The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (8 page)

She drew back a pace as if she was afraid he might contaminate her. Her face looked pale and scared. “You’ve been following me,” she accused him.

Odell was sober. “To tell the truth, Gertie—”

“Why do you have to hound me? Can’t you leave me alone?”

“I’m not hounding you,” he said, disheartening to know that she had interpreted his actions that way.

“You are, Mr Odell. I haven’t been able to make a move since you came to the Legation without having your eyes on me. You people are watching me all the time, waiting to pounce on me for the least slip I make. I thought America was a free country, but the police watch you here as much as they do over there . . . You think I killed Mr Gosling!”

“Did it ever occur to you,” he said through clenched teeth, “that I might have other reasons for wanting to be near you?”

“What?” she said, hardly believing her ears. “What did you say?”

“You’re not hard to take, Gertie,” he said.

“Take?” she said in confusion. “Oh but—”

“You never gave me much encouragement. You always seemed to have so much on your mind, Gertie.”

“If that’s really true, Mr Odell, I’m sorry I – if I offended you just now.”

“
If
it’s really true! You don’t think I’m telling you the truth?”

“I can’t be sure of anything any more.”

“I was in that office to protect Mr Gosling – and you.” He looked at her steadily. “You believe me, Gertie.”

She looked back at him for a long moment, and he thought her eyes were watering.

She lowered her gaze. “Yes, Mr Odell, I do. I do believe you.”

“Well, then,” smiled Odell, “I hope you’re not doing anything tonight, as I want—”

“Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry. Not tonight. I have an appointment I can’t break. Shall we make it some other time?”

“Sure, Gertie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” She smiled. “So long then.” She had her right hand in her coat pocket. She took it out and held it toward him. He grasped her palm. And then he felt that she had something in her hand – a slip of paper. When she drew her hand away she left it in his palm. He felt, with a rush of intuition, that everything was wrong. He pretended not to notice what she’d left in his hand. As she turned on her high heels to walk swiftly away from him, he thrust his own hand into his pocket.

He watched her go out of sight along the path, then he walked out of the park in the opposite direction. He was curious about what she was trying to convey to him. He went into the first street corner phone booth he came to and took the slip of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.

The wrinkles of perplexity increased on his forehead.

The paper was blank except for two circles, a small one inside a much larger one, drawn on it in pencil.

Gertrude, the cold night wind whipping the coat about her knees, went up the legation steps. All the windows were dark. X Street was dark. Fumbling in her handbag, she took out a key, unlocked the front door, and slipped into the vestibule. It was all cold marble, like a mausoleum. She left the front door unlocked behind her as she went in, as if she was expecting someone else to follow her.

She flicked on a cigarette lighter to light her way up the plush carpeted stairway to the third floor. This was the floor on which the murder had been committed. She went into the office, tiptoeing past her desk in the reception room, going into the private office.

She looked at Gosling’s empty chair behind the desk. Gosling’s bloodied ghost still seemed to occupy it. And she shuddered.

She remembered a line from one of the newspapers
. . . A nameless horror has stalked through the Legation . . .

The watch on her wrist ticked away loudly. She was painfully conscious of time. Everything had depended on time.

She did not know anyone was in the room with her until she heard the door between the offices click softly closed.

She turned around with a violent start. The cigarette lighter flicked out when she released her thumb. A shadow moved against the closed door.

“Is that
you
?” she gasped.

A powerful flashlight blinded her.

“Yes,” answered a voice. “Have you done all that was expected of you?”

She nodded miserably.

“Fine.” She heard a heartless chuckle.

And that was all she heard, for it is doubtful if she heard the two quick coughs before the lead slugs tore into her breast.

She was dead before she hit the floor.

McKitrick was saying: “The patrolman on the X Street beat saw the door of the Legation swinging open in the wind. He thought something was up, so he took a prowl through the building. He was the one who found her.”

Someberly Banner looked down at all that was left of Gertrude. “It’s a crying shame,” he muttered.

Odell sat gloomily on the edge of the desk. He roused himself up enough to say: “Well, this isn’t as puzzling as the first shooting. I talked to Gertie in the park this afternoon, Senator. She said she was going to meet someone tonight. Whoever it was just followed her in here and shot her. If I had any inkling this would happen, I never would have left her alone.”

Banner nodded. “It’s not your fault, Red.” He glared around. “What kinda gun this time? D’you know?”

McKitrick answered: “The medical examiner thinks it’s a .38.”

Banner snorted. “An American gun! This’s striking closer to home.”

Odell said: “There’s something else I’ve got to tell you, Senator. It might help you. I confess it doesn’t mean a thing to me. In the park today Gertie slipped this into my hand. She acted mighty secretive about it.” He gave Banner the paper with the circles drawn on it.

“Whatzit mean?” snapped Banner.

“Circles within circles. Wheels within wheels. You tell me, Senator.”

Banner looked at it front and back and held it up to the light to see if there were any pinpricks in it. Then, without saying anything, he crumpled it up and shoved it into his marsupial pocket. Plainly he could not make head or tail of it, but he wasn’t going to say so.

Though they stayed there till dawn they found no other clue to point to Gertrude’s murderer.

McKitrick woke up to find his phone ringing insistently and Banner on the other end of the wire.

“You never sleep, do you?” snorted McKitrick.

“Hardly ever, Mac. We ain’t got time for that now. It’s after breakfast. Come to the Legation and bring that small arms expert with you.”

“Captain Cozzens?”

“Yaas. Him. I’ve figgered out what everything means.”

“What put you on it?”

“Those circles.”

“Suppose you quit being so damned mysterious, Banner, and—”

“Get cracking to the Legation,” interrupted Banner. He hung up.

