“Say what before?” Schonbrun asked belligerently. “What you talkin’ about?”
“Why didn’t you tell us before that this sardine tin was so all-fired important?”
“Whyn’t I tell you? Ain’t you been belly-achin’ about it ever since I seen you?”
“Maybe we did wonder about it, but none of us said as how the person who found it did the killing. That was all your own idea. An’ what I want to know is, why didn’t you say something about it before?”
“I knew you was tryin’ to get me mixed up,” said Schonbrun angrily. “Here I do everything I can to help you, an’ Jeese, you even tie me up an’—”
“An’,” Asey interrupted, “with the aid of a few of Uncle Sam’s strips of cur’ency with C’s in the corner of ’em, we ask you a few questions.”
“Didn’t I deserve ’em? Huh? Didn’t you come an’ take me away by force when I wasn’t doin’ anything but mindin’ my business like a good citizen?”
“Don’t let’s go into all that again. We been over it so many times already that I’ve c’mitted it to mem’ry. Will you tell me why you think the feller that took them sardines is the one that done the murder?”
“I don’t know,” Schonbrun replied a little crossly. “I just thought of it.”
“I s’pose it didn’t occur to you that the best person to pick that tin up, that is, the one that had more chance to do it than any one else, was you? You crossed that way on your trip up to the cabin, an’ it seems to me that you might of found it. Did you?”
“Naw. I told you a million times already I didn’t. Wasn’t it there half the day, huh? Why pick on me?”
“Look,” said Betsey excitedly, “here comes one of those cops who were here yesterday.”
“You get into the dining-room an’ stay there,” Asey commanded Schonbrun. “Is it Kurth?”
“It’s Johnny all right,” said Betsey.
The policeman and Kurth strode into the living-room. They looked a little grim.
“See here,” said the officer, “this guy reports a car stolen from him and you say it was stolen from you, but we called up New York and it’s his all right. What kind of a game is going on here, I’d like to know?” Kurth’s greeting was chilly. “I’m sure there’s been some mistake. It’s awfully nice to see you all again, Miss Whitsby, but I wish you’d tell me why you’ve been appropriating my car.”
I looked pleadingly at Asey, who proceeded to rise and shine.
“Of’cer, we shouldn’t of done it. But we’ll see that you don’t get into any trouble, an’ we’ll, um. We’ll fix it up with you.”
I resented Asey’s use of the plural pronoun. All this complication was his own fault, and I knew from the beginning that no good would ever come of it. And here he was, blithely including all of us in his little joke.
“Joke, huh?” The officer eyed him truculently. “It ain’t going to be so funny to explain to the captain. He doesn’t like jokes like this. And I suppose you think it was a joke to have us take this man’s car and leave him stranded miles from everywhere. Yeah. You folks has a nice sense of humor. Go on.”
“That’s right,” Asey went on ruefully. “It sounds kind of punk now, but this is the way it was. We saw Mr. Kurth drivin’ around in his car up-town an’ he didn’t notice us attall. Now,” he looked at Betsey and flicked an eyelid.
“You see,” Betsey drew a long breath. I thanked heaven that the girl had an imagination. I myself should not have known how to continue. “You see, Mr. Kurth had wanted to come and visit us this weekend, but unfortunately we had asked other guests. And so of course when we saw him and he didn’t notice us, we thought he was angry or something.” She smiled at the officer. “So we thought it would be sort of amusing to say that his car was stolen and have him arrested.” The policeman looked at her scornfully. “Yeah?” Emma put down her knitting. “Surely, Lieutenant”—he was obviously not a lieutenant but he looked at her with more respect than he had shown any of us so far. “Surely you don’t suspect us of being real criminals, do you? You see, we felt that Mr. Kurth might be angry with us, as Miss Whitsby has said, and we did want to see him because he’s been away for a long time. We thought it would be rather sport to have him arrested and brought here, because we felt he wouldn’t come of his own accord. And you’ll have to admit it’s a unique method of making people visit you.”
“It’s all that,” said the officer. Our lengthy and elaborate explanations were having little effect on him. It was very evident that in his opinion we had been having sport at the expense of the police and he for one was not going to stand by and let us get away with it.
“Now,” Asey appealed to him. “I’ll warrant that Mr. Kurth here offered you a reward, didn’t he?”
“No,” said the officer stolidly.
“Well, that was probably just because he was too excited. Now, you just take this for all your trouble. You know yourself, Cap’n, that we couldn’t tell you fellers would be so smart an’ so on your job as to snatch Mr. Kurth’s car out from under him, as I guess you must of. Now, isn’t that all right?”
The policeman mellowed under the influence of Asey’s oratory, or his wallet.
