The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

The X Street Murders by Joseph Commings

Joseph Commings (1913-92) was one of the masters of the impossible crime story. He started his career in the old pulp magazines in the 1940s. He stockpiled stories written during the Second World War and some of these, possibly rewritten, did not appear in magazines until well into the 1950s. Most feature the larger-than-life and frequently over-bombastic character of Senator Brooks U. Banner. Banner has an uncanny knack of stumbling across baffling crimes of which the following is generally regarded as his masterpiece. Amazingly, although he later sold a number of erotic novels, Commings never published a collection of his stories. Fortunately for impossible-crime enthusiasts, Robert Adey assembled a collection called Banner Deadlines, published in 2004, which contains plenty more like the following.

Carroll Lockyear came out of the attache’s private office at the New Zealand Legation on X Street, Washington, D.C. He was tall and skinny. The sallow skin of his gaunt face was drawn tight over his doorknob cheekbones like that of an Egyptian mummy. The resemblance to a mummy did not end with the tightness of his skin. Sticking out from his sharp chin, like a dejected paintbrush, was a russet-colored King Tut beard. He looked like a well-dressed beatnik. In his left hand he carried a brown cowhide briefcase, his long fingers curled under the bottom of it.

The secretary in the reception room, Miss Gertrude Wagner, looked up at him. He approached her desk and laid his briefcase carefully down on it, then towered over it toward her.

“Yes, Mr Lockyear?” she said.

“I have another appointment with Mr Gosling on next Tuesday, Miss Wagner.”

Gertrude penciled a line in an appointment pad.

“Good day,” said Lockyear. He picked up his briefcase and walked out.

Gertrude smiled thinly at the Army officer waiting on the lounge. He was reading a copy of the Ordnance Sergeant, but it wasn’t holding his attention as much as it should. He wore a green tunic with sharpshooter medals on the breast, and his legs, in pink slacks, were crossed. Gertrude stopped her professional smile and picked up the earpiece of the interphone and pressed a button.

“Mr Gosling,” she said, “Captain Cozzens is waiting to see you.” She held the earpiece to her head for a moment, then lowered it. “Captain,” she said. Cozzens looked up with bright expectancy from his magazine. “Mr Gosling wants to know if you’d mind waiting a minute.”

“Not at all,” said Cozzens, eager to agree with such a good-looking girl. No doubt, visions of dinners for two were dancing in his head.

Gertrude stood up suddenly and tugged her skirt straight. She had black hair cut in a Dutch bob and dark blue eyes. The austere lines of her blotter-green suit could not entirely disguise her big-boned femininity. She gathered up a steno pad and a mechanical pencil and started to walk toward the closed door of Mr Gosling’s private office. Glancing at the slim bagette watch on her wrist, she stopped short. It was as if she had almost forgotten something. She went back to her desk. On it lay a sealed large bulky manila mailing envelope. A slip of paper had been pasted on its side. Typed in red on the paper was the Legation address and:

Deliver to Mr Kermit Gosling at 11:30 a.m. sharp.

Gertrude grasped the envelope by the top and proceeded into Gosling’s office, leaving the door open. This private office, it was carefully noted later, was on the third floor of the building. It had two windows and both these windows were protected by old-fashioned iron bars. It was a room in which an attaché might consider himself safe.

Captain Cozzens had been following Gertrude’s flowing progress with admiring eyes. Those narrow skirts did a lot for a girl if she had the right kind of legs and hips. And Gertrude definitely had the right kind.

Another man sitting near Cozzens was watching her too. He was red-haired and young, with a square face and a pug nose. The jacket of his black suit was tight across his shoulders. He was Alvin Odell and it was his job to watch what went on in the office. He was an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But he too was watching Gertrude with more interest than his job called for.

From where Cozzens and Odell sat they could see the edge of Gosling’s desk. They saw the closely observed Gertrude stand before it, facing across it, and she held the bulky envelope up waist-high.

There was a slight pause.

Then three shots spat harshly.

Cozzens and Odell, shocked at the sudden ripping apart of their daydreams by gunfire, saw Gertrude flinch before the desk. Then the two men sprang up together and rushed in to her side.

