Satterlee sighed.
“There,” he said plaintively, “I knew that would happen if you let the cops come into that little accident of ours today! I told you right then and there that I didn’t want to be involved with the police of this region any more. Maybe I didn’t say it just like that, but that was what I meant. Good Lord! I should think, Mayo, that if you’re in the police, you ought to be able to get that speeding business quashed. After all, I’ve done my best to try and help you!”
“Yes—yes. I’ll say this much,” Asey promised, “you’ll get let off the speedin’ charge if you can explain to me, with all the frills, just why in blazes you should be gaddin’ about this region last night at that time. Alone, was you?”
“Yes, I was alone. You see, it’s very easily explained. Nate’s beer gave out last night and I volunteered to get some more for him. He had a cold,” Satterlee explained ingenuously.
Asey smiled. “Go on.”
“He said there wasn’t any place I could get beer that time, and anyway, he liked best the beer of this man in Eastham somewhere. He said I couldn’t ever find it and I said I could. He had such a bad cough that he didn’t want to go out, but he wrote me directions to find the place and I took my car and set out. That was a little after ten. I got to the place all right. It wasn’t a store. It was a house. Portygee Someone—”
“Portygee Pete. He’s still bootleggin’.”
“That’s right. Then, with the fog, I must have missed a turn somewhere, getting from his place to the main road. I landed up beside a pond.”
“Easy enough to do that there. Ponds enough in that part of the Cape to float the British Navy.”
“You said it,” Satterlee told him. “There certainly are. Well, sir, I turned around and went back, and then I landed beside another pond. In fact, I either went back to that one pond four times, or I went to four different ponds. I’ve never seen so many ponds in all my life. I’ve never seen so many roads that landed up at ponds, either. You’d think all the people in that village spent all their spare time making roads to ponds. At last I got off on a small tarred road and came to a house. The man there gave me very careful directions, but I got lost again. I landed in a cranberry bog once, and near the ocean another time. It sounded like the ocean, so I went back on my tracks. Then I found the main road and later I turned the spot on a sign that said ‘To Weesit’ on it and I knew I was all right. I just naturally plumped my foot down on the gas and hustled. That was when the cop stopped me for speeding and having only one headlight.”
Asey chuckled. “That r’minds me of the time two fellers come to the Porter house one foggy August night. Asked if it was the Chatham Bars Inn. So happened they was twenty-odd miles away. Instead of turnin’ one way in Orleans, they’d turned another an’ their directions went perfect for down the Cape as well as up. It’s easy. But can you prove where you was a little after one?”
“I might have been in Jericho. I don’t know. I reached home about quarter to two or two o’clock and found that the beer had all slopped out of the can onto the back seat. Nate’d gone to bed. I tell you, I was a pretty disgusted man.”
“Ever hear of a feller named Maynard Guild?” Asey shot out the question with his eyes boring through Satterlee.
I watched to see if there were any reaction to the name, but not a muscle of the Squire’s face moved.
“Guild?” he shifted his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other without using his hands, an operation which has never ceased to fascinate me. “I know a Bob Guild who’s vice-president of Acme Saw and Tool, and he’s got a cousin named Morton Guild. Would that be the one you mean?”
Asey sighed. “No. Sell guns at your store?”
“ ‘Everything for the Sportsman.’ Do much duck-shooting down here, Mayo? I’ve got the finest double-barrelled—”
“Sold a .45 Colt, single action, old style, lately? Or wouldn’t you know?”
“Let me see. Yes, yes, I did. I remember that old gun well. It’d been in the store at least ten years. Man gave it to me in part payment of a bill he couldn’t meet. He was—”
“Now,” Asey interrupted him briskly, “just what are the lawrs in your state about sellin’ guns? In this one you get your picture took an’ go through a long rigamarole an’ then the gun number is registered along with your identification in the State House. As I r’call, you don’t do it that way in your state.”
“No. The purchaser signs a form and the number of the gun is taken. I keep my blanks filed away in a loose leaf notebook in my safe. We don’t make duplicates, though, or send them anywhere.”
“Then if you wanted to find the number of a gun bought in New Hampshire, together with the name of the feller that bought it, you’d have to hunt around from place to place?”
“Unless you published the number in the papers or something like that. Blanks aren’t collected in one place.”
“Nice state to buy a gun in if you was contemplatin’ murder.”
