Хорас Маккой - Trapped By Silver

Donovan apologized for disturbing him, saying the commissioner just wanted to be sure everything was regular in the recent and sad death of Dr. Rushing.

"Yes, thank you. Everything was regular," Thomas said politely.

"Were you with him when he died?"

"I'm sorry to say I wasn't. Jenkins found him and then roused me out. I went at once. He had been dead half an hour, I judged."

"I understand your father'd had heart trouble a long time," Donovan said.

"That's true. For eight or nine years, I guess."

"Well, you're the boss now and if you're satisfied I guess we ought to be," Donovan said.

Thomas Rushing nodded, sighing heavily. He took a small key chain from his pocket and moved the keys around with his fingers. He was so preoccupied that he did not seem to be aware his fingers were moving at all, or that they held anything.

"We wouldn't have taken up your time," Donovan said, "only you remember that clause in your father's will that wanted Commissioner-"

"Yes, of course. Thank you very much. Father was eccentric-"

"I understand he was," Donovan said. "Well, that's all, Mr. Rushing. Will you send in the butler?"

THOMAS RUSHING went out swinging the key chain, and in a moment Jenkins entered.

"There's a few little odds and ends I got to clean up before I go," Donovan said to him. "Tell me about that night you found Dr. Rushing."

"I was pressing my suit for the next day," Jenkins said. "I sleep on the same floor-three rooms behind him towards the rear of the house. My iron wasn't very good and I started to the kitchen to get a larger one. As

I passed Dr. Rushing's door I could see by the floodlights outside that the French windows were open. I knew this was too much air, so I tiptoed in to close them. Then I glanced at the bed and saw Dr. Rushing was partly uncovered. I went over to adjust the covers."

"You liked your master, eh?"

"He was the finest man I've ever known," Jenkins said with reverence. "Two years ago he paid my brother's tuition for an entire college course."

"And after you adjusted the covers-"

"Yes, sir. I discovered then he was dead. I called Mr. Thomas and he asked me to call Dr. Strube. That was all, sir."

"Did Dr. Rushing seem his usual self that night?"

"Why, yes, sir. He was all right. But then we never knew when he would get a stroke. I've been with him ten years and I learned that his condition had nothing to do with them. He'd seem perfectly all right one minute and then the next he'd be helpless."

"What did he do that last night?"

"He had dinner and then he and Mr. Thomas went to a motion picture show in the village. He retired to his room to write a letter-"

"Who was the letter to?"

"I don't know, sir. I only know I saw him at the secretaire. Sometime later he was in bed reading. I stopped in and asked him if I could get him anything. He said no and that's the last time-"

"Take us to his room," Donovan said. Jenkins led the way upstairs. We saw nothing of Thomas Rushing.

"Are you trying to make a case out of this?" I whispered to Donovan on the stairs.

"May as well look around," he whispered in reply, "the afternoon's ruined for me anyway."

Dr. Rushing's room was spacious and deep- toned. Great double French windows opened onto a small veranda, shaded by trees. The furnishings were heavy and baronial. The bed was a canopied four-poster with a cylindrical reading lamp clipped to its head. There was a slender secretaire against the wall that looked entirely out of place against so masculine a background.

"Is that thing the secretaire?" Donovan asked. Jenkins said it was. Donovan seated himself and examined the sheets of paper which lay loosely on a small blotter. Occasionally he held one up, peering at it from under his thickish brows. They told him nothing. Then he grunted and picked up a wadded sheet, smoothing it out.

"This must be it," he said. The sheet of paper was dated the night Dr. Rushing died, but there was no writing on it. At the bottom of the page were a few meaningless symbols such as a man makes when he is trying to think with a pen in his hand.

"He started to write and then gave it up," Donovan said.

Next he picked up a book which was bookmarked by a pair of silver pince-nez.

"That was the book he was reading," Jenkins said. "When I found him the book was beside his pillow, so I laid it on the secretaire. This is the first time I've been in the room since I straightened it-" "These his glasses?" Donovan asked, holding the pince-nez.

"Yes, sir."

"And this pair too?" Donovan asked, holding up another pince-nez, identical with the first.

"Yes, sir." Donovan was silent a moment. Then he got up.

"Well, I guess that's all," he said. Jenkins let us out downstairs.

"You've certainly wasted this afternoon," I said, as we rolled back to town. "You might just as well have faked that report to the commissioner and had an afternoon off."

"I guess I should have," Donovan said. "Oh, well. . if I was real bright I wouldn't be a copper in the first place."

THE NEXT afternoon I read in a newspaper that the homicide squad had made an arrest in the death of Dr.

Sidney Rushing, famed philanthropist, who had died a week ago of what was then thought heart disease.

I hurried over to headquarters. I was told Donovan was "in conference" and to wait around. Thirty minutes later he emerged from the Inspector's office bearing a folded sheet of legal paper. He grinned at me, opening the paper.

"Have a look at that," he said, pointing to the signature. The name affixed was Thomas Rushing.

"His son killed him?" I asked, amazed. "But when did you suspect the boy?"

"I didn't suspect anybody to begin with. That part of it came later. I didn't even suspect him when he lied to me."

"When was that?" I asked, not remembering any lie.

"Yesterday afternoon. I asked him if he knew about that clause in his father's will about the commissioner and he said yes. That was a lie. Morton said nobody knew about it but him and the old guy.

"Then when I started talking to the kid yesterday he pulled out that key chain and started playing with it.That was just a habit, of course. But I recognized that key chain by a little tag on the end of it. It was a speakeasy identification. I still didn't think anything about that; a young fellow can have a speakeasy identification without being a murderer.

"The thing I couldn't understand was those glasses of the old guy. He had two pairs, both alike, both silver.

Only the rims of one pair looked brassy, like they had been worn a lot. After I left you I started to think about that. How could a new model pair of glasses get so badly worn? The other pair was okay. I took them to a jeweler and he said they weren't worn, they were tarnished and that some chemical had tarnished them. I thought that was funny, so I went to a laboratory. I found out hydrocyanic acid fumes had done it.

"Right away I knew this thing was phony. Then I went to that speakeasy and asked Emil some questions.

He didn't want to talk about his customers at first but when I reminded him of a couple of little favors I'd done for him he kicked it. He told me about the kid and how he was seen a lot with Jimmy Frioto. Jimmy's a tough egg and not a fit companion for a kid coming into as much money as Rushing was.

"I always thought Jimmy made them bombs which blew out Judge Horgan's porch a couple years ago, but

I never could hang it on him. Anyway, I remembered he used to work for the Interstate Chemical people, so I went around to pay him a visit.

"Knowing I didn't have nothing on him, he talked pretty free. He was still working with criminals. Well, he didn't know nothing about any hydrocyanic acid fumes, and so we talked and talked. I finally persuaded him to be sensible. He'd fixed some of the acid fumes in a bottle and given it to the kid, and all the kid had to do was to hold it under the old guy's nose and break off a little glass tip. One whiff of that stuff and it was curtains. It was a perfect set-up, the kid knew everybody knew the old guy had heart trouble and this stuff didn't leave no odor or mark or nothing. I guess that's what them French windows was doing open, the kid wasn't taking no chances.