Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 139, No. 6, September 14, 1940

The murder weapon was a tricky one — in more ways than one.

I

The day Frank Mergan was shot I came up from what was called the summerhouse on his estate, knowing Frank Mergan would be sitting in his usual place in the big chair by the library window. In fact, I saw his head and shoulders through the window and it seemed to me they were very clear — clearer than usual — as though there was no screen in the window. Which was a fact. There was no screen.

I remember how I thought again, coming up, how easy it would be to shoot Frank Mergan with a high-powered rifle, from the edge of the cliff, and then slide down the cliff and escape in a boat. The head was silhouetted so plainly in the open window. The cliffs were tough but it could be done, if someone was waiting for you in a boat.

Mergan’s butler, Simpson, let me in and showed me to the library, though I knew well enough where the library was. John Schrieber was there with Mergan. Schrieber nodded toward a chair but I didn’t sit down. I glanced at the ship’s clock on the mantle and it showed seven minutes to five.

“What I’ve got to say can be said quick,” I told both of them. “There’s no point in beating around the bush.”

Schrieber said, “Now, now, Anderson. There’s no point, either, in being militant. Mr. Mergan left his affairs in the city to come all the way out to Rocky Point to give you an audience.”

“He did like hell,” I said carefully. “He came down here because he saw a profit to be made. He came down here to see how cheaply he could buy my machine, to see if he could steal it!”

Mergan didn’t say a word. It was Schrieber was insulted.

“Steal it! Why... why, hasn’t Mr. Mergan put up money during the last year so that you, with my help, could perfect the machine — so that you could be free from financial worry while you worked?”

Schrieber was staring at me righteously with his gray eyes large and glistening behind the glasses. Mergan said nothing. He just sat there in the big Morris chair where he always sat, partially facing the window. He was watching me, and smirking.

The window was open to the soft air of the balmy spring evening. In the distance you could hear the murmur of waves as the gentle sea broke upon the rocks below the cliffs. Nearer, on the wide lawn, there was a grove of giant hemlocks making a dark, ragged and immense shadow against the distant whiteness of the village of Rocky Point and against the banked clouds over the ocean.

Frank Mergan’s white hair was like a soiled cloud against the blackness of the Morris chair. Under the hair the thin face was as sharp as a terrier’s.

I said to both of them: “Free from financial worry! Maybe. You have advanced me two thousand dollars — enough to keep me alive. In return, what have you received? Why I, like a fool, have signed over to you the right to manufacture my machine without royalties. Already, to date, the Mergan factory has taken thousands of dollars in profits from my invention and given me — what? A lousy two thousand dollars!”

Mergan came forward in his chair. His thin little dried-up hands made a rustling sound as he rubbed the palms together. Like dead leaves. And he was like his hands, was Frank Mergan — hard and brittle, nearly bloodless. He said soothingly, “It sounds very much as if you’ve been talking to that lawyer fellow again, Anderson. That Tolman. I warned you about Tolman. He can do you no good.”

“Not now, he can’t!” I cried. “But if I had listened to him in the first place, he could have. He warned me about you. He told me to go ahead and perfect my machine without accepting money from anyone, without signing away any of my rights. He told me to struggle through. After all these years, what was another year, he asked me. But no! I was smarter than Tolman. I was a master mechanic and machinist! And wasn’t Mr. Frank Mergan a millionaire? And wasn’t Mr. Frank Mergan a philanthropist? And didn’t he give thousands of dollars away to the poor? Why, Mr. Frank Mergan wouldn’t steal a poor man’s idea, an inventor’s dream! Oh no!”

I laughed. It struck me as futile, what I said. I recall looking again at the ship’s clock on the mantle. It was three minutes to five.

Frank Mergan laughed, too. He laughed till his frail body shook, but no sound came from him. His white head was bent over a little and his cunning eyes rolled up at me. He looked like one of those grotesque wood figures that Mexicans carve out and sell to tourists. He was colored like them; white hair, brown, wrinkled skin, wine-shade dressing gown, round eyes with lots of the white showing, a long, pointed nose.

“Anderson, Anderson,” he chuckled. “What are you talking about? I haven’t stolen anything from you. Don’t be a Bolsheviki. Analyze the facts.”

“Yes, analyze them,” echoed Schrieber.

“You do it,” I said.

“I shall,” Mergan replied and what he said was this:

“Two years ago you came to me and told me you’d invented a hair-cutting machine. You believed that my company would be interested in the device since we were already known as manufacturers of electric razors, toasters, flat-irons, washing-machines, automatic switches and so forth and so forth.”

