Эрл Гарднер - The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith

Sergeant Ackley scraped his jaw with his thumbnail.

“I’ll... be—”

“You will if you use profanity,” interrupted Lester Leith.

But Sergeant Ackley had already stormed to the door...

Lester Leith surveyed his valet through a film of blue cigarette smoke. His thought-slitted eyes were brittle-hard with interest.

“Found him dead, eh, Scuttle?”

“Dead as a doornail, sir,” he said.

Lester Leith’s eyes became speculative. He inhaled a deep drag of smoke which made the end of the cigarette glow like a coal in the half-darkness beyond the floor lamp.

There followed a silence, broken only by the crackling of the flames in the fireplace. The valet, poised on the balls of his feet like a man about to strike a knockout blow, watched his master as a cat might stare at a mouse. But Leith’s eyes were focused upon the twisting spiral of cigarette smoke which eddied upward from the end of the cigarette.

“Murdered, of course, Scuttle?”

The valet wet his thick lips with the tip of a nervous tongue. He looked up.

“Why do you say ‘of course’?” he asked.

Lester Leith made a deprecatory gesture with the hand which held the cigarette.

“According to your statement, the man was an international gem thief. He’d arrived on the boat with a big shipment of stolen gems, or there’s every reason to believe he had them.

“The customs had a spy planted on the boat, a man who acted as room steward. He’d found out that a small steamer trunk, made along the lines of a miniature wardrobe trunk, had been cleverly designed with a false side that would slip out when one unscrewed the lock. And the smuggler evidently realized the steward had made the discovery, for he lured him down into a passage back of the baggage room, knocked him unconscious, bound and gagged him.

“Then the smuggler landed, got his ingenious trunk through customs and went to the Palace Hotel. You tell me that the steward regained consciousness, managed to free himself and telephoned the police and the customs authorities. They rushed to the Palace Hotel and found their man dead. It’s a natural assumption that he had been murdered.”

The valet nodded his head in oily agreement.

“Well, sir, whether it’s the natural assumption or not, the man was murdered. There was a knife driven right through his heart.”

Lester Leith blew a contemplative smoke ring, watched it as it drifted upward and disintegrated.

“Humph,” he said at last. “Any sign of a struggle?”

The valet’s voice lowered, as though he was about to impart a secret.

“Now we’re coming to the strange part of it, sir. The man had been tied in a chair, bound hand and foot and gagged, and then he’d been stabbed.”

Lester Leith’s eyes became level-lidded with concentration.

“Yes?” he said, his voice like that of a chess player who is concentrating on the board, “and the trunk?”

“The trunk, sir — was gone!”

And the last two words, coming at the end of an impressive pause, were hurled forth like a denunciation.

Lester Leith’s eyes abruptly became lazy-lidded with mirth.

“Come, come, Scuttle, there’s no need to be so dramatic about it. You’re like an amateur elocutionist at a charity entertainment reciting The Shooting of Dan McGrew. Of course the trunk was gone. Obviously, the man was murdered by someone who wanted the jewels.”

The spy wagged his head solemnly.

“No, sir, you don’t understand. The police were right on the man’s heels. He hadn’t been in the hotel fifteen minutes when the police arrived.”

Lester Leith let his forehead crease in a frown of annoyance.

“Well, what of it? Obviously, fifteen minutes was time enough for a murder. It should have been time enough for a robbery as well. Hang it, Scuttle, what’s the big idea? You’re as mysterious about this as an old hen with a choice morsel of gossip. Why the devil shouldn’t the trunk have gone?”

The valet answered with the faintest touch of triumph in his voice.

“Because, sir, every piece of baggage that’s checked into the Palace Hotel is listed on their records, and there’s never a piece of baggage that goes out that isn’t checked against that list. They had too much trouble with baggage thieves and with guests who slipped their baggage out of the back door. So they installed a baggage checker.

“Now that trunk of Cogley’s was distinctive. It was striped so it could be easily identified in customs. The baggage checker remembers it being taken into the hotel, and he’s positive it didn’t go out. And the bellboys and the freight elevator man are all certain it didn’t go out. The Palace Hotel is run on a system, and it’s easier to get money out of the safe than to get baggage out without a proper check!”

Leith yawned.

“Very possibly, Scuttle. The Palace Hotel has several hundred rooms. It’s obvious that the murderer simply took the trunk into a vacant room where he could work on it at his leisure.”

The valet snorted.

“You must think the police are fools, sir!” he exclaimed, and there was a trace of bitterness in his voice. “All that was checked by the police. They realized that possibility within five minutes, and made a complete check of the place. It was done without any confusion or ostentation, of course, but it was done. A bellboy or a house detective or a police officer, under one excuse or another, entered every single room in the hotel within twenty minutes of the time the murder was discovered. What’s more, every nook and cranny of the hotel was searched.

“And the trunk vanished. It simply evaporated into thin air. It went in, but it didn’t stay in. Yet it didn’t go out. There isn’t a single clue to the murderer, nor to the trunk!”

And the spy smirked at Lester Leith with that exaltation shown on the face of a pupil when he asks a question which baffles the teacher.

Lester Leith shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, well, there’s an explanation somewhere. Trunks don’t vanish into thin air, you know. But why bother me with it? I’m not interested.”

“I know, but you’re always interested in unusual crimes.”

“Was, Scuttle, was. Don’t say that I am. I admit that I formerly took a more or less academic interest in crimes. But that was before Sergeant Ackley got the idea I was beating the police to the solution of the crime and robbing the robber.”

The valet’s voice was insinuating.

“But this is such a very interesting crime, sir. After all, there’d be no harm in thinking out a theoretical solution, would there?”

Lester Leith did not answer the question directly.

“What other clues were there, Scuttle? How did the police decide that the murderer had entered?”

“Up the fire escape and through the window.”

“The fire escape?”

“Yes, sir. The room was locked on the inside, the key was in the lock. The window opened on the fire escape and it had been jimmied. The marks of the jimmy showed plainly in the wood, and there were traces of prints on the fire escape, rubber heels.”

Lester Leith tossed away the stub of the cigarette, took out his cigarette case, absently abstracted another cigarette.

“Funny that the murderer could have worked so quickly, and it’s strange that of all the rooms in the hotel the man would have secured one that opened on the fire escape. Of course, that solves the mystery of the trunk. The man took it down the fire escape with him — the murderer, I mean.”

Long before Lester Leith finished, the valet was wagging his head in negation.

“No, sir. In the first place, it was the most natural thing in the world for Cogley to have a room which opened on the fire escape. The murderer had made all the arrangements. In the second place, the missing trunk couldn’t possibly have gone through the window. The window is small, and the trunk, although smaller than the average wardrobe trunk, is, nevertheless, too big to...”