The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Charles G(ordon) Booth (1896–1949) was born in Manchester, England, then emigrated to Canada before settling in Los Angeles in 1922 to become a screenwriter for 20th Century Fox. While he was a popular and successful pulp writer and novelist in his time, even his best works, such as Gold Bullets (1929), Murder at High Tide (1930), The General Died at Dawn (1941), and Mr. Angel Comes Aboard (1944), are seldom read today.

The motion pictures that he wrote, however, as well as those based on his novels, are a different matter, still commonly found on late-night movie channels. The House on 92nd Street (1945) was released shortly after World War II as a thinly disguised film version of the FBI’s success in bringing down the largest Nazi espionage organization in the history of the United States, the Duquesne Spy Ring, in 1941. A black-and-white noir semidocumentary, it featured an introduction by J. Edgar Hoover and real-life FBI agents in several scenes. Booth won an Academy Award for Best Original Motion Picture Story and was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay (with cowriters Barré Lyndon and John Monks Jr.). It starred Lloyd Nolan and William Eythe. Films based on Booth’s novels are Johnny Angel (1945, with a screenplay by Steve Fisher and Frank Gruber, based on Mr. Angel Comes Aboard) and The General Died at Dawn (1936, with a screenplay by Clifford Odets).

“One Shot” was published in the June 1925 issue.

Peter Stoddard found Nat Hammond’s letter waiting for him on his return to Los Angeles. Stoddard had never liked Hammond over much — few people did, for that matter; nevertheless, he opened the letter with a good deal of anticipation. He knew of only one reason why the celebrated engineer should write him.

Stoddard was something of an authority on antiques. Twelve months before, he had offered to purchase the famous Parsee Sunrise from Walter Hammond, Nat’s brother, on behalf of Philip Andrea, the South American collector. Andrea was a friend of his. But notwithstanding the tragic accident that had wrecked Walter Hammond’s brilliant brain and left him broken in body and spirit two years prior to that, he had continued to adore the antique and the beautiful, and Stoddard could not induce him to part with the ancient symbol of the Parsee faith at any price. Walter Hammond had died six months ago.

Stoddard, also, was an engineer. He had won his spurs early in life, for he was still under thirty-five. But his was not the spectacular renown of the Hammond Brothers, builders of the Tse Chen railroad; rather, it was that solid, unobtrusive eminence such as men achieve by dint of their dogged refusal to admit themselves inferior to any contingency life may have in store for them. He was a tall, strongly built man with a rugged, kindly face tanned to a leathery hue by wind and sun. One sensed in him qualities of permanency and dependability leavened by a queer boyishness that endeared him to those who knew him intimately.

Stoddard was keenly observant in his undemonstrative way; and as he opened the letter, it occurred to him, as it had often done in the past, that he had never met brothers so opposite in their natures and in their outlook upon life as the two Hammonds.

Walter had been the artist, the thinker, the brains of that extraordinary partnership. Stoddard recalled him as he had seen him before the accident: clear-eyed and clear-skinned, well-shaped head, figure tall and lithe and slender like an athlete’s; generous to a fault and contemptuous of the commercial aspect of his profession. And then, after the Tse Chen accident: broken and bent and vacant-eyed, handsome face all twisted and awry, inarticulate in his speech and cherishing the beautiful things he had always loved, with the pathetic passion of a slum child for a broken toy.

Nat, on the other hand, was a great chunk of a man, domineering and brutal, calculating and cynical, as hard as nails and as tough as leather. How Walter had endured him Stoddard never really understood. Flesh and blood, he supposed.

The letter, Stoddard saw, had been written at Hammond’s place in the foothills, an old Spanish house near San Paulo, a small interior town some fifty miles east of Los Angeles. As he had surmised, it was in reference to the Parsee Sunrise. The letter ran:

Twenty thousand dollars! Pretty high, even for the Parsee Sunrise. Nevertheless, Stoddard knew that old Andrea would gladly pay it. The Sunrise was a jeweled symbol of the Parsee fire worshipers, ritualistic in purpose, extraordinarily beautiful in design. It was fashioned to represent the rising sun: some three inches across, its center was set with magnificent pigeon’s blood rubies from which radiated sapphire tongues of flame. Walter Hammond had acquired it in India from a converted Parsee — one of that remnant of the descendants of the followers of the ancient Persian, Zoroaster.