“Well, if you say that everything’s all right, I guess it is, an’ I’ll let it go. How do you feel about it, mister?” He turned to Kurth.
“Mr. Kurth,” I hurriedly interposed, “has a fine sense of humor and I am certain that he is going to be kind and forgiving to us for our horrid practical joke, aren’t you, John?”
He looked blankly at us all. “I’m sorry I made such a fuss if this is true,” he said lamely. “Only usually when you find your car gone, apparently dissolved into thin air, you don’t deduce the fact that some one wants to see you badly enough to make the police bring you to them.”
He smiled and added another bill to the donation of Asey’s. “It’s all right, officer. Perfectly all right. You don’t need to make any charges, or even to report this if you don’t want to.”
“Will you ever forgive us, Johnny?” Betsey asked as the policeman left. “It was a scrimy thing to do, but it seemed awfully funny at the time. Really it did.”
“Don’t give it another thought,” he assured us. “The only thing that hurt was that I was out visiting Terry Carpenter, and he lives miles out on some sand-bar. You know where it is, don’t you? Peaked Hill, they call it. And after plowing through acres of sand to come back and find my car gone and me miles from everywhere, was depressing, to say the least. But I got a lift back to Provincetown and sent the alarm in.” He laughed. “That’s a new one. Think of the possibilities of reporting peoples’ cars as stolen!”
“Why didn’t you come to see us if you were here on the Cape?” I asked.
“I knew you’d have a house full of company and I didn’t think it would be the thing after angling for an invitation myself. I haven’t seen you for how long? Two years?”
“All of that,” I answered. “But where were you staying?”
“Down at Provincetown,” he said. Asey and I looked at each other. “I tried the local hotel here, but they were all full. Isn’t it around here that the murder was done? Or is that why you have that rope outside? And I hear that Bill Porter has been arrested. Grim.”
“It’s more than that,” I replied. “But look, you didn’t know Sanborn, did you? We’re having an awfully hard time finding out anything about him.”
“Knew him in a business way, that’s all.”
“Mr. Kurth,” Dot, who had been staring at him since he had been introduced, spoke up, “weren’t you the one who had some lawsuit with Dale? It seems to me I remember your name. Dale told me about it?” Kurth looked at her. His face was white under his heavy coat of tan.
“Lawsuit?” He repeated unsteadily.
“Yes, about those in his book or something like that.”
“Oh, yes! Yes, of course.” His voice was relieved. “Those lawsuits. There was some trouble about the book. Of course. Yes. There was a lawsuit, but we managed to get it settled before we got to court.” His explanation was glib. “I’d almost forgotten all about that.”
I could cheerfully have murdered Dot for suggesting an answer for him. Asey looked vexed with her, too.
“You haven’t been down this way for some time,” I remarked.
“No, I’ve been out in China till very recently. Been doing newspaper work there. But tell me about this Sanborn case. Bill Porter didn’t do it, did he?”
“We don’t think so,” I said, “but it’s a curious affair all around.”
“How was he killed? The papers weren’t very explicit about the weapon.”
“We don’t know what killed him other than that it was a blunt instrument. The local sheriff clings to the idea that the weapon was a hammer wielded by Bill, one that Dale Sanborn borrowed from us. That is, he thinks it was the handle of a hammer. But no one knows for sure.”
“Hasn’t any attempt been made to find out?”
“The sheriff is so sure of Bill and the hammer that he hasn’t tried to work along any other lines at all.”
“But aren’t there any foot-prints or finger-prints or things like that?”
“Foot-prints wouldn’t leave any trace in the soft sand around the cabin.” I wondered if it were my imagination or whether Kurth had given a sigh of relief. “And finger-prints,” I went on, “are too advanced for this particular corner of the world.”
“No clues of any sort?”
“There are clues enough, but they’re not such mammoth aids. The principal mystery at the moment is the sardine tin that belonged to Bill which was found under the table and which was spirited away from Bill’s car up to the cabin and its contents devoured by some unknown person.”
Kurth nodded thoughtfully. “It beats me. It all seems so simple. I don’t exactly mean simple, but there’s such a lack of complications.”
I sniffed inwardly. If John Kurth wanted to imagine that our discoveries since the previous morning had been simple and without complications, he was privileged to do so. But I knew better.
“I forgot all about Abe,” Asey remarked contritely. “Betsey, will you run and tell him he can come out?” Schonbrun came in, took one look at Kurth and smiled cheerfully. “So you got him? That’s good.”
“Got who?” Asey asked.
“The guy I was tellin’ you about wandering around in the woods in back of the cabin Friday afternoon.”
