Max Brand

Murder Me

Warsaw 2019

Contents

I. THE MAN WHO WANTED TO DIE

II. SHADOWS THAT CREEP

III. IN A DARK ROOM

IV. THE MURDERER IS COLOR-BLIND

V. THE GREEN TIE

VI. THE ALIBI

VII. A GUN AND $1000

VIII. UNPLEASANT EVIDENCE

IX. MURDER BY WIRE

X. O'ROURKE VERSUS CAMPBELL

XI. COLLAPSING ALIBIS

XII. THIRD DEGREE

XIII. WILLETT TALKS

XIV. "I'LL BURN THE TRUTH OUT OF YOU!"

XV. ANOTHER SUSPECT TALKS

XVI. TRAIL OF FEAR

XVII. ROSE MAKES AN OFFER

XVIII. A DAMP COAT—AND A GIRL

XIX. A SPOT OF GREEN PAINT

XX. YELLOW EVIDENCE

XXI. MURDERER'S ACCOMPLICE

XXII. —A COWARD COLLAPSES

XXIII. MURDERER'S KNOCK

XXIV. TELFORD TALKS

XXV. ROSE TAYLOR TALKS

XXVI. WILLETT SPILLS THE BEANS

XXVII. ROADSIDE MEETING

XXVIII. O'ROURKE MAKES AN ARREST

XXIX. —THE CONFESSION

XXX. IN THE FLYTRAP

XXXI. CAMPBELL SETS A TRAP

XXXII. ROSE TAYLOR SPRINGS A TRAP

XXXIII. THREE VISITORS

XXXIV. MURDERER'S WORLD

I. THE MAN WHO WANTED TO DIE

THE letter asked for haste, but Willett always hurried with a calm face. All the way from New York his car hit the rain like a fist, knocking it into a dazzle before the headlights, while Willett lounged at ease behind the wheel. When the road was straight, it had a winter look, a black, polished river that flowed under the wheels without carrying the machine back; but, when the lights swung around a corner, they gave him reassuring glimpses of spring, a horn of abundance, filled with the bright rush of the rain, but with the summer green about to flow into it.

He kept the thought in his mind, dreaming over it. Headlights twinkled, swayed up and down the hills, glared in his face, and then went by with a thin squeal of tires or the roar of a truck. He was off the main road and finding his way by instinct. Qualms of doubt made him sit up straighter. He had not come this way for five years.

Then the lights showed him the old mill down by the creek, trying to hide in the rain. He knew he was right from the point. The side road carried him under a wet shimmer of trees. At the turn he saw Telford’s house. A pair of high-shouldered wings had been added to his memory of it; but, of course, Telford had prospered. He was the type. Afterwards, the lights wavered across Barry’s home, steadied on it, looked into the familiar face. He slid the car up the oval of the gravel drive, stopped, turned off the engine, switched on the curb lights.

The rain patted the top of the car with rapid little hands.

He got out and stretched. The trees that embosomed the place had grown smaller–because he had been taking long steps in the past five years, no doubt. There was one other change. An iron lantern hanging from the cornice above the door showed the way to the entrance. In the old days, oil lamps had been good enough for David Barry; electricity had been the mechanical slave and curse of man. It was Telford, no doubt, who had changed the mind of the old philanthropist. Willett rang the bell. In the pause, he listened to the rustling of the ampelopsis leaves; there was a smell of fresh paint.

The door opened a crack, jangling against a chain.

“Who’s there?” asked David Barry.

“It’s I, David.”

“Ah, you,” said Barry, and opened the door wide. The interior was dim. The lantern outside was what cast the shadow of big Willett over Barry, leaving only the pallor of his face and the sheen of his glasses. He shook hands, closing the door at the same time and saying, “You’ve grown bigger. That’s a trick of imagination, I know, but the fancy is never wrong, entirely. Yes, you’re a bigger man than you used to be. This way, Richard.”

