Murder Me E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Max Brand is generally regarded as the author of superior westerns like his „Destry Rides Again”, but Brand also wrote the „Dr. Kildare” series and numerous detective stories as well. Never before published in book form, this 1937 police procedural by veteran Brand introduces New York police detectives Campbell and O’Rourke. The pair investigate the apparent suicide of a philanthropist David Barry who was about to be accused of bribery and corruption prior to his death. Angus Campbell and Patrick O’Rourke can get the cuffs on the killer, there’ll be endless face-offs in which the five suspects hurl accusations at each other and reveal how many of them were popping in and out of the crowded murder scene on the fatal night.

Leseprobe

Contents

I. THE MAN WHO WANTED TO DIE

II. SHADOWS THAT CREEP

III. IN A DARK ROOM

IV. THE MURDERER IS COLOR-BLIND

V. THE GREEN TIE

VI. THE ALIBI

VII. A GUN AND $1000

VIII. UNPLEASANT EVIDENCE

IX. MURDER BY WIRE

X. O'ROURKE VERSUS CAMPBELL

XI. COLLAPSING ALIBIS

XII. THIRD DEGREE

XIII. WILLETT TALKS

XIV. "I'LL BURN THE TRUTH OUT OF YOU!"

XV. ANOTHER SUSPECT TALKS

XVI. TRAIL OF FEAR

XVII. ROSE MAKES AN OFFER

XVIII. A DAMP COAT—AND A GIRL

XIX. A SPOT OF GREEN PAINT

XX. YELLOW EVIDENCE

XXI. MURDERER'S ACCOMPLICE

XXII. —A COWARD COLLAPSES

XXIII. MURDERER'S KNOCK

XXIV. TELFORD TALKS

XXV. ROSE TAYLOR TALKS

XXVI. WILLETT SPILLS THE BEANS

XXVII. ROADSIDE MEETING

XXVIII. O'ROURKE MAKES AN ARREST

XXIX. —THE CONFESSION

XXX. IN THE FLYTRAP

XXXI. CAMPBELL SETS A TRAP

XXXII. ROSE TAYLOR SPRINGS A TRAP

XXXIII. THREE VISITORS

XXXIV. MURDERER'S WORLD

I. THE MAN WHO WANTED TO DIE

THE letter asked for haste, but Willett always hurried with a calm face. All the way from New York his car hit the rain like a fist, knocking it into a dazzle before the headlights, while Willett lounged at ease behind the wheel. When the road was straight, it had a winter look, a black, polished river that flowed under the wheels without carrying the machine back; but, when the lights swung around a corner, they gave him reassuring glimpses of spring, a horn of abundance, filled with the bright rush of the rain, but with the summer green about to flow into it.

He kept the thought in his mind, dreaming over it. Headlights twinkled, swayed up and down the hills, glared in his face, and then went by with a thin squeal of tires or the roar of a truck. He was off the main road and finding his way by instinct. Qualms of doubt made him sit up straighter. He had not come this way for five years.

Then the lights showed him the old mill down by the creek, trying to hide in the rain. He knew he was right from the point. The side road carried him under a wet shimmer of trees. At the turn he saw Telford’s house. A pair of high-shouldered wings had been added to his memory of it; but, of course, Telford had prospered. He was the type. Afterwards, the lights wavered across Barry’s home, steadied on it, looked into the familiar face. He slid the car up the oval of the gravel drive, stopped, turned off the engine, switched on the curb lights.

The rain patted the top of the car with rapid little hands.

He got out and stretched. The trees that embosomed the place had grown smaller–because he had been taking long steps in the past five years, no doubt. There was one other change. An iron lantern hanging from the cornice above the door showed the way to the entrance. In the old days, oil lamps had been good enough for David Barry; electricity had been the mechanical slave and curse of man. It was Telford, no doubt, who had changed the mind of the old philanthropist. Willett rang the bell. In the pause, he listened to the rustling of the ampelopsis leaves; there was a smell of fresh paint.

The door opened a crack, jangling against a chain.

“Who’s there?” asked David Barry.

“It’s I, David.”

