Trial by Fury Read online

  “Arlene Goudge,” Helene said. “And Dr. Spain just took her down to the shed back of the Enterprise.”

  Malone shook himself a little, like a collie just out of a bathtub, took Helene’s arm, and started up the path toward the shed. The rapidly fading voices back of him were discussing the rescue in excited tones. At the entrance to the shed a little crowd had gathered at a respectful distance. Malone pushed their way through and went on into the shed with Helene.

  Arlene Goudge was lying on the ground, looking beautiful, pale, and completely alive. Dr. Spain, on one side of her, was searching anxiously through his pockets for something. Tom Burrows was standing on the bottom step of the stairs, watching everything. And Jerry Luckstone was kneeling on the ground, holding both of her hands.

  “Darling,” Jerry Luckstone was saying incoherently. “Darling, I love you. Darling, why did you ever do such a crazy thing? Darling, aren’t we going to be married?”

  Arlene opened a pair of reproachful brown eyes. “Are we?”

  “Of course we are,” Jerry Luckstone babbled.

  She sniffed faintly. “But you’d never asked me.”

  Dr. Spain had found what he was looking for. It was his cigarette case. He took one out, put it in his mouth, and began hunting for matches.

  “She’ll be all right,” he pronounced. “A good healthy girl like that can stand a lot more than a ducking in the river even in her condition.”

  Jerry Luckstone looked up. Malone wouldn’t have believed his face could have turned paler than it already was, but it did. He said hoarsely, “Condition? What are you talking about?”

  Dr. Spain, having just found the matches, dropped them. “Do you mean to say she hasn’t told you?”

  Malone glanced down at the girl. In spite of the fact that she had been half drowned, a definite blush was beginning to grow on her colorless face. The little lawyer grabbed Helene’s arm.

  “This is no place for an audience.”

  They pushed on up the stairs into the Enterprise office. At the same moment Ed Skindingsrude opened the street door and came in. Malone stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Here’s your coat,” Ed Skindingsrude said, holding it out.

  “Thanks,” Malone said. He felt in the pocket to make sure his cigars were all right. They were. His lips were suddenly stiff as he formed the words, “How’s Miss McGowan?”

  Ed Skindingsrude stared at him with stunned eyes for a moment. He didn’t say anything.

  Malone strode to the head of the stairs and bellowed, “Dr. Spain! You’re needed!”

  Dr. Spain came puffing up the stairs, muttering, “If the darn-fool girls would only— Well, what’s the matter up here?”

  Malone explained quickly about Miss McGowan, how she had fallen on the desk, how her face had looked.

  “Stroke,” Doctor Spain said, taking a firm grip on his little satchel. “Always thought she’d have one. Wouldn’t think as thin a woman as that would have high-blood pressure, would you?” He kicked open the door. “Where’d you say she was, the bank?”

  Malone caught up with him in a bound. Helene and the county board chairman were two steps behind.

  “But I remember a farm woman near Delville,” Dr. Spain was saying.

  “Doctor,” Malone said, trying to use his breath for talking and racing at the same time, “if it’s a stroke, will she be able to talk?”

  Just about this time Phil Smith joined them.

  “Talk?” Dr. Spain had broken off in the middle of a word to repeat it. “Maybe. Maybe not. You never can tell about these cases. Take old man Waterman, here in town. Had a stroke when he was seventy-one. Lived to be ninety-two. Never spoke a word in all that time. Three days before he died, he started talking clear as a bell. Fact is, though, I always suspected he could talk all the time, and was just too mean to do it. But with a stroke—”

  Alvin Goudge caught up with them at this point. “Stroke? Who’s had a stroke?”

  Malone wanted to say, “You will have, when you hear about your new son-in-law.” He didn’t have the wind left for it. Instead he pointed dumbly to the bank.

  Main Street was nearly deserted, everyone having gone down to the riverbank. Halfway down the block Dr. Spain made the turn into the Farmers’ Bank on one rubber heel, without slowing down. No spectators noticed what was happening.

