The Dancing Detective

The Fingernail

Inspector Morrow, retired, followed his friend to one of the little tables against the wall.

“This place is famous for its food,” the other man, who was acting as host, remarked as they sat down, unfurled their napkins. “Ever been here before?”

Morrow looked around him uncertainly. “Restaurant Robert,” he murmured. “Wait a minute, I remember this place. Before my retirement from Homicide we once traced a murderer as far as here — and then we lost him again. Remind me to tell you about it after we’ve ordered.” He took up his bill-of-fare, studied it a moment or two. “You come here a lot — what’s good?”

“Try one of Robert’s famous rabbit-stews,” the other man suggested. “They’re made separately for each customer, in little individual earthenware casseroles. It’s Robert’s own secret recipe, he won’t share with anyone.”

“Sounds good to me,” acquiesced Morrow.

“Two,” said his companion to the waiter. “And tell Robert I have a new customer with me tonight.” He turned to Morrow. “That’ll bring him out in person at the end of the meal, to hear you praise his efforts — it always does. He’s as proud as a kid of these rabbit-stews of his.” He leaned back comfortably in his chair. “It’ll take a little while. Now what was that story you promised to tell me?”

“Oh yeah, that.” Morrow helped himself to a piece of bread. “It’s a good five years ago now. We found a man murdered one night—”

Inspector Morrow, five years younger, five inches slimmer at the waist, climbed down the rickety iron steps into the basement antique-shop. A younger man came toward the entrance to greet him, said, “Hello, Inspector.”

“Hello, Fletcher. What’s the good word so far?”

“Well, I’ve got all the preliminaries over with,” his subordinate said. “Weylin Hamilton’s his name. He lived here alone on the premises, in back of the shop. It happened in the early part of last evening. Robbery-motive. He evidently kept considerable money down here with him. We found the box he’d hidden it in busted open — and empty. No relatives or next of kin.”

The place was even more grotesque within than it had looked from the outside. Technically it might have been an antique shop, but to Morrow’s practical eye it looked more like a junk shop. It contained just about everything a person would not want, the way he felt about it. A suit of Japanese armor loomed terrifyingly in one corner. Scimitars, spears, and venerable flintlock pistols were affixed to the walls. There were squat Chinese buddhas, a South Sea war drum, even a Turkish water pipe coiled on a tabouret.

“Look out, that’s him,” Fletcher warned abruptly as his superior was about to thrust his way between a couple of the overcrowded display-stands. Morrow recoiled, just missing stepping on the inert bundle on the floor.

He gestured impatiently. “Move this trash out of the way and give me some room. That’s better.” He crouched down, peered attentively at the form lying there. “Now let’s see what we’ve got here.” The handle of an antique Florentine dagger, wrapped in felt, protruded from the dead man’s chest.

“That came down off the wall over there,” Fletcher pointed out.

“In other words, it wasn’t premeditated. The guy didn’t bring his own weapon with him. Hamilton came out of the back room, interrupted the guy trying to rob him, and the guy snatched down the first thing he could lay hands on and let him have it.” He pointed. “What’s this cotton wool doing wrapped around one of his insteps?”

“He was suffering with arthritis, the medical examiner says. Couldn’t put one shoe on. Couldn’t move around much, the last few weeks.”

“Then it’s a cinch he couldn’t manage those breakneck iron steps outside, leading up to the sidewalk. Must have been sort of marooned down here.” Morrow got up again. “Now let’s see this box you think he kept money in.”

“I know he did; there’s a tiny corner of a dollar bill — or maybe it was a five or ten — got caught under the back of the lid and torn off in the murderer’s hurry to get it out. I guess the old guy had it wadded in pretty tightly. Here it is.”

Morrow eyed the tiny fragment of paper first. “Yeah, that’s Government-paper,” he agreed. “You can see the blue and red threads even with the naked eye.” Then he turned to the box itself. It was of Oriental origin, lacquered wood on the outside, but lined with a thin sheeting of copper on the inside. The lacquer was marred and gouged-at all along the seam of the lid.

“He had a tough time opening this, even though it has no lock and key,” Morrow pointed out. “You see, it operates by pressure; there’s an unnoticeable sort of bulge in the wood. You press against that and that releases the lid. He didn’t get the hang of it, must have kept digging his nail into the seam and trying to pry it up that way.” He took it over closer to a portable reflector that had been rigged up, peered at the lining. “Then it shot up suddenly when he least expected it and his finger rammed home. He hurt himself on it, too. There’s a thin dark hairline across the edge of the metal lining, where it peers above the edge of the wood casing — blood. Just where did you find the box lying?”

