All things considered, it had been a busy evening for the police. Once more the story of the earlier murders, after a day or two of relative obscurity, was rehashed and restored to the front page.
The attack on Rainfall, it appeared, had not been the only development of the hours of darkness.
Far out on the west side of the city, near Garfield Park, another body had been discovered, seated lifelessly at the wheel of a closed car and ticketed with the now familiar placard. That is, the car was ticketed.
“Get along there, now,” a patrolman had remarked, good-naturedly enough; and then, when the man did not reply, he had opened the door of the car and repeated his command.
Still the man at the wheel had not spoken. As previous to this one-sided conversation the patrolman had passed the parked car a number of times without comment, he felt justified in his annoyance.
Then he had shaken the man’s shoulder, believing him to be asleep.
Discovery of the murder had been effected about midnight, according to the morning journals, but death, the police said, had visited its victim some hours before—approximately at nine o’clock, or about the time that Rainfall, more fortunate than the man in the car, had left the dinner at the Moments’.
There was no difficulty about identity. The man in the car had belonged to everything worth joining and carried membership cards in number. He was Ellis Greene, a young man of good reputation, and a bond salesman for a famous house. He had been murdered with admirable neatness, exactly as had been Bluefield, Gaunt, and Lear.
Save for the square of white paper pasted to the glass, which the patrolman had mistaken for an election poster, there was no clue to the murderer. None, at any rate, that could at once be made useful. A number of finger prints had been taken from the automobile, some of which were certainly Greene’s own and some of which were those of a stranger. The car, however, had belonged to Greene, who was unmarried, a Republican, and a collector of postage stamps. His age had been about thirty years.
Detective Sergeants Brandt and Noble had been placed in charge of the investigation—Kelly and Sheets being still engaged with the theater mystery—and they were reported to be following up a clue.
The sensation in Rainfall’s case was the identification of the man he had killed. Nicholas Aye was well known to the police, although he had no criminal record. He was, in point of fact, a bootlegger of repute—in his own district a sort of king or overlord.
In the light of Rainfall’s testimony, and that of Ghost, it was manifestly impossible that Aye could have murdered Greene, then hurried to the south side of the city to spy upon Rainfall. On the chance, however, that the elapsed time between the moment of Greene’s death and the discovery of his body had been underestimated by the coroner’s department, the available finger prints were compared.
Those found on Professor Moment’s window were definitely the finger prints of Nicholas Aye; those on the panels of Greene’s car were not.
There was only one possible conclusion, if the cases were related—that the “Dead Man” murders were not, as had been supposed, the work of a single hand. Rather, they were the work of a number of hands, albeit the hands might have been directed by a single brain.
Who, then, was the brain? Query: was he Nicholas Aye?
But what could such a man have had to do with Amos Bluefield and Patrick Lear? Yet it was certain that Aye had visited Rainfall with murder in his heart and a placard in his pocket. And Rainfall had been Lear’s friend and a prime mover in the Lear investigation.
For that matter, argued the police, if alcohol were the keyword to the puzzle, there could be no guessing how many citizens, reputable and widely diversified, the situation might ultimately touch.
Aye’s pistol had seemed an incongruous weapon for a murderer committed to cold steel, but it was less incongruous the morning afterward than it had seemed the night of the assault. In the bootlegger’s careful garments had been discovered a slender length of tempered steel, fitted with a wooden handle, which he had found no opportunity to use. Its point was guarded by a protector of stout leather, and it appeared to have been made to order for the murders.
Ghost was dismayed. The murder of Ellis Greene did not fit his theory at all. The bond salesman was too young to have been involved in the origins of the case, as he saw it. Nor was he pleased with the revelation of Aye’s identity.
“A bootlegger!” exclaimed the amateur disgustedly. “To what base depths hath this our case descended? Chandler, do you mean to tell me that a bootlegger is the brain and center of this web? That Bluefield and Lear were murdered because they had knowledge of the unlawful activities of a rum runner?”
Professor Moment looked reproachful. “My dear Walter,” he retorted, “I have said nothing of the sort. I have thought nothing of the sort. Why pick on me?”
“Because I’m annoyed, I suppose. I am merely raving aloud.”
“For that matter, though,” argued the professor, “why shouldn’t they have been? This is Chicago, after all. Rum running—bootlegging—is an established, indeed an accepted, fact. It is a profitable and recognized profession. It is perhaps our third industry. If somebody attempted to interfere with one of the systems, that somebody would be— I believe the phrase is—‘bumped off.’ Yes, sir, whether he were a haberdasher or an actor!”
“I’ll tell you why it simply can’t be,” said Ghost. “Because the idea of it is comic. If Bluefield had been a policeman, and Lear a politician, then Gaunt—a gambler—would fit the scheme admirably, and we would have a typical Chicago crime which would fail to interest me in the slightest degree. Greene, too, would fit, perhaps. But the early history of this case is on too high a plane. Bluefield’s murder—and Gaunt’s—and Lear’s were not low farce, but high fantasy. Each, or all, requires an explanation as satisfying as the murders.”
“I am perhaps less sensitive to the nuances of murder,” observed the professor aggravatingly. “To me, Walter, it seems reasonably obvious that this Aye—a sufficiently remarkable name, by the way, to satisfy your aesthetic sensibilities—is either the murderer or one of the murderer’s tools.”
