Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933

To Shamus Maguire, the Overturned Chair and the Missing Bottle of Whisky Were Telling Secrets of the Mysterious Death Behind the Closet Door

I

Shamus Maguire, house detective of the fashionable Hotel Paragon, rocked his two hundred and sixty odd pounds backwards and forwards on his size thirteen feet and looked calculatingly from one to another of those in the room.

From the group in the center came moans mingled with soothing phrases. The moans were contributed by a girl in the uniform of a chambermaid who lay in the middle of a large bed; the soothing phrases by the housekeeper and two other maids who, with the aid of cold cloths and smelling salts, attempted to banish the other’s distress.

Close by the door, ready to depart at an instant’s warning, stood the hotel electrician. Beside him, equally skittish, was a black-bloused porter.

“Got a knife?” queried Maguire abruptly of the electrician.

The man fumbled in his overalls and produced an oversized jackknife which he extended in the direction of the detective.

“That’s all right,” rejected Maguire magnanimously. “I just wanted to know if you had something you could cut him down with.”

“Me!” said the electrician concernedly. “No, sir, not me.” He edged slowly out of the room.

“Come back here,” ordered Maguire sternly. “You want the guy to die on us?”

“He’s already dead.”

“How do you know? Get busy and cut him down.” The electrician turned a sickly gray.

“And you, too,” went on Maguire turning to the porter. “The pair of you. Get in there now.”

He advanced on them threateningly and they began to move hesitantly toward the open door of a deep clothes closet. At the end of the closet, almost invisible in the deep gloom, a bulky object swung against the wall. It was this object that had caused the hysterics of the young woman on the bed. On the floor lay an overturned chair.

“Get busy,” Shamus commanded, urging them in with a shove.

The electrician picked up the chair and placed it gingerly against the wall beneath the bulky object. With a last appealing look at the obdurate Maguire the porter turned to assist. Shamus planted himself in the doorway to superintend things.

“You,” he said to the electrician, “climb up and cut the rope. And you,” to the porter, “hang onto him so he won’t land on the floor when you cut him loose.”

The electrician climbed reluctantly up onto the chair and made ready to saw through a taut length of rope. The porter, smothering his distaste, seized the object about the legs and made ready to bear its weight.

“Just a minute,” Maguire called suddenly. The electrician lowered his knife and the porter backed away relievedly.

“Get down,” the detective ordered curtly.

When the electrician had complied Maguire stood back and surveyed the scene. Something, decidedly, was wrong. Closer inspection served to fortify his opinion.

The chair upon which the man must have climbed to place the rope about his neck was close to the wall, directly under the body, yet the extended feet were a good two inches short of touching it.

How, Maguire asked himself, did the suicide get the rope around his neck and then kick the chair from under him with the seat of the chair at least two inches from the soles of his feet? The answer, obviously, was that he could not, and had not.

“Okay,” Shamus snapped. “Get going.” As the two returned to their task he lit a “Little Policeman” cigar and puffed at it furiously.

Suddenly the rope parted and the body slumped forward. The porter struggled frantically to keep it from pitching head first to the floor.

“Bring him out and lay him on the bed,” Maguire instructed.

Between them the porter and the electrician maneuvered the inert mass out into the bedroom. As they appeared in the doorway the screams from the bed trebled, and the group of women dissolved hastily towards the corridor.

When the corpse had been stretched decently on the bed, Maguire went to the telephone and made a brief report to the management and he complained that although he had put in an emergency call for the doctor at least twenty minutes previously, that gentleman had not yet appeared. When he was assured that the matter would be attended to with dispatch he hung up the receiver.’

The room was strangely vacant. Housekeeper, maids, electrician and porter, all had departed silently.

II

Although he had already given t the room a cursory examination Shamus now commenced, in the light of the puzzling circumstance of the chair and the inadequate length of the suicide’s legs, to re-investigate the premises with a greater attention to detail.

A letter lying open on the desk was the first thing to re-engage his interest. This letter, written on hotel notepaper, opened with the statement that its author, finding the world too much for him, hereby intended to hang himself.

For this act no person but himself was to be held responsible. He requested that the authorities communicate the fact of his death to officials of the Coatstown National Bank, Coatstown, California. It was signed, J. Wesley Beard.

Maguire read this missive over three times and folded it carefully away in his pocket. Next, he turned to a table bearing a collection of bottles. Three of the bottles had contained ginger ale. A fourth had contained what its label called a quart of whisky. So had a fifth.

Shamus eyed the labels and swore. Next he raised the bottle to his nose and sniffed. The odor, used though he was to prohibition beverages, crinkled his nostrils.

