“Say, you got somethin’ there,” said Mr. Santelli, suddenly deciding to be candid.
“You covered about two hundred thousand dollars, didn’t you?”
“Wow,” said Santelli. “This guy’s got ideas, ain’t he?”
“So,” smiled Ellery, “if Danger won the Handicap you stood to drop a cool million dollars, didn’t you?”
“But it’s my old friend John some guy tried to rub out,” pointed out Mr. Santelli gently. “Go peddle your papers somewhere else, Mister Wack.”
John Scott looked bewilderedly from the gambler to Ellery. His jaw muscles were bunched and jerky.
At this moment a special officer deposited among them Mr. Hankus-Pankus Halliday, his spectacles awry on’ his nose and his collar ripped away from his prominent Adam’s apple.
John Scott sprang toward him, but Ellery caught his flailing arm in time to prevent a slaughter.
“Murderer! Scalawag! Horse killer!” roared old John. “What did ye do with my lassie?”
Mr. Halliday said gravely, “Mr. Scott, you have my sympathy.”
The old man’s mouth flew open. Mr. Halliday folded his scrawny arms with dignity, glaring at the policeman who had brought him in. “There was no necessity to manhandle me. I’m quite ready to face the — er — music. But I shall not answer any questions.”
“No gat on him, Chief,” said the policeman.
“What did you do with the automatic?” demanded the chief. No answer. “You admit you had it in for Mr. Scott and tried to kill him?” No answer. “Where is Miss Scott?”
“You see,” said Mr. Halliday stonily, “how useless it is.”
“Hankus-Pankus,” murmured Ellery, “you are superb. You don’t know where Kathryn is, do you?”
Hankus-Pankus instantly looked alarmed. “Oh, I say, Mr. Queen. Don’t make me talk. Please!”
“But you’re expecting her to join you here, aren’t you?”
Hankus paled. The policeman said, “He’s a nut. He didn’t even try to make a getaway.”
“Hank! Darling! Father!” cried Katie Scott; and, straggle-haired and dusty-faced, she burst into the office and flung herself on Mr. Halliday’s thin bosom. Then she ran to her father and clung to him, and old John’s shoulders lifted a little.
In the midst of this reunion the track veterinary bustled in and said, “Good news, Mr. Scott. I’ve extracted the bullet and, while the wound is deep, I give you my word Danger will be as good as ever when it’s healed.” And he bustled out.
Ellery, his smile broadening, said, “Well, well, a pretty comedy of errors.”
“Comedy!” growled old John. “D’ye call a murderous attempt on my life a comedy?”
“My dear Mr. Scott,” replied Ellery, “there has been no attempt on your life. The shots were not fired at you. From the very first Danger, and Danger only, was intended to be the victim of the shooting.”
“What’s this?” cried Paula.
“No, no, Whitey,” said Ellery, smiling still more broadly. “The door, I promise you, is well guarded.”
The jockey snarled. “Yah, he’s off his nut. Next thing you’ll say I plugged the nag. How could I be on Danger’s back and at the same time fifty feet away in the grandstand? A million guys saw this screwball fire those shots!”
“A difficulty,” said Ellery, “I shall be delighted to resolve. Danger, ladies and gentleman, was handicapped officially to carry one hundred and twenty pounds in the Santa Anita Handicap. This means that when his jockey, carrying the gear, stepped on the scales in the weighing ceremony just before the race, the combined weight of jockey and gear had to come to exactly one hundred and twenty pounds; or Mr. Whitey Williams would never have been allowed by the track officials to mount his horse.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” demanded the chief.
“Everything. For Mr. Williams told us a few minutes ago that he weighs only a hundred and seven pounds. Consequently the racing saddle Danger wore when he was shot must have contained various lead weights which, combined with the weight of the saddle, made up the difference between a hundred and seven pounds, Mr. Williams’s weight, and a hundred and twenty pounds, the handicap weight. Is that correct?”
“Sure. Anybody knows that.”
“Yes, yes, elementary, in Mr. Holmes’s imperishable phrase. Nevertheless,” continued Ellery, walking over and prodding with his toe the saddle Whitey Williams had fetched to the office, “when I examined this saddle there were no lead weights in its pockets. And Mr. Williams assured me no one had tampered with the saddle since he had removed it from Danger’s back. But this was impossible, since without the lead weights Mr. Williams and the saddle would have weighed less than a hundred and twenty pounds on the scales.
“And so I knew,” said Ellery, “that Williams had been weighed with a different saddle, that when he was shot Danger was wearing a different saddle, that the saddle Williams lugged away from the wounded horse was a different saddle; that he secreted it somewhere on the premises and fetched here on our request a second saddle — this one on the floor — which he had prepared beforehand with a bullet hole nicely placed in the proper spot. And the reason he did this was that obviously there was something in that first saddle he didn’t want anyone to see. And what could that have been but a special pocket containing an automatic which, in the confusion following Mr. Halliday’s first signal shot, Mr. Williams calmly discharged into Danger’s body by simply stooping over as he struggled with the frightened horse, putting his hand into the pocket, and firing while Mr. Halliday was discharging his three other futile shots fifty feet away? Mr. Halliday, you see, couldn’t be trusted to hit Danger from such a distance, because Mr. Halliday is a stranger to firearms; he might even hit Mr. Williams instead, if he hit anything. That’s why I believe Mr. Halliday was using blank cartridges and threw the automatic away.”
The jockey’s voice was strident, panicky. “You’re crazy! Special saddle. Who ever heard—”
Ellery, still smiling, went to the door, opened it, and said, “Ah, you’ve found it, I see. Let’s have it. In Danger’s stall? Clumsy, clumsy.”
He returned with a racing saddle; and Whitey cursed and then grew still. Ellery and the police chief and John Scott examined the saddle and, sure enough, there was a special pocket stitched into the flap, above the iron hoop, and in the pocket there was a snub-nosed automatic. And the bullet hole piercing the special pocket had the scorched speckled appearance of powder burns.
“But where,” muttered the chief, “does Halliday figure? I don’t get him a-tall.”
“Very few people would,” said Ellery, “because Mr. Halliday is, in his modest way, unique among bipeds.”
“Huh?”
“Why, he was Whitey’s accomplice — weren’t you, Hankus?”
Hankus pulped and said, “Yes. I mean no. I mean—”
“But I’m sure Hank wouldn’t—” Katie began to say.
“You see,” said Ellery briskly, “Whitey wanted a setup whereby he would be the last person in California to be suspected of having shot Danger. The quarrel between John Scott and Hank gave him a ready-made instrument. If he could make Hank seem to do the shooting, with Hank’s obvious motive against Mr. Scott, then nobody would suspect Whitey’s part in the affair.