Great American Detective Stories

The Riddle of the Yellow Canary by Stuart Palmer

There hasn’t been a HILDEGARDE WITHERS novel in four years, nor a movie in even longer; and Edna Mae Oliver, magnificent creator of the role, is dead. But HILDEGARDE remains the horse-faced and acidulous dean of American women detectives, incomparable and inimitable (as many imitators have proved). Here is something different in the way of WITHERS exploits: a before-the-fact story in which the reader knows from the start the murderer with whom the schoolteacher matches wits — and life. (When once I asked Captain Palmer if he had a model for MISS WITHERS, he replied, “Of course: my father.” There’s another riddle for you.)

The soft April rain was beating against the windows of Arthur Reese’s private office, high above Times Square. Reese himself sat tensely before his desk, studying a sheet of paper still damp from the presses. He had just made the most important decision of his life. He was going to murder the Thorens girl.

For months he had been toying with the idea, as a sort of mental chess problem. Now, when Margie Thorens was making it so necessary that she be quietly removed, he was almost surprised to find that the idle scheme had reached sheer perfection. It was as if he had completed a jig-saw puzzle while thinking of something else.

Beyond his desk was a door. On the glass Reese could read his own name and the word “Private” spelled backwards. As he watched, a shadow blotted out the light, and he heard a soft knock.

“Yes?” he called out.

It was plump, red-haired Miss Kelly — excellent secretary, Kelly, in spite of her platinum finger nails. “Miss Thorens is still waiting to see you,” said Kelly.

She had not held her job long enough to realize just how often, and how long, Margie Thorens had been kept waiting.

“Oh, Lord!” Reese made his voice properly weary. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was five past five. “Tell her I’m too busy,” he began. Then — “No, I’ll stop in the reception room and see her for just a moment before I go. Bad news for her again, I’m afraid.”

Miss Kelly knew all about would-be song writers. She smiled. “Don’t forget your appointment with Mr. Larry Foley at five-thirty. G-night, Mr. Reese.” She closed the door.

Reese resumed his study of the sheet of music. “May Day — a song ballad with words and music by Art Reese, published by Arthur Reese and Company.” He opened the page, found the chorus, and hummed a bar of the catchy music. “I met you on a May day, a wonderful okay day...”

He put the song away safely, and reached into his desk for a large flask of hammered silver. He drank deeply, but not too deeply, and shoved it into his hip pocket.

The outer office was growing suddenly quiet as the song pluggers left their pianos. Vaudeville sister teams, torch-singers, and comics were temporarily giving up the search for something new to interest a fretful and jaded public. Stenographers and clerks were covering their typewriters. The day’s work was over for them — and beginning for Reese.

From his pocket he took an almost microscopic capsule. It was colorless, and no larger than a pea. Yet it was potentially more dangerous than a dozen cobras... a dark gift of fortune which had started the whole plot working in his mind.

Three years ago an over-emotional young lady, saddened at the prospect of being tossed aside “like a worn glove,” had made a determined effort to end her own life under circumstances which would have been very unpleasant indeed for Arthur Reese. He had luckily been able to take the cyanide of potassium from her in time. She was married and in Europe now. There would be no way of tracing the stuff. It was pure luck.

The capsule was his own idea, a stroke of genius. He rolled it in his fingers, then looked at his watch. It was fifteen minutes past five. The lights of Times Square were beginning to come on, clashing with the lingering dullness of the April daylight. Reese picked up a brown envelope which lay on his desk, crossed to his top-coat, and pocketed a pair of fight gloves. Then he stepped out into the brilliantly lighted but deserted outer office.

The first door on his right bore only the figure “1” on the glass. It was unlocked, and he stepped quickly through. It did not matter if anyone saw him, he knew, yet it would be safer if not.

Margie Thorens leaped up from the piano stool — the room was furnished so that it could be used by Reese’s staff if necessary, and came toward him. Reese smiled with his mouth, but his eyes stared at her as if he had never seen her before.

There had been a time not so long ago when Arthur Reese had thought this helpless, babyish girl very attractive, with her dark eyes, darker hair, and the hot sullen mouth. But that time was ever and done. He steeled himself to bear her kiss, but he was saved from completing that Judas gesture. She stopped, searching his face.

“Sit down, Margie,” he said.

She dropped to the stool. “Sit down yourself,” she told him. Her voice was husky. “Or do you have to rush away? Making another trip to Atlantic City this week-end?” Her words dripped with meaning. She played three notes on the black keys.

“Forget your grouch,” said Reese. “I’ve got news.”

“You’d better have!” She swung on him. “You’ve got to do something about me. I’m not going to sit out in the cold. Not with what I’ve got on you, Lothario.”

She had raised her voice, and he didn’t want that. “Good news,” he said hastily. Her eyes widened a little. “Oh, it’s not the Tennessee song. That stuff is passé. But I finally got Larry Foley to listen to May Day, and he thinks it’s great. Another Echo in the Valley, he says. So I’m going to publish it. He’s willing to plug it with his band over the air, and he’ll make a play to get it in the picture he’s going to do in Hollywood. You’re a success! You’re a song writer at last!”