He turned to gaze questioningly at the figure on the bed. J. Wesley Beard in pajamas was a singularly unimposing personage. The most noticeable of his features was a wispy gray moustache. Maguire had seen him frequently about the hotel, but remembered him chiefly because of a pair of heavy spectacles that lay on the bedside table. These were the most notable, because Beard wore over them covers of gray celluloid to shield his eyes from light.

Beside the glasses lay a bill form which revealed that Beard had paid nothing on his account since his arrival three weeks ago. The bill had been rendered the day before. Stamped across its face in bold blue letters were the words “Past Due.”

In the midst of his scrutiny of the bill, Maguire became suddenly tense. But as he turned slowly to the door his thoughts were to all appearances concentrated on the paper in his hand. He took a few slow steps, stopped, scratched his head puzzledly and took two more steps.

Then, dropping all pretense, he sprang for the door and wrenched it open. A startled youth in the blue and brass of a hotel bellboy was just straightening from a posture that would have placed his eyes on a level with the keyhole.

“Well?” demanded Maguire.

“Well what?” said the youth brazenly.

“Well this,” returned Maguire. One of his beefy arms shot out and a hand clamped on the youth’s shoulder. A blue and gold streak shot into the room and the door slammed.

“Say,” said the bellhop a trifle shakily, “what’s the idea?”

“Sit down.” Maguire forced the protesting youth into a chair. His face shaped itself into a threatening glower.

“Still doin’ business, I see.”

“Whadya mean,” protested the bellhop hotly.

Shamus went across the room and took a whisky bottle from the table.

“You’re the only guy in town with enough crust to peddle that kind of firewater around a swell dump like this,” he stated. “Besides, I recognize the label. The same stuff you were sellin’ a couple of months ago.”

“Nuts,” said the youth defiantly.

“You were warned,” continued Maguire coldly, “that if it happened again you’d be fired.”

“You ain’t got no proof.”

“Proof!” Shamus laughed harshly. “I don’t need no proof. All I gotta do is say the word to the manager and you’ll find yourself huntin’ a job.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” said the bellhop in sudden alarm.

“Don’t bank on it, kid. Don’t bank on it. I might and I mightn’t.”

“What do you want me to do?” the youth inquired sullenly.

“I want you to come clean,” Shamus told him crisply. “Why the keyhole act, for instance?”

“Aw,” was the disgusted reply, “I hear downstairs that this egg has knocked himself off and I come up to make sure.”

“And why the sudden interest?”

“He owed me fifteen bucks.”

“Fifteen bucks!”

“The way it happened, I’ve been rustlin’ his grog for him for the past two weeks. Last night he phones down and asks me to get him five jugs of rye in a hurry. When I get it here he wants to put it on the cuff and talks me into bein’ simple. And now,” he finished bitterly, “I’m out fifteen bucks. Five bottles at three bucks per. A guy is a fool to give credit.”

“Five bottles,” wondered Maguire aloud. “Five bottles, you said?”

“Five,” said the boy sorrowfully. “I shoulda known better.”

“Listen, kid. The next time I catch you bootleggin’ around this hotel you get the works, understand? Now scram.”

When the door had slammed Shamus instituted a third and even more thorough search. Five bottles, the boy had said. But now there were only two. Shamus sought in the bathroom, the clothes closet, under the bed, in the drawers and through the dead man’s luggage. No trace of the other three bottles was to be found.

This circumstance might mean much and it might mean little, Shamus could not at the moment determine. He had a hunch, however, that it was to mean much.

III

Having come to this decision Maguire awoke to the fact that though another half hour had passed the doctor had not arrived. He strode irately to the phone and called downstairs for the third time. An apologetic clerk reported that after a great deal of trouble it had just been discovered that the doctor was away from his office on a professional visit.

He had been called to the same floor upon which Shamus now waited so impatiently and the clerk would without delay get him on the phone and instruct him to attend to Maguire’s business.

“Never mind,” said Maguire shortly. “I’ll call him myself. What room is he in?”

“Eleven-twenty.”

Maguire hung up the reciver and started for the door. Eleven-twenty was just down the corridor and he could go there as quickly as he could phone.

The door to eleven-twenty opened abruptly to the detective’s sharp knock. As he recognized his caller a look of annoyance faded from the doctor’s face, but he held a finger to his lips warningly.

“Come in,” he whispered, moving aside on his tip toes.

Shamus entered and closed the door softly. A dishevelled looking man lay asleep on the bed, breathing heavily.

“What is it?” the doctor asked. Shamus explained why he had come and the other nodded.

“I’ll be right with you,” he said. “Nothing much wrong with this fellow outside of too much bad booze. I’ve given him a quarter grain of morphine. He should be off to sleep by now.”

