“I’ve always been a great newspaper reader and I never forget anything I read. Your name was mentioned with his several years ago. They even ran your photos together. You were Janet Jackson then.”
“I haven’t seen him — for five years,” she said, looking relieved.
“Since he went to jail? You haven’t seen him since he got out?”
“No, and I–I hope I never see him again. I don’t even want him to know where I am.”
“You changed your name even before you married Bob. Demetros probably wouldn’t know where to look for you if he wanted to.”
“No, but there wouldn’t be any reason for him to look me up. The newspapers were wrong. We were never more than casual acquaintances. I–I must go now.”
Quade looked thoughtfully after Jessie Lanyard as she walked to the dog building. Then he left and caught a taxi. Charlie had taken his car to replenish their supply of books.
Quade rode back to Westfield, paid off on the main street of the village, then stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes. A five-and-ten-cent store across the street caught his eye. Smiling grimly, he bought an ordinary toy, shaped roughly like a mature, lethal gun. He had the clerk wrap it in paper and put it in a mailing box. At the stationery counter he bought a box of adhesive address labels.
Then Quade went back to his hotel room. He got a jar of Vaseline from the bathroom, smeared a light coat of it on the water pistol, then wrapped it in paper and put it in the box. He tied the package, addressed a label and stuck it to the package.
He walked with it to the post-office, had the box weighed there, then mailed it first-class.
Returning to the dog show he found Boston fuming because he had been unable to find Quade.
“I brought the books back here an hour ago,” he exclaimed. “Where you been?”
“Attending to some business,” Quade replied shortly.
Quade made a pitch to a small noon-day crowd and took in thirty-five dollars. He and Boston drove to the hotel and had a late lunch. When they got the key for their room the clerk handed Quade a package. “Mailman just brought this.”
“Who’d be sending us a package?” asked Boston as they rode in the elevator to their floor.
“One of my female admirers probably,” Quade said.
In the room he cut the string of the package. Quade opened the box, lifted out the paper-wrapped contents and unwrapped it. He exhibited the water pistol.
Boston examined the gun, then snorted. “Someone’s ribbin’ you!”
Quade scarcely looked at the gun. He was examining the inside of the wrapping paper. The Vaseline on the gun had made recognizable outlines on the paper. He nodded in satisfaction.
“Look, Charlie,” he said “run down to the telegraph office and send a wire to the Blake Publishing Company in New York. Have ’em rush us two hundred more copies of our book. We’re going to need them before this dog show is over.”
“But what about the gun?” protested Boston. “Why would anyone send it to you? I don’t like it, I tell you. It’s — it’s a threat.”
“Don’t you worry your pretty head about the gun, Charlie. Go ahead, send that telegram.”
The moment Boston had left the room Quade took out a knife and scraped the address label from the box in which the gun had been mailed. He addressed another label, glued it to the box, then left the hotel.
He threw the toy pistol into an ashcan a couple of blocks from the hotel. Then he walked three blocks more, entered an alley and sought another ashcan behind the third building from the corner. Into it he tossed the paper box and the wrapping paper in which he had mailed the gun to himself. He’d torn the address label from the box, but left the postmark.
He chuckled. “Maybe a smart detective can make something of a box with a local postmark and paper bearing a little oil and imprint of a gun.”
Quade rejoined Boston at the hotel an hour later and the big fellow had his finger-nails chewed half-way to his wrists. “What’s all the mysterious stuff, Ollie?” he cried. “You got rid of me on a phony excuse, then you go off somewhere.”
“Can’t a man attend to his private business affairs?
“Yeah, sure, but — ah, never mind. What do we do now?”
“You can take the afternoon off, Charlie. I think I’ll do some visiting.”
“At the Lanyard place?… Well, I hope you don’t get burned.”
“It’s a cold world without some heat,” Quade said reflectively. “I’ve just discovered that I’ve been cold all my life.”
A couple of cars were parked in the curved drive of the Lanyard estate. Quade parked his own car, then circled the house to the kennels. The dogs started a terrific barking and Quade was about to retreat when Lois Lanyard called from a window in the rear of the house. “Look out! Those sheep dogs bite.”
“Ever hear of a man biting a dog?”
Lois disappeared from the window but reappeared at a rear door a moment later. She was dressed in a pink and yellow sport sweater suit and her eyes were dancing with mischief. Quade tightened about the mouth.
“Did you come here to see the dogs?” she asked. “There are more of them at the dog show, you know.”
“The dog show? Oh, you mean the dog show where you said you’d be today.”
She sobered for a moment. “I couldn’t very well get away. Some last minute fittings and — other things.”
“Ah! The marriage, of course.”
The moment was a tense one, but then a Gordon pointer came dashing out of a dog kennel and bounced up to the wire fence, putting his nose between the mesh. Quade snapped his fingers at the dog.
“Who does he belong to? Bob?”
“Yes, that’s Duke, his favorite. I’ve got the sheep dogs that are at the show. And Jessie has two Eskimo Dogs, huskies. Come, take a look at them.”
She led Quade to a pen and whistled. A tawny face appeared in the door of a kennel and after a careful examination was followed by a head. Another dog followed.
“They’re beautiful, I think,” said Lois, “But pretty shy.”
A voice called from the house. “Lois!”
“Yes, Mother?” Lois replied.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to come in for that last fitting.”
“I’ll be right in.” Lois turned to Quade. “I have to go now. It’s been nice seeing you. Come and see us when we get back.”
“From Borneo?” he couldn’t help cracking.
She laughed and ran into the house.
Quade drove thoughtfully back to the dog show. Charlie Boston wasn’t around the booth and had probably gone to see the rest of the show. Quade ran into Christopher Buck and Chief of Police Costello, engaged in heavy conversation.
The chief did not look cordially at Quade. “Ah, here you are,” he said in greeting. “What’s the big brain man know today?”
“I know that the prenadilla is a South American fish that travels for hours on dry land,” he retorted. “And I know other things. What do you know? About the police business, for instance. Have you pinched the murderer yet?”
“When I do, maybe you won’t be so cocky,” hinted the chief.
“Still barking up my alley, eh? Well, just for that I’ll let you worry over the thing by yourself.”
He walked off, but less than two minutes later Christopher Buck popped out in front of him. “Say, Quade, what did you mean about letting us worry by ourselves? You know something?”
Quade looked around mysteriously. “I got an anonymous phone call at the hotel this noon. A man’s voice told me to take a look around Bartlett’s house — the ashcan for example. What do you suppose he meant by that?”
Buck’s lean, lank frame quivered with excitement. “The killer’s thrown something away, something important. A clue!”
“What sort of clue would he throw away? The murder gun was found here. It’s just an ordinary .32. Peters’ own gun. But maybe Peters loaned the gun to someone else and that person loaned it to Fred — to the murderer.”