“But I wonder, Mr. Perry,” said Mr. Smith, “if you would mind telling me just why you… ah — Sheriff Osburne tells me that you admit sending a letter threatening your uncle’s life. Is that right?”
Walter Perry sighed. He said, “Yes, I did.”
“But wasn’t that a very foolish thing to do? I take it you never intended to carry out the threat.”
“No, I didn’t. Of course it was foolish. It was crazy. I should have seen that it would never work. Not with my uncle.” He sighed again and sat down on the edge of the cot in his cell. “My uncle was a crook, but I guess he wasn’t a coward. I don’t know whether that’s to his credit or not. Now that he’s dead, I hate to—”
Mr. Smith nodded sympathetically. He said, “Your uncle had, I understand, cheated a great many song writers out of royalties from their creations. You thought you might frighten him into making restitution to the ones he had cheated?”
Walter Perry nodded. “It was silly. One of those crazy ideas one gets. It was because he got well.”
“Got well! I’m afraid I don’t—”
“I’d better tell you from the beginning, Mr. Smith. It was two years ago, about the time I graduated from college — I worked my way through; my uncle didn’t foot the bill — that I first learned what kind of an outfit Whistler and Company was. I happened to meet some former friends of my uncle —old-time vaudeville people who had been on the circuits with him. They were plenty bitter. So I started investigating, and found out about all the lawsuits he’d had to fight, and — well, I was convinced.
“I was his only living relative, and I knew I was his heir, but if his money was crooked money — well, I didn’t want it.
He and I had a quarrel and he disinherited me, and that was that. Until a year ago, I learned—”
He stopped, staring at the barred door of the cell. “You learned what?” Mr. Smith prompted.
“I learned, accidentally, that my uncle had some kind of cardiac trouble and didn’t have long to live, according to the doctor. Probably less than a year. And — well, it’s probably hard for anybody to believe that my motives were good, but I decided that under those circumstances I was missing a chance to help the people my uncle had cheated — that if I was still his heir, I could make restitution after his death of the money he had stolen from them. You see?”
Walter Perry looked up at the little insurance agent from his seat on the cot, and Mr. Smith studied the young man’s face, then nodded.
“So you effected a reconciliation?” he asked.
“Yes, Mr. Smith. It was hypocritical, in one way, but I thought it would enable me to square off those crimes. I didn’t want his money, any of it. But I was sorry for all those poor people he’d cheated and — well, I made myself be hypocritical for their sake.”
“You know any of them personally?”
“Not all, but I knew I could find most of the ones I didn’t know through the records of the old lawsuits. The ones I met first were an old vaudeville team by the name of Wade and Wheeler. I met a few others through them, and looked up a few others. Most of them hated him like poison, and I can’t say I blame them.”
Mr. Smith nodded sympathetically. He said, “But the threatening letter. Where does that fit in?”
“About a week ago, I learned that his heart trouble was much better. They’d discovered a new treatment with one of the new drugs, and while he’d never be in perfect health, there was every chance he had another twenty years or so to live —he was only forty-eight. And, well, that changed things.”
The young man laughed ruefully. He went on, “I didn’t know if I could stand up under the strain of my hypocrisy for that long, and anyway, it didn’t look as though restitution would come in time to do any good to a lot of the people he owed money to. Wade and Wheeler, for instance, were older than my uncle, a few years. He could easily outlive them, and some of the others. You see?”
“So you decided to write a letter threatening his life, pretending to come from one of the people he’d cheated, thinking it might scare him into giving them their money now?”
“Decided,” said Walter Perry, “is hardly the word. If I’d thought about it, I’d have realized how foolish it was to hope that it would do any good. He just hired detectives. And then he was murdered, and here I am in a beautiful jam. Since he knows I wrote that letter, I don’t blame Osburne for thinking I must have killed him, too.”
Mr. Smith chuckled. He told him, “Fortunately for you, the sheriff can’t figure out how anybody could have killed him. Ah… did anyone know about your hoax, the threatening letter? That is, of course, before the sheriff traced it to you and you admitted writing and sending it?”
“Why, yes. I was so disappointed in my uncle’s reaction to receiving it that I mentioned it to Mr. Wade and Mr. Wheeler, and to a few of the others my uncle owed royalties to. I hoped they could suggest some other idea that might work better. But they couldn’t.”
“Wade and Wheeler — they live in the city?”
“Yes, they’re out of vaudeville now, of course. They get by doing bit parts on television.”
“Um-m-m,” said Mr. Smith. “Well, thank you for signing the renewal on your policy. And when you are out of here, I’d like to see you again to discuss the possibility of your taking an additional policy. You are planning to be married, you mentioned yesterday?”
“I was, yesterday,” replied Walter Perry. “I guess I still am, unless Osburne pins a murder on me. Yes, Mr. Smith, I’ll be glad to discuss another policy, if I get out of this mess.”
Mr. Smith smiled. He said, “Then it seems even more definitely to the interest of the Phalanx Insurance Company to see that you are free as soon as possible. I think I shall return and talk to the sheriff again.”
Mr. Henry Smith drove back to the Perry house even more slowly and thoughtfully than he had driven away from it. He didn’t drive quite all the way. He parked his ancient vehicle almost a quarter of a mile away, at the point where the road curved around the copse of trees that gave the nearest cover.
He walked through the trees until, near the edge of the copse, he could see the house itself across the open field. The sheriff was still, or again, on the roof.
Mr. Smith walked out into the open, and the sheriff saw him almost at once. Mr. Smith waved and the sheriff waved back. Mr. Smith walked on across the field to the barn, which stood between the field and the house itself.
The tall, thin man whom he had seen exercising the horse was now engaged in currying a horse.
“Mr. Merkle?” asked Mr. Smith, and the man nodded.
“My name is Smith, Henry Smith. I am… ah… attempting to help the sheriff. A beautiful stallion, that gray. Would I be wrong in guessing that it is a cross between an Arabian and a Kentucky walking horse?”
The thin man’s face lighted up. “Right, mister. I see you know horses. I been having fun with those city dicks all week, kidding ‘em. They think, because I told ‘em, that this is a Clyde, and that chestnut Arab mare is a Percheron. Found out yet who killed Mr. Perry?”
Mr. Smith stared at him. “It is just possible that we have, Mr. Merkle. It is just barely possible that you have told me how it was done, and if we know that—”
“Huh?” said the trainer. “I told you?”
“Yes,” returned Mr. Smith. “Thank you.”
He walked on around the barn and joined the sheriff on the roof.
Sheriff Osburne grunted a welcome. He said, “I saw you the minute you came out into the open. Dammit, nobody could have crossed that field last night without being noticed.”