INSPECTOR OSCAR PIPER CAME out of the Duke County Jail and took a deep breath of the moist air of early morning. It was Sunday again, and just a week since at this same hour a doomed girl had gone galloping through Central Park to her appointment. Seven days from murder to arrest—that wasn’t so bad, thought the inspector. Nor was he dissatisfied with the result of his long and amicable argument with Captain Tinker.
He walked down the stone steps of the jail and along the sidewalk toward where an angular spinster awaited him in the front seat of a borrowed roadster. He stopped and his feeling of warm satisfaction left him.
Before he could speak Miss Hildegarde Withers greeted him. “At last, Oscar! What was the matter, couldn’t the sheriff find his keys?”
Piper said that he was sorry about the delay. “We were deciding who’d have him,” he explained. “Abe Thomas, I mean. I finally convinced the captain that our murder came first, so we decided that he could keep the prisoner for a couple of days and have his chance at the publicity, and then we’ll extradite the rat and try him in New York for the Feverel job.”
The inspector leaned into the roadster, then moved as if to look into the rumble seat. “Hildegarde, I must be getting absent-minded! I could swear that I left another prisoner in your charge because you said you wanted to question him….” His tone was sarcastic.
“I let young Gregg go home,” Miss Withers cut him off. “He told me what he knew. All of a sudden he realized why he had been left behind at the track—and he guessed the significance of his boyhood air gun being planted where he hadn’t seen it in years! He went mad—but he’s sane enough now. And there are chickens and livestock on that place of his, including the mare and the red colt. Somebody has to feed them this morning.”
“Yeah? What about arson charges that I could bring?”
She shook her head. “It isn’t arson to make a pretense of burning your own house, Oscar. Besides, he was desperate. That young man suddenly realized that he had been unintentionally shielding the murderer of his ex-wife and of his father. He had no hope of convincing the police of that fact, particularly since his own alibi for the first murder depended only upon Thomas’s word. So he tried to execute rough justice with his own hand.”
Piper shrugged. “All right, you win. Regarding Mrs. Thomas you win, too—because we’re all satisfied that she didn’t know what was going on. So she’s being sent to some relatives upstate. But never mind them, Hildegarde. What about Thomas?”
She smiled at him. “Thomas? I told you, he was the murderer!”
“Yeah, I know, I know. But how did he pull it off? Don’t hold out on me, Hildegarde. The reporters will be swarming up on the first train and it wouldn’t look well for me to stall when they ask me how I did it.”
Miss Withers climbed wearily out of the car. “It’s been a long time since I wandered around in the courthouse square of a country town,” she said. “Come along, let’s stroll in the park where the reporters won’t be able to find you until you know all….”
Because of their fatigue and nervous reaction everything in the fresh and dewy morning seemed intensely clear to the two oddly assorted collaborators, clear as a landscape seen after weeks in a darkened sickroom. The inspector, like most city-dwellers inclined to avoid walking as the plague, found a park bench beneath a spreading elm and lit his last cigar. “Well, Hildegarde?”
“It was a murder among murders,” she said thoughtfully after a moment. “Getting at the killer was like peeling an onion—there was always another layer. Yet it was Thomas, Oscar, who killed Violet Feverel!”
Piper nodded impatiently. “I know that—the guy even brags about it now. But how did you figure it out? He didn’t even have a ghost of a motive. Family servants don’t kill because somebody did a bad turn to the old master or his son….”
“He had a motive,” Miss Withers said. “But let’s go back for a moment. We know Thomas came from Australia twenty years ago, got a job with Gregg when he was a wealthy breeder of race horses and stayed. He watched over the son of the household, watched him ride his bicycle and shoot his air gun. He attended horses; while his employer was away at the tracks he ran the place. And he saved his money.
