Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938

---Proof of the Pudding by Lawrence Treat

Even mother never baked a pie that held the secret to half a million dollars

Peppery little Flannagan looked like a cross between a cherub and a featherweight champ but he felt like a man trying to chop down a tree with a penknife. The case was two days old and stale, washed out.

He had come up to the north-woods village of Smyrna because Barton Seely sent for him. Seely, broad-shouldered, with round handsome features under his dark hair, looked out of place in the tiny cell behind the sheriff’s office. Too big for it. Too prosperous, too well fed, too healthy despite the worry in his deep brown eyes.

But he was dangerously close to hysteria as he shouted through the rusty bars of the jail. “You got a wire from me? Then you’re Flannagan. Listen — you know why they have me here — assault with intent to kill. They can give me ten years for it. Realize what that is? Know what it means to a man like me? Ten years. It’s crazy. But even Tannick — he’s my lawyer, came all the way up from New York — even Tannick says they can get away with it if I don’t run.”

Flannagan screwed up his sharp squirrel of a face. “You’re going off the deep end, Seely. I never saw you before in my life. You send for a first class investigator and when I get here you put on a scene like a chorus girl in a jam. Want me to sit down and have a good cry with you or what?”

Seely shook his head. “I’m all up in the air — anybody would be. But you’re right, I guess. I’m acting like... like a—”

“Like an idiot,” supplied Flannagan pleasantly. “And that’s charitable. Suppose you tell me what happened. You and Warren Lamport were on a hunting trip. Who’s Lamport?”

“Manages some of my properties, but promotion of high class real estate developments is his specialty. Best man at it in the country.”

Seely’s jaw snapped with the first decisive words he’d pronounced since he was jailed. Flannagan drawled, “So?” in a soothing tone.

“So we came up here. Just the pair of us and my man Glidden. I have a hunting shack that I use every year or two. I shouldn’t have taken Warren. We’d been disagreeing about things. It’s no secret, Flannagan, so I may as well tell you. He’s got a sharp temper in him and I guess I have too. We scrapped on the way up, scrapped in the woods and scrapped when we got back for the night. We even scrapped over the pudding.”

“This a nursery tale?”

“The pudding,” went on Seely, as if he hadn’t heard. “There’s no stove in the shack and Glidden did the cooking over an open fireplace. Makes it more like a camp. Glidden claimed you couldn’t cook desserts on it, and Lamport said he was an ass and he’d show him. So Lamport mixed stuff in a bowl and called it a pudding. I was cleaning my gun. I got sarcastic and we had unpleasant words. Glidden went to chop wood and I went outside to cool off. Lamport put his pudding on to cook and — what’s the use anyhow?”

Little Flannagan snapped like a dog herding a steer into the corral. “I come six hundred miles and now you’re scared I’ll get the goods on you instead of fixing up a phony case. Listen, Seely — you know who I am or you wouldn’t have sent for me. I go after the facts, and if you’re clean on this I’ll get you free. But so help me, if you shot Lamport I’ll nail it on you so tight you can’t squirm out with a crowbar. Or with a million dollars. Want to tell me what happened or want me to take the next train back?”

Seely shrugged wearily. “You may be able to help — you’re the only hope I have left — but my story’s so feeble I’d be better off if I shut up. But here it is anyhow. I was standing outside and I’ll swear nobody could have gone in or out without my seeing or hearing him. I heard the shot inside. Not loud, not as loud as it should have been, but I knew what it was. So I came in on the run, and there was Warren lying on the floor. No gun in sight, none we could ever find. Mine was in my pocket. No reason to shoot himself. The bullet glanced off his forearm and went into his side. You are not likely to shoot yourself in your own forearm, and you certainly can’t do it without a gun. But there he was anyhow, lying on the floor, and as soon as he came to he started groaning about my not meaning it. He really believes I shot him.”

“Right forearm? Maybe he was left-handed. You can hide guns.”

“He wasn’t left-handed and he wasn’t ambidextrous either. There was no gun and he’s not the suicide type, Flannagan. You’ll see for yourself.”

Flannagan saw. A tall sinewy man lying on a hospital bed, telling feebly how his best friend had tried to kill him. Deliberately. Then Flannagan had to go out. Lamport was weak and couldn’t talk much. Doctor’s orders.

