CHAPTER XXIII

CALLE L

A crowd of curiosity seekers had gathered about us. Smith tried to shoo them away, but the Havanese are persistent. It is not every day that one is privileged to witness a corpse in a cab. It was with some relief that we hailed the approach of a native policeman.

Smith issued crisp commands to this man. He wanted the body taken to the morgue for the necessary autopsy. It was not to be moved before the medical examiner appeared. Spence’s shop was to be sealed and guarded.

The policeman got into the cab and drove it off alone. At this Breese’s man set up a wail. He would not part with his beloved car. For ten years he had worked for the Biltmore. His reputation and his cab were both spotless.

But the detective silenced him with a glare and not too ceremoniously hoisted him into another taxi. Smith and I followed.

“You’re going to take us to the place where you say you left Spence,” Smith informed the driver, who looked mournfully back for his vanished cab. “Savvy?” The driver nodded miserably.

As we approached Calle L, he urged his colleague to slow down. The houses we passed were vaguely familiar, impressive stone houses befitting the aristocratic Vedado quarter. Then he called: “Here! Here!” Our cab stopped.

We had pulled up directly in front of the Gilded Cage!

“Here!” exclaimed the chauffeur, “here this man told me to stop. He looked around for a minute, then he says: ‘Go to café.’ I go to café on corner. There.” He pointed to the modest bodega not far away. “I go inside. I come back.” He wrung his hands as he relived the tragedy. “It is terrible. Ten years I work for Biltmore and never anything happen. Never!”

But Smith had gotten out and was studying the Gilded Cage. Breese still sat in the cab, as if in stupefied wonder. But he was roused by Smith’s first sharp question.

“You say, Mr. Breese, that you did _not_ send this man here?” Smith demanded.

“I certainly did not,” declared Breese emphatically.

“Despite what your driver says?”

“Despite what anybody says.”

“And yet,” Smith said slowly, “he drives to your house.”

Smith turned to the driver. “You say you sat in that café for fifteen minutes. Could you see your cab from there?”

“Sure--sure,” the driver nodded vigorously. “I watch my cab. I do not leave it alone. I don’t know this man.”

“You watched that cab all the time?”

“Sure--sure. All the time.”

“Now listen to me carefully,” Smith urged. “Did you see another man approach your man in the cab?”

“No. No one came to cab. No one.”

“There must have been some one,” Smith exclaimed impatiently. “The man didn’t kill himself.”

“No one! No one came to cab,” insisted the driver. “I watched. I see. I wonder why he send me away because he just sit there fifteen minutes.”

Smith swore softly in his perplexity. “But someone must have shot him,” he insisted. “He must have come here to keep a date. He must have been expecting someone. Why did he dismiss you?”

“No one came here,” the driver repeated. “I watch.”

“We’ll see if you did,” snapped Smith. “You take us to the chair you occupied in the café. Come on!”

The driver dutifully led us to the bodega and to the seat he had occupied. We got a clear view of both the cab and the street through the broad windows. Further, not only the driver but the swarthy jowelled proprietor and some of his habitual patrons were ready to swear that no one had approached the cab. They had been idly observing it, they said. They remembered it well.

And no one had heard a shot of any kind.

The further we plunged into the circumstances of the third murder associated with the Gilded Cage, the more uncanny it seemed. I know that for my part, although it was broad daylight, a bright sun, a profusion of tropical flowers everywhere about us, I shivered as if I were listening to a ghost story upon a moonless night in some creaky old house.

Smith peered up at the Gilded Cage, as if trying to discover something in its marble walls.

“I’ve never had a case before,” Smith turned to Breese, “that tossed me around the way this one does. I know it all fits together. But I can’t tell you how.” He paused, observing Breese keenly. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t be stumped. I’d hold on to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes--if I hold on to you I can puzzle it out.”

“But I was with you all the time.”

“Yes,” said Smith, “but you may have an accomplice. Your driver, for example. Let me show you, Mr. Breese, how guilty you look. Spence is a blackmailer, and you receive a letter from him. Now why does he write you a letter?”

“I don’t know,” said Breese. “Over the ’phone he said he had information on my wife’s death. To my face he said practically nothing, just told me to wait.”

“That’s your story,” said Smith, “but who’d believe it? He wrote me a letter, too. That’s natural enough. If his victim didn’t come through with money he’d see the police got the information. Now who was his victim? You were the only one, aside from myself, who came to his place. Obviously, he must have had something on you. That’s a reasonable conclusion. Particularly in view of the circumstantial evidence against you in the other two cases. Then, your driver says he told him you sent him off in the cab. Where does he go? To your house. And in front of your house he is killed.”

