“What do you think about Kurth’s being here?” I asked as we walked across to the post-office.
“Seems kind of funny, don’t it? He didn’t tell you he was cornin’ anyway, did he?”
“No, he didn’t. And it seems strange that after asking to come down he shouldn’t let us know, or at least come and call on us, don’t you think?”
“Seems so. Well, we’ll have to wait a bit before we go into that. Right now I don’t want to go gettin’ mixed up.”
He twirled the dials of Bill’s mail-box and drew out a letter. “Humpf. A special delivery stamp don’t mean one thing in this place. We’d ought to got that delivered at the house last night.”
“Is it from Paul Harlow?”
“Yup, says so on the outside, anyways. S’pose we take the car and read this down by the station. They ain’t so many people down there, an’ we can see if there’s any word from Jimmy besides.”
More than one curious glance was directed at us as we got into the car, in itself an object of attention.
I heard whispers. “Look. Miss Prudence Whitsby. There with Asey Mayo.”
I thought grimly that there was more going to be discussed that day than the Sanborn affair and Bill Porter’s arrest. We stopped outside the telegraph office in the station and Asey passed me the letter.
“Here, you read it out loud.”
“ Dear Cap’n, ”—Bill had been known as the ‘Cap’n’ throughout his college days.
“Your long winded telegram received,” I read, “and as per your instructions, I have spent several weary hours tracking down the dirt on your pal Sanborn. Couldn’t find anything about any bird by that name in any class from ’18 to good old ’22. Just as I was giving up in despair I met old man Kampfer of the eco. department and I stopped him and asked if he’d known of a Dale Sanborn who’d been around about that time.
“The old geezer blinked and said, ‘Who?’
“I shouted at him. You know he’s deaf in addition to his other derangements. ‘Who’s that,’ says he, sticking out his ear trumpet. ‘No, I didn’t know a David Sanborn. Perhaps you mean David Schonbrun; he was a brilliant boy. One of the cleverest and most intelligent undergraduates we ever had.’
“I pricked up my ears and the old gent chattered along. Said I’d probably remember him by the name of Red Ivan, and sure enough I did. I don’t think you would, because you didn’t play about with that sort of thing. The ‘red’ came from his leanings toward socialism and anarchism and all that, and Ivan was from that song that’s on the other side of the Frankie and Johnnie record. Well, Red Ivan was always making speeches about the downtrodden masses on a soap-box and getting himself arrested in places like Lowell and Lawrence for bawling about on strikes and one thing and another. They used to claim he was all tied up with Moscow, but most likely that was a lot of talk.
“ ‘Poor lad,’ says Kampfer, ‘he was killed in a strike riot not long after he got out of college. He’d just got out of a jail sentence too.’
“Well, I played a hunch. Those names were a lot alike, so I asked the old fellow out for a beer. He mopped up the stuff as fast as the boy could bring it, and I pumped him with every swallow. Now this Schonbrun sounded pretty much like your Sanborn except that yours wore snappy clothes and didn’t have a mustache like this one. Kampfer says he came from New York City, was born there and went to some city high school. I made him take me around to the hovel where he hangs out and get me a photo of the man in question. He made me promise to give it back to him as is, so don’t go for to lose it or light your pipe with it. This Schonbrun seemed to be a pet of the old man.
“Of course this man may not be the one you want, but on the other hand, Kampfer might be mistaken about his getting killed. Anyway you look at it, I calls it good sleuthing, and I hereby put in an expense account of ten beers at a quarter each. That is not extortion as small beer comes high these days. What’s all the shooting about anyway?”
“The rest,” I concluded, “is only something about coming up to the games this fall.”
Asey delved into the envelope and brought out a snap-shot. He looked at it closely and passed it over to me.
“What d’you think about it, now?”
I gazed at the faded picture of an earnest young man in baggy clothes who was shaking one fist in the manner of a curbstone orator. His hair was thick and bushy and on his upper lip was a truly pugnacious mustache.
“Doesn’t look much like Sanborn to me,” I commented.
“Maybe not. But it is.”
“I’d like to know what makes you think so.”
“Well, you never saw him except in swell clothes and without a mustache, and neither did I, for that. An’ we didn’t see him ’cept he had his hair all slicked. But it’s him.”
