Fredric Brown - Homicide Sanitarium

The look that had been in Perley's eyes while he talked of the stage faded to awareness of the present.

"Very well," he told them. "I guess he was just about my best friend, and vice versa. Yes, I know most people think--thought--it was funny, because Jim and I are--were--so completely different. But I guess that was why we liked each other."

"You saw him often?"

"He came to see me two-three times a week. Generally after the evening show.

We'd play chess or whistle until nearly morning."

"Whistle? Late at night?"

"Sure. He liked whistling. But he couldn't very well, and I was teaching him how. He just couldn't get the knack of it."

"But didn't the other roomers--"

"Not in a place like that, Mack," Jerry Bell cut in. "They're all slightly nuts. It's liberty hall. Last time I was there, there were acrobats jumping off the banister at four o'clock in the morning. Slimjim took me there after a game."

Zehnder nodded. "Yeah, I've been there," he said, "and I'd believe anything.

We picked up a guy there a month ago."

"Cap," McCracken asked, "could that have any connection with this case, maybe?"

"No. Simple theft case, and the guy's up now, doing three years. He was a stranger to the rest of the mob there, anyway."

McCracken glanced at Perley for confirmation, and got it.

"None of us knew him well," the whistler said. "He wasn't an artist like the rest of us. He painted pictures."

McCracken closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and asked the bird imitator:

"What do you know about Jim Lee's affairs? I've heard he was broke, or nearly so. If you're a. friend of his, you ought to know about that."

"I do, Mr. McCracken. He was hard up, that is, for him. He ran a lot of bookie places, you know, or rather he backed them. Then the syndicate--the Garvey-Cantoni group that runs the numbers game--moved in and took them over.

He didn't fight them about it. He wasn't a gangster and he didn't want to start a war.

And that's what it would have been if he'd tried to buck them."

Zehnder cut in.

"Perley's right about that. We're working on that syndicate, and we close a place now and then, but we haven't got much on them yet. They're bad boys, though."

"Then why," McCracken wanted to know, "suspect Perley when you've got some really tough mugs that might have a motive?"

"But they haven't," said Perley. "Jim Lee wasn't fighting them. Of course, they could have killed him for his ring, but--" He shrugged.

"What about that crochet needle Lee was killed with, Perley?" McCracken asked. "Was it one of yours? The captain says crocheting is your hobby."

For the first time, the little man seemed on the defensive as he answered.

"The police seem to think it's funny that I should like to crochet," he complained. "That's silly. Why, lots of men do. And it's good for the nerves, and it gave me something to do when Jim and I played chess. He took so long between moves."

"Was it one of your needles?" McCracken demanded.

"It could have been." Perley shrugged again. "I have lots of them."

"It was exactly like others in his room," said Zehnder.

Jerold Bell was getting restless.

"The devil with crocheting needles," he said. "I just dropped in here to see if there was any news on the ring. I think I'll go on around to Vermont Street and help the boys there look for it. Coming, McCracken?"

"In a minute, Jerry." He turned to Zehnder. "Listen, Cap, the main thing I want to know, is why you're holding Mr. Essington? Thus far there isn't any evidence against him, except that he hasn't an alibi he can prove."

Zehnder grinned. "It ain't that he can't prove he wasn't there. It's that we can prove he was, see? He says he didn't get home before two. But two people there heard him in his room, between half past eleven and half past twelve."

"You mean they heard someone in his room?"

"Nope. Him. Like always when he's in his room alone, they said, he was whistling to himself. Bird calls and stuff. Even a dog imitation."

Perley Essington whirled indignantly. "Dog imitations!" His voice was shrill with indignation. "Why, I--"

"How do you know it wasn't Slimjim Lee they heard, waiting for Perley?"

McCracken asked Zehnder. "If he was learning how to whistle -- ?"

Again Perley, still indignant, interrupted.

"Mr. McCracken, that isn't possible," he said. "Nobody would mistake Jim Lee's whistling for mine. They couldn't. He was just learning, and he just whistled straight, whistled, not bird calls."

His voice rose now:

"No, nor anybody else whistling, either. Nor a phonograph record, or anything like that. One young whippersnapper of a policeman suggested that. There isn't another artist in the coun-try who could possibly have been mistaken for me by the people who room there and who know my work."

"Fine," said Captain Zehnder. "Then it must have been you they heard?"

"I don't know," said Perley. "But they couldn't have mistaken anybody else for me. Listen, have you ever heard anybody else who can do this?"

He pursed his lips and began to run a gamut of bird calls that sounded like feeding time in an aviary. The calls tumbled upon one another's heels so rapidly, that McCracken could almost have sworn that two or three birds were singing simultaneously.

The insurance man, standing behind the little bird imitator, looked at McCracken over Perley's head and winked. He circled his forefinger at his temple, than reached forward at Perley's bald head, and--with the exaggerated gesture of a stage magician--pretended to pluck something from Perley's scalp. He held it up so McCracken could see that it was a tiny feather.

It was funny, but Perley was looking, and whistling, directly at McCracken and the private detective couldn't laugh without hurting Perley's feelings.

He wondered if Bell was right, and if Perley had really passed the borderline between eccentricity and outright screwiness. If he hadn't, he was putting himself in a bad spot by refusing to admit that his fellow-roomers could have been mistaken about whom they had heard.

Zehnder tapped Perley on the shoulder to stop him.

"Anything else you want to tell McCracken?" he said.

Perley stopped whistling and shook his head. He looked at Tim McCracken.

"You'll take the case?" he said. "I'm sorry I can't pay you more than--"

"Sure," said McCracken, "I'll take it." He looked at Zehnder. "You going around with us, Cap?"

Zehnder crossed and opened the door before he answered, and nodded to the turnkey who had been waiting outside. After shaking hands with McCracken, Perley was led down the hallway toward his cell. Mingling with his footsteps, there floated back the trilling notes of a thrush.

Zehnder grinned at McCracken. "That's the answer," he said. "The crackpot doesn't even know he's doing that. It's a habit, a reflex. Last night, in his room, he probably didn't even know he was whistling." He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out an envelope, and handed it to McCracken. "Well, here's your retainer, Mack. You can't get him in any deeper than he is, so I wish you luck."

McCracken put it in his pocket, grateful to Zehnder for not having embarrassed him by mentioning the amount.

"You didn't answer me, Cap," he said. "Coming with us?"

"Part way. Just for routine I want to see the Bijou's doorman, to check on that call Perley says he got."

"What call? He didn't say anything about a. call."

Zehnder snorted. "He did last night, but he probably decided it sounded too thin and to forget about it. Come on, I'll tell you on the way. You follow us in your car, Jerry. We'll just stop there a minute."

As he drove north on 24th Street, the captain explained about the call: