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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Mystery of the Second Shot," Rufus Gillmore crafts a gripping thriller that intertwines intricate plot twists with profound psychological insight. Set against the backdrop of a small, seemingly tranquil town disrupted by a chilling crime, the narrative unfolds through multiple perspectives, revealing the disappointment of assumptions and the complexities of human motives. Gillmore employs a rich, immersive prose style, echoing the traditions of classic detective fiction while infusing contemporary themes of anxiety and alienation, ensuring the novel resonates in today's cultural landscape. Rufus Gillmore, an acclaimed author known for his keen observations of human nature, draws on his experiences as a criminologist and amateur sleuth to inform this compelling work. His background lends authenticity to the procedural elements of the story, while his deep understanding of psychological nuances allows for a nuanced exploration of personal and societal conflicts, highlighting the often unspoken facets of human interactions. Readers captivated by intricate mysteries and a profound exploration of character will find "The Mystery of the Second Shot" an essential addition to their literary repertoire. Gillmore's skillful blending of suspense and psychological depth ensures a riveting experience that will linger long after the final page is turned. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Mystery Of The Second Shot
Table of Contents
The Mystery Of The Second Shot
Chapter 1 The Black Limousine
A thin-faced young stenographer was the first to suspect. She wrote the same sentence over and over—and listened. In the official refrigerator-like stillness of the Massachusetts Bank Commissioner’s Department, words carried, and the teasing excitement soon took on a meaning. Finally, about half past ten on that Wednesday morning, after a last whispered conference with his chief, Deputy-Commissioner Haswell bolted out of the Department. The thin-faced stenographer allowed him time to reach the elevator; then, she fluttered out into the State House corridor and called aside a reporter who had bribed her with baseball passes. Within ten minutes, the manager of the State House News Service began to telephone the city editor of each Boston daily the significant news: “It looks as though something were about to happen at last to the good old Province Trust Company. That’s all I know. Get busy!”
Eight Boston reporters—among them John Ashley of The Eagle—started on a foot race to State Street. But Deputy-Commissioner Haswell had taken a taxi. They arrived to find the bank closed, policemen driving a gaping crowd off the curb, and a surly sergeant who, stationed at the side door, denied them entrance.
The reporters promptly pooled their interests. The suspension of this venerable trust company marked the first check to the career of a conspicuous citizen. Each reporter knew it to be his business to locate Bertrand Newhall, President of the Province Trust Company, and to note carefully how he bore up.
According to the sergeant at the door, President Newhall was not inside. By adroit team-work, the reporters worried him into calling out one of the clerks, who confirmed his statement. But it was not likely that the president of a defunct bank would be absent from his post at such a crisis. While the rest watched the doors, two reporters hurried to neighboring pay-stations to get past the police by telephone. These returned with the same discouraging news, but the skeptical reporters still hung about the two doors, convinced that they had President Newhall cornered. In the meantime, one of their number had departed, intent upon a simple method of solving the problem.
Through a window bearing a “To Let” sign, with a pair of opera-glasses glued to his eyes, Ashley of The Eagle watched every movement across the street in the Province Trust Company. From this unoccupied office in an upper story, he had a slanting view into the trust company, over the heads of the crowd in the street and unobstructed by the opaque screens in the bank’s front windows.
At the long desk nearest to the great vault, stood Deputy-Commissioner Haswell. He was rapidly examining packages of stocks, bonds and notes, stopping from time to time to speak to a clerk beside him, who thereupon took tally or made notes. Two other men, apparently officials of the trust company, hovered about, alternately answering the Commissioner’s questions and withdrawing to shake their heads in ominous consultation. Scattered behind the grille, a score of clerks kept up a pretense of work; their cocked heads spoke of eager ears kept to the wind. Ashley fixed his glasses upon one after another. President Newhall was not inside the grilled-in-inclosure.
Ashley moved to the other side of the narrow office. Here he secured a view of the president’s and directors’ rooms. The president’s room was occupied only by a stenographer sitting idly at her machine; in the directors’ room, half a dozen men could be discerned through the glass partition grouped in earnest conversation. At each in turn he aimed his glasses and waited patiently until some shift in the talk brought face or profile to view. After a long time, Ashley swung the glasses from his eyes. President Newhall was not there either. If the reporters wished to learn how he took this—the first mishap in his triumphant career—they must hunt for him elsewhere.