He tip-toed to the bedside and regarded the man there expertly.

“He’ll do,” he said then.

As the doctor packed and closed his bag Maguire looked curiously about the room. It was a wreck. Clothes were strewn untidily about the floor. A table had been knocked over and in a corner was a broken glass and an empty whisky bottle. On the floor by the bed stood another whisky bottle. The labels on both were identical with those of the bottles in the room of the suicide.

Upon returning to the other room a scant three minutes was all that was required to complete the examination of the suicide.

“Strangled,” the doctor said turning to Shamus. “Roughly speaking I’d say he’s been dead twelve hours.”

“That’d make it about ten last night.” Maguire glanced at his watch.

The doctor nodded.

“Have you phoned the police?”

“I thought you’d better have a look at him first. The front office can put in the call. I’m goin’ home to bed.”

The pair left the room and went downstairs together.

“How about that lush in eleven-twenty?” Shamus inquired carelessly as they descended in the elevator. “Is he liable to raise any hell when he comes out of his stupor?”

“Not unless he absorbs some more bootleg. Anyway, the shot in the arm should keep him quiet for five or six hours.”

Though he had told the doctor he was going home, Shamus did not leave the hotel. First of all he collared the bellhop whom he had interviewed so stormily an hour before.

“How much booze did you sell eleven-twenty last night?” he demanded.

“Eleven-twenty? Not a drop.”

“Do you want me to go to the manager?”

“On the level. I never sold him a thing. Last night or any other time. What would be the use of me lyin’ about it?”

“Okay.”

Next Maguire went into the office and demanded to see the registration card of Mr. J. Wesley Beard. When it was handed to him he placed it on a desk alongside the suicide’s parting message to the world.

The signatures were identical down to the last detail. Though he was no handwriting expert, Shamus could see at a glance that there was nothing phony about that letter. It had been indited by J. Wesley Beard of Coats-town, California and no other.

Maguire had expected something different and for a moment he was disappointed. Mumbling angrily to himself he approached the information desk.

“Who’s got eleven-twenty?”

“H. W. Bunt, Syracuse, New York.”

Maguire turned away and lumbered across to the office of the credit manager.

“What do you know about this guy Beard?”

“Beard?” The credit man’s face turned sour. “I thought I knew all about him, but it looks as if I was wrong. He’s hung it onto us for two hundred and sixty-five dollars. Room, meals and service.”

Shamus shook his head and clucked sympathetically.

“Who is he?”

“A bank president, no less,” said the credit manager bitterly. “Not a big bank, but a solid bank, you understand. The Coatstown National of Coatstown, California. Beard’s been coming here for two years, off and on, without once letting us in for any trouble.”

“And what do you know about H. W. Bunt in eleven-twenty?”

“Bunt? Not a thing. Why?”

“I’d like to get a line on him. He comes from Syracuse.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” the credit manager promised. He wrote down the name and initials. “See me tonight if I’m around.”

IV

Sergeant Detectives Flynn and Schultz, two of the brighter stars from among the young men attached to the Central Office, were obviously bored. Investigating suicides, they felt, was beneath them.

“What,” demanded Flynn loftily of Maguire, “about this guy Beard?”

“He’s dead,” answered Shamus solemnly.

“And we don’t want no wise cracks,” said Sergeant Detective Schultz.

“He was found,” began Shamus, removing a small notebook from his pocket and consulting it ostentatiously, “at eight-forty this morning by Miss Hettie Jones. Miss Jones is a chambermaid. Beard was in the clothes closet of his room, hanging against the wall from a rope. The rope was around his neck. It is believed that he hung himself.”

Schultz swore.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Shamus. “Ain’t that what you want?”

“The department,” explained Flynn patiently, “sent us over to get the lowdown.”

Maguire looked up quickly.

“The department! And why would the department be botherin’ about a measly suicide?”

“The Chief of Police of a burg called Coatstown out on the coast wired us for particulars. Some bank this guy was connected with is short two hundred thousand dollars.”

“Hey!” Maguire was unable to conceal his astonishment. “Two hundred thousand.”

“Two hundred thousand,” repeated Flynn slowly. Both Central Office men regarded Maguire suspiciously. “What’s the trouble?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Shamus hastily. “I figured that egg was on the up and up, that’s all.”

Thereafter, for the space of ten minutes, he answered without quibble the questions Flynn and Schultz fired at him. This was unusual, for Shamus ordinarily resented interference by the police in the affairs of the hotel. The Hotel Paragon, he held, was his territory and when outside talent was introduced it got nothing but hindrance from the house detective.

“Oke,” said Flynn at last. “If you’d cooperate this way all the time you’d save a lot of trouble all around.”

