The American Gun Mystery (Death At the Rodeo)

19: Ibid

Much later, when it was all over and the miasma of mental nausea had lifted a little, Ellery Queen was to confess that, taking everything into account, that was the most trying moment of his professional career. It was made doubly trying by the fact that weeks before he had professed — cryptically through some subtle necessity — to know who had killed the first victim of that astounding criminal whose weapon vanished as if by magic and whose very figure seemed cloaked in invisibility.

Recriminations came naturally to shocked minds. It was, for instance, surely in the mind of Major Kirby. And it was certainly uppermost in Inspector Queen’s outraged thoughts. “If you knew,” the Inspector’s distended and astonished eyes might have been saying in that first instant when the Queens sat paralyzed and stared from the swirling horses to each other, “why didn’t you come out with it at that time and prevent this second murder?”

There was no answer that Ellery felt he might at that precise moment put into words. And yet he knew in his heart that the murder of Woody had been unforeseeable, unavoidable; there was nothing he could have done to prevent this supplementary letting of blood; and there was every reason in the world for his compulsion to preserve silence... now more than ever before.

These things hurtled through his brain, and he tasted a little of the self-constituted martyr’s bitterness. And the cool tenant of every sensitive brain — that little impersonal observer who sits in Gautama serenity in an inner recess among the turbulent gray cells — told him simply: “Wait. This man’s death is not upon your head. Wait.”

An hour later the same group that had surrounded the dead body of Buck Horne a month before surrounded the dead body of the one-armed rider — mangled, crushed, bloody, his limbs all askew and mercifully concealed beneath a blanket.

Police, detectives, were holding the crowd in check.

The arena was strictly guarded.

Major Kirby’s men, under the little man’s direction, were feverishly grinding away at the scene.

The troupe moved restlessly about. Their horses under the charge of Boone were placidly drinking at the watering troughs.

No one said anything; Kit Horne stood by in a coma of bewilderment; the Grants were still and pale; Tony Mars was on the verge of hysteria; in the Mars box Hunter and Champion Black peered intently over the rail into the arena.

Dr. Samuel Prouty, Assistant Medical Examiner of New York County, rose from his knees and flipped the blanket back over the dead man. “Shot in the heart, Inspector.”

“Same place?” asked the Inspector hoarsely, who looked as if he were living through the horrible episodes of a preposterous nightmare.

“As the other one? Pretty much.” Dr. Prouty closed his bag. “Bullet nipped through the fleshy part at the bottom of the stump of his left arm and lodged in the heart. If he’d had a whole arm he’d probably be alive this minute. As it was, he almost escaped. An inch higher, and the slug might have lodged in the stump.”

“One shot?” asked the old man tremulously. He seemed suddenly to have remembered Ellery’s peroration on the marksmanship of the murderer. “One shot,” said Dr. Prouty.

The routine things were done. Forearmed by unhappy experience, Inspector Queen took every precaution against the possible escape of the criminal and the disappearance of the weapon.

“I suppose it’s a .25 calibre again?”

Dr. Prouty probed for the bullet. He brought it out soon enough — a well-preserved little slug covered with blood. It was unquestionably the bullet of a .25 automatic pistol.

“What about the angle, Sam?” muttered the Inspector.

Dr. Prouty grinned mirthlessly. “Damn remarkable, I call it. Just about the same as the angle the Horne bullet made.”

The riders were segregated and their arms collected. They were searched. Everyone was searched. Sergeant Velie combed the arena again, and again found the shell — a battered shell, obviously again kicked about by human and equine feet, and in a spot yards from where the first shell had been found.

But the .25 automatic remained merely a fantastic notion.

Lieutenant Knowles, the police ballistics expert, was on the scene this time. Once more the ghastly and tedious business of searching twenty thousand people was begun. Some .25’s — so repetitive was the event! — were again turned up. In a long chamber off the arena Knowles set up a makeshift laboratory. He pressed Major Kirby into service, and the two men spent long minutes firing into an improvised target made of absorbent cotton loosely rolled. With the aid of the microscope the Lieutenant had brought with him, comparisons were made between bullets of the .25 calibre automatics found, and the bullet from the dead man’s body... The search continued. Inspector Queen, in a fine roaring rage, was everywhere at once.

The Commissioner of Police himself made an appearance, and an official close to the Mayor.

Everything was done. Nothing was accomplished.

When it was all over, only one thing seemed certain besides the fact that murder had been committed.

Lieutenant Knowles, weary and slouching, appeared with his report, Major Kirby striding silently at his side.

“You’ve examined all the guns?” snapped the Inspector.

“Yes, Inspector. The automatic that was fired at your dead man isn’t here.”

The Inspector was silent. It was so incredible that words were superfluous.

“But there’s one thing I can state positively, although I’ll check up with my universal when I get back to the laboratory,” continued Lieutenant Knowles. “Major Kirby thoroughly agrees. The bullet that killed Woody shows the same identifying marks as the bullet that killed Horne.”

“You mean they both were fired from the same automatic?” asked the Commissioner.

“Right, sir. No doubt about it at all.”

And Ellery Queen stood by and gnawed at the fingernail of his right forefinger, deep in thought and unwilling shame. No one paid the least attention to him.

The ghastly comedy played on. Gradually the crowd was weeded out, sent away. The arena was finecombed. The bowl, the offices, the stables, the whole maze of the Colosseum was gone over with eyes and fingers quickened by official censure.

And the automatic remained missing. It seemed that there was nothing to do but confess complete mystification and failure...

And then while the Commissioner, the Mayor’s representative, the Inspector, Lieutenant Knowles, and Major Kirby stood eying one another in the curiously strained manner of men who are afraid to face an unpleasant truth, Curly Grant furnished a diversion — a radical diversion, since it was so far the only event of significance in the period of Woody’s murder which was not the duplication of a kindred event in the Horne murder.

Curly appeared in the eastern gateway, wild-eyed, disheveled, and loped like a mustang across the tan-bark track to his father, who was standing alone in the arena contemplating his boots. They all turned sharply, sensing something wrong.

They heard very clearly what Curly Grant had to say. It was said in a voice choked with bewilderment, resentment, and anger.

“Pop! The money’s gone!”

Wild Bill Grant looked up slowly. “What? What’s that you’re sayin’, son? The—”

“The money! The ten thousand! I put it in a cash box in my dressin’ room this afternoon, an’ now it’s gone!”