Читать книгу The Mystery Of The Second Shot - Rufus Gillmore - Страница 6

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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, 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.

Sergeant Smith’s poison ivy complexion caught fire. He swept nearer and hulked threateningly over Ashley. Only the reporter’s unconcern kept the overtowering officer from laying violent hands upon him; in fact, the reporter’s preternatural indifference acted not only as a check but as a shock. Sergeant Smith was the first to give way.

“What’s your full name?” he demanded, retreating instinctively to the secure ground of police routine,

“John Ashley.”

“Business?” snapped the sergeant, while he took breath and bearings.

“Reporter.”

No modern police officer willingly makes an enemy of a reporter. They have too forbidding a fear of the press and its power to influence public opinion. Sergeant Smith’s embarrassment was one from which he scrambled as best he could, snatching up such remnants of his dignity as he thought he might successfully bear off.

“That’s all very well, young fellow,” he went on in a more man-to-man tone, “but you know what’s coming to a man—reporter or anyone else—who interferes with the police in the performance of their duty, don’t you?”

Ashley smiled. “I surely do,” he replied.

“Then keep out.”

“I want to. Suppose you give me a chance.”

The shaft rankled. Sergeant Smith’s face grew crimson again. The failure of his peace-offering enraged him. He doubled one of his huge fists. But at this moment a commotion at the outside door distracted his attention.

“Where are you, sergeant?” some one, entering, asked in a crisp voice.

Inspector Swett had arrived from Police Headquarters. With an ominous shake of his head toward Ashley, Sergeant Smith moved away to report to his superior. But a still further indignity was in store for him. The inspector wagged his head in obvious indifference to the sergeant’s perfunctory details. In the midst of his report, the inspector’s eyes, wandering, happened to light upon Ashley. He had not forgotten the important aid which this reporter had furnished in solving the famous “Extension Bag Mystery.” Inspector Swett abandoned the still talking sergeant to greet Ashley.

“Hullo, Ashley,” he cried cordially. “How’d you get in?”

“Beat you to it,” answered Ashley, accepting the inspector’s proffered hand. “In fact, you owe it to me that you’re here now.”

“You don’t say? Tell us all about it.” Inspector Swett’s tone, though compounded of good nature, was tinctured with sarcasm.

Ashley laughed. Contact with Inspector Swett had taught him not to trust the inspector’s apparent affability. He knew him to be one of the most obstinate and pig-headed theorists of the department, one who thought to make up with determination that which he lacked in intelligence. At the beginning of a mystery, Swett first formed a theory. This he resolutely held fast to, no matter how much it might be shaken by facts developing later. At the end of every case Inspector Swett could always be found with his original theory in mouth, clinging to it like a bulldog to a stick. His salvation lay in the fact that sometimes he was right.

Instead of taking the inspector’s question seriously, Ashley retorted, “What do you call it, Inspector?”

“It’s suicide, all right, I guess. Newhall was up against it. It was the only way out.”

The sound of a smothered sigh of relief came to Ashley’s ears from behind. He checked a natural impulse to turn and trace it to Miss Newhall. Instead, his eye flew to the inspector and sergeant, again conferring in the front hall. Apparently neither of them had heard it. When he turned carelessly a few moments later, he found Miss Newhall reseated in the hall chair, watching alertly the conference in the front hall. As Inspector Swett, led by the scowling sergeant, started upstairs, she bent toward Ashley.

“Do you think I could go now?” she asked eagerly. Ashley stopped the inspector to ask. She seemed disappointed at his refusal, but made no protest. Ashley would have liked to learn why she fled from the telephone at his approach and, above all, why she was so relieved to have Inspector Swett declare it suicide. But these were matters better investigated later, after the police had gone. He followed the inspector upstairs, interested to watch the police investigation and to hear their dictum.

Inspector Swett, Sergeant Smith and two policemen were gathered about the body. Sergeant Smith and the two policemen were on the steps above, Inspector Swett on those below. As Ashley drew near, he saw the sergeant bend across and whisper something to the inspector.

“That’s all right. It’s a simple suicide; let him come,” the inspector responded.

But Sergeant Smith was evidently nourishing his grudge against the reporter. With a shake of his head, he rose and stalked off along the upper hallway.

Inspector Swett got up at almost the same instant, thus failing to notice his assistant’s defection. “Nothing to it but suicide,” he announced with an air of finality.

The two policemen nodded their heads.

“I never knew Newhall to wear a cap like that,” suggested Ashley.

“My dear boy,” the inspector turned and placed a hand patronizingly on Ashley’s shoulder; “this man knew we were after him; that was his disguise.”

“Nine suicides out of ten occur in bedrooms or bathrooms,” continued Ashley. “Why should this man shoot himself on the stairs?”

“Thought of that,” rejoined the inspector imperturbably. “Now, just you think a minute. This man was alone in a house closed for the summer. No one would be likely to enter it except the watchman, and watchmen have too many houses on their beats to do more than stick their noses into any one. His body might have lain undiscovered for weeks in one of the rooms upstairs. Newhall was wise enough to choose a spot where it would be found, and found soon, son.”

Ashley had to confess himself answered. And yet, Miss Newhall’s anxiety to have her father’s death declared suicide kept his doubt astir. Moreover, could Newhall have shot himself without leaving powder marks upon his clothes? He was on the point of putting this question to Inspector Swett when he was stopped by the arrival of the medical examiner.

Medical Examiner Sorley, grown gray in a numbing occupation, seemed concerned chiefly in getting back to his bed. Kneeling upon the steps, he made a hasty survey of the position of the body. Then he turned it over and examined the wound.

“Bull’s-eye! Right through the heart,” he declared, wiping his hands. He picked up the pistol, broke it, removed the ammunition holder and counted the cartridges.

“Colt automatic,” he muttered, “.32 caliber—let’s see, seven cartridges left in magazine—one in chamber makes eight—well, the maximum load’s nine— yes, it’s been fired, the action’s fouled—found the shell?”

Inspector Swett pointed it out to him upon the stairs. The medical examiner picked it up and compared it with the cartridges in the magazine. “It’s a .32 all right,” he announced. “Anything to indicate this isn’t a clear case of suicide?”

“Not a thing, doctor,” replied Inspector Swett promptly.

From his place on the lower landing to which he had retired at the advent of the medical examiner, Ashley had suddenly become conscious of the intrusion of another face. At the medical examiner’s question, Miss Newhall had risen from her seat in the hall below. Over the stair-rail he saw her face—mouth open, eyes starting—waiting breathlessly for the inspector’s reply. As it came, he saw her draw a deep breath and sit down, as one relieved of a great suspense. As her face disappeared below the rail, Ashley happened to glance up. Over the rail on the floor above, Sergeant Smith was looking down. As he caught Ashley’s eyes upon him, he jerked in his head. But Ashley noted a look on his face which showed that he, too, had seen.