“But life holds more than working and saving, Oscar. Even for a dried-up, dingy little man. There was a cook in the Gregg household, the fair fat Mattie. Proximity will work wonders—but it took twenty years for Mattie to win Abe Thomas. They were married last year—and it would be my own guess that Mr. Thomas at once decided that he had—er—come a cropper is the term, I believe. That large and sentimental woman would make any man desire to throw it all away and go back to his native homeland. Without the wife of his bosom, naturally—yet he couldn’t go back without his ‘pile.’ So—”
“Meanwhile Don Gregg left home and married a professional model about the time the two old family servants underwent matrimony. Nor did that marriage turn out too well. The young couple were divorced, but the bride kept her wedding present from her father-in-law, that big red race horse. She kept him out of vanity and perhaps out of spite….”
Miss Withers shrugged. “Anyway she kept the horse and tried to have him schooled into a lady’s saddle mount. She also managed to get the court to award her a big alimony from Don Gregg, who couldn’t pay it. Neither could his father, for the old man had been guessing more wrongly on the races than he liked to admit.
“And then, Oscar, Abe Thomas saw his great chance. In an announcement of the season’s big race at Beaulah Park, only a mile from home, he saw that one of the horses—a nag so dubious that bookmakers were even then offering almost thirty-to-one on him—was entered under the name of ‘Wallaby’!”
“So what?” demanded Piper.
“Wallabies come from Australia,” Miss Withers explained. “Like the koala or honey-bear, the animal carries a certain sentimental meaning for the native of that far continent. I noticed today that almost every better risked his money because of some hunch, some sentimental association connected with the name. Wouldn’t it seem reasonable that when Abe Thomas finally broke his lifelong rule against gambling on the races, he would plunge on the horse which symbolized the continent ‘Down Under’ which he longed to revisit?”
“Okay—so he bet on Wallaby,” said the inspector impatiently. “But where’s the murder motive …?”
“Not so fast,” she told him. “Remember the notations made by Pat Gregg on the back of the race-track announcement? I found out through Eddie Fry that the old man had been sounding out bookmakers on where to get the best odds for a large sum of money on a long-shot in this race—and we know now that Pat Gregg didn’t have a large sum of money of his own! He was placing the money as a favor to his old employee, Oscar.” She sniffed. “Only—he didn’t place it.”
The inspector was waking up. “You mean—he gave it to Violet Feverel to bail his boy out of jail?”
She nodded. “He wanted the money desperately—and he was positive that there wasn’t one chance in a million of Wallaby winning. If Wallaby lost, Thomas would never know. Pat Gregg went down to the city and called on the beautiful estranged wife of his son—he paid her the nine hundred dollars which wasn’t his own and took a receipt—”
“How do you know he went down there? Maybe she came up to the farm?”
“Nonsense! He wouldn’t want Thomas to get wind of it. Besides, that blue notepaper on which the receipt was written could have come from a desk in Violet’s apartment, but never from the Gregg home. Anyway, don’t blame the old man too much. The boy was in jail without ever having broken any law and Violet Feverel had played with him like a cat with a mouse. As a climax she had the boy rearrested because he hadn’t paid alimony while in alimony jail—with the nine hundred dollars safe in her bank!”
“A nice girl!” the inspector observed.
Miss Withers shrugged. “Even though money isn’t worth much any more, people seem to want it just as badly. Anyway, the girl didn’t deserve to be murdered….”
“Yeah, why was she murdered?” Piper pressed. “Was Thomas sore because she got his dough?”
“Wait, Oscar. I thought so at first, but it was far deeper than that. Thomas had to kill Violet Feverel—in order to kill the old man!” She held up her hand. “Why did he want to kill the old man? Because he knew he was being double-crossed!”
“How could he know it—unless he was a crystal-gazer?” Piper objected.
“Worse than that, Abe Thomas was a snoop,” said Miss Withers. “Remember, Gregg collapsed on the stair when he heard that his son was back in jail. He was put to bed, unconscious, by his faithful servant—who, if I am not mistaken, calmly went through his master’s pockets!
