Malone was disappointed in his first look at Sheriff Marvin Kling. This was his first experience with the small-town forces of law and order, and he had expected something very different. Just what, he wasn’t sure. Not quite the old village constable, but something more along that line.
Instead, he found a big, burly, slovenly man seated in a swivel chair, his feet on a table, with a disordered roll-top desk behind him. He wore a cheap, purplish-blue suit with no vest, a striped shirt, and a bright-green tie. A soiled gray felt hat was stuck far back on his head. His big-jowled, ugly face had been reddened by a combination of sun, wind, and whisky, and a heavy lock of greasy dark hair hung over his forehead.
Neither he nor the thin, worried young man who was sitting on one corner of the table made any move, other than to look up, as Malone came in.
“What the hell do you want?” Sheriff Kling demanded.
Malone caught himself on the verge of an appropriate reply and instead said, “I suppose you’re the sheriff. I’m John J. Malone.”
“Oh,” the sheriff said. “You’re those folks’ lawyer.” He lit a cigarette, tossing the match on the floor. “Well, what do you think you’re going to do?”
“In about two more minutes,” Malone said evenly, “I’m going to give you a bust in the puss.”
The sheriff swung his big legs off the table.
“Just a minute, Marv,” the young man said anxiously. He turned to Malone. “Mr. Kling isn’t feeling particularly well. He’s had a lot of people bothering him.”
“I don’t feel particularly well myself,” Malone said, “and I didn’t come all the way up to this Godforsaken hamlet to get pushed around by a hick sheriff. Who are you?”
“I’m the district attorney,” the young man said. “I’m Jerry Luckstone.”
Malone looked at him with interest. Any man who had three women trying to get him out of jail was worth a second glance. He wondered how Luckstone did it. The district attorney was a delicate-looking young man, with a narrow, handsome, almost fleshless face, and curly brown hair. Maybe it was that helpless look that turned the trick.
“I thought you were in jail,” the lawyer said at last.
“It was a mistake,” Jerry Luckstone told him. “Cora Belle came in this morning and told Marv here that she was talking with me, way off in the other corner of the courtroom, when the shot was fired. Marv had just about decided it was a mistake anyway by then.”
Malone told himself he hadn’t really wanted that fee Florence Peveley had held under his nose. Now he could go back to Chicago without any qualms.
“All right, it was a mistake,” the sheriff said angrily. “Everybody makes mistakes. This would be a hell of a world if people didn’t make mistakes now and then.”
“For you it would be torture,” Malone said politely.
The sheriff glared at him. “I found out Jerry here had a fight with the old man over being engaged to Florence, and the old man was threatening to cut her out of his will. That’s enough reason for murder. And he was up there where he could have done it.”
Malone said nothing. He was trying to decide which woman Jerry Luckstone had really been talking with when the shot was fired; Cora Belle Fromm, or Ellen McGowan. Or if he’d been talking to either of them. He cleared his throat.
“Now about Mr. and Mrs. Justus,” he began.
The young district attorney spoke up quickly. “I can see no reason why they shouldn’t leave after the inquest. They’ll be required to testify there, of course.”
“I can see we’re going to get along fine,” Malone told him. He heard Sheriff Kling muttering under his breath. “It’s obvious, of course, neither of them could have committed the murder.”
“I ain’t so sure,” the sheriff growled. “They been mixed up in murders before, and here they are up in the Jackson County Courthouse for the first time, and here we have the first murder in thirty-two years.”
“You’re talking in allergies,” Malone said smoothly. “But a competent officer of the law like yourself wouldn’t attempt to introduce that as evidence.”
The sheriff looked pleased though confused. “No, I guess you’re right there.”
Malone lit a cigar. “You’ve had no more luck finding the gun, I suppose.” He drew an indignant glare by way of answer and added, “My only interest in this is idle curiosity, but if it’s permitted, I would like to take a look at the scene of the crime.”
The sheriff and the district attorney exchanged glances. “Why not?” the latter said. He managed a sick laugh. “Maybe you can give us some ideas.”
“It’s just possible,” Malone said politely.
He followed the two men across the lawn and into the big, shadowy courthouse, more tomblike than ever now with all its typewriters and telephones silenced. Jerry Luckstone informed him that the offices had been closed for the day.
Malone took a quick look at the courtroom, and looked away just as quickly. Buttonholes, busy with a broom and dustpan, looked up to grin at him.
“Now here,” Jerry Luckstone said. “Everybody was milling around in here. To be perfectly honest, I don’t recall exactly where I was. The Senator came up and told me he wanted to see me. He was sore about something. I told him I was going back in my office and he grunted something about going downstairs to fetch someone—he didn’t say who—and started for the stairs. That’s the last I saw of him.”
Malone nodded. “You didn’t notice where anyone else was?”
“No. I have a dim picture of Ed Skindingsrude over there by the jury box talking to somebody—Miss McGowan, I think—but I couldn’t swear to it.”
Malone walked over to the head of the tiny staircase and peered into the two rooms beyond. “Was anybody in either of these rooms?”
Luckstone shook his head. “Nobody. I’m positive of that.”
“Who got to the head of the stairs first?”
“As a matter of fact,” the district attorney said, “I did.”
The little lawyer sighed. There was a minute hall at the top of the staircase, hardly large enough for a man to turn around in, beyond it a slightly larger hall led to the two rooms. Between them and the courtroom, at the head of the stairs, was a door.
“What’s in there?”
“Nothing but a little broom closet,” Jerry Luckstone told him. He tried the door, it was locked. “Hey, Buttonholes, come over and unlock this.”
“It ain’t locked,” the janitor called.
“It sure as hell is locked.” He rattled it again.
Buttonholes picked up an enormous ring of keys and started over. “It ain’t never been locked, and it ain’t supposed to be locked,” he complained. “I ain’t even sure I got keys to fit it.”