“Elucidate.”
“Huh? Well, his eyes an’ nose an’ expression are the same. See, he’s evidently makin’ a speech here. Get that hand stuck up to bang something home? An’ see that glarey look? An’ that angle to the way his head’s held? That was the way he looked yesterday when he turned around after runnin’ Boots down. Kind of fanatic like.”
“That may be. But even so, this man was killed in a strike riot.”
“Maybe he was an’ maybe he wasn’t. Restaurants call fried flounder filly of sole, but it’s flounder. They’s more’n one man in this world who’s travelin’ under a different name. Maybe he was gettin’ too far mixed up in his line o’ work an’ thought it was a nice time to have David Schonbrun die. They ain’t a lot o’ difference in them names, like Harlow says. But we can make sure.”
“How?”
“Chap in Boston used to cook along of me on the Amanda S. He works in the room on the Clarion where they keep back numbers an’ things. We’ll telegraph him to see if he can find out about it for us an’ if it was a sure thing about his gettin’ killed. It ought to of been in a paper. An’ I guess I’ll send a wire to another feller I know who works in City Hall somewhere, in New York. He can find out about the family of this David Schonbrun an’ if there was such a feller anyway. We might as well do the thing up brown while we’re at it.”
He got out of the car. “Don’t look so amazed-like, Miss Prue. I picked up a lot of friends in my time as ’d be glad to do me a favor. An’ then I’ll telegraph a man I used to work for out West who’s the head or something of a Labor Fed’ration an’ see if he knows anything about this Schonbrun bein’ a labor agitator. That’s what he sounds like to have been to me. May none of these do any good at all, but you might’s well have all the strings you can to your bow.”
As he entered the office he chuckled. “This here is goin’ to cost Bill a good sum in the line of telegrams, I shouldn’t wonder, but I cal’late if I make ’em strong enough we may get answers to-day.”
At the moment I wondered why Bill had taken the trouble to add me to his staff of detectives. Asey Mayo had thought so far ahead of me that I was a little exhausted trying to keep up with him. His casual mention of friends scattered over the country surprised me. In the town Asey had no one outside of Bill Porter with whom he was intimate. He was a friendly soul, but his friendliness was impersonal and unconcerned. Yet this corps of acquaintances he unearthed in such an offhand manner was undoubtedly genuine. When Asey came back his face wore a troubled look. “Have you any word from Jimmy?”
“Yup. He can’t come down. Says the Porter company is on the verge of mergin’ with some other concern an’ that he couldn’t get away if Bill himself was killed. He says for me to go to work an’ spend as much money as I want gettin’ the thing all straightened out. Says to wire this man whose name he gave me in New York an’ ask if Sanborn had any enemies in the city. So I did. Well, I guess we got to carry on by ourselves. Now let’s go to the hotel an’ see if they’s any trace of Kurth there anywhere.”
But at the hotel we found no John Kurth in the register.
I described him as well as I could and the clerk pondered. “No, there wasn’t any one here who looked like that. Did he come from New York?”
“He might have,” I said guardedly.
“Well, why don’t you go over to that little camping place next to Bangs’ house, where he has the cottages to let overnight? There was a man here yesterday that looked like the one you want who came here for a room, but we were full up and didn’t have any room. I told him the Nobscusset or the Belmont up the Cape would be the best place for him to go, but he wanted to stay right here.”
“Kind of a car did he drive?” Asey asked.
“I couldn’t tell you. I know it was a big seven-passenger touring car, black and shiny and new-looking. I think it had a New York plate. And it had red wire wheels.”
“We’ll go see. Say, if he does come back you needn’t tell him we was lookin’ for him.” Asey placed a crisp five-dollar bill on the desk.
The clerk was more gracious. “Of course not, Mr. Mayo. Certainly not. If he does, I shall let you know, I suppose? Yes? Thank you, Mr. Mayo.”
“All alike,” Asey murmured as we left. “All alike. We’ll go see Lonzo Bangs.”
We found Mr. Bangs cleaning out a hen coop. The work seemed to hold his attention, and he did not take kindly to an interruption. I wondered if Asey would try to bribe him with money; I knew we wouldn’t get our information for nothing, yet I also knew the effect of a tip on the average independent Cape Codder. But Asey had his own tactics.