Margie Thorens looked as though she might fall. “It’s all true,” he assured her. As a matter of fact it was. Reese had known that it would be easier to tell the truth than to invent a lie. And it wouldn’t matter afterward. “I’m rushing publication, and there’ll be a contract for you in the morning.”

She was still dizzy. “You... you’re not going to horn in as co-author or anything? Truly, Art?”

“You look dizzy,” he said. He pulled out his flask. “How about a drink to celebrate?”

Margie shook her head. “Not on an empty stomach,” she pleaded. “I’d like a glass of water, though.”

The carefully designed plan of Arthur Reese rearranged itself, like a shaken kaleidoscope. He hurried to the water-cooler in the corner, and after a second’s pause returned with a conical paper cup nearly full. “This will fix you up,” he told her.

Margie drained it at one gulp, and he breathed again. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was five-twenty. The capsule would hold for four to six minutes...

“Better still,” he rushed on. “I got an idea for a lyric the other day, and Foley likes it. If you can concoct a good sobby tune to go with it...”

He fumbled at his pockets. “I’ve lost the notes,” he said. “But I can remember the lyric if you’ll write it down.” He handed her a yellow pencil and the brown envelope which held her rejected manuscript of Tennessee Sweetheart. “It begins — Good-bye, good-bye—”

He dictated, very slowly, for what seemed to him an hour. He stole a glance at his watch, and saw that four minutes had elapsed. He found himself improvising, repeating a line...

“You gave me that once,” protested Margie. “And the rhymes are bad.” She raised her head as if she had suddenly remembered some unspeakable and ancient secret. “Turn on the lights!” she cried. “It’s getting — Art! I can’t see you!” She groped to her feet. “Art... oh, God, what have you done to me...”

Her voice trailed away, and little bubbles were at her lips. She plunged forward, before he could catch her.

Reese found himself without any particular emotion except gratitude that her little body had not been heavy enough to shake the floor. He left her there, and went swiftly to the door. There was no sign that anyone had been near to hear that last desperate appeal. He congratulated himself on his luck. This sort of thing was far simpler than the books had made him suppose.

He closed the door, and shot the bolt which was designed to insure privacy for the musicians. Then he began swiftly to complete his picture — a picture that was to show to the whole world the inevitable suicide of Margie Thorens.

He first donned his light gloves. It was no effort at all to lift the girl to the wicker settee, although he had to resist a temptation to close the staring dark eyes.

He reached for the tiny gold-washed strap-watch that Margie Thorens wore around her left wrist. Here he struck a momentary snag. Reese had meant to set the hands at five of six, and then smash the thing in order to set the time of the “suicide,” but the crystal had broken when she fell.

The watch was not ticking. He removed one glove, and carefully forced the hands of the little timepiece ahead. The shards of broken glass impeded their movement, but they moved. He put his glove back on.

Reese did not neglect to gather up the fragment or two of glass which had fallen on the oak floor, and place them where they would naturally have been if the watch had been broken against the arm of the settee in her death agony. Luckily the daylight lingered.

The paper cup was on the floor. He was not sure that finger-prints could be wiped from paper, so he crumpled it into his pocket. Taking another from the rack, he sloshed a bit of water into it, and then dropped in a few particles of the poison which he had saved for some such purpose. The mixture he spilled about the dead mouth and face, and let the cup fall where it would have fallen from the nerveless fingers. On second thought, he picked it up, placed it in the limp hand of Margie Thorens, and crumpled it there with his gloved hand.

It was finished — and water-tight, he knew that. Who could doubt that a young and lonely girl, stranded in New York without friends or family, disappointed in her ambitions and low in funds, might be moved to take her own life?

Reese looked at his watch. The hands had barely passed the hour of five-thirty-five. He had twenty minutes to establish a perfect alibi, if he should ever need one.

There still remained a ticklish bit of fine work. He unlocked the door and looked out into the main office. It was still deserted. He stepped out, leaving the door ajar, and put his arm inside to turn the brass knob which shot the bolt.

Pressing the large blade of his jack-knife against the spring lock, he withdrew his arm and swung the door shut. Then he pulled away the knife, and the latch clicked. Margie Thorens was dead in a room which had a window without a fire escape, and a door locked on the inside.

In two minutes Reese was laughing with the elevator boy on his way down. In five more he stepped out of the men’s room at the Roxy Grill, washed and groomed, and with the paper cup and the folded paper which had held poison and capsule all gone forever via the plumbing. When the big clock above the bar pointed to ten of six, Reese had already stood Larry Foley his second round of drinks. He was softly humming May Day.

Inspector Oscar Piper called Spring 7-3100 before he put on his slippers. “Anything doing, Sergeant?”

“Nothing but a lousy suicide of a dame up in Tin Pan Alley?” the phone sergeant said. “Scrub woman found her, and the precinct boys are there now.”

“I’ll stop in and have a look in the morning?” decided the Inspector. “These things are all alike.”

The morrow was a Saturday, and Miss Hildegarde Withers was thus relieved of the necessity of teaching the young how to sprout down in Jefferson School’s third grade. But if she had any ideas of lying abed in luxurious idleness, they were rudely shattered by the buzzing of the telephone.

