American Gun Mystery (16 page)

Sergeant Velie had just reported no luck in his ransacking of the room when there was a knock on the door, and Johnson opened it to reveal a badly frightened young man who wore the inevitable badge of servitude in his lapel, a carnation.

“Come in,” said Ellery heartily. “You say you were on duty yesterday evening. At what time do you come on?”

“Uh—at seven, sir!”

“Ah, at seven! How very fortunate. You’ve heard the news, I take it?”

The young man visibly shrank. “Y-yes, sir. About Mr.—Mr. Horne. Frightful.” He glanced fearfully at Kit out of the corner of his eye.

“Well, now,” said Ellery expansively, “naturally we’re interested in possible visitors to Mr. Horne’s room during the past few days. Might give us a lead, you know. Were there any?”

Vanity being appealed to, the gentleman responded in the customary manner. He assumed a frowning air, scratched his forehead delicately with the tip of a womanish fingernail, and then the sun rose in his cheeks.

He exclaimed: “Yes, sir! Yes, I think. …There was someone night before last, sir!”

“At what time?” asked Ellery quietly. Kit was very still, hands folded in her lap, and Curly did not stir on the bed.

“Oh, about half-past ten, sir. I—”

“Please. One moment.” Ellery turned to Kit. “What time did you say you returned to the Barclay night before last, Miss Horne?”

“Did I say? I don’t think—I said I got in late and found Buck already asleep. That’s true, Mr. Queen. I got in past midnight. I’d been out with Mr. Grant.”

“Mr.
Curly
Grant?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Curly Grant, who seemed to have something wrong with his throat, growled again.

“Go on, please,” said Ellery to the clerk. “There was a visitor at ten-thirty. And?”

“Mr. Horne entered the lobby about nine o’clock, sir, got his key at the desk—that’s how I know—and, I suppose, went upstairs. At ten-thirty a man stopped at the desk and asked for the number of Mr. Horne’s room. A man—I think it was a man, sir.”

“What d’ye mean—you
think
it was a man?” growled Sergeant Velie in his first oral contribution in some time. “Don’t you know the facts of life yet? Can’t you tell a man from a woman, or was there somethin’ queer about the guy?”

The clerk exhibited terror again. “N-no, sir, I don’t recollect anything but the—well, the vaguest kind of picture. You see, I was busy. …”

“Can’t you recall anything of his appearance?” snapped Ellery.

“Oh, sir, he was sort of tall, I think, and big, and—”

“And?”

The clerk fell back against the door. “I can’t remember, sir,” he said feebly.

“Oh, botheration!” murmured Ellery. “Well! I suppose it can’t be helped.” Then hope glittered again in his eye. “Wasn’t one of your colleagues at the desk with you who might have noticed this man?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid not. I was alone at the time behind the desk.”

Sergeant Velie grumbled his disgust, and Ellery shrugged. “What else?”

“Why, I told him: ‘Mr. Horne’s in 841,’ and he picked up the house phone and talked. I heard him mention Mr. Horne’s first name in addressing him, and then I think he said: ‘I’ll be right up, Buck,’ and he went away.”

“First name? Hmm. That’s interesting. Went upstairs? To this room?” Ellery gnawed his upper lip. “But of course you wouldn’t know. Thank you. And please
don’t
mention this to a soul, man. That’s a command.”

The clerk backed out precipitately.

Ellery nodded to Sergeant Velie and to Johnson. “Ah—Miss Horne, we’ll leave you alone now. I hope I haven’t given you too bad a time. But it’s really been most helpful. Come along, boys.”

“I’m stayin’,” announced Curly defiantly.

“Please do, Curly,” whispered Kit. “I—I don’t feel like being alone. I don’t want to sleep. …”

“I know, kid,” he muttered, and patted her hand.

Ellery and the two detectives silently left the room.

“Now, Johnson,” said Ellery with a snap, “don’t disturb those love-birds in there, and mind you keep an eye on both doors. You’ll have to park in the corridor all the rest of the night, I’m afraid. If there’s any irregularity call the Inspector at the
Colosseum.
He’ll send a relief soon.”

And Ellery tucked his arm between the Sergeant’s steer-like side and the Sergeant’s bludgeon-like arm, and the two men marched off like half of the four Musketeers.

