Murder on Wheels (20 page)

“You’d have got further with the identification stunt if you’d walked a squad of policemen past Keeley, and had him point out the one he’d taken a sock at,” Miss Withers suggested. “He’s no prize, but I think he’s smarter than Kehoe. All the same, I hate to think of you poor policemen wearing out yourselves in a third degree, so I’ll offer a suggestion.” And she did.

The Inspector nodded, slowly. “Not a bad idea. A damn good idea. If the guy can be reached …”

He seized the telephone, asked to be connected with a certain office in the Criminal Courts Building. “Hello, Max? Got something right up your alley. Tell me, what speakeasies are there on West Forty-fourth Street?”

There was a pause. “No, no, I don’t mean that. Just in one block, say within a few doors of the Hotel Senator, on the south side of the street not far from Fifth Avenue.” He began scribbling. “Okay. Thanks.”

“Well, this ought to settle Buck Keeley’s hash, one way or the other,” he told Miss Withers. He reached for the phone again.

By the time Miss Withers and the Inspector had finished a sketchy luncheon consisting of ham sandwiches and malted milks, the scene was set.

“You’ve never seen the morning line-up, have you Hildegarde?” He opened the door of a large room on the top floor of the building. “Well, it’s the only place large enough for what we plan to try, so we’ll have a little line-up of our own. At eight o’clock every morning all the previous day’s arrests are paraded along that platform there, where you see the horizontal lines, with the floodlights on them. In these chairs sit the plain-clowes men, and a few uniformed men on special duty, getting a slant at the bright and smiling faces of the lads they’re going to meet up with later in the course of duty. It’s a great invention. Now you sit here in the front row, and I’ll be back with the boys.”

Evidently the Inspector routed out every plainclothes operative, desk clerk, and innocent bystander in the building. The chairs were soon filled, and the crowd awaited the show, whatever it was. Behind her was Buck Keeley, between two guards. Miss Withers realized that she was the only woman there, but nobody else seemed to think it strange.

At that moment the Inspector appeared in the doorway, talking affably with a small gentleman who wore a derby crammed down upon his cauliflowered ears. “I’ll consider it a great favor, Mr. Ellinson,” he was saying.

“Just call me Moe” said Mr. Ellinson cheerily. Then he saw the brightly lit platform with its tell-tale black lines against the wall, and recoiled noticeably.

“I ain’t going to get up on there for nobody,” he announced. “A favor I’ll do for you, Inspector, but I’m no crook and I’m not going to be mugged.”

“Wait a minute, Moe. I just want you to pick out one or more of the men whose faces you recognize in this crowd. It won’t take a minute.”

“Sure I’ll pick ’em out,” agreed Moe Ellinson. “But I don’t get up on that platform. I’ve got an honest business, Inspector. I run a speakeasy, not anything illegal. Ask anybody on Forty-fourth Street if I’m not on the level.”

He scratched his head. “Tell you what I’ll do, Inspector. I couldn’t see anything from that platform anyway. But you walk the gents across it, and let me stand here, and I’ll pick out the one you want. Agreeable?”

It was definitely not agreeable to the crowd. But the Inspector was pleadingly insistent. After all, they were all friends here, he said. And Mr. Ellinson was doing the Police Department a favor …

So, after much argument, it was settled. Moe Ellinson remained in the shadow of the door, beside the Inspector, and a line of gentlemen filed across the stage, most of them looking particularly self-conscious and silly. The Inspector realized for the first time how extremely criminal some of his aides looked when seen under these conditions.

“You don’t think you’ll have any trouble in recognizing him?” he said to the little man in the derby.

“I run my business by recognizing faces, right off the bat,” pointed out Moe Ellinson. “This is between friends, Inspector, and I don’t mind telling you that if I made any mistakes in who I let through that grilled door of mine, I’d be closed up quick. Once a man comes in my place, he needs no card to get there again. I remember him.”

He was staring at the gentlemen on the stage. “Oh, hello, Mr. Hennessy. How’s the sweet little wife? We haven’t seen you around lately.”

Chief-clerk Hennessy flushed brick red and moved off the stage. There was a scattering of applause from those in the confraternity who remembered that Hennessy had a wife out in Queens somewhere who could never under any circumstances be described as either “little” or “sweet.”

