Going Going Gone Read online

  “Maybe it’s the lump on my head,” Asey said, “but I can’t seem to reach any other conclusion myself. Now, s’pose we take a look at things – where’s that big flashlight I seen a minute ago?”

  The phone wire, they found, had very obviously been cut.

  “I could do a better job with one hand,” Cummings remarked as he peered up to where Asey was focusing the light. “And that roof’s so low, you could reach up and do it with one hand, too. Hm. Let’s get on to the beachwagon!”

  Asey surveyed the tyres for a moment, and then handed the light to Cummings.

  “Hold it, will you? I want to do some pawin’ around.”

  “Well?” Cummings demanded when he finished. “What’s the story?”

  “I think,” Asey said slowly, “we’ll take it for granted that her tyres was all right when Jennie an’ I seen her, else she’d have stopped us an’ asked for a lift. I think, doc, that she was just backin’ out of the garage, an’ that a few seconds after we drove by, she heard a tyre go. Well, she’s got to get to the auction, an’ she hasn’t left herself much time – after all, she hasn’t any need to go over there early an’ paw around John Alden’s things. She knows ‘em. Now, she’s a logical-minded woman, so she eases the beachwagon into the barn, where it’ll be easier to work a jack than in the drive-way. She gets half-way in, an’ another tyre pops. She gets out, hurries indoors to the phone – one flat she’ll tackle herself, but two she needs help with. But the phone—”

  “The phone’s gone,” Cummings broke in, “so she comes back and takes out the spare, and finds that’s gone, too! What happened, did someone tamper with ‘em in such a way that they’d pop when she started driving?”

  “That cleanest wheel,” Asey picked it out with the flashlight, “that’s just had. the air let out, I think. But the other two – well, it feels like they’d had long, thin nails driven into ‘em. I think someone stuck ‘em in so’s a few turns of the wheel would drive ‘em through into the tube.”

  “In short, the tyres were fixed so that they’d go when she started out,” Cummings said, “and the phone was cut so that she couldn’t call for help. Someone was trying either to keep her away from that auction entirely or to delay her getting there – isn’t that the way you figure it?”

  Asey nodded. “An’ when she found the spare was flat, too, she probably marched out to the road an’ prayed for someone to come along an’ take her. She must’ve known that most everyone had already gone—”

  “By George!” Cummings broke in. “By George, now I see how this works! Gardner Alden was over this way just to pierce those tyres and cut her phone! That’s why he was over here! That’s how he happened to be on your lane, don’t you see? He took the wrong turn at the fork – it’s very confusing there for people who don’t know their way around! Yes, sir, that’s it, he’d taken the wrong turn, and got over to your lane! As for Solatia, someone gave her a lift over to the auction, of course. After the news of this has spread around a bit more – probably by tomorrow morning, at the latest – someone’ll turn up and tell us that they took her. Then – what are you murmuring about, Asey?”

  “I was just sort of beginnin’ to wonder, doc, if she ever did get there!”

  “Of course she got there! Why in the world would you think she didn’t?” Cummings retorted. “You certainly don’t suspect that that woman in the sea chest was two other people entirely do you?”

  “No, but—”

  “I cannot imagine any conceivable reason why – Asey, you can’t think she wasn’t killed at the auction! What could give you any such notion as that?”

  “It’s all those people,” Asey said. “I seen the crowd. I can’t visualize anyone’s stabbin’ anyone with all that mob millin’ around, an’ not be seen. An’ Sharp said the chest was in the room behind where he was standin’, all afternoon. His helpers was in an’ out, all the time – one of the things that seemed to worry him so was his mental picture of his men hoppin’ over that chest, an’ sittin’ on it, an’ such. But throughout that whole auction, people were sittin’ there with their eyes glued on Sharp, an’ on that room behind him where the sea chest was!”

  “You sound like a man,” Cummings remarked, “who’s forgotten all about Harry Houdini! Maybe this was done with mirrors, too! I’ll grant you there seem to be’ some practical problems involved – but merciful heavens, man alive, they’re child’s play compared to the problems you’ll scare up if you figure things out any other way!”

