BAYNARD (HARDWICK) Kendrick (1894-1977) was born in Philadelphia and graduated from the Episcopal Academy in 1912. In 1914, he became the first American to join the Canadian Infantry, signing up one hour after World War I was declared; he served as a sergeant in England for the duration of the war.
During WWII, he instructed blind veterans, receiving a special plaque from General Omar Bradley to honor his work. Although fully sighted, he had a life-long interest in the blind and was one of the organizers of the Blinded Veterans Association, its only sighted advisor, and Honorary Chairman of its Board of Directors. After jobs with various companies in Florida, Philadelphia, and New York, he became a full-time writer in 1932 and settled in Florida.
Kendrick was one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America, bearing membership card #1, serving as its first president in 1945, and receiving its Grand Master Award in 1967.
While producing numerous short stories for the pulps, notably the series of fourteen stories about Miles Standish Rice that he wrote for the prestigious Black Mask, the most distinguished of all detective fiction magazines, he is remembered today for his novels about Captain Duncan Maclain, a blinded WWI veteran who becomes a private eye, assisted by his friend and partner, Spud Savage, but even more by his two dogs, Schnucke and Dreist.
The first Maclain novel, The Last Express (1937), was filmed by Universal in 1938 with Edward Arnold, who also starred in The Hidden Eye (1945), an original film script in which Maclain battles Nazi spies. The 1971-1972 television series Longstreet that starred James Franciscus as a blind detective, was based on the Maclain series.
“5-4=Murderer” was originally published in the January 1953 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
By Baynard Kendrick
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF BLINDNESS, and twenty-one years as a private investigator, had driven home one unassailable truth to Captain Duncan Maclain. He lived in a world of blackness, but it was lighted with hearing, touch, taste, and smell. To disregard any notion conveyed to his mind by those four keen senses working together, no matter how foolish it seemed for the moment, was to court trouble, and sometimes to invite death . . .
It lacked five minutes of midnight when Maclain got out of the heavy truck that had picked him up hitch-hiking three miles away on 17-E, plodding carefully along with his left foot on the macadam and his right on the grassy shoulder. The friendly driver hadn’t guessed he was blind, but had felt Maclain’s urgency to reach a telephone.
“That’s Nick’s Diner over there.” People were always uselessly pointing out places to Duncan Maclain. “This is the junction of 303 and 17-E. I’d pull up closer but I bogged there once. You can’t put these trucks where you can put a car.”
“Thanks a million,” said Duncan Maclain.
The truck rolled off. Twenty minutes before, a December storm in the southland had broken with a freezing wind and an icy deluge. Using a stick he had cut in the woods as an emergency cane, the captain stepped out swiftly toward the smell of the diner, strong on the breeze through the pouring rain.
He was miserable, and strung as taut as an overtuned wire. A long-distance call from Philip Barstow, the state’s attorney, had brought the captain without Schnucke, his Seeing-Eye dog, from New York to Red Platte that morning by plane. They’d driven thirty miles out to Barstow’s one-room hunting cabin, and hunted quail all day. Barstow was one of the captain’s oldest friends, and he was never surprised at Maclain’s ability to knock down three out of five singles, shooting merely at the sound.
There had been trouble and graft in the State Police, according to Phil Barstow, and the Crime Commission had started a probe on four recent unsolved shootings and on the unrestrained gambling in the vicinity. Colonel William Yerkes, in charge of the State Police, had finally asked Barstow to call in Duncan Maclain. A blind man interested in criminology, looking over the workings of the department, could accomplish more than any sighted investigator, in Yerkes’s estimation.
Then, sitting over highballs after dinner in the hunting camp, Phil Barstow had toppled out of his chair, seized with a sudden heart attack just as he started to explain. He had given the captain Yerkes’s private telephone number, 3-2111, and that was about all.