“There was proof enough in the billfold—the receipt. Too bad we only looked through the trousers last Sunday—it might have helped us. Anyway, Thomas’s first impulse must have been to confront his employer. But he had no chance to get his money back, no chance of legal redress. He knew that it was impossible that the old man could have got hold of nine hundred dollars anywhere else, so Thomas took a tremendous plunge. He went to see Violet!”
“Listen,” complained the inspector. “Are you making all this up out of your head?”
“He went to see Violet, begging for the return of his money,” Miss Withers continued. “That was how she got the hunch to bet on Wallaby—for though she sent him away with a merry sneer, he did succeed in convincing her that the horse would win. There’s nothing easier than to let oneself be inveigled into betting on a horse…. Even I …” She sighed reminiscently.
“Violet told Eddie Fry, as a joke, that somebody had tried to borrow back money that had been paid to her, saying he wanted to bet it on Wallaby. How like her to see the essential humor in playing the little man’s horse—with his money! She would have done it, if she had lived.
“But she couldn’t live. She’d sealed her own death warrant when she sent Abe Thomas away empty-handed. Not that he blamed her for that. No—but she was the one person in the world who knew that he had a grievance against his employer. Thomas killed her to cover up the murder of his employer!”
“Oh—but Violet was killed first!”
“In most cases of double murder, Oscar, the second murder is to cover up the first, but here it was vice versa. Violet Feverel’s tongue had to be quieted at the same time or before the murderer could attack his real victim!”
“Say!” the inspector muttered. “That could be …!”
“It was, Oscar,” the schoolteacher said firmly. “Abe Thomas was no fool. He planned both murders to look like natural death. In the case of Violet he realized that a scapegoat might come in handy in case murder was suspected. Don Gregg had a real motive—so Thomas with the innocent connivance of his employer and his wife worked out a pleasant little plot to get Don Gregg out of jail by a fake writ on the eve of the murder!
“He planned to free the young man in order to give himself an excuse to spend the night in town, knowing that his wife would lie in his defense and that even if the truth did come out about his part in the jail-break, no one would blame him except as a very minor accessory.
“He left home that Saturday night very early—before sunset because the chickens had not yet gone to bed—and came down to the city. He parked the station-wagon on an all-night parking lot, leaving hidden there an efficient but supposedly harmless little air pistol in addition to the weapon which he had artfully concocted out of a hoe and a horseshoe. The shoe had to fit Siwash—but that was easy, for the horse had been stabled up here at the farm during many winter seasons and presumably there were old shoes about.
“Oh, it was tight, Oscar, tight as a drum. The man was touched with pure genius and for a while he had the luck of the devil. He got Don Gregg out of alimony jail without a hitch. Perhaps he suggested the Turkish bath, knowing how difficult it would-be to check an alibi there. Anyway, he took the young man there in a taxi and after the steam and the rubdowns and whatever they have in such places both men lay down on their cots.
“But imagine his amazement, Oscar! Thomas lay there pretending slumber until such time as the young man was asleep, and suddenly he heard his companion get up, take his clothes from the locker and stealthily creep out of the place!”
“That must have been a shock,” agreed the inspector.
“Thomas soon saw how he could turn it to account,” Miss Withers continued. “It was raining and the boy had calmly appropriated Thomas’s blue coat. That showed he intended to return before morning.”
“Hey, where did he go?” demanded Piper.
“He had one idea, that young Don Gregg,” Miss Withers explained. “He wanted to confront the woman who had been persecuting him. Most of that night he stood in the rain watching the lighted windows of the apartment that had once been his. He admitted as much to me a little while ago, after I explained that we knew he had been seen trying to follow Violet that morning….”
“Did we?” Piper asked doubtfully.