Ashley returned the borrowed opera-glasses to the optician on the ground floor. He was about to cross the street to acquaint the other reporters with his discovery, when the vehement talk of a little Italian bootblack caught his attention. The bootblack stood by his stand at the head of the alley opposite the trust company. He was holding forth to a small knot of listeners, talking with the gesture and passion peculiar to the modern Latin. Aimless curiosity sent Ashley to him. Soon his casual curiosity changed to a lively interest. He had come upon information which lent an impetus and an entirely new bearing to the pursuit of President Newhall.
At half past seven that morning, when the bootblack arrived to open his stand, he had found a black limousine stationed before it. As the clocks began to strike eight, the chauffeur jumped out and cranked up the engine. Shortly afterwards, President Newhall came out of the clerks’ entrance of the Province Trust Company. He was smoking a cigar and showed no evidence of flurry. He carried nothing which would indicate that he was leaving for any time or distance. He crossed the street and entered the waiting car. The chauffeur swung away from the curb and the black limousine, with its single passenger, disappeared up State Street.
Ashley’s cross-examination failed to shake the little Italian’s assurance on two points of importance. He was certain that the chauffeur had cranked up before President Newhall came out of the trust company, and he was positive that the chauffeur had started off without directions from Newhall. Apparently, that departure had been carefully planned in advance.
Chapter 2 The Girl in the Doorway
Overhauling the past of a prominent citizen is frequently very like turning over flat stones in a moist meadow.[1q] Under the smooth exterior, one should prepare to come upon the slime of hidden motives and all manner of loathsome things scurrying from the light of day.
When Bertrand Newhall[1], by organizing the Wool Trust, played the part of a pirate in modern business, conservative Boston sneered. When, a few years later, he was caught red-handed in the act of seizing control of the historic Province Trust Company, conservative Boston stopped sneering and began to fight. But Bertrand Newhall was one not only reckless of all Boston business traditions, but also one whose hand was never discerned at its work until the issue was certain. When they sought to snatch from him the presidency of the Province Trust Company, he deftly checkmated every move. When, defeated, they fell to predicting the speedy downfall of this fine old institution, he merely smiled. He could afford to smile. The contest had served to demonstrate to all Boston that this bank was as utterly his as if he had it buttoned inside of his steel-gray waistcoat.
His success against such a powerful alliance of interests made him, through the aid of the newspapers, a man of mark. City editors, sensing in him that disturbance which is news, had played him up as one who fought “the interests.” When he triumphed, they had worked up public interest to a pitch which lent a news value to the printing of his very name. But one side of his character they discreetly avoided. By instinct Bertrand Newhall seemed always to select the way to his ends likely to provoke the most resistance. And never an enemy arose in his path but he stopped to punish him. It is an important principle of successful business men to accept opposition serenely, to waste no time seeking revenge. Bertrand Newhall was an exception. In his malevolent pursuit of an enemy there was never any let up; it revealed a fixity of purpose and a sly cunning amounting to mania.
Bertrand Newhall started the Wool Trust to destroy a competitor in the wool business who had dared to obstruct one of his earlier schemes. His Wool Trust—an enterprise cunning and ruthless as Newhall himself—engaged to transfer the wool of producers direct to consumers on a cooperative basis. Its success would have wiped out one of the city’s foremost trades. Boston wool dealers aligned themselves against it. They closed in and compelled the banks to call their loans to Newhall. But just as they thought that they had him, he suddenly loomed up in control of the Province Trust Company. With a resentment which was characteristic, he now started to punish the banks which had withdrawn their assistance by offering to pay two and one-half and even three per cent, interest upon many of their depositors’ running accounts.
Soon after he won his trust company fight, his first enemy in the wool trade—an old man named Thorpe—stole away to his unoccupied summer home and killed himself. Those acquainted with Bertrand Newhall’s relentless processes knew him to be responsible for the ruin, if not the actual death, of this old man. But what he had done, he had done legitimately, according to the rules of that form of civilized warfare called “business.” No newspaper cared to flirt with libel by laying the crime at his door. In fact, most of them were too deeply involved in making a popular idol of Bertrand Newhall. Moreover, at this juncture, he sent them word that he had just insured his life for half a million dollars. This was a huge policy for any business man to carry on his life at that time. The Boston newspapers featured this news instead.
