This bucket they placed well away from the hole in the floor.
“Shove yourself over here,” Dan suggested.
Turning as nearly toward the fresh bucket as I could with my right foot imprisoned, I scraped my bucket forward a half inch, then stopped and glanced at the doorway with an expression of pleased surprise.
“Why if it isn’t Warren Day!” I said.
Involuntarily the heads of all three snapped toward the door. I gave my bucket a mighty shove, for an instant it hung in space, then both the bucket and I plunked under water like a dropped stone.
I had my trouser leg jerked up and was fumbling at the straps of my artificial leg before we hit bottom. The pressure grew unbearable. Down, down I sank. The water ground against my ears, tried to force open my mouth. Then almost gently the bucket touched bottom.
One strap I had loose by then, but I knew I would black out from the terrible pressure before I could release the other. Placing my left foot on top of the bucket, I shoved with all my strength.
The stump below my knee rasped loose from the encircling leather, leaving some skin inside the loop.
I rose vertically until decreased pressure lessened the pounding in my ears and the constriction in my chest, then turned and made three long underwater strokes downstream, again changed to a vertical direction, and popped to the surface an instant before my mouth opened involuntarily to gasp for air.
For a few moments I simply treaded water and recovered my breath. When I was again able to notice my surroundings, I discovered I was under a long concrete pier, upon which the rear of the warehouse was apparently set. A dozen feet away I could see the hole through which I had fallen.
I slipped out of my coat and remaining shoe and let them sink. Then skirting a concrete piling, I swam to the edge of the pier, dived and swam underwater around an outcropping twenty yards away. When I surfaced, I was hidden from the warehouse.
A hundred yards farther down-river the precipitious bank ended and I came into shallow water. I dragged myself out of the river onto a trash-littered stretch of rocky beach containing nothing but a lone and deserted tarpaper shack.
I had to crawl all the way to Front Street, a distance of one short block from the river. There I found a section of two-by-four in the gutter, improvised a crutch and managed to make Second Street by a kind of staggering hop. Though it was barely after five o’clock, and not yet dark, not a soul was on the street, this section of the waterfront consisting largely of condemned warehouses.
At Second Street I found the loveliest taxi cab I have ever seen.
For reasons known only to himself, the cabbie asked not a single question. When I fished a wet wallet from my hip pocket and handed him a sopping ten-dollar bill, he shrugged as though all his customers tipped like that, watched me labor toward the front door of my apartment house on the two-by-four, then drove off.
This time I checked the whole apartment before relaxing. Then I took a shower, affixed a couple of band-aids to the raw places on my stump, and dug from the back of my closet the temporary leg the Veterans Administration had furnished me while I waited for them to build the custom-made job. It was wood instead of cork and aluminum, much heavier and about a quarter-inch too short, but at least I could walk with a slight limp.
When I had dressed, downed a sandwich and two highballs and was settled with a cigar, I stared at the ceiling and figured everything out. Just like that.
Seeing no point in keeping the solution a secret, I phoned Warren Day at his home.
“I’ve got the whole answer to the Ketterer affair,” I told him. “And it will curl your hair.”
“What hair?” he asked sourly, “Listen, Moon. My day ends at five. And even if it was before five, I don’t want to hear any more about Ketterer.”
I said, “Would you be interested to know that since I saw you at five, Dan Ironbaltz, Jimmy Goodrich and Art Depledge did their damnedest to kill me? Personally — not through hired guns.”
For a moment there was silence. “All right. Let’s have it.”
“They dropped me in the river with one foot set in a bucket of plaster.”
Again there was silence, this time longer. Finally he said in a bored tone, “You drowned, of course.”
“This is no gag!” I yelled. “They picked my false leg. It’s still on the river bottom.”
Eventually he began to believe me. When I had recounted the whole story, he said, “I imagine they still think you’re dead, and haven’t taken to cover. I’ll send out a call for them.”
“Good,” I said. “When you get them sewed up, drop by and I’ll take you calling on the guy who had Ketterer murdered — the real head of the gambling syndicate.”
“What’s that?”
I said, “You’ll find out when you get here,” and hung up.
It was nine-thirty before my door buzzer sounded.
Not wanting to get caught off guard a third time in my own home, I called through the door, “Who’s there?”
“Me,” growled the voice of Lieutenant Hannegan, economizing on words as usual.
Opening the door, I found him alone.
“Where’s Day?” I asked.
He jerked his head toward the street, turned and started down the stairs. Following behind, I found Warren Day in a squad car at the curb.
I said, “Round up the three would-be killers all right?”
“Yeah. They’re thinking over their sins in separate cells.” He eyed me sourly. “This better be good, Moon.”
“It will be,” I promised. To Hannegan I said, “Run us over to Lindell and Forest Place.”
There was no conversation until we almost reached our destination. Then I said, “Second house from the corner.”
Day studied the big old-fashioned building, recognition dawned in his eyes and he turned on me sputtering. “Ye gods! That’s the mayor’s house! What you trying to pull, Moon?”
“A killer out of the hat,” I said, and started up the walk.
After a moment of hesitation Day followed, and Hannegan trailed him. This time a middle-aged maid answered the door.
“Inspector Warren Day of Homicide and party,” I informed her.
“Did she kill somebody?” she asked, interested. “She’s not home, sir.”
“It’s the mayor we want to see,” I said.
The woman let us into the hall, went away and returned almost immediately.
“This way, please,” she said, leading us to the same study where I had sat with His Honor once before.
We discovered that Mayor John Cash already had one visitor. Fat Raymond Margrove was wedged into an easy chair in one corner.
Mayor Cash rose with a welcoming smile. “Well, well, Inspector. This is a pleasure.” Then he saw me and the smile froze on his lips.
I didn’t waste any time. “Surprised to see me alive, Your Honor?” I asked.
He sat down, licked his lips and said in a queasy voice, “What do you mean?”
Without preamble I gave it to the whole group. “This is the end of the line, Mr. Mayor. Gerald Ketterer never was the head of the gambling syndicate. He was just what he pretended to be: an honest man pledged to run the syndicate out of town. He would have too, and the syndicate took desperate measures to protect itself. It planted forged evidence that Ketterer headed the rackets, hired a private detective it figured wasn’t smart enough to catch on to the phony setup to uncover the evidence, and arranged for Ketterer’s ‘suicide’ when the news of his disgrace broke.
“It was a good forgery — good enough to fool Ketterer’s secretary. I wouldn’t be surprised if a little forger arrested this afternoon, and in the clink right now, was hired to do the job. He’s one of the best in the country, but handwriting experts will blow it wide open when they put that notebook under a microscope.” The mayor squeaked, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”