The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
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weren’t of interest to anyone except us. Our friends talk enough, but they have livelier material for conversation.”
Standish was, for the moment, checked. A small-town man at heart, he liked to picture New York as a metropolis of plots and counterplots, a vast mysterious center of conspiracy and crime. Jack seized his brief advantage.
“A while back we were going over possible reasons for Elmer Lewis’s behavior, and I suggest we continue. We decided he was scared, so his gun, his alias, his feeble disguise fit in. But the rest of it doesn’t fit in. Why didn’t he take a cab from the station? What purpose did he hope to serve by tricking us into driving him over from New Haven? What was in his mind? It’s a cinch he didn’t climb into our rumble seat to make it simple for his murderer.”
Standish reluctantly abandoned his darkling vision of New York. Jack’s questions made him restless. “Certainly it’s extraordinary we don’t know more about Lewis by this time. We can assume he was wealthy, an important figure in his own world. Why don’t his friends and relatives appear? Even in New York, few men transporting a hundred thousand dollars in currency can drop out of sight.”
“Have you established he was a New Yorker?”
“He came to New Haven from New York. The conductor remembers him. The porter remembers him, clearly. Lewis allowed the darkie to carry one bag, and insisted upon handling the other himself. Apparently that was the bag containing the money.”
Standish then enumerated various steps taken in the investigation. The press had been given free rein in the hope of obtaining additional information, and Boston, New York and Philadelphia newspapermen were already flocking to the village in droves. Metropolitan police, without result, had checked over the several “Elmer Lewises” listed in the city directory. Also without result, they had got in touch with the large New York banks. No one of these banks could report the recent withdrawal of $108,000. In Crockford prominent business men—including the baker, the plumber, the coal merchant, practically everyone except the unpopular Greek fruit dealer—had been requested to view the body which lay in the local undertaking parlors.
Elmer Lewis remained unidentified.
“I still believe,” said Jack, “Lewis is known in Crockford. What’s more, I think Mrs. Coatesnash knows him. If not as Elmer Lewis, then under some other name. Have you ordered her friends to visit the undertaking parlor?”
“Certainly not!” said Standish. “In the first place, I haven’t the authority; in the second place, I don’t consider it necessary. I did communicate with Darnley and Elliott, the New York lawyers in charge of her affairs. Mr. Darnley was out of town; Mr. Elliott kindly offered to appear for Mrs. Coatesnash any time I call on him.”
“No one can say,” remarked Blair, “that Mrs. Coatesnash isn’t cooperating.”
Jack suppressed his exasperation. “Very well, we’ll drop the lady. But if Lewis wasn’t acquainted in Crockford why did he come here? Are you proposing he was shot down by someone who had never seen him before?”
Standish studied the pattern in the carpet. “There’s always the chance of a homicidal maniac.”
“It’s an astute maniac who picks a man carrying a hundred and eight thousand dollars. The notion of a maniac is patently absurd,” snapped Jack. “The only positive factor in the whole mess would seem to be the motive for Lewis’s murder. The motive was money. Lewis was killed by someone who knew he had a hundred and eight thousand dollars and who wanted it. As it turned out he didn’t get it. But he tried. The bag that disappeared last night and reappeared this morning was seized in mistake for the bag up front with Lola and me. Isn’t that your idea?”
Standish had to smile. “You have a logical mind, young man.” Jack’s summation had appealed to him, and I saw it reflected, at least in part, his own reasoning. I felt a lightening of spirit. The police chief hesitated. “In a way, the second traveling bag hasn’t been a bad break for you, Storm. For the life of me I can’t see how you could have planted it in Durham—unless you had accomplices.”
Jack said dryly, “I don’t wonder you’re puzzled. We met Lewis at five o’clock, arrived in Crockford at a little past six. From six-thirty until two we were steadily in your company. We left our car downtown, took a taxi home. Meantime, of course, we might have cached the missing bag somewhere. But Durham is a good fifty miles away. No doubt you asked our taxi driver if he took us to Durham, stopping en route so we could recover the bag.”
The sarcasm proved a boomerang. “That’s just what I did. It helped me decide you hadn’t gone to Durham.”
That was sensible enough but disconcerting. Although the second bag had developed a point in our favor, my spirits sagged. Henceforth I realized that an official microscope would be directed upon all our acts, and I didn’t like it.
Standish now demanded a list of the New York friends with whom we stayed while visiting in the city—in case they might have a line on Lewis. Jack’s frayed good nature gained additional tatters. The desired list obtained, his brisk-stepping deputy at his side, Standish departed. In a husbandly fashion Jack immediately passed his irritation on to me.
“A bird brain—though I doubt Blair could compete with a really sagacious bird—could comprehend that Luella’s friends should be investigated, not ours. She may be the great white cow of Crockford, but she’s greedy, grasping, filthy rich. She’s financially able to engage in shady transactions involving a hundred thousand dollars: we aren’t. And as for our unfortunate friends—put them all together and they aren’t worth a hundred thousand cents.”
Outraged, indignant, Jack attempted to settle down but couldn’t rest or sleep. I brought his pad and pencils to the bed posed patiently for a sketch which he hoped to sell to a humorous magazine. He wasn’t feeling humorous. Toward the middle of the afternoon he tore up his sheets of drawing paper and announced an idea. He wanted to cable Laura Twining. “What for? She’d only show the cable to Mrs. Coatesnash.” Jack threw the fragments of his sketch into a wastebasket. “She might not. Laura’s something of a dunce, and I admit she always played the devoted slave, but I’ve a sneaking notion she harbored an occasional rebellious thought. We don’t know what she’s thinking now. If she has any suspicions in this case I’d like to share them.”
“A cable costs a lot.”
“It might be worth a lot.”
“Besides we’d have to go to town. You should stay in bed.”
“Something tells me” said Jack, “that the less I stay in bed while the investigation proceeds without me, the better. I’ve never craved a good close look at an electric chair.”
“Don’t they hang in this state?”
“Neither do I fancy rope.”
We were joking, but we were scared. Blair, who had arrived in our little car, had left it parked in the garage. While this was not exactly an official procedure, it was typical of Crockford and of Standish in his more pleasant guise.
I hadn’t wanted to go to the village, and after reaching there I discovered how right my instinct was. I suppose normal curiosity was to be expected, but what Jack and I were subjected to went beyond any decent limits. Our appearance in the small gray roadster created a sensation. Doors flew open, windows flew up, shopkeepers darted from stores, people stopped dead on the sidewalks, necks craned from passing cars. The town was crowded with Saturday shoppers, and if anyone missed seeing us, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Main Street was one long stare—a cold, unfriendly, measuring stare.
“I feel like Gary Cooper,” said Jack.
He sounded chipper, but he didn’t look it. Only a moment later at the telegraph office, we discovered that our errand was useless. The doors were closed and locked; we had both forgotten that in Crockford telegraph service ceases on Saturdays at noon.
“We can cable Monday,” Jack said.
I said, “We should have stayed at home.”
“Nonsense.