The Golden Goose

5

So there across the threshold stood Coley Collins; and Prin felt instantly better. With Coley there, everything that had looked so much like being wrong would now be surely right.

“Coley! Darling!” Prin cried. “You’ll never know how glad I am to see you.”

“Why not?” said Coley, coming in and shutting the door. “A girl is supposed to be glad to see the man she loves, especially when she has a date with him.”

“Oh, my gosh,” wailed Prin. “I completely forgot you were coming tonight.”

“If so,” said Coley stiffishly, “it would have been more ladylike not to mention it.”

“Oh, Coley, I’m sorry. But when you hear what’s happened, I’m sure you’ll forgive me.”

By this time Dr. Appleton, who had lingered over the phone, had gone back into the living room, glancing suspiciously at Coley on the way. The moment he was out of sight Coley seized Prin and kissed her all over her face — eyes, nose, cheeks, lips, chin — and he was heading for her neck when Prin whispered, “Coley. Don’t. I mean — don’t you want to know what’s happened?”

“All right,” said Coley sulkily. “What?”

“Uncle Slater is dead.”

Coley stood quietly, his head cocked as if he were repeating to himself what Prin had just said. “Did you say Mr. O’Shea is dead?”

“Oh, Coley. I was the one who found him.” And she told him all about Slater O’Shea’s return home at two o’clock, and the rest of it.

“You poor, poor kid,” muttered Coley. “Mr. O’Shea dead... Somehow, I assumed he would be around the Coronado taproom slugging it down to age eighty, at least.”

“We all did. The shock is bad enough, but Dr. Appleton’s making things worse.”

“From all I hear about Dr. Appleton behind my bar, he’s been making things worse in this town for years, especially the life expectancy of his patients. Though I can’t see how he could do much harm to a dead man.”

“No, but he can make a lot of trouble for the rest of us, and he seems determined to do it. He claims there was nothing wrong with Uncle Slater to cause him to die so suddenly. Dr. Appleton is insisting on an autopsy.”

“He can’t get an autopsy done without the consent of the next of kin.”

“He’s making a case out of it, Coley. He just called the police.”

Coley whistled soundlessly. “You mean to tell me old Appleton actually suspects that somebody gave your uncle a nudge?”

“He didn’t say so in so many words, but he certainly can’t think Uncle Slater committed suicide. Nobody who knew Uncle Slater could think that. Besides, he had no reason.”

“Hmm,” said Coley, frowning. He looked around and lowered his voice. “You say you found the body. How did you happen to do that?”

“Mrs. Dolan insists on the family eating dinner promptly, and it was ready, so I went upstairs to see why Uncle Slater hadn’t come down, and there he was, lying dead on the floor.”

“I wonder why Appleton thinks he may have been nudged. Was there anything to indicate it?”

“Not that I could see. But then I’ve never seen a dead person before, so I wouldn’t know. Maybe it’s the way Uncle Slater looked, or something. He looked awful.”

Coley was silent again. Then he said, “Prin. The flics won’t be here for a while yet, if I know Cibola City. Let’s slip upstairs while they’re all in the other room. I’d like to take a look at the scene of the crime.”

Prin whispered, “Coley, no!”

“Look,” Coley said incisively. “Maybe Dr. Appleton has more to go on than he’s telling. If it should turn out that your Uncle Slater is full of rat poison or something, the heat’s going to be turned on the family. That includes you, and anything that threatens you threatens me. Come on, we’re wasting precious time.”

“I don’t know, I...” Prin stopped miserably. Then she said, “Anyway, Dr. Appleton locked the door after he examined Uncle Slater. And he put the key in his pocket.”

“Key to a bedroom door? Then it’s probably one of those ordinary big keys that will unlock any bedroom door. Is it?”

“Well, yes—”

“Is there another key like it in the house?”

“My bedroom door has one.”

“Then let’s get it, Prin. I’m not going to leave you to the mercy of a senile sawbones and some village idiots in blue uniforms!”

Put this way, the proposal became irresistible. So Prin led the way swiftly and softly upstairs and went for her bedroom door key while Coley waited outside Uncle Slater’s door intently listening, as if he expected to hear Uncle Slater moving around inside. There was something darkly thrilling about the whole project.

