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CHAPTER 3

Ten minutes later Martin, in a borrowed overcoat, strode off between two patrolmen, jauntily whistling “Frankie and Johnnie”. Once out of the store, however, his chirruping ceased. He exchanged bantering remarks with the policemen as he climbed into the patrol wagon, knowing full well that if he didn’t laugh, he would undeniably break down and bawl his head off like a baby. He was done for. Washed up.

“This,” he said, “is the end to what was generally regarded as a pretty smart career. It—”

“Cheer up,” one of the cops said, “you done a lot in a short time, kid. Now you’re gonna be able to sit an’ think.” Inside the store, Mrs. Jordan drew on her gloves.

“The police,” she told Dot, “are simply unspeakable. So are these reporters. I want six books, my dear. Here’s the list. Send them to me at the Mayflower.”

She passed over a bill.

“This should cover them.” Head in the air, Mrs. Jordan started for the door.

“Hey, you!” Gilroy grabbed her by the arm. “Hey, who do you think you are, huh? You can’t leave here. You can’t go till I tell you! You got to stay—”

“My good man, you’ve solved this situation to your own entire satisfaction without my aid. I see no reason for my being detained any longer.”

“See here, lady—”

“Jones,” Mrs. Jordan announced, “is innocent. A child—in fact, rather a simple-minded child—could grasp that without effort. You’ve given him no earthly chance, and I trust that you will suffer for it. You know my name and address—”

“Yeah, but that don’t make no difference to me, lady. You got to stay here just the same. Ain’t goin’ to be detained, huh? Say, who do you think you are, huh?”

The store door opened and four men walked in. Even Dot, who never read the newspapers, knew them instantly—a senator, a world-famous lawyer, an ex-cabinet member and a renowned millionaire. The police force gasped, and the photographers audibly bemoaned the flash bulbs they had wasted on Martin and the books.

The lawyer spoke first to Mrs. Jordan.

“My dear Agatha, I’m so sorry for the delay. But—”

“Quite all right, Harry. Quite. Please tell these persons who I am. Really, Harry, something simply must be done about the police. I don’t know when I’ve been more thoroughly irritated. Of course I shall take no notice of it, not officially, but it’s been very trying. Very trying indeed.” Gilroy drew a deep breath and the captain’s face blanched as the ex-cabinet member swung around and stared at them coldly.

“Of course you know,” he said, “that Mrs. Jordan’s late husband was a former governor of this state?”

“I—er—no, sir. She never said nothing—”

“I should think,” the senator’s tones were severe, “that even the—that anyone might know without being told. The reporters—but, of course, one has to make allowances for police reporters.”

“Quite,” Mrs. Jordan agreed. “Now, Harry, will you be good enough to fix this all up, and arrange everything for the rest here? If we’re needed later, I suppose we must appear, but I know positively that none of us is even remotely connected with this affair.”

The lawyer nodded and reached for the phone. It took him eight minutes to unravel red tape.

“Politics,” Mrs. Jordan murmured to Dot, “but—er—the other side. Now, my dear, call me immediately if you need any sort of help, and let me know if anything happens. Harry, will you drop me at the Mayflower? Good. Personally,” she spoke directly to the captain, “I for one had no fault to find with the old police. One could invariably rely on the old police. They knew one. One could tell them by their helmets.” Scornfully she surveyed the visored caps of Gilroy and the captain. “Milkmen,” she said very distinctly. “Milkmen!”

The millionaire held the door open for her, and she swept out on the arm of the ex-cabinet member. The only detail lacking in the triumphal exit was a brass band.

Harbottle scuttled out in their wake, and during the silent interval that followed, two orderlies appeared and bore North’s body away on a stretcher.

“I guess,” the captain said, mopping his face with a limp handkerchief, “we’ll get out of here. Hanson,” he pointed to one of the plain-clothes men, “you stay outside. You two,” he jerked his head towards Dot and Leonidas, “can do what you want, but we’ll need you Monday. Mrs. Sebastian Jordan,” he muttered to himself. “Hell, I sort of thought she looked kind of familiar!”

