I expected a cutting bit of sarcasm from Murder at this obvious revelation to which Tim had struggled. But the chief had left his humor back in the office. He said, “Can I see this Nostra?”
Tim looked at the note Murder had received. He shoved bade bis chair. “Come on.”
They’d taken Nostra out of his cell to a little windowless room downstairs. The room was full of smoke when we entered, dark in the corners, with a dozen shadowy men moving like phantoms through the ocean of smoke. They were grouped about the man who sat beneath the glaring, green-shaded light in the middle of the room.
He didn’t look like I’d thought he would. He wasn’t greasy or sinister. Nostra was elderly, grey tinting his hair, with a thin face and a thinner smile. Brogardus, the chief, and I slipped inside the room, listened for a moment to the questions the dozen headquarters men were hammering at the crystal-gazer.
“Who told you to send those notes?”
“No one. I saw it in the crystal.”
“Don’t give us that This crystal business is a phony, a fake.”
Nostra shrugged the remark off.
“How long have you known Loren Cole, Frank Snow, and Gregory Sloan?”
“I’ve told you dozens of times, gentlemen, that I don’t know any of them. Can I have a drink of water?” He half rose; a strong hand pushed him back.
“Listen, you crystal-gazing rat this is murder! You think we’re going to let you go around killing people and get away with it?”
Nostra’s smile was thin. “How could f kill anyone? I was in jail. How could anyone kill those men? From what you have told me, they were all is sealed rooms. It was impossible for them to die.”
“But you said they were going to die!”
Nostra made a weary gesture with his hand. “Precisely. I knew, gentlemen, that I would be branded a fake. I knew I would be under suspicion. I foretold the deaths, and from the generosity of my heart warned the victims. A lesser man, to protect his own skin, would have remained silent. But I knew the risk I was running from the hands of the police when death was an established fact. I accepted it.”
“Bah!” That was Tim. He strode forward, Murder’s note in his hand.
“Did you write this?” Tim bellowed.
Nostra looked at the note. “I wrote it and dropped it in a comer mailbox late last night before I — er — punched the policeman.”
Murder stepped forward. “And you think I’m going to freeze to death in the middle of August?”
You could have heard a pin drop. Very slowly, Nostra looked from the chief’s face down to his feet. Then he raised his eyes once more; his gaze locked with Murder’s. Nostra looked cool and distant even under that hot light, but you could smell sweat in the tight room.
“You’re Abner Murder?”
“I am.”
“Then you will die. Exactly as the note said.”
Somebody shifted his feet. Everybody here, except Nostra, knew the chief, had seen him in action. Murder forced a ghost of a smile. “But suppose I don’t care to die. Suppose I have them lock me in jail until after the time limit tomorrow?”
“You would die anyway,” whispered Nostra. There was a note of finality hanging in his words. There was nothing more to be said.
Back in Brogardus’s office, Tim said, “Murder, we’ve fought and scratched, you and me, and we’ve even worked together on a few cases. Don’t let this get you down. I’ll break Nostra if it’s the last thing I do.”
“I’m afraid you won’t,” Murder said. “He’s got a simple story and he’s the sort of man to stick to it. He was in jail. That’s his alibi and you’re stuck with it. I think you’ve got as much out of him as you’ll get, Tim.”
Brogardus sat down with the air of a man who couldn’t think of anything else to do. He chewed his nails. The chief said, “You might as well give me the low-down, Tim. If I’m going to freeze to death by noon tomorrow...” His smile was wry as he left the sentence unfinished.
“All right,” Tim said, “here it is. Like the paper said, Frank Snow was discovered in his office, drowned. The door was locked, and no water was near him. Ergo, an impossible death.”
Brogardus made a steeple of his fingers. “It may be that somebody had it in for Snow. You Know yourself, Ab, how he was putting his nose in blackmail corners. But if anyone hated him enough to kill him. or feared him that much, it would have been impossible to kill him in the manner that he was.”
“And Loren Cole?”
“About the same,” Brogardus shrugged. “From all appearances, he tripped on a toy automobile on the floor of his office and broke his neck. We’ve talked to his wife and a few business associates. Cole has shown intense worry in the last few days but his wife states that he often had those moods. Several people he had bested in business one way or another hated him. But again, no one was in that office except Cole.”
“That leaves Gregory Sloan, the nightclub owner,” I said. “The paper didn’t have much to say about him.”
“We didn’t give out much,” Tim countered. “Gregory Sloan was a little luckier than the others. His secretary went in his office, found him in a convulsion. She saw the note from Nostra on his desk, mentioning poison.
“She was a quick-thinking gal. She grabbed a glass of lukewarm water and some baking soda from Sloan’s desk, poured it down him. She got an ambulance in a hurry, and they went to work with a stomach pump. Sloan’s in City Hospital now, but we are keeping it under cover that he’s okay. We don’t want another crack taken at Sloan.”
The chief edged forward in his chair. “Then you’ve talked to Sloan!”
Tim cocked an eye at him. “Sure, and that’s the most impossible part of the whole thing. If either Snow or Cole had lived to talk, they might have told us something. Like you, Ab, I was on pins and needles, thinking that in Sloan’s case a slip had been made and we’d get a lead. But he swears that he was absolutely alone from the moment he received the note until his secretary walked in and found him. He touched nothing that might poison him.
“Living, Sloan’s made the puzzle of the administration of the poison bigger than ever. He swears there was no way anyone could have poisoned him — unless he was slipped a capsule late yesterday or early this morning. At breakfast, say. But he’d have noticed a capsule, so that’s out.”
Tim flung up his arms in the attitude of a man much beset. Murder and I got to our feet. The chief asked Tim for the address of Nostra, got it, and we left the office. The old black ball we were behind looked bigger than ever.
Night was pitch black, not a star showing nor a breath of air stirring. As I walked down the grimy sidewalk in a seedy section of town beside the chief, I had the feeling the whole earth was gathered in a hush, watching us, waiting for the next impossible death to happen.
The unpainted cottage that was Nostra’s was directly ahead. We’d come down and scouted the place. Then we had dinner, Murder acting unhurriedly for a man slated to freeze to death sometime during this hot, hushed night. We’d waited for darkness, for the chief wanted to give that place a thorough going over.
We paused a hundred feet up the sidewalk. Except for the bar down on the corner with the lonely sounding, tinny jukebox, the street was deserted. We went on toward the cottage, clinging to shadows. We were at the edge of the yard, when Murder laid his hand on my arm. We dropped behind an unkempt shrub.
A moment later footsteps, quick, nervous, came across the sagging porch, down the walk. The shadowy figure reached the sidewalk, paused a moment. Yellow tongues from the street light touched a face, a neat figure. She was blonde and trim. Dim as it was, the street light told us she was young and lovely. She’d been inside Nostra’s shack, without any lights burning. Prowling, hunting maybe.