Murder on the Blackboard (18 page)

It was not until that moment that she turned to the afternoon paper which she had purchased. A two column box at the upper left caught her eye, and the heading held it. “I’ll Have the Last Laugh, Says Pfaffle…. Viennese criminologist from whom suspect in Halloran killing escaped yesterday says psycho-analysis will find him—look in Central Park, declared Augustine Pfaffle late this morning. The Professor went on to explain that his interrupted examination of the school-janitor showed him to be a pronounced victim of claustrophobia, or fear of closed spaces….”

“Closed fiddlesticks,” declared Hildegarde Withers. She dropped the newspaper carefully into a Keep the City Clean container, whimsically modelled of concrete in imitation of a tree trunk, and marched off across the park toward the east. It was after eleven and she had promised to meet Georgie Swarthout at the Inspector’s room in Bellevue surgical ward at noon.

She came silently through the door and seated herself by the head of Piper’s bed. The Inspector put aside his cigar and stared at her.

“You look like all three of the Furies,” he told her. “What’s up?”

She told him briefly of the events in the park. The Inspector raised his eyebrows so that they disappeared in a maze of bandages, and whistled softly.

“Bravo! Three cheers, and other congratulations. Although it’s ten to one that the traffic cop you called in will get all the credit. Possibly he’ll mention that a feminine bystander aided him in spotting the wanted man.”

“He can have the credit,” said Hildegarde Withers. “I don’t want any acclaim for dragging a man back to a cell out of the great outdoors. It makes me feel like something very low. As my children say, I could put on a top-hat and walk under a snake. The look in that man’s eyes when I called his name … it haunts me.”

“This is going to be a feather in the cap of our visiting friend from Vienna,” the Inspector told her. He motioned to a litter of newspapers around his bed. “My X-rays came out so well this morning that they said I could read up on things a bit, which is how I happened to run across it. You know, I was just wondering if maybe there’s something in this psycho-analytical method of solving crimes?”

Hildegarde Withers sniffed, audibly. “There’s everything in it except common-sense,” she announced. “Why, if I—”

She was interrupted by a cheery hail from the doorway, and Georgie Swarthout arrived, a box of cigars under his arm for the Inspector, and a meaning look for Miss Withers.

Piper opened the box, and sniffed at the aroma of Havana which rose to his nostrils. “You know,” he observed with a twinkle in his eye, “Vice-president Marshall was wrong, after all, when he said what this country needs is a good five-cent cigar. What this five-cent cigar needs is a good country.”

Miss Withers ignored this, and turned to Georgie. “I can see that you’re full to bursting with something,” she told him. “Come on, get it out of your system. Did your new lead come to anything? What was it, the murderer’s monogrammed cuff-links at the scene of the crime, or another missing ruby eye from the idol of the secret cult in Tibet?”

“Neither one,” said Georgie Swarthout. “This isn’t out of an Edgar Wallace thriller, but it thrills me, all the same. I played my hunch, see?”

“Begin at the beginning,” Miss Withers told him. “Go on until you get to the end, and then stop.”

“It began when I saw that Stevenson guy,” said Georgie Swarthout. “I didn’t like his looks, see? Too fussy about his clothes….”

“They don’t hang men for wearing tab collars and spats,” Miss Withers reminded him. “But go on.”

“Well, it didn’t take me long to get wise to him,” Georgie announced. “That guy was concealing something.”

“If there’s anybody in this case who isn’t,” Miss Withers observed wearily, “I don’t know who it is.”

“Yeah. Well, anyway, I didn’t like his looks. The idea of a swell girl like Janey Davis mooning around after him!” Georgie shook his head. “I got suspicious of him right away. So I went down to where he lives, in the Village, and I had a talk with the little wop who sells ice and wood in the basement….”

“And
gin, a dollar a fifth,
if I remember his quotation,” Miss Withers put in.

“Huh? Yeah. I gave the wop a dollar to tell me if he’d seen any dame answering the description of the dead Halloran girl come down there with Stevenson. But that doesn’t get me anywhere. The wop swears that he never saw Stevenson bring a dame into his apartment, big or little, blonde or dark.”

Georgie rose from his chair, and leaned across the foot of the bed. “But get this! I wasn’t satisfied with that, so I go upstairs. Stevenson isn’t home, and I pick his lock the way we did Dana Waverly’s last year in the bus murder case, and I go in.”

