Uninvited and unannounced, a determined feminine figure marched into the sacrosanct precincts of the New York Homicide Bureau, with an afternoon paper under one arm.
Inspector Oscar Piper looked up from the little mountain of official memoranda which covered his scarred oak desk, and leaned back wearily in his chair. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ was his greeting.
But Miss Withers was undaunted. ‘Busy or not busy, Oscar Piper, you ought to be out on Long Island this afternoon instead of sitting here befouling the air with cigar smoke.’
She opened the paper with a snap. A two-column headline topped a box in the middle of page one, evidently the result of a last-minute change in make-up.
‘“STATESMAN DIES IN FREAK ACCIDENT”,’ she read. Then—‘“David E. Farling, former state senator and present Manhattan attorney, was struck by a golf ball and instantly killed at about ten o’clock this morning. The accident happened at the small public course known as Meadowland, located near Forestlawn in Queensborough.
‘“Farling was discovered by fellow golfers lying face down near a large pool which forms one of the water hazards of the course. Beside him lay the golf ball which had struck his skull with a terrific impact, although the person who inadvertently drove it has not yet been identified …”!’
‘Yes, Hildegarde,’ the Inspector broke in testily. ‘I know all that.’
‘Well, do you know this?’ she continued caustically. ‘The newspaper story goes on to remark that while there have been records of six or seven such accidents every year in the New York area, this is the first time that it resulted in a fatality!’ She tossed the paper to him. ‘Now do you see what I’m talking about? Do you?’
‘There has to be a first time for everything,’ Piper reminded her. ‘But if it makes you any happier, Hildegarde, you might as well know that I sent one of our best men out to help the Queensborough boys on the case. Dave Farling is too prominent a man to pass over easily, and there are too many people whose toes he has stepped on. But all the same—’
‘All the same, you don’t believe this could be murder?’ Miss Withers sniffed. ‘There’s something fishy about this business, Oscar. Just because it happened out in the bright October sunshine instead of in a locked room, and just because the weapon was a golf ball instead of a pistol, you leap to conclusions.’
She drew a long breath. ‘Oscar, who was the person who found Farling’s body?’
‘Person? There was a whole raft of ‘em. He was playing with Sam Firth, his partner, John T. Sullivan, ‘the golden-tongued orator’, and his son, young Ronald Farling. They missed Farling when he didn’t show up at the green, and after waiting for him a while to give him time to find a lost ball or get out of a sand trap, they started back to look for him. They got the Swiss who runs the place to help, and the whole party found Farling lying face down in the mud at the edge of the pool.’
‘Giving each other a perfect alibi, or something,’ put in Miss Withers. ‘Go on.’
‘That’s all I know, so far,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’m only a cop, not a crystal-gazer.’
Miss Withers stood up. ‘Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go out there.’
‘Donovan knows his business,’ opposed the Inspector. ‘And the precinct boys out in Queens aren’t likely to welcome too much meddling. Besides, there’s no use to try to make anything except a freak accident out of this case unless—’
His telephone shrilled, and he barked an answer. ‘Well, Donovan? What? Listen, is the body still there? Well, leave it. Hang on to the guy—wait for me at the course.’
He put down the phone, and his voice was full of amazement. ‘Hildegarde, you’re right. It’s murder—and they’ve nabbed the dead man’s son!’
She went through the door ahead of him, jamming her Queen Maryish hat a bit lower on her head. The thrill of the chase widened her nostrils, but as they sped through Manhattan’s traffic in a long black squad car, heading toward the Queensboro Bridge, she grasped the Inspector’s arm and shook her head.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she announced. ‘I don’t believe it was the son that did it.’
‘Such things have happened, and worse,’ Piper reminded her. ‘And don’t think that Donovan doesn’t know what he’s doing. If he’s made a pinch he’s sure of his ground.’
Miss Withers had a retort ready, but the sudden screaming of the siren drowned her out. They cut through red light after red light, raced over the bridge, and then on a long straightaway past mile upon mile of used-car lots, garages, hot-dog stands, grocery stores … far into the vastness of Queens, which enjoys the reputation of being the largest and most unlovely borough of New York.
The day had been warm for October, but now as the sun set behind the towers of Manhattan to the westward, a chill wind began to sweep down from the Sound. Miss Withers could not help shivering as the fast car swung off the boulevard and shot south over a narrow macadam road. There was a faded sign: ‘Meadowland Golf Club—Greens Fee 50c’ …
On the right they could see a rolling green expanse of what had once been a succulent cow pasture. Now it bore signs of a sketchy landscaping and here and there a rain-streaked flag fluttered over a clipped green square of grass.