The police and the reporters departed.

“What a woman, Bill!” Dot said. “What a woman! Why, with a few more calls, she could have got all the social register here! She’s priceless. She’s unique!”

“She—er—always was. I—er—Dot, let’s go out and get some dinner and consider all this. Martin seems to have been correct about the Give-a-Dog-a-Bad-Name Club.”

“But Bill,” Dot said plaintively as she took a seat opposite him later in a white enameled restaurant, “Bill, what can we do about Mart? Don’t you think that Lady Jordan—”

“No, if she’d thought she could help, she’d have included him in her high-handedness. You know,” he twirled his pince-nez, “I’m inclined to believe that the police are almost as dull as Mrs. Jordan is inclined to think. Yet they’re entirely justified in all that they’ve done. That much must be admitted.”

“I don’t see how,” Dot said. “Why, they—”

“Martin has publicly threatened North on more than one occasion. He apparently had called the North house, and must have known that North was coming to the store. Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Harbottle both knew North was in the store, therefore, why should Martin not have known? He had ample opportunity to strike North not only before the time of the crash outside, but after it. He knew all about that type of blow. Furthermore, he admits it all. I do not for an instant doubt Martin’s ability to explain everything satisfactorily, but there you are. I don’t believe he killed North, any more than you do. I don’t think Martin is guilty of any of the other crimes for which the police have held him. But in all fairness to the force, I am forced to acknowledge the case which the police have against him. There’s really only one thing we can do, Dot. That’s to find out who really killed North ourselves.”

Ignoring Dot’s blank stare, Leonidas blandly continued. “I taught Martin for six years. I know he’s honest and decent. It would be psychologically impossible for him to tiptoe up behind someone and bash him over the head. Mind, I don’t say that Martin is incapable of killing anyone, for I suppose that everyone at heart is a potential murderer. But Martin would fight in fair fashion. He wouldn’t sneak up to someone and bash them.”

“Yes, but—”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Leonidas went on calmly. “That’s exceedingly fortunate for us, because practically nothing whatever can be done about Martin until Monday morning. Hm.” He looked at his watch. “It’s six-thirty now. We have, Dot, approximately forty hours in which to secure the real murderer of Professor North. Apprehend and secure, perhaps I should say.”

“We—forty hours—apprehend—” Dot swallowed. “But—Bill Shakespeare, be sensible! We can’t do anything of the sort! How could we? We couldn’t! Secure the real murderer in forty hours indeed! Who, as Gilroy asked the dowager, who do youse think you are?”

“Why not? I’ve always felt that if I were confronted with a crisis of this sort, I should be able to utilize such powers of reasoning and deduction and concentration as I may have cultivated during forty years of teaching. In fact, I’ve proved that ability to my own satisfaction more than once on my travels. Teaching is not itself particularly active or invigorating, but it does endow one with a certain amount of resourcefulness. And people are always getting into scrapes, it seems to me, which require the hand of a—m’yes, I think, Dot, this can all be attended to in forty hours. I’ve been,” he added irrelevantly, “a bit bored lately.”

He was so firmly self-possessed that Dot decided he wasn’t joking. He meant it. He was serious, after all. And somehow, when this blue-eyed man announced that something could be done, you felt yourself believing that it really could.

“The police,” Leonidas said, “feel that Martin came to the bookstore for the sole purpose of killing North. Actually he came to escape the police and to get warm. Why was North there? Martin said he rarely went to bookstores. Why, therefore, should he have taken this afternoon off to make a systematic pilgrimage to a number of bookstores, as that list would indicate? And why should an eminent anthropologist desire The Collected Sermons and Theological Meditations of Phineas Twitchett, D.D.?”