Gosling, a heavy-featured man with limp blond hair, was tilted sideways in his desk chair. Blood stained his white shirt front, Odell stared at the three bullet holes under the left lapel of the grey business suit.

Captain Cozzens’ voice was hoarse. “Those three shots – where did they come from?”

Gertrude’s blue eyes, dazed, searched Cozzens’ face as if she had never seen him before. Dumbly she lifted up the heavy envelope.

Before Cozzens could move, the FBI man was faster. Odell snatched the envelope out of her hand.

It was still tightly sealed. There were no holes or tears in it. Odell started to rip it along the top. A wisp of bluish smoke curled up in the still air.

Odell tore the envelope wide open and out of it onto the desktop spilled a freshly fired automatic pistol.

Heavy blunt-tipped fingers on speckled hands turned over the brown State Department envelope. It was addressed to Honorable Brooks U. Banner, M. C, The Idle Hour Club, President Jefferson Avenue, Washington, D.C.

The addressee was a big fat man with a mane of grizzled hair and a ruddy jowled face and the physique of a performing bear. He wore a moth-eaten frock coat with deep pockets bulging with junk and a greasy string tie and baggy-kneed grey britches. Under the open frock coat was a candy-striped shirt. On his feet were old house slippers whose frayed toes looked as if a pair of hungry field mice were trying to nibble their way out from inside. He was an overgrown Huck Finn. Physically he was more than one man – he was a gang. Socially and politically he didn’t have to answer to anybody, so he acted and spoke any way he damned pleased.

He was sipping his eighth cup of black coffee as he read the letter.

It was from the Assistant Secretary of State. In painful mechanical detail, it reported the murder on X Street with as much passion as there is in a recipe for an upside-down cake. Toward the end of the letter, the Assistant Secretary became a little less like an automaton and a little more human. He confessed to Banner that both the State Department and the FBI were snagged. They couldn’t find an answer. And considering the other harrowing murder cases that Banner had solved, perhaps he could be of some help in this extremity.

Banner crumpled the letter up into a ball and stuck it into his deep pocket. Thoughtfully his little frosty blue eyes rested on the white ceiling. He had read about the case in the newspapers, but the account had not been as full as the State Department’s.

He pulled the napkin from under his chin, swabbed his lips, and started to surge up to his feet. He looked like a surfacing whale.

A waiter hurried up with a tray. On it were three more cups of black coffee, “Aren’t you going to drink the rest of your coffee, sir?” asked the waiter in an injured tone.

“Huh?” said Banner absently. Already his mind was soaring out into space, grappling with the murder problem. “I never touch the stuff,” he said and went lumbering out.

Jack McKitrick, who looked like a jockey trainer, was an FBI department chief. He stood near Captain Cozzens in the New Zealand Legation office. When Banner came trotting in the door McKitrick said sideways to Cozzens: “That’s Senator Banner. They don’t come much bigger.”

Cozzens shook his head as he eyed the impressive hulk that rumbled forward.

“Morning, Senator,” said McKitrick to Banner.

Banner grunted an answer, mumbling words around a long Pittsburgh stogie clamped in his teeth.

“Senator,” continued McKitrick, “this is Captain Cozzens of the Ordnance Division, U.S. Army.” The two men clasped hands. “Cozzens is a small firearms expert.”

“Mighty fine,” said Banner.

“You were an Army officer yourself, weren’t you, Senator?” said Cozzens.

Banner truculently chewed on the stogie. “Yass. I never got above the rank of shavetail. We were the dogfaces who gave ’em hell at Chateau Thierry. But I’ll tell you all about my war experiences later, Cap’n. We’ll all work together on this. Not nice seeing our New Zealand friends getting bumped off. Not nice at all.”

“No, certainly not,” said Cozzens.

Banner struck an attitude of belligerent ease. “Waal, I’m listening, Cap’n. You were one of the witnesses to this murder. What were you doing at the Legation?”

Cozzens frowned. “I was here by appointment, Senator. Mr Gosling wanted me to suggest a good handgun for his personal use and to give him instructions in how to handle it.”