Willett dropped the weight of his overcoat, put up his hat, and had a glimpse of his face in the mirror. Some of the Eastern sleek had been rubbed off his cheekbones, some of the Nevada brown had been added. Perhaps that was why he looked bigger. He went behind Barry into the living room. There was a vase filled with such a spreading mass of spring bloom that it gave the place a busy air, like conversation.

“How does this old house seem to you?” asked Barry.

“You’ve always been so interested in doing good that you had to do good to a barn and turn it into a house,” said Willett.

“You don’t like it?”

“It must have been a good barn, but now it’s faked. Those curved beams, for instance, are the bunk. Then you set in a carved overmantel of old English oak above the fireplace, like a bit of church choir installed in the stable. You open out one wall and make a library balcony up there with Moorish columns and a French balustrade. You put Persian rugs on the floor, Chinese vases on the tables, and ring in this dash of Chinese sculpture.”

He sunned his back at the fire and lighted a cigarette.

“You’ve turned aesthete, Richard, have you,” said Barry. “You ought to know that all things which are truly beautiful may stand shoulder to shoulder.”

Willett smoked and said nothing.

“This statue, for instance, is a Bodhisattva. It’s a T’ang,” explained Barry.

“Looks like a dancing girl with a prop smile to me,” said Willett. “No, I’m not an aesthete.”

“But like all our countrymen, you have a right to your own opinions, eh?”

Willett said nothing.

“A remarkable thing about our civilization,” said Barry. “Without culture, without knowledge, we still express ourselves. Of course that is because we are so free–and so equal. The patriarch Jefferson and the puling French philosophers of the eighteenth century made us equal.”

Willett said: “You talk the way you’ve always talked, but you look sick. What’s the matter with you?”

“You’re a mining engineer, now, Richard, and I dare say that you have undeveloped millions in prospect?”

“I won’t talk business with you. I finished that five years ago when you handed over your affairs to Telford.”

“What would you do for a hundred thousand dollars, Richard?”

“Murder,” said Willett.

“That’s why I sent for you,” said Barry. “This morning I put you in my will for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“The hell you did,” answered Willett.

Something that was not a smile pulled at the corners of the mouth of Barry. He went to the long table, pulled open a drawer, and took thick, folded paper from it.

“You can see for yourself,” said Barry.

“I’ll take your word. You’ve always been afraid to tell a lie.”

“Here is a loaded gun, Richard. Here am I. My servants come by the day, only. We are entirely alone. You have not been here for five years. No one could suspect your coming. In ten seconds the thing is finished and you are on the road again.”

“Barring Telford, there’s no one I’d rather put a bullet through than you,” said Willett.

“I knew that, of course. I’ve understood for a long time–even when you were working for me–that you despised me, though I never knew why,” Barry said.

“I hate a four-flusher who buys applause,” said Willett. “You’ve always bought it. You’ve paid millions to get headlines about the great-hearted philanthropist.”

“There’s the gun, Richard, and here am I.”

“I think you’re trying to be noble even now. How much have you left?”

“Between four and five million.”

“Is that all?”

“I’ve been badly advised, Richard.”

“I told you Telford would be a bust. Who gets the rest?”

“Jacqueline.”

“Spindle-shanked little Jacqueline, eh? Does she give a damn about you?”

Barry said nothing. A slight color stained his cheeks. Hate steadied the eyes with which he looked at Willett.

“Let me have a drink, will you?” asked Willett.

“There on the sideboard. Help yourself.”

Willett went to the decanter and sloshed some whiskey into a glass. He tossed it off neat.

“Even your Scotch is a fake,” he said, and went back to the fireplace and a second cigarette. “What’s the jam you’re in?”

“I’m talking to you about a hundred thousand dollars. That’s reason enough for you.”

“You’re afraid, all right,” said Willett. “You’re brittle and sick with fear. Tell me what the jam is.”

Barry slipped into a chair. His head shuddered as he let it sink back against the cushion.

