The Monkey Murder

Chapter VIII Beavers Big Moment

Sergeant Ackley, Beaver, and the two detectives burst into Leith’s apartment to find Lester Leith sprawled in a lounging robe, reading. He looked up with a frown as the men came charging through the door.

“Scuttle,” he said, “what the devil’s the meaning of this, and where have you been, Scuttle? I didn’t tell you you could have the evening off— Good evening, sergeant and... gentlemen.”

“Never mind all that stuff,” Sergeant Ackley yelled. “What the hell did you do with those emeralds?”

“Emeralds, sergeant?” Lester Leith asked. “Come, come, sergeant; let’s get at this logically and calmly. You’re all excited, sergeant. Sit down and tell me what you’re talking about. And is that gum in your hair, sergeant? Tut, tut, I’m afraid you’re getting careless.”

“Search him,” Sergeant Ackley yelled to the two detectives.

“Now, just a minute, sergeant,” Lester Leith said. “This is indeed an utterly useless procedure. I certainly don’t know what you’re looking for, but—”

“Search him!” Sergeant Ackley repeated, his voice rising with his rage. The detectives searched the unresisting Leith.

“Come, come, sergeant,” Leith said, when they had finished with their search. “I suppose you’ve made another one of your perfectly asinine blunders, but, after all, there’s no use getting so incensed about it. Do you know, sergeant, I’m commencing to get so I’m rather attached to you, and you’re going to burst a blood vessel if you don’t control your temper. Tut, tut, man, your face is all purple.”

Sergeant Ackley tried to talk, but his first few words were incoherent. After a moment, he managed to control himself enough to say: “We caught Mainwaring’s chauffeur. He had a cane with two imitation emeralds in it.”

“Did he, indeed?” Lester Leith said. “Do you know, sergeant, I gave him that cane.”

“So I gather.”

“Yes,” Lester Leith said, “I gave it to him. I thought that perhaps Mr. Mainwaring might be interested in it.”

“And why did you think Mainwaring might be interested in it?”

“Oh, just as a curiosity,” Leith said. “I had two of them, and I really had use only for one, you know. And Mainwaring’s a traveler, an explorer who—”

“Where’s the other one?” Ackley interrupted.

“Over there in the corner, I believe,” Leith said unconcernedly. “Would you like it, sergeant? I’ll give it to you as a souvenir of your visit. I had some idea for a while that a person might be able to work out a solution — and, mind you, sergeant, I mean a purely academic solution — of a crime by using these canes. But I find that I was in error, sergeant. So many times one makes mistakes, or do you find that to be true in your case, sergeant?”

“Tut, tut, sergeant, don’t answer, because I can see it’s going to embarrass you. I can realize that the professional officer doesn’t make the errors that a rank amateur would, yet I see that I’ve embarrassed you by asking the question.”

“Anyway, sergeant, I decided there was a flaw in my reasoning so I decided to get rid of the canes. I gave one to Mr. Mainwaring, thinking he might like it — that is, I left it with his chauffeur — and I’m giving you this other one.”

Sergeant Ackley said: “Like hell you made a mistake. You solved that Mainwaring robbery.”

“Robbery!” Lester Leith asked. “Surely sergeant, you must be mistaken. It was the killing of a monkey, wasn’t it? The malicious, premeditated killing of a harmless pet. I felt very much incensed about it myself, sergeant.”

“You felt incensed enough so you went out and grabbed the emeralds,” Sergeant Ackley charged.

“What emeralds?”

“You know very well what emeralds — the two that were in the monkey’s stomach, the two that the chauffeur stole.”

“Did the chauffeur tell you that he stole any emeralds?” Lester Leith asked.

“Yes, he did. He made a complete confession,” Sergeant Ackley snorted. “He and Mainwaring’s nurse had been corresponding. She wrote him a letter mentioning the emeralds and their plan for smuggling them in by making a monkey swallow them. Of course, she denies all that, but we know Deekin’s right about it. You trapped Deekin into taking two emeralds out of their place of concealment in the car he was driving, and putting them into that cane.”