  They followed him into the private office, Malone, Helene, Ed Skindingsrude, Phil Smith, Mr. Goudge, and the bank examiner who had somehow been picked up on the way.

  Ellen McGowan still lay across the flat-topped desk, exactly as she had fallen. Yet there seemed to be a difference in the way she lay, some indefinable thing that had to do with nerves and muscle.

  Dr. Spain put down his satchel and began a quick examination, while the silent little group watched from the doorway.

  “Now this woman near Delville,” he began. Suddenly he straightened up. “Well, I’ll be dumbfounded!” His voice showed only a faint surprise. “That’s funny. Her throat’s been cut.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Malone was the first to recover his speech. “Well, doctor, your statistics were right. This makes four.”

  There was just a shadow of a pause before Doc Spain said, “I hope the statistics were right.”

  “If you added them up wrong,” the little lawyer said savagely, “either Ellen McGowan isn’t dead, or else there’s one more murder coming.” He felt that he had never been as angry in his life. “Maybe you’d better check up, to make sure.” He strode across the room and grabbed the telephone from the desk. The movement of its wire flipped the dead woman’s hand to one side. Someone in the group still by the door gasped, he didn’t know who it was but he was sure it wasn’t Helene. “Get me the sheriff’s office,” he growled into the mouthpiece.

  In the brief pause that followed he looked indignantly at the shocked faces. “A few more murders and somebody in this town will know what to do when one happens. If there isn’t a doctor in the house, call the police. If there is, call the police anyway. If the— Hello?” he roared at the telephone. “The sheriff? Deputy hell, I want to talk to Sheriff Kling.” Another moment passed, in it his anger began to fade. By the time a voice snarled over the wire, he was able to say, very cheerfully, “Hello, sweetheart. You’d better drop over to the bank. We have another murder for you.” A pause, and, “No, you bastard, I’m not kidding.” He slammed down the receiver.

  In the interval before the sheriff and his henchmen came roaring in, he looked over the spectators. There had been that little lapse between the time he’d impetuously dived into the river and when he’d remembered Ellen McGowan. During that time, no one in Jackson, Wisconsin, had noticed where anyone else was at any one moment. Practically the only person in the town who couldn’t have murdered Ellen McGowan was Arlene Goudge.

  “I had nothing to do with it,” he answered the glare Sheriff Kling directed at him from the doorway. “And the fact that I’m as wet as the St. Lawrence Waterways right now is my only alibi.”

  He explained what had transpired, with a little help from the spectators.

  “Obviously,” Sheriff Kling said coldly, remembering his high-school English and the fact that a reporter might creep in at any moment, “when the dead woman was alone in the room somebody murdered her.”

  “Obviously,” Malone said, “you’re full of small pieces of flypaper.” He pushed his way out of the room, grabbing Helene’s arm on the way. Her flesh was like ice.

  He paused in the lobby of the half-wrecked bank and looked at her. From inside the private office he could hear Sheriff Kling calling Charlie Hausen, the coroner. The little lawyer looked at Helene; the color had all drained out of her cheeks.

  “Malone, at least they can’t pin this on Jake. He wasn’t here. They—” Her breath caught sharply in her throat. “Well, when we find him we can tell him there was one murder he didn’t do. When we find him.”

  “Aw gw’an,” Malone said, weighing every word. “He could have s
neaked in through the window.”

  “He couldn’t have if he’s—” She broke off, reached for a cigarette, and managed to light it with the fourth match. “Malone, Arlene Goudge.”

  “She picked the damnedest time to jump,” Malone said. “One minute more—”

  “That’s not what I mean. Did she jump?”

  Sheriff Kling hurried through the lobby, ignoring both of them, followed by one deputy.

  Malone waited till he had gone and then said, “This sounds like an old song or something. Did she fall, or was she pushed?”

  “There were other people on that bridge,” Helene said through tight lips. “And one of them was Tom Burrows. Why didn’t he jump in and save her?”

  Before Malone had a chance to speak, Jerry Luckstone came into the lobby.

  “Ellen McGowan’s been murdered,” Malone told him.