As for the man Glidden, all he could do was shake his head and say nothing with a butler’s accent. He’d been chopping wood. He hadn’t heard anything. When he came back, Lamport was lying there and telling Seely he shouldn’t have done it.

The gun? None except the one in Seely’s pocket. Seely had cleaned it, oiled it and loaded it, standing next to Lamport who was measuring his ingredients for the pudding.

Pudding again. Little Flannagan let loose a few pounds of steam and marched out to the shack. Seely had called it a shack, anyhow. It had all the modern conveniences except a stove. Seely had funny ideas about roughing it.

Sightseers had messed up most of the evidence, if there’d been much in the first place. Flannagan found merely a couple of dried bloodstains and then the ashes in the fire. He shoveled the ashes into a paper bag and took them back to the sheriff’s office to study under a portable microscope. Ashes and the bullet that Sheriff Reveneau had locked in his safe, in a carefully labeled envelope.

Reveneau, big and grizzled and matter-of-fact, sat on the edge of the desk and nursed his bewilderment. Flannagan stared at the bullet for a long, long time. He had to believe it, and at the same time it was almost impossible. A smooth-bore pistol. A modern bullet without rifling marks.

After a while Reveneau couldn’t keep it to himself any more. “Of all the gosh-darned foolishment,” he growled. “They all of ’em admit there wasn’t nobody else around, so Seely must have done it. And one bullet missing from his gun. You can’t worm out of it, fella, no matter how much money ye git.”

Flannagan held the little lead pellet in his hand, flipped it thoughtfully and caught it. Reveneau was six inches higher and five inches wider, but a man is as big as the inside of his head.

Flannagan said, “Let’s iron this out. Who do you think I am, anyhow?”

“Reckon you’re asking for it. Seely, he’s got more money than’d fill this here room, so he hired you to twist things round his way. Trouble is, you can’t twist. This shooting happened in my jurisdiction and you can’t buy me neither. Seely goes up for it next court. Gimme back that bullet. Doc Jervis dug it out’n Lamport’s side and I don’t feel right ’bout lettin’ you nor anybody else handle it.”

Flannagan dropped it on the desk. “You have me wrong, Sheriff. Neither Seely nor anybody else hired me.”

“Come up for the fun of it, hey?”

Flannagan beamed amiably and looked like the bright boy of the class. He had his favorite cue. “In a way, yes. The university has a police school — the Academy of Police Science, it’s called — and my job is to tackle the tough ones and show that the scientific methods get results where the old ones don’t. Then I send a line in to the papers to the effect that the Academy cracked another one. I’m paid for getting publicity, but my job is to find the truth regardless.”

“Science,” muttered Sheriff Reveneau slowly. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it if you use your plain common sense. Only when you use your common sense, ain’t no need for science.”

“I’ll make a bet with you, Sheriff. I’ll bet Seely didn’t shoot Lamport and that Lamport didn’t do it himself either, and I’ll prove it with this sort of thing.” He tapped the microscope. “If I’m wrong, I’ll come up here and work under you for three months. But if I’m right, you come down to the Academy and take a three months’ course in police work. Is it a bet?”

Reveneau scratched his head thoughtfully, then extended a great bearlike paw. “My hand on it,” he said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. Even if you proved somethin’ with this scientific stuff o’ yourn, they wouldn’t believe it up here. You got to show a jury what a man instead of a microscope tells.”

Paul Flannagan gripped the hand and hardly listened. He was already building up the publicity in his head. “County Sheriff Comes Out For Science.” The papers would eat it up.

Arthur Tannick went down on the train with Flannagan. Tannick took care of the legal end of the Seely interests and made enough out of it to have to juggle his own income tax. He was tall, smooth, with a nose that looked as if it were made for his pince-nez glasses rather than the glasses for it.

Tannick lit a cigar that smelt of tobacco and perfume. “It’s a mess,” he said irritably. “I told Seely as soon as he got out on bail to hop the jurisdiction. There’s no case unless Lamport takes the stand, and I can persuade him not to.”

“I told Seely if he jumped bail he’d practically admit he was guilty.”

“Well, isn’t he?”

