American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

‘You can’t show me any murderer but Rogers and Nelson,’ snapped the chief, with an air of finality. ‘Because you can’t convince me or anybody else that a man could see what Rogers says he saw. A pistol with no hand near it. It’s impossible! It’s dam’ foolishness!’ He snorted.

Unconsciously Sydney Thames found himself nodding confirmation. That was the whole thing: an impossibility. No one had been near Cartwright but Rogers. The girl had been shot in the back, and no one could have been behind her but Nelson. This last Sydney knew, and had seen.

‘Let me see the pistols which killed Cartwright and the girl, and I’ll convince you that the same man murdered both,’ offered Colton.

‘Duplicate guns aren’t so rare,’ instantly resented the chief. This man was practically telling him that he didn’t know his business!

‘Those two pistols – and others that may be in the possession of the murderer – are the only ones of their kind in the world!’

‘Look at ’em, then.’ The chief grabbed them from his desk. ‘They’re a standard German make, single-shot target pistols, blued steel, with barrels six inches long, numbered and sold all over Europe.’

Colton took the two pistols, and Sydney drew his chair closer to see.

‘In the first place,’ began the blind man, as his thin, supersensitive fingers examined one gun, while the other lay on his knees, ‘murderers don’t usually have this kind of pistol. They can’t be carried in any ordinary pocket, and’ – his forefinger-tip rested over the shallow slot near the muzzle – ‘you never before saw target pistols without front sights!’

‘Took ’em off so they wouldn’t catch in the pocket,’ grunted the chief knowingly.

Colton’s lips curved in a smile. ‘An ingenious theory,’ he grunted. ‘Have you one to fit the banged-up appearance of these butts?’ He held out the pistol and indicated the nicks and scratches.

‘Been used to hammer nails,’ declared the chief, exaggerated weariness in his voice. ‘Gun owners use ’em that way sometimes, like a woman uses a hairbrush. Nothing to that.’

‘Yes there is! No gun owner in the world ever drove a nail by holding a gun vertically, hand on the barrel, and pounding it up and down like a pile driver! See, the hard usage doesn’t show on the bottom of the butt, as it would have done had the pistol been swung as a hammer. The dents and scratches are all on the outside edge!’

The chief took the extended gun. The sarcastic smile on his lips faded as he tried the two ways of holding it. The blind man was right! No driving of nails could have made nicks and scratches where they were on this pistol! ‘What’s that got to do with the murder?’ he growled.

‘Everything,’ answered the problemist shortly. He took the other pistol on his palm. ‘Didn’t it strike you that these were two finely balanced pistols, even for target use?’ Before the chief could reply Colton shot another inquiry: ‘Didn’t you wonder at the fact that both triggers had been filed to a hair so that the slightest jar would cause the hammer to fall? See!’ He cocked the pistol and jammed the muzzle against the chief’s desk.

The hammer clicked down sharply. He tried it again, this time jamming the butt down on a chair arm. Once more the hammer snapped on the empty chamber.

The chief’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s how those nicks were made!’ he ejaculated, shocked from his supercilious attitude. The lightning-like questions, the proving of fact after fact by Colton, had disconcerted him. In ten minutes the man who was sightless had shown him details that neither his keen eyes nor the eyes of his hundred men had seen, and Colton had made of those details startling, vivid possibilities.

‘May I speak to Mr Rogers?’ Colton asked the question quietly, simply, but under his voice was a subtle note that was dominantly compelling; a note that had made bigger and stronger men than the chief of the New York detective bureau bow to his wishes.

‘That’s all very interesting stuff,’ began the chief pompously, ‘but Rogers is the man who shot Cartwright, and we know that Cartwright held a dozen thousand dollars’ worth of his paper.’

The door opened to admit an attaché, and Sydney hid a grin with his hand. He had seen the chief press the call button even before he began to speak.

‘Bring Rogers here,’ grunted the head of the detective bureau.

The lawyer came in a moment later, and the two men who accompanied him were curtly ordered out.

The strong face of the prisoner was marred by lines indicating loss of sleep; his lips were shut grimly, a scowl creased his forehead, his eyes, sharp and piercing, were fixed on the chief.

‘This is Mr Colton, Rogers,’ introduced the detective shortly. ‘He’s got a sort of a theory on the Cartwright murder.’

‘If it’s the right one he’ll save you a lot of trouble,’ snapped the lawyer ungraciously. He turned to Colton. ‘I’ve heard of your work on the Villers case.’ His tone was almost amiable; then into it came dull wonder. ‘But that was simplicity itself beside this. I saw that revolver before the shot was fired, unsupported by human hands, against Jim Cartwright’s shirt front. It must have flown there on invisible wings!’

The chief grunted sarcastically, as he had grunted at each repetition of that unvarying statement.

Thornley Colton, tapping his foot lightly with his thin stick, looked up. ‘That is just what it did do!’ he said. The three men stared blankly. The blind man continued: ‘According to the newspapers, Mr Rogers, you said that something caused you to jerk up your head in time to see that picture. Do you know what it was?’

‘I do not.’ Rogers shook his head. ‘I can only describe it as some inner impulse.’

‘Wasn’t it’ – Thornley Colton’s tone was impressive – ‘wasn’t it a shadow, a swift-passing shadow, your eyes saw on the floor?’

Rogers