The Limping Goose

23

Johnny pressed the button of the door buzzer. “Come!” called the voice of James Sutton.

Johnny and Sam entered Sutton’s suite. Hertha Colston sat in a big chair near the window, a half-emptied glass in her hand.

“Johnny!” she cried. “It’s nice seeing you again.”

“Hello,” said Johnny casually. “This is my friend, Sam Cragg.”

“How are you, Sam,” Hertha said cordially.

“You made a conquest this noon,” Sutton said, smiling. “But I gather you didn’t do so well with Don Wheelwright.”

“He’s an advertising man,” replied Johnny carelessly.

“That’s more than I am,” said Sutton wryly. “I’ve got Scotch and bourbon. What’ll it be?”

“I’ll take a bottle of beer,” Sam offered.

“Beer? I’ll have to send down for some.”

“Never mind,” Johnny interrupted. “You said you had something important to tell me.”

“I have, but let it wait a few minutes. Uncle’s on his way over.”

“You called him? They told me at his office that he was out.”

“He probably was. He called me.”

“Don’s on his way over, too,” said Hertha.

“Good,” said Johnny. “Suppose I telephone Alice Cummings and ask her over?”

“That woman!” said Hertha disgustedly.

Johnny grinned. “I’ve got four inches of raw shin — and I think I’ve got three teeth loose.”

“You had a fight with her?”

“Not me with her. Her with me.”

“Uncle Jess said something about her trying to blackmail him,” Sutton offered.

“Blackmail? I thought she was merely trying to sell him something.”

“The name of Jess’s murderer.” Sutton smiled thinly. “I guess that’s her description of blackmail.” He crossed and poured himself a fresh drink.

“Can I give you a refill?” he asked Hertha.

“This is a refill. That’s my quota.” Hertha studied Sam. “Is this the strong man?”

“If I was in a good mood, I’d show you my muscles,” Sam volunteered.

“Why, aren’t you in a good mood?”

“Things — happened to me today.”

“Sam had a rough day of it. So did I, for that matter.” Johnny seated himself in a chair near a table.

“You’ve been trying to find Cousin Lester,” Sutton said. “That’s what I want to tell you about. I had a call from him.”

“What!”

“I was as much surprised as you, Fletcher. He said he’d heard it on the radio, about Jess—”

“Where’d he telephone you from?” Johnny asked sharply.

“Idaho. Place called Lewiston.”

“He’s been there all these years?”

Sutton shrugged. “I asked him. He said he’d tell me about it when he got in. He’s taking a train tomorrow and he ought to be here by Sunday.”

The door buzzer whirred. Johnny rose swiftly and went to the door. He opened it and Jess Carmichael, Senior, came in. “I’m glad you’re here, Fletcher. Isn’t that the...?”

“Yes,” said Johnny. “You might as well come in now, Lieutenant.”

Madigan came in. Sutton and Hertha Colston looked at him, puzzled.

“Lieutenant Madigan,” Johnny announced, “of Homicide.”

“Homicide!” exclaimed Sutton.

“Sam’s under arrest,” Johnny explained. “Madigan wouldn’t let Sam come with me unless I brought him, too.”

Carmichael looked sharply at Johnny. “You saw that woman?”

“I saw her. She’s got the bank, all right. And she thinks she’s got what was in it.”

“What was in it?” Sutton asked.

Johnny dug the handful of pennies and dimes from his pocket. “This!” He put the coins on the table beside his chair. “She wanted pennies and dimes so badly, I bought her seven dollars’ worth. Pennies are pennies to her, and dimes, dimes.”

“This is what was in Jess’s bank?” Sutton asked.

“Yes.”

Sutton looked at his uncle. “A bunch of old-fashioned Indian head pennies — and dimes and quarters. I thought there’d be—”

“A note?” Johnny asked.

“The Cummings woman claimed—”

“That there was a message in the bank? That’s the message.” Johnny indicated the heap of coins.

Sutton looked at the coins, perplexed. “One of your jokes, Fletcher?”

“No joke.”

Hertha Colston got up and came over. She looked at the coins. “I never saw these, but Jess told me once about the bank he had as a boy.” She looked at Carmichael. “You gave it to him?”

Carmichael nodded quietly. “He was very fond of the bank.”

“Can I have these?” Hertha asked, a note of wistfulness in her voice. “It’s... it might be a kind of remembrance.”

“There’re some things I want to say first,” Johnny said, “then I don’t care who takes these coins. Mr. Carmichael, Miss Colston, some of this is going to be rather painful.”

“Go ahead, Fletcher,” said Carmichael gruffly.

“You all know about Alice Cummings. She’s... well, she’s Alice Cummings. But Jess was infatuated with her. So much so that he gave her one of his boyhood treasures and confided in her. Up to a point. He told Alice Cummings that if anything happened to him, to give the limping goose bank to his father. It would tell him who had killed him.”

“I don’t understand that,” Hertha said, puzzled. “It — it sounds as if he expected to be killed.”

“He did.”

“I stumbled into this thing,” Johnny went on. “A bill collector came to my hotel and one thing led to another and he defied me to collect a long overdue bill. A bill against Alice Cummings. Nothing would have happened — that is I would not have gotten involved in this myself — if I hadn’t taken a short cut to finding Alice Cummings. I might add that the bill she owed was for a sixty-nine-dollar fur coat she bought four years ago. She made just a few payments on it, then skipped without leaving an address. With interest, the amount still due was seventy-four dollars.

