Fredric Brown - Homicide Sanitarium

McCracken sighed again. "Was it you said something about a dog imitation?"

"Not me. That was Bill Johnson. I might have heard a dog, but if I did, I don't remember. I'd have figured that came from outside. Like the cats. I did hear some cats yowling, but that wouldn't have been Perley either. He doesn't imitate animals, just birds."

McCracken got up and went to the door.

"Well, thanks," he said. He declined another drink, and went down the hall. He opened the door of Perley Essington's room and went in.

Jerry Bell came out of the room across the hall and stood in the doorway.

"Find out anything new?" he asked.

"Carson's telling the truth, I think," McCracken said. "If he was lying, he'd be more definite about time and things. He rings true."

"Then how can you figure an out for Perley? Or can you?

"I don't know," McCracken said. "But I got an idea. It's almost as screwy as Perley is."

He got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the carpet, and started working around the floor in circles, examining the carpet carefully. A white spot he found on the floor behind a chair interested him considerably.

He was starting to crawl behind the bed, when Jerry Bell said:

"You got it wrong, Mack. No corpses in here. That was the other room, remember?"

McCracken got up slowly and dusted off the knees of his trousers with his left hand. A tiny object he'd found behind the bed was gripped carefully between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He held it so Bell could see that it was a light blue feather.

Jerry Bell grunted. "Is that what you were looking for, Mack? Jeepers, I'll open the pillow and get you a handful of "em."

McCracken shook his head slowly.

"I doubt it," he said. "Very few pillows are stuffed with mocking bird feathers. Jerry."

"What makes you think that's off a mocking bird? You sure?"

"No," McCracken answered frankly. "But it's the right color. An ornithologist can tell. Anyway, mocking bird or not, there was a bird in this room. There's proof of that back of the chair. And a mocking bird fits the picture."

"Look," he explained. "The killer brought the bird here, prob-ably in a box.

He came in the window there and hid in the parlor until Jim Lee came in, and he killed him. Then--to pin the thing on Perley Essington--he came in here and let the bird out in this room for awhile. The bird would be Perley's best imitator, wouldn't it? And it'd sing, being free--comparatively--after being shut up."

"But--a mocking bird!" Bell protested. "Where'd anyone get one?"

"Pet shops have 'em occasionally. They're not common, but they can be got.

Probably the killer stole it, though. He wouldn't want the trail traceable if there'd be a slip-up. It was that dog-and-cat business made me think of one. My aunt used to have a mocking bird, and it'd imitate dogs and cats when it heard them.

And it'd have picked that up around the pet shop."

"Then maybe Perley wasn't lying about that call that sent him on a wild-goose chase."

McCracken nodded. "Of course. This was carefully planned. The guy who did it made sure Jim Lee would be here and that Perley wouldn't, and that he'd be a place where he couldn't prove he'd been."

"If an expert backs you up on your guess what that feather is," Bell said,

"looks like you did figure Perley an out, Mack. Got any idea who did kill Lee?"

McCracken took a deep breath, then said flatly: "You did, Jerry. I was sure as soon as I found this feather. It's just like the one you pretended to pull off Perley Essington's head when you were clowning back at Headquarters. You had the bird in your pocket when you left. Maybe you'd killed it after you used it. And when you pulled that feather gag in Zehnder's office you'd just had your hand in your pocket.

You were so confident you had Perley framed, you didn't hesitate to use it for making fun of Perley."

The expression on Jerry Bell's face didn't change. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, an unlighted cigar was tilted in a corner of his mouth.

"Not bad, Mack," he said. "How about motive?"

"It wasn't the ring," McCracken went on, "although in your kind of work you ought to know the outlets and where to cash in on it easy. But you wouldn't have done it for that. I figure you must have gambled over your head and gone in debt to Lee. Which did he have in his billfold, I.O.U.'s or checks of yours?"

Jerry Bell sighed deeply, took a gun out of his pocket.

"You're covered, Mack," he said. "I think you could make that stick. I'm in plenty deep, including some company funds, and that'd come out if the police nosed around. And -well, I did buy that bird instead of stealing it." He paused, then:

"But listen, Mack, Slimjim was blackmailing me on those debts. You can't blame a man for killing a blackmailer. You aren't --"

"How about Perley?" McCracken interrupted. "You tried to frame it on him, just so you wouldn't be suspected, just to give the cops an easy victim."

"He was in with Slimjim on the whole--"

"Nuts! If he had been, he'd have known who killed Jim, and why. That don't hold water, Jerry."

"Then let's try it this way, Mack. I can get two thousand for that ring. I know you're broke. How about half of that?"

McCracken's eyes were cold. "Jerry," he asked, "know what that spot on the floor back of the chair is?"

"I can guess. Why?"

"Then you can guess my answer to that proposition. I'm going to call your bluff, Jerry. You won't shoot me. You'd have done it already, if you figured you could get away with it. As readily as you killed Lee."

He turned and walked slowly toward the door, his hands relaxed at his sides.

"Regan out there knows we're in here alone, Jerry," he said. "If there's a bullet hole in my back, there's no story you could tell that would stand up under investigation. I'm not even armed, so you couldn't use self-defense. There'd be no out for you at all, Jerry."

He took a step toward the door, another.

"Stop, Mack!" ordered Bell. "I'll--"

McCracken kept on walking. It didn't seem to him that he was breathing at all.

He made the hallway, and was half way to the front door before he heard the shot. It had not been aimed at him.

The contents of the desk and the filing cabinet had been taken from the drawers and were stacked in a cardboard carton with a rope around it.

The carpet was rolled up at one side of the room, and the phone had been disconnected, although it still stood on the desk.

McCracken sat on the desk beside the phone, with his elbows on his knees and his chin cupped in his hands.

He was whistling softly and mournfully.

He didn't hear the door open, but he almost fell off the desk when a voice said:

"Excellent whistling, Mr. McCracken. Excellent!"

The shiny pate of the little bird imitator was bobbing across the office toward him.

"Hello, Perley," McCracken said. He couldn't muster a smile to go with it.

"I'm leaving vaudeville, Mr. McCracken," Perley explained. "Or maybe one could say that vaudeville is leaving me, because the Bijou is closing. Anyway, I'm opening a school for whistling and bird imitating. You whistle well. I could make you my star pupil."

"Thanks," said McCracken listlessly. "Maybe sometime. But what with moving and all--"

"To better quarters, I hope. And that reminds me. You never sent me a bill. I came to settle up for what you did for me."

He beamed at McCracken, and for a moment the private detective felt a ray of hope. Then it faded. A few dollars can seem like a lot sometimes, but it doesn't make much difference when you owe a few hundred and are about to be put on the street. "In fact, Mr. McCracken," Perley went on, "I have a check already written, which I hope you'll think adequate. It's for three thousand dollars. You may have heard that Jim Lee's will said that I was his only real friend and that he left me all his money, and that it turned out to be more than anybody thought he had. Some bonds, you know, that he thought weren't worth much."