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

a while. I was doin’ a knife-throwin’ act. Some wop had picked me up when I didn’t know my own name, and brought me to Europe with him. Somehow the kink had kept me off the booze, and I was even better than him, and he was the best in the world, bar none. He died a few months after I got out, and I copped his layout. We’d been rehearsin’ a stunt that was going to make ’em all sit up. The Flyin’ Death, we called it, and we threw pistols instead of knives. We had a blank board at one end of the stage, and a target at the other. We’d stand in the centre, let it fly at the blank board, duck, and the butt striking would jar down the trigger, and the bullet’d go over our heads and hit the bull’s-eye three times out of five. It was big stuff! But I wasn’t satisfied, because I wanted to hit the bull’s-eye every time. I was goin’ to play that act fer one man; the one that stole my wife and ten years out of my life. So I put in two more years on the Continent, still practisin’. If you looked at the nicks in the pistol-butts you can see how many times they’d been used.

‘When I got so I couldn’t go wrong I came to the States. I learned I was dead – one of the thugs that got my coin and papers, I guess. But that suited me right down to the ground. I found Cartwright was the big cheese in the business, but I couldn’t find the wife, or the kid. I wanted to get them, too; ten years don’t make no difference to me.’ Again came the sneer to the evil, yellow face, as his eyes caught their looks of horror and disgust. ‘I spent a year touring here before I could book Cartwright’s house. I wanted to get him right before everybody’s eyes. That’s why I had that dark act. He was up to the rehearsal in the mornin’ with a kid that looked something like the woman he stole, but it wasn’t my kid, because he made it plain he was only her manager. You can bet he’d a showed it if he had claims. I heard him make a date for the box after her act, and that looked good to me, because I’d get him right beside her.

‘Under the knives for the spotlight act was the pistol with a real cartridge, of course. I only used minichure ones with a pinch of powder for the act. The guns was balanced special in Germany, and the front sights was off the barrels so they could slide out of my hand. I could see the white of the girl’s waist and his shirt between every knife-throw, because I waited a few seconds each time to get ’em right. Then, when I knew I couldn’t make a mistake, I let the gun fly. I was goin’ to have the butt hit the wall in back of him, and the bullet catch him between the shoulders. It was easy, because I was above him on the stage, and I thought there couldn’t be any suspicion because I was in front of him, and he’d be shot in the back. But that darn’ fool kid,’ he spat out snarlingly, ‘had to have his hands on the hanging just when the gun hit, and throw it off enough to kill the girl.’

Sydney Thames gasped audibly.

‘It wasn’t my fault she was in the way, but a little thing like that wasn’t going to keep me from gettin’ the man I wanted. I got another of the guns out of my prop trunk and went after him. I couldn’t get him right until I heard the other feller arguin’ with him in front of the rathskeller. I ducked around to the side-door. I’d been in there before, but I’d had my black stage-whiskers and wig on, and the waiter didn’t know me. I played drunk, and gave the waiter a five-spot for a drink, and told him not to turn on the booth-light.

‘Cartwright faced my booth, but I was in the dark. They started to whisper. The waiter was out of sight, and the bartender was sleepin’. I had the gun ready for five minutes. This man bent down – and I let her fly. There wasn’t going to be any mistake this time, because I was going to put another half turn on the gun and make it jam its muzzle against his heart. No chance of missin’ that way! And he saw the gun comin’ when it was too late to dodge! And he knew me then! And the last thing he ever saw was me grinnin’ at him! It was a cinch to slope out in the excitement after.’

There was silence in the room when he had finished. From beyond the closed door came the discordant medley of the tinny piano, the screeching clarinet, the hoarse-voiced singers. Before them a manacled man, with sneers in his voice, and boasts, and snarls, had just told them of the man whose death he had accomplished with such fiendish cunning; of the innocent girl whose life he had destroyed.

‘Do you mean to say that you could fling those pistols as accurately as all that?’ demanded the chief, who was a policeman, first, last, and all the time. The case, to him, had ceased to be one of human emotions, of sorrow and tragedy; it was a matter of proof, of conviction. Such is the policeman’s philosophy of life – and death.

‘Do you want me to prove it?’ taunted the murderer. ‘There’s the other pistol for the act on the bureau. It ain’t loaded. Get it and I’ll show you.’

‘Better take his word,’ suggested Colton warningly.

‘I’ll see that he plays no tricks,’ boasted the chief. It was his case now. He got the pistol from the bureau.