Going Going Gone Read online

  “For Pete’s sakes, didn’t Sharp tell what was inside anything?” Asey demanded.

  “Oh, he called the trunk a pig in a poke. He was in one of those pixie moods,” Polly said. “You know, where he’d been selling covered wash boilers and closed laundry hampers full of junk he wouldn’t show you. People who hadn’t opened their mouths suddenly started bidding like maniacs – not because they wanted a wash boiler or a laundry hamper, but just out of curiosity, to see what was packed away inside ‘em. Oh!”

  “What’s the matter? Asey asked.

  “I never thought that out before, either, Polly said. “Another trick of the trade, isn’t it? Well, with all the excitement of Gardner Alden’s paying so much for that sea chest, and fat Mrs. Turnover’s paying so much for the house – and wouldn’t it have done John Alden’s heart good to see his relations shelling out! Well, with all that going on, I forgot about the trunk until we brought it home. And then Charles and I opened it— it wasn’t locked, or anything – and it was full of books. Those books.” She waved a hand toward Asey’s roadster. “Those damned three-quarter morocco bound Harper’s Magazines!”

  “And right away,” Charles said, “I said to Miss Polly, I said, ‘Miss Polly, if Miss Spry was found in that sea chest that’d been full of old books, then someone had to take them old books out to put her into the chest, and these is those books!”

  “What Sharp had done was obvious enough,” Polly said. “He’d put the books into an old empty trunk – and sold the works to us! The good old Madisons. The fall guys. Sell ‘em anything as long as you throw in a few Hitchcock chairs – Sharp knows mother’s weakness for them, heaven knows! He’s sold her all the others. So we get the chairs, with the old trunk casually thrown in as a humorous afterthought – and all the books from the sea chest carefully planted inside! Sharp is no fool. He knew that sooner or later, someone would get to wondering what had become of those sea chest books. And when someone finally got around to questioning him – you probably would have, wouldn’t you?”

  “Uh-huh,” Asey said.

  “Well, Sharp would have a mammoth brain wave and remember that old trunk he hadn’t opened publicly because he was selling it as a pig in a poke. He knows that trunk was empty when he sold it—”

  “Does he?” Asey interrupted.

  “Oh, he’ll say so, anyway! He’ll say that was his little joke, ha ha ha, selling the empty trunk! Then he’ll suggest that maybe someone better take a look at it, just the same, and bang! The Madisons have the trunk, but it isn’t empty, it’s full of books! The books! D’you follow?”

  “I think so,” Asey said. “I—”

  “The Madisons, therefore,” Polly continued, “must have killed Solatia Spry. Because gee whiz, these are the books from the sea chest someone had to take out before they could put Solatia in. It’s all the evil work of those Madisons! They hid the books after they stuck her into the chest, and then tried to sneak ‘em away in that old empty trunk Mrs. Madison bought. Yessir,” she said with a broad Cape twang, “it was them as killed her afore the auction so as they could buy up all of John Alden’s antiques! Let’s have a neck-tie party, fellers, an’ string the old Madisons up to a phone pole – who ever liked soap, anyways?”

  “But it wouldn’t be just the Madisons, sir, you see,” Charles said quickly. “It’d be the Madam. She’d be the one they’d blame for it all. And Miss Polly and I, we didn’t feel the Madam ought to be mixed up in it, so we thought we’d just get rid of them books, see, sir? And—”

  “And we couldn’t tell mother, because she’s so damn honest, she wouldn’t think anyone would ever do a thing like that to us,” Polly said, “and besides, she thinks Quinton Sharp is such a marvellous man. She wouldn’t believe it of him. And she wouldn’t go to bed and give us a chance to get out and get started – she was so excited about her new things, she kept twittering around and feeling them! Finally, I convinced her she looked as if she had a headache, and practically stuffed an allonal into her mouth, and got her to bed – usually she falls asleep the instant she looks at a pillow, but tonight she simply took forever. Wasn’t it awful waiting, Charles?”

  “Yessum!”

  “But she finally fell asleep, and Charles and I got the books out of the trunk and into the beachwagon, and then we took ‘em and strewed ‘em around the East Weesit road. We wanted to go farther away, but we had to be so careful about gas!”

