The Case of the Smoking Chimney

Chapter 13

Frank Duryea opened his eyes and, drugged with sleep, regarded the half light in the bedroom.

Half asleep, half awake, he tried to determine what had wakened him. There had, he knew, been some strange, disturbing noise. It sounded like— There it was again. This time there could be no mistaking it, the sound of creaking hinges.

Duryea straightened up in bed. Through the open window he could see the green fingers of palm leaves, and behind them, in the distance, some eucalypti towering over red-tiled roofs. Early as it was, he could see there was no wind. The leaves of the trees were motionless against the riotous colour of the morning sky.

It had sounded like the back door on the screen porch. If it wasn’t the wind, then it must be—

Suddenly he remembered Gramp Wiggins, groaned inwardly, rolled over, and tried to go back to sleep.

He failed to recapture the drugged drowsiness he expected. Twice he rolled over to the other side, conscious of a growing sense of irritation at his inability to get back to sleep, conscious also that the light was momentarily getting stronger, and that, even if he did get to sleep now, it wouldn’t do him any good.

He had thought at first that Milred was sleeping, but, as he turned for the third time, her voice from the pillow beside him said: “Rolling and twisting and getting mad doesn’t do any good. You have to lie still, refrain from moving, breathe deeply and regularly, and entertain peaceful feelings toward all the world.”

“Oh, is that so,” Duryea said, “and is the recipe doing you any good?”

“Not a damn bit,” she admitted, and then added: “I can’t feel at peace with the world.”

They sat up in bed then, looking at each other, and grinning.

“Was it the door that wakened you?” Milred asked.

“Yes. That started it. But lately there’s been a peculiar pounding noise.”

“Not pounding, dear. Beating.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Gramps is beating up some of his famous hot-cake batter. He insists that it has to be beaten for ten minutes, then let rest for ten minutes, then beaten for ten minutes more.”

“Can you,” Duryea asked, “tell me why anyone should get up at this hour of the morning if he doesn’t have to?”

“He has to. He’s too restless to sleep long... I keep thinking of those hot cakes, and occasionally you get the very faint aroma of coffee.”

“Well,” Duryea asked, “what are we waiting for?”

Milred threw back the covers. “I’ll give you first whack at the bathroom, while I go and tell Gramps to prepare for visitors. We’ll eat in our dressing gowns.”

Gramps was delighted to see his guests. By the time Frank Duryea entered the trailer, the interior was filled with the delicious fragrance of fresh coffee and frying bacon. Gramps was giving the finishing touches to his final beating of the hot-cake batter.

“Hello, son. Walk right in and sit down. Going to have some breakfast in just a jiffy. Milred says you woke up kinda early, feelin’ a little hungry.”

“Unusually early,” Duryea said dryly.

Gramp Wiggins didn’t take the hint. “Gettin’ up early’s a good thing. Gets your system cleaned out of poisons. Poisons pile up in your system when you sleep. Sleep too long at a time, and it don’t do you no good... If you want to know somethin’ about cooking bacon, son, look at the way we’re cookin’ this.”

Gramp Wiggins indicated Milred, who was holding a frying pan tilted at a sharp angle over a burner in the gas stove.

“Never let bacon cook in grease,” Gramp Wiggins said. “Grease gets to bubbling, makes the bacon indigestible, and ruins its flavour. Tilt the fryin’ pan up a little more, Milred... That’s right. Now keep pressing against the bacon with that pancake turner, so you squeeze the grease out... That’s right. Now pour the grease off into that can... No, no, no. Don’t let it get down so close to the flame. Keep that frying pan tilted up! Keep the bacon up in the upper end of it. It’s more work all right; but once you’ve tasted bacon cooked that way, you know what good bacon really is... A gentle heat to melt the grease, and then a little pressure to squeeze it out, an’ keep repeatin’ the process until you’ve cooked your bacon gently and slowly with no bubbling grease... Now these here are hot cakes, son! That’s the kind o” coffee you don’t get very often in this country.”

“Coffee you smuggled in from Mexico, I suppose,” Duryea said with mock sternness.