“Indeed, I did nothing of the sort,” Lester Leith said. “I had no idea there were any emeralds in the cane.”

“Don’t hand me a line like that,” Sergeant Ackley told him. “You figured it all out.”

“And what did the chauffeur do with the emeralds?” Leith asked.

“Put them into the hollowed-out place in the cane he was carrying.”

“Then you must have found them in the cane, sergeant! Congratulations on an excellent piece of detective work! The newspapers will give you a big hand over this.”

“Those emeralds in the cane were imitations, and you know it,” Sergeant Ackley said.

“Tut, tut,” Lester Leith said sympathetically. “I’m so sorry, sergeant. I was hoping you’d been able to solve a case which would result in a great deal of newspaper credit, perhaps a promotion. But you can’t go to the newspapers with a lot of hullabaloo about getting two imitation emeralds. It’s too much like killing a caged canary with a ten-gauge shotgun, sergeant. They’d laugh at you. It’s anticlimactic. Now tell me, sergeant, in his confession, did the chauffeur state that the same two emeralds he had taken from the monkey’s stomach were in that cane?”

“Yes, he did, because he thought those were the two, but by some sleight-of-hand hocus-pocus you must have switched canes and got the cane which had the genuine emeralds.”

Lester Leith smiled. “Really, sergeant, at times you’re exceedingly credulous, and opinionated, and careless with your accusations. If the chauffeur swears that the emeralds he took from the monkey’s stomach were the ones which were concealed in that cane, then they must be the ones; and if there’s anything wrong with those emeralds, any question as to their genuineness or authenticity, it must have been the monkey who made the substitution. Monkeys are quite apt to do that, sergeant. They’re very mischievous.”

“And, incidentally, sergeant, I’d be very, very careful, if I were you, about making an accusation against a reputable citizen based entirely upon the word of a self-confessed crook, on the one hand, and an assumption of yours, on the other. There’s really nothing to connect them up. As I see it, sergeant, you simply cannot make a case against me unless you could find those genuine emeralds in my possession. Of course, I have only a layman’s knowledge of the law, but that would seem to me to be the rule. As I gather it, Mainwaring will swear he never had any emeralds. And certainly Mainwaring’s word will be more acceptable than that of his chauffeur, a self-confessed crook, according to your statement, sergeant. Of course, if there never were any emeralds stolen from Mainwaring, I could hardly be convicted of taking what had never been taken. At any rate, that’s the way I look at it. Larceny involves the taking of property. If you can’t show that there ever was any property, you can’t support a charge of larceny. That’s the way it appears to me, sergeant, although I’m just an amateur.”

“What do you think about it, Beaver? You know something of police matters; that is, you’re friendly with a young woman who is friendly with— But perhaps I shouldn’t mention that in front of the sergeant. He’s so zealous, he might resent any possible leak from headquarters.”

Sergeant Ackley stood in front of Leith, clenching and unclenching his hands.

“Leith,” he said, “you got by this time by the skin of your eyeteeth. I almost had you. If it weren’t for making myself appear so damned ridiculous if the facts ever became public, I’d throw you in right now and take a chance on convicting you.”

Lester Leith said: “Well, sergeant, don’t let your personal feelings stand between you and your duty. Personally, I think it would be an awful mistake for you to do anything like that. In the first place, you couldn’t convict me; and in the second place, it would put you yourself in a very ridiculous light. To think that with all the facilities which the police had at their command, they couldn’t solve a case so simple that a rank amateur by merely reading a newspaper clipping— No, no, sergeant, it would never do. They’d laugh you out of office.”

Sergeant Acklev nodded to the two men. “Come on,” he said; “let’s go. Beaver, step this way. I want a word with you.”

Sergeant Ackley led the undercover man into the soundproof closet where the telephone was kept.

“Beaver,” he said, “you’ve got to fix up a story to square yourself.”

