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

Chapter Eight

Since the obvious place to begin my investigation was at police headquarters, my first stop was there. But before starting out, I cleverly instructed the girls to wait at my apartment until I returned so that I could give Madeline a complete report on Tom Henry’s situation. I could just as easily have taken them along and had them wait in the lobby at police headquarters, of course, but I knew Fausta couldn’t bear the condition of my flat very long, and I hoped if I left her in it a sufficient length of time, I would find it clean when I returned.

I like Warren Day and respect his ability as a cop, but if I may make my understatement for the day, his moods are unpredictable.

This particular afternoon I found my scrawny friend in a relatively equable frame of mind. He didn’t fawn on me, but neither did he bite off my head for neglecting to knock before I opened his office door.

He merely gave me a sour look and said, “I didn’t send for you, Moon.”

“You have a young fellow named Thomas Henry in the pokey down here,” I said. “Entered a charge yet?”

“Nothing serious,” Day said negligently. “Just first-degree homicide.”

“Recall the red-haired girl you met last night? Madeline Strong? It seems she bears a deep and romantic love for your murder suspect,” I said, “and believes the police have entered into a conspiracy with the real murderer to pin the killing on her Thomas. Naturally I told her that was ridiculous, that the Homicide Department wasn’t dishonest. It was just inept. She hired me to do what I can for the boy.”

“That’s nice,” Day said agreeably. “Just offhand the only thing I can think of you can do for him is hold his hand in the gas chamber.”

“I’m allergic to HCN,” I told him. “I’d rather keep him out of the chamber. What have you got on him?”

“We went straight from Amhurst’s place to this Thomas Henry’s last night,” Day said. “It’s only two doors from Amhurst. Henry pretended to be in bed, but we pounded until he finally opened the door. The first thing we asked was for him to take a look at the pipe you and Hannegan found on the lawn outside the murder window. He admitted it was his but couldn’t account for it being on the lawn. While I questioned him, Hannegan took a look around. In a drawer in the boy’s workshop he found a twenty-five-caliber automatic like the ones the two women had. Only this one had been fired. We pulled Henry in on suspicion of homicide, and this morning changed the charge to homicide when Ballistics checked the shell casing you and Hannegan found near the pipe and decided the firing pin of Henry’s gun had set it off.”

“How about the slug?” I asked. “Did that check too?”

“When we dug it out of the wall, it was smashed all out of shape. A soft-nosed job. But its weight and composition were the same as the bullets remaining in the gun found in Henry’s workshop. That, plus the firing-pin mark on the ejected casing, is enough to cinch it as the murder weapon in any jury’s mind.”

“What’s the motive supposed to be?”

“For Ford’s murder? None. But remember the scrap Amhurst said he had with Henry because Henry thought he had stolen his invention? We think he was potting at Amhurst and accidentally hit Ford.”

“Maybe the gun was planted,” I said without conviction.

Day’s grin contained the same type of enjoyment I imagine a fox shows when he has a fat rabbit cornered. “That’s what young Henry insists. Claims he never saw it before. But the gold initials on the grip read ‘T.H.’ ”

Dubiously I thought this over. On the surface it sounded like a hopeless case, but I had to do what I could. In a way the case was a little too hopeless, the circumstantial evidence a trifle too complete. And I kept remembering that Ed Friday had tried to bribe me to leave town for ten days, just about the time it would require to get Tom Henry properly indicted by a grand jury.

“May I see the boy?” I asked.

The inspector shrugged. “If you want to waste your time.”

He pressed a buzzer on his desk and after a moment Hannegan stuck his head in.

“Let Moon see Thomas Henry,” Day said expansively. “He can have ten minutes.”

Thomas Henry was about twenty-five, long and gangling and with a mass of wiry black hair which stuck straight out from his head like the bristles of a scrub brush. He had a high, broad forehead, gentle and rather dreamy eyes, and a wide mouth which looked as though it was normally accustomed to a good-natured smile. At the moment the corners were drooping.

He was seated on a drop-down bunk with his hands clasped between his knees when Hannegan unlocked the door, let me in and relocked it again. Walking back down the corridor a few feet, the lieutenant waited impassively.

I told Henry who I was, why I was there, and when I noted his eyes resting rather wistfully on my cigar, offered him one.

“Usually I smoke a pipe,” he said, “But in all the confusion of being dragged to jail in the middle of the night, I forgot to bring one.” He accepted a cigar and, when I held a light for him, puffed cautiously, as though suspecting it might explode.

“To start out,” I said, “I want you to understand you have to tell me the truth or I can’t help you. If you killed Ford, I don’t want a confession, but I want you to tell me to drop the case right now. There isn’t any point in wasting Madeline’s money on a lost cause.”

“I didn’t kill him, Mr. Moon,” he said earnestly. He regarded me with a thoughtful expression and added, “I don’t much like the idea of Madeline bearing the expense though. Couldn’t I assume the responsibility of paying you?”

“Got any money?”

“Well, no. A few dribbles of royalties from a couple of minor inventions. Nothing above living expenses. That is, not at the moment. I didn’t mean I could pay you right away. I have a couple of new patent applications in, and both should bring me a lot of money within the next few years.”

“I may not live beyond the next few years,” I told him. “Particularly if none of my clients pay me until their ships come in and I have to stop eating until they do. We’ll let Madeline handle the bills, and if you feel indebted to her, pay her back when the bonanza arrives. Now what’s the story on the gun found in your workshop?”

He claimed he had never seen it before Hannegan pulled it from his workshop drawer.

“I understand it’s probably one of several Walter Ford gave to various people as presents,” he said. “I believe they’re checking serial numbers to make sure. But Ford never gave me a gun. Why should he have? I’ve only known him a couple of months, and our acquaintanceship was merely casual.”

“How casual?”

“Well, I met him at Madeline’s house one night about three months ago when I dropped in unexpectedly. He and Madeline and Barney Amhurst were having some kind of meeting. About the Huntsafe, I guess, though at the time I didn’t even know Barney was working on the Huntsafe. After that I saw Ford at Madeline’s maybe a half dozen times, but we never said more than a few words to each other. We certainly didn’t know each other well enough to exchange presents.”

“How do you account for your initials on the pistol?”

“I don’t,” he said.

There was nothing more I could get out of him about his relations with Walter Ford, but I did get his version of the ruckus with Barney Amhurst. According to Tom Henry, he himself had started working on a gadget similar to the Huntsafe while still a student at M.I.T. and had on several occasions discussed his idea with Madeline Strong’s brother Lloyd, who was also a student there. Lloyd had never mentioned that he was working on the same idea himself.

“Lloyd was closemouthed to the point of secretiveness,” Henry said. “You’d think that after I told him what I was doing, he’d return the compliment inasmuch as he was working on a similar project. Particularly since he was probably my best friend. I’ve known both Lloyd and Madeline since we were all kids together. But even Madeline didn’t know what Lloyd and Barney were working on until after Lloyd was shot. You see...”

“Whoa!” I said. “Lloyd was murdered too?”