The Almost Perfect Murder by Hulbert Footner (reading the story of the TXT) 📕

let him go, it’s all right with me. Give him a chance for

his life. We can shout for the police when he starts down the ladder.”

 

Pandemonium arose at this.

 

“Yes!” cried the good-natured Mephisto.

 

“No,” screamed Zuleika, “let him go to the chair.”

 

Abdullah himself settled the matter by refusing to go. “I didn’t do

it,” he gabbled over and over. “I’m innocent—I swear it!”

 

“All right,” said Mr. Punch with a shrug. He closed the window.

 

The next thing I remember (you must keep in mind that this whole scene

lasted but about three minutes) was seeing Zuleika in a corner of the

room busy with a powder pad and a tiny mirror. Like most women no

longer young, as soon as she began to get a grip on herself her first

thought was to repair the damage to her make-up. It was absolutely a

pitiable sight to see her dabbing at her cheeks, because the woman’s

eyes were quite daft.

 

Suddenly Abdullah levelled a shaking forefinger at her and yelled:

“She’s left-handed!”

 

It was true; Zuleika had started to apply lipstick with her left hand.

 

“She’s left-handed! She’s left-handed!” yelled Abdullah.

 

“Well, what of it?” said Zuleika, staring, lipstick poised in air.

 

“She sat at my right,” cried Abdullah. “The shot was fired beside me.

She’s left-handed! She did it!”

 

“You lie!” cried Zuleika, showing her teeth. She had been a dark

beauty in her day. The rest of us simply gaped at this new turn.

 

“If she is his wife she had good cause to do it,” shrilled Abdullah.

“He was always running after other women. He took my girl from me!

Zuleika snatched up the pistol beside me. She did it! I will swear it

on the Book!”

 

“You lie!” repeated Zuleika. “You accuse me,” she cried suddenly; “how

about her?” She pointed to the tall figure of Anne Boleyn quietly

watching. “She was supposed to have emptied the magazine, wasn’t she?

She played a sleight-of-hand trick on all of you, that’s what! Why did

she change her seat at the table? So she could slip between me and

Abdullah when the lights went out and fire the shot! Take her mask

off, and let’s have a look at her!”

 

Mme. Storey smiled coldly at this tirade. She did not have to protect

her mask, because there was nobody present with nerve enough to touch

it. “I was the first one under the table,” she said quietly.

 

“Then how did the gun get loaded again?” Zuleika furiously demanded.

“You were the last one to touch it.”

 

“No,” said Anne Boleyn. “Because somehow it got moved from my old seat

next to Harlequin around to Abdullah’s.”

 

This forgotten fact was received in a dead silence.

 

“Let me have a look at that gun, please,” said Anne Boleyn to Mephisto,

who had been keeping it all this time.

 

“Don’t give it to her!” cried Zuleika.

 

“I’ve emptied it,” muttered Mephisto. “We don’t want any more

shooting.”

 

“You may keep it in your own hands,” said my employer coolly. “I only

want to look at the top of the barrel.”

 

She glanced at it as Mephisto held it, and then threw a bombshell among

us by saying: “This is not the gun I emptied and threw on the table.”

 

We stared at her. Mephisto instantly became panicky. “I have no other

gun on me,” he stammered.

 

“I didn’t say you had,” she said.

 

“How do you know it’s not the same gun?” cried Mr. Punch.

 

“Because I marked it when I unloaded it,” she answered. “I scratched

the barrel with my ring.”

 

“Another gun?” said Abdullah huskily. “What has become of the first

one?”

 

“That’s what we’d all like to know,” she said blandly. “Please stand

where you are, and I’ll try to dope it out.”

 

She did not have to speak twice, for all were arrested by the new and

peremptory tone in her voice. Stepping to the left of the head of the

table—that is to say, almost on the spot from whence the shot had been

fired—she went on thoughtfully: “The murderer had to make a quick

substitution of the loaded gun for the empty. He or she had to hide

the empty gun instantly—too dangerous to keep it on the person. He

would have to take the handiest place, trusting to retrieve it later.

Well, in any room there are only a limited number of hiding-places…”

 

The bright eyes through the slits in the mask travelled slowly around

the room and finally came to rest on a wine bucket standing on the

floor alongside the mantelpiece almost directly behind Abdullah’s

chair. The empty bottle was now sticking upside down in the ice and

water. She pushed up her sleeve a little way, and thrust her hand into

the water alongside the bottle. She drew it out, grasping a second gun

identical with the other.

 

Glancing at the barrel, she said casually: “There’s the scratch I made

behind the sight if any of you are interested in checking it up.”

III

The silence in the room was broken by Zuleika, who said with a sneer:

“Easy enough to find something when you know where you put it.”

 

The effect of this remark was only to focus suspicion on Zuleika

herself.

 

Abdullah muttered in a dazed way: “Two guns? Two guns? That lets me

out, don’t it?”