“Yes, Oscar,” she said wearily.

“You’ve often asked me how the police can spot a suicide from a murder,” Piper was saying. “Well, I’m on the scene of a typical suicide, perfect in every detail but one and that doesn’t matter. Want to have a look? If you hurry you’ll have a chance to see the stiff before she goes to the morgue.”

“I’ll come,” decided the school teacher. “But I shall purposely dawdle in hopes of missing your exhibit.”

Dawdle as she did, she still rode up the ten stories in the elevator and entered the offices of Arthur Reese, Music Publisher, before the white-clad men from the morgue arrived. Her long face, somewhat resembling that of a well-bred horse, made a grimace as the Inspector showed her the broken lock of the little reception and music room, and what lay beyond.

“Scrub women came in at midnight, and found the door locked. They got the night watchman to break it, since it couldn’t have been locked from the outside, and thought somebody was ill inside or something. Somebody was. The medical examiner was out on Long Island over that latest gang killing, and couldn’t get here till a couple of hours ago, but he found traces of cyanide on her mouth. The autopsy will confirm it, he says.” Miss Withers nodded. “She looks awfully — young,” she said.

“She was,” Piper told her. “We’ve checked up on the kid. Ran away from an Albany high school to make her fortune as a song-writer, so she’s even younger than you thought. Been in New York five months and got nothing but rejections. Yesterday afternoon she got another one and she waited until everyone else had gone, and bumped herself off. Left a suicide note on the piano, too.” The Inspector handed over the brown envelope. “Wrote it on the envelope which held the bad news — her rejected manuscript. And notice how firm and steady the writing is, right to the last word almost.”

Miss Withers noticed. She bent to squint over the rhymed note. She saw:

“Good-bye, good-bye I cry

A long and last good-bye

Good-bye to Broadway and the lights

Good-bye sad days and lonely nights

I’ve waited alone

To sing this last song

Good-bye..

     ..

      ..

       ..

        ..”

She read it through again. “She didn’t sign it,” Piper went on. “But it’s her handwriting all right. Checks with the manuscript of the rejected song in the envelope, and also with a letter in her handbag that she was going to mail.”

“A letter?” Miss Withers handed back the envelope. But the letter was a disappointment. It was a brief note to the Metropolitan Gas Company, promising that a check would be mailed very shortly to take care of the overdue bill, and signed “Margery Thorens.”

Miss Withers gave it back. She took the tiny handbag that had been the dead girl’s, and studied it for a moment. “She had a miniature fountain pen, I see,” said the school teacher. “It writes, too. Wonder why she used a pencil?”

“Well, use it she did, because here it is.” Piper handed her the long yellow pencil which had lain on the floor. The school teacher looked at it for a long time.

“The picture is complete,” said Piper jovially. “There’s only one tiny discrepancy, and that doesn’t matter.”

Miss Withers wanted to know what it was. “Only this,” said the Inspector. “We know the time she died, because she smashed her wrist watch in her death throes. That was five minutes to six. But at that hour it’s pretty dark — and this is the first time I ever heard of a suicide going off in the dark. They usually want the comfort of a light.”

“Perhaps,” said Miss Withers, “perhaps she died earlier, and the watch was wrong? Or it might have run a little after she died?”

The Inspector shook his head. “The watch was too badly smashed to run a tick after she fell,” he said. “Main stem broken. And she must have died after dark because there was somebody here in the offices until around five-thirty. I tell you...”

He was interrupted by a sergeant in a baggy blue uniform. “Reese has just come in, Inspector. I told him you said he should wait in his office.”

“Right!” Oscar Piper turned to Miss Withers. “Reese is the boss of this joint, and ought to give us a line on the girl. Come along if you like.”

Miss Withers liked. She followed him into the outer office and through a door marked “Arthur Reese, Private.” The Inspector, as was their usual fiction, introduced her as his stenographer.

Reese burst out, a little breathlessly, with “What a thing to happen — here! I came down as soon as I heard. What a—”

“What a thing to happen anywhere,” Miss Withers said under her breath.

“Poor little Margie!” finished the man at the desk.

Piper grew suddenly Inspectorish. “Margie, eh? You knew her quite well, then?”

“Of course!” Reese was as open as a book. “She’s been hounding the life out of me for months because I have the reputation of sometimes publishing songs by beginners. But what could I do? She had more ambition than ability...”

“You didn’t know her personally, then?”

Reese shook his head. “Naturally, I took a friendly interest in her, but anyone in my office will tell you that I never run around with would-be song writers. It would make things too difficult. Somebody is always trying to take advantage of friendship, you know.”

“When did you last see the Thorens girl?” Piper cut in.

Reese turned and looked out of the window. “I am very much afraid,” he said, “that I was the last person to see her alive. If I had only known...”

“Get this, Hildegarde!” commanded Piper.

“I am and shall,” she came back.