He stopped and stared at me. “True, Anderson?”

“That much is.”

“Perfectly true,” murmured Schrieber.

Mergan went on: “You came to me because I was easily accessible, having this summer home in Rocky Point for oh, so many years... having become more or less of a byword among the natives hereabouts. True, Anderson?”

“You old goat,” I said angrily. “Why ask that silly question? It’s true so far. I’ll stop you when you begin to lie.”

Schrieber gasped.

Of course it was true, so far. I was born in Rocky Point. Ever since I was big enough to understand anything I’d been told that Frank Mergan was just everything a young American should strive to emulate. My father, poor man, told me that. He believed it. In his day, everybody believed it. My Sunday School teachers, my school teachers, the newspapers, the family magazines, the Boy Scout books — they all said that Frank Mergan and men like him were great and rich and generous and brave and honorable as well as smart, for every one of them had worked his way up from office boy to ownership of whatever business he was in and nobody could do that unless they were paragons of virtue and intelligence.

I glanced at Schrieber. He was being patiently pious and fawningly smug. The rat.

Frank Mergan ignored what I said. He went on, coldly.

“You came to me and told me about your machine. I didn’t send for you. You came. But I was interested. I saw possibilities in the device—”

“You didn’t see them in the beginning,” I broke in. “I argued with you for three hours before you even began to see them. Afterward, your own advertising copywriters opened your eyes the rest of the way. It took some high-priced persuasion to force you into a shrewd decision.”

“Why. Why!” Mergan choked. “You... you whippersnapper!”

“Just to keep the record straight. Though you’ll get credit for it anyway in all the story books.”

“I have a good mind to have you kicked bodily out of my house! You are an ingrate, Anderson.”

“Nuts. You and your butler and your yes-man together, couldn’t move me an inch.”

“Are you threatening me?”

I glared at him. My hands commenced to open and close of their own accord. I felt like choking him.

Then he smiled. That was his way, Frank Mergan got what he wanted through guile, never by open fight.

“Ah well, let it pass,” he said. “After I was convinced, Anderson, what did I do? I offered you five thousand outright for your machine. You refused. Meanwhile I had had experts looking it over — Mr. Schrieber for one, he being an inventor, too.”

“Of sorts,” said Schrieber modestly.

“Anyway, these experts,” continued Mergan, “suggested certain modifications in your machine so that women as well as men could use it. Then I sent for you, Anderson. Is not that true?”

“Go on.”

“I offered you two thousand dollars if you would re-design the machine. You agreed to do so. I provided you with a laboratory by installing a complete machine-shop in the summerhouse, here on my estate. I also offered you the services of Mr. Schrieber.”

“And I perfected the machine,” I said, “after a year’s hard work. But during that year you had the improvements patented in the name of your company.”

“It was my right under the terms of our agreement.”

“Your right nothing! Your lawyers made it your right by saying to the patent office that since you were paying for the improvements, they belonged to you. Schrieber was your watchdog.”

“Mr. Schrieber is a loyal member of my organization,” answered Mergan tartly. “A loyal member, Anderson.”

“And why shouldn’t he be?” I blurted. “He’s smart. When you die he’s in line for a nice chunk of your dough, since you’ve got no heirs. Why wouldn’t he be?”

Schrieber’s face contorted. “Careful, Anderson! You may go too far! Please leave personalities out of this discussion. Mr. Mergan is making you another offer.”

“Oh, is he?”

“I’m offering you five thousand dollars,” Mergan purred. “The original offer. Three thousand cash added to the two thousand you’ve already received for the entire rights to your machine.”

“But I worked for that two thousand!” I was astounded.

“Hundreds of inventors have received less for better inventions, I assure you.”

“I know that! Hundreds of inventions have been stolen, legally stolen! There must be hundreds of inventors hating you as I hate you, you—”

But Mergan only shrugged. He wasn’t fazed. “Do you accept?” he asked softly.

“I’ll see you in hell first!” I shouted. “The Mergan company has already marketed fifty thousand of these machines, my machines! Now you’re offering me three thousand dollars. You... you dirty old thief!”

This did faze him. He grasped the arms of his chair as if he would move it, but it didn’t move. He was obviously boiling with anger.

“I know,” I cried. “You’re going to say the law is on your side. Well, save your breath. I know it.”

“Do you accept my offer?” he barked.

“No!”

“Then you’ll get nothing!”

