The boss turns back to the phone. “Ruggles, we’ve got a violinist for you! Yes, a violinist! Jump into your car and come right over! Right?” He hangs up and slaps me on the back again. “Peter, you’re a lifesaver! Ruggles says he will be here just as soon as he can pick up the piano player. And now, Peter, get that violinist, and drive like hell!”
Well, if I had not been in such a hurry I would have stopped at the cloakroom, which is on the second floor, and I would have shown the twenty-ease note to that redhead Annabell, and I would have told her that even if the slaughterhouse employee was coming I expected her to dance with me like she promised. But something told me that she would ask for some of the money for herself because she interduced us, and anyhow Hubert would give her five dollars out of his fifty if he really liked her, so I beat it out to the garage without stopping.
There must have been forty or forty-five cars parked in the driveway and in the courtyard and in the street outside, and I observed one car parked right in front of the house with the lights on and the motor running. If I had not been in such a hurry I would have turned off the motor because it was wasting rationed gas and besides I could see there wasn’t anybody in the car. But the boss said, “Peter, drive like hell,” and that was what I did.
I turned into Main Street going so fast the tires screamed, and I turned the corner at West Main Street going ditto ditto. I turned the corner where the casino used to be before it burned down, and I was hitting sixty miles an hour, and I went down the long hill next to the cemetary the same way and more of it.
I had to slow down when I got to the Mudge Pond road which is bumpy and if you drive faster than fifteen miles an hour or maybe twenty you will break a spring or maybe an axle and if there is somebody coming the other way and he is going fast also it is just too bad.
I got to the slaughterhouse employee’s shanty.
It was dark.
I blew the horn.
Nothing happened.
I yelled, “Hubert! Hubert!”
He didn’t come out, so I took the flashlight we keep in the glove compartment and I walked right into the shanty, which was not locked.
I yelled, “Hubert!” but I could see he was not there. There was the same stove, the same chair, the same tumble down sofa, the same table — nothing on it this time — and that was all.
I climbed out through the window which did not have any glass in it, and I went to the place where I saw the roadster with the Illonois plates.
It was gone.
I deducted Hubert was not there, having gone to the movies maybe, and I also deducted I could kiss those twenty dollars good by.
I turned the car around, which was not easy on that narrow road and in the dark, and I drove back doing fifteen miles an hour and mostly less than that, and I was so low in spirits that I felt like bawling.
I turned into our driveway, and there was the same car I observed when I left, and the lights were on and the motor was still running, so I got out to turn off the motor and park it somewhere where it wouldn’t be in the way, and suddenly I observed it was a roadster and it had Illonois plates.
Well, that did not make me more cheerful, if you know what I mean, because I deducted that redhead Annabell had beat me to it if Mrs. McRae said to her what she said to me, and Annabell had sent for Hubert Honeywell without letting on, and maybe the boss would tell me, “Peter, you had a good idea but Annabell had it first. Give her fifteen dollars out of that twenty.”
But I parked the roadster, turning off the motor, that being my job, and just as I was going to get out—
Yes, I saw it on the back seat, the violin case, and I deducted the rest like a shot: maybe Hubert Honey well wasn’t so good, and he wasn’t going to play until they paid him!
Well, two can play at that game, so I picked up the violin case, which was heavy as lead, and I tiptoed into the house.
Well, I could see I had deducted right. There was Hubert with his back to me, and there were the guests, all lined up along the walls, and there was Annabell, and she was going from one guest to another with a bag which looked like it was one of our best pillowcases, and she was saying, “Contribute liberally, ladies and gentlemen. Shell out like you enjoyed doing it. Feed the kitty. Nice kitty. Thank you, sir. Oh, thank you, ma’am.”
I could see Mrs. Grimshaw drop in three or four rings and a wrist-watch, and Mrs. Cutler dropped in a diamond chain she was wearing around her neck, and Mr. Cutler didn’t bother to take some money out of his wallet because he dropped in the wallet without opening it, and I could see Hubert Honeywell was going to get a lot more than the boss promised because those people really wanted to dance. But like the boss always says, what is fair is fair, and it wasn’t right that the Amenia Concert Orchestra would play for twenty-five dollars and Hubert Honeywell would get so much more for just leading them.
I pressed the catch on the violin case, meaning to give Hubert his violin, and I said out loud, “Here’s your violin, Hubert, and don’t be greedy,” and then everything started to happen at once.
Annabell gave a scream and dropped the pillowcase, and Hubert spun around and he couldn’t see me at first because it was dark where I was standing, and that violin case came open in my hands and I made a grab so the violin wouldn’t drop on the floor and it wasn’t a violin at all. It was a funny kind of gun, and it had a funny bulge like a differential housing in the middle, and it had a stock like a rifle and a pistol grip like a pistol.
Hubert had his automatic in his hand, and he shot twice, and the big mirror in the hall, which was about ten feet to my left will not be the same again until they put in a new glass.
I says, “Hubert, don’t shoot. It’s me, Pete,” but he turns toward the sound of my voice and I can see he means business so being a dead shot I just touch the trigger of the gun I’ve got in my hands, and I drill him through the right shoulder as neat as you please.
He drops the automatic, and the women start screaming and fainting, and by this time I am suspicious of Hubert who is not a good American because he does not turn off his motor which wastes a lot of gas when he parks and it keeps on running. “Hubert,” I says, “the trained detective will let ninety-nine men pass but will snap his handcuffs on the one hundredth. Hubert, were you ever a slaughterhouse employee?”
His shoulder is hurting him, and he is holding it with his left hand, but he says, “Yep.”
“Where?”
“The Chicago stockyards.”
“Were you ever a tailor?”
“Yep.”
“Where?”
“They put me to tailoring in the prison at Joliet.”
“And now, what is your real name?” He is going to answer, but that redhead Annabell throws her arms around his neck. “Don’t say another word, honey,” she says. Then she turns to me, “Pete, his name is John Doe.”
You could have knocked me flat with a toothpick when I heard that, but I had been through a lot that night, and just like Mr. Grimshaw said when they took up that collection for me later, “Peter’s unairing aim, his coolness, and his reckless bravery saved us all.”
I says, “Who did you say he was?”
“John Doe.”
I says, “Were you ever a pastry-cook?”
He says, “Yep.”
“Where?”
“In the prison they got at Columbia, Missouri.”
And I says, “John Doe, the game is up. I arrest you as the mysterious murderer of the wealthy millionaire, Richard Roe. Come to Headquarters with me.”
He tries to get away when the Amenia Concert Orchestra comes, and Sheriff Vince Dudley, who plays the piano, starts to put him in his car, but I tap him on the nose with his own automatic, and that is how his nose comes to be broken.