Sullivan enjoyed our discomfiture.
“That’s just where I found it. I was taking a look around his house a little while ago and I wandered around the garage. Saw that old car of his and just for fun I gave it the once-over. And right down behind the front seat, there was the old hammer.”
“Might have been one belongin’ to the car,” Asey offered.
“Yes. Might of. But it’s a nice spandy brand-new old hammer, and it’s got written on the handle of it in pencil ‘Whitsby, their hammer.’ ” He passed the article in question to me. “Recognize this, Miss Whitsby?” It was undeniably the one we had given Sanborn. I remembered that after we had used it while putting up our curtains at the cottage, Betsey had sat down and scrawled that inscription on it. Betsey can not resist the lure of a freshly sharpened pencil. She ruins telephone pads by covering them with meaningless hieroglyphics while she talks on the phone, and she is always scribbling comments on the margins of her books.
I admitted that the hammer was ours.
“Well, that’s that.”
“Show it to Bill?” Asey asked.
“Yes. And you should hear what he said.”
“What’d he say? Didn’t he give any explanation?”
“Sure he gave me an explanation. Captain Kinney of the old second precinct he used to get a big kick out of the reasons people gave him when they had things there wasn’t any need for them to have. That is, unless they were connected with a crime. I got a kick out of Bill’s reasons too. He claims he was mad as hops when he went to see Sanborn. He says this hammer was on the table when he went into the cabin, and he just picked it up and fiddled with it the way you fiddle with a paper-knife or a pair of scissors or something like that. Then he says he got even madder when Sanborn says he didn’t run over the dog, and he left the place more mad than when he went in.”
Sullivan laughed uproariously. “He claims he was so hot ’n’ bothered that most likely he just toted it off with him and forgot that he’d done any such thing. Now, ain’t that a likely bit to give for an explanation? Seems as if I could hear already what the district at-torney’d do to a thing like that. Picked it up and took it away, he says, so mad he don’t know what he was doing, an’ then he goes and forgets all about it. Seems to me if he could do that, he could of hit Sanborn over the head with it and forgot about it just as easy. Likely, ain’t it, Asey? Real likely.”
“Might be at that, Slough. Truth’s stranger than fiction. You think he killed Sanborn with it?”
“Yes. And even if he didn’t, it’ll take more explaining than Bill Porter’s done already to make it seem like anything so common as takin’ away a pencil or something. Well, so long. I got to go to see some reporters. They’re waiting for an interview.”
“Let ’em take a picture of you with your uniform on,” Asey suggested.
“They already have. Three times. Thank you just the same. And don’t you think you two better save gasoline an’ leave detectin’ to those that make it a business?”
“Dunno,” Asey drawled, “’s we will.”
Sullivan shrugged his shoulders. “As you like, as you like.”
“How’s Bill?” I asked.
“Oh, him? He’s all right. In fact, he’s better. When I found that hammer, I knew I’d got all I wanted, so I took him out of the pillory.” His tone was benign.
“Guess you found public opinion wasn’t goin’ t’ stand for nothin’ like that, didn’t you?” Asey asked.
“Public opinion didn’t have one thing to do with it,” Sullivan retorted, though his face was rather more than pink. “I was only keepin’ him there till he got ready to confess, anyhow. An’ if he hadn’t rubbed me the wrong way, he wouldn’t of been here at all.”
“Hmmm,” said Asey, nodding. “I see. Well, what you done with him now, huh?”
Sullivan chewed the end of his cigar. “Well, there wasn’t no place that was really safe for a killer like him, an’ at first I didn’t know what to do with him. But some one suggested a box-car we just unloaded with stuff for the store; it’s got a good lock, and there’s plenty air even if there ain’t no light to speak of. Besides, it’ll kind of give him a taste of the solitary confinement that’ll be coming to him soon.”
Asey and I looked at each other in consternation.
“Well, so long,” Sullivan waved a hand airily, took back the hammer and, with a flourish, drove away.
“Well,” I said.