“You mean me?” Kurth laughed easily. “My dear man, you’re sadly mistaken. I was in Boston Friday afternoon.”
“I ain’t mistaken. You had on a gray suit an’ a green shirt an’ a green tie an’ a blue berry. I didn’t think I’d know you without them, but I remember your face, it’s so dark. I know it was you.”
Kurth appealed to me. “Won’t you explain to me just what this is all about?”
“Mr. Schonbrun,” I said slowly, “thinks he saw you here on Friday. He has been helping us, that is, Asey and me,” I foundered.
Asey came to the rescue. “We’ve been tryin’ to get Bill Porter off, an’ Abe’s been helpin’. He saw a man behind the cabin Friday an’ thinks you was him.”
“I’m sorry. That is, I’m sorry to disappoint your discoveries in this amateur detecting stunt, but I really was not the man. Do I look like the sort of person who’d wear a green shirt and a beret?”
In his white flannels, brown coat, white shirt and brown tie he resembled a collar advertisement more than anything else.
“I don’t know what sort of a man you are,” Schonbrun said stoutly, “but whether you wore green shirts or not, you had one on Friday afternoon.”
Asey looked at him. “Maybe you’re mistaken, Abe. Perhaps it was just some one who looked like Mr. Kurth. Forget about it.”
Tardily I recalled Asey’s instructions to follow his lead. “Yes,” I said, “perhaps you’d best say no more about it.”
Schonbrun looked from me to Asey and back again. “Oh, very well. O.K. by me. Can’t seem to please you two at all. Give you some information an’ you get worked all up over it an’ ten minutes later you want me to forget about it. O.K. by me. I will.”
“Have you seen anything of—” I was trying to be tactful and at the same time ask him about Maida, but it was proving difficult.
“Of Maida?” He was very unconcerned. “No, I haven’t. I believe she’s in Paris.”
“We’re having more callers,” Emma said pointedly. I looked toward the doorway, where Doctor Reynolds stood waiting expectantly.
“Good morning. Possibly you didn’t hear me. How’s the head, Asey? Miss Prue, how did that sea-horse get bunged up last night?”
“Head’s all better,” said Asey. “I told you how I hurt myself. Fell off a roof.”
“You didn’t tell me anything of the sort,” he expostulated.
It occurred to me that very soon I should have to introduce Schonbrun and Kurth and I wondered how I could do it without having the doctor demand all the information we had about the two of them.
Asey solved the problem. “This here is Mr. Abe, Doc, an’ this is Mr. Kurth.”
“Of course, Mr. Kurth.” The doctor shook hands. “I have a very clear recollection of that grand slam you made when you were down here last. You bid it, if you remember, and made it doubled and redoubled. I had forgotten your face, Mr. Kurth, but not your achievement or your name. That reminds me, Miss Whitsby, did you ask Mr. Kurth about that note?”
“As a matter of fact he’s been here only a few minutes and I’ve barely had time to say how-do-you-do.” The doctor was surveying Schonbrun. “I didn’t catch the name,” he said.
Schonbrun looked at him resentfully but made no answer.
“Abe,” said Asey hastily. “Abe. He used to have another name, but he changed it. Just Abe. Great admirer of Lincoln, he is.”
“Indeed.” The doctor peered at Schonbrun. “Yes, yes. Of course. Somehow he reminds me of some one I have seen, though of course I have a wretched memory for faces.”
“It is hard to remember everything, isn’t it?” Emma asked sweetly. She accented the “everything” ever so slightly.
“Quite so,” said the doctor. “But I don’t suppose you’d object if I were to ask Mr. Kurth a question or two? I’m connected with this case, after all.”
“Go right ahead,” Asey told him. “If Mr. Kurth don’t have no objections.”
“Well, Mr. Kurth,” the doctor began, “in my examination of Mr. Sanborn I found a note signed by you and although I brought it over here and showed it to Miss Whitsby, to ask her opinion on it, she said she was sure it had nothing to do with the case. For that matter, she said you were not in this country at all.” Kurth flashed a look at Asey and me. “I’m beginning to understand a lot of things,” he said knowingly. “Miss Whitsby knew nothing of my whereabouts, Doctor. She was telling you the truth. Have you the note with you?”
The doctor passed it over, and Kurth read it through thoughtfully. “Yes, I remember that. I had just been telling these people here that I knew Dale Sanborn slightly in New York, and at one time I had had a lawsuit brought against him which was later satisfactorily cleared up, all but one or two points. Sanborn had used means to obtain information about the affair which I didn’t consider strictly honorable. I found out about it only a week ago, and this is what the letter refers to. I’ll admit that it seems a bit formidable after what has happened, but that is all there is to the matter.”
