“Maybe I will,” Gavigan broke in. “But save it. Here, help Malloy. I’m going ahead.”
He started off at a dogtrot, and I shifted into second along with him. He gave me a look, “That gun, Ross. Give me.” I did. “And don’t ever let that happen again, understand? Watrous’s prints and yours will have ruined Lamb’s.”
The house blazed with light and movement. Gavigan saw an open cellar window at the foot of the stairs, brightly lighted. He got down before it. “How is he, Gail?”
The Doctor’s voice said, “Still out. He got a whisky bottle over the head. Cut a bit. But I’ll have him around—”
A quiet voice from the steps above asked, “Catch him?”
“Yes.”
“Who?” Merlini asked.
“Lamb. I thought you knew.”
“What does he say for himself?”
“He doesn’t yet. He’s still out on his feet. Took a lovely header down the boathouse steps.”
“Odd gunnery score he chalked up, wasn’t it?” Merlini came down the steps. “Awfully inconsistent. Headquarters has been after you on the phone. Say they have a wire for you from Washington.”
The Inspector started for the side door. He’d gone nearly a dozen feet before he wheeled and asked, “What do you mean — inconsistent gunnery score?”
“Look at that. In the wall just above your head.” Merlini pointed with the flash he carried. Seven feet above ground level and perhaps a foot below the underside of the sun deck, I saw a dark core of metal protruding slightly from the center of a roughly circular, chipped area in the wall.
“Bullet,” Merlini said. “The tree’s 35 feet away from Rappourt’s chair. The first shot missed her by a good two feet — and she’s no small target. The second, as you see, missed even the window, 10 feet to one side and five too low. While the third scored a perfect bull’s-eye on the Colonel from a considerably greater distance. Wouldn’t you call that erratic?”
“Sure. But what’s it prove?” Gavigan didn’t wait for an answer. He disappeared into the house.
“Well, what does it prove?” I asked as Merlini turned to follow him.
“Misdirection, Ross. And lots of it. With curves, too.” He slid away from me.
Ten minutes later Gavigan stood in the living-room and watched Brady ink Lamb’s fingers and press them, one at a time with a slight sideward roll on a sheet of white paper. He took the paper almost before Brady lifted Lamb’s hand at the last impression. Placing it under the table lamp, he leaned above it with a magnifying glass. He looked from the prints to a photograph that he held in his left hand, and then back again.
Quinn, Gail, and Muller were still downstairs. Hunter was outside with the body. Everyone else, except the Hendersons, was in the living-room. Sigrid stood by the fireplace, her face white. Madame Rappourt, not quite as self-possessed as usual, sat on the davenport against the wall, an alert, thoughtful expression on her dark face. Ira Brooke leaned against the heavy cabinet radio in the corner. His hands were slowly tearing a paper match cover into small pieces. Arnold stood in the center of the room, his hands in his pockets, his teeth tight on the stem of his unlighted, unfilled pipe. They were all watching Lamb, whose gross, heavy movements were slow and painful. He put his hand to his forehead once, rubbed its back across his eyes and seemed surprised because the other hand came up with it. He looked vacantly at the steel that joined them as if seeing it for the first time.
Inspector Gavigan stood up at last, faced Lamb and said with deep satisfaction, “Charles Lamb, I arrest you for murder!”
Merlini, on the davenport near Rappourt, scowled sleepily and inquired, “For one, two, or three murders, Inspector?”
“For a couple of dozen,” Gavigan said. “Mr. Lamb happens to be otherwise known as Joe (The Boss) Garelli, retired gangster, racketeer, and ex-kingpin of the Chicago rackets. Front Street, Auckland, New Zealand, my eye! That address was just to give us something hard to check.”
Sensation! That was the mildest word any paper would use. I made a half movement toward the phone.
Arnold said, “But didn’t they find Garelli on the bottom of the Chicago River a year or so ago with his feet in a tub of cement?”
“You shouldn’t believe all you read in the papers,” Gavigan replied. “The Boss had made his pile and wanted to get out. Mobs don’t accept resignations. Besides, some other people figured that part of the dough he was taking with him belonged to them. But he thought he was smart. He picked out someone else to take the rap, same general description. Filled him with machine gun slugs, a lot of which messed up the face. Dropped him in the river. I’ve always wondered why the hands were missing and how come he went in at a spot where the body couldn’t very well have been expected to remain undiscovered — right where some divers were doing repair work on a bridge foundation. He had to have the body found, you see. So his pals would stop trying to trace him.”
“What tipped you off, Inspector?” Merlini didn’t seem sleepy any longer.
Gavigan turned to him. “Headquarters got the pilot of the plane that high-tailed it out of here this morning. You knew Lamb was the guy that was waiting for it as well as I do. No clothes in his room, no shaving stuff, no nothing. What happened to them? Obviously he’d packed up. He had the stuff with him in a suitcase; and, when he saw the police launch coming and saw he was going to miss his plane, he ditched it. Leach’s been looking for it up at the other house, but no luck. Lamb added a couple of rocks and dropped it in the river probably. Novak could get it, but I won’t need it. The pilot was Curley Branner.”
“The guy who used to pilot the Boss’s bullet-proof plane and who disappeared about the same time! I’ll be—” That was Grimm, speaking out of turn, unable to help himself.
Gavigan let it go. “There was a little matter of some hair straightener, hair dye, and some freckles that washed off, but the identification was positive. Lamb here didn’t need to wear any false whiskers. It wouldn’t have done him much good anyway, with his beef. But he’d allowed for that from way back. Always awfully shy of photographers; and they were damn shy of him after a couple that tried to shoot him, got shot themselves — only with another kind of camera. The Mystery Czar of Crime, the magazine articles called him. He’d seen to it that even among his pals only a very few knew what he looked like. But he had one spot of tough luck. He was so sure the F.B.I. didn’t have his fingerprints. He had always worn gloves, even to bed. He didn’t know that silver—” Gavigan grunted oddly—“silver nitrate can pick up fingerprints off fabric. The Washington boys managed to snake one of his gloves. They got part of a thumb and half an index print off the glove, at the edge where he’d pulled them on. His valet should have done that for him, too. The F.B.I. rushed his prints up by telephoto. I’ve pinned down four points of similarity in the thumb and six in the forefinger. I only need two more, and, if the boys at the lab can’t dig those up when they start checking fork angles and ridge lengths, I’ll turn in my badge.”
“Charles Lamb,” Merlini mused. “Not a bad alias, either. Garelli’s report card gets a gold star for misdirection. Whenever he was introduced, people were immediately reminded of familiar essays, certainly a far enough cry from Tommy guns and racketeering. I deduce that he must have gone as far as high school.”
“And he’s got only one more stop to make,” Gavigan said.
“I can see that. I congratulate you, Inspector. This should make you Police Commissioner overnight. But when you get back on the subject, what about solving this case?”