  “That’s too bad,” the young district attorney said. “Say, is Phil Smith—” He stopped suddenly and said, “What did you say?”

  The little lawyer repeated it, with details.

  “But that’s terrible,” Jerry Luckstone said. His voice didn’t seem shocked or even surprised. Obviously there was something on his mind. “I can’t believe it. Ellen McGowan. Is Phil Smith in there?”

  Malone nodded. He called, “Mr. Smith.” The white-haired, handsome man came out, looked wonderingly at him and at Jerry Luckstone.

  “Listen, Phil,” the young district attorney said in a voice that had a lapel-grasping quality to it. “do you have to wait five days for a marriage license?”

  Phil Smith blinked. “You know the law as well as I do, Jerry.”

  “Damn it. I don’t want to wait five days.”

  Malone decided to be helpful. “I know a little about Wisconsin marriage laws,” he suggested. “There’s such a thing as a special dispensation—”

  The county clerk looked at Jerry Luckstone. “How about it, Jerry? If Doc Spain will say the word—”

  Dr. Spain was called into the conference. He said, “Hell yes, enough for half a dozen dispensations,” and went out on the street to watch for Charlie Hausen’s ambulance.

  “In that case,” Phil Smith said, clearing his throat He paused. “How about Florence?”

  “That’s all right,” Jerry Luckstone said. “I called her up and she drove right down here. She’s taken Arlene up to her house to spend the night, and we’d like to get married in the morning.”

  Malone counted to ten and decided he could trust himself to speak. “Well, I certainly wish you all the happiness you deserve.”

  “Thanks,” the young district attorney said. For the first time in their knowledge of him, there was a relaxed, almost happy look on his face.

  There was a howl of brakes in the street outside, and Charlie Hausen’s assistants began preparing to move Ellen McGowan’s body into the ambulance.

  “Wait a minute,” Malone said suddenly. He drew Jerry Luckstone into a corner of the lobby. “What authority do you have to get here in the county to exhume a body?”

  Jerry Luckstone turned pale. “Why?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “Well, Charlie Hausen can give an order. Here in Jackson County the coroner has the authority to give permission to open a grave.”

  “Then get it from him while he’s here,” Malone said quickly, “before he drives off with Ellen McGowan’s body. Or better yet, get him to send an assistant to drive the ambulance, and have him stay here.”

  “All right,” Jerry Luckstone said, frowning. “But why?”

  “You ask too God-damned many questions,” the little lawyer said. “Just get Charlie Hausen to stick around, and get the necessary order to open Ellen McGowan’s father’s grave.”

  This time the young man turned completely white. He opened his mouth, shut it again, finally managed a completely unintelligible sound.

  “I said not to ask so many questions,” Malone snapped. He relit his cigar. “Her father presumably died out in California and his body was shipped back here for burial. Am I right?”

  Jerry Luckstone nodded, without saying a word.

  “I thought so,” Malone said, looking fixedly at the match that had burned out in his hand. “You get that order through in a hurry and make arrangements to open the grave tonight and investigate that coffin that was shipped back from California.” He snapped the match in two and dropped it on the floor. “Because I’m pretty damned sure you’re going to find it’s empty.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Half a dozen reporters had cornered Mr. Goudge, of the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Committee, and were asking him (a) did he know that his daughter had just been pulled out of the river, (b) could he suggest why his daughter had jumped into the river, and (c) did he have any statement to make regarding his daughter’s act and any possible connection with the series of crimes that had taken place in Jackson.

  Mr. Goudge upheld a fine old tradition, and utterly delighted the reporters, by setting his jaw hard and announcing grimly, “Gentlemen, I no longer have a daughter.”

  As far as the Committee’s plans were concerned, he had nothing to say, save that it was hardly fair of the Journal to refer to it as a “vigilantes mob.”

  At that point the reporters caught sight of Helene and Malone, on their way to the hotel, and set after them in full cry.

  Malone yelped, “No you don’t!” grabbed Helene by the elbow, and ran, calling back over his shoulder, “You can’t talk to me till I get my clothes changed.” He had dragged her into Wilk’s Garage, behind two parked trucks, through the back door, up the alley and into the rear entrance of the hotel before the astonished press had time to catch its collective breath.