  “Wa-el—”

  “Look here, Sharp said the chest was brought over here in his beachwagon!” Cummings said. “You took that chest out of his beachwagon, at your house, didn’t you? Yes, I heard you tell Riley that. Now, Sharp and Gardner came over together – I heard Gardner say so. Therefore, unless Sharp and Gardner started with a chest full of books, and came here and killed Solatia, and took out the books, and put her into the chest and took it to your house—” he stopped and sighed. “D’you vaguely see the point I am attempting to make?

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And while I’ll admit that Sharp is rightly named, I don’t think he’s a murderer,” Cummings said. “And if he were, I doubt if he or anyone else would bring that chest to you – Jennie really inveigled Gardner into it, didn’t she? With Sharp seconding her suggestion and egging her on? And why should Gardner have paid so much just for a chest full of books? But if he’d killed Solatia and put her into the chest, then you could see why he’d pay so – oh, we’ve gone over that before! The point is that Solatia got to the auction, all right! She was killed there, and she – where are you going?”

  “I want to see if Riley’s man is feelin’ well enough to carry on here. I got this hankerin’ to track down Gardner,” Asey said. “He’s beginnin’ to fascinate me. I’d like to know what other thoughtful an’ considerate things he may be preparin’.”

  Riley’s man said that he’d manage all right. “I got my gun out, and I’m going to shoot at the next funny sound I hear, see?”

  “I don’t knows I’d go quite so far as that,” Asey said, “but maybe you might hook the doors, an’ perhaps not sit with your back to ‘em, or fall asleep. If Hanson sees you before he sees me, tell him there’s a few things I think he might look into. So long!”

  Cummings sighed as they started back to the lane where they had left the roadster.

  “That was such a lovely sequence of scenes I had pictured at first, I rather resent having it destroyed so completely. I could just see Solatia picking Gardner up, and their argument as they bowled along in the beachwagon to the auction, and his determination not to let her get John’s things for her rich customer, and her determination to have ‘em. But this sabotage – Asey, I never until this very minute got the proper perspective on the sabotage business! Look, Solatia finally gets a lift to the auction, she sees Gardner there, goes up to him, and accuses him of this sabotage. She says he’s the one who’s been trying to keep her from getting things, and she’s going to denounce him – were all these brambles here when we came?”

  “I don’t think they’ve grown any,” Asey said.

  “Maybe I’ve aged in the last hour. It’s a shock to come upon you lying starkly on the floor of an entry, looking as if you were more material for a sea chest. Well, to get on. Solatia says she’s going to denounce Gardner—” Cummings paused. “Am I running on again?” he asked cautiously.

  “I think you’re doin’ a fine job.”

  “I think it’s even better than my first idea,” Cummings said with pride, “because it’s got more. You have this argument between them about John’s things, which might have taken pace any time, plus her anger at his sabotage, plus his anger at her turning up there, plus their mutual desire to get John’s best things—”

  “Over this way, doc. Over here,” Asey flashed the light at the roadster. “Mind that poison ivy – huh! You feelin’ strong, doc?”

  “What’s the matter now?”

  “Our friend must be bas
ically patriotic,” Asey said, “because he didn’t slash my tyres. See? He just let the air out of ‘em.”

  “All of them?”

  Asey completed a circuit of the car. “All of ‘em. Every last one.”

  “My mother always told me that doctors who didn’t stay in their offices and serve humanity,” Cummings said, “would meet with evil. Three miles back to town! Of course I know how to walk. I do it every day. From car to sick room, or car to hospital, or car to office. But it’s only fair to tell you that I haven’t walked three consecutive miles since I was in the last war. Almost anything might happen.”

  “Maybe a passin’ car’ll give us a lift,” Asey said consolingly.

  But they had to walk the entire distance.

  “It’s a judgment on me,” Cummings said as they entered Main Street, “for all the times when I’ve thoughtlessly advised people to take nice long walks – why in the world d’you suppose I ever suggested such a thing?”