Stoddard’s satisfaction at the prospect of securing the Sunrise was lessened somewhat by the contempt of Walter’s love of beauty expressed in Hammond’s letter. Well, Walter Hammond could no longer adore his beloved Parsee symbol — far better that Andrea should have it than that it should remain in Nat Hammond’s unappreciative hands.

And then, as Stoddard turned the typewritten letter over, these considerations were suddenly and dramatically swept from his mind. He found himself staring down at a pen-written postscript appended to the back of the note. The character of the handwriting — small, neatly printed script, totally unlike Hammond’s sprawling signature — was scarcely less intriguing than the text. To his amazement he read:

That was all.

Peter Stoddard was ever a man of brisk action, and nine o’clock that evening found him driving into San Paulo. It must be admitted that his quest for the Parsee Sunrise was overshadowed by the extraordinary postscript that had been added to Hammond’s letter. The engineer had not penned it, of course. Who had, then? This diverting question, and his inability to answer it, had alternatively puzzled and delighted him ever since he had read the postscript. That queer boyish streak in his otherwise staid and responsible nature had dressed it in the iridescent garb of romance.

At one of the hotels Stoddard was informed that Hammond’s place was some ten miles northeast of the town. He was instructed to proceed over the county highway, then turn east along the second dirt road. Two giant eucalyptus trees marked the entrance to the estate.

A strong wind had risen in the past half hour; before it drove scudding banks of cloud that spread a pitch-black pall across the sky. As Stoddard’s roadster swept along the purple highway, so dense had the night become that impenetrable walls of blackness seemed to enclose him on three sides. The fan-shaped glare from the headlights of his car alone gave him any sense of dimension. The wind, rising steadily, clawed at his face, whipped the red into his cheeks; he was compelled to narrow his eyes to slits, thus increasing his visual difficulties.

After some twenty minutes of this difficult going, Stoddard perceived an opening in the continuity of wire fencing on his right. Swinging his car, he found himself bounding over a rutted, weed-grown road which apparently extended into the invisible mountain range bulking hugely before him. The grade rose steeply. The scent of deciduous orchards assailed his nostrils. He slowed down and began to peer ahead, seeking the two eucalyptus trees. Presently he saw them: vague and indistinct in the all-pervasive gloom, and creaking and groaning and whispering in the howling wind.

Stoddard swung into the drive and slowed down to a crawl. He found himself in an avenue of smaller eucalyptus trees that whipped his nostrils with their pungent scent. As the machine glided up the cindered drive, headlights cutting a white swath before it, the Hammond house emerged from the pall of darkness that enveloped the estate. It was a white, sprawling, flat-topped structure with cool porches and shadowy terraces, ivy-covered and embowered in a profusion of subtropical plants and shrubbery. A light burned dimly in a single window.

Stoddard stopped his roadster in front of the house, alighted, and hammered on the stout oak front door with a bronze knocker which he found fastened thereto. A dull booming noise like muffled thunder seemed to emerge from the interior of the house. He waited, but there came no response. He repeated the summons... Still no response. For the third time he wielded the bronze knocker. Then he glanced at his watch. Nine forty-five! The wind swished and howled in the trees now, and ran shrieking around the corners of the building... No response!

Stoddard stepped back and regarded the house contemplatively. It had a somber, menacing appearance in the brooding darkness; an atmosphere of evil seemed to enfold it and press down upon it. Once again he evoked muffled thunder from the bronze knocker, and waiting, listened attentively. A full minute elapsed. Still the house retained its tomb-like silence.

A cinder path skirted the front of the house. Stoddard ran softly along it toward the lighted window. A queer, apprehensive feeling was taking possession of him. Stopping in front of the window — it consisted of two long French doors — he saw that it was approached by a small porch. To this he quickly ascended. Curtains were drawn across the glass doors, but there remained an inch or so of space between them, affording a limited view of the room.

At what he saw, Stoddard caught and held his breath; his face whitened to the lips; his heart seemed to stop beating.