“I expected that. Knowing I have no money for lawyers, knowing Tolman, without fee, cannot afford to fight through a long drawn-out legal battle against a dozen shrewd, conniving attorneys for the Mergan company, knowing that you can steal the manufacturing rights, you will freeze me out!”

John Schrieber puffed, “Anderson, Mr. Mergan doesn’t have to take such talk from anybody—”

I paid no attention. Instead, I looked down upon Mergan, unable to control my anger. “Mr. Mergan,” I said distinctly, “some day one of these people you’ve defrauded is going to take something away from you more valuable than any machine. Some day one of them is going to remember that he is a man, an American who will risk his very life to defend his rights. Watch out, Mr. Mergan, watch out! When—”

And it was at that very moment that the dull plopping sound came from Mergan, the like of which I had never heard before. For a second I thought Mergan had made the sound in trying to speak. Then I saw him stiffen in his chair. He swayed, and there came a sharp report — of a distant gun — perhaps a second and a half after the plop.

Behind me I heard Schrieber gasp, “My God!”

An instant later there was the second plop. Then another report. Mergan doubled up. He rolled slowly out of the chair and fell to the floor, face down.

II

Schrieber screamed and rushed to the door, seemingly galvanized into movement by fear. Stupidly I gazed at the open window.

Behind me the ship’s clock struck twice. It was five o’clock.

Schrieber was yelling, “Simpson! Simpson!”

The butler appeared at the door. “What’s happened, sir? What has happened?” I saw Simpson’s eyes lower and heard him gurgle strangely. He was staring at the floor in front of the chair. Mergan’s slight body twisted uncannily and turned on its side. There came a quivering relaxation in all the thin muscles and Mergan lay still.

“Call the police!” shouted Schrieber. “Now! Why are you standing there like that? Go! Call them, I say!”

“Ye-yes sir.” The butler faded from the door. Schrieber ran to Mergan. He knelt. Now it could be seen that there was a hole in Mergan’s forehead. Very little blood came from it. But there was lots of blood on Mergan’s chest. A slowly spreading circle ringed the white bosom of his shirt and almost covered it. Schrieber put out his hand.

“I wouldn’t touch him,” I said.

Schrieber froze. He stared up at me fearfully, his lips quivering. “Anderson, Anderson, what has happened?” he asked emptily.

“He’s shot,” I answered cautiously. “Somebody from outside—”

“Then what are we doing here? Why aren’t we out there searching for... for—” Schrieber stopped and there was a curious hollowness in his voice, as if he had given me a cue in a play or had prompted me in a forgotten line.

“It wouldn’t do a bit of good,” I said. “Do you think a man is going to shoot another man and then stand there until the police arrive?”

Schrieber nodded avidly in agreement. “You’re right, Anderson,” he muttered.

“The police will be here in no time at all,” I said.

They were. Much sooner than I expected. Rocky Point was only a mile and a half from the Mergan place on the bluff. Simpson’s call brought the town marshal, Ben Taylor, and Ben’s deputy, Will Garnett. These had scarcely entered the room when another officer came in. This was Hank Radcliff. Radcliff was a township patrol officer working with the state highway police department. I knew both Taylor and Garnett rather well, but I had never spoken more than a dozen words to Radcliff, though I had heard it said that he was a very clever detective, a graduate of a famous police school. There were two other highway police with Radcliff, as it developed.

Radcliff took charge. He out-ranked Taylor in whatever way a township man would out-rank a village officer. Anyway, he was the man I watched, what with his reputation. The others were just average small-town policemen — brave and strong, but without any real knowledge of how to go about solving a crime that wasn’t obvious. Like this one.

I saw at once that Radcliff was no ordinary cop by the way he went about his business. He was of medium height and rather pudgy of body. Oddly enough, his face was thin, hatchet-like, like that of a tall and angular man. He had black hair, a lock of which hung low on his forehead.

The first thing he did was to make a short but thorough examination of the body, without moving it. The second thing he did was to have Schrieber and I tell him exactly what we had seen. Schrieber told it and then I told it. Both of our stories were, of course, exactly alike. About Mergan sitting in the chair, about that odd plopping sound which came from the bullets hitting him, about him falling, about the delayed report of the gun.

“What were you three talking about?” asked Radcliff.

Schrieber told him briefly. He turned to me.

“Oh yes, Anderson. You’re the fellow who invented this hair-cutting machine. Hmmm.” He studied my face closely though not discourteously. “You were arguing with Mr. Mergan about payment for the right to manufacture?”