The long fight against the wool trade had reduced the Wool Trust to an anemic and tottering condition. After Bertrand Newhall assumed charge of his bank, the Wool Trust took on a more healthy outward aspect. President Newhall’s enemies—and they were many by this time—insinuated that this improvement was due to a secret process of blood transfusion from the Province Trust Company. They declared that Newhall had already dissipated his own private means, that he was now engaged—illegally—in transferring the resources of the trust company to his earlier enterprise. But they could offer no proof, and city editors came to regard the insinuations of these men whom Newhall had out-generaled, as founded upon only rancor and spite. Bertrand Newhall, they credited with being too shrewd a man to violate the State Banking Laws.
But the modern newspaper flourishes on crime and has a greedy humor for suspicion. Ashley’s discovery of President Newhall’s sudden and carefully maneuvered exit threaded together all these old rumors. Followed one of those sensational man-hunts in which modern reporters, quicker of scent, get the start of the bigger-footed, smaller-headed police. All that afternoon, a steadily increasing number of reporters ransacked the city in a vain hunt for the missing man.
Ashley returned to The Eagle at about four that afternoon to learn that the police had just joined in the chase, that Newhall was now wanted for misapplication of the funds of the closed bank. With this news came that quick leap of the spirits known only to the reporter who has nosed out “a big story.” But his elation was short-lived.
Now that the police had confirmed Ashley’s suspicions, Henderson, the star-reporter of The Eagle, had taken over the assignment. To Henderson, the worst thing about life was that anyone else should succeed. Ashley had incurred his enmity a few months before by furnishing the clew which enabled the State Police to clear up the famous “Extension Bag Mystery.” Neither reporters nor police had attached any significance to certain faint figures in red chalk upon this grisly receptacle until Ashley, studying them under a microscope, had declared them to be a pawnbroker’s number. Immediately, the State Police had called in every Boston pawnbroker to identify the bag; the one who had sold it was discovered and a murderer run down. Henderson had not liked being beaten by a man on his own paper, and by “a heady young cub” at that. He had it in for Ashley; and all his fellow-reporters knew it.
Ashley found himself cut off midway in his report. Henderson turned his back on him and began coolly to send other reporters over the very ground which he had covered. Retiring to his desk, Ashley was compelled to witness man after man hurry out on the hunt and to feel the eyes of the others upon him, watching how he took his medicine. To add to the insult, Henderson on his way out was stopping casually to make remarks which meant much—and nothing. Ashley jumped up and intercepted him.
“See here, Henderson,” he said calmly, “just where do I fit?”
“Fit?” mocked Henderson, his tone bringing the attention upon them of every man in the room. “Fit!” he repeated. “Why, you don’t fit at all. You’re an accident, a left-over, a tin can on the dump so far as this case is concerned.” He started to pass.
Ashley took him by the arm. “I started this,” he protested, “and don’t you think for a minute that you’re going to lose me in the shuffle.”
Henderson jerked his arm free. “You mix in on this, and I’ll put it all over you,” he threatened; “all over you—so your best friend won’t know you.”
Ashley laughed. Henderson was a soft, spongy man whom he could have thrown like a pillow. His fingers itched—but he laughed.
Henderson’s cheeks turned the color of claret. “If you want to learn who’s boss here, just start something—that’s all I’ve got to say to you—just start something.” Without waiting for an answer, Henderson whirled about and left the office.
Shortly after eleven on that humid June night, Ashley bent his course once again in the direction of Newhall’s city residence. For almost twelve consecutive hours, he had hunted for the missing man without obtaining a single clew. Four times before that day he had returned to this deserted house only to pound vainly upon its boarded-up doors. His first vigorous will for the chase flagged, but the habit persisted, keeping him at it with a dull, senseless obstinacy like the second-wind of a runner.
Not a person was in sight as he turned into Commonwealth Avenue. The rows of deserted houses flung back at him in a persistent tattoo the echo of his own footsteps. The absence of people and all the companionable signs and sounds of life freed his mind, released his thoughts to the far places. For the first time that day the object of his search drifted unnoticed from mind.
Suddenly the door of one of the houses in the dead block was thrown violently open. A young woman burst out. Ashley stopped short, felt his heart cease to pump. It was as though he were crossing a graveyard alone at night; someone had suddenly stepped out from behind a tombstone.
She was fighting for air. She glanced wildly up and down the avenue, saw him, and came rushing down the stone steps. Almost before his mind began to register, she had reached and seized him by the arm.
“Come—come quick!” she gasped. She did not look at him, but towards the house. She did not heed his questions, but only tugged madly at his sleeve. A moment he held back, then he ran with her along the sidewalk, up the steps, into the house.
