Fredric Brown - Homicide Sanitarium

Then he closed his mouth again. The way the walrus was looking at him awakened new possibilities.

"Say, George," he said, "I'm short of cash until I get that retainer. Let me have a buck and put it on my account, will you?"

"Sure, Mr. McCracken." The walrus rang up "No Sale" on the register and passed over a bill from the drawer. He made a notation on a slip of paper on the ledge.

"Makes it eleven dollars and--no, twelve dollars even." McCracken winced slightly. "Thanks, George," he said, and moved a few steps away to lean against the wall, while he studied the article in the Blade. It was quite brief--understandable as the murder had been discovered only half an hour before deadline of the Blade's final edition.

Slimjim Lee, whose real name was James Rogers Lee, had met his death probably between midnight and three A.M., although the body had not been discovered until four-thirty. Autopsy might determine the time of death more closely.

His body had been found in the visiting parlor of a theatrical rooming house on Vermont Street. He had been killed, presumably, by a long slender needle called a crocheting needle in one part of the story and a knitting needle in another paragraph. It had been thrust into his heart.

He was known to have been wearing, shortly prior to the murder, his famous ring with the huge solitaire diamond for which he was reputed to have paid six thousand dollars. His bill-fold was found empty. Undoubtedly, according to the police, robbery had been the motive, and the solitaire diamond the principal objective of the murderer.

Mr. Lee, according to the newspaper article, had been a close friend of Perley Essington, who roomed at the house in question, and was a frequent visitor at the Vermont street address. Perley Essington was a vaudeville performer specializing in whistling and bird imitations, and he was billed as "The Mocking Bird" on the Bijou's current bill.

Harry Lake, another vaudevillian and inmate of the rooming house, had seen Slimjim Lee enter the house at around midnight, and had assumed he was calling on Perley Essington.

Another vaudevillian and roomer, one LaVarre LaRoque, a dancer, had discovered the body when she came in at four-thirty in the morning. She had opened the parlor door when she had noticed a crack of light under it.

McCracken read the story for the third time, and was putting the paper in his pocket, when he saw Jerold Bell coming through the revolving door into the lobby.

"Hi, Mack," Jerry greeted him. "Haven't seen you since you left the force.

Have a quick one before we go see our fine feathered friend?"

Over a Scotch-and-soda, McCracken asked:

"You're in this because Continental insured the ring? How much was it really worth, Jerry?"

"He paid four thousand for it," Bell said. "I doubt if it could be sold now for over two and a half. Openly, I mean. As stolen property, whoever has it will be lucky to get a thousand. It's insured, incidentally, for two thousand."

McCracken nodded. "Cap Zehnder said you sold the policy. How come? I thought you handled only investigations for Continental."

"Ordinarily, yes. But in cases where unusual factors influence the amount of the premiums, I generally get called in. The regular salesman gets a cut, too, but turns the closing over to me and I help advise the amount of the premium."

"And what was unusual about this policy?"

Bell grimaced. "Just that Lee insisted on wearing that rock twenty-four hours a day, which made the risk much greater than is ordinarily the case with jewelry that valuable. Most people keep their stuff in safes or vaults, and wear it on special occasions. And then there was his occupation to consider, of course. A gambler, who goes to all the places a gambler goes to, and associates with the kind of people--well, I had to talk the company into issuing the policy at all."

"Leaving you out on a limb, now that the ring is gone?" McCracken grinned.

"Any chance that Slimjim might have sold the ring himself?"

"Not an earthly one," Bell said. "That ring was his luck, he thought. He'd have sold his shirt and shoes first. I've sat in on games with him, and knew him well enough to be positive of that."

"Ever met this Perley Essington?"

Jerry Bell nodded. "Wait until you see him, Mack. A crackpot of the first water. I never thought he'd pull anything like this--if he really did. Cap Zehnder says he has him cold, but I don't know what the evidence is."

"How well you know him?" McCracken asked.

The insurance man laughed. "A month ago, he wanted to take out an insurance policy on--believe it or not, Mack--on his whistle! How could you insure a whistle?

That was when he first got his engagement at the Bijou. He'd been 'at liberty' for a long time before that. I think Slimjim loaned him money to live on."

"You didn't issue the policy?"

"Heck, no. I saw him a few times and pretended to give it consideration only because he was a friend of Lee's. I wanted to keep Slimjim's good will, and that meant I had to go easy with Perley."

At Headquarters, they found Zehnder alone in his office. He barked an order into his desk phone.

"I'm having your Mocking Bird sent up here," he said. "If you want to talk to him in private before you go, Mack, you can do that in his cell when we send him back. Okay?"

McCracken nodded. "Sure. It won't matter, if he's innocent. And if he's guilty, I don't want it."

Zehnder chuckled. "Then I'm afraid you're out twelve bucks."

"Any news on the ring?" Bell asked.

The captain shook his head, but before he could add to the negation, the door opened.

A fat little man, whose head was as devoid of hair as a banister knob, came in.

A uniformed turnkey was behind him, but stepped back into the hall and closed the door from the outside when the captain signalled to him.

"Mack," said Zehnder, "this is Perley Essington. Your client, maybe. You said you already know him, Bell?"

McCracken put out his hand and shook the pudgy, moist one of the little bird imitator.

"Tell me about it, Mr. Essington," he said. "All I know now is what I read in the paper."

The little man beamed at him. "I saw the paper," he said. "It's right as far as it goes. I wasn't home when Jim Lee came there at midnight."

"How do you know he came at midnight, then?" asked Zehnder.

Tim McCracken frowned at the captain. "Tut, tut, Cap. It says so in the paper. Don't you read the Blade? Or haven't you got three cents?" He turned back to the vaudevillian. "Where were you at midnight, Mr. Essington?"

"Call me Perley, Mr. McCracken," the actor said. "Why, at midnight, I was just walking. After the show I went for a walk in the park. It was a warm night, and I didn't get home until about two o'clock. I didn't know Jim was coming around last night."

"See anyone you knew while you were out?" McCracken asked.

"Nope." Essington shook his head. "And you'll ask next if I stopped in anywhere. I didn't. I sat on a park bench for awhile and listened to a nightingale. I had a sort of conversation with him. Like this."

He pursed his lips, and suddenly the little room was filled with a sweet, lilting melody. The clear notes throbbed to silence. McCracken saw that Jerold Bell, who was standing behind Perley's chair, was grinning at him.

McCracken cleared his throat. "Say, that's good, Perley. You that good on other birds?"

"Better," said the little man complacently. "On some, even the birds can't tell the difference. On the stage, I'm a wow. And I have a line of patter with the whistling that knocks them out of their seats and rolls them in the aisles. Just last week, the manager was telling me that I was the greatest--"

"That's fine," interrupted McCracken. "But let's get back to Slimjim Lee. How well did you know him?"