“He lives there. Raine is a funny old codger, or was. He goes in for collecting things, stamps, first editions and what not. And he’s a litigious old cuss, always in court. He sues his neighbors, sues the dealers who sell him things, sues the paving contractors who do work on his street, sues everybody.
“He’s got a white-haired old lawyer that he found somewhere, down and out, and took the lawyer to live with him in his house. And he always keeps the lawyer busy. Then he’s got a butler who’s a character, looks like an old pug; and there’s a Chinese cook. That’s the household.”
Sidney Zoom nodded.
“That,” he said, “is just about how I figured the case.”
Captain Mahoney shot him a shrewd glance.
“How’d you’ figure any of that out?”
“There were legal papers in the pockets of the corpse,” he said, “and the latest of them was a case where he’d sued the administrator to quit title to some of the jewelry his son had had at the time of his death. A copy of the judgment was in his coat pocket at the time. The cop on the beat found it.”
Captain Mahoney squinted his eyes.
“Well,” he said, “here’s the way Gromley reconstructs the case. Old Man Raine started after the girl and didn’t catch up with her until he was almost at her apartment. He grabbed at her and clutched a string of synthetic rubies she was wearing, a present from her husband.
“She broke away, shot him, then turned and fled to her apartment. She was panic-stricken, and ditched the jewels and the gun. She probably was so excited she didn’t know he’d broken the necklace when he grabbed at her.
“She was afraid they’d be coming for her, however, so she ripped her name off the mail box to balk them of that much of a clew, and went to her apartment to pack, then she heard the sirens and knew any woman who started to leave the apartment house while the police were there would be stopped and questioned.
“So she pretended she’d been in bed asleep, and waited to see if the police were coming. If they hadn’t found her she’d have ducked out as soon as the police left. She figured that if they did find her she could stall them off. And she might have done it if it hadn’t been for Gromley’s being so damned shrewd with his questioning.”
Chapter VI
The Dead Man’s House
Sidney Zoom shook his shoulders as though to relieve them of some weight.
“That’s what I didn’t like about Gromley. He’s damned clever, and he used his cleverness, not to reason out what must have happened there at the time of the murder, but to trap the girl. It wasn’t fair.”
Captain Mahoney smiled mechanically.
“Things in this world aren’t always fair. But they’re fairly efficient. It’s the result that counts.”
Sidney Zoom gave a single expletive.
“Bah!” he said.
“Still believe in divine justice, eh?” asked the police captain.
“I’ve seen something closely akin to that save several innocent people from jail or the death penalty,” said Sidney Zoom.
Captain Mahoney shook his head.
“You’ve been lucky, Zoom. But it wasn’t divine justice. It was your own damned cleverness, plus the fact that you’ve got sufficient money to ride your hobby as far as you want to.”
Sidney Zoom said nothing.
“That’s the place,” remarked Captain Mahoney. “The one on the other side of the street. The big house with the iron gate and the padlock.”
Sidney Zoom made a single comment.
“Yes,” he said. “It looks like the type of place he’d have lived in.”
“Evidently you didn’t take a shine to him?”
“No, I didn’t. His character showed on his face, even in death.”
“It takes all sorts of people to make a world, Sidney.”
Sidney Zoom’s answer was typicaclass="underline"
“All sorts of things come up in a garden. But one pulls out the noxious weeds.”
Captain Mahoney sighed.
“Your philosophy’s too advanced for this age, my friend.”
Sidney Zoom abruptly reverted to the clews which had led the officers to the crime.
“Would you ever have found the girl if it hadn’t been for the beads?”
“You mean the synthetic rubies broken from the string?”
“Yes.”
“Eventually, but we’d have had to go to the house first When we got there and talked with the servants who had heard the commotion we’d have gone after the girl.”
“But the beads were the clew?”
“Naturally. They led from the corpse to the outer door of the apartment.”
“Of the apartment house, you mean.”
“Well, yes.”
Sidney Zoom fastened his intense, hawk-like eyes upon the man who was staring at him with sudden curiosity.
“Did it ever strike you as being a bit strange, Bill, that the beads only went as far as the outer door of the apartment house, and that they were spaced most evenly? Why weren’t there any beads between the door and the entrance to the girl’s apartment?”
Bill Mahoney laughed.
“There you go, Zoom, with some of your wild theories. The beads were the girl’s all right. We’ve identified those beyond any doubt. And the rest of the string was found behind the mirror in her room where she’d tried to conceal it. She’d put it there. There was the imprint of a finger in the soft surface of the chewing gum. It was her finger.
“What happened was that the man she’d shot broke the string of beads with his last death clutch. They were spilling all over the street, but the girl didn’t know it until she got to the door of the apartment. Then she gathered up what was left, probably some that were on a thread that had dropped down the front of her dress.
“She knew she had to hide them. She wanted to put them where the police would never find them. By that time she knew they had been spilling, leaving a trail directly to the apartment house. That’s why she pulled the card off of the mail box. She knew the officers would trail those beads and, if they found a card bearing the same name as the dead man, they’d come right up.”
Sidney Zoom stretched, yawned, smiled.
“Did you notice, by any chance, if there was a cut on the fingers of Eva Raine?”
Captain Mahoney’s glance was gimlet eyed.
“Yes. There was. What made you think there might be?”
“The edges of the card container on the letter box were pretty sharp, and she was in a hurry. I thought she might have cut herself.”
“And that such cut accounted for the red stain on the mail box?”
“Yes.”
“I think,” said Captain Mahoney, very deliberately, “that we’ll go on in. You’ve told me too much — and not enough.”
Zoom uncoiled his lean length from behind the steering wheel, grinned at the officer. “Come on.”
They walked up a cement walk, came to the porch of the house. An officer on duty saluted the captain, regarded Zoom curiously. The police dog, padding gravely at the side of his master, managed a dignity which was the more impressive in that it was entirely natural.
The door swung open. Two men stood in the hallway.
Captain Mahoney intoned their names to Sidney Zoom in a voice that was informative, but not social.
“Zoom, this is Sam Mokley, the butler; Laurence Gearhard, the lawyer.”
Zoom nodded, stalked into the hallway, suddenly turned to transfix the two men with his hawk-like eyes.
“I want to see two things,” he snapped. “First, the room from which the jewelry was taken; second, the bed where Harry Raine slept.”
The lawyer, white-haired, cunning-eyed, shrewd judge of human nature, swept his pale eyes over Zoom’s tall figure, vibrant with controlled energy.