Erle Gardner - The Monkey Murder

“But I simply can’t understand,” Leith said, “why you should adopt this attitude. Man, you’re pointing that gun at me! You’re—”

“Beat it,” the chauffeur ordered.

Leith, apparently realizing all at once the menace of that gun, turned and took to his heels, the cane held under his arm.

Deekin took four or five quick steps, then paused to dust off his clothes, walked another fifteen or twenty feet, and then apprehensively twisted the head off the cane, and peered into the interior. The street light reflected in reassuring green scintillations from the interior, and Deekin, breathing easier, swung into a rapid walk.

Beaver, the undercover man, coughed significantly until he caught Sergeant Ackley’s eye, then motioned toward the door.

They held a conference in the car vestibule.

“There’s something fishy about this, sergeant,” the undercover man said.

“I’ll say there’s plenty fishy about it,” Sergeant Ackley said suspiciously. “I’m going to put that guy who let Leith give him the slip back to pounding pavements.”

“He couldn’t have helped it,” Beaver said, “but that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about, sergeant.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Those two emeralds couldn’t have been in that suitcase.”

“What do you mean, they couldn’t have been?” Sergeant Ackley shouted. “Where else could they have been?”

“Right in Lester Leith’s pockets,” Beaver said.

“Bosh and nonsense,” Sergeant Ackley snapped. “If that’s all you have to offer in the way of suggestions, I’m—”

“Just a moment, sergeant,” Beaver said. “ You forget that Leith told the baggageman to look through the suitcase in order to familiarize himself with the contents. Now, if those emeralds had been in there, the baggageman certainly would have seen them, and then he wouldn’t have let the suitcase go for any fifty-dollar deposit. He’d have got in touch with the claim department and—”

Sergeant Ackley’s expression of dismay showed that he appreciated only too keenly the logic of the undercover man’s words.

“So you see what that means,” Beaver said. “If those gems weren’t in the suitcase, then Leith must have brought them; and if Leith brought them, he’d never have stuck them to the under side of that table and then got off the train.”

“Well, then the girl stuck them there,” Ackley said.

“No, she didn’t, sergeant. That girl is just a plant.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just a red herring to keep us occupied while Leith is actually getting the stones.”

“You’re crazy!” Sergeant Ackley said. “We have the stones.”

“No, we haven’t, sergeant. You left the chewing gum on them so they’d be evidence, but if you’ll pull that chewing gum off and wash those stones in gasoline, I’ll bet you’ll find they’re two of the imitation stones that I got for Leith. He fixed this whole thing so that we’d be carried away on the train ‘way past Beacon City while he was doubling back by an airplane to shake down the guy who has those stones.”

“Who?” Sergeant Ackley asked.

“The chauffeur,” Beaver said. “Can’t you see? The chauffeur was a thin guy. He had a board with some nails in it planted so he could puncture a tire on the car right where he wanted to. No one knows that the jack was broken. They only have his word for it. He said he was going out to get another jack. What he really did was climb in this stolen car which he’d planted before he went down to the dock to meet the boat. He slipped this rubberized suit of clothes over his others, drove into a service station, blew himself up, put on a mask, went over to the stalled automobile, stuck them up, killed the monkey, took the stones, drove back, parked the car, deflated the suit, put it in the suitcase, checked it up, salted the emeralds somewhere, and then came back to the car. To keep suspicion from centering on him, he said that he’d seen this fat man and gave the license number of the car. He—”

Sergeant Ackley groaned. “You’re right! But, by gosh, we’ll get a plane, we’ll telephone, we’ll—” His hand shot up to the emergency air cord.

A moment later, the long string of Pullmans, rocketing through the night, suddenly started screaming to an abrupt stop, with passengers thrown about in their berths like popcorn in a corn popper. Sergeant Ackley started forward. His right shoe went stickety-stick — stickety-stick. He looked down at the wad of chewing gum stuck to the sole of his shoe. Curses poured from his quivering lips. He pawed at the wad of moist chewing gum. The motion of the stopping train pitched him forward, threw him off balance. His hat was jerked from his head. With gum-covered fingers, he retrieved the hat, clamped it back on his head, and then, feeling a lump between his hair and the hatband, realized too late that he had pressed the wad of moist gum into his hair.

Sergeant Ackley, Beaver, and the two detectives burst into Leith’s apartment to find Lester Leith sprawled in a lounging robe, reading. He looked up with a frown as the men came charging through the door.

“Scuttle,” he said, “what the devil’s the meaning of this, and where have you been, Scuttle? I didn’t tell you you could have the evening off— Good evening, sergeant and... gentlemen .”

“Never mind all that stuff,” Sergeant Ackley yelled. “What the hell did you do with those emeralds?”

“Emeralds, sergeant?” Lester Leith asked. “Come, come, sergeant; let’s get at this logically and calmly. You’re all excited, sergeant. Sit down and tell me what you’re talking about. And is that gum in your hair, sergeant? Tut, tut, I’m afraid you’re getting careless.”

“Search him,” Sergeant Ackley yelled to the two detectives.

“Now, just a minute, sergeant,” Lester Leith said. “This is indeed an utterly useless procedure. I certainly don’t know what you’re looking for, but—”

“Search him!” Sergeant Ackley repeated, his voice rising with his rage. The detectives searched the unresisting Leith.

“Come, come, sergeant,” Leith said, when they had finished with their search. “I suppose you’ve made another one of your perfectly asinine blunders, but, after all, there’s no use getting so incensed about it. Do you know, sergeant, I’m commencing to get so I’m rather attached to you, and you’re going to burst a blood vessel if you don’t control your temper. Tut, tut, man, your face is all purple.”

Sergeant Ackley tried to talk, but his first few words were incoherent. After a moment, he managed to control himself enough to say: “We caught Mainwaring’s chauffeur. He had a cane with two imitation emeralds in it.”

“Did he, indeed?” Lester Leith said. “Do you know, sergeant, I gave him that cane.”

“So I gather.”

“Yes,” Lester Leith said, “I gave it to him. I thought that perhaps Mr. Mainwaring might be interested in it.”

“And why did you think Mainwaring might be interested in it?”

“Oh, just as a curiosity,” Leith said. “I had two of them, and I really had use only for one, you know. And Mainwaring’s a traveler, an explorer who—”

“Where’s the other one?” Ackley interrupted.

“Over there in the corner, I believe,” Leith said unconcernedly. “Would you like it, sergeant? I’ll give it to you as a souvenir of your visit. I had some idea for a while that a person might be able to work out a solution — and, mind you, sergeant, I mean a purely academic solution — of a crime by using these canes. But I find that I was in error, sergeant. So many times one makes mistakes, or do you find that to be true in your case, sergeant?”