THE CAR HAD COME to a stop in the driveway of the Gregg home, and the inspector was frozen half inside and half on the running board. His mouth was unbecomingly open.
Miss Withers blinked at him. “Oscar, what was that?”
“Keep your head down or you’ll find out!” he returned, drawing himself somewhat under cover. “Sounds like a declaration of war to me,” he added.
“Sharpshooting, eh?” Miss Withers peered toward the Gingerbread House in an interested fashion. “But I didn’t hear a shot!”
She heard one now—a sharp spat like the clapping of hands. Again she heard a sharp z-z-zing in the air overhead. This time the aim of the invisible marksman was either worse or infinitely better, for a fat sparrow who had been quarreling noisily with his fellows in the clear air overhead now did a perfect double inside loop and then shot away toward the distant thickets, leaving only a couple of silvery feathers to float lazily down upon the inspector and Miss Withers.
The face of a man presented itself momentarily at a bedroom window and was withdrawn. Piper straightened up, regained his hat.
“Wasn’t shooting at us, after all,” the inspector admitted.
“He had the range closely enough to make me feel uncomfortable,” the schoolteacher returned. “Come on—in the immortal words of the poet, let us storm their redoubt!” She led the way toward the porch of the Gingerbread House and pressed a resolute finger on the bell.
“Somehow,” she observed during the ensuing silence, “somehow, Oscar Piper, I have a feeling we are getting warmer.”
Mrs. Mattie Thomas opened the door and greeted them as long-lost friends. But behind the vast smiles her eyes glinted warily.
“We want to see—” began the inspector, and stopped.
“Say, Hildegarde, who do we want to see?”
“Everyone in the household,” Miss Withers prompted.
“You can’t see Mr. Gregg,” the woman told them. “He’s a lot better, but he can’t see anybody. He even sent out the nurse to say he couldn’t see his own flesh and blood.”
Miss Withers’s eyebrows went up. “Then—his son is here?”
Evidently Mrs. Thomas had made a mistake. “Who? Why—no, ma’am….” She managed another smile. “He was—but he’s gone….”
He hadn’t gone far. Don Gregg was coming down the staircase holding a rusty air rifle in his hand.
“Hello,” he said. “Owe you an apology, I suppose. But I didn’t think anybody would be in the driveway.” He held out the little gun. “Stumbled on this in my closet when I got home a little while ago—haven’t seen it for years. I was practicing shooting out of my bedroom window….”
“You’re quite a good shot with that thing?” Miss Withers hinted.
Young Gregg smiled. “I used to be—but it took two shots to get that sparrow. When I was a kid Thomas would have given me the raspberry if I didn’t do it first crack.”
“Oh—so the efficient Mr. Thomas taught you to shoot?” Miss Withers went on.
“Him?” Gregg laughed shortly. “No, Thomas could never hit anything. Bad eyes or nerves, I don’t know which. He could miss the barn when shooting inside the haymow. But that didn’t stop him from encouraging me.”
“A shot with the air rifle, eh?” Piper cut in. “Well, Hildegarde, that’s as good as …”
He was going to say “confession” and then suddenly realized that as yet the newspapers had carried no accurate information as to the way in which Violet Feverel had died. Also, his partner was shaking her head violently.
“So you haven’t seen your father yet?” Miss Withers asked. “Is Thomas with him?” Young Gregg shrugged.
“My husband has gone to the village,” said the fat woman from her vantage point in the doorway of the dining room. “Abe ought to be back pretty soon, if you want to wait. He had important business at the bank.”
“Really?” Miss Withers started for the stairs. “We’ll just have a word with Mr. Gregg’s nurse while we’re here.”
Mrs. Thomas protested, but the schoolteacher stalked resolutely up the stairs, followed by the inspector.
There was nothing wrong with the nurse. Miss Withers realized that point as soon as she gazed into the sensible, freckled face of the woman in the white uniform. There couldn’t be anything wrong with this nurse. Dr. Peterson had chosen well, for her name was Rogers and she stood foursquare upon her heels, a Gibraltar among nurses.
Miss Rogers had moderate respect for a gold badge. She closed the repaired door of the sickroom behind her and came into the hall.
“He’s better,” she pronounced. “Doctor was here a little while ago and said he could get up.”
