Newsboys shrieked the tidings in the streets.
With an enterprise they had not equaled since the world’s series baseball games—when final box scores were on sale at the park before the crowd had left the grounds—the newspapers flung forth their extra editions. Somewhere in the audience there had been journalists other than Howard Saxon. A line of customers still struggled to reach the box office as the shouts began outside. Those who had received their money back, but who still hung about the theater, were able to purchase swift, inaccurate reports of what had occurred almost before their eyes. There was something mysterious and fascinating in the phenomenon.
Meanwhile, a bulky patrolman had replaced the seven-foot doorman on the sidewalk, and in the dressing room of Patrick Lear a minute investigation was going forward.
Captain Michael Frogg, head of the Detective Bureau, was present in person, with a staff of technical experts. Finger-print men with cameras and flashlights were in everybody’s road. There were detectives enough to populate a village. Among these latter were two men of considerable note—John Kelly and William Sheets. Both were thief catchers of reputation, and more than one murder mystery had been solved by their combined perseverance. It was a pleasure, thought Saxon, watching them, to see them at work.
“Nothing Holmesy about those dicks,” he observed, sotto voce, to Rainfall. “They wouldn’t know a steamfitter from a country parson by his coat lapel; but if one of these actorettes has anything on her conscience you can bet these birds will pry it loose.”
With Rainfall, the newspaper man had remained to see it through.
“A couple of rat terriers in a roomful of mice,” said the physician. “They know their business, though.”
A sheet had been draped around the body of Patrick Lear, and Saxon and the doctor were feeling somewhat better in consequence.
The more important members of the company were now isolated in their dressing rooms, attended by inquisitive detectives. The rest of the cast had been herded into a corner of the wide stage. Swift questions were fired at these, from time to time, as the burly sleuths prowled about in search of clues. In all parts of the house a scene of vast activity was apparent. The theater seemed to be bursting with policemen. Over the several disturbances, at intervals, sounded the hoarse roar of Captain Frogg, urging his men to greater effort.
But there was little enough that could be learned. It was obvious, after an hour of search and inquiry, that the murderer, if he were not among the members of the company, had made his entrance and his exit by way of the fire escape that led directly from the star’s dressing room to the alley below. There were even marks upon the window ledge.
“Only,” observed Captain Frogg, in his rhinocerine bellow, “we just don’t know yet who made the marks and when he made them. Maybe they were there last week. Maybe this Lear made’em himself. Maybe that’s the way he used to leave the theayter, to escape his admirers. Maybe I made them, last night, walking in my sleep. Just the same,” he concluded with hoarse satisfaction, “I’m betting that the man who made them was going away from here—in quite a hurry.” His voice dropped suddenly to a dulcet purr, strangely incongruous, as he repeated: “In quite a hurry!”
He thrust his head out of the door, smiling with a sort of ferocious humor at the huddled group of actors and actresses. The idea in his mind became suddenly apparent. “There ain’t any of you people who come into this show late, I suppose? Second or third act, maybe? Lots of time for somebody to do a little job of murder, hop out of the window, and hustle over to the stage door again, eh?”
“I asked about that, Captain,” said the detective Kelly. “The man at the stage door says nobody came in twice. He says if anybody had climbed the fire escape from outside he’d have seen him. He doesn’t stay inside all the time. He moves around a bit. Takes a smoke in the alley every once in a while.”
“Anyway,” contributed Sheets, “to climb that thing from the alley you have to pull it down first. It goes down when you step on it, but it’s a good twenty feet above you when you’re under it.”
The captain shrugged his massive shoulders.
“Anything you say, boys,” he retorted. “But it could have been done. I could do it myself. What about a parked car, right underneath the escape, eh? There’s parked cars up and down every alley in the Loop. Wouldn’t have had to be his own, either. Where’s that doorman?”
“That’s right,” agreed Kelly, without embarrassment. “It could have happened that way.” He started for the door. “I’ll get after that fellow again.”
Sheets followed more slowly, and Rainfall, Saxon, and the police captain were left alone with the corpse of Patrick Lear.
“Could have happened, anyway,” continued Frogg. His obstinate, good-natured growl seemed to fill the little room. “Moves around and takes a smoke in the alley, does he? Not when it’s raining, he don’t! When it’s raining he sneaks his little smoke indoors, just like we all do. Of course he didn’t see anything. Nobody ever sees anything. The man that did this job wasn’t aiming to be seen. Ask a watchman whether he saw a murderer climb a fire escape twenty feet away, and of course he’ll say no. Because he knows damn well it’s his job to see things, and he knows damn well he wasn’t on the job. That’s human nature, ain’t it, Doctor?”
“Absolutely,” said Rainfall, smiling faintly.
Captain Frogg lowered his voice. He became almost confidential.
“I know you, Dr. Rainfall,” he said. “You’re one of the big guns in medicine. I’ve heard of you before. Well—what about it?”
The physician stared. “What about what? This case?”
“This death,” said the police captain. “What killed him? That’s what I want to know. And those other birds, too. What killed them? Could it have been poison?”
“Yes,” answered Rainfall, “I think it could have been; but I don’t believe it. The coroner’s pathologist is a competent fellow. I know him. If it had been poison he’d have spotted it.”
Frogg nodded acquiescence. “Then what the hell was it?”
“Any reputable physician, looking at Lear, would probably say heart failure,” answered Rainfall. “I’d say it myself if it were not for those other cases. But it ought to be settled, this time.”
“You’re darned tooting it ought to be settled this time,” growled the captain. “If it ain’t, I’ll have every newspaper in town on my neck. This fellow ain’t Bluefield and he ain’t Gaunt. He’s a public character. We’ve got to find out what killed him, and we’ve got to get the man that did it. Did he have heart trouble?”
