Brett Halliday - Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 27, No. 2 — September 1945)

“He won’t have to talk!” Hinchman shouted hysterically. “I know everything that he knows! I’ll bust up every racket in town!”

“You’ll tell us who killed Parker and Souders?”

“Sure, they were Westfall’s boys. He ordered it. I had absolutely nothing to do with it!”

“And who killed Ditson?”

Hinchman shook his head vigorously.

“Honest to God, I don’t know who did that! I actually thought you’d brought me here to turn him up!”

Keever eyed me sharply. “You said you’d turn him up, Ben!”

I hedged. “Well, aren’t you getting your money’s worth? You passed Briarton Cliff on the way here. I’ve cracked that case. Aren’t you satisfied with the progress?”

“Scarcely,” said Keever. “After all, this thing started with Ditson’s murder, and it’s still unsolved. By the way, why’s that fire still burning at the cliff? It started hours ago.”

“The rubbish dumped there,” Dwight volunteered. “Everybody does it.” He laughed. “Why, only a couple of days ago, I came along and found my stuffed-shirted prospective brother-in-law dumping a big bundle there.”

“How big?” I yelled.

Startled, Dwight replied: “A hell of a big bundle. Must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds I’d say from the way he was lifting it.”

“The diary!” I yelled again. Then I raced into a bedroom and beyond into the bath. The door was locked, but the smoke fumes leaked through. The lock broke out with my second try, and my momentum carried me into Bronson. I tried to put out the fire first. When Bronson intervened I let him have a couple in the same place that Dwight had belted him. My punches were hurried and not so good, but Bronson was in no condition to handle them. He went down and stayed down while I salvaged the remaining pages of the diary.

Keever was staring into the bath, Dwight and Mary Ditson behind him.

“What have you here?”

“Ditson’s murderer — and Sheila Brown’s! It took me a hell of a long time to tumble, but I finally did when Dwight told about seeing Bronson heaving a big bundle of rubbish over Briarton Cliff. Then I realized the cliff’s about as high as a twelve-story window at the Maramoor. And the bundle was about as heavy as Ditson! That meant Bronson was practicing for throwing Ditson’s dead body from the hotel window!

“He had to know something about the trajectory of his gruesome missile. Its target was to be Sheila parked in his convertible below!

“Ditson’s murder was only incidental to Sheila’s murder. Ditson had advertised by letters to the newspapers that he would commit suicide if his losses weren’t paid back. Nobody, least of all the Maramoor Hotel people, took him seriously. If a suicide is on the level, he usually doesn’t tell a soul, much less advertise it in the papers. Even Westfall must have thought he was bluffing, but he couldn’t afford to call Ditson’s hand.

“The set-up was perfect for Bronson. He merely had to get in a little practice heaving man-sized objects from twelve-story heights. My guess is that he had experimented with several bundles before Dwight happened along.

“No parking was permitted in front of the Maramoor and beneath Ditson’s room. Bronson checked on Ditson’s window, planted his convertible there with the top down and ran into the hotel. The Maramoor is a big hotel. The odds were against anyone noticing Bronson enter or leave. He had only to rap on Ditson’s door, then rap Ditson and heave him out of the window with a mind to his Briarton Cliff ballistics. His human missile was well aimed.

“Of course his lovely victim could not dispute his subsequent statement that he had reached the curb on the opposite side of the street, waved, then seen Ditson’s plunge.

“I was fooled because I couldn’t find a motive for Bronson’s killing Ditson. Not until I realized that Ditson was merely the projectile he aimed at Sheila did I think about a motive for killing her. The answer must be in her diary, which he never knew existed until tonight My guess is that Bronson had converted securities she’d entrusted to him. The diary will probably tell how much his booty was.”

“It does!” said Dwight. He had come into the bath and picked up several pages. “It tells to the dollar — ninety-five thousand of them!”

Bronson groaned back into consciousness. Whirling, Dwight kicked him. I got him the hell out of there and back into the room where Hinchman stood in custody of two of Keever’s goons. Hinchman watched as Bronson was dragged out.

“Put us in the same cell, please,” said Hinchman. “It’ll raise my social standing.”

It was so corny I remembered my promise to myself, that I’d hit Hinchman before I got out of Midtown. So I did.