“Why?”

“I think,” said Cozzens slowly, “he wanted to use it to protect himself.”

“Against what?”

“He never had a chance to tell me. But I think this might supply part of the answer.” He held up a wicked-looking pistol. “This is what did the trick, Senator. It’s all right to handle it. No fingerprints were found on it.”

Scowling, Banner took it from him. “So that’s the Russian pop-pop.”

“Right,” said Cozzens. “A Tokarev, a standard Russian automatic. It’s a 7.62-mm. with a Browning-Colt breech-locking system and it uses Nagant gas-check cartridges.”

“This was the gun in the sealed envelope,” said Banner. “Are you sure it wasn’t some other gun you heard being fired?”

Cozzens slowly shook his head. “I’ve spent a lifetime with guns, Senator. I’ve got to know their ‘voices’ just the way you know people’s. When you hear an accent, you know what part of the world the speaker comes from. That’s the way I am with pistols and revolvers. So I’ll stake my reputation that the shots we heard had a Russian accent, meaning they were fired from a Tokarev automatic, slightly muffled. Besides that, ballistics bears me out. The bullets found in Gosling’s body were indisputably from that gun.”

Banner grunted. “And all the while the gun was sealed up tight in an envelope and you could see the secretary holding the envelope while the shots were fired?”

“That’s right,” answered Cozzens.

“How d’you explain it, Cap’n? What’s your theory?”

“Theory? I haven’t any. I can’t explain it. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Anything else you have to offer?” asked Banner.

“Nothing. That’s all.”

The stogie in Banner’s mouth was burning fiercely. He looked around the office where the murder had been committed. It was a completely equipped modern office. Nothing had been disturbed. He mumbled: “Gosling knew his life was in danger!”

Banner turned to McKitrick. “I’ll see Odell.”

Cozzens left while Banner was being introduced to the FBI agent, Odell.

“You heard Cozzens’ story about the shooting, Odell,” said Banner. “Have you anything to add to it?”

Odell shook his red-haired head. “No, it happened just that way, Senator.” His frank boyish face was grave.

“Why were you stationed here?”

“At a request from Mr Gosling. He asked for our security.”

“How long’ve you been hanging out here?”

“About a week, Senator.”

McKitrick interrupted to say: “Odell asked for this assignment.”

Banner studied the young man with the rusty hair. “What’s the reason, Red?”

Odell hesitated, growing crimson around the ears. “Well, Senator – a – Miss Wagner – Well, you’ll have to see her to appreciate her-”

Banner suddenly chuckled. He was thinking of his own misspent youth chasing the dolls.

Odell sobered. “She’s a hard girl to make friends with,” he admitted ruefully.

“It’s tough, Red,” grinned Banner. “Fetch in the li’l chickie and we’ll see if I can’t make better time with her than you did.”

Odell went out of the office and returned with Gertrude. She looked scared at Banner. Big men in authority seemed to have given her a sudden fright. Her shoulders were hunched up as if she were cold. Odell held her solicitously by the elbow.

“Hello, Gertie,” boomed Banner as familiarly as if he had helped to christen her. “Siddown.”

She dropped gratefully on the leather lounge as if relieved to get the strain off her shaky knees.

“Gertie, there’s no reason why you should think I’m gonna panic you. I’m your big Dutch uncle, remember?”

She smiled at him.

“Now, Gertie,” he resumed, “you live with your people, don’t you?”

“No,” she said hoarsely, then she cleared her throat. “No, Senator. I have no relatives in America. They’re all living in Germany.”

“Germany?” Banner made a quick pounce. “What part of Germany?”

“On a farm outside of Zerbst.”

Banner’s little frosty blue eyes looked shrewd. “That’s in East Germany, ain’t it, Gertie?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about ’em. And how you got out?”

