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

He announced gleefully: “Finding that comet was the break I’d been waiting for. You’ll die laughing when I tell how I pulled it I’ve got one of those home recording outfits, and I hooked that up onto my phone. Then I called operator instead of dialing and asked for Charley Zane’s number. Spica was out that night, and he answered, himself. I pretended I thought I was calling Western Union, see? I read off a telegram about locating this comet. Then I had him read it back to me. I felt sure he’d do just what he did do — rush off a wire to claim the discovery himself. I was going to give him another week for the build-up, and then I was going to spring that recording of his own voice on him.”

The fat man’s stare dropped down to the white sheeted form on the floor. He said softly: “Charley, I’m sorry you’re dead. Now I’ll never get to see the look on your face when the bad news hit home!”

Endicott gagged. “That’s awful! You should not talk to the dead like that!”

“Mr. McGuffey doesn’t really mean it,” O’Hanna offered. “Not twenty thousand dollars worth, anyhow! He only told us how it all started. How it ended goes like this.”

The Irishman’s gray eyes bored. “Charley Zane was worth more dead than alive to you, McGuffey. Dead, his will became effective. With that document in your hand, you could deal with Spica. She could pay you twenty thousand dollars and destroy the will — or she could let you hand the will over to Inez Martin, and it’d cost her a hundred grand. That adds up to a swell motive for murder and for stealing the will. Throw in Kigel’s death, and the measure runneth over.”

The fat man’s face soured. “How come Kigel?”

“Kigel is why you couldn’t find the will where you hid it. He lied to me, of course. He heard a shot and saw you running into the trees. He followed. When you stopped and hid that piece of paper, he naturally picked it up. He was making off with it when I ran into him out in the woods.”

McGuffey bared his teeth. “Why, that—” He stopped. He gave a jowl-quivering headshake. “I told you before. I was right here when Kigel was shot.”

“I told you before, too. A shot isn’t necessarily the

shot. Kigel, like Charley Zane, might have been killed a little earlier in the game.” The house dick glanced around. “What’s wrong, Spica?”

The blond girl dropped a balled handkerchief from her lips. She said: “I just thought of something! I didn’t realize it was important before. Don’t you remember, I told you I excused myself by telling the others I had to lie down?”

“I heard you with both ears.”

“Mr. Endicott kindly assisted me into the back bedroom. Dr. Raymond was placing a sheet over Uncle Charley’s body. That’s when McGuffey could have slipped out secretly to kill poor Mr. Kigel.” The blond girl caught fresh breath. “Mr. Endicott stepped into the same room with Dr. Raymond. That’s when I crawled out the window. There were two men out there in the dark. I didn’t see their faces. But one of them was a tall, thin man like Frank Kigel, and the other one was a big heavy man—”

Joe McGuffey blurted: “Spica, you’re lying your damned head off!”

The girl said: “They were arguing. I heard one of them say: ’It won’t make a bit of noise, you damned fool!” She blinked at O’Hanna. “Now, what on- earth could that remark have meant?”

The house dick looked suddenly satisfied. He intoned: “It’s the reason nobody heard the actual murder shots. It’s why neither victim was powder-burned. The killer used a gun equipped with a silencer.”

The fat suspect’s jaw unlatched. His eyes bulged behind their glasses. He said: “That’s silly! That’s comic cartoon stuff! There really isn’t any such a thing!”

O’Hanna said: “There’s a Federal Law against them. That’s why silencers have been practically unknown in the U.S.A. They were fairly common in Europe. The Nazi Gestapo used them. A lot of our men picked up souvenir Lugers overseas. A gat with hushworks may well be in our midst. I’ll say this much — I’ll believe it when I see it!”

He gestured to Endicott. “You take charge of the meeting. The sheriff and I are going exploring.”

Ed Gleeson wasn’t happy. Outside, he said: “You’re overlooking one thing. McGuffey was indoors when the last shot was fired.”

“You can tie that part with a piece of string. Just remove the silencer, tie the string to the trigger of a cocked gun, and feed the string through a slightly raised window. That puts your killer indoors, and the shot outside,” O’Hanna said. “You look under the windows while I take to the woods.”

Tree boughs blotted out the stars, but the flare of a match showed the spot where O’Hanna had first run into Frank Kigel. Handsful had been scooped where O’Hanna skidded into the leaf mold and pine needles. He turned to the nearby spot where the narrow-faced man had pitched headlong. O’Hanna’s shoe furrowed through the decaying leaves with his toe.

He said to himself, “Smart — like a dog with a bone,” as his toe suddenly turned up a folded foolscap paper.