“Wait a minute,” Chief Gaines protested. “That little pellet couldn’t have more than stunned her. It—”
The shrill ringing of the telephone interrupted him. Hawkins answered it, and handed it to his superior. Chief Gaines’ side of the conversation was “yes” and “no”. He hung up and nodded to Jeff to continue.
“Now, the puzzling part was that there were apparently no marks on the body. I made a note of that and asked Smitty to get me the answer. Tell us, Smitty.”
The little man cleared his throat. “I telephoned several famous pathologists. Their unanimous opinion was that such a thing was impossible. The nearest solution they had for the problem was the possibility that a long, thin sliver had entered a vital organ. They discounted the heart, for they felt that the point of entrance would easily have been noticed.”
“What about the brain?” Chief Gaines asked.
“They said it could have entered through the ears, mouth, nose or eyes, points of entry harder to find. They also suggested making a thorough search of the scalp.”
“That’s where it was,” the chief grinned. “Doc Marshall missed it on his preliminary examination. He found the hole hidden by hair at the base of Pamela’s skull, not much bigger than a pinhole. Lodged in—”
Wendell Bogart jumped to his feet. “Did you have the gall to perform an autopsy on my niece without a reasonable suspicion of foul play?”
“We didn’t,” the chief said. “An X-ray of her head showed a long piece of metal like a thick needle.”
“I think you’ll find, Bill,” Jeff explained, “that it is probably the end from the dart Bogart dropped into the wastebasket. You see, the blunt end could be forced into the head of the lead pellet. When it drove into her skull, the pellet only followed until it struck bone. The point of the dart would continue into the head.”
“This is ridiculous!” Wendell Bogart sat down, puffing furiously on his cigar.
“Give us the answer, Jeff,” the chief said. “Also, tell us where the gun is.”
“Those leaves should tell you, chief.” Jeff pointed to the dried leaves with the bits of the gray hairs clinging to them. “What would dead leaves be doing on a lawn at this time of year?”
“I’ll be damned.” Chief Gaines whistled. “And I was raised in the country, too. Those leaves are from an old squirrel’s nest. Something must have disturbed it. Could it have been a gun?”
“That’s right. You’ll probably find some sort of contraption like those spring clothesline reels, or maybe something bigger, like the spring that pulls back an air hose.”
“But how?”
“I think you’ll find, if you examine the trellis, a spot where the air gun was wedged in the framework, screened by leaves. Under cover of the flash, the killer fired the gun, pushed it through the trellis, and let it go. A spring coil, or counterweight, jerked it up into that big oak tree. On its way up, it knocked off growing leaves and also struck an abandoned squirrel’s nest.”
“What’s the motive, Jeff?”
“The same old one – money. You ready to confess, Bogart? You know, your fingerprints will be on the gun. You were the only person who could have shot her in that spot. That’s why your arm was resting on the top of the settee, behind Pamela.”
“This is ridiculous!” Bogart snorted, his face turning gray. “Whatever gave you the idea that I need money?”
“Just little things, like cutting down on cigars, and not carrying matches. That’s the sort of foolish thing that normally wealthy people usually do when they try to economize. I suspected you weren’t on the level when I came here early this morning. Everyone around town seems to know you’re having financial troubles.”
Hawkins burst into the library. “The gun’s there, chief. There are beautiful prints on it, too. I’m not going to attempt to move it yet. I want to photograph that little blue steel squirrel in its nest. It was jerked up into the old squirrel’s nest by a fine steel wire, and a small coil drum. It looked like a specially made contraption to do that one job. OK for me to get a hook and ladder company out here? We can get photographs from the raised ladders.”
“Go to it, Hawkins,” the chief said. “You ready to talk, Mr Bogart? You’ve got to talk if I spend the rest of the week in an outlying police station taking you apart. You have a workshop and laboratory here in the house, and you probably manufactured your own props. I’m going to have an airtight case against you before I book you. Going to talk willingly?”
A look of fear crossed the older man’s face. “I should have my lawyer.”
“You’ll get him after you make a statement. To begin with, how did you get the gun when Corinne was murdered? Where did you hide it?”
“I found it in the chair where Pamela dropped it. Temporarily, I hid it behind the seat of the family doctor’s car when he came to examine Corinne. He drove away with it. I recovered it a few days later. My first idea was to protect Pamela. The scandal—”
“Later,” Jeff prompted, “you decided to cash in.”
“Pamela was a murderess; she didn’t deserve to live.”
“Besides, you needed the money. You were afraid to dip into her trust fund because of the courts and the bonding company. You wouldn’t denounce her to the police because of the publicity and also because you thought you’d be indicted, too, as an accessory after the fact.”
“Something like that.”
“Come on, Smitty, let’s go.”
“But, Jeff, why the silver bullet?”
“It didn’t have to be silver. It could have been copper, or maybe eight or ten-carat gold. The bullet had to be made of a metal soft enough to form a temporary seal to back up the compressed air in the pistol, and hard enough to penetrate a body. Pamela never thought of a dart. Silver happened to be handy. Besides, it was bizarre, showy, and all the Bogarts go for that. Pamela’s tricks, Wendell Bogart’s showing off with darts, the sodium flash.”
“Jeff, don’t let’s take any more criminal cases unless they are—”
“No more at all! Let’s go.”
A REAL NICE GUY
William F. Nolan
Warm sun.
A summer afternoon.
The sniper emerged from the roof door, walking easily, carrying a custom-leather guncase.
Opened the case.
Assembled the weapon.
Loaded it.
Sighted the street below.
Adjusted the focus.
Waited.
There was no hurry.
No hurry at all.
He was famous, yet no one knew his name. There were portraits of him printed in dozens of newspapers and magazines; he’d even made the cover of Time. But no one had really seen his face. The portraits were composites, drawn by frustrated police artists, based on the few misleading descriptions given by witnesses who claimed to have seen him leaving a building or jumping from a roof, or driving from the target area in a stolen automobile. But no two descriptions matched.
One witness described a chunky man of average height with a dark beard and cap. Another described a thin, extremely tall man with a bushy head of hair and a thick moustache. A third description pegged him as balding, paunchy and wearing heavy hornrims. On Time’s cover, a large bloodsoaked question mark replaced his features – above the words WHO IS HE?
Reporters had given him many names: “The Phantom Sniper” . . . “The Deadly Ghost” . . . “The Silent Slayer” . . . and his personal favorite, “The Master of Whispering Death”. This was often shortened to “Deathmaster”, but he liked the full title; it was fresh and poetic – and accurate.
He was a master. He never missed a target, never wasted a shot. He was cool and nerveless and smooth, and totally without conscience. And death indeed whispered from his silenced weapon: a dry snap of the trigger, a muffled pop, and the target dropped as though struck down by the fist of God.