Murder Up My Sleeve

5

Inspector Jim Malloy of the Homicide Squad was full of genial good nature.

“Nice place you have here,” he said. “Brought the furniture over from China, didn’t you?”

“Most of it,” Terry admitted.

“Nice apartment. Nice view. Like these odd apartments. Were you ever in Mandra’s place?”

“Yes.”

“A funny sort of place, wasn’t it? Mandra owned the building. All the other apartments in it were cheap dumps. Mandra’s place was fixed up like a million dollars. They say that’s the way rich Chinese live, shabby outside stuff, luxurious inside fittings. Too bad about the murder. Sorry they bothered you to go to the district attorney’s office, but you know how those things go. Mandra was killed with a sleeve gun and his correspondence showed you’d been writing about a sleeve gun. So the D.A. thought you might give him some information.”

“No bother at all,” Terry replied. “I was glad to do anything I could. How about a Scotch and soda?”

“Never use ’em on duty.”

“And this, I take it,” Terry asked, smiling, “is a duty call?”

“Well, you might put it that way. You see, we’re interested in this sleeve-gun business. We can’t find out much about them. We thought perhaps you could tell us a little more.”

“Are you certain,” Terry asked, “that the murder was committed with a sleeve gun?”

By way of answer, Malloy took from his pocket a glass test tube, the end of which had been sealed with a strip of adhesive tape on which was written a date, number, and signature. Sealing wax had been affixed to the adhesive tape. Within the test tube, a small dart some five and a half inches long rattled against the glass as Malloy handed it over.

Terry studied it carefully.

“That,” he said, “is undoubtedly Chinese in workmanship. As nearly as I can tell, it’s a dart from a sleeve gun. I’ve never seen such a dart used for any other purpose.”

“That’s the gadget that did the job,” Malloy asserted. “It was a dead-centre shot. Struck him right in the heart. He went out like a light. I wanted to ask you a few questions about sleeve guns. How accurate are they?”

“At very short ranges they’re quite accurate. The gun can be fastened to the forearm if desired, then a downward pressure of the arm on a table top or other solid object releases the dart.”

“Deadly little things. Could a woman use one?”

“Certainly, if she wore long, loose sleeves.”

“Do you have a sleeve gun I can look at?”

“There’s one in that case behind you. You may inspect it if you wish.”

“Wonder if you’d mind if we borrowed it for a little while. We’d promise to return it in good condition.”

Terry approached the glass-covered case, pulled on the knob of the door, then stood motionless.

“What’s the matter?” Malloy asked.

Terry took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, surveyed the empty corner.

“A sleeve gun was here,” he said, “over in this corner of the shelf. It’s gone now.”

Malloy’s voice was rich with sympathy. “Well, ain’t that too bad!” he said, pushing forward. “Anything else gone?”

“No.”

“How about darts? Did you have some darts with it?”

“Yes, I had three... There are two left.”

Malloy’s big hand reached into the case and picked up the two darts. His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth, making sounds of audible sympathy.

“That sure is too bad,” he repeated, “and I know how hard it is to get one of these things, because we’ve been trying all day to locate one. What do you suppose could have happened to it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Terry told him; “and if you’re intending to compare the two darts with the one in the test tube, there’s no need to stall. From what I can see they appear to be absolutely identical.”

“They do, don’t they!” Malloy exclaimed in apparent surprise, as though the idea had just occurred to him. He held the test tube in one hand, the two darts in the other. “Same length, same type of workmanship, same sort of metal point, apparently about the same weight. Tell me, Clane, if a man had a sleeve gun tied to his arm and missed the first shot, it would be pretty hard to reload and try again, wouldn’t it?”

“Virtually impossible,” Clane agreed.

“Therefore, a man only needs one shot. If that does the work, it’s plenty. If it doesn’t, a whole pocket full of darts wouldn’t help. What I’m getting at is, that shooting one of these things isn’t like using an automatic revolver, where it pays to carry an extra clip of cartridges.”

“It’s a one-shot weapon,” Clane admitted.

“So, if a man was going to commit a murder he would take only one dart. He wouldn’t have any need for the other two.”

“Quite correct,” Clane conceded, with just a trace of irritation in his voice. “And having committed the murder, if he owned the sleeve gun, he would then restore it to the place from which he had taken it.”

“Sure,” Malloy said, “sure he would. But he couldn’t restore the dart.”

“Naturally.”

