She stood there until Odell came up to her. He grinned sheepishly. "h.e.l.lo, Gertie. Mind if I walk the rest of the way with you?"
She drew back a pace as if she was afraid he might contaminate her. Her face looked pale and scared. "You"ve been following me," she accused him.
Odell was sober. "To tell the truth, Gertie-"
"Why do you have to hound me? Can"t you leave me alone?"
"I"m not hounding you," he said, disheartening to know that she had interpreted his actions that way.
"You are, Mr Odell. I haven"t been able to make a move since you came to the Legation without having your eyes on me. You people are watching me all the time, waiting to pounce on me for the least slip I make. I thought America was a free country, but the police watch you here as much as they do over there . . . You think I killed Mr Gosling!"
"Did it ever occur to you," he said through clenched teeth, "that I might have other reasons for wanting to be near you?"
"What?" she said, hardly believing her ears. "What did you say?"
"You"re not hard to take, Gertie," he said.
"Take?" she said in confusion. "Oh but-"
"You never gave me much encouragement. You always seemed to have so much on your mind, Gertie."
"If that"s really true, Mr Odell, I"m sorry I if I offended you just now."
"If it"s really true! You don"t think I"m telling you the truth?"
"I can"t be sure of anything any more."
"I was in that office to protect Mr Gosling and you." He looked at her steadily. "You believe me, Gertie."
She looked back at him for a long moment, and he thought her eyes were watering.
She lowered her gaze. "Yes, Mr Odell, I do. I do believe you."
"Well, then," smiled Odell, "I hope you"re not doing anything tonight, as I want-"
"Oh," she said, "I"m sorry. Not tonight. I have an appointment I can"t break. Shall we make it some other time?"
"Sure, Gertie. I"ll see you tomorrow."
"Tomorrow." She smiled. "So long then." She had her right hand in her coat pocket. She took it out and held it toward him. He grasped her palm. And then he felt that she had something in her hand a slip of paper. When she drew her hand away she left it in his palm. He felt, with a rush of intuition, that everything was wrong. He pretended not to notice what she"d left in his hand. As she turned on her high heels to walk swiftly away from him, he thrust his own hand into his pocket.
He watched her go out of sight along the path, then he walked out of the park in the opposite direction. He was curious about what she was trying to convey to him. He went into the first street corner phone booth he came to and took the slip of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.
The wrinkles of perplexity increased on his forehead.
The paper was blank except for two circles, a small one inside a much larger one, drawn on it in pencil.
Gertrude, the cold night wind whipping the coat about her knees, went up the legation steps. All the windows were dark. X Street was dark. Fumbling in her handbag, she took out a key, unlocked the front door, and slipped into the vestibule. It was all cold marble, like a mausoleum. She left the front door unlocked behind her as she went in, as if she was expecting someone else to follow her.
She flicked on a cigarette lighter to light her way up the plush carpeted stairway to the third floor. This was the floor on which the murder had been committed. She went into the office, tiptoeing past her desk in the reception room, going into the private office.
She looked at Gosling"s empty chair behind the desk. Gosling"s bloodied ghost still seemed to occupy it. And she shuddered.
She remembered a line from one of the newspapers . . . A nameless horror has stalked through the Legation . . .
The watch on her wrist ticked away loudly. She was painfully conscious of time. Everything had depended on time.
She did not know anyone was in the room with her until she heard the door between the offices click softly closed.
She turned around with a violent start. The cigarette lighter flicked out when she released her thumb. A shadow moved against the closed door.
"Is that you?" she gasped.
A powerful flashlight blinded her.
"Yes," answered a voice. "Have you done all that was expected of you?"
She nodded miserably.
"Fine." She heard a heartless chuckle.
And that was all she heard, for it is doubtful if she heard the two quick coughs before the lead slugs tore into her breast.
She was dead before she hit the floor.
McKitrick was saying: "The patrolman on the X Street beat saw the door of the Legation swinging open in the wind. He thought something was up, so he took a prowl through the building. He was the one who found her."