Far ahead of them they saw a small white building surrounded by autos, but at that moment their precipitous course was interrupted by a blue-clad figure which stepped out into the road ahead of them, waving its arms.
Brakes screamed. ‘The Sergeant says I was to tell you that if you cut across the fence right here you’ll find him where the body is …’
‘Okay,’ said Piper. He helped Miss Withers out of the car, which was simple, and over the barbed wire fence, which was fraught with difficulty and peril.
‘Right straight toward the trees,’ their guide advised. They went onward over a little hill, and came down upon another fairway. Ahead of them, from the depths of a narrow ravine which cut across the open fairway in a wide diagonal, rose the tops of a cluster of elms. But there was no sign of human presence.
‘Under the trees, Inspector,’ their guide insisted.
They came suddenly above the ravine, looking down upon a wide, leaf-choked pool near the elms. Smaller trees and bushes filled the canyon-like cut at the left, but ahead of them it lay open around the pool. Here were gathered an official little circle around a body which still lay face downward near the water’s edge.
Photographers were taking their last shots in the fading light. Sergeant Donovan, red-faced and perspiring, came up the slope to greet his chief.
‘Open and shut,’ he announced. ‘I washed it up pronto, Inspector. But you may as well have a look around.’ He noticed Miss Withers, and greeted her without enthusiasm. ‘Afternoon, ma’am.’
‘Open and shut,’ she repeated blankly. ‘Hmmmm.’
They looked at the body—a sprawled, plumpish man of fifty dressed in plus-fours and bright yellow sweater and stockings, and with a small circular indentation in the back of the skull. Then a tarpaulin was drawn over the grim exhibit.
‘Right here was where they found the golf ball that did it,’ the Sergeant was saying. ‘About two feet from the corpse.’
From his pocket he took a wadded handkerchief, in the centre of which reposed a bright new golf ball, bearing on one side a tiny trademark consisting of a black spade—and on the other a dull reddish smear. ‘Exhibit A, Inspector!’
Piper nodded. ‘Seems to be clear enough. We may as well go on to the clubhouse, eh, Hildegarde?’
Miss Withers had discovered a dead branch nearby, with which she was poking dubiously at the deep leaf-choked pool. Its murky waters were reflecting the last glow of the sunset.
‘But we’ve found the body, Hildegarde!’ he said jokingly. ‘Or do you think the murderer is lurking under water?’
She sniffed, and tossed aside the branch.
It was a good stiff walk back to the clubhouse, a small building of rattletrap structure. In the rear was a three-room apartment sacred to the gnarled Swiss who leased the land and operated the course. In the front was an office furnished with a cash register, a counter displaying sun hats, golf balls, patent tees and the like, and a screened porch boasting half a dozen tables with chairs and a dispensing machine for soda pop.
It was on this porch that young Ronald Farling waited, with a plainclothes detective on either side and a burly captain in charge. That worthy hurried down to meet the Inspector on the lawn.
‘Greetings.’ said Piper. ‘Miss Withers—Captain Mike Platt, Queens Division. Congratulations, Captain.’
The captain grinned. ‘Glad you agree that we’ve broken the case so early, sir. Just the same, I kept the young rat here so you could talk to him on the ground, so to speak …’
‘Give us the picture, quick,’ ordered Piper.
‘Well,’ said Platt slowly, ‘it’s not a nice picture at all. Farling and his son Ronald, together with Mister Sullivan and Mister Firth all came out early this morning for a round of golf. They often come to this little course because it’s never crowded and because it’s ten miles closer to the city than the nearest full-size course.
‘Or so they say. We got statements from Firth and Sullivan and let them go. It seems that on the seventh tee each one of the four drove his ball into trouble—except for young Farling, who’s an expert. He drove right over the tops of those elm trees, almost to the green. Sullivan landed in the woods at the left, Firth saw his ball roll into the rough ground near the hill, and Dave Farling topped his a measly twenty feet or so.