“Several weeks ago,” began Reese, “Margie Thorens submitted to me a song called Tennessee Sweetheart, in manuscript form. It was her fifth or sixth attempt, but it was a lousy — I beg your pardon, a terrible song. Couldn’t publish it. Last night she came in, and I gave her the bad news. Made it as easy as I could, but she looked pretty disappointed. I had to rush off and leave her, as I had an appointment for five-thirty with Larry Foley, the radio crooner. So I saw her last in the reception room where she died — it must have been five-thirty or a little earlier.”

Miss Withers whispered to the Inspector. “Oh,” said he, “how did you know that the Thorens girl died in the reception room?”

“I didn’t,” admitted Reese calmly. “I guessed it. You haven’t got that cop standing guard at the broken door for exercise. Anyway, I was a few minutes later for my date because of the rain, but I met Foley at about twenty to six. He’ll testify to that, and fifty others.”

Piper nodded. He took a glittering gadget from his pocket. “Can you identify this, Mr. Reese?”

Reese studied the watch. “On first glance, I should say that it was Margie’s. But I wouldn’t know...”

“You wouldn’t know, then, if it was usually on time?”

Reese was thoughtful. “Of course I wouldn’t. But Margie was usually on time, if that is anything. I said when she phoned me yesterday morning that I’d see her if she came in at quarter to five, and on the dot she arrived. I was busy, and she had to wait.”

The Inspector started to put the watch back into its envelope, but Miss Withers held out her hand. She wrinkled her brows above it, as the Inspector put his last question.

“You don’t know, then, anything about any private love affairs Miss Thorens might have had?”

“Absolutely not. I don’t even know where she lived, or anything except that she came from somewhere upstate — Albany I think it was. One of her attempts at song-writing was titled Amble to Albany.”

Piper and the music publisher walked slowly out of the office, toward where a wicker basket was being swiftly carried through a broken door by two brawny men in white. Miss Withers lingered behind to study the wrist watch which had been Margie Thorens’. It was a trumpery affair with a square modernistic face. Miss Withers found it hard to tell time by such a watch. She noted that the minute hand pointed to five before the hour, and that the hour hand was in the exactly opposite direction. She put it safely away, and hurried after the Inspector.

With the departure of the mortal remains of Margie Thorens, the offices of Arthur Reese and Company seemed to perk up a bit. The red-haired Miss Kelly returned to her desk outside Reese’s office, wearing a dress which Miss Withers thought cut a bit too low in front for business purposes. The clerks and stenographers were permitted to fill the large room again, somewhere a man began to bang very loudly upon a piano, and an office boy rushed past Miss Withers with a stack of sheet music fresh from the printer’s.

“Well, we’ll be off,” said the Inspector suddenly, in her ear.

Miss Hildegarde Withers jumped. “Eh? Well what?”

“We’ll leave. This case is plain as the nose — I mean, plain as day. Nothing here for the Homicide Squad.”

“Naturally,” said Miss Withers. Rut her thoughts were somewhere else.

The Inspector had learned to heed her suggestions. “Anything wrong? You haven’t found anything that I’ve missed, have you?”

Hildegarde Withers shook her head. “That’s just the trouble,” she said. “I’m beginning to suspect myself of senility.”

“Tell me,” said Miss Withers that evening, “just what are the clues which spell suicide so surely?”

“First, the locked door to insure privacy,” said the Inspector. “Second, the suicide note, for it’s human nature to leave word behind. Third, the motive — in this case, melancholy. Fourth, the suicide must be an emotional, neurotic person. Get me?”

“Clear as crystal,” said Hildegarde Withers. “But granted that a girl chooses to die in darkness, why does she write a suicide note in darkness? And why does she bend a pencil?”

“But the pencil wasn’t bent!”

“Exactly!” said Hildegarde Withers, thoughtfully.

To all intents and purposes, that ended the Thorens case. Inspector Oscar Piper turned his attention to weightier matters. Medical Examiner Bloom reported, on completion of the autopsy, that the deceased had met death at her own hands through taking a lethal dose of cyanide of potassium, probably obtained in a college or high school laboratory, or perhaps from a commercial orchard spray.

Miss Hildegarde Withers attended to her usual duties down at Jefferson School, and somewhere in the back of her mind a constant buzzing continued to bother her. The good lady was honestly bewildered by her own stubbornness. It was perfectly possible that the obvious explanation was the true one. For the life of her she could think of no other that fit even some of the known facts. And yet—

On Tuesday, the fourth day after the death of Margie Thorens, Miss Withers telephoned to Inspector Piper, demanding further information. “Ask Max Van Donnen how long the girl could have lived after taking the poison, will you?”

But the old German laboratory expert had not analyzed the remains, said Piper. Dr. Bloom had summarized the findings of the autopsy — and Margie Thorens had died an instant death. In her vital organs was a full grain of cyanide of potassium, one of the quickest known poisons.

“She couldn’t have taken the poison and then written the note?” asked Miss Withers.

“Impossible,” said the Inspector. “But what in the name of—”

Miss Withers had hung up. Again she had struck a stone wall. But too many stone walls were in themselves proof that something was a little wrong in this whole business.

That afternoon Miss Withers called upon a Mrs. Blenkinsop, the landlady who operated the rooming house in which Margie Thorens had lived. She found that lady fat, dingy, and sympathetic.