It was the start of a vivid grueling nightmare for Duncan Maclain. He had made Phil Barstow as comfortable as he could, and then left the camp in a panic. Working with his braille hunting-case compass, and following the sand woods-road with a foot in one six-inch deep rut, he had by some miracle of direction made the state road, 17-E, by 11:30.
His cigarettes, holder, and lighter were on the table when Barstow fell. His wallet, with identification card and money, was in a pocket of his hunting jacket hanging on the cabin wall. A search of his hunting pants and the pockets of the ancient woollen shirt he wore rewarded him with a badly rumpled handkerchief and a single dime. That, at least, was a break, for when he reached a phone he could make his call.
Exactly ninety-six steps from the truck his improvised cane struck an artificial hedge in front of the diner. The captain found an opening a little to his right, took two steps up, and briefly stood listening before he went in.
It might have been a cough he’d heard, or the clearing of a throat. It might have been imagination carried to his overstrung nerves and tired body on the driving rain and rising wind. Whatever it was, it conveyed a feeling of being watched. His listening brought no recurrence. He shrugged and dismissed it as he opened the door and went in.
Nobody spoke and he heard no breathing. He took two steps forward and found the counter. Muffled sounds of running water and the clatter of dishes drifted in toward him—from a pantry, probably, with a swinging-door entrance in back of the counter.
He followed thirteen stools to the right and found a cigarette machine partly blocking a window. A hinged flap there gave a passage through the counter.
He retraced his steps to where he had started and walked on down to the other end, twelve stools more. There he found a telephone booth.
He went inside and shut the door and sat for a space holding on to his dime. A call to Colonel Yerkes would solve everything—get a police car to pick him up at Nick’s Diner and dispatch an ambulance to the camp for Phil. It would also do something else—tie Duncan Maclain and Yerkes inextricably together. Maclain was supposed to be looking over the department on his own as Barstow’s friend. He wasn’t supposed to know the colonel, and didn’t. The uncanny judgment that had made the captain what he was, told him in every fiber that to call the colonel was wrong.
He put in his dime, dialed the operator, and asked for the Chief, saying he wanted to report an emergency call.
When he hung up he felt certain an ambulance would get to the camp for Phil and that the Red Platte Hotel would send a car for him. He had explained everything to the chief operator. There was always one great light burning steadily through the blackness, the friendliness of all the world to people who couldn’t see.
His dime had even been returned. It would buy a cup of coffee. He put it in his pocket and sat for a space with his forehead wrinkled.
Life was full of patterns to Duncan Maclain and the pattern of the phone booth seemed somehow awry. His hand went over the dial box and paused on top. A double bell was there. That seemed natural enough, although different from the type of dial box he knew in New York. But under the shelf where the telephone sat he found two more boxes fastened to the phone-booth wall. Each of the boxes had bells on top—bells of different shape, designed to give a different sound. It was those boxes that had been cramping him since he first sat down, pressing up against his knee.
He came out, found a stool near the phone booth, and sat down; then he called out, quite loudly, “Hello, is there anybody here?”
“Who do you think I am?” a voice demanded from behind the counter farther down. “Do you think I’m deaf or can’t you see?”
“The last one’s right,” said Duncan Maclain. “I’m blind.”
“Well, whatta ya know!”
Steps came toward him in back of the counter. He was conscious of an odor of pomade and clothes long impregnated with cooking. Someone breathed on him—a short man from the location of his head, and heavy, judging from the weight of his steps as he walked along the duckboards in back of the counter. The captain was suddenly conscious of his two-day growth of beard, his damp ragged shirt, and tousled hair.
“You must be that blind guy who goes hunting with Phil Barstow.”
“That’s right.” The captain held out his hand. “I’m Duncan Maclain.”
“Well, whatta ya know! I’m Nick Gherigis. I own the joint.”
A pudgy hand, freshly wiped but not too dry of dishwater, shook the captain’s, confirming his estimation of Nick’s height and girth by its feel.
“Phil’s been stopping in here for over ten years now. Where is he?”
The captain told Nick what had happened.
