Free Death Takes a Bow by Frances Lockridge Page B

maybe, that he’d have a chance to laugh. Somewhere else. When he got where he was going, if he went any place. He’d think it funny to leave me high and dry, and to make poor old Dupont ridiculous, and to leave North introducing a dead man. He was that kind of a guy.”
    It would, Weigand commented, be carrying things rather to an extreme. And Sproul, unless he was very optimistic, might be doubtful whether he would get to enjoy the joke.
    â€œI don’t mean that he would kill himself just for that,” Burden clarified. “The chance of troubling people would be—well, call it an additional inducement. Assuming he had a major inducement.”
    â€œRight,” Weigand said. His tone ended it. Burden got up and started toward the door leading to the stage. Then Mullins opened the same door and got ready to speak, but Weigand thought of one more question.
    â€œBy the way,” he said, “did Sproul know a little dark man?”
    Burden looked at him and said “What?”
    â€œA little dark man,” Weigand repeated. “Was there one somewhere in Sproul’s life, that you know of?”
    Burden said he didn’t get it. There might have been a dozen little dark men in Sproul’s life.
    â€œHow little?” he said. “How dark? A Negro midget?”
    Weigand grinned and shook his head. Not quite that little, or that dark, presumably.
    â€œI really don’t know,” he admitted. “I didn’t see him, myself. But there seems to be a little dark man in the wood pile somewhere. Peering out, as nearly as I can gather. Mr. North saw him.”
    Burden said “oh” and shook his head. He continued to look at Weigand doubtfully. He said that he didn’t connect Sproul with any little dark man in particular.
    â€œAlthough obviously—” he began.
    Weigand nodded and said “right.” Probably, he added, it didn’t come to anything. Sergeant Mullins moved aside to let Burden pass out to the stage.
    â€œThey’re taking it away,” Mullins said. “O.K., Loot?”
    â€œWhy not?” Weigand said. “We don’t want it, do we?”
    â€œI don’t,” Mullins said, flatly. “Not any part of it. It looks screwy to me, Loot.”
    â€œDoes it, Mullins?” Bill Weigand said politely.
    Mullins said “yeh.” He looked at the lieutenant darkly. “The Norths are in again,” he advised his superior darkly. “It’s bound to be screwy.”
    Weigand nodded, abstractedly, admitting there was something in what Mullins said. Still abstractedly, he took from his pocket the notes Sproul had prepared against that evening’s lecture. He nodded at them, glad he had them. They would tell him more about Sproul; they were bound to.
    â€œAnd every man is the clue to his own murder,” he remarked. Mullins stared at him.
    â€œHuh?” Mullins said. “I don’t get it, Loot.”
    Weigand told him not to bother. He laid the notes beside him on the desk, nodded to Mullins and told him to let them take the body. Then he said, “No, wait a minute,” because he decided he would like to look at this guy Sproul again. He followed Mullins to the stage, went past the waiting men from the New York County morgue, and looked down at Sproul.
    He was a florid corpse, was Mr. Sproul, and his hair bristled in an incongruously lively fashion. Weigand stared at the body and the body stared back; probably it was pure imagination to think that the body grinned in a kind of malicious triumph. That was just something which had already begun to happen to the face. Weigand shook his head at the corpse and said it could be taken away. The white-uniformed men from the morgue put it in the basket, neither roughly nor gently. They did not chuck it in; on the other hand they were evidently conscious that it was in no danger of breaking.
    Somebody had pulled aside heavy velvet curtains which