Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938
- Автор: Clark Dale, 12627 Convict
- Год: 1938
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938». Краткое содержание книги:
Cooper had been intrigued, too, by the fact that the safe had remained locked during all of the time that the money was coming into the house. Bradford Weller, the man who squeezed money till it shrieked, had kept his safe locked and tossed bales of currency into boxes.
It never had made sense and Greg Cooper watched Beau Bridwell’s sensitive fingers with a feeling of thrilled anticipation. When that door swung open, he expected to see currency in stacks; currency that had never been destroyed and never intended for destruction.
Beau Bridwell was only four minutes at the safe; four minutes that seemed like hours. Then he straightened. His face was streaming with sweat. “Easy, Guvner,” he said hoarsely. “A baby could ’a’ opened this old can.”
Greg Cooper came to his feet as Bridwell gripped the handle and pulled the door open. The little cracksman’s jaw dropped and he turned incredulously to Cooper.
“Empty, Guvner,” he said. “Some papers, but...”
Greg Cooper was beside him in a stride. He looked incredulously at the yawning emptiness of the big box. The silence of the room blanketed on him and he felt an emptiness within him that corresponded to that of the safe.
He had sat tamely on the sidelines while the senator had his bonfire and he hadn’t worried because he was sure of his hypothesis. Now, for the first time, it occurred to him that he might actually have witnessed over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars going up in smoke.
Beau Bridwell wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “What now, Guvner?”
Cooper turned to him — and stiffened. Upstairs, a woman screamed three times.
Chapter VIII
Death Without Dignity
Greg Cooper charged across the study. He heard the other two men behind him. Beau Bridwell’s voice was hoarse with fright.
“We gotta lam,” he said.
It was no time to argue the question. Greg Cooper did not know what he would encounter upstairs, but whatever it was, if it were sufficiently grave to wring screams from Vi Dawson, he had no time to waste on Beau Bridwell or Terry Black.
Greg grabbed Black’s revolver. He took the black stairs three steps at a time and in the pale light of the upper hall, he saw Vivian Dawson. She was reeling away from the senator’s room, her arms held stiffly away from her sides. Her features were rigid with shock and her green negligee had fallen away from the flimsy nightgown beneath. Greg Cooper put his arm around her and steadied her.
“Vi! What is it?”
“It... it’s in there. Uncle Brad! Dead. I touched him...”
He looked toward the senator’s room, then turned. Mildred Harney was coming down the hall. Her face was chalk white.
“What has happened?” she said.
Greg Cooper shook his head. “I’ll find out. Take Vi into her room, will you?”
“Sure.”
The blonde girl seemed relieved at having something to do. She slipped her arm over Vivian Dawson’s shoulders. Vivian’s lips tightened and she straightened.
“Oh,” she said. “Thank you. I’m all right.”
She turned as though to go back to the senator’s room, but Greg Cooper shook his head at the blonde girl and went down the hall alone. He stepped into the senator’s room and closed the door behind him before he flipped the light switch.
Bradford Weller was lying on his hack in the bed with his glazed eyes staring at the ceiling. There was an Italian stiletto, that had probably come from his own collection, buried hilt-deep in his chest. His fingers were resting lightly upon the hilt as though he had plunged the stiletto home and then relaxed his grip as death took him away.
In the cruel light of the central ceiling fixture that he so seldom used, his bald head gleamed. On the floor beside the bed his false teeth lay with fragments of broken glass about them.
Greg Cooper stared for a long minute at the corpse and slowly shook his head. “Fake,” he said. “He never killed himself.”
He moved gingerly into the room, conscious of the fact that he must not touch anything lest he disturb valuable clews. His mind raced over possibilities.
All that he was immediately sure of was the fact that Bradford Weller would never have taken his wig off and removed his teeth if he were contemplating suicide. The senator’s vanity would have survived even death.
As it was, death had found him stripped of everything — even of dignity.
“He didn’t figure to be murdered. It doesn’t make sense.”
Cooper shook his head. A few hours ago, Bradford Weller had made a show out of the burning of currency with the expressed intention of foiling those who had designs on his money and who, he claimed, were waiting for him to die. Now Bradford Weller was dead. There was a fine irony in that but Cooper could not see the possible motive. He did not believe that sane people killed for vengeance unless there was another powerful factor working. There were people in the household who were resentful, but they were people capable of seeing that murder would make a bad situation worse.
There was a clicking sound from the direction of the door and Cooper turned. Tim Weller stood framed in the doorway; a tall, spare figure in a faded blue bathrobe, striped pajamas and loose house slippers. He blinked at the light and ran one thin hand through his disheveled gray hair.
“Bradford,” he said huskily. “Dead, isn’t he?”
He continued to blink into the glare of the room. He did not have his cane but he gripped the door frame for support. Cooper nodded.
“Yes,” he said gently. “He’s been dead for hours, I imagine. His body is rigid.”
Tim Weller continued to stare at the body. “He was mad,” he said. “Insane.”
“I don’t think so.” Cooper had started for the telephone but he turned back. “You’d better go to your room, Judge. It’s pretty tough.”
He never called Tim Weller “Judge” except on special occasions. The old man shook his head. “My place is here.”
“I’m going to call the police.”
“It’s the thing to do. Call Alexandria Police station.” Tim Weller crossed the room to the chair farthest from the bed and sat down. “You know,” he said, “I made Bradford. Started him in law. Made a politician out of him.”
“I know.” Cooper picked up the phone. He swore softly. There was no buzz in the receiver. The old man looked up. Cooper put the phone back on the stand. “The wire is cut,” he said.
He was frowning again. There was a cold-blooded, professional touch about cutting the phone wires. He looked casually along the line. He couldn’t see the break and because he couldn’t, he found the wire-cutting more baffling. A phone in a bedroom would naturally be an extension phone. To isolate a house without phone service, the line would have to be cut downstairs.
“An amateur would never have thought of that,” he said aloud.
Tim Weller blinked at him. “What?” he said.
Cooper shrugged. “Somebody figured that he needed a head start.”
He moved away from the phone and looked at the body on the bed. Despite his newspaper experience, he felt that queer sense of helplessness that sweeps a person in the face of violent death. He would have to go after help now, and he had a strong disinclination to go. The murderer might want just that.
But he couldn’t figure out any reason why the murderer would want him out of the house — except that the safe had been empty when he had Beau Bridwell open it. If the safe had held a small fortune in money earlier in the evening — as he suspected — then its present emptiness provided a possible motive for murder and a good reason for the murderer to want a head start or time to hide the money after the money was considered. Cooper swung around.
“Did you come downstairs tonight, Judge, after once you went to bed?”