American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

The knife-thrower leered at him with his bloodless lips, and the slit eyes shone with an exultant gleam. He took a stubby pencil from his bath-robe pocket and drew a small circle on the blank wall. He walked to the other end of the room, the chief watching him like a hawk. The pistol dangled from the man’s hand as he turned. A snap of the arm, and it became a flying whirl of blue. The muzzle struck the exact centre of the small circle, the hammer snapped down, and for an instant the gun seemed suspended against the wall before it jangled to the floor.

‘God! That’s what I saw last night!’ choked Rogers.

The knife-thrower picked up the pistol. ‘It’s just as easy to make the butt strike first, with the muzzle pointed at me, as it should have pointed at Cartwright’s back last night.’

The commissioner watched every move as he walked to the end of the room.

Suddenly Colton’s voice rang out:

‘Don’t let him throw that pistol!’

The chief jumped from his chair as the red arm swung.

A line of fire leaped from the blank wall toward the scarlet-robed figure across the room. The explosion echoed and re-echoed in the room. The pistol clattered on the bare boards under the small circle it had struck so unerringly. On the butt were flakes of the white plaster where it had been driven into the wall. The red robe seemed slowly to crumple as the knife-thrower sank to the floor; and as they ran to where he lay, the lips twisted in an evil leer of triumph, the slit eyes gleamed their gloating.

‘I told you I’d never swing for it!’ he sneered up at them. ‘Palming that cartridge was easy. I used to be a magician – when my name was – Kelly!’

V

‘Yes, Sydney, he paid the price the State puts on murder, and I guess it is just as well.’ A fleeting smile crossed Colton’s thin lips for an instant. ‘But the chief is naturally angry that such a spectacular murderer should escape his clutches so easily. My keen ears caught the click of the breech as he put in the cartridge. But I was too late; he had waited until the last second.’

The two men were in the library of the old-fashioned house, where the blind man had come to spend his regular afternoon four hours in darkness that meant insurance against the splitting headaches too-long-continued light on his sensitive, sightless eyes always caused. The knife-thrower had lived but a few minutes, for his skill had not failed him, and the bullet had pierced one of his lungs. Rogers had gone to arrange for the funerals of Cartwright and the daughter he had loved. They were to be side by side in death, and the story would go to their graves. On that the men had agreed in the big bare room where the last act of the tragedy had been played.

‘How did you ever connect the knife-thrower with the murders?’ asked Sydney finally.

‘Your story of the shooting in the box, as you told it to me while we were waiting for the panic to cease in the theatre, gave me the first clue,’ explained the blind man thoughtfully. ‘The fact that you saw the face of Nelson so plainly told me that the flash must have crossed his body, and, in groping his way in the darkness, his right hand must have been on the hangings. Shrimp’s enthusiastic description of the knife-thrower’s act told me how wonderful it was, and – he was the possibility.

‘Then the murder of Cartwright was the proof needed. There could be no explanation but that of a thrown pistol for the thing Rogers saw. And the two pistols being identical was the last link. But no one would believe the theory without irrefutable proof. That I got, first by the nicked-up butts of the guns, showing how long they had been used in practice. Then Rogers’s story of Cartwright told me the guilty person. But then came the necessity of explaining where he had been all the years. I sent Shrimp to the stage entrance to get the knife-thrower’s address and locate him. He did, and, being a boy, he aroused not the slightest suspicion when he made an inquiry at the house. I knew also that at least one of the two employees of the rathskeller must have known another man had been on hand when the murder was committed. I had to go there to see why they had withheld the information from the police. The explanation was logical enough, but the police would never have seen it. Then I had to go to the theatre and find the place where the butt of the gun had struck on the wall. The finding was more of a job than I thought. In his excitement the boy must have moved the hangings a foot, for the scar in the velvet was a foot lower than I should have found it. And you must remember that it was a scar that no eye could have seen, one that could only be found with a microscope, or supersensitive fingertips like mine. Then came the message from Shrimp, whom I had told to call me up either at the rathskeller or the theatre.’

Silence came in the darkened room. When Thornley Colton spoke again his voice was low, solemn, its tone one of reverent wonder. ‘The death of that girl is one of the higher mysteries, Sydney. Was she murdered because of a terrible mistake, or did a merciful Providence send a thoughtless, foolish boy to grope in the darkness at just the right instant to deflect that pistol, and send the bullet into her back? She died in the happiest moment of her life; joy was in her heart and on her lips. If the pistol had not been turned by the