“Wait a minute,” said Shamus unexpectedly, as the Central Office men began to move away. They halted.

“Beard,” went on Maguire, “didn’t knock himself off.”

“What?”

Shamus explained briefly the circumstance of the chair and the impossibility of its having been kicked away from underneath him by the deceased Beard. Their surprise was due not so much to the information as to the fact that Shamus was freely parting with it.

“Repeat that,” requested Flynn grimly, recovering himself.

Shamus obliged.

“Wait here a minute,” Flynn called, heading towards the telephones. He returned five minutes later, his eyes sparkling with excitement.

“You ain’t stringing us?” he demanded.

“Don’t be foolish.”

“Okay then. We got hold of something big here, Shamus, and if you want to play along with us we’ll see you get credit in the right spot.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Maguire cynically. “Thanks, pal. I always knew your heart was in the right place.”

“You don’t have to be like that,” declared Flynn huffily. “Now take us up to the room.”

“Did you tell them to send over a finger print outfit?”

Flynn nodded and the three started for the eleventh floor. The body of the late Mr. Beard had been removed to the morgue, but the room was otherwise undisturbed. Flynn and Schultz went to work like a pair of bloodhounds.

Seating himself in a corner to be out of the way, Maguire watched them.

“There’s been drinkin’ goin’ on here,” announced Schultz importantly, after ten minutes of clumsy poking into corners.

“You don’t say,” contributed Maguire.

“These bottles here—”

“You leave them bottles alone,” called Flynn angrily from the other side of the room. “We might find prints on them. And the glasses too.”

“I wasn’t going to touch them,” Schultz declared sulkily. Flynn scowled and sat down to rest.

“Find anything?” asked Shamus brightly.

“I found plenty, but I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ just yet.” And after a moment’s thought: “What kind of a guy was this here Beard, anyhow?”

“Cagy,” Maguire answered. “Been in the hotel half a dozen times in the last two years, but nobody knew much about him. Ate all his meals in his room, but never let the waiter in to serve him. He used to take his tray at the door and put it outside himself when he was through. Didn’t like to go to the dining room on account of being so short sighted, I guess. Never spoke to the help any more than he had to.”

“Now why,” mused Flynn, “would a guy act like that?”

Before anybody had time to answer, a knock on the door heralded the arrival of a couple of fingerprint men from the Central Office. Having no interest in the routine he knew would follow, Maguire made an excuse and departed.

V

Alone in the corridor, Shamus glanced at his watch and made a silent computation. According to the doctor, the man in eleven-twenty had been put safely to sleep for five hours at least. That left ample time for Maguire’s needs, and he set off purposefully down the hall.

In room eleven-twenty he found Mr. H. W. Bunt in deep and noiseless sleep. From the open doorway Shamus looked and listened, then stepped inside.

With the speed and efficiency of long experience he set about searching the room. What he wanted was the fifth whisky bottle. The unfortunate J. Wesley Beard had bought five bottles and there were but two in his room. On a table beside somnolent Mr. Bunt were two more. Where was the fifth?

A cursory look around that morning in the presence of the doctor had failed to reveal it. But under Maguire’s expert methods it was not long in coming to light.

He found it in a small hand bag that stood on the floor by the window. Besides the unopened bottle of whisky the bag contained one suit of frowzy and very threadbare clothes, a battered felt hat, one pair of socks, one pair of cracked shoes, down at the heel, one white shirt with an attached collar and one necktie.

Making a mental note of these things Shamus closed the bag and retreated. The bottle of whisky had confirmed his very grave suspicions.

Beard had purchased five bottles of whisky only. Two of these were still in his room. Three and two make five. H. W. Bunt, therefore, must have visited the room of J. Wesley Beard sometime between the time the whisky was bought from the bellboy and the time the doctor was called that morning-

Descending to the rotunda, Maguire chewed upon this fact for half an hour. At the end of that time he was approached by the quartette from the Central Office. Sergeant Detectives Flynn and Schultz looked glum.

“Any luck?” Shamus inquired.

Flynn was noncommittal, but by dint of judicious questioning Maguire gathered that they had discovered seven distinct sets of finger prints. That, to say the least, was discouraging.

“What in hell did you expect?” Shamus said bluntly. “Those bottles must have been handled plenty before they got as far as Beard’s room. This is a hotel, you understand.”

“A big help you are,” Flynn said wearily.

“What did you find on the drinking glass?”

“Two sets. One of them, we figure, belonged to Beard. The second set is different from any of the others. Maybe that will help us. Anyways we’re goin’ down to the morgue to fingerprint Beard.”

“I’ll save you the trouble,” offered Shamus promptly. “You can verify Beard’s prints by the ones on his registration card. Come on into the office and have a look at it.”