“Granted,” said Ghost, “for the sake of argument; but surely not in his capacity of bootlegger.”
“What would you have him?”
“An auctioneer,” said Ghost, “a country editor, a bishop of the Anglican church—a whirling dervish—a teacher of the mandolin! Anything but a bootlegger.”
“You’ve been reading Sherlock Holmes,” accused the professor. “All right, Walter, I’ll take that back! But it does seem a bit unreasonable to refuse an easy explanation because you are determined it ought to be a hard one.”
Ghost shrugged. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe I’m an ass. I’ve often suspected it. But I’m not demanding a difficult explanation. I ask only an explanation that fits the crime.”
He was silent for a moment. Then, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Chandler,” he continued. “I’m going to investigate this latest murder myself. The Greene affair. Last night, I thought I had a solution—vague, nebulous, a little crazy, but artistically satisfying none the less. To-day it’s been shaken, and I’m beginning to doubt my intuitions—which is bad. I’m going to visit the morgue and have a look at young Mr. Greene, and then I’m going to talk with the detectives who are in charge of his case.”
“All right,” said the professor. “Nihil obstat.”
“Thanks,” said Ghost dryly, and went away to the telephone to call a taxicab.
At the county morgue, a singularly cheerless place, he found a bulky police sergeant in charge of the victim’s garments, looking at them with listless eye while smoking a cigar.
“Yeh,” nodded the sergeant, “I’m Noble! Ghost, eh? Your name was in the papers, wasn’t it? Sure, I remember. Friend of Dr. Rainfall.”
Nevertheless, the sergeant looked suspicious.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Ghost? Wanta see the body?”
“Not particularly,” responded Ghost. “I mean, I’ve seen bodies before, and there are pleasanter sights.” He smiled disarmingly. “Yes, I suppose I do. I should like, also, if it isn’t forbidden, to see the clothing and the contents of the man’s pockets.”
“Nothing interesting,” said the sergeant. “Couple of letters of no importance—a patent cigarette lighter, worth about a dollar—some cigarettes—and his business card. A flock of membership tickets. He was quite a joiner.”
“Nothing scandalous, eh? Too bad! Well, let me see them.”
The detective officer indicated a large wallet— his own—on a table beside him. “It’s all there,” he nodded obligingly. “Help yourself. Sort of an amateur detective, ain’t you?”
“If you don’t mind,” smiled Ghost.
“Oh, I don’t mind! The woods are full of them. We’ve had sixty on this case, already.”
“This case?”
“Not Greene—no, all these murders.”
“I see! What do my colleagues seem to think?” Ghost contrived to make his tone deprecating, and the big detective grinned.
“My God! You should hear them!”
“I’m glad I don’t have to,” said Ghost. As he talked he was turning over the several articles mentioned.
He produced a newspaper clipping from the wallet. “Here’s something you didn’t mention.”
“That! Oh, yes—it don’t amount to much.”
“Still, everything found on a man’s body is interesting. Bootlegger out of circulation, eh?”
“What?” cried the sergeant. He looked over Ghost’s shoulder. “You’ve got the wrong side of it, buddy.” He obligingly turned it over. “Bond sales. That was his job.”
Ghost read the other side. It was as the detective had said. Under a Wisconsin date line, report was made of an issue of bonds that was shortly to be placed on sale.
He returned to the obverse and read again a short account of the death, in a hospital, of a man who some time previously had been shot by federal agents. The man had been a minor rum runner, one Anthony Carr. What an extraordinary coincidence! thought Ghost—if it was a coincidence. For the man Greene was certainly a bond salesman by profession, according to police investigation. Nothing could be more natural than to find in his pocket a clipping having to do with a prospective sale of municipal bonds. Yet it was astonishing that the other side of the clipping should reveal the death of a rum runner. Both sides contained the notices complete.
Ghost was troubled. Again his more artistic and satisfying theory of what had occurred seemed to be going glimmering.
“These are his garments, I suppose?”
“Yep, all he had on.”
“Good stuff, isn’t it?”
“First rate,” agreed Sergeant Noble.
Ghost turned the clothing over as idly as the sergeant had done. The shoes were singularly fresh and clean. They had just been half-soled. Suddenly his heart leaped and sank. Sank dismally.
In the right coat lapel of the man’s jacket was a glittering button. Its significance to the police had been slight. It certified merely that Ellis Greene had been a member in good standing of the Chicago Lodge of the Royal Bison. But Ghost’s mind carried back to the eerie scene in the Moment drawing room and Holly Moment’s puzzled inquiry: “Are you wearing something on your coat, Mr. Ghost? On the right side?”
Something bright—that glittered for a moment in the poor light!
Great heaven, was it possible that the body of Bluefield’s murderer lay there, only a few feet away?
Ellis Greene, bond salesman?
Many men, it was true, wore lodge buttons on their lapels; but Green was dead in circumstances that related him in some fashion to the other murders.
And if Greene had killed Bluefield, and somebody else had killed Greene, where did it all begin, and where would it all end? It was a circle—one murderer killing another murderer—the second murderer killed perhaps by a third murderer …
Gamblers, bootleggers, bond salesmen! Incredible!
And which side of the newspaper clipping had Ellis Greene been saving? To Ghost, it made all the difference in the world.
His æsthetic badly shaken, his theory in similar plight, the amateur thanked the detective sergeant for favors shown and drove thoughtfully homeward.