Джон Данн - Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 44, No. 5, September 28, 1929

Brill interpolated, severely:

“Better keep your oar out, young fella! I guess the inspector can get along without your advice. If you don’t think it’s queer for anybody to knot up a handkerchief that way, that’s no license for you to chip in.”

There was a strain of stubbornness in Hawley. It came hotly to the surface.

“It’s not so queer,” he insisted, coloring as Gregory’s eyes narrowed upon him.

But the inspector wasn’t rebuking him with that steady regard; his mind had flashed back to the incident of Bradley Easier’s hat — to his observation that what Hawley’s shoulders supported was a human, reasoning head.

“Why isn’t it queer?” he presently wished to be told.

Jim Hawley, so swiftly and directly caught up, had an impulse to temporize. He looked away toward the lamp and blinked in its glare. Was somebody, pretty soon, going to be telling him he was crazy?

“I mean,” he said lamely, “it is and it isn’t. If it was just the handkerchief, maybe I wouldn’t have thought anything. But — take that lamp there, now!”

Gregory transferred his stare to the lamp.

“Well?” His voice was crisp.

“It’s a reading lamp,” said Hawley.

Brill burst into an explosive and uncomplimentary laugh.

“That’s keen! Goes to show you, inspector, that we’ve got a lot of talent harnessed up in the precincts! Hawley’s found out that it’s a reading lamp! Can you beat him?”

Gesturing Brill to silence, Gregory popped out another, “Well?”

Hawley squared his shoulders and his jaw.

“There’s something funnier about the lamp than about the handkerchief,” he asserted doggedly. “Could a man read under a light like that without being blinded? It’s a hundred-watt bulb, inspector! There it is, marked on it. The glare of it off a book or paper would start your eyes watering in a jiffy. Nobody’d use more than a sixty-watt lamp for reading, at the outside.”

Gregory nodded absently. Brill was grinning.

“You must burn better than a hundred watts yourself, under your hat, Hawley,” he sneered. “But what’s the lamp got to do with the handkerchief? What has watts got to do with knots?”

Hawley wheeled on him, his eyes blazing.

“Don’t you remember anything at all,” he demanded, “from the days when you were a kid? Didn’t you ever—”

Again Brill laughed, and the sneer was caught up in the laugh, giving a cutting edge to it.

“Hey!” he cried. “What’s that got to do with — anything?”

With an effort, Hawley caught back two things that had been ready to slip. One was the latter part of an uncompleted question, the other a right fist that ached for contact with Brill’s sardonic mouth. But his defy was out before he could check it.

“I’ll show you!”

There were danger signals in his eyes, and Brill did not misread them. He looked away to Gregory, who asked quietly:

“What do you mean, Hawley? What’ll you show?”

Hawley drew a deep breath, and caught up the challenge.

“Just what happened up here,” said he. “My idea of it, anyhow.”

Again Gregory was studying him.

“Go ahead,” he invited shortly.

But Hawley shook his head.

“I can’t do it; not with both of you here,” he demurred.

“There’s nerve!” gasped Brill. “What the hell d’you think you’re pulling?”

Gregory rubbed his chin.

“I don’t understand,” he admitted. “If you think you’ve got something to show us, Hawley, let’s see it — in a hurry. We’ll have the reporters here in a couple more minutes.”

“I know,” Hawley said. “But this is something I’ve got to do my own way. Or else it won’t mean anything. You’ve got to leave me alone here.”

“And — us?”

“I want Brill to go over and sit where he was — on the stoop of No. 38. If it’s just the same, inspector, I’d like to have you alongside him. Just sit there — and watch!”

Brill held up his hands.

“Jeez!” he ejaculated. “If that ain’t brass! How long is it, inspector, since you took orders from a rookie patrolman?”

Gregory’s gaze bathed him with a cold light. It was only a straw — but he grasped at it for his sinking friend.

“I haven’t been so long in the department myself, sergeant,” he said, “that I’m sure there isn’t anything left for me to learn. As for Hawley’s proposition, I’m ready to be shown. We’ll stroll across the street together. Brill, if you don’t mind. Where did you say you wanted us, Hawley? On the stoop of No. 38?”

Mary Corcoran was over there, watching No. 31 with strained eyes, when Sergeant Bill Brill came back to her. Just as he had gone, he returned — with a swagger. But now it was not a pistol he flourished, but a police inspector.

“This is my boss, kiddo,” he said. “Inspector Gregory, meet Miss Corcoran. She’s my extra special.”

The girl took the inspector’s thin hand, and by her speech betrayed how little she knew of the department. What she said — and warmly, too — was:

“Then I suppose you know Jim Hawley, Mr. Gregory!”

Brill frowned, but the inspector smiled.

“I’ve just had the pleasure of meeting him,” he replied. “An enterprising young man.”

His gaze wandered over the way, and discovered the head of the enterprising young man poking from the brightly-lighted second floor window of No. 31.

“Set?” called Hawley.

“We’re here.”

Mary Corcoran gasped.

“It’s Jim! He’s in that room where the man was killed!”

And then she was on her feet, screaming. What had happened twenty minutes ago was being repeated. A wild, horror-filled shout was echoing along the street.

“Bradley! For God’s sake! Don’t, Bradley, don’t!”

“Help him!” cried Mary Corcoran. “The murderer’s come back, and he’s after Jim! Look, look!”

Black shadows were again on the yellow shade, the swollen shadows of two men struggling behind it.

Brill’s eyes popped. He jumped up, his hand swinging automatically to his hip. But the shadows had vanished then. There was a whir, and a sharp crack.

The crack wasn’t another pistol shot; the yellow shade had been yanked and let go smacking onto its roller. Jim Hawley leaned out the window.

“A one man show!” he called across the street. “How was it, Inspector Gregory?”

Gregory was already on his way over. He pushed into No. 31 and ran up the stairs. Hawley met him at their head. He had the knotted handkerchief in his hand.

“The knots were the giveaway,” said he. “They made the shadows of the two heads. Maybe Bill Brill doesn’t remember being a kid, inspector — but don’t you? Don’t you remember making shadowgraphs between a strong light and a screen? Just with your fingers you could make a lot of things. Horses and dogs and elephants and churches. And if you tied knots in a handkerchief — say, couldn’t you put on a first-class battle?”

A roar escaped Gregory — a roar of appreciation and relief. He went down the stairs with a rush, burst into the parlor where Easier sat among the hostile witnesses.

“Brad!” he shouted. “You’re clear! It was a last dirty trick that Hammett tried to put up on you. He’d got ready finally to bump himself off — and he thought he’d leave you to swing for it. That’s what he’d been scheming these ten years toward, planning a red anniversary!”

He whirled around and caught Jim Hawley’s arm; whispered energetically to him. Then he lashed out at Brill.

“You’re a good man, sergeant,” he wound up. “I’d be the last to say you weren’t. But there’s such a thing as being too anxious to force a collar. You’re inclined to be that way, sometimes. Sometimes your brains are in your feet!”