The Central Office men accepted the offer with alacrity and the fingerprint men made quick work of bringing to light the several sets of prints with which the card was smudged. Comparison of these with the two sets taken from the glass showed beyond doubt which were those of the suicide.

As they emerged from the office Flynn and Schultz looked a shade more cheerful.

“Whoever put that second set on the glass,” Flynn gloated, “made a good job of it. We got the thumb and four fingers of the right hand. The guy that left them is the guy that murdered Beard.”

Shamus thought so himself, but said nothing. He lit a cigar and gazed doubtfully through a cloud of blue smoke.

“We’ll let you know if anything turns up,” Flynn promised by way of good-by. “And in the meantime, don’t let no one go into that room.”

VI

Pangs of hunger were notifying Shamus Maguire that he had lunched lightly and that the welcome hour of dinner was not far off. Slowly his thoughts turned from crime to rare steaks. And then, abruptly, the pleasant visions fled.

From the wide portals of an elevator stepped Mr. H. W. Bunt of room eleven hundred and twenty. Mr. Bunt was pale and wan and his facial muscles twitched spasmodically. But to Shamus these things were of scant moment. For in his right hand Mr. Bunt carried a small hand bag.

Thus it was that when Bunt stepped out of the hotel onto the street Shamus was not far behind. Unhesitatingly Bunt plunged into the evening crowds and Maguire, giving him a brief start, plunged after.

Bunt walked briskly for a block and a half, after which he halted at a bus stop. Shamus came up and mingled unnoticed in the throng. When Bunt boarded a bus Shamus did so, too. Bunt clambered up the stairs to the top deck while Maguire eased himself into a seat below, close to the door.

From where he sat Shamus had an unobstructed view of the stairway. For nearly three-quarters of an hour his eyes never left it. The bus was well into the outskirts of the city and nearly empty of passengers before Bunt at last appeared.

Descending the steps rapidly he leaped to the sidewalk as the bus lost momentum. Without looking either to the right or left he strode off down an ill-lighted side street.

As the bus jerked into motion again Maguire started up from his seat and lurched out onto the platform. The machine was by now moving at a good clip, but Shamus jumped. As his heels hit the pavement he grunted. Then, catching his breath, he swung round in pursuit.

Bunt had disappeared. When Shamus reached the corner, however, he caught sight of his quarry, half a block away. Banking on the darkness for concealment, he put on a burst of speed which brought him within fifty feet of the other.

Five more minutes’ walking brought the pair to a bridge over a narrow, swiftly running river. Halfway over, Bunt halted suddenly and leaned on the rail. For a moment Maguire believed the man had stopped to confront him. He was already on the bridge and it was too late now to turn away.

So he kept on. But after all, Bunt paid no attention to him. The man stood gazing over the railing, his back to the sidewalk. He did not move as Maguire passed.

At the other end of the bridge Shamus crossed the road and took the opportunity to steal a hasty glance backwards. Bunt had left his place at the rail and was heading back the way he had come. And he no longer carried the small hand bag.

It took ten minutes scouting about the neighborhood to locate a taxicab. Maguire rode back to the hotel in comfort, deeply engrossed in several problems. At the hotel door he paid off the cab in a hurry and went into the building on the jump.

Taking the elevator to the eleventh floor he let himself into room eleven-twenty and switched on the lights. The odds were that Bunt would return by bus, in which event Maguire had a good twenty minutes to spare. Nevertheless he worked fast and took no chances. A slip now might ruin everything.

To begin with he secured from the bathroom a clean towel and a piece of soap. Dampening the towel, he went out to the telephone and proceeded to rub the receiver free of any fingerprints that happened to be on it.

Next, rubbing a bit of soap on the damp towel, he applied to the receiver a light, unnoticeable coating of grease. That done, he switched off the lights, retired to the corridor, locked the door, disposed of the towel in the linen room and went downstairs, where he proceeded to satisfy an appetite that was by now ravenous.

After that, stuffed but satisfied, he took his way leisurely to the office of the credit manager where, without comment, he was handed a half page report from a credit agency.

He read it eagerly, then grunted with disappointment.

“I might get something more later,” the credit manager said. “As things stand, though, there doesn’t seem to be any record of him previous to two years ago.”

Bunt, according to the report, maintained a home in Syracuse and had done so for two years past. He was seldom in it, however, spending most of his time traveling about the country buying and selling antiques. His credit, never stretched, was excellent.

VII

Pocketing the report Maguire went out into the rotunda and crossed to the room phones.

“Eleven-twenty,” he told the operator.

The connection was made almost at once and a cranky voice demanded to know who was calling.

