“Why,” Leonidas inquired, “are you so positive, Cuff?”
Cuff laughed again. “Say, Bill, I know every garage in Dalton, see? And Carnavon, and Adamstown, and all abouts. That’s why it was so hard remembering about this truck. I knew it was in a place I din’t know, see? And besides, I seen all their papers. They’re on the square, see? Rossi made me check the papers, see, so nobody wouldn’t say he was giving his cousin a break. That’s the kind of guy Rossi is, see? Like he said to me, he could have gone through them papers himself, and nobody wouldn’t ever of known if he passed over them battery serials or not. But he give the job to me. And they wouldn’t of done like that if they hadn’t of been on the square. And there, was plenty garages, see, that didn’t want us to look over their papers and books and stuff. Some of ‘em put up an awful squawk.”
“Cuff Murray,” Margie said, “are you talking about the serial numbers on that battery from the bandit’s car?”
“Yeah, sure,” Cuff said. “That’s when I was in this garage, see. That time when Rossi took me with him while they was checking them battery serials—”
“Cuff!” Cassie said. “Rossi took you to check things?”
“Yeah. You see, Bill,” Cuff said with pride, “some guys was trying to hold up the bank, see? And I got the one guy, and the other three, they beat it, and then they ditched the car and burned it, see, and the colonel was trying to track ‘em down by the battery. The battery serial number wasn’t touched, see? And it was a replacement battery. And we was trying to track it down and find out who bought it, because we found out from the guy that made the batteries it was in a shipment that come to Dalton. But Kelling—that’s the guy on Centre Street—bought the lot. He din’t keep records who bought ‘em off him, on account they was cheap batteries, and wasn’t guaranteed, nor nothing. He kept records, but—”
“He kept records,” Cassie said, “the way Emory Kelling keeps all records. ‘Merchandise, sixteen-eighty-eight.’ ‘Merchandise, one-thirty-one-ninety-eight.’ He might have been selling a battery or a curling iron or a fish rod, for all anyone could tell from his old records! Rutherford said he understood perfectly why Emory Kelling was always in hot water with the Income Tax Department, and always being fined. Anyway, Rutherford took all those bills for merchandise that month, and tried to find out which one might have been for that battery, and who bought it, and who he sold it to. D’you see?”
“M’yes,” Leonidas said. “Rutherford would take, for example, John Smith’s bill for eighteen dollars, and try to find out from John Smith what the merchandise might have been.”
“Yes—how well you put things, Bill! And of course, most of the garages and the electrical men and everyone who bought from Kelling’s had their own records,” Cassie said, “showing just what the items were that they bought. Rutherford managed to track down every last battery except one, that one. And I begin to see why. Look, Cuff, Rossi actually took you with him to this Arthur Street garage, and made you check the books, and the vouchers?”
“Huh?”
“The books! The vouchers! The duplicates! The stubs! The counterfoils! The—oh, what’s the use.” Cassie said, “What is the use? You don’t even know what I’m talking about! Margie, did you have any inkling of this?”
“He never said a word, the dope. I know all about the bandit he got, but I never heard a murmur about this. The dope! Cuff, you lump!”
“Aw—”
“From now on,” Margie said, “you better just tell me everything, see? Bill, is this mixed up with this Winthrop dame?”
“Remotely,” Leonidas said. “M’yes. I begin to see things. Cuff, you had your picture taken helping kiddies cross streets, so I assume that you’re regularly assigned to a prowl car. Are you?”
“Car Twenty,” Cuff said. “But that was a special detail, see? Rossi took me special. It made a nice change. I liked it.”
“Oh, Cuff!” Cassie said. “Why didn’t you tell me, or Margie!”
“I told you I had a special detail one day,” Cuff protested. “I did tell you.”
“But it was on Washington’s Birthday, wasn’t it?” Cassie said. “Back then? I just naturally thought it was the parade detail! Oh, Cuff, and you don’t even know a voucher from an ostrich! Could you understand anything that you read?”
“Aw, sure, Mrs. Price! Rossi gimme the papers,” Cuff said, “and I sat down at the desk, and I read through all of ‘em. It wasn’t very hard. Honest. They was all typed, see, in big print. Like you done the exam answers I learned—”
“I knew,” Leonidas said, “that sooner or later that would come out. Cassie, you stole the police examination papers, didn’t you?”
“Why, Bill, I never did!” Cassie said righteously. “What a malicious thought! Jock just happened to be in the room while Rutherford was making out the questions, and purely by chance—by the remotest chance, Bill, Jock spilled the ink on the question paper, and then, naturally, he offered to type the paper over for Rutherford. And—”
“And you took the ink-stained paper,” Leonidas said, “and typed out the answers, and taught them to Cuff!”
“Jock said you’d find out,” Cassie said. “He knew you would. My, what a week! It was like trying to teach Eliza to talk properly in Pygmalion. Jock and Margie and I had to take that Jamaica cruise to rest up. We were awfully afraid Rutherford might change the order of the questions, but mercifully, he didn’t. And really, Cuff’s done a lot of good since he got on the force—”
“M’yes,” Leonidas said drily. “Safeguarding the kiddies, and encouraging his ex-pals to—er—swipe the seventh hole. Cuff,