“I went into the contracting business,” he said. “I was poorly advised, Richard. Before certain city contracts could be secured, money had to change hands–and Telford has just found out that the district attorney is going to start an investigation tomorrow.”

“Philanthropist accused of bribery and corruption, eh? That would be sweet! I’d love that,” said Willett, and laughed.

Barry closed his eyes. Willett brought him three fingers of whiskey.

“Take a shot of this,” he directed.

The glass tinkled against the teeth of Barry. His head wavered as he lifted it. After one swallow he began to cough and writhe a little.

“It’s rotten stuff, right enough,” agreed Willett, and finished off the drink. “But that ought to brace you a little. Who’s the district attorney?”

“Thomas Hunt Lawlor.”

“I know that bird and he’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Can’t Telford get to him?”

“Lawlor aims at being governor,” said Barry. He put his head in his hands. “Richard, if I’m not dead before morning, I will burn that will and you lose a hundred thousand dollars. Did you tell anyone you were corning out here?”

“Not a soul.”

“Then the way is open to you.”

“Why don’t you put the gun to your crooked head and pull the trigger? Burn the will, and shoot yourself, and save a hundred thousand for dear little buck-toothed Jacqueline. I’ll stand here and watch the body fall for old time’s sake. Head’s up, David. I’ve always given you good advice. There won’t be any pain. Just lay the muzzle against the temple and pull the trigger and you’ll be laid away with your headlines; the district attorney will never bark up a dead tree, and somebody will build you a monument, somewhere.”

“I tried poison,” said Barry, “and my lips would not let it pass. I tried a gun and the cold of the steel–I tried gas, but when the tube was in my mouth–”

He leaped out of his chair.

“Now, steady, steady!” said Willett. “Don’t be a damned fool.”

“Oh my God, oh my God!” said Barry.

“Sit down,” commanded Willett. “Have you got a telephone?”

“No. I wouldn’t have–the babble of the crowd–”

“Very well. I’m going out to find one and have a little think.”

“What good will the telephone be? What can you do? Richard, don’t leave me alone!”

“Do I care if you sweat for another hour?” demanded Willett. “Take your scrawny hands off me!”

In the hall he paused to put on his coat and hat. He drew on his gloves before he touched the knob of the front door.

II. SHADOWS THAT CREEP

It was more than an hour later when Willett sat again at the fire of David Barry, smoking, blowing up the smoke, looking carefully through the brown mist toward the dead man. Barry hung by the neck with a doubled curtain-cord tied about his throat. The cord was fastened to the balustrade of the library gallery. He was still swaying–the force in a pendulum runs down so slowly–and the movement stirred slightly the silver of his lifted hair. This gave him a touch of life. His face held a slightly sardonic grin and his head, twisted to the side, added an air of thought.

Willett tossed the butt into the fire and stood up, pulled on his gloves. It was when he was standing that he noticed, for the first time, a little riffle of white that lay at the foot of one of the legs of the long table. He picked up a woman’s handkerchief. The linen was so delicate that the slightest breath of air would have been enough to keep it floating. The perfume was hardly noticeable–merely a clean fragrance. Willett looked toward the dead man. Hardly more than a hundred and twenty pounds in that starved body, he estimated. Then he slid the handkerchief into his pocket. The big automatic on the table he put away in his clothes also.

From a small table near the fire he took a newspaper, carried a hard-bottomed chair to the pendulous body of Barry, laid the paper on the seat of the chair and stepped up. His face was now almost on a level with that of Barry. He dusted his gloves against his clothes, opened his coat, rubbed them once more against his white shirt. After that he untied Barry’s necktie. It was a hand-woven silk, blue, with small gray-white flowers worked into the pattern. He looked at this for a moment, repassed it around Barry’s neck, and tied it again with care, adding touches like a woman before a mirror.