The room was evidently a library. Books lined two walls; there were several comfortable chairs; a fire crackled in a cobblestone grate. Against one of the walls stood an antique desk, richly carved. Stoddard could see only the front of the desk. Before it, in an arm chair, sat a man with his body slumped forward, head and shoulders sprawled over the left-hand front corner of the desk. The left side of his face lay on the edge of the desk. Stoddard glimpsed a smear of red against the light grey of his coat. His body was limp and strangely still.

Nat Hammond was dead. Of course, Stoddard knew this intuitively. But so devastating to his mental poise was the shock of thus finding the man he had come all these miles to see, that for a moment or two he could merely stare at him, incapable of thought or movement or speech. Then a gust of fury shook him. Hammond had been shot down like a dog — perhaps within the last few minutes. Casting caution to the winds, he shook the French doors vigorously. They were locked. He took off his cap, pulled it over his hand, and drove his fist through one of the center panes of the doors. In a moment he had drawn the bolt, pushed the door open, and stepped into the room.

Hammond had been shot through the heart. His body was still warm. Stoddard gently raised his head and shoulders, and leaned them back in the chair. The man’s heavy, domineering face was set and rigid; it expressed a profound amazement, as if death had revealed its mystery to him while he was yet alive.

Stoddard glanced swiftly around the room. There were no indications of a struggle, nor did he see a weapon of any sort. The door was shut. He closed and bolted the French doors.

Stoddard stood in the middle of the room debating with himself what he should do. The police must be notified, of course. But it was within the bounds of possibility that Hammond’s murderer was still in the house, in which event he must be apprehended at once. Stoddard’s mind was quickly and coolly made up. First, he would search every room in the place; then he would telephone to the police. He was unarmed, but Stoddard was one of those rare men who seem to have been born absolutely fearless. The risk he would run simply did not occur to him.

Stoddard remained where he was, however. His big body tensed suddenly and his rugged face grew as hard as flint. He leaned forward, listening intently, grey eyes fixed on the door. He had just discovered that he was not alone in the house. A small sound had come from the hall or room beyond the door: an inarticulate sound like the suppressed sob or a gasp of pain or terror. Stoddard measured the distance between himself and the door. Then his body flexed and he sprang forward, covering the intervening several yards at a single bound, caught the door handle, and jerked the door open.

A gasp of amazement broke from his lips; he fell back in consternation. A girl had tumbled headlong into the room. She recovered herself, and shrank back against the wall. Stoddard stared at her speechlessly, the color ebbing and flowing in his bronzed cheeks.

She was undeniably pretty; he realized this in spite of the consternation that transfixed him. Her eyes were large and dark and luminous, and her oval face, notwithstanding its deathly pallor, had an intriguing piquancy about it. Her dark bobbed hair fell around her well-shaped head in charming disarray. He saw that terror and horror dominated every fiber of her being; she seemed to shrink visibly as he stared down at her. Stoddard was the first to speak.

“Hammond is dead,” he said, huskily. “Do you know when it happened? — who did it?”

She must have found some reassuring quality in his voice, for the terror in her eyes receded a little. A moment or two elapsed before she replied.

“Ten minutes ago.” the girl whispered, jerkily. “I was in my room — I heard the shot — I found him — tumbled over his desk—” She stopped shuddering and covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know who! — why! — anything!”

Stoddard nodded understandingly.

“Did you hear anyone trying to get away — afterward?”

“No! There was no one in the house but Uncle Nat and I. Whoever did it — must have got out through those doors!”

She indicated the French doors by which Stoddard had entered the library.

The engineer shook his head emphatically.

“Those doors were bolted! He didn’t get out that way! He couldn’t have! I had to break one of them to unfasten the bolt.”

The girl stared at him incredulously.

“You are Hammond’s niece?” Stoddard went on.

She nodded, still keeping her dark eyes fixed upon him.

“I am Julia Hammond. Walter Hammond was my father. You are Mr. Stoddard, I suppose. Uncle Nat said you were coming about — the Parsee Sunrise.”

There seemed the merest edge of contempt in her tone as she mentioned the antique symbol. Stoddard let it pass without comment, however.

