The Collection (110 page)

"I got home about ten-thirty, maybe eleven. I had a
good mystery story I wanted to finish, and I was reading." He rubbed his
chin. "It was sometime between then and midnight that it started. And kept
up maybe half an hour, off and on. And it
was
in Perley's room. I went
past the door when I went to the bathroom once about twelve, so I'm sure of
that."

"Did you look in the parlor then?" McCracken
asked.

"No. I think the door was closed. But I didn't have
any reason to look in, so I didn't."

"You're not sure about the time. Couldn't it have been
two o'clock, maybe, if you'd lost track of time while you were reading?"

"No. I went to bed at twelve-thirty, see? I did look
at my clock then, and my watch too, to set it. I could be wrong by it being
earlier, but not later."

"And the other fellow who heard it?"

"Name's Bill Johnson. Yes, he's sure, too, that it was
somewhere around midnight."

McCracken sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. He
tried another tack.

"Birds outside, maybe?" he asked.

"No, too loud," Carson said. "And I never
heard birds sing that much or that loud around here before. Anyway, it'd have
to be a flock of different kinds of them. And--let's see--robins don't sing at night,
do they? Robin's about the only bird call I'm sure of, and I heard that."

"How good was Slimjim Lee? Perley was teaching him, he
says."

Carson shook his head firmly. "No, but definitely.
I've heard him, and he could carry a tune, but that's about all. And he wasn't
sure where he'd carry it. No, pal, this stuff was good. If it wasn't Perley,
then he's got a rival."

"How about the radio?"

"I thought of that, afterwards," Carson said.
"But it couldn't have been. The place was as quiet as a morgue, around
then, and I'd have heard the announcer shooting his mouth off between
imitations. Anyway, no bird imitator could stay on the air that long. It was at
least half an hour, off and on, like I said."

McCracken sighed again. "Was it you said something
about a dog imitation?"

"Not me. That was Bill Johnson. I might have heard a
dog, but if I did, I don't remember. I'd have figured that came from outside.
Like the cats. I did hear some cats yowling, but that wouldn't have been Perley
either. He doesn't imitate animals, just birds."

McCracken got up and went to the door.

"Well, thanks," he said. He declined another
drink, and went down the hall. He opened the door of Perley Essington's room
and went in.

Jerry Bell came out of the room across the hall and stood
in the doorway.

"Find out anything new?" he asked.

"Carson's telling the truth, I think," McCracken
said. "If he was lying, he'd be more definite about time and things. He
rings true."

"Then how can you figure an out for Perley? Or can
you?

 "I don't know," McCracken said. "But I got
an idea. It's almost as screwy as Perley is."

He got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the carpet,
and started working around the floor in circles, examining the carpet
carefully. A white spot he found on the floor behind a chair interested him
considerably.

He was starting to crawl behind the bed, when Jerry Bell
said:

"You got it wrong, Mack. No corpses in here. That was
the other room, remember?"

McCracken got up slowly and dusted off the knees of his trousers
with his left hand. A tiny object he'd found behind the bed was gripped
carefully between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He held it so
Bell could see that it was a light blue feather.

Jerry Bell grunted. "Is that what you were looking
for, Mack? Jeepers, I'll open the pillow and get you a handful of
"em."

McCracken shook his head slowly.

"I doubt it," he said. "Very few pillows are
stuffed with mocking bird feathers. Jerry."

"What makes you think that's off a mocking bird? You
sure?"

"No," McCracken answered frankly. "But it's
the right color. An ornithologist can tell. Anyway, mocking bird or not, there
was a bird in this room. There's proof of that back of the chair. And a mocking
bird fits the picture."

"Look," he explained. "The killer brought
the bird here, probably in a box. He came in the window there and hid in the
parlor until Jim Lee came in, and he killed him. Then--to pin the thing on
Perley Essington--he came in here and let the bird out in this room for awhile.
The bird would be Perley's best imitator, wouldn't it? And it'd sing, being
free--comparatively--after being shut up."

"But--a mocking bird!" Bell protested.
"Where'd anyone get one?"

"Pet shops have 'em occasionally. They're not common,
but they can be got. Probably the killer stole it, though. He wouldn't want the
trail traceable if there'd be a slip-up. It was that dog-and-cat business made
me think of one. My aunt used to have a mocking bird, and it'd imitate dogs and
cats when it heard them.

And it'd have picked that up around the pet shop."

"Then maybe Perley wasn't lying about that call that
sent him on a wild-goose chase."

McCracken nodded. "Of course. This was carefully
planned. The guy who did it made sure Jim Lee would be here and that Perley
wouldn't, and that he'd be a place where he couldn't prove he'd been."

"If an expert backs you up on your guess what that
feather is," Bell said, "looks like you did figure Perley an out,
Mack. Got any idea who did kill Lee?"

McCracken took a deep breath, then said flatly: "You
did, Jerry. I was sure as soon as I found this feather. It's just like the one
you pretended to pull off Perley Essington's head when you were clowning back
at Headquarters. You had the bird in your pocket when you left. Maybe you'd
killed it after you used it. And when you pulled that feather gag in Zehnder's
office you'd just had your hand in your pocket. You were so confident you had
Perley framed, you didn't hesitate to use it for making fun of Perley."

The expression on Jerry Bell's face didn't change. His
hands were thrust deep into his pockets, an unlighted cigar was tilted in a
corner of his mouth.

"Not bad, Mack," he said. "How about
motive?"

"It wasn't the ring," McCracken went on,
"although in your kind of work you ought to know the outlets and where to
cash in on it easy. But you wouldn't have done it for that. I figure you must
have gambled over your head and gone in debt to Lee. Which did he have in his
billfold, I.O.U.'s or checks of yours?"