It wasn’t too complicated a story. Gertrude had been born just after the end of World War Two. She grew up in a Communist dominated land, where everybody was schooled in the Russian language. She learned to speak English too – from an ex-Berlitz professor who ran a black market in verboten linguistics. Farm life had been stern, as she grew big enough to help her father and crippled mother with the chores, but Gertrude had become sturdy on plenty of fresh milk and vegetables, and she used to walk back from the haying fields with her rakehandle across her back and shoulders and her arms draped over it. It made her walk straight and developed strong chest muscles.

“Yass,” muttered Banner at this point. “Like those Balinese gals carrying loads on their heads.” He dwelt silently on Bali for a moment, then he said: “Go on. How’d you get outta East Germany?”

She had, she explained, visited East Berlin several times, helping to bring farm products to market. Each time she came an urge grew stronger in her to see all the things she had heard rumors about, the free and wealthy people of the West, the shops and cinemas along the Kurfurstendamm, and the opportunities for a better life. One day, at the Brandenburg Gate, the urge overcame her. She made a wild, reckless dash, eluding Soviet soldier guards, and made it, panting, falling into the arms of sympathetic West Berliners in the American Sector. She had thought that she would surely find somebody who could help to get her crippled mother and her father free too, but so far there was nobody who could perform that miracle.

Her good looks and quick learning ability eventually got her sponsored for a trip to the United States. Mr Gosling, of the New Zealand Legation, had proved kind to her and had got her the job.

She stopped talking, her brunette head with the Dutch bob bent low.

“Haaak!” Banner cleared his throat, making a sound like a sea lion. “Who’re you living with now?”

“Nobody. I have a small apartment to myself. I have become an American citizen.”

Banner sourly eyed the chewed wet end of the stogie in his hand. “Now about this envelope with the gun in it. When did it come to your desk?”

“Sometime near 11:00 o’clock in the morning, Senator.”

“Who brought it?”

“A man from the special messenger service.”

“Would you know him if you saw him again?”

“I think I would.”

“Was your boss, Mr Gosling, engaged at 11:00?”

“Yes, Mr Lockyear was in there.”

“What time did Cap’n Cozzens come into the reception room?”

“Around 11:15.”

“Did anyone tamper with that envelope once it reached your desk, Gertie?”

“No, sir. No one.”

“What time did Lockyear come outta the private office?”

“It was nearly 11:30.”

“When he came out,” said Banner carefully, “did he go straight out?”

“Yes – he stopped only to make an appointment for next Tuesday. I jotted it in my pad.”

“Then what’d you do?”

“I spoke to Mr Gosling on the interphone,” she said in a low hushed voice. “I told him that Captain Cozzens was waiting to see him next. He told me to withhold him for a minute and for me to come in with my notebook. I started to go in, then remembered the envelope. The sticker on it had said: Deliver to Mr Kermit Gosling at 11:30 a.m. sharp. I went back to my desk for it.”

“It was now just about 11:30, eh? When you went into the private office, what was Gosling doing?”

“He was sitting at his desk.”

“He was perfectly all right?”

“Yes, Senator.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

She opened her mouth. She paused. “No, he didn’t actually say anything. He just smiled and motioned me toward the chair I usually take dictation in. I held up the envelope. I was just about to tell him about it when the gun went off.”

“And you saw Gosling being hit with the bullets?”

She nodded wretchedly. “He jerked back, then started to sag over. Then Captain Cozzens and Mr Odell rushed in.”

“Is that all?” rasped Banner.

She bowed her head again.

McKitrick, the FBI departmental head, stirred uneasily by the wall. “Now,” he said, “you see what’s got the wits of two organizations stymied!”

Banner was looking down at his stogie. It had gone out, but he wasn’t even thinking about it. He said: “I’ll tell you what I think about it.”

McKitrick looked at him hopefully. “What?”

“It couldn’t’ve happened! It’s too damned impossible!”

Ramshaw must have been about forty-five. A cigarette dangled limply out of his slack lips as he sat on the bench at the special messenger service. He wore a weather-faded blue uniform with shrunken breeches and dusty leather leggings.

Banner loomed over him, his enveloping black wraprascal increasing his already Gargantuan size. “You remember the envelope you delivered to the New Zealand Legation yesterday?”

