"Well, I can then," the man snapped. "He stood practically half out o" that sitting-room door all the time. His hand was holding it open by the k.n.o.b all the time . . . the nearest hand that"d be, the left. His right hand was in his pocket. His arm never lifted or moved or anything-no, not even up to when I shoved him aside to go in to his uncle."
"But that means his right hand was hidden from you by his body," I fill muttered. "I"ve heard of people shooting from their pockets . . ."
Grimes cut in: "You say Gerald took off his coat to put under his uncle"s head were you able to see if there was a pistol in its pocket, or anywhere on him?"
"There wasn"t, sir," the taxi-man declared. "I"m certain of that. I"ll tell you why: I noticed how ragged the lining of that coat was, thinking what a come-down it was for a chap like him. It was so ragged that I couldn"t ha" missed seeing a pistol poking out or bulging. Another thing. It was me he handed the coat to before Mrs Ferris told him to get a cushion-an" from the weight o" that coat, there couldn"t have been a pistol in it."
That seemed conclusive enough, yet Paul Toft muttered: "Odd bit of by-play, that coat business . . . as though it were part of a thought-up alibi . . ."
We did not pay much attention to him. The pistol theory was destroyed, especially as the taxi-man went on: "An" it"s all stuff, anyhow. As if I didn"t know what bullets do to people . . . I saw plenty enough in the War. An" there was no sign o" wound on poor old Mr Stanley."
That clinched the matter, as it were, but it also reminded me that it was about time I took a look at the dead man. The body had been taken into the sitting-room behind the one we were in, and as I examined it the thought of foul play receded farther and farther from my mind. There was simply no sign of wound or violence. I pointed this out to Paul Toft, who stood brooding over me as I worked.
"Eh? Nothing there, Doctor?" he muttered, coming out of his medium"s trance . . . "Nothing that would show, no . . . I feel that"s it . . . Something that was sure not to show . . . How?" He examined the body. "Hair, maybe . . . Hair still thick and black . . ."
"It couldn"t hide a bullet wound," I said.
"No . . . no, not a bullet wound, but . . . How would he have stood as Gerald came into the door? Left front to Gerald, eh . . . ? Shave the head on the left side, please, Doctor . . ."
I did this, not with much hope, but rather because I was always peculiarly under the spell of this strange, lank man"s strange powers. The more of the surface of the skull I uncovered the more pessimistic I became-until Toft"s bony finger prodded forward and he muttered: "What do you make of that, Doctor?"
It was a tiny puncture in the skin well above the left ear, a little red speck so small that it might have been anything from a flea-bite to the p.r.i.c.k of a needle-point. I said as much.
"Needle-point!" he breathed. "Ah, we"re getting warmer."
"How?" barked Grimes, who had joined us after a routine search of the house. "You suggesting that Gerald jabbed a poisoned needle into the old fellow? Just when did he manage that-never having been near him?"
"A dart might have done it"; I had taken fire at Toft"s suggestion. "A poisoned dart."
"Fine!" Inspector Grimes jeered. "An" Gerald being a rackety one was no doubt a first-cla.s.s darter from practice in pubs. Only you"re forgetting the taxi-man swears he never took his hand from his pocket. Also. . . ."
"An air-pistol fires darts," I said excitedly. "And, by Jove, an air-pistol makes next to no noise, not enough to be heard above the sound of a taxi-engine, I"ll bet."
"Fine, Doctor," Toft smiled at me, but the Inspector went on grimly: "As I was about to finish-also even air-pistol darts aren"t invisible to the naked eye. They"re quite solid bits of metal, with a point and a lead b.u.t.t an" tufts o" silk to steady "em. How is it the taxi-man missed such a dart sticking in the old man"s head? Remember Gerald never went near enough to pull it out."
"I feel . . . it fell out," Toft said, but I could not support him there. From the nature of the wound it would have remained sticking into the head.
"The doctor doesn"t think so," Grimes said, reading my face. "Also, say it did fall out, it would have dropped close to the body. It"s a plain dark brown carpet in that room. Would the taxi-man, Mrs Ferris, and the other doctor have missed seeing it as they worked on the body? It"s a thousand to one against. There was no sign of it in the room then no sign of it now. I"ve been over that room with a hand-brush. I"ll show you."
He called out, and the local sergeant brought in a dust-pan with the sweepings of the sitting-room. There was little more than a litter of fluff and sc.r.a.ps, tiny bits of coal, fragments of paper, a couple of wireless screws, a thin, capped pencil, also the little red cylinder of indiarubber that belonged to it though it had been trodden out, one or two b.u.t.tons, the half of what looked like the elastic b.u.t.ton strap of a pair of braces . . . stuff like that, but no sign of anything like a dart.