“Mr. Mulrooney,” said Shamus calmly. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Mulrooney.”

“There’s no Mr. Mulrooney here,” the cranky voice stated.

“Is this room twelve hundred and twenty?”

“No, it isn’t,” said the voice angrily. Maguire heard the receiver crash at the other end and the connection was broken. As he hung up Shamus was grinning to himself faintly.

Without loss of time, then, Maguire descended to the bowels of the building where, in a room close to a humming dynamo, he discovered a taciturn young man seated on an upturned box. He talked to this young man earnestly and inaudibly.

When Shamus had finished the young man nodded understanding and got up from his box. From a shelf he took a desk telephone wrapped about with wire and from the floor a small case of instruments.

“And be sure you don’t touch the receiver or let nothin’ rub against it,” Shamus instructed finally.

“Okay,” promised the young man. With the telephone and instruments under one arm he went out of the room, leaving Maguire dubiously testing the strength of the upturned box by pressing on it with one of his size thirteen feet.

Finding himself unable to place any confidence in the box and there being no chair in sight Shamus commenced striding restlessly up and down the room. The taciturn young man was absent for a quarter of an hour.

He then stepped into the room silently, placed a disconnected desk telephone on a table and his case of tools on the floor. Maguire sprang towards the telephone and lifted the receiver by its cord.

“You didn’t touch it?”

The young man shook his head and with a pair of shears cut through the wire connecting the receiver to the rest of the instrument.

“You wanta step on it,” the young man said gravely. “This guy is packin’ up to leave.”

“Hey! What guy?”

“The guy in eleven-twenty.”

Maguire seized a page of soiled newspaper. As he barged out through the door he wrapped the receiver carefully about with the newspaper and stuffed the thing into his pocket.

He delayed his headlong progress through the rotunda long enough to bark a couple of questions at the dignitary in charge of the porter’s desk.

“Handlin’ any baggage out of eleven-twenty?”

“Trunk and two bags.”

“What train?”

“Ten o’clock for Syracuse.”

Maguire glanced up at the big clock over the registration desk and got himself into motion again.

“Police headquarters,” he ordered, diving into a taxi at the door. “And step on it, baby.”

Pulling up before the big, gray police building he dismissed the driver and sped into a labyrinth of deserted corridors towards the identification bureau.

There, after impressing the officer in charge with the need for haste, he sat down to await the photographing of the telephone receiver and the development of the pictures thereon.

“Couldn’t be better,” he crowed some minutes later when a damp sheet containing perfect replicas of the thumb and finger tips of Bunt’s right hand was laid before him.

“And now, kid, if you’ll dig up the set that Flynn and Schultz brought in from that Beard suicide I’ll show you something that’ll make your eyes pop. Not Beard’s prints, you understand, but the other, unidentified set.”

VIII

The identification officer began rummaging through a filing cabinet. Shamus leaned back in his chair, placed a “Little Policeman” between his teeth and viewed with much satisfaction the results of a heavy day’s work.

These fingerprints would clinch the case against Bunt. They would constitute irrefutable proof that Bunt had been a visitor to the room of J. Wesley Beard just previous to the “suicide.” And behind this stood the three bottles of whisky Bunt had taken from Beard’s room.

“Well, well, well. If it ain’t the big sleuth from uptown.” These words, uttered in the horsy tones of Sergeant Detective Schultz, brought Shamus around with a jerk.

Schultz, wearing an expression far from affable, stood accusingly in the doorway. Looking over his shoulder was Sergeant Detective Flynn.

“So what?” Flynn demanded suspiciously, pushing into the office.

Rainbow-tinted visions of beating the police to another big pinch turned slightly foggy, but Shamus rallied bravely. He smiled beatifically and proffered a cigar.

“What’s this?” demanded Schultz, looking down at the damp photo of Bunt’s fingerprints.

“Yeah,” said Flynn grimly, disdaining the cigar. “What is it?”

“I was lookin’ for you boys,” said Maguire quickly. Seizing their arms he drew them towards him intimately. “Let’s get out of here and go somewheres where we can talk private.”

Reluctantly Flynn and Schultz yielded to the pressure on their arms and moved towards the door.

“But them prints...” Schultz protested.

“Belong to one of the waiters,” lied Shamus glibly. “He’s been swipin’ the silver.”

They were almost through the door now, close to safety. And then Maguire chilled as he heard the voice of the identification officer.

“Hey there! Where yuh goin’? Don’t you want to see them prints from the Beard case?”

“The Beard job, hey?” Flynn jerked away angrily. “You two-timin’ old gorilla.”

For once in his career Maguire was wordless.

“Where,” demanded Schultz truculently, “did you get them prints?”