‘The others left him there and went on, for he was an unlucky golfer usually. From there to the green, where they knock the ball into the little hole, Inspector, each man was separate and busy with his own affairs. But though nobody saw him—excepting the murderer—Dave Farling must have knocked his second shot into the pool. And while he was down trying to find his ball, somebody knocked a ball into the back of his head, smashing his skull …’
Miss Withers could see on the porch the drawn, handsome face of young Ronald Farling, between the two cops. ‘Somebody, you say, but—’
‘But how do we know it was him?’ Platt laughed. ‘Because he had a whale of a fight with his father yesterday in the office, over something his father wouldn’t let him do. “Not while I live!” said the old man. Firth, the partner, overheard it. And he told us. Moreover, the young lad is what they call a “scratch” golfer. He likes to give exhibitions of driving a ball off a watch, or taking what they call a mashie and chipping balls twenty feet into a tin pail. He’s probably one of the few men in these parts who could be perfectly sure of hitting just what he aimed at!’
The captain was beaming. ‘Well, when Farling didn’t show up at the green, the others figured he was looking for a lost ball. But then he didn’t come and he kept a didn’t coming, as the saying goes, and finally the three of them started back. They saw old Chris Thorr on the other fairway raking away at the autumn leaves, and called him to help. So the four of them came over the edge of the gully and saw Farling lying there, dead as a herring.’
‘And the boy admits the crime?’ asked Miss Withers.
Platt shook his head. ‘Not him. He’s a smooth one. But we’ll make him talk before he sleeps or—’
‘All right, Captain,’ said Piper quickly. ‘Medical examiner gone?’
Platt nodded. ‘Doc Farnsworth it was—and he didn’t like the looks of things. It was him refused us a certificate of death by misadventure. Wouldn’t give his final opinion until the autopsy. But Donovan and I figured we didn’t need to wait for that before getting young Farling safe behind bars.’
‘Okay,’ said Piper. ‘Let’s have a look at the lad.’
They went up the steps and through a screen door. The young man was very pale, and seemed chilled through in his light blue sports shirt and dark flannels. He leaped to his feet impulsively.
‘How long are you going to hold me here? I tell you, I had nothing to do with what happened. Do you think I’d kill my own father?’
‘Father—by adoption, wasn’t it?’ Miss Withers put in softly. ‘Didn’t I read something about it, some years back?’
Ronald Farling stopped short. His eyes clouded for a moment. Then— ‘Yes, by adoption. David Farling and his wife adopted me nine years ago, when I was twelve. It was just after my own father …’
‘Yes? Go on!’ Piper pressed forward.
The boy gulped. ‘Just after my real father was—was executed for murder! Dan Farling as his lawyer couldn’t get him off, though it happened in a pitched battle between union men and company scabs. So he promised to take me, and bring me up as his own son. And he did …’
The boy stopped short, realizing too late what he had said. His fists clenched, and then opened helplessly. ‘Like father like son, eh? I suppose that’s what you’re saying?’
‘You had a fight with your foster-father in his office yesterday?’
Ronald nodded. ‘Well, an argument. But not—’
‘What was it about?’
‘He didn’t want me to get married.’ confessed Ronald Farling simply. He drew a deep breath. ‘And if you want the name of the girl you can rot in hell before I’ll tell you and drag her through this!’
He subsided sullenly into his chair. During the latter course of the questioning Miss Hildegarde Withers had been doing a little quiet snooping nearby. She reappeared with a leather golf bag full of sticks in one hand. The initials on the bag were ‘R.F.’
‘This is yours?’ she asked the prisoner.
He nodded. Miss Withers opened the zipper pocket and brought out half a dozen golf balls. Three were old and battered. The other three were almost new, showing only a few nicks. Each bore a tiny red heart as a trademark,
‘Could I see the one you have?’ she asked the Sergeant. She took it gingerly. ‘Just as I thought. They don’t match.’ On an impulse she showed Ronald Farling the ball with the smear of blood. ‘Recognize this ball. young man?’
He stared and frowned. Then his eyes widened. ‘Why, that’s my father’s!’
The cops gathered instantly. ‘What?’
‘It is! You see, when we started out this morning each member of the foursome bought three new balls. Ask the girl inside at the counter—and of course we each got a different colour and mark so we could tell them apart easily. Most makes of balls are designed in sets of four that way. Firth chose clubs, Sullivan diamonds, my father—I mean my foster-father—chose spades, so that left me hearts. They were kidding me about it …’
‘So David Farling was killed with one of his own golf balls!’ said Miss Withers slowly. ‘Can we prove that by comparing this with other balls in his bag?’
But the dead man’s bag was empty of balls.
‘This isn’t getting us anywheres,’ Captain Platt finally objected. ‘Okay for me to take young Farling away, Inspector?’