"You"re going to say Gerald might have picked his dart up," Grimes said. "Well, I don"t think he could have, not before it was seen. What"s more, I don"t think he"d risk his neck on anything so conspicuous . . . And then, there"s the pistol? What became of that? There"s no sign of it anywhere about or on Gerald . . . No, it won"t wash. You"re only making a case out o" moonbeams, Toft."
It seemed so. I stood dejected. Paul Toft said in his dreamy calm: "There"s no getting over that." He touched the tiny puncture on the skull. "That"s how he died . . . I feel that. And he was deliberately wounded under the hair so that we"d miss it."
"Oh, heck!" wailed Grimes; "an" I"ve just been telling you that all the facts say no!"
"Of course they would. The whole thing was carefully, brilliantly schemed to make facts say no," the reedy man mused on. "From the careful employment of that taxi-driver as a witness, to the firing of an all but silent air-pistol from the pocket . . . a helpfully ragged pocket, remember . . . And you"ll probably find that Gerald Park is a first-rate marksman."
"I probably will," the Inspector said bitterly. "That won"t be so hard as to find how he managed to make a dart and a pistol vanish into thin air under the noses of witnesses. Just crank up a really good feeling to explain that, my lad."
Toft only blinked and looked at me, and in trying to think of a way out I did remember something.
"Just precisely when did Gerald offer his empty coat to his uncle?" I asked.
"Didn"t you hear Mrs Ferris say it was after she came into the sitting-room," Grimes said sourly.
"After he"d fetched the brandy," Toft put in swiftly. "Yes, that"s the loophole, Doctor. He was out of sight of witnesses, at least while he was in the dining-room getting the brandy."
"An" a fat lot that"s going to help," Grimes said as we went into the dining-room. It was, indeed, spa.r.s.ely furnished; just a gate-table, six stiff chairs, and a side-board with two cupboards, one of which was the cellarette.
"I"ve even searched behind the pictures; there"s nothing here," Grimes began, and added as Toft walked straight towards a French window in the rear, that opened on to the garden. "An" that"s no good, either. It"s been locked all winter, an" the key"s not in it."
"That"s what makes it queer," Paul Toft said. "The key"s usually left in this sort of window from year"s end to year"s end. Did someone want to create the impression that n.o.body could have got out through this window to-day?" He stood still, staring at the lock with his queer other worldly gaze. Then he muttered: "Hum! Someone locking this window, s.n.a.t.c.hing out the key, moving on the run to the room across the hall . . . where would he hide the key?" His eyes twinkled at me. "How"s this for real pukka police deduction, Doctor? There"s a hall stand full of umbrellas on the way. . . . Wouldn"t he toss the key into them in pa.s.sing?"
I went to the hall stand. The third bulgy umbrella I upended and shook, shot a key to the hall floor. It fitted the French window.
We stepped through it on to a small redtiled veranda overlooking the garden. This was without railing, but it had an inclined gla.s.s roof supported by pillars to keep off the rain. We stood and looked at half an acre of neat garden.
"You think he might have nipped out here and chucked his pistol into one of them bushes, or hidden it in one of the flowerbeds?" Grimes asked in a voice not so a.s.sured as it had been. "A mug"s trick. He"d ha" known bushes and flower-beds are the first things we think of."
"And being a smart fellow he would think of a cleverer place," Toft said. "Cleverer but handy . . . easy to use in a hurry, handy to get at when suspicious people like ourselves had gone."
He stepped out into the garden and looked up at the roof of the veranda. A gutter ran along the edge of it, terminating in large, old-fashioned rain-water heads and down pipes at each end. With his left hand churning away at its indiarubber, Toft walked to the nearest down pipe, stretched his reedy arm up into the rain-water head, and, after a sharp tug, brought his hand away with an air-pistol.
It was a short, but obviously powerful weapon with a rather full bore, and looked of foreign make. Toft broke it, charging its air chamber, and fired. It made very little sound, and was plainly in perfect working order.
"Job!" Grimes said in grudging admiration. "Your feelings do get you there, I fill. . . . He"s a smart one, that Gerald, just fancy his thinking of locking the window after hiding this and then hiding the key to keep us from looking here . . . All the same, there"s the dart. He"s got everything so neatly alibi-ed that you"ll have to prove that dart before you can be sure of pinning it on him."
That was a fact. Paul Toft stood, his great head brooding as he churned away at his indiarubber. Grimes and I examined the pistol, talking quietly not to disturb him. It was an interesting pistol, and I pointed out some oddnesses about it to Grimes the size of the bore, for instance.
