"I want to hear your side of what happened last night." The tall man put a hand to his head. "Oh, Lord! Again?" He started to close the door. "Four cops, and three reporters, and --"
McCracken caught the door and held it. "Then once more won't hurt you," he said. "Besides, I'm on Perley's side. I'm working for him, trying to punch some holes in the case against him."
"Why didn't you say so? Come on in." He walked back to the dresser to get the bottle standing on it. "Have a drink?"
"Two fingers. The main thing is are you sure it was Perley you heard?"
"Yes and no. I wouldn't swear it was him, but if it wasn't, it was somebody pretty good. There aren't many that can come close to him on that warble stuff. I've heard lots of imitators. Straight whistling, yes, but not on the imitations."
"What time did you hear it first, and what time last?"
Carson lifted a glass and clinked it against the one he'd handed McCracken.
When he'd downed the glass' contents, he said:
"I got home about ten-thirty, maybe eleven. I had a good mys-tery story I wanted to finish, and I was reading." He rubbed his chin. "It was sometime between then and midnight that it started. And kept up maybe half an hour, off and on. And it was in Perley's room. I went past the door when I went to the bathroom once about twelve, so I'm sure of that."
"Did you look in the parlor then?" McCracken asked.
"No. I think the door was closed. But I didn't have any reason to look in, so I didn't."
"You're not sure about the time. Couldn't it have been two o'clock, maybe, if you'd lost track of time while you were reading?"
"No. I went to bed at twelve-thirty, see? I did look at my clock then, and my watch too, to set it. I could be wrong by it being earlier, but not later."
"And the other fellow who heard it?"
"Name's Bill Johnson. Yes, he's sure, too, that it was somewhere around midnight."
McCracken sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. He tried another tack.
"Birds outside, maybe?" he asked.
"No, too loud," Carson said. "And I never heard birds sing that much or that loud around here before. Anyway, it'd have to be a flock of different kinds of them.
And--let's see--robins don't sing at night, do they? Robin's about the only bird call I'm sure of, and I heard that."
"How good was Slimjim Lee? Perley was teaching him, he says."
Carson shook his head firmly. "No, but definitely. I've heard him, and he could carry a tune, but that's about all. And he wasn't sure where he'd carry it. No, pal, this stuff was good. If it wasn't Perley, then he's got a rival."
"How about the radio?"
"I thought of that, afterwards," Carson said. "But it couldn't have been. The place was as quiet as a morgue, around then, and I'd have heard the announcer shooting his mouth off between imitations. Anyway, no bird imitator could stay on the air that long. It was at least half an hour, off and on, like I said."
McCracken sighed again. "Was it you said something about a dog imitation?"
"Not me. That was Bill Johnson. I might have heard a dog, but if I did, I don't remember. I'd have figured that came from outside. Like the cats. I did hear some cats yowling, but that wouldn't have been Perley either. He doesn't imitate animals, just birds."
McCracken got up and went to the door.
"Well, thanks," he said. He declined another drink, and went down the hall. He opened the door of Perley Essington's room and went in.
Jerry Bell came out of the room across the hall and stood in the doorway.
"Find out anything new?" he asked.
"Carson's telling the truth, I think," McCracken said. "If he was lying, he'd be more definite about time and things. He rings true."
"Then how can you figure an out for Perley? Or can you?
"I don't know," McCracken said. "But I got an idea. It's almost as screwy as Perley is."
He got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the carpet, and started working around the floor in circles, examining the carpet carefully. A white spot he found on the floor behind a chair interested him considerably.
He was starting to crawl behind the bed, when Jerry Bell said:
"You got it wrong, Mack. No corpses in here. That was the other room, remember?"
McCracken got up slowly and dusted off the knees of his trousers with his left hand. A tiny object he'd found behind the bed was gripped carefully between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He held it so Bell could see that it was a light blue feather.
Jerry Bell grunted. "Is that what you were looking for, Mack? Jeepers, I'll open the pillow and get you a handful of "em."
McCracken shook his head slowly.
"I doubt it," he said. "Very few pillows are stuffed with mocking bird feathers. Jerry."
"What makes you think that's off a mocking bird? You sure?"
"No," McCracken answered frankly. "But it's the right color. An ornithologist can tell. Anyway, mocking bird or not, there was a bird in this room. There's proof of that back of the chair. And a mocking bird fits the picture."
"Look," he explained. "The killer brought the bird here, prob-ably in a box.
He came in the window there and hid in the parlor until Jim Lee came in, and he killed him. Then--to pin the thing on Perley Essington--he came in here and let the bird out in this room for awhile. The bird would be Perley's best imitator, wouldn't it? And it'd sing, being free--comparatively--after being shut up."
"But--a mocking bird!" Bell protested. "Where'd anyone get one?"
"Pet shops have 'em occasionally. They're not common, but they can be got.
Probably the killer stole it, though. He wouldn't want the trail traceable if there'd be a slip-up. It was that dog-and-cat business made me think of one. My aunt used to have a mocking bird, and it'd imitate dogs and cats when it heard them.
And it'd have picked that up around the pet shop."
"Then maybe Perley wasn't lying about that call that sent him on a wild-goose chase."
McCracken nodded. "Of course. This was carefully planned. The guy who did it made sure Jim Lee would be here and that Perley wouldn't, and that he'd be a place where he couldn't prove he'd been."
"If an expert backs you up on your guess what that feather is," Bell said,
"looks like you did figure Perley an out, Mack. Got any idea who did kill Lee?"
McCracken took a deep breath, then said flatly: "You did, Jerry. I was sure as soon as I found this feather. It's just like the one you pretended to pull off Perley Essington's head when you were clowning back at Headquarters. You had the bird in your pocket when you left. Maybe you'd killed it after you used it. And when you pulled that feather gag in Zehnder's office you'd just had your hand in your pocket.
You were so confident you had Perley framed, you didn't hesitate to use it for making fun of Perley."
The expression on Jerry Bell's face didn't change. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, an unlighted cigar was tilted in a corner of his mouth.
"Not bad, Mack," he said. "How about motive?"
"It wasn't the ring," McCracken went on, "although in your kind of work you ought to know the outlets and where to cash in on it easy. But you wouldn't have done it for that. I figure you must have gambled over your head and gone in debt to Lee. Which did he have in his billfold, I.O.U.'s or checks of yours?"
Jerry Bell sighed deeply, took a gun out of his pocket.
"You're covered, Mack," he said. "I think you could make that stick. I'm in plenty deep, including some company funds, and that'd come out if the police nosed around. And -well, I did buy that bird instead of stealing it." He paused, then:
"But listen, Mack, Slimjim was blackmailing me on those debts. You can't blame a man for killing a blackmailer. You aren't --"