“Certainly, Oscar. He followed Violet to the stable and after her very noisy friends had departed toward Harlem, he tried to rent a horse and follow her into the park. Perhaps he meant murder, Oscar. Perhaps he hoped to catch her in a meeting with a man which would give him grounds for going back into court….”
Piper brightened. “You know, I figured she must be covering up something….”
“So did everybody else in the case,” Miss Withers admitted. “They all figured that Violet must have had a secret, passionate side to her nature. She was actually as cold as a new Frigidaire, and as empty. Anyway, Don Gregg tried to follow her….”
“And he was the guy who stole the bicycle from the Western Union boy?” the inspector burst in.
She nodded. “And took a spill on it too. Tore his clothes—because I saw Barbara mending them with stocking thread. The bicycle was wrecked and he changed his mind. He left it in the park and walked back to the Turkish bath—if he had continued on half a mile he would have come upon his wife’s dead body. Back at the baths he found Thomas gone—and began to worry. Had the man gone out searching for him? He went back to bed, being naturally tired after a night outside in the rain, and slept through the long hours of the morning.”
“That covers him,” Piper said quickly. “But hurry, Hildegarde, those newspaper boys will be here in twenty minutes.”
“We’ll go back to Thomas,” said Miss Withers calmly. “While Don Gregg was staring up at the windows of Violet’s apartment Thomas was speeding northward in the station-wagon. There was nobody at the parking lot between the hours of one and six—and the drive at that time would not take an hour. He was hurrying to the farm; he had work to do there.
“Already, remember, Thomas had done away with Pat Gregg’s faithful police dog, Rex, who always slept in the old man’s room. He did it by means of the powdered glass he so brashly mentioned to us as being used on dingoes in Australia. That left Gregg unprotected. And Thomas knew that the worst risk he ran would be of being discovered as helping a minor jailbreak, and that public sympathy is with the prisoners of alimony jail.
“Anyway, Thomas must have parked the car a distance from the house, crept up to the old man’s room and opened it with a key which he had prepared for this moment. Opening the door, he slipped quickly to the bed in the darkness and deftly knocked Mr. Gregg unconscious with a blow on the neck under the ear. Remember that pale bruise—it wasn’t a hard blow, for he just wanted to stun him. My guess would be that he used a sock filled with sand….”
“I’ve heard of it being done,” said the inspector stiffly.
“Heard of it—you probably invented it!” Miss Withers accused. “Anyway, with Gregg unconscious the murderer worked swiftly on a plot which was far and away the most clever, I might say over-clever, that I have ever heard of. He had wanted a safe and sane murder, without a trace. So he hit upon the idea of stringing the old man up by the heels and leaving him there to die from the pressure of blood on his brain!”
The inspector’s mouth opened. “Upside down?”
She nodded. “He knew that Gregg had had one collapse and was subject to high blood pressure. It struck him that apoplexy might be brought on artificially. He was strong enough to lift the old man, for he had done it on the stairs only a short time before. Anyway he left Gregg hanging by his suspenders. I presume they were knotted and caught in the trap door which led to the cupola. That was the only place in the room where he could have been tied up, for there was no chandelier and besides, the stairs offered an easy way to carry the victim up in the air.
“Leaving Gregg, as he thought, to die a slow and horrible death, Thomas hurried out of the room, locked the door, and got back to the city. He replaced the station-wagon on the parking lot where it was to be serviced by the attendants when they came on duty at six. From it he took his parcel of weapons and calmly walked down the street and appropriated the first taxicab he found empty!”
“But why a hack when he had a car?” the inspector protested.
She smiled. “Oscar, I’m afraid you’re going to flunk this course. Naturally he didn’t dare risk having his car identified. Taxi drivers often leave the keys in their cars, for who would steal a taxi anyway? So—Thomas stole a taxicab from outside a restaurant and drove calmly to the most convenient place where he could overlook the bridle path on which he knew Violet must ride if she rode at all. His plan was perfect—a BB shot must sting the horse into a frenzy and throw the rider. Before she could get up Thomas would give her a fatal blow with the horseshoe club he had designed, thus placing all blame on the big thoroughbred she was riding. The wounds would appear to be made by a horse’s hoof!
