“If you and this Tom Henry are so much in love, how did you happen to be with Barney Amhurst last night?”
She looked at me in surprise. “That was a special celebration. Normally Tom would have been along too, but you heard what Barney said last night about the disagreement he had with Tom. Tom doesn’t hold any hard feelings against Barney, but under the circumstances he hardly felt like joining in celebrating the success of an invention which made obsolete the work he had been doing himself. I invited him, but he declined and he knew I was going with Barney. Besides, Barney is such an old friend of the family, it was almost like being out with my brother.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Make an independent investigation of the murder?”
“I want you to prove Tom didn’t do it.”
I shook my head at her. “No, ma’am. I don’t take cases on that basis. If you want me to investigate the facts, fine. But any evidence I uncover bearing on the killing goes to the police, no matter where it points. If your Tom actually killed Ford, I not only won’t undertake to prove he didn’t, I’ll do my best to prove he did. If you decide to hire me, that is.”
Madeline said, “You couldn’t possibly prove he did it, because he didn’t. He told me so over the phone.”
While the girl dubiously thought over the wisdom of employing an investigator who promised to help convict instead of absolve her sweetheart if he actually proved to be guilty, Fausta said in a firm voice, “Of course you want him to take the case, Madeline. Manny will find out the truth in no time at all. He is a very smart man.” She looked at me from narrowed eyes and added, “Except about women.”
Madeline gave Fausta a trusting look and said in a small voice, “All right, Mr. Moon. Can you start right away?”
“Immediately,” I told her. “But there’s a fee involved. Can you afford it if the investigation runs into a matter of weeks?”
She looked surprised. “Of course. I have plenty of money.”
I told her my day rate and accepted a retainer of fifty dollars.
“I’ll start off with a question to you,” I said. “Can you think of any reason Ed Friday wouldn’t want you to engage me to check up on this murder?”
Blankly she shook her head. “I barely know the man. And I don’t think Barney or Walter Ford knew him before about a month ago, when he came to Barney with an offer to invest in the Gimmick. Tom doesn’t know him at all. Why do you ask that?”
“Just an impression I got,” I said. “Quite possibly I misconstrued what he was getting at.”
Chapter Eight
Since the obvious place to begin my investigation was at police headquarters, my first stop was there. But before starting out, I cleverly instructed the girls to wait at my apartment until I returned so that I could give Madeline a complete report on Tom Henry’s situation. I could just as easily have taken them along and had them wait in the lobby at police headquarters, of course, but I knew Fausta couldn’t bear the condition of my flat very long, and I hoped if I left her in it a sufficient length of time, I would find it clean when I returned.
I like Warren Day and respect his ability as a cop, but if I may make my understatement for the day, his moods are unpredictable.
This particular afternoon I found my scrawny friend in a relatively equable frame of mind. He didn’t fawn on me, but neither did he bite off my head for neglecting to knock before I opened his office door.
He merely gave me a sour look and said, “I didn’t send for you, Moon.”
“You have a young fellow named Thomas Henry in the pokey down here,” I said. “Entered a charge yet?”
“Nothing serious,” Day said negligently. “Just first-degree homicide.”
“Recall the red-haired girl you met last night? Madeline Strong? It seems she bears a deep and romantic love for your murder suspect,” I said, “and believes the police have entered into a conspiracy with the real murderer to pin the killing on her Thomas. Naturally I told her that was ridiculous, that the Homicide Department wasn’t dishonest. It was just inept. She hired me to do what I can for the boy.”
“That’s nice,” Day said agreeably. “Just offhand the only thing I can think of you can do for him is hold his hand in the gas chamber.”
“I’m allergic to HCN,” I told him. “I’d rather keep him out of the chamber. What have you got on him?”
“We went straight from Amhurst’s place to this Thomas Henry’s last night,” Day said. “It’s only two doors from Amhurst. Henry pretended to be in bed, but we pounded until he finally opened the door. The first thing we asked was for him to take a look at the pipe you and Hannegan found on the lawn outside the murder window. He admitted it was his but couldn’t account for it being on the lawn. While I questioned him, Hannegan took a look around. In a drawer in the boy’s workshop he found a twenty-five-caliber automatic like the ones the two women had. Only this one had been fired. We pulled Henry in on suspicion of homicide, and this morning changed the charge to homicide when Ballistics checked the shell casing you and Hannegan found near the pipe and decided the firing pin of Henry’s gun had set it off.”
“How about the slug?” I asked. “Did that check too?”
“When we dug it out of the wall, it was smashed all out of shape. A soft-nosed job. But its weight and composition were the same as the bullets remaining in the gun found in Henry’s workshop. That, plus the firing-pin mark on the ejected casing, is enough to cinch it as the murder weapon in any jury’s mind.”
“What’s the motive supposed to be?”
“For Ford’s murder? None. But remember the scrap Amhurst said he had with Henry because Henry thought he had stolen his invention? We think he was potting at Amhurst and accidentally hit Ford.”
“Maybe the gun was planted,” I said without conviction.
Day’s grin contained the same type of enjoyment I imagine a fox shows when he has a fat rabbit cornered. “That’s what young Henry insists. Claims he never saw it before. But the gold initials on the grip read ‘T.H.’ ”
Dubiously I thought this over. On the surface it sounded like a hopeless case, but I had to do what I could. In a way the case was a little too hopeless, the circumstantial evidence a trifle too complete. And I kept remembering that Ed Friday had tried to bribe me to leave town for ten days, just about the time it would require to get Tom Henry properly indicted by a grand jury.
“May I see the boy?” I asked.
The inspector shrugged. “If you want to waste your time.”
He pressed a buzzer on his desk and after a moment Hannegan stuck his head in.
“Let Moon see Thomas Henry,” Day said expansively. “He can have ten minutes.”
Thomas Henry was about twenty-five, long and gangling and with a mass of wiry black hair which stuck straight out from his head like the bristles of a scrub brush. He had a high, broad forehead, gentle and rather dreamy eyes, and a wide mouth which looked as though it was normally accustomed to a good-natured smile. At the moment the corners were drooping.
He was seated on a drop-down bunk with his hands clasped between his knees when Hannegan unlocked the door, let me in and relocked it again. Walking back down the corridor a few feet, the lieutenant waited impassively.
I told Henry who I was, why I was there, and when I noted his eyes resting rather wistfully on my cigar, offered him one.
“Usually I smoke a pipe,” he said, “But in all the confusion of being dragged to jail in the middle of the night, I forgot to bring one.” He accepted a cigar and, when I held a light for him, puffed cautiously, as though suspecting it might explode.