Man Sinister

Chapter VII

Early in the afternoon, Vera came downstairs to take lunch up to Harold. While she was busy in the kitchen with Ellen, I went upstairs. Harold was standing at the front window looking at Hagan’s stake-out across the street.

Harold was pale and tired. From the droop of his lower lip I guessed him to be in a sullen, petulant mood.

He asked what arrangements I’d made about the funeral. After I told him, I veered our talk abruptly.

“I want to hear about McGinty.”

“What about him?”

“Everything.”

“It was personal,” he said curtly.

I wouldn’t allow him to anger me. “Not too personal for you to hope that I covered traces of what happened in the vacant cottage.”

He studied my face. “You’re not going to drag that out before Hagan?”

“I’ve got to do something. I’m Hagan’s boy so far. I’ve got a feeling that he’d have me in jail already if Wilfred hadn’t disappeared to cast a small measure of uncertainty in the police mind.”

Harold breathed deeply. “You can’t prove anything to Hagan about McGinty. You’d only be hurting yourself.”

“Not if McGinty and Papa Joe’s death are tied together.”

“They’re not.”

He didn’t intend to talk; that much was clear, reflected in the hard light in his eyes, the set of his mouth. He still believed McGinty was dead, that I had spirited his body away. He believed I was too much involved to drag the McGinty angle before Hagan.

“I wish I could convince you of the truth, Harold,” I said soberly. “And that truth is that McGinty will return.”

Fear flared in his eyes. “Will you stop being so irrational?” he cried. “Stop torturing me with impossibilities!”

I gave him a moment to calm down. “Then for such a large favor as you think I did for you,” I said, “you should be prepared to do a small one for me.”

“What is it?” he asked sullenly.

“Find Wilfred.”

“Hagan will find him. Wilfred killed Papa Joe. That’s obvious. When Wilfred is found Hagan will wring the truth out of him and this whole dirty thing will be over.” His words carried all the conviction his wishful thinking could summon.

“All the more reason for finding Wilfred,” I said.

“What makes you think I could find him?”

“Because I think Ellen knows where he is. You’re the one person who might get it out of her. He hasn’t run far, and he has let Ellen know where he is. This morning I found her fixing a plate of food, and it was not for herself. Not for me. She didn’t bring it up here, did she?”

“No.”

“Then who else but Wilfred? She wanted the food ready when she found the chance to slip it out to him.”

“It’s a slim premise.”

“I know, but it’s the only one I can think of. Will you talk to her?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

I turned to leave the room. A small lump pressed against the sole of my shoe as I started to open the door. I moved my foot, reached down, and picked up a small leaden pellet that lay between the edge of the carpet and the wall. As I walked downstairs that pellet gave me ideas and the ideas brought excitement stirring inside me.

I was feeling equal to facing Hagan when he returned an hour later.

He took possession of the parlor and had Conroy summon us one by one. I walked into his presence at about three-thirty.

He was placid, even friendly, during the half-hour I spent with him. He did his best to turn the question session into a chatty period. I repeated the answers I had given him that morning. He made no mention of the arrival of a woman in a taxi. I hoped that meant he believed Bryanne to be one of the sympathetic callers who’d besieged the house during the morning.

Hagan made the pointed suggestion that none of us should entertain the thought of leaving town, no matter how urgent the business, until Papa Joe’s death was cleared up. When I left him I had the distinct feeling that he had struck a dead end. I was still his man, but the hole was still a trifle square for the peg. He was playing out rope, waiting for a break, for someone to hang himself.

In the afternoon paper, the murder hit the front page. The heading was heavy and black, but the story was barren of real details.

Vera and Harold came downstairs and we formed a restless trio in the parlor until Harold excused himself. I caught his glance. He was going to see Ellen.

I kept Vera occupied with small talk. She was not at all reluctant to tell me about herself. She came from a small town in Michigan, she told me. After finishing college, she’d gone to New York with an eye on the publishing business. Nothing unusual. A girl of her beauty might have led a more exciting life.

When Harold returned, he gave me a short nod over her shoulder. After a while, he mentioned Papa Joe’s financial affairs. “I wonder,” he suggested, “if we’ll find anything of value in that cottage Papa Joe owned on Hickory Street.” The glance he gave me was meaningful.

I relaxed. There was nothing to do now but wait until darkness was heavy enough to cover my trip to the cottage.

I let an hour or more elapse after our quiet, desultory dinner before I set out for the cottage. Before leaving the house I turned off the light in the rear hallway, and opened the door to the back porch.

Standing in the shadows of the porch my gaze searched until it found Hagan’s back yard stake-out. I was sure he would have one. The man was lounging on a stone bench near an old rock pool that was filled with leaves and dirt. Ellen would have seen the man and had not dared take a chance on slipping out. Wilfred was doubtless a hungry boy, waiting for food that would not arrive.

A light summer breeze rushed across the yard. I let the sound of it in the trees cover any slight sounds I might have made as I eased off the porch, clinging to the shadow of the house.

