The Collection (146 page)

“And the servants — well, I'd told you the housekeeper had
quit and not been replaced yet. Just coincidence the other three all happened
to be away. The cook's mother's critically sick; she's still away. It was the
gardener's night off; he spent it with his sister and her husband in Dartown,
like he always does. The other guy, the horse trainer or groom or whatever the
devil you'd call him, went to town to see a doctor about an infected foot he'd
got from stepping on a nail. Drove in in Perry's truck and the truck broke
down. He phoned and Perry told him to have it fixed at an all-night garage,
sleep in town, and bring it back in the morning. So, outside of horses and a
couple cats, the only people around last night were Perry and the two private
ops.”

Mr. Smith nodded gravely. “And the coroner says the murder
happened around two o'clock?”

“He says that's fairly close, and he's got something to go
by, too. Perry turned in about midnight, and just before he went to his room,
he ate a snack out of the refrigerator. One of the ops, Roberts, was in the
kitchen with him and can verify what he ate and when. So — you know how a
coroner can figure time of death, I guess — how far digestion has proceeded.
And—”

“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Smith.

“Let's go up on the roof,” suggested the sheriff. “I'll show
you the rest of it, easier'n I can tell you.”

He got up from the piano bench and went toward the stairs,
Mr. Smith following him like a very small tail on a very large comet. The
sheriff talked back over his shoulder:

“So at midnight Perry turns in. The two ops search the place
thoroughly, inside and out. There ain't nobody around then. They'll swear to
that, and like I said, they're good men.”

“And,” said Mr. Smith cheerfully, “if someone was already
hiding on the premises at midnight, it couldn't have been Walter Perry. You
verified that he checked in at a hotel at midnight.”

“Yeah,” the sheriff rumbled. “Only, there wasn't nobody
around. Roberts and Krauss say they'll turn in their licenses if there was. So
they went up, this way, to the roof, because it was a moonlight night and
that's the best place to watch from.

Up here.”

They had climbed the ladder from the back second-floor
hallway through the open skylight and now stood on the flat roof. Mr. Smith
walked over to the parapet.

Sheriff Osburne waved a huge hand. “Lookit,” he said, “you
can see all directions for almost a quarter of a mile, farther than that most
ways. There was moonlight, not bright enough to read by, maybe, because the
moon was low in the sky, but both the International men were on this roof from
around midnight to half past two. And they swear nobody crossed any of those
fields or came along the road.”

“They were both watching all that time?”

“Yeah,” the sheriff answered. “They were gonna take turns,
and it was Krauss's turn off first, but it was so nice up there on the roof,
and he wasn't sleepy, that he stuck around talking to Roberts instead of
turning in. And while they weren't watching all directions every second — well,
it'd take anybody time to cross the area where they could've seen him.

They say it couldn't have been done.”

“And at two-thirty?”

The sheriff frowned. “At two-thirty Krauss decided to go
downstairs and take a nap. He was just going through the skylight there when
the bell started to ring — the telephone bell, I mean. The phone's downstairs,
but there's an extension upstairs and it rings both places.

“Krauss didn't know whether to answer it or not. He knew out
in the country here, there are different rings for different phones and he
didn't know whether it was Perry's ring or not. He went back up on the roof to
ask Roberts if he knew, and Roberts did know, and it was Perry's ring on the
phone, so Krauss went down and answered it.

“It wasn't anything important; it was just a
misunderstanding. Merkle, the horse guy, had told the all-night garage he'd
phone to find out if the truck was ready; he meant when he woke up in the
morning. But the garage-man misunderstood and thought he was to call when he'd
finished working on the truck. And he didn't know Merkle was staying in the
village. He phoned out to the house to tell 'em the truck was ready. He's a
kind of dumb guy, the one that works nights in the garage, I mean.”

Sheriff Osburne tilted his hat back still farther and then
grabbed at it as a vagrant breeze almost removed it entirely.

He said, “Then Krauss got to wondering how come the phone
hadn't waked Perry, because it was right outside his bedroom door and he knew
Perry was a light sleeper; Perry'd told him so. So he investigated and found
Perry was dead.”

