A. Fair - Bats Fly at Dusk

Bertha said, “You can’t do this to me. You can’t—”

“Indeed I can,” Sellers said, quite affably. “I’m doing it. If you haven’t taken anything out of the building, I suppose I can’t make a burglary charge stick, unless, as you so competently point out, I could prove that you entered the building for the purpose of committing a felony in the first place. Looks almost as though you had looked up the law before you made your visit.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“That, of course is another statement of fact which is open to investigation, although I don’t know just how we’re going to prove it. But in any event, Mrs. Cool, I’m placing you under arrest, and I think as a student of law, you understand that if you now do anything to interfere, you will be resisting arrest, which, in itself, is a crime.”

Bertha Cool thought that over, looked at Sergeant Sellers, recognized the inflexibility of purpose behind his smiling mask, and said, “Okay, you win.”

“We’ll just leave your car parked right where it is,” Sellers said. “I wouldn’t want you to dispose of anything between here and headquarters — and since the tinkling melody of the Bluebells of Scotland shows me that you went to the music box and raised the lid, it is quite evident that the object you took from the music box was relatively small and, therefore, something that could be easily concealed. So, Mrs. Cool, if you wouldn’t mind going into the room again so I can keep my eye on you while I pick up that music box, we’ll take it right along to headquarters with us.”

“All right, you’ve got me,” Bertha Cool said. “Go ahead. Rub it in! Go on and gloat!”

“No gloating at all, Mrs. Cool, just a slight formality. Now, then, if you’ll walk just ahead of me, and if you wouldn’t mind keeping your hands up where I can see them. That spotlight of yours isn’t very efficient. I think you’ll find mine a lot better.”

Sergeant Sellers’s five-cell flashlight blazed into brilliance, lighting the way into the front room of the little bungalow.

The matron escorted Bertha Cool to the door of Sergeant Sellers’s private office and knocked.

The tinkling strains of Bluebells of Scotland sounded faintly through the door.

“Come in,” Sellers called.

The matron opened the door. “In this way, dearie,” she said to Bertha Cool.

Bertha paused on the threshold, turned, looked at the matron — two husky, bulldog-jawed women glaring at each other. “All right, dearie,” Bertha Cool said.

“What did you find?” Sergeant Sellers inquired.

“Nothing,” the matron announced.

Sergeant Sellers raised his eyebrows. “Well, well. Don’t tell me that you went there just for the experience, Mrs. Cool?”

“You forget Freddie,” Bertha said. “Got a cigarette? Your girl friend snitched my package.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot your cigarettes,” the matron said. “I put them up on that—”

“It’s all right, dearie. Keep them with my compliments,” Bertha said.

The matron caught Sergeant Sellers’s eye and seemed embarrassed. “You should have said something about them at the time, Mrs. Cool.”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to,” Bertha announced. “I thought it was a privilege that went with the office, like the cops taking apples from the fruit stands.”

“That’s all, Mrs. Bell,” Sergeant Sellers said.

The matron glared at Bertha Cool, then quietly withdrew.

“Sit down,” Sellers said to Bertha Cool. “Let’s see, you wanted a cigarette. Here’s one.”

He opened a fresh package of cigarettes, and handed Bertha one. He fished a black, moist cigar from his waistcoat pocket, clipped off the end, shoved it in his mouth, and, for the moment, made no effort to light it.

“Something about this music box,” he said.

“Indeed?”

“You went to it, opened it, then closed it and left. You didn’t take anything out. I wonder if you put something in.”

Sellers took a magnifying glass from his drawer, went over the music box carefully, inspecting both the works and the case, looking for some place of concealment which might harbour some bit of planted evidence: When he could find none, he dosed the music box, studied the outside of it, and looked at the portrait of the young woman. “I wonder if this is it.”

“What?”

“The portrait. It isn’t a missing heiress, is it?”

Bertha, feeling remarkably good after winning her verbal encounter with the matron settled back in her chair and laughed.

“Why the laughter?”

“Thinking of the nineteenth-century beauty,” Bertha said. “A chunky, mealy-mouthed nincompoop who wore corsets and fainted at the faintest suggestion of salty humour. And you think I’d come all the way from—”

“Yes, yes,” Sergeant Sellers said as Bertha stopped. “You interest me now. All the way from where, Mrs. Cool?”

Bertha clamped her lips tightly shut.

“Almost told me something, didn’t you?” Sergeant Sellers said.

Bertha, realizing how close she had come to saying, “All the way from Riverside,” contented herself with puffing placidly away at her cigarette, atoning for what was almost a verbal slip by maintaining a rigid silence.

Sergeant Sellers looked at the big clock over the desk. “Ten minutes past two,” he mused. “It’s rather late, but then — this probably is an emergency.”

He consulted the label on the inside of the music box, studied a telephone directory, then picked up the receiver, said, “Give me an outside line,” and dialled a number.

After a few moments, he said suavely, “I’m very sorry about having to call you at this hour. This is Sergeant Sellers speaking from police headquarters, and the reason I’m calling is because I’m trying to trace an important clue in a murder case. Is this Britten G. Stellman? It is, eh? Well, I want you to tell me whether you can remember a music box, one of the old-fashioned kind with a metal comb and a cylinder — has a picture of a landscape on one side and the portrait of a girl on the other, plays ‘Bluebells of Scotland,’ and — oh, I see — you do, eh? Yes. What was her name? Josephine Dell, eh?”

Sergeant Sellers was silent for several seconds, listening to the voice which came over the telephone; then he said, “All right, now let me see if I’ve got this straight. This Josephine Dell came in about a month ago, saw this music box, and said she’d like to get it but didn’t have enough money to pay for it. She left a small deposit to hold it for ninety days. Then she rang you up on Wednesday, told you she had the money available, and that she was sending it to you by telegram. She asked you to deliver the music box by messenger to this blind man without saying anything about who sent it; just to tell him that it was a present from a friend — that right?”

Again Sergeant Sellers was silent for several moments while he was listening; then he said, “Okay. One more question. Where was that telegram sent from? Redlands, eh? You don’t know whether she lives in Redlands? Oh, I see. Lives in Los Angeles and you think she just happened to be travelling through Redlands. You don’t think that she’s any relation t’ this blind man, didn’t say anything about that? Just saw the one time when she was in and paid the deposit, eh? Say where she was working? I see. All right, thanks a lot. I wouldn’t have called you at this hour if it hadn’t been a major emergency. I can assure you your co-operation is appreciated. Yes, this is Sergeant Sellers of Homicide. I’ll drop in and see you next time I’m in the neighbourhood and thank you personally. In the meantime, if anything turns up, give me a ring. All right, thanks. Good-bye.”