“How do I know? About this Lamport — he’s a lawyer?”

Tannick nodded. “Doesn’t practise, though. More of a promoter than a lawyer.”

Flannagan said, “Seely and Lamport came up for some shooting and now they got a shooting and they don’t like it. I could feel sorry for that pair. All alone in the woods with nothing between them and the cold except a five-thousand-dollar shack, and nothing between them and starvation except Seely’s valet. Think of it, Tannick — two men and only one valet. The way I look at it, they should have brought along the chef from the Waldorf and then there wouldn’t have been any trouble.”

“No need of being facetious. They had angry words over a pudding, and though the statement sounds ludicrous, it was merely the excuse, the casus belli. If Lamport goes on the stand they’re bound to bring in a verdict of guilty. Even Lamport couldn’t explain how he shot himself and then disposed of the gun. Seems to me that’s the strongest point against Seely.”

Flannagan shrugged. “One point in Seely’s favor balances everything else you can possibly say.”

“What’s that?”

“Why in hell would he call me in if he were guilty? He knows I’ll get the truth, no matter what it is.”

“Maybe you overrate yourself, Flannagan.”

And little Flannagan snapped back, “Impossible!” and looked vastly pleased with himself.

But it was sheer bravado. The same bravado with which he’d talked himself into his job three months ago. The university had had a million dollars worth of police school and laboratory equipment but no pupils and no prestige. Flannagan had erupted with the idea that practical work, practical success was the answer. Solve a few murders, make the world know the Academy was cracking cases, and the Academy was made. He’d wrangled a trial for his scheme, with himself as publicity director.

Maybe it was luck, maybe it was little Flannagan’s liberal sprinkling of Academy funds, but the next important murder case was an Academy triumph. The papers stated that the police had arrested the murderer “in cooperation with the Scientific Academy of the University” and the police commissioner admitted he had had “invaluable help.” Thereafter Flannagan was made.

But it was a precarious making. One boner and the opposition would be on his neck. The jealous police officials who didn’t like to divide credit: the reactionaries who believed in the old-fashioned methods; the crooked politicians who were secretly connected with crime.

As soon as Flannagan reached New York, he walked into the Academy laboratory and put down the bag of ashes he’d collected from the fireplace of Seely’s cabin.

“Have a look at this stuff,” he said, “and let me know what you find.”

Stettinus, the laboratory wizard, tall, stooped, with a yellow wrinkled face and a mouth wide enough to grace a cartoon, said, “What’ll I look for?”

“Anything in general pudding in particular. Bread pudding, prune pudding. Maybe even cordite pudding. You never know these days.”

Stettinus sniffed. “Cordite?” he said, and went to work.

There was no cordite, of course. Pine ash, hickory ash, paper ash. Traces of prune pudding. A twisted cartridge case, unmarked. But no cordite, Flannagan read the report and did nothing — yet.

The newspapers interviewed Lamport as soon as he came out of the hospital. He indicated that a high sense of ethics and his feeling of responsibility as a citizen would compel him to appear at the Seely trial next month. As for Seely, he got out on bail, jumped the jurisdiction and persuaded the local authorities to do nothing except hope he’d show up at the proper time. Unusual? Sure. But the answer was Tannick and unlimited money.

Flannagan waited until Lamport had recovered and was back at work. Then Flannagan made an appointment, marched into Lamport’s luxurious office and said, “I want to talk to you about the Seely case.”

Lamport appraised him with sharp, calculating eyes. “Nothing I know of to talk about.”

“Oh yes there is. I’ve uncovered an extraordinary piece of evidence. Lamport. About an automatic pistol you own.” Flannagan consulted a slip of paper and read off some serial numbers. “That’s yours isn’t it?”

“Yes, but I don’t see what bearing—”

Flannagan interrupted. “Of course you don’t. The strongest point against Seely is that his gun was the only one on the scene and that one bullet was missing. A ballistic expert could prove the bullet that wounded you didn’t come from Seely’s gun, but country jury would say. ‘If it didn’t come from Seely’s then where the devil did it come from?’ And they’d disregard the evidence.”

“I’m not a ballistics expert and I saw who shot me. That should settle the matter.”