“Therefore if he was a smart man he’d figure it would be better to have both the sleeve gun and one dart missing than to just have one dart missing.”

Malloy’s warm brown eyes were absolutely devoid of guile.

“You weren’t by any chance thinking, were you,” Clane asked, “that...”

Malloy interrupted, making those clucking noises with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Tkk, tkk... don’t give it a thought, Clane! Don’t give it a thought! We were just talking about what a smart man would do if he was committing a murder. But people like you and me don’t commit murders. It takes a person with a goofy streak in him to kill a man... Unless it’s a woman does the job. There’s no accounting for what a woman’ll do. Emotional you know. It’s sure too bad about your sleeve gun! You haven’t lent it to anyone?”

“No.”

“Then it must have been stolen.”

“That,” Clane said, “would seem a fair inference.”

“And by someone who’d have a chance to open the door of that glass case without being caught. Now, how many people have the run of your apartment, Clane? Not that I want to be sticking my nose into your business, I just want to get this thing straight. How many?”

“Very few. I haven’t been back from China long enough to make many new friends.”

“The Renton woman who paints?”

“She’s been here, yes.”

“Some Chinese girl, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

“Now don’t get high hat, Clane. That’s what the police are for, you know, to recover stolen property. Suppose you give me a description of this gun. Perhaps you could draw a sketch so we’d know more about what we had to hunt for.”

Clane picked up a pad of paper, took a pencil and started a rapid sketch.

“I described it in detail to the district attorney this morning, but this will give you a little better idea, seeing it in the form of a sketch. It’s a tube of bamboo with a powerful spring and rather a peculiar catch. As nearly as I can remember it, this is the way the catch looks.”

Malloy studied the sketch carefully, folded it, slipped it in his pocket, held the two darts in his hand for a moment and then said, “There ought to be some way of identifying these darts of yours so we don’t get ’em mixed up with the dart that was used in the murder. Would you mind writing your initials on the wood and then I’ll write my initials right after yours.”

Without a word, Terry initialed the small wooden shaft of each dart. Inspector Malloy put his own initials after Terry’s.

“Say,” Malloy remarked, after he had slipped the two darts into an envelope which he took from his pocket, “how about the Chink here... you know, your servant? Would he perhaps have borrowed that sleeve gun?”

“Not a chance. I’d trust Yat Toy with my life.”

“Sure, sure,” Malloy agreed; “but would you trust him with someone else’s life, someone perhaps who was planning to do you some harm?”

“But Mandra wasn’t planning to do me any harm.”

“Mandra was a funny one,” Malloy said meditatively. “I’ve known him ever since he got his start in the bail-bond business. That’s going on to twenty years. You couldn’t say just what he was planning. He was a queer one. Of course, I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I will say this: there’s lots of people could have had a motive for murdering Jacob Mandra. That man was clever. He knew people’s weakness. You might learn a lot about human nature by figuring people’s good points, Clane; Mandra learned what he knew by figuring people’s bad points; and I don’t know but what Mandra knew more than you or me, at that. You see, people have more weak points than good points. A man ain’t as good as his strongest point. He’s as bad as his weakest point. Well, I’ll be moving on. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Not at all,” Terry said. “By the way, Inspector, there’s a light delivery van parked downstairs, and whenever anyone leaves my apartment a man steps out of that delivery van, flashes a badge, and takes that person somewhere.”

Inspector Malloy’s brown eyes widened. “Is that so?” he asked. “Well, now, ain’t that something!”

“Have you any idea how long it’s going to continue?”

“Why, I couldn’t say a thing about it,” Malloy said. He walked to the window, moving his ponderous bulk on tiptoe, as a hunter stalking his quarry. His forefinger pointed down at the paneled delivery truck.

“Is that the one?” he asked in a hoarse whisper, as though the van might become alarmed and rush into flight.

“That’s the one.”

“Well,” Malloy said, “can you beat that!” His eyes radiated sympathy. “You say they nabbed everyone who’s been here to-day?”

“Everyone.”

“Well now,” Malloy said, “I’ll have to look into that. Don’t you do a thing about that, Mr. Clane. You just leave it to me and I’ll find out about it.”

He shook hands and left the apartment. After he had descended in the elevator, Terry moved to the window. Malloy emerged from the lobby, but studiously avoided the light delivery van which remained parked at the curb. Nor did any mysterious person emerge from it to accost him.

Terry summoned Yat T’oy.