“I guess you could call it an argument,” I answered. “He wanted to steal my invention. I objected.”

Schrieber shot me a look of astonishment. Radcliff saw it.

“You realize that whatever you say here might be used against you later,” said Radcliff. “You don’t have to answer questions, yet.”

“I’ll answer anything you ask,” I replied boldly. “And I’ll tell you this: There were dozens of inventors who probably would have liked to take a shot at Mergan.” I wanted to get the point over to this detective.

“You can’t talk that way about Mr. Mergan,” interposed Schrieber hotly, his glasses quivering on the bridge of his thin nose.

I said loudly: “No? Well, I’ll say what I think. I’ve nothing to hide. We’ve already told this officer that we were having an argument. I’m trying to explain what it was all about.”

Radcliff, glancing from Schrieber to me and back again, said nothing further about it. Instead, he went to the chair where Mergan had been sitting, and tried to move it. It would not budge. He knelt, examined the legs of the chair, then arose.

“It’s fastened to the floor,” he said noncommittally. “There are little hunks of angle-iron on each front leg.”

Which was so.

Schrieber, officiously, took a look at the chair-legs.

“What do you know about that?” asked Radcliff.

“Nothing,” said Schrieber.

“And you?”

I said, “Mergan’s chairs never interested me. If he screwed them to the floor, maybe it was because he was afraid he would forget himself and steal them some night.”

Schrieber’s voice shook. “You can’t speak of the dead in such a manner, Anderson.”

I didn’t answer.

Radcliff called Simpson. The butler came in nervously, his hands fluttering like those of a frightened old woman. Radcliff showed him the angle-irons. “Did you know they were fastened down?” he asked.

Simpson quavered: “Fastened down? Goodness, no. I never knew such a thing. Why—”

“Who cleans this room?”

“The housekeeper, sir.”

“Call her, please.”

Simpson went out.

Radcliff turned to me. “Anderson,” he said. “I want you to sit in that chair in the same position Mr. Mergan was in when the shots came.”

“You want me to sit in it? Why don’t you sit in it? I can show you just as well.”

Radcliff looked at me momentarily, shrugged, and sat down in the Morris chair. I said, “Lean back a little. You’re sitting too straight. Mergan was hunched over. There! More like that.” Radcliff followed directions closely. “That’s it,” I said at last. “That’s the position he was in.”

“Was it, Mr. Schrieber?” Radcliff queried.

“I believe so,” said Schrieber.

Radcliff looked out the window toward the lighted summerhouse. “What is that down there?” he asked.

Schrieber told him. “Formerly it was a summerhouse. Now it’s being used as a laboratory by Anderson. Anderson has been working there.”

“What kind of laboratory?”

“A machine lab,” I said.

“Do you work alone?”

“Schrieber was supposed to help me.”

“You say ‘supposed to’. Didn’t he?”

“Not much,” I said flatly. “He was a spy for Mergan.”

Schrieber began to sputter but said nothing, for just then the housekeeper came in. She was nervous, but not frightened, though she refused to look at the body. Radcliff questioned her and she said, “I moved this chair every day. It wasn’t ever fastened down. That I’ll swear.”

“Was the screen usually out of the window?”

“Never,” Mrs. Todd answered. “I don’t — why it’s out n—” She stopped, biting her lip. She had suddenly realized why it was out.

“That’s all. Thank you.” Radcliff spoke kindly. “You may go, Mrs. Todd.”

As she went out, a highway patrolman came in. He gave Schrieber and me a sharp glance and then looked at Radcliff.

“Go ahead,” said Radcliff.

The patrolman drew a deep breath. “Sergeant, whoever fired these shots must have flown away. We’ve searched the grounds clean to the cliffs. We ain’t found hide nor hair of a soul.”

“Could he have used a boat?”

“No, he couldn’t. ’Member what I told you about how this land lays? This Mergan place is on a point stickin’ out into th’ ocean. On three sides there’s nothin’ but cliffs — an’ I mean cliffs! A fly couldn’t scarcely crawl down ’em and even if a man did get down, where would he be? There’s nothin’ but rocks, an’ sharp rocks too, at th’ bottom. Nobody could ever bring a boat close in enough to board her and live to tell it.”

“There’s a road.”

“Just one — from the highway in. Abe an’ me was on that within a minute after we heard those shots—”

Oh, I thought, no wonder Radcliff got here so quickly. The patrolmen had heard the shots and their car carried a radio.