“Well, whatta ya know!” said Nick Gherigis. “My old lady’s got a bum ticker, too. We live out in back. She’s having to take it easy. Usually she helps, but right now all the work is on me. I’d drive you back to the camp now, but I don’t like to leave her.”
“I feel sure the ambulance will get there,” Maclain told him.
“It’ll get there for Barstow. He’s the big wheel around here. You hungry?”
“Plenty.”
“I’ll fix you up some ham and eggs.”
“I only have a dime with me.”
“Skip it,” Nick said. “Phil will pay me if you don’t.” He hesitated briefly. “Hell, I suppose if you can shoot a bird you can eat ham and eggs without me feeding you.”
The captain said, “I usually manage to find my mouth.”
The telephone rang in the booth.
“Shall I answer that for you?” Maclain got up from his stool.
Nick said, “Let it ring. The joint’s closed. It’s ten past 12. If you’ll excuse me a minute I think the old lady’s calling me.”
Over the intermittent ringing the captain heard the swish of a swinging door. He could follow Nick for a few quick steps. The phone bell rang again and at its pause he felt quite certain that out in the pantry Nick had closed another door.
Maclain sat down on a stool right by the booth. A quick thought struck him that someone might be calling him at Nick’s—from the hospital or hotel. Cursing his own stupidity, he reached in the booth without leaving the stool, found the receiver, and put it to his ear.
Nick’s voice came over the telephone, trembling in intensity: “A hundred a week is cleaning me now. I’ll blow the works before I’ll double it. Kate don’t know nothing, but I’m leaving her a list that’ll jail everyone in the whole damn state if anything happens to me. Now go to hell!”
When the swinging door swished as Nick came back, the captain was sitting with his elbows on the counter.
There was a tinkle of keys, the snip of a lock, and the unmistakable ring of a bell and slide of a drawer as the cash register opened. A clink of change followed, and the crisp dry rustle of currency. Then came the tap of bills being straightened on edge against the top of the counter.
Nick went back through the swinging door. An instant later something clanged.
An atmosphere of menace had suddenly seeped into the diner. The captain was as sensitive to the coming of trouble as he was to the brewing of a storm. Nick was frightened. His voice and words had told all that on the extension of the pay phone. Now, after locking the cash register up for the night, he’d opened it again and removed all the money to hide it somewhere in the pantry.
“I hope he’ll trust me for some cigarettes,” muttered Maclain.
Nick came back, shut the cash register drawer, and said, “It’s a helluva night. If that car don’t show from the hotel, you’d better stay here. There’s an extra little room at the back. It ain’t much, but it’s dry. I’ll fix your eats.”
Gas popped under a grill, ignited from the pilot light that Nick turned on. It was followed by the soft slap of a piece of ham tossed on the grill. The captain heard the crack of eggs against the edge of a bowl, and a second later, a comforting sizzle.
The captain nerved himself, as if for a great ordeal. “I left my cigarettes at the camp—with all my money. I hate to impose on your kindness, but I was wondering—”
“Name your brand,” Nick said.
Then it happened.
Accompanied by a gust of wind, someone came through the diner door, about ten stools from where Maclain was sitting. In a voice that was high with terror, a woman screamed from behind the swinging door: “Nicky, don’t shoot! Don’t kill anyone!”
A gun went off, firing three times. The muffled footsteps of slippered feet stumbled off in the pantry.
Nick went down, slithering more than falling, collapsing forever with the feeble dead flap of his pudgy hand against the counter.
The captain sat like a man of bronze, his cup half-raised. Any second the gun would go off again and his own career would be finished.
Unhurried footsteps walked away—toward the other end of the diner where the cigarette machine stood. The captain listened, counting, and let a sound-etched photograph developed in his brain of a man about the size of Nick, with an overcoat rapping against his legs.
The captain remembered the hinged counter-flap. He heard it raised, and he could feel the vibrations as the man swung it over and dropped it against the counter.