“Yat T’oy,” he said, speaking in Chinese, “you will ride in a taxicab and perform an errand.”

“What is the errand the Master wishes?”

Terry scribbled an address on a piece of paper. “This,” he said, “is the address of George Levering, the man with sunburnt skin and pale eyes. Go to this address and ask Mr. Levering if it will be convenient for him to have dinner with your master.”

“And the Master does not wish to use the speak-listen wire?” asked Yat Toy, using the Chinese idiom for telephone.

“The Master does not wish to use the speak-listen wire. And if any men should be watching Levering’s apartment, or making a search of the room, you will report to me at once.”

Silently Yat T’oy turned and shuffled from the room. Terry Clane telephoned for a cab. When the cab arrived, he watched Yat T’oy leave the door of the apartment house and shuffle across the sidewalk. As the Chinese reached the cab door, a man jumped from the delivery van, stepped forward, pulled back the lapel of his coat, pushed Yat T’oy into the taxicab, climbed in beside him, and leaned forward to speak to the driver. The cab drove off.

“Well,” Terry mused, staring down at the sinister body of the covered van, “since you boys are acting so smart, I’ve given you a real tough nut to crack.”

Thoughtfully, Terry Clane divested himself of his clothes, took a cold shower and a brisk rub. He had just finished tying his necktie when the telephone rang. A young woman’s voice said crisply, “Mr. Clane? Just a moment. Hold the line, please, the district attorney wishes to speak with you.”

A second later, Clane heard a metallic click, then the voice of Parker Dixon saying, “I’m sorry to bother you again, Mr. Clane, but if you’ll come up here right away I think it will be well worth your while.”

Clane hesitated. “It’s hardly convenient,” he said, “to...”

“It’s most important,” Dixon interrupted. “I don’t wish to seem insistent, but I know you’re anxious to help us clear up this matter, and...” He paused, waiting significantly, and Clane said wearily, “Oh, very well, I’ll be up.”

“Right away?”

“Right away.”

Clane summoned a cab, went to the district attorney’s office. This time there was no waiting. Five seconds after he entered the outer door, he was being ushered into the district attorney’s private office.

Dixon, seated behind the desk, smiled. It was as though he had merely relaxed, and the muscles of his face had automatically turned on the smile. Inspector Jim Malloy, for all his big bulk, got to his feet with cat-like quickness, and, with hand outstretched in genial welcome, crossed the office.

“Well, well, Mr. Clane!” he exclaimed, grasping Terry’s hand and pumping it up and down. “This is an outrage — twice in one day. When the district attorney told me that we needed you, you know what the first thing I said was? I said, ‘Now that’s just too bad!’ But it’s one of those things. Come over and sit down... No, not that chair, this one here close to the desk. Sit down and be comfortable. I think perhaps we’ve got some good news for you. You know, the police department takes a lot of kicks, but sometimes we really do good work. Here it was, just an hour ago you were telling me about that sleeve gun being stolen, and now...”

“I’ll handle it, Jim,” Parker Dixon interrupted.

Abruptly, with no preliminaries, he shoved a bamboo tube across the desk to Terry Clane and asked:

“Is this your sleeve gun?”

And, with that question, the office suddenly became very silent. Terry sensed that the men were holding their breaths as they fastened their eyes upon him.

Slowly, Terry extended his hand to the sleeve gun.

Holding the sleeve gun in his hand, Terry strove to exclude his surroundings from his mind. Inspector Malloy, on one side, and District Attorney Dixon on the other, watching his every move, hoping that they might surprise some expression on his face which would incriminate him, were impediments to his concentration, and he strove to relegate them to his mental background while he focused his mind upon the problem of the sleeve gun.

He felt certain it was his sleeve gun.

Had it been found at the scene of the crime, they would have asked him to identify it on the occasion of his first visit to the office. Had it been discovered upon one of the suspects who had been taken to the office for questioning, they wouldn’t have been so keen upon getting an identification of the gun, unless it had perchance been found in the possession of Yat T’oy.

Giving this matter careful thought while he turned the sleeve gun over and over in his fingers as though looking for some mark of identification, Terry decided the probabilities were very much against such a major indiscretion on the part of Yat T’oy.

“Well,” the district attorney said, “I think you’ve looked at it from every angle, Mr. Clane.”

Terry raised his eyes and smiled. “I was hoping,” he said, “to find some mark of identification which I could remember, but I can’t do it.”

