The Riddle of the Blueblood Murders Page 2

  McGrath turned, and came out of the office, his face strangely contorted. He pushed past Miss Withers without seeing her, and she heard him utter, “Damn all dogs and all fools who breed ’em . . . !”

  Miss Withers saw that this was not the time for her to have a chat with the pleasant Mr. Neville. She tiptoed softly back toward the amphitheater.

  She spent the rest of the evening patrolling the avenues between the dog cages, keeping a sharp lookout for any signs of the mysterious marauder. The crowds were thick, and extremely innocent-seeming. She met several other owners and was inevitably introduced to their precious exhibits. Every time she passed the cage wherein her own Dempsey was confined, the dog forgot all the manners that had been impressed upon him in three weeks of rigorous training, and bounced up and down in eagerness to get out.

  Closing time arrived, and she saw the odd little Mr. Holt saying goodnight to his collie who evinced no interest in his master. The crowd thinned out, and Miss Withers, glad that nothing had happened, moved toward the doors. She was intercepted by Henry Neville, whose face was very red, and whose lips were gray.

  “Won’t you come back to my office?” he invited. “Things seem to be going along quietly, except for a little trouble we’re having with one of our judges. All the same, I’d like your ideas on the other situation.”

  He led the way back to the little office, which had been straightened since Miss Withers saw it last. The broken whiskey bottle was gone.

  Miss Withers plunged at once into her own suggestion for safeguarding the situation, which was to have plate-glass installed instead of wire netting in all the cages. Neville seemed only half listening to her, but he shook his head. “Think of the cost,” he said. “Besides, the public would object, and the owners be unduly alarmed at the necessity for the scheme.”

  The talk dwindled. Miss Withers looked at him, playing a wild hunch. “I wonder,” she said, “if you’d tell me just what is the trouble in regard to Mr. Judge McGrath?”

  Neville looked at her sharply. “Trouble? Nothing at all, really. The man is an excellent judge of dogs. His wife and he used to have a big kennel themselves, and he is the last word on disputed points. But he’s taken to drinking himself to death, and it’s bad for the Club. I wish we’d never hired the gentleman for this job . . . There’re plenty others who’d do anything to get in his shoes.”

  Neville shrugged his shoulders. “He’ll probably be all right tomorrow, though. The judging starts at nine o’clock and terriers come first.”

  “I know that,” said Miss Withers. “I was just wondering. Am I not likely to show that I know nothing of handling a dog when the time comes to lead Dempsey up to the stand? I’d like to take him myself, but still—”

  “Simple enough,” said Neville cheerily. He reached for a telephone on his desk. “The dogs have been fed and exercised by now, and I’ll get one of the kennel men to bring your pooch in here, and demonstrate how you should act.” He rattled the receiver, and got no answer. “Must be that the boys are gone for the night,” he observed. “Wait here, I’ll fetch him myself.”

  In something over ten minutes he was back, with a wriggling Dempsey under his arm. “It’s almost pitch-dark in there,” he announced. “I had trouble getting the key to the boxlock. Somebody must have turned out the wrong lights.”

  He searched in his desk for a light whip-leash and loose collar, and the next half hour was spent in technicalities. Miss Withers learned facts which had already been well impressed upon her pet by the trainer in Westchester who had labored with him for weeks. Finally, Neville said that she would pass muster.

  They went back into the arena, dimly lit by a cluster of tiny bulbs high in the ceiling. Far ahead of them exit lights gleamed dully, like evil red eyes in the gloom. As their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they managed to make their way between the high-ranked cages, with Dempsey growling at every sleeping occupant. Finally they came to the last alley-way . . .

  Suddenly Dempsey wriggled out of his mistress’ arms, and dropped to the sawdust. He plunged forward as if hot on the scent of something, and then stopped short, his legs braced wide and a salvo of barks issuing from his mouth. The noise died away to a nervous, unsteady whining. The hair on his back was bristling . . .

  “Who’s there?” cried Neville.

  Nobody answered. Dempsey huddled against his mistress’ stocking.

  Miss Withers produced a tiny affair of polished nickel from the depths of her handbag, and cast its beam ahead of them. The alleyway was empty. They went softly forward.