“I suppose so. You know, speaking of that old Colt, I sold that gun to a member of the troupe that Gilpin was in. The afternoon of the fourth of May. Just before they left. Now I don’t know why I remember that,” he went on, quite unconscious of the news he was divulging or of the effect it was having on Asey and me. “No, I don’t. It’s funny how you’ll remember something like that and then entirely forget very important things. Just last week I put the keys to my safe deposit box away somewhere, and I’ll be jiggered if I’ve been able to find them since, or even remember approximately where I hid them. Think of it! I forget things like that and then I remember customers I’ll probably never see again! Well, this man, he was the fellow who sang. Remember his eyebrows. What was his name? Something like—”
“It was—” Aristene began, but her father waved her to be silent.
“Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! I’ll get it in a minute. It’s right on the tip of my tongue this instant. Something like Dalton. No, Galton. Dalton. Dall—”
I was reminded of the time Adin had addressed Angela Coffin as Mrs. Corpse.
“Ah, I have it. Allen. That was it. Allen. Fellow that sang. Stocky man, with eyebrows that met.”
“Sold him a gun?” Asey was perfectly casual.
“Yes. That old Colt.” Satterlee laughed heartily. “Yes, sir, I remember that. I’d bought a lot of stuff from Bannerman’s once. You know, old Army overstock. Well, among the stuff were some old fashioned black powder cartridges for a .45. Reduced charges, twenty-eight grains of powder instead of forty. Old government cartridges made at the old Frankfort Arsenal, years ago. Eighteen seventy or eighty or around then. Well, sir, when Allen bought this gun, I remembered that I had just one box of those cartridges left. Didn’t have anything in the store they’d fit except that old Colt, so I brought them out and offered to sell them to him cheap. First off I thought I’d throw them in with the gun, and then I decided not to.”
“Didn’t know much, to take ’em, did he?”
“No, I don’t think he knew much about guns,” Satterlee admitted. “He bought the Colt because he said it looked like a cowboy’s gun. Ha-ha! That’s what he said. Of course, those cartridges might have been bum, but as I told him, they’d be all right for him to pot around with. Might sound weak, but otherwise they’d ought to be all right unless they exploded.” He laughed. “But I’d shot some of ’em myself once before. Even if they were a little weak, they had a penetration of three inches or more in pine.”
“How they come packed? Boxes of twenty?”
“Yes. Say, hadn’t we better be getting along? We mustn’t stay here all night.”
“No hurry,” Asey said. “Randall told you the car’d be ready for you at ten, but you want to allow him an hour’s leeway, easy. Maybe more. Randall’s like that. Do much shootin’, yourself?”
“I was in the National Guard for fifteen years,” the Squire said, pulling out a pipe and a tobacco pouch. “Quite a shot, I was. Always liked the old Colt,” he added reminiscently. “Always carry one.”
Asey gulped. “Got one with you now?”
“Yes, indeed. Always take one in the car. I slipped it into my pocket when we left the sedan.”
Calmly he got up and fished it out of an overcoat pocket. “Nice gun.”
“Yes,” Asey said weakly, “nice gun.”
Aristene had been staring at Asey for some time. Now she spoke up. “Mr. Mayo, what’s all this about? What’s been going on? What are you trying to dig out of us?”
“Dig out of you?” Asey picked up Satterlee’s gun and casually unloaded it. “Well—”
A commotion upstairs interrupted him. It sounded to me like a machine gun and I jumped from my chair as though I had been shot. I felt a little foolish, but after the shooting that had gone on, not to speak of all this talk about guns, I felt that anything was liable to happen.
“What’s all that?” Satterlee asked. “You got other people staying with you? What’s wrong?”
“Wait a sec.” Asey got up as the din continued. Opening the door into the tiny front hall, he shouted for Punch, who promptly clattered downstairs. He stuck his face, grinning from ear to ear, just inside the door.
“Terribly sorry, Asey. Awfully sorry. It was all my fault. We found a long closet back of the eaves and we explored it. Found a lot of kid’s games there. We’ve been playing tiddly-winks. Then I found this net bag of golf balls. Must have been rotten, the webbing, because it burst when I picked it up. The balls just bounced around. Really, I’m sorry, but it scared us just as much as it scared you.” He opened the door and walked into the living room. “May I come in and get warm? It’s chilly upstairs. Oh. Oh!” he looked at Aristene. “Oh! How d’you do, Miss Satterlee?”
She nodded, but said nothing.
“Call Dan,” Asey ordered.
Punch bolted upstairs. I watched Dan as he came into the room. The effect of Aristene on him was even greater than it had been on Punch.
“Why,” the Squire remarked in some surprise, “that’s the man I was telling you about, Mayo. That’s Allen, who bought that gun. How’d the cartridges go, Mr. Allen?”
Dan stared at him. “What cartridges?”