I had one strip of side yard to cross between the house and trees. Once in the trees I made better speed, skirting the yard, taking to the weed-grown lots that lay between me and the cottage.

The cottage, when I reached it, was dark. I tried the back door and found it unlocked, giving me no purpose for the ring of keys I had filched from the pantry.

The floor creaked once as I entered. I stopped, listened, gripping the flashlight I’d picked up in Wilfred’s room. I moved forward again, and there was a sudden burst of movement before me.

The light flared, catching Wilfred as he flung a desperate look over his shoulder while he lunged for the door across the room.

As he yanked the door open my fingers grabbed his collar. I jerked him back and he stood breathing thickly. His face was as white as dough, his eyes jutting in an oblique angle.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said quietly. He stood quivering like a beaten pup and watched me warily as I removed my hand from his collar and stepped back from him.

“Now let’s sit down and talk this over like gentlemen.” I found a ramshackle, dusty chair and pushed it toward him. He let his body come in stiff sitting contact with the edge of it.

“It was foolish of you to run, Wilfred.”

He shook his head, breathing through his mouth.

“Let’s go back over what happened,” I said. “Last night Harold rushed into the house on Northland. A few moments later Papa Joe arrived. He spoke to Harold; then went to his room. A little while after that, Papa Joe called for you and you went up to him. After that — a blank, until Papa Joe was found this morning. What did Papa Joe want you for, Wilfred?”

“To get him a drink of whisky.” He stopped, as if the words had expended all his energy.

I waited, and said finally, “Did you get it for him?”

Wilfred nodded. “I went downstairs first, but the bottle was gone from the buffet. It was the only bottle in the house, I thought. I remembered then that young Mr. Cranford took it to his room earlier in the day. When I went up to get it, I heard him and his wife wrangling, so I didn’t go in.”

“Why not? Were you more afraid of breaking in on Harold than of refusing Papa Joe’s request?”

“I’ll say not! But I happened to think of the pint of Old Seaman you put on your bureau when you came home yesterday. I’d brought me a glass from downstairs and a bottle of ginger ale. Instead of going to young Mr. Cranford’s room for the whisky, I went to yours. The pint was still on your bureau.”

My heart began hitting my ribs with a hammer-like beat at the implications his story was unfolding.

“You poured him a drink from the Old Seaman?”

“Yes, sir. A big drink, the kind he always liked. He throwed it down his throat, made a face, and used the ginger ale for a chaser. Then he looked like somebody had hit him over the head with a club. He fell into a chair and looked at me, his eyes terrible, the color funny in his cheeks. He opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything. Then he slid off the chair onto the floor.”

Wilfred chewed the side of his lip. “I thought right away he was plumb dead and that I’d poisoned him even if I hadn’t meant to. I was scared clean to my toenails. I just wanted to get away from there until they found out who did it. I was afraid that they’d catch me and wouldn’t look any further. I slipped back this morning to tell Ellen I hadn’t done it, and where I was, and for her to get me some grub.” He touched my arm timidly. “Please don’t take me back, Mr. Martin! I swear I didn’t do it, even if it was me that gave him the whisky!”

“I believe you,” I said. Tears welled in his eyes.

I waited a moment, and when the shaking ceased in his fat moon face and round shoulders, I reached in my pocket for the lead pellet I’d found in Harold’s room. I Jet the light play on the chunk of lead as I rolled it around in the palm of my hand.

Wilfred paled.

“You dropped one of the slugs,” I said. “Did you carry the rest of them away with you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I found you in Harold’s room yesterday with his gun in your hand and a pair of pliers in your pocket. You went to his room with one purpose in your mind. You hated him with all the intensity of your being. You felt that only you could save your sister.”

“She wouldn’t listen to me,” Wilfred said miserably.

“Yet for all your hate you were afraid to do anything to Harold directly. You knew he was in danger of some kind, going out armed to protect himself. You wanted to remove that protection, so you peeled the slugs out of his cartridges, leaving him with a gun loaded with blanks.”

Wilfred hung his head sheepishly. “I thought it was pretty smart, Mr. Martin. Just everybody wouldn’t have thought of it.”

“Pretty underhanded, too.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

I dropped the slug back in my pocket. My mind reviewed how it had happened here in the cottage. McGinty had hurled his body away from Harold’s spitting gun, had reached the next room where he had tripped over a piece of furniture and fallen. Not knowing whether Harold had missed or whether he actually was mortally wounded, McGinty had realized his only chance lay in silence and in the hope that Harold would not follow him into the dark room and start shooting again.

When he had heard Harold rush out of the cottage, McGinty had allowed a few moments to elapse. Then he had got up and walked out, crossing the back yard along the general course of Harold’s flight.

Little wonder the yard had not revealed McGinty’s passage to me. I had been looking for a trail left by a crawling, dying man, not that of a man completely healthy, whole — and able to strike again!