“Now let’s see how things worked out.”
Sidney Zoom uncrossed his legs.
Jed Slacker was listening with a face that had been drained of color. His right hand was lowered, resting upon one of the drawers in the desk. His eyes were huge, the flesh seemed to sag away from them, leave them round and gleaming.
“Crazy!” he exploded. “Crazy as a clam!”
Sidney Zoom nodded.
“Yes, only dams aren’t crazy... However, as I was saying, let’s see how it worked. You waited until Goldfinch had made a small purchase from Charles Gillen. You waited until you felt certain the butler convict had been able to steal and conceal some of the diamonds.”
“Then you flashed your fake circular on Goldfinch. He had always had a horror of buying stolen gems. Not that he cared particularly about the ethics of the situation, but because he was afraid of paying good money for stones and then finding he had no title to them.
“So Goldfinch decided to get rid of the stones he’d purchased from Gillen, after you had convinced him those stones were stolen. Then was when you pulled a master stroke. You explained to Goldfinch that he’d left his housekeeper a sum under his will that would just about equal what he’d pay for the stones. Why not take those stones and give them to her, tear up the will and let the accounts balance?
“Goldfinch fell for the idea. It would save his face all around. He didn’t dare to sell the stones, knowing they were stolen and might be traced. Nor did he want to keep them. He gave them to his housekeeper and told her exactly what she said he had. But it sounded so utterly improbable under the questioning of the officers that it was ludicrous.
“And you knew that sooner or later Shorty Relavan would enter the picture. And he could be counted on to do just what he did do. There was a murder and there was a robbery. If he said he was innocent no one would believe him, not with diamonds in his room.
“So it was up to him to make up a story that would admit theft, or the receipt of stolen property, but pin the murder more securely on to the shoulders of the housekeeper, where the police had already fastened it.”
Sidney Zoom stopped talking.
Jed Slacker began to laugh, a nervous, almost silent laugh.
“Then what?” he asked.
“You wanted to get Goldfinch’s fortune. You wanted to steal the diamonds. But you didn’t dare to trust to a will. So you had Goldfinch give you a large block of stock and gave him a receipt and acknowledgment of trust. You knew where he kept those sort of papers.
“Then you killed him, and you planted a fake declaration of a half interest in some of your own stuff that hadn’t turned out to be other than an expense, and you destroyed your own declaration of trust.
“The police were slow in finding the place where the papers were stored, so you led them to it. You’d taken out the bulk of the diamonds. But you left a few so it wouldn’t look as though the place had been looted.”
Of a sudden the man’s tactics changed.
“Proof!” he bellowed, reaching for the telephone with his left hand. “Try to find any proof. I’m ringing the police right now. I’m going to have you arrested for defamation of character. I’m going to...”
Sidney Zoom pointed to the floor.
“Clever, what? The police came in here and took the writing of your machine so they could show the declaration of trust they found was written by you on this machine, and I arranged things so your first tracks when you entered the room would be visible.
“Naturally, you were worried whether the police had found where you’d hidden the diamonds. Your steps show that you rushed at once to the framed picture over the radiator. I presume there’s a hollow in the frame or something...”
The basilisk eyes stared with the fascination of utter horror at the white blotches on the smoothly polished linoleum. As Sidney Zoom had said, they went directly from door to picture, picture to typewriter, typewriter to desk.
Jed Slacker sighed.
“Then,” he said, with a cunning leer, “the police weren’t here at all. You were the one who wrote off the things from the typewriter. Did it so I’d be nervous when I came in. If you polished the floor, the police weren’t here.”
Zoom nodded after the manner of one who concedes a trick in a bridge game.
“Well reasoned,” he said.
The hand of the pudgy man whipped up from underneath the desk.
“Then you’re the only one that knows,” he half whispered, and Sidney Zoom found himself staring into the dark hollow of a gun muzzle.
Sidney Zoom was careful not to move his hands.
“All right, Rip,” he said.
“And you die!” sneered the fat man, half rising from his chair, his lips curled back from his tooth tips, “I’d sooner take chances...”
A tawny streak burst open the closet door, went across the waxed linoleum with a great scratching of claws as the police dog tried for traction.
Jed Slacker saw him coming, whirled the gun.
The police dog leaped. His teeth closed on the flabby wrist, just above the gun hand. The dog flung himself to one side so that his weight crashed against the arm, twisted the wrist.
Jed Slacker dropped the gun. The dog instantly released his hold and dropped to the floor, growling, the gun within a few inches of his curled lips and glistening fangs.
“I wanted, of course,” said Sidney Zoom, speaking in casual tones, “something like that, a declaration of guilt. There’s the typewriter. You’d better write a confession.”
The fat man stared at him in utter incredulity.
“It was to be the perfect crime,” he said. “I fixed it so it could never be pinned on me, and now...”
Sidney Zoom shrugged his shoulders, a gesture of utter finality.
“Don’t bother. I can’t get any sympathy for men who commit murder and try to pin it onto an innocent woman.”
“But...”
“Get busy with that confession, or I shall have to turn the dog loose on you. He likes to save murderers from the chair. After all it’s not so bad — having your throat ripped out.”
The man shuddered, sighed, seemed to collapse. The spirit left him. He put paper into the typewriter.
Sidney Zoom sat and smoked.
Chapter IX
— of Death!
The fat man grew more enthusiastic as he typed. The pudgy fingers struck the keys, rattling off the letters. The face took on some semblance of color. Once or twice he smiled.
Sidney Zoom arose, looked over the man’s shoulder.
The confession was written as one might gloat over a victory. Slacker reveled in the details, telling of how he had fooled the police, of how he had left some two dozen diamonds in with the papers, of his feelings when Phil Brazer had palmed many of those diamonds while he was groping around in the receptacle.
Even the police were not immune to the greed lust which had actuated Slacker. But Slacker had got hundreds of diamonds, the crooked detective but a dozen or so.
Sidney Zoom, watched the confession as the sheets rolled out of the typewriter. When Slacker had finished Zoom told him to sign each page, and the fat man dashed off his signatures with a flourish.
“You missed lots of my moves,” he complained. “The press will get this. I want to stand before the public in the true light, a master criminal.”
Sidney Zoom nodded casually. “Of course.”
“How’d you know I had the diamonds hidden here? Why not in my room?”
“Because you asked for five minutes after I told you the thing that would make you realize the police suspected you. If you’d suddenly remembered something that made you want to go back to your room I’d have followed you and burst in just when you were at your hiding place.”