“—an’ if anybody had come out the road we’d have seen him sure. There’s no place to hide along there either. Besides, Abe an’ me was watchin’ as we come in.”

“Very good, Barnes,” said Radcliff. “The way it looks then is that the shots came from the summerhouse. From the angle of the bullets’ entrance, it must have been that way. A man standing at the corner or behind the building—”

“Nobody could have stood like that, Sergeant,” interrupted Barnes. “They just couldn’t. The summerhouse is built right on the edge of the cliff. There ain’t room for a man to—”

The patrolman stopped as the wail of a siren sounded in the distance. He cocked his head, listening. “That’d be the ambulance,” he said.

“All right. You take care of things,” Radcliff ordered. “These gentlemen and I will take a walk.”

“Where to?” Schrieber asked.

“I want to see the summerhouse and the grounds.”

“But should I leave here?” said Schrieber in mild protest. “I — being Mr. Mergan’s secretary. Perhaps I should stay and see—”

“They won’t need you,” Radcliff assured him. “He’ll be taken to the Rocky Point mortuary. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

“But the office, the attorneys, should be notified.”

“What attorneys?”

Schrieber replied, “My dear Sergeant, Mr. Mergan controlled corporations worth millions. Why, news of his death will affect the stock market. It will affect finance throughout the world!”

“Well, what can lawyers do to stop it?” Radcliff was not sarcastic, saying this. He sounded merely curious.

“They can lighten the blow by announcing the will.”

“The will?”

“Certainly!” Schrieber gazed at the sergeant with something like pity. “When a man like Mr. Mergan dies, the terms of his will are very important. If he make large bequests to, for instance, philanthropies, the market will be affected in a manner entirely different from what it would be if individuals inherit. Boards of trustees don’t throw securities on the market rashly—”

“I see,” said Radcliff slowly. “And how does this will affect you, personally?”

“Oh,” Schrieber blinked. “Why, I presume Mr. Mergan remembered me in the bequests he made. I’ve been with him a long time. I’ve been loyal to him.” He paused and flashed a glance at me. “However, I see what you mean. It would be considered a motive, wouldn’t it?”

Radcliff didn’t answer the question. He waited till Schrieber was through and then said, “Come along, both of you.”

III

We followed him outside and he let me take the lead. We walked to the building on the cliff which once had been a summerhouse. The lab it now housed was complete. There was a lathe, a drill-press, a long work bench equipped with vises and a complete set of expensive, metal-working tools including a welding outfit. Mergan had provided it at the time I had undertaken the research work.

Radcliff stopped inside the door. His voice took on a new edge when he spoke, after his eyes had gone over the interior in a long, careful appraisal. He said slowly, “Now, Anderson, I want you to show me the rifle.”

I stared at him. “The rifle!” I heard Schrieber gasp.

Radcliff grunted and his boney face seemed as narrow as a knife. “You heard me, Anderson. You’re an inventor. You hated Mergan. You had no recourse against what you believed he was doing — stealing your invention. So, knowing his habit of sitting in the same chair in his study, knowing that the window near the chair was visible from this shop, you rigged some kind of apparatus that would fire a rifle at a given instant, a rifle aimed at the spot Mergan would occupy in the chair — when the chair was fixed to the floor, as it was.”

“Why... why—” I muttered, unable to speak, for the suddenness of this attack left me numb.

“Rigging a rifle like that would be simple enough for an inventor, using clockwork, say, using springs to lift the gun and fire it. Even I — not knowing a thing about mechanics — could come pretty close to rigging up a thing like that with all these tools to work with. It looks obvious, Anderson, very obvious.”

He stopped. His hand, I saw, was not far from his holstered pistol.

“But there were two shots fired!” I got that out.

“Yes. The rifle was fixed to fire once, lower its muzzle a trifle, and fire again. A good inventor could do that, too.”

I had recovered now. “That’ll be hard to prove unless you find the gun,” I said. My voice was perfectly flat. I felt nothing, no fear, nothing.

“I asked, where is the gun,” Radcliff said.

I looked at him. Schrieber was staring at me, his lips partially open, his eyes aghast. Suddenly he spoke.

“By George, officer, you’re ingenious! A hidden rifle, automatically fixed. Of course! I’m something of an inventor, too, yet it never occurred to me.” As he spoke Schrieber approached the bench. He bent over it, peering. His hands came down and he felt carefully, pressing with his fingers. “The angle of the bullets’ entrance would place the thing — here!”