Piper looked at Miss Withers, rubbed his jaw, and nodded. ‘Keep him safe and sound,’ he said. ‘And don’t yell at him all night,’ he added firmly.
The young man was half-led, half-dragged, to a waiting police runabout, and Miss Withers had a last glimpse of his white, drawn, frightened face.
There was a brief interlude during which a grey ambulance lumbered out into the gathering darkness of the little golf course, its lights shining like two glaring tiger-eyes … at last David Farling was to be removed from the edge of the muddy pool. It was high time, thought Miss Withers.
The Inspector had left her to make a telephone call, and she wandered out through the littered yard in the rear. Here were old car tyres, sand boxes, broken greens-flags, and an ancient piano box—souvenirs of dead days. For the first time in her life she wished that she had taken up music and games and golf in her youth. A knowledge of what the Inspector called ‘pasture pool’ would be a great help to her now. She had a feeling that an essential clue was eluding her—and the police. Perhaps it was a clue that would cry out like a trumpet to a more experienced devotee of golf.
She sank down on a convenient bench overlooking the fairway, and rested her chin in her hand. Far ahead she could see the lights of the morgue wagon swing across the sky and then beam back towards the club house, its silent passenger safely aboard.
‘A ride that each of us must take—and some before our time,’ she was musing to herself.
At that moment a guttural torrent broke out almost in her ear. She turned suddenly, and realized that the speaker did not see her on the bench. He stood not far from the doorway of the living quarters, a gnarled, bitter figure leaning upon a long rake.
‘Ach, der Schwein …’
Miss Withers had a vague knowledge of German and of French left over from her schooldays, and after a moment she realized that this endless torrent was a combination of both, which must be Swiss. Yet most of the words were, luckily, unfamiliar to her. Here and there she caught one which made the back of her neck turn bright red.
She made ready. There was always something to be said for the power of a surprise attack. She jumped up like a jack-in-the-box.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded, raising her umbrella threateningly.
‘Who am I? She asks me, who am I?’ The harsh voice rose shrill and high. ‘Me, I’m poor Chris Thorr. Me, I’m the slave who must work week in and week out to make all smooth the grass where those verdammte pigs go joyriding with their unspeakable ambulance …’
His voice was full of great sobs. Suddenly Miss Withers felt a certain sympathy for him, especially now that the ambulance came lurching back towards the club house, leaving dark deep furrows in the soft turf, wheels spinning erratically right and left …
She tried to make some properly sympathetic remark. But Chris Thorr turned back towards his lighted doorway, shoulders slumped despondently. ‘Es ist nicht der Mühe Wert!’ was his parting shot.
Miss Withers turned to see the Inspector beside her. ‘I don’t like that old buzzard,’ he observed. ‘What was that last crack?’
‘Something about life being a bowl of cherries,’ Miss Withers translated freely. ‘I’m afraid Thorr is a pessimist.’
‘Maybe,’ said Piper, as they walked back towards the shack. ‘From what I hear he’s got reasons. This place barely pays expenses, next spring they’re going to condemn most of it for the new Parkway, and his wife ran off with a travelling man or somebody last August.’
‘But didn’t I see a girl in the office?’ Miss Withers asked.
Piper nodded. ‘That’s Molly Gargan, a neighbourhood girl that he hires to take care of the office and sell tickets to the players. Which reminds me, I’d better tell the boys it’s okay to let her go home. We’ve been holding everybody …’
‘Hold her a while longer,’ Miss Withers decided. ‘I want to see Molly.’
Molly Gargan was something to see, beyond a doubt. Miss Hildegarde Withers was prone to attach more importance to feminine brains than to beauty, but the black-haired girl with the bright blue eyes and full sculptured body was positively breathtaking.
She sat at a stool behind the counter, staring out of the window at the darkness of the golf course. Oddly enough, her blue eyes were raining tears down an utterly calm and lovely face. She wore a modest pink dress that was obviously homemade, and as Miss Withers came through the doorway she noticed that Molly Gargan had torn that dress in five or six places along the collar. Now, as if no part of herself, her long fingers were busily tearing yet another place …
Miss Withers cleared her throat. ‘Whatever happened out on the course, it can’t affect you, young woman, can it?’
Molly started, and then her lips tightened. ‘Of course not …’
Miss Withers tried a rather mean trick. ‘The young man whom they arrested,’ she said casually, ‘insists that this morning, when the foursome started to play, they all purchased balls here.’