“That’s easy, mister. I never handled one like that before. A 10-year-old kid came into our agency about 10:00 in the morning and said somebody told him to leave the envelope with us to be delivered immediately. We didn’t ask too many questions, seeing as the kid had more than ample money to pay for the delivery.”

“Did he say whether the someone was a man or a woman?”

“Nope.”

“Did anyone tamper with the envelope while it was here?”

“Nope. I was assigned to do the job, mister. I kept the envelope right in front of me till I delivered it to the Legation at 11:00. It had written on it, Deliver to Mr Kermit Gosling at 11:30a.m. sharp, so I wanted to be sure it got there in plenty of time.”

Banner glowered. “Didja know there was a gun in it?”

Ramshaw squirmed as if his shrunken breeches chafed him. “I – I thought there was. That’s what it felt like through the heavy paper.”

“Nobody stopped you on the way to the Legation? Tell me if someone even bumped into you.”

“Nope, nope. Clear sailing all the way, mister.”

Banner looked down at a pocket watch that must have been manufactured by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. He muttered: “I can still ketch Lockyear before lunch.”

He went out of the agency, leaving behind him a grinning messenger. “Say, mister! Thanks for the tip!”

Lockyear, in his office on Pittsylvania Avenue, played with his King Tut beard as Banner made himself known to him.

“It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of, Senator,” said Lockyear. “But I’m afraid I can be of very little help. Gosling was far from dead when I left him.”

“While you were in the office,” said Banner, “did you notice anything threatening?”

“Threatening? No, not a thing, Senator.”

“Perhaps you’d tell me what you were seeing Gosling about.”

“Of course I have no objection, Senator. I’m an exporter-importer. I’ve been seeing Gosling about clearing some shipments that have been going in and out of New Zealand. Governments are touchy these days about cargoes.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all, Senator.”

In a few minutes Banner was on his way back to the Idle Hour Club. As he entered the convivial surroundings and lumbered into the dining room, he found McKitrick waiting for him.

“The only thing about this case that’s plain,” said McKitrick abruptly, “is the motive. We know why Gosling was killed.”

“Do you?” Banner squeezed in behind a table and told a waiter he wanted some straight whiskey.

McKitrick said in a lower voice: “Gosling was collecting information on a spy who’s been selling all our secrets to the Russian Government. Gosling didn’t know exactly who it was, but he was getting dangerously close to that truth. Unfortunately the spy got to Gosling first. The Russian pistol is evidence of that.”

McKitrick stopped talking long enough to allow the waiter to place Banner’s whiskey before him.

“Yass?” Banner fired up another big stogie.

McKitrick continued: “I’ve been thinking about Gertrude Wagner. She admits she’s from East Germany. Her sympathies might easily lie with the Commies. We have only her word that she’d broken with them. What’s more to the point, Banner, she was in the room with Gosling when he was killed. The only person in the room with him. And she was holding the gun that killed him!”

“So?” muttered Banner. “Mebbe you can explain away the sealed envelope.” When McKitrick didn’t answer, Banner shrugged. “How was she able to shoot the gun through the envelope without making any holes in it?”

McKitrick sighed. “Times are getting brutal for us investigators when all a murderer has to do is send his victim a gun by mail and it does the killing for him.”

The wind coming across the Potomac River that afternoon had the icy sting of early winter on its breath.

Gertrude Wagner, wrapped up in a cloth coat, walking on the park path, stopped suddenly. She stared nervously around her. A man in an oystercolored balmacaan, who had been following her, veered around a turn in the path. When he saw her looking straight at him he hesitated for a fraction of a second, then he kept on coming, his pace more deliberate. Under the slant brim of his hat Gertrude could see the bright red hair. The wide shoulders were familiar.

She stood there until Odell came up to her. He grinned sheepishly. “Hello, Gertie. Mind if I walk the rest of the way with you?”

She drew back a pace as if she was afraid he might contaminate her. Her face looked pale and scared. “You’ve been following me,” she accused him.

Odell was sober. “To tell the truth, Gertie-”

“Why do you have to hound me? Can’t you leave me alone?”