“Mornin’, Lonzo.”
“Um,” said Mr. Bangs.
“Know that rowboat of Bill’s, that Cape Cod dory he had built last year up to Wareham?”
“Um.” Mr. Bangs dusted off a glass egg.
“Wanted to buy it a month or two ago, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Didn’t, though.”
“Nuh-uh.” Mr. Bangs shook his head.
“Price too high? Bill wanted fifteen dollars, ’f I recall rightly.”
Mr. Bangs made an assenting sound.
“Shouldn’t wonder if you could have it for twelve.”
“Ten,” said Mr. Bangs, coming to life suddenly. “Eleven?”
“Ten,” decisively.
“Highway rob’ry, that’s what it is. You can have it for ten, though. F.O.B. our wharf.”
Mr. Bangs looked hurt. “Won’t deliver?”
“Course not,” said Asey. “You’re gettin’ a bargain. Wouldn’t sell ’f it wasn’t we was gettin’ a new one.”
“Throw in oars an’ rowlocks?”
“Yup, as long’s you pay cartin’.”
Abruptly Mr. Bangs laid down his broom and departed into the house. He came out with a roll of one-dollar bills secured by an elastic band; he gave it to Asey, who gravely counted twice through the notes. “Right?”
“All right, Lonzo.”
“I’ll get th’ boat t’-morrer. Now, just what was it you was after me for, anyhows, Asey?”
“You know Miss Whitsby?”
“Shouldn’t wonder.” He bobbed his head in my direction.
“Well, she’s lookin’ for a man, a friend of her cousin, Mr. Handy, an’ her cousin told her he was bein’ in Wellfleet this weekend. We asked at the hotel an’ the feller at the desk said he might be up to one of your cottages.”
“Didn’t know as you was related to the Handys,” said Mr. Bangs interestedly.
“Remote connection,” I told him hastily. “Fifth cousins.”
Mr. Bangs considered. “What was his name?”
“That,” said Asey ingeniously, “is just where the shoe pinches. Her cousin wrote her the name in a letter an’ he writes so bad she can’t make it out. She thinks it’s Kurth.”
“Nobody here of that name.”
“He’s tall and real dark,” Asey went on, “an’ he drives a black Cadillac touring car with red wire wheels.”
“Packard,” said Mr. Bangs.
“Then he’s here?” I asked, concealing my pleasure.
“He was. Went down to Provincetown a while ago to see a feller an’ wasn’t cornin’ back, so he said. But his name wasn’t what you said it was. ’Twas Brown. William K. Brown of New York City. Y’know,” added Lonzo expansively, “ ’f I’d ’a’ known he was a friend of any Handy or a rel’tive of yours, I’d ’a’ given him a better cottage. The one he had ain’t got such a good bed.”
“I’m sure,” I said, “that he enjoyed it.”
“Well, ’f he comes back, I’ll do better by him.”
“Say,” Asey remarked as we were leaving, “you didn’t happen to notice the number of his car, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. But m’wife might of. She’s a real noticin’ woman, Mariar is.”
He returned to the business of hen-coop cleaning and Asey, with a weary little sigh, knocked on the kitchen door of the Bangs house.
“If it’s the fruit man,” a shrill voice announced, “I don’t want nothin’. The A and P has good enough without payin’ all kinds of fancy prices. Why, Asey Mayo, is that you? An’ Miss Whitsby? Well, now, you just come right in.”
We went into the hot kitchen.
“I’m doin’ my bakin’, but I ain’t got one thing t’ offer you. I’m real ashamed not to be more forehanded.” She waited expectantly.
Asey repeated the story of my mythical cousin and his equally mythical friend. Did she remember the number of Mr. Brown’s car?
“’Twas a real funny number. ’Twas 11-C-ll. I ast him if that C meant ’twas New York City, an’ he said he didn’t know what that letter meant, but he guessed so.”
“That’s real good you remembered. An’ now, Miss Whitsby, didn’t you want some tickets for the Temp’-rance Union garden party? You’re sellin’ ’em, ain’t you, Mis’ Bangs?”