“I read in the papers that the poor darling is to be sent home to her aunt in Albany, and that her class is to be let out of high school to be honorary pall-bearers,” said Mrs. Blenkinsop. “Such a quiet one she was, the poor child. But it’s them that runs deep.”

Miss Withers agreed to this. “Do you suppose I could see her rooms?”

“Of course,” agreed the landlady. “Everything is just as she left it, because her rent was paid till the end of April, and that’s a week yet.” She led the way up a flight of stairs. “You know, the strangest thing about the whole business was her going off that way and making no provision for her pets. You’d a thought—”

“Pets?”

The landlady threw open a door. “Yes’m. A fine tortoise shell cat, and a bird. A happy family if ever I saw one. I guess Miss Thorens was lonesome here in the city, and she gave all her love to them. Feed and water ’em I’ve done ever since I heard the news...” She snapped her fat fingers as they came into a dark, bare room furnished with little more than the bare necessities of life. It was both bedroom and sitting room, with the kitchenette in a closet and a bath across the hall. One large window looked out upon bare rooftops. One glance told Miss Withers that the room existed only for the rented grand piano which stood near the window.

Mrs. Blenkinsop snapped her fingers again, and a rangy, half-grown cat arose from the bed and stretched itself. “Nice Pussy,” said Mrs. Blenkinsop.

Pussy refused to be patted, and as soon as she had made sure that neither visitor carried food she returned to her post on the pillow. Both great amber eyes were staring up at the gilt cage which hung above the piano, in the full light of the window. Inside the cage was a small yellow canary, who eyed the intruders balefully and muttered, “Cheep, cheep.”

“I’ve got no instructions about her things, poor darling,” said the landlady. “I suppose they’ll want me to pack what few clothes she had. If nobody wants Pussy, I’ll keep her, for there’s mice in the basement. I don’t know what to do with the bird, for I hate the dratted things. I got a radio, anyhow...”

The woman ran on interminably. Miss Withers listened carefully, but she soon saw that Mrs. Blenkinsop knew less about Margie Thorens than did she herself. The woman was sure, she insisted, that Margie had never had men callers in her room.

More than anything, Miss Withers wanted a look around, though she knew the police had done a routine job already. She wondered if she must descend to the old dodge of the fainting spell and the request for a glass of water, but she was saved from it by a ring at the bell downstairs.

“I won’t be a minute,” promised Mrs. Blenkinsop. She hastened out of the door. Miss Withers made a hurried search of bureau drawers, of the little desk, the music on the piano... and found nothing that gave her an inkling. There were reams of music paper, five or six rejected songs in manuscript form... that was the total. The room had no character.

Miss Withers sat down at the piano and struck a chord. If only this instrument, Margie’s one outlet in the big city, could speak! There was a secret here somewhere... for the understanding eye and heart to discover. Miss Withers let her fingers ramble over the keys, in the few simple chords she knew. And then the canary burst into song!

“Dickie!” said the school teacher. “You surprise me.” All canaries are named Dickie, and none of them know it. The bird sang on, improvising, trilling, swinging gaily by its tiny talons from the bottom of its trapeze. Miss Withers realized that there was a rare singer indeed. Her appreciation was shared by Pussy, who dug shining claws into the cover of the bed and narrowed his amber eyes. The song went on and on...

Miss Withers thought of something. She had once read that the key to a person’s character lies in the litter which accumulates beneath the paper in his bureau drawers. She hurried back to the bureau, and explored again. She found two dance programs, a stub of pencil, pins, a button, and a smashed cigarette, beneath the lining.

She was about to replace the paper when she heard someone ascending the stairs. That would be Mrs. Blenkinsop. Hastily she jammed the wearing apparel back in the drawer, and thrust the folded newspaper which had lined it into her handbag. When the door opened she was talking to the still twittering canary.

She took her departure as soon as she could, leaving Mrs. Blenkinsop completely in the dark as to the reasons for her call. “I hope you’re not from a tabloid,” said the landlady. “I don’t want my house to get a bad name...”

Down the street Miss Withers paused to take the bulky folded newspaper from her bag. But she didn’t throw it away. It was a feature story clipped from the “scandal sheet” of a Sunday paper — a story which dealt with the secrets behind some of America’s song hits, how they were adapted from classics, revamped every ten years and put out under new names, together with photographs of famous song writers.

But the subject of the story was not what attracted Miss Withers’ eagle eye. Across the top margin of the paper a rubber stamp had placed the legend — “With the compliments of the Hotel Rex — America’s Riviera — Boardwalk.”

“Dr. Bloom? This is Hildegarde Withers. Yes, Withers. I have a very delicate question to ask you, doctor. In making your autopsy of the Thorens girl’s body, did you happen to notice whether or not she was — er, enceinte? It is very important, doctor, or I wouldn’t bother you. If you say yes, it will turn suicide into murder.”

“I say no,” said crusty Dr. Bloom. “I did and she wasn’t.” And that was the highest stone wall of all for Hildegarde Withers.