“Good God,” exclaimed Breese, “you almost convince me it’s so!”

“I almost convince myself it’s so,” said Smith.

“But I assure you----” protested Breese.

“And yet,” interrupted Smith, “that doesn’t explain how he was murdered by someone unseen and unheard.”

“It may have been a silencer,” I suggested.

“Undoubtedly,” said Smith. “But nobody’s invented an invisible gun or an invisible man. Unless----” he stopped suddenly and looked up at the huge shrouded windows of the Gilded Cage. “Unless the executioner,” he continued grimly, “was waiting in one of those windows with a gun and silencer.” He shouted suddenly. “That’s it.”

He pointed to one of the windows.

“No doubt of it,” he continued excitedly. “A man standing there, at that window--Spence down here in the cab and----”

To our amazement the window swung open. Then we saw a huge head. Perutkin appeared at the window. He was beckoning to Smith, suggesting by signs that he go into the house.

“There’s that lunatic again,” muttered Breese.

“What’s he doing here?” Smith demanded of me. “I’ll have to lock him up just to get rid of him.”

But the Russian was gesticulating wildly.

“He wants us to come in,” I suggested.

“I want to go in anyway,” said Smith, moving up the long stairs to the terrace. “He’s probably got another hare-brained scheme.” He dismissed the Russian from his mind contemptuously. “But that’s the explanation. No doubt of it. Spence was killed from a window in this house. Now we’ll find out who’s in that house and this time I let nobody go.”

“But who can it be?” muttered Breese. “Someone I know? Someone in the house, someone with us on the yacht? The mere thought of it is appalling.”

We had reached the terrace. The door swung open. The Russian greeted us.

“A thousand pardons, Mr. Smith,” he called. “I left you unceremoniously. I plead haste. And a thousand pardons to you, Mr. Breese. I am responsible for any unpleasantness that may have been caused you. I was led astray. I insisted you were a criminal. And I had no evidence. I can only beg your pardon.”

“What is it you want now?” Smith insisted grimly. “You’ve got nothing more to do with this case. You know that, don’t you?”

“That is true,” replied the Russian, “in half an hour I shall have nothing more to do with this case. Yours shall be the glory, Mr. Smith. The case is over.” He paused. “It is too bad about Spence. A blackmailer, but still a human being.”

“How do you know about him?” Smith demanded.

“I foresaw his end, poor chap,” the Russian sighed. “When I left you so hurriedly I had hoped to prevent it. But when I came here I knew I was too late.”

Smith looked at him, shaking his head in baffled wonder.

“You see, it was inevitable,” the Russian explained. “Spence was the last. There shall be no more murders. Now there shall be retribution. When Mrs. Breese was killed, it was written that Trenholm should go. And when Trenholm confided in Spence, and Spence very foolishly sought profit from his highly dangerous information, Spence was doomed.” He added casually: “But I have our man.”

“Which one is it this time?” Smith sneered.

“The right one,” replied the Russian. “You need have no fear. I made one mistake in this case, I concede it. I overlooked one slight detail. It entirely escaped me. And that one slight detail sent me off on the wrong track. I became confused. My work was execrable. I can only apologize. But I have made up for it. I have corrected my error. And I have the man you want.”

“Is this another one of your experiments?” demanded Smith.

“No,” said the Russian. “I have disappointed you before, Mr. Smith. I have disappointed myself. Even now I kick myself violently for my stupidity.”

“Well,” said Smith practically, “who is it and where is he?”

“Will you give me half an hour--thirty minutes?” asked the Russian.

“I knew there was a catch in it,” sighed Smith.

“I could turn the man over to you at this moment,” the Russian said, “but it would not be advisable.”

Smith shook his head. “I’ve wasted enough time with you,” he said. “If you have anything, come out with it.”

“Very well,” said the Russian. “You refuse me? Then find the man yourself. I have no self-interest. I am merely helping you. Is a half-hour so precious to you that you cannot gamble it against a certainty? I assume you want the man. I shall get him for you, in exactly thirty minutes. He is not far from you now.”

Smith is by nature a trader. He overlooks no bargains. After a moment’s hesitation, he said finally: “All right! I’ll give you half an hour. If you don’t produce, better keep out of my way!”

“Excellent!” exclaimed the Russian. “Come with me!”