 

“Why should it?” demanded Zuleika. “You could hide a gross of guns in

that costume. I knocked against one of them when I sat down at the

table!”

 

Zuleika, it appeared, was ready to charge anybody with the murder.

 

“It’s a lie!” whined Abdullah.

 

Mme. Storey meanwhile was comparing her gun with the one Mephisto held.

 

“Same style and make,” she remarked. “No doubt they were carried by

the same person.”

 

We now heard a sound that threw everybody except Anne Boleyn into

another wild panic. It was the distant clanging of a gong in the

street. Instantly it was clear to us all that the people outside had

sent for the police. With a moan of terror, Jackie ran to the window

and threw it up. Mr. Punch made no move to stop her now. Out she

went, followed by Zuleika and Abdullah. When it came to the point,

Abdullah was not so anxious to face the police after all.

 

Myself, I was wild to follow. The dead man on the floor, the clanging

of that horrible gong, the thought of a fight with the police—it was

too much. My nerve failed me completely; but I waited for some sign

from my employer. Mr. Punch seemed to have lost his head, too. He

stood there biting his fingers in a horrible state of indecision.

Mephisto at the window shouted to him:

 

“Come on! Come on! You can’t face this out alone, you fool!”

 

Mr. Punch flung up his arms.

 

“All right,” he cried. “You are all witness that I didn’t want to go.

If you must go, I’ve got a car in the street. I’ll get you away.” He

turned to us and shouted: “Come on! They’re already in the building.”

 

Mme. Storey gave me a sign, and I hustled after Mephisto. I left her

and Mr. Punch contending which should go last. She got her way.

 

Out on the fire escape my head reeled. The pattering of those

descending feet on the iron steps below me made me shudder. It is a

sound which suggests fire and catastrophe.

 

The fire escape was on the rear of the building. Late as it was,

lights went up in the windows of the surrounding tenements, and bodies

hung half out.

 

“What’s the matter?” they cried back and forth to each other. “There

they go! Look at them!”

 

Mr. Punch stood by my side, stamping with impatience, while Anne Boleyn

was still only two-thirds down. “Come on! Come on!” he whispered

frantically.

 

“Coming!” she answered serenely.

 

She reached the ground just as the police started issuing from the

window above. Scrambling over the fence any way we could, we found

ourselves in a narrow passage which communicated with the next street.

The others were hovering in the mouth of the passage, uncertain where

to turn.

 

“This way!” whispered Mr. Punch, taking the lead.

 

We ran around the first corner into an alley. It was evident from the

sounds that a crowd was gathering in front of Webster Hall, but by the

grace of Providence the dark streets behind were empty. Mr. Punch

flung open the doors of a big limousine standing in the alley. He took

the wheel, and all the rest of us piled in pell-mell behind. When he

started the engine the sound brought men running from the front of the

hall to the other end of the alley, and the cry went up:

 

“There they go!”

 

The gong began to clang again.

 

As we crossed the street in the rear of the hall, the police were

coming out of the passageway by which we had escaped a minute earlier.

One of them shot at us. I saw the sparks where the bullets ricochetted

from the paving stones. But we were only in sight for a moment before

plunging into the second block of the alley, and they were all on foot.

There was no car at hand for them to seize.

 

The awful strain relaxed a little. What a strange crew we were in the

back of that limousine! All masked and watching each other out of the

corners of the eye-slits. The two women had resumed their masks,

though what they expected to gain by it now, it would have been hard to

say. And what a load we carried beside the seven people! Love,

hatred, guilt, suspicion, and fear, all squeezed up together as in an

affectionate embrace.

 

Something, I don’t know what, the suggestion of a new sound behind us

perhaps, prompted me to peep under the curtain over the rear window.

To my dismay I discovered that a light car filled with policemen had

crept up almost upon us, and was gaining rapidly. There was no

particular reason why I should have feared the police, but I was

terrified sick at the thought of more shooting.

 

“Oh, they’re coming!” I gasped.

 

Scarcely slackening speed at all, Mr. Punch turned the first corner to

the left. The heavy limousine reeled, teetered, slid, while we held

our breath and clutched at one another. But the four wheels came down

to earth again and we rushed through the side street in safety. Not so

the policemen. The light car skidded half across the street, leaped to

the sidewalk and crashed to a standstill against the house-fronts. I

only hope the poor fellows in it were not seriously hurt.

 

That was the end of pursuit. Mr. Punch turned a few more corners and

then, slackening speed, put on his mask and spoke to us through the

front window. He was less suave now.

 

“I can take you folks to a place where you’ll be absolutely safe until

you can get some proper clothes. But, naturally, I don’t want you to

know where it is. Pull down the blind over the front window. If I

catch anybody peeping I’ll put you out in the street just as you are.”

 

“That’s fair enough, Punch,” said Mephisto. “I won’t let anybody look

out.”

 

“I want to go home!” wailed Jackie like a child.

 

“Nothing doing, sister,” said Mephisto. “We’re all in this thing

together, and we got to stick together.”