Someberly Banner looked down at all that was left of Gertrude. "It"s a crying shame," he muttered.
Odell sat gloomily on the edge of the desk. He roused himself up enough to say: "Well, this isn"t as puzzling as the first shooting. I talked to Gertie in the park this afternoon, Senator. She said she was going to meet someone tonight. Whoever it was just followed her in here and shot her. If I had any inkling this would happen, I never would have left her alone."
Banner nodded. "It"s not your fault, Red." He glared around. "What kinda gun this time? D"you know?"
McKitrick answered: "The medical examiner thinks it"s a .38."
Banner snorted. "An American gun! This"s striking closer to home."
Odell said: "There"s something else I"ve got to tell you, Senator. It might help you. I confess it doesn"t mean a thing to me. In the park today Gertie slipped this into my hand. She acted mighty secretive about it." He gave Banner the paper with the circles drawn on it.
"Whatzit mean?" snapped Banner.
"Circles within circles. Wheels within wheels. You tell me, Senator."
Banner looked at it front and back and held it up to the light to see if there were any pinp.r.i.c.ks in it. Then, without saying anything, he crumpled it up and shoved it into his marsupial pocket. Plainly he could not make head or tail of it, but he wasn"t going to say so.
Though they stayed there till dawn they found no other clue to point to Gertrude"s murderer.
McKitrick woke up to find his phone ringing insistently and Banner on the other end of the wire.
"You never sleep, do you?" snorted McKitrick.
"Hardly ever, Mac. We ain"t got time for that now. It"s after breakfast. Come to the Legation and bring that small arms expert with you."
"Captain Cozzens?"
"Yaas. Him. I"ve figgered out what everything means."
"What put you on it?"
"Those circles."
"Suppose you quit being so d.a.m.ned mysterious, Banner, and-"
"Get cracking to the Legation," interrupted Banner. He hung up.
Banner was sitting in a leather chair, comfortably waiting for them to arrive. He bobbed his big grizzled head at McKitrick and Cozzens. His grizzled mane looked like a fright wig this morning, as if he had been trying to comb it with an eggbeater.
"Gennelmen," he said, "this won"t take too much of your precious time. Lemme get on with it. First off, you will swear that there ain"t any Tokarev pistols hidden in that private office."
"Of course not," responded McKitrick a little testily. His face bore the results of a very hasty shave. There was a nick on his chin. "There isn"t as much as a needle hidden in there that we don"t know of."
"And you can search me and find out I"m not packing a Russian pop-gun."
"We"ll take your word for it, Senator," said McKitrick shortly.
"We get on together," chuckled Banner. He got up with a heave and a vast grunt. "You two sit here on the lounge, the way you were the other day with Odell, Cap"n." He watched them sharply as they followed his suggestion. "I"m going in there." He entered the private office, where Gosling and Gertrude had been killed, leaving the intervening door open. He was out of sight from the two watchers for about five minutes, then he reappeared and stood in the doorway, filling the frame with his bulk, his hands deep in the bulging frockcoat pockets. "Nothing up my sleeve, mates," he announced.
They both stared at him, not knowing what to expect. Then both of them leaped to their feet.
Three loud shots had crashed out in the empty office behind Banner"s back!
Banner did not even take his hands out of his pockets. "And there you have it," he said.
"But, great G.o.dfrey!" yipped McKitrick, pushing past Banner to see who else was hidden in the private office. "Who fired that pistol?"
"It was a Tokarev automatic!" said Cozzens. "I"ll swear to that!"
"But there isn"t anyone here but you!" McKitrick glared helplessly around the room.
"Neverthless-" began Banner. "But let it keep awhile. There"re more important things like searches and seizures to be made."
"Confound you, Banner!" said McKitrick, but he was in good humor about it.
"You can begin by arresting-"
The search was fruitless until Banner suggested that what they were after might be on microfilm and if they could not find microfilm in all the obvious places, it might be hidden in the electric light sockets.
That was where they found it.
They had all the proof they needed to arrest their man for espionage and murder.
