Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

Grand larceny was nothing new at luxurious San Alpa, but O’Hanna had to admit he was startled when one of the guests put in a claim for a stolen comet. That innocent astronomical phenomenon became the cause of two very un-innocent deaths. Not bad, from a distance of three hundred light-years!

Chapter One Crime in the Sky

Spica Zane was tall, blond, and curved. She said: “You’ll love the Palomar Room, Uncle Charley. It’s astronomical.”

Charley Zane was short, bald, and shrunken. He said: “I haven’t time for lollygagging. I’ve got to set up my telescope for Professor Martin.”

“We’ll just stop a wee little minute. I want you to see this,” she persuaded. She led the way into the Palomar Room, told the head-waiter: “A table for two, please.”

Moonless dark had closed on San Alpa, the million-dollar luxury hotel on the privately owned southern California mountain top. The resort’s clientele of West Coast socialites, Hollywood week-enders, and platinum-pocketed tourists had swarmed in from the colossal golf course and the miles of scenic trails.

Naturally, Manager Endicott had foreseen that golf courses and hiking trails were strictly daylight attractions, so he’d installed some night-time play life in the form of a big city style, de luxe night club. He’d named it after the well-known mountain observatory, and the interior decorator had gone to town with this idea.

Spica Zane sat down at the table for two, smiled at her uncle, and said: “I bet you feel right at home here.”

The little man revolved a stare around the room. He peered at the electric moon burning above the bar. It had an electric star caught between its horns. Other electric stars glowed in the curved ceiling. They were reflected in the glass dancefloor. Signs of the zodiac gleamed around the walls.

Charley Zane said: “Bah! It’s a mess. It’s all wrong. That moon is too big. The actual apparent diameter of the moon is only one-half a degree.”

The blond girl gave the head-waiter a disarming smile. “Uncle Charley is an amateur astronomer,” she explained.

Charley Zane said: “A star stuck between the horns of the moon is impossible. The space between the horns is filled by the moon itself.”

The head-waiter hastily back-pedaled, beckoning a white-jacketed waiter to take over.

Charley Zane went on criticizing. “The stars are all wrong, too. The pointers of the Dipper always revolve about Polaris. They never aim at Orion. Orion is a southern constellation.”

The waiter shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. But after a couple of drinks, the customers don’t seem to notice anything wrong.”

Spica Zane smiled at the waiter, too. She said: “My uncle isn’t an ordinary customer. He’s an expert on astronomy.” She toyed with the wine card. “I think I’ll have one of those Saturn Slings. Look, Uncle Charley, isn’t it cute? They’ve even named their drinks after the stars.”

The little bald man scowled: “Saturn isn’t a star. It’s a planet—”

He broke off. He craned his bald head forward, his shrunken neck out of its collar. His tensed, thin form rose partly from its chair. His voice, too, became tense. He said: “Waiter, call the house detective in here right away!”

The waiter said: “What do you want of—”

“Shut up,” the small shrunken man snapped. “Get the house officer in here quickly, and do it quietly.”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

The waiter glided toward the sidewall, eased out through a side door. He crossed a passageway off the main lobby, hinged open another door, and said: “Hey, Mr. O’Hanna!”

Mike O’Hanna was the house dick. He didn’t look like one. He was six feet of Irishman, dressed up to look like one of the paying guests among whom he circulated, without most of them guessing there was a house dick at their elbows.

O’Hanna dropped aside a hotel protective association bulletin, swung his feet off his desk. “It isn’t nine o’clock. You got drunk trouble already?”

The waiter said: “We got a sun, moon, and star specialist. He don’t like our decorations.”

O’Hanna headed out into the passage. “What’s he doing about it? Tearing them down?”

“Nah. He’s a quiet little guy.” The waiter opened the sidedoor into the Palomar Room. “There, that old geezer with the blonde.”

The house dick sauntered up to the table for two, made it a table for three by pulling up a chair. He peered into Charley Zane’s tight, shrunken features. “I’m it. Now, what?”

Charley Zane said in a low, metallic whisper: “That man in Aries!”

“That how-much?” O’Hanna asked blankly.

“Aries,” the little bald man repeated. “The first sign of the zodiac.”

The blonde smiled and said: “My uncle is an amateur astronomer.”

“I’m not,” the house dick denied. “I’ve seen those signs a thousand times, but I’ve got to admit I’ve never met up with ’em by names. Which one is Aries?”

“The end of the bar.” Charley Zane jerked his head.

O’Hanna turned a seemingly casual glance toward the end of the bar. His glances slid over a drinker nursing along a highball that’d been mixed long enough ago for the ice to have mostly melted.

“The fat man with the glasses?” O’Hanna asked. “What about him?”

Charley Zane grunted. “Nothing. I’m not making any charges. I just want you to remember I pointed him out to you.”

O’Hanna said: “Uh-huh? By what name shall I remember the guy?”

“His name’s Joe McGuffey,” Zane said. Abruptly, he pushed back from the table. “Come along, Spica. It’s high time we were getting back to the chalet.”

The chalets were the hotel’s California-style, glorified bungalows, and they tabbed Charley Zane as no mere minimum rate tourist. The fifteen-dollar-a-day minimum applied to the single rooms, whereas the chalets began at a cool fifty.

The blond girl said: “Oh, but Uncle, I ordered a Saturn Sling. We can’t run off without paying for it”

Charley Zane said to O’Hanna: “You take care of it. Have it put on my bill. The name’s Zane.”

O’Hanna watched them go. The fat man at the end of the bar didn’t. The fat man’s eye-glassed gaze stayed moodily on his unfinished highball.

The house dick sauntered over, parked himself on the neighboring stool. The fat man didn’t notice this, either. O’Hanna gave the bartender the brush-off sign. The bartender wasn’t supposed to recognize him.

“Draw one,” O’Hanna said. He hung an elbow on the bar, collared his fingers around the bar glass when it came, and asked: “What’s that supposed to stand for, huh?”

The bartender asked: “What’s what supposed to stand for?”

O’Hanna said: “That sign at the end of the bar. The Indian good luck charm, or whatever it is.”

Beside him, the fat man aroused from his reverie. “It’s a Chaldean symbol,” he said. “That’s Aries, the first sign of the zodiac.”

O’Hanna wasn’t surprised to hear this. He stared at the fat man, and made his voice sound startled. He said: “I’ll be damned! You must be a regular professional astronomer, huh?”