“Exactly. Except that I found a cartridge shell near the fireplace and I wondered whether I couldn’t hook it up to another weapon. So the other night I took the liberty of entering your apartment and borrowing your gun. I fired a few test shots and compared the ejector marks on the cartridge case with the marks on the cartridge from the fireplace.”

“And they didn’t match,” said Lamport, leaning forward with a shrewd expression.

“And they didn’t match,” agreed Flannagan genially. “But that, of course, is only between the two of us.”

“I don’t get you.”

Flannagan shrugged. “A simple matter to exchange the cartridge case from the fireplace for one of my test samples. Now, you see, they do match.”

“It’s a frameup!” snapped Lamport.

“Sure it is.”

Flannagan studied the effect of his words. They produced not outraged morality nor even a sense of being duped, but admiration and a cool, calculating appraisal of how best to handle the situation.

Flannagan said quietly, “I think we understand each other.”

“I’ll have to think it over.” Lamport pressed a switch and spoke into the dictaphone connecting with the receptionist in his outer office. “Will you call Durcher? I’ll be wanting him later on.” Lamport left the switch connected so that the remainder of the conversation could be heard outside.

“What are you after?” demanded Lamport angrily. “Money?”

“Oh no. Something far more elemental. Justice.”

“What’s that!”

“I’ll try to explain, though you could best start with a dictionary. Then, if it’s still beyond you, I could submit a bibliography. Some very great minds have examined the subject.”

“As I understand it, Flannagan, you’re deliberately framing me with false testimony. You’re claiming that a gun which I left in New York was actually in Smyrna.”

“Oh no. I’m claiming that your gun was in Smyrna because I can prove it.”

“And just what do you want out of this?”

Flannagan did something rare with him. He repeated himself. “Justice,” he said. “When I was in Smyrna, I found a case against Seely that looked practically airtight, except for one little thing. But the alternative was too fantastic, assumed too fast and facile and fertile a brain behind it, so I kept the idea to myself. When I brought my evidence to the laboratory my hunch was confirmed, but confirmed with a delicate piece of scientific analysis that nobody would believe. Certainly not a Smyrna jury. I needed you to help me, and you did.” Flannagan heard a door slam in the outer office. The rumble of voices sounded vaguely. He stood up.

“And so,” he said, “I found that the marks on the cartridge case prove the gun is yours.”

“You lie!” thundered Lamport. “I never even took my gun with me.”

“Difficult to prove.”

Lamport cleared his throat and spoke in a loud voice. “So your proposition is that if I pay you enough you won’t frame me on the Seely case.”

Flannagan, in an equally loud tone, replied, “My proposition is this: I want you to do just one thing.” He moved casually toward the side door. “To go to hell!”

He yanked open the door and dived. Lamport yelled, “Get him — cover the back!”

Flannagan dashed to the left, saw a door marked, “Lewin Office Supply,” and opened it. A girl was sitting in front of a typewriter. She had dark hair and brown eyes and a long delicate face. Flanagan peeled off his coat, pulled a gun and barked. “Don’t get scared and you’ll be all right. I’m in a jam — cops’ll be here — take this letter down on your machine — and so help me, if you give me away—”

His mouth tightened and his eyes shot fire. Then he hopped on one corner of her desk, gun still drawn but concealed by his body so that he was half sitting on it.

Her face went chalk white and she stared with her large, appealing eyes. Flannagan — smiled. “Steady,” he said. “Now take this: ‘According to our records the goods were delivered on the 14th of the month and—’ ”

The typewriter was dirking steadily. Flannagan jerked his head around as two cops punched open the door and strode in.

“What do you want?” demanded Flannagan.

They hesitated. One said:

“A little guy, your build — seen him anywhere?”

“Not in the last fifteen minutes. I’ve been dictating. What happened?”

The cop glared. “How the hell do I know? Maybe nothing. But if he shows up, yell.”

“Yell my head off.” grinned Flannagan. “Hope you find him, officer.”

The door slammed shut. Flannagan drew a deep breath. The girl said. “It was too fast for me and I didn’t have time to think. I don’t believe you’d shoot me. I’m going to scream.”

“Of course I wouldn’t shoot you, and you won’t scream either. At least not until you know what it’s all about. Let’s go downstairs and have a soda. I’ll tell you how I was framed, and if you think the cops ought to have me, then you can scream your head off. Want my gun for a guarantee of good faith?”