  “Maybe it’s like vegetables,” Asey suggested slyly.

  “Vegetables?”

  “Uh-huh. You’re always urgin’ me to eat more of ‘em, but I’ve always noticed you scrape ‘em to the side of your plate an’ leave ‘em there.”

  “I save them for the last,” Cummings said righteously, “so I can get the full savour – what’s that yonder, a stampede? Oh, it’s Two-gun letting out. Wait, Asey, I want to watch. I want to see what that bill did to ‘em. They ought to be in shreds,” he added as the people crowded out on to the street, “but they look as happy—”

  “Good-evening, sir.” Alden Dorking paused beside them, spoke to Asey, and nodded at the doctor. “Any developments about Miss Spray?”

  “Wa-el,” Asey drawled, “Doc Cumming’s learned how to walk, an’ I’ve learned the value of a thick head. In a nutshell, no, we haven’t found—”

  He broke off as Cummings clutched his arm and pointed to a man in a light coat and grey trousers who’d just emerged from the theatre.

  It was Gardner Alden.

  “Oh, Mr. Mayo!” he said, “I saw you there in the movies when the lights went on, and waved at you. I thought you might possibly be hunting for me!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT was the light-grey-and-white-striped seersucker coat, Asey told himself. He had been scanning those movie aisles for a dark grey coat. That was how he had missed the man.

  But almost simultaneously, he reminded himself that he had not just been looking for a coat. He’d had been looking, too, for that long face with the tight, thin lips, and the bushy grey eyebrows, and the aquiline nose that was almost duplicated, in a larger size, on Al Dorking’s face.

  Cummings managed to find his voice.

  “Quite a bill you sat through, Mr. Alden,” he said. “Was there a rogue elephant to go with the Gila Monster?”

  “There was even a vengeful native who slashed the straps that kept the howdah on the heroine’s pet white elephant,” Al Dorking said with a laugh. “There was everything, with custard pies thrown in. We got the works. I stopped by at the Inn for you, Uncle Gard, but you’d gone – I knew when I saw that double-feature announcement that you’d be right in the front row!”

  “My brother John and the rest of my family,” Gardner explained to Asey, “have always laughed at me because I never miss a Western picture – haven’t for years. And if there’s anything I like better, it’s a good slapstick comedy team like O’Leary and Mazutto. Really, I had a splendid time!”

  He sounded more human and was displaying more animation, Asey thought, than he had at any time during their acquaintance. Perhaps it was the seersucker coat, but there was almost a festive aura about him.

  “Still carrying the papers?” Al Dorking inquired, pointing toward the bulging brief case.

  Gardner nodded. “I almost don’t dare let them out of my sight. They’re some of the data on the MacDougall estate, Mr. Mayo,” he said parenthetically. “You may have read about it. Some of the younger heirs are well known in cafe society, and they’ve been rather noisy about their grandfather’s will, which they don’t like. I brought these along to study on the train. And by the way, will you or the police want me, d’you think? Because I ought to be getting back. I have rather a lot to do with this case.”

  “I’ll be running along, Uncle Gard,” Al said. “I suppose I’ll see you to-morrow before you go?”

  “Yes, I want to talk with you. Good-night, Al.” Gardner turned to Asey as Dorking strolled away. “I wonder if you and the doctor would care to come into the drug-store and have some ice cream with me? The movies made me hungry, and the Inn fare was rather slim this evening.”

  “A sundae!” Cummings said. “That’s what I’ve been wanting! No, three sundaes! One for each mile I had to walk. Nothing like walking to give you an appetite – now I wonder, why do I always tell fat ladies to walk when they want to reduce? If they’re at all like me, it’ll only give ‘em the appetite of a dray horse. You walk very much, Mr. Alden?” he added casually as they entered the crowded drug-store next to the movies. “I have a feeling that you’re probably a great hiker. You have the – er – build.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Gardner said with a smile, “I never walk unless I’m walking after a golf ball, and for the last few years I haven’t even bothered to walk after them. I have a troublesome cartilage in my left knee – ah, they’re leaving that table over in the cottier! Let’s take that.”

