He was dead right, too, on all counts except one:
The shaggy dog murders had hardly started.
The little man with the bulbous nose went home — not to the address he had given Peter Kidd, but to the one he had given the printer to put on the cards he’d had engraved. His name, of course, was Robert Asbury and not Aloysius Smith. For all practical purposes, that is, his name was Robert Asbury. He had been born under the name of Herman Gilg. But a long time ago he’d changed it in the interests of euphony the first time he had trodden the boards; 633 Kenmore Street was a theatrical boardinghouse.
Robert Asbury entered, whistling. A little pile of mail on the hall table yielded two bills and a theatrical trade paper for him. He pocketed the bills unopened and was looking at the want ads in the trade paper when the door at the back of the hall opened.
Mr. Asbury closed the magazine hastily, smiled his most winning smile. He said, “Ah, Mrs. Drake.”
It was Hatchet-face herself, but she wasn’t frowning.
Must be in a good mood. Swell! The five-dollar bill he could give her on account would really tide him over. He took it from his wallet with a flourish.
“Permit me,” he said, “to make a slight payment on last week’s room and board, Mrs. Drake. Within a few days I shall—”
“Yes, yes,” she interrupted. “Same old story, Mr.
Asbury, but maybe this time it’s true even if you don’t know it yet. Gentleman here to see you, and says it’s about a role.”
“Here? You mean he’s waiting in the—?”
“No, I had the parlor all tore up, cleaning. I told him he could wait in your room.”
He bowed. “Thank you, Mrs. Drake.” He managed to walk, not run, to the stairway, and start the ascent with dignity. But who the devil would call to see him about a role?
There were dozens of producers any one of whom might phone him, but it couldn’t be a producer calling in person.
More likely some friend telling him where there was a spot he could try out for.
Even that would be a break. He’d felt it in his bones that having all that money in his wallet this morning had meant luck. A hundred and ten dollars! True, only ten of it was his own, and Lord, how it had hurt to hand out that hundred! But the ten meant five for his landlady and two and a half for the cards he absolutely had to have — you can’t send in your card to producers and agents unless you have cards to send in —and cigarette money for the balance. Funny job that was. The length some people will go to play a practical joke. But it was just a joke and nothing crooked, because this Sidney Wheeler was supposed to be a right guy, and after all, he owned that office building and a couple of others; probably a hundred bucks was like a dime to him. Maybe he’d want a follow-up on the hoax, another call at this Kidd’s office. That would be another easy ten bucks.
Funny guy, that Peter Kidd. Sure didn’t look like a detective; looked more like a college professor. But a good detective ought to be part actor and not look like a shamus.
This Kidd sure talked the part, too. Circum — am —Circumambulate, and — uh — succinctly. “Perhaps you had better circumambulate me succinctly.” Goofy! And that “from the Latin” stuff!
The door of his room was an inch ajar, and Mr. Asbury pushed it open, started through the doorway. Then he tried to stop and back out again.
There was a man sitting in the chair facing the doorway and only a few feet from it — the opening door had just cleared the man’s knees. Mr. Asbury didn’t know the man, didn’t want to know him. He disliked the man’s face at sight and disliked still more the fact that the man held a pistol with a long silencer on the barrel. The muzzle was aimed toward Mr. Asbury’s third vest button.
Mr. Asbury tried to stop too fast. He stumbled, which, under the circumstances, was particularly unfortunate. He threw out his hands to save himself. It must have looked to the man in the chair as though Mr. Asbury was attacking him, making a diving grab for the gun.
The man pulled the trigger.
“ ‘I am the dog of a murdered man,’ ” said the blonde. “ ‘Escape his fate, Sir, if you can.’ ” She looked up from her shorthand notebook. “I don’t get it.”
Peter Kidd smiled and looked at the shaggy dog, which had gone to sleep in the comfortable warmth of a patch of sunlight under the window.
“Purely a hoax,” said Peter Kidd. “I had a hunch Sid Wheeler would try to pull something of the sort. The hundred dollars is what makes me certain. That’s the amount Sid thinks he owes me.”
“Thinks he owes you?”
“Sid Wheeler and I went to college together. He was full of ideas for making money, even then. He worked out a scheme of printing special souvenir programs for intramural activities and selling advertising in them. He talked me into investing a hundred dollars with the understanding that we’d split the profits. That particular idea of his didn’t work and the money was lost.
“He insisted, though, that it was a debt, and after he began to be successful in real estate, he tried to persuade me to accept it. I refused, of course. I’d invested the money and I’d have shared the profits if there’d been any. It was my loss, not his.”
“And you think he hired this Mr. Smith — or Asbury—”
“Of course. Didn’t you see that the whole story was silly?
Why would anyone put a note like that on a dog’s collar and then try to kill the man who found the dog?”
“A maniac might, mightn’t he?”
“No. A homicidal maniac isn’t so devious. He just kills.
Besides, it was quite obvious that Mr. Asbury’s story was untrue. For one thing, the fact that he gave a false name is pretty fair proof in itself. For another he put the hundred dollars on the desk before he even explained what he wanted.
If it was his own hundred dollars, he wouldn’t have been so eager to part with it. He’d have asked me how much of a retainer I’d need.
“I’m only surprised Sid didn’t think of something more believable. He underrated me. Of all things — a lost shaggy dog.”
The blonde said, “Why not a shag— Oh, I think I know what you mean. There’s a shaggy dog story, isn’t there? Or something?”
Peter Kidd nodded. “The shaggy dog story, the archetype of all the esoteric jokes whose humor values lie in sheer nonsensicality. A New Yorker, who has just found a large white shaggy dog, reads in a New York paper an advertisement offering five hundred pounds sterling for the return of such a dog, giving an address in London. The New Yorker compares the markings given in the advertisement with those of the dog he has found and immediately takes the next boat to England. Arrived in London, he goes to the address given and knocks on the door. A man opens it. ‘You advertised for a lost dog,’ says the American, ‘a shaggy dog.’
‘Oh,’ says the Englishman coldly, ‘not so damn shaggy’…and he slams the door in the American’s face.”
The blonde giggled, then looked thoughtful. “Say, how did you know that fellow’s right name?”
Peter Kidd told her about the episode in the printing shop. He said, “Probably didn’t intend to go there when he left here, or he wouldn’t have taken the elevator downstairs first.
Undoubtedly he saw Henderson’s listing on the board in the lobby, remembered he needed cards, and took the elevator back up.”
The blonde sighed. “I suppose you’re right. What are you going to do about it?”