I
T SEEMED TO ELLERY
that several years had elapsed since he and Djuna and the Inspector had so blithely taken seats in Tony Mars’s box in anticipation of a naive evening. He paused to look at his watch as he and the Sergeant reentered the
Colosseum.
It was ten minutes past four.

“What on earth,” he demanded of his silent companion, “would we do without Herr Einstein? It took the incomparable Teuton to make us realize how fragile Time really is—what an insecure place it holds in the scheme of things,
‘Le moment ou je parle est deja loin de moi.
…’ I suppose you aren’t acquainted with Boileau? The seventeenth century satirist,
‘Le temps fuit, et nous traine avec soi
—’”

“How you talk,” chuckled the Sergeant suddenly.

Ellery became silent with celerity.

They found—wonder of inestimable wonders!—the vast curving tiers of seats, which a few hours before had held twenty thousand, quite deserted. Except for the litter in the aisles, there was no sign of human occupancy. The fort had been evacuated—with trimmings—in something more than record time.

Except for the police, detectives, a few weary citizens, and the personnel of the rodeo, the
Colosseum
was empty.

“Wha’d you find?” croaked the Inspector, marble-gray with fatigue, as Ellery and the Sergeant entered the arena. Nevertheless he spoke with a certain eagerness.

“Nothing but this,” said Ellery, and produced the second revolver of the Horne pair. The Inspector seized it.

“Empty,” he muttered. “And it’s the twin, all right. Why’d he leave it in his room?” Ellery patiently explained. “Ah, then that’s out. Find anything else?”

“No papers or letters,” reported the Sergeant.

“A visitor,” reported Ellery; and repeated the testimony of the Barclay’s night-clerk. The Inspector went into the expected convulsion at the clerk’s deplorable lack of observation.

“Why, that visitor might have been Horne’s killer!” he cried, scowling ferociously. “And that mugg—Didn’t remember
anything
about him?”

“Tall and big,” said the Sergeant.

“Huh!”

“And now,” said Ellery, with a curious impatience, “tell me what’s happened here.”

The Inspector smiled bitterly. “Less than nothing. We’ve cleared the mob out, as you can see—got the last one on the street five minutes ago. And we
didn’t
find the .25 automatic.”

“You found no .25’s at all?” exclaimed Ellery.

“A half-dozen or so. Most of them about an hour ago. I sent ’em down to Knowles at Headquarters. He called me up a few minutes ago.”

“Yes, yes?”

“Not one of the .25’s we found in the crowd tonight, he says, could have fired the bullet that killed Horne!”

“Not one?”

“Not one. The right automatic hasn’t been found.”

“Well, well,” muttered Ellery, pacing up and down in the dirt. “A sweet state of affairs. I knew, I felt this would happen.”

“You know what I’m goin’ to do?” asked the Inspector presently, in plaintive tones.

“I can guess.”

“I’m goin’ to have the joint ransacked from top to bottom!”

Ellery clutched his throbbing temples. “The pleasure’s entirely yours. This—this Tomb of Mausolus! Go on. Search. I’ll wager one of Djuna’s doughnuts to the contents of the Treasury that you don’t find the gun.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” snapped the Inspector. “It didn’t get out of this building. We saw to that. It couldn’t have walked away, could it? So it must be here somewhere.”

Ellery waved his arm wearily. “I grant the full logic of the statement. But you won’t find it.”

It could not be said of the energetic little Inspector that he did not make valiant, even heroic, efforts. He swung into action by mobilizing his small army of investigators into squads. Sergeant Velie was detailed to captain the squad covering the arena itself. Detective Piggott headed the group in charge of searching the tiered bowl. Detective Hesse was deployed with five assistants to go through the dressing rooms, stable, anterooms, offices. Detective Ritter fell heir to the task of scouring corridors, ramps, areaways, cellars, storerooms, ash-cans, and whatever remained. It was a most thorough and workmanlike disposition of trained forces. The squads marched briskly away on their appointed errands. And Ellery stood helplessly by and cudgeled his aching brains.

The Inspector, fuming at the long delay necessitated by the gigantic task before his men, set himself to clearing up a random detail or two which had hitherto escaped his attention. He summoned the two gatekeepers of the arena, the men stationed at the eastern and western main exits of the arena. Their testimony was brief and led precisely nowhere. Both men—old rodeo hands vouched for by Wild Bill Grant himself—swore that no one could have slipped by them into the arena without having been seen. And they had permitted no one inside who was not dressed in cowboy costume, except Dr. Hancock, the rodeo doctor, and Dan’l Boone. Ted Lyons having ridden in astride a horse, as a member of the troupe, they had not spotted him. But what was infinitely more important was that the two old gatekeepers stoutly asserted that no one had
left
the arena after the fatal shot by way of their doors.

