“The very close range of the shooting, and the loss of the sleeve button, indicated that there might have been a struggle. Lastly, there was no evidence that Brent had ever owned a gun or acquired one. No gun had been traced, either, although, of course, this was not unusual.
“The jury argued for more than an hour, and at length they decided on a verdict of manslaughter.”
Ex-Superintendent Foster was frowning, and I said: “Did he actually serve the full sentence?”
Foster shook his head. “No. Fortunately he only served a very small part of it. You see, as it later turned out — and it was only by the merest stroke of luck that it did — George Carnaby had actually committed suicide.”
I stared blankly at Foster. “But there was no gun!” I exclaimed.
“No, there was no gun,” Foster said. “Carnaby was a crazy man — I told you that. He wanted revenge. When he killed himself, he wanted to be sure Brent would be charged with his murder.
“He had found the button from Brent’s cuff after Brent had been to the house. This he had put under his body deliberately before shooting himself.
“He had also put the accusing finger on Brent by scribbling that fake note on his desk-pad about the 4 p.m. appointment.
“Then he had impersonated a fictitious man named Jackson on the phone, and sent Brent on a wild-goose chase, in order to create what would look, later on, like a phoney alibi.”
Foster drew on his pipe and went on: “But the most diabolically cunning part was the gun... only it didn’t quite work out as he had planned.”
The Yard man was enjoying the puzzled look on my face.
“Carnaby didn’t count on the fact that the people who took over the Hendon house from the widowed Marian would start off by having the chimney swept.
“Some way up the chimney of the fireplace before which Carnaby’s body was found, a wooden bar had been firmly wedged. Dangling from this wooden bar was a gun — the gun which had killed Carnaby — on a length of strong elastic.
“George Carnaby had so held the gun when he shot himself that it was drawn up the chimney he let it go.”
Foster slowly relit his pipe.
“You see,” he said, “you can never be too cocksure about the guilt of those you send to the gallows.”
Night Drop
by Jerry Jacobson
It was the eleventh hour and DuVol’s time was running out. He needed $800 more to get out of town alive, and here was an easy way to pick it off. A piece of cake — or was it?
The young man seated at the counter in. the Mecca Cafeteria, with the grocery bag trapped between his legs, was watching through the back mirror the man in the expensive suit seated at the corner table, eating a hot lunch. Joe Ori was nursing a cup of coffee. He was wearing a faded tee-shirt with an iron-on decal which entreated people not to buy grapes. Over it he wore a bleached military field jacket.
He continued studying the contrasts between himself and the well-dressed man eating his hot meal. Ori had not eaten a hot meal in at least six weeks. These days, all he did, it seemed, was go to meetings and steal fruit in the Public Market and wait for his sign.
The meetings — they never told you in them how exactly the system was to be defeated. They just exhorted you to defeat it, threw some pamphlets at you and kicked you out the door. He found himself hating the dapper man in the expensive suit. Why didn’t they stay uptown where they belonged? This was a people’s cafeteria. They’d do better to mind their own stores; the people would be storming them soon enough.
Quentin DuVol let the third game draw to a tie, playing old man Parkington like a fish. Not so old, perhaps — around fifty. But decidedly a fish.
Parkington had the serve for a match win. DuVol wiped away the excess moisture on his handball gloves against his thighs and tensed. The fish’s serve was a weak lofty thing. The ball floated into the deep left corner where DuVol caught the carom with a deft scoop shot.
Parkington swatted it off the front wall back to mid-court ineffectually. DuVol volleyed it back to nearly the same spot on the floor. They exchanged four or five timid shots. DuVol could see the fish’s legs weakening, see his knees floating on water. Two more shots by each man, and then DuVol lofted a deep lob over Parkington’s right shoulder.
The fish went after it in panting desperation, his gym shoes slapping without coordination on the maple floor. The shot crimped itself where the two walls met, near the floor, and died long before Parkington could reach the spot. He tumbled and rolled into a heap against the wall. Another fish in the net.
DuVol gave him time to compose himself, to catch his breath. The fish had put up a game fight. But men like Parkington never beat a hustler when a hustler was playing his game.
“That’s three out of three, DuVol,” Parkington said when he felt his victim was a bit better. “At... what did we agree? Twenty a game?”
“I believe it was thirty,” DuVol said.
The fish’s cheeks flushed. “Oh, yes. I was thinking of the billiards. That was twenty a game. Well, what is it they say? Don’t touch the dice if you can’t pay the price?” His laughter was lame, false — like lead coins falling onto pavement, “that appears to be ninety dollars for the handball and one hundred dollars for the billiards. Come on, down to the locker room with me and we’ll settle this up, you robber-baron.”
They rode down together in the leather-walled elevator of the Downtown Athletic Club. “Well, I guess you know, DuVol,” Parkington said on the way, “this has been a week for me to end all weeks. First that burglary and now this afternoon of shut-outs to you.”
“Yes, I heard something of that going around. A daylight burglary, wasn’t it?”
“The broadest and boldest,” said Parkington with disgust. “Some amateur riding his luck. Paintings, everything in the safe in my study, jewelry belonging to my wife. It was all insured, of course. It’s just that the sheer gall of a stunt like that has me enraged. I hope I get my hands on the bastard before the city police do, that’s all I have to say on the subject.”
“They’ll get him. These people always make a slip-up sooner or later.”
Parkington nodded and asked DuVol if he wanted to join him for lunch in the club’s dining room. DuVol declined apologetically. He had an early afternoon appointment to see about some land he might take an option on out at Eagle’s Point.
There wasn’t really any land out there to be had, even if DuVol could afford it, which he could not at the present. After a shower and a sauna and collecting from Parkington, he walked six blocks to the Mecca Cafeteria on Third Avenue and took to a corner table a hot roast beef sandwich, a small paper cup filled with potato salad and a glass of milk.
It had been DuVol who had engineered the burglary of Parkington’s home in exclusive Bellehaven. He never participated in these things himself. He was an engineer, not a. common laborer. He knew people for that sort of work.
It hadn’t been much of a stroke, gaining membership in the Downtown Athletic Club. He held dozens of memberships in businessmen’s clubs, all the way from Boston to Los Angeles with plenty of stops in between. DuVol was a gentleman games player, a gentleman gambler. Bridge, chess, backgammon, billiards in all its wondrous forms, handball, squash, poker on occasion.
Mastery at these always gained a man entry into this wealthy, polite world sooner or later, if he were very good at it. He was always “in” investments. A man who indicated his profession was “investments” could nip all this business of background checking in the bud. He dealt in grain futures, bonds, speculative local stock issues, land development.