“So far he had played in remarkable luck, but here he struck his first obstacle. Abe Thomas was a poor shot, Oscar. He didn’t realize how poor a shot. True enough, as Violet Feverel cantered into range he managed to hit the big red horse. But Siwash didn’t throw his rider—perhaps he was gentler than anyone thought. So the murderer, desperate, tried again—and this time he missed the horse completely!
“Already a park attendant was coming in sight and Thomas had to decamp with his job unfinished. He had no more use for the air pistol and the horseshoe club, so he tossed them into the first pond he saw. He had no fear of there being traces, for as far as he knew he had not harmed a hair of Violet Feverel’s head!”
“Then who in blazes—” began the inspector.
“Oscar, he showed genuine surprise when he heard the girl was dead—for he had come to her apartment as soon as he got rid of the taxi and regained his own car with the natural purpose of killing Violet then and there, perhaps with his bare hands. He had to kill her—for it was necessary to cover his other murder! He might have thought of pushing her from the window, another excellent way of faking an ‘accident.’ If we hadn’t been there he might have killed Barbara by mistake. But when he saw us he instantly thought of a very plausible lie—and a lie which would cover him on the murder which he thought he had committed up at the farm.
“His amazement at Violet’s death was genuine, for he did not dream that his wild shot at the horse had struck her throat and cut the jugular. But he accepted the news as an evidence that fate was on his side and took us up to the farm to show us a dead man. He ran a fearful risk, he knew, that he would not have time to cut down the body before we found it. But he covered that neatly by rushing into the house and letting the door blow shut in our faces—by accident!
“It took him only a few seconds to get up the stairs, and here was the third trick of fate. For he found that the suspenders had broken or slipped out of the trap door, letting the victim fall to the floor where he got off with nothing worse than terrific bruises and a coma.
“Desperately the murderer tried to cover up his traces as we rang and rang at the bell downstairs. He got the sick man into the bed, placed the suspenders on the trousers and threw whatever gags and bindings he had used out of the unscreened window of the tower. By the way, he left the cupola window open, which gave us a faint hint, or should have done so. To cap it all, he locked the door—and broke it down from the outside! Sounds like a lot—but we waited outside for at least ten minutes.
“When we were coming up the stairs he rushed down crying for a doctor—and I imagine that he was much relieved when he learned that Gregg’s only memory of the whole thing was the dream of being the pendulum of a clock. You see, of course, the significance?”
“You mean, the old man got an inkling of what was going on while he was tied up feet topmost?”
Miss Withers nodded. “Just as we dream of being afloat on an iceberg when the covers slide off the bed. The mind fictionizes and elaborates. That nightmare was an important clue, Oscar. But to go on….
“Thomas was temporarily unable to continue with his real murder, mainly because there was a Gibraltar-like nurse watching over the old man. So he bided his time, letting suspicion fall on those of Violet’s friends and relatives who might have had a real reason to kill her. Who would suspect him, the humble employee of her ex-father-in-law?”
“I would have, only there wasn’t any motive!” Piper protested.
“Exactly! The motive hadn’t come into being yet! Anyway, Thomas bided his time. Perhaps he was afraid to trust his luck too far. Perhaps he decided to wait until the big race and see which horse won. If Wallaby lost then he had no kick coming.
“But he laid his plans, Oscar. When he failed to raise any money at the bank, a last desperate effort to follow his hunch on the race horse with the Australian name, he got ready for the big moment. There would be dramatic justice about killing his enemy at the moment of the race’s climax. Besides, the race-track event gave him a chance for an alibi unique among alibis….”
“But Thomas was at the track, Hildegarde!”