“I’m not hounding you,” he said, disheartening to know that she had interpreted his actions that way.

“You are, Mr Odell. I haven’t been able to make a move since you came to the Legation without having your eyes on me. You people are watching me all the time, waiting to pounce on me for the least slip I make. I thought America was a free country, but the police watch you here as much as they do over there… You think I killed Mr Gosling!”

“Did it ever occur to you,” he said through clenched teeth, “that I might have other reasons for wanting to be near you?”

“What?” she said, hardly believing her ears. “What did you say?”

“You’re not hard to take, Gertie,” he said.

“Take?” she said in confusion. “Oh but-”

“You never gave me much encouragement. You always seemed to have so much on your mind, Gertie.”

“If that’s really true, Mr Odell, I’m sorry I – if I offended you just now.”

“If it’s really true! You don’t think I’m telling you the truth?”

“I can’t be sure of anything any more.”

“I was in that office to protect Mr Gosling – and you.” He looked at her steadily. “You believe me, Gertie.”

She looked back at him for a long moment, and he thought her eyes were watering.

She lowered her gaze. “Yes, Mr Odell, I do. I do believe you.”

“Well, then,” smiled Odell, “I hope you’re not doing anything tonight, as I want-”

“Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry. Not tonight. I have an appointment I can’t break. Shall we make it some other time?”

“Sure, Gertie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” She smiled. “So long then.” She had her right hand in her coat pocket. She took it out and held it toward him. He grasped her palm. And then he felt that she had something in her hand – a slip of paper. When she drew her hand away she left it in his palm. He felt, with a rush of intuition, that everything was wrong. He pretended not to notice what she’d left in his hand. As she turned on her high heels to walk swiftly away from him, he thrust his own hand into his pocket.

He watched her go out of sight along the path, then he walked out of the park in the opposite direction. He was curious about what she was trying to convey to him. He went into the first street corner phone booth he came to and took the slip of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.

The wrinkles of perplexity increased on his forehead.

The paper was blank except for two circles, a small one inside a much larger one, drawn on it in pencil.

Gertrude, the cold night wind whipping the coat about her knees, went up the legation steps. All the windows were dark. X Street was dark. Fumbling in her handbag, she took out a key, unlocked the front door, and slipped into the vestibule. It was all cold marble, like a mausoleum. She left the front door unlocked behind her as she went in, as if she was expecting someone else to follow her.

She flicked on a cigarette lighter to light her way up the plush carpeted stairway to the third floor. This was the floor on which the murder had been committed. She went into the office, tiptoeing past her desk in the reception room, going into the private office.

She looked at Gosling’s empty chair behind the desk. Gosling’s bloodied ghost still seemed to occupy it. And she shuddered.

She remembered a line from one of the newspapers … A nameless horror has stalked through the Legation…

The watch on her wrist ticked away loudly. She was painfully conscious of time. Everything had depended on time.

She did not know anyone was in the room with her until she heard the door between the offices click softly closed.

She turned around with a violent start. The cigarette lighter flicked out when she released her thumb. A shadow moved against the closed door.

“Is that you?” she gasped.

A powerful flashlight blinded her.

“Yes,” answered a voice. “Have you done all that was expected of you?”

She nodded miserably.

“Fine.” She heard a heartless chuckle.

And that was all she heard, for it is doubtful if she heard the two quick coughs before the lead slugs tore into her breast.

She was dead before she hit the floor.

McKitrick was saying: “The patrolman on the X Street beat saw the door of the Legation swinging open in the wind. He thought something was up, so he took a prowl through the building. He was the one who found her.”

Someberly Banner looked down at all that was left of Gertrude. “It’s a crying shame,” he muttered.

Odell sat gloomily on the edge of the desk. He roused himself up enough to say: “Well, this isn’t as puzzling as the first shooting. I talked to Gertie in the park this afternoon, Senator. She said she was going to meet someone tonight. Whoever it was just followed her in here and shot her. If I had any inkling this would happen, I never would have left her alone.”

Banner nodded. “It’s not your fault, Red.” He glared around. “What kinda gun this time? D’you know?”