Schrieber lifted his head and peered toward the house. The library window, lighted, with the figures of police moving behind it, was plainly visible. Schrieber took a step to the right. “About here, I’d say—” Again he touched here and there with his fingers, this time nearer the edge of the bench. He found it then.

The board which formed the bench apron swung out. Then a segment of the bench lifted, at the same time making half a revolution. On the under surface of the plank rested a rifle, held by three pieces of notched wood. The rifle stopped and pointed directly at the distant window.

I stepped closer, watching Schrieber’s hands at the gun. At the far end of the plank was a neat nest of clockwork. It had no case and its dial was clear. The hands pointed to one minute after five. It was, as Radcliff said and as I knew, a simple but effective arrangement easily mounted by even an amateur inventor.

Schrieber bent low over the gun. His fingers approached it. Radcliff touched his arm and said, “Let it alone, please.” Schrieber moved away. Then the sergeant turned to me.

“Anderson,” he said, “you’d better confess.”

“Confess!” I was numb, in panic.

“Either that or make it tougher for yourself later, Anderson. I’d advise you not to do that.” Radcliff came closer and touched my arm. “Come on up to the house. I want the rest of the boys to hear it.”

“But... but you’re saying I’m a murderer!” I felt blood rush back into my head and now the numbness vanished and a feeling of desperation replaced it. “You can’t prove a damn thing!” I shouted.

Then we were outside, walking, all three of us, toward the house.

“Circumstantial evidence is acceptable as proof, Anderson,” said Radcliff, speaking from behind me. “Everything is against you. You hated Mergan, you threatened him, you—”

Schrieber broke in excitedly. “Sergeant! Sergeant!”

“Yes?”

“I can help you there. About Anderson threatening him. You see, it was a habit of Mr. Mergan’s to record all important conferences between himself and any of the men in his organization. Well, tonight, he did that! I had forgotten it till just now.”

“Recorded it?” Radcliff sounded doubtful.

“Yes! This evening, when Mr. Mergan and Anderson talked, every word they spoke is on a record, a dictagraph record in the library. I switched on the machine just as Anderson entered. It was routine with Mr. Mergan. He always did that—”

“Evidence!” cried Radcliff. “Evidence of the best kind! Play the record to the jury! Let them hear Anderson’s threats against—”

“He made threats, too, plenty of them,” said Schrieber shrilly. “Why, I remember—”

I was remembering, too. I’d said plenty. I’d told Mergan that lots of inventors wanted to get him, that some day one of them would, that some day one of them would take something from him more valuable than any machine — oh, what hadn’t I told him? And now every word was on a record...

As we entered the library, a short, white-haired man met us. He took something out of a black bag and handed it to Radcliff. I heard him say, “The bullets, Sergeant.”

Radcliff held the mushroomed, leaden smears under a light. He said, “Why, they’re twenty-two caliber — high-powered twenty-two’s!” Then he became thoughtful, walking to the window and back without looking at anyone. But a moment later he snapped his fingers. “By Joe! That must be an English ‘Chumley’ rifle. They’re the only twenty-two on the market that will handle this type of slug!”

The white-haired man said, “I’ll be going along now, Sergeant. We’ve got everything, pictures and all. The body’ll be at Rocky Point.”

“Yes, Doctor. All right. Thank you.” Radcliff was frowning, still thinking. Then he called to the patrolman, Barnes, who was standing near the fireplace. “Did you see those slugs?”

“I sure did.”

“I’m right about them, am I not? They’re out of a ‘Chumley’?”

“They can’t be anything else,” said Barnes slowly. “Doc showed ’em to me. Nothin’ but a ‘Chumley’ could fire ’em.” “Good,” Radcliff said and brought out a small, black notebook. He opened it and produced a pencil. “‘Chumley,’ ‘Chumley’,” he said aloud and eyed Barnes. The patrolman, I noted, returned the look for quite a long time. “How do you spell ‘Chumley’?” Radcliff asked him.

Barnes shook his head slowly, watching his superior officer. “Darned if I know, Sergeant. But it’d be on the gun—” He grinned sheepishly. “If we could find the gun.”

“We have found it,” Radcliff informed him. Then, casually, he turned to me. “How do you spell ‘Chumley,’ Anderson? I want the name correct in my report.”

I said, “I don’t know how to spell it. I—”

But Radcliff had swung to Schrieber before I finished. “You spell it for me, Mr. Schrieber.”

Schrieber shook his head. “I don’t know how. Sorry.”

