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

Professor Inez Martin said sharply: “Nonsense. If the man had been dead for a quarter of an hour, why didn’t you notice it right away? Why didn’t the doctor suspect anything?”

Little Doc Raymond eyed the young woman sternly.

“Good heavens, Professor Martin, corpses aren’t comets. Corpses are peculiar! Rigor mortis can begin to occur anywhere from two to six hours after death. Anyway, it’s beside the point. A bullet in the brain isn’t necessarily instantaneously fatal. Abraham Lincoln remained alive nine hours after he’d been shot. Of course, this was a modern, powerful bullet. It undoubtedly destroyed the brain’s function entirely. But a feeble spark of life may have remained for five or ten minutes—”

O’Hanna cut in. He said: “But let’s not go into that. Let’s turn to pleasanter topics we can all understand. I refer, of course, to the hundred-thousand-dollar will.”

Leather creaked as Sheriff Gleeson tugged at his belt. “Now you’re getting somewhere. This stuff about comets is so educational it goes completely over my head. I’m afraid the idea of two guys being murdered over a comet that’s invisible to the naked eyes wouldn’t go down with a country jury. What can you tell us about the will?”

The house dick shrugged. “It was the cheapest bribe on earth, and Professor Martin knew it.”

He turned toward Inez Martin. “After you named the comet in Zane’s honor, you knew nothing could keep him from tearing up that will and making a brand new one. Your observatory wouldn’t get a thin dime — unless he died immediately.”

The lady astronomer stormed: “You’re accusing me of murder?”

O’Hanna brooded: “A jury could get to like the idea. Look at you — a beautiful creature, abnormally obsessed with a passion for component stars and hydrogen carbide! It’s obvious you’re a crank. The natural feminine instincts have soured in you. You’re a cold-blooded example of a scientific fiend, to whom the ordinary human values of life mean nothing.”

He grinned wryly. “That’s why you kept quiet about the telescope. Charley Zane’s niece might contest that will. A smart lawyer could make it look bad for you, if the truth came out you had no alibi for the actual time of the shooting. Even though you were perfectly innocent of any crime.”

Manager Endicott was astounded. “Mike! You mean you don’t think she did it?”

“I think she’s too cold-blooded to be guilty,” the house dick declared.

“Too — huh?”

“She’s too scientific to overlook a clue like a telescope pointed at the wrong angle. Besides, if she’d killed Zane, she’d have known when it happened — she wouldn’t have had to figure it out by subtracting nineteen degrees from the meridian.” O’Hanna formed a smile. He said: “Also, her eyesight’s O.K. Joe McGuffey’s isn’t. He had to bend over close to read off the nineteen degrees. Working by flashlight and in a hurry, he might have overlooked that detail entirely.”

McGuffey made fat fists. Behind them, he blustered: “Hell, you can’t pin anything like that on me!”

“On you, it looks pretty good. You’d hated Charley Zane for years. You’d sent his brother to the penitentiary. Since the feud started over finances, and you were the prosecuting witness, I assume that you lost a sizable chunk of money.”

The fat man said: “That far you’re right. The Zanes swindled me out of a cool twenty thousand dollars.”

“He’s lying!” Spica Zane’s voice broke. “My father was innocent!”

Joe McGuffey glared at the blonde. “Your father was a dumb crook. Charley Zane was a smart one. The dumb one took the rap. The smart one took my dough.”

The fat man pivoted to O’Hanna. He said: “I’ll prove I didn’t kill Zane. I wanted him alive. I wanted to see him squirm. I was in a position to show him up for the double-crossing crook he was. That comet was the chance I’d been waiting for the last twenty years. I had him where I wanted him.”

“Do tell. Do tell.”

“You can’t hurt a man like Charley Zane by showing him up as a financial highbinder. He thinks that’s just smart business. The crowd he runs with think it’s smart business. But if they caught him playing poker with marked cards, they kick him out of every club in town. If they caught him turning in a phony score-card in a golf tournament, he’d be an outcast for life. That’s why I took up Charley Zane’s hobbies — cards, golf, and star-gazing. I figured sooner or later his crooked streak would show up in a spot where it’d hurt him, where he’d be ashamed to show his face in front of his own friends.”

McGuffey snaked his tongue across his thick lips. His eyes glistened behind the curved lenses.