Molly nodded her lovely dark head.
‘And he claims that all four of them bought balls with a red diamond on them—is that true?’
‘Why, no! They—’ Suddenly Molly stopped short. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said evenly. ‘I remember now.’
‘Like fun you do,’ Miss Withers said under her breath. ‘Where do you live, Molly?’
Through the window Molly Gargan pointed to a white house perhaps a mile away, where the lights of the boulevard were glaring. ‘My father runs a filling station,’ she confessed.
‘Very well, Molly,’ Miss Withers advised. ‘The police asked me to tell you that you may go home now.’
‘Thanks!’ said Molly Gargan fervently. With one quick motion she pulled a sweater over her dress, slapped a tam-o-shanter over her dark hair, and was out of the door.
Miss Withers watched the girl as she took a short cut across the darkened golf course in the direction of that dim white blotch in the distance which was home. Then she was aware that someone watched beside her.
It was Chris Thorr, shaking his head. ‘They are all alike,’ he observed gutturally. ‘Women!’
He crossed to the cash register, pressed the ‘no sale’ key and scooped out the day’s takings, a sorry morsel. Then he ostentatiously locked the display case, as if Miss Withers would have been likely to go in for shoplifting golf balls and wooden tees.
‘You can’t blame her for hurrying away on a day like this,’ Miss Withers reminded him. ‘What if she did forget to close up? She’s a very pretty girl.’
Chris Thorr didn’t seem interested in pretty girls. ‘Bah!’ said he. ‘The prettier they are the less they know. I hope soon she gets married, and I hire a good sober girl, homely as a mud fence, ja!’
He moved around, turning out electric lights. ‘You go home now—everybody go home, ja? I go to bed.’
Everybody went home—except for one chilled and unhappy cop who was assigned, according to regulations, to cover the scene of the crime. Patrolman Walter Fogle spread out a newspaper on the damp grass under the elms, and prepared for a long and lonely vigil above the dark and leaf-choked pool …
The wind howled eerily in the tree-tops that night, and the pale October moon was hidden behind ragged wisps of cloud. Patrolman Fogle realized that it lacked but a night or two of being All Hallows Eve, and towards morning he dozed off into a nightmare of witches and goblins and howling, dancing wraiths …
He awoke with a jerk to see a spectral white figure moving near the edge of the pond. Fogle blinked, pinched himself, and blinked again. But the figure remained.
‘Hey!’ he mouthed, through dry and trembling lips.
The white figure became a statue. ‘What the hell are you doing there?’ demanded the patrolman. ‘Stop or I’ll fire!’
The apparition dissolved in the direction of the clump of trees and brush further down the gully.
‘Stop!’ yelled Fogle. His gun came out, and he blazed away furiously. But to no avail.
Next morning, shame-faced, he made his report. ‘Maybe it was a dead ghost and maybe it wasn’t,’ he insisted to Captain Platt. ‘But I know for one thing that it could run like a rabbit. And it wasn’t old Chris Thorr nosing around, because I went back to the club-house and dragged him out of bed.’
‘Look at his shoes?’ asked the captain. ‘Heavy dew, wasn’t there?’
The cop nodded. ‘His shoes were dry, and he was sound asleep.’
‘Okay,’ said his chief. ‘Go home and grab some sleep. We may want you this afternoon.’
At that moment Miss Withers and the Inspector were in deep conference. ‘It’s funny about the medical examiner’s report,’ Piper was saying. ‘The doc insists that Farling’s skull was of normal thickness and that a golf ball would have to be travelling with the speed of a bullet to make such a wound.’
‘Oscar,’ suggested the school-teacher, ‘isn’t that an idea? I mean, couldn’t you shoot a golf ball out of a gun?’
He shrugged. ‘Certainly not without leaving powder marks, even if you could get a gun barrel improvised out of a pipe or something. And as for that, Max Van Donnen just reported to me that while that golf ball bears traces of blood which check with Farling’s, it has never been struck with a golf club! The waxy covering is intact, under the microscope! So there goes your gun theory.’
Miss Withers nodded. ‘I suggested the gun because, you see, Oscar, I spent two hours this morning taking a golf lesson from a professional at the Lakewood Country Club. He’s a better golfer than even young Farling, and he can drive a ball four hundred yards or lift one neatly into a tin pail twenty feet away. But not both at the same time, Oscar! By that I mean you can’t combine speed with absolute accuracy in golf!’
‘Which means that we’re right back where we started,’ said Piper.