She beamed. “I should say I am, an’ if I haven’t been havin’ a time with them, what with those summer folks, the gull pond ones, takin’ half of ’em, an’ then returnin’ all six because they decided to go somewheres else that day.”
“I’ll take the six,” I said, reaching for my purse. Mrs. Bangs accepted the three dollars with voluminous thanks. Asey and I departed precipitately.
“Whew,” said Asey as we rolled along, “y’know, sometimes I kind of wonder myself at these here Cape Codders. Here’s your three dollars, Miss Prue. Bill Porter is payin’ all the incidental expenses like that.” I noticed that they were three of the dollar bills from Mr. Bangs’ payment on the boat.
“Now we go to the phone office,” said Asey, “an’ strew a little bait for our fish, as the feller said.”
He chose the booth farthest away from the operator and manipulated a nickel.
“Pretty fine inventions, tel’phone an’ tel’graph. Yup. Gimme the state police headquarters. Yup.”
“What are you going to do?” I demanded.
He closed one eye and opened it slowly.
“State police headquarters?” he asked in Jimmy Porter’s precise clipped tones. “I should like to report a stolen car…. Yes. A stolen car. A Packard seven passenger touring car, New York license plate number 11-C-ll… . Color? Black with red wire wheels…. No, the man will show you a license and registration in the name of John Kurth. But it’s forged… . Who am I? This is Mr. Mayo speaking for Miss Dorothy Cram of New York City… . Yes, it was Miss Cram’s car. Now, if any of your men sight that car, I wish you’d have them bring it to Miss Prudence Whitsby’s cottage at Wellfleet… . Oh, yes! There’s a reward.” He hung up the receiver and grinned at me.
“Asey, you downright liar! What will happen if the state police find out you’re humbugging them like this? There’ll be an awful to-do.”
‘The reward’ll take care of that. It’ll save us the trouble of findin’ this Mister Kurth. We ain’t got the time to go gallivantin’ all over the Cape for him. We got bigger an’ better things to do. Ain’t no use for Mahomet t’ go t’ the mountin if the mountin’ll be made t’ travel. An’ them state police love pickin’ people up. Relieves the monot’ny.”
“How did you learn to imitate Jimmy like that? You had that Harvard-Oxford accent down pat.”
“I made so much fun of him that I got to learn to do it pretty well. It’s apt to get results you wouldn’t get otherwise. You know, I liked Jimmy better when he talked like every one else.”
We climbed into the car. “I feel like Doctor Watson,” I remarked.
“That dumb feller Sherlock Holmes was always totin’ around? Poof! I saw him at the movies. You ain’t no Doctor Watson, Miss Prue. Four eyes is better than two any day of the week, an’ I don’t wear no glasses. Nope, no reason for you to be feelin’ that way, just because I been doin’ things you ain’t no need to know about much. Before long I may be the one doin’ the Watson act myself. Say, when we get to Mis’ Howe’s will you do the talkin’? She don’t care for me on account of my not bein’ a Methodist.”
“Neither am I, Asey.”
“No,” said he laconically, “you ain’t. But you’re you.”
Mrs. Howe met us at the gate of her tiny white house which looked like something from an Easter card. Here she had her dining-room where summer visitors too lazy to cook for themselves were fed.
“I’m real glad to see you two; I just know you’re going to tell me a lot I don’t know about this Sanborn business. Isn’t that a pretty car? Is it Bill Porter’s? I suspected as much. And isn’t it a pity about poor Mr. Sanborn? Just as nice a man as you’d want to meet anywhere, though he was a moody one if you ask me.”
“Moody?” I asked. It rarely took over one word to elicit a hundred and one from Mrs. Howe.
“Well, maybe I ought not to say exactly moody, now that the poor man’s dead, but I’ll tell you just what I mean. He came here yesterday to see what time meals was and he was late for dinner. Didn’t seem to mind that much, said he’d just’s soon go to the hotel as not. I told him he’d ought to bring a napkin ring, and he joked about it just as nice and friendly as you please. I explained to him that all mealers wasn’t so honest, and I’d had so many napkins rings taken away that I had to have people bring their own or else have paper napkins and I never could abide the scrimpy things.”
“And quite right, too,” I told her. “But what was there moody about him?”