Prin rejoined him on tiptoe, and Coley slipped her key into the lock and turned it — rather noisily, Prin thought — and the thingumajig inside snicked back. Coley opened the door and there was something darkly thrilling in Uncle Slater’s room, too. For the room itself was dark by this time, and Prin could not see a thing, anything at all, not even Coley, after she shut the door, which was thrilling enough for anybody.

Prin set her back against the door, telling herself that this was the kind of darkly thrilling experience she could live very nicely without. She had to fight her breath to keep it from whooshing. She could hear Coley breathing rather gustily himself a step or two away, and all of a sudden it was a matter of life or death to turn on the light. The trouble was, Prin could not remember exactly where the light switch was, and this was ridiculous. It was a little mercury switch beside the door that made no sound when it was moved, but whether it was on the left side or the right side of the door was blotted out. Then she jumped. But it was only Coley, whispering sharply.

“Damn it, Prin, will you kindly turn on the light?”

“Damn it, Coley,” Prin whispered back, “give me time to remember where the switch is!”

She had no sooner said this than she remembered: it was on the right side. She felt for it and found it and the light came on. Coley was standing there with his back to her, and he seemed to be listening to something again, although there was nothing to hear but the sound of their breathing, which was oddly fainter in the light than it had been in the dark. Uncle Slater was still lying on the floor. Coley went over and looked down at him with concentration, still listening to silence. After a while he scratched his head.

“You’re right,” he said. “No question about it. Your Uncle Slater’s dead.”

“Of course he’s dead,” Prin said. “There’s no sense wasting time investigating that.”

“Well, I couldn’t quite believe it in spite of all the testimony to the contrary. According to what Mr. O’Shea told me, there weren’t many sensations he hadn’t gone after at one time or another, but I’d have laid odds that dying was one he’d have postponed indefinitely. It’s simply out of character.”

“Coley, if you want my advice, you’d better look around fast and see what there is to see before they find us here — and you know who ‘they’ are.”

“There doesn’t seem to be much to see,” Coley said keenly. “Nothing appears to be out of order except your uncle.”

He began to move around the room, not touching anything. He moved and peered and nosed with the same beautiful precision and economy with which he mixed cocktails. It exhilarated Prin just to watch him.

It required only a few minutes for Coley to circumambulate the room, still looking like a master-detective undaunted by temporary failure. He paused at Uncle Slater’s bedside table and studied it enigmatically. On it stood a clock, a half-empty bottle of bourbon and a glass. Prin could see nothing out of the ordinary in these items, but Coley appeared to find them of peculiar interest, for he said, “Ah!” and stood looking at them as if the case were solved.

“Yes?” Prin whispered tensely.

Coley turned to her. “And no,” he said. “It’s really quite elementary. Appleton is a senile ass making something out of nothing, probably to cover up his incompetence in letting Mr. O’Shea die of something that could have been diagnosed by any good veterinarian. However, if Uncle Slater was dosed with something deadly, it appears to me quite clear that the dose was administered in this bottle of bonded bourbon.”

“That may be true,” Prin said, “but I don’t see what’s so clear about it.”

“My dear child,” said Coley with a smile. “You overlook your late uncle’s chronic thirst. The bourbon is something he would have been certain to indulge in generously at the first opportunity on his return home this afternoon. However, I strongly doubt that there was any poisoning at all. He drank the whisky, and lay down for a nap, and simply died of something old Appleton didn’t know he had.”

Prin regarded him adoringly. But then her heart jumped, because Coley suddenly raised his hand and cocked his head.

“Do you hear anything?” he whispered.

She listened and shook her head.

“Open the door and have a quick look.”

She opened the door cautiously and stuck her head into the hall. The hall was empty. She withdrew her head, closed the door and gave a sudden jump and gasp.

“Damn it, Coley,” Prin said, “did you have to slip up behind me like a ghost the minute my back was turned? You almost scared the panties off me.”

Coley moved closer. He moved so close that Prin found herself backed against the door. “Anybody out there?” His eyes were glittering.

“Coley! What’s the matter with you? Why are you acting so queer suddenly...?”

