Лоуренс Трит: Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938

Stan glanced around, grinned. Worthington stood in front of the furnace, weighing the poker in his hand. There was no need for it. The watchman just sat and stared helplessly at the scene.

“I don’t think so, Judge,” Stan said. “We just came from the shipping department.”

“You what?” Elmore demanded. “But you couldn’t! I’ve been watching! Baxter, what the hell is all this?” He came heavily down the steps and saw Worthington. “And who is this fellow?”

The blond man gave Stan a warning look.

“He’s helping me with this affair,” Stan evaded.

“But what in the devil are you doing here?”

Stan said, “I wanted to see you, Judge. Selma told me you were at the plant, and I came here. Now it’s your turn.”

Elmore nodded. “I had a little work to clean up in my office. I beard a groan, and traced it to the boiler room. I found the watchman here writhing on the floor, tied hand and foot, with a handkerchief in his mouth. He says three men slugged him down here, about an hour ago.”

The watchman rubbed his forehead and groaned piteously.

“He was still practically unconscious,” Elmore continued. “It took me a while to revive him, enough so he could talk sense. Then I heard voices in the shipping room overhead. So I took his gun and went up to the top of the stairs.”

Stan turned to the watchman. “You’re revived now, aren’t you?”

“My head,” the old man mumbled. “My head hurls bad.”

“But you feel well enough to show my friend here to a telephone?”

“I guess,” the watchman said dubiously.

“Then go ahead. Here, Judge. Let’s have that gun.” Stan handed the weapon to Worthington. He grinned at the blond man. “You know what to phone the cops about all this.”

Elmore said, “We can all go now.”

“Oh, no, Judge. I want to talk to you — alone.”

“I see.” But Horace Elmore’s florid features looked confused. He watched Worthington and the watchman climb the stairs; he shook his head.

“It’s a mistake to leave a poor old duffer like that in this place alone at night. I always said so. It’s a job for a young fellow with red blood in him. Well, Baxter, what’s on your mind?”

Stan chuckled. “Judge,” he said, “do you expect me to take you seriously? Am I supposed to believe that you — in your office, in the other wing of the building — could hear a man groaning in the boiler room? Especially when that man was practically unconscious, and had a gag in his mouth?”

Elmore flared, “Certainly I heard him!”

“Baloney. It’s impossible!”

“Young man” — the judge’s tone was icy — “do you mean to call me a liar?”

Stan said, “Uh-huh. Not only a liar, but a damn poor one!”

Horace Elmore moistened his lips.

“Look,” said Stan. “You didn’t trace any groan here. You came here, and it was pure accident you found the watchman on the floor. Isn’t that the fact?”

“It is not.”

“Oh yes it is. And the reason you won’t admit it,” Stan went on, “is that someone might ask what you came to the boiler room for. You wouldn’t like to answer that, would you?”

The judge did not reply. His eyes seemed tortured under the younger man’s relentless inspection. His gaze shifted to the door.

Stan shrugged. “All right, don’t answer. I’ll just go through your pockets.” “You can’t do that!”

“No?” Stan eyed the bulge of Elmore’s coat-front. “You came down here to burn something in the furnace — and then didn’t do it. You worked over the watchman first. And then you wanted to get rid of him before you destroyed the stuff. And now you’re not going to have a chance to.”

He took a step toward Elmore. The man’s face had gone very pale.

“Wait a moment.” he said huskily. “This isn’t what you’re probably thinking. It... it’s personal, it concerns no one but myself.”

“You admit you came here to burn what you have in your pocket.”

“Yes,” said Elmore, his plump lips trembling. “Some personal papers — no longer important since Mr. Randt is dead. A little trouble he once had. That’s all. And out of respect for his memory, I think it best they be destroyed.”

Stan’s voice was dry, harsh: “Those papers,” he said, “concern Selma!”

The blood rushed furiously into Horace Elmore’s cheeks. He gave the younger man a burning stare. There was anger in his eyes, and fear,

He swallowed twice before he could speak at all. He cried then, “Baxter, I warn you! Leave my daughter’s name out of this!”

Stan sighed. He faced an unpleasant job. And he pitied Horace Elmore at this moment.

“I’m not a fool,” he muttered. “Tonight at Randt’s you pledged me to secrecy. You said you didn’t want to stir up an old scandal. Why? Whom were you afraid of hurting, Judge?”

The big man recoiled from that question. Shrank, as if from a physical blow.

Stan went on remorselessly: “Why couldn’t you tell the police? Randt was dead. Julia had been dead for many years. Frank Kendall lived, but you hated him. Whom were you afraid of wounding? Judge, wasn’t it some other living person — a person very near and dear to you?”

A sudden perspiration dampened the other’s Hushed face. With a trembling hand, Horace Elmore loosened his collar. But his breathing remained as hard as before. He said heavily:

“No living person, Baxter! You see, I loved Julia. I loved her as much as Randt did, and just as hopelessly. And I didn’t want to have her name in a murder case. Not even twenty years after her death.”

A twisted smile touched Stan’s lips. “I guessed that you loved her, Judge. And I knew you lied when you hinted Lois Callum might be Julia’s daughter. I knew that after I talked to Selma.”

“You told Selma?”

Stan said, “She told me that you paid no more attention to Lois than to her other chums. It stood to reason you would have had a very special interest in Julia’s daughter.”

“But I didn’t know it!” Elmore cried. “I found out only the other day that Callum had papers—”

“Forgeries!” Stan said. “I’ve seen them. And you knew very well Callum’s documents were forged.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is,” Stan insisted. “The genuine papers were in your hands. But in a minute they’ll he in mine. Because I’m taking them away from you!”

He advanced a long step and his hand shot out to grasp the other’s lapel.

And then the strength seemed to ebb out of Horace Elmore. The man’s whole body sagged. He cried in a strange, broken voice:

“All right! Selma isn’t my child! Her real name is Leslie Kendall!”

The only sound was Judge Elmore’s sobbing breath. The color had deserted his face, leaving the skin an ashen gray in which the eyes burned like coals. He slowly sank down onto the watchman’s bench.

Stan shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry that I had to hammer the truth out of you.”

Several moments ticked away. Elmore looked up. “Well, you’ve got the truth. Julia begged me to take care of the baby if anything happened to her. I made arrangements with an orphanage — one of my father’s pet charities. The baby was left there a few weeks, and then my wife and I took her away. My wife knew the whole story. We told our friends that we wished to raise the girl as her own — the fact that she had only foster parents was not to be mentioned to her, ever.”

“Did Randt know?”

“No!”

Stan said, “What were your plans?”

The judge hunched his shoulders helplessly. “There were no definite plans. I expected to reveal the thing some day, after Selma grew up. She had a claim to a good deal of money — Julia’s money, not Kendall’s by rights. But tonight changed all that.”