She shook her head. ‘We know that Ronald Farling didn’t kill his foster father—at least not by driving a ball at him. Oscar, I think we’re making this case too complicated. Did you get the report from the telephone company?’
He shook his head. ‘Takes them time to trace those calls,’ he pointed out. ‘But I don’t see why you think we’d learn anything if we knew how many phone calls, if any, have been made from the club house to Farling’s office on Broadway, and vice versa. You don’t think—’
She nodded. ‘When there’s a girl as startlingly beautiful as Molly Gargan in a case, you can take it for granted that she is somehow a part of the picture. Suppose the dead man had been playing regularly on that little course just to see the fair Molly, had become involved with her somehow, and then cast her adrift? And suppose the odd little Mr Thorr secretly nursed a love for his pretty clerk, and wanted to avenge the slight?’
She stopped, and shook her head. ‘Thorr doesn’t love the girl. On the contrary. And besides, Farling would not have brought his friends and son to play golf at the course after he was through with the girl …’ She sank into a chair. ‘I’m afraid we’ve drawn another blank …’
Just then the telephone rang, and Piper listened eagerly. He made notes on a piece of paper. ‘Well!’ he said. ‘In the past three months there have been fourteen phone calls from the golf course office to Farling’s office—twenty-three from Farling’s office to the course, and seven from the Farling home on Fifth Avenue to the course!’
‘Which means that your case against young Farling is blown higher than a kite,’ Miss Withers reminded him. ‘Besides, he couldn’t have been the midnight prowler who frightened Patrolman Fogle out of his alleged wits last night.’ She frowned. ‘Oscar, you ought to drain that pool!’
Piper laughed. ‘So you are looking for another body!’
‘Another body—or another golf ball,’ she reminded him. ‘A golf ball with specks of powder burns on the cover, and a trademark which might be anything but a black spade.’
‘Draining that pool seems like something of an engineering problem,’ Piper objected. ‘Besides—’
‘And I think you ought to turn Ronald Farling loose,’ she went on. ‘There may be more to discover from him if he’s free than if he’s in the lockup.’
‘The more we discover the worse off we are,’ Piper objected. ‘I naturally have had the other two members of that foursome investigated. Sullivan has been talking over the radio in behalf of the Citizens Committee, and naturally has been panning some of Farling’s friends in politics. But the two men were personal pals. As for the partner, Sam Firth, he didn’t gain anything from Farling’s death, and he’s probably lost a good share of his law business. Neither of them—’
‘Business!’ Miss Withers snapped. ‘We’re missing the whole key to this affair. I wish I knew more about pretty Molly Gargan. I still believe that she’s the catalytic agent—’
Piper shook his head. ‘Doesn’t look like she’d throw a fit, to me.’
‘I said catalytic, not epileptic,’ Miss Withers snapped. ‘Don’t you remember your chemistry? Well, with a girl as beautiful as she around, anything that happens involves her somehow. Oscar, I’m going to telephone her, and arrange for a quiet little talk—’
She asked for Information, and then was connected with Gargan’s Gas Station on Queens Boulevard. It was a worried Irish voice which answered her.
‘Molly? This is her father speakin’. No, she’s not here. She went out early this mornin’, without giving me my breakfast. What? No, she didn’t pack a suitcase. She was wearing a pink dress, I suppose.’
Miss Withers put down the phone. ‘Oscar, doesn’t pink look white at night?’
She gave him no time to answer. ‘Come on!’ she insisted. ‘I think we’re on the trail of something, and I don’t like the scent.’
‘Now listen!’ objected her old crony. ‘Good heavens, woman, I’ve got a Bureau to run …’
‘It’ll run by itself,’ she came back. And the Inspector followed, for he knew her of old.
‘We’ll first have a talk with young Farling,’ she decided. ‘Tell the man to drive us to the Queens lockup.’
But when they had reached that outlying station they found that the talk with young Ronald Farling would have to be postponed indefinitely.
‘He’s flew the coop!’ was the way Captain Platt put it. ‘About half an hour ago Sam Firth, his father’s partner, came out here with a writ of habeas corpus. They’d got wind of the medical examiner’s report which cast doubt on the golf ball angle, so it was up to me to book the kid for murder or let him go. And we didn’t have enough on him—’
‘We can get him again if we need him,’ said Piper. ‘Well, Hildegarde?’
‘We need him now,’ she said shortly. ‘Find out for me just what is the situation out at the golf course, will you? Anybody there?’