“Great Scott, sergeant!” the undercover man exclaimed. “I can’t. He’s seen me working with you. He knows—”

“Now listen,” Sergeant Ackley interrupted. “We’ve spent a lot of money getting you planted on this job. With you here, we can keep track of what he’s doing. The very next time he tries anything, we’ll be certain to get him. But without you to keep us posted, he’ll laugh at us, flaunt his damned hijacking right in our faces, and get away with it. The man’s too diabolically clever to be caught by any ordinary methods.”

“I can’t help that,” the spy said doggedly. “I’ve shown myself in my true colors now, thanks to you.”

“What do you mean, thanks to me?” Sergeant Ackley demanded.

“You insisted that I accompany you.”

Sergeant Ackley’s face flushed with rage. “If you want to come right down to facts, Beaver,” he said, “you’re the one who’s responsible for this whole mess.”

“How do you mean I’m responsible for it?”

“I had the idea all along that those emeralds were in the monkey’s stomach. Then you got that brainstorm of yours that the nurse had stuck ‘em in the chewing gum, and damned if I didn’t let you sell me on the idea. I should have known better. You—”

“I thought that was your idea,” Beaver charged.

“Mine?” Sergeant Ackley’s eyes were round with surprise. “Why, don’t you remember telephoning me, Beaver, that—”

“Yes, and you said it was your idea.”

Sergeant Ackley said patronizingly: “You misunderstood me, Beaver. I told you that I’d already considered that possibility. That was all.”

The undercover man sighed.

“Now then,” Ackley went on, “you’ll have to make up for that mistake by devising some way of getting yourself back in Leith’s good graces.”

The big undercover man, his black eyes suddenly glittering, said. “O.K., I have an idea!”

“What is it?” Sergeant Ackley wanted to know.

“I could claim that I was under arrest; that you came here and pinched me first and then kept me with you all the time you were laying for him on the train and—”

“That’s fine,” Ackley said. “We’ll put that across.”

“But,” Beaver went on, “it won’t explain our conversation in the closet. You’ve spilled the beans now.”

“You’ll have to think up some explanation,” Sergeant Ackley said. “You thought up that other, now you can think up—”

“Of course,” Beaver said, “I could say that you’d called me in here and made me a proposition to spy on him and that I resented it.”

“Swell,” Sergeant Ackley said. “That’s exactly what we want. I knew we could think up something if we put our minds to it, Beaver.”

“Oh, we thought of this, did we?” Beaver asked.

“Certainly,” Sergeant Ackley said. “That is, I outlined to you what was required, and directed your thoughts in the proper channels. It shows you the value of supervision.”

“I see,” the spy said, his eyes still glittering, craftily. “But Lester Leith won’t believe that story unless I tell him that I bitterly resented your attempt to bribe me.”

“Well, go ahead and resent it,” Sergeant Ackley said.

“But how can I resent it?”

“You can shout at me, abuse me in a loud tone of voice.”

“No,” Beaver said, “this closet is virtually soundproof.”

“Well, think of something,” Sergeant Ackley said impatiently.

“I could push you up against the wall.” Beaver said, “and he could hear that. Then I’d have to hit you.”

Sergeant Ackley seemed dubious. “I don’t think we need to carry things that far, Beaver. We can scuffle around a bit and—”

“No. That will never do,” Beaver said. “We have to put this thing on right, or not at all. I won’t stay here unless we can do it convincingly.”

“Oh, all right,” Sergeant Ackley said. “Just to make it seem convincing, I’ll hit you first. You hit me easy, Beaver. You’re a big man. You don’t know your own strength. Come on; let’s get started. Now remember, Beaver, after things quiet down, I want you to get him started on the affair of the drugged guard.”

“What’s that?” Beaver asked. “I hadn’t heard of it.”

“Well, you will hear of it. We’ll give you all the dope. It happened last night. Karl Bonneguard was collecting funds for a political cult movement in this country. We don’t know how far it had gone. But he’d collected quite a bit of money. There was a grand jury investigation in the offing, so Bonneguard drew all the money out of the bank and—”

“I get you,” Beaver said. “What happened?”