“Hell, that’s what you mean.” Asey bit off a new hunk of tobacco. “Plain honest hell with fringes. What’d that fool boy do a thing like that for, I ask you? Whyn’t he take his dummed ole sardine tin if he had to take something, ’stead of that hammer? An’ why didn’t he have the wit to say he didn’t know nothing about it when Slough asked him? That’s what I want to know. What’s he got to go an’ tell the truth for? Course,” he added, “I raised him to tell the truth, but I thought I’d taught him how to discrim’nate about tellin’ it, too. They’s some things it don’t pay to be too truthful about, an’ when you got yourself arrested for murder you ought to know it. I don’t see’s how a little white fib would ’a’ hurt his soul mor’n this hammer’s goin’ to hurt him. Them Porters has got a streak of crazy blood in ’em, an’ that’s a fact.”
“What’ll we do now?”
“Do? What in time can we do? We can go on just like we was goin’ on an’ try to find out who done it. We can go on an’ hope the sky falls an’ lets down a shower o’ skylarks an’ rainbows an’ the feller that killed Sanborn. We’ll just forget all about that crazy fool boy. We’ll go after our telegrams an’ see if any one of them guys got anything for us.”
“But what about Bill and the box-car?” I asked. Asey shrugged his shoulders. “I guess it ain’t so public as the pil’ry, but that’s about all the better it is. I bet that boy thinks twice ’fore he eats another sardine, that’s what I bet.”
I nodded heavily. That was one way of looking at the situation.
At the station we found two messages waiting for us. “Nothin’ like sendin’ answers prepaid if you want to get real quick service,” Asey remarked. “One’s from the feller in Boston an’ the other’s from that one in New York. This is what the first one says:
“Man called David Schonbrun reported killed strike riot 1923 Lowell Mass. Riddled body found and identified by authorities not confirmed as Schonbrun by friends or family. Half a dozen others killed at same time believed foreign agitators and never identified at all. Perfectly possible body of Schonbrun might have been one of other workers and not man himself if that answers your question. Can find no record of him afterward. Had been jailed Lowell two months previous contempt of court. Description you give fits but Schonbrun had mustache. Will send you all else available if and when found.
“Humpf. That kind of fits in with what Harlow said,” Asey mused. “There’s a good chance, then, that he wasn’t killed at all. When was his first book out, do you happen to know, Miss Prue?”
“Somewhere around 1924-25, I believe. I heard Betsey mention something about it.”
“Well, that all fits together. I guess we’ll take it for granted, Miss Prue, that this Sanborn was Schonbrun. Maybe he ain’t after all, but it seems to me to be a nice beginnin’ for us to make. An’ well begun’s half done, as the feller said. Now, this other’s from the City Hall feller.
“Four David Schonbruns in records,” he read. “One born Barvaria 1874 glue manufacturer no family. One born here 1899 died 1901 with parents in epidemic scarlet fever. One born Stuttgart 1876 married Marie Stravinoff, children David born city May 19, 1897, Abraham born Brooklyn October 2, 1899, father killed blast in Jersey City plant 1903, mother died February, 1929, starvation—”
“Asey,” I interrupted breathlessly, “remember Dot’s story? Do you suppose the woman she told us about, the one in the settlement house, was Sanborn’s mother?”
“Kind of looks that way.” He continued reading:
“No record death David Schonbrun or brother. If last is one you want let me know as remember connection with strike last year and will send details.”
“That couldn’t be Dale, could it? Do you suppose that the brother is a labor agitator too?”
“Guess so. So the brother is followin’ in the footsteps of David an’ he’s active enough to get his name known. I wonder if he had a hunch his brother wasn’t dead an’ was tryin’ to find out by goin’ after him that way?”
“Maybe. But Asey, if there was the other brother, why did the mother starve to death? She had him to look out for her.”
“Maybe an’ maybe not. Well, I’ll send to these fellers an’ tell them to send me all they know. N’en we’ll have only that chap out West an’ Jimmy’s friend to hear from.”
“Asey, do you suppose that that hobo was the brother, and not Kurth? That might account for Olga’s thinking he looked like some one she had seen but not some one she actually remembered.”