Mr. Smith nodded. He said, “Then, I suppose, they searched
the place again?”

“Nope. They were smarter'n that. Good men, I told you.

Krauss went back up and told Roberts, and Roberts stayed on
the roof, watching, figuring maybe the killer was still around and he could see
him leaving, see? Krauss went downstairs, phoned me, and while I was getting
around here with a couple of the boys, he searched the place again, Roberts
watching all the time. He searched the house and the barns and everywhere, and
then when we got here, we helped him and went all over it again. There wasn't
nobody here. See?”

Mr. Smith nodded again, gravely. He took off his gold-rimmed
glasses and polished them, then walked around the low parapet, studying the
landscape.

The sheriff followed him. He said, “Look, the moon was low
in the northwest. That meant this house threw a shadow across to the barns. A
guy could get that far, easy, but to and from the barns, he'd have to cross
that big field as far as the clump of trees way down there at the edge of the
road. He'd stick out like a sore thumb crossing that field.

“And outside of the barns, that there chunk of woods is the
nearest possible cover he could've come from. It'd take him ten minutes to
cross that field, and he couldn'ta done it.”

“I doubt,” observed Mr. Smith, “that any man would have been
so foolish as to try. The moonlight works both ways. I mean, he could have seen
the men on the roof, easily, unless they were hiding down behind the parapet.
Were they?”

“Nope. They weren't trying to trap anybody. They were just
watching, most of the time sitting on the parapet, one facing each way, while
they talked. Like you say, he could've seen them just as easy as they could've
seen him.”

“Um-m-m,” said Mr. Smith. “But you haven't told me why
you're holding Walter Perry. I presume he inherits — that would give him a
motive. But, according to what you tell me about the ethics of Whistler and
Company, a lot of other people could have motives.”

The sheriff nodded glumly. “Several dozen of 'em.

Especially if we could believe that threatening letter.”

“And can't you?”

“No, we can't. Walter Perry wrote it and mailed it to his
uncle. We traced the typewriter he used and the stationery.

And he admits writing it.”

“Dear me,” declared Mr. Smith earnestly. “Does he say why?”

“He does, but it's screwy. Look, you want to see him anyway,
so why don't you get his story from him?”

“An excellent idea, Sheriff. And thank you very much.”

“It's all right. I thought maybe thinking out loud would
give me some idea how it was done, but it ain't. Oh, well. Look, tell Mike at
the jail I said you could talk to Walter. If Mike don't take your word for it,
have him phone me here. I'll be around for a while.”

Near the open skylight, Mr. Henry Smith paused to take a
last look at the surrounding country. He saw a tall, thin man wearing denim
coveralls ride out into the field from the far side of the barn.

“Is that Merkle, the trainer?” he asked. “Yep,” said the
sheriff. “He exercises those horses like they was his own kids.

A good guy, if you don't criticize his horses — don't try
that.”

“I won't,” said Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith took a last lingering look around, then went down
the ladder and the stairs and got back into his car. He drove slowly and
thoughtfully to the county seat.

Mike, at the jail, took Mr. Smith's word that Sheriff
Osburne had given permission for him to talk to Walter Perry.

Walter Perry was a slight, grave young man who wore
horn-rimmed glasses with thick lenses. He smiled ruefully at Mr. Smith. He
said, “It was about renewing my policy that you wanted to see me, wasn't it?
But you won't want to now, of course, and I don't blame you.”

Mr. Smith studied him a moment. He asked, “You didn't... ah
... kill your uncle, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then,” Mr. Smith told him, “just sign here.” He produced a
form from his pocket and unscrewed the top of his fountain pen. The young man
signed, and Mr. Smith folded the paper carefully and put it back in his pocket.

“But I wonder, Mr. Perry,” said Mr. Smith, “if you would
mind telling me just why you ... ah — Sheriff Osburne tells me that you admit
sending a letter threatening your uncle's life. Is that right?”

Walter Perry sighed. He said, “Yes, I did.” “But wasn't that
a very foolish thing to do? I take it you never intended to carry out the
threat.”