“Where in heaven’s name have you been hiding yourself?” inquired the Inspector when Miss Withers entered his office on Friday of that week after the death of Margie Thorens.

“I’ve been cutting classes,” she said calmly. “A substitute is enduring my troop of hellions, and I’m doing scientific research.”

“Yeah? And in what direction?” The Inspector was in a jovial mood, due to the fact that both his Commissioner and the leading gangster of the city were out of town — not together, but still far enough out of town to insure relative peace and quiet to New York City.

“I’m an expert locksmith,” Miss Withers told him. “I’ve spent three hours learning something about poisons from Max Van Donnen, who has forgotten more than the Medical Examiner ever knew! He says you can’t swallow a lethal dose of cyanide without dying before it gets to the stomach — unless it’s in a capsule.”

“You’re not still hopped up about the Thorens suicide?” The Inspector was very amused. “Why, that’s the clearest, open and shut case...”

“Oscar, did you ever hear of a murder without the ghost of a motive?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t exist,” he told her. She nodded slowly. “See you later,” she said.

Miss Withers rode uptown on the subway, crossed over to Times Square, and came into the offices of Arthur Reese, Music Publisher.

The red-headed Miss Kelly looked up with a bright smile. “Mr. Reese is very busy just now,” she said. Miss Withers took a chair, and stared around the long office. It was a scene of redoubled activity since her last visit, with vaudevillians, song-pluggers, office boys and radio artists rushing hither and yon. On the wall opposite her was an enlargement in colors of the cover of the new song, May Day — by Art Reese. On every desk and table were stacks of copies of the new song, May Day.

“So Mr. Reese is a composer as well as a publisher?” Miss Withers asked conversationally.

Miss Kelly was in a friendly mood. “Oh, yes! You know, he wrote that big hit, Sunny Jim, which is how he got started in the music business. Of course, that was before I came here...”

“When was it?” asked Miss Withers.

“Two years ago, at least. But May Day is going to be a bigger hit than any of them. It’s going to be the sensation of the season. All the crooners want it, and the contracts for records are being signed this week.”

Miss Withers nodded. “There’s a lot of money in writing a song, isn’t there?”

“A hit — oh, yes. Berlin made a quarter of a million out of Russian Lullaby.” Miss Kelly had to raise her voice, as a dozen pianos in a dozen booths were clashing out lilting, catchy music. A door opened somewhere, and Miss Withers heard a sister team warbling soft, close-harmony... “I met you on a May Day, a wonderful okay day, and that was my hey-hey day... a day I can’t forget...”

“It’s published the first of May,” Miss Kelly went on chattily. “And that’s why Mr. Reese is so busy. He’s got to go out of town this afternoon, and I’m afraid he won’t be able to see you today without an appointment.”

“Eh?” Miss Withers started. “Yes, of course. No, he won’t. I mean... I mean...” She rose suddenly to her feet, humming the lilting music of May Day. It was familiar, hauntingly familiar. Of course, she had read of how popular tunes were stolen. And yet — suddenly the mists cleared and she knew. Knew where she had heard those first few bars of music — knew what the meaning of it all must be — knew the answer to the riddle. She tinned and walked swiftly from the room.

She rode down in the elevator somehow, and stumbled out of it into the main hall. There she stopped short. She could waste no energy in walking. Every ounce of her strength was needed to think with. The whole puzzle was assembling itself in her mind — all the hundred odd and varied bits flying into place. Everything—

She stood there for a long time, wondering what to do. Should she do anything? Wasn’t it better to let well enough alone? Nobody would believe her, not even Oscar Piper. Certainly not Oscar Piper.

She stood there until one o’clock struck, and the hall was filled with luncheon-bound clerks and stenographers. Her head was aching and her hands were icy-cold. There was a glitter in her eyes, and her nostrils were extraordinarily wide.

Miss Withers was about to move on when she stopped, frozen into immobility. She saw the elevator descend, saw the doors open... and out stepped the plump, red-haired Miss Kelly.

She was laughing up into the face of Arthur Reese. Reese was talking, softly yet clearly, oblivious of everything except the warm and desirable girl who smiled at him...

Miss Withers pressed closer, and caught one sentence — one only. “You’ll be crazy about the American Riviera...” he was promising.

Then they were gone.

Miss Withers had three nickels. She made three phone calls. The first was to Penn Station, the second to Mrs. Blenkinsop, and the third to Spring 7-3100. She asked for Inspector Piper.

“Quick!” she cried. “Oscar, I’ve got it! The Thorens suicide wasn’t — I mean it was murder!”

“Who?” asked Piper sensibly.

“Reese, of course,” she snapped. “I want you to arrest him quick...”

“But the locked door?”

Miss Withers said she could duplicate that trick, given a knife and the peculiar type of lock that Reese had installed on his music-reception room.

“But the suicide note?”

Miss Withers gave as her opinion that it was dictated, judging by the spaces between words and the corrections made by the writer.

“But... but, Hildegarde, you can’t force a person to take poison!” Miss Withers said you could give them poison under the guise of something more innocent.