“He had had one attack that I know of.”
“Shock, maybe,” mused the captain. “Murder by shock, eh? Scared to death! How’s that?”
“I doubt it,” said Rainfall. “It’s possible, of course.”
“Look here,” said Frogg. “What’s your idea? I suppose you have one.”
“Well, I have and I haven’t,” confessed the physician. “What I do want to see, though, is a first-class autopsy, this time. I’m not knocking the coroner’s staff. They have to work quickly, and in an ordinary case they’re all right. This isn’t an ordinary case, as I see it. It’s a queer business, don’t you think?—three men dead and no reasonable explanation of their deaths!”
“Yes, I do. Look here! Why not do the job, yourself?”
Rainfall’s glance wandered to the body of Patrick Lear, monstrously outlined under a white sheet. He shook his head.
“Lear was my friend, Captain. I don’t quite fancy it. But, by the Lord Harry, I will do it rather than have it go undone. The other autopsies were pretty casual, from all reports. Examination of the vital organs isn’t enough.” He hesitated. “I suppose the coroner would object, anyway.”
“Why should he?”
“He’d think I was butting in on something that was none of my business, wouldn’t he?”
“To hell with the coroner,” observed Frogg, without malice. “Tell him you’re working for me. I’ll tell him myself. He’ll be here at any minute.”
“Very well,” said Rainfall. “I’ll do it. That is, I’ll stand by and oversee the job. He can hardly object to that.”
Frogg, however, had just had another idea. “No,” he decided, “there’s no use giving Powell all the credit. We’ll let him go ahead his own way, and when he flops again—as he probably will—we’ll call you in. That way the department gets the credit, and Captain Michael Frogg gets his name in the papers.”
He chuckled raucously.
“All right,” agreed Rainfall. “I don’t care how it’s done as long as we get at the truth. As a matter of fact, the coroner may find it out for himself.”
“No fear of that!” Frogg was confident the coroner’s office was hopeless. “Tell you what we’ll do: we’ll—”
The detective Kelly came hurrying back. He interrupted the gruesome conversation without apology.
“Well,” he announced briskly, “you were right, Captain. There was a car parked near that fire escape. The doorman saw it. He thought it had been there all morning.”
“Oh, he did!”
“Yeh, thought it belonged to somebody in the next building.”
“Well, maybe it did,” grunted Frogg. “But the murderer used it, whoever it belonged to. If he came at Lear from outside, he did. He wouldn’t have to be a monkey to do it, either. Anybody can climb on top of a car and swing onto a fire escape. I could do that, myself. Naturally he watched his chance.”
“It couldn’t have been there all morning,” mused the detective. “It’d have got a ticket.”
“Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn’t,” said Frogg. “It would depend on whose car it was. If it was the mayor’s car, or the fire marshal’s car, or my car—then it wouldn’t! Likewise, if it happened to be the car of some friend of a certain mounted policeman, it wouldn’t get a ticket, either. Well, look up the mountie on this street, Kelly, and see what he knows about it. How about all these play actors?”
“Some of’em walked, some of’em came in taxis. Even this Lear didn’t have his own car.”
“And none of’em know a thing about what happened, eh?”
“So they say.”
“What about the girl who was doing all the crying in here?”
“Miss Carvel? She was on the stage when it happened.”
“What does she say?”
“That’s what she says. Oh, about her crying! Well, she says she was nervous and upset.”
“Nervous and upset, was she?” inquired Frogg ironically. “Well, she was the only one of them that was, then. Nobody else was doing any weeping. How do we know she was on the stage when it happened? She was there when Lear failed to show up—sure! And a swell alibi, too, Johnny, me boy. No, it all depends on when it happened. And nobody knows when it happened. Lear came in at two o’clock, so it must have happened after two. He wasn’t dead when he walked in, that’s certain. By God, we’ll need a time chart of this play before we’re through!”
The sporting editor of the Telegram had been silent quite long enough, it occurred to Howard Saxon.
“How about that piece of paper, Captain?” he asked.
“What about it?” retorted the captain suspiciously.
“Well,” explained Saxon, “I’ve an idea that it has nothing whatever to do with this case.”
“The deuce you have! Now where did you get that idea?”
Rainfall, too, looked amazed at his companion’s contribution to the discussion. He had almost forgotten Saxon.
“Here’s the way I figure it,” said Saxon. “Lear had a bad heart, as Dr. Rainfall has told you. Well, he had another attack, and it carried him off. Somebody in the company, who had been reading about these other cases, fixed up a ticket of his own. Maybe somebody who didn’t like Lear. Bingo! A new murder mystery and a free advertisement for the show.”
Captain Frogg frowned thoughtfully for a moment. Then he sighed.
“The worst of it is,” he observed, looking at Rainfall, “he could be right! Not about advertising the show. A fellow’d have to think quick to pull that, after discovering a man dead. But maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with those other cases at all! Maybe somebody just wants us to think so.”
Saxon nodded. “Well,” he replied, shifting his ground expertly, “in that case, you’d probably have the murderer of Patrick Lear, at least.”
“So we would, so we would,” agreed Frogg, without enthusiasm. “Ain’t it grand, Doctor, to have a newspaper imagination! Well, I’ve changed my mind again. I want to know something about this case. You’ll act for me at the autopsy, will you, Doctor?”
“Yes,” said Rainfall. “I’ll perform it, if necessary.”
“Swell!” observed Captain Michael Frogg. “Now we’ll get somewhere. That’ll be Powell now. He always makes a lot of noise.”
They turned abruptly to greet the coroner of Cook County.