Fletcher took him over and showed him. Morrow got down and began to scan the floor. “Here’s a drop here. Here’s another. They must have escaped before he could wrap something around it—” He motioned imperatively to his assistant. “Gimme a piece of paper, any kind will do—” He scooped at something with it, held the paper out to show him. “See what this is?”

Fletcher squinted at the little shell-like object. “It looks like — like somebody’s whole fingernail.”

“It is. He lost his whole nail. It must have been defective to start with to come off that easy, but the metal edge of that box lining caught under it and sliced it off. If it didn’t come right off at once, he pulled it off himself to keep it from dangling. That was his mistake. It takes too long to grow a new nail for him to be able to cover up the loss before we’ve caught him.” He wrapped and pocketed the queasy little memento.

“It was somebody that paid two or more visits — he knew just which box the old man kept his cash in, out of all the junk in here, and made a beeline for it without disturbing anything else. Hamilton must have been incautious enough to haul it out once or twice in his presence.”

“That looks like Hamilton paid him instead of him paying Hamilton for something that he bought,” Fletcher observed.

“Let’s take a look at what the inside room is like.”

It was just a cubbyhole with a cot and cupboard in it and not much else. Morrow glanced around with eyes trained not to miss little details that somebody else might have overlooked. He opened the cupboard, revealed several bottles of liniment and nothing else. He turned to Fletcher. “The medical examiner says he was suffering from arthritis lately and couldn’t navigate the entrance steps. You say he had no relatives or intimate friends. Well, where’d he get his meals from, then? There’s not so much as an empty cracker box in sight.”

Fletcher scratched his head. “Gee, I never thought of—”

“He had them sent in, that’s what he did. From some place near by where he’d been in the habit of going formerly, before he was incapacitated. That means a waiter or bus boy of some kind. And that’s who killed him. It all checks. Repeated visits with a covered tray or hamper. And Hamilton took money out of the box to pay him, instead of his paying Hamilton. Now we’re getting somewhere. We want a waiter with the nail gone from one of his fingers, who works at some place in the immediate vicinity, within a radius of about three or four blocks at the most.” He blew between his hands, ground them together. “It’s practically over!”

Andy, the junior waiter at Robert’s, was nervous. He stood there in the kitchen with his back to the boss, while the latter cut up the skinned rabbits that went piecemeal into the famous stews, six casseroles of which were already slowly simmering on the charcoal stove.

Robert, a great good-natured hulk of a Frenchman, bald as an onion under his chef’s cap, was rambling on, as he had a habit of doing whenever there was anyone in the kitchen to listen, no matter who. “Fonny thing happen this afternoon. Some guy he come to my door upstairs here in house, before restaurant is open, say he want to speak to me. I think he’s policeman; you know, one of those kind without blue suit?”

Andy had stopped his work of trimming radishes, stood listening intently, head bent, with the paring knife held motionless in one white-gloved hand. He didn’t say anything.

“He look at me close, like owl. He say, which one of your waiters got sore finger, you happen to notice?” Robert shrugged. “I say, how I’m going to tell you that? The one strict rule in my place is, all the men work for me they got to wear white cotton gloves, kip ’em on their hands all the time for to be clean and neat.”

Andy just listened, neck rigid.

“He say, ‘Never mind, I find out for myself. Kip it under your hat, eh’?” He gestured toward the dining-room door. “He sitting out there now, I see him when I come through. What you suppose is matter, eh?”

“I don’t know,” Andy said in a muffled voice.

Robert wiped his hands on his apron. “All right, ragout they all ready now, just wait for to put seasoning in. I go down basement, bring up little spice. Kip eye on fire for me, eh, Andy? If she get too low, put on little more charcoal—” He opened the cellar door that led down to the supply room, waddled clumsily out of sight down the steps.

Andy swallowed hard, as though he had a lump in his throat. He turned and eyed the redly glowing charcoal range. He went over to the sack of fuel slumped in a corner, scooped out a trowelful, carried it to the stove, crouched down and spaded it in. Then he looked around across his shoulder. He was alone in the kitchen at the moment, and such moments were likely to be few and far between as the dinner hour got under way.

He unpinned something from the inside of his shirt. With furtive, trembling, white-gloved fingers he tore it across once, twice. He flung the pieces in on top of the flame-licked charcoal. One fragment escaped him in the draught, fell to the floor, lay there for a moment. The numeral “20” was engraved on it, in green and white, with red and blue threads veining the paper. He retrieved it, sent it in after the other pieces. Then he closed the stove flap. His face had been gray even in the ruddy glow beating against it.

He jumped furtively back to the work table, just as the swing door flapped open and one of his fellow-workers came bustling in. The latter loaded a tray without glancing at Andy, hoisted it to his shoulder, swung out again into the dining-room.