She nodded. “For a little while before the race. But I timed our trip from the track to the farm with Captain Tinker and it took less than five minutes. Thomas knew his wife would be in bed most of the day; he had nothing to fear from her. Oscar, that man scurried away from the track, leaped into the station-wagon and got home while the race was being run!”
“But, Hildegarde….”
“But me no buts. When he knew that Wallaby had won—perhaps he read the news in the face of the old man at the telescope—Thomas struck. Again he used the sock filled with sand and this time a twisted sheet instead of a rope to hang the old man with. Oscar, he repeated his performance of the previous Sunday morning and then hurried back to the track in time to be seen supposedly leaving!”
The inspector was bubbling with suppressed excitement. “I’ve got you!” he said. “I’ve found a hole in your case big as a house. Hildegarde—maybe a man could see through a telescope the finish of a race almost a mile away. I’ll even concede that with his telescope trained on the finish line he could see you and me leaning over the rail yelling at the horses. Still”—this was the inspector’s moment of triumph—“still he couldn’t hear what we were saying! And Thomas quoted word for word your remark when you showed me the fistful of tickets—something about how you bought a ticket on each horse to win!”
Miss Withers didn’t say anything. “Now who’s flunked the course, Hildegarde?”
She smiled. “Well, Oscar, since you ask for it—Do you remember our meeting with Thomas last Monday when we stopped him by the pasture fence and I amused you so much by tossing him an apple?”
The inspector nodded blankly. “Well, perhaps you didn’t notice, but his motor made so much noise nobody could hear anything. You told him to shut it off, that you wanted to talk to him. And he nodded and obeyed, staring at your lips….”
“What? You mean to tell me there’s parlor magic hocus pocus mixed up in this?”
“Parlor magic nothing. Lots of people can read lips without realizing it. That was one of the amusing things about the old silent films; every once in a while you would catch the hero saying something incongruous while kissing Theda Bara or chasing Lillian Gish through the foliage.
“I’ll admit,” she continued, “that I nearly went crazy trying to answer that question myself, Oscar, until I remembered what Thomas had unintentionally demonstrated previously. And that telescope is powerful enough so that the man at the other end could almost read the program I was holding.
“I myself, when looking through the telescope, noticed that I could see the clods of earth flying from the race track when it was being prepared for the race. That optical instrument brought the finish line—and we who stood at the fence at that exact spot—within a few feet of Abe Thomas’s eyes!
“He was undoubtedly searching for some gesture, something that he could mention which would prove that he was near us all the time. And then fate tossed in his lap that flash—perhaps half guesswork—of what I was saying to you. That completed his plot—gave it the little extra fillip that made it perfect. And remember, mind you, he was confident that Gregg’s death would be set down as a natural attack of apoplexy!”
There was the mournful scream of a train whistle in the distance. “Hurry, Hildegarde….”
“There’s not much more. Thomas had a shock when he learned from you that we wanted to ride over to the farm from the track. He had thought—”
“Wait a minute! Why did the old man want us to come and see him today after the race? Do you think he was getting wise?”
Miss Withers shook her head. “Oscar, he had just realized what might happen if by a miracle Wallaby won! He would then owe Thomas some twenty-five thousand dollars or more. We can only guess—but if worse came to the worst and the horse won, it is my firm belief that the old man was going to try his best to pin the Feverel murder on Abe Thomas.
“It would have been so neat—removing at one time a menace to himself and a menace to his son. For the old man, Oscar, believed that his son had killed Violet Feverel. He was sure of it, which accounts for his unwillingness to see the young man. If the improbable happened and Wallaby should win, I think Gregg intended to kill two birds with one stone and try to frame Abe Thomas to save himself and his boy!
“But to return to the old house. Thomas had a flat tire on the way home and drove straight on without stopping to change it. That did not fit in with his usually careful nature. He arrived only just in time, for the others were already on the steps ringing at the door.