The fat man looked complimented. He blinked behind his eyeglasses, parting his fleshy lips in a flattered chuckle. “Oh, no. You couldn’t call me that. I’m afraid I’m just an amateur.”

The house dick swung on the stool, said brightly: “Well, what a coincidence! It’s funny, but you’re the second amateur astronomer I’ve encountered today. The other was a chap named Zane. You two ought to get together, probably you have lots in common.”

Joe McGuffey’s fat face lost its look of innocent pleasure. His pale eyes stormed behind the curved panes of his spectacles. His lips writhed, and his words came out hotly. “I’ve already met Charley Zane! He’s a damned crook! He’s trying to steal my comet!”

O’Hanna was astonished. “You mean a real comet? One of those fireballs with a tail on it? Up in the sky?”

“Naturally,” Joe McGuffey stated.

It didn’t seem natural to O’Hanna. The house dick shook his head.

“I never even knew they belonged to anybody in particular.”

“They belong to whoever finds them first,” the lardy man explained. “As soon as you discover a new one, you notify an observatory. If you’re the first finder, they name the comet after you.”

“Yeah? And what do you do with one after it’s registered in your name?”

McGuffey peered at the house dick. “I’ll put it this way. What’s your name, sir?”

“O’Hanna.”

“O.K., O’Hanna. Now how many people do you suppose are going to remember your name a thousand years from now?”

The house dick sighed. “Come to think of it, I guess nobody. Come to think of it, I won’t be here to care.”

The fat man said: “A thousand years from now, they’ll remember me. Because astronomers will still be studying the heavens with their telescopes. They’ll see my comet, and they’ll say to themselves: ‘Hello, here’s McGuffey’s Comet, rising three degrees ahead of A Cygni, right where Joseph J. McGuffey first located it away back in 1946!’ ”

O’Hanna raised an eyebrow. “The thing becomes a kind of traveling tombstone in the sky with your name engraved on it?”

McGuffey saw no humor in the suggestion. He said solemly: “Yes. And that isn’t all. It’s a great feather in an amateur observer’s cap to have a comet named after him. Many a man has spent a lifetime without ever making such a discovery. I’ve been watching for twenty-five years myself. Charley Zane is a newcomer and a novice. He only took up this hobby in the last few years, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him steal this comet from me!”

The house dick nodded: “I see how you feel about it. By the way, how does a guy go about hijacking somebody else’s comet?”

The fat man tossed down the last swallow of his highball, slid his plump legs from the bar stool. He said grimly: “I don’t know how the damned crook is going to try it, but I’m sure as hell going to stop him.”

O’Hanna stepped into the manager’s teak-paneled office, picked out a World Almanac from a pile of books on Endicott’s desk.

The thin-faced, graying Endicott peered up, puzzled.

O’Hanna said: “Coincidences are beginning to pile on coincidences. I’ve been doing a little research in astronomy. It turns out that Spica is the name of a star three hundred light-years distant from us. Now, isn’t that fascinating?”

Endicott didn’t think so. He said: “Good Lord, Mike, that’s probably the most trivial detail you ever wasted my time telling me.”

O’Hanna protested: “Where’s your imagination, man? Just think of it. Three hundred light-years means a ray of light started on its way to us when the pilgrim fathers were still alive. It was still umpteen billions of miles away when Mr. McGuffey took up the hobby of star-gazing. It must have been just about that time that Spica Zane was born and named after the same star, because Spica is a name her parents couldn’t have picked out of religion, history, or thin air.”

Endicott blinked. He frowned. He said: “Well, what of it?”

“I’m asking myself.” O’Hanna frowned, too. “McGuffey says Charley Zane is a mere newcomer and a novice in the game. For my money, though, there’s a tie-up going back to the time that girl was born. I’d like to dig into the family history of the McGuffeys and the Zanes. I’m boiling over with questions to ask those guys.”

Endicott took alarm. He cried: “Mike, you mustn’t! I absolutely forbid it!”

“You don’t want me to unveil the family skeleton?”

Endicott said: “Certainly not. It’s preposterous. Our guests’ private affairs are none of our business. People come to San Alpa for pleasure. They won’t stand for embarrassing questions about their pasts, and I don’t blame them.”

O’Hanna’s Irish-gray eyes narrowed. “That’s how you talk now. You’ll talk different when hell boils over on the premises. You’ll say then it was my job to head off the trouble before it could happen.”

Endicott sat back, straightened his spare shoulders. “There isn’t going to be any trouble. From what you’ve told me, this is merely a case of a couple of old fools squabbling over a silly comet. You’re acting as if some horrible crime had been committed.”

The house dick said: “No. I’m acting as if some horrible crime was going to happen. I’ve got a black Irish hunch there’s more to this setup than comet, comet, who’s got the comet.”

The manager scoffed. “Ridiculous! You’re being as absurd as those two idiots themselves!”

“You won’t back me up, then, if I ask them some personal questions?”

Endicott said: “I certainly will not. I’ll discharge you if I hear of you carrying on in any such high-handed fashion. It’s my duty to the stockholders to draw patronage to this hotel, not to annoy folks so they leave.”

O’Hanna was used to it. He said: “O.K., I just wanted to get it in the record. You’re telling me to lay off. It’s in your hands, and if it blows up, it’s your fingers that get burned.”

Endicott took fresh alarm. He said hastily: “Wait a minute, Mike. If you’re expecting trouble, naturally it’s up to you to keep an eye on developments. But you’ll have to work under cover. You mustn’t ask any bothersome questions of these folks.”

“Yeah? I’m supposed to go read the answers in the stars.” O’Hanna snapped his fingers. He said: “Hey, that might work. I’ll go ask Zane to show me his comet.”

He headed through the lobby, down the front steps across the landscaped grounds. Tonight was the kind of night Endicott’s publicity pamphlets boasted about — cool enough to sleep under blankets after the daytime California sun.

As O’Hanna blinked the lobby lights out of his eyes, the stars showed up like lamps over the pine and black oak treetops. O’Hanna came to a stop, legs braced wide, chin tilted high. Thinly, behind him, came the sounds of piano and saxophones in the Palomar Room. The music brought a picture of the crowded bar under the artificial moon, the dancers circling in the smoky haze under the electric, indoor stars. The Palomar Room seemed far away, and no great bargain.

