American Sherlocks by Nick Rennison (reading like a writer .TXT) 📕

He turned to face the door as hurried footsteps proclaimed to his trained, supersensitive ears that Sydney Thames was approaching.

‘Cartwright has been murdered!’ cried the red-cheeked secretary breathlessly. ‘It happened too late for the morning papers, but The Fee got some early extras of the evening editions with full details.’

‘Where? How?’ asked Colton.

‘In an up-town rathskeller. He was shot by Theodore Rogers, the lawyer.’

‘He was not,’ corrected the blind man quietly,

‘How did you hear of it?’ demanded Sydney, in surprise.

‘This is the first intimation I had of such a thing, but your statement was just a little too positive; your voice told me that you believe Rogers guilty because of the utter impossibility of the story he must have given the police.’

Sydney flushed. ‘But his story is crazy, insane!’ he insisted.

‘Perhaps if I heard it –’ suggested Colton.

Excitedly, with utter disbelief in his voice, Sydney Thames told of the unheld pistol Rogers swore he saw; of its firing with no finger near the trigger; of its recoil, and fall.

‘Of course the police arrested him,’ continued Sydney. ‘Cartwright held a lot of Rogers’s paper. That’s the motive. They’ve got a clear case, as clear as the one against the love-crazed kid who shot the violinist.’

‘Just as clear,’ echoed Colton slowly. Then: ‘But haven’t you withheld the fact that the pistols used in both murders are exactly alike?’

‘How – did you know – that?’ gasped Sydney. Many times he had heard the blind man make such amazing statements, but they always startled him.

‘Because both crimes were committed by the same man in the same way!’

‘But Nelson, the kid who shot the girl, was locked up in a cell,’ protested Thames.

‘Exactly,’ admitted the blind man. ‘But he killed Cartwright as surely as he murdered the girl.’

It was several seconds before the meaning of that sentence struck Sydney. ‘He shot that girl in the back!’ rebelled Thames. ‘I saw his face over the flash of the pistol. Even he admits that no one else could have fired it, because it fell on his toe!’

‘Rogers swears that no one did fire the bullet which killed Cartwright,’ reminded Colton. ‘And the pistol fell on the table in front of him.’

‘That’s impossible,’ asserted Thames emphatically. ‘Someone must have held the gun. Someone must have pulled the trigger. There can be no explanation of what he says he saw. The days of ghosts and black magic have passed.’

‘But not the days of black murder,’ retorted Colton. ‘There is no black art, ghosts, or hypnotism in the murders of last night. The method is unique, that’s all.’

He picked up the slim, hollow stick he always carried. ‘I’m going to find that murderer,’ he said. ‘A man who could kill a girl like that is either a fiend or a hideous blunderer. I think it’s the latter. Will you call the machine?’

The big automobile was always ready for instant service, day or night, and ten minutes later they were on their way down town. Beside the driver, eager-eyed, joyful, was The Fee. Colton had promised to let him help on the case, and the boy’s cup of happiness was full. The Fee had but two heroes: Thornley Colton in real life; Nick Carter in his favourite fiction.

‘We’ll go to police headquarters first,’ decided Colton. ‘The prisoners will be there this morning, and I’d like to question Rogers.’ Then he got from Sydney all the details the papers had given of Cartwright’s murder.

The Fee found a friendly doorman when they reached police headquarters and prepared to have the time of his life. Colton’s card secured them grudging admittance to the office of the chief of detectives. The chief, like his men, had all the professional’s scorn for the amateur, but he knew the blind man, with his wide acquaintance with influential people, was not a person to antagonize. And the police had found Rogers a different proposition from the youth whose infatuation had led him to the dark box and the murder charge. The lawyer was well known, and his story demanded respect despite the utter impossibility of the thing he described. Of course, the barman and the waiter had been arrested as witnesses, but they had not seen the actual shooting. The barman had been dozing, and the waiter had been busy in a front booth. The shot had aroused them.

‘Going to give us some more pointers?’ asked the chief tolerantly, when he had shaken hands with Colton and nodded curtly to Sydney.

‘I’d like to look into that double-murder case a bit,’ confessed the problemist, paying no attention to the tone.

‘You mean the two murders committed last night,’ corrected the chief gruntingly. ‘Nothing to ’em. We’ve got the goods on young Nelson. Twenty people in the three front rows saw him do it. And Rogers’s fool story is enough to hang any man.’ The real detective’s scorn for the criminal whose methods are crude came to his voice. ‘He might have got away with a suicide story – Cartwright was all broken up about the girl – but Rogers swears it wasn’t suicide, because the manager’s hands were not near the pistol when it was fired. He says Cartwright’s look was one of horror, as if he’d seen his end coming, and couldn’t get away from it.’

‘He did see his death coming,’ put in Colton quietly; ‘and I think that during the last instant he lived he realized at whose hand it came.’

‘You think he got wise to Rogers at the end, eh?’ guessed the chief.

‘No!’ The negative was sharp. ‘Rogers had no more to do with the murder than you or I. Cartwright was killed by a man who had been planning the murder for years; the death of the girl was a terrible mistake.’

The chief jumped from his chair. ‘What do you know?’ he demanded.

‘Nothing – definitely. With