"So, you’re mixed up in this affair, are you, you sly young devil! Well, maybe this time you've just possibly outsmarted yourself, for once!" grated Branigan.
Those green eyes twinkled with innocent merriment into his own gimlet gaze. "Doubt it, Branigan," Star drawled with a wry grin. "Thirty customers will tell you that Phath and I were nearly out of the door when McGuire called out from the floor above that his partner was being murdered by a ’black ghost’—whatever he meant by that."
"He’s right," rumbled the moonfaced Uranian. "And I was the first one in the room, just before these two." In a sober voice and without wasting words the bartender told how he had found the babbling little Scotsman crouched tearfully over the corpse of his partner. A few quick questions from Branigan brought out the whole story—the mystery moon, the secret tomb, the treasure of black pearls.
"What happened to the gem Barlow was flashing around?" demanded the inspector. Quarl shrugged, his wide moon yellow face wearing a baffled expression.
"Search me, inspector! It’s—it’s gone!"
"Aye," barked Branigan gruffly. "Search you I will, and everybody else on the scene—starting with you, Pirate!"
"Search away," grinned the redhead. "But please be careful around the ribs—I’m awfully ticklish!"
Branigan had brought with him two husky ratings of the Port patrol. Together they made short work of searching the patrons of the Spaceman’s Rest, and the murder room. They found nothing of consequence: in particular, they did not find the mysterious black pearl the two miners had found in space.
When they were done, and Branigan grudgingly permitted the now-sobered patrons to leave the saloon in the dim pink light of morning, Star Pirate took him aside.
"Have you come to any conclusion as yet, or are you as baffled by all this as I am?" asked Star.
The inspector smirked nastily.
"What, the great Star Pirate—mystified? Well, I’m not. It’s open and shut. Nothing to it; easiest case I ever cracked," he said in tones redolent of self-satisfaction.
"Pray enlighten me, then," murmured Star politely.
"When you’re confronted with a case of murder, look for motive," the inspector said sententiously. "Who profits most by the man’s death? His partner, of course, McGuire—"
"Not before the law," said Star instantly. "Barlow has a niece who keeps house for the two men. They have a little shack out in the back-country, where they rest up between voyages and raise a small crop of vegetables. As Barlow’s only heir, the girl inherits everything he leaves. The fifty-fifty agreement between the two partners was only verbal, a mutual agreement, and was to be terminated by the death of either one of them, Not that Miss Barlow won’t, most likely, be extremely generous with McGuire, who has been as much an uncle to her as Barlow himself ever was."
Branigan’s mouth was hanging open. He noticed the fact, and closed it. "H-how did you ... latch onto all this?" he asked.
"Easy," Star grinned. "I talked to McGuire."
Branigan purpled, then, restraining his temper with a visible effort, he growled, "Those pearls were taken on a mining trip, and it’ll be a pretty problem for the courts to decide whether they’re Barlow's private property or belonged to both men, since they shared the proceeds from their mining trips equally. But that’s for the courts to worry about—me, I look for motive, then for opportunity. McGuire had both— nobody else was in the room when you and your web-footed sidekick and this fat-faced Uranian came busting in, was there?”
"Nobody . . . that I could see, " mused Star Pirate thoughtfully.
Branigan smirked and spread his hard hands. "Then there it is, smart guy! It had to be McGuire ... take him away, boys."
Star and Phath and the yellow-skinned bartender stood in silence as the Patrol squad manacled a pale and muttering Scotty McGuire and led him away.
They said nothing because there was really nothing to say.
5. The Mystery Deepens
The medical examiner who performed the official autopsy on the body of Big Bill Barlow was a gaunt, gloomy-faced Mercurian with teak-dark skin and eyes like hot gold coins. He received Star Pirate and the Venusian in a cramped and dusty, airless little cubicle of an office. The desk was buried under a snowfall of papers and the windowpane so fogged by dust and grime that you could not have told by eye alone whether it was day or night outside. Star came to the point at once, as he had apparently interrupted the doctor during his lunch hour.
"Yep, strangled," grunted the medical examiner, munching juicily on a ham sandwich. "Powerful feller, the murderer—dang powerful. Feller’s throat was literally crushed."
"By human hands?" inquired Star. The doctor, whose name was Hurgo, stared meditatively at a taded, ten-year-old calendar which hung on the wall, chewing on a succulent slice of pickle.
"Jovian might of done it," he said at last. "Heavy gravity planet like Jupiter makes 'em stronger than other fellers. But I doubt it. The victim—what's his name ? Barlow? — was a big man, too; thick neck like a bull. And from the way the muscles of his throat were mashed and mangled —" here he paused to pick his teeth with a sliver of wood, while Phath looked sickly out of the bleared window and began to wish he had waited in the dirty lobby below—"mashed and mangled, I say . . . nope, not even a Jovian could have done it."
"With a strangling cord? A rope, maybe?" pressed Star Pirate keenly. The coroner blinked bland gold eyes at him, and glugged down a swig of cold black coffee into which he first poured a large and liberal slug of Mercurian brandy.
"You're think' mebbe this Barlow feller was garrotted, heh?" he guessed shrewdly. "Not a chance, young feller ... it would have taken a woven-steel hawser and a power-winch to have done such a job on Barlow's throat. Believe me!"
When the two adventurers got downstairs, Phath took a deep breath of fresh air and felt the minor surge of sickness pass. He wondered—but only briefly—whatever in the name of thirty space-devils possessed a man, to make him wish to become a coroner and spend his time messing around with cadavers.
"Where now, chief?" he inquired somewhat more cheerfully.
"Now we find ourselves a lawyer," said the rangy redhead, "and post bail for Scotty McGuire."
The milky-skinned Venusian examined his comrade with an albino-pink gaze. "You don't figure Scotty did this guy Barlow in, then, right?"
"Of course not," scoffed Star. "Barlow was three times McGuire's weight, with hands like a couple of hams and biceps as thick as most men's thighs. Even dead drunk, he could have mopped the floor with three Scotty's. Uh, I've no doubt the wiry little Scotsman can hold his own in a barroom brawl, but—did you see his hands? Small as a woman's. It is not physically possible that he inflicted such wounds with those hands as were found on Barlow's throat ... you remember what Dr. Hurgo said ... 'mashed and mangled' ..."
Phath looked sick, swallowed with difficulty, and suggested they change the subject. Star grinned to himself and restrained from making the quip he longed to make.
Three days later, their second task completed, they called the mechanic at the field, learned their ship was ready. Then, after a quick lunch at the Spaceport Cafe, they went to the field, where the Jolly Roger, newly outfitted with her sparkling fresh copper receptor coils, awaited them; they blasted off and headed south across the many miles and miles of thick, quaint jungles of curious trees which covered most of the surface of tropic Ganymede.
The queer, tall, nodding growths of pale, flabby balsa-solt fiber were not so much trees as giant stalks of vegetable which resembled celery as much as any other earthly analog. The fibrous trunks sucked up moisture from the rich soil and converted it to nutritious tissue which the Ganymedian colonists served at table, either baked in thin, chewy cutlets, or cubed in succulent stews and ragouts, or boiled into thick, creamy soups.