Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

“Recognize him, Luke?”

“It’s Little Ikey Saran. That must mean the one that got away is Pete Harrison; they always ran as a pair and hired their guns out that way to anybody who had the price.”

“They won’t be hiring them out for a long time now, I think,” the chief said. “The killer knew we were on the Marilyn Foster and Rose Tiffin murders; he figured there was a chance we’d work our way to the dog. So he hires and plants Saran and Harrison to keep an eye on Doc Thoms’ place. The hoods were probably taking their orders too literally — but they might have got us if we hadn’t made the house and I hadn’t found that side door to sneak out of and come up behind Saran.”

“Saran looks like he’ll keep; let’s find Thoms.”

We went in the house, turned the lights on. Thoms turned out to be a short, beefy man, effectively sapped and stretched out on his kitchen floor. The chief kneeled over him. “He needs a doctor right away.”

Cops and an ambulance we needed. I heard sirens wailing in the distance. At least cops were on their way, and I found the phone in Thoms’ living room and got an ambulance started.

I went back to the kitchen, where Archer was laying a cold, wet cloth over the sap wound on Thoms’ head. From the look in the chief’s eyes, I had a hunch this was the payoff...

An hour later a tense group of people were gathered in Tim Brogardus’ office at headquarters. Tim was behind his desk, muttering about the chief dragging him out at a time of night when he should be home. Two uniformed cops occupied strategic spots against the wall. Aunt Minna was there, on the edge of her chair, worrying her wispy handkerchief in her fingers. Buddy VanDyke sat on the edge of Brogardus’ desk, considerably sobered. His grandfather paced back and forth across the room. Lon Montague sat stiffly in his chair, looking balefully at the chief.

And David Archer occupied the middle of the room, rubbing his palms together. He was just enough ham to feel his glory at times like these.

“First,” he said, “I’ll give credit where it’s due. Aunt Minna broke this case.”

“She...” Brogardus stared.

“When she put me on the trail of the dog,” Archer said. “The little Peke that was a very good watchdog, and that was acting queer when Marilyn phoned Aunt Minna in Philly. But before progressing, let’s clear up a few financial details. Lon, you say you thought a great deal of Marilyn Foster — would it be worth a grand to you for me to hand her killer to the cops?”

A stir of uneasiness swept the room. “Is that why Brogardus called us all down here?” Montague said lazily. “To pin a killer in the chair?”

“You’re not afraid, are you, Lon?”

“Me?” Montague laughed. “I tell you what I’ll do. I’m a gambler, essentially. I don’t like you, but I’m willing to leave my feelings out of it; you sew Marilyn’s killer up, I’ll give you a grand.”

Archer nodded, turned to Buddy VanDyke. “And you also loved Marilyn; you’d be willing to do something for the one person she had on earth, wouldn’t you?”

Buddy looked at Aunt Minna.

“That’s right,” the chief said. “With the friends and connections you have it would be duck-soup for you to find a job for a gracious little lady.”

“Of course, I’d do it!” Buddy said shortly.

“This is blackmail,” Brogardus muttered. “Let’s get on with this thing.”

Archer ignored the lieutenant, and turned to Ludwig VanDyke. “Just one question. Several years ago, before you retired from business, weren’t you before a grand jury because of some of your business practices?”

“Why, I...” old Ludwig sputtered. “What’s that got to do with this?”

“I knew you were cold enough, cruel enough; I just wanted to make sure you were crook enough to commit murder!”

“Sir!”

“Don’t give me that oratorical tone,” Archer said coldly. “I’m accusing you of killing Marilyn Foster and Rose Tiffin, and of hiring a pair of thugs to do whatever dirty work came up — which almost led to some more killing!

“I kept trying to figure Montague and Buddy’s first wife’s death in the motive — while all the time the motive was right under my nose; it was so damn simple I couldn’t see it. Buddy’s money. You are an old man; you’d been rich for a greater part of your life. You’d come on hard times once and they’d given you an almost pathological fear of poverty — it’s never easy for the rich to become poor!

“At any cost, you had to keep Marilyn Foster from marrying Buddy, from taking him and his money out of your control. You hired a detective agency to try to get something on her. She countered by taking Buddy into a quick marriage — marriage today at noon. You went to her apartment last night, knowing that if she lived, this weakling Buddy would slip from your grasp. You argued with her, perhaps even tried to buy her off, but she laughed at you. You had done everything you could to keep her away from those millions, and now she had the upper hand. So you seized that poker and killed; you killed again when you realized that you’d never be safe as long as Rose Tiffin was alive.

Buddy stared at the old man, shrinking away. Ludwig looked about the room, knotting his fists, licking his lips, he sputtered, “I’ll have you know, sir...!”

“Save it for the jury,” Archer suggested. “Save it to tell the executioner how a little dog tripped you up. A dog that had temper, a dog that was acting queer — that was sick — that came tearing in, nipping at you when it saw you — a stranger — striking down a person it loved.

“It must have struck terror in you — a hypochondriac — that a normal person could never understand, when you felt the fangs of that dog breaking the flesh of your ankles. That alone would have been enough; but when you noticed the dog was sick, you reached a point of complete horror, desperation. Once I had dug my way through to a motive and began to wonder about you, Ludwig, as a potential killer, I could visualize your reaction to the dog’s attack. I knew that if you were the killer, you’d have grabbed the dog in an agony of neurotic fear and put it somewhere for observation. You’d also have started anti-rabies shots, immediately. I haven’t gone far enough yet to check with the doctors in town, to see which of them you contacted for the shots. Tim will do that, and clear up any other details; that’s his job. But I knew when I located that dog at Doctor Thoms that you were our man.”

Ludwig wiped his hand across his face. “You’ll never prove any of this!”

“Don’t depend on it! You’ve turned out to be just another amateur at the murder game. We’ve got little Ikey Saran. We’ll pick up Harrison, his sidekick; they’ll talk. Doctor Thoms is still alive, to tell us who brought the dog to him. And that’ll only be the beginning.”

Old Ludwig looked desperately about the room. Then he slowly crumpled in a chair. “I want a lawyer,” he croaked; “and call Josiah and tell him to bring my heart medicine.”

He was still sitting there, worrying about his heart, when the chief and I left. As we neared the bottom of the stone steps that led down to the dark, deserted sidewalk, we heard someone coming behind us. We paused, looked back. It was Aunt Minna.

“I wanted to thank you, Mr. Archer.”

“All in a day’s work. I guess you’ll find Priscilla somewhere around Doctor Thoms’ place. Incidentally, I’ll remind Buddy about that promise of a position for you — in a few days. He’s got a shock to get over...”

“Yes, I understand,” Aunt Minna said softly, “for so have I. Why must there be killing in the world? One killing affects so many people...”

Her words were still ringing in my mind when David Archer and I drove off in the deep, silent night.