"Too big to carry any air-gun pellet I know," I said. "Why, you could shoot a pencil from that."
"Pencil!" Toft"s voice came suddenly, alight with eagerness. "That"s it, Doctor. . . . I wonder why I felt? . . . But I remember reading about it now."
"What?" both Grimes and I demanded in one voice, but his lank limbs were carrying him headlong into the house, and he was calling to the sergeant for the pan of sitting-room sweepings.
He was in the sitting-room when they were brought. Toft picked from the mess the little cylinder of rubber that had dropped out of the cap of the pencil.
"Clever," he muttered. "Devilish clever. . . . Dropping that pencil, too . . ."
"What"s the pencil got to do with it?" Grimes frowned.
"Nothing," Toft grinned, "but you"d never suspect that, would you? This bit of rubber looks as if it belonged to that pencil, doesn"t it? Just an ordinary eraser off the top of a pencil. But look-" Toft broke the pistol, exposing the breech hole, and into that he shoved the rubber cylinder. "It fits the pistol as perfectly as any lead slug, you see. Doctor, will you put that big book on top of that arm-chair. Good, now put a sheet of clean notepaper against it . . . and stand clear. I"m not such a good shot as Gerald Park."
But he was good enough. He walked to the door, just where Gerald had stood, though instead of shooting from his pocket he took aim in the orthodox way, and fired.
Again the pistol made only a slight sound; a much sharper rap came from the paper where the rubber pellet struck. It struck with such force, in fact, that it bounded right across the room, and only Toft"s sharp eyes followed it to a corner under the book-case some twelve feet away.
"Your eyes show you the first advantage of such a bullet," Paul Toft said. "Being rubber having, in fact, a pneumatic tip it bounces away with great violence from whatever it strikes. Bounces, you might say, right out of range of the victim, so that there is little chance of its being connected with him . . . and being innocent rubber, anyhow, it is likely to be over-looked. Only it"s not innocent rubber . . ."
He walked across the room and lifted up the sheet of notepaper the bullet had struck. On that paper we saw a faint ring impression made by the head of the rubber, and in the centre of it a tiny puncture just such a puncture as had pierced the skin of Stanley Park"s head. It was then that we realised that there must be a needle bedded in that rubber cylinder. Paul Toft proved it to us.
Rescuing the bullet from under the book-case, he held it delicately by one end, and, taking a pair of tweezers from his pocket, pressed the outer edges of the circular top down. As he did that, a tiny needle-point emerged from an almost imperceptible hole in the nose, a needle-point no more than an eighth of an inch long, but, if that point was poisoned deadly.
"I read about this some time ago . . . but forgot it until Doctor Jaynes stirred my memory," the dreamy fellow smiled. "They"ve been using this deadly weapon in several countries of Europe for safe and secret murder. You can see how horribly efficient it is. An a.s.sa.s.sin can shoot at his man anywhere, in the street, in a crowd, in a theatre. n.o.body hears the report of the air-pistol, so n.o.body can trace the shooter. The victim falls dead, but n.o.body knows how he dies. There is only that tiny poison hole, hidden by the hair, no doubt, as in Stanley Park"s case. The bullet that has already bounced off into the litter of the street . . . it automatically vanishes when it has done its work. Even if fired in a room it can be covered up, as Gerald Park so nearly covered it up, by dropping a pencil from which the rubber eraser is missing . . . so you would think the bullet merely part of that . . ."
"Almost fool proof," Grimes nodded. "When the murdered man tumbled down without wound, without any hint of anybody attacking him, it"d naturally be taken for heart failure or a stroke, as we thought Stanley Park"s death was; and all the murderer has to do is to walk away . . . Just as Gerald Park nearly did but won"t."
But I am afraid Gerald Park did. When Grimes arrested him he was startled, but took it quietly. He simply couldn"t believe we had caught him until he heard the charge read over to him, and saw the pistol. Even then he went quietly to his cell and committed suicide. He"d been searched, of course, very carefully, but the police had overlooked a further quality of that deadly little indiarubber bullet. It could be too easily hidden. He"d hidden another bullet in the turn-up of his trousers, we thought. But we could never be sure. He was found next morning with the rubber cylinder gripped tight in his fist. The point driven into his palm, so that the hydrocyanic compound on it had done its deadly work. Thus we never knew how he had come to plan his murder even though Paul Toft had brought it home to him.
