“You apparently miss the fact that in giving you this combination, it might look as though Mrs. Wheatland thought you the guilty man and was trying to assist you to get out of the room,” said Williams dryly.
“Nonsense!” snapped Clinton, his face very red. “Caresse whispered that door combination to me the moment we entered this room, before Arch started his demonstration!”
“I was a bit ahead of you both,” put in Farren grimly. “As we came along the hall Caresse told it to me and said she felt sure there were diamonds hidden here. She wanted me to look for them, not only to give them to her but to stop her husband from getting himself caught up by the law and openly disgracing them both.”
“Just as the professor put that crucible in the fire Caresse told me the combination of the lock,” said Frisby then, with a little chuckle. “She said she’d explain later. Since I have a mind like a card index, got to have in my game, I didn’t have to do anything as elaborate as Harmer and write it on a cigarette paper.”
Across the smoke-filled little apartment Lieutenant Williams met the brilliant eyes of Caresse. Leaning against the wall with folded arms and the jeweled cigarette holder dangling in one hand, she looked back at him with mockery that was like a glove flung in his face. If she knew the man, she had done a clever thing to protect him and yet give him information. It had been just possible that Williams would not have found that out. And one of them might have had the luck or the brains to discover that hiding place of the gems, if there was one!
“By Jove!” said Saleworth rather blankly. “No one told me about the lock.”
“And why, Mrs. Wheatland, did you tell Clinton, Farren and Frisby the combination, before the crime took place?” asked Williams crisply.
“Archie was so sure he was going to be killed, that I thought he probably would be,” replied that amazing girl coolly.
“But these men, one of them, might have taken the diamonds,” reminded the lieutenant
“No,” said Caresse, her head flung high. “They are honest. I could trust them all.”
“Yet one of them stabbed your husband,” said Williams dryly.
Caresse merely shrugged and made no reply.
“Very well.” said the lieutenant then, looking about. “I shall alter the combination of that lock. No one but myself will be able to enter this room after the professor’s body is removed. If there is a cache of unset diamonds here used by Professor Wheatland in his manufacturing stunt, we shall find it. I am laying my cards frankly on the table now. We cannot stay in here all night. It is getting on our nerves now. Every one of you will be under police surveillance from this time on-ward. You will remain here until my men arrive and then you will be at liberty to return to your homes. I understand that you have nothing more to tell me? None of you can recall any little thing that will assist me?”
Utter silence answered him, and after a moment or so the lieutenant turned quietly to the telephone upon the desk, lifted the receiver and called into the transmitter: “Police headquarters!”
And across the two sharp words there shivered an ear-piercing scream as Linda Price fell in a dead faint to the floor before Farren who stood beside her, could catch her.
Miracle Murder
by Harold de Polo
Frayne looks over the “lilies of the field” for the slayer of the lovely Baa-Baa Jackson...
I
“On your toes, Don. Five-four in games, remember. If I lake this one it ’ll give me the set.” Inspector Frayne walked to the service line.
“Better give me all you’ve got, chief,” came back Haggerty. “I’ve just been kidding you along.”
The famous manhunter’s answer was a nod and a smile and a ball that Haggerty was barely able to lob over the net. Frayne killed it, and Haggerty grinned.
“Still kidding you, sir,” he said.
Frayne laughed, this time. He rarely laughed. He enjoyed these games with Don, though. Although Don was younger and had been a tennis crack in college, the two were fairly evenly matched. It was the only outdoor sport in which the police official indulged, and he drove to this upper West Side club whenever he could find the leisure. There was no better physical exercise on the market, in his opinion, and he had to keep himself in trim.
Frayne, after a beautiful volley, took the next point. And took the following one after a still harder tussle. He didn’t get a chance, however, to put over his next serve.
A club attendant came rushing up excitedly. All club attendants had strict orders to interrupt any game at any presumably crucial moment, if necessary, if an official call came over the wire.
“Mr. Haggerty, sir,” the man was literally bellowing, apparently enjoying the importance of the layman at being mixed up in police business. “From headquarters. Lieutenant Geogan. Very important. He’s on the wire, sir.”
Frayne dropped his arm, nodded just once, and Haggerty took a hurdle over the net and raced for the clubhouse.
Haggerty was Frayne’s right hand man; his protégé; his buffer. It was Don’s task, before anything else, to see that his superior was not troubled with any murder problems that might have been dissected by any average detective. No one was allowed to communicate with the famous manhunter directly; they had first to give their stuff to his assistant.
Frayne had been forced to lay down this law. Otherwise he would have been swamped with all the unimportant and easily untangled eases that are bound to occur in the five boroughs that comprise the miracle city of the world, New York.
Frayne was twirling his racket, impatiently. Lieutenant Geogan wouldn’t have called unless the affair had been a vital and baffling one. Geogan was one of the shrewdest men on the New York force.
But Haggerty was back, now. He was running his fingers through his reddish hair, as he invariably did when he thought a mystery was on deck.
“Baa-Baa Jackson, chief,” he said, his keen face alive with enthusiasm. “Paid the so-called wages of sin at last. Found in her bed this morning. Cold murder. Beaten up first, then stabbed. A kitchen knife from her own apartment. She—”
“Why not?” Frayne cut in with a frown. “She must be — yes, she must be thirty-eight. She had a long run. Couldn’t Geogan put his Broadway crew on the job?”
“Wait, chief, wait a minute, please,” replied Haggerty. “The maid let herself into the apartment with her key at nine o’clock this morning, as she always did. Baa-Baa sort of half woke up and said she didn’t want to be disturbed until eleven. The maid got busy on the job of cleaning up the place. In something less than half an hour, as near as she can figure, the doorbell rang. It was Vince Lamont. He insisted on waking Baa-Baa. They found her dead — beaten up and slabbed. Geogan swears that the colored maid is O.K. Good rep, and she also stood up under questioning. She says she can’t be wrong; that Baa-Baa spoke to her when she came in at nine. The bedroom window was latched. Besides, the maid didn’t hear a sound.
“Chief,” Haggerty finished, “it looks nice!”
Frayne, fingering his well trimmed mustache with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, was smiling a trifle skeptically. His voice also had the same tone.
“Another of these miracle murders, eh?”
Haggerty didn’t answer this one. Haggerty wasn’t supposed to answer it. Haggerty knew just when, and when not, to speak, which was one more reason why he was a valuable asset to the great manhunter.