“Ah, you,” said Barry, and opened the door wide. The interior was dim. The lantern outside was what cast the shadow of big Willett over Barry, leaving only the pallor of his face and the sheen of his glasses. He shook hands, closing the door at the same time and saying, “You’ve grown bigger. That’s a trick of imagination, I know, but the fancy is never wrong, entirely. Yes, you’re a bigger man than you used to be. This way, Richard.”

Willett dropped the weight of his overcoat, put up his hat, and had a glimpse of his face in the mirror. Some of the Eastern sleek had been rubbed off his cheekbones, some of the Nevada brown had been added. Perhaps that was why he looked bigger. He went behind Barry into the living room. There was a vase filled with such a spreading mass of spring bloom that it gave the place a busy air, like conversation.

“How does this old house seem to you?” asked Barry.

“You’ve always been so interested in doing good that you had to do good to a barn and turn it into a house,” said Willett.

“You don’t like it?”

“It must have been a good barn, but now it’s faked. Those curved beams, for instance, are the bunk. Then you set in a carved overmantel of old English oak above the fireplace, like a bit of church choir installed in the stable. You open out one wall and make a library balcony up there with Moorish columns and a French balustrade. You put Persian rugs on the floor, Chinese vases on the tables, and ring in this dash of Chinese sculpture.”

He sunned his back at the fire and lighted a cigarette.

“You’ve turned aesthete, Richard, have you,” said Barry. “You ought to know that all things which are truly beautiful may stand shoulder to shoulder.”

Willett smoked and said nothing.

“This statue, for instance, is a Bodhisattva. It’s a T’ang,” explained Barry.

“Looks like a dancing girl with a prop smile to me,” said Willett. “No, I’m not an aesthete.”

“But like all our countrymen, you have a right to your own opinions, eh?”

Willett said nothing.

“A remarkable thing about our civilization,” said Barry. “Without culture, without knowledge, we still express ourselves. Of course that is because we are so free–and so equal. The patriarch Jefferson and the puling French philosophers of the eighteenth century made us equal.”

Willett said: “You talk the way you’ve always talked, but you look sick. What’s the matter with you?”

“You’re a mining engineer, now, Richard, and I dare say that you have undeveloped millions in prospect?”

“I won’t talk business with you. I finished that five years ago when you handed over your affairs to Telford.”

“What would you do for a hundred thousand dollars, Richard?”

“Murder,” said Willett.

“That’s why I sent for you,” said Barry. “This morning I put you in my will for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“The hell you did,” answered Willett.

Something that was not a smile pulled at the corners of the mouth of Barry. He went to the long table, pulled open a drawer, and took thick, folded paper from it.

“You can see for yourself,” said Barry.

“I’ll take your word. You’ve always been afraid to tell a lie.”

“Here is a loaded gun, Richard. Here am I. My servants come by the day, only. We are entirely alone. You have not been here for five years. No one could suspect your coming. In ten seconds the thing is finished and you are on the road again.”

“Barring Telford, there’s no one I’d rather put a bullet through than you,” said Willett.

“I knew that, of course. I’ve understood for a long time–even when you were working for me–that you despised me, though I never knew why,” Barry said.

“I hate a four-flusher who buys applause,” said Willett. “You’ve always bought it. You’ve paid millions to get headlines about the great-hearted philanthropist.”

“There’s the gun, Richard, and here am I.”

“I think you’re trying to be noble even now. How much have you left?”

“Between four and five million.”

“Is that all?”

“I’ve been badly advised, Richard.”

“I told you Telford would be a bust. Who gets the rest?”

“Jacqueline.”

“Spindle-shanked little Jacqueline, eh? Does she give a damn about you?”

Barry said nothing. A slight color stained his cheeks. Hate steadied the eyes with which he looked at Willett.

“Let me have a drink, will you?” asked Willett.

“There on the sideboard. Help yourself.”

Willett went to the decanter and sloshed some whiskey into a glass. He tossed it off neat.

“Even your Scotch is a fake,” he said, and went back to the fireplace and a second cigarette. “What’s the jam you’re in?”

“I’m talking to you about a hundred thousand dollars. That’s reason enough for you.”

“You’re afraid, all right,” said Willett. “You’re brittle and sick with fear. Tell me what the jam is.”

Barry slipped into a chair. His head shuddered as he let it sink back against the cushion.