  “A lot of nerve,” he growled, “wanting to interview a man when he’s covered with mud.”

  “Usually the procedure is reversed,” Helene said acidly, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “For that matter,” the little lawyer said, starting slowly up the stairs, “why did the double-damned idiot jump in the river? Especially,” he added, “right at that particular moment.”

  “Didn’t you ever go to the movies when you were a boy? The girl always jumped in the river after her old man had turned her out. You couldn’t expect much originality from a girl like Arlene.”

  Malone sniffed. “Well, I wish she’d waited five minutes longer,” he complained. “Though even so, I doubt if— What the hell’s the matter?”

  Helene had stopped suddenly, one hand flung against her white cheek, staring at a step just ahead of them. “Malone!”

  “Well, what?”

  “That’s Jake’s necktie!”

  Malone stared at it for a moment, then picked it up from the corner of the stair.

  “It’s one of those silly-looking hand-woven ones. I’d know it anywhere. Malone, how did it get here?”

  The little lawyer turned the necktie over and over in his hand as though he expected to find a code message written on it.

  “Why didn’t we see it when we came downstairs this noon?” he wanted to know.

  “Because it was way over in the corner. You wouldn’t see it going downstairs, you’d have to be going up.” She drew a quick breath. “I don’t care why we didn’t see it, I want to know what it was doing there. Malone, where’s Jake?”

  “Shut up,” he said. His voice was like the crack of a whip.

  It worked. After a moment she took out a cigarette and lit it with fingers that trembled only a little.

  “Malone, he wasn’t dressed when we left him. And we weren’t gone such a long time. Something happened that made him get up and dress in a hurry, and go out by the back stairs.” She took a deep drag on the cigarette. “He was in such a hurry that he left with his necktie in his hand, intending to put it on on the way. His shoelaces must have been untied, too, I’ve seen Jake dress to go to a fire when the hook-and-ladder company went by the window.” She dropped the cigarette and stepped on it with her high heel. “Then in his hu
rry he dropped it here.”

  “Damned good reasoning,” Malone said absent-mindedly. He scratched the back of his neck. “Then he left the hotel down these back stairs. I thought so all along. Otherwise someone in the lobby would have seen him.” He paused, scowled. “That means he didn’t leave the hotel alone.”

  “What do you mean? How do you know?”

  “Because,” the little lawyer said patiently, handing the necktie to Helene, who held it as though it might turn and bite her, “he wouldn’t have known about the back staircase. We wouldn’t have known about it if Jerry Luckstone hadn’t told us where to find it, and where it led. Even if he’d stumbled on it by accident—which is unlikely since you have to open a door to get to it—he wouldn’t have known where it led. So someone must have come up here, routed him out, and gone with him down these stairs.”

  “But who? Why?”

  Malone shook his head.

  She looked at him blankly. He realized how very pale, how very weary she was. He suspected that she had slept little, if any, the night before. Her cheeks were almost marblelike, her eyes two great pools of blue shadows. She turned and started up the stairs again.

  “I always knew Jake would lose that necktie sometime,” she said coldly.

  At the door of her room she paused a moment, one hand on the doorknob. “Let’s meet for dinner in half an hour. Do you think you can get all that mud off in half an hour?”

  “If I can’t,” Malone said gallantly, “I’ll be here anyway.”

  He closed the door of his room behind him, caught hold of the corner of the bed, and leaned on it for a minute, breathing deeply. A curious monster, evidently originally dressed in white, now covered with half-dried mud, weeds, and green slime, looked at him from the mirror above the dresser.

  “I never felt better in my life,” Malone assured himself.

  He clung there for a moment, then threw himself on the bed, face down, his arms above his head. For five minutes he sprawled there, his eyes closed, not thinking of anything at all, not thinking of Jake, nor of Ellen McGowan’s face as she lay across the desk, nor of the wet hair blinding him as he struggled in the river, nor of the empty coffin they would dig out of a Jackson, Wisconsin, grave that night.