Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Smoking Chimney

Gramps paused to get just the right words to describe the conditions in Santa Delbarra. “He knows it,” he said. “But he don’t appreciate it.”

Jane Graven laughed outright at the lugubrious expression on the old man’s face. Then, as she saw that expression change, there was a flash of sympathy in her eyes. “Why try to help him then?” she asked.

“Well, you see, it’s this way,” Gramps explained. “I’ve always been interested in crime stuff. Read all the magazines and just about all the good mystery stories.”

“I see. I—” She broke off, turned toward the door. “Good afternoon, Mr. Baxter.”

Pelly Baxter gave Gramps a quick, appraising glance, then said to Jane Graven: “I would like to talk with you for a few moments if you don’t mind.”

There was that in the quiet, almost ominous insistence of his manner that made Jane arise at once. “We can talk in here,” she said, indicating one of the inner offices. “Well,” she said, “I guess that’s all, Mr. Wiggins.”

“Oh, I’ll wait,” Gramps said easily. “I’m in no hurry. I’d like to talk with you just a little more.”

Pelly Baxter stood impatiently waiting for Jane to join him. When she had led the way into the inner office, Baxter promptly closed the door.

Corliss Ramsay, pounding away at the typewriter, gave Gramps a casual glance, smiled at the friendliness in his eyes, and went on with her typing.

Gramps wandered around the office for a few moments, then strolled casually into the office of Harvey Stanwood.

It was a neat, efficient, businesslike office, with good, substantial furniture, volumes of reports on income tax decisions, copies of tax laws, and books on accounting.

Two newspapers were on the corner of the desk. Gramps absently fingered one of the newspapers, noticed that it was dated the twenty-fourth. He looked at the other, saw that it, too, was dated the twenty-fourth. And then Corliss Ramsay was in the doorway. Kindly, but firmly, she said: “The waiting room is out here, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, beg pardon,” Gramps said, and followed Corliss Ramsay back into the outer office, where he seated himself and browsed through an illustrated magazine for the quarter hour which elapsed before Pelly Baxter left the office.

Jane Graven did not emerge. The door remained half open. Gramps looked at Corliss, saw she was busy with her typing, said, as he got up: “Guess she’s waiting for me to come in,” and walked boldly through the half-opened door into the inner office.

Jane Graven was sitting with her elbows propped on a desk. She looked up as she saw Gramps in the door, and Gramps instantly realized she had been crying. Gramps closed the door.

“That’s all,” Jane managed to say, in a firm, businesslike voice. “Nothing more.”

Gramps crossed over to the desk. “Now you listen to me, sister. If anybody’s pushin’ you around—”

She rolled back the swivel chair, got to her feet, managed a very crisp, businesslike manner, despite her slightly swollen eyes. “That’s all, Mr. Wiggins. I have nothing further to communicate.”

“Well,” Gramps admitted, “when you say it in that voice, I guess that’s it... But you just remember me, sister. The name’s Wiggins. Everybody calls me ‘Gramps’. You can reach me care of the district attorney up in Santa Delbarra County — at least until this case gets cleared up. If there’s anythin’ I can do to help you, let me know.”

“Thank you. There’s nothing.”

Gramps gave one more wistfully longing look at the office of Harvey Stanwood on the way out.

Sitting in the lobby of a downtown hotel, with an afternoon paper of the twenty-fourth, Gramps took less than fifteen minutes to realize that every word in the so-called suicide note that had been in the Petrie cabin had been cut from a newspaper of this date. The headlines were all there. One of them, in italics on the back page, was the caption for an editorial. The others were conventional headlines.

Why, then, did Harvey Stanwood have two of these newspapers on his desk?

Gramps gave that problem careful consideration, then with the blade of a razor-sharp penknife, carefully cut from his paper the same words which had been pasted to the sheet of paper so as to form the so-called suicide note.

Having done this, Gramps folded the narrow strips of paper and pushed them down into his vest pocket. Then he folded the newspaper, started to crumple it and drop it into the refuse can near the corner. Abruptly another thought struck him. He smoothed out the mutilated paper, looked at it long and thoughtfully, then, smiling, folded it carefully and left the hotel, his manner that of a man who has become obsessed with a very definite idea.

Milred Duryea said: “I have a feeling of impending disaster.”

“Gramps?” her husband asked, smiling.

“Yes. Whenever I don’t know what he’s doing, I become uneasy. When I find out what he’s done, my worst suspicions are invariably confirmed. What do you suppose he’s doing?”

Duryea said: “I was rather short with him last night when he faked a toothache to come busting into the office and try and get in on the examination of those witnesses. I think probably I hurt his feelings. Haven’t seen him since.”

“You may have hurt his feelings,” she admitted, “but you probably didn’t cramp his style any.”

“Well, after all,” Duryea said, “we can’t worry about him. I like him, but—”

“You don’t get me,” Milred interrupted. “As long as this murder case is unsolved, Gramps is out doing something. Heavens knows what it is.”

Duryea seemed strangely good-natured about it all. “Oh, well, if he gets pleasure out of it, let him go. As a matter of fact, any citizen can read about a crime that’s been committed and go out and start trying to solve it. Only, thank heavens, they don’t.”

“Gramps,” Milred announced, “never does the expected.”

“He’s probably headed back toward Mexico with his feelings hurt.” the district attorney said. “He’ll think it over for a while, let the hurt wear off, and some morning we’ll hear the old rattletrap wheezing and banging into the driveway.”

Milred slowly, deliberately wiped the flour off her hands, walked over to Frank Duryea’s chair, placed firmly determined fingers under his chin, elevated his head, and said: “Open your eyes — wide.”

“Why, what’s wrong with my eyes?”

“You,” she announced, “are deceiving me.”

“That’s a blanket accusation! You’ll have to be more specific before I dare commit myself. I might ’fess up to something that you didn’t know about. Give me a bill of particulars.”

She said: “You’re solving that Pressman murder case. That’s why you don’t care what Gramps is doing.”

“Well,” he admitted, “we’re making headway.”

“And holding out on me.”

“Well, not exactly.”

Milred sat down on the arm of the chair. “The biscuits,” she said, “are practically ready to go in the oven. Standing isn’t going to do them any good. Then I did intend to take some of that biscuit dough, add a little more shortening and sugar to it and when we’re about halfway through dinner, slip it in a nice hot oven to cook up for strawberry shortcake. The strawberries are all crushed and sugared in the icebox. There’s a big bowl of cream all whipped and sugared... And I thought I’d take those slabs of hot shortcake right out of the oven, spread on a generous amount of butter, put on a layer of crushed, sweetened fruit, let the ice-cold strawberry juices mingle with the melted butter and run down the outside of the shortcake. Then I’d put on another slab of hot shortcake, put more berries on that, put on great gobs of whipped cream, and bring it in for dessert. But... if you continue to hold out on me, I won’t have time.”