Black Cat Weekly #10

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6I’D LIKED Terry well enough, but I wanted to laugh without any amusement at all. The mention of the platters had ruined everything, but I was sure Terry hadn’t said what Nolan reported. It didn’t happen to be true. If Terry had been found stabbed, he was probably too far gone to talk, and Nolan was bluffing to try to break me down. And I raged.

I grinned savagely at Nolan. I was mad as hell.

“Tough guy, huh?” said Nolan. “Let’s see!”

He glanced around him. Adele stared at me with an urgent, frightened question in her gaze. Purcell was fiddling excitedly with a hand-camera, his eyes bright, fitting in a flash-bulb with fingers that shook with his excitement. Joe Winthrop stared at me with the queerest expression I’ve ever seen on anybody’s face. To a sixteen-year-old boy, presence at the unmasking of a murderer would be an overwhelming experience.

“Er—Nolan,” said Purcell agitatedly. “I’d like to get a picture of this, but the grouping’s all wrong ...”

Nolan nodded to him. “Yeah. Let’s go in the study. Appropriate, huh?”

I suspected Nolan of playing up to a situation, which would be natural enough. But I said nothing. I was bitterly, savagely wise, now. It wasn’t time to play what few trump cards I had. I said only, “I’d like to have a lawyer, Nolan.”

“You’ll get one,” he said flatly. “Right now, I think, you’re gonna talk— An’ there are gonna be plenty of witnesses, so’s you can claim third-degree stuff later!”

With a cop at each elbow, I went into the study. The others crowded behind me. Purcell darted off somewhere and came back with his big camera and tripod—the same one that had been set up to take pictures of an entirely different sort in this same study only last night. He’d been taking pictures of Adele with various items in Cantrell’s collection at the time of the reported attack on Terry. Now he spread out the legs of the tripod, fairly quivering with excitement. He began to make the adjustments which fill so much of a photographer’s time that the actual picture-taking is anticlimactic.

I was still bitterly amused when I found myself with the two flanking cops taking the center of the stage. The cops had led me there, and they would be prominent in the picture. Joe Winthrop dutifully went for his mother, and Purcell hastily asked Jermyn to send upstairs for Sally Morris. He was all loaded up to take pictures. I imagine he expected a dramatic picture when Sally came in.

He got it.

She came in the door, and I’d thought Jermyn looked ghastly the morning after Cantrell’s murder. But Jermyn never looked like Sally did. She’d only just heard about Terry. She was dazed and numbed by shock. But when she looked at me her eyes were black with anguish, and there was a terribly accusing look in them, and she moved like a sleep-walker.

A flashlight glowed intolerably for the fraction of an instant. I don’t think she knew it. Nolan motioned for her to be led to a chair alongside the desk that Cantrell had actually used—not the rococo new piece. Nolan sat casually on that. Purcell changed plate-holders and stuck in another flashbulb.

“We might as well go over the works,” said Nolan briskly. “I got reason to believe that somebody can fill out one point that had me stumped for a while. I knew right from the beginnin’ who done the job on Cantrell, but I didn’t have the evidence. Then that job on Houlihan rocked me back on my heels, but what Terry Cantrell told me while we were carryin’ him to the car—that pulled it all back together again.”

I saw what was coming. I said politely; “Not that I’ve been rogues-galleried, Nolan, may I sit down to listen?”

He waved his hand toward the desk-chair. Purcell swung his camera to get a picture of Nolan, lecturing. During all the rest of Nolan’s talking, Purcell shifted his camera to individual after individual, and shot an excellent sequence of portrait studies of people under strong emotion. It was, when you think of it, almost a photographer’s idea of heaven.

“When I got here,” said Nolan, painstakingly, “I found Cantrell sittin’ in a chair—that chair—” (It was the chair in which I happened to be sitting, by the way.) “with a wound in his temple that was enough to kill him. It was a funny kinda wound. I never saw one like it before. An’ the doc said he’d been out cold or dead when it was made. Remember?”

