“Charlie,” he chided the burly man, “how often have I told you not to try to beat the other fellow at his own game?”
“Aw, you don’t have to rub it in,” growled Boston. “Anyway, you were lucky, that’s all. My hammer kept slipping.”
“Of course it did. It was supposed to slip. The ball had been rounded on an emery wheel. You’ll recall Johnny handed me his own private hammer. With it even you might have—”
“Why, the dirty crook!” Charlie Boston turned to plunge back to the cane concessionaire, but Quade grabbed his arm.
“We’ve no time for that. While you were frittering away your time I got mixed up in a murder mess.”
Boston gasped. “Murder!”
“Yes. I was making a pitch and someone tossed a dart into a prospective customer’s shoulder. There was poison on the dart.”
“Is that what all that commotion was about awhile ago?” cried Charlie Boston. “Gawd! I saw everyone rushing but I figured it wasn’t nothing more than a dip lifting someone’s poke.” He whistled as astonishment overwhelmed him. “A murder at your pitch!”
“While you were trying to win a cane!”
Boston sulked. “All right. All right.”
“Got a job for you, Charlie. One that suits your peculiar talents. Next to the Education Building there’s a grease joint, run by some girls from a church. Go down there with that nice, new cane of yours and give the girls your personality.”
Boston looked suspiciously at Quade. “Is this a rib?”
“No. This murder happened right next door to them. Pump the girls. Find out if they saw anything. Wait there for me. I’ll be back in a little while.”
Boston walked off briskly. The assignment was one he relished. Quade shook his head dolefully after his pal and went off in the other direction.
A few minutes later he stopped at a tent concession. There was a board backdrop in the tent, over which was spread a sheet of canvas, with red hearts painted on it. One or two customers were throwing darts at the hearts.
“Abe,” Quade said to the concessionaire, “did you lose a dart here today?”
Abe Wynn, a bald, fat man, grunted. “I lose a dozen every day. The yaps swipe ’em.”
“The cops been here yet?”
Wynn winced. “No, but I heard — and I’ve been expectin’ them. I don’t know a damn thing. It happened at your pitch, huh?”
Quade nodded. He picked up a handful of darts and began tossing them at the red hearts. “And the dart had your trademark. I s’pose you wouldn’t remember the people who tossed here today?”
“No. It’s been a good day and there’ve been two-three hundred. Any one of them could have slipped a dart into his pocket. But, Ollie, you know damn well one of these darts wouldn’t kill a man unless it struck a big vein or the heart.”
“There was poison on it. A deadly poison.”
“That lets me out, then. None of these darts have poison on them. I know because I wipe them with an oily rag every day to keep them from rusting.”
“Well, I was just asking. If a Lieutenant Johnson talks to you, he’s tough.”
Quade worked his way to the front of the Fair Grounds, to the Administration Building. He located the secretary’s office and had scarcely stepped inside, than Lieutenant Johnson grabbed him. “I was just going to look for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Some people have been picked up. I want you to look them over and give me the nod if any of them were in that crowd when you were selling those books.”
“There were five hundred. I wouldn’t know them all.”
“You might remember some of the faces…. In here.”
In the secretary’s office were eight or ten men and one woman. Quade’s eyes ran quickly over the gathering. He whispered to Lieutenant Johnson. “The stocky fellow in the gray suit — I’m sure of him. And the girl, she was there for a minute, although I think she left before it happened.”
The detective smacked his lips and stepped up to the middle-aged man in the gray suit. “Mr. Colby, you were Arnold’s office manager, weren’t you?”
Colby nodded. There was apprehension in his eyes. “I’m also a stockholder in the company. I thought a great deal of Arnold. I’m sure Ruth will bear me out in that.” He nodded toward the girl.
The girl’s eyes were tear-stained and she was wadding a moist handkerchief in a gloved hand. “My father always spoke very highly of Mr. Colby.”
She was, then, the dead man’s daughter. Which puzzled Quade. She had been in the crowd when he’d started, but she hadn’t been with her father — and had left before he was killed. Or had she left?
Lieutenant Johnson was still working on Colby. “Today’s a legal holiday. But you can save us time, Mr. Colby. We’re putting an auditor into the business tomorrow. You can save yourself a lot of trouble right now by telling for how much you tapped the till.”
Colby exclaimed angrily. “I resent that question. If I’m under arrest I demand to be allowed to telephone my attorney. If I’m not under arrest, I insist on courteous treatment.”
“This is a murder case, Mr. Colby,” snapped Johnson. “If my questions seem pointed, please bear in mind the gravity of the crime. It’s my business to ask questions, so could you venture an opinion as to why someone would want to murder Mr. Arnold?”
“I could not,” retorted Colby. “The Arnold Publishing Company is a corporation. L. B. owned sixty percent and I believe ten percent is in Miss Arnold’s name. She will naturally inherit her father’s stock. I stand to gain nothing by Arnold’s death.”
“Is that right, Miss Arnold?” the detective asked.
The girl nodded. “I believe so. Father told me only yesterday that the business was in bad shape.”
“That’s right!”
The exclamation came from a stocky man with huge, black eyebrows and a Hitler mustache. Lieutenant Johnson whirled on him. “Your name?”
“Wexler. Louis Wexler.”
“You were a friend of Arnold’s?”
“Creditor would be a better word. He owed me for printing.”
Colby interrupted. “Do you have to advertise it to the world? You got plenty of money from Arnold over a period of years. That he was a little hard pressed at the moment…”
“Hard pressed?” cried Wexler. “What about me? I’ve got a plant and a payroll. I got to lay it out every week—”
“So you were sore at Arnold?” Lieutenant Johnson said softly.
Wexler glared at the detective, then seemed to realize that he had laid himself open. Abruptly, his manner changed. He even attempted a smile. “Just in a business way, you understand. After all, you don’t kill a man who owes you money. You can’t get it back, then.”
Quade nudged the lieutenant. “Ask the girl why she slipped away from my pitch,” he murmured.
Johnson inhaled softly. Then he pounced on Ruth Arnold. “You were at the scene of your father’s murder. Did you leave before or after he was killed?”
Ruth Arnold’s hand flew up to her mouth and her eyes popped wide open. The tall young man beside her gripped her arm. He scowled at the detective. “Ruth was with me all afternoon.”
“Let her answer my question!” Johnson thundered.
“I left before,” Ruth Arnold whispered.
“Why’d you leave — because you saw your father?”
That question scored, too. But the girl’s supporter answered, “She left to meet me. It’s all right, now, Ruth. They’ll find it out anyway.”
“That you and Miss Arnold are engaged?” cut in Oliver Quade.
The girl gasped, but the man beside her, nodded. “Yes. Ruth’s father objected to her having anything to do with me.”
“What’s your name?” demanded Johnson.
“Jim Stillwell.”
Oliver Quade cleared his throat. “Lieutenant, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask Mr. Stillwell a question?”