The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
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appeared that Elmer Lewis was a comparative stranger to Crockford.
As this examination terminated. Dr. Rand arrived to authorize the removal of the body. The village coroner was a gray-haired man of sixty who had secret leanings toward the stage. He had white, delicate hands and moved them constantly as he talked. It was reliably reported that he had studied Delsarte. A small-town physician all his life, a hundred miles from Broadway, he was long accustomed to death, but, as he was to tell us later, he never got to like it. Climbing to the fender of the car, deftly balancing himself, Dr. Rand turned his flashlight into the rumble seat.
Seen in the bright illumination, Elmer Lewis looked startlingly alive. The eyes behind the steel-bowed spectacles stared forth wide open; the face, a little more pallid than in life, shone in the damp; the thin lips were slightly parted. The dead man slouched loosely in his seat; one hand was in his pocket, the other drooped across his lap. But except for the stain on his coat he might have been waiting for us to drive him to the cottage, arrogantly determined that we take him there. The nearest onlookers gasped and retreated.
The coroner went grimly to work. He touched the dead man’s eyelids and throat, clasped the pulseless wrist. As he attempted to pull Lewis’s hand from the overcoat pocket, he accidentally struck the steel-bowed spectacles. With a macabre alacrity they began to slide. A woman spectator screamed. The coroner snorted, caught the spectacles, pocketed them. Turning, he made an acid speech to the curious throng.
“No one is holding you people here. You’d be better off at home and more profitably employed. I wager half you women haven’t washed your dinner dishes.”
The crowd broke ranks. Dr. Rand returned to his labors, unbuttoned the overcoat, stripped open waistcoat, vest and shirt. Following the course of the wound he located the bullet. It had penetrated the body and dropped to the floor of the car. Dr. Rand picked up the bit of bloodstained lead and handed it to Standish.
“There’s Exhibit A. The poor fellow died instantly, never knew what hit him, no sign of struggle. Happened some time during the last half hour. That’s all for now. You can take him to the morgue.” Removing a lap robe from the car, the physician covered the body, interrupted himself to say testily, “Where in hell is the ambulance? Are those drivers always at the movies?”
Just as he spoke, the local ambulance clanged magnificently through Main Street and stopped, sputtering, at the curb. After the ambulance and its burden had gone away, John Standish casually hoisted himself into the now-vacant rumbleseat and said:
“Mind driving me to the station?”
Although the police station was immediately across the square, that ride was the longest I ever took. Of the three of us, John Standish alone bore it well. As we alighted, he noticed the bag between Jack and me—Lewis’s traveling bag, which we had quite forgotten. Standish carried the bag inside.
The police station occupied the basement of the village court house, and had a separate, neatly labeled entrance. On either side of the entrance grew potted cedars, provided by the Garden Club and watered in rotation by designated members. Passing these civic tributes, we entered a large uncarpeted reception room with a door at each end opening into two smaller rooms. One of these was used by officers of the State police as a dressing room. The other served as the village police station.
In towns the size of Crockford, police stations close at six o’clock and police protection virtually ceases. Standish unlocked the second door, and we followed him into his poorly furnished office. Carelessly dropping the bag, the officer knelt, touched a match to a fire laid in an unsightly grate. Jack pulled out a chair for me—there were half a dozen ranged around a scarred pine table—selected another for himself. The previous excitement, the bracing need of decision was gone and reaction had set in; I thought Jack looked depressed and very tired.
The fire refused to start, Standish struck another match, and I achieved an initial unpopularity. Studying my surroundings, I saw built across the back of the small room what appeared to be a barred iron cage, like a cage in a zoo. The contraption, open at the top, boasted a heavy iron, double-padlocked door. There was a cot inside.
“What is it?” I asked.
Jack turned. “It must be the jail.”
Now, I am a New Yorker, and at the moment I remembered the towering, somber mass of the Tombs. The contrast was too much. I laughed, partially from nerves, to be sure, but I laughed. Standish turned around.
“It’s small, Mrs. Storm, but Crockford is a law-abiding town. Always was, till a couple years ago when you town folks started coming, bringing your liquor and big-town ideas.”
After that I kept still. At length the tardy fire blazed up and Standish, lighting a smelly briar pipe, settled himself at the table, Jack spoke in a fagged voice.
“My wife has suffered a severe shock. She’s dead tired. So am I. We’ve had no dinner. Can’t we let any further questioning go till tomorrow?”
Standish eyed me particularly. “This is murder, Mr. Storm.”
“Very well then. Only please be as quick as you can.”
The other took his time. He was the official embodiment of the law and he permitted that important fact to sink in. He sharpened a pencil, laid out a notebook, telephoned for Minnie Gray, wife of one of the deputies and public stenographer, and finally gave us his attention.
“There are several things I want to clear up immediately. For instance, the phone call. You say it came from New York?”
“The call was made in New York about three o’clock,” Jack said. “I can’t tell you the exact time; I didn’t look at a clock. But Lewis left there on the three-fifteen.”
“Did you see him get off the train in New Haven?”
“No.” Jack smiled faintly. “However, I was told he would be on the three-fifteen; when f arrived at the station the train had just pulled in, and Lewis was waiting with his bags. So I assume…”
The first hint of what Standish’s attitude was to be leaked out. “In this case I’m beginning to think it isn’t safe to assume anything. I want facts, a lot of facts. In the first place, who is Lewis? What was he doing here in Crockford: What was his business?”
“He didn’t say. I understood it concerned Luella Coatesnash; apparently she had asked him to go to my cottage. That’s all I know about it. I spoke to him for only a few minutes outside the station.”
“Then you didn’t hold any conversation on the way over from New Haven?”
“Lewis rode in the rumble seat. Lola and I were in front with the windows closed.”
“Isn’t there room enough in front for three?”
“Lewis chose the rumble seat. Indeed he insisted upon riding there.”
“In the rain!”
“Yes, in the rain. I thought it peculiar. I did my best to dissuade him. I failed.”
Standish’s pipe went out. He re-lighted it. He looked skeptical. I put in a quick suggestion. “Maybe Lewis didn’t want to talk to us. There was something queer, secretive about him. Perhaps that is the reason he chose the rumble seat.”
“Possibly.” Standish turned politely to Jack. “Suppose we go back to the phone call. That call must be traced.”
“Don’t the local operators keep track of long-distance calls? “I’ll check with them later. At the moment I am interested in your help.”
“Then it might be better to talk to Lola. She answered the phone. Lewis was on the line when I got there. Or rather his secretary was.”
“His secretary!” The stiff, gray brows climbed. “Didn’t you talk to Lewis himself on the phone? Certainly you gave me that impression.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Then you didn’t talk to Lewis on the phone?”