The bow-legged man coughed behind a sallow hand, corrected: “Professor Janathan.”
“O.K., Professor.” O’Hanna waved him away, beckoned Lucas Kuhn closer. “Identify him?”
Kuhn was shaken. “It’s Mullet, all right. My God, I’d give my right arm if I hadn’t fired that shot!”
Endicott made reassuring sounds. “It isn’t your fault. Besides, he shouldn’t have run away after he was shot. If he’d surrendered, probably prompt medical attention could have saved his life.”
Secretly, Endicott was reassuring himself that it wasn’t really a case of murder at all. Violent death is never welcome in a resort hotel, but at least this wasn’t a murder mystery involving the paying guests in an unpleasant slay-scandal.
“Frankly,” the manager pronounced verdict, “it’s nobody’s fault except his own. It’s just a case of a guy playing ghoul and getting knocked for a goal.”
O’Hanna had swung to study the corpse. A metal object bulked out one of Oscar Mullet’s coat pockets. O’Hanna knelt, tugged forth a T-shaped metal trough supported by a trigger-equipped handle.
Endicott peered and said: “Why, that’s a photographer’s flashgun — the kind they used before flash-bulbs were invented. It explains the flash and the smoke cloud in Miss Taine’s chalet.”
Endicott looked like Sherlock Holmes as he said it, and Lucas Kuhn played an admiring Dr. Watson. “I guess you’re right. Mullet thought one of us was trying to poison the cat, and he evidently thought dressing up like Grandpa’s ghost was the way to stop us.”
Little Doc Raymond gestured. “Lend a hand, Mike.”
O’Hanna helped lift the corpse. The other hand had been under the body, and now as they turned the corpse they saw this hand clutched a Santa Claus style set of whiskers. It had been a white beard once. It was red now from ’having been pressed to the bullet wound, and the blood was stiffening the whiskers as it dried.
“That absolutely proves it,” Endicott settled the case for keeps. “There’s the disguise he wore to scare Miss Taine.”
O’Hanna eyed the clue skeptically. He challenged: “Yeah, but how long has this blood been drying, Doc?”
The house physician tossed his diagnosis like a hand grenade. “Mike, it’s screwy, but in my opinion he’s been dead at least half an hour.”
O’Hanna’s wristwatch said it was 1:10. It’d be 2:10 by the time the sheriff covered sixty miles of mountain road to get here. By the time he picked up the phone to call Sheriff Gleeson, Endicott was making a speech over the corpse.
Chapter Two
Holograph Hunter
Endicott took it tough. He’d had it all wrapped up as accidental homicide, and now the thing was turning into a cold-blooded kill. He contradicted: “Half an hour is impossible! It’s hardly been that long since Eva Taine saw this guy playing ghost. It’s not more than ten or twelve minutes since Kuhn fired the fatal shot. So how can you stand there and say he was dead before any of those things happened?”
The medico protested: “I don’t say it. The blood on the beard says it.”
Endicott scowled. “Another thing. It’s not more than five minutes since Professor Janathan found this man out in the corridor. Good heavens, why would he lie about a thing like this?”
O’Hanna nodded. “Why would he? You’re taking the words right out of my mouth.”
The house dick swiveled to the staring Kuhn. “Who the hell is this guy Janathan, anyway?”
“Search me. I never heard of him before.” Lucas Kuhn stretched a.fleshy hand. “I guess it’s OK. if I take my gun back now.”
O’Hanna said: “That’s your guess. Mine’s different.”
The pink-faced man didn’t like it. He put up an argument. He said: “Look, if Oscar Mullet has been dead half an hour, that shot of mine didn’t kill him, and my gun can’t possibly be legal evidence.”
O’Hanna said: “That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is, if you didn’t shoot him — how do we know you didn’t shoot somebody else. There’s a chance of another corpse turning up with a slug in it, and I’m keeping the gun.”
Keeping the weapon in his pocket, the house dick headed down the corridor to 218. Professor Alexander Janathan had switched from tux and cummerbund to a corduroy, velvet-collared smoking jacket. Affably, he waved a corncob pipe as he greeted O’Hanna. “Excuse the Missouri meerschaum, but frankly I’m just a farm boy at heart! You can have your coffin-nails and Corona Coronas, for my part I’ll take my nicotine barnyard style. I find it’s cooler on the tongue that way—”
O’Hanna interrupted. “Were you really born on a farm, Prof?”
“As a matter of fact — no. I’m actually a scion of Chicago. I was raised in the shadow of the old Historical Museum on North Dearborn. I suppose that’s how I got interested in my specialty. From the time I was knee-high to a glass showcase, I used to hang around the exhibits in there. I practically cut my teeth on the old-fashioned dragoon pistols, the whaling harpoons, the ship’s models and so on.”
O’Hanna queried: “Your specialty? What’s that?”
“I’m a dealer in holographs.”
“Holy-whats?”
Alexander Janathan chuckled. “It means handwritten documents, especially those from the pens of important historical and literary personages. For instance, if you had a letter written by Mark Twain in your pocket, I’d cheerfully pay you a hundred dollars for it — and no questions asked. From there the rates go on up, and you could practically write your own ticket for the original copy of the Gettysburg Address as inscribed by Abraham Lincoln. I don’t mean the second copy he dashed off later and gave to Horace Greeley, but the genuine, original, first draft. It would be worth — well, thousands and thousands.” The hatchety man waved his corncob pipe, said: “But pshaw! I’m dreaming. What would a house detective be doing with the Gettysburg Address in his pocket? It’s a ridiculous idea, isn’t it?”
O’Hanna confided: “The only handwritten document I’m interested in is a murder confession, telling how Oscar Mullet got killed half an hour ago.”
Professor Janathan cocked an eyebrow. “Did you say half an hour ago?”
“The doctor said half an hour ago. I’ll tell you a secret — the blood was partly dried on the false beard Mullet had clutched to his wound.”
The other took it calmly. “I’ll tell you a secret right back. You’ll never be able to prove it in court!”
“No?”
“No, and here’s why. There’s no way to keep that clue intact! There’s no process for preserving a bloodstain in the exact condition you find it. It’ll be a lot drier by the time the coroner arrives, and it’ll be just caked blood when the case comes to trial — if there is a trial.”
Janathan came up out of his chair, balanced himself on his bow-legs, aimed the pipestem at O’Hanna. He declared: “So the jury would have only your house physician’s word — and he’s no pathologist — any smart defense lawyer would tear him to pieces. A smart lawyer would simply hire half a dozen experts to drive the jury nuts with their double-talk. It’d wind up the way expert testimony usually does, with the jury not knowing who to believe.”
O’Hanna asked: “And there’d be you, swearing you saw and talked to Oscar Mullet twenty-five minutes after his supposed death.”
Alexander Janathan swung his pipe-stem to a comer of his thin mouth, made a sound with his pipe like frying an egg. Innocent-eyed, he queried: “Me? Why drag me into it? I don’t want to be the ruin of your case! All I ask is to be left alone! I’m a sleeping dog that bites only when kicked.”