“Rather surprising in a case of supposed apoplexy, isn’t it?” Miss Withers asked.
The nurse nodded. “It was a very slight attack, the slightest I ever saw,” she said. “If it weren’t for the bruises on his neck and shoulders, Mr. Gregg would be practically a well man. He seems to have had a very hard fall.”
The inspector frowned. “Just bruised up a bit, eh? Probably had convulsions in the attack. Yet is he really too sick to be seeing his only son?”
Miss Rogers’s face was impassive. “He isn’t,” she said shortly. “Mr. Gregg could see anybody he likes if they’d promise not to talk about horse races.”
“But why did he send word …”
“He doesn’t wish to see his son,” said Miss Rogers finally. “There seems to be some family feeling which I cannot discuss….”
“Of course,” agreed Miss Withers. “Then may we go in?”
The nurse nodded. “Not a mention of horses, mind!” She opened the door.
Old Pat Gregg was sitting on the edge of his bed reading a newspaper. He was dressed in underwear, trousers and shoes, and smoking a cigar. When he saw the nurse he threw the cigar away.
He stood up to greet the newcomers. “I’d have given ten to one that you would be back,” he said. “You can’t leave well enough alone—got to be stirring up trouble about a killing that was pure and simple a break for humanity.”
“We wanted to ask,” Piper began casually, “a question or two about your attack yesterday morning. Can you remember anything more—anything you haven’t told us?”
He shook his head testily. “Nothing only that one minute I was laying in my bed sleeping, and then I had me a flock of bad dreams and finally woke up mighty sick.”
Piper frowned. “Then how did you get the bruises?” he demanded.
“Dr. Peterson says I must have thrown myself around and hit against the floor….”
“Yes,” Miss Withers cut in. “That’s probably right. Only it’s odd that you managed to fall up into bed again—for that was where Thomas found you.”
The old man pressed his hand to his forehead. “Well, I don’t remember….” The nurse signaled that they had gone far enough with that line of pursuit.
“All right, all right,” said the inspector testily. “There’s only been a murder committed, that’s all. We don’t expect anybody to give us any help, but we would like a few questions answered.”
“It might avoid a second murder,” Miss Withers added. “Because I’m almost willing to wager that there’ll be …”
Gregg’s face lit up at the word “wager.” He motioned them closer, out of hearing of the nurse who had taken her position by the door and was beginning to look impatient.
His hands were hairy, trembling. Undoubtedly the man was torn by some inner conflict, some shadowy fear.
“If I tell you—” he began and broke off short.
“Yeah? Go on!” insisted the inspector. “What do you know?”
“Nothing, yet,” whispered Pat Gregg. “But you may as well know that there won’t be any second murder until after the big race Saturday!” His voice dropped. “If you’ll come to see me afterward—as quick as you can get here after the race—I’ll give you a hint. And it’s a hint that will knock you right off your feet, I’ll bet a dollar to a tomato.” He leaned back weakly.
“But don’t wait, man—tell us now!” Piper pleaded.
He shook his head. “I might be wrong and I wouldn’t want to go getting anybody into trouble.”
“Not much he wouldn’t!” Miss Withers said to herself.
But that was all they could get out of Pat Gregg. The round-faced old man subsided into a stubborn but meaningful silence.
On an impulse Miss Withers proffered to the invalid the paper sack which she had carried for so long. “Won’t you have an apple, Mr. Gregg?”
He looked up surprised. “What? Why, this’s mighty nice of you, bringing fruit to me. I do get hungry for apples ’long about this time of year.” He accepted a red apple from the sack, sniffed of it appreciatively, and grinned. “A cold-storage Jonathan, but mighty good all the same,” said he. Then, to Miss Withers’s badly concealed disappointment, he took a large bite out of the apple.
Miss Withers moved toward the door. “I’m glad to see you better, Mr. Gregg.”
“Better?” he laughed. “I’m well—only for this foolishness of having a nurse around all the time.”
“Well enough to see your son, who’s waiting downstairs?”
“What?” Pat Gregg stood up to his full five feet five. “My son downstairs? Nurse, why didn’t you tell me? My boy has been away for months and you don’t tell me when he comes home!” Miss Rogers opened her mouth, but before she could speak he cut her short. “Have Don come up here, at once! At once, do you understand?” His head moved slightly in negation even as he spoke. The nurse put her hands on her hips and sighed.