  “Something is wrong here,” Miss Withers decided suddenly. She sniffed, and found that there was an odd, sweetish-bitterish odor above the smells of dog.

  Something was very wrong. The two humans realized at last what Dempsey had known from the beginning—those eight cages contained the bodies of seven dogs. Some of them appeared to be sleeping, but it was the long sleep that knows no waking.

  Neville was shouting for the night-watchman. “Clyde! Where are you?”

  There was no answer. Neville pressed against the wire-netting which screened the nearest cage. “Dead—all of them, in torment! It’s happened while we were wasting our time in the office. What insane devil out of hell could do a thing like this?”

  Miss Withers did not think that his question required an answer. She was staring at Devonshire Lad, the big bored collie of which little Mr. Holt had been so proud. Devonshire Lad was only a tumbled pile of fur now.

  Neville was still shouting for “Clyde.” Finally there came an answering hail from the distance. But Miss Withers paid no attention to the breathless and perspiring night-watchman, when he trotted into the scene. She was watching Dempsey, who was walking stealthily forward, his nose pointed into the shadows beneath the cage of Devonshire Lad.

  He was sniffing, and seemed to be stalking something. Miss Withers sent her flash ahead and saw what it was. The circle of yellow light fell upon the gaunt face of Andrew McGrath, reputed to be America’s best judge of terriers. He was dead, quite dead. Clutched firmly in his right hand was a large bottle more than half full. Through the loose cork came the tell-tale odor of bitter almonds . . .

  Neville was demanding to know where Clyde had been. “Didn’t I tell you to keep your eyes open?”

  “You told me to see to the doors, and that’s what I was doing,” said the old man belligerently.

  “But the lights? They’re supposed to be on all night. Who turned them out?”

  “So help me,” said the watchman, Clyde, “I thought you did!”

  Miss Withers, not without a qualm, put Dempsey back into his cage and snapped the lock. “Where’s the nearest telephone?” she then demanded.

  It was four o’clock in the morning when Miss Withers finally left the Garden. The Inspector’s myrmidons had descended upon the place with flashlight powders, cameras, and fingerprint apparatus, but their general opinion was that they were wasting their time on a snipe-hunt.

  Medical Examiner Bloom himself condescended to put in a brief appearance in full evening dress, and the wagon from the Department of Justice finally carried away the body of the dead man and the bodies of the seven dead dogs.

  The Inspector led Miss Withers to a little all-night lunch counter on Eighth Avenue, and ordered ham and eggs and coffee for two.

  “Don’t take it so hard,” he said. “You did all you could. But you were looking for an outsider and not a judge of the dog show himself.”

  “Oh, that!” she said. Then—“Oscar, in spite of what Dr. Bloom says, do you believe that McGrath was the dog poisoner, and that he killed himself in remorse?”

  “I’d like to know how you could give any other explanation,” Piper retorted. “He had that bottle of prussic acid gripped in his hands, tight as a vise. No one could have put it there. Besides, with his wife dying a few months ago from blood poisoning that she got through the bite of a dog she was buying, he had reason enough to hate the whole canine tribe. Neville told me
the whole story. Says that McGrath has been queer ever since the tragedy. Tonight he must have had one last orgy and then finished off himself.” The Inspector looked pleased with such a facile explanation.

  Then Miss Withers stuck a pin in his balloon. “You think that McGrath took a sip from the poison bottle, carefully recorked it and then died?”

  “By George!” the Inspector wagged his head. “Cyanide of potassium, especially in liquid form as prussic acid, is the strongest and quickest known poison. He wouldn’t have had time to recork it—a few drops on his tongue would have knocked him out.” Piper stopped. “Yet, look here. Bloom swears that he doesn’t need an autopsy to know that McGrath died from the stuff in that bottle.”

  “When you answer my first question,” Miss Withers cruelly went on, “I wish you’d tell me how the poisoner got the dogs to come up to the wire netting and take a sip from his bottle, in the first place. He had no meat, nothing to dope with the acid . . .”

  Piper shook his head. “Then it wasn’t suicide. And we’re right back where we started.” He looked at the school teacher for guidance, which was unlike him.