“Then I wonder if you’d mind running down to the laboratory and getting it for me. If I recall rightly, it’d be on the under side of the barrel, about halfway back.”

“Certainly.” Schrieber was anxious to help. “Now?”

“If you please.”

Schrieber went to the door, with a backward glance at me. It was a glance of triumph.

“When you come back I’ll ask you to let me hear that dictaphone record, too,” said Radcliff.

“Certainly.” This time Schrieber’s triumph was complete.

When the door had closed the sergeant turned to me. “Think a minute, Anderson. Perhaps you do remember.”

“How to spell ‘Chumley’? I never heard the name before,” I said. “Why not C-h-u-m-l-e-y?” He wasn’t going to bluff me. No matter what happened, he wasn’t going to see how scared I was.

Barnes went out, rather suddenly, so that Radcliff and I were alone. He said nothing further, but walked slowly from one end of the library to the other. Once he took off his hat and combed his thin hair with his fingers.

I tried to think about the dictagraph record and what would be on it, but I was too worried to think, so I looked out the window near the Morris chair. In the distance I saw Schrieber enter the summerhouse laboratory. He was alone.

I turned back to Radcliff. I was nervous. I said, “The record will prove I talked rough to Mergan. Can they hang a man for talking?”

“Talking can help hang him.” Radcliff was scanning my face. “I’ll tell you one thing — you’d be better off confessing. It would save the State a lot of money.” Radcliff stepped close to me.

“Yeh—”

I stopped. Out the window I saw Schrieber come out of the lab and start toward the house. As I watched, Barnes stepped into view from behind a hedge. He signaled Schrieber and Schrieber stopped and waited as Barnes approached. Then the patrolman pointed a finger toward the sea and toward the driveway skirting the hedge. I saw Schrieber nod his head and saw his lips move. The next second he was leading Barnes across the lawn. I knew. This was part of the circumstantial case they were building up against me.

I turned back to Radcliff and he was frowning, fingering his notebook.

“Damn it,” he said under his breath. “I want to know how to spell that name. If I don’t get it now I may forget it.” He jerked his head up at me as if a sudden idea had struck him. “Anderson,” he said rapidly, “I wonder if you’d mind running down there and taking a look at that gun for me? Won’t take a minute. Just get the name right. Will you?”

“Why, yes,” I told him, surprised.

“Don’t try to run away. The road is guarded,” he added.

IV

I knew that well enough. I went out. The wide lawn was full of the pale, reflected sunlight of early dusk. As I walked along the path toward the lab I saw, off to the right, the figures of two men moving slowly along the road which led to the highway. They were Barnes and Schrieber. Schrieber was pointing and Barnes was nodding his head vigorously in agreement with whatever Schrieber was saying.

Nearing the laboratory I knew, all of a sudden, that this was some sort of a trap. Radcliff had made a lot of the spelling of the name “Chumley.” He had made too much of it. A man like him would be accurate, yes, but the correct spelling of the name of a rifle couldn’t be this important. He had made too much of it— Or could it be important? My thoughts tried to ferret out something hidden. But no! It would be an easy matter to get the name later without all this fuss of sending me, and Schrieber, to look for it. The main thing was the rifle itself, wasn’t it? It had been found and so had the slugs. I knew enough to know that police scientists could tie the bullets up with the gun.

My thinking stopped again as I neared the door to the lab. Then it began again, this time playing with a notion of escape. But there was no escape, as Barnes had said. The cliffs were sheer. The only road out was guarded.

So I came into the lab with my thoughts in endless, meaningless circles and went to the bench where the gun was hidden. By the time I lifted the rifle and brought it into view my hands were trembling. This uncertainty was awful. I had to think it out. How much could Radcliff prove? How much of what he’d said was bluff and how much was really menacing? Did he believe I’d planted the rifle or did he have a doubt?

Well, I was taking no chances. Maybe Radcliff had overlooked something. If so, I might at least strengthen my position by being careful from now on. I turned the rifle over and looked at it carefully from one end to the other. Then I brought out a handkerchief and gave it a good wiping. There was no chance now of any fingerprints being on it.

And — there was no name on the rifle. I hadn’t recalled seeing one when I’d seen this gun before. Now I was certain. There was nothing but a number, just ahead of the triggerguard, just behind one of the clamps that held barrel to stock.

The number was 4417. I wrote it down. To make sure, I went over the gun again from end to end. It was beautifully made, full-automatic, with a sleek look about it.

But there was no name anywhere upon it.

