Free Murder on Wheels by Stuart Palmer Page A

hall, ringing with a persistent nagging note that was somehow like the screaming “Skrrrrrr” of the parrot upstairs.
    “I’ll take it,” called out Piper as he saw the Sergeant moving down the hall.
    The voice at the other end was a familiar one—that of the cop on special duty in his own office at Headquarters.
    “Hello, Inspector? Just got something that’ll interest you. Yeah. The boys went over the Chrysler, but no prints except the stiff’s. Yeah. Nothing else that didn’t belong. Ignition key in the dashboard. No marks on the cushions. No sign of any place where the rope could have been tied, and then pulled loose.”
    “Well, what else?”
    “The post office sent over a leather that they found in the outgoing mail about ten minutes ago, Inspector. One of the collectors got it in a late round this afternoon, stuck away in one of the letter boxes. He’s not sure which building, but it’s in the general district where the Stait guy was bumped. Yeah, that’s what pickpockets always do with a wallet. Lift the dough and then drop it through the slot so it won’t pin a rap on them later. Only this leather had twenty-five bucks still in it … and what’s more, it has a half a dozen swell engraved cards with the name Lewis Maitland Stait Yeah. That’s the brother of the stiff, ain’t it?”
    Piper said, “Yes,” and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Anything else, Joe?”
    “No, nothing else, Inspector—oh, wait a minute. Here comes a messenger from Van Donnen’s office with the rope you wanted him to look over.”
    “Good! What’s the expert testimony in the rope? Read it quick.”
    “Dr. Van Donnen says it’s not a rope at all, it’s a lariat or reata. Belongs out west somewhere. Signs of animal hair, probably shorthorn cattle. Tensile strength three hundred pounds or more. The binding of blue thread at the end is from Woolworth’s, though. Yeah, Woolworth’s. Well, he says he’s sure. And the knot isn’t a hangman’s noose at all, it’s just a running slip knot, spliced into place. That’s all.”
    “That’s plenty, Joe. See you tomorrow morning.” The Inspector hung up.
    He told Miss Withers the latest news. “Laurie Stait goes out west to a dude ranch this summer, and we find him with a lariat around his neck a few months later. You don’t suppose that we’ve got a tangible clew of this hodge-podge, do you? Putting two and two together …”
    “The trouble with you, Oscar, is that you always put two and two together and make a baker’s dozen out of it,” Miss Withers told him.
    The Inspector nodded. “Maybe. But when you put the dude ranch and the lariat together with the fact that there’s been a Rodeo at the Madison Square Garden all week …”
    “And what is a Rodeo?” They were preparing to leave. Miss Withers yawned politely.
    “Oh, a bunch of crazy hoodlums put on a Wild West show, with a lot of riding wild horses and bulldogging steers and rope tricks.”
    “You don’t suppose,” said Miss Withers casually, “that there was a gentleman at the Rodeo who knew some rope tricks that weren’t part of the program?”
    McTeague had gone home to nurse the lump on his forehead, and Sergeant Taylor was relaxed in a chair in the front hall, on special duty for the rest of the night. Miss Withers and the Inspector came down the front steps together, and paused for a moment to look between the houses at the full moon, which hung like a great white skull in the sky.
    “The Police have the case well in hand and an arrest is expected hourly,” quoted the Inspector bitterly. From somewhere in the decaying mansion they had just left came the muffled sound of shrill derisive laughter. It might have been from the little maid Gretchen or the lewd centenarian parrot that Mrs. Stait called Skipper.
    Miss Withers thought it a fitting end for the first day of this mad murder case.

VIII
The Valkyrie Gets Taken for a Ride
    T HE INSPECTOR AROSE AN hour earlier than was his custom next