“Why,” Dot grinned, “when you come right down to it, why should anyone want a book like that? And why just Volume Four? If you were going in for Twitchett, why not embrace him in toto? Why be so choosy? And why should that greasy little Italian have wanted it, too? I think that’s something more than coincidence.”

“And he had the name neatly typed out on a card, too. And North had the title on the tip of his tongue. M’yes. Our store was fourth on the list. North had no books with him when he came in, which makes me think he’d been seeking just that one book. He’d bought nothing else. Dot, finish your rice pudding and consider the infinite possibilities of Volume Four. Why did North want that book?”

“Don’t know. But how do you know he didn’t find it?”

“Possibly he might have, but it was nowhere near him when I went out back with Gilroy and that doctor of his. Nor on him. Nor in his pockets. Hm. As soon as you’re through, we’ll go back to the store and begin investigating on our own hook. I do not feel that any one of Martin’s golf clubs was the weapon used. It’s too foolish. And I want to find out more about the estimable Phineas Twitchett—if he existed and actually wrote this collection of sermons, and what sort of thing they were, and if any record exists of their having been in the store. Sometimes your uncle—er—broke down to the extent of noting a book or two in his ledger.”

Dot watched him furtively as she finished her meal. There was a great deal more to Leonidas than had met her eye at first. More than his spectacular resemblance to Shakespeare and his blue eyes and bland manner. There seemed to be no doubt whatsoever in his mind that forty hours were sufficient in which to find North’s murderer. And it wasn’t an idle boast or a meaningless bluff or simple conceit on his part. He just seemed to be sure.

Outside the bookstore, they found Hanson preparing to depart.

“My orders is,” he said, “that you two ain’t to be annoyed or disturbed. But there’ll be one of the boys hanging around the corner in case you want him for anything, and he’ll keep an eye on you at the same time. You’ll get a good curious crowd around here when this story breaks.”

After he left, Leonidas proceeded to lock the vestibule and turn out the hall lights.

“Somehow,” he said, “I dislike the thought of a good curious crowd. It makes me think of banana peels and gobs of crumpled newspapers and a great many unpleasant sounds and odors. Now, I’ll see what we can find out.”

From the bottom drawer of the desk he pulled out an enormous volume, a magazine, and a thin morocco bound book, all three of which he consulted at some length. Then, from a pile on the floor, he selected a tattered copy of Who’s Who.

“What’s the news?” Dot asked. “Or haven’t you any? Those are the most imposing things that you’re consulting, anyway.”

“The United States Catalogue,” Leonidas told her, “assures me that Twitchett actually existed. He wrote four volumes of sermons and meditations, which were privately printed and published at the author’s expense in Boston, 1809. They were all he ever did write. Vanity, I should say, all vanity. It appears that North wanted the last volume. He wanted it very badly, Dot. He’s been to all the big booksellers in Boston and asked for it, and asked for it with sufficient fire and determination that everyone of them has listed it in this week’s exchange column of the Publishers’ Weekly. And one bookstore adds that the volume wanted must bear the autograph signature of one Lyman North. Who’s Who bore out my suspicion that Lyman was a relative of John North. As a matter of fact, he is, or was, North’s grandfather.”

Dot looked at him with admiration. “Bill, I hand it to you. My hat’s off. So North wanted a particular Volume Four. His own grandfather’s. Was it a valuable book, or anything like that?”

“I’m coming to that part. It’s not included in this check list, which would indicate that it’s not valuable enough to be listed. You know, Dot, under the circumstances, I don’t feel that Quinland had anything to do with this business. Quinland tracks down only very rare and valuable items. Offhand, I’d say that Mr. Twitchett’s entire set probably isn’t worth five dollars, and that Volume Four by itself might bring perhaps a dollar. Quinland, therefore, wouldn’t have found it worth while to take the whole set. Certainly there’d be no reason for his killing North just to get possession of one single volume.”

Dot lighted a cigarette and stared at the clouds of smoke as they floated up towards the ceiling stacks.