The Impossible Footprint William Brittain William Brittain (b. 1930), a retired high-school teacher, is one of those authors who has consistently produced clever crime stories for the magazines for the last forty years and yet has had none collected in book form. That in itself is a mystery. He has written a long-running series featuring Leonard Strang, also a high-school teacher, who unravels unusual problems and whose adventures are long overdue for book publication. I reprinted one of the Strang stories in my earlier volume of locked-room mysteries. The following story does not feature Mr Strang, but is another baffling mystery. Just how can someone who has lost his foot leave a footprint?
Matt Kehoe leaned his hunting rifle against one of the small pine trees that encircled his hiding place in the still woods and beat his mittened hands together to get some circulation stirring in his fingers. Even through the two sweaters and the thick parka he was wearing the icy cold crept up his spine and made him shiver uncontrollably. His snowshoes creaked loudly as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
"Mister Kehoe, will ye hold still, if ye please? Oi"m a guide, sor, not a worker of miracles. If ye expect a deer to pa.s.s this way so"s ye kin get a shot at it, ye"ve got to stop soundin" like a boiler factory at full production."
The whispered voice with its rich Irish brogue conjured up visions of the morning sun rising over the green fields of County Cork and the smoke of peat fires issuing from the chimneys of sod huts in Galway. Kehoe looked at his companion and shook his head in amazement.
For the man who had spoken, crouched down on his snowshoes in a position Kehoe would have sworn it was impossible to achieve, had the swarthy skin, high cheekbones and thin, hawklike nose of a full-blooded Indian. His blue denim jacket could provide little in the way of warmth, while his wide-brimmed hat was perforated with several bullet holes as well as a few larger openings which looked suspiciously as if they had been made by human teeth. Yet the cold didn"t seem to affect him at all. The look of repose on his face might have been graven from stone.
"Joshua, I"m going to freeze to death if we don"t start moving around," Kehoe said through chattering teeth. "Wouldn"t it be better to go looking for deer instead of just waiting for them to come to us?"
Joshua Red Wing shook his head slowly and looked up at Kehoe with reproachful eyes. "Yesterday when I agreed to guide ye in yer huntin"," he said, "I understood ye wuz one o" them detective chaps like oi"ve read about in the penny-dreadful magazines. Oi thought ye"d be used to a bit uv hardship, what with runnin" down alleys an" climbin" fire escapes like I see on the tellyvision. It"s a sad disappointment to discover yer as soft as the rest uv the hunters from the city. Next oi"ll be findin" out ye can"t shoot worth a d.a.m.n, neither."
Joshua reached into a pocket and drew out a dented tin flask. "Here," he said, pa.s.sing it to Kehoe, "this"ll warm yer blood a bit."
Kehoe grasped the flask, removed the top and took a single long swallow, then suddenly jerked the flask from his lips. Strange gasping sounds came from his throat, and his face turned bright red as the liquid, which felt as if it had been produced from sulfuric acid liberally laced with ground gla.s.s and old razor blades, streaked down his gullet.
"Luscious, ain"t it?" asked Joshua, retrieving the flask. "It"s from an old family recipe me sainted mother gave to me at the time of-"
"Joshua," Kehoe said, tears streaming from his eyes, "I"d pull you in right now for attempted poisoning if I hadn"t seen you drink that stuff yourself. Is it that brew that makes you sound like an Irish Geronimo?"
"No," replied Joshua with a twinkle in his eye. "Fact is, oi spoke nothin" but Injun up to the age uv four. At that point oi began workin" at a church in the village in exchange fer an eddication. Me English wuz learned from a Father McGrath and a cook named Bridget O"Toole. They wuz both first-generation Irish, which accounts fer me way uv speakin". If it offends ye, why oi kin do "ugh" and "how" ez good ez any Injun ye"ll see in the movies."
Before Kehoe could reply, Joshua stood up, gripping his rifle in one hand and motioning for silence with the other. "Oi heard somethin" off in the woods," he whispered to Kehoe. "Comin" this way, it wuz. Now ye sees the wisdom uv me ways. Let the other hunters drive the game ahead uv "em. We"ll be here to greet it when it arrives."
Kehoe nodded, pumping a cartridge into the chamber of his own gun.
"Wait fer a good shot, an" try to drop the animal in its tracks," Joshua breathed. "Old Karl Spearing"s land begins about two hundred yards over to the left. If a wounded deer makes it that far, no sense chasin" it. Spearing"s a mean one an" won"t have anybody comin" on his land to hunt. The few who tried hev wound up with a rump full uv buckshot."
"I think I see something off there in the woods," Kehoe said, pointing. "I"ll just-"
"Don"t be too hasty," Joshua warned. "It could be anything. Mebbe a black bear that got up too early from its winter nap."
A loud shout established the inaccuracy of the bear theory. "Help! Is anybody around? Help!"