I came out of the lab and started toward the house along the gravel walk. As I neared the portico, Barnes and Schrieber rounded the house from the left. Barnes was asking questions, Schrieber answering, pointing his white hand this way and that as the patrolman nodded vigorously. I went on into the library.

Radcliff, at the mantle, was looking at the ship’s clock. He swung toward me. “Ah, Anderson.” He brought out his notebook. “You got the name? How was it spelled?”

His indifference didn’t fool me.

“There wasn’t any name,” I said.

“What?”

“There isn’t a name on that gun anywhere.” I glared at him. I wanted to shout: “And what’s more, I see through your little trick!” But I didn’t say it. I didn’t see through his trick.

“Are you sure about that?” Radcliff’s narrow face was inclined toward me, over the squat, strong body.

“There is nothing but a number — 4417 — near the trigger...”

“You’re positive!” He seemed oddly excited.

“Yes, I wrote it down.” He wasn’t going to catch me up. “Just to be sure.”

The door opened. I shut my mouth. Barnes and Schrieber entered. Radcliff put his notebook behind him as they came in. Now he brought it into sight again. He said, “Ah, Schrieber. Did you get the name of the gun? How was it spelled?”

Schrieber smiled knowingly, glancing from me to Radcliff and back to Barnes. “Certainly,” he said as if he was sharing a secret which excluded me. “It was on the gun, as you said. It is spelled C-h-o-l-o-m-o-n-d-l-y.”

“But—” Radcliff gave a good imitation of surprise. He turned to Barnes and spoke in a puzzled tone. “We both figured it was a ‘Chumley’...”

Schrieber laughed. “It is a ‘Chumley’, Sergeant. I mean that’s the way the name is pronounced. But it’s spelled the way I told you. Cholomondly is pronounced ‘Chumley’.” Then Schrieber ceased talking, for Barnes had stepped to his side. Barnes was holding a pair of handcuffs.

“We’ll take you,” Radcliff snapped and his manner changed abruptly so that he was no longer courteous. “We’ll take you, Schrieber, instead of Anderson.”

“Wh-a-t!” Schrieber’s glasses slipped down his long nose and his eyes blinked nakedly. “Why, you—”

The ’cuffs snapped over his wrists. He swung toward me, screaming. “There’s the man — Anderson! He—”

“I don’t think so,” said Radcliff, decisively. “It could have been Anderson, just as it could have been you. Both of you had a motive. Both of you could have fixed the gun. But only one of you did. We had to find out which. You helped us by being such a good speller.”

“You’ll regret this!” screamed Schrieber hysterically.

“Maybe, but I think we’ve got a pretty good case. You see, Schrieber, there is no name on a ‘Chumley’ gun. There never is. Just a number. So when a man buys a ‘Chumley’ all he usually hears is the way it’s pronounced by the clerk who sells it. He doesn’t know how to spell it, unless he’s English, until he sees the bill for it. Now you’re not English, Schrieber, yet you knew how to spell ‘Chumley’. That means you saw the bill for this gun. Certainly you couldn’t have seen the name on the gun, for it wasn’t there. I think we can find the clerk, maybe the bill—”

“You gambled on both of us!” I blurted out.

Radcliff smiled. “Yes, Anderson. It was worth a gamble, wasn’t it? C-h-o-l-o-m-o-n-d-l-y is a tricky word. Even good spellers, if they’re American—”

Schrieber sputtered, “You’ll wish you’d never—” But Barnes put a big hand over his mouth and shoved him toward the door.

“Maybe,” said Radcliff, a little wearily, looking at me. “But still I think we’ve got a pretty good case. Though that’s part of my job, too, seeing it through. Too bad about your hair-cutting machine, Anderson.”

“I don’t think so, Sergeant,” and my voice shook under the reaction of relief. “If you’ve got a good thing, the truth will come out, sooner or later.”

“Or a bad thing either,” he said, glancing toward the door. “But you’re right, Anderson. You can’t stop truth. You can only slow it up for a while.”

“One thing, Sergeant — is it true that a ‘Chumley’ is the only rifle that will handle slugs like — like these that killed—”

He smiled. “No, Anderson. Three or four American rifles handle them, too. I guess there’s different kinds of truth, eh? I knew there’s no name on a ‘Chumley’ rifle and that this one is a ‘Chumley’. So I took a chance. Only a very good speller would know that Cholomondly spells ‘Chumley’, unless he’d seen the word. After all, what is truth, Anderson?”