“Did anyone tamper with that envelope once it reached your desk, Gertie?”
“No, sir. No one.”
“What time did Lockyear come outta the private office?”
“It was nearly 11:30.”
“When he came out,” said Banner carefully, “did he go straight out?”
“Yes – he stopped only to make an appointment for next Tuesday. I jotted it in my pad.”
“Then what’d you do?”
“I spoke to Mr Gosling on the interphone,” she said in a low hushed voice. “I told him that Captain Cozzens was waiting to see him next. He told me to withhold him for a minute and for me to come in with my notebook. I started to go in, then remembered the envelope. The sticker on it had said:
“It was now just about 11:30, eh? When you went into the private office, what was Gosling doing?”
“He was sitting at his desk.”
“He was perfectly all right?”
“Yes, Senator.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
She opened her mouth. She paused. “No, he didn’t actually say anything. He just smiled and motioned me toward the chair I usually take dictation in. I held up the envelope. I was just about to tell him about it when the gun went off.”
“And you saw Gosling being hit with the bullets?”
She nodded wretchedly. “He jerked back, then started to sag over. Then Captain Cozzens and Mr Odell rushed in.”
“Is that all?” rasped Banner.
She bowed her head again.
McKitrick, the FBI departmental head, stirred uneasily by the wall. “Now,” he said, “you see what’s got the wits of two organizations stymied!”
Banner was looking down at his stogie. It had gone out, but he wasn’t even thinking about it. He said: “I’ll tell you what I think about it.”
McKitrick looked at him hopefully. “What?”
“It couldn’t’ve happened!
Ramshaw must have been about forty-five. A cigarette dangled limply out of his slack lips as he sat on the bench at the special messenger service. He wore a weather-faded blue uniform with shrunken breeches and dusty leather leggings.
Banner loomed over him, his enveloping black wraprascal increasing his already Gargantuan size. “You remember the envelope you delivered to the New Zealand Legation yesterday?”
“That’s easy, mister. I never handled one like that before. A 10-year-old kid came into our agency about 10:00 in the morning and said somebody told him to leave the envelope with us to be delivered immediately. We didn’t ask too many questions, seeing as the kid had more than ample money to pay for the delivery.”
“Did he say whether the
“Nope.”
“Did anyone tamper with the envelope while it was here?”
“Nope. I was assigned to do the job, mister. I kept the envelope right in front of me till I delivered it to the Legation at 11:00. It had written on it,
Banner glowered. “Didja know there was a gun in it?”
Ramshaw squirmed as if his shrunken breeches chafed him. “I – I thought there was. That’s what it felt like through the heavy paper.”
“Nobody stopped you on the way to the Legation? Tell me if someone even bumped into you.”
“Nope, nope. Clear sailing all the way, mister.”
Banner looked down at a pocket watch that must have been manufactured by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. He muttered: “I can still ketch Lockyear before lunch.”
He went out of the agency, leaving behind him a grinning messenger. “Say, mister! Thanks for the tip!”
Lockyear, in his office on Pittsylvania Avenue, played with his King Tut beard as Banner made himself known to him.
“It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of, Senator,” said Lockyear. “But I’m afraid I can be of very little help. Gosling was far from dead when I left him.”
“While you were in the office,” said Banner, “did you notice anything threatening?”
“Threatening? No, not a thing, Senator.”
“Perhaps you’d tell me what you were seeing Gosling about.”
“Of course I have no objection, Senator. I’m an exporter-importer. I’ve been seeing Gosling about clearing some shipments that have been going in and out of New Zealand. Governments are touchy these days about cargoes.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all, Senator.”
In a few minutes Banner was on his way back to the Idle Hour Club. As he entered the convivial surroundings and lumbered into the dining room, he found McKitrick waiting for him.
“The only thing about this case that’s plain,” said McKitrick abruptly, “is the motive. We know why Gosling was killed.”
“Do you?” Banner squeezed in behind a table and told a waiter he wanted some straight whiskey.
McKitrick said in a lower voice: “Gosling was collecting information on a spy who’s been selling all our secrets to the Russian Government. Gosling didn’t know exactly who it was, but he was getting dangerously close to that truth. Unfortunately the spy got to Gosling first. The Russian pistol is evidence of that.”
McKitrick stopped talking long enough to allow the waiter to place Banner’s whiskey before him.
“Yass?” Banner fired up another big stogie.
McKitrick continued: “I’ve been thinking about Gertrude Wagner. She admits she’s from East Germany. Her sympathies might easily lie with the Commies. We have only her word that she’d broken with them. What’s more to the point, Banner, she was in the room with Gosling when he was killed. The
“So?” muttered Banner. “Mebbe you can explain away the sealed envelope.” When McKitrick didn’t answer, Banner shrugged. “How was she able to shoot the gun through the envelope without making any holes in it?”
McKitrick sighed. “Times are getting brutal for us investigators when all a murderer has to do is send his victim a gun by mail and it does the killing for him.”
The wind coming across the Potomac River that afternoon had the icy sting of early winter on its breath.
Gertrude Wagner, wrapped up in a cloth coat, walking on the park path, stopped suddenly. She stared nervously around her. A man in an oystercolored balmacaan, who had been following her, veered around a turn in the path. When he saw her looking straight at him he hesitated for a fraction of a second, then he kept on coming, his pace more deliberate. Under the slant brim of his hat Gertrude could see the bright red hair. The wide shoulders were familiar.
She stood there until Odell came up to her. He grinned sheepishly. “Hello, Gertie. Mind if I walk the rest of the way with you?”
She drew back a pace as if she was afraid he might contaminate her. Her face looked pale and scared. “You’ve been following me,” she accused him.
Odell was sober. “To tell the truth, Gertie-”
“Why do you have to hound me? Can’t you leave me alone?”
“I’m not hounding you,” he said, disheartening to know that she had interpreted his actions that way.
“You are, Mr Odell. I haven’t been able to make a move since you came to the Legation without having your eyes on me. You people are watching me all the time, waiting to pounce on me for the least slip I make. I thought America was a free country, but the police watch you here as much as they do over there… You think I killed Mr Gosling!”