Through the trees Kehoe caught sight of a man headed toward them at a dead run. He envied the man"s ability to handle snow-shoes without tripping over them.
"It"s Tip Spearing, Karl"s lad," Joshua said. "Over this way, young fella."
Joshua stepped out of the grove of pines. As the running man approached he tripped and would have fallen if the Indian hadn"t caught him in his arms.
"Take it easy, lad," Joshua said to the gasping man. "Now then, Tip, what"s the trouble?"
"Josh, II-" Tip Spearing was in his mid-twenties, at the peak of his manhood, but judging from the ghastly expression on his face, he had looked into the deepest pit of h.e.l.l itself.
"It"s terrible," Tip went on. "I can"t believe-"
"Calm down," whispered Joshua soothingly. "What is it now?"
"It"s Dad. He didn"t come back home last night. I"ve been out looking for him and-" He gulped convulsively. "I"ll take you to where he is."
Beckoning to them, Tip turned, and retraced his tracks. Joshua followed at an easy trot, while Kehoe stumblingly brought up the rear. They pa.s.sed through a large clearing where the ground had been blown free of snow, and Kehoe almost tripped as twigs and leaves caught at the webbing of his snowshoes.
Reentering the forest, the men finally reached a vertical ma.s.s of shale that jutted upward like some monstrous grave marker. Tip signaled for Joshua and Kehoe to stop. "Over . . . over there."
Leaning their rifles against a tree, the two men left Tip and moved off in the direction that he had indicated. The white snow on the ground caught the sunlight that filtered through the branches and threw it back into their eyes so they squinted from the glare. They burst out onto what appeared to be a game trail amid the trees and suddenly the snow wasn"t white anymore.
It was red. The b.l.o.o.d.y, frozen circle was almost six feet in diameter.
Kehoe had seen dead men before, but he clamped his teeth together and swallowed loudly as he beheld the body of Karl Spearing spread-eagled in the snow, its lower part across the b.l.o.o.d.y stain. The body"s left foot was shod in a calked boot with the letter "S" worked into the sole but all that was left of its right leg was a stump, ending in a raw, open wound.
"Cut clean through the leg bones, just below the knee," Kehoe said to Joshua. "Knife"s missing from the sheath at his hip, too. What do you suppose happened?"
"Oi"ve got a fair idea," replied the Indian. "Not too pretty, either. Oi"ve heard about such things often enough in this country, but this is the first time oi"ve seen it. Would ye mind followin" me? An" hev a care where ye step, if ye please, so"s not to destroy tracks. Eventually we"ll hev to call in the local law. No sense ruinin" all such things fer "em."
They moved off down the trail, keeping well clear of the wide swath in the snow where Karl Spearing had evidently dragged his tortured body in a desperate attempt to seek help. The trail led past a thick stand of willow shoots. Joshua pulled aside the leafless branches.
"Yonder"s the trap, Mr Kehoe. Hev a look."
Kehoe gaped at the shiny-toothed jaws of the bear trap in the midst of the white snow of the willows. They were clamped inexorably together on a b.l.o.o.d.y booted leg.
His eyes riveted on the leg, Kehoe spoke to Joshua. "You said you knew what happened here. What was it?"
Quickly the Indian sketched in the story. A lone man in midwinter, the chance misstep, and the heavy jaws of the trap, chained to a thick tree, leaping up out of the snow to grip the leg. In such a fix there was only one desperate chance, to be taken before cold seeped too deeply into the bones and blood.
A tight tourniquet was applied, after which the imprisoned limb was packed with snow to numb it as much as possible. Then, in a grinding h.e.l.l of shock and pain, the pinioned man performed an amputation on himself. Finally, if cold and loss of blood did not take their toll, it might be possible to make one"s way to where help was available. A slim chance at best, but Karl Spearing knew what must be done. He had tried and he had lost.
"Spearing"s house is but a short ways beyond the trees there," Joshua said, pointing. "Great big stone buildin" it is, with a telephone line down to the village. If he"d been able to get to it, he might be alive now."
"Rotten business," added Kehoe. He pointed to a bone-handled hunting knife lying on the flattened snow. "Must be what he did the operation with. The poor devil hardly had a chance, did he? Well, what now?"
"We"d best get back to Tip and take him to the house. Oi"ll call Vern Lefner from there."
"Lefner? Who"s that?"
"He"s our sheriff. When he"s done makin" out his reports on this that"ll take several hours, ez Vern loves to scribble on official papers the two of ye kin talk about police work fer the rest uv the day. What with all our shoutin" and hollerin", oi doubt there"s a deer left in the whole county."