“You’re still crazy,” insisted the Inspector. “Why—”

Miss Withers knew what he was thinking. “The alibi? Well, Oscar, the murder was committed at a time when Reese was still in his office, which explains the daylight. He smashed the girl’s watch, and then set the hands ahead. But you didn’t have sense enough to know that with the minute hand at five of six, the hour hand cannot naturally be exactly opposite! Particles of glass interfered, and the hands of her watch were at an impossible angle!”

Piper had one last shot in his locker. “But the motive?”

“I can’t explain, and the train leaves in twenty minutes!” Miss Withers was a bit hysterical. “She’s a nice girl, Oscar, even if she has platinum finger-nails. She mustn’t go with him, I tell you. If they get out of the state, it means extradition and God knows what — it’ll be too late...”

“Take an aspirin and go to bed,” said the Inspector kindly. “You’re too wrought up over this. My dear woman...” He got the receiver crashed in his ear.

Mr. Arthur Reese was out to enjoy a pleasant week-end. The first balmy spring weather of the year had come, aptly enough, on the heels of his first happy week in many a month. To have May Day showing such excellent signs of becoming a hit upon publication day was almost too much.

He made no mistakes. He did not try to kiss Kelly in the taxi, not even after they had picked up her suitcase and were approaching Penn Station. There would be time enough for that later.

“This trip is partly pleasure as well as business,” he said to Miss Kelly. “We both need a rest after everything that’s happened this week — and I want you to play with me a little. Call me Art...”

“Sure,” said Kelly. “You can call me Gladys, too. But I like Kelly better.” She snuggled a little closer to her employer. “Gee, this is thrilling,” she said. “I’ve never been to Atlantic City even — let alone with a man and adjoining rooms and everything... what my mother would say!”

“Very few people would understand about things like this,” said Reese comfortably. “About how a man and a girl can have a little adventure together like this — really modem...”

“If you say so,” said Kelly, “it’s true. You know I’ve had a crush on you ever since I came to work for you, Mr. Reese — Art...”

“Sure,” he said. “And I’m crazy about you, too.” He paused, and his eyes very imperceptibly narrowed. “How old are you, Kelly?”

“Twenty,” she said wonderingly. “Why?”

“Nice age, twenty,” said Reese, taking a deep breath. “Well, Kelly — here we are.”

Reese had a stateroom on the Atlantic City Special, and Kelly was naturally pleased and excited by that. She was greener than he had thought. Well, he owed this to himself, Reese thought. A sort of reward after a hard week. It was a week ago today that—

“What are you thinking of?” asked Kelly. “You look so mad.”

“Business,” Reese told her. He took a hammered silver flask from his pocket. “How about a stiff one?” She shook her head, and then gave in.

He took a longer one, because he needed it even worse than Kelly. Then he took her hungrily in his arms. “I mustn’t let him know how green I am,” thought Kelly.

The door opened, and they sprang apart.

A middle-aged, fussy school teacher was coming into the stateroom. Both Kelly and Reese thought her vaguely familiar, but the world is full of thinnish elderly spinsters.

“This is a private stateroom,” blurted Reese.

“Excuse me,” said Hildegarde Withers. When she spoke, they knew who she was.

She neither advanced nor retreated. She had a feeling that she had taken hold of a tiger’s tail and couldn’t let go.

“Don’t go with him,” she said to Kelly. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Kelly, very naturally, said, “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

“I am,” said Miss Withers. She shut the door behind her. “This man is a murderer, with blood on his hands...”

Kelly looked at Reese’s hands. They had no red upon them, but they were moving convulsively.

“He poisoned Margie Thorens,” said Miss Withers conversationally. “He probably will poison you, too, in one way or another.”

“She’s stark mad,” said Arthur Reese nervously. “Stark, staring mad!” He rose to his feet and advanced. “Get out of here,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re saying...”

“Be quiet,” Miss Withers told him. “Young lady, are you going to follow my advice? I tell you that Margie Thorens once took a weekend trip with this man to Atlantic City — America’s Riviera — and she’s having her high school class as honorary pallbearers as a result of it.”

“Will you go?” cried Reese.

“I will not.” There was a lurch of the car as the train got under way. Shouts of “all aboard” rang down the platform. “This man is going to be arrested at the other end of the line — arrested for murdering Margie Thorens by giving her poison and then dictating a suicide note to her as—”

Reese moved rather too quickly for Miss Withers to scream. She had counted on screaming, but his hands caught her throat. They closed, terribly...

The murderer had only one thought, and that was to silence forever that sharp, accusing voice. He was rather well on to succeeding when he heard a clear soprano in his ear. “Stop! Stop hurting her, I tell you!”

He pressed the tighter as the train got really under way. And then Kelly hit him in the face with his own flask. She hit him again.

Reese choked, caught the flask and flung it wildly through the window, and dropped his victim. He was swearing horribly, in a low and expressionless voice. He shoved Kelly aside, stepped over Miss Withers, and tore out into the corridor. The porter was standing there, his sepia face gray-green from the sounds he had heard. Reese threw him aside and trampled on him. He fought his way to the vestibule, and found that a blue-clad conductor was just closing up the doors. Reese knocked him down, and leaped for the end of the platform.