“Why, that old Colt I sold you when you were in Nashua. And the old cartridges from Bannerman’s. Don’t you remember? You bought the gun because you said,” Satterlee laughed uproariously, “you said it looked like a cowboy’s gun!”
“Is he crazy?” Dan demanded. “What’s he talking about? I never saw him before in all my life!”
“You never what?” Satterlee snorted. “Well, sir, you certainly did. I could pick you out of a crowd as the man I sold that gun and those cartridges to. Why, you even signed your name on the form. Daniel Allen. Yes, sir! You may have forgotten me, but I haven’t forgotten you.”
“I haven’t got a gun.” Dan was getting angry. “I never bought a gun in all my life. Never owned one. Never bought any of your old Banner bullets, or whatever they are. You’re crazy.”
“Do you mean to stand there,” the Squire spluttered, “stand there and tell me I’m a liar? I tell you I sold you a .45 Colt and cartridges to go with it. On the fourth of May. You don’t deny that you were in Nashua on the fourth of May, do you?”
Dan thought a moment. “No, I was there. But I never bought your—”
“Liar!” Satterlee stormed. “Scoundrel! Rascal! Teen, you see what I told you. I was right. All that troupe was a bunch of lying rascals. I thought that Gilpin was the worst, but I guess this man’s just as bad as he was. Of all the bare-faced liars, of all the rotten dirty blackguards, you, Allen, and that Gilpin—you—”
“See here,” Dan said, “you can say what you like about me. I don’t know you from Adam unless you’re the father of Miss Satterlee here. But you leave Red Gilpin out of it! At least under the circumstances you might have the common decency to speak respectfully of the dead even if you are crazy!”
“What—what d’you mean, speak—of the dead?” Aristene asked with a little catch in her voice.
“Why, Red Gilpin was murdered here last night! That’s what I mean. And whoever you are, you can take back what you said about Red, or I’ll paste your fat person into jelly!”
“Dead?” Aristene repeated. “Murdered?”
“Shot,” Asey added, “with a .45 Colt.”
Aristene turned to her father.
“So that’s what you were doing last night? I thought that pond and fog business sounded hollow.” Her voice was perfectly steady for all the white heat behind her words. “You said you’d kill Red if you ever saw him again. That’s why you came to the Cape, is it? You followed him up. I thought it was queer that you should suddenly want to see things like sand dunes and long lost cousins again! Well, now you’ve gone and killed him and let this Mayo sew you into a sack. You went right into it with your eyes open. I knew he was trying to trick you. He didn’t pull the wool over my eyes. He didn’t fool me. He’s got you. And I’m glad. D’you hear that? I’m glad!”
Her hands, still folded in her lap, did not move although the knuckles were white and tense. I wondered how anyone could be as furious as her words sounded and still be so outwardly calm.
Her accusation cut Satterlee as though she had stabbed him with a knife.
“But Teeny! I didn’t kill this man. I didn’t! That’s all true about last night. I did get lost. I never knew Gilpin was within a thousand miles of here when I decided to come and see Nate. You can rest assured that I’d never come if I’d known it, too! All I wanted was to get you out of Nashua. That was all I really came for. I hoped a little trip might take your mind off—off everything. I’d intended first to take you abroad, but business was too shaky to leave. I took you just as far as I could afford. It wasn’t much.” His voice broke. “But it was as good as I could do.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true, Teen. It is.” He got up from his chair and went over to her. “Teen, I know I said I’d kill Gilpin if I ever set eyes on him again. I know I said I wanted to kill him. But I didn’t mean it. I wouldn’t have and you know it. I—well, I know that I splutter a lot. But you know that your father wouldn’t have killed that man!”
She waved him away. “I don’t believe you.”
Helplessly, Satterlee shrugged his shoulders.
“Mayo,” he said to Asey, “you believe me, don’t you?”
Silently Asey went to the peg where his coat hung and from a pocket removed the box of cartridges and the Colt which had killed John Gilpin.
“This the box you sold Allen?”
“He did not—” Dan began.
“Keep still a minute, Dan. This the box, Satterlee?”
He took the box and examined it. “It’s the same box. It would have to be.”
“Why?”
“I got a new stamp last April. This is it. And that box was the last I had of those cartridges. This box has the new stamp. So it must be. Where’d you get it? And the gun? Yes, it’s the same gun. See that nick in the handle? Allen said I ought to take something off for the nick. Where’d you get it? Where did these come from?”
“They was the gun and bullets someone threw over the bankin’ after they killed Red.”
Satterlee’s face was a study.