Irish-gray eyes widening in the dark toward the great, jeweled constellations over his head, O’Hanna mused: “Zane’s right — that layout in there is phony. I’ll be damned if those amateur astronomers haven’t got something on—”

The shot tore his thought in two.

At the flat, wicked report, O’Hanna’s head came down, his stare raked toward the chalets scattered in the concealing trees.

Window-light glowed from a dozen different chalets down the slope. The shot might have sounded from any of them. It might have been out under the trees.

A woman’s scream sliced off a cut of shrill, high-pitched fear and horror.

O’Hanna’s bent elbow came up. Luminous hands on his stopwatch registered 9:20. He was coming up on his tiptoes, running, as the elbow pumped down. Footpaths looped and veined through the landscapery. O’Hanna took the bee-line route toward the scream, as straight as the trees would let him travel.

He didn’t see the other man in time. It was doubly dark under the trees whose boughs blotted out the starlight. O’Hanna hadn’t heard any warning, either. His own sprinting feet kicked up too much disturbance as they crushed pine needles and oak leaves.

The other man hadn’t seen or heard O’Hanna for the same reasons. He was just there in the way, squealing affrightedly, as the house dick came bearing down on him.

They crashed. O’Hanna skidded a yard, jumped up, dropped handfuls of pine needle and leaf mold. The other man lay still, whooshing for breath.

The house dick stooped, fanned the fellow’s angular form. He didn’t find a gun.

The man wailed: “D-don’t shoot again! My money’s in my hip pocket! Don’t kill me!”

O’Hanna yanked the other to his feet. He hadn’t brought a flashlight, and in the dark the man’s face was a long, narrow blur that didn’t add up to recognizable features.

O’Hanna said: “Relax, I’m the house detective. What happened here?”

“I... I don’t know! I heard a shot! Then a man came running at me with a great big shiny gun in his fist. I ran for my life.”

O’Hanna said: “Come on. Show me where.”

The man quavered: “Straight ahead — there.”

Straight ahead was a clearing, the silhouette of a swiss-roofed chalet, and a lighted window with a telescope barreled up out of the opening and aimed above the tree tops.

O’Hanna went ahead and looked in through that window. His eyes were on a level with the polished brass rods, graduated hour circles, and ball-and-crank mounting of the telescope. His glance raked down through the gleaming brass-work and the outspread wooden legs of the ’seope’s tripod. The glance became a fixed stare — fixed on the small, shrunken corpse of Charley Zane. He’d been shot dead center through the bald top of his head. There wasn’t much blood, and there wasn’t any powder burn at all.

The set-up looked as though somebody had stepped up to this window, aimed a gun, and fired as Charley Zane bent his head down over the telescope’s eyepiece.

O’Hanna closed a hand on the narrow-faced man’s arm again. “Come on. Inside.” They toured the building, went up natural stone steps to the rustic door. O’Hanna thrust the door open, was face to face with a red-haired young woman at the entry hallway phone.

The redhead was saying: “Notify the manager immediately. Mr. Zane has been murdered,” and broke off as she glimpsed O’Hanna.

O’Hanna said: “I’m the house officer. How’d it happen?”

The redhaired young woman said: “This way. I’ll show you.”

Chapter Two Clues and Comets

This way led through the front room where a hearth fire snapped at its task of taking the chill off the night air. Somebody had dropped a poker in the middle of the peasant-style braided rug. Spica Zane was a huddled figure in a corner of the divan. She held a handkerchief balled against her mouth. The hands that held the handkerchief were tense, white-knuckled fists. Her eyes were clenched shut, too.

The red-headed girl went on ahead. She said: “I’d just got here a minute before. I’d barely taken off my coat.” She pointed at a tan cloak draped across a chair. She said: “Miss Zane was poking up the fire when we heard the shot. She ran across the room and opened this door and switched on the lights. She screamed when she—”

O’Hanna cut in: “The guy was sitting in here in the dark?”

The redhead said: “Oh, yes. His comet was barely visible through a low-powered telescope. Darkness helped his eyes focus on a barely distinguishable object.”

O’Hanna was inside the murder room. He went down on one knee beside Charley Zane’s body. He’d seen it right the first time. Burning powder hadn’t reached the dead man’s bald scalp. O’Hanna muttered: “You can say that again, sister. It worked both ways! This wasn’t a point-blank kill. The murderer did some mighty fancy focusing in the black-out, too... What’s this?”

The house dick extricated a page of crumpled memorandum paper from under the corpse’s limp hand. He puzzled over the find:

“Twenty-three hours and thirty nine minutes point five minus thirteen hours and six minutes flat leaves ten hours and thirty-three and one half minutes? Minus thirteen minutes more amounts to ten, twenty and one-half?”

The girl said: “Oh, that’s perfectly elementary. The first figure is the comet’s right ascension. The second figure is the sun’s right ascension. Deducting one from the other leaves the hour of transit, which, corrected to standard time, means the comet would be highest in the sky at ten hours, twenty minutes, and thirty seconds P.M. this evening.”

It came out Greek to O’Hanna. He peered at the redhead. “You sound like you’re another amateur astronomer yourself!”

Her smile was mock-demure. “I’m Professor Inez Martin, of the staff of Mt. Yarrow Observatory.”

O’Hanna’s astonishment widened the redhead’s smile. She said: “Gracious, don’t be so upset. Women do go in for higher education nowadays, you know. Some of them study medicine. Others practice social service or law. I can be an astronomer, can’t I, even without a long white beard?”

“You’ve got something there,” the house dick conceded. For one thing, Inez Martin had a figure there. She was the long-legged, graceful type. Her eyes were feline, her lips sultry.

He asked: “Where was the killer by the time you girls switched on the lights?”

“I’ve no idea. We saw no one at all.”

O’Hanna turned back into the front room, to the narrow-faced man. Electric illumination showed that the face wasn’t just narrow, it was knobby, too. The cheeks were sunken under knobby cheekbones. The eyes were uneasy gimlets under bony crags of brow. The nose had a bump halfway down its length.

O’Hanna asked: “Your name, sir?”

“It’s Frank Kigel.” The man’s knobby face worked. He said: “I’m a nervous case. I’m here at your hotel for a rest cure. I was merely out for a quiet stroll before bedtime. I heard that shot, so close it almost made me jump out of my skin. Then I heard the scream. It raised the hair on my head! After that, I saw a man come running at me — a great huge monster of a man with a big shiny gun in his fist! My nerves couldn’t stand any more. I turned and ran for my life!”