“He brought in a telephone receiver,” volunteered the identification officer. “I took them offa that.”

“See what he’s got.” Flynn was coldly angry.

The fingerprint man laid the unidentified prints from the drinking glass alongside the set from Bunt’s telephone. He shook his head.

“Wrong,” he said. “They ain’t the same at all. You been stung, Maguire.”

“Well, who claimed they were the same? I told you they belonged to a waiter we figure has been grabbin’ the silverware. And the reason I wanted to look at the set off the glass was to see if there was a scar across the thumb tip. A hunch I had.”

Flynn and Schultz registered disbelief.

“I come down here,” continued Shamus sorrowfully, “to talk to you boys about a hot lead. But if this is the kind of cooperation I get you can both go to hell. I’ll do my own cooperatin’.”

So saying and having assumed an expression of righteous indignation, Shamus picked up the wet photograph and the receiver and stalked out.

When he was alone, however, dejection enveloped him like a black cloud. With a feeling of complete discouragement he regarded the wreck of his theory. He was not now even sure that there had been a murder.

According to the rules of common sense the fingerprints of H. W. Bunt should have turned out to be the same as those of J. Wesley Beard’s unknown murderer. But fingerprints cannot lie. Mr. Bunt was not this person and Maguire’s reasoning was wrong.

So wrong, in fact, that Shamus lacked the heart to review it in a search for flaws. He was past caring now whether the criminal was ever found or not. He climbed wearily into a taxi and returned to the hotel.

There, plunged in gloom, he propped himself against a pillar in the rotunda and resolved to forget the whole heartbreaking business. He was still there and still as gloomy when at nine-fifteen sharp he noted that the object of his late activities was walking, briskly across his line of vision.

IX

H. W. Bunt was preparing to check out of the hotel. Behind him trailed a bellhop carrying a large club bag. Bunt stepped up to a wicket marked “Bill Clerk” and gazed through the grille.

“My bill, please,” Shamus heard him say. “H. W. Bunt. Room eleven hundred and twenty.”

The bill was slid through the wicket. Bunt picked it up, turned around to the light and gazed at it puzzledly. From where Shamus stood there seemed to be something about the bill the man couldn’t understand.

His brow wrinkled in a frown. The puzzle seemed to deepen. He stepped, closer to the light, holding the bill so it caught the full force of the beams. Finally, exclaiming impatiently, he gave up the attempt and swung round on his heel.

Shamus, watching with an interest that was fully revived, saw him march to the cashier’s wicket. Shoving the bill through the aperture he bent clown to speak.

“What is the amount of this bill, please? I can’t quite—”

Maguire did not linger to hear more. He galloped to the front door and out into the night. Once more he was in a taxi, leaning far forward in his seat to shout promises and imprecations into the ear of the chauffeur.

Due to his consistent disregard of metropolitan traffic regulations the driver was able, at the conclusion of a trip that normally took twenty minutes, to deposit Shamus Maguire before the doors of the County morgue in ten.

Shamus took a flight of wide stairs two at a time and dove through a set of revolving doors. He flashed his credentials before the eyes of a startled attendant.

“You got a stiff in here from the Paragon,” he said rapidly. “Guy named Beard. He come in this morning. I wanta give him the once over.”

He was conducted at once to a long chamber in which stood a row of oblong objects draped eerily with white sheets. Leading the way to the middle of the row the attendant whisked away a sheet and revealed the mortal remains of J. Wesley Beard, bank president.

Maguire bent forward till his nose was not more than a few inches from that of the deceased. He seemed to be gazing deeply into the corpse’s faded eyes.

He straightened, grunted with satisfaction and charged out of the building.

“Central Station,” he shouted, leaping into the waiting taxi.

The train for Syracuse left at ten o’clock. It was ten minutes to when Shamus pulled up at the station, Flinging a bill to the driver he headed, bull-like, into a hurrying stream of people. He pulled up at an open gateway before which stood a Pullman conductor at a high desk.

Breaking in at the head of a queue of waiting people Shamus again flashed his credentials, stemming the flood of protest the conductor had begun to deliver.

“Got a reservation for a man named Bunt? H. W.? He’s wanted.”

The conductor seemed doubtful.

“Wanted for murder,” Shamus added.

“Oh.” The man ran his eye over a list. “Car three hundred and eight. Lower nine.”

Shamus passed through the gate and started down a long line of Pullmans. He was running heavily and panting. At car three hundred and eight he stopped.

“Where’s the man that’s got lower nine, porter?”

“He’s aboard, sir.”

Clambering up the steps Maguire barged down a narrow, green-curtained aisle. The curtains before lower nine were parted and inside a light burned. On the berth lay a hat, coat and club bag.

