Honest Money and Other Short Novels
- Автор: Гарднер Эрл Стенли
- Год: 1991
- Язык: английский
- Год: Carroll & Graf
- ISBN: 978-0-88184-683-6
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «Honest Money and Other Short Novels». Краткое содержание книги:
The man at Corning’s side made an ineffective effort to open the door. Corning pushed him back.
“Have you got the envelope?” asked Flint.
“Come around the other side,” said Corning. “I’ll talk to you there.”
Flint moved around to the other side of the car.
Corning spoke rapidly.
“The reason I gave you the wrong envelope,” he said, “was because I didn’t have the right envelope. I wanted to find out what it was all about. The general idea was that Grosbeck was killed by a stick-up. He wasn’t. He was betrayed by a friend. When you thought you had the envelope you took it right to Jason, which fold me what I had surmised — that Jason suspected Grosbeck had important evidence that was to go to the Grand Jury, Jason was out when Grosbeck came to his house to see him. Grosbeck waited for Jason to come back. Somebody shot Grosbeck.”
The man in pajamas struggled feebly. “What the devil’s the meaning of this?” he asked.
“You were overcome by smoke,” Corning told him, “and I rescued you.”
“All right, I can get out now,” said the man.
“Who is it?” asked Flint.
“Harry Stanwood,” said Corning. “Do you know him?”
Flint gave an exclamation of surprise.
Corning continued to talk rapidly.
“Two witnesses pin the kill on Fred Parkett. There’s a man named Longwell and one named Monteith. They claim they were there and saw Parkett miming away from the scene of the crime. They weren’t there. Those witnesses were planted. I’ve got an affidavit showing they couldn’t have been there. It’s the affidavit by one of the young women who was with them at a hockey game that didn’t break up until an hour after the murder. Mrs. Jason heard the shot, but she didn’t hear anyone running away from the car where the murder was committed. The reason for that is that nobody did run away.”
Corning turned abruptly to Stanwood.
“How about those papers, Stanwood?”
“What papers?” gasped the man, his face a pasty white.
“The papers that you took from Grosbeck’s body as soon as you had killed him,” said Corning. “The papers that were of such importance to the Grand Jury. The papers that were going to incriminate Dick Carr and some other detectives.”
“You’re crazy!” Stanwood said.
Corning smiled, and the smile was cold.
“It won’t be hard to find out,” he said. “The way I dope it out, Stanwood made the kill, and Dick Carr, the detective, is standing back of him. They needed a fall guy, so they picked on Fred Parkett, the ex-convict. Naturally, Stanwood wasn’t going to surrender the papers until he was out in the clear. But even then he couldn’t stand the gaff. He figured that he had to gild the lily and paint the rose, so he worked with Carr, and got a purse snatcher to plant some evidence on my secretary. I put some smoke bombs in his house so that he d think the place was burning down, and I figured he’d carry his most valuable possessions with him when he went out.”
Stanwood cursed and swung his fist full into Corning’s face. Corning took the blow without flinching, leaned forward and pinned Stanwood’s arms. Flint ran around the car and jerked open the door. The two struggling men fell to the running-board. Flint reached up with the barrel of the gun and brought it sharply down on Stanwood’s skull. Stanwood lay limp.
Flint reached an exploring hand into the breast of Stanwood’s pajamas.
“Here it is,” he said.
“All right,” Corning said. “I don’t want to mix in this any more than I have to. Suppose you tell me what your connection is.”
“I’m a Federal detective,” said Flint. “I was in touch with Jason right after the murder. Jason suspected it wasn’t a simple hold-up, but we always figured Parkett had done the job. Grosbeck had some valuable evidence, and he’d split with the gang. He was going to turn the evidence over to Jason. Jason told him to come to his residence. He’d talked with Jason over the telephone. Jason was delayed getting there, and when he got there Grosbeck was dead.”
Ken Corning brushed the dust from his knees.
“How about packing him over to your car?” he said. “I don’t want to figure in this part of it if I don’t have to. I’ve got a young woman named Mabel Fosdick in the Beechwood Hotel She’s made an affidavit, and she’s willing to tell the truth. She can give you the lever that will crack the testimony of Longwell and Monteith. They’ll probably name the people higher up when you work on them.”
Flint clicked handcuffs of the wrists of the unconscious figure in pajamas. He looked at Corning and his grim features relaxed.
“Do you always get your clients out?” he asked.
Ken Corning shrugged his shoulders.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I get a break. And sometimes... I have to make a break.”
Flint chuckled.
“All right,” he said. “You take his feet and I’ll take his head.”
Devil’s Fire
Ken Corning pushed his way through the gawking pedestrians who still loitered on the sidewalk. They had formed in a white-faced ring about the red pool which spread along the cold surface of the gray cement, reflecting the street lights until they seemed like glowing rubies.
“Who saw it?” Corning asked.
A uniformed officer extended a long arm.
“On your way,” he ordered. “It’s all over now. On your way. Keep moving. Nothing more to see.”
A man moved up to Ken Corning, sized him up with eager eyes.
When he spoke, his voice was whining.
“I seen it, boss.”
The officer singled out Ken Corning.
“Hey, you! On your way. There ain’t nothin’ more to see. Keep movin’.”
Ken Corning sized up the narrow shoulders, the glinting eyes, the lips that twisted back from the teeth.
“All right,” he said. “What happened?”
The officer barged into them.
“You heard what I said. Get movin’ an’ keep movin’. Just because there’s been a man hurt ain’t no sign that...”
“I’m collecting evidence,” Ken Corning told him.
“Huh? Collectin’ what?”
“Evidence.”
“Who you with?”
“I’m a lawyer. I’m representing the man that was arrested for the murder, George Pyle.”
“You’re a lawyer, representing George Pyle?”
“Right.”
“Who hired you?”
“A friend of Pyle’s. They told me to get here and get the facts, then to see what I could do for Pyle.”
The officer’s eyes showed doubt. The crowd, sensing some new diversion, surged in to a closer circle. The man at Ken Corning’s elbow said for him alone: “Let’s go some place where we can talk, bo.”
The officer restated his command, this time in a louder voice, as though he would make himself more certain by adding to his vehemence. Ken Corning took the man’s arm.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They pushed through the curious ring of spectators, heard in the dim distance the wailing of a siren, heard the officer, assured now of his power, ordering the curious bystanders to be on their way.
Ken Corning picked a rooming-house.
“We can go up here,” he said.
“Okey, boss,” the man told him.
They turned in under the illuminated sign and climbed a flight of dark stairs. A simpering landlady, well past middle age, pushed a buckram-backed book with frayed pages across an inclined desk.
Corning looked at the narrow-shouldered man.
“Got any place where you’re staying?” he asked.