“About how much time elapsed between the firing of the shot and your entrance into this room?” he went on. “I must ask these questions, you know,” he added gently, noticing signals of distress in her eyes. “We’ve simply got to find out who did it!”

Julia nodded.

“Yes — I know,” she whispered. “I ran in at once — a few seconds, that’s all.”

Stoddard was incredulous now.

“But how could he have got away in so short a time without your seeing him?”

Tears suddenly welled up into the girl’s dark eyes.

“I don’t know! I don’t know how he got away!” she sobbed, with such emphasis that Stoddard was startled. “Uncle Nat and I were alone in the house. Mrs. Bell, the housekeeper, is visiting in Los Angeles over the weekend. Tyson, the man around the place, has gone to San Paulo for the car — it is being overhauled. He’ll be back soon. Someone must have got into the house, shot Uncle Nat, and got away. I don’t know how he got in, or who it was!”

Her voice had risen hysterically; she broke into a paroxysm of sobbing.

Stoddard’s protective instincts were thoroughly aroused now. He longed to utter some word of comfort, but he was essentially an outdoor man and he could think of nothing adequate to the situation; so he simply waited for the girl’s outburst to subside. Stoddard was as ignorant of women as he was wise in the ways of men, but he had an unusually keen brain and he thought he detected in the girl’s behavior a note of panic which her natural distress at her uncle’s tragic end did not account for satisfactorily. Moreover, how Hammond’s murderer could have got out of the house — provided, of course, he was not still in it — without Julia seeing him was utterly beyond Stoddard’s understanding. The engineer puzzled over these points until he found Julia looking up at him.

“I’m sorry I broke down like that,” she said quietly. “What shall we do?”

“I’m going to search the house,” Stoddard declared. “If the man we want isn’t hiding in it he must have got out through a door or window somewhere! You had better stay here.”

Julia shook her dark head decidedly.

“No, I’m going with you! I simply couldn’t stay here!”

She led the way into the hall, and snapped on a light. Stoddard preceded her to the front door. It was bolted on the inside. Julia said nothing. Stoddard felt a queer chill run over him. They began a tour of the house, commencing with the drawing-room. The windows of the latter were fastened — on the inside. They passed into the dining-room and then into the living-room. In these rooms also the windows were fastened.

“Uncle Nat had Tyson bolt them on account of the wind,” Julia explained tonelessly.

Stoddard did not reply. There seemed nothing to say. A sense of emptiness possessed him; he felt as if the atmosphere of the place were choking him. He avoided Julia’s eyes. They continued their rounds of the house in silence, coming into each of the five bedrooms and the two bathrooms in turn. All the windows were bolted. Finally they entered the kitchen. The single window was fastened and the back door which led into an outhouse was bolted on the inside. There was no basement. Every means of egress from the house was secured on the inside.

“I bolted the kitchen door after Tyson went to San Paulo,” Julia said, in the same toneless voice. “Uncle Nat has one or two valuable antiques, our house stands alone, and he was always very particular about having the doors locked and bolted, especially at night.”

Stoddard said nothing. Not until this moment had he permitted himself to contemplate the conclusion that had been hammering at his brain since they had found the front door bolted. Julia was looking at him unhappily, searching his face for some key to his thoughts. Stoddard contrived to avoid meeting her eyes. It was inconceivable that she had taken her uncle’s life, yet he was compelled to consider the evidence of his senses. His respect for the principles of logic, inculcated in him during a lifetime of professional experience, was not to be lightly put aside. Julia had known they would find the windows and doors bolted before they had begun to examine them! This, of course, accounted for that panic-stricken note he had detected in her breakdown in the library.

Then a revulsion of feeling set in. Julia could not have done this monstrous thing! Such a theory was too fantastically horrible for sane and reasonable thought. There must be some logical explanation that did not offend every canon of decency. Stoddard forced himself to meet her wide, searching eyes. His suspicions were sacrilege; he swept them out of his mind. Julia caught him by the arm.