And Carroll Lockyear, the export-import man, almost pulled his King Tut beard out by the roots when they confronted him.
McKitrick and the a.s.sistant Secretary of State made impressive members of Banner"s small audience. Banner was prancing back and forth, gnawing a long stogie, as if he were holding a press conference. But he had not let the reporters in yet. They were all ganged up outside in the hall, waiting.
The a.s.sistant Secretary of State fingered his chin reflectively. "The riddle of the sealed envelope-"
"Yaas, yaas!" Banner chuckled. "It"s simple when you know the sorta thimble rigging that went on behind the scenes. I said in the beginning that I thought the murder was too d.a.m.ned impossible cuz one person alone couldn"t"ve accomplished it. Lockyear is the murderer and spy, all right, but he had forced poor Gertie to help him. Y"see, he was a Commie agent and Gertie told us that her crippled mother and her father are still stranded in East Germany. You can now see how easy it was for him to get her to agree to his scheme. He could tell her he"d get "em outta East Germany if she played ball. If she still didn"t agree, he could easily threaten to turn the old folks over to the untender mercies of the MVD agents."
He paused a moment before going on. "Gosling was getting onto Lockyear"s trail. Some time before the murder, Lockyear used a standard tape recorder. Lockyear let the tape run silently for three minutes, then he fired his Tokarev pistol three times near the recorder. He now had a tape recording of three minutes of dead silence, followed by three quickly fired shots. He handed that roll of tape over to Gertie for her to put in Gosling"s private office where he could get his hands on it later on. When he went into Gosling"s office to commit the murder that morning he had in his briefcase the Tokarev pistol with silencer on it, and also in the briefcase was a large manila mailing envelope that was a duplicate of the one to be delivered to Gertie"s desk by the messenger service. The gun that was delivered to Gertie by the special messenger route was probably a toy pistol, so that if the envelope were opened prematurely the whole thing could be laughed off as a practical joke.
"It was all timed to the split second. Lockyear stalled with Gosling till almost 11:30, talking business, then swiftly he pulled the silenced automatic outta the briefcase and shot Gosling in the chest three times with it before his victim could blink or cry out. Naturally the shots were not heard outside the room with the door closed. He whipped out the prepared envelope, s.n.a.t.c.hed the silencer off the pistol barrel, and shoved the pistol, still smoking, into the envelope, sealing it immediately. Next he set the prepared reel of tape on the recorder alongside Gosling"s desk there"s one in every office and you"ve noticed that Gosling"s office had all the modern equipment and then picked up the envelope and briefcase. It was now, according to his watch, 11:27. He flipped the tape recorder switch to on. Three minutes of dead silence, remember, then three shots. He put his arm around both the envelope and the briefcase so that the briefcase would entirely conceal the envelope to anyone waiting in the lounge. He came out of the private office and walked to Gertie"s desk on which the second envelope with the toy gun in it was lying, waiting to be delivered at 11:30 sharp. He put his briefcase down on her desk, so that it covered both envelopes. After getting Gertie to jot down his phony appointment for next Tuesday, Lockyear picked up his briefcase again together with the envelope that had been lying on Gertie"s desk! In its place he left the one with the real murder weapon in it. He carried the other envelope out with him, still concealed behind his briefcase, and n.o.body was aware of the switch. So the gun that had just been used to commit the murder was now waiting for Gertie to carry it back in. She had been forced into it. She knew Gosling was already dead. She had to play out her part. She pretended to talk to Gosling on the interphone to give the illusion that Gosling was still alive after Lockyear left. Then she started to go into the private office, looked at her watch, knew the three minutes were almost up, then carried the sealed envelope in."
He stopped and glowered around the room. "The three shots that were heard by the two witnesses were the ones already on the tape recorder! Cozzens even remarked that they were somewhat m.u.f.fled! . . . The tape recorder ran itself out silently again, till Gertie, in the excitement that followed the discovery of Gosling"s dead body, managed to flip the switch off."