He held her with his eves with their clear steady blueness, with their frank liking for her and with the vague dreamy humorous quality in them.

She said, “Yes, I’ll take your gun.” Flannagan held it by the barrel and waved it casually. “It’s a wild excitable crazy kind of world, isn’t it? You’re a stenographer in a — what kind of an office is this?”

“Office supply. Weren’t you going to give me the gun?”

“Yes. Fascinating work. Fascinating despite the drudgery, because any minute of any day somebody can walk through that door and change the entire course of your life. Two minutes ago you could have opened your mouth and ruined me. You can still do it. A half hour ago I kept a routine appointment and a man framed me. The police wouldn’t hold me a half hour, but my name would come out and a very worthy enterprise be damaged with the laughter heaped upon it.” He calmly pocketed his revolver. “I wish I could do something to thank you for using your head.”

“You could tell me exactly what this is all about and see if I believe it.”

He looked thoughtful as he put on his coat. “My name is Flannagan. Paul Flannagan. And yours?”

“Elizabeth Dean.”

“May I use your phone, Miss Dean?”

He dialed Lamport’s number. Into the mouthpiece he said, “This is Flannagan speaking. I’m in a phone booth around the corner and thought I’d tell you to call off the police hunt. A waste of time, now. I knew what you were doing as soon as you told your receptionist to call Lieutenant Durcher. An unusual name, Durcher, and I happen to know him. I doubt whether he’d have arrested me under any circumstances, but the story would have reached the papers and made me a laughing stock. My attempt to compel you to withhold testimony. My reputation’s a vulnerable point, in view of my work. You tried a neat trick but it was obvious that you didn’t switch off your outer office communication. The only obvious thing you’ve done thus far. And thanks for an interesting afternoon. You enabled me to meet an extremely attractive young lady, and that doesn’t happen every day.”

He hung up. “I think I can go in safety now, Miss Dean. As for the explanation I was going to give you — suppose we postpone it till dinner this evening. Say the lobby of the Astor, about seven o’clock. Will that suit you?”

It did, but the meeting between Paul Flannagan and Elizabeth Dean is no part of this story, except that as a result she changed her job from the Lewin Office Supply to the publicity office of the Academy of Police Science.

About a week before Seely was due to stand trial in Smyrna for assault with intent to kill, Lamport came to see him by appointment. It was the first time the two men had spoken at any length since the shooting. Seely, embarrassed, older and more haggard than when Lamport had last seen him, offered cigars and a highball before he came to the point of the interview.

“I’ve been thinking about this, Warren. You claim I shot you. I can’t find it in me to doubt your word, even though I have no recollection, no consciousness of the act. They say that men can do things automatical, without volition or realization of the nature of what they’re doing. Maybe. If it’s possible, maybe that’s what I did. A kind of temporary insanity. That’s the plea Tannick advises me to make.”

“I’d like to think that was the reason, Bart. Even so, it’s tough on me.”

“On you? You’re not threatened with jail — how is it tough on you?”

“To be the means of sending you to prison,” said Lamport steadily. “If there were some way out—”

Seely stared at the ash of his cigar. “Unless you give your testimony, there’s no case against me. But Tannick made you an offer and you turned him down.”

Lamport nodded. “I thought the two of us could talk it over together. If I don’t testify after I’ve been subpoenaed, I’m in for a lot of trouble.”

“I’ll pay for that trouble. Anything you want.”

Lamport leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling. “Suppose, instead of shooting a man — shooting me, to be exact — you’d done something else. Some other crime. Were driven to it by necessity, by circumstances you couldn’t control. Suppose you took money which you were handling in a capacity of trust.”

Seely sat up suddenly. “The C.P.A.’s been going over my books. He hinted at a shortage which he hadn’t checked yet. You mean you’ve been defrauding me?”

Lamport was staring at Seely now, staring with that sharp penetrating look. “I wouldn’t care to admit that. But if you found you could lodge a charge against me, and if instead of doing it you made good the money and dropped the charge, then it might be worth my while to keep away from Smyrna.” Lamport swallowed. “Pure coincidence that I have this means of defending myself.”

