And with a strange weakness in all his limbs he reeled towards the face that at that final moment sharply eluded his.
“So that’s how you did it?” said the little man suddenly, speaking in a different voice and, as it were, from a different world. “I’d always had my suspicions, ever since they found that half-burned mallet on the edge of the slag-heap. You aimed badly, I’m afraid...” And in a more level voice he added: “Parker Potterson, alias Richard Morley, I arrest you for the willful murder of Thomas Raines on the night of December the twelfth, Eighteen-Ninety-Eight...”
Two of the bystanders seized his arms and led him away, the little man and the woman following...
“What puzzles me,” remarked the latter some hours later as she discussed the whole affair with her famous, though somewhat diminutive husband, “is why he troubled to throw the mallet on the slag-heap at all? Why not simply have put it in a bag and carried it through the station barrier in the ordinary way? He could easily have destroyed it afterwards.”
“True,” answered Detective-Inspector Howard, of Scotland Yard, “but then that wouldn’t have been Morley. Some criminals are not clever enough, but Morley was too clever. That mallet on the slag-heap was the one quite unnecessary touch of genius that let him down. And he was so proud of it that years afterwards he couldn’t resist the temptation to brag about it to a pretty woman.” He gave his wife an affectionate glance as he added: “Well, Maud, it was your triumph, chiefly — you played a dashed unpleasant part remarkably well. But it was the mallet that finished him — as surely as it finished your poor father thirty years ago.”
Suspect Unknown
by Courtney Ryley Cooper
One of America’s most popular authors takes us behind the scenes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington and achieves a uniquely authoritative piece of crime fiction. An F.B.I. story that will instruct as well as entertain you.
Inspector Jessup of the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been expecting the call. He smiled slightly as he listened to the telephone report:
“Agent Benson speaking from the first floor. The subject just got out of his car as a sight-seeing bus arrived for a tour of the bureau. He immediately mingled with a bunch of sight-seers, and is headed upstairs on one of the first elevator loads. Agent Torner is trailing him, subject to your orders, sir.”
“Rejoin Agent Torner and continue the surveillance,” commanded the inspector and hung up. A big man, sandy-haired, pleasant-featured, he shifted in his chair with a certain air of lumbering boyishness, and eyed for an instant the intercommunicating system. For once he could give thanks that he was head of the Washington office.
At other times, he had been not too delighted with his assignment. This was a “spot” job, constantly under the eye of the director; the distance between Inspector Jessup’s office and the nerve center of the entire F.B.I. was only the difference between the fourth and fifth floors of the big marble building of the United States Department of Justice. Under ordinary conditions the proximity meant that the inspector’s activities were subject to far greater scrutiny than those of any other like officer in the organization. But at a time like this—
He flipped a button on the interoffice system, marked: “Director.” Instantly, a crisp voice answered:
“Yes, Jessup.”
The inspector leaned close to the transmitter:
“Hello, Boss. The suspect in the Tilliver murder case just came into the building for another tour of the bureau.”
“Good! That makes the third trip in three days.”
“And that either makes me dead right on him or dead wrong. He must figure he’s got that job covered up pretty well, and wants to be sure of it. After all, once he leaves Washington, he can’t run and hide like the average fugitive. He’s a prominent man. He’s got to stay in the open, and that takes a lot of nerve — unless a person knows that there isn’t a chance of being caught. So what happens? He remembers his crook training: to stick in with officers after a crime and try to hear or see something that will tip him off as to how they’re progressing with the case. That’s my theory — I’ll stand or fall on it.”
“All right, Jessup. Go ahead with your plans.”
“On the lines we talked over yesterday afternoon?”
“Definitely.”
“There’s a point, Boss. To do that, I’ll have to divulge a certain amount of information about the case. How far shall I go?”
There was a pause. Then: “That’s up to your judgment, Jessup. Your job is to place him actually at the scene of the crime. If you can do that, all our other evidence dovetails. We know he was seen in the neighborhood both before and after the murder. The witnesses we had hidden here yesterday when he went through were fairly certain on that point. We know too that Tilliver and a man who looked a lot like this fellow served a term in California together some twenty years ago on a charge of extortion by mail.”
“But there’s no fingerprint record to prove it.”
“That’s the tough part; the fingerprint files on that prison don’t date back that far. So you’ve got to work carefully. As I see it, you figure that he and Tilliver were once crooked pals. After they got out of prison, they went different ways. Tilliver seemingly reformed. So did this fellow. You believe that neither of them did anything of the sort. Tilliver was still a blackmailer at heart, and this — what’s his name?”
“Manton Kent.”
“That’s right, Kent. This Kent got into a small concern — handling all sorts of things — and apparently built it up to a big business—”
“But we can show by evidence that it’s a house of cards. That’s my idea of the motive, Boss. On the surface, it looks as if he killed Tilliver rather than pay him blackmail. But I think he did it because he figured that Tilliver knew what Kent was doing in this firm: juggling its stock, selling off its assets for his personal account, padding pay rolls — it’ll take a dozen auditors to chase down the crooked things this fellow’s done. Tilliver must have found this out, tried to get some blackmail as a result of what he knew — but got killed instead.”
“It’s a great theory — if you can prove it.”
Inspector Jessup’s lips tightened.
“Yes, that’s the trouble — to prove it. To put him smack into the middle of the murder scene, or get some sort of record on him through fingerprints.”
“There were none at the scene of the crime.”
“And no record from the penitentiary. I didn’t mean that. I was hoping that I might find he’d served time somewhere else. Or been arrested for investigation, or mixed up in some bankrupt racket — anything to break through his armor. Otherwise, I haven’t a leg to stand on.”
“Especially since all the tangible evidence points directly away from him. Well, use your head on that, Jessup. And good luck to you.”
A clicking sound was followed by silence. Inspector Jessup raised a big hand to his forehead and brought it away, the palm beaded with sweat. He wished now that he had not been so eager to work personally on the solution of this murder, that he had not been so enthusiastic in the belief that Man ton Kent, following a crook’s logic, was attempting to spy on those who were spying on him.
Suddenly, however, he straightened. In quick succession, he flipped the levers of the interoffice system to a half-dozen departments, and gave crisp orders. Then he glanced at his watch. It was twelve minutes past ten o’clock. The morning tour of the building had begun promptly at ten. By now, the inspector knew, the guide had explained the wide-flung activities of the bureau; he should be finishing up the tour’s beginning in the Exhibit Room with a few words on the machine guns captured from gangsters, Dillinger’s death mask, the red wig worn by Katherine Kelly, the kidnaper, and the vacuum jar in which her husband had hidden ransom money. The inspector pressed a button. A special agent answered.