Three to Conquer

3. Roped In

He had a small plant, employing six myopic but deft-fingered men. There was an office barely large enough to hold his desk and that of a secretary cum stenographer cum telephone operator. This person, Moira, was three inches taller than himself and about half the width. Cupid couldn't lug a ladder into the room and that fact suited Harper.

Seated at his desk, he was examining a set of miniscule glass forceps under a powerful magnifier when Riley opened the door and took the two steps necessary to reach the middle. His plainclothes effectively advertised him as a cop in disguise.

" 'Morning, Lieutenant," greeted Harper, glancing up momentarily before returning attention to the task in hand.

" 'Morning, Neanderthal." There being no extra chair, or space for one, Riley hooked a thick leg over a desk comer and rested himself as best he could. He bent forward to stare through the magnifier. "Beats me how paws so thick and hairy can fiddle with stuff that size."

"Why not? You pick your teeth, don't you?"

"Leave my personal habits out of this." Riley's eyes became accusing. "Let's discuss some of yours."

Harper sighed, fitted the forceps into a velvet-lined case and placed it in a drawer. He shoved the magnifier to one side, looked up.

"Such as what?"

"Being around when things happen."

"Can I help it?"

"I don't know; sometimes I wonder. It's mighty queer the way you latch onto this and that."

"Be specific," Harper invited.

"We've had a call. Fellow wants to know if you're still around. And if not, why not."

"All right, I'm still around. Go tell him."

"I wanted to know why he wanted to know," said Riley, pointedly.

"And he told you; he said it isn't in the mud."

"Mud? What mud?"

"At the bottom of the pond." Harper grinned up fit him. "He also asked whether I'm known to own a.32."

"You're right; it was Captain Ledsom. He gave me the details from first to last."

"Whereupon you solved the whole case for him," suggested Harper. "Two minds being better than one."

"You are going to solve it," said Riley.

"Am I?" Harper rubbed a chin (and produced gasping noises. "Moira, throw this bum out."

"Do your own dirty work," ordered Riley. "You aren't paying her to act as bouncer as well, are you? Let's get down to basics. You're going to let business go to pot; while you play Sherlock."

"Why?"

"First, because I told I Ledsom you could clear up the matter if continuously kicked. So he wants me to kick."

"And second?"

"Because there's now a reward for information leading to the apprehension and conviction of the killer or killers. Being human, and in old shoes, and wearing a tie obviously given with a gallon of grog you could use the dough."

"That all?"

"Not by a long shot. I've saved the best bit to the last." He grinned, revealing big teeth. "An hour ago some hoarse-voiced character phoned Ledsom and said he'd seen Alderson having an argument with a compressed bruiser answering more or less to your description. Know what that makes you?"

"The sacrificial goat," said Harper moodily.

Riley nodded. "We'd pick you up and sweat a confession out of you but for two things. One is that we know you too well to believe you did it; the other is that the witness is not available to identify you."

"Why isn't her

"He said his piece and cut off — so Ledsom doesn't know who called."

"That looks fishy."

"Some folks hate to get involved,'' observed Riley. "More's the pity."

"I'm not surprised. I became too public-spirited myself; see what it's bought me."

"You jumped into it. Get busy and wriggle out of it."

"I can't afford the time," Harper complained.

"You can't afford a spell in clink, either," Riley pointed out. "If Ledsom asks us to take you in, we'll have to do it."

"Do you think that's likely?"

"God knows. It depends on what they turn up in the way of further evidence."

"If they find any pointing at me, it will be purely circumstantial."

"That's a hell of a consolation when you're sitting around awaiting trial," said Riley. "The moment Ledsom believes he's got enough to convince, a jury, he'll make the pinch. He may then find he's wrong because the jury proves difficult to satisfy. But even if you get away with it, you'll have been put through the mill, lost a lot of patience, time and money."

Harper said flatly, "They haven't the chance of a celluloid cat unless they find that witness and he identifies me. Even that won't be proof. It will do no more than suggest a motive. And if the witness does identify me, he'll be a liar who knows something about the shooting and is trying to divert attention. He can't appear without becoming suspect himself."

"Could be. A way to find out would be to trace him and beat the truth out of him."

"The state troopers can do that themselves."

"Maybe," said Riley. "And maybe they couldn't."

"Maybe I couldn't, either."

"I'm not so sure. You've done some darned funny things these last few years."

"Such as what?"

"That Grace Walterson murder. Twelve years old and unsolved — until you sit on a park bench and hear a boozey tramp muttering about it in his sleep. You tell us. We grab him and he confesses."

"Sheer luck," informed Harper.

"Was it? The Grace Walterson case had been long forgotten and wasn't in our bailiwick, anyway; we had to check across country to get details. That guy did it all right. He was drunk like you said. There was only one respect in which his story didn't jibe with yours."

"What was that?"

"He didn't go to sleep and he didn't mutter. He swears he sat there, blurry-eyed but wide-awake and wordless, while you slid away and brought back a patrolman."

"He wrote his confession on paper and I ate it," said Harper. "I just can't resist paper." He frowned at the other. "You must be nuts. The sot voiced the burden on his conscience and gave himself away."