Andy went after him, but only as far as the door. He steadied it with one hand, peered cautiously out through the glass inset near the top. There was a sprinkling of early arrivals already in the outer room. Most of them were habitués, he knew their faces. All but one. There was a man sitting by himself at a table against the far wall. He’d never been in the place before. Andy was sure of it. He didn’t act hungry, he was ignoring the bill-of-fare. A waiter came over to take his order and the man said something to him. The waiter looked surprised, hesitated momentarily. The man repeated what he had said in a tight-lipped way that brooked no argument. Then Andy saw the waiter slowly strip off first one glove, then the other, poise his hands for inspection, palms down. The man nodded curtly and the waiter slowly began to draw his gloves on again.

Andy didn’t wait to see any more. He left the door pane, fled swiftly across the kitchen toward the opposite door that gave onto the outside alley, stripping off his apron and flinging it behind him as he went. He pushed the door open, then drew up short. There was the motionless figure of a man outlined at the alley-mouth against the street light beyond. He was just standing there waiting, effectively blocking all egress. There was no other way out but past him — in the other direction the alley came to a dead end.

Andy turned, floundered strickenly back into the kitchen again. He looked around him with agonized helplessness. Robert’s slow, heavy tread was starting up the basement-steps from below.

He had a minute left. It ended.

He was standing there, bent forward over the work table, face ghastly white, when Robert came lumbering up into sight a minute later. Robert gave him a sudden, startled look. “What’s matter, you sick? You got pain in stomach?”

“Boss, you’ll have to let me go home for tonight,” Andy whispered weakly. “I can’t work any more.” There was sweat on his forehead.

Another waiter came barging in. “One rabbit stew for the rich dame at number four table!”

Robert was a considerate boss. “All right, Andy, you go,” he consented. “You no look good, that’s a fact. You take over his tables for him tonight, George—”

Andy’s face was still deathly pale, but calm and untroubled now, when he tottered out to the alley mouth a moment later. The man standing there promptly reached out, pinned him fast. “Just a minute, brother, let’s have a look at your hands.”

Andy obeyed without demur. He held them out, shakily, palms downward. They were ungloved. The index finger of the right hand was a sodden, topheavy funnel of telescoped gauze bandaging.

“Take that off,” growled the man.

Andy didn’t have to. He just gave his hand a slight downward hitch and the saturated dressing flew off of its own weight. There was nothing to hold it, nothing under it, just a gory space between the thumb and the middle finger.

“It was him all right, eh?” Morrow’s friend asked absorbedly.

“Sure it was him,” Morrow scowled. “But knowing a thing is one thing, proving it another. He’d worn his white service gloves when he’d carted the tray over, so that did away with all hope of prints. The pair of gloves that had become bloody, he probably destroyed. He admitted he’d taken quite a few meals over to Hamilton, but so had all the others. Hamilton had been seen alive after he called for and removed the tray that last night. The question was, which of them had sneaked back after the tray had been taken away, to rob the old man? We had to have that finger!

“I raised holy hell with them when they brought him in to me. ‘You numbskulls, get that finger!’ I hollered at them. ‘That’s almost more important than he is!’

“We jumped right back to the place, all of us. Inside of ten minutes after it happened, we were on the job turning the premises inside out. We put out the fire then and there, raked through the half-burned charcoal. We stopped the garbage before it had had a chance to go out, went through it with a fine comb. We emptied out all the flour bins and containers and whatnot they had around, we made a wreck out of that place. But the finger never turned up.

“He claimed it was an accident, of course. The knife had slipped and taken it clean off. He claimed he’d fainted with the shock, and was in too much pain when he came to, to notice what had become of it.

“We ragged him for days after that, but it didn’t do any good. We never found the money on him, nor any evidence that he’d spent it. We couldn’t shake his alibi for the particular time the crime had taken place. He’d outsmarted us. We knew he was the guy. But without that nailless finger we couldn’t prove it.

“It still burns me up, even at this late day, to think of it. It spoiled what would have otherwise been a hundred-per-cent perfect record for me. I still can’t figure out what became of it, what he did to make it disappear so fast — and thoroughly.”

“Here comes Robert, as I warned you, to find out how you liked his specialty,” his friend remarked.

“Say, that rabbit stew was great,” Morrow complimented the old chef. “I never tasted anything to beat it!”

“You like, eh?” Robert’s chest puffed out like a pouter pigeon’s. “I never had a complaint yet, in over twenty years—” He corrected himself conscientiously. “Just once, I remember now. One night fussy rich lady, who used to come regular, she send for me. This long time ago, we have a little trouble in kitchen that night. I get maybe a little excited.

“She say, ‘Robert, are you sure that was all rabbit? I may be wrong, but the flavor at times seemed to vary a little—’ ”