Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Smoking Chimney

“Wait a minute. You can’t take me away from here.”

“Why not?”

“Because... because it’d make trouble.”

“Not for you. You’re in plenty of trouble already.”

“Don’t you understand? I got—”

“What have you got?” the sheriff asked as Wiggins abruptly became silent.

“Nothin’,” Gramps said.

“You all alone out here?”

Gramps hesitated for two or three thoughtful seconds, then said sullenly: “Yes.”

“No one with you?” the sheriff asked.

“Don’t be a sap,” Gramps told him. “Do I look as though I had anyone with me?”

Duryea said to the sheriff: “Go ahead. Load him in. He’s got to find out that I’m here sooner or later, and we may as well get it over with.”

“All right, Borden,” Lassen said. “Bring him up to the car.”

Duryea leaned forward. “Gramps, I warned you that you were on your own,” he said.

“Oh, so you’re here?”

“Yes.”

“Humph!” Gramps said. “I begin to smell a rat now.”

Bordon hustled him forward, opened the door in the rear of the car, bundled the old man in.

“And you’re here, too, Milred?”

“Yes.”

“Humph!” Gramps said again, and then added after a moment: “Helluva note, when us Wigginses can’t stand together.”

Duryea said: “You had your warning, Gramps. I told you not once but a dozen times.”

“Watcha goin’ to do with me?” Gramps asked.

“Take you in to the county seat,” Lassen announced promptly.

“You can’t hold me.”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t committed any crime.”

Lassen laughed. “Try telling that to a jury. You didn’t know who was in this automobile. We were law-abiding citizens, driving along a public highway. We stopped the car, and you came stalking us with a gun. The implication was plain. You were trying to hold up an automobile.”

Gramps thought for a moment, then suddenly began to laugh. “Got it all now,” he said. “It’s a damn, dirty frame-up.”

“That’s what they all say,” Lassen announced.

“How’d you know I was here?” Gramps asked. “Tell me that.”

“I didn’t have to know you were here. I simply stopped the car—”

“Stopped the car after you’d let this young cat-footed giant out to come sneakin’ up on me... Sort of thought I heard somethin’ movin’ behind me, but was so interested in findin’ out what was goin’ on in the car, I didn’t pay enough attention... You ain’t goin’ to make yourself ridiculous along about election time, by throwin’ an old man in the cooler for tryin’ to get evidence?”

“Evidence of what?” Lassen asked.

“Evidence of murder, of course.”

“And in order to get it, you arm yourself and go out on to the public highways ready to pounce on the first unsuspecting motorist who comes along,” Duryea announced sarcastically.

Gramps looked at him with piercing eyes. “You’re kinda overdoin’ it a little bit, son,” he said. “Guess the idea is to throw such a scare into me you’ll make a good dog out of me, huh?”

Duryea said: “Once and for all, I’m telling you that you’re on the same footing as any other citizen.”

“Yeah, I know, but you wouldn’t come pouncin’ down on any other citizen this way — not if you knew him an’ knew what he was workin’ for.”

“Just what are you working for?” Lassen asked.

“Tryin’ to get the murderer for you.”

“And you expected that he’d come along here and stop, so that you could have a little chat with him?” Duryea asked.

“No, I didn’t,” Gramps said. “But I expected he’d come along an’ try to go into that house, an’ when he did, I wanted to be right behind him.”

“Why should he go into the house?” Duryea asked. “What specific reason is there for him to show up at this time and go into the cabin?”

Gramps started to answer that question, then suddenly thought better of it and kept quiet.

“I’m afraid your little story won’t hold water,” Duryea observed.

That brought a torrent of speech from the old man. “Now you listen to me,” he said. “You’ve certainly overlooked all the important clues in this case... The first one is the time element.”

“Go ahead,” Duryea said. “Get it out of your system, but remember that anything you say can be used against you.”

“First rattle out of the box,” Gramps said. “You’ve got a regular clock, an’ you don’t pay any attention to it. That oil lamp uses up just so much oil every hour. I know somethin’ about oil lamps. Pressman knew somethin’ about oil lamps, because he’d lived out in a little cabin when he was a poor prospector. Now then,” Gramps said, suddenly turning to Pete Lassen, “what makes a lamp smoke?”

“I don’t know,” Lassen admitted.

“It smokes because it’s turned up too high,” Gramps said. “If the wick is trimmed even, about the only thing that’ll make a lamp smoke is bein’ turned up too high.”

“I suppose so,” the sheriff agreed.

“Now then,” Gramps went on, “you light an oil lamp an’ there’s some oil in the wick. The minute the match touches the wick, the lamp starts burnin,” but as it gets hotter an’ starts drawin’ more oil up through the wick, the lamp will begin to burn more brightly. A person that knows anythin’ about oil lamps turns the wick way down when he lights ’em. Then after four or five minutes, he’ll adjust the flame... You get me?

“Let’s suppose that it was dark when the murder was committed. Pressman was there in the house. When it got dark, he’d have lit the lamp. He would have known how to light a lamp, an’ he’d have had the wick down low, an’ it would have gradually come up to just about the right height. He knew oil lamps.

“Therefore, we have to figure that it was the murderer who lit the lamp. Now if it had been dark when the murder was committed, the lamp would already have been lit... Figure that one out.”

“Then the murderer must have lit the lamp in broad daylight,” Duryea said, smiling. “Your own reasoning is getting you all mixed up, Gramps.”

Gramps shook his head. “Nope. Not unless the lamp had been filled durin’ the night. When the body was discovered, the level of the kerosene in the lamp indicated it had been burnin’ just about so long. The amount of kerosene used up by a lamp is a pretty good clock. I figure that lamp was lit about six hours before I first saw it — an’ I saw it about the time the sheriff got there — around nine o’clock.”

“Then the murder couldn’t have been committed then — that would have been at three in the morning,” Duryea objected.

“Yep,” Gramps said, “that’s right. The autopsy surgeon says that murder was committed between four o’clock an’ eleven o’clock on the twenty-fourth. Just because a light was burnin’ everyone thinks the murder was committed after dark... I’m tellin’ you that burnin’ lamp didn’t have anythin’ to do with the murder. The murderer made two trips to the cabin.”

“Then when was the murder committed?” Duryea asked, interested now in spite of himself.

“The murder was committed a little before five o’clock on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth,” Gramps said, his voice fairly crackling with positive assurance.

“It couldn’t have been. The evidence shows that Pressman was alive at that—”

“What evidence?” Gramps shrilled. “How does anyone know it was Pressman that was in that house? Sonders says he saw somebody pullin’ the curtains down the minute the car turned into the driveway. Both Sonders an’ True say they heard someone walkin’ around inside the house. Both of them admit the man in there wouldn’t say a word. Both of them say that there was somethin’ ominous about the way he come to the door — made ’em think that he had a gun an’ was figurin’ on shootin’... All right, just because they hear somebody movin’ around in the cabin an’ know Pressman’s in the cabin, they jump at the conclusion that it was Pressman they heard movin’ around... I’ll tell you somethin’ about the man that was movin’ around inside that cabin. That person was the murderer, an’ Ralph G. Pressman was lyin’ dead on the floor at that very moment.”