Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Smoking Chimney

Gramps said: “How was it done? A gun or—” He caught Duryea’s disapproving eye upon him and abruptly lapsed into silence.

Pete Lassen poured more maple syrup on his hot cakes. “Done with a gun,” he said. “As nearly as they can tell, death must have been instantaneous. I told them not to move the body until we got there, Frank.”

“And we still aren’t sure that he was Pressman?”

“No. Gentry’s inclined to think now that he wasn’t.”

“Why?”

“Says the man was pretty seedy looking, and doesn’t think it’s Pressman... I talked to him over the telephone, and he was pretty excited. It’s hard to get the facts... How about it? Can you take a run out there with me?”

“Sure,” Duryea said. “As soon as I get some clothes on. Milred and I rolled out of bed and came in for an early breakfast. It won’t take me over five minutes. Come on, let’s go.”

They left the trailer for the house. Gramps seated himself across the table from Milred and started tossing flapjacks from the griddle to his plate. After a few minutes, they heard the doors of the sheriff’s car slam, and the sound of the car pulling away from the kerb.

Gramp Wiggins looked solicitously at Milred. “It’s gettin’ pretty cold here,” he said. “You oughta have some clothes on.”

“Cold?”

“Yes. Mighty chilly.”

“I’m all right.”

Gramps thought for a moment, then tried a different tack. “Ain’t got a half pound of butter in the house you could loan me, have you?”

Milred laughed at him. “Go on,” she said. “You can’t fool me, and you don’t have to. When were you intending to start?”

Gramps said: “Right now, by gum,” and started heaving dishes around promiscuously, piling things in the sink with a helter-skelter, hurried abandon which contrasted oddly with the neat efficiency of the bachelor’s den-on-wheels.

Milred Duryea laughed tolerantly, said: “Remember, Gramps, you’re my relative. Don’t strain the family relationship with my husband too much. If he’d wanted you around, he’d have invited you to go along.”

“Great jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Gramps exclaimed. “There ain’t no law says a man can’t travel anywhere on a public highway. Guess if I want to go to Petrie, there ain’t nobody goin’ to stop me. Got just as much right to park there as I have anywhere... Milred, you get the hell out of here, and let me get started.”

He dashed around the little trailer like a whirlwind, making things tight; then he darted out of the door, and a moment later Milred heard the sound of a starting motor, the rattlety bang of Gramps’ decrepit car.

Milred Duryea, not wishing to be taken to Petrie in her négligée, stepped abruptly out of the trailer, and slammed the door.

Almost immediately the trailer creaked into motion.

It was nearing nine o’clock as the county car slowed down for the main street of Petrie.

“Know where this Reedley cabin is?” Duryea asked the sheriff.

The sheriff said: “As I understand it, it’s the old Dingman place. Just a little chicken ranch affair. A couple of acres up on the edge of the mesa country. If it hadn’t been for this oil stuff, it wouldn’t be worth paying taxes on. A little shack about a hundred feet from the road back in some eucalyptus trees.”

The road wound through the last of the orchard land, marginal territory in which stunted trees with pale, anaemic leaves were in marked contrast to the rich full green of the lower lands. Then the soil gave way to rocks and sagebrush and bits of greasewood with here and there a cleared patch of hay land.

“Those eucalyptus trees over there,” the sheriff said.

They slowed for the turn-off where a dirt road took off from the pavement.

“That’s the place all right,” the sheriff said. “See the automobiles parked there in the trees?”

The dirt road widened into a yard surrounded by tall eucalyptus trees. The yard itself was completely and utterly disreputable. There were old piles of scrap lumber, chicken coops patched together out of odds and ends, several chicken houses made of old, unpainted lumber, roofed with rusted tin which had evidently been hammered out of five-gallon oil cans and tacked together to form an excuse for roofing. All around the yard were chicken droppings and chicken feathers, and that unmistakable odour associated with chicken coops.

Reedley’s house was in keeping with the rest of the place, a shack building which had evidently been built a bit at a time. Starting with one room, it had had two rooms added. The building was devoid of paint — old, weather-beaten and dilapidated.

A group of men gathered into a compact little knot were talking under the trees. The sheriff swung his car over toward them, saying to the district attorney: “Guess you know all these people. Deputy coroner. Deputy sheriff... That slim chap talking with Gentry is the editor of the Herald ... Hello, folks.”

They crowded around the car, shaking hands, making comments.

“Well, boys,” the sheriff said at length, “what about it?”

Gentry, the constable, said: “I think you’d better hear Everett True’s story, Sheriff.”

True stepped importantly forward. As editor of the Petrie Herald , he had a certain position in the community, and he was, quite apparently, jealous of that position. He was a tall, middle-aged man with high forehead, burning, intense eyes, and a rapid manner of speech. Quick in his actions and accurate in his perceptions, he had quite evidently rehearsed his story in his mind, reducing it to the bare essentials.

“Hugh Sonders came into the office about four-thirty yesterday afternoon,” he told the sheriff. “He had a tip that Reedley was Pressman. Wouldn’t tell me where he’d got it... At first I was sceptical; then as I investigated, I began to think there might be something to it. The more I checked, the more plausible the whole thing seemed. I hadn’t been able to get a photograph of Pressman, but I did have a pretty fair description. I had written an editorial in the form of a question asking whether Pressman thought there was oil in the property and was making a good-faith attempt to develop it, or whether he was merely seeking legalized blackmail from the people who had built up this community by hard work and self-denial.

“We decided to go call on Reedley, and I thought it would be a good idea to pull a proof of this editorial, show it to Pressman — if that’s who Reedley turned out to be — and use his comments as the basis of a story.

“I showed Sonders the editorial. He thought it wasn’t nearly strong enough. The way he felt influenced me somewhat. I made some changes — interlineations, and the change of a word here and there, and gave it to Sonders to look over. Sonders read the proof of the editorial and talked it over with me while we were driving out. I intended to take a photograph if I could, and had a small candid camera concealed in my hip pocket. It was arranged that Sonders would hand him the proof-sheet of the editorial, and, while he was reading it, I’d get out my candid camera and try for a shot.

“Sonders and I arrived here about five o’clock. As I was driving into a parking place under the eucalyptus trees, Sonders saw a shade being jerked down. We noticed then that all the shades had been lowered. That made us believe Reedley really was Pressman, that he had an idea of what we wanted and why we were coming, and had jerked down the shades when he saw us turn in at the driveway.

“Naturally, I was somewhat excited. Sonders was, too. He pointed out that there were two doors to the house, that in order to keep our man from walking out on us, we’d each take a door. I went to the back door, Sonders went to the front. We knocked, then kicked at the doors and started calling out. We couldn’t get any answer.”