“George Bay was free-lancing to see if he couldn’t clear up Mrs. Dowling’s death. He had an idea he could collect a reward from the insurance company if he showed it was murder.
“Bay didn’t have much to go on. But Bill Eldon has just about solved that case too. He found out that Howard and Mrs. Dowling had a picnic outfit in a suitcase. They carried powdered milk. She was the only one who took cream in her coffee.
“Dowling only had to put poison in the powdered milk and then leave on a business trip, where he’d have an alibi for every minute of the time. The picnic case, you see, was never used except when he was gone, and only his wife used the powdered milk.
“You should have heard Sheriff Eldon questioning Dowling. He soon had him floundering around in a mass of contradictory stories.
“He’d learned Bay was on his trail and decided to kill Bay so it would look as though Howard had done it. He knew Howard’s term had expired but didn’t know Howard had been rearrested and was in jail. Dowling had had his tent placed so the back was right up against that pine thicket. He’d pretend to be asleep, but he’d taken the pegs out of the back and he’d carry a change of shoes and prowl along the mountain trails. I guess he was pretty desperate, after getting all that wealth together, to be trapped by an old crime. He tried to frame it on you, of course, stealing your gun, then later even planting some of your cigarette stubs. He buried the things from his victim’s pockets at your place where officers would be sure to find them. But because he thought Sheriff Eldon was a doddering old man, he overdid everything.
“Well, that’s all the news, and I must skip. I’m supposed to be back in the main trail in ten minutes. The others are going to pick me up on the way out. I thought I’d just stop by and — leave you my address. I suddenly realized I hadn’t told you where you could reach me.”
She was standing in the door of the cabin, smiling, looking trim and neat in her leather riding skirt, cowboy boots and soft green silk blouse.
Frank Ames strode toward her, kicking a chair out of his way. “I know where to reach you,” he said.
Five minutes later she pushed herself gently back from his arms and said, “Heavens, I’ll be late! I won’t know how to catch up with them. I don’t know the trails.”
Ames’ circling arms held her to him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You have just left lipstick smears all over one of the best guides in the mountains.”
“You mean we can catch up with the others?” she asked.
“Eventually,” Frank Ames said. “You probably don’t know it, however, but you’re headed for the County Clerk’s office.”
“The County Clerk’s office? Surely you don’t mean—?”
“I’m leaving just as soon as I can get a few things together,” he said. “You see, I want to record a claim. Up here in the mountains when we find something good, we file on it.”
“You... you’d better have it assayed first, Frank.”
“I’ve assayed ‘it,’ ” he said. “Underneath that raspberry lipstick there’s pure gold, and I don’t want anyone to jump my claim.”
“They won’t,” she assured him softly.
Victor Canning
A Stroke of Genius
Lancelot Pike planned a little caper down to the smallest detail. It was really a simple affair, and should have worked. But the strangest thing happened... a tale of the Minerva Club...
The Minerva Club, in a discreet turning off Brook Street, is one of the most exclusive clubs in London. Members must have served at least two years in one of Her Majesty’s Prisons and be able to pay £50 a year dues. In the quiet of its Smoking Room, under the mild eye of Milky Waye, the club secretary, some of the most ambitious schemes for money-making, allied of course with evasion of the law, have been worked out. But, although notoriety is a common quality among members, fame — real honest solid fame — has come to few of them.
Lancelot Pike is one of these few but, although he is still a member, he is not often seen in the august halls of the Minerva. However, over the fireplace in the Smoking Room, hangs one of his greatest works — never seen by the general public — a full assembly, in oils, of the Management Committee of the club; it shows thirty figures of men whose photographs and fingerprints are cherished lovingly by Scotland Yard.
Lancelot’s road to fame was a devious one and the first step was taken on the day that Horace Head, leaning against a lamppost in the Old Kent Road and reading the racing edition, saw Miss Nancy Reeves. Without thinking, Horace began to follow her, some dim but undeniable impulse of the heart leading him. And, naturally, Lancelot Pike, who was leaning against the other side of the lamp-post, followed Horace, because he was Horace’s manager and was not letting Horace out of his sight.
Horace Head at this time was at the peak of his brief career as a professional middleweight fighter. He was younger then, of course, but still a wooden-headed, slow-thinking fellow with an engaging smile bracketed by cauliflower ears. He was wearing a gray suit with a thick red line in it, a blue shirt, a yellow bow tie, and brown shoes that squeaked.
He squeaked away after Miss Nancy Reeves and there wasn’t any real reason why he should not have done so. She was a trim slim blonde with blue eyes and a pink and white complexion that made Horace think — and this will show how stirred up he was — of blue skies seen through a lacing of cherry blossoms. It had been a good many years since Horace had seen real cherry blossoms too.
Lancelot Pike followed him. Lancelot was a tall, slim, handsome, versatile number, with a ready tongue, a fast mind, and a determination to have an overstuffed bank account before he was thirty no matter what he had to do to get it. At the moment, Horace — at one fight a month — was his stake money.
If Miss Nancy Reeves knew that she was being followed, she showed no signs of it. She eventually went up the steps of the neighborhood Art School and disappeared through its doors.
Horace continued to follow. He was stopped inside by an attendant who said, “You a student?”
Horace said, “Do I have to be?”
“To come in here, yes,” said the attendant.
“Who,” said Horace, “is the poppet in the green coat with blonde hair?” He nodded to where Miss Nancy Reeves was almost out of sight up a wide flight of stairs.
“That,” said the attendant, “is Miss Nancy Reeves.”
“She a student?” asked Horace.
“No,” said the attendant. “She’s one of the art teachers. Life class.”
“Then make me a student in the life class,” said Horace, the romantic impulse in him growing.
At this moment Lancelot Pike intervened. “What the devil are you after, Horace? You couldn’t paint a white stripe down the middle of the road. Besides, do you know what a life class is?”
“No,” said Horace.
“Naked women. Maybe, men, too. You’ve got to paint them.”
“To be near her,” said Horace, “I’ll paint anybody, the Queen of Sheba or the Prime Minister, black all over. I got to do it, Lance. I got this sort of pain right under my heart suddenly.”
“You need bicarbonate of soda,” said the attendant.
Horace looked at him, reached out, and lifted him clear of the ground by the collar of his jacket and said, “Make me a student.”
Well, it had to be. There was no stopping Horace. Lancelot helped to fill out the form and, in a way, he was glad because he knew that the classes would keep Horace away from the pubs between training. Horace was the kind who developed an enormous thirst as soon as training was finished.