McKitrick answered: “The medical examiner thinks it’s a.38.”

Banner snorted. “An American gun! This’s striking closer to home.”

Odell said: “There’s something else I’ve got to tell you, Senator. It might help you. I confess it doesn’t mean a thing to me. In the park today Gertie slipped this into my hand. She acted mighty secretive about it.” He gave Banner the paper with the circles drawn on it.

“Whatzit mean?” snapped Banner.

“Circles within circles. Wheels within wheels. You tell me, Senator.”

Banner looked at it front and back and held it up to the light to see if there were any pinpricks in it. Then, without saying anything, he crumpled it up and shoved it into his marsupial pocket. Plainly he could not make head or tail of it, but he wasn’t going to say so.

Though they stayed there till dawn they found no other clue to point to Gertrude’s murderer.

McKitrick woke up to find his phone ringing insistently and Banner on the other end of the wire.

“You never sleep, do you?” snorted McKitrick.

“Hardly ever, Mac. We ain’t got time for that now. It’s after breakfast. Come to the Legation and bring that small arms expert with you.”

“Captain Cozzens?”

“Yaas. Him. I’ve figgered out what everything means.”

“What put you on it?”

“Those circles.”

“Suppose you quit being so damned mysterious, Banner, and-”

“Get cracking to the Legation,” interrupted Banner. He hung up.

Banner was sitting in a leather chair, comfortably waiting for them to arrive. He bobbed his big grizzled head at McKitrick and Cozzens. His grizzled mane looked like a fright wig this morning, as if he had been trying to comb it with an eggbeater.

“Gennelmen,” he said, “this won’t take too much of your precious time. Lemme get on with it. First off, you will swear that there ain’t any Tokarev pistols hidden in that private office.”

“Of course not,” responded McKitrick a little testily. His face bore the results of a very hasty shave. There was a nick on his chin. “There isn’t as much as a needle hidden in there that we don’t know of.”

“And you can search me and find out I’m not packing a Russian pop-gun.”

“We’ll take your word for it, Senator,” said McKitrick shortly.

“We get on together,” chuckled Banner. He got up with a heave and a vast grunt. “You two sit here on the lounge, the way you were the other day with Odell, Cap’n.” He watched them sharply as they followed his suggestion. “I’m going in there.” He entered the private office, where Gosling and Gertrude had been killed, leaving the intervening door open. He was out of sight from the two watchers for about five minutes, then he reappeared and stood in the doorway, filling the frame with his bulk, his hands deep in the bulging frockcoat pockets. “Nothing up my sleeve, mates,” he announced.

They both stared at him, not knowing what to expect. Then both of them leaped to their feet.

Three loud shots had crashed out in the empty office behind Banner’s back!

Banner did not even take his hands out of his pockets. “And there you have it,” he said.

“But, great Godfrey!” yipped McKitrick, pushing past Banner to see who else was hidden in the private office. “Who fired that pistol?”

“It was a Tokarev automatic!” said Cozzens. “I’ll swear to that!”

“But there isn’t anyone here but you!” McKitrick glared helplessly around the room.

“Neverthless-” began Banner. “But let it keep awhile. There’re more important things like searches and seizures to be made.”

“Confound you, Banner!” said McKitrick, but he was in good humor about it.

“You can begin by arresting-”

The search was fruitless until Banner suggested that what they were after might be on microfilm and if they could not find microfilm in all the obvious places, it might be hidden in the electric light sockets.

That was where they found it.

They had all the proof they needed to arrest their man for espionage and murder.

And Carroll Lockyear, the export-import man, almost pulled his King Tut beard out by the roots when they confronted him.

McKitrick and the Assistant Secretary of State made impressive members of Banner’s small audience. Banner was prancing back and forth, gnawing a long stogie, as if he were holding a press conference. But he had not let the reporters in yet. They were all ganged up outside in the hall, waiting.