“I went into the contracting business,” he said. “I was poorly advised, Richard. Before certain city contracts could be secured, money had to change hands–and Telford has just found out that the district attorney is going to start an investigation tomorrow.”

“Philanthropist accused of bribery and corruption, eh? That would be sweet! I’d love that,” said Willett, and laughed.

Barry closed his eyes. Willett brought him three fingers of whiskey.

“Take a shot of this,” he directed.

The glass tinkled against the teeth of Barry. His head wavered as he lifted it. After one swallow he began to cough and writhe a little.

“It’s rotten stuff, right enough,” agreed Willett, and finished off the drink. “But that ought to brace you a little. Who’s the district attorney?”

“Thomas Hunt Lawlor.”

“I know that bird and he’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Can’t Telford get to him?”

“Lawlor aims at being governor,” said Barry. He put his head in his hands. “Richard, if I’m not dead before morning, I will burn that will and you lose a hundred thousand dollars. Did you tell anyone you were corning out here?”

“Not a soul.”

“Then the way is open to you.”

“Why don’t you put the gun to your crooked head and pull the trigger? Burn the will, and shoot yourself, and save a hundred thousand for dear little buck-toothed Jacqueline. I’ll stand here and watch the body fall for old time’s sake. Head’s up, David. I’ve always given you good advice. There won’t be any pain. Just lay the muzzle against the temple and pull the trigger and you’ll be laid away with your headlines; the district attorney will never bark up a dead tree, and somebody will build you a monument, somewhere.”

“I tried poison,” said Barry, “and my lips would not let it pass. I tried a gun and the cold of the steel–I tried gas, but when the tube was in my mouth–”

He leaped out of his chair.

“Now, steady, steady!” said Willett. “Don’t be a damned fool.”

“Oh my God, oh my God!” said Barry.

“Sit down,” commanded Willett. “Have you got a telephone?”

“No. I wouldn’t have–the babble of the crowd–”

“Very well. I’m going out to find one and have a little think.”

“What good will the telephone be? What can you do? Richard, don’t leave me alone!”

“Do I care if you sweat for another hour?” demanded Willett. “Take your scrawny hands off me!”

In the hall he paused to put on his coat and hat. He drew on his gloves before he touched the knob of the front door.

II. SHADOWS THAT CREEP

It was more than an hour later when Willett sat again at the fire of David Barry, smoking, blowing up the smoke, looking carefully through the brown mist toward the dead man. Barry hung by the neck with a doubled curtain-cord tied about his throat. The cord was fastened to the balustrade of the library gallery. He was still swaying–the force in a pendulum runs down so slowly–and the movement stirred slightly the silver of his lifted hair. This gave him a touch of life. His face held a slightly sardonic grin and his head, twisted to the side, added an air of thought.

Willett tossed the butt into the fire and stood up, pulled on his gloves. It was when he was standing that he noticed, for the first time, a little riffle of white that lay at the foot of one of the legs of the long table. He picked up a woman’s handkerchief. The linen was so delicate that the slightest breath of air would have been enough to keep it floating. The perfume was hardly noticeable–merely a clean fragrance. Willett looked toward the dead man. Hardly more than a hundred and twenty pounds in that starved body, he estimated. Then he slid the handkerchief into his pocket. The big automatic on the table he put away in his clothes also.

From a small table near the fire he took a newspaper, carried a hard-bottomed chair to the pendulous body of Barry, laid the paper on the seat of the chair and stepped up. His face was now almost on a level with that of Barry. He dusted his gloves against his clothes, opened his coat, rubbed them once more against his white shirt. After that he untied Barry’s necktie. It was a hand-woven silk, blue, with small gray-white flowers worked into the pattern. He looked at this for a moment, repassed it around Barry’s neck, and tied it again with care, adding touches like a woman before a mirror.

Stepping down from the chair, he returned it to its place, tossed the newspaper into the fire, and watched the roar of flame jump up the chimney. Some small, withering flakes of gray ash showered down onto the hearth. He brushed them back with the hearth broom and looked again at the corpse, critically. Something about it was not to his taste, so he returned and, this time, untied and tied again the laces of the dangling shoes. When he had finished this, he noticed that the body had stopped swinging. With a push he restarted the gentle oscillation. After that, he went into the adjoining bedroom.

