Murder Up My Sleeve

15

Parker Dixon smiled with his lips. His eyes were as coldly watchful as those of a pugilist studying an opponent in the ring.

“I’m afraid, Mr. Clane,” he said, “that you haven’t been entirely frank with me.” And he glanced across the room to where a shorthand reporter was seated at a small table, taking down everything that was said.

Terry said, “I’ve tried to co-operate.”

“Co-operate?” Dixon asked.

“Yes.”

“With whom?” the district attorney demanded, a trace of irritation showing in his voice.

“I’ve tried to co-operate with you and Inspector Malloy,” Terry assured him.

“A little more co-operation such as you have given us would have plunged the case into hopeless confusion. There was, for instance, the rather mysterious manner in which this Chinese girl disappeared from your apartment. How do you explain that?”

“As I told you earlier,” Terry said, “co-operation implies a mutual objective definitely known to both parties. Therefore, I might as well ask why you didn’t tell me you had planted a dictograph in my apartment.”

Inspector Malloy said, “You can bounce words off of him like rubber balls off a brick wall, Dixon, it doesn’t bother him! Nothing hazes him. He looks sweet and innocent but he moves around like a greased pig in...”

“Never mind, Jim,” the district attorney interrupted, without taking his eyes from Clane. “Incidentally, Mr. Clane, I didn’t call you in to engage in a verbal exchange. I called you in to give you one last chance to give a satisfactory account of your connexion with the Mandra murder and to explain your subsequent activities, particularly your theft of Mandra’s portrait from the apartment of his widow.

“Please understand, Mr. Clane, I am not seeking information now. I have the information. I am giving you one last chance to justify your actions.”

Terry remained silent.

“Do I gather,” Dixon said, “that you have nothing to add to what you have said?”

“If you’ll specify just what points you want me to declare myself on, I’ll be glad to answer questions,” Terry told him.

“Why did you leave Howland’s office this afternoon before the others arrived?”

“I had a difference of opinion with Mr. Howland.”

“What about?”

“About a matter which has nothing whatever to do with the facts of the case.”

“Did it have something to do with Miss Renton’s defence? With her testimony, perhaps?”

Clane raised his eyebrows. “Is it possible,” he inquired coldly, “that you have summoned me here to interrogate me concerning Mr. Howland’s plans for Miss Renton’s defence?”

Dixon acknowledged he had lost a point by lowering eyes, but a moment later he had raised them to stare searchingly at Clane.

“I’m going to have Alma Renton and Mr. George Levering brought in here,” he said. “My men picked them up as they left Howland’s office. I’m going to interrogate them concerning the substitution of paintings. I want you to be present at that conversation. If anything is said which doesn’t coincide with your recollection, I’d be glad to have you advise me. I don’t want to make any threats, Mr. Clane, but I think I am justified in saying that the only thing which can possibly keep you from being charged with a very serious crime is the question of your intent.”

“Therefore,” Terry said, smiling cheerfully, “if I assist you in making a case against Alma as an accessory you’ll know my intentions are all right, and I probably won’t be arrested, whereas, if I don’t do so, you’ll know my intentions are wrong and prosecute me as an accessory. Is that right?”

“I didn’t say that,” Dixon retorted.

“You didn’t say that, but isn’t that the idea you wished to convey?”

The district attorney shrugged his shoulders and said, “I think, Mr. Clane, that we have pursued this phase of the conversation quite far enough. After all, I think you understand your own position and I am now quite certain that you appreciate mine.”

He slid his finger along the desk to the push button, and a moment later, apparently in response to the signal, a young woman opened the door and Alma Renton and George Levering were ushered into the room.

“Be seated,” the district attorney invited. “You both know Mr. Clane, of course. I want to ask a few questions.”

“The understanding being,” Clane warned, in a slow, amused drawl, “that if you don’t answer those questions truly and correctly, I’m to interpolate a word here and there. That’s the price I’m being asked to pay for my own freedom.”

Alma glanced swiftly at him and said, “Terry!” her voice sharp with incredulity.

Levering nodded his head, and there was something of smirking satisfaction in the gesture, as though he were saying, “You may surprise Alma by turning stool pigeon but you haven’t surprised me.”

Dixon leveled his eyes at Alma Renton.

“When did you first know your sister had murdered Mandra?” he asked.

Terry’s comment came with the effortless ease of a polished toastmaster recalling a well-worn story.

“Permit me to make a correction, Mr. Dixon. She didn’t know her sister had murdered Mandra for the simple reason that her sister didn’t commit the murder.”

The district attorney’s eyes shifted to Terry.

“That remark, Mr. Clane, indicates a knowledge, on your part of who did murder Mandra.”