  Miss Withers was grim. “The dog show must go on tomorrow as usual,” she insisted. “I’m going to have another try. I believe that a madman was loose in the Garden tonight and with nearly a thousand dogs gathered there, he won’t be able to keep away. I think I’m beginning to see something, but I’m going ahead as planned. Do me a favor, and have the newspapers hush up this ‘suicide’ as much as you can.”

  He nodded, and went to the wall-telephone. He gave some instructions to his office, and then called another number. He listened for some time, and then came back. “Bloom and three assistants are almost finished with the autopsy on the stiff,” he told the school teacher. “He says it’s prussic acid all right. Each of the dogs had a trace of it around the mouth, but none in the stomach. The man must have choked to death on the stuff, for there’s a good bit of poison in the nasal passages. Bloom says he never ran across that before. He still holds out for simple suicide.”

  “Things are seldom what they seem,” quoted Miss Withers wearily. “I’m for home and bed. Tomorrow I’ve got to play a lone hand, and outbluff this murderer.”

  She was not so confident when, shortly before nine o’clock the next morning, she was back at the Garden, after a few hours of fitful slumber filled with dreams of the little dog Dempsey in which he wore a silk hat and drank prussic acid from a silver flask.

  Yet he was safe and sound when she came to his lonely cage among the seven empty boxes. Indeed, he was carrying on a long-range verbal battle with a terrier somewhere in the next row—a dignified, nettled terrier whose deep growls befitted an aristocrat named Champion Million-dollar Highboy.

  There were not many spectators at this early hour, Miss Withers noticed. What people there were had been firmly ushered to the front tiers of seats nearest the platform, from which they could overlook the judging. A goodly crowd of owners and experts stood in a semicircle around the platform, evidently waiting for things to begin.

  She had a look around for poor little Mr. Holt, seeking to commiserate with him for the loss of Devonshire Lad, but the man was not to be seen. Mr. Neville she noticed in the center of a circle of indignant dog-owners, and she heard him wearily explaining that the club had taken out insurance against just such a tragedy as had occurred last night, and that they would be reimbursed for the loss of their pets. She tried without success to catch his eye.

  The work of judging terriers was beginning, with a brisk, self-satisfied young man—somebody said his name was Kearling—as the substitute for the great McGrath. He looked extremely pleased with himself. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,” she observed.

  A trainer brought Dempsey to her, and the little dog looked the part of “Surefire Scout” for he had been well brushed, dusted with chalk, and otherwise prepared for the supreme test. Miss Withers took the leash, and wondered if, after all, she was really fooling anybody as to her real mission here. One after another she saw magnificent specimens of dogdom circle around the sawdust, mount the “bench,” and come under the sharp eye and exploring hands of Judge Kearling.

  Some he quickly motioned away, to be grouped forever among the goats. Others went into a smaller grouping, while Champion Million-dollar Highboy stood alone, sure of his blue ribbons and looking like a painted, calendar dog.

  Her turn came, and in full view of the crowd Miss Withers led a sober and sedate Dempsey around a bit, and then to the bench. He was almost, but not quite, wagging his tail.

  Kearling bent down, dictating swift, nervous sentences to an aide who kept score. He patted Dempsey’s rump. “Stern, ten points,” he said. “Hind legs, eight. Barrel and shoulders, nine. Ears—”

  His practised hands felt of the cocked ears, and Dempsey immediately forgot all that had been so patiently drilled into him. This was a very nice man, thought Dempsey, a man who smelled charmingly of dog. Rising swiftly on his hind legs, he licked Kearling across the face. The crowd gasped. It was as if a debutante being presented at Court, had kissed the King!

  Kearling jerked erect and frowned! He raised his hand and started to say the word “Disqualif—” But for some reason he thought better of it. He knelt again, avoiding Dempsey’s friendly red tongue, and completed his examination. “Ears— zero, because surgically dropped. Skull, two points, because of overwidth. Jaw . . .”

  It was soon over. Dempsey went, as Miss Withers had feared, among the goats. Not even superb preparation and conditioning would conceal the fact his skull differed tremendously from the narrow brain-pans of the over-bred elect. Surprisingly enough, the little dog seemed to realize the slight, and when the blue ribbon went to the bored and beautiful Champion Million-dollar Highboy he growled deep in his throat.