Piper left the room and after a last look at the invalid Miss Withers followed him. She smelled a rat—several rats—but she couldn’t say just where.
At the foot of the stairs Don Gregg waited. “I’m surprised that you left town when the charming Miss Babs Foley is there, alone and unprotected,” the schoolteacher suggested.
“That kid?” said Gregg. “She can take care of herself. Besides—I’ve had enough of that family, call it Foley or Feverel or whatever you please. Her sister made life hell on earth for me….”
“Half-sister, wasn’t it?” Miss Withers corrected. She held out her paper bag. “Have an apple, young man.”
“But I don’t like apples!”
“Have one anyway,” cut in the inspector on general principles. If Miss Withers was going crazy he was going to stick with her.
Don Gregg took an apple rather gingerly.
“Bite it!” insisted Miss Withers. “It isn’t poisoned or anything like that.”
Don Gregg drew a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. “O-kay!” he said wearily. He bit into the apple. Immediately he became unhappy; he was staring at the remainder.
“A worm!” he cried.
“You’re lucky that it isn’t half a worm,” Miss Withers told him. “And now we must be running along. By the way, I think your father would like to see you.”
“Did he say so?” Miss Withers nodded and Don Gregg went swiftly up the stairs. They heard him go hurrying down the long hall, heard him knock upon the door. There was the murmur of voices and then the door closed with a slam. Don Gregg came back down the hall at a slower pace.
“The old man changed his mind again,” said the inspector as Miss Withers drew him through the door and out into the afternoon sunshine.
“Yes,” she nodded in agreement. “That’s obvious. But why did the old man change his mind?”
Even as Piper frowned over that riddle the answer came from the doorway behind them. Don Gregg stood there, his face pale and impassive.
“Because my father wants to ask me a question and he’s afraid of what the answer might be!”
Miss Withers didn’t need to ask what the question was. She nodded slowly. Perhaps that was it—and yet at the same time a very interesting and intriguing alternative presented itself.
“Hmm,” she remarked. “Well, Oscar, we’d better be getting back to the city.”
The inspector looked surprised. “Why, we haven’t—” Then he caught her glance and stopped short.
“If you’re waiting to see Abe Thomas, you ought to know that he won’t be back until late—much later than his wife thinks,” said young Gregg hopefully.
“Well, then—” said Miss Withers as if it didn’t matter.
She nudged the inspector.
“You’ll be here in case we want to find you, just as a matter of routine?” Piper put in.
Don Gregg nodded. “Until Saturday anyway.”
He stood on the porch, watching, as they got back into the police car and turned around. “I’d like to know why he’s so anxious for us not to question Thomas,” the inspector said.
Miss Withers looked at him. “I wonder if it could have anything to do with a forged writ and a fake badge?” she idly suggested.
They drove slowly along the pasture wall while the fat mare and the red foal called Comanche galloped companionably on the other side. “Poor little fellow,” Miss Withers observed. “He’s got to grow up and have his legs raced half off, and then probably he’ll pass downhill from owner to owner as a hack and finally on a junk wagon or somewhere….”
The inspector said that that was the life of a horse. He stepped on the gas and then as they reached the corner of the pasture he slowed down again.
A station-wagon was rattling and roaring up the hill toward them with Abe Thomas at the wheel. “Let’s chat a moment,” Miss Withers told Piper, and as the two cars came abreast she leaned out and waved her hand.
Thomas shoved in his clutch so that the flivver stopped with its motor roaring louder than ever. He peered out dubiously and then tried to shout. There was no sound though they saw his lips move.
“Shut it off—we want to talk to you!” Piper called.
Light dawned in the little man’s gloomy face. He spoke a silent “Okay” and then moved the gas lever up so that the motor died away to a low rumble. “What d’you want to talk about?” he asked warily.
“Plenty!” said the inspector before Miss Withers could cut him off. “You lied when you said you went into town Sunday morning to take a message to Miss Feverel, didn’t you?”
Thomas blinked and nodded. “Sure I did.”
“You went in early so you could get Don Gregg out of alimony jail on a fake writ, didn’t you?”
“Sure I did,” repeated the little man. The faintest suggestion of a smile flickered across his face.
“And you went with him to a Turkish bath?”