Shamus grabbed the hat and coat in one hand and the bag in the other and continued on down the car. He turned into the men’s washroom.

H. W. Bunt, seated on the lounge reading a newspaper, looked up casually. Then, as he recognized the hat, coat and bag, his eyes widened.

“Come on,” Shamus commanded, flinging the hat and coat on the seat. “Make it snappy, now.”

“What,” said Bunt, sounding outraged, “does this mean?”

“It means you’re pinched. Are you comin’ under your own steam or do I have to crack you on the jaw and carry you out?”

“Who are you?”

Shamus drew back his fist menacingly. Mr. Bunt stood up and put on the hat and coat. Maguire seized his arm and yanked him out the door. They went along the aisle on the double, Bunt stumblingly. As they stepped down onto the concrete walk the train shuddered and began to move.

X

The Captain in charge of the night detail at the Detective Bureau looked at Maguire and his prisoner amusedly. Sergeant Detectives Flynn and Schultz stood alertly to one side, ready to lay down a barrage of sneering laughter the moment Shamus began to look foolish.

“Murder?” remarked the Captain. “Murder, you said?”

“I said murder,” Shamus declared coolly, “and I meant murder.” He shifted his grip on Bunt’s arm. “It wasn’t suicide at all.”

“There’s a report in your basket,” put in Flynn. “Me and Schultz was over havin’ a look around.”

The Captain ruffled through a sheaf of reports and settled into the perusal of one in the scratchy hand of Sergeant Detective Schultz.

“You mean to say,” he queried upon concluding, “that this here guy — Bunt you say his name is — killed J. Wesley Beard?”

“No,” said Shamus loftily, “that ain’t what I mean to say.”

“Then what the hell do you mean?”

“Two years ago,” began Shamus rhetorically, “J. Wesley Beard began makin’ trips east from California. He stayed at the Paragon nine times during those two years and got himself fairly well known. Except that nobody ever seen him without his glasses. He used to wear a pair of thick-lensed glasses with a set of gray celluloid covers on them.

“The result is that if you asked anybody around the hotel to describe him they’d tell you that Beard was a medium sized guy with a moustache and that he wore glasses with gray covers. And that’s all they could tell.”

“So what,” sneered Schultz.

“Two years ago,” Maguire continued, “a guy named H. W. Bunt went into Syracuse, rented and furnished a house, opened a bank account, hired a housekeeper and went away again. He’s been back on short visits eight or nine times since. This is H. W. Bunt.”

“My ears are ringin’,” said the Captain skeptically.

“And this,” stated Maguire composedly, “is also J. Wesley Beard.”

Sergeant Detective Schultz burst into a derisive guffaw, but Sergeant Detective Flynn, the keener witted of the two, gave a startled jerk.

“Three weeks ago J. Wesley Beard, glasses and all, checked into the Paragon for the ninth time and proceeded to give an imitation of a dead beat. Charged everything. Even got credit from a bellhop for liquor. This was a build up.

“Four days ago H. W. Bunt, a medium sized guy with a gray moustache, checked into the hotel. He asked for, and got, a room on the eleventh floor. Beard’s room was on the same floor.

“Last night Beard had a visitor. This visitor was a down and out bum that nobody would ever miss. Some time during the last two years Beard had gone to a lot of trouble to make friends with this guy. The bum was medium sized and had a gray moustache.

“The pair of them turned loose on five bottles of bootleg. When the bum passed out Beard undressed him, put him in a pair of pajamas, wound a rope around his neck and strangled him. When the bum was good and dead Beard hoisted him up and hung him onto the closet wall.

“Then he wrote the suicide note, packed the bum’s clothes in a small bag and scrammed down the hall to room eleven-twenty, where, without the glasses, he was H. W. Bunt.”

“Is that right?” the Captain demanded of Beard.

Beard nodded dispiritedly.

“Sure it’s right,” Shamus said, preening himself. “All you need to do to make sure is fingerprint him. I was on to him from the start, but I never figured out this double identity stuff until just a while ago.

“When I brought Bunt’s fingerprints down here and compared them with the unidentified set off the glass I thought for awhile I was up against it. Naturally, the unidentified set were the ones left by the dead guy — the bum — the one we thought was Beard.

“But I went back to the hotel and done a little more hard work. Then when I seen Bunt ask the cashier to read his bill for him I was in the clear. He couldn’t read without the glasses.

“So I beat it down to the morgue to check. When I seen the stiff there had no ridge on his nose that people get from wearin’ glasses, I made the pinch.”

“And you call that cooperation,” said Flynn bitterly.

Maguire turned around slowly, fixed Flynn with a derisive stare and emitted a loud and triumphant snort.