“No, I didn't. Of course it was foolish. It was crazy. I
should have seen that it would never work. Not with my uncle.” He sighed again
and sat down on the edge of the cot in his cell. “My uncle was a crook, but I
guess he wasn't a coward. I don't know whether that's to his credit or not. Now
that he's dead, I hate to—”

Mr. Smith nodded sympathetically. He said, “Your uncle had,
I understand, cheated a great many song writers out of royalties from their
creations. You thought you might frighten him into making restitution to the
ones he had cheated?”

Walter Perry nodded. “It was silly. One of those crazy ideas
one gets. It was because he got well.”

“Got well! I'm afraid I don't—”

“I'd better tell you from the beginning, Mr. Smith. It was
two years ago, about the time I graduated from college — I worked my way
through; my uncle didn't foot the bill — that I first learned what kind of an
outfit Whistler and Company was. I happened to meet some former friends of my
uncle —old-time vaudeville people who had been on the circuits with him. They
were plenty bitter. So I started investigating, and found out about all the
lawsuits he'd had to fight, and — well, I was convinced.

“I was his only living relative, and I knew I was his heir,
but if his money was crooked money — well, I didn't want it.

He and I had a quarrel and he disinherited me, and that was
that. Until a year ago, I learned—”

He stopped, staring at the barred door of the cell. “You
learned what?” Mr. Smith prompted.

“I learned, accidentally, that my uncle had some kind of
cardiac trouble and didn't have long to live, according to the doctor. Probably
less than a year. And — well, it's probably hard for anybody to believe that my
motives were good, but I decided that under those circumstances I was missing a
chance to help the people my uncle had cheated — that if I was still his heir,
I could make restitution after his death of the money he had stolen from them.
You see?”

Walter Perry looked up at the little insurance agent from
his seat on the cot, and Mr. Smith studied the young man's face, then nodded.

“So you effected a reconciliation?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Smith. It was hypocritical, in one way, but I
thought it would enable me to square off those crimes. I didn't want his money,
any of it. But I was sorry for all those poor people he'd cheated and — well, I
made myself be hypocritical for their sake.”

“You know any of them personally?”

“Not all, but I knew I could find most of the ones I didn't
know through the records of the old lawsuits. The ones I met first were an old
vaudeville team by the name of Wade and Wheeler. I met a few others through
them, and looked up a few others. Most of them hated him like poison, and I
can't say I blame them.”

Mr. Smith nodded sympathetically. He said, “But the
threatening letter. Where does that fit in?”

“About a week ago, I learned that his heart trouble was much
better. They'd discovered a new treatment with one of the new drugs, and while
he'd never be in perfect health, there was every chance he had another twenty
years or so to live —he was only forty-eight. And, well, that changed things.”

The young man laughed ruefully. He went on, “I didn't know
if I could stand up under the strain of my hypocrisy for that long, and anyway,
it didn't look as though restitution would come in time to do any good to a lot
of the people he owed money to. Wade and Wheeler, for instance, were older than
my uncle, a few years. He could easily outlive them, and some of the others.
You see?”

“So you decided to write a letter threatening his life,
pretending to come from one of the people he'd cheated, thinking it might scare
him into giving them their money now?”

“Decided,” said Walter Perry, “is hardly the word. If I'd
thought about it, I'd have realized how foolish it was to hope that it would do
any good. He just hired detectives. And then he was murdered, and here I am in
a beautiful jam. Since he knows I wrote that letter, I don't blame Osburne for
thinking I must have killed him, too.”

Mr. Smith chuckled. He told him, “Fortunately for you, the
sheriff can't figure out how anybody could have killed him. Ah... did anyone
know about your hoax, the threatening letter? That is, of course, before the
sheriff traced it to you and you admitted writing and sending it?”

“Why, yes. I was so disappointed in my uncle's reaction to
receiving it that I mentioned it to Mr. Wade and Mr.      Wheeler, and to a few
of the others my uncle owed royalties to. I hoped they could suggest some other
idea that might work better. But they couldn't.”