Thomas nodded. “Sure I did. He said he’d been dreaming of how good that steam room would feel all the time he’d been cooped up. After the steam room we were taken to adjoining cots in the sleeping room and there we slept!” Thomas did not exactly add “Make something of it!” but the phrase was implied.
“You slept there until when?” Miss Withers put in.
“Until about eight, when I went up to Miss Feverel’s apartment and met you!” insisted Thomas.
Miss Withers looked mildly triumphant. “But if you came into town to free Mr. Don Gregg instead of bringing a message to Miss Feverel, just why did you get up at the crack of dawn and go to her apartment?”
Thomas seemed to shrink, but he did not speak.
“Was it because you discovered that in the night Don Gregg had slipped out of the place—and you were afraid he might do some violence to the woman he hated? Was it because you wanted to warn her?”
Thomas seemed to shrink still smaller behind the wheel of the flivver. Automatically he fumbled for a blackened corncob.
“Too much been said already,” he muttered.
Miss Withers and the inspector exchanged a glance of mutual congratulation. “By any chance,” continued the schoolteacher quietly, “did you leave this station-wagon in the street outside the Turkish baths—with the ignition key in its place?”
“You think Mr. Don—” began the little man. He shook his head violently. “I left this flivver in the Park Central parking lot—and it was there in the morning!” His mouth snapped shut. “That’s all I’m saying!”
“That’s enough,” the inspector remarked pleasantly. “Let’s go, Hildegarde….”
But she shook her head. “Make haste slowly, Oscar.” She noticed that Thomas was knocking the tobacco from his pipe and making a wry face.
“Pipe getting sour?” she said conversationally. “Didn’t you say that there was nothing like an apple to sweeten the mouth?”
Thomas nodded suspiciously and then caught one of the red globules she tossed into the front seat of the station-wagon.
He stared gloomily at the apple. “Thanks—but it’s nothing like the apples we have ‘Down Under.’”
Miss Withers looked up. “Down under what?”
“Australia, where I come from,” said Thomas. “That’s a country where the police solve murders instead of pestering innocent bystanders….” He took a big bite out of the apple and Miss Withers’s heart sank.
“We might as well go,” she told the inspector.
“You mean back—to arrest Gregg?”
She shook her head. “He’ll be there if we want him. By the way,” she called to Thomas as he was about to start away, “what did Don Gregg mean by telling us he would be here until Saturday?”
The little man shrugged. “How sh’d I know? Probably the young fool expects to make a killing on the big race and then …”
“And then decamp?”
Thomas gnawed at the core of the apple. “Don’t worry, he won’t,” said the little man. “Nobody ever beats the races, but they all try. I like to go and watch ’em—screaming and gasping with excitement and then, when their horse trails in, you should hear ’em wail.”
Abe Thomas let off the emergency brake. “I’ve got to get home to my chores,” he said. The station-wagon moved protestingly on up the hill toward the Gingerbread House.
“Well,” said the inspector cheerily, “now we’re getting somewhere!” He started his motor.
But Miss Hildegarde Withers wore a face that was very long. “Oscar, it’s possible to make good time in the wrong direction,” she said thoughtfully. “Racing full speed down a blind alley …”
The inspector said he didn’t get her. “You’re mysterious as a fortune-teller,” he complained. “And all this stuff about apples! What’s behind it?”
She shook her head sadly. “Oscar, what do you think of a mystery in which the murder was committed by a person who didn’t appear until the climax?”
“In a book I’d say the author was cheating and in real life I’d say that the police weren’t on their job!” he came back.
She nodded. “Such a lot of lovely suspects and I’ve cleared every last one of them!”
“Cleared ’em? How?”
“The man who smoked the murder pipe had false teeth,” she explained. “The rest of the description was guesswork, but that was certain sure. So I had a wonderful inspiration—knowing that you can’t take a good healthy bite at an apple with false teeth. Yet every suspect—even the big red race horse—passed the test!”
There were two small hard apples in the bottom of Miss Withers’s well-worn paper bag. As the police car started up she tossed them over the fence into the pasture where the mare and the red colt were standing as interested spectators.
One apple chanced to strike the mare smartly on the rump, and as Miss Withers rode away she saw the plump matron leap into the air, kick savagely at nothing, and then race wildly homeward with the surprised colt staring after her.