“Did you hear from him?” The doctor asked.
“No, I didn’t. I thought of course that my letter had missed him, and you’ll find another just like this, more or less, at his New York apartment. I decided that my information about his being down here was wrong. I’d read about it in the paper.”
Asey and I looked at each other.
“I came down here,” Kurth continued, “to see Terry Carpenter. You know him, don’t you?”
“The artist who lives on the dunes? I’ve heard of him though I don’t know him personally.” The doctor’s tone implied that nomadic artists who lived on sand-dunes were scarcely numbered among his acquaintances.
“Well, I was coming down to see Terry, and I thought it would be a good plan to clear up loose ends with Sanborn at the same time.”
“I see.”
John Kurth’s story was perfectly honest and straightforward as he told it; that is, it would have been if Asey and I had not known that he spent Friday night at one of Lonzo Bangs’ cottages under an assumed name and if Schonbrun had not declared him to be the strange man of the green shirt.
“I see,” the doctor repeated. It was evident that the doctor would not dream of questioning the word of a man who had bid and made a grand slam, doubled and redoubled.
“I’m glad.” Kurth smiled. “That letter is more than ordinarily ominous. And it would have been unpleasant for me if it had fallen into the hands of some one who didn’t know me. I can’t imagine what I must have been thinking about.”
“I see,” said the doctor for the third time, “but what about that letter from your wife?”
“From my wife?” Kurth was genuinely puzzled. “But I haven’t a wife. That is, Maida and I are divorced.”
The doctor looked reprovingly at me. “And you with all your Lucy Stone talk. You know, Miss Whitsby, I don’t like to be unpleasant, but the more I think of it the more it seems to me that you must have been deceiving me. In fact, it seems definitely suspicious to me.”
“Don’t be an utter idiot,” I said with dignity.
“I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings, but really, it is suspicious when any one has misled me the way you have. And Asey too.” The doctor thumped his fist emphatically on the table. I was sure he hurt it. “Now, Mr. Kurth, you say you and your wife are divorced?”
“Yes,” said Kurth shortly.
“Can you explain this letter?” He passed over Maida’s note.
Kurth read it eagerly. “I’m afraid I can’t,” he said regretfully. “You see, it sounds as bad as mine does when you know none of the circumstances which surround the case. I don’t happen to know what Maida’s doing, but very likely she’s in business and this is simply something connected with it. That’s all the explanation I can give. Of course, it is a coincidence.”
“Do you know if she’s down here or whom she might be visiting?”
“My dear Doctor,” said Kurth gently, “I believe she and I know people who summer in every town on the Cape. I’m sure of it. She might be anywhere from here to Plymouth or down to Provincetown. I couldn’t tell.”
“Hm.” The doctor put the notes back in his breast pocket. “You don’t seem to be much more of a help in the matter of these letters than Asey or Miss Whitsby. But I believe that they’re important. Your wife’s, if not yours, Mr. Kurth. I’m going to find out more about them even if you say they’re bridge scores or invitations to a golf tournament. I think there’s something behind them. I’m going to find out.”
He stamped down the steps and drove away.
“Peppery sort, isn’t he?” Kurth remarked. “I do hope you find out who the guilty one is, but in spite of those rather incriminating letters, I assure you that I am not the murderer, and I don’t believe Maida is either.”
“The doc’s just mad because he don’t know more,” Asey assured him. “He can’t live happy till he knows all about everything. He’s that sort.”
Kurth rose. “I’m afraid I shall have to bid you all good-by. Terry is all worked up about my car, and I shall have to run over and let him know that everything has turned out all right. I’ll come back and see you again and I hope you won’t have to steal my car to make me.”
Asey was making little motions with his forefinger.
“But you won’t go right now, will you?” I protested, watching the finger and trying to gleam directions from it, “won’t you have a glass of ginger ale or something before you go? Betsey will look after it, won’t you?”
Kurth hesitated. “That’s very kind of you.”
But it was Asey who leaped from his seat and got out to the kitchen before Betsey could move. “I’ll get it,” he said as he left.
It was some time before he came back bearing a tray and glasses. I noticed that his hands were grimy, grease-smeared, and that the nail of his right thumb was torn.
Kurth drained his glass. “Fine. Now I must be going.”
We all followed him out to where his car stood by the garage.
In his absence Asey had done more than to open a few bottles of ginger ale. He had apparently turned burglar in a large way. The trunk on the back of the touring car had been rifled and an open suitcase lay on the running-board.
Over the radiator the irrepressible Asey had laid out a gray suit, green shirt, green necktie, and on top of all of them was the “berry.”