"All right." Riley stared at him very hard. "But you had to be there when he did it. Then there was the Tony Giacomo case. He heists a bank, kills two, and you have to be lounging nearby, two days later, when he—"

"Oh, give it a rest," suggested Harper wearily. "I'm thirty-seven years old; I have rubbed shoulders with nine wanted men, and you pretend it's remarkable. How many have you sat next to in your half century of sin?"

"Plenty, I daresay; but not one of them told me he was wanted and begged me to take him in."

"None begged me, either."

'The entire bunch did the next best thing. They made the mistake of being some, place where you were, too. You've upped our score of snatches by quite a piece and the Commissioner thinks you're Wonderman. There's something decidedly odd about it."

"Name it, then."

"I can't," confessed Riley. "I can't so much as imagine an explanation."

"Some people are always there when accidents happen," Harper pointed out. "They can't help it; it's the way things go. Take my Aunt Matilda—"

"Let somebody else take her — I'm married," said Riley. "Are you going to break this case, or do you prefer to wait until I'm ordered to bring you in?"

"How much is the reward?"

Riley looked prayerfully at the ceiling. "He weakens at the thought of money. Five thousand dollars."

"I'll stew it awhile."

"If the idea is to wait for the reward to be jacked up, you may wait too long."

With that, Riley bestowed a curt nod on Moira and walked out. They listened to his heavy footsteps fading away in the distance.

"Moira, do you sense anything strange about me?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Harper," she assured.

That was true enough. Her mind revealed that she wished he were ten inches taller and ten years younger; it might add a little spice to office work. She asked no more than that because her stronger emotional interests were being satisfied elsewhere.

He did not probe any more deeply into her thinking processes. His life resembled that of one perpetually walking by night through a city of well-lit and wide-open bedrooms. He tried not to look, didn't want to look, but often could not avoid seeing. He was guilty of invasion of privacy twenty times per day, and just as frequently regretted, it.

"Riley must be talking through his hat."

"Yes, Mr. Harper."

He called Riley, on the phone, midmorning of the following day, and announced, "You've given me the fidgets."

"That was my intention," said Riley, smirking in the tiny visiscreen.

"Everything is well in hand here, we being better organized than are some police headquarters. I can leave for a few days without risk of bankruptcy; but I'm not going away blind and bollixed."

"What d'you mean?"

"For a start, I'll get nowhere if the moment I set foot across the line Ledsom's boys grab me."

"I'll tend to that," Riley promised. "They'll leave you alone — unless they can prove you're ready for cooking."

"I want the addresses of Alderson's widow and of that girl. Also of the fellow who phoned Ledsom — if they've managed to trace him."

"Leave it to me; I'll call you back as soon as I can."

Harper pronged the phone, watched its fluorescent dial cloud over and go blank. What bothered him was the hulking but agile-minded Riley's vague suspicions concerning his aptitude for uncovering evil long hidden from everyone else.

The trick was easy enough. He had found out long ago that if he stared too long at a man with a guilty conscience, the recipient of the stare became wary while the guilt radiated from his mind in vivid details. Nine times in the last ten years he had gazed absently at people who had literally thought themselves into jail or the chair.

Harper had no difficulty in imagining the reaction should the news ever get out that no individual's mind was truly his own. He would be left without a friend, other than some person of his own peculiar type — if such a one existed.

As for the criminal element, they'd see to it that his life wasn't worth a moment's purchase.

Possibly he had been followed-up in police thought as a direct result of his foolishness, in passing them news so openly, and so often. He had been impelled to do it mostly because he detested finding himself in the presence of somebody who had got away with mayhem, and any time might try to get away with it again. It irked his sense of justice.

In the future, it might be better to pass the word to the police by some indirect method — such as, for example, the anonymous telephone call. It was doubtful whether that would serve, however; Harper had become too well-known a local character to leave the police puzzling over the source of such tip-offs.

The phone buzzed, and Riley came on. "I've got those two addresses." He read them out while Harper made a note of them, then said, "The unknown caller hasn't been traced, but Ledsom now thinks there's nothing to his message. They've found a fellow, roughly corresponding to your description, who gave Alderson some lip in the midmorning. There were several witnesses and, in all probability the caller was one of those."

"What was the squabbler doing at 4:00 p.m.?"

"He's in the clear; he was miles away and can prove it."

"H'm! All right, I'll go take a look around and hope my luck holds out."

"Is it luck?" asked Riley pointedly.

."Bad luck, to my way of thinking," said Harper. "If you had fathered ten sets of twins, you'd appreciate without being told that some men can be afflicted."

"More likely I'd appreciate that some guys know how," Riley retorted. "And that's the trouble with you — so go to it!"

He faded off the screen. Harper sighed for the third time, tucked the slip of paper with its addresses into a vest pocket, spoke to Moira.

"I'll phone each day to see what's doing. If you can't handle something urgent and important, you'll have to nurse it until I ring through."

"Yes, Mr. Harper."

"And if anyone turns up to pinch me, tell them they're too late — I'm on the lam."

"Oh, Mr. Harper."