“What do you take me for?” Gramp Wiggins said. “I declared that coffee and got it through all due and regular. The only things I smuggle are the things the government says I can’t bring in with me the way I want ’em — sugar and booze.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Duryea asked, trying to make his voice sound officially stern, “that you might wind up in jail?”

“Sure it has,” Gramps admitted readily enough, “but you can’t let a little thing like that stop you. Nowadays to do what a man wants to, he has to take chances on going to jail, same as he does on gittin’ killed in an automobile smash. You’d just lose out on lots of things you wanted to do, if you got finicky about going to jail.”

“Rather an unsocial attitude,” the district attorney commented.

“Unsocial!” Gramps screamed at him. “Unsocial, hell! It’s still a free country. Lots of people think the legislature has taken your liberties away. It ain’t done nothin’ of the sort. It’s only passed laws providin’ that you go to jail if they catch you exercising those liberties. Hell, it’s still a free country!”

“An interesting glimpse of the psychology of an individualist,” Duryea pointed out, “but if everyone—”

“Now you quit worryin’ about me goin’ to jail, an’ spell Milred on that frying pan. Keep her tilted up high, an’ keep pressin’ that grease out. Not too hard now, just a gentle pressure, holding it down against the pan.”

Duryea followed Gramps’ instructions, had the pleasure of seeing the bacon turn to a crisp, golden brown, entirely unlike any bacon he had ever cooked before, and all the time Gramps was keeping up a running fire of conversation.

Travelling around the country and associating with people in various and sundry trailer camps, Gramps had a weird assortment of contacts in various parts of the country. A California grape grower sent him choice wines. A pal who had a farm in Vermont provided maple sugar and syrup. Even the jar of thick, red jam had been contributed by the wife of a boysenberry grower whom Gramps had met on his travels.

“How on earth do you ever get all that stuff delivered?” Duryea asked.

“Oh, I write to ’em, an’ let ’em know about where I’m going to be, and they send things on by mail. Us trailer folks kinda keep in touch with each other... Okay, son, that bacon’s done. Put it out on a piece of paper. Sit down there and sink your teeth into one of these here hot cakes. Now, put on lots of that maple syrup and try some of that jam. Best you ever tasted... Better let me spike that coffee up a little bit with some brandy. Put more kick in it.”

“This is fine,” Duryea said.

Milred grinned across at her husband. “My gosh, I’m famished. I—”

She broke off to listen.

“Car coming, fast,” she explained, standing in the doorway and looking down the street.

They heard the car squeal to a stop, then steps on cement, the sound carrying clearly in the crisp morning air.

Milred looking out of the window, said: “It’s the sheriff. I’d better let him know we’re in here.”

“You mean Sheriff Lassen?” Gramp Wiggins said, his voice shrill with excitement. “Tell him to come in here! I ain’t seen him in a coon’s age! I want to shake hands with him. He’ll remember me, won’t he, Frank?”

“Remember you is right,” Duryea said. “You gave him more headaches. The last time you tried to help him—”

“Now, whoa! Back up!” Gramps said. “You gotta admit that I put him on the right track.”

“Yes, you guessed right,” Duryea admitted.

“Guessed! Guessed, hell!” Gramps shrilled. “I called the turn. I—”

The trailer swayed on its springs as the sheriff hoisted himself into the crowded quarters.

“Hello, everybody.”

“You remember my grandfather, Gramp Wiggins?” Milred asked.

The sheriff came over to shake hands. “Sure do. He gave us quite a bit of help on that case when he was here last.”

Gramps beamed with pride.

“Sort of a block off the old chip,” Milred muttered demurely.

Lassen said: “I hope there’s enough coffee in that pot for an extra cup. This cooking smells so good it’s a crime.”

“Plenty of coffee, lots of bacon, hot cakes, jam, lots of everything,” Gramps said. “Now you folks sit down an’ start eatin’ right away. These hot cakes are going to come up so fast it’ll s’prise you. No use letting good food get cold.”

