“Who?” asked Hilary.
“Halcón. A thief, a pusher, a pimp, and a heroin addict. Yet, for that very reason, I don’t believe he shot Governor Playfair. The Family does not entrust the art of assassination to petty hopheads. Hitmen are the most specialized of all criminals, highly paid for their superb marksmanship. Halcon’s hands shook so, that he couldn’t have hit a barn door at ten paces.”
“So it was a fanatic after all!” cried Carlos. “A psycho yielding to a sudden impulse, triggered no doubt by that abusive editorial in the local rag. Editorials like that were published before the assassinations of both McKinley and Kennedy.”
“Impulsive?” Wilkes shook his head. “That trick of getting hecklers to distract the audience from the assassin had to be organized. That implies premeditation. The whole thing had the professional touch—organized, swift, accurate, anonymous. Only the Family could have supplied the human weapon that fired that shot, but I’m not interested in him. I want the man who really killed the Governor, the man who got the Family to do it.
“Halcon must have known who that man was, but now Halcon himself is dead. He’ll never be cross-examined now. We’ll never know what he knew. That’s a Family technique. Get rid of your victim first, and then get rid of any witnesses. ‘Resisting arrest!’ The classic pretext.”
“Did the newscast say who actually fired the shot that killed Halcón?” asked Hilary.
“No. They said there was a scuffle when Halcon was being moved from one cell to another. Several guns went off. Ballistics will identify one of them. If I were there, I should look for some cop who had got just a little too close to the rackets and laid himself open to blackmail.
“The real killer must be feeling safe tonight. The public has seen a scapegoat sacrificed, and the Playfair case will now go into a file marked Closed.”
“And what has become of Freaky?” asked Tash.
“Vanished as if he had never existed. That also suggests professionals with safe houses and underground escape routes just like a spy network.”
“It’s another world,” said Hilary. “A shadow world as dark and remote from ours as the other side of the moon.”
“Not as remote as you might think,” retorted Wilkes. “Our vices still finance it as they did during Prohibition. Mrs. Playfair’s drug habit was one link between the two worlds, and there are many other more important links, financial and political. The underworld reverses our world and so proves that it is a reflection of our world, a mirror-image. It stands still only when we stand still. It moves only when we move.”
Tash was watching Wilkes’ face. “A penny for your real thoughts. You haven’t come so far just to tell us things like that.”
“You won’t like my thoughts.”
“Try us,” said Carlos. “We may be more broadminded than you think.”
“At first glance, this case is like a cliff without a handhold or even a toehold for the climber,” said Wilkes. “But, even on the blankest cliffside, a determined mountaineer can usually find one or two toeholds, however slight.”
“And you have found some?” cried Tash.
“Just one. And it is only acceptable if we assume three things we haven’t proved. First, that the killing of Halcón was the killing of a scapegoat by some agent of the Family in order to protect the real murderer of Governor Playfair. Second, that Mrs. Playfair’s death was murder, too.”
“I knew it all along!” exclaimed Tash. “I had warned her about keeping an ashtray on her bed with a burning cigarette in it. She’d promised she’d stop. I knew she meant it from the way she said it. If she was being as careful as that, I don’t see how the fire could have started accidentally. It was arson, and it was meant to kill her and Jeremy both. He only escaped because he was with me, and the murderer couldn’t have anticipated that.” “What is your third assumption?” asked Hilary. “That both murders were planned by someone intimately associated with the Governor and Mrs. Playfair.” “And the toehold?” prompted Carlos.
“I’ve found out why the fire alarm didn’t go off in time the night of the fire. We missed the reason because it was so obvious, right in front of our eyes, and we were looking for something hidden and subtle.
“You recall the penny that was found in Miss Perkins’ office after the dead canary was left on her typewriter? And the dimes found in Mrs. Playfair’s room after the fire?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Have you all forgotten that a coin will blow a fuse and cut out any electrical circuit, including the one that powers an alarm system? If you are able to put a new fuse in the fuse box afterward, there will be no evidence to show what has happened.”
“Of course!” said Tash. “Carlos, I remember your telling me that we had an old-fashioned alarm system at Leafy Way with no long-term batteries to back it up if current went off during a storm.”
“Simple, isn’t it?” said Wilkes. “As you know, each floor at Leafy Way had its own fuse box, and each suite of rooms its own alarm system with its own circuit. How easy to blow a fuse, knock out a circuit, and leave the alarm in one suite off long enough for the fire to get out of control and spread. Then replace the fuse, so the alarm will go off too late to be of any use as a warning, but early enough to keep people from realizing that the alarm must have been turned off temporarily when the fire started. Its delayed reaction would be put down to some flaw in the mechanism.”
“Wouldn’t it have been even simpler to set and reset the alarm buttons?” suggested Hilary.
“To do that, you’d have to find out the combination. There