Footfalls at the front doorway announced that manager Endicott had arrived on the murder scene. Lighter footfalls behind him belonged to little Doc Raymond, the San Alpa house physician.

O’Hanna said: “O.K., Doc, take over and see nobody touches anything. I’ll call the sheriff and get busy running down the mysterious monster.”

Endicott quavered: “Good heavens, Mike, the man with the gun is no mystery at all. It was McGuffey, and all you’ve got to do is arrest him without bothering anybody else at all!”

O’Hanna was used to this. County Sheriff Ed Gleeson was headquartered sixty miles away. It would take him an hour to motor up the hairpin-curved, San Alpa mountain road. When crime occurred at the hotel, O’Hanna was supposed to use that hour to wrap up all the clues so the paying guests wouldn’t be annoyed by the sheriff asking them questions.

The desk clerk said Joseph J. McGuffey was registered as of Pasadena, and registered in room 234.

“Come on,” the house dick told Frank Kigel.

He didn’t get any answer, though, when he knocked on 234’s door. He fed a passkey into the lock, stepped inside. As he pressed the wall switch, ceiling light fell down onto the mounded bed coverlet.

The mound changed shape. Joe McGuffey heaved his pajamed shoulders up from the pillow, rubbed his eyes. He mumbled: “Huh, what’s the matter? I’ve been sound asleep for an hour! Is the hotel on fire or something?”

O’Hanna circled the bed, found the fat man’s garments shed on the far side. He stooped, retrieved a shoe, ran three fingers inside the footgear. He said: “The hotel isn’t on fire, but your shoe’s still warm inside. You’re a liar!”

Frank Kigel popped his narrow head around the door, pinned his gimlet gaze on the fat man, and said: “He’s lying, all right! He’s the man! I’d know him anywhere!”

“It’s a frame-up,” the fat man said. He waved off the bed coverlet, slid his stocky legs from the bed. “Charley Zane hired that guy to tell falsehoods about me.”

O’Hanna waved Kigel outside. As the door closed, he queried: “Oh, so you weren’t anywhere near the spot?”

“Certainly not! I’ve been right here in bed for the last hour.”

“You’re a low-grade liar, McGuffey. If you’d been asleep, you wouldn’t know whether it was one hour or three. If you were in bed, you wouldn’t know something wrong happened during the hour, either.”

McGuffey flushed. He said: “Why wouldn’t I know? You break into my room. You wake me up from my sleep. You call me a liar. You have another guy put the finger on me. I’d be dumb if I thought such goings-on meant everything was hunky-dory. I’d be still dumber if I didn’t realize Charley Zane put you up to all this. I’m going to hand that little guy a good swift poke in the nose—”

O’Hanna stemmed the tirade. “Cut out the kidding, McGuffey. You know damned well a poke in the nose won’t hurt Zane a bit. He was shot dead tonight, and an eye-witness saw you running away after the killing.”

The fat man blinked. He said: “Zane was killed? Hell, I never knew that. I ran away because I thought that was Zane shooting at me!”

“Now it comes out. Now you admit you were there.”

McGuffey said: “Yeah. Sure. I told you why. I was going to keep that crook from stealing my comet. I crawled in a back window and went through some papers in his suitcase. That’s why I quick crawled in bed here. I thought Zane saw me crawling out of that window, took a shot at me, and was going to have me arrested for stealing his will. That’s what I figured you was after when you came in here.”

O’Hanna asked: “His will?”

The fat man said: “Yeah. I found a copy of a brand-new last will and testament in his suitcase. He was leaving a hundred-thousand-dollar bequest to Mt. Yarrow Observatory.”

O’Hanna brightened. “Now you’re getting down out of the stars to something I can understand. Let’s see the document.”

“I was afraid to bring it here to my room,” McGuffey said. “I hid it in the fork of a tree down there.”

“Pull on your pants. Show me where.”

Five minutes later, Joseph McGuffey slowed to a stop under the trees. He pointed his arm and said: “That’s the back window I used. It leads into Zane’s bedroom. His suitcase is in the closet there. I hear the shot just as I crawled out of the window, and I headed straight for the lights of the hotel.”

He’d brought a flashlight with him. He aimed the light on the ground and said: “See? There’s my footprints.”

The leaf mold and pine needle carpet hadn’t taken any clear footprints. There were vague marks that might have been left by striding shoe leather.

The fat man said: “That’s my trail. I remember it was about the third oak tree I passed.” He swung, pointed his light. “Why, that’s it right there. I remember the fork — I remember I had to stand on tiptoe to reach up there—”

He walked to the tree, threw the flashbeam up into the crotch. The light showed oak bark, and that’s all.

McGuffey made swallowing sounds. “I guess it must have been the next tree.”

It wasn’t the next tree, or the one after that, or the one on either side of these trees. The fat man complained: “It’s mighty funny. I can’t understand this at all!”

“Maybe it wasn’t a last will and testament you had to hide. Kigel says you were toting a gun in your fist.” The house dick’s tone hardened. “If it was a gun, no wonder you don’t want to locate it.”

“I was toting a flashlight,” McGuffey protested. “You’re not playing fair, O’Hanna. You’re believing everybody but me.”

“I don’t trust you, that’s a fact. I’m going to let you help Doc Raymond sit up with the corpse.” O’Hanna decided, “while I sashay up a few clues on my own.”

The lobby clerk said Professor Inez Martin’s room number was 312. O’Hanna eased the passkey into the lock, gingerly twisted the knob. The red-haired lady astronomer was at home. She’d pulled up a chair to the room’s writing desk, was brooding over a sheet of San Alpa stationery. Drowned by her own thoughts, she didn’t hear the sleuth enter.

O’Hanna stared at the sheet of hotel paper on the desk. He asked: “More mathematics? What’s the answer add up to this time?”

“Why... why—!” She gasped, came to her feet. She said furiously: “Do you make a habit of marching into the privacy of a lady’s room without so much as knocking?”

O’Hanna said: “Only when I’m solving murders.” He tapped a finger on the page of figures. “What’s all this mean? Ten twenty equals zero, so nine twenty equals plus fifteen degrees, or nineteen degrees equals nine zero four?”