“Somebody drugged the guard, and burgled the safe. We can’t find out how the guard got doped. It’s a mix-up that simply doesn’t make sense.”

“You don’t think the guard framed it and copped the dough?”

“No. The guard’s O.K. He warned Bonneguard soon as he felt drowsy. I’ll have to tell you about it later, Beaver. We haven’t time to discuss it now. We’ll go ahead with the act. We’ll open the door. You’ll be indignant.”

“O.K.,” Beaver said, “let’s go.”

They raised their voices in loud and angry altercation. Beaver flung open the closet door and said:

“I think it’s the most contemptible thing I ever heard of.”

“Go ahead and be a dumb cluck, then,” Sergeant Ackley roared. “You keep playing around with this crook and you’ll wind up behind the bars. You’re a crook yourself!”

“Liar!” Beaver shouted.

Sergeant Ackley lunged a terrific swing at Beaver’s jaw.

The undercover man, moving with the swift dexterity of a trained boxer, stepped inside of the blow. For a fraction of a second, he set himself. A look of supreme enjoyment became apparent on his face. He moved his right in a short, pivoting jab which caught Sergeant Ackley on the point of the jaw.

Ackley’s head snapped back. The force of the punch lifted him from the floor, slammed him back into the arms of the two detectives.

One of the detectives reached for his blackjack. The other dragged out a gun. Beaver whirled to face them, so that his back was to Lester Leith. He gave a series of warning winks and said:

“I call on you to witness that he struck me first, after accusing me of being a crook. Do you know what he wanted? He wanted to bribe me to stay on in this job and act as spy. I told him what I thought of him. I told him Mr. Leith was the best man I ever worked for.”

He took a deep breath and turned to Lester Leith. “I’m very sorry, sir,” he said, “for losing my temper. But Sergeant Ackley took me into custody, very much against my will, earlier in the evening. Disregarding my demands that I be taken before a magistrate, he dragged me aboard that train and forced me to accompany him. I didn’t dare disobey him. However, when he made this infamous proposal to me, I felt that I was well within my rights as a citizen in couching my refusal in no uncertain language and in defending myself against attack. I trust I haven’t done wrong, sir.”

The police officers stared in amazement at the spy. Lester Leith regarded the limp form of Sergeant Ackley with eyes that were half closed in thoughtful concentration. At length he said:

“No, Beaver, you’ve done exactly what I should have done under similar circumstances. I distinctly saw Sergeant Ackley make an unprovoked assault upon you.”

Turning to the two officers, Beaver said: “And I call on you two gentlemen to be witness to what has happened. I demand that you take Sergeant Ackley out of here. I think, when he recovers consciousness, he will be the first to tell you that I have done exactly what the situation called for.”

One of the detectives returned the spy’s wink. “O.K., Beaver,” he said, “you win. Come on, Al. Give me a hand and we’ll drag the sarge out of here before there’s any more trouble.”

When the door had closed behind them, Beaver said to Lester Leith: “Disloyalty, sir, is one of my pet abominations. I detest one who is disloyal. I couldn’t restrain myself.”

“I don’t blame you in the least,” Lester Leith said. “I’m surprised that Sergeant Ackley had the temerity to arrest you and drag you aboard that train.”

“So am I, sir,” the spy said. And then, with a look of cunning in his eyes, added: “Incidentally, sir, while I was with them in the drawing room, I heard them discussing a crime which was committed no later than last night; a crime involving a drugged guard—”

Lester Leith held up his hand, palm outward. “Not now, Scuttle,” he said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

The spy said, “Perhaps tomorrow, when you’re feeling rested—”

“No, not tomorrow, Scuttle.”

The spy did not press the point. “Very well, sir,” he said.

“By the way, Scuttle,” Leith commented, “I think I’d like a brandy, and you’d better join me. I derived a great deal of satisfaction from the way you hung that punch on Sergeant Ackley’s jaw.”