Terry nodded.

Dixon’s finger slid once more to the button on his desk. This time he rang twice. “Perhaps,” he said, “you’d like to tell us the identity of the Chinese girl who called on you at your apartment earlier this afternoon.”

“No,” Terry said slowly, “I’m afraid I can’t give you any help on that, Mr. Dixon.”

He noticed a sly, sardonic expression in the district attorney’s eyes, and was therefore not entirely unprepared for that which followed. A door was flung open with dramatic swiftness. A uniformed officer escorted Sou Ha into the room.

The Chinese girl stood very erect, very quiet, and very dignified, her manner indicating that her mind had achieved a calmly unruffled tranquillity.

“Is this the girl?” Dixon asked.

Slowly Terry Clane got to his feet.

“That,” he said, “is the girl.”

“And I believe, Mr. Clane, she confessed in some detail to the murder of Mandra, but explained to you that she was leaving the knowledge of her guilt with you in the nature of a trust, not to be used unless you found it was quite necessary to save Cynthia Renton.”

It was Sou Ha who spoke. “That is true,” she said calmly, “the man was evil and I killed him.”

Alma Renton’s gasping intake of breath knifed the moment of tense silence which followed Sou Ha’s statement.

“And do you wish me to make a correction on that?” Terry asked.

“You have done quite enough, Mr. Clane,” Dixon said.

“Perhaps,” Clane suggested, “I could do still more with a question or two.” And without waiting for permission, he said to Sou Ha, “Where was Cynthia Renton when you killed Mandra?”

“On the couch in another room, asleep,” Sou Ha said, in the toneless voice of a fatalist facing a supreme crisis.

“What was Mandra doing?”

She looked at him for a moment with inscrutable eyes. Her face was expressionless and yet a barrier seemed to have been thrown up between them.

“The time has come,” he told her, “for you to answer these questions. In no other way can I save the painter woman.”

“Mandra,” she said, “was seated at the table. He had the sleeve gun in his hand. I recognized it. It was the sleeve gun which you had kept in your glass-covered case.”

“What else was on the table?” he asked.

“A woman’s handbag. I think it was the handbag of the painter woman.”

Parker Dixon exchanged a swiftly significant glance with Inspector Malloy. The district attorney’s eyes held a glint of triumph. Malloy was frowning thoughtfully.

“What color was the handbag?”

“Black.”

Clane glanced at Alma Renton. “Would Cynthia have carried a black bag?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “she hates black. Her handbag was brown — a dark brown.”

Clane turned back to Sou Ha. “Where did Mandra get this sleeve gun?” he asked.

“In some way it came from your house.”

“How did he get it?”

“As to that I do not know.”

Dixon turned to the shorthand reporter and said, “Are you getting this, Miss Stokely?”

“Every word,” the young woman said.

“Go right ahead, Mr. Clane,” Dixon invited smilingly, “you’re doing splendidly. Your co-operation was a bit tardy but, now you’ve started, you’re making up for lost time.”

“I take it,” Clane asked, with a swift glance at Sou Ha, “this will clear Cynthia Renton?”

“There are one or two other matters to be straightened out,” the district attorney pointed out. “We can’t afford to overlook some of your activities, Clane. Take that portrait, for instance.”

“Yes,” Clane said, “I appreciate the spot I’m in, but since confessions are in order, I think we’ll all come clean. One of the first things to clear up is the matter of these counterfeit portraits. I think you, Levering, had better explain that.”

Levering looked repentant. “I’m sorry I did what I did,” he admitted. “I’m going to make a clean breast of it. Now that this Chinese girl has confessed, I can do it. I was with Alma. Cynthia came to us and told us her story. She’d been drugged. When she awakened, Mandra was dead. I wanted to keep her out of it, so I suggested I could scout around a bit and find out what had happened. I did so and discovered that a witness had seen some woman leaving Mandra’s apartment carrying the portrait Cynthia had painted. I asked Alma if she could duplicate such a portrait from Cynthia’s sketches. She said she could, so I suggested we should make the counterfeit portrait, put it in Cynthia’s apartment, and give Cynthia that two o’clock alibi.”

Dixon’s eyes stared at Levering in unflattering appraisal.

“How long had you been with Alma Renton before Cynthia’s arrival?”

“I can’t give you the exact number of minutes.”

“Wasn’t it rather an unusual hour for you to call on her?”

“Not exactly. I’d been confronted with an emergency... That is, I had to see her in regard to a business matter.”

“Meaning you wanted her to give you some more gambling money?” Clane asked.

“You can keep out of this!” Levering blazed. “I don’t know who made you guardian for the Renton girls, anyway. Trying to protect this Chink, you’ve involved them in a dirty scandal.”