Asey slapped his hand on the wheel. “Them Portygees have a sayin’ that woman’s council may not be a lot, but the one who scorns it ain’t none the wiser. By gum, Miss Prue, I never thought of that. We’ll go right up this minute an’ ask her.”
But Mrs. Howe, standing in front of her house, called for us to stop as we drove by.
She bustled out to the car. “Well, I’m real glad you stopped this time. I waved and called when you went by before till folks thought I was crazy, but you two was so busy with each other that you didn’t have no eyes for me at all. It’s about those sardines.”
“What about ’em?” Asey asked.
“Well, you know you told me not to mention a thing about them to any one and I didn’t. But it’s no use, and I might as well.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Well, at dinner-time to-day a real pleasant lady stopped here in her car and asked if she could have lunch. She’d seen the sign out here about meals, I guess. And she was so nice I told her of course she could eat here, even though it was pretty late and most of my mealers had finished. She was real grateful and said if she was putting me out any, she’d be glad to pay extra. Well, while she was eating, she talked about this Sanborn business and said what an awful thing it was, which it is, and I think it’s a blot on the town, just as I was saying to Addie Phillips—”
“Get back to the mutton,” said Asey.
“Mutton? Oh, you mean the sardines. I said to her, I said, ‘Looks to me like Bill Porter done it, though why he went and left a sardine tin behind him, I for one don’t see.’
“And she looked real queer at me and said that she knew Dale Sanborn real well, and she knew it for a fact that he didn’t ever eat sardines not even want to have them around him or even mentioned.”
“Hadn’t she read about it in the papers?” I asked. “That’s what I told her, that it was in all the papers, and she said that she hadn’t seen to-day’s paper, she’d just heard of it while she was getting gasoline somewheres. Anyways, I thought I’d let you know that there wasn’t any use in keeping that about the sardines a secret, because other people seem to know about it too.”
“Did she talk as though she knew him well, or did she tell you her name?” Asey demanded.
“Well, I suppose she knew him well or she wouldn’t know what he liked to eat. She didn’t say what her name was, but there was a little pin made out of some shiny stones that looked like diamonds on her dress and the initials as far as I could make them out were M. W. or maybe W. M.”
“Maida Waring,” I whispered to Asey. “Mrs. Howe, didn’t you ask her name?”
“Well, I did the best’s I could without seeming rude. I called her Miss Um and Mrs. Um, but she wouldn’t supply her name. And I suggested she write in my visitors’ book,—I always keep one because it’s kind of nice to see who people are and where they hail from,—but she said she was in too much of a hurry. She said she had to see some one in Provincetown and she hadn’t time.”
“Mrs. Howe, you’ve been real helpful,” Asey said. “But if that woman turns up again will you see we find out about it before she has time to leave?”
Mrs. Howe promised that she would, and we departed for home.
“This situation,” I said, “begins to get itself complicated. If that was Maida Waring and she was going to see some one in Provincetown and if the mysterious William K. Brown, or Kurth, if it is Kurth, was also going to Provincetown—”
“It’d look,” Asey finished for me, “like they was something afoot, bein’ as how there’s bees where’s honey. Funny they both wanted to come an’ see you, and funnier still they just came, willy-nilly. Well, things is pickin’ up.”
As we turned up the lane we met Betsey and Dot in the small car.
“Where you goin’ now?” Asey asked.
“We finally found the people who were playing tennis on the courts yesterday. That is, we found out who they were and it seems that they’re staying at the hotel, so we’re going to see if we can find them there. Shall we keep on if they’re not? I mean, shall we put on the bloodhound act?”
“Yup,” said Asey, “if you don’t have to track too far.”
“And what are you two closed-mouth ones in your swell barouche going to do?”
“These bloodhounds,” said Asey with a grin, “are havin’ a rest period for the time bein’. All work an’ no play’s contrary to the constitution. Git along in your thimble, you two, an’ don’t let no sea-gull take you for a minnow an’ carry you away.”
Up at the house we found Emma, placidly counting stitches.