A heavy wooden four-poster looked too big for the chamber. The head was toward a recessed window. There was a fireplace fitted with a paneled door, a small built-in bookcase that made a pleasant spot of color in the rough plaster of the wall; figured chintz framed the two windows. A soft tan rug covered the floor.

Willett stepped behind the bed and pulled hard on the head posts. The bed gave way slowly toward him. He pushed it back in place and noticed that the casters had left distinct trails across the nap of the rug. There was not a solid headboard but fluted wooden balusters which would have the advantage of letting light from the window pour over the shoulder of one who wished to read in bed. Barry had that habit. On the bedside table were Florence Ayscough’s three volumes of translations from the Chinese, a paper cutter, a fountain pen desk set, an ashtray of pale jade. Willett took off the bedcover, folded it, laid it across the back of a chair. Under the pillow he found a fresh suit of pajamas, white silk with heavy blue embroidery around the buttonholes. He took off his shoes, pulled on the pajamas, opened the bed, and got into it. He lighted a cigarette from the box of them on the bedside table and opened one of the Ayscough books.

Tu Fu was a great poet but sad, aching with sadness. Willett tamped out the cigarette. Jabbing the coal down against the polish of the jade was a desecration. He replaced the book on the table, open and face down, got up from the bed, took off the pajamas and looked at his clothes to make sure that no white threads had adhered to them. Next there was the smoothing of the pillows, the replacing of the carefully folded pajamas under them, the remaking of the bed, the replacing of the cover. It was hard to do these things with gloved hands.

As he finished, the wind leaped out of the whistling distance and struck the house, shaking it till the windows hummed and the shutters rattled. A long, hushing draught ran through the place as though a door had been opened.

Willett pulled the automatic out of his pocket and raised his eyes to listen. The breathing of the wind ceased through the house; it went roaring off among the trees. A taint of wood smoke had entered the air from the living room.

He stepped into the adjoining bedroom. He himself had used that bed more than once in the other days. He remembered even the figures in the design of the toile de Jouy that curtained the little, high windows. The same cloth covered the chairs beside the fireplace, and there was a pillar lamp on the fireside table exactly like that in Barry’s room, except that the shade was red. He started a little when he saw this, then took the shade from the lamp and passed back into the other chamber. The shade of Barry’s bedside light was drum-shaped and an appropriate green with a little Directoire print on one side. He removed that shade also and deliberately toppled the standard to the ground. The crash of the fall was surprisingly loud. His muscles jumped. He had to set his teeth and, when he leaned to pick up the fallen lamp, he started about, suddenly. A shadow seemed to be disappearing to the left of the living room door. But that was nerves, of course.

Rather pale, now, his head jutting forward with strain, he examined the standard of the lamp. A bit of the gilding had broken away from the painted base; that was all. He put on the lamp the shade he had taken from the adjoining bedchamber and went back into the living room. To cross the threshold took effort. A faint swirl of smoke and ashes from the hearth hung like a ghost in the air. David Barry, his head thoughtfully on one side, his eyes half-closed, meditated upon him. Willett dropped the Directoire shade into the fire. It was gone in a gust of flame. With the tongs he picked the wire frame out of the fire and put it to one side.

Still there was something to do in the back of the house. He returned through Barry’s chamber into the bathroom. When he snapped on the light, it polished the white of the tiles. All was in undisturbed order, particularly the linen hand towels on the swinging rack beside the washbowl. It would have been a stupid oversight to leave this place untouched.

Another burst of storm went racketing overhead and whistling underfoot. In the mirror before him he saw his face was bright with sweat. His eyes were too big.

He washed his hands, dried them on a towel, replaced it on the rack. From the cabinet behind the mirror he took a tube of toothpaste, unscrewed the top from it, left it on the glass shelf below the mirror. There was a toothbrush, the bristles a little ragged toward the toe. He moistened that brush and placed it beside the tube of paste.

Everything was finished now, if he could get safely from the house. An invincible fear slid his hand down to the butt of the automatic as he opened the door of the bathroom. Again, shadows seemed to shrink swiftly away to either side. Nerves once more. He rubbed the back of his chamois glove across his sweating lips. His eyes were stretched so wide open they ached.