Professor Martin nibbled her underlip. “I’ll try to make it simple for you. In order to place a location on earth, it’s customary to use latitude and longitude. Those are the lines you see crisscrossing a map. In the heavens, we use the corresponding lines of ascension and declination. I’d been invited to see that comet tonight, so earlier tonight I calculated its declination. Now, are you satisfied?”

The house dick shrugged. “Frankly, the answer is no! I don’t savvy this business of amateurs like Charley Zane and Joe McGuffey finding comets at all. I don’t see how they can compete with you professionals with your fifty and hundred inch telescopes.”

Inez Martin sat down again, crossed her shapely knees, tugged her skirt into place. She said: “Oh, dear, you really are an ignoramus. In the first place, it’d take the largest telescope in existence two hundred years to completely map the stellar universe on film. In that time, literally scores of comets could appear and disappear while the telescope was pointing somewhere else. In the second place, the large observatory telescopes are used for specialized scientific research. We concentrate on studies of the component stars, the hydrogen carbide theory, and so on. Actually, it’s the amateur astronomers with the low-powered glasses who make most of the comet discoveries.”

“Yeah?”

The lady astronomer said: “It’s like the difference between a famous banker and a sharp-eyed newsboy. The banker knows all about international finance, but the boy is more apt to find a dime on the sidewalk.”

“O.K., let’s suppose I found a comet myself. Would you name it after me? So a thousand years from now, my great-great-great-grand-childen could point up in the sky and say there’s the comet their great-great-great-granddaddy discovered?”

Inez Martin thought this was funny. She giggled. “I wouldn’t want to bet on it. Your comet probably wouldn’t be a periodic one.”

“A how-much?”

“Periodic comets, like the famous Halley and Donati, return at stated intervals. The others are mere wanderers which flash through our solar system once, and may never be seen again.”

O’Hanna asked: “What about this one out there tonight? Who were you going to name it after — Charley Zane or Joe McGuffey?”

The lady astronomer hesitated, smoothed her fingers over her auburn hair. “That’s the sixty-four dollar question. It’s the queerest mix-up! You see, those men are practically next door neighbors in Pasadena. Each has an observatory fitted up over the garage at the back of his property. Each insisted he saw the comet first. Each rushed off a telegram the same night, at almost the same moment, a week ago. Ever since, they’ve been bombarding the observatory with threats of lawsuits to establish their claims. Then Mr. Zane mailed a check for traveling expenses, inviting a representative of the observatory to come to Pasadena and settle the matter. I can’t imagine why, but the staff decided I was the one to go.”

“They probably figured you could soothe the situation with some sex appeal,” the house dick flattered. “So what did you find out in Pasadena?”

Inez Martin shook her head. “Oh, I never went there. Mr. Zane wired that his plans had changed, and I was to meet him at San Alpa, instead. I had a suspicion he didn’t want me to hear Mr. McGuffey’s side of the story, so I telegraphed Mr. McGuffey to meet me here, too.” She shook her head again. “I’m sorry I did. Mr. Zane turned out to be an entirely different sort of man than I’d expected. He proved to be deeply interested in pure science. He was making arrangements to bequeath a large sum of money to the advancement of scientific research.”

O’Hanna grinned. He braced back his shoulders, bent up his left arm, made cranking motions with his right hand.

Professor Inez Martin widened her greenish eyes at the Irishman. “What on earth is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s sign language. It means fish-hooked and being reeled in,” O’Hanna interpreted. “Charley Zane baited you with a hundred-grand hook so you wouldn’t offend him by naming the comet after Joe McGuffey.”

He crossed to the door. Behind him, the lady astronomer became haughty. She said: “I couldn’t be bribed like that. You forget I’m a scientist.”

Hand on the doorknob, O’Hanna said: “You’re a scientist interested in component stars and hydrogen carbide. As far as you’re concerned, comets are just amateur, dime-on-the-sidewalk stuff. To you, this particular fireball is a mere wandering pinpoint in the universe, and it wouldn’t make the slightest scientific difference whether you named it after Charley Zane, Joe McGuffey, or Joe Palooka. That’s how Zane figured. You wouldn’t kick away a hundred thousand dollar bequest by deciding the wrong way, especially when the evidence wasn’t conclusive for either man. It’s the answer to the question of how Zane could steal a comet.”

Inez Martin watched him open the door. She moistened her lips. “Wait a minute... Where do you think all this leads you?”

O’Hanna said meaningfully: “I’m a periodic fireball myself. I keep making my rounds. I’ll be seeing you some more — next round.”

Downstairs, Manager Endicott’s teak-paneled office was deserted. The house dick snatched the almanac from the mahogany desk, flapped through its pages, ran his forefinger down the Star Tables, 1946, until he reached A Cygni.

He read aloud: “Declination, forty-five degrees and five seconds.” Then he said, softly: “I’ll be damned!”

Orchestra music still flooded the Palomar Room, couples still circled on the glass floor, unaware of violent death on the premises. O’Hanna beckoned to the head-waiter, to the waiter who’d called him earlier in the evening. He asked: “Just what happened when the Zanes walked in here tonight?”

They told him.

O’Hanna’s lips were thinned as he started across the San Alpa grounds. Overhead, the stars were as gorgeously bright as before, and a little higher in the heavens. O’Hanna headed downslope toward the chalets. Whispering, rustled sound under the trees stopped him short. His eyes strained. A blurred, ghost-shape moved. The house dick’s hand fanned in fast between his coat lapels.

He snapped: “Hands up! Who’s there?”

“Don’t shoot. It’s me.” The ghost shape materialized into slim, blond femininity as Spica Zane emerged from under the trees. She said shakily: “I was coming to the hotel to find you! The others don’t know. I pretended I had to lie down. I slipped out of the back window secretly. There’s something important I have to tell you!”

“I’m listening with both ears.”

The blond girl drew a deep breath. “I think Uncle Joe killed Uncle Charley!”

This was probably expected to startle the hell out of O’Hanna. It didn’t. He murmured: “So the Zanes and the McGuffeys are blood relatives?”

Spica Zane said: “My mother was a McGuffey. My father was Uncle Charley’s brother. The two families were in business together years ago. Some money became missing, and Joe McGuffey managed the evidence so my father was sent to prison. He died there. Uncle Charley never forgave McGuffey after that.” The girl’s voice sharpened. “Joe McGuffey’s a hateful old man! He’s done everything he could to ruin our lives. This comet trick is merely the last of a long string of episodes.”