Captain Platt reported that Fogle was due to go back on duty at the course within the next few minutes, having had a short relief. ‘We always keep a cop around the scene of the crime for a couple of days,’ he informed her. ‘Otherwise the place is closed up.’
Miss Withers then realized that Molly Gargan couldn’t possibly be on duty. There would be no need to have her sitting on the stool behind that counter in the club house … yet where was she?
‘Oscar,’ she insisted, ‘will you take me over to the course? But for heaven’s sake let’s have no blaring of sirens this time.’
They approached Meadowland very quietly indeed, and at Miss Withers’ instigation the squad car was parked far down the macadam road.
Then, leaving the uniformed driver at the wheel, the Inspector followed Miss Withers over the wire fence and across the turf. ‘Good Lord, woman, are you still harping on that pool?’
She sniffed, and led the way. ‘I want a description from Patrolman Fogle of that ghost he saw,’ she admitted.
But Fogle was not on duty above the pool. Another uniformed man approached after a moment, crashing through the underbrush down the gully. He snapped to salute.
‘Where’s Fogle?’ asked Piper sharply.
‘Hasn’t relieved me yet, sir. I guess last night was too much for him, because he was due at two o’clock and it’s nearly half past.’
‘What were you doing off your post? Looking for him?’
The cop reddened. ‘No, sir. I—I thought I seen something moving down there …’
Piper shook his head. ‘I guess all you men out here believe in fairies,’ he growled. ‘Was it a grinning skull or a snake with wings?’
‘No, sir,’ said the patrolman seriously. ‘It was a young guy in golf clothes, and he could run like a deer.’
‘Yeah!’ said Piper.
But Miss Withers, who had climbed back to the edge of the gully, was staring out over the course. ‘He still is,’ she remarked. ‘Running like a deer, I mean. And if he doesn’t look out …’
Piper and the cop joined her in time to get a clear, if distant, view of a young man who looked very much like Ronald Farling, as he vaulted the wire fence into the road and was immediately clasped in the brawny arms of the uniformed man who drove Piper’s car.
When the others came up he was arguing furiously with his captor. ‘Let him go!’ ordered Piper.
Ronald Farling, looking a little wild and dishevelled from his night in jail, faced them. ‘I suppose you want to know why I’m here?’ he demanded.
Miss Withers shook her head. ‘You’re looking for the same thing we are,’ she advised him. ‘Come with us, if you wish. In the words of the popular song, we’re heading for the last roundup.’
They crept towards the club house in silence, keeping always behind the rolling little hills, following gullies and the shadows of scattered trees. ‘Hildegarde, what are you up to?’ Piper begged.
‘I haven’t the slightest idea!’ she admitted. ‘But I’m going to learn something.’
The wind still blew gustily from the north, driving dead leaves into their faces, and bringing the sound of loud voices from somewhere behind the club house. They crept steadily on, and finally reached the vantage point of a hedge.
From here they could get a good view of the club house, and of the littered yard in the rear where Chris Thorr stood, raking at the refuse. Beside him was Patrolman Fogle.
‘Say!’ broke out Piper. ‘There’s something—’
But Miss Withers hushed him. ‘Listen.’
‘Well, then—I bet you twenty dollars against five that you can’t hit it in one out of three tries!’
Thorr’s voice came clearly, and it bore an undercurrent of masked excitement …
Fogle scratched the back of his neck, and drew out his service gun. ‘You talk too loud, fella,’ he said. ‘I hate to do it, but I’m going to take your money.’
They were standing perhaps twenty feet from the broken-down piano case which Miss Withers had noticed last night. Now she saw with a gasp of surprise that a homemade target of black and white circles had been tacked on the side of the box.
‘Okay,’ Fogle said doggedly. ‘I’ve got three tries to put a slug in the centre of that target, and if I do it you pay me twenty bucks.’ He raised his gun …
Miss Withers tried to scream, and found that no sound issued from her throat. She grabbed the Inspector. ‘Stop him!’ she gasped.
‘Illegal target practice within city limits of New York, illegal firing of service gun …’ mumbled the Inspector. He stood up quickly.
‘Hey, there! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
The two in the yard whirled to face them. Miss Withers tottered on after the Inspector, who glared at the patrolman.
Fogle was in a spot, and he knew it. ‘I—sorry, sir. But he was razzing me about police marksmanship, sir. On account of my firing last night at the ghost or whatever it was. Claimed I couldn’t hit the piano box, much less the target. So we made a bet—’
Piper was grinning. ‘Oh, he thinks cops can’t shoot, eh?’