Malone examined the keyhole. “Try an ordinary dimestore passkey,” he suggested.
The janitor found several on his ring, the second one unlocked the door. Malone opened it and peered inside.
It was a tiny closet, dark and dusty. A few old brooms leaned against the wall, a collection of ancient filing cases were stacked at the far end. An old raincoat hung from one hook, a large white dusting cloth from another.
Malone shook the coat and felt of its pockets, kicked the brooms, examined the filing cases, and judged from the dust on them that they hadn’t been moved in twenty years.
“I don’t know what you expect to find in there,” Sheriff Kling complained.
‘The gun,” Malone said pleasantly. He felt of the dusting cloth, lifted it down from the hook, and carried it into the light. “And there it is.”
He shook the cloth gingerly over a table, a small black revolver unrolled itself and dropped to the table top.
There was a long silence. “Either you’ve got second sight,” Sheriff Kling said at last, in a dangerously quiet voice, “or by God, you know more about this murder than you’ve told anybody.”
Malone dropped an inch of cigar ash in the general direction of a cuspidor. Buttonholes looked at him reproachfully and reached for his broom. “It was perfectly simple,” the little lawyer said. “It didn’t occur to anybody to look in the closet for the gun, because the door was locked. It occurred to me to look there because I had an idea it was the only place the murderer could shoot from without being noticed, and I was right. Obviously the murderer didn’t carry the gun away from the scene of the crime, this was the only place that hadn’t been searched, so it had to be here.”
Jerry Luckstone pointed to the closet “You mean the murderer was in there?”
“Of course he was,” Malone said. He stepped just inside the closet and stood looking out. “Buttonholes says this door isn’t usually locked. All right, the murderer brought along a key, an ordinary passkey, and had it probably on the inside of the door. This is a wild guess, but it’ll do. He stood right here, with the door open just a crack, when he fired. You see the door protects him from the view of the people in the courtroom.”
Sheriff Kling and the young district attorney nodded. The lawyer went on, “He waited until the Senator started alone down the stairs. In passing he had to almost brush against the door of the closet. The murderer fired through the crack. No one would pay any attention to the closet, everybody was interested in the murdered man.”
Jerry Luckstone sighed. “That’s the trouble with witnesses. They always look at the wrong things.” He frowned. “But then what?”
“Then,” Malone said, “he hid the gun in the dustcloth, locked the door behind him, and went downstairs.”
“What the hell did he lock the door for?” Sheriff Kling growled.
“So that your deputies would reason that the door had been locked at the time the Senator was killed and wouldn’t bother looking in the broom closet for the gun,” Malone told him.
“This is all very well,” Jerry Luckstone said, “but it doesn’t tell who it was.” He looked hopefully at Malone.
The little lawyer shook his head. “This is as far as the train of reasoning goes. But you’ve got a likely bunch of suspects in that collection of people who were up here at the time.” He paused suddenly in the act of lighting his cigar, letting the match bum until it all but scorched his fingers. “As a matter of fact—” He stopped himself and paused again. This murder wasn’t his affair and he wasn’t going to mix up in it. Let the forces of law and order of Jackson County make the same discovery, by the same simple reasoning.
“What?” Jerry Luckstone asked anxiously.
“As a matter of fact,” Malone repeated, “you might as well put their names in a hat and draw one out. It would be the easiest way.” He finished relighting his cigar. “Well, glad to have been of help. See you at the inquest, gentlemen.”
He strolled out of the courthouse, feeling extremely pleased with himself.
Well, as far as he was concerned, that settled everything. Jake and Helene could continue on their fishing trip after the inquest. He privately hoped they would catch nothing but minnows and would never desert Chicago again. The young district attorney was out of the toils of the law, and Arlene Goudge, Miss McGowan, and Florence Peveley would be satisfied. Also Cora Belle Fromm, since she too had taken steps to prove the young man’s innocence. There was nothing now for him to do but go back to Chicago and see how big a fee he could squeeze out of Harry for beating that bookie rap.
By nightfall he’d be back in Chicago. The thought revived his spirits. “Oh, God,” he murmured soulfully, “just to hear one taxi horn again!”
Ellen MacGowan was hurrying up the sidewalk as Malone went down the courthouse steps. He paused to greet her.
“Well, Mr. Luckstone is out of jail, without any help from me,” he told her.
She nodded. “I know it.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. She was the neatest person he’d ever seen in his life, her trim gray hair might have been parted along a ruler. Her navy-blue print dress had been freshly ironed. It seemed to him that her face had a worried, almost haggard look. Well, you didn’t witness a murder every day. It might have accounted for a sleepless night.
“It appears the sheriff made a mistake,” Malone said.
She sniffed. “Sheriff Kling is not only dishonest but stupid.” She added coldly, “Crime conditions in this county are deplorable.”
He was conscious of a strange, dissatisfied feeling as he walked back to the General Andrew Jackson House. It wasn’t, he told himself, that he gave a damn who had shot Senator Peveley. Certainly it wasn’t that he was trying to promote himself a client out of the affair. But there was no law against a man being curious.
He entered the lobby of the hotel just in time to hear the U. P. reporter calling his office, and paused momentarily to listen.
“Take this, Joe,” the reporter was saying into the telephone. “The sheriff up here—Marvin Kling—just called me up and told me he’d found the gun. The gun. G-u-n. O. K.? All right. He found also where the murderer was standing when he fired the shot. He was standing in a closet at the top of those stairs. A closet. No, no, not that kind. A broom closet. Got that? Now. Sheriff Kling says he figured out where the gun was and where the murderer stood by just reasoning that—”
Malone walked on across the lobby, grinning happily. Marvin Kling was a small-town sheriff, but he learned fast!