“He made them wait in the living room and rushed upstairs. His victim was dead—indeed, had died within a few minutes of being hung up so horribly. Thomas must have got a start when he saw that the bonds made dull marks on the dead flesh and that the upper half of the body was so livid with distended blood vessels. But that was as it may be. He hoisted the dead man up into his chair, hoping it might still appear as a natural death from excitement of watching the race.
“Again he got rid of his aids by tossing them out the window, where he could easily pick them up on the garden path. It would not take ten minutes, Oscar—even remembering that he replaced the sheet on the bed. The four who waited downstairs did not notice the passing of time, for they were watching the quarrel between Mr. Fry and Latigo Wells. (Over Barbara, I presume—though when Eddie Fry ran away at the bridle path, I think she crossed him off the list.)
“Thomas came down the stairs shouting the alarm, as he did before. And we were fooled, Oscar—fooled first by his very real surprise on finding that Violet was dead! Then fooled by his drab exterior, his sober habits—fooled by the perfect alibi of the telescope!”
Miss Withers shook her head sadly. “There were clues enough, if I hadn’t been wasting my time worrying over briar pipes and on trying to solve the murder through an attempt at applied psychology.”
“That was what we were doing at the races?”
She nodded. “I was looking for a person who would be capable of betting everything he owned in the world on a long-shot—for that’s what murder is, Oscar. I didn’t find such an impulse among our suspects. Most of them bet moderately on middle-class horses chosen on name alone. Barbara and Latigo plunged with the money which had been in Violet Feverel’s bank account and which I presume came originally from poor Thomas. But they plunged on a show bet—not risking the whole breathless leap. Our murderer had more daring than that, Oscar. He would have bet to win!
“Oh, I was right—only our murderer couldn’t bet because he didn’t have anything to bet with. Getting his tip third or fourth hand I won a pocketful of money which I don’t know that I have any right to keep. Anyway, that line of approach petered out….”
“We got him, which is all that matters,” said the inspector complacently. He leaned back on the bench, relit his cigar. “You know,” he admitted, “I wasn’t so badly fooled as I might have been. I thought all along that Thomas must have had something to do with that attack on Barbara Foley last Monday when her saddle was tampered with on the bridle path….”
Miss Withers smiled at him. “Such a report card you’re going to take home this month, Oscar! Because that ‘attack’ on little Babs was the only thing in this whole affair of which Thomas was perfectly innocent!”
“What? Then who in blazes—”
“Not Thomas, anyway,” Miss Withers told him. “He had no way of knowing that Barbara would try riding the horse because I did not put the idea in her mind until Sunday afternoon. And ten minutes after the girl fell off I phoned the farm and found him there where he belonged! No, Oscar—it was not Thomas. But knowing how badly Maude Thwaite wanted the ownership of that striking-looking beast, it is my opinion that she thought up a neat little idea for discouraging Barbara in any plans of keeping him. All the woman meant to do was to cause a fall, and not one fall from a horse in a thousand is fatal.”
“All the same—Say, there must be some way of getting her for that! Malicious assault, anyway….” The inspector was chivalrously irate.
“I’ve thought of a possibility,” Miss Withers said dreamily. She might have said more, but there was the sound of honking horns in the village street. Flashlight powder went off in a brilliant explosion just outside the jail, where Captain Tinker was posing….
“The reporters!” said Piper. “Say, I’ve got to get over there and keep Tinker from telling how he solved the case….”
“Here’s a last tip for you, Oscar,” Miss Withers called after him. “Tell the gentlemen of the press that you broke the case through a mistake that the killer made. You see,” she hastily explained, “he thought it would be a very clever idea to dig up Don Gregg’s childhood air rifle and plant it in his bedroom closet in case anybody ever noticed the BB shot in this mystery. Of course we realized at once that no young man of thirty would keep such a toy in his bedroom all those years….”
“We sure did!” agreed the inspector happily, and sprinted for the jailhouse steps.