Several more figures filed across the stage, and then Moe Ellinson spoke again. “How d’do, Mr. Wegman? I haven’t seen you up at my place since the first of October. That check, Mr. Wegman, it was rubber. Thirteen dollars, it was …”

Mr. Wegman, who spent his days in serving subpoenas, likewise betook himself off in a hurry. There were protests, and several gentlemen changed their minds about aiding Piper in his little experiment.

Miss Withers was enjoying herself. And then, all of a sudden, it was over. The last man had passed across the stage. Miss Withers knew that the Inspector was, as he would say, pulling a fast one.

Piper turned to Moe Ellinson. “As I explained to you, Mr. Ellinson, we asked you to come here because a certain gentleman in this room maintains that he came into your place for a drink with some friends on last Friday afternoon. You say you never forget a face. Which of the men who passed across the stage was that man?”

Moe Ellinson shook his head. “Some of the gentlemen are my customers,” he said. “But I haven’t seen any of them for a few weeks. Business has been bad since the depression.”

Piper nodded. “Then you haven’t seen the gentleman here at all? His name was Keeley, although you may not have given him a card to your place.”

“Sure I’ve seen him,” said Moe Ellinson easily. “But you tried to put something over on me. He didn’t come up on the stage at all. The gent you mention came into my place with four others at about five-thirty Friday afternoon, and after he’d washed the blood off his face I served ’em up a couple of rounds of beer. Then they left.”

“Can you pick him out?”

Every eye in the room was on Moe Ellinson now. He enjoyed the limelight.

“Sure I can pick him out for you, Inspector. The gent you’re referring to just went up the aisle on his hands and knees, and he’s going through the hall door right now. Don’t mention it.”

Miss Withers whirled around, and saw an empty chair behind her, with two surprised-looking guards gripping empty air. Buck Keeley had given them the slip!

They started for the door, but the Inspector held them back. “My experiment has been a success,” he said calmly. “Let him go, he’s been handed a sure-fire alibi.”

Miss Withers and the Inspector went slowly down the hall toward his office. “I said that my experiment was a success,” he told her. “It was, from Keeley’s point of view. But it was a flat failure from mine.”

Miss Withers caught sight of the familiar face of Sergeant Taylor down the hall. “There’s the report from your handwriting expert, Mrs. Korn,” she cried excitedly. “Your experiment was a failure, but watch and see how
mine
turns out!”

The report from Jersey was brief and to the point. “Whether because they were written under different emotional conditions, or because of change or development in the writer, these two samples of handwriting differ slightly in obvious characteristics. But
beyond the shadow of a doubt
they were written by the same person!”

“I guess the day leaves us both right behind the eight-ball,” the Inspector told her unkindly.

But Miss Withers was unconvinced.

M
RS. WITHERS RETURNED TO
the Inspector’s office later that same day to find that worthy minion of the law bidding farewell to a group of gentlemen who appeared too indigent and uninterested to be anything but members of what is sometimes laughingly called “the Fourth Estate.” Inspector Piper was talking.

“Just say that Buckner Keeley, Rodeo star rider, was arrested this morning on charges arising from the Stait murder, but that he was released
this
afternoon when he cleared himself of suspicion by the proving of a well-supported alibi. Will you print that, as a favor to me?”

There were several grunts of assent. “But look here, Inspector, it’s not news if you discover that somebody
didn’t
do the murder. There must be a lot of people in town who’re innocent of snagging the candy playboy out of his go-cart the other evening.”

“Yeah,” another voice rose up. “This little story is all right, but my city editor says he has a bellyful of listening to announcements that an arrest is expected before nightfall.”

“Is it true that you suspect Laurie Stait of having been the center of a smuggling ring?”

“Is it true that the twin brother’s girl-friend is unable to account for—”

“D’you think this murder is the work of a homicidal maniac?”

“Will you announce …”

The Inspector herded them desperately past Miss Withers and out into the hall. “I think that this murder and every other murder is the work of a homicidal maniac,” he admitted. “Now scram back to your desks, boys. I’ll let you know as soon as there is anything doing. When we get our hands on the murderer—”

“He’ll have already cheated the chair by dying of senile dementia,” suggested an irreverent baritone.

