Professor Inez Martin widened her greenish eyes at the Irishman. “What on earth is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s sign language. It means fish-hooked and being reeled in,” O’Hanna interpreted. “Charley Zane baited you with a hundred-grand hook so you wouldn’t offend him by naming the comet after Joe McGuffey.”
He crossed to the door. Behind him, the lady astronomer became haughty. She said: “I couldn’t be bribed like that. You forget I’m a scientist.”
Hand on the doorknob, O’Hanna said: “You’re a scientist interested in component stars and hydrogen carbide. As far as you’re concerned, comets are just amateur, dime-on-the-sidewalk stuff. To you, this particular fireball is a mere wandering pinpoint in the universe, and it wouldn’t make the slightest scientific difference whether you named it after Charley Zane, Joe McGuffey, or Joe Palooka. That’s how Zane figured. You wouldn’t kick away a hundred thousand dollar bequest by deciding the wrong way, especially when the evidence wasn’t conclusive for either man. It’s the answer to the question of how Zane could steal a comet.”
Inez Martin watched him open the door. She moistened her lips. “Wait a minute... Where do you think all this leads you?”
O’Hanna said meaningfully: “I’m a periodic fireball myself. I keep making my rounds. I’ll be seeing you some more — next round.”
Downstairs, Manager Endicott’s teak-paneled office was deserted. The house dick snatched the almanac from the mahogany desk, flapped through its pages, ran his forefinger down the Star Tables, 1946, until he reached A Cygni.
He read aloud: “Declination, forty-five degrees and five seconds.” Then he said, softly: “I’ll be damned!”
Orchestra music still flooded the Palomar Room, couples still circled on the glass floor, unaware of violent death on the premises. O’Hanna beckoned to the head-waiter, to the waiter who’d called him earlier in the evening. He asked: “Just what happened when the Zanes walked in here tonight?”
They told him.
O’Hanna’s lips were thinned as he started across the San Alpa grounds. Overhead, the stars were as gorgeously bright as before, and a little higher in the heavens. O’Hanna headed downslope toward the chalets. Whispering, rustled sound under the trees stopped him short. His eyes strained. A blurred, ghost-shape moved. The house dick’s hand fanned in fast between his coat lapels.
He snapped: “Hands up! Who’s there?”
“Don’t shoot. It’s me.” The ghost shape materialized into slim, blond femininity as Spica Zane emerged from under the trees. She said shakily: “I was coming to the hotel to find you! The others don’t know. I pretended I had to lie down. I slipped out of the back window secretly. There’s something important I have to tell you!”
“I’m listening with both ears.”
The blond girl drew a deep breath. “I think Uncle Joe killed Uncle Charley!”
This was probably expected to startle the hell out of O’Hanna. It didn’t. He murmured: “So the Zanes and the McGuffeys are blood relatives?”
Spica Zane said: “My mother was a McGuffey. My father was Uncle Charley’s brother. The two families were in business together years ago. Some money became missing, and Joe McGuffey managed the evidence so my father was sent to prison. He died there. Uncle Charley never forgave McGuffey after that.” The girl’s voice sharpened. “Joe McGuffey’s a hateful old man! He’s done everything he could to ruin our lives. This comet trick is merely the last of a long string of episodes.”
O’Hanna said: “Family feuds can be furious, I’ll grant that. But if your two uncles hated each other so, how come they remained next door neighbors?”
“Uncle Charley was too proud to move out of the neighborhood. It’d look like running away. It’d be like admitting my father was guilty. Don’t you see, we had to face the scandal with our heads high—”
A gun talked out loud, right in the middle of what she was saying.
Spica Zane wailed, flung herself against the Irishman’s chest. She moaned: “No! Don’t go! I’m afraid he’ll kill me next!”
O’Hanna thrust free of her arms. He started running toward the chalet. He damned near stepped on the body, before he glimpsed the spectral whiteness of the face and of the shirt-front.
The house dick skidded to a stop, fumbled for a match. From his cupped hand, the yellow light flooded out over the narrow, knobby face. Frank Kigel’s rest cure had become permanent. He was dead of a hole through his heart without benefit of any powder burns.
Chapter Three
Murder, My Stars!
County sheriff Ed Gleeson came into the chalet, peered at the company. Relief softened his features as he counted out O’Hanna, Endicott, and little Doc Raymond. That left only Spica Zane, Professor Inez Martin, and Joseph J. McGuffey.
Gleeson hiked up the belt which supported his hip-holstered Frontier six-shooter, and said to O’Hanna: “Good going, Mike. I see you’ve got it trimmed down to three possible suspects already.”
Joe McGuffey waved a fat hand. “You can count me out, Sheriff. Lucky for me, the house dick here tabbed me for a suspicious character early in the game. He left me right here in Dr. Raymond’s custody.”
The lardy man appealed to Endicott and Doc Raymond.
“I’ll just leave it to you guys. I was right here in this room, wasn’t I, when somebody killed Kigel outdoors. So consequently I guess that leaves it up to the ladies.”
Professor Inez Martin said: “Thanks for the compliment! But it happens I was right here in this room with an eye-witness when somebody killed Charley Zane.”
Ed Gleeson peered at the blond girl.
O’Hanna said: “She was the eye-witness with the other lady the first time. At the time of the second shot, she was talking to me about her family.”
Sheriff Gleeson absorbed this and said: “Well, hell, what are we waiting for, then? If they’ve all got alibis, you haven’t rounded up any suspect at all. Let’s get busy tearing the joint apart until we come onto the killer. What d’ya say, Mike?”
Bleating sounds came from Endicott. The manager choked. “Sheriff, you can’t! You mustn’t! Why, ninety-nine out of a hundred of our guests are absolutely innocent. You can’t line them up like common convicts and give them the third degree. They’d check out in droves, and they’d probably never come back as long as they live.”
Endicott’s graying face was haggard. He had nightmares like this one — had them every time crime cropped up at San Alpa. He wheeled to O’Hanna, said desperately: “Mike, you gotta do something quick!”
The house detective reminded: “Yeah, that’s what I said before all the shooting started. I told you I had a black Irish hunch. You jeered at—”
Endicott cut in. “Well, have another hunch now! And have it quick! There’s no time to waste!”
O’Hanna said: “O.K., I got a hunch. Let’s all adjourn to the next room, everybody. I want to show you something.”
He opened the door, disclosed Charley Zane’s sheet-covered body.
Doc Raymond asked: “Do you want me to uncover it again?”
O’Hanna said: “No, this is one of the higher hunches. It has to do with astronomy. It involves higher mathematics of right ascension and declination. It’s based on the theory that a comet rising three minutes ahead of the star A Cygni has a right ascension of thirty-three hours and thirty-nine minutes point five, from which we deduct the right ascension of the mean sun.”
He paused, shook his head. “That’s what the almanac calls it. I don’t know why it’s a mean sun instead of a friendly one.”
Professor Inez Martin laughed quite unmerrily.