“Dan, you say you didn’t buy these from Satterlee in Nashua?”
“I certainly do! I never bought them.”
“Wait.” Asey warned Satterlee as he was about to protest. “What time of day did you sell that gun?”
“Just before the store closed. Say, half-past-five to six.”
“Okay. Now, Dan, s’pose there’s any way of provin’ where you was from half-past-five to six on May fourth?”
Dan thought. “Let me see. Gee, Asey, I don’t know! That’s over a month ago and we’ve moved about so much since. We move around so much anyway that a few minutes of one afternoon are hard to account for. Five-thirty to six. Well, the show would have been over. In Nashua we left the van out of town near the house of Punch’s friends. Went into the city and back in the truck. Red and Punch had to transfer their stuff from the truck into the hall. Couldn’t I ask Edie? She might be a one to know.”
“Think a bit more first,” Asey urged.
“It doesn’t seem likely that I’d be alone. We don’t wander off alone much even if we have the time. Except Red, and he didn’t a lot. Probably we’d all have bundled off somewhere together for dinner.”
Asey called the rest downstairs.
“Mrs. Allen, I want you to do some tall rememberin’. May fourth. Nashua. After your afternoon show. Where was you? Where was Dan? More p’ticular, where was you all between five-thirty an’ six?”
Edie closed her eyes. “Lord, I don’t know. I can’t remember. It seems to me that we all had dinner together. Red came in late. He—” she stopped short, opened her eyes and looked at Aristene. “Red was late. I can’t think just what we did directly after the matinee. Can you, Hat?”
“Indeed I do remember. You and I went shopping for some new stockings and most of the stores were closed. We wandered around for years before we found a little shop that was open. I remember it vividly,” Hat smiled wryly, “because I had a corn. I was nearly exhausted before we met the rest for dinner. Punch was mending Judy—”
Asey looked surprised, then laughed. “Oh, for his show. That right, Punch?”
“Yes, Judy was acting up that week.”
“And Dan,” Hat continued, “went off with Red. You were going to get a gadget for the van.”
“Hat,” Dan said fervently, “you’re a peach! It all comes back to me now. Punch, you remember that the van needed a new radiator top? We’d bought new washers till we were sick of it. And we needed a new baggage carrier. Red and I went to half a dozen stores. Yes, that’s where I was, Asey. With Red. He left after we got the things and I met Punch and the girls at a restaurant. He came in later.”
“Let me get this straight,” Asey said. “You think you was with Red from five-thirty to six?”
“Sure.”
“When,” Asey asked Satterlee, “did you have your set-to with Red?”
“After I got back from the store. Just after six, I’d say.”
“An’ then you, Miss Satterlee, went out with Red after that?”
“Yes.”
“Humpf.” Asey wrinkled his forehead.
“But it all proves I couldn’t have bought those things,” Dan argued, “doesn’t it?”
“Don’t forget,” Asey reminded him, “that we can’t exactly check up on that. Just like you say you showed Red the letter from Guild. You say you did, but we can’t prove that either.”
Dan sat down suddenly on the couch.
“Look, Asey. There’s one straw I see to catch at. He says I signed my name on something. I’ll give you my signature and you can have it compared with that one, can’t you? I know he’s wrong and I’ll stake my life on it. You can take my signature and you’ll find the other’s a forgery.”
“I was goin’ to anyway. I’ll see what can be done about gettin’ a photostat copy or somethin’. Satterlee, you’ll have to get in touch with someone an’ give p’mission to have someone get into your store tonight. Got a clerk?”
“Four.” The Squire cleared his throat.
“Well, we’ll go do some phonin’, then. The form’s in your safe, ain’t it?”
“But—but—you can’t,” Satterlee stammered.
“Can’t what?”
“Get a copy of that signature. Or the form, either.”
“An’ I,” Asey said firmly, “would like to know why in time I can’t.”
“Because I put it in my safe deposit box at the bank with a lot of other papers. I did it by accident. I didn’t—”
“Got your keys, ain’t you? We can get into a box as easy as a safe.”
“No. No, you see, it’s just as I said when I was trying to remember Allen’s name. I said I couldn’t remember where I put the keys to the box. They’re lost. Both of ’em. The one I use and the duplicate.”
“Kept ’em together?” Asey asked disgustedly.
“Of course.”
“Huh. Well, even at that, the bank’ll most prob’ly have another duplicate tucked away somewhere out of sight.”
Satterlee shook his head.
“I’m afraid they haven’t. You see, I just got a newer—a bigger box. They warned me then that they had just those two keys. Used to have another but the man who had the box before me lost it.”