Seely said, “How much?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand. Say another two hundred and fifty to set me up.”

Seely broke into a broad grin. “For half a million you’ll drop the Smyrna charge? I’ll have the money in three days.”

“Cash,” said Lamport.

“Cash,” repeated Seely. “And now that we have it settled, how did the shooting really happen?”

Lamport shrugged. “If I told, my position would be considerably weakened.”

The door opened and little Flannagan walked in. “Got it on the dictagraph, Seely. It worked the way I told you. Here are the warrants against Lamport for false imprisonment, malicious prosecution and extortion.”

Lamport leapt to his feet. “Say, what is this?”

“The showdown.” replied Flannagan. “The evidence was nothing to get. All I wanted was your admission of Seely’s innocence.”

Lamport stiffened. “That’s something you’ll never get!”

“ ‘If I told,’ ” quoted Flannagan, “ ‘my position would be considerably weakened.’ Wouldn’t convince the Smyrna woodsmen, but it’ll convince a New York jury, and that’s where the actions for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution will be brought. There won’t be a trial in Smyrna.”

Lamport shrugged.

“You have some evidence? Or are these purely obstructive tactics?”

“Judge for yourself. When Seely cleaned and loaded his gun, he dropped one of the bullets without realizing. Dropped it in the prunes and left an empty chamber in his gun. The laboratory can prove it because the cartridge case, despite the heat, still had a minute coating of sugar and syrup and prune particles.

“What happened was that when you poured the prunes into your pudding, you poured the bullet too. Whether you dropped it, whether you spilt the pot or it boiled over, I don’t know. But that bullet landed in the fire and the heat discharged the bullet. No gun ever fired it!”

“You’re crazy!” thundered Lamport.

“That’s what I thought at first, when I found a bullet without rifling marks and a cartridge case without any marks at all. It took too clever and quick-thinking a man to engineer. But after my interview with you the other day, I learnt not only how quick-thinking you were, but also how worried. There was no reason to try to frame me on an extortion charge, but you saw a chance to force me out of the picture and you grabbed it. The gambler mind taking a long chance. Same thing as at Smyrna.

“A bullet dropped in the fire and then exploded, wounding you. You saw a chance to get something on Seely. You needed that because you’d been embezzling his funds. You held off until now, though you had this in mind right from the beginning.”

Lamport laughed. “Sure I did!” His hand whipped from his coal and leveled the automatic. “But the only real evidence you have is that dictagraph and you’re getting the record for me right now and smashing it to bits!”

Flannagan narrowed his eves. “It in the next room.”

“Put your hands up and Hand next to each other. Now walk ahead slowly. You’re both covered.”

Flannagan had to lower his hand to turn the door knob. He was close to the door as he entered the next room. When he dived, his speed was double quick because the door was swinging one way and he was leaping the other.

He landed on his knees, whirling and snapping up his revolver in the same instant. The big automatic thundered and the door jerked and showed a splintered panel. Flannagan backed slowly to the corner and held his breath. If he’d judged Lamport right, Lamport wouldn’t leave without taking the last desperate gamble of shooting it out.

Flannagan waited. Seely was behind the big upholstered couch across the room. Flannagan saw the door move slightly and something emerge from it. He held his fire, his eyes darting from the object he hadn’t identified to the door hinge and then back again.

In the narrow opening between door and hinge a black muzzle slid upward. Flannagan compressed his lips and fired twice through the slit. There was a groan, the thud of a body toppling, the shattering sound of glass. Flannagan sprang forward to the door and peered cautiously around it.

Lamport was lying on the rug, his automatic a few feet from him. Near the door lay the broken vase which he had used as a decoy in the hope of drawing Flannagan’s attention.

Seely spoke shakily. “He’s dead?” he asked. Then he saw Lamport move. “Ambulance — police!” he babbled.

Flannagan walked over to the phone and dialed a number. “Hello, Miss Dean? Flannagan speaking. Get that publicity material about the Smyrna sheriff coming out for science and send it right out. All the papers. And one other thing — call the police and an ambulance to Seely’s house. I’d do it for myself except that I want a drink first. Not for me, stupid — for Seely. Imagine a big guy like that fainting, just from a little excitement.”