Jerry Bell sighed deeply, took a gun out of his pocket.

"You're covered, Mack," he said. "I think
you could make that stick. I'm in plenty deep, including some company funds,
and that'd come out if the police nosed around. And -well, I did buy that bird
instead of stealing it." He paused, then:

"But listen, Mack, Slimjim was blackmailing me on
those debts. You can't blame a man for killing a blackmailer. You aren't
--"

"How about Perley?" McCracken interrupted.
"You tried to frame it on him, just so you wouldn't be suspected, just to
give the cops an easy victim."

"He was in with Slimjim on the whole--"

"Nuts! If he had been, he'd have known who killed Jim,
and why. That don't hold water, Jerry."

"Then let's try it this way, Mack. I can get two
thousand for that ring. I know you're broke. How about half of that?"

McCracken's eyes were cold. "Jerry," he asked,
"know what that spot on the floor back of the chair is?"

"I can guess. Why?"

"Then you can guess my answer to that proposition. I'm
going to call your bluff, Jerry. You won't shoot me. You'd have done it
already, if you figured you could get away with it. As readily as you killed
Lee."

He turned and walked slowly toward the door, his hands
relaxed at his sides.

"Regan out there knows we're in here alone, Jerry,"
he said. "If there's a bullet hole in my back, there's no story you could
tell that would stand up under investigation. I'm not even armed, so you
couldn't use self-defense. There'd be no out for you at all, Jerry."

He took a step toward the door, another.

"Stop, Mack!" ordered Bell. "I'll--"

McCracken kept on walking. It didn't seem to him that he
was breathing at all. He made the hallway, and was half way to the front door
before he heard the shot. It had not been aimed at him.

* * *

The contents of the desk and the filing cabinet had been
taken from the drawers and were stacked in a cardboard carton with a rope
around it.

The carpet was rolled up at one side of the room, and the
phone had been disconnected, although it still stood on the desk.

McCracken sat on the desk beside the phone, with his elbows
on his knees and his chin cupped in his hands.

He was whistling softly and mournfully.

He didn't hear the door open, but he almost fell off the
desk when a voice said:

"Excellent whistling, Mr. McCracken. Excellent!"

The shiny pate of the little bird imitator was bobbing
across the office toward him.

"Hello, Perley," McCracken said. He couldn't
muster a smile to go with it.

"I'm leaving vaudeville, Mr. McCracken," Perley explained.
"Or maybe one could say that vaudeville is leaving me, because the Bijou
is closing. Anyway, I'm opening a school for whistling and bird imitating. You
whistle well. I could make you my star pupil."

"Thanks," said McCracken listlessly. "Maybe
sometime. But what with moving and all--"

"To better quarters, I hope. And that reminds me. You
never sent me a bill. I came to settle up for what you did for me."

He beamed at McCracken, and for a moment the private
detective felt a ray of hope. Then it faded. A few dollars can seem like a lot
sometimes, but it doesn't make much difference when you owe a few hundred and
are about to be put on the street. "In fact, Mr. McCracken," Perley
went on, "I have a check already written, which I hope you'll think adequate.
It's for three thousand dollars. You may have heard that Jim Lee's will said
that I was his only real friend and that he left me all his money, and that it
turned out to be more than anybody thought he had. Some bonds, you know, that
he thought weren't worth much."

Mechanically,
McCracken took the little slip of yellow paper that was being held out toward
him. His eyes focused on the figures, then blurred, then came into focus again.

"There was thirty thousand net, Mr. McCracken,"
Perley Essington was saying, "and if it hadn't been for you--well, I'd
never have been free to spend any of it. So I think a tenth is fair, isn't
it?"

McCracken found his own voice at last.

"More than fair, Perley. I--well you can put me down
as your star pupil, all right. And give me that nightingale business first.
It's just how I feel. But not on an empty stomach." He took the little
man's arm firmly. "First, we're going down to the Crillon and order a
plate apiece of their very best birdseed."

It was five minutes before five a.m. and the lights in my
office at the fourth precinct station were beginning to grow gray with the
dawn. To me, that's always the spookiest, least pleasant time of all. Darkness
is better, or daylight. And those last five minutes before my relief are always
the slowest.

In five minutes Captain Burke would arrive---on the dot, as
always---and I could leave. Meanwhile, the hands of the electric clock just
crawled.

The ache in my jaw crawled with them. That tooth had started
aching three hours ago, and it had kept getting worse ever since. And I
wouldn't be able to find a dentist in his office until nine, which was four
long hours away. But, come five o'clock, I'd go off duty, and I had a pretty
good idea how to deaden the pain a bit while I waited.

Four minutes of five, the phone rang.

“Fourth Precinct,” I said, “Sergeant Murray.”

“Oh, it's you, Sergeant!” The voice sounded familiar,
although I couldn't place it; it was a voice that sounded like an eel feels.
“Nice morning, isn't it, Sergeant?”

“Yeah,” I growled.

“Of course,” said the voice. “Haven't you looked out the
window at the
pale gray glory
that precedes the rising of---”

“Can it,” I said. “Who is this?”

“Your friend Sibi Barranya, Sergeant.”

I recognized the voice then. It didn't make me any happier
to recognize it, because he'd been lying like a rug when he called himself my
friend. He definitely wasn't. On the blotter, this mug Barranya is listed as a
fortune-teller. He doesn't call himself that; when they play for big dough, the
hocus-pocus boys call themselves mystics. That's what Barranya called himself,
a mystic. We hadn't been able to pin anything on him, yet.

I said, “So what?”

“I wish to report a murder, Sergeant.” His voice sounded slightly
bored: you'd have thought I was a waiter and he was ordering lunch. “Your
department deals in such matters, I believe.”