Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

“It’s a frame-up,” the fat man said. He waved off the bed coverlet, slid his stocky legs from the bed. “Charley Zane hired that guy to tell falsehoods about me.”

O’Hanna waved Kigel outside. As the door closed, he queried: “Oh, so you weren’t anywhere near the spot?”

“Certainly not! I’ve been right here in bed for the last hour.”

“You’re a low-grade liar, McGuffey. If you’d been asleep, you wouldn’t know whether it was one hour or three. If you were in bed, you wouldn’t know something wrong happened during the hour, either.”

McGuffey flushed. He said: “Why wouldn’t I know? You break into my room. You wake me up from my sleep. You call me a liar. You have another guy put the finger on me. I’d be dumb if I thought such goings-on meant everything was hunky-dory. I’d be still dumber if I didn’t realize Charley Zane put you up to all this. I’m going to hand that little guy a good swift poke in the nose—”

O’Hanna stemmed the tirade. “Cut out the kidding, McGuffey. You know damned well a poke in the nose won’t hurt Zane a bit. He was shot dead tonight, and an eye-witness saw you running away after the killing.”

The fat man blinked. He said: “Zane was killed? Hell, I never knew that. I ran away because I thought that was Zane shooting at me!”

“Now it comes out. Now you admit you were there.”

McGuffey said: “Yeah. Sure. I told you why. I was going to keep that crook from stealing my comet. I crawled in a back window and went through some papers in his suitcase. That’s why I quick crawled in bed here. I thought Zane saw me crawling out of that window, took a shot at me, and was going to have me arrested for stealing his will. That’s what I figured you was after when you came in here.”

O’Hanna asked: “His will?”

The fat man said: “Yeah. I found a copy of a brand-new last will and testament in his suitcase. He was leaving a hundred-thousand-dollar bequest to Mt. Yarrow Observatory.”

O’Hanna brightened. “Now you’re getting down out of the stars to something I can understand. Let’s see the document.”

“I was afraid to bring it here to my room,” McGuffey said. “I hid it in the fork of a tree down there.”

“Pull on your pants. Show me where.”

Five minutes later, Joseph McGuffey slowed to a stop under the trees. He pointed his arm and said: “That’s the back window I used. It leads into Zane’s bedroom. His suitcase is in the closet there. I hear the shot just as I crawled out of the window, and I headed straight for the lights of the hotel.”

He’d brought a flashlight with him. He aimed the light on the ground and said: “See? There’s my footprints.”

The leaf mold and pine needle carpet hadn’t taken any clear footprints. There were vague marks that might have been left by striding shoe leather.

The fat man said: “That’s my trail. I remember it was about the third oak tree I passed.” He swung, pointed his light. “Why, that’s it right there. I remember the fork — I remember I had to stand on tiptoe to reach up there—”

He walked to the tree, threw the flashbeam up into the crotch. The light showed oak bark, and that’s all.

McGuffey made swallowing sounds. “I guess it must have been the next tree.”

It wasn’t the next tree, or the one after that, or the one on either side of these trees. The fat man complained: “It’s mighty funny. I can’t understand this at all!”

“Maybe it wasn’t a last will and testament you had to hide. Kigel says you were toting a gun in your fist.” The house dick’s tone hardened. “If it was a gun, no wonder you don’t want to locate it.”

“I was toting a flashlight,” McGuffey protested. “You’re not playing fair, O’Hanna. You’re believing everybody but me.”

“I don’t trust you, that’s a fact. I’m going to let you help Doc Raymond sit up with the corpse.” O’Hanna decided, “while I sashay up a few clues on my own.”

The lobby clerk said Professor Inez Martin’s room number was 312. O’Hanna eased the passkey into the lock, gingerly twisted the knob. The red-haired lady astronomer was at home. She’d pulled up a chair to the room’s writing desk, was brooding over a sheet of San Alpa stationery. Drowned by her own thoughts, she didn’t hear the sleuth enter.

O’Hanna stared at the sheet of hotel paper on the desk. He asked: “More mathematics? What’s the answer add up to this time?”

“Why... why—!” She gasped, came to her feet. She said furiously: “Do you make a habit of marching into the privacy of a lady’s room without so much as knocking?”

O’Hanna said: “Only when I’m solving murders.” He tapped a finger on the page of figures. “What’s all this mean? Ten twenty equals zero, so nine twenty equals plus fifteen degrees, or nineteen degrees equals nine zero four?”