Chris Thorr nodded. ‘Couldn’t hit a barn if you were inside with the doors shut. Not like the police in Switzerland, let me tell you. Say—’
Piper rubbed his chin. ‘Fogle, how come you’re stalling around here? Don’t you go back on duty?’
‘At two p.m., yes sir. But I just looked at the clock inside and it’s only one forty-five.’ He grinned. ‘So I thought I had time to show this guy …’
‘Go ahead and show him,’ Piper ordered. ‘Just this once we’ll forget regulations …’
Miss Withers could hold herself no longer. ‘Forget regulations and forget the common sense you were born with,’ she screamed. ‘But first me let get in that piano box …’
She attacked it furiously with tooth and nail, but it was stouter than it seemed. Young Ronald Farling came forward to help her, while Thorr and the cops looked blankly on. Then at last a board was pried away, and another …
‘Oh, God!’ cried Ronald Farling. ‘Molly!’
It was Molly Gargan—her soft young body wound with cruel ropes, her red mouth gagged with a twisted rag. Tenderly they took her down from the hook which had held her there, with her heart beating just behind the bull’s-eye of the target …
Only a half inch of soft pine lay between Molly Gargan and the leaden death which had hung poised above her …
It all happened in a split second. ‘Get that man!’ screamed Miss Withers.
Gnarled, dried-up Chris Thorr suddenly had come alive. He flung Fogle head over heels, knocked the Inspector to his knees with the ever-present rake which he had snatched from behind him, and was running amok towards the two women.
His mouth was open and frothing, and a shrill endless scream of antic insanity filled the air …
Then Ronald Farling stepped in, dodged the swinging iron teeth of the rake, and brought his fist smartly into the madman’s groin. Again—and then a right across to the chin that sent him backwards—
He did not rise. When things had calmed a bit, they found out why. He had fallen upon the tines of his own rusty rake, and three of the iron spikes had pierced his brain.
Farling and the girl leaned against the piano box, touching each other gently, wonderingly … they had no eyes or ears for anything else.
But the Inspector fairly gnawed at his cigar.
‘Hildegarde! It’s a madhouse!’
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘Thorr wanted to get Molly put out of the way, and chose this means. Fogle was to have shot her as she stood bound and gagged in the piano box. Then later Thorr would have hidden the body out on the course somewhere—and with one or more bullets from Fogle’s gun in the body, he would be the one to be suspected, particularly since he shot wildly at a phantom last night …’
‘Yeah, but what phantom?’
‘I imagine it was Thorr, in his night-shirt and barefoot,’ Miss Withers went on. ‘He didn’t know that there’d be a guard at the pool, or at least he wasn’t sure. He had some unfinished business there—’
‘So you say!’ objected Piper. But why would Thorr want to kill Molly here?’
‘Ask her,’ said Miss Withers. ‘She knows.’
Molly did know. It was because she had feared and suspected Thorr for some time, and therefore when her sweetheart was arrested for the murder of his foster-father she had started scouting around …
‘And you found what?’ Miss Withers asked.
‘I found that there were some brown stains on the end of Thorr’s rake handle,’ said Molly Gargan. And suddenly the whole thing was clear to Miss Withers.
‘That’s why he tied you up when he found you examining his rake! It was the murder weapon—not the golf ball.’
Piper shook his head. ‘You’re still crazy. What possible motive would there be—’
‘For Thorr to kill Farling? A very good one. Enter the pool once more, Oscar. You see, Farling must have been looking for his lost ball, and have poked at the water with that dead stick, just as I did. And Thorr, lurking nearby, saw him probing the pool and rushed up to hurl his rake like a javelin. The rake handle is just the diameter of a golf ball, Oscar. He thought of that when he had finished the deed, so he took the one remaining ball from his victim’s bag, touched it to the wound, and dropped it nearby. He wanted it to appear like an accident, Oscar.’
‘But why, in the name of heaven, should Thorr object to having Farling poke around in that pool?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ said Miss Hildegarde Withers. ‘We won’t know for sure until you drag the pool, as I’ve begged you to do, again and again. But I’ve got a pretty good idea that you’ll find the sunken body of the wife who is supposed to have left Chris Thorr last August and run away with a travelling man.’
‘Well, who’d have suspected that?’ exclaimed Piper.
‘Who indeed—but I?’ Miss Withers flashed back.