“No?” she jeered. “Thanks for nothing! Who did, Mr. Clever?”
But her eyes were guarded and frightened.
Craig cast a fleeting glance out at the garden:
“Outside,” he said crisply, “there isn’t enough breeze to stir a leaf—so that was not a window banging. I should say it was your accomplice—boyfriend, maybe—hiding upstairs.”
She gasped. He smiled almost apologetically and went on:
“These modern houses are the devil. They relay every sound.”
“You…!”
She was on her feet facing him, and her face was livid. Craig’s eyes hardened and he went on relentlessly:
“Your boyfriend no doubt knocked out hubby, dumped him in the car with the engine running. You were hoping to get away with a suicide set-up. You’d overheard him phone me, so you didn’t wait. You didn’t dare; it would have been a bad mistake to have let him have that little chat with me. Only thing was,” he said slowly, “you made a mistake of another kind. One of you locked the garage and returned the key.” He nodded towards the front door. “Which was silly. If the key was there, how could your husband have locked himself in? It couldn’t have been taken without your knowing.… In your own words, you have been here all the afternoon.”
For a moment there was silence while they stared at one another, then her eyes suddenly widened and shifted to a spot over his shoulder.
Craig spun on his heel, ducking his head to one side—and the heavy poker that the curly-headed young man had aimed at the back of his neck whistled harmlessly past his ear.
The woman screamed:
“Jim!”
“Hallo, son,” said Craig chattily, and whipped his fist into the newcomer’s stomach, bending him up like a jack-knife.
Curly Head gave an agonized grunt and lurched forward. Craig grabbed him with his left hand and pushed him back to arm’s length. His right fist draped itself shatteringly on Curly’s jaw. Craig released him and let Curly Head sink gently to the floor.
“And now, Mrs. Moran,” Craig said genially as he put his foot firmly on the poker, “Shall you call the police? Perhaps, after all, you don’t feel up to it, so I will.”
And Craig picked up the telephone.
THE WARREN STREET ALIBI
When the door clanged behind him and he stood on the right side of the prison walls for the first time in three long years, one thought lay uppermost in young Sammy Ryan’s mind. It was to find, as soon as possible, the man who had been directly responsible for his wearisome sojourn as guest of His Majesty’s Government.
That man’s name was Craig.
But Sammy’s aim was not as had been many others who had found themselves in the same unfortunate circumstances. He was not nursing a revengeful hate in his heart—on the contrary, his emotions towards the private detective were of a hopefully friendly nature;
He had a healthy enough outlook to realize that Craig had borne him no personal animosity. Craig had been responsible for getting Sammy a stretch simply as a result of his investigations of that particular case, and, in fact, had felt sorry for him. Sufficiently sorry to promise to see that Sammy would be all right on his release, that is, if Sammy’s protestations when he went in, that he wanted nothing more than to go straight, still held when he came out.
Three years behind bars having convinced Sammy Ryan that above all things the straight and narrow was the path for him, he now sought Craig’s redemption of his earlier promise.
Nor did Nat Craig fail him.
So, when one evening Sammy’s wife came round with the news that old man Robinson had been done in and the police were holding her husband, Craig was interested.
Mrs. Ryan said tearfully:
“I just don’t know what to think—only it wasn’t Sammy that did it. He wouldn’t. Why should he when you was so kind in getting him a job and everything? Why should he kill Mr. Robinson?”
She was sitting on the edge of a chair in his office with a damp ball of handkerchief screwed in her fist. Craig placed a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Ryan. It hasn’t been proved he had anything to do with it yet.”
She dabbed at her face with the handkerchief. “But you know the police. They’ll be thinking it was him because of him being put away last time, but it wasn’t—”
“They can’t pin anything on him on account of that.” Craig soothed her. “I’ll go down and see how the land lies.”
Her eyes were shining with tears and gratitude.
“It’d be ever so kind of you. Pore Sammy’d be that glad to see you.”
Craig said: “You slip home and I’ll have a chat with Sammy.”
When she had left, Craig made his way to Robinson’s the newsagent in Warren Street, where he had found Sammy Ryan a job. It seemed unlikely that Sammy would do such a crazy thing as murder his employer just when he was getting along steadily as an honest citizen. Craig seldom misjudged his man, and he didn’t like to think that he had made a mistake this time either.
He found Inspector Hooper plus his sergeant and the fingerprint and photograph boys already at work when he reached the little shop. The police surgeon, having expressed his opinion that the deceased had been shot in the back of the head from a couple of yards’ range, had departed
Craig gazed mildly round the scene from the doorpost
Inspector Hooper hadn’t expected to see him so soon, and Craig suspected he didn’t look overjoyed at his appearance at that.
“What do you want, Craig?”
“Just thought I’d come along,” explained Craig pleasantly. “Sammy’s a sort of protégé of mine, you might say. I feel quite responsible for him.”
His gaze swept the shop.
The Inspector murmured to the rabbit-toothed individual that he had been talking to before Craig had appeared on the scene.
He turned back to Craig. “He’s in the sitting room at the back,” he said shortly. “Waiting to be taken along to the station.”
“Sammy never carried a gun in his life,” Craig offered mildly.
The other shrugged.
“Maybe he’s been seeing too many gangster films since he came out. He had a gun this evening all right.”
“Yes,” chimed in Rabbit-tooth. “He was carrying it when I grabbed him.”
Craig turned slowly and raised an inquiring eyebrow. The Inspector sighed.
“This is Mr. Benson,” he said. “Mr. Robinson’s brother-in-law.”
“How nice,” murmured Craig.
Benson gave him a stiff nod. “A terrible business,” he offered. “Lucky I hung on to the chap.”
Craig was interested.
“What happened?”
“I’d just gone out for a few minutes to telephone my wife—this telephone is out of order—and I heard the shot,” explained Benson. “I came back immediately, of course, and was just in time to spot Ryan dashing out of the shop. I grabbed him and held on while I yelled for the police.”
“Motive: robbery?” queried Craig.
The Inspector nodded vigorously.
“No doubt that was it. Only Mr. Benson’s arrival scared him off.”