“Well, just as he was driving off he said what did he miss for dinner? And I told him what we had. We had nice clam chowder with crackers in it, and my own piccalilli that I make myself,—we always have that on Fridays. Then we had flounders fried in deep fat, you know, rolled in egg and fried real brown, and green peas out of my own garden and hot biscuits. That is, baking powder biscuits, not riz ones. And he laughed and said he was real sorry to have missed all that.”
“I don’t blame him one iota,” I said. “It’s a meal any one would be sorry to miss.”
She simpered at me, and Asey gave me an admiring glance.
“And,” she went on, “I told him, I said, now we had a real nice sardine salad, too. And what do you suppose that man did?”
“What?” I asked. I was beginning to feel like the silent partner of a vaudeville act, the one who says who and where and why and what for the other member to make his points.
“Well, he shuddered like he was going to have a stroke, he did. It was just the way Mr. Howe was taken. And then he stared at me with the ugliest expression I ever saw and his eyes were sort of glarey.” I looked at Asey. He had used the same expression. “And he just sort of stared. Then he let out a scream and said ‘Sardines I Don’t you ever give me any sardines or let me see them, either.’
“And just as I was going to ask him if he wanted a soda mint or something, he drove that car of his away from this very gate like I’d said it was a salad full of poison. Now, wouldn’t you call that being moody, even if a man is dead?” she concluded triumphantly.
“I certainly should call it moody.” I forced a touch of indignation into my voice. “A grown man acting like that about sardines.”
“I know it,” said Mrs. Howe. “I know it. I thought at the time, ‘Well, Mr. Sanborn, you may be a book-writer and that may be some excuse for your being different than other people, but I don’t think that there’s any use or even any excuse for a writer acting that way about a few sardines.’ ” Abruptly she changed her tone. “Do you think Bill Porter killed him?”
“No; what time did Sanborn leave?” Asey asked shortly.
“He left here a little after two. We have dinner at twelve sharp and I know the tables was all cleared off and the dishes washed when he came. Yes, it must have been about a quarter past two.”
I remembered that Sanborn had run over Boots at two-thirty; then he probably had gone to the hotel for luncheon and returned just before he came to the cottage for the hammer. It all hung together. I wondered if there were any possible connection between his anger and the sardines and the murder. But Sanborn had been care-free enough when we had last seen him. If he had been in a temper he had made a quick recovery.
Asey nodded thoughtfully. “Now, Mrs. Howe, you’re real good to tell us about Mr. Sanborn. But you won’t mention it to any one else, will you? I mean about the sardines and all?”
“Of course not, not if you don’t think it would be right for me to do it. But now, I’ve been thinking. What should I do with that money he left here for his first week’s board? Had I better keep it and turn it over to his heirs if they come down here, do you think?” I smothered a laugh. “No, you keep it, Mrs. Howe. It’s been paid you, and it’s yours.”
She smiled. “Well, now, that makes me feel better. It was the first thing I thought of when the Nobles’ milk boy told me this morning, and I’ve had it on my mind ever since. And I’ll see that no one knows anything about the way he acted over those sardines.”
We both thanked her, and Asey rolled the car away just in time to offset a stream of questions.
He looked at me quizzically. “Gets cur’user an’ cur’user, don’t it? Sanborn acts like a crazy man when he hears the word sardines mentioned an’ don’t want to see the things in front of him. An’ he goes away in such a dummed hurry that he runs over Boots to get off his mad streak. An’ yet there’s a sardine tin beside him when he’s found killed. They was a strange sort of thing to find anyway, an’ it was even stranger when they turned out to be Bill’s sardines, or at least the tin as belonged to ’em. But now that this turns up, I calls it plumb downright a-mazin’.”
“But what does it all mean, Asey? I wish we knew.”
“If wishes was hosses, beggars’d ride. I wisht I knew, too, Miss Prudence-Doctor Watson-Sherlock Holmes. I wisht I could say ’twas ele-menteery, but I can’t do nothin’ of the kind.”
He leaned over and pressed a button on the ornate dashboard. The arrogant notes of the musical horn floated out over the meadows.
“I can’t do nothin’ of the kind,” he repeated. “But you an’ me is goin’ to find out by Monday mornin’.”