“Bill,” she said at last, “in forty hours, you could release all of Sing Sing.”

“Well,” Leonidas said reminiscently, “once in Kenya, I—but that’s not important. I doubt it, Dot. Sing Sing is something else. Now, let’s go back and look about. The police took countless pictures, but they did very little actual looking. Why should one take pictures instead of looking at a scene, I wonder, if the scene is before one to look at?”

The rectangular section where North had been killed looked to Dot exactly as it had the day before when she saw it for the first time. On three sides rose the tall stacks of dusty books, dimly lighted by a single wire-caged bulb on a long extension cord.

Dot shuddered.

“It seems uncanny, doesn’t it, Bill? I mean, here are all these mangy tomes, just the same as they were before all this happened. Gives you a funny feeling of how everlasting books are compared to human beings, doesn’t it? Think of what those books could tell us about this affair if they could only speak up! Think of all the things that have happened around them, anyway! It’s silly, but I never thought about books much until I landed here yesterday, and now—why, I could write one myself with ease!”

Leonidas nodded. “Upstairs in my things I have a volume which belonged to the Borgias. That provides very rich material for speculation. I—Dot!”

He knelt down suddenly and began shifting to one side a pile of books which rose beside the cross stack. Energetically he grubbed while Dot held the light for him to see.

“Bill, what is it?”

“I have it,” he said as he got up. “I thought something fluttered behind those books as my foot touched that pile, and I was right! Dot, look! Dot, this is—this is—look!”

He held out a small red paper label, possibly an inch square. Across it in worn gilt letters was “TWITCHETT’S SERMONS”. Underneath was “Vol. 4”. Then, in a third line, in very small letters, was “L. North”.

“The backstrip label,” Leonidas explained as Dot stared at it. “North did find the book! Or else, at any rate, it was here in the store!”

“But where is it now?”

“It certainly wasn’t here when I came out with Gilroy and that doctor,” Leonidas told her. “I suppose there are two ways of looking at it. Either the book is here, or it is not here.”

“But who could have taken it away, Bill?”

“Generally speaking, Martin or Harbottle or Mrs. Jordan or Quinland. Or persons unknown. I doubt very much if Martin or Harbottle did. Or Quinland. And Mrs. Jordan’s coat had no visible pockets, nor did her dress. And her handbag was too small.”

“Then the book is here? Is that what you mean, Bill?”

“It may be here, or someone else removed it, or possibly it was sold long ago, and the label has reposed there on the floor ever since. Just the same, Dot, put on your apron. We shall hunt.”

* * * *

For the next half-hour, dust flew in the religious section and the adjoining stacks as it had never flown during the regime of Jonas Peters. Dot climbed the rickety ladder and, from a precarious perch on the top rung, made the circle of the upper stacks. Leonidas searched the lower shelves and the odd piles, and then, on hands and knees, went over every inch of floor.

They found, between them, a decrepit mouse trap, a stale candy bar, two pairs of unmated rubbers and a monocle, but no trace of Volume Four.

Dejectedly, Dot sat on a pile of books and lighted a cigarette with hands which would have put a coal heaver to shame. Her face, like Leonidas’s, was smudged with dirt, and every muscle of her arms and legs cried out in sheer weariness.

“It’s gone, Bill.”

“What’s that?”

“I say the damn thing’s gone.”

“M’yes. Dot, d’you recall what was on your uncle’s work bench in the back corner? Is your memory—”

“Visual? Very much so. I always won prizes at children’s parties for remembering all the articles on the table. Why d’you ask?”

“Could you possibly remember what was on the workbench before I went out into the black ell? That was about twenty minutes before Martin came in.”

“Um. I think I can.” Dot shut her eyes. “I think I can, Bill. Let’s see. Big shears. Small shears. Paste pot. Stamping tool. A bunch of ’em. Electric stove with glue pot in pan on top. Cold as ice. Two brushes stuck in same. Rounding hammer—”

“Wait. You mean that hammer for pounding and rounding the backs of books?”