  “Why?” Asey asked.

  “Why? Because mother is so awfully gas conscious, she watches every spoonful of gas—”

  “I mean, why did you strew ‘em at all?” Asey said. “Not just in East Weesit, but what in the world made you think of strewin’ ‘em anywheres?”

  “That,” Polly said with pride, “was our plan! It took an hour to figure it out, too, didn’t it, Charles? You see, if anyone had known the books were in that trunk, they’d have been after us at once. But nobody was after us, so nobody knew! That is, nobody but the person who put them in it, in the first place. See?”

  Asey nodded.

  “We decided if we were to put the books somewhere else, where they’d be found easily – that was our Waterloo,” Polly said. “We made it too damned easy! Anyway, we decided to strew ‘em. Then if whoever found ‘em claimed that we’d done the strewing and that they’d come from the trunk, why, we’d know they were the persons – I mean, that he was the person – who’d put the books in the trunk in the first place. We’d know who was guilty!”

  “But s’pose he didn’t bite?” Asey suggested. “S’pose he didn’t care where the books was, as long as they didn’t involve him?”

  “Then we’d have drawn a blank on finding the murderer,” Polly said, “but we wouldn’t be burdened with all those incriminating books ourselves! They’d be out of our hands!”

  “We had another angle, too, sir,” Charles said. “We thought after we got through getting rid of the hooks, we could wait around a little while and see if anyone hit the trail of ‘em and sort of tried to do anything about ‘em. Like if someone had been watching our house to see if we’d find the books in the trunk, and what we’d do with em. We thought maybe we might trap someone.”

  “An’ did you?” Asey inquired.

  “We never got the chance, sir,” Charles said sadly. “You see, we—”

  “We got trapped ourselves,” Polly interrupted. “We never realized we were being followed, but as soon as we finished laying the books down – this was the first time – then this car drove up, and out popped that bald man. Paul Harmsworth. He made us pick up every one and put them all back into the beachwagon again.”

  “Why?”

  “Harmsworth’s a great friend of Solatia’s – mother knows him, too. She’s bought things from him. It turns out.” Polly said, “that Harmsworth’s violently upset about her being killed, and he’s going to find out who did it if it kills him, and he’s violently suspicious of mother and me.”

  “And me, too, sir,” Charles added. “He was once at an auction where I took away something Miss Spry’d bought – quite by accident, it was. But he knows Miss Spry never trusted me again, and she always picked on me if she got a chance.”

  “And he knew I’d quarrelled with Solatia occasionally – she took an inordinate interest in my love life,” Polly said, “and sometimes she goaded me into resenting it verbally. And he knew that mother and Solatia had quarrelled about John’s things – and he brought it all up. In his agitation, he even denounced us as the dastards who let all the air out of his tyres!”

  “So!” Asey said. “Then it was him who called Ellen, an’ it means he was somewhere around Solatia’s, earlier in the evenin’. Go on!”

  “There’s nothing more to go on about,” Polly said. “He just seemed convinced that we were two of the most guilty people outside of the Rock.”

  There was a little silence.

  “Just what did you do to him, Charles?” Asey asked.

  “Well, sir, he was very hasty, sir, see? And he n
ever give Miss Polly a chance to explain anything, and he was all for making us take those books to the cops, and such like, sir, and so – well, sir, I just tied him up and left him in the woods, sir. I mean, sir, the way I figured it, nobody knows him much around here, but they know Miss Polly and me, and they know we don’t go kiting around in the middle of the night, and Mrs. Madison and my wife’ll swear we wasn’t out, anyway, and he can’t prove anything. It’s only his word against ours, and ours is better.”

  “What Charles means,” Polly said, “is that we rationalized the situation that way afterwards. For a few minutes there, after we’d disposed of him, we were just a wee bit panicky. We lit out for home so quick! Then we thought, who was this Paul Harmsworth but a bald man, and what could he prove?”

  “So,” Asey said, “havin’ pulled yourselves together, you went an’ laid the books down all over again, huh, over a longer route?”