“Who’s acting queer?” Coley muttered menacingly. “I just wanted to be sure no one was coming so our investigation shouldn’t be a total loss. Shall we therefore indulge in a few gestures of affection before going downstairs?”

He began at once to activate his suggestion. Even while Prin collaborated, she felt uneasy. The gestures of affection were no more than good taste demanded in the presence of a third party, especially one who was dead, but even so... Besides, it was hard not to feel glad-happy-joyous under the influence of Coley’s gestures, and this tended to get in the way of Prin’s sad feelings about Uncle Slater. The most disturbing thought of all was that Uncle Slater in his time had himself been no mean hand at gestures of affection; and their gesticulating interchange in his presence seemed rather like rubbing it in.

All these thoughts had the effect of taking the fun out of everything, so Prin said, “Coley. Darling. Coley. Don’t you think we’d better go downstairs?”

Coley, who was in the middle of a particularly affectionate gesture, said, “No, I don’t.”

“But dearest, someone’s sure to miss us soon, if not already... Cole... ey... and there’s the... police-and-besides-it-doesn’t-seem-right-to-do-what-we’re-doing-with-Uncle-Slater-lying-here...”

“Uncle Slater doesn’t mind. He wouldn’t even if he could.”

“Well, I do,” Prin said a little crossly, “and it prevents my giving you my full attention. So if you please...”

“Oh, hell, all right.”

Coley released her sulkily, switched off the light and opened the door. The timing was uncanny: if he had not opened the door in that instant, it would have been opened from the other side in the next, for there in the hall, one aged hand in the act of reaching for the knob, stood Dr. Horace Appleton. The old physician looked so fiercely fiery that Prin went weak. But then she saw from Coley’s composure that her soldier of fortune had the situation perfectly in hand, and felt immediately better. It was one of Coley Collins’s most endearing virtues, this ability to make her feel immediately better in the worst circumstances.

“What in the ding-dang devil you two up to?” screamed Dr. Appleton.

“Dr. Appleton, I presume?” said Coley coolly.

“What? Yes! What you been doing in this room?”

“What we have been doing in this room, Doctor,” replied Coley, “is looking around.”

“Ha!” said Dr. Appleton. “The police will be interested to hear that!”

“The implications in your statement, not to mention the tone in which you uttered it, sir,” said Coley frostily, “come dangerously close to slander. You’re taking far too much upon yourself, my dear doctor. Have a care.”

Dr. Appleton began looking apoplectic and seemed about to join Slater O’Shea, wherever Slater O’Shea was. “Unlawful entry,” he spluttered. “Destruction of evidence on the scene of a crime—”

“Entering a room in a house where one is a resident or guest hardly constitutes unlawful entry,” said Coley, at absolute zero now. “Plus we have destroyed nothing, because we have touched nothing. And may I point out, sir, that so far this room is merely the scene of a death? That a crime has been adduced only by you?”

Dr. Appleton made a heroic effort to remain in the realm of the quick. He slowly regained his natural color, which was pink, not purple.

“I am the doctor on this case,” he said, “and I have acted in all ways within my competence. Now! Why were you in this room after I locked it? The truth! You may tell me or the police, as you choose.”

“As I see it,” Coley said, “it’s a poor choice either way, and nothing constructive is likely to come of it.”

This time Dr. Appleton contracted asthma. He tried to say something, but nothing came out except a kind of shrill whinny that, without being intelligible, nevertheless contrived to sound profane. Coley, seeing that he had achieved a tactical advantage, remorselessly pressed it.

“You have no one to censure but yourself, Dr. Appleton,” he said evenly, “if I have felt compelled to conduct a preliminary investigation of the scene in defense of this defenseless young woman, whose very liberty may be threatened by your sly folly. It is my conviction, sir, that you are yelling copper in order to cover the tracks of your own professional incompetence. If I am in error, I tender you my apology in advance. In either case, the police will decide when they get here — which, unless my ears deceive me, is an event that is taking place right now.”

And so it was. They were out on the veranda ringing the bell, and by the time old Appleton and Coley and Prin got downstairs they were inside the house, all two of them.