Mark Telfair nodded. “It was a case of any port in a storm. Herrington knew that he could not reach his own five-acre farm up in Yorktown Heights with his loot. He had prepared the box in New York for submersion — his place is on a lake — and when he realized that the police were sure to get him he remembered your lily pond was close by. It worked. Nobody but Mitchell knew he had been on your place.”
“I certainly didn’t know!” Smythe bleated. He was perspiring profusely. “Mitchell isn’t the first ex-convict I’ve helped because—”
Mark Telfair’s voice broke in. “I can’t say I found your actions suspicious at any time, Mr. Smythe. I exonerated you completely when I rode home with you on your gas tank and you never spoke a word to your chauffeur. If he had been your accomplice you had plenty of things to talk about and, as far as you knew, absolute privacy.
“But Mitchell, Mr. Smythe, has been combing this estate for months to find that loot. Until he read in Herrington’s statement that involuntary hint, ‘as safely hidden as if at the bottom of the Atlantic,’ it never occurred to him that paper money and bonds might be hidden at the bottom of a pond. But ten days ago, when he heard rumors that Herrington might reveal the hiding place to save himself from the chair, he got desperate and confided in Warden Crawford here, thinking the warden might work out some way of getting a tip from Herrington.
“Mitchell says that Warden Crawford told him to keep on searching — that he would see to it that Herrington did not reveal his secret to the authorities. And Crawford did see to it — in his own murderous way.”
“Positively fiendish, I am,” the deputy warden commented in his mild voice. “With your talent you should be on the stage, Telfair. Did I also command Mitchell to run you off the road when I was notified by telephone that you were headed this way — possibly with an unconditional reprieve for Herrington from the governor?”
“You did,” Mark Telfair said.
Warden Crawford waved it all away with a gesture. “Guess, surmise, hope, thought, theory, ex-convict’s words, and so on — all as light as air and just as menacing.”
He laughed gently, deep in his chest, with his eyes fastened in mild mockery upon Telfair’s face.
“You’re a lawyer, Mr. Telfair,” he said. “You can guess just how much a jury would believe when Chink Mitchell, with his crook’s face and his shifty eyes, took the witness stand. His unsupported word is all the tangible evidence you have against me—”
Mark Telfair shook his head.
“Mitchell will not take the witness stand. The blood transfusion at the hospital was not a success. Mitchell is dead. But before he died Mitchell made this brief ante-mortem statement — and that is admissible evidence, Warden. I need not tell you what weight such a statement, made by one who knows he is at the very threshold of eternity, carries with a jury.”
He leaned forward, returning with steady eyes the mockery that was slowly fading from John Crawford’s face.
“I am not an ex-convict, Warden Crawford. My word is as good as yours. I will be in the witness chair, testifying to your third murder this night, if they try you for that — first, Mitchell is dead, Warden, murdered by you — and I saw you make the thrust that killed him.”
“That’s evidence!” grunted Chief Hardwick. “We can take him on that.”
“Don’t be a fool, Hardwick!” the deputy warden said in a high voice. “I deny — I didn’t—”
“Though you said you wanted to save a man from the chair tonight you wanted to see him die, Warden,” Mark Telfair stated with quiet certainty. “You, not the state, forced that execution. You’re going to be present at one more execution, Warden, but this time you’re not going to see the man die.”
The House of Creeping Horror[1]
by George F. Worts
Out of the Shadows Steals a Strange Figure in a Red Sash and into the Africa Mystery Comes an Incredible New Development
Daniel “Flash” Horton was at the home of the Africas the night Benjamin Africa was murdered. Benjamin himself had summoned him. “Something mighty mysterious has been going on in this house,” Benjamin Africa had said over the phone to the young attorney. “There’s murder in the air.”
So Flash had said good night to his sister, Margy, and had gone to the strange house, where lived the giant adventurer, Africa; and his exotic Eurasian bride, Lotus; and the old witch, Minetta Africa, who hated her brother Benjamin’s bride; and the man, Wayne Cheseldine, who had followed Lotus from China, and Africa’s blond grand-niece, Bernice Hopper.
Benjamin Africa had told Flash of the beating he had given Cheseldine when the latter tried to persuade Lotus to run away from him. Benjamin also told Flash of the superstition that when a spot of blood appeared under the huge portrait of the first Benjamin Africa, and when the clock in the hall stopped, an Africa always died.
And the spot appeared, and the clock stopped, and Benjamin Africa was murdered, garroted with a piece of wire. There were few clues, but they all pointed to Lotus.
Flash notified Sheriff Alonzo Hegg. It was while he was waiting for the sheriff to arrive that he saw a man fleeing across the Africa lawn, caught him, and after a struggle brought him back to the house. Minetta Africa said to Flash, “That man came this morning to see my brother on some kind of secret business. He says his name is Harry Muroc.”
Chapter VIII
Muroc’s Alibi
The sheriff’s whole air was one of brusque self-importance. His small blue eyes looked quickly about the room. His manner was that of a man of decision, of authority. This was, of course, Flash reflected, the opportunity of a lifetime to a man of Alonzo Hegg’s pompous character.
Having swiftly scrutinized the room, he looked for several seconds at the wire about the dead man’s neck, then said, in his somewhat booming voice, “Got any idea who did this, Dan?”
“Not yet.”
“Any clues?”
“Three,” Flash said. “Look here. This scratch across the desk may or may not be important. This paper may or may not have been dropped by the murderer. I think it was.”
“What’s that you’ve got in your hand?”
“A hairpin. It dropped out of his collar just now as I rolled him over. He was lying face down.”
Sheriff Hegg took the hairpin from Flash’s hand and held it close to the candles.
He grunted and said, “I guess this doesn’t leave much doubt about who did it, Dan. Have you questioned them?”
“Not yet.”
“Where’s that yaller girl?”
“In her room. She didn’t do this.”
“Don’t agree with you,” Sheriff Hegg said flatly. “There’s been plenty of rumors about that girl and this fellow from China who followed her here. It’s as clear as crystal to me without going a step farther. She killed him so she and that fellow from Hongkong could skip out together. We’ll just see about that!”
Flash saw the long, horselike face of the butler in the doorway.
“Tell Mrs. Africa to come to the sitting room,” Flash said. “And the servants, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
When the butler had gone, the sheriff said, “Where does this door go?”
“The sitting room. Miss Minetta, the man from Hongkong, and a suspicious character who says his name is Muroc are in there. I found Muroc hanging around outside on the terrace there a few minutes ago. He ran when I called. I grabbed him. He won’t talk.”