He looked about the room. Purcell snapped his picture. Mrs. Winthrop came in, stricken; Nolan ignored her. He paused impressively and pulled a delapidated cigar out of his pocket—while Purcell made his camera ready again. Nolan inspected the cigar and licked its wrapper delicately to hold it in place. He fumbled for a match.

“I questioned everybody,” he went on, making a gesture that included everybody in the study. “I found that one person in the house had plenty of reason to kill Cantrell. He said he’d been by himself in the library when the killin’ was done. Two other people had looked there for him when the killin’ was first discovered, though, an’ they didn’t see him.”

From the depths of the armchair in which Cantrell had been murdered, I said sardonically; “Shall I take a bow, Nolan?”

He paid no attention. Having found a match, he struck it. “The trouble was—” He puffed at the impossibly tattered cigar— “the trouble was that I couldn’t find out what he’d done the killin’ with, an’ I couldn’t get any lawyer-proof evidence that he was in this room when the killin’ was done. In court it woulda been a circumstantial-evidence case. Hard to get a conviction. But I knew who done the killin’, all the same.”

Sally Morris looked at me. Her hands were twisted in her lap. Her affection for Terry Cantrell hadn’t brought her any great happiness, but now that he was dead—Nolan had tried to bluff, but I believed him dead—now that he was dead her anguish was pitiful to see. And she believed I’d murdered him.

“I started diggin’,” said Nolan. “I was hopin’ for a break. I kept the party right here—nobody leavin’, waitin’ for somethin’ to crack. Then Houlihan got his.” He puffed. “That meant I’d been wrong. Not about who done the first killin’, but why. Killin’ Cantrell mighta got Morden outa a jam, but Houlihan,—no. Morden was already outa his jam. Houlihan was killed so somebody could hunt for somethin’. I didn’t know then what he was huntin’ for.”

I waited with grim anticipation. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Morden asked the butler, here—” Nolan nodded at Jermyn—“what’d happened to some pewter platters that’d been in the study. I got to wonderin’ about them. It turned out they were missin’. I asked Terry Cantrell what they were. So he jumped. He said—”

* * * *

Slowly, carefully, deliberately, Nolan told us about the pewter platters Cantrell had bought from Adele. He didn’t mention her, and her expression did not change. She didn’t identify counterfeit pewter platters made of platinum with the ones she’d owned. Nolan told how the man who’d made them had been hanged for counterfeiting good silver coins in worthless platinum, and how the supposedly pewter platters were of the metal which at the time of their making had no value at all.

But Sally Morris’ eyes changed. This was a motive for me to have killed Cantrell—and Terry, too. From anguish her expression passed through accusation to a terrible, burning hatred.

“We found those platters finally,” said Nolan negligently. “Morden’d hid ’em.” He looked at me sharply, but I did not look either indignant or surprised. I felt, in fact, some grim satisfaction. When they tried to prove that I knew the whereabouts of or had ever touched those platters, they would be surprised. “Yeah. Morden’d hid ’em. He didn’t know we’d found ’em. An’ maybe half an hour ago, he started to talk to Terry Cantrell, got him mad. An’ Terry busted out with what he knew —that Morden had killed his uncle to get outa a jam an’ for a chance at the platters, an’ Houlihan so he could hunt for an’ find ’em. An’ when Terry Cantrell spilled that to Morden,—why—Morden jumped him. With a knife.” Then Nolan added detachedly. “Because it was quiet, I guess. But Terry Cantrell was able to tell us before he’d—”

He stopped. But everybody finished the word. It was “died.”

There was a terrible silence. Sally Morris made a little choking sound. I hadn’t killed Terry Cantrell; I was sorry for Sally. I had plenty to worry about on my own account but —well—to keep them from looking at her, I said evenly;

“It’s pretty ingenious, Nolan. If I didn’t know better, I’d believe it. Unfortunately—”

It was probably my voice that did it. Sally Morris started to her feet, and her hand groped on the desk beside her, and then in a horrible sobbing flash she ran at me. She’d picked up a paper-knife. It wasn’t sharp except at the point, but that was quite sharp enough. I caught it in my forearm. Then the cops beside me had her. She struggled desperately for an instant and then went limp. She’d fainted.

