“There were so few items in the dressing room, by checking the list of contents you can almost immediately guess which item had been stolen and later returned.” From memory Tony announced the items the Chief had read from his list. “Obviously what Ainslie found missing was one of the makeup kits,” he concluded.
“What happened was this: The murderer kidnaped Sam — I’ll explain how in a minute — put on Sam’s clothes, used the makeup kit he swiped from the theatre to give himself a putty broken nose and a scar through one eyebrow, covered the lower part of his face with a handkerchief and stuck up the restaurant. After killing Larson, he put the clothes back on Sam’s unconscious body, stuck the gun and money in his pocket, took him a mile out of town and threw him feet first under a freight train.”
Ransome paused for a moment before continuing his explanation.
“Everything went as the murderer planned until two things happened,” he said. “First the rumor got around that some local person had hired the hobo to kill Larson, and then the mayor discovered the makeup kit missing and did a bit of brilliant deduction. Unfortunately for Mayor Ainslie he did his deducting while the murderer was listening, and got himself killed for his trouble. Just to round things out neatly, the person who killed Ainslie decided to frame me for it, thereby knocking off two birds with one stone.
“If you’ve all followed me so far, you’ll realize the murderer has to be someone about Sam’s build.” Briefly Tony’s eyes flicked over George Erickson, Art Jacobs and Harry Short. “Of the four main suspects, that lets out only Mrs. Larson as the murderer, and is the reason she wasn’t required to be here tonight.”
No one said anything, and Tony went on softly. “Some of you people got pretty mad when I started gossip circulating all over town, and that’s what gave me my first real lead. Five people were being publicly slandered, but only three called to see me. An innocent person’s reaction when accused of a crime is to yell his head off, which is exactly what Mayor Ainslie, Mrs. Larson and Erickson did. The only two who failed to show up were Harry Short — and Art Jason!”
Harry Short licked his lips and remained silent.
“If that’s an accusation,” Jason broke in, “you better be able to prove it.”
“Intend to,” Tony informed him agreeably. “I’ve already tied Harry Short into this, because he tried to kill me tonight. You worked it in conjunction with Harry, but you did the actual killing of Ransome, and probably of Ainslie. Short’s job was to dispose of the hobo-bandit.
“I looked over a disbursement ledger in Short’s office earlier tonight and found something interesting. Four categories of business disbursements are included in the same book. None are designated, but a study of the expenditures indicates the four businesses involved are a bingo game, a bookshop, a tavern and a casino. They wouldn’t all be in the same account book unless they were all under the same control. You and Harry Short are secretly partners.”
Under his clipped mustache, the bearded man’s lips curled ironically. “Is partnership a crime?”
“Partnership in murder,” Tony assured him. “You’re finished, Jason. I even know how you managed to kidnap Sam in broad daylight.”
The little man’s eyes were cold as he went on. “Probably you’d had details of the plan worked out for some time and were just waiting for a hobo or tramp of the right size to come along. Nearly every visitor to town gets to the Blue Goose eventually, so you didn’t even have to go looking. And the plan was beautifully simple. You merely gave the guy you thought was a hobo a dollar to deliver a note for you to Harry Short at the bookshop. The note was Harry’s signal to offer the hobo a drink in the privacy of his office, and the drink was full of knockout drops.”
“It’s not true!” the yellow-faced bookmaker in the corner said desperately. “Don’t be dragging me into this!”
“Shut up!” Art Jason snapped at him. His face was pale, but his smile remained ironic. “You’re a wonderful story teller, Ransome, but so far you haven’t mentioned a shred of evidence aside from that box, whose contents haven’t even been analyzed yet.”
“I will,” Tony reassured him. “That’s why the robbery witnesses are here.” He turned toward the cook and two waitresses. “I want you three to think back to the robbery. Did all of you notice the gun closely?”
Janet said, “Notice it! I hardly took my eyes off it.”
“Yeah,” Gert put in. “It was a black automatic. A great big—”
“Now I want you to concentrate,” Tony interrupted. “If your attention was fixed on the gun, you must have noticed the hand holding it too. Remember anything peculiar about that hand?”
All three looked blank. Then Henry the cook’s eyes strayed toward Art Jason’s right hand. Understanding blossomed on his face, and he said quickly, “If you mean Mr. Jason’s diamond ring, the bandit wasn’t wearing it.”
For an instant Tony felt his whole case crumbling about him, but then Janet spoke.
“He wasn’t wearing a ring,” she said slowly. “But I remember now there was a white circle on his trigger finger.”
“Why sure,” Gert chimed in immediately. “I remember that too.”
Henry snapped his fingers. “Of course. Gee, I’m dumb. I can even remember wondering what caused it, in spite of being so scared. It was the mark where a ring had been worn.”
“There you are gentlemen,” Tony said. “All tied—”
Then he grabbed at the automatic in his side pocket and drew himself side-wise as the glittering stone on the bearded man’s forefinger formed a gleaming arc toward his armpit. Tony’s gun became entangled in the cloth, and as he hit the floor and enormous explosion mushroomed in the small room. The little man’s body involuntarily flinched, but he rolled free.
On hands and knees he looked up to see Art Jason slowly lean backward, an automatic dangling limply from one hand, then topple to the floor like a falling timber. Tony thrust his gaze upward toward the chief in time to see a final whisp of smoke curl from his big revolver. The handcuffed Harry Short crouched half out of his chair, as though wondering which way to run.
“You,” Chief Murphy said to him affably, “had better sit down and relax.”