O’Hanna said: “Family feuds can be furious, I’ll grant that. But if your two uncles hated each other so, how come they remained next door neighbors?”

“Uncle Charley was too proud to move out of the neighborhood. It’d look like running away. It’d be like admitting my father was guilty. Don’t you see, we had to face the scandal with our heads high—”

A gun talked out loud, right in the middle of what she was saying.

Spica Zane wailed, flung herself against the Irishman’s chest. She moaned: “No! Don’t go! I’m afraid he’ll kill me next!”

O’Hanna thrust free of her arms. He started running toward the chalet. He damned near stepped on the body, before he glimpsed the spectral whiteness of the face and of the shirt-front.

The house dick skidded to a stop, fumbled for a match. From his cupped hand, the yellow light flooded out over the narrow, knobby face. Frank Kigel’s rest cure had become permanent. He was dead of a hole through his heart without benefit of any powder burns.

Chapter Three Murder, My Stars!

County sheriff Ed Gleeson came into the chalet, peered at the company. Relief softened his features as he counted out O’Hanna, Endicott, and little Doc Raymond. That left only Spica Zane, Professor Inez Martin, and Joseph J. McGuffey.

Gleeson hiked up the belt which supported his hip-holstered Frontier six-shooter, and said to O’Hanna: “Good going, Mike. I see you’ve got it trimmed down to three possible suspects already.”

Joe McGuffey waved a fat hand. “You can count me out, Sheriff. Lucky for me, the house dick here tabbed me for a suspicious character early in the game. He left me right here in Dr. Raymond’s custody.”

The lardy man appealed to Endicott and Doc Raymond.

“I’ll just leave it to you guys. I was right here in this room, wasn’t I, when somebody killed Kigel outdoors. So consequently I guess that leaves it up to the ladies.”

Professor Inez Martin said: “Thanks for the compliment! But it happens I was right here in this room with an eye-witness when somebody killed Charley Zane.”

Ed Gleeson peered at the blond girl.

O’Hanna said: “She was the eye-witness with the other lady the first time. At the time of the second shot, she was talking to me about her family.”

Sheriff Gleeson absorbed this and said: “Well, hell, what are we waiting for, then? If they’ve all got alibis, you haven’t rounded up any suspect at all. Let’s get busy tearing the joint apart until we come onto the killer. What d’ya say, Mike?”

Bleating sounds came from Endicott. The manager choked. “Sheriff, you can’t! You mustn’t! Why, ninety-nine out of a hundred of our guests are absolutely innocent. You can’t line them up like common convicts and give them the third degree. They’d check out in droves, and they’d probably never come back as long as they live.”

Endicott’s graying face was haggard. He had nightmares like this one — had them every time crime cropped up at San Alpa. He wheeled to O’Hanna, said desperately: “Mike, you gotta do something quick!”

The house detective reminded: “Yeah, that’s what I said before all the shooting started. I told you I had a black Irish hunch. You jeered at—”

Endicott cut in. “Well, have another hunch now! And have it quick! There’s no time to waste!”

O’Hanna said: “O.K., I got a hunch. Let’s all adjourn to the next room, everybody. I want to show you something.”

He opened the door, disclosed Charley Zane’s sheet-covered body.

Doc Raymond asked: “Do you want me to uncover it again?”

O’Hanna said: “No, this is one of the higher hunches. It has to do with astronomy. It involves higher mathematics of right ascension and declination. It’s based on the theory that a comet rising three minutes ahead of the star A Cygni has a right ascension of thirty-three hours and thirty-nine minutes point five, from which we deduct the right ascension of the mean sun.”

He paused, shook his head. “That’s what the almanac calls it. I don’t know why it’s a mean sun instead of a friendly one.”

Professor Inez Martin laughed quite unmerrily.

“You’re not the least amusing. Furthermore, those aren’t your figures, and you didn’t look them up in the almanac. Mr. Zane had all that figured out on a piece of paper.”

“I looked it up in the almanac to make sure,” O’Hanna said. “Zane’s arithmetic was right. His comet would have been on the meridian at ten hours, twenty minutes, and thirty seconds P.M. Now, does any astronomer in the crowd care to explain just exactly what the meridian is?”

The redhaired lady professor said, “I’ve already explained it to you. It’s the point where the comet would be highest in the sky.”

The house dick peered at the other girl. “Is that all it is, Miss Zane?”

Spica Zane said thinly: “I don’t know. I never pretended to understand anything about these things.”

O’Hanna’s Irish-gray glance ranged on to Joseph J. McGuffey. The fat man cleared his throat and said: “Well, technically speaking, the meridian would be an imaginary line through the heavens from north to south. It’s also the point where any celestial object is highest in the sky.”

O’Hanna’s tone became careful.

“At ten-twenty P.M., the comet would appear due north?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“But an hour earlier — at nine-twenty — the telescope would have been pointed somewhere else to see this fireball?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Where?”

McGuffey said: “It’d be slightly east. The stars rise in the east like the sun. They move around a complete circle in a day, which is fifteen degrees in an hour.”

“O.K. Now, take a look at this telescope. Can you tell if it’s pointed fifteen degrees east of due north?”

The fat man said obligingly: “That’s no trick at all.” He aimed a plump finger at the brass-work mounting. “That’s what we call an equatorial telescope. The degrees are marked off in the hour-circle.” He craned forward, narrowed the eyes behind his thick-paned spectacles. He said in vast surprise: “Nope, something’s wrong. It’s aimed almost exactly nineteen degrees east of north...”

O’Hanna said: “Let’s work out the answers in our heads. Fifteen degrees equals one hour, so nineteen degrees must equal one hour and sixteen minutes. Subtract it from ten-twenty P.M., and you get four minutes after nine. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

The house dick turned to Inez Martin, watched color flood the redhead’s cheeks. He asked: “Why don’t you tell the folks — those aren’t my figures, and I didn’t get them out of the almanac! They’re your mathematics, and they don’t mean declination, or whatever you called it.” His voice boomed. “Nine-oh-four is the time Charley Zane stopped focusing on his comet because that’s when he got a bullet through his bald spot!”

Inez Martin’s greenish eyes chilled. “That’s ridiculous!”

O’Hanna said, “Come, come, where’s your scientific spirit? Those stars have been running on schedule for thousands of years. Mere man-made clocks and watches are regulated by comparing them with the stars. You don’t think the heavens overhead suddenly clicked out of line sixteen minutes tonight?”