“Horatius has absolutely nothing to report. Your only visitors have been the paper boy and an itinerant fruit-seller who had an argument with Olga about ripe bananas. And young Mr. Sullivan has taken a leaf out of your book and put barbed wire about the cabin. People were simply milling about it. Oh, yes, and I can’t find two stitches I lost yesterday. I’m going to sue that awful railroad. And, dear me, I quite forgot the most important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Olga made a discovery. Not two seconds ago.”
“What did she discover?”
“She found the hammer we lent Sanborn,” Emma announced triumphantly. “Wasn’t that clever of her?”
“What?” Asey and I looked at each other in astonishment.
“Yes, here it is.” She passed over a hammer, an exact replica of the one Sullivan had showed us. “Where in blazes did she find it?”
“Out by the garbage hole, beyond the beach grass.” There are no garbage collectors on Cape Cod and one either burns refuse and hopes that the wind may not turn, or else one buries it in a hole. We used the latter method and our hole was about a hundred feet beyond the kitchen.
I took the hammer from Asey and looked at it closely. On the handle was a smear that had been made by a hand rubbing pencil marks. The writing, if it had been writing, was quite obliterated.
“What are you two looking so puzzled about? It is the hammer, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. You see, Sullivan has already found a hammer beneath the front seat of Bill’s car, and I have identified it and said it was the one we gave Sanborn.”
Emma opened her eyes wide. “That’s interesting, interesting indeed! But couldn’t this still be the one?”
“It could,” I said. “It’s new and the smear of pencil mark is about the same size as the other. And Betsey always uses soft pencils. I think I remember wondering this afternoon why the writing on the hammer Sullivan showed us wasn’t more smudged. But I have identified it as ours and I don’t suppose for one moment that it would do any good to show this to Sullivan, do you, Asey?”
“I don’t cal’late ’twould. He’d just sit an’ laugh an’ say it was our idea to get Bill off. We can’t prove this is the one you loaned him, an’ you already said the other was the one anyway.”
“What’ll we do about it?”
“Nothin’, I guess, right now. I reckon we’ll ask Olga about that tramp.”
He called her out from the kitchen.
“You been thinkin’ about who that stranger was you met yesterday?”
She nodded.
“Remembered who he looked like yet?”
Again she nodded.
“Well, for the love of heaven,” exclaimed Asey, “who in time was he like anyway?”
“He looks like Mr. Sanborn,” said Olga complacently.
Asey got up and solemnly, to Olga’s surprise and our astonishment, kissed her on both cheeks.
“An’,” he added, “if I had a medal I’d give it to you too. But since I ain’t got any, I’ll give you this.” He peeled five bills from his wallet. “Information like that comes to five dollars the word. It’s worth more, but times is hard.”
Olga looked inquiringly at me. I told her to take it.
She nodded her thanks. “I’ll guess I know you again,” she said coyly to Asey and went back to her work.
“I guess,” Asey stood up, “that now we’ll begin to investigate this bum situation in a big way. Mrs. Manton, we’ll leave you to play the waitin’ game for us again.”
“I delight in it,” she informed him. “It’s the only game I ever played that took absolutely no effort whatsoever. You don’t even have to sharpen pencils. But you’d better wait a minute. There’s some one letting down the barrier for a car.”
I looked, hoping it would be the touring car with Kurth, but it was only the doctor. In white linen knickerbockers and a tweed coat he looked more like a banker at the nineteenth hole than a country practitioner.
“Good afternoon,” he greeted us. “I’ve been doing my duty as medical examiner and I have some things I want to ask you about.”
“You still stick to your idea of a bash on the skull?” Asey asked.
“A blow at the base of the skull,” the doctor corrected. “Yes. I was sure last night and now I’m positive. There’s no trace of poison and no trace of heart failure or any other natural cause.” He launched into a lengthy description. “And I hear that Sullivan has found the hammer and that things look bad for Bill.”
“He has found one hammer,” I said, “but we have found its twin brother.” I showed him what Olga had brought to light.