The Assistant Secretary of State fingered his chin reflectively. “The riddle of the sealed envelope-”

“Yaas, yaas!” Banner chuckled. “It’s simple when you know the sorta thimble – rigging that went on behind the scenes. I said in the beginning that I thought the murder was too damned impossible cuz one person alone couldn’t’ve accomplished it. Lockyear is the murderer and spy, all right, but he had forced poor Gertie to help him. Y’see, he was a Commie agent and Gertie told us that her crippled mother and her father are still stranded in East Germany. You can now see how easy it was for him to get her to agree to his scheme. He could tell her he’d get ’em outta East Germany if she played ball. If she still didn’t agree, he could easily threaten to turn the old folks over to the untender mercies of the MVD agents.”

He paused a moment before going on. “Gosling was getting onto Lockyear’s trail. Some time before the murder, Lockyear used a standard tape recorder. Lockyear let the tape run silently for three minutes, then he fired his Tokarev pistol three times near the recorder. He now had a tape recording of three minutes of dead silence, followed by three quickly fired shots. He handed that roll of tape over to Gertie for her to put in Gosling’s private office where he could get his hands on it later on. When he went into Gosling’s office to commit the murder that morning he had in his briefcase the Tokarev pistol with silencer on it, and also in the briefcase was a large manila mailing envelope that was a duplicate of the one to be delivered to Gertie’s desk by the messenger service. The gun that was delivered to Gertie by the special messenger route was probably a toy pistol, so that if the envelope were opened prematurely the whole thing could be laughed off as a practical joke.

“It was all timed to the split second. Lockyear stalled with Gosling till almost 11:30, talking business, then swiftly he pulled the silenced automatic outta the briefcase and shot Gosling in the chest three times with it before his victim could blink or cry out. Naturally the shots were not heard outside the room with the door closed. He whipped out the prepared envelope, snatched the silencer off the pistol – barrel, and shoved the pistol, still smoking, into the envelope, sealing it immediately. Next he set the prepared reel of tape on the recorder alongside Gosling’s desk – there’s one in every office and you’ve noticed that Gosling’s office had all the modern equipment – and then picked up the envelope and briefcase. It was now, according to his watch, 11:27. He flipped the tape recorder switch to on. Three minutes of dead silence, remember, then three shots. He put his arm around both the envelope and the briefcase so that the briefcase would entirely conceal the envelope to anyone waiting in the lounge. He came out of the private office and walked to Gertie’s desk on which the second envelope with the toy gun in it was lying, waiting to be delivered at 11:30 sharp. He put his briefcase down on her desk, so that it covered both envelopes. After getting Gertie to jot down his phony appointment for next Tuesday, Lockyear picked up his briefcase again – together with the envelope that had been lying on Gertie’s desk! In its place he left the one with the real murder weapon in it. He carried the other envelope out with him, still concealed behind his briefcase, and nobody was aware of the switch. So the gun that had just been used to commit the murder was now waiting for Gertie to carry it back in. She had been forced into it. She knew Gosling was already dead. She had to play out her part. She pretended to talk to Gosling on the interphone to give the illusion that Gosling was still alive after Lockyear left. Then she started to go into the private office, looked at her watch, knew the three minutes were almost up, then carried the sealed envelope in.”

He stopped and glowered around the room. “The three shots that were heard by the two witnesses were the ones already on the tape recorder! Cozzens even remarked that they were somewhat muffled!… The tape recorder ran itself out silently again, till Gertie, in the excitement that followed the discovery of Gosling’s dead body, managed to flip the switch off.”

“Good God!” muttered somebody in the room,

Banner cleared his throat with a big sea lion noise. “Haaak! Although Gertie had been terrorized into helping Lockyear remove a threat to his existence as a spy, she wanted desperately for one of us to know the truth. She knew she was being watched by everybody, their side as well as ours, so she couldn’t come right out and tell us about it. She drew two circles, one inside the other, on a piece of paper. She didn’t dare hint further. She was trying to call our attention to the reel of the tape recorder – circular. Yunnerstand? And she was trying to help us, boys. If she had completely obeyed the instructions of the murderer, I never would’ve found the tape still on the recorder in that office – she would’ve destroyed it. Last night the murderer killed her as a safety measure, thinking that his trail on tape had been completely wiped out.”