“You mean to say you can’t identify this gun!”

“Frankly, I can’t. I think it’s mine, but I wouldn’t want to say positively.”

“It looks like yours?”

“Yes.”

“And your best judgment is that it is yours?” Dixon asked, leaning slightly forward.

Terry shook his head. “Of course,” he said slowly, “you understand that these things are made by hand. Each one is individual. Observe, for instance, there’s a blemish in the wood here, a dark stain here, a little crack here, and the brass end is, as you’ll see, not perfectly round. These are all distinguishing marks which identify this gun. Yet I can’t remember them as having been on my gun.”

“Gee, that’s too bad,” Malloy said. “I was hoping we could turn it over to you. I’m sure it’s yours, and if you could just identify it, we could turn it over, and that’d be all there’d be to it.”

“Of course,” Terry pointed out, “now that I’ve handled it, my fingerprints would be on it anyway, but you might have been able to identify it by...”

“No,” Malloy interrupted, “there weren’t any fingerprints on it, not a one. It had been wiped clean, and...”

The district attorney said sternly, “That’s all right, Inspector, I’ll handle it.”

Malloy lapsed into silence. Dixon turned to Clane.

“You haven’t any idea when, how, or by whom this weapon was taken from your collection, Mr. Clane?”

“No, I haven’t. I can’t, of course, say whether it did or did not come from my collection.”

“I believe the glass door of your curio case was locked when you discovered the sleeve gun was missing?”

“Yes.”

“When you tried to open that door Malloy tells me you simply twisted the knob and seemed rather surprised the door didn’t open.”

“That’s true.”

“Then you hadn’t expected to find the door locked?”

“No.”

“Therefore, someone else must have locked it?”

“Of course,” Clane pointed out, “memory is a tricky thing at best, and whether that door was locked or unlocked would ordinarily be a matter so trivial...”

“No need to apologize,” the district attorney interrupted. “We understand the circumstances perfectly. You’re giving us your best recollection.”

“My best recollection is that the door was unlocked the last time I had occasion to look into the cabinet.”

“You carry a key to it on your key ring?”

“Yes.”

“Who else has a key to it?”

“Yat Toy, my servant.”

“How long has he been with you?”

“Three years.”

“He was with you in China?”

“Yes.”

“Has he changed his name since leaving China?”

Clane smiled and said, “If you’re referring to the name on his papers, don’t think he’s traveling under an alias. Yat T’oy is something of a nickname. It means ‘Little One’ ”

“Do you know if he knew Jacob Mandra?”

“No, I would have no way of knowing.”

“You didn’t take him with you when you went to call on Mandra?”

“No, I would hardly take a servant with me.”

“Isn’t he more than a servant? Isn’t he a friend?”

“In a way, yes.”

“And you can’t give us any more help with this sleeve gun?”

“I can’t positively identify it, if that’s what you’re referring to.”

“That’s what I’m referring to.”

“No.”

“Look here, Clane, you’re morally certain that’s your gun.”

“I think it is my gun, yes.”

“Then, why not identify it?”

“Because I can’t... May I ask where you found it?”

As soon as he had asked the question, Clane realized that it was the question for which these men had been waiting. Dixon slowly pushed back his chair, got to his feet, strode to the overstuffed leather chair which Terry had occupied on the occasion of his first visit, extended a dramatic, rigidly pointing forefinger, and said solemnly, “Mr. Clane, that sleeve gun was discovered about half an hour ago by Inspector Malloy. It had been shoved down between the cushions of this chair.”

“You have no means of knowing just when it had been inserted in those cushions?” Terry asked.

“It might have been placed there at any time after the murder,” Dixon said.

“Am I to understand,” Clane asked, “that you feel it’s possible I might have had the gun in my possession when I was calling on you this morning and surreptitiously inserted it in the cushions of the chair?”

“It is quite possible.”

“Well,” Terry retorted, “I didn’t put it there.”

“Have you any idea who did?”

“No.”

Inspector Mallory exchanged a significant glance with the district attorney.

“Very well,” Dixon said with cold formality, “that will be all, Mr. Clane. Please don’t leave town without first getting permission from me.”

“I’m to consider myself in custody?” Clane asked.

“Not at all,” Inspector Malloy interposed hastily. “You’re a witness, Mr. Clane. And you’re in a position to co-operate with us.”

“And,” the district attorney added dryly, “we want to be assured of your continued co-operation, Mr. Clane.”