Lassen slid into a chair. Gramps poured him coffee. “Help yourself to a plate up there, Sheriff, and a knife and fork and spoon. Use all the sugar you want. The government ain’t got no restriction on that sugar, and if you want to talk with Frank, go right ahead. Don’t mind me.”

Duryea made a warning signal which the sheriff, reaching for a plate, failed to get.

“Guess you saw Gentry last night. He was pretty worried. That’s nothing new for him. I’ve never known him when he wasn’t worried. This time he seems to have had some reason for worry.”

“What’s the matter?”

“He told you about what the Petrie Herald was going to claim?”

“Uh, huh.”

“Well, before the paper hit the streets, Gentry took a couple of deputies and went out to Reedley’s house. He was going to put it up to him cold turkey. If Reedley was Pressman, he was going to give him a chance to get out of the place without getting hurt. If he wanted to stay on, he was going to tell him that the constable wasn’t going to act as a bodyguard for him.”

“I know,” Duryea said. “I advised him to handle it that way. What happened?”

“It’d already happened when Gentry got there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dead. Sometime during the night. Curtains were pulled up so you could look right into the house. An oil lamp was burning. Body lying on the floor. An attempt had been made to make it look like suicide... Perhaps it was. The door was locked from the inside, and the key was clutched in his right hand. I understand he left a suicide note. Gentry thinks we should go out there and look things over — says it’s going to set off a lot of fireworks.”

Duryea gave a long, low whistle.

“Thought I’d come by and get you,” the sheriff went on, “and we could pick up a bite of breakfast somewhere and run out... Didn’t expect I’d find you up this early. And,” he nodded at Gramps, “didn’t expect I’d run into such a nice breakfast.”

Gramps said: “How was it done? A gun or—” He caught Duryea’s disapproving eye upon him and abruptly lapsed into silence.

Pete Lassen poured more maple syrup on his hot cakes. “Done with a gun,” he said. “As nearly as they can tell, death must have been instantaneous. I told them not to move the body until we got there, Frank.”

“And we still aren’t sure that he was Pressman?”

“No. Gentry’s inclined to think now that he wasn’t.”

“Why?”

“Says the man was pretty seedy looking, and doesn’t think it’s Pressman... I talked to him over the telephone, and he was pretty excited. It’s hard to get the facts... How about it? Can you take a run out there with me?”

“Sure,” Duryea said. “As soon as I get some clothes on. Milred and I rolled out of bed and came in for an early breakfast. It won’t take me over five minutes. Come on, let’s go.”

They left the trailer for the house. Gramps seated himself across the table from Milred and started tossing flapjacks from the griddle to his plate. After a few minutes, they heard the doors of the sheriff’s car slam, and the sound of the car pulling away from the kerb.

Gramp Wiggins looked solicitously at Milred. “It’s gettin’ pretty cold here,” he said. “You oughta have some clothes on.”

“Cold?”

“Yes. Mighty chilly.”

“I’m all right.”

Gramps thought for a moment, then tried a different tack. “Ain’t got a half pound of butter in the house you could loan me, have you?”

Milred laughed at him. “Go on,” she said. “You can’t fool me, and you don’t have to. When were you intending to start?”

Gramps said: “Right now, by gum,” and started heaving dishes around promiscuously, piling things in the sink with a helter-skelter, hurried abandon which contrasted oddly with the neat efficiency of the bachelor’s den-on-wheels.

Milred Duryea laughed tolerantly, said: “Remember, Gramps, you’re my relative. Don’t strain the family relationship with my husband too much. If he’d wanted you around, he’d have invited you to go along.”

“Great jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Gramps exclaimed. “There ain’t no law says a man can’t travel anywhere on a public highway. Guess if I want to go to Petrie, there ain’t nobody goin’ to stop me. Got just as much right to park there as I have anywhere... Milred, you get the hell out of here, and let me get started.”

He dashed around the little trailer like a whirlwind, making things tight; then he darted out of the door, and a moment later Milred heard the sound of a starting motor, the rattlety bang of Gramps’ decrepit car.

Milred Duryea, not wishing to be taken to Petrie in her négligée, stepped abruptly out of the trailer, and slammed the door.

Almost immediately the trailer creaked into motion.