One foot plunged into the recess between train and platform, and his hands clawed at the air. He fell sidewise, struck a wooden partition which bounded the platform, and scrambled forward.

He leaped to his feet. He was free! It would take a minute for the train to stop. He whirled and ran back along the platform...

He knocked over a child, kicked a dog savagely because its leash almost tripped him, and flung men and women out of his way. The train was stopping with a hissing of air-brakes. He ran the faster...

He saw his way cleared, except for a smallish middle-aged man in a gray suit who was hurrying down the stairs — a man who blinked stupidly at him. Arthur Reese knocked him aside — and was then very deftly flung forward in a double somersault. Deft hands caught his arm, and raised it to the back of his neck, excruciatingly.

“What’s all this?” said Inspector Oscar Piper. “What’s your blasted hurry?”

Miss Withers came to life to find a porter splashing water in her face, and red-haired Miss Kelly praying unashamed. The train had stopped. “I’m all right,” she said. “But where did he go — he got away!”

They came out on the platform to find the Inspector sitting on his captive. “This was the only train that left any station in twenty minutes,” said Piper. “I changed my mind and thought I’d better rally around. Somebody better send for the wagon.”

An hour or so later Miss Withers sat in an armchair, surrounded by the grim exhibits which fine the walls of the Inspector’s office in Center Street. She still felt seedy, but not too seedy to outline her deductions as to the manner in which Reese had committed the “suicide” of Margie Thorens. One by one she checked off the points. “I knew that a girl who had a fountain pen in her handbag wouldn’t use a pencil to write something unless it was given to her,” she said. “It wasn’t her own, because it was too long to fit into the bag, unless it miraculously bent. From then on the truth came slowly but surely...”

“But the motive!” insisted Piper. “We’ve got to have a motive. I’ve got Reese detained downstairs, but we can’t book him without a motive.”

Miss Withers nodded. Then — “Did a woman come down to see you, a Mrs. Blenkinsop?”

The Inspector shook his head. “No — wait a minute. She came and went again. But she left a package for you with the desk lieutenant...”

“Good enough,” said Miss Withers. “If you’ll call Reese in here I’ll produce the motive.”

Arthur Reese, strangely enough, came quietly and pleasantly, with a smile on his face. There was an officer on either side, but Piper had them go outside the door.

“I’m sorry, madam,” said Reese when he saw Miss Withers. “But I lost my head when you said those terrible things. I didn’t know what I was doing. If I’d realized that you were a policewoman...”

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Margie Thorens,” cut in Piper. “Under the law, you may make a confession but you may not make a plea of guilty to a charge of murder...”

“Guilty? But I’m not guilty! This woman here may have made a lot of wild guesses as to how I might have killed Margie Thorens, but man alive — where’s my motive? Just because I made love to her months ago...”

“And took her to Atlantic City — before she was eighteen,” cut in Miss Withers. “That gave her a hold over you, for she was under the age of consent. Being an ambitious and precocious little thing, she tried desperately to blackmail you into publishing one of her songs. And then you found that she had accidently struck a masterpiece of popular jingles — this famous May Day. So you took the song, and made it your own property by removing Margie. She wrote May Day — not you! That’s my motive!”

Reese shook his head. “You haven’t got any proof,” he said confidently. “Where’s one witness? That’s all I ask! Just one—”

“Here’s the one,” said Hildegarde Withers calmly. From behind the desk she took up a paper-wrapped bundle. Stripping the newspapers away, she brought out a gilt cage, in which a small yellow bird blinked and muttered indignantly.

Miss Withers put it on the desk. “This was Margie Thorens’ family,” she said. “One of her only two companions in the long days and nights she spent, a bewildered little girl, trying to make a name for herself in an adult’s world.” She clucked to the little bird, and then, as the ruffled feathers subsided, Miss Withers began to whistle. Over and over again she whistled the first bar of the unpublished song hit, May Day.

“I met you on a May day...”

“Who-whew whew-whee whee whee,” continued Dickie happily, swelling his throat. On through the second, through the third bar... The Inspector gripped the table top.

“Reese, you said yourself that you never called on Miss Thorens and never knew where she lived,” said Hildegarde Withers triumphantly. “Then I wish you’d tell me how her canary learned the chorus of your unpublished song hit!”

Arthur Reese started to say something, but there was nothing to say. “I talked to a pet store man this morning,” said Miss Withers, “and he said that it’s perfectly possible to teach a clever canary any tune, provided he hears it over and over and over. Well, Dickie here is first witness for the prosecution!”

Arthur Reese’s shrill hysterical laughter drowned out anything else she might have said. He was dragged away, while the canary still whistled.

“I’m going to keep him,” said Miss Withers impulsively. She did keep Dickie, for several months, only giving him away to Mrs. Macfarland, wife of her Principal, when she learned that he would never learn any other tune but May Day...

It was December when Inspector Oscar Piper received an official communication. “You are invited to attend, as a witness for the State of New York, the execution of Arthur Reese at midnight, January 7th... Sing Sing, Ossining, New York per L. E. I.”

“With pleasure,” said the Inspector.