The lady astronomer said: “Of course not. But Miss Zane and I heard the shot—”

“You heard a shot. It wasn’t necessarily the shot that killed the guy.”

Spica Zane gulped, put her hand to her mouth. O’Hanna swung to the blond. “Well, what?”

“I... I didn’t think it was important. That’s why I didn’t tell you before. But it was such a nice night, I went out for a short walk. That was about nine o’clock. Uncle Charley could have been killed while I was out. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

Professor Inez Martin said sharply: “Nonsense. If the man had been dead for a quarter of an hour, why didn’t you notice it right away? Why didn’t the doctor suspect anything?”

Little Doc Raymond eyed the young woman sternly.

“Good heavens, Professor Martin, corpses aren’t comets. Corpses are peculiar! Rigor mortis can begin to occur anywhere from two to six hours after death. Anyway, it’s beside the point. A bullet in the brain isn’t necessarily instantaneously fatal. Abraham Lincoln remained alive nine hours after he’d been shot. Of course, this was a modern, powerful bullet. It undoubtedly destroyed the brain’s function entirely. But a feeble spark of life may have remained for five or ten minutes—”

O’Hanna cut in. He said: “But let’s not go into that. Let’s turn to pleasanter topics we can all understand. I refer, of course, to the hundred-thousand-dollar will.”

Leather creaked as Sheriff Gleeson tugged at his belt. “Now you’re getting somewhere. This stuff about comets is so educational it goes completely over my head. I’m afraid the idea of two guys being murdered over a comet that’s invisible to the naked eyes wouldn’t go down with a country jury. What can you tell us about the will?”

The house dick shrugged. “It was the cheapest bribe on earth, and Professor Martin knew it.”

He turned toward Inez Martin. “After you named the comet in Zane’s honor, you knew nothing could keep him from tearing up that will and making a brand new one. Your observatory wouldn’t get a thin dime — unless he died immediately.”

The lady astronomer stormed: “You’re accusing me of murder?”

O’Hanna brooded: “A jury could get to like the idea. Look at you — a beautiful creature, abnormally obsessed with a passion for component stars and hydrogen carbide! It’s obvious you’re a crank. The natural feminine instincts have soured in you. You’re a cold-blooded example of a scientific fiend, to whom the ordinary human values of life mean nothing.”

He grinned wryly. “That’s why you kept quiet about the telescope. Charley Zane’s niece might contest that will. A smart lawyer could make it look bad for you, if the truth came out you had no alibi for the actual time of the shooting. Even though you were perfectly innocent of any crime.”

Manager Endicott was astounded. “Mike! You mean you don’t think she did it?”

“I think she’s too cold-blooded to be guilty,” the house dick declared.

“Too — huh?”

“She’s too scientific to overlook a clue like a telescope pointed at the wrong angle. Besides, if she’d killed Zane, she’d have known when it happened — she wouldn’t have had to figure it out by subtracting nineteen degrees from the meridian.” O’Hanna formed a smile. He said: “Also, her eyesight’s O.K. Joe McGuffey’s isn’t. He had to bend over close to read off the nineteen degrees. Working by flashlight and in a hurry, he might have overlooked that detail entirely.”

McGuffey made fat fists. Behind them, he blustered: “Hell, you can’t pin anything like that on me!”

“On you, it looks pretty good. You’d hated Charley Zane for years. You’d sent his brother to the penitentiary. Since the feud started over finances, and you were the prosecuting witness, I assume that you lost a sizable chunk of money.”

The fat man said: “That far you’re right. The Zanes swindled me out of a cool twenty thousand dollars.”

“He’s lying!” Spica Zane’s voice broke. “My father was innocent!”

Joe McGuffey glared at the blonde. “Your father was a dumb crook. Charley Zane was a smart one. The dumb one took the rap. The smart one took my dough.”

The fat man pivoted to O’Hanna. He said: “I’ll prove I didn’t kill Zane. I wanted him alive. I wanted to see him squirm. I was in a position to show him up for the double-crossing crook he was. That comet was the chance I’d been waiting for the last twenty years. I had him where I wanted him.”

“Do tell. Do tell.”

“You can’t hurt a man like Charley Zane by showing him up as a financial highbinder. He thinks that’s just smart business. The crowd he runs with think it’s smart business. But if they caught him playing poker with marked cards, they kick him out of every club in town. If they caught him turning in a phony score-card in a golf tournament, he’d be an outcast for life. That’s why I took up Charley Zane’s hobbies — cards, golf, and star-gazing. I figured sooner or later his crooked streak would show up in a spot where it’d hurt him, where he’d be ashamed to show his face in front of his own friends.”

McGuffey snaked his tongue across his thick lips. His eyes glistened behind the curved lenses.

He announced gleefully: “Finding that comet was the break I’d been waiting for. You’ll die laughing when I tell how I pulled it I’ve got one of those home recording outfits, and I hooked that up onto my phone. Then I called operator instead of dialing and asked for Charley Zane’s number. Spica was out that night, and he answered, himself. I pretended I thought I was calling Western Union, see? I read off a telegram about locating this comet. Then I had him read it back to me. I felt sure he’d do just what he did do — rush off a wire to claim the discovery himself. I was going to give him another week for the build-up, and then I was going to spring that recording of his own voice on him.”

The fat man’s stare dropped down to the white sheeted form on the floor. He said softly: “Charley, I’m sorry you’re dead. Now I’ll never get to see the look on your face when the bad news hit home!”

Endicott gagged. “That’s awful! You should not talk to the dead like that!”

“Mr. McGuffey doesn’t really mean it,” O’Hanna offered. “Not twenty thousand dollars worth, anyhow! He only told us how it all started. How it ended goes like this.”

The Irishman’s gray eyes bored. “Charley Zane was worth more dead than alive to you, McGuffey. Dead, his will became effective. With that document in your hand, you could deal with Spica. She could pay you twenty thousand dollars and destroy the will — or she could let you hand the will over to Inez Martin, and it’d cost her a hundred grand. That adds up to a swell motive for murder and for stealing the will. Throw in Kigel’s death, and the measure runneth over.”

The fat man’s face soured. “How come Kigel?”