He counted the footsteps along the duckboards and jumped involuntarily at the sound of the bell and the opening of the cash drawer.
For three long seconds he listened to heavy and muffled breathing, as the man stared in the drawer. The captain knew then why the man hadn’t shot him.
The man was masked with something covering his nose and mouth—a handkerchief perhaps. He couldn’t know Maclain was blind, but he didn’t care; he couldn’t be recognized.
The clank of metal sounded from the duckboards near where the captain figured Nick lay. “He’s disposed of the gun beside his victim,” the captain thought, and wondered why.
The heavy footsteps retraced their course, paused for a second inside the door, then went on out.
For thirty seconds the captain waited, tense and listening. There had been no sound of a car.
He set his coffee cup down and began to function again. When he knew his way, he could move much faster than most sighted people. He went to the end of the counter and through the opening almost on a run. Then he grew more cautious. He felt along, with his fingers brushing shelves of condiments and canned goods, until he reached the swinging door. As he had already pictured, a large round porthole of glass was set in the door.
The woman who had screamed was undoubtedly Mrs. Gherigis. She must have seen the gunman through the window in the door. The captain figured swiftly that she couldn’t have seen Nick standing in front of the grill out of range of vision.
Why had she screamed, “Nicky, don’t shoot! Don’t kill anyone!”?
The captain snapped his fingers in sudden understanding. The masked killer must have been wearing some of Nick’s clothes. Mrs. Gherigis didn’t know her husband had been shot—she had thought he was the killer!
“Of whom?”
Obviously the man, whoever he was, who was shaking Nick down.
The aroma of the cooking ham and eggs grew sharper, mixed with the smell of the simmering coffee.
If Duncan Maclain knew any fear, it was that of fire. With even greater caution, he located the gas knob and turned off the grill.
His foot touched Nick’s head. The captain knelt and let his perceptive fingers roam lightly over Nick’s body. The gunman was an expert and he had shot to kill, wasting nothing. All three bullets had hit, one in Nick’s stomach, one in his mouth, and one in his eye.
Water was gurgling softly in the Monel-metal sink, under the counter close by the captain’s head. He cleansed the blood from his fingers.
Anxious now to check the accuracy of his hearing, he felt around Nick’s body until he found the gun. With his hand resting on it, he froze.
The swinging door had opened gently behind him, but that wasn’t the sound that held him rigid. It was the unmistakable click of a hammer as someone cocked a .38 revolver.
“Mrs. Gherigis?” a man’s voice called out.
The captain made no move to turn.
“You there! Don’t bother to look around—just leave that automatic where it is. Stand up slowly and put your hands behind you. I’m Corporal Walsh of the state police and I’ve got you covered.”
The captain obeyed. The chill of steel on his wrists was cold as Walsh snapped handcuffs on. He felt himself frisked by an expert hand that relieved him of his pocket knife and laid it on the counter. The frisking seemed to throw Maclain off balance and he leaned against Walsh to right himself. Walsh was tall and thin, and he pushed the captain angrily away.
Then Walsh yelled, “Burzak—come in here!”
A blast of icy wind struck the captain as another man came in.
Seconds ticked by, then Burzak asked, “Isn’t that the guy that got off the truck?”
“The same,” said Walsh. “Get Lieutenant Corman personally on the phone and tell him exactly what happened—that we were parked down there on 303 at the crossroads, saw this man get off the truck, and were watching the place when we heard the shots. We drove up with our lights off and nailed him.”
“Efficiently, too,” muttered Duncan Maclain. “I was so busy checking my marvelous powers of hearing that I didn’t hear you fellows come.”
The captain’s braille-watch said five to one. The two police cars, with Lieutenant Corman and his three technicians from Homicide, had rolled up twenty minutes before. The captain had heard them brake to a stop.
