Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

“And you’ve been telephoning all this time?”

“I’ll say I have. Try to put in a telephone call and they stall you along for an hour and then tell you the circuits are busy for two hours. This war certainly has increased the production of talk.”

Tragg grinned. “Talk is cheap.”

“Not to Kingman, Arizona, it isn’t. Not when you’re a working woman.”

“How,” Tragg asked, “do you account for the fact that you took sugar from that bowl, and felt no ill effects, when two other people who took sugar from the same bowl developed prompt symptoms of arsenic poisoning?”

“I don’t ‘account’ for it,” Nell Sims snapped. “It’s up to you to ‘account’ for it. That’s your business.”

“You don’t think your daughter is in love with Hayward Small?”

“He’s glib. He’s just naturally slick and he’s been going around with her, keeping her out late — later and later. I don’t like it. He’s too old for her. And he’s always giving you that steady eye — pretending he’s working his psychology on you. A girl Dorina’s age don’t want psychology. She wants romance. He isn’t the type, and he’s been married. He told me that himself. You know as well as I do it isn’t right for a married man to go traipsing around with a girl Dorina’s age, even if he has been divorced. It ain’t right.”

“You think — that is — you think there’s been anything wrong in the relationship, Mrs. Sims?”

Mrs. Sims glared at both of them. “Let him,” she proclaimed, “who is without stones among you cast the first sin. My daughter is a good girl.”

“I know. I understand. But I’m merely trying to find out exactly what you meant when—”

“I meant what I said. There ain’t no good going to come of a thing like that. And now I’ve told you all I know, and I’m going to bed.”

She turned and stalked out of the room.

Tragg turned out the light, which had been shining so brightly in her eyes that she couldn’t see Mason on the bed. “How you feeling. Mason? Has the hypo sneaked up on you again?”

There was no answer. Mason was breathing regularly, eyes closed.

“Drugged,” Tragg said, “and I guess he’s pretty weak. The nurse says he’s okay. Wish she’d kept Dr. Kenward here so we could have questioned him. Well, Sam, figure that one out. Either she’s lying, or she took sugar from a bowl that had a lot of arsenic in it and felt no ill effects.”

“She might be lying about the sugar.”

“No. Perry Mason says she had sugar in her tea.”

“That’s right... I’m playing with a thought that worries me.”

“What?”

“Suppose that instead of taking sugar out of that bowl she was putting arsenic in. It would be easy to dip in with a spoon and then, after lifting it out, while replacing the cover, drop in the poison.”

Tragg said, “I’ve had the same idea. The last person to take sugar out of that bowl without being poisoned is the most logical suspect. Let’s have a smoke, Sam. We aren’t getting anywhere right now. Our next step is to check all the possible suspects, and then see if we can’t find arsenic in the possession of one of them — or find where someone has been buying arsenic.”

They scraped matches into flame, smoked for a while in silence. Sam Greggory stretched out his big arms, yawned. “Well, I’m going to bed. I—”

A staccato explosion coming from the direction of the gardens spatted against their eardrums, caused the sheriff to bite down abruptly on an unfinished sentence, turn his head, listening. Two more explosions made the silence which followed seem sinister.

Somewhere on the floor above them feet thudded to the floor, then raced to the stairs, came rushing down them.

The side door that opened out to the garden was jerked open so hard that it banged against the wall.

Sam Greggory tugged a big revolver from a holster that had worn shiny with much usage. “I guess,” he observed grimly, “this is it... From the southeast corner of the grounds?”

“I think so,” Tragg said. “Let’s go.”

They ran out of the room. The sheriff, in the lead, called out, “In case we—”

He was interrupted by the sound of Velma Starler screaming.

Two more shots sounded from the cactus garden.

Sam Greggory and Lieutenant Tragg, racing ahead, had some trouble orienting themselves in the moonlit grounds. There was no longer any sound of screams to guide them. A spurious peace had descended upon the shadow-splotched grounds. Everything seemed calm and peaceful as the two officers, weapons in hand, moved cautiously forward.

Abruptly, Tragg clasped the sheriff’s shoulder. “Voices,” he whispered, and then added, “Steps — over here.”

They listened. The sheriff, stocky and carrying a little too much weight, was breathing heavily, making it difficult to listen — but after a moment they could hear the crunch of sand as steps came toward them.

The sounds were coming from the other side of a large, circular patch of spineless cactus. Tragg took one side, the sheriff the other, circling swiftly.

Velma Starler was walking slowly toward them. Dr. Kenward was leaning heavily on her shoulder. The nurse’s face showed white and apprehensive in the moonlight as she saw the two men converging on her. Then she recognized the officers, said, “Dr. Kenward has been shot.”

The doctor’s professional fingers were exploring the injury even as he walked. He said, calmly, “A perforation of the adductor magnus, possibly a perforation of the muscular branch of the profunda artery. Rather more extensive hemorrhage than would otherwise be expected. I think we’ll be able to control it all right. We’ll go on to the house if you don’t mind, gentlemen.”

He resumed his hobbling.

“How did you happen to get shot?” Greggory asked. “Who did the shooting? Did you fire any shots? What were you doing out there?”

Velma Starler said almost angrily. “He fell asleep when we were out here, and I let him stay there, hoping he’d get a little much-needed rest. Night calls have been wrecking his health. He doesn’t have the faintest idea who fired the shots.”

Lieutenant Tragg picked up Dr. Kenward’s left arm, flung it over his neck and shoulder so as to give the doctor more support.

Dr. Kenward said in his even, unemotional voice, “I was asleep, gentlemen. I am not certain, but I believe it was a shot that roused me yet I cannot definitely identify the thing that awakened me as being a shot. However, I do know there were at least two shots fired during the interval that it took me to regain my senses as I awakened from deep slumber. I had some difficulty remembering where I was — and then I realized that projectiles were thudding into the sand and that they were intended for me.

“I jumped to my feet and started to run.

“Apparently the person who was doing the shooting must have been partially concealed. As I ran, I evidently placed a clump of cactus between us. My assailant thereupon detoured around this cactus, stalked me in the moonlight, saw me again in time to fire more shots. It was the second of these shots that took effect.”

“I saw him fall,” Velma Starler explained, “at the last shot. I knew, as soon as I saw him running toward me, that someone had been shooting at him.”

“You never saw your assailant?” Greggory asked.

“No.”

“Saw no flashes of gunfire?”

“No.”

“I did,” Velma Starler said. “I saw the flashes from the last two shots. They were over behind that big barrel cactus. That’s about fifty or sixty feet from where Dr. Kenward had been lying.”

“You can make it from here on all right, Doctor?” Lieutenant Tragg asked.