Lois flashed an angry look at her fiancé but Bartlett bluntly took her arm and walked off with her. Quade shrugged and walked down the aisle containing the English bulldogs. He made friends with a couple of the dogs, although he had some uneasy moments while doing so.
“Maybe,” Quade said to himself, “they’ll judge the pointers today. Then again maybe they won’t!”
When he walked away, the snap fastening the biggest bulldog to the wall was loose. The dog, however, didn’t know it yet. Later, instinct and nature would take its course.
Quade went quickly back to his booth, climbed up on his stand and began his pitch. And if he had talked loud before he shook the rafters now. The noise was too much for the dogs and they set up a terrific racket. Inside of thirty seconds bedlam reigned in the building. Men and women began rushing about. That excited the dogs even more. And then, Quade, on his perch, saw a big bulldog leap out of his stall. He went no further than the neighboring one, which contained a bulldog almost as big as himself. Also a male.
The fight created a riot in the building. A hundred people clamored, screamed and yelled. A half dozen dog handlers had to use water and burning newspaper to get the dogs apart.
Quade watched the fight, but Charlie Boston was conspicuous by his absence. He had taken flight outside the building the moment he’d heard one of the bulldogs was loose.
When the dogs were back in their stalls and the crowd began dispersing, Quade strolled into the pointer aisle. “Going to judge the pointers today?” he asked Freddie Bartlett.
Bartlett glared at him, “No, some damn fool let one of the bulls loose and it’ll take two hours for the dogs to quiet down.”
“Next time,” Quade said to himself, “maybe Freddie will be more particular who he snubs.”
Charlie Boston dashed up, wild-eyed. “Oliver,” he croaked. “Come over here a minute. I gotta tell you…”
Quade followed Boston to one side. “In your booth,” gasped Boston. “Gawd, a dead man!”
“Hell, I just left that booth five minutes ago.”
“Maybe so, but there’s a stiff there now.”
Quade’s lips tightened. He distanced his partner, reaching the small booth a dozen steps ahead of him. He leaned over the four-foot counter, looked down into the small space behind — and caught his breath.
A man wearing white flannels, white doeskin shoes and a black and white striped sweater was lying there in the tanbark. And a dark brown liquid had trickled from a spot over his left eye down over the bridge of his nose.
Quade turned. “Call the show secretary and the police.”
“But he’s in our booth.”
“Call the cops,” Quade repeated sharply.
Charlie Boston had a policeman at his side and, in their wake, coat-tails flapping, the dog show secretary.
“Murder!” bleated the secretary. “Murder, here! Oh, my God!”
The dogs started barking again and Quade slumped in disgust. The fool secretary was starting another riot. It lasted for a full ten minutes, then a dozen Westfield police arrived and herded everyone in the building into the aisle before Quade’s booth.
Chief Costello of the Westfield Police Department was in command. “This is your booth, I understand,” he began on Quade.
“Yes, it’s my booth and you want to know what I know. The answer is, nothing. There was a dog fight and I joined the crowd to watch it. My assistant here, Charlie Boston, found the body and told me about it. That’s all I know.”
“Zat so?” The chief turned on Boston and put him through a bad few minutes. But Boston defended himself ably. He had left the building when the dog fight started because he didn’t like dog fights. When the dogs had quieted he’d returned and found the body here in the booth. He’d gone to tell Quade immediately. He stuck stoutly to that story.
The coroner come and examined the body inside the booth. He came out in a few minutes. “Shot with a .32 caliber bullet, I’d say.”
“And no one heard the shot?” the chief said sarcastically. “A hundred people in here, too.”
“And five hundred dogs,” added Quade. “All of them barking. You couldn’t have heard a machine gun.”
The chief glared at him. “I’ll talk to you some more.” He turned to the coroner. “S’pose you’d better take him to town. We’ll give the notice to the papers and someone may come down and identify him.”
“That’s not necessary,” said the coroner. “I know him. His name is Wesley Peters.”
“Wesley! My God!”
The scream came from a gorgeously blonde young woman in the front of the crowd. Quade stepped quickly toward her, but couldn’t quite catch her as she sank to the tanbark. He dropped to his knees and bumped into a slender, dark-haired chap who was also stooping to pick her up.
“I beg your pardon!” the man exclaimed. “It’s my wife.”
Quade pushed a path through the crowd to a booth with a long table in it. The young fellow brought his wife behind Quade, deposited her gently on the table. The coroner came through but the woman had already revived and was struggling to sit up. She moaned. “Wesley! He’s dead… dead!”
Lois Lanyard came up, put her arm around the girl and spoke soothingly.
“I’ll take her home,” said the young husband.
“Hmm. Guess it’s all right,” grunted the chief of police. “I know both of you.”
But the woman who had fainted protested at being taken home and after a moment insisted she was quite recovered.
“Thanks for trying to help,” the young fellow told Quade.
“Quite all right.”
“My brother, Bob,” Lois Lanyard said. “And his wife, Jessie.”
Quade had already guessed the relationship. The family resemblance between Bob and Lois Lanyard was striking, but whereas Lois was wholesome and vital, her brother seemed to be the ascetic, brooding type. His wife was dressed expensively, her hair was burnished gold and her coiffure marvelous. Lois’ clothes had probably cost as much as Jessie Lanyard’s but didn’t look it. Which was the difference between them. Lois was born to money, Jessie had married it.
The chief of police became brusque. “All right, we know who he is. Now let’s see if we can’t find out who killed him. You,” pointing at Quade, “you say this is your booth. I don’t see nothin’ in it.”
“I do not display samples.”
“Naw? What’s your racket?”
The show secretary stretched up on his toes and whispered to the chief. There was a light in the chief’s eyes when he tackled Quade again. “A book agent, huh!” he snapped in glee. “So you’re the bloke who’s been making all the racket around here today. Come on now, talk and talk fast.”
“Why would I want to kill this man? I never saw him before in my life.”
“So what? Does every robber and thug have to be introduced first to the people he robs?”
“Has he been robbed?”
A startled look came into the chief’s eyes. He turned away hurriedly and pulled the coroner into the booth. He emerged a moment later, crestfallen.
“He wasn’t robbed.”
“Ah, his money is still on him, eh? How much?”
“Over a thousand dollars,” admitted the chief. “And there’s a watch and stickpin. But — maybe you didn’t have time.”
“No? You forget that I was the one who sent for the police?”
The chief swore roundly. “Say, who’s the policeman here? You or me?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Why you—!” The chief started to swing a punch at Quade, but caught himself with an effort. “Enough of that stuff now. We’ve got to find the gun.”
He signaled to a couple of policemen and barked orders at them. They scattered through the neighboring booths. And inside of two minutes one of them yelled in discovery. He came back carrying a nickel-plated .32 caliber revolver in a handkerchief. The chief’s eyes gleamed.