"Good G.o.d!" muttered somebody in the room, Banner cleared his throat with a big sea lion noise. "Haaak! Although Gertie had been terrorized into helping Lockyear remove a threat to his existence as a spy, she wanted desperately for one of us to know the truth. She knew she was being watched by everybody, their side as well as ours, so she couldn"t come right out and tell us about it. She drew two circles, one inside the other, on a piece of paper. She didn"t dare hint further. She was trying to call our attention to the reel of the tape recorder circular. Yunnerstand? And she was trying to help us, boys. If she had completely obeyed the instructions of the murderer, I never would"ve found the tape still on the recorder in that office she would"ve destroyed it. Last night the murderer killed her as a safety measure, thinking that his trail on tape had been completely wiped out."
Locked in Death.
Mary Reed & Eric Mayer.
Those of you who have seen my anthologies of historical whodunits will know that Mary Reed and Eric Mayer are the authors of the stories featuring John the Eunuch, set in 6th-century Constantinople. One or two of those stories have been locked-room mysteries. John the Eunuch also features in a series of novels that began with One for Sorrow (1999). Besides John, they also have another continuing character, Inspector Dorj of the Mongolian Police, who first appeared in "Death on the Trans-Mongolian Railway" in Ellery Queen"s Mystery Magazine (March 2000). The following is a brand new Inspector Dorj story involving a travelling circus and a puzzling corpse.
During his years with the Mongolian police Inspector Dorj had witnessed crimes in sufficient variety to inspire several Shakespearean tragedies, but until the crowbar-wielding midget sent the locked door of the circus caravan flying open the inspector had never seen a man murdered by a corpse.
Hercules the lion-tamer was, it is true, an exceptionally large and powerful corpse, but a corpse nevertheless. He lay wedged between the bed on which Dorj had last seen him and the blood-smeared door of the ancient caravan"s lavatory cubicle. His enormous hands were still reaching for his victim. Nikolai Zubov, sprawled partly under the table near the door, was now beyond Hercules" reach, but the ugly welt ringing the circus owner"s neck made it clear what must have happened. Dorj said so.
"Clear?" muttered Dima, the midget, peering around Dorj into the disordered caravan. Dima"s bone white clown makeup ran with sweat from his efforts with the crowbar, turning his face almost as ghastly as Zubov"s. "How can you say it is clear when it seems Zubov was strangled by a dead man?"
"Of course the lion-tamer was dead," said Batu, Dorj"s a.s.sistant. "The lion went berserk and practically disembowelled him. No one could have survived a gaping wound like that. You"re lucky you got bored and left the performance before the lion-taming act started."
Dorj now regretted dragging the young man to the circus, which had turned out to be a sorry affair even before the accident. "You kept an eye on the caravan while I returned to town to make arrangements?"
"I would have seen anyone approaching."
"So only Zubov and Hercules were inside?"
A cloud-like frown pa.s.sed over Batu"s round, flat moon of a face, a typical Mongolian face in contrast to Dorj"s sharper-angled features. "The names of those deceased should not be spoken so soon after death. Souls linger. So many people, saying their names they may call the dead back from the lower world."
Dorj had long since abandoned trying to talk Batu out of his native beliefs and instead had taken to occasionally exposing the young man to some culture unfortunately, as it turned out, in the case of the circus. So now he simply instructed his a.s.sistant to begin the tedious collection of evidence and then, to be alone to consider the conundrum, walked away from the caravan and the abandoned Russian airplane hangar the circus had borrowed for its performances.
A rutted track led into the desert where a cold September wind rolled small bits of gravel against his carefully polished shoes. Unlike Batu, who had grown up in a ger, the traditional movable tent of the Mongolian nomads, Dorj was city bred. Until the great earthquake that some called freedom had driven him to a posting in the Gobi, he had rarely strayed far from the relatively cosmopolitan world of Ulaanbaatar.
He was not comfortable in his own country. He hated the Gobi, a featureless immensity beside which men and the culture Dorj valued so highly seemed small and insignificant. Out here Batu"s half-civilized ideas about returning souls seemed almost plausible. Or at least as good as any explanation the inspector had for a murderous corpse.