“Let’s talk about this contrivance a little,” Lindsey said drily, “before we start getting down to cases. Did a licensed electrician put up such a botched job for a light-extension?”
Several of them shook their heads. “I didn’t think so,” Lindsey concluded.
“Hoff, the janitor, rigged that up for us,” Dusty explained. “You see, there was no wiring for light at all in here when we rented this part of the basement. He tapped the nearest wire, which is outside in the passageway there, clamped on an outlet on the wall by it. Then he had to bore a hole up there over the top of the door, to pass the wire through to us on this side. He got hold of a long length of wire, ran it through, put a plug on one end and a socket for a light-bulb on the other.
“To save himself the trouble of having to clamp it up against the ceiling, he just threaded it over the tops of those two pipes and let them do the work. But he’s a dope. When he got all through, the wire was long enough to lay the bulb on the floor, like an egg. So instead of taking his pliers and cutting it and taping it together again, he just took this big loop he had between the two pipes that supported it, taking up the slack and lifting the bulb about to where it should go. Then to make sure it would stay that way, he made a big knot in the wire just on the outside of the last pipe, too thick to go through the slit between pipe and ceiling.
“Clear enough,” Lindsey complimented him. “In other words that knot held it fast on the outside of the two pipes. But on the inside, toward the door and basement passage, it formed a perfect pulley arrangement. That loop could be drawn tight or relaxed at will by someone standing outside the door there, simply by pulling the plug out of the outlet — thereby plunging this room into darkness — taking a good grip on the wire, and pulling it taut out through that hole above the door. And if someone’s head happened to get caught in that loop as it contracted, and he couldn’t extricate it again quickly enough, it’d be just too bad. He’d probably corkscrew the loop as he threshed around, until his neck broke. A perfect case of garrotting. That’s how it was done.”
“But he was held fast up there between the two pipes, as high as he could go, when I woke up and saw him,” Billie said. “How could he stay up there like that, unless the murderer kept pulling the cord taut out there in the passage, held onto it for hours? And there was no one out there when I—”
“No, he wouldn’t have to do that. He only had to hold it long enough to get a good thick knot bunched in it just past that bunghole over the door, to keep it from slipping through again with the weight of Thatcher’s body. You may have missed seeing that second knot, but I didn’t. It’s out there big as life right now.”
“Well then, that let’s Frankie out, without going any further!” she said decisively. “Thatcher may not have been a heavyweight, but my brother hasn’t got enough strength in his arms to hold a cord tight so a man’s full weight is kept clear of the floor, and at the same time tie a knot into it.”
“That doesn’t let your brother or anyone else out,” Lindsey let her know firmly. “The pipes acted somewhat on the principle of pulleys, took a lot of the direct strain out of it. And another thing, marihuana, like any other narcotic can lend a man abnormal strength temporarily. Overstimulation. We’ve got the method now. That points equally at any one of you, except you yourself, Miss Bligh. We’ve got the motive. And that points only at you, so far, Bligh. No one else had one. All we’ve got to learn now is who had the opportunity. Two out of three rings the bell as far as I’m concerned,” he concluded ominously.
He turned to Frankie. “Now, according to your own admission made to me before you supposedly knew it was a murder that was involved and not just suicide, you were the last one to leave here, except your sister and the dead man. I suppose you want to retract that now.” He didn’t wait to hear whether he did or not. “I don’t need your own testimony on that point. I can get it by elimination, from your yellow-bandsmen. Now tell me who was the first to get up and go out of here?”
Detwiller said, almost reluctantly, as though he felt it was taking an unfair advantage: “I was.”
“Corroboration?” snapped Lindsey.
They all O.K.’d it. “Yeah.”... “That’s right, he was.”
“Then you’re out of it,” Lindsey told him. The band-leader looked apologetically at the others, as though he would have been glad to take the rap if he could have.
“Who was next?”
“Armstrong,” said Kershaw, and the girl nodded.
“I was starting to fall asleep already,” she said, “but I remember the sound of his slamming the door roused me for a minute. I looked up and Kersh and Thatcher and — Frankie — were still here with me.”
“And after him?” He looked at Kershaw. No answer. He looked at Frankie. The latter’s eyes dropped and he stared down at the floor. He looked at the girl finally. “I can’t help you out on that one,” she said almost defiantly. “I was sound asleep by then. That time the door didn’t wake me.”
“I was pretty binged,” Kershaw drawled unwillingly, kneading the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t care to get a pal in Dutch by saying something I ain’t one hundred percent sure of. It seems to me Bligh and Thatcher and Billie were still in here, though. I kind of remember saying ‘Good-night’ three times. That’s the only way I can tell.”
“Don’t be so damn noble on my working-time,” Lindsey squelched him. He turned back to Frankie again. “How about it? You want to use the out your pal here is giving you?”
He looked up and met his sister’s gaze. She stared at him hard without saying a word. “No,” he groaned. “I guess what I told you in the beginning still goes. I was pretty high and hazy, but I remember being alone in here with Thatcher at the very end. Billie, too, of course, but she was asleep.” Then his voice rose, he shook his manacled hands pleadingly toward the dick. “But I know I didn’t do anything like that! I wasn’t in any condition even to figure out that I could snare him by means of the loop in that light cord. It was all I could do to find the stairs and get up them—”
“I’m sorry, Bligh,” said Lindsey, “but the opportunity jibes, too. There’s my two out of three. I’m going to have to hold you. The rest of you can go.”
Chapter Three
Kill Crazy
As they filed out one by one giving him sympathetic looks, Dusty went to him and rested his hand encouragingly on his bowed shoulder for a minute. “Buck up, kid,” he murmured, “we’re with you. We’ll get you out of this. You’ll be back laying it in the groove with us in no time!” Then, all business again, he hurried out, remarking: “I gotta get down to the Mad House[1] in a hurry and see if the Warden[2] can find me someone to take his place. That means a rehearsal too, to break him in—”
The door closed and Lindsey saw that the girl was still sitting there on the piano bench, hadn’t gone with them. “Wouldn’t grasping that wire, pulling it, even though it was heavily insulated, have left bums or marks on the palms of whoever did it? Frankie’s hands are smooth and white.”
“So are everyone else’s. I took a look at them all. That don’t amount to a row of pins anyway. It would have been easy enough to slip on a pair of gloves or even twist a folded handkerchief around them.”
“I want to talk to my brother alone for a few minutes, won’t you let me do that, please?”