“Cut it out.” From the lieutenant. “Now, if you’d ask me, I’d say this murderer has to be one of two things. Either he’s smarter than anyone else I’ve ever come up against, so smart he can hide what he’s feeling and thinking. Or else he’s so dumb and tough he doesn’t have anything to show. I’ve had that kind before.”
“The first description fits Mr. Kistler perfectly.”
“Okay, baby, the second fits you.”
“Does it? What I was really thinking was that it might be someone who kept his mind fastened so tightly on something else that it completely covers up what you’re trying to get at.”
“Say, that would do for Buffingham, wouldn’t it? Nice work!”
“A few other people, too,” the lieutenant broke in again. “Well, I’m going to have Buffingham down here and take another crack at him.”
He ordered the detective in the hall to bring Mr. Buffingham down. Mr. Buffingham returned with him immediately.
“Something’s come up that makes me have another go at you, Buffingham.” The lieutenant’s manner held its usual smooth threat. “I’ve been going into the records of the Liberry case. You didn’t come into that case directly, Buffingham, but I’ll stake plenty that you were connected with Mrs. Garr in that old business some way. What were you—a come-on?”
“I never saw Mrs. Garr before I came to this house.”
“How about knowing the Wallers?”
“Know ’em? Sure. They been here a long time. Seen ’em around.”
“Ever know Waller was once on the force?”
Buffingham hesitated. “I don’t know. Had a vague idea he was.”
“Know him at the time of the Liberry case?”
“No.”
“Oh, you’re sure. So you know when the Liberry case was?”
“I remember the story in the papers. Big story.”
“Yeah. Big story. What were you doing in those days?”
“Oh, I was workin’, I guess.”
“Where?”
“Drugstore, it must of been. That’s all the jobs I ever had. Mostly jerking sodas.”
Lieutenant Strom paused before his next question. The only movement in the room was the flicker of Mr. Buffingham’s restless dark eyes.
“Did you ever work in the Stacy Drugstore at the corner of Cleveland and St. Simon Street?”
Again, as on Wednesday, something came and went behind Mr. Buffingham’s eyes.
“Yeah, I worked there once.” He laughed. “I worked in half the drugstores in town.”
“When did you work there?” Sharply.
“When—Let’s see. That was a while ago. Twelve years. Fifteen years. I don’t know. Hell, I worked in too many places. You know. You get took on for a rush season. Christmas. Or summer at the fountain. Then you get laid off.”
“Stacy’s still running that drugstore, Buffingham. I can find out.”
Mr. Buffingham’s shoulders shrugged.
“Sure you weren’t working there the summer of 1919?”
“Might of. I wouldn’t remember.”
“There’s something to make you remember. Cleveland at St. Simon Street is only two blocks below 417 St. Simon. And there was plenty of hell popping at 417 St. Simon Street that summer.”
“It didn’t have nothing to do with me. I wouldn’t know.”
Was he tense, answering carefully? Or were his answers as casual as they sounded on the surface?
The lieutenant appeared to have gone as far as he could see to go up that alley. He switched to another.
“Now let’s get going on last Monday night, when Mrs. Dacres had this party we’ve heard so much about. You came in with Mr. Grant just after midnight. You go upstairs. You sleep. Now, Buffingham, you know doggone well there were noises going on in this house that night. It’s impossible to go downstairs, even carpeted stairs, in a house this age, without making some creaks. Mrs. Dacres heard ’em, the night Mrs. Garr was done in. You can’t—”
He turned abruptly, called:
“You, Jones out there, steal silently upstairs, will you?”
“Say, what is this?” From Jones.
“Do what you’re told!”
“Okay.”
Jones stealing upstairs was so evident I giggled.
“Swell burglar Jones’d make,” the lieutenant interrupted himself further before going back to Buffingham. “Hear that, Buffingham? We know that kind of noise was going on in this house Monday night. Not as loud as that, but some noise. And you can’t saw a bolt without a whine. Not quick, the way this guy had to do it. Little Quick Ears here was out. So was Kistler. Sands and the Wallers said they had been in bed a long time; they might have been sleeping hard, if it wasn’t one of them that was up and about. But, by God, I’d like to hear your reason for not hearing things. Your room’s right at the head of the stairs. You’d just got in. If you didn’t hear anything, Buffingham, it sounds doggone suspicious to me.”
Mr. Buffingham hadn’t smoked this time. But now he took out a cigarette and began revolving it rapidly with both hands, his eyes fixed on it.
“I wouldn’t want to get nobody in trouble,” he said at last.
“Let me worry about that. You can’t get anyone in trouble he didn’t get himself into. What’d you hear?”
“Creaks, you know. In the hall. Going down the stairs. Like them he made. Jones. Only not so loud.”
“Where’d they start—other end of the hall?”
The cigarette revolved more slowly.
“I guess not. My end. I guess they went past my door.”
“Past your door. From Grant’s or Kistler’s rooms?”
“He”—Mr. Buffingham motioned with his head toward Hodge—“he wasn’t in yet. I don’t think. I hadn’t gone to sleep yet.”
“Grant, then!”
No reply.
“Grant,” said Hodge. “Baloney.”
“Or someone hiding in your rooms, Hodge,” I said.
“Grant!” the lieutenant repeated briskly, his eyes alight. “I’m always getting around to that guy. He hated her, too. Said he did. I’m going to have him down. No, Buffingham, you stay here. Grant!”
22
THE OBLIGING JONES WENT upstairs for Mr. Grant. While we waited, Hodge laughingly showed Lieutenant Strom the timetable he had worked out. The lieutenant, not laughing, added the paper to a bunch for his pocket.
“Nice evidence if it turns out you did it,” he