So across the threshold of the living room again. He got the wire frame from the hearth, crumpled it, tucked it into a pocket. He walked on. The body of David Barry was beside him, behind him, no longer moving with a pendulous sway but slowly turning to this side and then to that. Now the eyes were directly behind him, watching with perfect indifference, with perfect knowledge.

He jerked open the door to the entrance hall and fairly leaped through into it. But then he remembered something else. He had to turn about and look at Barry again before he reached for the switch and snapped the room into darkness. Through the black shadow, something ran at him on swift tiptoes.

He set his teeth and waited, leaning forward a little. If a man gives way every time his nerves go haywire, he’ll break up quickly. The tiptoe rush out of darkness came straight at him, ceased, went over his shoulder in a mild breath of air.

Willett closed the door then. He refused to look at himself in the hall mirror as he put on his coat and hat. Now as he leaned at the front door, his hand on the knob of it, another man was leaning on the farther side in exactly the same posture.

Nerves again! He jerked the door open with a sudden decision–and saw before him the face of the wild outer night. Stars were in the west with clouds rolling back from them in masses, stained low down by the glare of the city lights.

He looked into his car before he climbed under the wheel. The self-starter labored, paused, labored again. If the car would not run, could he push it forward to the next incline of the highway? He knew that he could not. He tried the self-starter again. This time the eight cylinders began firing with a pun-that was much too loud.

In the quiet night of a city one could hear the noise of a starting engine half a mile away; but here there was the friendly uproar of the wind.

At last he was gliding down the driveway, lurching over the dip of the gutter onto the road. Fifty miles an hour was standing still. Sixty, seventy meant nothing. He hit eighty-five before fear began to blow away behind him. A few deep breaths set his heart right. He slowed to seventy; he could have dropped to forty if he chose, for the thing was entirely behind him. Time was like that–first a nothingness, then the impenetrable solidity of a wall.

The headlights flickered across dense brush beside the road. He screwed down the right-hand window and flung away the little tangled knot of the wire frame.

His hotel was too big to have a brain. He got the key to his room and went up in the elevator wondering what it was that depressed him with a near sense of trouble. Not until he was in his room did he remember the big automatic and the handkerchief, but between him and the house of David Barry now extended winding miles of rain-washed road, the pause and pouring of the city traffic, the mindless preoccupation of this great hotel.

He put the handkerchief and the gun into the top drawer of the dresser, well behind his collars and ties. Tomorrow he would manage to dispose of them both.

III. IN A DARK ROOM

DETECTIVE SERGEANT Angus Campbell was only thirty-two but already he was so bald that his head was varnished with highlights. He had big, bald eyes also, meaningless except when they began to glare with anger. They were glaring now as he fingered his telephone a moment before lifting it from the hook.

“Give me Detective Sergeant Patrick O’Rourke,” he said, and waited.

The family of Angus Campbell came from western Scotland; he himself came from western Nebraska. Like all his people, he was tall, erect, lean, and he carried his shoulders so square that a chip could be kept in balance on each of them. He had a gray, sober, sad face framed by a pair of great ears, red, outjutting, somewhat hairy. He had come to New York a dozen years before to become a reporter but, when he discovered that reporters only skim the surface of things, he joined the police. Angus Campbell was thorough.

A drawling voice spoke over the wire.

“This is Angus Campbell,” said the sergeant.

“Seems to me I’ve heard of you before,” answered Sergeant O’Rourke.

Campbell gritted his teeth.

“The inspector,” said Campbell, “has assigned us together on another case.”

“Who? You and me? He can’t assign us on another. I resign. I wouldn’t–”

“Resign and be damned,” said Angus Campbell, and hung up the telephone.

But he was not surprised to find himself, after that bright moment of hope, once more in the back of a police car with O’Rourke, once more with the stench of an O’Rourke cigar making his nostrils pinch together. He never looked at O’Rourke when he could avoid it but, when he was with the Irishman, the picture of that red, gross face came between him and his work, possessed his mind, made all his nerves taut.

Sergeant Campbell kept his wife and two children in a walk-up on 125th Street. Sergeant O’Rourke managed a Lexington Avenue apartment and his family summered in the cool green of Connecticut.

“As long as the inspector has rubbed our noses in it again,” said O’Rourke, “why not take it like men? Why not talk? The quicker we use the bean and solve this job, the quicker we can say good-bye.”