“That will do,” Dixon said sternly. “Your own conduct is far from blameless, Mr. Levering.”

“And now,” Terry said, “I think it’s my turn, so I’ll make a confession. The murder, gentlemen, was committed with my sleeve gun.”

“So you’re satisfied it’s your sleeve gun now, are you?” Dixon asked.

“I’m morally certain of it. I always have been.”

“You didn’t seem anxious to identify it.”

“I was a little conservative.”

“Very well, go ahead,” Dixon said.

“Well,” Clane observed thoughtfully, his eyes flickering in swift appraisal over the faces which were turned towards him, “one of the important questions to be considered is: How did that sleeve gun get into Mandra’s possession? The next question is: How did it get here? How do you account for that, Sou Ha?”

“I know nothing further,” she said.

“What did you do with the sleeve gun after you killed Mandra?”

“I tried to return it to your collection. The door of the case was locked and so I...”

She hesitated.

“So you what?” Terry asked.

“I have finished,” she said with calm dignity. “So much I will tell and then I tell no more.”

Clane nodded and said to the district attorney, “Let’s see if we can’t reason out an answer to those two questions — first, how the sleeve gun got into Mandra’s possession; second, how it happened to be found in your office. We’ll begin by taking Mandra’s character and his desires into consideration.

“We must remember Mandra was very anxious to get a sleeve gun. It’s a weapon which is very typical of his collection. One which is both rare and valuable. Therefore, Mandra was willing to go to any lengths to secure a genuine, authentic, antique sleeve gun.

“Our knowledge of Mandra’s character is that he didn’t stop when once he had made up his mind. He didn’t limit himself to orthodox methods. Someone took that sleeve gun from my apartment and transferred it to Mandra’s possession. Perhaps the best way of determining who that someone was, is by considering how the sleeve gun came into your possession.

“That gun was put here by someone who had been unexpectedly brought to this office. If he’d known in advance he was coming here, he naturally wouldn’t have carried the gun with him. I gather, therefore, that the person who brought the gun here was someone who was picked up by your man as he was leaving my apartment; since everyone who left my apartment was unexpectedly placed under restraint and brought here.

“The question arises why that person should have had the sleeve gun in his possession on leaving my apartment. There is one answer, and, as I see it, only one answer. That person had stolen the gun from my collection, knowing that it would be some time before I would miss it, in the ordinary course of things. He was anxious to return it after the murder, just as he had been anxious to take it before the murder. He wanted to replace it in the glass-enclosed case where I keep many of my curios, but he didn’t have the chance to do so because Yat Toy had locked the door, which was customarily kept unlocked. He therefore decided he’d try it again at a later date, left my apartment and was picked up by officers with the sleeve gun still in his possession. Now, that person couldn’t have been Sou Ha because, as Sou Ha has suddenly realized, she didn’t come to this office prior to the time the sleeve gun was found. It’s at that point the circumstances cease to corroborate the confession she has made. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to find out who brought that sleeve gun here.

“Now, gentlemen, there was only one person in my apartment who had any opportunity to try to return that sleeve gun.”

Terry paused, whirled, and extended a dramatic forefinger at Levering.

“You, George,” he said, “tried to return that sleeve gun and you were baffled by a locked door. And you were whisked up to the district attorney’s office before you had any chance to get rid of the weapon. You managed to wipe all the fingerprints off of it with your handkerchief while you were waiting in the outer office here, but you didn’t have a chance to hide it until you had entered this room.

“Now then,” Terry demanded, staring into Levering’s pale eyes, “where did you get that sleeve gun?”

Levering stared with wide, apprehensive eyes at Terry as though hypnotized. Parker Dixon’s urbanity of expression gave way to a puzzled frown, while his lips forgot their ready smile. Alma Renton shifted startled eyes from Terry to Levering.

Terry said slowly and impressively, “I’ll answer that question for you, Levering. I’ll tell you where you got that gun. You got it from William Shield. You stole that gun for Shield in the first place. Shield and Mandra were engaged in a racket by which they framed hit-and-run charges on a carefully selected list of people who were accustomed to drive their cars after taking one or two cocktails. You were picked to be one of their victims because, through Alma, you had access to my apartment. Mandra didn’t blackmail you for money. He blackmailed you for my sleeve gun. The price you had to pay for escaping prosecution on a hit-and-run charge was the stealing of that sleeve gun. It was understood Mandra was going to have a duplicate gun made and let you return that duplicate to my collection. You were convinced the substitution could be made before the absence of the sleeve gun had been noticed.