Whereupon it seemed necessary to ascertain, if possible, if anyone might have slipped from the arena via one of the innumerable small doors dotting the concrete wall of the oval on the north and south. This was not easily determined; but the whole problem was swept aside by Ellery, who pointed out that the arena was the arena, they all knew precisely how many persons had been in the arena from the moment of Wild Bill Grant’s entrance until after the murder, and that since everyone was still present and accounted for, no one could have escaped.

The search went on. The shock-drugged troupe of cowboys and cowgirls, still kept prisoner in the arena, were lined up in seated rows. The Inspector questioned them
en masse
and individually; he might have been addressing a group of stalagmites for all the information he elicited. They were all stolidly on the defensive; they sensed the Inspector’s suspicion, and they closed their shells like the hardbacks they were—quiet, immobile, in a vague way dangerous.

“Now what I want to know from you people,” roared the Inspector, “is if any of you noticed a particularly suspicious action when you were ridin’ and whoopin’ round the track just before the shot?”

No answer. They did not even turn their heads. Shorty Downs, that monster of muscle and tight skin, spat carefully past the Inspector; the brownish stream shot within twelve inches of the old man and landed with a little
spat!
on the tanbark. It seemed to be a signal of defiance; a ripple passed through the crowd, and glances grew darker and sharper.

“Won’t talk, eh? Mr. Grant, come here a minute.” The showman detached himself from the small group standing to one side, and dutifully trudged up to the Inspector. Ellery noted with a little start of surprise that Major Kirby was a member of the group; still present! The Major, he reflected, was a more inquisitive gentleman than he appeared.

“Well?” sighed Grant.

“
How
well?” retorted the Inspector.

“No savvy.”

The old man waved his thin veined hand over the heads of the troupe. “How well d’ye know this bunch?”

Grant’s features settled like plastic mud, and something cold took possession of them. “Well enough to know that not one of ’em would ’a’ taken a pot-shot at ole Buck!”

“But that isn’t answering my question.”

“They’re all ole hands—” began Grant icily; and then the ice melted away and was replaced by impenetrable steel. Something uneasy flickered in his hard eyes. “They’re all ole hands,” he repeated.

“Now, now, Mr. Grant, you wouldn’t try to fool an old man, would you?” murmured the Inspector. “You began to say they’re all old hands, and then you stopped. Why? Clear as daylight that you suddenly remembered they’re all
not
old hands. Speak up!” he said sharply. “Who’s the new man, or men?”

A faint sigh ran through the troupe, and there were black glances frankly directed at the Inspector. Grant stood very still for an instant, and then shrugged his heavy shoulders.

“Just rec’llected,” he muttered. “Ain’t nothin’, Inspector. I
did
take on a new hand t’day—”

The man named Slim Hawes, who was squatting in the front row, growled something derisive and disgusted. Grant colored.

“Who?” demanded the Inspector.

Grant stepped up to the group. “You, Miller,” he said tonelessly. “Come outa that.”

The man with the purple-sided face rose from the center of the group, hesitated, and then shuffled out of line and shambled forward. The Inspector stared at him for a moment, and looked away. The hideous ravaged left cheek was revolting. He was plainly in a spasm of nervous fear; his lips trembled, showing the molasses-brown teeth, and he spat three times—long spears of tobacco juice—on his way forward. …Boone had evidently outfitted him; he no longer wore shabby clothes but was dressed in a shiny new outfit.

“I’m here,” he mumbled, avoiding Grant’s gaze.

The showman licked his lips. “Inspector, this is Benjy Miller. I took ’im on before sundown. But I tell ya—”

“I’ll handle this. Well, Miller, what have you got to say for yourself?”

The man blinked. “Me? Say fer m’self? Why, noth-in’. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout poor ole Buck’s passin’, sir. Ter’ble thing to see, sir, all them hosses stompin’ on poor Buck, an’ me an ole bunkie o’ Buck’s—”

“Hmm! So you did know Horne, eh? Mr. Grant, how’d you come to take this man on so late?”

“He came to me from Buck himself, Inspector,” said Grant doggedly. “Buck wanted me to do somethin’ fer ’im. So I did.”