  There was something bizarre, Asey thought, about sitting down and eating a strawberry sundae with a man whom you’d rather suspected of biffing you over the head, a short while before, with a length of lead pipe. He knew that Cummings thought so, too, but the doctor wasn’t letting the situation impair his suddenly developed appetite for sundaes.

  “About Miss Spray,” Gardner said. “Is there anything I can do to assist you and the police, Mr. Mayo? I might add that the whole affair was a definite shock to me. I quite sincerely believed that the chest contained some old books.”

  “Why did you pay so much for that chest, Mr. Alden?” Asey asked.

  Gardner looked at him, and smiled slowly.

  “You’re the first person,” he said, “who has had the courage to come out and ask me that directly. Both Quinton Sharp and that police sergeant nearly turned themselves inside out attempting indirect methods, and I thought your cousin Jennie would bite off her tongue, trying not to burst out and ask me. To be perfectly frank with you, I came here with the intention of buying up all of John’s best things. I knew all about the will, of course. I knew that he had left nothing to the family – one of my partners drew up that will from notes which John gave me.”

  Gardner finished his ice cream, and pushed the dish away from him.

  “My brother and I were very good friends,” he went on. “He knew that I wanted those things, and he told me honestly why he wasn’t going to leave them to me, and why he didn’t want me to have them. He said that I had possessions enough, that I didn’t care for what I had, and that I didn’t really care about these things of his. That I simply rapaciously wanted them. We had different points of view, John and I.”

  Cummings held out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and Gardner paused to take one.

  “Thank you. Yes, John retired long ago, and came and lived here quietly,” he drew a small gold lighter out of his pocket and snapped it alight, “and he enjoyed himself thoroughly. He thought I was idiotic to keep on slaving in the city, as he phrased it, when I could sit back and enjoy things the way he did. I could never manage to convince him that nothing would make me much unhappier than to bury myself in a little town – even a picturesque little town like this – and putter around all day, trimming a rose-bush, or mending a stonewall, or painting a back porch. Well, to get to the point, I came here with the avowed intention of buying John’s things. And I changed my mind at the auction this afternoon.”

  “Why so?” Asey asked.

  “It was the faces of people who were fingering the things I’d known.” G
ardner seemed to be picking his words with great care. “I found myself resenting them deeply. Then I thought of all the things I have in my own collection, things I’d fingered that had belonged to other people. I don’t know if I’m making myself at all clear, but suddenly I felt a little ashamed. I began to understand what John had meant – I just wanted possessions. Like those people prying and peering in drawers and cupboards, touching and fingering and lifting things up to scan them more closely, I didn’t really care about them. So I didn’t bid.”

  “I see.” Asey felt that he had attended enough auctions and seen enough auction faces to grasp what Gardner was driving at. “But the chest?”

  “Oh, yes.” Gardner stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. “The chest. Well, when that was brought on, I remembered it – though I hadn’t honestly thought of it in years. My grandmother used to keep her treasures and little trinkets in that chest. I remembered that on rainy days, she used to let us play with them. She would take out one thing at a time and tell us a story about it – there were brocades and little clay figures and bits of jade from China, and pink shells and odd sponges and carved wooden ornaments from the West Indies, and laces and coins. All the things that grandfather had brought back to her from all over the world. I wanted that chest. It meant something to me. I wanted it – more than the really fine things I thought I’d wanted – does this sound quite absurd to you?”

  Asey shook his head.

  “I bid two thousand for it,” Gardner said. “I’d come prepared to bid much more for the other things. Mrs. Madison raised my bid, and then she looked at me – you know how once in a while people look at you, and you suddenly realize that they know what you’re thinking and feeling? I bid three thousand, and she turned away. She understood that the chest meant something to me, otherwise I think she would have run me up for the fun of it. I spent less on what I wanted than I should ordinarily have spent on the things I thought I wanted, and didn’t bother with. That’s all there is to it, Mr. Mayo.”