Nolan had been an instant late in stopping her. He looked vexed. Jermyn started forward. I scowled him back.

“Lay her down somewhere— no. Put her right here!” he said angrily. “I gotta finish this! I ain’t talkin’ just to hear myself talk! I gotta reason for talkin’! You all right, Morden?”

One of the cops pulled the paper-knife out of my arm. Blood followed it. Not much. It hurt, but not unreasonably.

Adele came over, quickly.

Without a word, she pushed my coat-sleeve back, folded back the shirt-sleeve—it was Terry’s shirt— and found the wound. She was chalky-white, but her lips were set firmly. I fumbled with my other hand and gave her a handkerchief. Without a word, she tore off a strip or two and tied up my arm to stop the bleeding. It was an odd sort of interruption. After a glance at the wound, Nolan waited scowlingly for the thing to be over. And I realized that Purcell had made at least one flash-bulb picture, though I didn’t know until later that he’d snapped Sally plunging at me with the knife.

“Okay! Okay!” said Nolan sharply. “I ain’t just showin’ off! I gotta reason for tellin’ this stuff in detail just like this! Now stay right here an’ listen! I’m gonna ask everybody one question. It’s time for somebody to come through!”

He glared about him. Mrs. Winthrop bit at her lips, blinking in horror. Joe was thrilled. Jermyn’s face was a study in amazement. Adele was shockingly pale. She looked at me in a sort of pleading question. Suddenly I felt an amazing feeling that the world wasn’t so bad after all. I looked at her and managed to smile a little bit. And I shook my head reassuringly.

“This is the stuff I wanna know!” said Nolan angrily. “There’s somebody—an’ I think they’re right in this room!—that can fill out this case complete. I got to have that somebody come through!”

He wasn’t impressive, Nolan, but he dominated us all in spite of the nasty small incident just past. I sat back in my chair.

“Jermyn, here,” said Nolan savagely, “found Cantrell’s body. He went in the study, an’ saw his master dead. All of you know the rest of it. But somebody was in that room before Jermyn got there! Somebody was in there between the killin’ an’ the time Jermyn found the body! I wanna know who was the first person to know that Cantrell was dead! Come clean, now!” He pounded with his fist. “Who straightened Cantrell up in his chair? When he was killed, he fell over! There’s a blood-stain to prove it. Somebody come in, saw him there—maybe thought he’d fainted or somethin’—and straightened him up to try to revive him! An’ that somebody musta figured they’d be accused of murder, an’ beat it! I want that person to talk, now! I gotta have the evidence they can give! If you think a cold-blooded murderer oughta fry, come on, now!”

He glared. At Jermyn. At the pretty maid-servant, who shivered and shrank back. At Adele, who was still looking at me with that frightened questioning look. At Mrs. Winthrop and her son.

I looked at Sally, only now opening her eyes and moaning softly. If she’d believed Terry killed his uncle—

There was another blinding flash. Purcell had made another picture. He had an unparalleled opportunity for dramatic photography, had Purcell. Now he changed his plate and said ruefully, “Since you put it that way, Nolan, I guess I’d better confess. I’m the one you mean.”

Nolan swung his head and stared. “Huh? You? Why in hell didn’t you tell me—”

Purcell shrugged. He looked definitely sheepish. “I didn’t dare, Nolan. Not until you found the real murderer. I was supposed to take pictures of the great event Cantrell intended to stage. It was to be the announcement of Terry Cantrell’s engagement to Miss Morris, here. After dinner, last night, he went in the study and I started upstairs, but it occured to me I’d better make sure about the lights. Just after I’d gotten upstairs, I went down the back way and into the study by the back door.”