Stepping down from the chair, he returned it to its place, tossed the newspaper into the fire, and watched the roar of flame jump up the chimney. Some small, withering flakes of gray ash showered down onto the hearth. He brushed them back with the hearth broom and looked again at the corpse, critically. Something about it was not to his taste, so he returned and, this time, untied and tied again the laces of the dangling shoes. When he had finished this, he noticed that the body had stopped swinging. With a push he restarted the gentle oscillation. After that, he went into the adjoining bedroom.

A heavy wooden four-poster looked too big for the chamber. The head was toward a recessed window. There was a fireplace fitted with a paneled door, a small built-in bookcase that made a pleasant spot of color in the rough plaster of the wall; figured chintz framed the two windows. A soft tan rug covered the floor.

Willett stepped behind the bed and pulled hard on the head posts. The bed gave way slowly toward him. He pushed it back in place and noticed that the casters had left distinct trails across the nap of the rug. There was not a solid headboard but fluted wooden balusters which would have the advantage of letting light from the window pour over the shoulder of one who wished to read in bed. Barry had that habit. On the bedside table were Florence Ayscough’s three volumes of translations from the Chinese, a paper cutter, a fountain pen desk set, an ashtray of pale jade. Willett took off the bedcover, folded it, laid it across the back of a chair. Under the pillow he found a fresh suit of pajamas, white silk with heavy blue embroidery around the buttonholes. He took off his shoes, pulled on the pajamas, opened the bed, and got into it. He lighted a cigarette from the box of them on the bedside table and opened one of the Ayscough books.

Tu Fu was a great poet but sad, aching with sadness. Willett tamped out the cigarette. Jabbing the coal down against the polish of the jade was a desecration. He replaced the book on the table, open and face down, got up from the bed, took off the pajamas and looked at his clothes to make sure that no white threads had adhered to them. Next there was the smoothing of the pillows, the replacing of the carefully folded pajamas under them, the remaking of the bed, the replacing of the cover. It was hard to do these things with gloved hands.

As he finished, the wind leaped out of the whistling distance and struck the house, shaking it till the windows hummed and the shutters rattled. A long, hushing draught ran through the place as though a door had been opened.

Willett pulled the automatic out of his pocket and raised his eyes to listen. The breathing of the wind ceased through the house; it went roaring off among the trees. A taint of wood smoke had entered the air from the living room.

He stepped into the adjoining bedroom. He himself had used that bed more than once in the other days. He remembered even the figures in the design of the toile de Jouy that curtained the little, high windows. The same cloth covered the chairs beside the fireplace, and there was a pillar lamp on the fireside table exactly like that in Barry’s room, except that the shade was red. He started a little when he saw this, then took the shade from the lamp and passed back into the other chamber. The shade of Barry’s bedside light was drum-shaped and an appropriate green with a little Directoire print on one side. He removed that shade also and deliberately toppled the standard to the ground. The crash of the fall was surprisingly loud. His muscles jumped. He had to set his teeth and, when he leaned to pick up the fallen lamp, he started about, suddenly. A shadow seemed to be disappearing to the left of the living room door. But that was nerves, of course.

Rather pale, now, his head jutting forward with strain, he examined the standard of the lamp. A bit of the gilding had broken away from the painted base; that was all. He put on the lamp the shade he had taken from the adjoining bedchamber and went back into the living room. To cross the threshold took effort. A faint swirl of smoke and ashes from the hearth hung like a ghost in the air. David Barry, his head thoughtfully on one side, his eyes half-closed, meditated upon him. Willett dropped the Directoire shade into the fire. It was gone in a gust of flame. With the tongs he picked the wire frame out of the fire and put it to one side.

Still there was something to do in the back of the house. He returned through Barry’s chamber into the bathroom. When he snapped on the light, it polished the white of the tiles. All was in undisturbed order, particularly the linen hand towels on the swinging rack beside the washbowl. It would have been a stupid oversight to leave this place untouched.

Another burst of storm went racketing overhead and whistling underfoot. In the mirror before him he saw his face was bright with sweat. His eyes were too big.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.