“You are one up on me,” Miss Withers conceded. The Inspector leaned back on his pillows, but his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

“Well, I went through the dump. Nothing much in the line of furniture. Mostly second-hand junk from the uncalled-for warehouses. Fireplaces full of burned newspapers. Bookcases full of books.”

“What books?” Miss Withers judged people, first by their hands and feet, and next by their libraries.

“Oh, just books. Nothing much. Mostly books on family trees and so forth. All about the Stevenson family, and the Addison family, and so forth. The living room didn’t get us anywhere, and the bathroom was also a blank, except for a few bugs in the tub. But there was a kitchenette in the wall, and in that kitchenette I found this!”

With a flourish, the young detective pulled from his pocket a nearly-full bottle, and handed it to Miss Withers.

“Ever see that label before?”

She nodded slowly. “Dewar’s Dew of Kirkintilloch” had entered the case again.

“And that proves Mister Stevenson isn’t the white-haired boy you thought he was,” declared Georgie Swarthout. “This liquor isn’t kicking around everywhere. I guess this is pretty good evidence that somebody besides the janitor knew about that secret entrance through the school cellar into the warehouse next door!”

Miss Withers picked up the bottle, smelled it, and made a wry face. “This case is getting to have a pretty high alcoholic content,” she said slowly. “So far it’s been nothing but bottles of whiskey. If I weren’t a strict teetotaller already, I would be now, for certain.”

The Inspector sat up against his pillows. “Swarthout, can’t you dig up some clues that are White Rock or seltzer or something? Discover a jar of buttermilk that points straight to the murderer, and Miss Withers will be ever so much happier.”

“I’d be happier at anything that pointed straight to the murderer,” that lady told him acidly.

At that moment the white-capped nurse knocked on the door. “A message for you, Inspector. It just arrived.”

She brought a blue and white envelope, with the familiar Postal Telegraph monogram, and put it in Piper’s hand. He opened it savagely, and as he read its contents he ground his strong teeth deeply into Swarthout’s innocent cigar. Then he shoved his missive toward Miss Withers.

It was signed by one Jasper Abbott, who had risen from street-car motorman to the elevated position of Assistant Commissioner of Police, by virtue of an inability to earn a living in any other fashion and a cousin high in the rolls of Tammany Hall. Mr. Abbott was not the Inspector’s closest buddy, and his wire did nothing to cement their friendship.

It read: “
THE COMMISSIONER DESIRES ME TO CONVEY TO YOU HIS PLEASURE AT HEARING THAT YOU WILL BE BACK ON DUTY WITHIN THE NEXT THREE OR FOUR WEEKS IN WHICH WE ALL JOIN STOP YOU WILL BE GLAD TO KNOW THAT IN YOUR ABSENCE PROFESSOR AUGUSTINE PFAFFLE OF VIENNA HAS BEEN APPOINTED ACTING INSPECTOR OF THE HOMICIDE SQUAD AT THE SUGGESTION OF DISTRICT ATTORNEY ROCHE AND GIVEN A FREE HAND IN THE HALLORAN CASE.
”

“Glad?” said the Inspector bitterly. “I’m practically tickled pink.”

J
ANEY DAVIS WAS ASLEEP,
a vaguely troubled sleep, when the telephone rang. Her curly red-brown hair was tumbled across the pillow, and her body curled like a kitten’s. She reached out a smooth white arm and fumbled with the alarm clock. But the ringing went on.

Then she sat up straight in bed, stark terror in her eyes. She was staring at the door. For a moment she remained there, soft, warm, terrified and lovely. Then the instrument across the room on the desk attracted her by its frantic vibrations, which almost lifted the receiver from the hook. She slipped her feet into a pair of mules, and crossed the room to the window. Once the wintry blasts were shut away, and the curtains raised to admit the dim glow which passes for daylight in Manhattan, she lifted the telephone.

It was the voice of her chief, Mr. Waldo Emerson Macfarland, and by his tone he seemed very upset indeed.

“Miss Davis? Janey? Listen to me carefully. I want you to get down to the school just as quick as ever you can….”

“But—” the sleepiness left the girl’s voice. “But I thought there was to be no school until Monday! You said so yourself!”

“Never mind what I said, pay no attention to that,” Macfarland told her. “I’ve just got my instructions, and I am giving you yours. When you get down there, telephone every teacher and every employee of the school—excepting poor Anderson, of course—and tell them to be there at one o’clock. No, I don’t know what it’s for. Something to do with the police. If any of them object, tell them there will be an officer after them if they are not down there at two o’clock. The officer on guard at the door will have his instructions to let you in. Am I making myself perfectly clear, and do you understand me?”

