Lame fairly screamed, “I tell you this is a frame-up, a dirty frame-up!”
Barney Killigen smiled at Judge Tammerlane, walked back to his chair at the counsel table, and sat down.
“I have no further questions on cross-examination,” he said.
Judge Tammerlane glanced at Carl Purdue and said: “Well, the court has questions, and I think the district attorney’s office should have some.”
Purdue said: “I’m going to ask the witness to remain in custody until deputy sheriffs can check up on that Thermos bottle.”
Lame said sullenly: “It’s a frame-up. I can’t be responsible for all the stuff a man plants in my house.”
“I presume,” Barney Killigen said, with a smile, “that it’s your idea the money has been planted in your Thermos bottle by the defendants, Lame?”
“You shut up,” Lame yelled. “I’ve stood enough from you.”
Judge Tammerlane said: “The court will take a thirty minute recess. During that time, the court will leave it to the sheriff to see that Robert Lame is kept under close surveillance.”
It was a hectic half hour. Newspaper reporters took flashlight photographs of Barney Killigen in his pose of cross-examiner. Judge Tammerlane held a long, secret conference with the district attorney and the sheriff, and then the deputy sheriffs returned. They carried with them one Thermos bottle which was entirely empty, but when the glass container on the inside was removed, the lower half of it had been broken. In the interior of the Thermos bottle was a tom scrap of paper with just a bit of writing on it. It was as though someone had tom up an envelope, but a piece of that envelope had inadvertently been allowed to drop back into the lower part of the Thermos bottle, in the space opened up by the breaking of the glass container.
Handwriting experts proved that the paper was exactly the same as that in which the envelope, containing the bills, had been placed; that the bit of writing on the scrap of paper had been written by the man who had made the donation, and that the ink was of exactly the same chemical constituents as that which came from his fountain pen.
Judge Tammerlane released the defendants, and ordered Robert Lame into custody.
The police went to work on him to find out where the ten thousand dollars was hidden. They were ungentle in their methods.
We walked out of court in a blaze of glory. Estelle Whiting was kissing Barney Killigen, her mother was crying, and Jimmy Grayson seemed as one in a daze.
VII
Miss Ray stared with bewildered eyes at the big roll of currency Barney Killigen tossed on her desk.
“Take it down and deposit it,” he said.
“Where in the world did it come from?” she asked.
“Just a contribution made by a grateful client,” Killigen said.
“Well, it’s about time,” she asserted, relief in her voice. “The bank was becoming most insistent. They were particularly displeased with that last five hundred dollar check you put through, on the promise of making a prompt deposit.”
“Banks are always displeased about something,” Killigen said easily. “And, oh, yes, by the way, Miss Ray, your salary is due. Here it is.”
He handed her two bills, one hundred dollar bill, and one fifty dollar bill.
“Come on in the office, Wiggy,” he said to me.
I accompanied him to his private office. He opened his billfold and tossed me three hundred dollar bills.
“Here you are, Wiggy,” he said, “another month’s salary.”
I stared at them for a moment, then held them under my nose.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Don’t they smell right?”
“I have rather sensitive nostrils,” I told him.
“Good.” He smiled. “And what does the bloodhound smell?”
“A very faint odor of coffee,” I said, “and a very definite odor of polecat.”
“It couldn’t be your imagination?” Barney Killigen asked.
“No,” I said.
“How’s Miss Ray’s sense of smell?” he inquired.
“She hasn’t any.”
“Well,” he said, with a grin, “that will simplify matters. You’d probably better spend that money at your earliest opportunity, Wiggy.”
“I will,” I told him.
He opened the bottom drawer of the desk, pulled out his flask of whisky and two glasses.
“Well,” he said, “we’ve got that case cleaned up.”
“What happened to Estelle Whiting?” I asked.
“She got married,” Killigen said. “Judge Tammerlane married them. You should have seen the old boy’s face when he kissed the bride — I guess she gave him something to think about.”
“She was giving you something to think about after the case was finished,” I said.
“Yes,” he observed, “she was grateful.”
“Does Grayson have a job?”
“He can’t get one around here,” Killigen said easily; “his record’s against him. He had one long enough to save up a little money, which he very foolishly put into making the down payment on an automobile. Then some detective told his employer about Grayson’s criminal record, and the fat was in the fire, and Grayson out of a job.”
I pressed the point, feeling that I already knew the answer. “Exactly what did he get married on?” I asked.
Killigen said: “Well, it’s a peculiar thing, one of the wedding presents he received was an envelope with two thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills.”
“Do you suppose,” I asked, “that those bills smelled of coffee and polecat?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Killigen said, his eyebrows elevated. “My sense of smell isn’t very acute. I would, however, say the money was clean.”
“Slick and clean,” I said.
He grinned.
“Of course,” I went on, “putting two and two together, and knowing you as I do, I realize that if a person had been going out on a most important engagement — or one which he thought was most important — say, for instance, looking over a lot of feminine pulchritude in the altogether, and he discovered a skunk in his bungalow shortly before he was due to leave, he’d naturally have shut up the skunk in the kitchen, or whatever room in which he had discovered the animal, and would leave the windows open, hoping to get rid of the skunk, or at least to get rid of the odor.”
“That’s a natural enough deduction,” Killigen admitted, smiling.
“And,” I went on, “if someone had known to a virtual certainty that this man was going to be away during certain hours, judging said feminine pulchritude in the altogether, it would have been a relatively easy matter for such a person to have entered the house and found the Thermos bottle. At that, Lame was rather clever. He knew enough about crime to know that the most effective hiding place was one where no one would ever think of making a search.”
Barney Killigen lighted a cigarette, smoked it for a couple of puffs, and then held it out to watch the smoke drift upward.
“Rather interesting reasoning, Wiggy,” he said. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, have thought of all that unless you happened to know me as well as you do, would you?”
I admitted, “I wouldn’t.”
“Excellent,” he said. “You’re the only one who knows me that well. And if poor people are going to be wrongly accused of crime, someone has to pay for defending them. But Estelle Whiting had no money with which to secure high priced legal services.”
“Sort of a vicious circle,” I suggested.
“Exactly,” he agreed, “and when one gets in a vicious circle, the thing to do is to cut right across the middle.”