  Polly nodded. “But we were too excited to think it out first, so in order to get back here without running into the books, we had to weave drunkenly around on one side roads, all over the place – after the Harmsworth incident, we weren’t too anxious to have anyone else connect us directly with those damned Harper’s! And we got as far as here – and this time, if you hadn’t gone and picked ‘em up just as fast as we’d laid ‘em down!”

  “I see,” Asey said. “I see!”

  “If we’d only known what a swell person you are,” Polly said, “we’d have come straight to you and told you the truth, and not bothered with all this malarkey. Wouldn’t we, Charles?”

  “Yessum!” Charles said with sincerity. “Yes, sir, we would.”

  “Thinking it all over impartially,” Polly went on, “I must say we haven’t been much of a success at evidence shifting and book tossing. All we’ve really accomplished is to immobilize Paul Harmsworth – who now doubtless hates us twice as much, and is further convinced of our guilt – and not get any books thrown away, at all!”

  “What about that first lot, this afternoon?” Asey wanted to know.

  “Oh, you’ll probably never believe that one! “Polly said. “Those were John’s own school books, and his childhood books. I bought them myself at the auction – they were part of a lot. I didn’t want them, but neither did I want other people to have them. They were personal things. Like his collar buttons, or his pipe, or something. You know, if you’ve known people and their possessions, sometimes auctions – well, it hurts you to see things that meant something to someone sold to just anyone. I wonder if you know what I mean?”

  “I think,” Asey said, “that I do. I never liked auctions.”

  “Those books bothered me. I loaded them into the picnic hampers we’d brought along to take the china back home in, and drove over and dumped them in to the far end of the pond. I’m not crazy about auctions myself, and I felt like getting away from that one then. It was during a lull, when Sharp was selling corned beef, and Chris pointed out to me that we’d need the hampers for the china, and that I’d better dispose of the books as soon as I could.”

  Charles’s vigorous yawn broke the silence that followed.

  “Don’t, Charles! Polly said. “If you get me started yawning, I’ll never stop! What are you going to do with us, Asey? I wish I could see your face!” she added. “I have a firm and horrid suspicion that you don’t believe a word we’ve told you!”

  “I think what’s botherin’ me,” Asey said honestly, “is that you didn’t ask Quinton Sharp what was in the trunk, after you’d opened it an’ knew. If he’d said it was filled with old bound Harper’s, you’d have saved yourself a heap of trouble. Not to speak of gasoline.”

  “But if he knew,” Polly said, “and if they – oh, no! If he knew the Harper’s were in the trunk all the time, then where would the books from the sea chest be? Asey Mayo, you can’t be thinking that the first lot I dumped into the pond – you can’t think those were the chest books!”

  “You can see,” Asey said, “how the thought might have flickered around my mind, can’t you?”

  “But those were books I bought! Those were John’s! And you can check up on that easily enough!” Polly said earnestly. “We can get them out of that pond in a jiffy, and prove they were old school books – oh!”

  “Looks like he’s got you, don’t it, Miss Polly?” Charles said sympathetically. “Because even if we proved they was school books, like you say, we can’t prove they wasn’t in the chest, can we?”

  The end of his sentence turned into another vigorous yawn, which Polly caught and transmitted to Asey.

  “I think,” Asey opened the door of the beachwagon and got out, “that we’d better call it a day before we three fall sound asleep right here in the middle of the road. I’ll keep the books, an’ see what Quinton Sharp has to say about ‘em, an’ you run along home. By the way, Chris Bede hasn’t been tearin’ around with you on this book tossin’ project, has he?”

  “Chris? Oh, no!” Polly said quickly. “No, indeed! What made you ask?”

  “I thought I caught sight of him,” Asey said.

  “Oh, I’m sure you didn’t!” Polly said. “Don’t you think he must be mistaken, Charles?”

  “Yessum.”

  “I mean, he’s at the doctor’s,” Polly said. “Chris did altogether too much running around at the auction this afternoon, and got his ankle hurting – he was badly shot up in China, you know. He was practically going to spend the night with Dr. Cummings.”

  Asey thought back to the collection of patients who’d been waiting in Cummings’ office. He hadn’t paid very much attention to them, but he remembered noticing that there hadn’t been a man there under fifty.