“Yes, I understand you,” said Janey. “But I don’t see—I thought the case was closed? They arrested the janitor, didn’t they? Even if he got away, they caught him again … who else do they want?”

“
Whom
else,” Macfarland told her absently. “And Janey—”

“Yes, Mr. Macfarland?”

“Be very careful what you say and how you act!”

“As if he needed to tell me that,” said Janey Davis to herself. She went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth, vigorously. Then she turned on the shower, and let her pajamas slip from her body. Gingerly she stopped under the stream of water, tucking the last shreds of her hair under a green bathing cap.

It was at that inauspicious moment that the telephone chose to ring again.

Wearily, the girl stepped out of the tub again, wrapped a scanty bath towel around herself, and slopped over to the phone.

“Hello? … Who? … Yes, this is me … Mr. Swarthout? … Say, with all night and all day to choose from, is there any law that you always have to phone me right in the middle of a bath? Besides, I’m in a hurry….”

She wrapped the towel more closely around her shoulders. “What? No, I can’t have lunch with you today, either. I have to work. W-O-R-K, work. Yes. No, I don’t know when I’ll get through. Yes, at the school. No, I don’t think so … really, I can’t….”

The faculty of Jefferson School had gathered faithfully in response to Janey’s telephone calls. By thirty-five minutes after two the narrow seats of Miss Vera Cohen’s classroom, always used for faculty meetings because of it nearness to the Principal’s office, were almost full.

Even Betty Curran Rogers was there, a frightened smile on her lips and a shining new wedding ring on her left hand. Her knees were up at her chin, due to the lowness of the seat which was meant for second-graders, and her heart was in her mouth, due to the fact that at any moment she expected to receive official notice from Mr. Champney and Mr. Velie of the Board of Education that on the expiration of her contract at the end of the semester her services would no longer be required at Jefferson School. Since the new Mr. Rogers was a salesman of power cruisers, with a drawing account of twenty-two-fifty a week, the situation was not one to be taken lightly.

Today Mr. Macfarland did not sit at the desk, with Janey Davis at his side to take dictation or make notes on his remarks. He was, like the rest of them, dutifully waiting on a bench. He fiddled with his eyeglasses.

Janey Davis sat across the aisle from him, her pencil busily drawing little circles and whirligigs. Young Mr. Stevenson, in the seat behind, watched her anxiously, but she did not turn around.

He leaned forward once to whisper, but she shook her head. “For Heaven’s sake remember where we are,” she whispered back.

Miss Rennel was busily talking. “I’d like to know why we’re down here in the first place, and why we’re waiting in the second place? Land’s sake, nobody is any more anxious to cooperate than I am, but in my opinion this is highhanded, very highhanded….”

Mr. Macfarland, thus appealed to, shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I told you that it was none of my doing,” he reminded her.

“Well, but what are we waiting for?”

Mr. Macfarland said that he didn’t know.

“I suppose it’s Hildegarde Withers! I don’t see what authority she has to gallivant around all over town questioning us as if she were a prosecuting attorney! Just because she knows a policeman. Tell me”—Miss Rennel was voicing the thoughts of them all—“tell me, Mr. Macfarland, has Miss Withers any official authority?”

“None as far as I’m concerned,” that gentleman said wearily. “Before I knew of the arrest of the janitor I had some idea of asking her to undertake an investigation, but later events …”

He was interrupted by the arrival of no less a personage than Sergeant Taylor of the Homicide Squad, at present acting as a vanguard for a small army composed of Professor Augustine Pfaffle, his stenographer, male, a photographer, likewise male, and bringing up the rear, the bulky figure of Mike McTeague, a Gibraltar in brass buttons.

“Folks!” announced Taylor dramatically, “I have the great honor—I mean, I’m glad to have the opportunity—I mean, this here gentleman is one of the world’s greatest criminologists, and a gentleman with whom I am honored to have the opportunity of working with him. You all read in the newspapers about how without going out of his hotel room he was able to locate the missing suspect in this here murder case.

“Now it seems that there’s one or two angles of this murder about which the Commissioner and the District Attorney aren’t entirely satisfied, and so the case has been turned over to Professor Pfaffle here. He is going to iron out the wrinkles, with your help, ladies and gentlemen, so that a waterproof iron-bound case can be turned over to the District Attorney and the Grand Jury, so that justice will be satisfied and—”