Эрл Гарднер - The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith

She refused to admit she had been previously employed by Leith, or that his valet had taught her to fall in a faint; she denied ever having been in a side show.

Ackley called in Beaver to confront her.

It needed but a glance at the goggle eyes of the undercover man to give Ackley his answer.

“That’s not the one. I never saw her before... Yes I did, too. She was one of the unsuccessful applicants for the job Sadie Crane got.” Ackley’s jaw sagged.

“Then... she doesn’t even look like the other?”

“No. This one is blonde. The other was brunette. This one has black eyes, the other had hazel eyes. They’re both fat — that’s all.”

“And because I didn’t ask for a description I presume I’ll be on the carpet,” groaned Ackley.

They went back to the room where Lester Leith was being held.

“Where’s Sadie Crane?” rasped Ackley.

Leith blew a cloud of smoke in a lazy spiral.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t tell you.”

Beaver spoke up again.

“He had fifteen drawing-room reservations on night trains. Maybe she went on one of those other reservations.”

Ackley exploded into action.

“Beaver, you have the most infuriating habit of withholding important information!” he yelled, and got busy once more on the telephone.

Investigation disclosed a startling fact. Five of Leith’s drawing-room reservations had been filled. Each one with a woman of astonishingly ample proportions, each woman with a suitcase which never left her hand.

It was a stupendous job to intercept each train and interview each woman, search each suitcase — chartered airplanes, long-distance telephone calls, emergency stop signals on various railroads...

By morning several facts were apparent.

The railroad systems out of the city had been badly confused by a wholesale stopping of limited trains at various points en route. Five fat women had been taken from trains to automobiles. They were all yelling vehement threats of lawsuits. Five suitcases had been confiscated. Each suitcase contained exactly the same thing — a pair of green trunks and a jacket.

Sergeant Ackley finally threw up his hands in disgust.

He had disrupted railroads, irritated powerful officials. He had done it all on a suspicion alone, and he had subjected himself to several suits by irate fat women who, as Lester Leith pointed out, were more inconvenienced at being jammed into police automobiles than were thin women.

Also, as Lester Leith managed to point out, Ackley had done virtually nothing toward apprehending the man, Garland, who had escaped; nor had he acted diligently in rounding up Garland’s accomplices.

By the time Ackley had turned his attention to that angle of the case, the accomplices had vanished. There remained for him nothing but the glory of having solved the Demarest robbery, and he took unto himself every bit of that glory.

Three days later Ackley received a hurried call from Beaver.

“The apartment where Sadie Crane lived is occupied. No one knows who’s in it, but the milkman delivers three quarts of whipping cream every day.”

Sergeant Ackley gripped the receiver until the skin over his knuckles was pale. “I’m coming right over,” he said.

“Leith is in his apartment,” cautioned Beaver.

“Keep him there,” roared Ackley, and slammed down the telephone.

He made record time to Leith’s apartment house.

A hammering on the door of the apartment where Sadie Crane had lived was answered by a thin wisp of a man.

“Who are you?” demanded Ackley.

“I’m Spinner.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I married Sadie Crane.”

“Where’s your wife now?”

“In the sitting room, the last I saw of her.”

“Here?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sergeant Ackley picked the thin little man up bodily by the coat collar, set him to one side, and strode into the apartment.

He came to a spacious room, in the center of which, sitting in a specially made armchair, cheerfully knitting, was a mountain of flesh.

“You Sadie Crane?” he yelled.

She shook her head.

“Who are you, then?”

“Sadie Crane Spinner. I married Arthur Spinner yesterday.”

Sergeant Ackley took a deep breath, controlled the outburst that quivered on his lips.

“You were at the Garland Printery the night Scuttle was there?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You were to take the Flyer?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“At the request of Lester Leith?”

“Yes. He wanted me to take a suitcase with my things in it and put on a performance in some suburban town.”

“But you changed your plans at the last minute?”

“Oh, yes. You see, when I left the printery to take a cab to the depot, the cabbie had a note that had just been delivered. It was from Leith telling me not to catch the train. He’d changed his mind. He said to take the suitcase up to his apartment and leave it there and go back to my apartment and wait until I heard from him. So I did it. It suited me — I don’t like to ride on trains. The berths ain’t big enough.”

Sergeant Ackley’s eyes were bulging.

“You came here, and have been here all the time?”

“Certainly. Then I got married and had to give up the idea of traveling. I’ve got to take care of Arthur.”

“And your suitcase? What became of it?”

“Oh, Mr. Leith brought it back here the next morning. He said he’d changed his plans.”

Sergeant Ackley fitted the mental picture puzzle together.

“What was in the suitcase when he returned it?”

“My trunks and jacket.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing else.”

“What are you doing now?”

“On my honeymoon. Times are good. Lester Leith employed me at twenty-five dollars a day as a human elephant, my husband at the same figure as a walking skeleton. When his side show blew up he gave us a month’s pay in lieu of notice; and the apartment’s rented until the middle of the month and the rent paid. So we’re staying on here.”

“Well,” remarked Sergeant Ackley, “I’m a cock-eyed—”

The woman nodded cheerfully.

Sergeant Ackley strode into the apartment of Lester Leith. Scuttle let him in, flashed him a look of inquiry.

Ackley walked to the chair where Lester Leith was blowing spirals of cigarette smoke.

“Pretty clever, sending a woman to the only place I’d never look for her — right hack to her own apartment. I covered every train, arrested five fat women who were false alarms, covered every hotel and rooming house — and here she was all the time!”

Lester Leith shrugged.

“Of course. That’s where she would be if I were innocent of the crime you accused me of. But you thought I was guilty, so you looked in all the wrong places.”

Sergeant Ackley’s hands clenched.

“And you had only to take the loot from Garland, slip it in Sadie Crane’s suitcase, have her take it out of the printery for you, then come to this apartment — take it out right under our noses — and you cleaned up two hundred thousand dollars!”

Lester Leith coughed deprecatingly. “You wouldn’t want to accuse me of a crime without proof.”

“Two — hundred — thousand — dollars!”

Leith traced the perimeter of a smoke ring with his forefinger.

“And even if you had proof, you couldn’t convict me of any crime.”

“Why not?”

“Because any package which might have contained any loot would have also had my kunzite necklace mingled with it, and it’s no crime to recover your own stolen property. If any other property should have happened to be mingled with it, that would come under the legal head of commingled personal property.”