Banner was sitting in a leather chair, comfortably waiting for them to arrive. He bobbed his big grizzled head at McKitrick and Cozzens. His grizzled mane looked like a fright wig this morning, as if he had been trying to comb it with an eggbeater.

“Gennelmen,” he said, “this won’t take too much of your precious time. Lemme get on with it. First off, you will swear that there ain’t any Tokarev pistols hidden in that private office.”

“Of course not,” responded McKitrick a little testily. His face bore the results of a very hasty shave. There was a nick on his chin. “There isn’t as much as a needle hidden in there that we don’t know of.”

“And you can search me and find out I’m not packing a Russian pop-gun.”

“We’ll take your word for it, Senator,” said McKitrick shortly.

“We get on together,” chuckled Banner. He got up with a heave and a vast grunt. “You two sit here on the lounge, the way you were the other day with Odell, Cap’n.” He watched them sharply as they followed his suggestion. “I’m going in there.” He entered the private office, where Gosling and Gertrude had been killed, leaving the intervening door open. He was out of sight from the two watchers for about five minutes, then he reappeared and stood in the doorway, filling the frame with his bulk, his hands deep in the bulging frockcoat pockets. “Nothing up my sleeve, mates,” he announced.

They both stared at him, not knowing what to expect. Then both of them leaped to their feet.

Three loud shots had crashed out in the empty office behind Banner’s back!

Banner did not even take his hands out of his pockets. “And there you have it,” he said.

“But, great Godfrey!” yipped McKitrick, pushing past Banner to see who else was hidden in the private office. “Who fired that pistol?”

“It was a Tokarev automatic!” said Cozzens. “I’ll swear to that!”

“But there isn’t anyone here but you!” McKitrick glared helplessly around the room.

“Neverthless—” began Banner. “But let it keep awhile. There’re more important things like searches and seizures to be made.”

“Confound you, Banner!” said McKitrick, but he was in good humor about it.

“You can begin by arresting—”

The search was fruitless until Banner suggested that what they were after might be on microfilm and if they could not find microfilm in all the obvious places, it might be hidden in the electric light sockets.

That was where they found it.

They had all the proof they needed to arrest their man for espionage and murder.

And Carroll Lockyear, the export-import man, almost pulled his King Tut beard out by the roots when they confronted him.

McKitrick and the Assistant Secretary of State made impressive members of Banner’s small audience. Banner was prancing back and forth, gnawing a long stogie, as if he were holding a press conference. But he had not let the reporters in yet. They were all ganged up outside in the hall, waiting.

The Assistant Secretary of State fingered his chin reflectively. “The riddle of the sealed envelope—”

“Yaas, yaas!” Banner chuckled. “It’s simple when you know the sorta thimble – rigging that went on behind the scenes. I said in the beginning that I thought the murder was too damned impossible cuz one person alone couldn’t’ve accomplished it. Lockyear is the murderer and spy, all right, but he had forced poor Gertie to help him. Y’see, he was a Commie agent and Gertie told us that her crippled mother and her father are still stranded in East Germany. You can now see how easy it was for him to get her to agree to his scheme. He could tell her he’d get ’em outta East Germany if she played ball. If she still didn’t agree, he could easily threaten to turn the old folks over to the untender mercies of the MVD agents.”

He paused a moment before going on. “Gosling was getting onto Lockyear’s trail. Some time before the murder, Lockyear used a standard tape recorder. Lockyear let the tape run silently for three minutes, then he fired his Tokarev pistol three times near the recorder. He now had a tape recording of three minutes of dead silence, followed by three quickly fired shots. He handed that roll of tape over to Gertie for her to put in Gosling’s private office where he could get his hands on it later on. When he went into Gosling’s office to commit the murder that morning he had in his briefcase the Tokarev pistol with silencer on it, and also in the briefcase was a large manila mailing envelope that was a duplicate of the one to be delivered to Gertie’s desk by the messenger service. The gun that was delivered to Gertie by the special messenger route was probably a toy pistol, so that if the envelope were opened prematurely the whole thing could be laughed off as a practical joke.

“It was all timed to the split second. Lockyear stalled with Gosling till almost 11:30, talking business, then swiftly he pulled the silenced automatic outta the briefcase and shot Gosling in the chest three times with it before his victim could blink or cry out. Naturally the shots were not heard outside the room with the door closed. He whipped out the prepared envelope, snatched the silencer off the pistol – barrel, and shoved the pistol, still smoking, into the envelope, sealing it immediately. Next he set the prepared reel of tape on the recorder alongside Gosling’s desk – there’s one in every office and you’ve noticed that Gosling’s office had all the modern equipment – and then picked up the envelope and briefcase. It was now, according to his watch, 11:27. He flipped the tape recorder switch to on. Three minutes of dead silence, remember, then three shots. He put his arm around both the envelope and the briefcase so that the briefcase would entirely conceal the envelope to anyone waiting in the lounge. He came out of the private office and walked to Gertie’s desk on which the second envelope with the toy gun in it was lying, waiting to be delivered at 11:30 sharp. He put his briefcase down on her desk, so that it covered both envelopes. After getting Gertie to jot down his phony appointment for next Tuesday, Lockyear picked up his briefcase again –
together with the envelope that had been lying on Gertie’s desk!
In its place he left the one with the real murder weapon in it. He carried the other envelope out with him, still concealed behind his briefcase, and nobody was aware of the switch. So the gun that had just been used to commit the murder was now waiting for Gertie to carry it back in. She had been forced into it. She knew Gosling was already dead. She had to play out her part. She pretended to talk to Gosling on the interphone to give the illusion that Gosling was still alive after Lockyear left. Then she started to go into the private office, looked at her watch, knew the three minutes were almost up, then carried the sealed envelope in.”