“I nailed her for that seventy-four dollars, but she only had fifty-seven dollars in her purse at the time. I held out for the other seventeen dollars and then the phone rang and Jess Carmichael was announced. Things hadn’t been going too good lately with Cummings and Jess. She wanted to get me out in the worst way and without stopping to think she gave me the limping goose bank to make up the difference of seventeen dollars.” Johnny paused. “Cummings and Jess quarreled and she went out, leaving him in her apartment—”

“That’s what she says,” Hertha put in spitefully.

“I think she told the truth. Somebody else came in — somebody who knew that Jess was there. That’s the person who killed him.”

“Fletcher,” Carmichael asked soberly, “do you know who that person is?”

“Mr. Carmichael,” Johnny said, “this morning when I was here talking to Mr. Sutton and you were in the other room listening, he said that you started out in life as a telegraph operator. Was that true?”

“Why, yes, I was the station agent and telegraph operator at a little town in Ohio.”

“Can you still read the Morse code?”

“Once you learn that you never forget it. I might not be able to send a message any more, at least not very quickly, but I could still read one unless it was in International code.”

“Just a moment, then.”

Johnny stepped to the table and began sorting out the quarters, dimes and pennies. He lined them up, according to the date, beginning with the 1860 dime, continuing down to the last 1939 coin.

The others in the room watched him. When Johnny was nearly through, James Sutton suddenly laughed, “You’re a character, Fletcher. You spring your childish games on us and we’re hypnotized. We listen to you and we watch you.” He chuckled. “Do you know, Uncle Jess, that our friend Fletcher here last night hired a limousine to take him out to your home and that he charged the hire to his room at the Barbizon-Waldorf Hotel here?.. and he happens to be living at the Forty-Fifth Street Hotel.”

“I’ve been to his room,” said Carmichael.

Johnny straightened from arranging the coins. “Read it, Mr. Carmichael. Read it. It’s the message your son wanted you to read.”

“I taught Jess the Morse code when he was eight years old,” said Carmichael. He looked at the rows of coins spread out on the table. “I don’t understand, Fletcher.”

“The pennies are the dots, the dimes the dashes and the quarters the spaces between words. Read it, Mr. Carmichael.”

Carmichael gave a start. His eyes darted to the coins. “ ‘If Jess C. is killed,’ ” he read slowly. Then he gave a violent start.

“One of Fletcher’s tricks,” cried James Sutton hoarsely.

“Is it, Sutton?” Johnny demanded. “Does the message give his name, Mr. Carmichael?”

Carmichael continued dully, “ ‘Jim Sutton did it. He’ ” — he hesitated — “ ‘he killed L. Smithson!’ ”

“That’s a lie!” yelled Sutton. “Lester isn’t dead. He... he phoned me today from Idaho.”

“Did he?” Johnny shot at him.

“I talked to him,” Sutton said wildly. “I... he wrote me a letter two-three years ago. He’s alive, I tell you, he’s alive...”

“He’s dead,” said Johnny bluntly. “You killed him twelve years ago. Jess knew it then, but kept quiet. But he never trusted you. He was afraid of you.”

Carmichael faced his nephew, his eyes blazing like an avenging angel’s. “Did you kill my son?”

Sutton backed away. “He was raised with a gold spoon in his mouth. He had everything and I... I was poor.”

“Poor!” burst out Sam Cragg. “How can a guy live in the Barbizon-Waldorf and be poor?”

“I gave him an allowance,” Carmichael said. He moved toward Sutton. “I gave you money and you... you killed my son...”

“I needed more money,” Sutton wailed. “I... I’ve been wiped out. I speculated and I lost every dollar and went into debt.” Satton sank into a chair and began to sob.

Carmichael stood over him; his big body seemed to slump and he aged before Johnny’s eyes. Hertha Colston moved up to him quietly and put her arms about Carmichael’s shoulders.

Carmichael looked at her and smiled wanly. “They told me when he was a boy that he had a vicious streak in him. I... I thought he’d outgrown it. I would have made him my heir...”

“He counted on that,” Johnny said soberly. “He hired me last night to find Lester Smithson. He knew very well that I wouldn’t be able to do that, but he figured it was a good thing, to throw suspicion in another direction. Blame Lester Smithson. Lester had reason to kill Jess, he figured. If he could make you believe that Lester had come back and killed Jess he was all right.”

Lieutenant Madigan moved forward. He snapped a pair of handcuffs on Sutton’s wrists and said, “We’ll get a statement from him down at Headquarters.”

The phone rang suddenly, shrilly. Everyone in the room looked at it, but no one moved toward it. Johnny finally stepped across the room and picked it up. “Yes? Who?” He winced. “Yes, he’s here.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Mr. Carmichael, it’s Alice Cummings. She wants to talk to you.”

“I have nothing to say to her.”

Johnny said into the phone, “Sorry, babe, Mr. Carmichael has nothing to say to you... Yes, it’s me, your old friend, Johnny Fletcher...” He winced again. “You’ve cut your price to ten thousand? For what... Oh, the pennies and dimes, eh?”

“Let me talk to her,” Hertha said suddenly.

“She wants to sell seven dollars’ worth of change for ten thousand,” chuckled Johnny. He handed the phone to Hertha Colston.

Hertha told Alice Cummings what to do with the coins.