The Inspector came back mopping his brow. This had not been a notably comfortable day.

“All the same,” he explained to Miss Withers. “I had to release that story. We’ve nothing against Buck Keeley now, and the poor devil may as well know it. He probably thinks that he’s being hunted down with rifle squads, but he’ll read the morning newspapers in a few hours and find out it’s all fixed.”

“He knows it’s all fixed,” said Miss Withers quietly.

“You mean he waited here long enough to hear what Ellinson said before he walked out from between those two dumb flatties I had guarding him?”

“No, not exactly. But I saw him about half an hour ago, and I told him.”

Inspector Piper frowned. “You saw him? Where?”

“If you must know, it was up in his sister’s room at the Hotel Senator,” Miss Withers explained. “He was under the bed, with a revolver in each hand, and I was afraid he’d start shooting before I could explain why I came up there. But I talked first, luckily.”

“That’s good,” said the Inspector absent-mindedly. “Say, by the way. Just why did you go up there? How did you know he was there?”

“I didn’t know he was there. I knew his sister Rose was there. Remember our bargain, Oscar. I want to play a lone hand on this, because I’m pretty sure I’ve got a full flush—”

“You probably mean a full house?”

“Have it your way, Oscar. Anyway, I think I’ve got what we’re looking for. Only I can’t prove it, as yet. That’s why I went to see Rose Keeley. I had to ask her help.” Miss Withers leaned back in the easiest chair.

“But what in the world do you need Rose Keeley’s help for?” The Inspector did not conceal his amazement.

Miss Withers smiled enigmatically. “I needed her help in sending a telegram, Oscar. What this case cries out for is a character witness capable of making an identification. I sent for one.”

“A character witness for Buck Keeley?”

“Hardly.” And that was all the Inspector could get out of his co-worker. Finally she changed the subject.

“I came back here hoping to interest you in having tea with me somewhere,” she informed him. “You realize, don’t you, that we had hardly any lunch? I thought that there might be a place near here?”

The Inspector welcomed the suggestion. “Just around the corner is the Diavolo Rosso,” he informed her. “Best Italian food in the city, though it’s something of a dump outside. And the
vino
is swell.”

“Where I was brought up, out in Dubuque, spaghetti and red wine weren’t served at tea-time,” Miss Withers observed acidly. “Besides, so far as it is possible I try to observe the laws of our great, if somewhat depressed, nation. It’s probably a silly old-fashioned habit that I’ve grown into from trying to live as an example to the younger generation in my classes. I realize that I’m behind the times, and that while I’m in Rome I ought to burn Roman candles, but—”

The rest of Miss Withers’ little homily was drowned out by the skirl of the telephone.

The Inspector discovered that a gentleman named Waverly would like to speak with him on important business.

“Go ahead, put him on,” was the decision.

“Hello, Inspector Piper? This is Charles Waverly. You remember our little chat of last evening?”

Inspector Piper admitted that he did.

“You remember asking me why I considered the marriage of my sister to the surviving Stait twin as unfortunate?”

Again the Inspector assented, impatiently.

“Well, I thought you ought to know this. They had some kind of a dreadful row this morning, and my sister moved away from the Stait house. My prediction was right, Inspector.”

“Well, what if it was? Do you want to set up as a clairvoyant and give me as a reference? Go on, man. Why did she leave him?”

There was a pause over the line. Then—“Really, I don’t know. She won’t talk to me, Inspector. She won’t talk to anybody, she says. But she’s left her husband and moved back to her apartment in the Village and she says that she’s going to sail for Bermuda on Friday’s boat.”

“You tell her for me that if she tries to sail on that boat I’ll have her dragged off by the scruff of the neck,” Inspector Piper shouted into the telephone. “And you tell her another thing—”

“I can’t,” cut in Charles Waverly. “She phoned me to tell me what had happened, and hung up before I could ask her why. And she’s not answering the phone at her apartment.”

“She’ll do some answering for me,” the Inspector promised. And he hung up the phone.

Miss Withers listened in silence to what the message had been. “Why are you putting on your hat, Oscar?”

“I’m going down there and find out why Dana walked out on her husband, of course.”