  As required by rule, the judge passed cheerfully among the disgruntled owners, explaining his findings. When he came to Miss Withers he stroked Dempsey kindly. “I’d rather own him than the Champ,” he comforted her. “But show dogs are being bred for narrow skulls, because they don’t need brains.”

  “Do judges?” Miss Withers almost said aloud. She glared suspiciously at the brisk young man. Was his soft-soaping her an evidence of some feeling on his part that she was a person to be placated? Did he guess her real mission here? She remembered that Neville had said that there were those who would do anything to get in McGrath’s shoes.

  Miss Withers led a subdued little dog back toward his cage, as a procession of Aberdeens trotted forward to face the judge. She noticed that the Garden management, no doubt taking advantage of the smallness of the crowd at this hour, had set two singularly inept looking carpenters to work repairing a slightly damaged step leading to the tiers of seats.

  As she entered the alley-way, she stooped short and very nearly disgraced herself by screaming. For one horrible moment she thought that her mind had given way and that she was seeing things—witnessing a ghastly repetition of the tragedy of the previous evening.

  For Henry Neville was leaning down beneath the empty cage that was Dempsey’s and dragging something forth from the shadows, just as the body of McGrath had been dragged only a few hours ago. Yet this was, at any rate, not a corpse.

  It was Peter A. Holt, and the little manufacturer was spluttering and bubbling with wrath. “Take your hands off me! Let me go!”

  Neville’s glasses were slipping from his nose, but he was tightly holding on. Dempsey, who loved a fight of any kind, barked encouragingly and fought to get out of Miss Withers’ arms. The two men stopped struggling, as they looked up and saw the spinster approaching.

  The president of the Knickerbocker Kennel Club was rosy with triumph. “Got him!” he announced ungrammatically. “Here’s the little rat who was lurking underneath your dog’s cage—no doubt waiting for a chance to poison him, and complete last night’s work.”

  Miss Withers frowned. There was more in this than met the eye. “Lucky you happened to be here,” she said. “
By the way, just how did you happen to be here?”

  Neville flushed, but he still kept a grip on Holt. “Why shouldn’t I be here? I was keeping an eye on the cages, just to make sure that nothing more went wrong. And I saw a movement under the cage.”

  Mr. Holt still clung to his ear-trumpet. “He’s mad, mad as a hatter,” he confided to Miss Withers, when he got a chance to speak. “Or else crazy drunk. And he has the colossal nerve to say that I was lurching!”

  “Not lurching—lurking!” repeated Neville angrily.

  “He thinks you’re the dog-poisoner,” Miss Withers shouted into the ear-trumpet. Holt’s round little face lightened.

  “He thinks I’d kill my own prize collie?” The man laughed ruefully. “Then he is mad! Why, I came down here this morning and hid myself under the cage hoping to catch the person who was responsible for what happened last night. I thought he might come around again, and I’d nab him.”

  Miss Withers looked thoughtful, but Neville laughed jeeringly. “Yeah? Well, we’ll just have in the police, and see what they find on you, mister.”

  Holt looked worried, for the first time. “If you cause me any unpleasant publicity,” he promised, “I’ll see that you have a lawsuit on your hands inside twenty-four hours. But if searching me is all you want, go to it here and now.”

  He held his arms away from his body. Neville searched him, wrathfully, and found nothing. There was no trace of anything that could have caused death to a dog or a human being.

  Miss Withers remarked casually that something might have been dropped beneath the dog-cage. But Neville only drew another blank. There was no use going further.

  He drew himself up stiffly. “Mr. Holt, I apologize most sincerely. But if you knew how the events of last night had worried and upset me . . .”

  Holt took it well. He offered to shake hands. “I know,” he said. “I felt the same way. Our intentions were both of the best.”

  Neville, still feeling embarrassed, rushed away to his proper place beside the judging stand, and Miss Withers drew a little nearer to the ruffled little manufacturer. He stroked Dempsey with a hand that trembled. “Nice fellow,” he said. Dempsey seemed still subdued by the ill fortune that had attended his efforts at passing as a show dog. He drew away.