He nodded at a door behind me, the second entrance to the room we were in. I’d entered the study by that door, just after Cantrell’s murder.

“I’d gone up to get a roll of color-film,” explained Purcell. “I meant to have one of the servants mail it. Jermyn will remember that. He mailed it for me, later. But after I went upstairs I went down again and into the study, and I found Mr. Cantrell murdered.”

Nolan relaxed. He even smiled. “Aha!” he said in satisfaction. “Now shoot the works!”

“It happened just as you said,” said Purcell apologetically. “I thought at first he’d fainted. I straightened him up. Then I saw he was dead, realized he’d been murdered. And then I realized that it was a perfect set-up to incriminate me.”

Nolan blinked. Purcell said more apologetically still; “Mr. Cantrell had been killed with my camera-tripod, Nolan. I was supposed to be upstairs. I’d no plausible excuse for being down—apparently sneakily down. If I went upstairs to fix film, and then come out of the study announcing that Cantrell was murdered and I didn’t do it ... You see?”

It was plausible. For Purcell to come out of the study where he wasn’t supposed to be, announcing that he hadn’t killed Cantrell though his camera had—But there was a question.

“Look!” said Purcell.

He did something to the top of his tripod and lifted the camera off. He lifted the heavy tripod from the floor. The legs ended, of course, in heavy rubber tips like those on the bottoms of crutches, but heavier. And Purcell twisted at one of those tips and it came off. Underneath there was a rounded metal piece shaped rather like a small onion. It would be used in place of the rubber tip, to hold the tripod solid out-of-doors. Indoors, it held the rubber tip on.

“Cantrell was killed with one of these,” said Purcell. “One tripod was lying on the floor with the rubber tip off. Fortunately, the camera hadn’t been harmed. Somebody’d pulled off the tip, jabbed savagely with the weight of the tripod behind it, and that was that. But you figure what a fix it put me in, being in the room where that had happened, with no convincing excuse for being there!”

Nolan looked triumphant.

“Okay! Okay! Swell! So what’d you do?”

“I put the rubber tip back on and set up the tripod again. I was panicky,” admitted Purcell. “I was scared to death! And then I thought there’d be a question of what weapon was used. If they found the tripod put together again, they’d blame me for it. My fingerprints would be on the tip, too. So I—” He looked apologetic and ashamed at once. “I— I tossed the fire-tongs into the fire, to make it look like they were the weapon and had been thrown in there to get rid of the fingerprints. Then I went out again, sneaked upstairs, fixed up my roll of film, and brought it downstairs again. I gave it to Jermyn and he mailed it. I admit that I did wrong, but I think that anybody else would have done the same.”

Nolan looked so complacent that he almost acquired a likeness to Cantrell. He beamed. “This winds up the case, all right! Did you clean off the tripod tip?”

“I—just slipped the cap on,” said Purcell. “I meant to, later, but there wasn’t anything to clean—”

“A test’ll show it,” said Nolan expansively. “That winds—”

Purcell said awkwardly. “There’s another thing—”

Nolan stopped instantly and waited, exuberantly.

“I—couldn’t say it before,” said Purcell. “You see, with all the evidence against me, for me to accuse someone else would have seemed merely—well—phoney. So I didn’t say anything. But I saw somebody else come out of the study just as I started, down the back stairs to go in myself. I didn’t think it odd at the time, and after I found Cantrell I was scared. But—I can tell you who was in the study before me.”

“Go ahead!” said Nolan cheerfully.

“You’ve already guessed it,” said Purcell with an air of relief. “It was Sam Morden, here.”

I sat tight-lipped while Nolan nodded and grinned.

“That’s swell!” said Nolan. His voice was triumphant indeed. “You can make the pinch now, boys!”

So the policemen who stood by my chair moved forward. One of them got out a pair of handcuffs. There was an instant of blank, incredulous amazement.

Then Purcell was staring in utter stupefaction at the handcuffs on his wrists.