“But a murder was committed with that sleeve gun. The dart had buried itself in Mandra’s heart, and couldn’t be recovered by the murderer. The authorities were certain to learn the nature of the murder weapon when they recovered that dart at the post-mortem. Therefore, since I had not known that my sleeve gun was missing, it became vitally important to the murderer to have that gun returned to its position in the cabinet before I missed it. So Shield once more brought pressure to bear upon you to return that gun.”

Dixon interrupted. “Just a moment, Mr. Clane,” he said, “we’re going to keep this straight as we go along. Why should Shield seek to protect this Chinese girl?”

Terry said, “He wasn’t trying to protect her. Let’s use our heads, gentlemen, and not overlook the most significant fact in this entire case. The testimony of the impartial, disinterested witnesses shows that when the woman who took the painting from Mandra’s apartment was seen on the stairs she was holding the canvas away from her in both hands, one hand resting on each side of the canvas. It’s impossible, under those circumstances, for the woman to have carried both the canvas and her purse. This is particularly true when we consider that the paint on the portrait was still wet.”

Dixon’s face showed sudden interest.

“Therefore, you mean...”

“Therefore, I mean that that woman must have returned for her purse,” Clane said. “She’s the only person we’ve so far discovered who must have had the key to that corridor door, with the possible exception of Shield, or his associates.

“Now, Shield or his associates wouldn’t have gone to Mandra’s apartment at that hour of the morning unless they’d planned a premeditated murder, and, if they had planned a premeditated murder, they’d have brought a weapon. The person who killed Mandra was one who became seized with a sudden impulse to kill. By a fortuitous chain of circumstance, the weapon was ready at hand. The crime, therefore, was one of emotion. Now we know Juanita left that apartment at two o’clock in the morning, carrying this portrait. We know she didn’t have her purse with her then, since she paid the cab driver from ‘mad money’ she took from her stocking. We have established, furthermore, that the crime was one, not of premeditation, but of emotion and impulse. We have established the fact that some woman’s purse was lying on the table in front of Jacob Mandra when Juanita left in a jealous rage at two o’clock in the morning. That purse was seen by Sou Ha at two forty-five. We know the purse wasn’t there when the body was discovered. What more logical, therefore, than to assume Juanita Mandra, remembering when she was called on to pay off her taxi-cab in front of her apartment that she had left her purse behind her, paid off the cab driver from her ‘mad money’, took the portrait up to her apartment, and later summoned another cab and went back after her purse?

“Since she was Mandra’s wife, and since she admits she went to Mandra’s apartment on the occasion of taking the portrait, and wasn’t seen by the door-keeper, it follows that she must have had a key to that corridor door. She returned to get her purse. That was some time between two forty-five, when Sou Ha left, and a few minutes after three, when the body was discovered. She is the one who killed Mandra. She killed him in a jealous rage because she knew Mandra was contemplating divorce proceedings. She is just the type who would do such a thing. She snatched up the weapon which was on the table, released the dart which entered Mandra’s heart, then rushed from the apartment. She returned the murder weapon to Shield. Shield returned it to Levering, and Levering was caught making a clumsy attempt to return that weapon to my collection.

“At the time of the murder, Cynthia Renton, who was asleep in an adjoining room, was awakened by the noise made by Juanita in leaving the apartment, and, slowly rousing to consciousness, came out, to find the dead body of Mandra.

“Now then, Levering, it’s time for you to tell the truth. And, just to keep from taking an unfair advantage, I’m letting you know I was the one who telephoned you in Howland’s office and trapped you into an admission that Shield had framed you on a hit-and-run charge, and that you’d settled with him.

“When I started figuring out what must have happened, knowing Mandra’s methods, knowing how badly he wanted a sleeve gun, knowing that he had a blackmail system by which he could pick his victims at will, I realized you must have been the one whom he had used in procuring that sleeve gun; and I trapped you into admitting it.”

Terry Clane, ignoring the white, strained faces of the startled witnesses, stared steadily in grim accusation into Levering’s pale eyes.

Levering’s entire conception of the case suddenly executed a topsy-turvy revolution and he was unable to keep what was going on within his mind from showing on his face. District Attorney Dixon, experienced in reading faces under emotional stress, needed but one look at Levering to reach an instantaneous decision.

“Young man,” he said solemnly, “a shorthand reporter is taking down what’s being said here. I’m not making any promises and I’m not making any threats, but within the next two minutes you’re going to decide definitely whether you’re running with the hare or with the hounds. Your part in this matter has been decidedly culpable. It remains for you to say whether it becomes more or less culpable from now on.”

George Levering ran his forefinger about the inside of the neckband of his shirt. He was breathing heavily, as though he had been running.

“Yes, sir,” he said, after a moment, “I’ll tell my story.”