“Yes. A heavy thing with a funny head. You’re mixing me up, Bill. Now I’ve got to begin at the beginning all over again. Paste pot—”

“You’re sure that the rounding hammer was here at that time?”

“Positive. I left it balanced on a couple of books when you called me and said you were going out to the ell. What’s this all about, Bill?”

“Because to a certain extent, I too have a visual memory. When I called you to take a look at Quinland, after Martin came, the hammer was balanced on a couple of books. I had started to thrust it back on the bench, thinking it was going to topple over. But I didn’t. And when we came by there a while ago, it seemed to me that the hammer was gone—”

Simultaneously the two of them made a dash for the work bench.

The hammer was nowhere to be seen, and no amount of frenzied searching could bring it to light anywhere in the store.

Leonidas beamed with satisfaction.

“This first hour,” he said, “has been very profitable indeed, Dot. We know that North found Volume Four and that whoever killed him took the book. Stole it from him. That whoever killed North used your rounding hammer for that purpose, and then removed the rounding hammer—”

“You mean, it was that hammer—you think that the hammer was—”

“Was the basher? I do.” Leonidas smiled. “After all, why should anyone go to the trouble of using a golf club as a hammer if there happened to be a hammer at hand?”

“But where’s the hammer gone to? Where is it now?”

“That,” Leonidas told her cheerfully, “is exactly what I propose we find out. We’ll start right now. I—er—feel that this should be most amus—I mean,” he corrected himself, “most interesting. M’yes. Very.”

Dot looked at him curiously. There was a new glint in his eyes and a new set to his shoulders. At first she had thought he was setting out to aid Martin because he liked the boy, or at least from purely philanthropic motives. She was now less sure. Leonidas Witherall might have spent forty years pounding knowledge into the minds of small boys, but it occurred to her that he had a considerable amount of the adventurous spirit usually associated with husky young men east of Suez or north of thirty-six.

Dot began to feel slightly uneasy.

“Look here, Bill,” she said hesitantly as he bundled her into her coat, “what—I mean, where are we going? I mean, I don’t want to be an old cold-water thrower, but—well, just what are your plans, anyway?”

“I think,” Leonidas said, “we will first pay a visit to North’s house. I’ve got the address here. North seems to be the—er—crux of all this, therefore it appears that his home is as good a starting place as any.”

“But Bill, I—well, I’ve an uneasy sort of feeling that’s drifting over me and saying that you and I are two nitwits, and that this business isn’t awfully safe. Meddling with police problems, and all. I mean, I think we’re going to run into trouble. I,” Dot hesitated as Leonidas looked quizzically at her, “I—well, instinct, or something, says so. I feel that something—in fact, that a lot is going to happen.”

“I should be indeed disappointed,” Leonidas tied a pearl gray scarf about his throat, “if a lot didn’t.”

Dot sat down on the chair by the desk.

“Bill, I mean it. Once in a while I have—”

“Premonitions?” Leonidas suggested.

“Don’t you laugh at me! I do. I had one the night my dorm burned down at college. The girls all laughed at me, but I packed my bag before I went to bed, and I was the only one who saved more than a pair of pajamas. And I felt this way before I went to the movies once last year. Just as the boy I was with started to buy the tickets, I grabbed his arm and told him not to, and an hour later—”

“The theater blew up,” Leonidas said.

“No, the balcony fell down. Don’t you look so—so—I can’t describe it! Anyway, I mean this.”

“I’m sure you do,” Leonidas said. “Very well, then, Dot, we’ll stay here, and let the police wreck Martin’s young life, and—”

Dot got up. “All right, come along! But I’m telling you, Bill Shakespeare, we shouldn’t do this! We’re going to regret it!”

Leonidas smiled.

Ten minutes later they were rolling towards Cambridge in the subway.