“Mr. Stoddard,” she began, “I heard you knocking at the front door! I didn’t dare to open it! I was terrified — I couldn’t think! My uncle had been shot down, and I was the only one in the house with him — so far as I knew. I felt sure that every window and door was fastened on the inside — and I had seen no one — heard no one! I was nearly frantic. You know what it means! They’ll say I — did it!” Her voice broke; then she went on more quietly. “I can’t think how it has been done — men don’t pass through adobe walls and locked doors!” She gripped Stoddard’s arm in a sudden access of terror. “You don’t think — you don’t think I did it, Mr. Stoddard?”

“No!” Stoddard shouted. He caught the girl by the shoulders. Their eyes held and kindled; an indissolvable bond of understanding seemed to draw them together. “You didn’t do it, Julia, and nothing will ever make me think you did!”

A sob of relief broke from the girl’s lips. Stoddard was seized with a nearly irrepressible desire to draw her to him. He contented himself with merely pressing her hand reassuringly.

“You must phone the police,” she whispered.

Stoddard had forgotten the police. Julia was right, of course. The sooner he got in touch with the authorities, the better. Just then he heard the purr of an engine in the drive outside, followed by the creak of a stopping car.

“Tyson,” Julia stated.

There came a slow, dull knock on the kitchen door. Stoddard shot back the bolt.

Tyson was a little wisp of a man with disheveled grey hair, small eyes of a curious faded blue, rather shrewd in their expression, and a wizened skin that reminded Stoddard of a last year’s apple. He was quite old — seventy, at least: his small, thin body was stooped with age, though a sinewy strength like that of an old gnarled stick still clung to it tenaciously. At sight of their grave faces, a look of apprehension leaped into his faded eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he queried in a thin, cracked voice.

Stoddard looked at him gravely for a moment without speaking. The kitchen grew very still and quiet, and the old man seemed to grasp something of the gravity of the situation.

“Mr. Hammond—” he began in a trembling voice.

Stoddard nodded.

“Mr. Hammond is dead,” he stated, slowly. “He has been shot.”

Tyson’s eyes almost started out of their sockets; his russet color faded and he caught at the table to support himself. Stoddard watched him narrowly.

“Dead!” Tyson muttered, as if he found the fact unbelievable. “Dead!” Then he shot a sharp, penetrating look at Stoddard. “Who did it?” he croaked.

“We are trying to find out,” Stoddard returned gravely. “Did you meet anyone in the drive or on the road?”

Tyson shook his head emphatically.

“I saw no one,” he quavered shrilly.

The engineer silently led the way into the library. Julia was still deathly white, but into her face had come an impassive expression that suggested little of the terror and misery behind it. Tyson stared at the body of his master in silence, a look of unutterable horror in his faded eyes.

Stoddard picked up the telephone and got in touch with the office of the San Paulo Town Marshall. The latter, it appeared, was out. He would return within the next half hour and would come at once. Stoddard put the instrument down, thankful for the small respite.

Tyson was still staring at Hammond’s body in frozen silence and Stoddard dismissed him impatiently. The old man went off to his kitchen mumbling indistinguishably to himself. Two chairs were drawn up before the fireplace, and Stoddard dropped into one of them. Julia seemed on the verge of taking the other when she cast a shuddering glance at the limp figure by the desk. She went to the switch and snapped out the light. Then she took the vacant chair.

“You don’t mind — the dark!” she whispered, tremulously. “I can’t bear the light — with him there.”

Stoddard nodded understandingly. The dying firelight played redly on Julia’s dark head. They regarded each other unhappily. Neither of them spoke. The silence seemed to knit them closer together. Outside, the wind still swished dismally in the tree tops. Suddenly, Stoddard took Hammond’s letter from his pocket and showed the postscript to the girl.

“Why did you write that, Julia?” he asked, gently.

She looked at him searchingly for a moment.

“I was doing secretarial work for Uncle Nat.”

“And you didn’t want me to buy the Parsee Sunrise?”

Julia’s eyes grew humid with expression.

“I wonder if I can make you understand, Mr. Stoddard,” she went on, slowly. “Uncle Nat hated beauty — my father loved it — passionately. After the accident — you remember? — he simply adored that Parsee symbol. It was pitiable to see him with it. Last year when Uncle Nat wanted him to sell it to you, he went into hysterics and made me promise to keep it — always. Just before he died he made me promise again. Uncle Nat has charge of my estate until I am twenty-five — next June — and he insisted on selling the Sunrise. I begged him not to. He called me a silly fool — said the market was just right for disposing of antiques — and he wrote that letter to you. He gave it to me to mail. I was desperate and I added that absurd postscript. I might have known that it would bring you quicker than anything else!