Disgust pressed the lips of Angus Campbell close together; an irresistible sense of logic parted them again.

“Aye,” said he.

“Take a fellow like this David Barry, with three volumes of newspaper clippings and five million berries on the bush, why should he dive off the balcony and choke himself?” asked O’Rourke.

“There’s nothing surprising about what a philanthropist does,” said Angus Campbell, “not once he’s started being a philanthropist.”

“Sometimes they got a past to bury,” said O’Rourke.

“Mostly it’s a future that they want to get,” answered Campbell.

“There would be motives for the murder, if it’s a murder,” said O’Rourke. “The will, one day old, was found in the drawer of the table in the room where old Barry hung. It leaves a hundred thousand dollars to a fellow by name of Richard Willett, a mining engineer just back in New York a couple of days. It leaves all the rest of the millions to his nearest relative, a gal by name of Jacqueline Barry, a free spender. The dressmakers in Paris begin to eat when she arrives. She’s loaded with debts; she’s five-feet-eight inches, a hundred-and-thirty-odd, rides in the first flight, and a good forehand drive–an all-round girl, she is, says the inspector. There’s Barry’s partner in the contracting business, Jeff Morrison, that never done anybody but Big Jeff any good. That’s three to look at. Have a cigar, Angus?”

“I never smoke till I can afford a good one,” said Campbell.

He was so pleased by this remark that he looked out the window and enjoyed that swift green rolling of the landscape, new-washed by the rain and shining now in the sun.

“God forgive Himself for making a man like you!” said O’Rourke. And they were silent the rest of the way to the Barry house.

Automobiles filled the entire oval of the entrance drive. A weary-faced lieutenant of police met them and gave his report.

“We’ve kept the newspapers in the dark. That’s a break for you boys,” he pointed out. “Medical examiner says that it’s death by strangulation. No tap on the head or anything. Straight suicide, but the inspector wants it looked into. Telephoned to Mr. Jeffrey Morrison, Barry’s partner in the contracting business–Meet Detective Sergeants Campbell and O’Rourke, Mr. Morrison.”

He had an alderman’s bulk set on the legs of an athlete, a pink face, soft, hairy, pink hands. He held a cigar fishtailed into a wide, wet mass by much chewing.

“Glad to meet you boys,” said Jeffrey. “I hope you dig into this. David Barry–well, all I say is: Why? Why? Man revered by the whole world–and so, why? is all I say.”

“Who’s the red-haired whiz-bang in the car, there, lieutenant?” asked O’Rourke.

“That’s the heiress. There’s five million dollars between her and yesterday. Miss Jacqueline Barry–Meet Detective Sergeants O’Rourke and Campbell.”

She said how-do-you-do to them without smiling. They went on.

“Cool,” said O’Rourke. “Cool as hell, but I always go for green eyes. Have a cigar, lieutenant? Who’s the big bird with the jaw and the eye?”

“Mr. Richard Willett, meet Detective Sergeants Campbell and O’Rourke. They’ll take charge of the investigation, Mr. Willett. And Mr. John Telford. We telephoned to Telford and Miss Barry. Telford’s the neighbor and lawyer of David Barry,” explained the lieutenant. “The woman sitting under the tree, crying, is Matilda Grunsky. She’s the servant. She found the body.”

“She’s not crying because she cares,” said Sergeant Campbell. “She’s only crying because she thinks she ought to. Is everything the same inside?”

“The body’s been removed to the bedroom. Can’t leave a dead man swinging all day. It kind of offends people, somehow.”

“You telephoned to the rest. Why’s Willett here?” asked O’Rourke.

“He got a letter from Barry asking him to come out in a rush. I saw the letter. It’s all in order.”

“Why the rush?” asked Campbell.

“Why a dead man, either?” asked the lieutenant. “How do I know why the rush? You boys come in, now? The rest of you folks just wait out here a few minutes and then you can all come inside.”

They passed into the living room.

“That’s where he hung from,” said the lieutenant. “I left the curtain cord hanging right there. No sign up there in the balcony–Hanging there, his feet half a yard off the floor, cooked. The medical examiner says something like ten o’clock last night. Around about there. There’s the will on the table–”

“Five million, besides what he wasted, you’d think he would of blown himself to a better dump than this,” said O’Rourke.

