ONE OF THE PUZZLING things about the General’s associates and activities the night before he died was the absence of fingerprints, complete and absolute, from the right door handle of his car. Someone had wiped them off. Which would seem to mean, Jasper Tully reasoned, that someone was in the car with him that day who anticipated trouble, and someone maybe whose fingerprints had a notable history.
He thought about this after leaving Mrs. Norris at her brother-in-law’s, chiefly because he was on his way to see Johnny Rocco’s man. In spite of Mrs. Norris’ assertions to the contrary, he was not entirely convinced that the General might not have had an old-time association with The Rock which, just for the hell of it, he might have been reviving. There was something about the Twenties. Well, he was over sixty himself, Jasper Tully, and to dig out the few best years of his life, he would find them there. And you couldn’t doubt that retired in the bloom of health, a man like the General would be bored. Having survived many dangers, he was likely to take risks that would shiver more timid men into their beds. No, he decided, it was not at all impossible for the General to have been in some sort of game with The Rock, a game in which he needed money quickly. Perhaps, when he found out Jimmie was headed for Albany, he decided to pull out, and had to buy his way…therefore the business deal with Fowler. Then something went awry. For The Rock, fatally awry. Was he, by any chance, hoisted on his own petard? Did he maybe get something intended for the General in that last ride from the bank? He had left the motor running in a low-slung sports car, something the General also drove.
All these things the detective turned over and round in his mind, and wondered then in summary, how close to the truth he had come in any one of them.
It was in the end, the moon-faced character, seen as the chauffeur of the General’s lady friend, that made the link for Tully. If he should turn out now to be the deceased Johnny Rocco’s bodyguard … Tully gave the revolver in his shoulder holster a pat, as though to assure himself of its company.
However, it was a man almost as tall as himself, and with a face lean-cheeked as a medieval monk’s, who opened the double doors on Johnny’s house to Tully. Rocco’s man protested that he had never heard the name of General Jarvis in this house.
“Ask me questions,” he said, “I’ll prove it. I’ll prove I tell you the truth. Anything about The Rock.”
“Was he ever married?” Tully asked.
“No. No women. Not for a long time. I tell you how it was. During prohibition, he took the pledge, no drink. During the depression, he took the pledge, no women. That way he doesn’t get into no trouble.”
“Didn’t he have any hobbies?” said Tully.
“Sure. Sports cars, absolutely authentic.”
Tully thought about that for a moment. “Absolutely authentic what?”
“I tell you how it was.” This punk, this gangster, spread out the most beautiful hands Tully had ever seen. “The Austin-Healey, you know?”
“I know. The one outside the bank.”
Rocco’s man nodded. “That one. Two in the whole world like it. Do you know who’s got the other?” Tully shook his head. “English royalty. The Duke of Glower. Absolutely authentic.”
Tully thought of the item in Python’s column which suggested an intimacy between Jimmie and English royalty. He rubbed the back of his neck vigorously. “How do you know?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t know, not me. I wouldn’t know a Hillman Minx from a baby carriage. But The Rock knew. He used to slap me on the chest and say, ‘Look at her, Slim. Me and the Duke of Glower got one.’ And it was me personal had to bathe her.”
“Wonderful,” Tully growled. “You didn’t happen to personal bathe a neat little Jaguar lately, did you? Say, the door handle on the right side?”
“Huh?”
Tully let it go. He left soon thereafter, the second door closing behind him slowly like the rising of a castle moat in a Hollywood spectacular. Maybe in the next such picture they could use a medieval monk named Slim.
He went then to see the officials at the bank where Johnny The Rock did his last business.