“Uncle Nat had no feeling, no love, no tenderness in him!” Julia continued bitterly. “Sometimes I positively hated him!” She leaned forward. “Do you know, Mr. Stoddard, I can’t help thinking that that Parsee Sunrise has something to do with his death!”

This had already occurred to Stoddard, and he nodded silently. Julia’s explanation had increased his fears on her behalf. If she repeated it to the police an ambitious prosecuting attorney would easily find in her dislike of Hammond and in her desperate determination to prevent him from selling the symbol a motive strong enough to account for the crime.

“Julia,” he began, earnestly, “I had to break that window to get into the room! We’ve got to tell the San Paulo marshal that I found it broken and open! We must give the impression that someone got in, shot Nat Hammond, and got out that way! And we are not going to say anything about your trouble with Hammond!”

But Julia shook her head emphatically.

“No, Peter.” She smiled, using his first name with a tenderness that thrilled him. “We are going to tell the truth — all the truth — nothing else! Don’t you understand? If we lie, they’ll find us out somehow and that will make it all the worse.”

“But appearances are so strongly against you!”

“I know. That is why I’m going to tell the truth, Peter. Nothing but the truth. It is the best way. You’ll stand by me, won’t you?”

A lump rose in Stoddard’s throat and he could not command his tongue. He caught her hand in his and pressed it tightly. The contact seemed to tell her more than a hundred expressions of loyalty could have done...

Stoddard leaned back in his chair and ran a weary hand through his hair. His brain ached with the strain of its continuous application to this impossible problem he had set out to solve. Every facet of the riddle had an adamantine hardness that defied his mental powers as resolutely as Lucifer ever defied the hosts of heaven. He felt as if he were traveling along the convolutions of a maze — a maze with neither entrance nor exit. Well, there was an opening somewhere and he must find it. He must!

Stoddard shut his eyes to ease the throbbing in his head. The house was silent. Outside, the wind had dropped to a thin wail. The fire in the grate had sunk to a bed of red embers. He did not move. Neither did Julia. She was staring into the grate, chin cupped in her hands, waiting... Some time passed. Then, suddenly, Stoddard heard a tiny whisper of sound like the quick patter of infinitesimally small feet on the floor near the antique desk.

Cautiously turning his head he strained his eyes at the place from where he thought the sound had come. But the shadows were too thick; he could see nothing. The noise continued. Stoddard’s hard-muscled body grew rigid; his hands clamped down on the arms of his chair. Still he could not identify the sound! Apparently, Julia had not noticed it. She was still gazing into the red-embered grate.

The sound possessed Stoddard body and soul. Identify it he must! Setting his eyes on the whereabouts of the light switch he tensed his body and sprang at a single bound across the intervening floor space. His hand closed on the switch; light flooded the room.

There came a sharp yelp of pain. Three streaks of white whizzed across the floor and vanished behind the antique desk. Stoddard gaped at them in amazement. Mice! White mice! A wave of exasperation swept over him. He had made a fool of himself over these! Then he saw Julia smiling wryly up at him and he grinned sheepishly.

“They are quite wild, now,” she said. “Father got them — after the accident. He thought the world of them and he trained them to do the prettiest tricks! Tyson promised to look after them, but Uncle Nat, of course, ordered them destroyed. Tyson simply worshiped Father and he left their cage open — on purpose, I’m afraid — and they got away. That desk was Father’s — he used to let them have the run of it. Uncle Nat had Tyson set traps — you’ll find one behind the desk. Probably there’s a mouse in it.”

Stoddard fumbled behind the back of the desk and drew out an old-fashioned mousetrap of the box type. In it was a tiny white mouse, stiff with terror.

“I am sure Tyson lets them go after he catches them,” Julia continued. “The place is overrun with them and they never seem to get any less. Tyson was with Uncle Nat and Father for thirty years — he went with them everywhere — and he considers himself a privileged person. I’m sure he couldn’t be persuaded to kill the little things. He adored Father.”