  “Cummings had a lot of experience with wounds in the last war,” he said casually. “He was over in France for three years.”

  “Chris says he’s marvellous,” Polly said. “He’s so frightfully busy now, of course, you practically can’t reach him on the telephone. But when Chris finally got him, he said he thought he could do something about that muscle that hurt so.”

  “Chris phoned him, didn’t he?” Asey said. “Why, sure!” he went on as Polly nodded. “I remember! I was there at the time. Just about nine o’clock, wasn’t it?”

  Polly didn’t hesitate. She fell for his little trap, hook, line, and sinker.

  “It was practically exactly nine,” she said. “I remember the dock striking – you remember too, don’t you, Charles? You were there in the living-room, helping to move the highboy.”

  “Oh, yessum!” Charles said. “Yes, Miss Polly. I remember. Just nine, it was. Exactly. Yessum.”

  “I’m sure the doc fixed him up.” Asey well knew that Cummings had done nothing of the sort. He and the doctor had left the office around eight. At nine, he had been biffed with a length of lead pipe while Cummings waited among the rhododendrons. “Well, you two get along – by the way, where did you leave this fellow Harmsworth?”

  Charles gave him the explicit location on the East Weesit road.

  “We really didn’t hurt him, sir,” he added. “What I mean, sir, he may feel he got awful shook up, but I didn’t hurt him none at all. I hope you’ll explain to him, sir, that Miss Polly and me, why we wouldn’t hurt the hair on a fly’s head, sir! But Mr. Harmsworth hadn’t ought to have made all them cracks about us and the Madam, sir, and not let us explain anything about them books, or what we was trying to do, sir!”

  “As a matter of fact,” Asey said, “I’m not so much upset about your havin’ immobilized him as glad that you located him for me. You saved me a lot of work – golly, I got that cop of Riley’s to untie, too! I forgot all about him. Well, you an’ Charles run along home – an’ you stay there, too!”

  “Oh, we certainly will!” Polly said. “We’ve had enough for one night, haven’t we, Charles?”

  “Yessum! “Charles said. “Yes, Miss, we certainly had enough!”

  “We know when we’re licked,” Polly continued. “We’ll just go home, and sneak in quietly so moth
er doesn’t hear us, and stay there, that’s what! Don’t you worry about us, Asey! We’ve shot our little bolt and learned our little lesson! We absolutely wouldn’t dream of stirring out of the house again. Not after all this!”

  Asey moved the roadster so that the beachwagon could get by, and grinned as he watched Miss Madison and her aged retainer depart for home at a brisk clip.

  He didn’t for one moment believe that Polly Madison had any notion of returning home – and staying there. While Charles’s statement about having enough had sounded both genuine and heartfelt, Polly had protested altogether too loudly – and too much.

  She would probably go home – a sort of token return, he decided. Then she would turn to Charles and inform him that they were setting right out again. And Charles would say “Yessum” with just as much enthusiasm as if she’d presented him with a half share in the Madison Soap Works.

  Asey shook his head.

  He wished that after people had convinced him of their own integrity and of the truth of their story, they wouldn’t go and spoil it all!

  Why had she lied about Chris Bede? The mention of his name had set her off, put a different note in her voice. Chris must have been up to something, and Polly must have known it. She’d jumped to the conclusion that Chris had been in some trouble or other at nine – could she perhaps have known that he was over at Solatia’s? At all events, she’d promptly placed him in the doctor’s office at that time. She’d alibied him like a shot.

  And thereby, of course, she’d thrown her own story completely off. For if she lied so glibly about one thing, she could lie just as glibly about something else.

  “Yup,” Asey murmured, “I think you’ll drive home, wait what you think is a safe time, an’ then I think you’ll go larrupin’ off after your boy friend an’ try to find out what’s gone sour. An’ I think, just for the pure, undiluted fun of it, that I’ll trail along after you an’ pull a confrontin’ act, just like Hanson does. I’d ought not to have given you the reins for a single second. I’d ought to have brought you right up standin’, as Hanson would have, an’ pretended I didn’t believe a word you said. I was too durn easy, an’ you think I’m soft.”