Corman was thickset, quiet, efficient, and deadly. It hadn’t been very difficult to identify himself to Corman. The lieutenant had checked by phone with the hospital and found that an ambulance was on its way to Barstow. Then he had checked with the Red Platte Hotel and learned that they had not yet been able to send a car out to Nick’s because of the storm. “Cancel it,” Corman told them smoothly. “We’ll bring him in.”
“Dead or alive,” thought Maclain.
Corman had then ordered the captain’s handcuffs taken off and had grown quite friendly.
The captain sat on a stool, with Corman next to him, between him and the door, and listened to the pop of another flashlight bulb. The measurements, photographing, and finger-printing were almost finished. The ambulance and intern would arrive any minute to cart Nick away.
“Mrs. Gherigis killed her husband,” said Duncan Maclain. “Make a ten-minute tour of the place with me and I’ll show you how.”
“That’s a hot one,” said Burzak from farther down. “The lieutenant just got through talking to her in back. She says you were the only one in the diner. She was looking through that glass in the swinging door and saw you shoot the gun.”
“Which narrows it down to her word against mine,” said Maclain. “But she made one mistake—a big one—in picking me for a witness while she tried to look like a man. She thought I was a bum who had wandered in here and that my story would be disbelieved. What she over-looked was that I couldn’t have shot him and couldn’t even see her, because I’m totally blind.”
Corman stood up. “I’ll make a tour with you. If you can make that story stick, Maclain, it’s the very first thing I’ve heard that sounds like sense.”
There were two things in the pantry that interested Duncan Maclain—a big deep-freeze that clanged when the lid dropped down, and a closet. The closet door stood ajar and had a Yale lock on it. What caught Maclain up was the fact that the door was lined with heavy asbestos.
“There’s nothing in there but supplies and beer,” said Corman. “We’ve already looked around. Nick had it insulated against moisture.”
Duncan Maclain was already inside the closet, his fingers traveling along the wall and back of the stacked-up cases of beer. The wires he was searching for led up in back of the shelves. He came out and checked the Yale lock again, making sure it was on the thumb latch and that even if the door were shut it would open without the key.
“When I search for things,” said Duncan Maclain, “I first have to find where they aren’t. That’s what proves to me that my thinking is right.” He hooked his fingers on Corman’s arm. “The washroom seems to be the logical place. Let’s look there.”
Two coats and a hat were hanging in the washroom, with four of Nick’s soiled aprons and two suits of his overalls. Corman stood in silence as the captain’s fingers brushed them all. For twelve inches up from the bottom of the legs, one of the suits of white overalls was damp and muddy.
“Those were what Mrs. Gherigis wore when she did the shooting.” The captain pointed to the hat and one of the overcoats and the muddy overalls. “They’re damp and Nick hasn’t been out of this place since the rain started. I think if you turn them over to your technicians, lieutenant, and check the sweatband in that hat, you can prove that’s what Mrs. Gherigis had on.”
“Well, I’ll be—” said Corman. “I’ll take them now.”
“No, wait.” The captain stretched out his hand. “Take me out and around in front. There’s a hedge out there. I felt it coming in. I’ll show you how she got in and out of the diner and yet was not seen by Walsh and Burzak in their car.”
They came out of the washroom, and a couple of steps to the right Corman opened another door.
“There’s a storm vestibule here,” Corman said. He opened a second door, letting in a gust of wind and rain. “Wait here a second,” Corman went on. “We’ll get drowned in this. I’ll get the slickers from Walsh’s car.” Corman went out.
The captain raised both his sensitive hands and swept them up and down along each side of the inner vestibule door. It was the logical place to put an electric meter, fuse box, and cutout switch for the diner. He grunted in satisfaction as he found them.
An automobile door slammed and Corman came back with two slickers. They put them on and went out into the rain.
He struck the fronds of the prickly hedge in front of the diner a few feet farther on. It ran from the end of the diner to the door. It was more than head-high and planted about eighteen inches out from the diner wall.
“Have you a flashlight, lieutenant?”
“Yes.”
“Shine it in back of this hedge and see if there are any footprints.”