Scarcely conscious of what he was doing, Stoddard knelt down, opened the trap and shook the tiny rodent out onto the floor. It streaked across the room and vanished behind the antique desk. His mind pivoted upon that last remark of Julia’s. She had said that Tyson had adored her father! Could it be possible that Tyson had shot Nat Hammond because of some fancied or magnified wrong done to Walter Hammond by his brother?

Stoddard’s heart leaped at the thought. Then he dismissed the notion. It was absurd, of course. Tyson was driving back from San Paulo at the time the shot was fired. Moreover, every door and window in the house had been locked on the inside — Stoddard shook his head in a gesture of rage and despair. His brain was numb; he could not think coherently. Setting aside the trap he looked at Julia.

“Do you know where the Parsee Sunrise is?”

Julia shook her head.

“No, I don’t. Uncle Nat hid it away. I never could find it.”

“Did Hammond have a pistol of any sort?”

Julia nodded.

“Yes, a small automatic. I don’t know where he kept it. I think he was afraid of Father getting it.”

Stoddard glared malevolently at the antique desk. A curious feeling that it was in some way connected with Hammond’s death came upon him. More than ever did it seem a sinister presence, brooding over the room.

To distract his unhappy thoughts he commenced a thorough search of the five drawers of the desk. Perhaps he might find the Parsee Sunrise. The drawers were crammed with a miscellaneous litter of papers, appertaining to Hammond’s business affairs, personal and private... When he had finished several minutes later he had found no sign of the ancient symbol.

His brain had cleared, however, and he eyed the desk thoughtfully. Then he began to run his fingers slowly and heavily over the top of the desk, studying with particular care the beautiful grain of the wood. Nothing resulted from this proceeding and he turned his attention to one of the massive legs that supported the desk.

At that moment a powerful car throbbed up the cinder drive and slurred to a stop in front of the house. Heavy feet approached and someone hammered authoritatively on the front door. Tyson shambled out of the kitchen. Stoddard looked up; the color receded from his cheeks.

“The San Paulo marshal!” he whispered.

Julia nodded. She had gone deathly pale. Stoddard caught her hands tightly between his.

“We’ve got to tell him that I found this window open!” he stated, emphatically.

“No!” The fierceness of her tone startled Stoddard.

“If you do, I’ll tell him the truth of it, anyway! We won’t accomplish anything by deceit. I know!” Her voice softened. “Peter — don’t worry. Things will come out right, you’ll see.”

A sudden impulse to press her hand to his lips overcame Stoddard. As he yielded to it the look in her dark eyes seemed to leap out at him. Her lips trembled; she withdrew her hand gently, as a heavily built man with a hard, shrewd face and frosty blue eyes strode into the room.

Tyson hovered near the door. The marshal went directly to Hammond’s body and glanced at it coolly and appraisingly; then he addressed himself to Stoddard.

“Bartlett is my name,” he stated, in a crisp voice. “I am the San Paulo city marshal.” He said this as if he wished to leave no doubt of it in their minds. “What’s happened here?”

Stoddard had intended to gloss over the evidence so damaging to Julia’s case as much as possible — not that he expected to accomplish anything by so doing — but before he could utter a word Julia plunged into a vividly phrased recital of what they knew of the affair. She quickly explained Stoddard’s presence in the house, how he had effected an entrance, and her relationship to Hammond. The possible connection of the Parsee Sunrise with the shooting she touched on briefly, also. Then, as if her case were not black enough already, she specifically mentioned that they had searched the house and found no one, and that every window and door had been fastened and bolted on the inside. Frankness, her only card, she played skillfully. She finished with a little hopeless gesture that wrung Stoddard’s heart.

Throughout Julia’s explanation, Bartlett had maintained a rigid silence. Little darts of suspicion had leaped into his frosty eyes and his lips had curled ironically once or twice. Stoddard had observed these signals of the marshal’s disbelief and his rugged face grew haggard as he waited for the man to express himself.

But whatever opinions he had formed, Bartlett, for the moment, kept to himself. He fired a stream of pertinent questions at Julia. She answered them coolly and quietly, sitting in the chair in front of the fireplace. The occasional twitching of her hands and the deathly pallor of her face were the only outward manifestations of the stress she was under.