“Amazing,” said the doctor. “Now all you need is to find another sardine tin and prove that Bill was just picking daisies and didn’t go near the cottage at all. Did you see the crowd up-town?”
“Not since this morning. How is Bill getting along?—I hear he is now in a box-car.”
“That’s right. And people are crowding around it as though it were a six-headed calf. They’ve had to call in a dozen extra to handle traffic, and as each of the dozen has his own individual thoughts on the direction of traffic, it’s pretty messy. But every one’s quiet and peaceful. I think they’re stunned more than anything else. And the place is simply running over with reporters. They were on your trail, Miss Whitsby, but I told them you were ill and under my care and not to be disturbed. I think I said I’d have them arrested if they bothered you. Possibly that will stop them from annoying you.”
“You’re very kind,” I said.
“I hope it will work. They’ve taken Slough and Bill from every angle and I had to chase a couple out of my office before I came up here. They were very determined.”
“You had something you wanted to ask us about,” I reminded him.
“Oh, yes. Well, I went through all Sanborn’s more personal belongings of course, and there were two or three things I wanted to find out about. I showed them to Sullivan, but he doesn’t think that they’re at all important. I’m not so sure, however. For instance, there’s this note. It’s postmarked Boston and written this last Wednesday. I’ll read it to you. It came to him at the hotel special delivery Wednesday night.”
“ ‘Dear Sanborn, [he read] “ ‘I understand that you are staying at the Cape for a time, and I should like to see you at the earliest possible opportunity.
“ ‘If I can, I shall visit friends in the town this weekend, but at all events, I shall be down and I would advise you to see me. I have got pretty well into the truth of the matter and you are going to clear up the rest if I have to resort to force.’ ”
The doctor cleared his throat. “That’s signed by a man who calls himself John Kurth. Now, Miss Whitsby, I have a bad memory for faces, but I never forget a name. Didn’t you have a friend named Kurth who visited you and Betsey here once or twice when you had that cottage down by the hollow? And wasn’t he a classmate of Jimmy Porter?”
I looked at Asey who nodded ever so slightly behind the doctor’s back.
“Yes,” I said, “I knew him, and he visited us.”
“I thought so,” said the doctor with some satisfaction. “I am rarely mistaken in the matter of names.”
“You an’ Addison Sims of Seattle,” Asey murmured. “And,” the doctor went on, “then there is another note, postmarked Boston and dated Wednesday, also sent special delivery and delivered to Sanborn Wednesday evening. Its contents are so much like the other that there’s no need for reading it. But this one is from a woman who wants him to clear something up, and it’s signed Maida Waring. Now, as I remember, wasn’t that the name of the woman Kurth married?”
I told him that it was.
The doctor beamed. “I thought so. Yes, I thought I was right. Now, do you think that there might be anything in those notes? Connected with the murder, of course.”
“I dunno,” Asey drawled. “They didn’t come here, did they, Miss Prue?”
I took my cue. “No, they didn’t. And I don’t think they came down, or I should have seen them. I’m sure they would have come to call. I don’t think either of them is in town.” All that, I reflected, was true as far as it went.
“That’s too bad,” said Reynolds. “I mean, I thought that it might lead to something. Probably it’s only a business note, though of course it is a coincidence. And why doesn’t Kurth’s wife sign herself with her full name?”
“Lucy Stone league,” I extemporized.
“A lot of nonsense, too,” said the doctor. “Why a woman shouldn’t take her husband’s name is beyond me. These new notions are the limit, if you ask me. Take the declining birthrate.”
“I know,” I said hurriedly. “It’s disgraceful.”
“It’s going to be the ruin of this country,” said the doctor. “That’s just what it’s going to be. I’m writing an article about it now for the Medical Journal.”
We listened to a discussion on the declining birthrate. Asey at last had the courage to damn the flow of words.
“Something else you had to ask about, Doc?”
“Oh, yes. I’d quite forgotten.” He fumbled in his pocket and brought out an engagement ring. “It’s this. I happened to look inside. It says D. S. to D. C. Aren’t those the initials of Betsey’s friend?”