“He was in there only a few seconds and came out and left, fast. I couldn’t figure out why he’d changed his mind so quick, and after he left I looked in and— Well, I thought Mr. Wheeler was dead. I guess the man thought so too, that is, if he meant to kill Mr. Wheeler, he could have easily — uh—”
“A silenced gun?”
“The police say it must have been, when I told them I hadn’t heard the shot.”
“What did the man look like?”
“Tall and thin, with a kind of sharp face. He had a light suit on. There was a slight stain of some kind on the front of the coat.”
“Miss Ames,” said Peter Kidd, “did Sid Wheeler buy or find a dog recently?”
“Why, yes, this morning. A big white shaggy one. He came in at eight o’clock and had the dog with him on a leash.
He said he’d bought it. He said it was to play a joke on somebody.”
“What happened next — about the dog?”
“He turned it over to a man who had an appointment with him at eight-thirty. A fat, funny-looking little man. He didn’t give his name. But he must have been in on the joke, whatever it was, because they were chuckling together when Mr. Wheeler walked to the door with him.”
“You know where he bought the dog? Anything more about it?”
“No, Mr. Kidd. He just said he bought it. And that it was for a joke.”
Looking dazed, Peter Kidd hung up the receiver.
Sid Wheeler, shot.
Outside the booth, the shaggy dog stood on its hind legs and pawed at the glass. Kidd stared at it. Sid Wheeler had bought a dog. Sid Wheeler had been shot with intent to kill.
Sid had given the dog to actor Asbury. Asbury had been murdered. Asbury had given the dog to him, Peter Kidd. And less than half an hour ago, an attempt had been made on his life.
The dog of a murdered man.
Well, there wasn’t any question now of telling the police.
Sid might have started this as a hoax, but a wheel had come off somewhere, and suddenly.
He’d phone the police right here and now. He dropped the dime and then — on a sudden hunch — dialed his own office number instead of that of headquarters. When the blonde’s voice answered, he started talking fast: “Peter Kidd, Miss Latham. I want you to close the office at once and go home. Right away, but be sure you’re not followed before you go there. If anyone seems to be following you, go to the police. Stay on busy streets meanwhile. Watch out particularly for a tall, thin man who has a stain on the front of his coat. Got that?”
“Yes, but — but the police are here, Mr. Kidd. There’s a Lieutenant West of Homicide here now, just came into the office asking for you. Do you still want me to—?”
Kidd sighed with relief. “No, it’s all right then. Tell him to wait. I’m only a few blocks away and will come there at once.”
He dropped another coin and called Bethesda Hospital.
Sid Wheeler was in serious, but not critical, condition. He was still unconscious and wouldn’t be able to have visitors for at least twenty-four hours.
He walked back to the Wheeler Building, slowly. The first faint glimmering of an idea was coming. But there were still a great many things that didn’t make any sense at all.
“Lieutenant West, Mr. Kidd,” said the blonde.
The big man nodded. “About a Robert Asbury, who was killed this morning. You knew him?”
“Not before this morning,” Kidd told him. “He came here — ostensibly — to offer me a case. The circumstances were very peculiar.”
“We found your name and the address of this office on a slip of paper in his pocket,” said West. “It wasn’t in his handwriting. Was it yours?”
“Probably it’s Sidney Wheeler’s handwriting, Lieutenant.
Sid sent him here, I have cause to believe. And you know that an attempt was made to kill Wheeler this morning?”
“The devil! Had a report on that, but we hadn’t connected it with the Asbury murder as yet.”
“And there was another murder attempt,” said Kidd.
“Upon me. That was why I phoned. Perhaps I’d better tell you the whole story from the beginning.”
The lieutenant’s eyes widened as he listened. From time to time he turned to look at the dog.
“And you say,” he said, when Kidd had finished, “that you have the money in an envelope in your pocket? May I see it?”
Peter Kidd handed over the envelope. West glanced inside it and then put it in his pocket. “Better take this along,” he said. “Give you a receipt if you want, but you’ve got a witness.” He glanced at the blonde.
“Give it to Wheeler,” Kidd told him. “Unless — maybe you’ve got the same idea I have. You must have, or you wouldn’t have wanted the money.”
“What idea’s that?”
“The dog,” said Peter Kidd, “might not have anything to do with all this at all. Today the dog was in the hands of three persons — Wheeler, Asbury, and myself. An attempt was made — successfully, I am glad to say, in only one case out of the three — to kill each of us. But the dog was merely the —ah — deus ex machina of a hoax that didn’t come off, or else came off too well. There’s something else involved — the money.”
“How do you mean, Mr. Kidd?”
“That the money was the object of the crimes, not the dog. That money was in the hands of Wheeler, Asbury, and myself, just as was the dog. The killer’s been trying to get that money back.”
“Back? How do you mean, back? I don’t get what you’re driving at, Mr. Kidd.”
“Not because it’s a hundred dollars. Because it isn’t.”
“You mean counterfeit? We can check that easy enough, but what makes you think so?”
“The fact,” said Peter Kidd, “that I can think of no other motive at all. No reasonable one, I mean. But postulate, for the sake of argument, that the money is counterfeit. That would, or could, explain everything. Suppose one of Sid Wheeler’s tenants is a counterfeiter.”
West frowned. “All right, suppose it.”
“Sid could have picked up the rent on his way to his office this morning. That’s how he makes most of his collections. Say the rent is a hundred dollars. Might have been slightly more or less — but by mistake, sheer mistake, he gets paid in counterfeit money instead of genuine.
“No counterfeiter — it is obvious — would ever dare give out his own product in such a manner that it would directly trace back to him. It’s — uh—”
“Shoved,” said West. “I know how they work.”
“But as it happened, Sid wasn’t banking the money. He needed a hundred to give to Asbury along with the dog.
And—”
He broke off abruptly and his eyes got wider. “Lord,” he said, “it’s obvious!”
“What’s obvious?” West growled.
“Everything. It all spells Henderson.”
“Huh?”
“Henderson, the job printer on the floor below this. He’s the only printer-engraver among Wheeler’s tenants, to begin with. And Asbury stopped in there this morning, on his way here. Asbury paid him for some cards out of a ten-dollar bill he got from Wheeler! Henderson saw the other tens in Asbury’s wallet when he opened it, knew that Asbury had the money he’d given Wheeler for the rent.
“So he sent his torpedo — the tall thin man — to see Asbury, and the torpedo kills Asbury and then finds the money is gone — he’s given it to me. So he goes and kills Sid Wheeler — or thinks he does — so the money can’t be traced back to him from wherever Asbury spent it.
“And then—” Peter Kidd grinned wryly — “I put myself on the spot by dropping into Henderson’s office to get Asbury’s address, and explaining to him what it’s all about, letting him know I have the money and know Asbury got it from Wheeler. I even tell him where I’m going — to Asbury’s.