Whistle Past the Graveyard [= Give the Girl a Gun]

Chapter Four

Just as I hung up the phone, Barney Amhurst rejoined us. He was still breathing heavily but had regained most of his color and, aside from a rather dazed expression, seemed to have shaken off the effects of shock. I noticed he still carried the boxlike object he had been holding when I first poked my head into the study. He looked at it rather puzzledly, as though wondering why he was carrying it around, then crossed to the fireplace and laid it on the mantel.

“That part of the Huntsafe?” I asked.

Amhurst nodded. “The transmitter.” Then tentatively he said, “The killer, Mr. Moon. Shouldn’t we...”

“Run outside to hunt him down in the dark?” I finished for him when he paused. “No. He’s gone by now, and we’d only trample any footprints he may have left if we start milling around in the yard. Besides, you have a gun?”

“Those.” Vaguely he gestured toward the rifle and shotgun in the wall rack.

“By the time we got those loaded, he’d be even farther away. We’ll let the cops handle the search.”

Friday returned from the kitchen with a fresh drink, bringing with him a tray containing a bottle of bourbon, a soda siphon and a bowl of ice. He set it on an end table next to Evelyn, who immediately began to mix herself another drink.

To Friday I said, “I’m going outside and bring in your bodyguard. See that no one leaves this room, and particularly that no one goes in there.” I pointed at the door of the murder room.

“Sure,” he said.

In the apartment house hallway several tenants were standing around discussing the explosion. When I stepped from Amhurst’s door, they all looked at me.

“Somebody dropped a light bulb,” I explained.

One or two looked dubious, but they all started to drift back toward their own apartments.

The gray coupé containing Friday’s bodyguard was parked almost squarely in front of the building at a point where its occupant could not see the side lawn. Recalling that Friday had addressed the man as Max, I called him by name.

He was leaning back with his eyes closed listening to the car radio, and when I spoke through the open window, he merely opened his eyes and rolled his head sidewise.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“You see anyone come from the side of the building there in the last few minutes?” I pointed toward the corner of the building behind him.

Straightening, he peered over his shoulder. “I ain’t got eyes in the back of my head, mister. What’s up? Anything the matter with Mr. Friday?”

“No, but you’re wanted inside.”

When we entered the apartment together, Max looked at his employer inquiringly.

“Take your hat off,” Friday said.

Without changing expression the bodyguard hung his hat on the back of a chair, leaned against the wall next to the door and waited.

The first police to arrive were a couple of radio-car patrolmen. The elder of the pair glanced into the room containing the dead man, asked if anyone had left since the killing occurred, and when we told him no, advised us to relax until someone from Homicide got there. Then he picked an easy chair to relax in himself and simply waited, leaving his younger companion standing with his back to the door.

A few minutes later I was surprised when the chief of Homicide himself arrived. Usually Inspector Warren Day likes to forget his work after five P.M., and unless special circumstances or important people are involved, he leaves night calls to subordinates.

Day was trailed by his perennial shadow, Lieutenant Hannegan, who, as always, wore a plain blue serge suit which looked like a police uniform without brass buttons.

When Day was sure he had everyone’s undivided attention, he swept off his straw hat, baring a totally bald scalp, and announced in the tone heralds customarily employ following a flurry of trumpets, “I’m Inspector Warren Day of Homicide.”

Then, before the company fully recovered from this impressive performance, he swung his gaze at me. “What are you doing here, Moon?”

“I was invited, Inspector. I was about to ask you the same thing. Doesn’t Homicide have a night shift any more?”

“The chief was holding a department-head meeting, and it broke up just as your call came in.” He peered at me owlishly. “When Blake told me you made the call, I decided to come over and see who you bumped this time.”

I said regretfully, “Sorry, Inspector. Somebody else did the bumping.”

I led him into the combination workroom-study while Lieutenant Hannegan kept a watchful eye on the other occupants of the apartment. After kneeling beside the corpse for a moment, Day rose, glanced at the jagged hole the murder bullet had made in the plaster in the far corner of the room after it removed the top of Walter Ford’s head, then turned his eyes toward the broken pane of the French doors.

“Walter Ford... that’s the dead man... and Barney Amhurst... he’s the slim, curly-haired guy with dimples... were in here alone when it happened,” I explained. “According to Amhurst, someone outside smashed the pane and then fired.”

The inspector walked over to stare dissatisfiedly at the small pile of broken glass lying on the floor beneath the broken pane. “Kind of silly stunt, busting the glass first, wasn’t it? You don’t have to break the glass before you shoot through a closed window.”

“Murderers are silly people,” I told him. “It happened the way Amhurst said all right. The door into the front room was slightly ajar, and I distinctly heard the tinkle of broken glass before the gun went off.”

“Why were the two men in here alone?”

“They were getting ready to demonstrate an invention.” I started to. explain what the Gimmick was, and how Fausta and I happened to become involved in the celebration of the newly formed Huntsafe Company, then decided he would understand the contraption better if he got the explanation firsthand from its inventor.

Leading him back into the front room, I said, “Amhurst better tell you about his invention. I’m a little vague on the details.”

“It’s a portable warning device for hunters, Inspector,” Amhurst said. From the mantel he removed the transmitter he had placed there a short time before, moved a small catch and showed that it opened like a box. Compactly arranged inside the case was a small square battery, a few things which looked like minute radio tubes, and a horseshoe-shaped coil wound with fine wire.

“This straps to your waist over the left hip,” he explained. “About where G.I.’s carry their first-aid packs.” He indicated the square battery. “This is the crux of the whole thing. It’s a battery of my own design and it develops seventy-five volts. Briefly, what the transmitter does is set up a huge electromagnetic field about itself. When another hunter enters this field equipped with a Huntsafe, the receivers of both hunters are activated. You wear the receiver on your wrist.”

In illustration he held out his left wrist, looked surprised to discover a compasslike object strapped to it, and said, “I forgot I still had a receiver on. I slipped it on just as Walt was shot.”

Snapping shut the case of the transmitter, he flicked a tiny switch, set the case on the mantel again and walked across the room away from it. When he was about ten feet away his wrist receiver began to emit a soft ticking sound. He stopped, held his wrist in a horizontal position and the compass needle pointed straight at the transmitter.

“In the core of its own field the receiver doesn’t work,” Amhurst said. “If it did, its own transmitter would make it click constantly and the needle would spin in a circle. You have to be at least three yards from the transmitter, and it will work up to four hundred yards.”

“Hmph,” Day commented. He looked at Hannegan and ordered, “Take a look around in there.”

While the lieutenant was carrying out this duty, Warren Day acquainted himself with Barney Amhurst’s guests.

The inspector got no help whatever from either Ed Friday or his bodyguard, Max, both disclaiming any knowledge whatever of Walter Ford’s private life. He did learn from Max that his last name was Furtell, but aside from that his questioning of the two men was a waste of time.

From Amhurst himself Day gleaned only the negative information that he would be unable to identify the murderer if he saw him again. Amhurst said he saw only a dim figure the other side of the glass and could not even be certain whether it was a man or a woman. This was not surprising since it was pitch dark outside.

Reluctantly the inspector turned to the women.