Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927
- Автор: Valentine, Corley H. W.
- Год: 1927
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927». Краткое содержание книги:
They waited for no second invitation, and when the four came back from a low-voiced conversation at the window, the action of the town marshal spoke louder than any words could have spoken.
Because, what he did was to remove the handcuffs from the wrists of Duke Emmett.
The meaning of this symbol was not lost upon Bill Wacker’s other friends in the smoke-filled room. They began to slink away — all except a small wiry man who bristled up to the prosecuting attorney.
“What I’d do,” he began, with the same officiousness which had marked his conduct on the night of Bill Wacker’s arrest, “would be to find out who fired that shot—”
“Would you?” inquired the prosecuting attorney, turning from him blandly to face Duke Emmett. “Mr. Emmett,” he went on, just as blandly, “would you mind letting me see your gun?”
“With pleasure,” responded the faro-dealer, and handed it over.
Breaking the forty-five, Barrett scanned the cylinder. “I thought so,” he muttered grimly, “it’s fully loaded, and you wouldn’t have had time to slip in a new one.”
His head still bent over the weapon, he continued: “I thought I could tell the difference between the sound of a forty-five and the sound of a thirty-eight. Marshal, did you really think you heard a forty-five?”
But when, after what seemed to be an unnecessarily prolonged pause, he raised his head, the marshal was not there to reply. He and the small wiry man had sheepishly faded away.
“Want ’em?” asked Duke Emmett in a whisper, as Barrett handed back the forty-five.
“Not just now,” the prosecutor answered, a new glint in his eyes. “I let them get away so I could tell you before it’s too late that the man we’ve got to find is that bartender that fired his signal with his thirty-eight. Let’s go.”
As, shoulder to shoulder, they moved toward the door, Duke Emmett whispered: “He shot into the ceiling. I didn’t even pull my gun.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” the prosecutor whispered back, “I’m glad you didn’t have to kill the only other man who saw Bill Wacker murder Pedro Alvarado.”
V
At ten o’clock, the following morning, while in his court room old Judge Oglesby was administering the oath to the twenty-four good men and true that constituted the grand jury, three men that had not had their clothes off, the night before, sat in the office of Prosecuting Attorney Knot-Headed Barrett, their tired eyes centered on a tin pail in which was a chunk of ice and a towel.
Fidgeting in his chair, the most nervous of the three — a weedy, furtive man — spoke up, his voice thin and jumpy: “Mr. Barrett, Mr. Emmett,” said he, forcing himself to look from one to the other of his two companions, “I know you’re telling me the truth when you say it’ll work. And you ought to know I’m telling you the truth when I say I wish I was somewhere else. There’s healthier jobs than testifying against Mr. Wacker.”
The whine in his voice awoke no sympathy in the prosecuting attorney. “You’re lucky to be alive,” said young Barrett. “Either Emmett or I might have killed you at daybreak this morning after we’d tracked you to that cabin, and you started to put up a fight.”
With a shrug of distaste he turned from his unwilling witness, and began to read aloud the affidavit that witness had signed and sworn to. When he had finished, he said to the red-faced, blue-eyed faro-dealer, who had been listening to the reading with satisfaction he made no effort to conceaclass="underline"
“Emmett, this cinches it. And it’s too late for our friend here to back out. The fact that he swears, as you do, that he’d heard Wacker threaten to kill Alvarado, that he knows that, on the afternoon of the murder, those drunken cow-punchers Wacker’s talked so much about, simply weren’t present, and that he, like you, saw Wacker shoot Alvarado after Alvarado was dead, means Bill Wacker’s indictment. We all know if he’s indicted he’ll be convicted.”
“That’s a sure bet,” said the gambler succinctly, rising to peer into the tin pail which held the ice and the towel.
“Another sure one is, if he ain’t, I’ll be killed for coughing up about him paying me to beat it, and then coming back with that Tucgoles gang to get some more dough,” quavered the bartender, his eyes on the door as though he were thinking of using it. “That’s a sure one, too.”
Reading the unspoken thought, young Barrett stepped to the door, locked it and slipped the key into his pocket. “The Tucgoles gang has gone back home, but we can’t take any chances of having you following them — not just yet,” he said.
The bartender’s eyes shifted from the locked door to the open window.
“Might as well close that, too,” sighed young Barrett, walking to the window. But he did not close it.
Instead, he stood motionless, his gaze fastened on a dark-haired young woman, who was walking up the courthouse steps, his heart beating a bit faster as he muttered to himself: “Flossie Nicholas!”
Not until she was lost to sight inside the courthouse door did he so far recover his composure as to close the window, and face the other men, neither of whom had seen what he had seen.
“Emmett,” he said to the faro-dealer, in a voice which sounded strangely in his own ears, “I’m going out for a minute. Lock the door after me. Keep your gun on this fellow while I’m gone.”
With only one thought beating in his mind — to reach the girl before she could talk to anybody else — he drew his keyring from his pocket, and strode to the door.
He opened the door. There stood Flossie Nicholas.
Even as his long, inquiring gaze gave back her own, he realized that her spell over him was broken. Waiting for her to speak, he hoped she had come upon some errand other than that of trying to revive the past they had shared together. She had.
Briefly and curtly, she said: “Mr. Prosecuting Attorney, I know who killed Pedro Alvarado, and I know how Pedro Alvarado was killed.”
From the ferret-faced bartender, who was covered by the faro-dealer’s gun, burst two words: “Wait! Wait!”
“Shut up!” she said to him, and came farther into the room. The prosecuting attorney closed the door behind her. “Listen,” she went on, her voice even and colorless, her words addressed only to young Barrett, “I’m from Tucgoles. Never mind what I call myself over there. But I was Pedro Alvarado’s girl.”
With an absence of emotion which surprised himself, young Barrett heard this disclosure, but in what she, who once had been his sweetheart, said next he was keenly interested. “And Pedro told me,” she continued, almost lifelessly, “that Bill Wacker had threatened to murder him in such a way that the guilt would never be discovered—”
“How?” he broke in eagerly.
“With that!” she exclaimed, pointing a dramatic directing finger at the pail in which was the towel and the chunk of ice. “Pedro knew! Back when they were friends, Wacker had told him. Let a towel lie long enough in ice water and it’s the deadliest weapon of them all. It’s worse than a blackjack. Because it kills and leaves no mark — unless, of course, it happens to fracture the skull.”
Under his breath, the prosecuting attorney said: “His skull was fractured.”
Out of the ferret-faced bartender burst another protective cry. “He fell on the floor,” he said.
“Liar!” the woman spat at him.
“Liar!” repeated Duke Emmett. “I saw Wacker slug him to death with an iced towel. I saw Wacker shoot him after he was dead — with his own gun. And you saw it, too.”
The conscience-stricken fashion in which the bartender cowered away from them would have convinced even Bill Wacker himself that Flossie Nicholas was telling the truth.