“There’s nothing but water,” Corman said. “It’s an inch deep, at least.”
“Well, that’s one up for Mrs. Gherigis,” said Duncan Maclain. “Let’s follow briefly what she did. You’ll find when you make an investigation that Nick Gherigis had been paying out dough.”
“To whom?” Corman rasped.
“To a dame,” said the captain. “I have very keen ears. Mrs. Gherigis called Nick in while I was in the diner, and I heard them quarreling. He’s been keeping a woman some place and it’s been on her mind for a long time. Tonight was the finish.
“She went in back and got Nick’s gun, put on his white overalls, hat, and coat in the washroom, came around here in back of this hedge, shot him, and went back the same way, leaving the clothes in the washroom. With only Nick and me and her in the diner, she felt sure you’d hang it on me—a bum.”
“I’ll buy it,” Corman said suddenly. “Driving up here from the road with their lights off, Walsh and Burzak couldn’t have seen her from the police car.”
There was a swish of tires and a splashing of water as a heavy car turned from 17-E to stop in front of the diner.
Corman said, “We might as well go inside. The morgue wagon is here.”
“Do you mind if I talk with Mrs. Gherigis?” the captain asked.
“Go ahead,” said Corman.
The captain stood and listened while two men carrying a stretcher went in through the diner door. Corman went in with them.
When the granite of anger set in Maclain, he ceased to be a human being and turned into a machine. He was blind, but with the inexorable blindness of justice. He hated a killer, but in his code there were worse . . .
Maclain was part of the rain and the raging wind as he took the keys from Corman’s car and the ambulance. There were none in the car that had brought the technicians, so the captain swiftly raised the hood of that car and jerked the distributor wires loose, disabling the machine. A moment later he sped around the diner and was down on all fours, crawling about to pat the ground beside and underneath Walsh’s and Burzak’s official car. Then he got to his feet, opened the door, and removed the keys.
Beside him, Burzak’s gritty voice said suddenly, “What are you doing?”
“I was about to put your slicker back in,” said Duncan Maclain.
“Wait till Walsh hears this one,” Burzak said. “You lying bum, I knew that you could see!”
The captain hit him, one straight right, backed with one hundred and ninety pounds of fury. It landed just an inch and a half underneath the sound of Burzak’s words.
He slid out of the dripping slicker and draped it over the fallen trooper, then stepped into the vestibule and pulled the main lightswitch beside the door. His feet made no noise as he sped past the washroom, across the pantry, into the insulated closet.
There wasn’t even the tiniest snip as he shut himself in by pushing up the button and releasing the Yale lock on the inside of the door. He brailled the closet with frantic speed and stopped with every sense alert at three big, round cans set together on a shelf before him.
They were fastened with little tin hasps, like those on a bread box. The captain tried to lift a can and found it wouldn’t move. He opened the hasp and raised the lid to stick in a probing finger. Sugar—but only on top! His finger had struck a metal bottom less than an inch and a half down.
He shut the top and twisted the can around. It was cut out at the back and set in a groove. He hadn’t been wrong when he had traced the wires. He reached inside and lifted from its cradle the combination mouth-and-earpiece of a French-style telephone.
The dial signal clicked in his ear and settled to a buzzing sound. Maclain reached in through the opening and dialed 3-2111.
“Colonel Yerkes?”
“Yes. Who is it?” The colonel’s voice sounded sleepy.
“It’s Duncan Maclain. Phil Barstow’s—”
“I know all about you.” The voice was wide awake now. “I thought you were out at Barstow’s camp.”
“Do you know Nick’s Diner?”
“Of course!”
“Fine,” said Maclain. “Then get together six of your best men—ones you’re positive you can trust. Arm them to the ears and get out here as fast as you can. Nick was shot an hour ago by one of your own troopers—Burzak—while Corporal Walsh was waiting outside in the car.”
“Good Lord!” said Yerkes. “Why?”
