Chapter IV
Utterly amazed at this turn of events, Johnny sketched what had been told him to his sleepy compatriot, and that gentleman, galvanized into instant life, began hammering out the story on his typewriter.
"Better let the old man look it over," Suggs suggested. "He's interested in this Guerney affair, and wants to keep his finger on it. Better call him on the 'phone, tell him what's happened and that I've gone up to the house to look things over."
Johnny was lucky enough to get a trolley without much delay. And every rumbling foot of the way he kept asking himself what had become of Jones' body? What malign influence was behind these repeated killings? He thought of his father's words, "Don't build yourself any triumphal arches until the job is done." The governor was right, as usual. Anyone who solved this mystery deserved a triumphal arch, at that.
Twenty minutes later he reached the Guerney residence, and was admitted by Lieutenant Jamieson himself.
"Come upstairs and take a look at the study," the latter invited. "I'll admit this has me buffaloed. Just where this brown skinned baby horns into the picture is beyond me. Now, if it had been Jones — as you guessed — we might have been able to fix up a story that would jibe with the facts, you know, but this—" He shrugged his shoulders. "Bradley must have been mistaken about only the one key. The study door was open, and I know that I locked it before we left."
Johnny nodded. He had locked the door himself, with Mildred's key at one o'clock that morning. The appearance of another one relieved him, for it shifted the shadow from the girl. Between one o'clock and three-thirty the possessor of the third key — who was probably the murderer they sought — had entered the house. Who was he?
The reporter and the police lieutenant walked upstairs.
A man lay on the study floor, almost directly on the spot where J. Sylvester Jones had sprawled when Suggs discovered him earlier in the morning. He was a Dayak, finely developed physically, and from the tattoo marks on arms and shoulders evidently of a chief family. He wore five silver leg rings and a bead necklace for ornaments, and a cheap overcoat in deference to western customs. His head had been crowned by a peculiar bit of Dayak millinery, decorated with a hornbill feather, but it had rolled off into a corner. A parang, or short sword, with a beautifully carved handle, was gripped in his fist as though he had been awaiting an assault.
Johnny knelt beside him, his keen eyes roving over the wonderfully developed body and the section of floor immediately beside it. Quite possibly this was the man who had killed both Strickland Guerney and J. Sylvester Jones. If he was, who, in turn, had killed him? Certainly not Bradley, who was in jail. Very improbably Mildred, whom he had escorted to her hotel, an hour's ride from this place. Then it was someone who had not as yet been suspected.
"Well, what do you make of it?" asked Jamieson.
Suggs rose, walked across the room, apparently following a trail that was invisible to the lieutenant's eyes. He stopped before the fireplace, in which no fire had been built for months, examined it carefully, glanced up the chimney, and walked back to the Dayak's body.
"I've found a few things," he said, "that you probably overlooked. In the first place, there hasn't been any struggle here. All this smashing, up has been done for effect. If there really had been a struggle between this Dayak and a man powerful enough to give him a battle do you think that he would still have held the parang in his hand in that way? The way I read it is this: The Dayak came into the room, all ready for action, and was shot down before he was able to make a move. It isn't possible that, if there had been a fight that knocked over all this furniture, that this light table with the lamp would have survived. No, the place was carefully wrecked before the Dayak was killed."
Jamieson grunted. "Why before?"
The reporter's voice grew sarcastic. "Do you imagine anyone could have wrecked this place and made a getaway between the time the shot was fired and Duffy arrived?"
"Why the devil should he wreck it at all?"
"Ah, that's the question. The only reason I can see is that the murderer was searching for something. He tore things up regardless in looking for it."
"Well, he was disappointed then," grunted the lieutenant. "We took everything of value — papers and money — over to the station when we left."
Johnny could have kicked himself. "I'm certainly the prize cheese detective of the world," he told himself. "So Mildred and I—" he already called her that in his thoughts — "wasted all that time looking for something that was in Jamieson's safe. I should have known that much."
"Anything else?" demanded Jamieson.
"Oh, yes. Quite the most important of all. And it's going to prevent you from collecting that ten-spot from me."
"What do you mean? You bet that we would find Jones' body here."
"And so you will." He rolled the Dayak's body to one side. "Look at that blood spot. Too far down to have come from this savage's wound. Someone else was killed in this room before Mr. Dayak. There are two drops of blood between here and the fireplace. I looked up the chimney and caught a glimpse of something. I'll wager that you'll find Jones' body jammed up in there."
Jamieson, Detective O'Toole and the two patrolmen made a rush for the fireplace. In ten seconds they had demonstrated the truth of Suggs' statement, and the soot-smeared, twisted body of the late dandy was stretched beside that of the Dayak.
They looked at him with far more respect than they had ever exhibited before.
"I'll take my hat off to you, Johnny," the lieutenant admitted. "Now tell me who did k. I can't afford to lose out on this case after letting Mullaney make a clean get-away last month."
The reporter laughed. "I don't know."
"You're holding out on me," complained Jamieson.
"No, I'm not. I really don't know enough to help you, but I hope to add a little to that knowledge by this afternoon. When I do I'll let you know, you can gamble on that. I'm not trying to build up a reputation with the force. All I want to do is get solid with my dad. He never had a very high opinion of my abilities, and I want to prove to him that he is wrong."
"I'll have to be covered up a bit until something breaks. What is your paper going to say?"
"Oh, we'll fix that up all right," the reporter assured him. "The Star will have a story full of glittering generalities, giving all due credit to the foxy police, who found out that this apparent scrap was a frame-up."
"All right," agreed Jamieson, slightly mollified, "but for heaven's sake, let me know as soon as anything breaks."
"Sure thing."
Johnny,used the telephone in the hall to call up the paper. His father was in the office, having come down immediately at the news of the developments in the Guerney case. The older man listened quietly, then asked:
"Have you any clues at all?"
"Well," said Johnny guardedly, "maybe yes and maybe no. I'm going after something right away."
"Keeler tells me that you received a cipher note from Bradley. Have you figured out what it means?"
"No. I believe it is too short for a message, and I am hopeful that another part will come soon. Until it does I am going to follow out some ideas of my own. By the way, dad, Lieutenant Jamieson wants you to cover him up until something breaks."
"Of course."
Johnny rang off. It was his intention to go to Mildred, and find out from her if she had been accompanied by the Dayak as a servant, and if he had taken up her quarrel and been killed in following it out. That seemed very likely. He might have murdered Guerney and Jones, but Suggs could not understand who, in turn, had killed him.