“Every window and door locked on the inside, hey?” Bartlett snapped.

“Yes.”

“And you searched every room in the house?”

“Yes.”

Bartlett grunted indistinguishably. Then he took a black bound notebook from his pocket and penciled rapidly on its pages. Stoddard hung on his movements fearfully and breathlessly. Finally, he could stand it no longer.

“Look here, Bartlett!” he burst forth, huskily. “You don’t believe she did it, do you? It looks bad, I know! But, good Lord, man! She couldn’t have done it! Look at her!”

In his desperate eagerness to impress the marshal Stoddard stepped forward and caught him fiercely by the arm.

But the other shook him off, chuckling grimly.

“If she didn’t do it, I’d like to know who did! Every window and door locked and bolted and the girl and Hammond alone in the house! Two and two still make four, Stoddard! You can’t get away from it!”

Julia uttered a cry and covered her face with her hands. Stoddard’s arm dropped limply to his side. He had expected this, of course; nevertheless, Bartlett’s reasonable deductions left him weak and trembling, all his rugged strength sapped out of him. Julia had intrigued him as no other woman had ever done, and if he could have shifted her burden to his own broad and capable shoulders he would gladly have done so. He had known her scarcely more than an hour; but into that time had been packed the emotional experiences of a lifetime.

Tyson, still in the doorway, took a shambling step forward. Then he stopped, a look of horror creeping into his faded eyes. His lips mumbled soundlessly and his old teeth clicked together like castanets. Bartlett returned to his notebook.

“That Parsee trinket — what’s it worth?” the marshal demanded abruptly after a moment.

“Twenty thousand dollars,” Julia whispered in dead tones.

The Parsee Sunrise. Stoddard caught his breath sharply. A little train of thought had flared up in his mind. If the ancient symbol had been stolen, and he could establish that fact, the existence of a third party might be argued — surely a point in Julia’s favor. He stared at the antique desk thoughtfully. It seemed to leer back at him.

The desk had been manufactured in a day of political intrigue — probably for someone of importance — when combination lock safes were unknown and a secret compartment in a private desk was a highly desirable feature. Stoddard had examined the grain of the top of the desk in the hope of discovering a concealed chamber of some kind, feeling sure that if there was one the Parsee symbol would be inside it. Now he began to run his fingers painstakingly over the right-hand front leg, as he had been about to do when Bartlett arrived.

Several minutes elapsed. The marshal continued to make notes in his black bound book. Julia had not moved from her chair in front of the fireplace. Tyson was still standing within the door, mumbling soundlessly to himself. Stoddard began on the left front leg of the desk. Suddenly, Bartlett closed his book with a snap, pocketed it, and turned to Julia.

“Get your things together,” he commanded, tersely. “I’m going to take a look around the house. Then we start for San Paulo. The sheriff and the D.A.—”

“No!”

The single word, uttered by Stoddard, had the effect of a pistol crack. A cry of exultation broke from his lips, and he pointed dramatically down at the top of the antique desk. Then Bartlett and Julia and Tyson rushed forward. Stoddard met them with an ecstatic look on his rugged face and his left hand closed fiercely, triumphantly, on Julia’s arm.

A section of the top of the desk, some eight inches long and five inches wide, stood erect, revealing a compartment perhaps four inches deep. There was a hole in one corner of the compartment. Near it lay the Parsee Sunrise, glittering like a constellation of minute stars. A bundle of papers, their edges serrated as with the fretting of tiny teeth, lay on the bottom of the compartment partly supporting an automatic pistol that had been carelessly thrust into the compartment in such a way that its muzzle pointed directly at where Hammond’s body must have been before he fell forward, and his death agony shut down the cunningly concealed section he had just released.

Entangled with the trigger guard and hair trigger of the pistol was a common mousetrap, baited with cheese. And caught by the leg in the trap Nat Hammond had set for it was one of Walter Hammond’s white mice! In futile terror it had dragged the trap across the trigger as Hammond had opened the compartment. The roar of the shot that had killed Hammond had stilled its tiny heart.