Campbell trailed behind, using his eyes. O’Rourke seemed to have no need of eyes. He trusted the lieutenant.

They went into the bedroom.

“Peaceful, ain’t he?” said O’Rourke, admiringly. “Can’t you close his eyes?”

“Not yet and keep them closed,” said the lieutenant. “Look the whole show over, boys. Why the hell the inspector wanted to drag you all the way out here for nothing I can’t tell. Shall I let the others in?”

“Sit down a minute and let ’em think we’re doing our stuff,” said O’Rourke. “Sit down, Campbell. There’s nothing to find here but suicide and the moral lesson.”

“There’s one queer one,” said the lieutenant. “The old boy always used to carry three or four thousand around in his pocket. He’s been known to stop bang in the middle of the street and pass a cold thousand to one of the poor and deserving. But there’s no spot cash in his pocket now. There’s not even a wallet.”

Angus Campbell said, “You’d be meaning that a thief strangled him and then dropped the body over the balcony railing, yonder? Would a thief waste the time to do that after he once had the money in his pocket?”

“Logical is what old Angus is,” said O’Rourke. “He don’t believe in fish till after he’s swallered it. You could let in the crowd now. I guess our day’s work is done.”

They entered the house talking quietly, but not at all sadly, together. Tall, handsome John Telford walked first with Jacqueline Barry. Morrison and Willett came in the rear. They passed into the bedroom.

Angus Campbell, standing with O’Rourke at the doorway, could not help observing, “Not a tear in the lot of them. They’re all modern. Lawyer, partner, heiress, legatee, and not a wet eye in the lot. Too modern to feel any emotion. Machines. Detectives used to have a chance. They could read faces. But now we might as well look at monkeys. You take a widow at noon and she grieves till it’s cocktail time, unless somebody drops in for tennis in the afternoon.”

John Telford exclaimed suddenly: “What’s the matter, Jacqueline? Here–we’ll get to some air.”

He half-carried her past the detectives, her head on his shoulder. In a chair under the living room window he placed her.

“Listen!” muttered Campbell. “That’s modern, isn’t it?”

She was saying: “Sorry, John. I didn’t think it would hit me so hard. We never cared a rap for each other. If his eyes had been closed, it would have been all right.”

The voice of Richard Willett said, “I didn’t know that Barry was color-blind. What’s a red lamp shade doing in this room?”

“What’s the matter with it? It looks all right to me,” said O’Rourke.

“Wait a minute,” said Campbell. “Lieutenant!”

“Well?” asked the policeman.

“That light in the living room–that wasn’t touched? Nobody switched it off?”

“No,” said the lieutenant. “What you driving at?”

“Speaking of lamps is what made me think,” admitted Campbell. “Maybe the light’s burned out.”

He strode across the living room and turned the switch. The shades of the floor lamps brightened. “You sure nobody touched the switch since Barry’s body was found?” he demanded.

“I’ll get the maid and ask her,” said the lieutenant.

She came with great eyes, walking as though the floor were thin ice.

“When you came in here this morning,” said Campbell, “did you touch the electric switch by the door?”

“I only seen,” said Matilda Grunsky, “and then I didn’t touch anything.”

“Come across with it,” said O’Rourke. “Everybody’s looking at you, Angus. What’s the matter with you?”

“Well,” said Campbell, “I was only thinking it was a queer thing that a man would commit suicide in the dark.”

“Well, damn my eyes, I’m a fool!” said O’Rourke.

He looked toward the girl. She was sitting up straight in her chair, suddenly, and instead of staring at the brightness of the lamps, she was looking across the room toward the curtain cord that still dangled from the balcony in two long strands, significantly curled up at the ends.

John Telford said: “No, that’s true!”

Big Jeffrey Morrison exclaimed: “That’s what I said. Lieutenant, you remember I said it: Why? Why should he do it? I tell you, it’s going to turn out murder. Would a man climb all the way up onto that balcony and tie the rope around his neck and the other end around the railing and then jump? What would he be trying to do? Save the electric bill? You can see what a trained mind does. You have the trained mind, Sergeant Campbell.”

O’Rourke shifted his gaze to Richard Willett. The man with the jaw and the eye had not spoken a word. He was lighting a cigarette, carefully, like a man untroubled by thought.