A few seconds later, Ashley was bending over the body of a man. It lay dull and without show of life upon a landing of the inside staircase to which the girl had dragged him. He turned it over and brought the face to view. Then he shot upright. Even in the dim light which came from a distant room in the hall above, he recognized the strong features. It was Bertrand Newhall.
Chapter 3 A Telephone Number
“Father, oh, father, why did you?—how could you? Oh, father, father!” the girl wailed.
In the horror and amazement of his discovery, Ashley had utterly forgotten her existence. He turned from the set dead face on the landing to the distorted living one on the staircase.
She had collapsed against the banister a few steps below him—a huddle of shaking nerves—as though she dared not come nearer the body. The hand which clung to the rail was as white as her face, the other clutched a large green cloth bag—the kind that lawyers carry. Even in that moment of horror, Ashley noted the curious contrast of this business-like bag with the smartness of her chic summer frock, observed the tight hold she kept upon it, realized that it must have been in her hand all the time.
“Oh, father! father!” she moaned. “He—he has killed himself. Oh, I tried—” her voice broke. After a time, she controlled it. “I tried so hard to reach him in time. Is—is he—?” her voice refused to go on.
Ashley bent over and raised one of Newhall’s arms. There was no perceptible pulse; the hand lay limply in his. He placed the back of his bare wrist close to the man’s lips; no breath fanned it. He turned back toward the girl and solemnly nodded his head.
By a quick leap he managed to catch her as her hand loosened from the rail. He supported her until her body ceased to tremble and her hysterical sobbing quieted. Then she drew away from him.
“What—what am I to do?” she begged.
Ashley led her gently down the stairs and turned on a light. “I am sorry, but I’m afraid you can’t leave yet. The police may want to ask some questions.” He stopped before a chair in the lower hall. “Perhaps you had better sit down here and rest while I telephone for them.”
“The police?” She seemed startled.
“They will have to be notified. Perhaps I could telephone for some of your friends first.”
“There is no one but—” she stopped and bit her under lip; “there is no one I could send for at this hour. I have been abroad and have been home only a few days. I can’t think of anyone,” she explained. She sat down. For an instant, she seemed oblivious of everything. But he had hardly reached the telephone in the back of the hall before she called, “Tell them that my father has committed suicide.”
At the time, this request made little impression on the reporter, but he observed with some surprise the eager tone in which it was uttered.
After an irritating clash with a stupid telephone operator, Ashley secured and notified Police Headquarters. He was on the point of telephoning to his own paper, when it occurred to him that it would be wiser to take advantage of the time before the police came to make a fuller investigation. As he hurried back along the hall, Miss Newhall sprang to her feet.
“You aren’t going to leave me,” she protested tremulously.
“Only to put things back as they were, before the police come,” he explained.
“Oh!” She sank back in the chair. “I won’t mind —if you don’t leave the house. I’m not afraid,” she declared in a voice which shook so that it belied her statement, “only—only I need someone near to tell me what to do when the police come.”
He reassured her and hastened up the stairs.
The body lay upon the upper landing where the front stairway turned at a right angle towards the upper hallway, four steps above. The wound was on the left side, near the heart. Ashley turned on the light in the upper hall and returned to make a more thorough examination. Near the right hand lay a Colt automatic. One shot had been fired from it. After a long search, he found the shell, lying upon one of the lower stairs. He groped about the rest of the stairs and landing without coming upon anything else. Apparently it was a simple case of suicide.
He turned the body back on its left side, as he had found it. As he did so a dark object which it had covered came to sight. He picked it up. It was a chauffeur’s cap. The name of the maker had been torn from it, but the size-tag—7 3/8—remained. With a quickly stifled cry of surprise, he turned the body over again. There were no powder marks upon the clothes.
Puzzled, Ashley again examined the cap. Newhall was a man whom he had often observed motoring about downtown, but never wearing such a cheap cap as this. Whose cap, then, could it be? Replacing the body in its first position, he stepped gingerly over it, up the stairs and into the hall above. A hasty examination showed him nothing of interest there. He passed on to a room opening directly opposite the top of the staircase. The door stood wide open. He peered into it. It was a narrow room, hardly more than a closet, lighted by a single incandescent lamp; it was furnished with a sewing machine, two low tables and a pair of cane-seat chairs. Manifestly, it was a sewing-room. He was about to enter to search it further when, suddenly, he stopped and bent an attentive ear towards the staircase.