“Kigel is why you couldn’t find the will where you hid it. He lied to me, of course. He heard a shot and saw you running into the trees. He followed. When you stopped and hid that piece of paper, he naturally picked it up. He was making off with it when I ran into him out in the woods.”

McGuffey bared his teeth. “Why, that—” He stopped. He gave a jowl-quivering headshake. “I told you before. I was right here when Kigel was shot.”

“I told you before, too. A shot isn’t necessarily the shot. Kigel, like Charley Zane, might have been killed a little earlier in the game.” The house dick glanced around. “What’s wrong, Spica?”

The blond girl dropped a balled handkerchief from her lips. She said: “I just thought of something! I didn’t realize it was important before. Don’t you remember, I told you I excused myself by telling the others I had to lie down?”

“I heard you with both ears.”

“Mr. Endicott kindly assisted me into the back bedroom. Dr. Raymond was placing a sheet over Uncle Charley’s body. That’s when McGuffey could have slipped out secretly to kill poor Mr. Kigel.” The blond girl caught fresh breath. “Mr. Endicott stepped into the same room with Dr. Raymond. That’s when I crawled out the window. There were two men out there in the dark. I didn’t see their faces. But one of them was a tall, thin man like Frank Kigel, and the other one was a big heavy man—”

Joe McGuffey blurted: “Spica, you’re lying your damned head off!”

The girl said: “They were arguing. I heard one of them say: ’It won’t make a bit of noise, you damned fool!” She blinked at O’Hanna. “Now, what on- earth could that remark have meant?”

The house dick looked suddenly satisfied. He intoned: “It’s the reason nobody heard the actual murder shots. It’s why neither victim was powder-burned. The killer used a gun equipped with a silencer.”

The fat suspect’s jaw unlatched. His eyes bulged behind their glasses. He said: “That’s silly! That’s comic cartoon stuff! There really isn’t any such a thing!”

O’Hanna said: “There’s a Federal Law against them. That’s why silencers have been practically unknown in the U.S.A. They were fairly common in Europe. The Nazi Gestapo used them. A lot of our men picked up souvenir Lugers overseas. A gat with hushworks may well be in our midst. I’ll say this much — I’ll believe it when I see it!”

He gestured to Endicott. “You take charge of the meeting. The sheriff and I are going exploring.”

Ed Gleeson wasn’t happy. Outside, he said: “You’re overlooking one thing. McGuffey was indoors when the last shot was fired.”

“You can tie that part with a piece of string. Just remove the silencer, tie the string to the trigger of a cocked gun, and feed the string through a slightly raised window. That puts your killer indoors, and the shot outside,” O’Hanna said. “You look under the windows while I take to the woods.”

Tree boughs blotted out the stars, but the flare of a match showed the spot where O’Hanna had first run into Frank Kigel. Handsful had been scooped where O’Hanna skidded into the leaf mold and pine needles. He turned to the nearby spot where the narrow-faced man had pitched headlong. O’Hanna’s shoe furrowed through the decaying leaves with his toe.

He said to himself, “Smart — like a dog with a bone,” as his toe suddenly turned up a folded foolscap paper.

He figured Kigel had been carrying it in his hand, had the animal cunning to shove the paper deep down into the leaf trash and pine needles.

The house dick cupped another match over it. He said, “Hun-h-h?” as he saw the document lacked the necessary two witnesses’ signatures.

Sound came softly, rustlingly, behind him. He waved out the match, whirled around. A soprano voice said: “Don’t shoot. It’s me again — Spica Zane. I had to tell you. I just remembered something!”

O’Hanna was getting used to it. “I bet you just realized it’s important.”

The blonde gulped. “Yes. You see, I don’t know what a silencer looks like. But lots of Uncle Charley’s employees were drafted. Some of them brought back war souvenirs. It’s one way to get in solid with the boss. Well, Uncle Charley had a funny little tube packed in his suitcase. I thought it was some part of a telescope. Maybe he was killed with his own gun and silencer!”

O’Hanna said: “Hubba-hubba, I’m glad you told me. I just remembered something too. I didn’t realize it was important at the time. I mean the way you dragged your astronomical uncle into the Palomar Room tonight. It was a mighty clever dodge to throw him and McGuffey together in public just before killing him.”

The blond niece gasped, put her hand to her mouth.

O’Hanna said: “They might have got into a public debate about their comet. Or Uncle Charley might have made some nasty crack the waiter would overhear, especially with you there to lead him on to saying it. A very cute trick indeed.”

Spica Zane backed away a yard. She said: “But he called you. He warned you Joe McGuffey might start trouble!”

“He suspected the wrong relative. You walked into that dark room and put the gun’s silencer against his bald spot.”

The girl shrank.

O’Hanna said: “Professor Martin was due any minute. The minute she arrived, you reached for the fireplace poker, At the same time, you grabbed a piece of string. The gun was on the other end, outside, with the silencer removed.”

Spica Zane kept walking backwards. O’Hanna followed her. He said: “The reason you sneaked out the bedroom window was to get rid of that gun outside. By that time Kigel had come back nosing around for the will. He caught you redhanded with the gun. So you gave him the silent slug treatment. Then, to cover up, you repeated the string and gun stunt, this time using me as your alibi’s eye witness.”

The girl whirled. O’Hanna caught at her shoulder. It wasn’t there. She dropped to her knees. Her fingers clawed frantically through the leafmold and pine needles.

O’Hanna shouted: “Hey, Ed! She hid it here! She—”

He saw something in the blonde’s hand. He put out his foot. He didn’t put it there easy. The thing stopped flying when it hit a tree trunk.

O’Hanna sprang, and scooped it up. He said, as Ed Gleeson dashed up with a flashlight: “I’ll say somebody gave Uncle Charley a war souvenir.” It wasn’t just the silencer. A hunk of Waffenfabrik shooting iron went with it.

Manager Endicott’s eyes bulged as they steered the tousled, weeping blonde into the chalet.

He prattled: “Mike! You mean — she—”

“Yeah. She didn’t know her Uncle Charley was a two-timer. She thought he was actually going to give away a hundred thousand bucks she’d hoped to inherit herself. She framed the kill before he could make it legal with witnesses’ names.”

“Good God!” Endicott said. He shook his head. “A lovely young lady like that killing her own flesh-and-blood just for money. It makes me shiver!”

O’Hanna looked around at everybody.

“That’s what murder does,” the house dick opined solemnly. “It leaves you just naturally cold.”