“Um,” said Hank, leaning against the counter thoughtfully. “That’s a couple of hours ago. Must have had several customers in here during that time. But all I can remember are regulars. People on night shifts that come in regularly.”
“When you’re standing at that grill in the window frying something, you can see out across the street,” I said. “You ought to be able to see down as far as the alley, because this is a pretty wide street.”
“Yeah, I can.”
“Did you see anyone walk or drive in there?”
“Golly,” said Hank. “Yeah, I did. I think it was around one o’clock. I happened to notice the guy on account of what he was carrying.”
I felt my heart hammering with sudden excitement.
“What was he carrying? And what did he look like?”
“I didn’t notice what he looked like,” said Hank. “He was in shadow most of the time. But he was carrying a bowling ball.”
“A bowling ball?”
Hank nodded. “That’s what made me notice him. There aren’t any alleys —I mean bowling alleys—right around here. I bowl myself so I wondered where this guy had been rolling.”
“You mean he was carrying a bowling ball under his arm?”
I was still incredulous, even though Hank’s voice showed me he was not kidding.
He looked at me contemptuously.
“No. Bowlers never carry ‘em like that on the street. There’s a sort of bag that’s made for the purpose. A little bigger than the ball, some of them, so a guy can put in his bowling shoes and stuff.”
I closed my eyes a moment to try to make sense out of it. Of all the things on this mad night; it seemed the maddest that a bowling ball had been carried into the alley by the morgue—or something the shape of a bowling ball. At just the right time, too. One o’clock.
It would be a devil of a coincidence if the man Hank had seen hadn’t been the one.
“You’re sure it was a bowling ball case?”
“Positive. I got one like it myself. And the way he carried it, it was just heavy enough to have the ball in it.” He looked at me curiously. “Say, Jerry, I never thought of it before, but a case like that would be a handy thing to carry a bomb in. Did someone try to plant a bomb at the morgue?”
“No.”
“Then if it wasn’t a bowling ball —and you act like you think it wasn’t—what would it have been?”
“I wish I knew,” I told him. “I wish to high heaven I knew.”
I downed the rest of my coffee and stood up.
“Thanks a lot, Hank,” I said. “Listen, you think it over and see if you can remember anything else about that case or the man who carried it. I’ll see you later.”
WHAT I needed was some fresh air, so I started walking. I didn’t pay any attention to where I was going; I just walked.
My feet didn’t take me in circles, but my mind did. A bowling ball! Why would a bowling ball, or something shaped like it, be carried into the alley back of the morgue? A bowling ball would fit into that ventilator hole, all right, and a dropped bowling ball would have broken the glass of the case.
But a bowling ball wouldn’t have done—the rest of it.
I vaguely remembered some mention of bowling earlier in the evening and thought back to what it was. Oh yes. Dr. Skibbine and Mr. Paton had been going to bowl a game instead of playing a second game of chess. But neither of them had bowling balls along. Anyway, if Dr. Skibbine had told the truth, they had both been home by midnight.
If not a bowling ball, then what? A ghoul? A spherical ghoul?
The thought was so incongruously horrible that I wanted to stop, right there in the middle of the sidewalk and laugh like a maniac. Maybe I was near hysteria.
I thought of going back to the morgue and telling them about it, and laughing. Watching Quenlin’s face and Wilson’s when I told them that our guest had been a rnan-eating bowling ball. A spherical—
Then I stopped walking, because all of a sudden I knew what the bowling ball had been, and I had the most important part of the answer.
Somewhere a clock was striking half-past three, and I looked around to see where I was. Oak Street, only a few doors from Grant Parkway. That meant I had come fifteen or sixteen blocks from the morgue and that I was only a block and a half from the zoo. At the zoo, I could find out if I was right.
So I started walking again. A block and a half later I was across the street from the zoo right in front of Mr. Paton’s house. Strangely, there was a light in one of the downstairs rooms.
I went up onto the porch and rang the bell. Mr. Paton came to answer it. He was wearing a dressing gown, but I could see shoes and the bottoms of his trouser legs under it.
He didn’t look surprised at all when he opened the door.
“Yes, Jerry?” he said, almost as though he had been expecting me.
“I’m glad you’re still up, Mr. Paton,” I said. “Could you walk across with me and get me past the guard at the gate? I’d like to look at one of the cages and verify—something.”
“You guessed then, Jerry?”
“Yes, Mr. Paton,” I told him. Then I had a sudden thought that scared me a little. “You were seen going into the alley,” I added quickly, “and the man who saw you knows I came here. He saw you carrying—”
He held up his hand and smiled.
“You needn’t worry, Jerry,” he said. “I know it’s over—the minute anybody is smart enough to guess. And—well, I murdered a man all right, but I’m not the type to murder another to try to cover up, because I can see where that would lead. The man I did kill deserved it, and I gambled on—Well never mind all that.”
“Who was he?” I asked.
“His name was Mark Leedom. He was my assistant four years ago. I was foolish at that time—I’d lost money speculating and I stole some zoo funds. They were supposed to be used for the purchase of—Never mind the details. Mark Leedom found out and got proof.
“He made me turn over most of the money to him, and he—retired, and moved out of town. But he’s been coming back periodically to keep shaking me down. He was a rat, Jerry, a worse crook than I ever thought of being. This time I couldn’t pay so I killed him.”
“You were going to make it look like an accident on the Mill Road?” I said. “You killed him here and took him—”
“Yes, I was going to have the car run over his head, so he wouldn’t be identified. I missed by inches, but I couldn’t try again because another car was coming, and I had to keep on driving away.
“Luckily, Doc Skibbine didn’t know him. It was while Doc was in South America that Leedom worked for me. But there are lots of people around who did know him. Some curiosity seeker would have identified him in the week they hold an unidentified body and—well, once they knew who he was and traced things back, they’d have got to me eventually for the old business four years ago if not the fact that I killed him.”
“So that’s why you had to make him unidentifiable,” I said. “I see. He looked familiar to Bill Drager, but Bill couldn’t place him.”
He nodded. “Bill was just a patrolman then. He probably had seen Leedom only a few times, but someone else—Well, Jerry, you go back and tell them about it. Tell them I’ll be here.”
“Gee, Mr. Paton, I’m sorry I got to,” I said. “Isn’t there anything—”
“No. Go and get them. I won’t run away, I promise you. And tell Doc he wouldn’t have beat me that chess game tonight if I hadn’t let him. With what I had to do, I wanted to get out of there early. Good night, Jerry.”