“Nick was running a wire room, receiving and sending bets on the aces. He has an extension to the pay booth and two dial phones concealed in a sound-proof room off the pantry. I’m locked in and telephoning from it.”
“Who else is at the diner?”
“Lieutenant Corman, three technicians, two men from the morgue, Walsh and Burzak, and Mrs. Gherigis,” said Maclain. “None of them are leaving—I have all the car keys. At the moment they’re probably hunting for me. I put out all the lights in the place and I had to knock Trooper Burzak cold when he started to move their police car.”
“Can you hold it a minute?” Yerkes demanded. “I’ve got another phone here. I’m going to start out the riot car. Hang on!”
The colonel was back in a few moments. “Tell me briefly what happened and I’ll be right along. The riot squad is already on its way.”
“Phil had a heart attack,” said Duncan Maclain. “I came here to get to a phone. An ambulance is on its way to pick up Phil.
“Walsh and Burzak were parked outside by the end of the diner, where I couldn’t have seen them even if I had eyes. But they saw me come in. The telephone rang and Nick left to take the call in this closet, where I am now. He told me he’d heard his wife call. I thought somebody might be phoning me back about the ambulance for Phil, so I picked up the phone in the booth.
“Nick was on the extension and I overheard part of the call. He said that a hundred a week was cleaning him and he’d blow the works before he’d double it. He said he was leaving his wife a list that would jail them all.”
“You don’t know who he was talking to?”
“I don’t,” said Maclain. “Maybe Corman.”
“What makes you think that?”
“It’s an idea I got when Walsh told Burzak to get Lieutenant Corman personally and to tell him exactly what had happened—that they had been parked down there on 303 at the crossroads, had seen me get off the truck, had driven up with their lights off, and had nailed me. It sounded like an awful lot of yackety-yak to send in on a murder call.”
“Do you have any proof, Captain Maclain?” Yerkes’s voice was grim.
“Plenty, but I haven’t much time to tell you—somebody has just started pounding on the door. I guess they’ve got the lights back on.
“Walsh and Burzak saw me come in, decided it was a good time to rub out Nick and hang it on someone they thought was only a bum. Right now I look like one. Burzak put on Nick’s hat, coat, and overalls—he found them in the washroom inside the side entrance. Then he came around through the front, shot Nick, and took a look in the cash register. I think he wanted that list Nick had talked about, but Nick had cleaned out the cash drawer and hidden the stuff after the warning call.
“Burzak was scarcely out of the diner when Walsh came in and put me under a gun. It was the world’s fastest piece of police work, Colonel.
“Anyway, Burzak had dressed up to look like Nick and had blasted him. Mrs. Gherigis saw a man through the window of the pantry door and thought it was Nick. She still doesn’t know Nick’s dead.”
“You sound pretty sure, Maclain.”
“Of course I’m sure; get this, Colonel: five of us were here. Nick was shot. Mrs. Gherigis couldn’t have done it—she was back of a door and out of range of vision. I didn’t, and Walsh is tall and thin—too tall to get Nick’s things on and be mistaken for him by Nick’s wife. Five minus four equals one—Burzak.”
“Just a second, Captain Maclain. What evidence have you got?”
“I think you’ll find Nick’s list of names in the deep-freeze, Colonel—I heard the lid clang. Your laboratory can prove that Burzak had Nick’s clothes on. . . I’d better hang up now—they’re breaking the door.”
“One more second,” Yerkes pleaded. “Can you prove that Burzak and Walsh were there all the time—from before the murder?”
“I have to hurry, Colonel. Burzak’s and Walsh’s police car hasn’t moved from right beside this diner since before 11:30 when it started to rain. Everything around here is soaking but it’s bone dry under their car.”
“I’ll be right over,” said Yerkes. “Is there anything I can bring you?”
“Cigarettes, Colonel,” said Duncan Maclain, “I never did get any. And maybe just a wee drop of scotch. I’m dryer inside than the ground under Walsh’s and Burzak’s car.”