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:
Gresham pointed to the reports that had been forwarded to him from the claim department’s files and now lay on his desk.
“That means,” he said quietly, “that the Citadel pays two hundred thousand dollars to Gulliver’s beneficiary, his wife.”
Barrow whistled softly.
“Whew!” he said. “The coverage was double indemnity?”
Gresham nodded grimly.
“It was,” he said, “and in this case it will have to be paid. You know the courts have made the ruling so often it does no good to contest it.”
Barrow sought enlightenment.
“What ruling?” he asked.
“Why, that when a man meets death ‘without expectation’ it is accidental and must be so construed. Certainly no man expects to be murdered. Does he now?”
Thus the Citadel, unless proof of some collusion could be adduced, was to be a heavy loser.
“There’s just one possibility of repudiating such a claim,” Gresham reminded his investigator, “and I don’t think there’s a chance in this case. If it can be shown that the beneficiary of a policyholder was in any way connected with the conspiracy to murder, then the claim is nullified.”
“Why do you say it is not possible in this case?” Barrow demanded. “Do you know Mrs. Gulliver?”
“Well— And it will be some time before she returns home. I saw her off on the Mediterranean cruise — went down to the pier with Gulliver himself. That angle is absolutely hopeless.”
“Have you notified her?”
“Yes. The Albermarle is due at Marseilles to-day. She probably will hurry home. Be at least ten days before we see her, even if she makes decent connections.”
Barrow had definitely determined upon his course of investigation from this point and now he proposed it to his chief.
“With your consent,” he said, “I’d like to stay on this thing. Perhaps there is something about it that will let us out.” Gresham smiled at the resolute young man before him.
“This is one time, Charley my boy,” he said, “that I have no idea — however remote — that we can do anything. To me it is as obvious as anything could be. Some person who harbored a grudge against Gulliver made a daring attack on him and got away with it. Either that or—”
“Mistaken identity,” Barrow interrupted eagerly. He had thought of that.
“Exactly,” Gresham agreed. “It could logically happen that Gulliver was pointed out in a crowd to a killer who had never seen him before. That has occurred.”
A nod from Barrow.
“What I can’t understand, though,” he spoke now as though to himself, “is how the guilty man got away with the thing in such a crowd.”
Gresham chided him.
“Why,” he said, “sometimes you are almost childlike in your faith in human nature. To begin with, what assurance have you that a man did the killing?”
Barrow gasped.
“Why, you don’t mean that you think a woman—”
“I’m not saying who did it. But we don’t know that a man did. Then another thing. If you were in a milling crowd on the Fourteenth Street subway platform and a man suddenly cried out and fell, what would you think?”
Barrow saw what the chief was driving at. And Gresham was right. When Gulliver had fallen everybody near him believed he had fainted and rushed to his side. It was easy for the killer to lose himself in the confusion.
“Well,” Barrow commented, “it all at least gives us something to think about, and I believe I’ll start in the logical way — on the supposition that Gulliver did have enemies who’d like to do away with him. I have an opinion myself, but I’ll forget it for the time being, at least.”
“What’s that?” Gresham asked.
“That Gulliver has had an affair with some woman and his death may be traced directly to that,” Barrow said with finality.
“You’ll find that is decidedly incorrect,” said Gresham. “Gulliver was not of that type. But go to it, my lad. Do it your own way.”
A further exchange of theories and Barrow set forth on his search for a key to the Gulliver mystery.
Chapter II
After the Conference
It was an interesting conference that Barrow interrupted at Police Headquarters a few minutes later, when he presented himself at the offices of Bill Druggan, captain of detectives. He was ushered in forthwith and there found the captain in earnest conversation with Inspector Conalan, and O’Connor, Fay and Thomas, headquarters detectives.
“We’ve been expecting you, Barrow,” Druggan greeted him. “You had Gulliver, didn’t you?”
“We did,” he offered, “for a hundred thousand, with double indemnity.”
Druggan’s eyes widened.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “What a shove that is! Two hundred thou. Gonna pay it?”
“That,” Barrow smiled, “seems to be entirely up to you.”
And he explained his own failure to find anything tangible enough even to begin a search on.
“Have you anything?” he queried.
The inspector here broke in.
“We don’t know,” he frankly acknowledged, “whether we have or not. Gulliver was identified through papers we found in his pocket. He had lost nothing, so far as we can determine. There is just one discovery that has us a little bewildered. Perhaps you can help us. Show him, Bill.” Barrow should have been flattered by this compliment to his powers of deduction. He knew, however, that Conalan, however friendly, meant no such thing. He was a policeman and was merely covering all possible angles.
Druggan produced a sheet of white paper about six inches long and four wide.
Excepting for two words written directly in its center there was no other mark. These read:
The Citadel man studied the paper carefully. It had been folded once. Finally he glanced up.
“Cryptic, to say the least, isn’t it?” he observed. “What does it mean and where did you find it?”
The police inspector looked at his headquarters associates, smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“We don’t know and wish we did,” he replied to Barrow’s, first question, and to the second he offered:
“It was found in the left hand pocket of Gulliver’s coat.”
What importance could be placed upon this scrap of paper, Barrow wondered.
“It must have been a note he had hastily made about something he intended to handle in one of his stories,” he offered. “He was a writer, you know, and I understand that they often do that.”
Druggan grinned triumphantly.
“Dead wrong, old man,” he explained. “This paper was placed in Gulliver’s pocket by the bird who stabbed him.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, there are no finger-prints on it — that is there were none.”
“But what can it mean?”
Conalan again interrupted:
“Why,” he said, “it might mean almost anything. The killer undoubtedly meant to convey the idea that—” He hesitated.
“That what?” Barrow urged.
“That... oh, how in the hell do I know?”
And there the matter rested, at least for the time.
The paper, frankly, was a complete mystery to the police. The person who had written the meaningless words had been meticulously careful to avoid leaving telltale finger-prints and, since the paper itself was the sort that can be purchased at any stationery store in small tablets, there was little upon which to proceed.
Despite this handicap, however, Captain Druggan and the inspector made every effort to check up on the source of the paper. And when Barrow returned to headquarters the following morning, Druggan was disgusted.