The sound of a woman’s voice—lowered for secrecy —came up to him. “Please, oh, please, get me Back Bay 43210[2],” it pleaded. Now that he gave it attention, he realized that he had heard, subconsciously, these same sounds several times before. Whom could Miss Newhall be calling up with such an attempt at secrecy? He dropped his search, switched off the hall light and hastened quietly downstairs. But his footsteps on the bare hall below no sooner warned her of his approach than she hastily hung up the receiver. She turned toward him; her face flushed.
“I was trying to get a friend of mine, but she was not at home,” she explained, returning to her seat.
A slight emphasis on the “she” made an unpleasant impression upon Ashley.
“I came down to call up a number myself,” he said in excuse. “Are you quite through?” Her assent obliged him to call up The Eagle. It was time that he notified his paper of his discovery. But the receiver was hardly adjusted to his ear, when he was stopped.
“Sorry, madam, Back Bay 43210 doesn’t answer,” the telephone operator informed him.
He gave no evidence of what he had learned, asked for his own number. But he was not to get the news to his paper so easily. He was interrupted by a patrol wagon rolling up to the door. A squad of police scrambled out and entered the house.
At their head and front came Sergeant Smith, big and surly from much ordering about of men. He carried a lantern, which he held up rudely before the girl’s face. “Who are you?” he demanded brusquely.
“I am Miss Newhall,” she replied, pulling back. “It is my father—upstairs.”
“Oh!” Sergeant Smith was surprised, if not softened. “Well, you sit down here,” he ordered. “We’ll take charge of things here.”
At that moment his swinging lantern disclosed Ashley at the telephone. “What are you doing there?” he yelled. “Who are you, anyway?”
“Ashley, of—”
“Hang up that telephone and see that you keep away from it,” he interrupted. Then he turned to his men.
“Bill,” he roared, “you take the door and see that no one comes in or goes out without my orders. Come on now, the rest of you, get a move on, light up and search the house.”
Chapter 4 The Girl Seems Strangely Interested
Before the arrival of the medical examiner, summoned from his bed, and of the inspector, dispatched from police headquarters, Sergeant Smith and his detail had authority only to search the premises for people and evidence. What they lacked in power, they proceeded to make up in noise, thumping about the house, opening and shutting doors, poking into corners and closets and under furniture.
While his men ransacked the premises, Sergeant Smith, after a hasty survey of the body, mounted guard over Miss Newhall and Ashley. The law prescribes that everyone shall be considered innocent until proved guilty[2q], but there never was a policeman yet who believed or practiced this—least of all Sergeant Smith. The esteem of his superiors was to be earned only by presenting facts to them in the guise of crime, in laying early hands upon somebody who could be made to look guilty. Police practice would excuse his overstepping the bounds of decency, but never his failure to suspect where suspicion could be made to stick. Miss Newhall and Ashley he viewed with suspicion merely because he found them in this strange situation. If he could surprise or bully one or both of them into making any damaging admissions, so much the better for him with the coming inspector.
Ashley, after a question or two, he gave over as too experienced to be trapped into any slip of the tongue; but a woman, if bullied, could usually be startled into giving the cue to anything criminal. He set to work “to throw the scare into her.”
He listened to Miss Newhall’s story with an intimidating silence. When she finished, he began that hectoring which brings on panic.
“You say you reached Boston at nine o’clock and that you didn’t enter this house until after eleven—what were you doing in those two hours?” he demanded.
“I was trying to find my father at the bank and at some of his clubs,” Miss Newhall answered, her eyes flashing at the insult of his manner.
“What clubs?” he snapped.
She named four.
“So you weren’t in your father’s confidence; he couldn’t trust you, couldn’t he?” prodded Sergeant Smith, continuing, before she could answer. “Do you mean to tell me you didn’t know where he was tonight?”
The girl drew back. “I knew he was in Boston,” she admitted, nervously.
Sergeant Smith had been waiting for some just such sign of weakness. “You knew he was in Boston and you knew he intended to commit suicide without moving a finger to prevent him until nine o’clock?” he yelled in a voice calculated to break the windows.
“I—I didn’t know—I—” The girl’s voice trembled, broke.
Ashley, unable to endure the spectacle longer, stepped forward. “You don’t need to answer any more of that man’s questions,” he whispered. She drew back, put Ashley between her and the bullying sergeant.
“What do you mean by buttin’ in? Any more of this and you’ll sleep in a cell,” roared Sergeant Smith, taking a threatening step toward the reporter. “Come back here, I’m not through with you,” he called after the girl.
“You don’t need to obey that order,” Ashley advised her without turning.
