After a moment Inspector McGowan felt something cold touch the back of his head.
Instantly he swung about.
Jimmy cried out in alarm and the andiron went clattering to the floor.
McGowan stood staring at his son for an instant in complete silence, sadly shaking his head.
“I gave you plenty of time,” he said. “And you were certainly in no danger. But you dropped the andiron the instant I turned. Why?”
“I... I don’t know, Dad.”
“I think I do,” inspector McGowan said. “You felt guilty about lying to me. Your story held up when you told it to a half-dozen police officers who are trained to spot lies. But you couldn’t keep up the pretense with me, your own father, and that was the only really critical test.
“Look at it this way, son. The chances are strong he’d have turned after the first blow, since he was built like an ox. And if he had turned, you never could have hit him twice more. I don’t think you hit him at all. In fact, I’m sure of it. It would have taken a special kind of hardness, no matter how desperate the situation. You either can or you can’t, son, and either way it’s no disgrace.”
Jimmy went back to the chair and sat down, letting his legs dangle again. This time he made no attempt to evade his father’s gaze, but there was a look of anguish in his eyes.
“You’re right, Dad,” he said. “He didn’t come to the apartment to kidnap me. Even if he had I never could have struck him with that andiron. I might have grabbed it up, but I couldn’t have used it to bash in his head.”
“All right, son,” Inspector McGowan said. “Now let’s have the truth.”
Jimmy hesitated for the barest instant, his lips tightening at the corners in a way that seemed incongruously adult. “I... I saw you counting the money, Dad.” He spoke the words quickly and looked away, one hand going up to brush back his hair.
“You saw me—”
“Last night, when you thought I was in bed. I went to the kitchen to get a glass of milk, and when I saw the light was still on in the living room I... well, you don’t like me to get anything out of the icebox when it’s so late, and I was afraid you’d hear me, and I thought that if I said good night again you wouldn’t mind so much. But when I saw how worried you looked I didn’t think it was such a good idea. I stayed out in the hall for about a minute, though, and I saw you get up and put the money in the wall safe.”
Inspector McGowan’s lips had set in tight lines, and for an instant there was a silence between father and son. McGowan stared out through the wide office window. “So you think it was bribe money. Is that it, son?”
The anguished look had returned to Jimmy’s eyes, as if he was wondering if his father knew just how much it was costing him to go on.
“I guess you didn’t expect Gierson to call this morning, did you, Dad? If you had, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have gone downtown so early.”
“Go on, Jimmy,” Inspector McGowan said.
“When the bell rang and I opened the door he came into the living room and said he had to sea you right away. I told him that you were downtown, that you’d left an hour earlier than you usually do. I told him I didn’t know why. I should have known better than to let him in. But when I asked who it was and he identified himself through the speaking tube I guess I must have been remembering the money, or something.”
“That’s when you should have told him I wasn’t there,” Inspector McGowan said. “I’ve cautioned you often enough about letting anyone into the apartment when you’re alone. You knew who Gierson was, and what he might be capable of.” McGowan’s voice was strained. “That money must really have bugged you.”
“I don’t think it did, Dad. I didn’t really think you’d actually take a bribe. It was just something I... I couldn’t quite put out of my mind. So when Gierson—”
“Don’t try to spare my feeling by soft-pedaling it, son,” McGowan said. “It bugged you, all right. So you finally let him in. What did he say when you told him I wasn’t there?”
“He was angry, Dad. Sort of threatening. I think he was frightened as well, or he never would have said what he did. It was as if I’d just sort of... well, faded out for a minute and he forgot that you weren’t there, and that I was listening with both ears. He said that everything had gone wrong, that he was in trouble, and you would be, too. He said it might be too late to stop what he was afraid would happen.”
“Talking to himself, you mean, ranting and raving and putting most of the blame on me. Is that what you’re trying to say, son?”
Jimmy nodded. “That’s the way it was, I guess. But only for about a minute. He calmed down a little when he saw me looking at him as if I didn’t know what it was ill about. I knew how important it was to give him that idea. He grabbed me by the shoulder and said: ‘All right, I’ll phone your father from here. Get lost. Go for a walk and come back in twenty minutes.’
“I didn’t want to leave him alone in the apartment. But what could I do? He’d have made me go, no matter what I said. So I went.”
“He must have spent a few minutes thinking over what he was going to say to me on the phone,” Inspector McGowan said. “No call came through. What did you do when you left the apartment?”
“I just drifted around the neighborhood for fifteen or twenty minutes,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t have a dime to phone you with. Anyway, talking about him didn’t seem such a good idea, with Sergeant Bergor or someone else listening in.”
“You’d just about decided to stop giving me the benefit of the doubt. Was that it? The money, on top of what you’d heard Gierson say—”
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“What did you do when the twenty minutes were up?” McGowan asked, staring past his son at the harbor view far below.
“I went back to the apartment.”
“And when you got there?”
“He was lying by the fireplace with— It was awful, Dad, like I said. There was blood on the andiron and blood on the rug. I could have picked the andiron up and left my fingerprints on it, but I didn’t touch it. I was going to say I’d killed him, and you’ve told me that if you want to be believed tampering with the evidence is the worst thing you can do. You pile up complications for yourself.
“So I just kept going over in my mind what I was going to say when I had to make a statement, as I knew I’d be asked to do. I knew I’d have to be careful and not talk too much. They didn’t scare me, Dad. I don’t know why exactly. With you it was different—”
“Was the door ajar when you left the apartment?” Jimmy’s father asked. “I mean, did you forget to slam it after you?”
“I may have, Dad. After Gierson told me to get out I was too worried to think about it. I just remember getting into the elevator and going down to the street.”
“So anyone trailing him could have walked in without ringing, and picked up the andiron. A minute or two after you went down in the elevator.”
“I guess it could have happened that way,” Jimmy said.
Inspector McGowan looked at his son steadily for a moment. “When you finally did phone me I got there in about twenty minutes, with the siren wide open, and you told me you’d struck him three times with the andiron and killed him dead. Why did you make up that kidnaping story? The truth now. Whom were you trying to protect?”
“You, Dad,” Jimmy said. “I thought you knew.”
“I know now, yes. But I didn’t when you walked into this room a few minutes ago.”
Inspector McGowan did not remove his eyes from his son’s stricken face. “I was right here all morning. How could I have had anything to do with—”
“There are lots of ways, Dad,” Jimmy said. “You’re an inspector of police. You could have—”