the city slicker and forbids it, so she waits until the rodeo brings them here, and starts seeing Laurie again. And the brother gets wise and knocks the boy off. How’s that?”

“Too easy,” objected Miss Withers. “Besides, you saw Rose Keeley. Did she strike you as the kind of a girl who would let a brother tell her what to do? More likely she tells him what to do. She looks like the kind of woman who gets what she wants, or knows the reason why.”

“Suppose she wanted Laurie Stait … and he didn’t want her?”

“Oscar, I do believe you’re improving,” Miss Withers congratulated him. “Well, here we are at the abode of justice.”

“You’d better come on up,” suggested the Inspector.

“But what about our agreement ? I was going to keep in the background.”

“There’s a lot of routine matters that ought to be settled by now,” he explained. “There’s the report of the auto expert who went over the wrecked Chrysler, and the pictures from the photographer, and so forth. Take a look at them, and then you can go out sleuthing all you like on your own …”

“I don’t think I’ll … oh, yes I will.” Miss Withers exercised the ancient prerogative of her sex and changed her mind. For she had noticed a young man going up the flight of stone steps ahead of them, toward the main entrance of the building.

It was a young man she had seen before. In spite of his wearing a nondescript hat and overcoat, she recognized him quite clearly. It was Hubert Stait, the odd little cousin of the dead twin, and he was going somewhere in considerable of a hurry.

That somewhere proved to be the Inspector’s own office, or as close to that sanctum sanctorum as was possible with Lieutenant Keller barring the door.

“I tell you, I’ve got to see the Inspector!” Hubert Stait was demanding as they came down the hall.

“Well, if you turn around you can see him, all right,” the Lieutenant informed him dryly. “But as for his seeing you, I can’t say.”

Miss Withers watched Hubert as he turned to face them. He looked even more like a startled owl than ever, now. His tie had not been tied carefully, and it failed to match his shirt … or even to harmonize. His voice showed evidence of a considerable amount of excitement.

“May I see you alone, Inspector?”

“Certainly.” Inspector Piper led the way to the inner door. As he held it open for Hubert Stait, his eyes sought Miss Withers’ for a second, and then dropped meaningly toward a low padded chair. “Will you wait
there,
Hildegarde?”

She was vaguely annoyed, having hoped to hear the inside of this, whatever it was. But she dropped obediently into the padded chair.

Lieutenant Keller came back into the office, and busied himself at some file cases near the window. For a few minutes Miss Withers amused herself by trying to figure out where the murderer could have stood to cast a noose over the head of a man in an open roadster on Fifth Avenue.

In the car? That wasn’t likely. He would have had to jump out, which wasn’t easy, and then brace himself with the rope in his hands. No, that was out.

From a window of one of the buildings? That was more likely, but though, as the Inspector had pointed out, a cowboy trained in the use of a lariat might have made the cast of the rope, yet how would a stranger in town have ingress to a front office on the Avenue, and how would he know Laurie Stait was driving past at that hour? Miss Withers knew that there was a saying that if you wait on the corner of Forty-second Street at Fifth Avenue long enough, you will meet everyone you ever knew. She had always doubted the usefulness of meeting everyone she’d ever known, and besides, there wasn’t a high degree of probability that one of the cowboys had taken up such a vigil. Much less Rose Keeley, who didn’t appear a highly patient person.

It was from such reveries that Miss Withers was rudely jerked forth when she realized that there was a low buzzing somewhere close by. It annoyed her, and she looked over the desk top to see what it was.

The buzzing came in starts and stops, and gradually as her ears became accustomed to it she made out that she was listening to the human voice … to Inspector Piper’s voice, dim and far away. But it did not come through the door.

Lieutenant Keller was watching her. “Top drawer to the left,” he suggested. She opened it, and found a radio headset of earphones, as well as a pad of paper and a dozen sharpened pencils.

The Lieutenant nodded encouragingly. She put on the headset, and then suddenly her pencil started flying across the pad in a weird line of hieroglyphics which neither Mr. Pitman nor Mr. Gregg would have owned. But her own brand of shorthand had come in handily before, and it was handy now.

With the headset over her ears, she could hear every word that was spoken in the next room. The Inspector was talking, crisply and clearly.

“… you’ll have to explain the reason,” he was finishing. “It’s not the custom for us to furnish an officer as a body guard in a case of this kind. What are you afraid of? As it happens, there was an officer in the hall last night, but I’m taking him off today. Why do you want a body guard?”

“Because there’s
danger
in that house,” broke in Hubert Stait, his voice raised above its usual cautious calm. “I’m entitled to police protection, aren’t I?”

“My dear young man, the murder is already committed. Laurie Stait is dead. It’s unlikely …”

“It is not unlikely that something else will happen. I know! Inspector, I tell you that nobody’s life is safe if you don’t keep a guard in our house at night. That’s like the police. You come around and ask questions and make life miserable for the innocent bystanders, but when a person knows that there is the greatest danger you
pooh-pooh
it until it’s too late. Laurie is dead, though he might not be if he’d come to the police when he started to be worried over whatever it was. We all knew he was in trouble, worse trouble than usual. All week he’d been staying home and he wouldn’t let anyone else answer the phone … though he seemed to dread it. But he is dead … and I’m not going to be the next one.”

“Why should anyone want to murder you?”

“I don’t know, I tell you! But I think somebody is trying to wipe out every male member of our family. Laurie was first, he’s the eldest. But why do you think it’s going to stop there?”

“Why not? Any reason why you think all the men in the family are doomed ? Who are they, by the way—besides the late Laurie Stait, and Lew, and yourself?”

There was a moment’s silence, and Miss Withers heard the creak of the Inspector’s easy chair.

Then Hubert’s careful voice came over the wire. “The next in line would be Charley, that’s Charles Waverly, the New York attorney. He’s a fourth cousin or something to the twins, while I’m a first cousin. The next relatives are farther removed, both by blood and by actual distance. They’re out in Kansas or somewhere.”

“I see. And why would anyone start to knock off the whole family? Is there a large estate?”

“I … I don’t think so. Gran always is preaching economy, although there’s money enough to keep things running. Gran never entertains, you know, and two servants keep the place. The house itself ought to be worth a good deal.”

“Doesn’t look like motive for murder to me,” said the Inspector. “Even a house on Riverside Drive isn’t worth more than twenty or thirty thousand in these times. Nobody would start wholesale murder for that.”

“Then why was Laurie killed?”

“We’ll have an answer for that question one of these days,” said Inspector Piper slowly. “It may be an answer that certain people don’t like, but it will be the right one. No, Mr. Hubert Stait, I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse your request to have an officer play wet-nurse for you unless you can give me a better reason than this fantastic story of a deeplaid plot …”

“Then I’ll give you a better reason than that, Inspector.” Hubert’s voice cracked. “Last night someone tried to kill me!”

T
HERE WAS A SILENCE
during which Miss Withers might have counted ten. Then the Inspector’s voice rose, raspingly.

“Someone what?”