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:
Tim Weller blinked. “Downstairs? No.”
“Somebody did.” Cooper ground his palms together thoughtfully. Tim Weller lifted his head.
“How do you know?”
Cooper did not answer. He was remembering what Beau Bridwell and Terry Black had told him. They delayed their attack on the safe because there had been someone in the senator’s study. Cooper’s eyes passed over the lean body of Tim Weller. It was easier to believe the Judge than to disbelieve him. It would take a strong motive to make Tim Weller negotiate stairs that he didn’t have to climb.
He looked at the corpse. The senator hadn’t been down there. He had been dead for hours before Beau Bridwell arrived at the house. Who was left? The girls? Yes. Either one of them might have been in the study. He didn’t believe that either one had. Hito? Well, he would have to check up on that. The thought of Hito gave him an idea.
He didn’t have to go for the police. He had someone to send.
“I’ll have to consider the possibility that Bridwell and Black lied,” he thought grimly. “Bridwell may have been closing that safe instead of trying to open it when I came in.”
He still believed in his theory of little crooks being afraid of big money, but this had been an extraordinary night — and he was not unmindful of his own position. There was a man with a criminal record who had one of Greg Cooper’s checks that had been drawn on the day his employer was murdered.
Greg Cooper had had the opportunity personally — and any one of several motives that would look good to the police — for murdering Bradford Weller.
He was aware of Tim Weller’s blinking eyes fixed upon him. He didn’t know how long the old man had been studying him, but Tim Weller was shrewd. He might be Greg Cooper’s worst witness before a grand jury if it came to that. His report on Cooper’s unusual actions in the death room would carry weight. The old man was nodding his head slowly.
“It is no disgrace for a crazy man to kill himself,” he said huskily. “His mind broke. He didn’t know. But you better go for the police.”
Greg Cooper stared at him. “You think that he killed himself?”
Tim Weller blinked. “Obviously,” he said. He waved his hand toward the corpse with its stiff fingers resting on the stiletto hilt.
For a long minute Greg Cooper stood where he was and some perverse and cowardly thing inside of him said, “Why not?” He could send Hito to tell the police that the senator had committed suicide. They would come prepared to find a suicide, and the dignified grief of Tim Weller, who apologized for the disgrace of suicide by pleading his brother’s insanity, would convince them.
It was a temptation but he set his jaw against it. “I’m sorry, Judge,” he said, “but it isn’t that simple. He didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”
“Murdered?” Tim Weller raised his head, his eyes widening and, for the moment, ceasing to blink.
“That’s right. And I’m going to send Hito for the cops.”
Greg Cooper was heading for the door as he spoke. He had taken only two steps out into the hall when a gun boomed outside the house. There was a hushed beat of time and then another shot from a gun of lighter caliber. Somebody shouted and on the highway the brakes of a car squealed.
Chapter IX
Suspects
The door of Vivian Dawson’s room opened on the echo of that second shot. Mildred Harney came out, running. She started for the stairs and Greg Cooper was only a step ahead of her. He gripped her arm and she struck at him.
“Let me go!” she said.
He gripped harder and swung her around. She struck at him again and her body stiffened. Then suddenly she went limp. The desperate look went out of her eyes and she clutched at him.
“Oh, please,” she said. “Don’t go out. Stay with us. I’m frightened.”
He shook her, and over her shoulder he saw Vi Dawson. Vivian’s face, too, was pale but she had recovered her grip on herself.
“See what it is, Greg. I’ll take care of her.” There was a catch in her voice. Another shot sounded outside and she flinched; but she kept coming. She caught the blonde girl’s arm as Greg Cooper let go, and Copper whirled to the stairs.
He went down fast. He was thinking of Bridwell and of Terry Black, wondering if they had recovered the gun from the table in the study and if they were shooting it out with someone on the grounds. The sense of personal danger pressed on him. Anything that happened to Beau Bridwell was likely to be bad medicine for Greg Cooper. Apart from that, he didn’t want to get the little yegg into anything serious. He was responsible for Beau Bridwell being out here and he had practically given the man guarantees of safety. Even the later doublecross did not nullify that, unless the doublecross was worse than he knew.
He bounded across the lower hall and out of the front door. Upstairs he had left Mildred Harney in care of Vi Dawson. That was another irony of a case that was full of irony. The girls took turns taking care of each other. But there was a difference.
Vi Dawson had gone to pieces with shock but had found herself when there was danger to be met. Mildred Harney had not been affected by the senator’s death but she had found fear in her being when the shooting started. Why?
Cooper expected to find the answer to that question out on the grounds — when he found who was doing the shooting.
Traffic was stopped on the Mount Vernon Highway a hundred yards or so away and Cooper had an idea that the occupants of the cars were under cover from stray shots.
A dark figure moved on the sloping lawn that rolled down to the highway from the house. Instantly there was a flash of flame from a point near the garage. The dark figure folded and went down and Cooper saw another man crawling out of the garage shadow, raising himself for another shot.
“Hold it!” Cooper shouted and started forward. He had lost the sense of personal danger. He knew only that the man out on the lawn had been hit and that, with the car lights from the highway behind him, he would be a still target for the other marksman. There was something chilling about the idea of seeing a bullet pumped into a fallen man. Cooper raced toward the garage.
The man with the gun got up on one knee. He was wobbling badly but fighting for balance. Cooper put on a last burst of speed and struck at the gun with his open hand. The gun spun end over end and the man who had wielded it sank forward on the grass. Cooper recognized him.
“Hito!” he said. “You’re hit, aren’t you?”
“Shot bad.” The Japanese rolled over. He was shaking his head. Blood flowed over the front of his light pajama jacket. Greg Cooper dropped on one knee beside him and the Japanese drew a deep sobbing breath.
“Lady scream,” he said, “and I get up. Pretty soon after, man jump out of window and run. Look dishonest. I remember lady scream and I shoot. Yess.”
“You fired at him without knowing who he was?” Cooper was wadding a handkerchief against the man’s wound and looking toward the road. A car with green lights had pulled in through the gates and there were two men with flashlights moving gingerly toward the man who was lying on the lawn. Hito sighed.
“I shoot to scare,” he said. “Not try to hit. He shoot back and I try to hit next time.”
“Okay. Take it easy. We’ll have a doctor for you. Don’t talk any more.”
Cooper rose to his feet. One of the cops threw a flashlight beam at him and he knew that there was a gun pointed down the beam. He raised his hands high.
“There’s a man shot here,” he said.
“There’s one shot here, too.”
“We’ll have to get them into the house.”
“Yeah. Who are you?”